Fog of Doubt (6 page)

Tedward strolled out after her, laughing. ‘Never mind, Til! You cope with the old girl, I'll see myself out.' Gabriel followed him barking gaily, under the chronic delusion that anyone in an overcoat was necessarily about to take him walkie-palkies, and Annaran, the Siamese cat, who was very sillily called after the film Annaran the King of Siam, poised ready to dart out to certain death under the traffic wheels of Maida Vale. ‘
Gab
riel!
An
naran!' shouted Matilda, in despair, above the din. The telephone rang, Emma reached boiling-point, Rosie screamed out from her attic that if that was Damien on the 'phone she would come down and speak to him, and out of a first-floor window flew a long-sleeved woollen nightie. A strong smell of burning pastry arose from the basement. ‘My
God
, what a house!' said Tilda. From the hall came a last shrill yelp of disappointment as Tedward shut the door in Gabriel's face; followed by a squall as it closed upon Annaran's shining tail. The fall of the nightgown had been followed by a heavy silence in Mrs. Evans' room. To-day of all days!—Granny was always at her most impossible, after Worse than Death.

CHAPTER FOUR

S
URE
enough, it was Damien on the telephone. Matilda caught snatches of Rosie's end of a long and intensely boring quarrel culminating in a slamrned-down receiver, more telephone calls, and a return to bed. She called up to the attic to know what Rosie wanted to do about dinner to-night.

‘I shall be out,' said Rosie.

‘Out? I thought you were supposed to be so ill?'

‘Well, I am, but I shall be better by this evening and I'm going out.'

‘If it's because of Raoul, you needn't see him, darling,' said Matilda, repenting of having been impatient and unkind when, after all, the poor child was worried and unwell; but people were so hopeless, they got themselves into muddles and then sat back and were aggrieved with everyone but themselves.

‘I just don't want to see anyone—it's not especially him.'

‘But there's going to be an awful fog, Rosie, it's as black as pitch already. Stay in bed, darling, and I'll bring you up some dinner on a tray …' (in the intervals of cooking a Ritzotel dinner for Raoul, putting the baby to bed, dealing with Gran's post-seduction remorse and steering a safe course between concealing from Thomas that she wanted to be alone with Raoul for the purpose of discussing Rosie, and encouraging him to believe that it was from her own desire to be false to her marriage vow.…)

But Rosie, muttering darkly about the general rottenness of men, insisted that, fog or no fog, she would get up and go out; meanwhile, could she have her lunch in bed please, now.

‘No, I'm damned if you can,' said Tilda. ‘If you're well enough to go gallivanting—with Damien Jones, I suppose? —you're well enough to have lunch in the dining-room.'

‘Well, if you want to know,' said Rosie, ‘I am not going gallivanting with Damien, so there; for the simple reason that Damien has a Meeting to-night, and would he leave his precious Meeting for me, oh, no of course not!—much as I might need his sort of support and things … I should think it would be better to do something about just the dull, ordinary person that you saw every day and who ackcherly needed your help, than sit around incessantly discussing a whole lot of people that you never set eyes on, who only might.'

This accorded so closely with Tilda's own conception of helping one's neighbour, that she refrained from remarking that she, personally, had so far received little thanks for trying to help the one, dull, everyday person who actually needed it. She contented herself with saying that Rosie could come down to lunch in her jenking-gowns but to hurry up. Melissa produced the more ruined remnants of her scorched pastry and generously handed them round. ‘Who're you going out with this afternoon—Stanislas?' said Rosie, making civil conversation. Melissa gave her a warning grimace. ‘My dear child, if it's me you're worrying about, please don't,' said Matilda irritably. ‘If you were going out with the King of
Greece
, I couldn't care less.' Though why the poor King of Greece, she could not imagine. My God, what a day, she thought again.

At six o'clock Damien presented himself at the door, the thick, grey fog swirling in with him as she opened it. He looked rather pink and white, and carried a small, crushed bunch of flowers in a paper cornet. ‘Could I see Rosie, Mrs. Evans, please?'

