Near Neighbours

by Molly Clavering

  But when she had lifted the necklace from its case and admired the winking golden eyes of the topazes in their paler gold setting, Miss Balfour handed it to Mr. Milner with a smile.

  “Will you put it on for me, Montagu, please?” she said, some instinct telling her that this was what he would like.

  He fastened it round her neck with his usual deftness, stood back to approve the effect, then helped her into her fur coat, and the two, arm in arm, went out of their house and up the steps of Number Six in great content.

  “It is just going to be family and you and Mr. Milner, who count as family,” Mrs. Lenox had said, when she invited them. “Willow doesn’t care for the idea of a lot of people just now, and the others agreed. So please don’t expect anything very grand or exciting.”

  “Just family” seemed to include not only Adam Ferrier, but his mother and his cousin Charles as well, so there was a sufficiently large number gathered in the Lenoxes’ drawing-room to make it look quite well-filled. The Christmas decorations, the dozens of cards that had covered every flat-topped piece of furniture, were all gone, but the long room with its bowls of hyacinths scenting the air, and the big bowls of glossy-leaved rhododendrons dark against the pale walls still had a festive look, which the laughter and talk of its occupants enhanced.

  Miss Balfour, accepting a glass of sherry from Murray, thought how nice everyone looked, the men in dinner-jackets, the girls in their pretty frocks, Mrs. Ferrier poised and elegant in midnight blue chiffon, Mrs. Lenox in her old black lace which shoved up her still pretty neck and arms.

  Willow was wearing black, too, and a little matronly air, absurd and rather touching. Holly in dark green, Hazel radiant in silver, and dear Rowan in red. It made her look rather pale, and she was not as gay as usual. Orlando trotted busily to and fro carrying a plate of savoury biscuits which he offered, nudging people with the plate if they did not notice him, and leaving a trail of biscuits behind him as he went. He discovered this in time, set the plate carefully on a low stool, and went back on his tracks picking up the fallen, and then carefully replacing them on the plate.

  Mrs. Lenox, who had come to stand beside Miss Balfour’s chair, laughed as she watched this.

  “What does it matter?” she said. “He is the only person who is eating them, and he’s happy and good. He is a dear little boy, Miss Dorothea. I shall miss him when he goes to school, even though it is only in the mornings.”

  “I knew you would keep him, and I am so glad for his sake,” said Miss Balfour.

  “Oh, yes! I couldn’t send him away now,” said Mrs. Lenox. “And Martin Tinker seems to have a germ of conscience after all. He wrote to his wife and sent her a little money, though he said he would never come back again. Mrs. Tinker came to see me and told me all this. She sent her husband a letter by air-mail—about Orlando’s being here and everything—and then he wrote again and promised to let her have money when he could, some of it specially for Orlando. He said—Mrs. Tinker read that bit out to me—that if people had turned up who wanted to saddle themselves with the brat he wouldn’t interfere, he was only too glad to be quit of family worries, and realized now he had got away how bad married life had been for his painting! I could hardly contain myself. I was boiling with fury when Mrs. Tinker read all this, but she took it quite as a matter of course. Glad to be quit of him, I expect, poor soul!”

  “How strange people are!” murmured Miss Balfour.

  Mrs. Ferrier crossed the room to join them. “Let me sit with you and watch the young people,” she asked, and when she had taken a chair near Miss Balfour’s, she added: “Mrs. Lenox, do sit down for a moment. They are all quite happy without us.”

  So the three sat together, looking on and thinking their own thoughts, all different, all alike.

  Mrs. Ferrier thought of her son and rejoiced in his happiness. Unlike many mothers of only sons, she considered that Adam was extremely fortunate in the girl he had chosen. An early spring wedding, they had decided, while Willow would still be able to appear at it. Mrs. Ferrier hoped that dear Charles would be as lucky as Adam. Had he set his heart on Rowan Lenox? Would Rowan come to care for him in return? She was everything Maud Ferrier could wish for Charles, but that went for nothing, it all hung on whether the child would come to love him. There was that boy, the one she danced with so beautifully, who looked rather like Robert Burns in the sulks. . . . Mrs. Ferrier wished that she could arrange a marriage between Charles and Rowan, and just settle the affair out of hand. She was perfectly certain they would be a good match. Then her common-sense told her to stop being silly and think of something else.

