by Ursula Bloom
‘What … what do I do, Sarah?’
‘What have you arranged about it so far? I mean, does John know?’
‘I told him this afternoon.’
‘He must have had a jolly tea! Some afternoon for you both, I bet!’
‘What could I do? We talked about it, and we are getting married the moment we can. Of course we shall tell everyone we were married some time ago, and that ought to stop the chatter, which will help.’ Already she felt the faint glow of thankfulness that she had been able to tell someone.
Sarah nodded, but with that certain aloofness which she always adopted when she was deeply concerned. She reached for a shagreen cigarette box, opened it, and selected from it a tipped cigarette, lighting it rather casually; every movement she made told her friend how she was feeling. Diana had always noticed that manner of Sarah’s when exam times came at school. It was a reserve which cut. She asked, ‘Do you want to marry John?’
The moment had come when Diana knew that she had to speak the truth, even if it appalled her; instinctively she saw her duty, for it stared her in the eyes. ‘No, I don’t,’ she said, and was almost amazed at the way she said it, but she was no longer ashamed, for perhaps she herself had already changed.
The cigarette had gone out, elaborately Sarah re-lit it, taking her own time about it. Then she spoke. ‘Your people, they don’t know about it yet, do they? I liked your mother, she was always very nice to me, an understanding person, but I thought scared. Who wouldn’t be with your father in the home?’ Then she sent out a belated ‘Sorry’.
‘Mother has had a filthy life with him. She’s a darling, but frightened to speak her thoughts, at times even to think them, I shouldn’t wonder. I suppose now it is too late for her to change, and she is such a pet.’
‘I know.’ Diana appreciated the fact that Sarah said it, meaning it. She was not shocked, nor resentful. ‘I suppose you’ll have to take some job?’
‘Where? How?’
‘Anything to escape from Solihull. You could come here for a time, for Herbert’s gone to the States for a month, maybe six weeks. I need a companion. That might get over the first hurdle?’
‘John says we can get the marriage fixed up in three weeks’ time.’
‘But is that what you want?’
‘I don’t know. Whatever would people say if we didn’t get married? The baby would be an illegit., and that would be disastrous for everybody. In a small place like Solihull people talk, they’d never let it be.’
‘I should stop worrying myself about them and about Solihull. They’ve had their lives and their fun, though I doubt if your mother has had so much of that. But we don’t want to hurt her. I mean, you could pretend you were married.’
‘Dad would want to see it in writing.’
‘Then he wouldn’t have such an awful lot of luck, would he?’ Diana always remembered that crisp certainty with which Sarah spoke when she dealt with an awkward situation. She was sure, and she had a dead hard accuracy, for she had always been a clever girl. ‘Very well. Say nothing for now; wait and see. Sometimes things happen.’
Diana spoke rather quickly. ‘I had an idea about it this evening, I just felt that the answer would come, not out of us, or anyone here, but out of time. Do you remember M’lle at school? She always said that doors opened for us. Well, I felt a door opening.’ She smiled rather wanly. ‘Maybe it is that hunter’s moon again.’
‘But it could be right. Stay on here for a visit, and let me help. Together we can do more than you could alone, that’s a fact, and try to remember that I am your friend.’
They turned and put their arms about each other. There was power in Sarah, that stubbornness which she had always had (and what a friend! thought Diana), and she looked at Diana with those penetrating green eyes of hers, the brightly auburn head poised. I love red hair, she thought suddenly.
‘What happened?’ Sarah asked. ‘You needn’t tell me if you don’t want to, but what happened?’
Diana insisted that the whole adventure had been her own fault as much as John’s, and she should have seen trouble coming. Perhaps the holiday had been her first real escape from Solihull, her first freedom in a new type of life which lay away from her father’s eternal commands. She did not count the amiable visits to dear Aunt Chrissie, then she had been but a child. But Devonshire in late September had been so lovely; still flowery, the sea sufficiently warm for happy bathing, the sands benign and sunny; the glow of a head of fuchsias, the shimmer of zinnias and dark dahlias in the garden; and perhaps she had never appreciated how dangerous passion could be, flowing into one’s world like a huge tidal wave of desire, to carry a girl along with it, until she was drowned by emotion.
