Near Neighbours

by Molly Clavering

  “Thank you. Ellen, that was delicious, as usual,” said Mrs. Ferrier at the piano, as Miss Fairweather gathered her songs together.

  “Have we come to the end of your programme? I have enjoyed it,” said Ellen Fairweather. “But are none of the youngsters going to perform at all?”

  “Bless me!” exclaimed her hostess. “I’d quite forgotten. One of the girls sings—the little brown one with the big eyes. I don’t know what she’ll be like, but I must ask her.”

  So Hazel, who had found herself soothed and comforted by the music and had almost lost sight of the dread fact that she might have to sing, was startled by hearing Mrs. Ferrier say:

  “Miss Lenox, won’t you sing for us now?”

  It never occurred to Hazel to protest or refuse. They had all been taught by their mother that it was rude to make a fuss when asked to do anything. With her heart somewhere in the soles of her little green shoes, she went across to the piano.

  “I’m afraid I’ll sound very rustic and untrained after those lovely voices,” she said to Mrs. Ferrier. “And I can only sing very ordinary things.”

  Mrs. Ferrier, ruffling through the little bundle of songs, murmured: “Surely you don’t call these Hebridean songs ordinary? Will you sing one or two of them?”

  She chose them because Ellen did not sing them particularly well, so that the contrast might not be too cruel, and she set them on the music-rack with an encouraging smile.

  Hazel gave a hunted glance round the room, certain that when she opened her mouth nothing but a squeak would come out, with all these eyes on her.

  Then she saw Rowan in the corner, not looking at her, rapt away into some secret place where she heard notes falling like a shower of diamond-bright drops from a branch. She could sing for Rowan, who liked to listen to her.

  It was a blackbird’s voice, small, but mellow and true, and Hazel sang simply and without affectation. “The Wild Swan,” she sang, and “The Fairy Hill”, and last, “Land of Heart’s Desire”.

  This was what Adam Ferrier heard as he let himself noiselessly into the flat, and something kept him standing there in the hall, unable to go to his room until it was ended.

  Even when the singing voice had died away and a buzz of conversation took its place he still stood there thinking. “Heart’s desire!” Well, he supposed he had got it, but there was something wanting. He was working harder than ever, the work was as interesting as before, and yet he felt that he was getting stale. He must be, or Old Prentice would never have told him to take things a bit easier, and urged him to go out more.

  “All work and no play, Ferrier!” he had said. “You know how it goes on. You need some outside interests if you are to do your best work. Take it from an old stager, who has been at it since before you were born.”

  Was this what the life he had planned was going to be like—standing alone outside the warm room where other people laughed and talked?

  On a sudden impulse he decided to join his mother’s party. Charles had told him that Rowan Lenox was going to be there. He could ask her casually how Hazel was, say that he never had a chance of seeing her nowadays. . . . It would he no good, of course. He had finished himself with Hazel, and even now he reddened as he remembered how he had—well, warned her off. He had been incredibly stupid, priggish and conceited, and if he ever had an opportunity, he would tell Hazel so.

  He opened the drawing-room door and walked in.

  “I found I could get away earlier than I expected, Mother,” he said to Mrs. Ferrier.

  “You have missed all the music,” she told him. “But you are in time to hand round coffee and drinks. I wish, though, that you could have heard Hazel sing.”

  “Hazel! Does she—was she singing?” he asked, looking round the room in search of her.

  “Indeed she does, and was. I thought you would have known,” said Mrs. Ferrier. “She was singing last of all. Ellen Fairweather and the others were delighted with her. Ellen wants to give her some lessons. It is a charming voice, and just like her, somehow.”

  Adam nodded vaguely, but he hardly heard, So it was Hazel whom he had listened to singing “Land of Heart’s Desire”. He seized a plate of sandwiches and walked about the room with them, looking for her.

  “I wish Adam would let us have some of those sandwiches he is carrying round,” observed Miss Fairweather plaintively.