  Hazel was radiant this evening, her mother thought. Seeing her now for the first time, no one would believe that she was generally considered the least attractive of the Lenox girls. Tonight she was as vivid as Rowan, prettier than Willow—though it was not fair to Willow to compare her with anyone just at present.

  Willow was taking the discomfort of pregnancy and the thickening of her lissom shape very well. It was charming to see Archie’s care of her, and her own reaction to the attentions which formerly she had been all too apt to respond to with pettishness.

  Reviewing her family, Mrs. Lenox felt that she had reason to be satisfied with both Willow and Hazel and their prospects of happiness. Yes, and Holly was turning out so well. Her mother could hardly be thankful enough that the terrible lumpish stage, giggles and sulks and behaving like a plough-boy, which had made the holiday at Kersland less agreeable than usual, had passed. She had certainly improved greatly, and the credit for this was due to Madame Perrot, Mr. Milner, Mrs. Ferrier, so greatly admired by Holly—and Murray.

  Murray had been very good about taking Holly out, he had even squired her to a dance or two and seen that she had plenty of partners. Perhaps it was because he seemed to have no young woman of his own at the moment, and was missing Hazel, who was absorbed in Adam.

  As he had remarked casually just a few days before that he did not mean to marry until he was thirty at least, Mrs. Lenox considered it much better for him to devote his attention to Holly instead of rousing hopes doomed never to be fulfilled in other girls. Besides—to have her darling Murray at home for a few years longer, until he met the lucky, lucky girl who would be his wife! Surely it was natural for a mother to wish it? And Murray was perfectly happy . . .

  At the thought that Murray was happy, Mrs. Lenox realized with a guilty pang that she had forgotten Rowan, and Rowan was not happy at all. She might pretend she was nervous at the prospect of her new job in the little school to which Orlando was going, but her mother knew that she was worrying herself silly over that foolish boy Angus Todd’s accident. It was typical of him, Mrs. Lenox thought angrily, to rush off on a climbing expedition out of sheer temper, and then to fall off some part of Ben Nevis and break an arm and several ribs and get pneumonia into the bargain! Of course, she would have been sorry, Mrs. Lenox told herself, if he had not recovered, but he was getting better—only Rowan seemed to feel it was her fault in some way, and had become pale and quiet in consequence.

  At the other end of the room Murray, finding himself beside Rowan with no one else near them for the moment, nudged her gently.

  “Look at those three,” he murmured. “Mummy, Miss Dorothea and Mrs. Ferrier. The Fates, or the witches in Macbeth, or the Three Graces? All thinking of their young, by the look of them!”

  “Miss Dorothea hasn’t any young of her own,” said Rowan, uneasily. “And I—I don’t want to be thought about!”

  “She’s got old Monty, a handful if there ever was one! But I agree with you. I don’t want to be thought about either,” Murray answered, quite cheerfully. “Which is all the more reason for behaving as if we don’t need thinking over, duckie.”

  “Oh, Murray! Are you unhappy—”

  “Am I unhappy, too, you were going to say, weren’t you? Well, I don’t mind telling you that I’m not exactly uproariously happy, but I expect to recover.”

  “Well, so do I,”
Rowan retorted. “And I’m more worried than unhappy, really. Tell me, what’s wrong with you?”

  Murray pulled her back into the shadow of one of the long window curtains. “Just the usual,” he said lightly. “I thought Susan Rattray would wait for me—we’re both too young to marry—and she’s decided she doesn’t want to. In fact, she’s met some fellow who’s ready to marry her as soon as she likes. That’s all.”

  “Susan is only a year younger than me,” said Rowan. “She is old enough to marry—”

  “And, of course, you think you are too?”

  Rowan flushed. “I’m—it’s different—” she began, rather incoherently. “Susan has some money of her own, and a mother she’d be happier away from, and—and—I’m not thinking about marriage,” she ended, more firmly. “For one thing, there’s Orlando.”

  “Orlando!” Murray repeated. “My dear good girl, surely you’ve realized by now that Mummy has taken over Orlando? You won’t have much say in his affairs and you may as well get used to the idea at once. It’s far more sensible, anyhow.” Then, as she said nothing: “You don’t mind, do you, Red Rowan? It is much the best thing that could happen,” he said.