Maybe the whole fault lay in the one simple fact that the two of them had been too much in love with the life there, and then with each other.
‘So,’ she said, ‘I have to get married.’
‘Why?’
‘Surely the reasons are quite obvious?’
‘I don’t see why. Marry him if you must, but leave him later, which brings you right back to Solihull, and that is plain awful. You know your parents are dull as ditchwater, surely this is the moment to break away and give yourself a chance with the baby?’
‘But how can I do it?’
‘Whilst Herbert is in the States we’ll get it fixed. Your people would let you stay for the month, tell your mother I’m ill, any old lie, but stay, for this is what matters. Ring John up and tell him you want time to think about it; leave the real explanation till the last moment, but wait for now.’
Diana hesitated.
It was quite unthinkable to ring John and say that although she still cared for him as a friend, the other side of her had completely changed. The emotional fever of love as they had known it in Devonshire had abated, and now she was lost in a perplexing world and wanted time to think.
‘I’d rather get married,’ she said.
‘You always were a fool.’ Sarah was plain-spoken, then she changed her tone. ‘I must say that you have been pretty good at doing the wrong thing and sticking by it. I think that if you now marry John, in the urgency of the moment, it will only collapse in the long run, for forced marriages always do. This is not the 1920s, it is almost 1950, and everything has changed. It isn’t mortal sin as you seem to think, lots of people commit it. Many more do it, but don’t get caught out, that is where you and John have flopped, if you ask me.’
What a dynamic friend to have! Diana thought, and what peculiar principles she has! Hardly up her father’s street. ‘I’ve got to give myself the time to think properly about it.’
‘Of course. Let’s talk when you are less tired. It’s been a filthy afternoon for you, but there are ways out of it. Up socks! or as M’lle said at Chatterworth, Up zee stockings!’
During the evening John rang her. He had already made some enquiries and to his horror had found that the special licence, about which he had talked so gaily, would cost the earth, and would be an absurd extravagance, even if they could afford it, which they could not. He was getting the usual kind of licence, but the tone of his voice was anxious, and, fortified by her talk with Sarah, Diana rushed into the argument.
‘Hold your hand for a while, John. I am not yet quite sure of what I want to do.’
This confused him, and he did not know what had happened. He began to splutter.
‘But we’ve got to do it, I mean we must marry, and time is agin’ us. If we don’t make this move, then we can do nothing to put things right.’
‘I want to think about it.’
‘Good God! But we discussed the whole thing. Whatever are you playing at now?’
‘It’s just that I have got other ideas, and I must have time to think about it.’ She rang off.
From the divan Sarah watched her with a faint amusement in the green eyes. She said, ‘I reckon you’re doing the right thing, you know. Ring your mother and tell her you wish to stay here for a bit. We can get things fixed
, and know where we are going.’ Then slowly, ‘Have you any other relations who could help?’
There was of course Aunt Chrissie, the most reasonable of them all, but much too old to take action. Why, she must be into the eighties by now. ‘There is Aunt Chrissie, but I couldn’t bother the poor old duck. It would hurt her too much.’
‘She might be considerate.’
‘Yes, she might,’ and a shadow in the corner flickered strangely. She dismissed the thought and the shadow. For now it was easier to wait and see, surely?
Maybe Sarah realised the wisdom of a pause. She said, ‘If I were you I would not worry myself too much today, for you’ve had more than enough to fill the diary.’ And then, vaguely, almost romantically, as though for an instant she bared a side of her nature which Diana had never seen before, ‘Babies are rather lovely little things to have.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘We’ll find the way out, you bet.’
‘You bet!’ said Diana.
