‘Darling,’ she gabbled, ‘you couldn’t give me a boiled egg, could you? For lunch? Tomorrow?’
‘Of course I could,’ said Verity.
She was surprised, when Sybil arrived, to find that she really did look unwell. She was a bad colour and clearly had lost weight. But apart from that there was a look of – how to define it? – a kind of blankness, of a mask almost. It was a momentary impression and Verity wondered if she had only imagined she saw it. She asked Sybil if she’d seen a doctor and was given a fretful account of a visit to the clinic in Great Quintern, the nearest town. An unknown practitioner, she said, had ‘rushed over her’ with his stethoscope, ‘pumped up her arm’ and turned her on to a dim nurse for other indignities. Her impression had been one of complete professional detachment. ‘One might have been drafted, darling, into some yard, for all he cared. The deadliest of little men with a signet ring on the wrong finger. All right, I’m a snob,’ said Sybil crossly and jabbed at her cutlet.
Presently she reverted to her gardener. Bruce as usual had been ‘perfect’, it emerged. He had noticed that Sybil looked done up and had brought her some early turnips as a present. ‘Mark my words,’ she said. ‘There’s something in that man. You may look sceptical, but there is.’
‘If I look sceptical it’s only because I don’t understand. What sort of thing is there in Bruce?’
‘You know very well what I mean. To be perfectly frank and straightforward – breeding. Remember,’ said Sybil surprisingly, ‘Ramsay MacDonald.’
‘Do you think Bruce is a blue-blooded bastard? Is that it?’
‘Stranger things have happened,’ said Sybil darkly. She eyed Verity for a moment or two and then said airily, ‘He’s not very comfortable with the dreary little Black sister – tiny dark room and nowhere to put his things.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. I’ve been considering,’ said Sybil rapidly, ‘the possibility of housing him in the stable block – you know, the old coachman’s quarters. They’d have to be done up, of course. It’d be a good idea to have somebody on the premises when we’re away.’
‘You’d better watch it, old girl,’ Verity said, ‘or you’ll find yourself doing a Queen Victoria to Bruce’s Brown.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Sybil.
She tried without success to get Verity to fix a day when she would come to a weight-reducing luncheon at Greengages.
‘I do think it’s the least you can do,’ she said piteously. ‘I’ll be segregated among a tribe of bores and dying for gossip. And besides you can bring me news of Prue.’
‘But I don’t see Prue in the normal course of events.’
‘Ask her to lunch, darling. Do –’
‘Syb, she’d be bored to sobs.’
‘She’d adore it. You know she thinks you’re marvellous. It’s odds on she’ll confide in you. After all, you’re her godmother.’
‘It doesn’t follow as the night the day. And if she should confide I wouldn’t hear what she said.’
‘There is that difficulty, I know,’ Sybil conceded. ‘You must tell her to scream. After all, her friends seem to hear her. Gideon Markos does, presumably. And that’s not all.’
‘Not all what?’
‘All my woe. Guess who’s turned up?’
‘I can’t imagine. Not,’ Verity exclaimed on a note of real dismay, ‘not Charmless Claude? Don’t tell me!’
‘I do tell you. He left Australia weeks ago and is working his way home on a ship called Poseidon. As a steward. I’ve had a letter.’
The young man Sybil referred to was Claude Carter, her stepson – a left-over from her first marriage in whose favour not even Verity could find much to say.
‘Oh Syb,’ she said, ‘I am sorry.’
‘He wants me to forward a hundred pounds to Tenerife.’
‘Is he coming to Quintern?’
‘My dear, he doesn’t say so but of course he will. Probably with the police in hot pursuit.’
‘Does Prue know?’
‘I’ve told her. Horrified, of course. She’s going to make a bolt to London when the time comes. This is why, on top of everything else, I’m hell-bent for Greengages.’
‘Will he want to stay?’
‘I expect so. He usually does. I can’t stop that.’