  “No, I don’t mind,” she said, slowly. “It’s just rather a surprise.”

  “Well, cheer up, then!” urged Murray. “I’ll have to go and dish out more sherry and make bright conversation, and I don’t like leaving you moping in a corner.”

  “I’ll be all right. Only—if you could keep people away from me for a minute or two—”

  “You’re not pining for that Byronic dancer of yours, are you?” asked Murray, with a sharp glance at her downcast face.

  “Oh, no!”

  “Good. Then I’ll try to head Charles Ferrier off. I suppose he’s whom you mean by ‘people’?”

  Rowan caught him by the sleeve as he turned to leave her.

  “Murray! You—you aren’t desperately unhappy about Susan?”

  “No, ’tis not so deep as a well,” said Murray. “I told you. I’ll get over it.”

  He nodded at her, smiled, and moved away.

  Rowan knew that he was quite badly hurt, and she thought how different was his way of facing it from Angus Todd’s.

  Not that Angus had been badly hurt by her, or so she hoped, and he seemed to have got over it. But she had had a severe shock at the news of his accident, and had blamed herself for it. It had been a very great relief to have a letter in a round clear hand from someone called Morag MacDonald, who said that Angus couldn’t write himself, but was “doing nicely”. It was quite plain that the writer had been sitting beside Angus while she wrote and that they were friends, perhaps would soon be more than friends. There was no longer any need for Rowan to feel responsible for Angus, and though she was truly glad, she could not help feeling that she had lost something. It would be a long time before she forgot him; every time she danced she would remember him, and always there would be certain favourite tunes which would bring him back to her mind.

  She knew that she had never been even half in love with Angus, but the fright of hearing about his fall was too recent for her to want to think of any other man. Rowan felt that she did not want to love anyone except her family for a long time. The sight of Willow’s content and Hazel’s shining happiness did not shake her, for there was Murray to weight the balance on the other side.

  “I’d like just to be friends with someone,” she thought, and unconsciously her glance went across the room to Charles Ferrier’s fair head, bent towards Holly in the attitude of courteous attention which Rowan knew meant that his thoughts were wandering.

  Miss Balfour saw Rowan’s look, and smiled to herself. Dear child, she was upset and out of tune for love at the moment, but she would recover, and, of course, she would turn to Charles Ferrier and they would be happy. It might not be for a little time yet, but they were young. They could afford to wait.

  With a little pang, Miss Balfour remembered that her own time was short, but she reproved herself for even this momentary repining. She had had almost six months of such happiness and content as she had never dared to hope for. If she died at this very minute she could still count herself blessed. And she felt that she owed a great deal of it all to Rowan—under God.

  Rowan’s impulsive visit on the day of Belle’s funeral had been the start. It had been a kind warm hand stretched out to draw her into the friendly family circle of her neighbours next door. She would have made the acquaintance of the Lenoxes, no doubt, in time, but with Rowan’s help she had become their friend and they hers. Nor could she ever have come to terms with Montagu if it had not been for the new ease and confidence which knowing the Lenoxes had given her. Bless them all, she thought, and especially Rowan . . .

  She sat in a pleasant reverie until Mrs. Lenox roused her by saying: “I’m sure it is time we all went down to supper,” and she saw that everyone was beginning to move towards the door.

  Miss Balfour gave a last look round at all her friends as she rose and gathered her little bag and her lace scarf. She wanted to have a mind picture of them to carry away with her on her birthday, when they were looking even nicer than usual.

  Willow’s hand was tucked into the crook of Archie’s arm confidingly and Archie appeared to have grown taller and broader in some mysterious way. Hazel and Adam had eyes only for one another, Murray was obviously drawing Holly’s attention to them, while Mrs. Ferrier gazed at her son with dispassionate affection as if she found him silly but understandably so. Mrs. Lenox had been seized by Orlando, alarmed lest the extra hour granted to him might run out before supper was even begun, and Montagu was hurrying to give an arm to his sister-in-law, rosy and beaming, in his element because it was a party.

  If only Rowan would be kind to Charles. . . . Miss Balfour held her breath as she watched the girl slowly push aside the curtain that had partly screened her. Charles was looking towards her. He seemed to know that Rowan’s next move was of immense importance to both of them.

