Nobody Asked Me

by Mary Burchell

  So instead Alison did her best to simulate a profound interest in the colonel’s reminiscences and his description of what this famous restaurant was like in the days when he was a subaltern home on leave in the twenties.

  It was not the liveliest way of spending an evening, but she was extremely touched when it was time to go and he said to her:

  ‘Good night. I hope I shall meet you again. You’re a very nice child, and the first young person I’ve met with any pretensions to manners since I came home.’

  It comforted her a little for not having spoken again to Julian. And, in any case, as she told herself again when she got into bed that night, it was certainly not for her to expect any special notice from her cousin’s fiancé.

  The summer crept on in ever increasing heat. Airless and aimless.

  Uncle Theodore was on the Continent, and quite often Aunt Lydia and Rosalie went into the country for the week-end. Very occasionally they took Alison, but much more often she was left behind.

  Sometimes she used to tell herself that she preferred it so. The big house might be incredibly empty and lonely when she was left there by herself, but Aunt Lydia had a way of making her feel still lonelier if she came to any of the smart house-parties.

  Alison tried not to think too much about it because she was afraid of losing her sense of proportion where her aunt and Rosalie were concerned, but she felt pretty sure that the uppermost idea in Aunt Lydia ’s mind was that no one should be allowed to detract from Rosalie’s social success.

  And once or twice Alison had shown distinct signs of achieving a certain little popularity of her own.

  It was after this that the invitations, as interpreted by Aunt Lydia, showed an increasing tendency to include only herself and Rosalie.

  There was no appeal, of course, any more than there had been over the question of getting a job. And so Alison had to resign herself as best she could to large slices of her own exclusive company.

  One Saturday, when she was quite alone, the telephone bell rang.

  Alison took off the receiver.

  ‘Hello.’ She sounded more listless than she knew.

  ‘Mr. Tyndrum speaking,’ came Julian’s voice from the other end of the wire. ‘Can you tell me if I left my cigarette-case at the house yesterday afternoon? I have an idea I put it down on a table in the library. It’s a gold one, with the initials "J.T." in one corner.’

  ‘I-I’ll go and see,’ Alison said.

  ‘Just a moment.’ His tone changed suddenly. ‘Who is that speaking?’

  ‘It’s Alison,’ she said, and then wondered the next moment if she ought to have said ‘Miss Earlston’.

  He didn’t seem to think so, however, because he immediately repeated her name with some pleasure.

  ‘Alison! I thought you were away. Why aren’t you with your aunt and Rosalie in Sussex?’

  ‘I-wasn’t asked.’

  ‘Weren’t you?’ The sudden gentleness in his voice made Alison bite her lip.

  ‘I’ll go and see if your case is there, if you’ll just hold on a minute.’

  ‘All right.’

  She went into the library thinking, ‘And I didn’t even know he was here yesterday. It must have been when I went to fetch Aunt Lydia ’s rings from the jeweller’s.’

  The case was there. She picked it up and held it rather close against her as she went back to the phone.

  ‘Hello. Your case is all right, I have it here.’ She suddenly pressed it absurdly against her cheek.

  ‘That’s good. I shouldn’t like to lose it. May I call in for it this afternoon, Alison?’

  ‘Yes-of course.’

  ‘Will you give me tea if I come about half past four? Or do the Victorian proprieties forbid it?’ She knew he was smiling.

  ‘I’ll have tea here for you at half past four.’

  ‘Good!’

  When he had rung off, she stood there for a moment with the receiver still in her hand. Was it wicked to feel so happy at the mere thought of having him all to herself for perhaps a whole hour?

  Of course it was. But what could she do about it?

  He arrived punctually at half past four, and came into the library, where she was sitting rather solemnly behind her aunt’s small tea-table.

  ‘Well, Alison, this is very pleasant.’ He dropped into a chair opposite, and smiled at her as though he meant that.

  ‘Yes,’ said Alison. ‘Here is your cigarette-case.’ She handed it to him.