  Charles, watching his cousin’s relentless progress towards Hazel, whom he had seen in a far corner talking to Holly and John Marshall, laughed.

  “I’ll rescue them for you,” he said, and followed Adam.

  Hazel had seen him come in, and so was armoured in composure by the time he reached her.

  “Good evening, Adam,” she said, pleasantly. “I don’t think you know my youngest sister, Holly.”

  “Have a sandwich?” said Adam, holding out the plate.

  “I think I’d rather wait until we have some coffee, thank you. Wouldn’t you, Holly?” said Hazel.

  “I’ll have one now,” remarked Holly, and helped herself. “They’re frightfully good,” she added to John Marshall with her mouth full. “You’d better have one too, Mr. Marshall.”

  Charles arrived at this moment and took the plate from Adam.

  “I’ll deal with this,” he said. “Holly, you come with me and try some of the other eats. They’re on a table over near the door. There’s whisky and soda,” he said, to John Marshall, “Will you just go and help yourself?”

  And so, in a few seconds, Adam and Hazel were left in a little backwater of their own out of the main stream of talk and light laughter.

  “Look here, Hazel,” he said at once, before she could think up a remark. “I want to tell you that I’d like to kick myself hard for—for the rotten things I said to you the last time I saw you to speak to. What a prig and a cad I must have sounded!”

  Hazel’s hurt had gone deep. She would be wary of letting herself be hurt like that again, although seeing him, hearing him stammering his awkward apology, her heart turned over. But she was too vulnerable where he was concerned. She would never, never let him, by the wildest flight of imagination, be able to think that she was running after him.

  “Oh, no. Not in the least,” she said, rather quickly and breathlessly. “You were perfectly right, feeling as you do, to tell me that you had no time for anything outside your work. I hope you are getting on well with Mr. Prentice.”

  “Damn my work and Old Prentice, too,” said Adam savagely, and turned away without another word.

  “You’ve deserted Hazel very suddenly, haven’t you?” said Charles, catching Adam by the arm as he pushed blindly past him.

  “It’s no good. I’ve done for myself with her, and serve me right. Don’t say any more, Charles, there’s a good chap,” muttered Adam.

  Charles raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.

  “What a lovely, lovely party it was,” Holly remarked with a loud sigh of satisfaction, climbing the stairs ahead of her sisters when they got home a little later. “I enjoyed every minute of it—no, every second. Every single second!”

  “So did I, but you needn’t waken Mummy and Murray,” said Rowan.

  “Didn’t you think it was lovely, Hazel?” insisted Holly.

  “Yes. Lovely. Good night,” said Hazel.

  As she opened her bedroom door and went in, both Rowan and Holly could see the tears trickling down her cheeks.

  “Good Gracious!” exclaimed Holly, her eyes like saucers. “What’s wrong? Do you think it was the music, Rowan?”

  “Yes—no—I expect it was. Don’t say anything about it, Holly, like a dear,” Rowan besought her. “Not to Mummy or anyone. You won’t, will you?”

  “No, I won’t, truly.” Holly was sobered, not only by Hazel’s tears, but by something in Rowan’s voice.

  Being grown up, she decided, as she threw her clothes off and promised herself that she would put everything away in the morning, was very strange, and on the whole, rather sad.

  “
But terribly interesting,” she added to herself, and fell asleep at once.

  It was a long time before Hazel slept that night.

  CHAPTER 19

  For some time after Willow had moved into the flat next door, Mrs. Lenox had been so busily and happily employed in changing the rooms in her own house, so that Holly and Rowan should each be comfortable on their own, that she did not notice how little she was seeing of her eldest daughter.

  After some thought, for she had made a vow to herself not to interfere with Willow and her establishment, Mrs. Lenox went to Number 4 to call on her married daughter without invitation.

  Edna, opening the door to disclose a vastly improved hall—the decorating of it, and the stairs, dining-room and drawing-room had been carried out, and Number Four was now fresh and light—said that she thought Mrs. Harper wasn’t in.