She went to her bedroom to lie down. She could not sleep, possibly she was far too anxious for that, and all the time she kept going back to John’s casual behaviour at times this afternoon, which had changed the whole of their lives. She now felt that the man with whom she had talked had not really been John, but a stranger, most certainly not the man she had loved in Devonshire. This man had been shocked at first and then so damnably practical about it. She had felt that he loathed the truth, and would have done anything to slip away from it. Now nobody could slip away from it. She turned the facts over in her mind, but could find no solution.
Wait, her heart told her.
She stood at a crossroads in her life, waiting for something to happen, just as people at crossroads wait for a taxi to come. A signpost showed her where the roads went, but she could not read the writing, for she felt half blind with worry. Of course Sarah was right, it was far wiser to do nothing for now, delay a while, to lay the ghost.
Later she changed her dress, which is ever comforting to a woman, and they went to dine together in the small but superb little dining-room. It had a glow about it. The cosiness soothed her, and she got the feeling that she would always remember the big shaggy golden chrysanthemums in the blue Delft bowl, the sparkle of the silver, and the calm which lay serenely over the whole room.
They dawdled, talking of school days, M’lle, and old Stoggins, the geography mistress who had never been outside England but gave the impression that she knew the world by heart. They went back into the lounge for their coffee, and the moment the man had left them with it, the telephone rang.
‘I bet that’s John again, so I’ll take it,’ and Sarah answered with an expressionless ‘Hello?’ Diana felt that she could not talk further with John tonight, just as she was beginning to slip a bit away from it all; not now, she thought. Sarah spoke, said ‘Yes, of course’, and then laid her hand over the mouthpiece of the instrument. ‘It’s your father.’
If he knows … she said to herself, and then tremulously, ‘What does he want?’
‘Take the thing. I gather something’s happened.’
‘Not Mummie?’ It was at that moment that she felt a new strength, for whatever happened nothing must worry her mother. She said, ‘Hello, Daddy?’
He was extremely pompous.
He prepared her for a great shock. No, it was not her mother, almost impatiently, as though he would have welcomed distress in that direction rather than the one from which he had received it. He went on. Miss Howland had telephoned from Newbury. There had been a tragic event, really a very sad event. It had happened at tea time in the house called Tall Trees, and was not entirely unexpected seeing the great age, etc. A pulse throbbed in the girl’s wrist, just like a clock which was beating out the time with a certain sureness of its own. The poor old lady had gone upstairs for a little nap, and there she had quietly died in her sleep.
‘Such a tragic way for things to happen,’ said her father in that awe-struck voice of his which was particularly intentioned to put drama into the situation.
‘Poor darling Aunt Chrissie!’
In the slight pause Diana realised that of course her father had never really approved of dear Aunt Chrissie, who could speak her own mind in no measured terms. But she had had a fortune of her own, and for that reason he wouldn’t dare to criticise her. Legacies would interest him, and this could be his lucky week.
He said, ‘We must realise one has to face this sort of thing. Your mother and I wondered if Sarah could put you up for a day longer, then we could come your way for the funeral, pick you up and take you along to Newbury with us? You ought to be there. Oh yes, without a doubt, your last great-aunt, most certainly you ought to be there.’
She did not bother to ask Sarah, for she knew that she would agree to any plans which she made. ‘That will be quite all right.’
He cleared his throat eagerly, and went on again. ‘Get yourself a decent black dress, nothing shoddy, for we can’t have people talking. If you go to Harrods you can put it down to your mother’s account, and that will be quite all right. A hat, too. Yes, you must get yourself a decent hat, not one of the “new look” kind, nothing ostentatious. We may as well do the thing properly, as undoubtedly I shall benefit.’ He stopped speaking, and she heard a little hoarse cough, which always came when he was nervous. ‘It’s not a matter of counting your chickens before they are hatched; she had no one else to whom she could leave her fortune, and we shall all benefit.’