For all he was such an ass, Matilda couldn't help being fond of Damien Jones. He was a nice-looking boy, with a handsome, sullen face and forward-curling hair, and as long as he treated only his equals as Comrades and didn't drag her up into it, she respected the honest idealism which drove him to improving a world in which he, himself, had not yet learned to live. ‘She is, Damien, dear, but I don't know whether she's see-able. I think she's going out.'

‘Who with?' said Damien, blurting it out before he could stop himself.

‘I don't know, my dear. Go and wait in the office and I'll call her.' (Blast the boy!—with Melissa off duty, Emma half-undressed for bed, probably by now sailing her bedroom slippers in the bath, and the animals singing lustily for their supper …) But she toiled upstairs and called up to the attic that Damien was here and Rosie called back that Damien could go to hell and Matilda replied that Rosie could tell him so herself, then, because she was not going to, and went into the nursery. She heard Rosie thump down the little attic stair and duly lean over the banister and call out to Damien that he could go to hell. Damien apparently came out into the hall and said something in reply, for Rosie called back that she couldn't, she was in her pants and bra, and that anyway, if she had been as fully dressed as an esquimo or an igloo or whoever those people were, she wouldn't, so he might just as well fuss off because there was no point in his staying. He evidently hung about for a little while; just as Tilda, unable to bear the thought of his hurt young face, was about to abandon the baby once more and go down and administer comfort, the front door banged. Oh, well, she thought; I really didn't have time! She dumped the baby in its cot, where it stood looking over the high railed side with a trembling lower lip; in its white woolly sleeping-bag, with its halo of red-gold hair, it looked as though it were about to enter a sack-race in some celestial school-sports. She caught it up and kissed it, besought it not to add to the complications of life by weeping, and hurried away, thankfully closing one door at least behind her. Emma gave a couple of dismal yells, changed her mind and broke, instead, into loud singing. Outside, the fog was like a blank grey face peering in through the window-panes. Pray heaven, she thought, that it means that Raoul will be late.

Thomas came in. He was bleary-eyed and coughing. ‘Tilda?'

‘In the kitchen, darling.'

Thomas appeared at the kitchen door. ‘Is he here yet?'

‘No, thank goodness. I'm praying he'll be late. I'm not nearly ready.'

‘Perhaps he won't come,' said Thomas, hopefully. ‘The fog's frightful. I almost thought I might have to leave the car.'

‘You're not late, though.'

‘I skipped all but the positively dying. I'll make a round of 'phone calls. Any messages?' He drifted off towards the office and came back a moment later with a small piece of paper. ‘What's this about Harrow Gardens?'

‘I don't know, darling,' said Tilda, straining potatoes, her head held back to protect her make-up from the clouds of steam. ‘Harrow Gardens?'

‘Yes, it looks as if I shall have to sweat out again—and in this fog. Oh, blast! “Ten weeks. D. and V. Three days.” Who took it?—Melissa, I suppose?'

‘I suppose so, but she's out,' said Matilda, pushing past his unyielding form to get at the cooker again. ‘Do
move
, sweetie, how can anybody get round you?'

‘What the hell does she mean, “Ten weeks. D. and V. Three days”?'

‘I suppose she means that a ten-weeks-old baby has had diarrhoea and vomiting for three days: what else? Thomas, I shall go mad if you don't move, darling.'

‘Oh, hell!' he said, looking savagely at the note on the paper and very slightly shifting his position to let her get past, immediately resuming it again. ‘I shall have to go.'

‘My poor
pet,
' said Matilda absently, straining frozen peas.

‘Where on earth's Harrow Gardens? Somewhere round the Harrow Road, I expect,
miles
from here, of course, and off any known map route, nobody to ask the way of, and the fog like a sort of veil of wet Jaeger corns all over one's face.' Cheered by this vivid metaphor, he went through to the drawing-room and crashed about among Matilda's carefully arranged bottles, mixing himself a drink He came back with it in his hand. ‘When did this message come, do you know?'

‘Darling, I tell you I don't know anything about it; but if Melissa took it, it must have been before one, because she wasn't on duty after that.'

‘Well, I think I ought to eat something now and do my 'phone calls and go. If I hang about for this French chap of yours, it'll be a couple of hours before I see the child.'

‘If it's had its D. and V. for three days, would that make much difference?'

‘It might,' he said. ‘Anyway, they must be getting worried, waiting all this time. No telephone number of course, so I can't ring them up.
And
no name. Trust Melissa!'