‘Of course not. After all –’
‘Verry, he gets the very generous allowance his father left him and blues the lot. I’m always having to yank him out of trouble. And what’s more – absolutely for your ears alone – when I pop off he gets everything his father left me for my lifetime. God knows what he’ll do with it. He’s been in jail and I dare say he dopes. I’ll go on paying up, I suppose.’
‘So he’ll arrive and find – who?’
‘Either Beryl, who’s caretaking, or Mrs Jim who’s relieving her and springcleaning, or Bruce, if it’s one of his days. They’re all under strict instructions to say I’m away ill and not seeing anybody. If he insists on being put up nobody can stop him. Of course he might –’ There followed a long pause. Verity’s mind misgave her.
‘Might what?’ she said.
‘Darling, I wouldn’t know but he might call on you. Just to enquire.’
‘What,’ said Verity, ‘do you want me to do?’
‘Just not tell him where I am. And then let me know and come to Greengages. Don’t just ring or write, Verry. Come. Verry, as my oldest friend I ask you.’
‘I don’t promise.’
‘No, but you will. You’ll come to awful lunch with me at Greengages and tell me what Prue says and whether Charmless Claude has called. Think! You’ll meet your gorgeous boyfriend again.’
‘I don’t want to.’
As soon as she had made this disclaimer, Verity realized it was a mistake. She visualized the glint of insatiable curiosity in Sybil’s large blue eyes and knew she had aroused the passion that, second only to her absorption in gentlemen, consumed her friend – a devouring interest in other people’s affairs.
‘Why not?’ Sybil said quickly. ‘I knew there was something. That night at Nikolas Markos’s dinner-party. I sensed it. What was it?’
Verity pulled herself together. ‘Now, then,’ she said. ‘None of that. Don’t you go making up nonsenses about me.’
‘There was something,’ Sybil repeated. ‘I’m never wrong. I sensed there was something. I know!’ she sang out. ‘I’ll ask Basil Schramm – Dr Schramm I mean – himself. He’ll tell me.’
‘You’ll do nothing of the sort,’ Verity said, and tried not to sound panicstricken. She added too late, ‘He wouldn’t know what on earth you were driving at. Syb – please don’t go making a fool of me. And of yourself.’
‘Tum-te-tiddily. Tum-te-tee,’ sang Sybil idiotically. ‘See what a tizzy we’ve got into.’
Verity kept her temper.
Wild horses, she decided, would not drag her to luncheon at Greengages. She saw Sybil off with the deepest misgivings.
II
Gideon Markos and Prunella Foster lay on a magnificent hammock under a striped canopy beside the brand-new swimming pool at Mardling Manor. They were brown, wet and almost nude. Her white-gold hair fanned across his chest. He held her lightly as if some photographer had posed them for a glossy advertisement.
‘Because,’ Prunella whispered, ‘I don’t want to.’
‘I don’t believe you. You do. Clearly, you want me. Why pretend?’
‘All right, then. I do. But I’m not going to. I don’t choose to.’
‘But why, for God’s sake? Oh,’ said Gideon with a change of voice, ‘I suppose I know. I suppose, in a way, I understand. It’s the “Too rash, too ill-advised, too sudden” bit. Is that it? What?’ he asked, bending his head to hers. ‘What did you say? Speak up.’
‘I like you too much.’
‘Darling Prue, it’s extremely nice of you to like me too much but it doesn’t get us anywhere, now does it?’
‘It’s not meant to.’
Gideon put his foot
to the ground and swung the hammock violently. Prunella’s hair blew across his mouth.
‘Don’t,’ she said and giggled. ‘We’ll capsize. Stop.’
‘No.’
‘I’ll fall off. I’ll be sick.’
‘Say you’ll reconsider the matter.’
‘Gideon, please.’
‘Say it.’
‘I’ll reconsider the matter, damn you.’
He checked the hammock but did not release her.
‘But I’ll come to the same conclusion,’ said Prunella. ‘No, darling. Not again! Don’t. Honestly, I’ll be sick. I promise you I’ll be sick.’
‘You do the most dreadful things to me,’ Gideon muttered after an interval. ‘You beastly girl.’
‘I’m going in again before the sun’s off the pool.’
