Fantails (7 page)

It was from a wish to give pleasure to Andrew’s sister that Sherry had brought her here this evening; out of his need, too, for the companionship of someone who had no place in his own life. He liked her, liked her very much, but had not expected that she would prove entertaining company. She was as unexpectedly refreshing as the discovery of an almond in fruit salad, peppermint where one had expected vanilla. He was attracted and intrigued.

Behind them the french windows of the ballroom had flashed into oblongs of orange light, and now a lilting waltz floated out into the quiet evening. Turning, they saw that a few couples had begun to dance. Sherry looked an unspoken question. Logie answered, “Yes, I’d love to!”

Heads turned as they crossed the terrace between the tables. Girls noted Logie’s necklet of flowers, a notion to be copied; men saw only that the general effect was charming.

When they came out again on to the terrace the gold light of the sunset was merging into the blue shadows of the twilight. Sherry said, “How about exploring?”

“The garden’s rather lovely,” Logie told him, “just as it was when this place was a private house.” She led the way along a winding path through shrubberies where nightingales, unseen, were fluting all about them, to a wrought-iron gate in the thickness of a great yew hedge along whose height the shapes of peacocks had been clipped. Strolling between the netted raspberries and apple-trees trained on a fence to screen the vegetables, they found a seat set in an alcove in the hedge, and sat there looking along a wide grass path bordered by white phloxes and madonna lilies that shimmered ghostly in the dusk. Here in bygone summers the ladies of Crownall must have walked in crinoline and bustle, leg-o’-mutton sleeves and trailing skirts. Here, thought Logie, other girls, the daughters of the house perhaps, had sat as she was sitting now, dreaming of romance and perhaps finding it with some whiskered dandy.

Only one thing tarnished the enchanted moment: the memory of something Sherry had said as they began to dance. It had taken a few moments of adjustment before they were attuned to each other, moving as one entity, and he had looked down at her face, that was on a level with his shoulder, saying, apologetically, “Sorry—I’m being clumsy! I’ve been dancing lately with a girl nearly as tall as I am. A mistake to dance too much with the same partner.” In a moment or two the music took possession of them; they were floating, drifting, eddying on its current. She forgot what he had said. But now the memory of that “girl nearly as tall as I am” had returned to tease her.

When they had danced again they went back to their table on the terrace. Their waiter brought a frosted jug of cup. Strawberries, lemon rind, and a sprig of mint floated in the amber liquid. They sat there for a long while, that to Logie seemed no time at all, exploring each other’s mind and liking what they found there.

A couple Logie had not seen before came to the next table. Sherry, his back towards them, did not see them. Logie thought them an attractive pair, well-groomed and gay, and obviously pleased with each other. Presently the girl glanced casually at Sherry, looked surprised and said something to her companion, who turned and looked too, then rose quickly and came up behind Sherry, laying a hand on each shoulder.

“Hullo, Sherry old boy! What luck running into you! Linda and I have just got back from Switzerland. Sorry to miss your ‘do,’ but we couldn’t get them to change our sleepers. I suppose you’re honeymooning here, are you?” Smiling, he looked at Logie, waiting to be introduced. The girl with him joined them too. “Sherry, how nice to see you!”

Sherry had risen. He said, “There wasn’t any ‘do’ to miss. This is Miss Selkirk. Logie, I don’t think you know Captain and Mrs. Warren, do you?”

Was it her imagination or a trick of light that made her fancy that both the Warrens first looked taken aback, then schooled their startled faces quickly into expressions of polite friendliness as they exchanged trivialities about the lovely evening and this charming place? Was she imagining that Sherry’s voice was suddenly harsh, his face hard, and that an atmosphere of tension hung in the air?

Captain Warren said, “Well, now that we’ve had the luck to meet, you two must have a drink with us.”

His wife, smiling at Logie, said, “Yes, do come along!” gesturing to the table they had left. Logie hesitated, waiting, since she was his guest, for Sherry to reply.

He said, abruptly, “Thanks very much, but we were just leaving. Too bad that we didn’t see you earlier.”