‘Harrow Gardens off the Harrow Road doesn't sound very private-telephoney,' said Matilda.

Rosie's voice called softly on the stairs in an unwontedly melodious pipe. ‘Tilda! Anyone here yet?'

‘No, come on down,' called Matilda. She added, warningly, however, ‘Only Thomas.'

Rosie appeared in the kitchen doorway. She looked excessively smart in a gay little hat and bright scarlet coat and a pair of very high heels held on by a sliver of sole and a couple of thin leather straps. ‘Well, hallo and good-bye, chaps. I'm off.'

‘What, in this fog?' said Thomas. ‘Where to?'

‘Just—out,' said Rosie, shrugging.

‘Aren't you staying in to see this wonderful Frenchman?'

‘No, thanks very much,' said Rosie. ‘I'm
not.
'

Thomas raised his eyebrows. ‘Aren't you? Why?'

‘Oh, lor',' said Rosie, impatiently. ‘Because I don't want to, that's why.'

‘As it's
my
hand he's coming to hold, why should she?' said Tilda quickly. ‘Look, you two, how do you think anyone can cook a dinner in a kitchen this size with three people milling around in it? Rosie, if you're going out, darling, go; and Thomas, you'd better have something on a plate now, because he'll be here any minute and then it'll be sauve qui peut, as far as I'm concerned.'

Rosie started off with alacrity but Thomas, unusually persistent, followed her out into the hall. ‘It doesn't seem very polite.'

‘Well,
I
can't help it if I've got an appointment, Thomas.'

‘You did know this man in Geneva?'

‘Yes, I
knew
him,' acknowledged Rosie, reluctantly.

‘But not very well?'

‘If you want to know, I knew him a great deal too well,' said Rosie, bursting out with it, irritably. ‘Now may I go, please, as I happen to have an appointment and I'm late for it already.' Tilda heard the bang of the front door as she flounced off down the steps. Thomas opened it again to call out after her: was it she who had taken this message about a case in Harrow Gardens? Her denials floated back to them, muffled already by the fog. There was a rattle as she struggled with the little gate. The faint clip-clop of her high heels whispered of her uncertain progress through the impenetrable grey. Thomas wandered back into the kitchen looking thoughtfully into the glass in his hand, apparently not much edified by what he saw there. Matilda, glancing anxiously at his face, served some food from the saucepans on to a plate with a great banging of spoons against china, and put it on a corner of the kitchen table. ‘Eat this, darling, and I'll just run upstairs and take Gran hers.' Mrs. Evans usually ate with the rest of the family but she was too unpredictable a member to be trusted when there were guests. This evening, anyway, she was mourning her lost virtue, and refused all food and drink. ‘Sand, sand, sand!' she said to Matilda, looking about her close-carpeted room with a delirious brightness in her eyes. ‘Nothing but sand! I don't think I shall ever see anything again, Matilda, my dear, but all these wastes and wastes of golden sand; and not so much as a camel galloping towards me with my Sheik aboard!'

‘Aboard?' said Matilda.

‘The Ship of the Desert,' said Mrs. Evans, fixing her with an eye that dared her to say, Here, Gran—come off it!

‘Well, darling, try and eat your supper. It's very special, all hashed up by me out of Tante Marie, for my Frenchman.'

‘Frenchman? What Frenchman?'

‘Granny, I told you this morning—a man I used to know in Geneva.'

‘What's he coming here for?' said Mrs. Evans, sharply. ‘From Geneva.'

‘Well, he wants to see me, that's all.'

‘I shall come down,' said Mrs. Evans, scrambling up off the sofa which earlier in the day had carried her so bravely in her vain dash across the burning sands, and beginning to hunt through her wardrobe for an appropriate change of dress.

‘No, you can't,' said Matilda, a little too quickly. ‘He—well, he wants to see me alone, Gran. He wants to talk to me.'

‘How can he see you alone? What about Thomas; and Rosie?'

‘Rosie's gone out to avoid him, and Thomas has to go on a case. Darling, do eat your supper. You must keep up your strength, you know,' said Tilda, resorting to a rather low trick, ‘if you've got any more dashing about the desert to do.'