  ‘Thank you.’ He took it. ‘Why, it’s quite warm. Have you been holding it in case it should run away?’

  ‘No.’ She smiled gravely.

  ‘What then?’

  ‘I was just-holding it,’ she said lamely.

  Alison was intent on pouring out the tea, so she missed the puzzled little look he gave her as he slipped the case into his pocket.

  ‘What have you been doing with yourself since I saw you last?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘Nothing very much,’ replied Alison with perfect truth.

  ‘Nothing? I thought you had become quite a popular young person-made your own set and that sort of thing. I understood that was why you were so difficult to get hold of.’

  ‘Did you?’ Alison slowly bit a piece of bread and butter, and wondered with sudden frightened misery if he were laughing at her.

  Or perhaps, as he was without Rosalie for the week-end, he didn’t mind making up to her.

  That thought hurt even more.

  She sought for a careless conversational opening, but none presented itself.

  ‘Alison.’ He put down his cup. ‘Are your duties as a hostess weighing very heavily upon you-or is it that I have offended you over something?’

  ‘No,’ she said, not very lucidly.

  ‘Which question are you answering?’ he asked, smiling a little.

  ‘Both,’ replied Alison desperately.

  ‘I see.’ He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘So that you are perfectly at your ease, both as a hostess and as a friend?’

  ‘I-I don’t think you’re a friend,’ Alison was horrified to hear herself stammer.

  ‘Don’t you?’ He was completely serious now. ‘What have I done to forfeit your friendship-or did I never have it?’

  Dead silence.

  ‘I wish you would answer me, Alison. I’m really rather disturbed about this. Didn’t you look on me as a friend that first evening?’

  ‘I didn’t understand then,’ Alison got out at last in a very low voice.

  ‘What didn’t you understand?’

  She was aware of faint surprise at the back of her mind for the extreme patience of anyone who was usually so arrogantly impatient.

  ‘I didn’t understand why you did it. I do now.’

  There was silence again for a moment, and then he said with an odd little note in his voice, ‘Why do you suppose I did it?’

  If she could have thought of any lie in the world, she would have told it then. But she couldn’t. She could only think of the literal truth. And she said it.

  ‘You’d quarrelled with Rosalie, and you wanted to make her jealous by paying attention to another girl.’

  This time the silence was a long one-and Alison found herself wishing wildly that she could faint.

  Then he spoke at last, gravely and quietly.

  ‘Alison, I do most earnestly beg your pardon, because I think there was a little of that feeing at the back of my mind. But do please believe that my chief thought was something quite different.’

  She couldn’t quite have said why, but she felt most exquisite relief at the way he put it. Somehow, his owning to having felt like that was better than a million protestations that no such thought had entered his mind.

  ‘What-what was your chief thought, then?’ she asked rather timidly.

  ‘I was so terribly sorry that you had been made to feel lonely and humiliated and-No, don’t look like that,’ he said, as Alison winced angrily.

  ‘I don’t want to be pitied as a sor
t of oddity,’ muttered Alison. She knew that must sound terribly ungracious, but she couldn’t help it.

  He smiled-that extraordinarily sweet smile which had so astonished her before.

  ‘That wasn’t in my mind at all,’ he told her. ‘What really moved me was the fact that I knew exactly how you were feeling, because very much the same thing happened to me when I first came to England.’

  ‘To you! But it couldn’t! You’re so-so much one of them,’ Alison stammered.

  ‘My dear child, do you really suppose these people consider I’m "one of them"?’ He laughed a little, but, from his heightened colour and the slight quiver of his nostrils, Alison guessed that he hadn’t really liked saying that.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said.

  ‘No? Hasn’t Rosalie ever said anything about me?’ He spoke abruptly.

  Alison shook her head.

  ‘I’ve never heard her speak about you at all.’

  He didn’t say anything to that, but Alison suddenly knew she had hurt him a little by that clumsy admission.