‘Prunella, are you really fond of me? Do you think about me when we’re not together?’
‘Quite often.’
‘Very well, then, would you like – would you care to entertain the idea – I mean, couldn’t we try it out? To see if we suit?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well – in my flat? Together. You like my flat, don’t you? Give it, say, a month and then consider?’
She shook her head.
‘I could beat you like a gong,’ said Gideon. ‘Oh, come on, Prunella, for Christ’s sake. Give me a straight answer to a straight question. Are you fond of me?’
‘I think you’re fantastic. You know I do. Like I said, I’m too fond of you for a jolly affair. Too fond to face it all turning out to be a dead failure and us going back to square one and wishing we hadn’t tried. We’ve seen it happen among our friends, haven’t we? Everything super to begin with. And then the not-so-hot situation develops.’
‘Fair enough. One finds out and no bones broken, which is a damn sight better than having to plough through the divorce court. Well, isn’t it?’
‘It’s logical and civilized and liberated but it’s just not on for me. No way. I must be a throwback or simply plain chicken. I’m sorry. Darling Gideon,’ said Prunella, suddenly kissing him. ‘Like the song said, “I do, I do, I do, I do”.’
‘What?’
‘Love you,’ she mumbled in a hurry. ‘There. I’ve said it.’
‘God!’ said Gideon with some violence. ‘It’s not fair. Look here, Prue. Let’s be engaged. Just nicely and chastely and frustratingly engaged to be married and you can break it off whenever you want to. And I’ll swear, if you like, not to pester you with my ungentlemanly attentions. No. Don’t answer. Think it over and in the meantime, like Donne says, “for God’s sake hold your tongue and let me love”.’
‘He didn’t say it to the lady. He said it to some irritating acquaintance.’
‘Come here.’
The sun-baked landscape moved into late afternoon. Over at Quintern Place, Bruce having dug a further and deeper asparagus bed, caused the wee lad, whose name was Daft Artie, to fill it up with compost, fertilizer and soil while he himself set to work again with his long-handled shovel. Comprehensive drainage and nutrition was needed if his and his employer’s plans were to be realized.
Twenty miles away at Greengages in the Weald of Kent, Dr Basil Schramm completed yet another examination of Sybil Foster. She had introduced into her room a sort of overflow of her own surplus femininity – beribboned pillows, cushions, a negligée and a bedcover both rose-coloured. Photographs. Slippers trimmed with marabou, a large box of petit-fours au massepain from the ‘Marquise de Sévigné’ in Paris, which she had made but a feeble attempt to hide from the dietetic notice of her doctor. Above all, there was the pervasive scent of oil enclosed in a thin glass container that fitted over the light bulb of her table-lamp. Altogether the room, like Sybil herself, went much too far but, again like Sybil, contrived to get away with it.
‘Splendid,’ said Dr Schramm, withdrawing his stethoscope. He turned away and gazed out of the window with professional tact while she rearranged herself.
‘There!’ she said presently.
He returned and gazed down at her with the bossy, possessive air that she found so satisfactory.
‘I begin to be pleased with you,’ he said.
‘Truly?’
‘Truly. You’ve quite a long way to go, of course, but your general condition is improved. You’re responding.’
‘I feel better.’
‘Because you’re not allowed to take it out of yourself. You’re a highly strung instrument, you know, and mustn’t be at the beck and call of people who impose upon you.’
Sybil gave a deep sigh of concealed satisfaction.
‘You do so understand,’ she said.
‘Of course I do. It’s what I’m here for. Isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Sybil, luxuriating in it. ‘Yes, indeed.’
He slid her bracelet up her arm and then laid his fingers on her pulse. She felt sure it was going like a train. When, after a final pressure, he released her she said as airily as she could manage, ‘I’ve just written a card to an old friend of yours.’
‘Really?’
‘To ask her to lunch on Saturday. Verity Preston.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘It must have been fun for you, meeting again after so long.’
‘Well, yes. It was,’ said Dr Schramm, ‘very long ago. We used to run up against each other sometimes in my student days.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Time for your rest,’ he said.