  “Oh, Rowan, do—” implored Miss Balfour, inwardly.

  And as if Rowan had heard the words, she gave Miss Balfour one look.

  She was pale still, but the light was coming back to her eyes.

  Turning, she smiled across the room at Charles.

  T H E E N D

  About The Author

  Mary ‘Molly’ Clavering was born in Glasgow in 1900. Her father was a Glasgow businessman, and her mother’s grandfather had been a doctor in Moffat, where the author would live for nearly 50 years after World War Two.

  She had little interest in conventional schooling as a child, but enjoyed studying nature, and read and wrote compulsively, considering herself a ‘poetess’ by the age of seven.

  She returned to Scotland after her school days, and published three novels in the late 1920s, as well as being active in her local girl guides and writing two scenarios for ambitious historical pageants.

  In 1936, the first of four novels under the pseudonym ‘B. Mollett’ appeared. Molly Clavering’s war service in the WRNS interrupted her writing career, and in 1947 she moved to Moffat, in the Scottish border country, where she lived alone, but was active in local community activities. She resumed writing fiction, producing seven post-war novels and numerous serialized novels and novellas in the People’s Friend magazine.

  Molly Clavering died in Moffat on February 12, 1995.

  Titles by Molly Clavering

  Fiction

  Georgina and the Stairs (1927)

  The Leech of Life (1928)

  Wantonwalls (1929)

  Susan Settles Down (1936, as ‘B. Mollett’)

  Love Comes Home (1938, as ‘B. Mollett’)

  Yoked with a Lamb (1938, as ‘B. Mollett’)

  Touch Not the Nettle (1939, as ‘B. Mollett’)

  Mrs. Lorimer’s Quiet Summer (1953)

  Because of Sam (1954)

  Dear Hugo (1955)

  Near Neighbours (1956)

  Result of the Finals (1957)

 
Dr. Glasgow’s Family (1960)

  Spring Adventure (1962)

  Non-Fiction

  From the Border Hills (1953)

  Between 1952 and 1976, Molly Clavering also serialized at least two dozen novels or novellas in the People’s Friend under the names Marion Moffatt and Emma Munro. Some of these were reprinted as ‘pocket novels’ as late as 1994.

  FURROWED MIDDLEBROW

  FM1. A Footman for the Peacock (1940) ... RACHEL FERGUSON

  FM2. Evenfield (1942) ... RACHEL FERGUSON

  FM3. A Harp in Lowndes Square (1936) ... RACHEL FERGUSON

  FM4. A Chelsea Concerto (1959) ... FRANCES FAVIELL

  FM5. The Dancing Bear (1954) ... FRANCES FAVIELL

  FM6. A House on the Rhine (1955) ... FRANCES FAVIELL

  FM7. Thalia (1957) ... FRANCES FAVIELL

  FM8. The Fledgeling (1958) ... FRANCES FAVIELL

  FM9. Bewildering Cares (1940) ... WINIFRED PECK

  FM10. Tom Tiddler’s Ground (1941) ... URSULA ORANGE

  FM11. Begin Again (1936) ... URSULA ORANGE

  FM12. Company in the Evening (1944) ... URSULA ORANGE

  FM13. The Late Mrs Prioleau (1946) ... MONICA TINDALL

  FM14. Bramton Wick (1952) ... ELIZABETH FAIR

  FM15. Landscape in Sunlight (1953) ... ELIZABETH FAIR

  FM16. The Native Heath (1954) ... ELIZABETH FAIR

  FM17. Seaview House (1955) ... ELIZABETH FAIR

  FM18. A Winter Away (1957) ... ELIZABETH FAIR

  FM19. The Mingham Air (1960) ... ELIZABETH FAIR

  FM20. The Lark (1922) ... E. NESBIT

  FM21. Smouldering Fire (1935) ... D.E. STEVENSON

  FM22. Spring Magic (1942) ... D.E. STEVENSON

  FM23. Mrs. Tim Carries On (1941) ... D.E. STEVENSON

  FM24. Mrs. Tim Gets a Job (1947) ... D.E. STEVENSON

  FM25. Mrs. Tim Flies Home (1952) ... D.E. STEVENSON

  FM26. Alice (1950) ... ELIZABETH ELIOT