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He sighed impatiently. ‘Only-It’s just that there is nothing of the British public school and university about me, you know. I spent the first twenty years of my life hundreds of miles from anywhere, in the wilds of Argentina.’

  ‘Did you?’ Alison opened her eyes very wide.

  He nodded.

  ‘My father was a cattle drover,’ he added calmly.;A farmer in a small way, too. And I suppose that for most of my youth I never thought of being anything else either.’

  Alison stared unbelievingly at him. She tried, without any success, to imagine the cool, perfectly groomed Julian Tyndrum, attired in riding-breeches and an open-necked shirt, riding across miles of prairies in pursuit of wandering cattle-or whatever cattle drovers were expected to do. She decided she was extremely vague about their duties in any case-and looked up to find him watching her with some amusement.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing-I was only thinking-there’s nothing at all about you to suggest that sort of life.’

  ‘Oh, yes, there is, Alison.’ He laughed a little. ‘There’s my disposition, my whole outlook on life-and my hands.’ He held them out calmly for her inspection.

  Alison looked at them. Her first thought was that they were not hands which would hold anything very lightly, and then-’But I should never mind being held by them.’

  ‘I think they’re very nice hands,’ she said gravely, and touched one of them lightly.

  He gave that slight laugh again, but she knew he was extremely pleased.

  ‘Tell me why you didn’t become a cattle drover or whatever it was, too,’ she said.

  ‘Because, the year that I was twenty, one of the big oil-prospecting companies made their way into our district- and their richest find was on the tiny piece of land owned by my father. They tried to persuade him to sell out for a large sum, but he insisted on an interest in the company instead.

  ‘Actually, his gamble was a fortunate one. In the end he made a great deal more than the original price he had been offered. Besides that, he sent me off to Buenos Aires to put a little polish on me, and then used his influence to get me into the company.’

  ‘It must have been a terrible break from your old life.’ Alison was touched and flattered at his telling her so much about himself.

  Julian smiled. ‘Yes. I didn’t like it much at first. Not when I had to start right at the bottom, with all the routine stuff. But I expect the discipline did no harm. Besides, I soon began to find my feet and to go ahead.’

  ‘Uncle Theodore once said you have a wonderful business sense,’ Alison remarked rather solemnly.

  He shrugged.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed, quite calmly. ‘I have a certain flair for big effects which carries me a good way; and at the same time I don’t easily lose my head.’

  ‘No, I should think not.’ Alison spoke so earnestly that he looked amused again.

  ‘Anyway, I did very well in Buenos Aires for about five years. Then my father died, and of course I inherited his interest in the company. I was offered what amounted to a directorship at the London headquarters, and so for the first time in my life I came to England. And how I hated it!’

  ‘Oh-why?’ Alison was shocked and slightly put out.

  ‘Because I was not in the least "one of them", as you put it. I found myself a complete outsider in the social world to which my money and position admitted me. And-quite naturally, I suppose-I Was made to feel it.’

  Alison made a little sound of sympathy. She touched his hand again in that small, friendly gesture, and this time his fingers closed round hers. There was no special significance in the clasp-nothing like the devastating time she had watched him grip Rosalie’s hand-but, all the same, it comforted and warmed her.

  ‘I can’t pretend I was anything but utterly impossible,’. Julian added thoughtfully. ‘I suppose any polish I had acquired-and it must have been little enough-was definitely un-English. In fact, I heard someone who disliked me describe me as "an objectionable mixture of dago and rough diamond".’

  ‘Whatever did you do?’ Alison asked curiously.

  ‘Knocked him down, of course. But he won really, because ever afterwards I went about with the perpetually nagging fear that there was something in what he had said.’

  ‘Well, there isn’t now.’ Alison spoke hotly. ‘Not a single trace of it.’