‘You must come and talk to her on Saturday.’
‘That would have been very pleasant.’
But it turned out that he was obliged to go up to London on Saturday to see a fellow medico who had arrived unexpectedly from New York.
Verity, too, was genuinely unable to come to Greengages, having been engaged for luncheon elsewhere. She rang Sybil up and said she hadn’t seen Prue but Mrs Jim reported she was staying with friends in London.
‘Does that mean Gideon Markos?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘I’ll bet it does. What about ghastly C.C.?’
‘Not a sign of him as far as I know. I see by the shipping news that Poseidon came into Southampton the day before yesterday.’
‘Keep your fingers crossed. Perhaps we’ll escape after all.’
‘I think not,’ said Verity.
She was looking through her open window. An unmistakable figure shambled towards her up the avenue of limes.
‘Your stepson,’ she said, ‘has arrived.’
III
Claude Carter was one of those beings whose appearance accurately reflects their character. He looked, and in fact was, damp. He seemed unable to face anything or anybody. He was well into his thirties but maintained a rich crop of post-adolescent pimples. He had very little chin, furtive eyes behind heavy spectacles, a vestigial beard and mouse-coloured hair which hung damply, of course, half way down his neck.
Because he was physically so hopeless, Verity entertained a kind of horrified pity for him. This arose from a feeling that he couldn’t be as awful as he looked and that anyway he had been treated unfairly – by his Maker in the first instance and probably in the second by his masters (he had been sacked from three schools), his peers (he had been bullied at all of them) and life in general. His mother had died in childbirth and he was still a baby when Sybil married his father, who was killed in the blitz six months later and of whom Verity knew little beyond the fact that he collected stamps. Claude was brought up by his grandparents who didn’t care for him. These circumstances, when she thought of them, induced in Verity a muddled sense of guilt for which she could advance no justification and which was certainly not shared by Claude’s stepmother.
When he became aware of Verity at her window he pretended, ineffectually, that he hadn’t seen her and approached the front door with his head down. She went out to him. He did not speak but seemed to offer himself feebly for her inspection.
‘Claude,’ said Verity.
‘That’s right.’
 
; She asked him in and he sat in her sunny drawing-room as if, she thought, he had been left till called for. He wore a T-shirt that had been made out of a self-raising-flour bag and bore the picture of a lady who thrust out a vast bosom garnished with the legend ‘Sure to Rise’. His jeans so far exceeded in fashionable shrinkage as to cause him obvious discomfort.
He said he’d been up to Quintern Place where he’d found Mrs Jim Jobbin who told him Mrs Foster was away and she couldn’t say when she would return.
‘Not much of a welcome,’ he said. ‘She made out she didn’t know Prue’s address, either. I asked who forwarded their letters.’ He blew three times down his nose, which was his manner of laughing, and gave Verity a knowing glance. ‘That made Mrs Jim look pretty silly,’ he said.
‘Sybil’s taking a cure,’ Verity explained. ‘She’s not seeing anybody.’
‘What, again! What is it this time?’
‘She was run down and needs a complete rest.’
‘I thought you’d tell me where she was. That’s why I came.’
‘I’m afraid not, Claude.’
‘That’s awkward,’ he said fretfully. ‘I was counting on it.’
‘Where are you staying?’
‘Oh, up there for the time being. At Quintern.’
‘Did you come by train?’
‘I hitched.’
Verity felt obliged to ask him if he’d had any lunch and he said, not really. He followed her into the kitchen where she gave him cold meat, chutney, bread, butter, cheese and beer. He ate a great deal and had a cigarette with his coffee. She asked him about Australia and he said it was no good, really, not unless you had capital. It was all right if you had capital.
He trailed back after her to the drawing-room and she began to feel desperate.
‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I was depending on Syb. I happen to be in a bit of a patch. Nothing to worry about really, but, you know.’
‘What sort of patch?’ she asked against her will.
‘I’m short.’
‘Of money?’
‘What else is there to be short of?’ he asked and gave his three inverted sniffs.