‘Of course.’ Diana heard her own voice fluttering, for she hated discussing things like this. ‘Did you get any news? I mean, I do so hope she did not suffer. I would not want her to be scared or anything, she was so sweet.’
‘Oh no, it was nothing like that. I don’t suppose there was any suffering, and at her age, eighty something or other, she would have been glad to go. She had lived far too long. Goodbye. Oh yes, your mother sends her love,’ and he rang off brusquely.
He always rapped out requests as orders, and insisted on the promptest obedience to directions, infuriated if he did not get this.
Diana set down the ’phone, and turned back to Sarah, realising that her own dark eyes were a trifle misty. The memory of her great-aunt was one of kindliness. She had been the old lady who had produced chocolates out of her handbag, saying, ‘Eat them, darling, and damn the spots!’ She thought also of Miss Howland, the quiet thoughtful housekeeper. A sense of extreme peace had always lingered over the William and Mary house called Tall Trees. I wonder what will happen to the place now, she said to herself, with a feeling of grief within her.
It was horrible that she would never see the old lady again.
‘I call it vile, she really was the only decent member of your family,’ said Sarah, with her directness for summing up a situation, which could be so shattering.
‘Mother would be all right if she ever got a chance.’
‘Your father will never give her that. I would have said that inheriting a fortune would only make him worse. Why not ring up poor Miss Howland? She must be feeling rather awful, and there are times in life when a kind word is beyond price.’
‘Why yes, of course.’
Mechanically Diana sat down at the side table of ivory, with a gilt rim to it, and the matching telephone to hand. Her own memories of poor Miss Howland had perhaps faded slightly, but she remembered her amiability; how good she was at her job and her extraordinary power for self-obliteration. It was she who had driven the engine of the house with skill, never appearing to become tired or worried, never angry, and sometimes a shade remote.
Miss Howland herself answered the call.
By the sound of her voice quite recently she had been crying, for her tone had thickened and at moments it was a trifle shaky. The timbre had changed. But when she heard that it was Diana speaking at the other end, she brightened.
‘Miss Richardson! But how good of you! How kind! and thank you so much.’
The old lady had been found dead in bed. Miss Howland had t
aken her up a cup of tea, and found her lying there quite peacefully, for the seizure had taken her unawares. She would have known nothing about it, and that is the way all of us would wish to go.
‘But of course having been with her so long and her always being so good to me, it … it is rather dreadful,’ she said a little timidly, and with the echo of tears in her voice. ‘But I am so glad you are coming down to the funeral, dear, she would have wanted that. It would have pleased her.’
‘Poor darling! But of course I’m coming.’
Then more slowly Miss Howland said, ‘I may be speaking out of my turn, dear, but you ought to know. She always told me that she had left everything to you. The house and the money, because ‒ it was she who said it ‒ she wanted you to be free to do whatever you wanted with life.’
‘But surely not to me? To my father, of course.’
‘She didn’t like your father, dear, always said that he was a hard man, if you’ll pardon me, and she wanted you to have it.’
‘But she couldn’t do that!’
‘Well, all I can say is that she kept saying that she had done it. She wanted your happiness, and wished you to be free.’ She gave a little sigh which had something of a sob in it.
‘But she was very rich?’
‘Yes, and you get it. Thank you for ringing me up. There’ll be a lovely lunch for you all on Tuesday. She always said that she wanted it to be a lovely lunch for her funeral.’
Miss Howland rang off almost mechanically. Diana turned to Sarah. ‘Miss Howland says …’ and she choked slightly. ‘Miss Howland says she has left me everything.’
‘But wasn’t she most awfully rich?’
‘So my father said,’ and after a pause, ‘I just can’t think what he will say now.’
It was Sarah who broke into one of those gaily bubbling laughs of hers. ‘I can! And it’s damned funny. Well, of course this is the way out of everything. This is the answer. You’ll be rich and cannot think again of marrying that stupid idiot John.’