There was a brief, uncomfortable silence. Then Linda Warren looked Sherry straight in the eyes, and hers were sorry and kind as well as puzzled. “Another time!” she said, adding to Logie, “That means you too, of course! I do hope we shall meet again.”

Logie smiled back, murmuring that she hoped so, too. The Warrens went back to their own table. Then in silence Logie waited while Sherry paid the bill, in silence walked beside him to the car park. In silence still he took the homeward road. Some silences are happy and companionable; this one was raw with the jagged edges of Sherry’s bitter mood and Logie’s bewilderment.

What did it mean? she asked herself. What
could
it mean, this talk of Sherry being here on his honeymoon? Had it been understood among his friends that he would shortly become engaged? Possibly to the tall girl with whom he said he had been dancing lately? And why was it that he so evidently wanted to spend no more time than need be in the company of the Warrens?

He spoke at last as they approached the bridge that linked the outskirts of Market Blyburgh with the countryside. “Sorry for that deplorable exhibition of bad manners on my part. I had a sudden and violent attack of unsociability ... Too bad of me to drag you away so soon, but I—” he broke off.

“Oh, I was quite ready to come home. I’ve got to be at Dr. Sinclair’s surgery at nine and I like lots of sleep!” she answered lightly. She went on as they crossed the bridge, “I’ve just remembered—we were wondering if you’d like to come with us to-morrow evening on the river? We take supper with us often in the summer in our boat—rather an ancient tub, but safe enough, so far. So if you’d care to come too—?”

Sherry said that he would love to, and would bring along cider from the Painted Anchor as his contribution to the fare. They parted at the wicket door of the coach-house as though no awkwardness had marred the ending of their evening.

Logie crept along the passage to her bedroom in a golden haze of happiness, trying to ignore the cloud, small and indefinite, yet faintly threatening, that hovered in a corner of her mind.

Alison, lying wakeful, heard her, and remembered evenings that now seemed very long ago, when she too had gone creeping quietly past bedroom doors so as to avoid disturbing sleepers in the tall Edinburgh house where she had boarded. Evenings when the future had seemed full of happy promise...

She sighed and turned, but could not sleep, held in the disturbing grip of premonition. She had known it twice before, this feeling of impending change, as though the course of life were going to alter: once just before her summons to Market Blyburgh when Mary Selkirk fell ill; the second time shortly before Robert Selkirk’s death. She prayed that this time it might foretell not tragedy but joy.

CHAPTER FOUR

A
week
went by and still Sherry stayed on at the Painted Anchor transforming life at Fantails, yet fitting into it surprisingly.

Most mornings Alison, doing the housework, would hear him coming upstairs two steps at a time. “What’s to do to-day?” he would demand, then settle down for the next hour or two to shelling peas, topping and tailing gooseberries, or polishing the old brass preserving pan. He spent the whole of one rainy afternoon cleaning shoes until they shone with the rich, burnished gleam of horse chestnuts, an art learnt from his batman.

Always he brought some contribution to the day’s fare—a couple of lobsters that, he declared, had looked so lonely on their slab, surrounded by regiments of soles and plaice, that he had taken pity on them, or a chicken and a basket of mushrooms brought from the old woman who came once a week to sell her country produce, and once a hamper from Fortnum’s, packed with luxuries such as Alison had long forgotten and Logie and Jane had never known—bottled peaches, tinned asparagus, foie gras, marrons glaces. When Alison protested, he replied that if she didn’t like it he would have to stay away; he couldn’t possibly eat their rations and bring nothing in exchange, and his ration card was wanted at the Painted Anchor. He even produced butter, saying they kept a couple of cows at home and he had had it sent on by the housekeeper.

The weather was kind and they were able nearly every evening to have picnics. Sometimes they went on the river, sometimes Sherry took them farther afield, to the sea or the broads. Never having discovered for himself the limitations imposed by the lack of a car, he was amazed by how little they knew of the country beyond bicycling distance from home, and touched by their delight in these expeditions into the unknown territory. Once when it rained, he took them all to dinner at the Maid’s Head, in Norwich, and after to see a film. It was Logie’s habit when she came back from the surgery to go for a short walk, and Sherry would go with her. Sometimes they strolled up the river bank, sometimes went a short way into the country in his car and walked there along, woodland paths or lanes deep in the fields.