  “But I could take a run up and make sure, if you like, ’m,” she added, obligingly.

  However, Mrs. Lenox said she would go up herself, and did so, only to find the rooms on the top storey empty.

  Everything was extremely neat and well-kept, she was pleased to see, but the whole flat seemed desolate, as if it were not lived in. Absurd though it was, she felt that by being up here alone in Willow’s absence, she was prying, and she hurried away down the long stairs, her feet making no sound on the thick carpet.

  Later in the day, when Rowan and Holly had come in, Mrs. Lenox asked them if they had been round to see Willow recently. Holly, whose classes were now occupying her to the exclusion of every other interest, shook her head.

  Rowan hoped she did not look startled as she also said that she had not seen Willow for four or five days, but she felt it. A recollection of the dark windows on the top floor of the next-door house was troubling her. For some reason which she could not explain and had no grounds for, she thought that Willow was away from home. If Willow had been foolish enough to go off somewhere with Micky Grant, which was what Rowan feared and dreaded, it would be better that Mrs. Lenox should not know.

  Rowan intended to deal with the situation so forcibly that Willow would be frightened into promising good behaviour. But no drastic measures had to be taken since Willow, with more sense and courage than she was given credit for by her younger sister, had settled her own affairs.

  On a dismal November afternoon Miss Balfour’s drawing-room door opened a little and Willow’s voice said: “May I come in, Miss Dorothea?”

  “Of course, my dear, do.”

  Miss Balfour put down her book of travels and smiled a welcome. She was quite glad of company, but she was also rather surprised, because Willow very seldom came to see her.

  “I hope there is nothing wrong—with the cooker, or the light, or anything?” she asked.

  “Oh, no. Everything is all right,” said Willow, coming farther into the room so that Miss Balfour could see her.

  She did not look as if everything were all right. Her pretty face was pale and her eyes looked as though she had been crying.

  “I—I just thought I’d like to come and see you,” she said. “But if I’m interrupting you I’ll go away again.”

  Miss Balfour was conscious of a cowardly desire to say that she was a little tired and if nothing was wrong perhaps Willow could come and see her later.

  She knew that Willow had been away from the flat for three days before she had reappeared yesterday, it was impossible not to know, when someone lived in your house and used your stairs and front door.

  This flashed through her mind so quickly that she had told Willow to come and sit down near the fire in much less than a second.

  “You look chilled, Willow dear,” said Miss Balfour in her kindly way. “I hope you keep a good fire in your sitting-room.”

  “I haven’t lighted it yet. I’ve been out all day,” Willow said listlessly.

  She sat in the big chair with her whole slender body drooping, a weeping willow, indeed, Miss Balfour thought.

  “You must light it the moment you go upstairs,” she said, firmly. “I believe you have caught a chill. I’ll get Edna to bring you a hot drink.”

  “No, really I haven’t, Miss Dorothea. Please don’t bother,” said Willow. “I sound snuffly because I’ve been crying such a lot, that’s all.”

  Miss Balfour picked up her knitting and continued unobtrusively with the socks she was making for Montagu; those which he bought were, in her opinion, far too thin for a man of his age to wear during winter in Edinburgh. She knew that it was often easier to talk to someone who did not appear to have her whole attention concentrated on what was being told, and knitting looked peaceful and commonplace.

  “It’s funny, you know,” Willow went on, staring into the fire. “I cry very easily, and as a rule I rather enjoy a weep. But after to-day I feel as if I’d never be able to cry again. It hurt, to-day. I hope you don’t mind if I tell you about it, Miss Dorothea. The girls are too young, and Mummy, poor darling, would never understand. She’d be horrified. I don’t believe she ever looked at another man except Daddy.”

  If it occurred to Miss Balfour to wonder why she, an elderly spinster, should be expected to understand, without being horrified at, whatever Willow’s revelation might be, she gave no sign of it. With a placid-sounding murmur she went on knitting, and Willow, never taking her eyes off the fire, continued in a low voice hoarsened by tears.