  ‘Thank you, Alison.’ Julian inclined his head with an amused expression. ‘As that is seven years ago, I venture to hope you are right. One should be able to learn most things in seven years. And yet’-she was astonished to see his face darken suddenly with a sort of angry melancholy-’there are times when Rosalie looks at me, and I wonder-’

  Alison sat perfectly still, knowing that those last words had been scarcely meant for her, and that, for a moment, he had almost forgotten her existence.

  Then he raised his head and seemed to see her again. He patted her hand and let it go.

  ‘So, you see, I knew just what you were feeling when you told me about being lonely and humiliated. And I couldn’t have turned my back on that.’

  ‘Did I really tell you-that?’ Alison asked with a slight smile.

  ‘No. But you cried at first-just a little, you know,’ he reminded her with odd gentleness. ‘And that told me a good deal. One doesn’t actually have to have shed tears to know what is behind them.’

  ‘Oh.’ Alison looked down, extremely moved.

  ‘Well, Alison?’

  ‘What?’ She looked up in that startled little way, to find his smile on her.

  ‘Am I forgiven?’

  ‘Why, of course.’ Alison smiled too.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said very gravely then.

  There was a moment’s silence, and then he said, ‘I am sorry to have seen so little of you since that first evening, but you always seem to be out when I come. Then Rosalie explained to me how much in demand you were with your own set and-’

  ‘Rosalie told you that?’ Alison couldn’t keep her colour down.

  ‘Yes.’ He looked at her penetratingly and then said sharply, ‘Why not?’

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ Alison said, looking away from him.

  After a long moment he said quietly, ‘I see.’ And Alison felt perfectly certain that he did.

  But he made no other comment. He merely said, ‘Are you doing anything to-morrow, Alison?’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Alison’s surprise that he should suppose such a thing was more illuminating than she knew.

  ‘Then will you come for a drive with me? We could start early, and be right out in the country before the real heat of the day.’

  Alison was silent, her hands locked together. The temptation to say ‘Yes’ was overwhelming, but some obscure instinct told her she was playing with particularly dangerous fire.

  Julian looked faintly put out at her hesitation.

  ‘I thought I’d been forgiven,’ he reminded her te
asingly, but she saw that he flushed slightly.

  It was that flush which did it. Rosalie might hurt and humiliate him, thwart him and make him unsure of himself. It was beyond Alison to do the same for any reason, good or bad.

  ‘I’d love to come,’ she told him eagerly. ‘I’d simply love it.’

  ‘Very well.’ He smiled at her unexpected vehemence, and she could see he was wondering what had been behind her hesitation. ‘Is half-past eight too early for you?’

  ‘Oh, no. I’ll go to bed early,’ she told him.

  ‘All right. Go to bed early.’ He laughed kindly. And she had no idea that he carried away with him a picture that reminded him rather pathetically of a child on the day before a party.

  When he had gone, Alison walked quietly up and down the library because she was too excited to sit still.

  It was all wrong, of course, feeling like this because she was to spend a day with Rosalie’s fiancé. Only that afternoon she had reproached herself for her pleasure in the thought of an hour with him. Now she was brazenly rejoicing because she was to spend a whole day with him.

  ‘But I don’t care,’ she told herself passionately. ‘It’s only one day out of all his life. One day-and all the rest are Rosalie’s.’ And then, in a flash of unconvincing remorse, she thought, ‘Besides, perhaps it will rain.’

  But she knew it wouldn’t rain-it couldn’t rain. Not on this one day out of all his life.

  CHAPTER III

  ALISON was ready and waiting when Julian arrived next morning-a morning which had dawned in cloudless perfection.

  As they left London, the faint mist of morning still clung about the houses of the outer suburbs, like the last vestige of sleep about waking eyes. And Alison, sitting very quiet beside Julian in the big grey Daimler, thought how perfect life was.

  Then, just as she was beginning to wonder if she ought to make some sort of conversation, he said:

  ‘What kind of breakfast did you have, Alison?’

  ‘Nothing very much. Why?’ Alison looked a little surprised.

  ‘I thought so. We will stop at the next place and you’ll have a proper meal.’