The more they saw of him, the more they liked him. Jane adored him because he took her seriously instead of talking down on her indulgently, after the mistaken way of so many grown-ups. Alison was amused by his dry humour, although she often winced at the barbed bitterness of something he would let fall, the cynicism of his outlook on the world and on humanity. Sometimes she would argue with him. “Why do you talk as though everyone were calculating and out for all that they can get, regardless of how it may affect other people?”

“Why? Because that’s how I’ve found them!”

“You don’t think
we’re
like that!”

“No. But you’re different.” He smiled at her disarmingly, tossing peas he was shelling in a basin.

“Indeed we’re not. We’re very ordinary. We’re mixed, like everybody else. Nice and nasty, mean and generous, kind and cross—in streaks.”

“Only most people aren’t streaked. They’re all of a piece, the ones I’ve known best. Not such a very nice piece, either, when you look at it too closely.”

Alison sighed.

“Cross with me?”

“No. Sorry for you!”

At this his young face hardened. “I don’t need anybody’s pity!” he said shortly, and she changed the subject, though her heart was full of compassion. She was convinced that recently he had suffered the hurt of a deep disillusion, and it had left a scar.

And as for Logie, she was deep in love, in love with life, in love with love, in love with all that Sherry represented in her eyes—romance, luxury, freedom to go where you pleased, do as you chose, have what you wanted: more than half in love with Sherry himself, fascinated by his unfamilar outlook. Trying to look at life through his eyes made of the world a different place, a place filled with new, strange, half-frightening possibilities. Alison, realising more than Logie herself of Logie’s state of mind and heart, was torn by hopes and fears: hopes that with Sherry Logie might find happiness, fears that he might leave their lives as suddenly as he had entered them.

Preoccupied with new happenings and possibilities, Alison had given little thought to the change impending in their lives if the Sinclairs went to America, when one morning Ella Sinclair came to Fantails. Sherry had gone to Norwich to have his hair cut, so Alison was alone stringing currants for a summer pudding.

“It’s settled!” Ella cried, her dark eyes sparkling. “We’re off at the end of next week. I suppose Americans are like that—always in a hustle. Anyhow, they’ve been pulling strings at the other end and got us cancelled passages.
Flying
—imagine it! A pair of staid old fogies like me and Tom suddenly uprooting ourselves and going off across the world!”

She prattled on excitedly about their plans, as thrilled at forty-nine over the impending change as any girl of seventeen invited to her first dance. Alison, her fingers busy with the currants, listened in smiling silence, occasionally ejaculating, “You’ll both enjoy that!” or “How lovely for you!”

“Here I go, burbling away about us, when you must be dying to know about Hugh Brandon,” Ella said at last.

“Hugh—?”

“Dr. Brandon, who’s taking on the practice. Tom thinks the world of him—he’s leaving you all in good hands! G.Ps. are apt to scoff at Harley Street, but if anybody scoffs at Hugh it’s a case of sour grapes. He’s brilliant, Tom says. Only forty-three, but he’s made a great name as a consultant.”

Alison was trying to remember something. “Wasn’t he the man who flew to India not long ago to see some maharajah who was ill?”

“That’s it. He only stayed there five days, and Tom heard he got five thousand for it!”

“But why ...” Alison hesitated, trying to word her question tactfully. Ella said it for her. “Why should he leave Harley Street for Market Blyburgh? Family reasons. He’s a widower with a little boy of five. The child is delicate, and Hugh feels he should be in the country, yet wants to have him under his own eye—naturally enough. He has the sense to know that money isn’t everything. Tom has a notion that he won’t be sorry to break away from London for a while. It seems he has become the fashion among rich women who have nothing better to do with their time and money than play at being ill if they can find an attractive doctor to listen to the tales of their imaginary aches and pains. Hugh’s not the man to enjoy wasting his time over that sort of nonsense.”

“Does he know Market Blyburgh?”

“He spent a week-end with us last year. You were coming to Sunday supper to meet him, but Andrew turned up unexpectedly on embarkation leave at the last minute.”

“Of course. Now I remember. You spoke about him then. That’s why the name seemed so familiar.”