  “It’s Micky. Micky Grant. I never knew he was really fond of me before I married Archie. Micky’s one of those people who has to make love to every girl whose looks he fancies. He said he was an education for girls. I didn’t think I cared much to be educated that way, so I never let him know if I was fond of him or not. I didn’t really know myself. And then I married Archie, and Micky went away on a job. He came back to Edinburgh this summer, and he wouldn’t behave as if I were married, and it was so difficult to be stand-offish and staid with him! You see, he’s always attracted me, always. I can’t help it. I love Archie, I do, really, but Archie’s away such a lot, and even when he’s at home, he isn’t—isn’t exciting. He’s so sort of colourless beside Micky. Of course, Murray says Micky’s ‘nothing but a doggone pest’, and I daresay he is, but he makes everything seem so thrilling, and Archie doesn’t.

  “Archie’s far too quiet and gentle,” Willow said. “If he would shout at me when I scream at him in a rage, it would be much better! I’d pipe down then. But he just leaves me alone to get over it, and that isn’t any good—”

  As she pictured the uproar that would be created by the young Harpers shouting and screaming at one another in her top flat, Miss Balfour could not be too thankful that Archie was quiet.

  “But I wouldn’t have paid any attention to Micky,” Willow was saying. “Truly I wouldn’t, if he hadn’t told me he wasn’t fooling, and that he’d always cared for me, and it had been the most frightful shock to him when I married Archie.”

  At that Miss Balfour let the half-knitted sock drop on to her lap, and sitting very straight, said severely: “He had no business to tell you that. It was most heartless and unscrupulous of him to do so.”

  Willow turned her head to look at her, and said with a wan smile: “Of course it was. But it’s the sort of thing the Micky type of person does do, Miss Dorothea. I’m the same kind myself, so I know. And when he said it was better for one person to be unhappy than three, I listened. But I told Micky I must have three days to think it over, and that’s why I went away. I had to be somewhere that had no associations with Micky or Archie, and so I went to one of the little seaside places in Fife where I’d never been before. It was funny to see the sands quite empty, and the ice-cream booths and bathing-huts all boarded up, and big waves lashing on the shore. I stayed in an old-fashioned hotel that smelt of very old cabbage and roast mutton, and I walked miles along the shore every day, all alone, without another soul in sight. I was able to think and not be interrupted. It takes me a long time to think, and I don’t believe I’d ever have got it sorted out, only the day before yesterday when I got in
, I felt rather queer and faint, and had to sit down in the hall.

  “And the landlady told me I ought to take more care of myself—of course, I should have known that I was going to have a baby! I can’t think why I didn’t, except that I was too muddled over the Micky business—”

  She broke off, and looked at Miss Balfour’s troubled face.

  “It’s Archie’s baby, Miss Dorothea. You needn’t look like that!” she exclaimed. Then she sighed. “After all, it’s not surprising that you should be shocked. I’ve behaved very badly, though not as badly as that. Anyhow, when I realized about the baby, I knew I couldn’t possibly leave Archie. And so I came back, and to-day I’ve been walking about the Queen’s Park and the slopes of Arthur’s Seat in the mist and rain, having it out with Micky.”

  “You told him?”

  “Not about the baby. That’s none of his business,” said Willow. “I told him that I was going to stay with Archie. It took a long time.”

  And tears began to fall from her eyes and roll down her pale cheeks.

  She brushed them away impatiently. “Oh, Lord! I thought I’d stopped that!” she said, angrily. “I must have a far bigger supply of tears than most people. I’m—sorry, Miss Dorothea.”

  “My dear child,” said Miss Dorothea. “You are tired out, and cold and hungry. You are going to lie down on the sofa here, where it is warm.”

  “I don’t want to argue,” said Willow, wearily. “I’ve been doing that for hours and hours.”

  She found it very comforting to lie on the old sofa with soft cushions under her head and a warm light rug over her. When Miss Balfour brought a hot-bottle in its bright blue cover and put it at her feet, Willow caught the elder woman’s hand.