No Fond Return of Love (8 page)

‘The servants listening to a television programme,’ said Viola distastefully.

‘Servants?’ echoed Dulcie incredulously. ‘Do people have
servants
nowadays – I mean, ordinary people like Aylwin Forbes?’

‘He seems to be quite well-off, but actually the “servants” go with the house, I think. He has a maisonnette on the two top floors,’ Viola explained.

‘His parentage isn’t mentioned in
Who’s Who,
’ said Dulcie. ‘I suppose there could be money in his family.’

The concentration of one’s thoughts on a particular person can sometimes have the effect of making him appear in the flesh, and so it was on this occasion. The front door of the house opened, and Aylwin Forbes came out. He looked older than Dulcie had remembered, and was informally dressed in a blue cardigan, old grey trousers, and red slippers.

It would have been better, Dulcie thought, as so often on these occasions, if they had not seen him or he had not seen them – if they could have slipped quietly away without having to say anything. As it was, she felt herself cringing with embarrassment at Viola’s false-sounding exclamations of surprise, and at Aylwin’s response which seemed almost to be – and perhaps was – one of dismay.

‘Why, Viola and Miss – er …’

‘Mainwaring,’ said Dulcie quickly.

‘Of course! We met at the conference, didn’t we? I had no idea you lived round here.’

‘I don’t, as a matter of fact,’ said Dulcie unhelpfully.

‘Oh, I see.’

The little party walked on in silence.

‘Miss Mainwaring has been dining with me. I have a flat in Carew Gardens,’ said Viola.

‘Dining’ was perhaps not quite the word, thought Dulcie, and neither was ‘flat’. And why did she have to say
Miss
Mainwaring, making her sound like a worthy elderly female?

‘I was on my way to post a letter,’ he said, though no letter was in his hand.

‘Miss Mainwaring has to catch a bus,’ said Viola.

‘Yes, I live miles away beyond Hammersmith,’ said Dulcie, making a joke of it, as suburban dwellers sometimes must.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Aylwin, with a thoughtful air, as if he might be remembering the house in Deodar Grove where his wife now was. ‘Here is the pillar-box,’ he said, for there was no getting away from it. He fumbled in his pockets. ‘But I seem to have forgotten my letter. How stupid ofme!’

The women made no comment, and after saying good-night he left them and went back to his house, presumably to fetch, or even to write, the letter.

‘Somehow he reminds me of Rupert Brooke,’ said Dulcie enthusiastically, when he was out of earshot.

‘Rupert Brooke, good heavens!’ There was contempt in Viola’s tone. That handsome
vieux-jeu
kind of face, and the slender volume of poems that so many schoolgirls bought in the nineteen-twenties. ‘My mother’s favourite poet. Do you really think so?’

‘I thought he had a look of him. And yet,’ said Dulcie thoughtfully, ‘Aylwin just misses perfection – there’s the Greek-statue look, something blunted or marred about the features… Look, here’s my bus. I think I’d better get it.’

‘Goodbye,’ said Viola. Til see you on Friday.’

She turned away from the bus stop and hurried back past the house in Quince Square. But the door was shut and now from the basement came an unknown man’s voice, saying unctuously, ‘The tea is
delicious
and the packet is val-u-able!’ Then there was a snatch of song, like a little Elizabethan catch adapted to television advertis-ing.

He had been gravely lacking in hospitality, not to have asked them to come in, thought Aylwin, hurrying up to his study and picking up the letter from the table. But Miss Mainwaring had a bus to catch – she would not have wanted to be delayed. She lived far away, in the same direction as his wife’s mother, in that depressing house facing the common. He had not always found it so.

Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwise

Twenty times better,

he thought. Once it had seemed the height of romanticism, on a January day shortly after their first meeting, with the stone squirrel in the next-door garden, and Marjorie’s pretty little face peeping through the net curtains that her mother had put up at every win-dow, waiting for him to come to tea on a Sunday afternoon. He would have done anything for her in those days, have snatched even the stone squirrel from its hard earthy bed and pressed it into her hands as a ridiculous romantic present, meeting unembarrassed the surprised stare of his future mother-in-law as he waited with it on the doorstep.

He wished now that he could have asked the two women – Viola and Miss Mainwaring (had she no Christian name?) – in for a drink. A whisky, perhaps, or tea out of the big blue dragon cups. That would have been safe and cosy. And there would have been no danger of an embarrassing scene with poor Vi if Miss Mainwaring had been there.

As it was, he put down the letter again and turned to the material which his assistant editor had sent him for the January issue of his journal. ‘Some problems of an editor’, he thought, as various difficulties presented themselves. Then, bringing his fist down on the table, he heard himself saying aloud words that normally one only sees written.

‘The Editor’s decision is final,’ he declared. ‘No review shall exceed a thousand words.’

LAUREL was not sure exactly where the flower shop was, but she had been reluctant to ask Dulcie as she did not want her to know that she was going to call there. She must thank Paul for having got her bracelet mended and for the roses, and it would be much more interesting to* call and see him than to write a stiff little note, or to go to his house and perhaps have to meet his terrify-ing blue-haired mother with her spoilt little poodle.

She hoped it would not turn out to be one of those big smart shops with chic flower arrangements, where inquiries as to the price of bunches that looked within one’s means would be met with contempt – for she would have to buy something and was rather short of money. But when she found the street she saw to her relief that the shops in it were small, almost mean, and the flower shop itself reassuringly modest. She approached it cautiously, noticing the name ‘Mirabelle’, and looked in through the window. There was nobody visible inside, so she went on looking, studying the rows of plants and cacti arranged in the front, the fancy pot-holders and hideous vases, and at the back the green tins of gladioli, dahlias and chrysanthemums. In one corner, with the sacks of com-post and fertilizer, there were some garden objects, rabbits and gnomes and little animals of indeterminate species, looking peculiarly sad in the dusk. And Paul, who now emerged from somewhere behind the rabbits and gnomes, also looked sad.

His face brightened a little when he saw Laurel, but it was a moment before either of them spoke.

‘Good evening,’ said Laurel at last, a little stiffly.

Paul returned her greeting.

‘I came to thank you for getting my bracelet mended so quickly, and for the lovely roses.’

‘Oh, that’s all right.’

‘I suppose you’ll be closing soon? I wasn’t sure if you’d still be open.’

‘Yes, I usually close at six or sometimes half past. People seem to buy flowers on their way home.’

‘Guilty husbands, I suppose’ said Laurel frivolously, then, seeing his puzzled look, regretted her remark.

‘It seems to be mostly women’ he said seriously.

Women like Aunt Dulcie, Laurel thought, going back to dull and lonely rooms which they hoped to brighten with a bunch of cheap zinnias.

‘Well,
I
must buy something’ she said.

‘You don’t have to.’ A faint smile came on to his face. ‘I expect Miss Mainwaring has plenty of flowers in her garden still.’

‘Yes, of course, but I might get a plant for my room. A cactus, perhaps.’ She peered rather desperately at the rows of plants, with their harsh spiky leaves. ‘Or something trailing,’ she went on more hopefully, fingering a variegated ivy. ‘That might be better.’ She wished he would help her to choose instead of standing silently, almost deferentially, at her side. She wondered if it was going to be embarrassing to pay, slipping the money into his hand with a little joke if she could think of one. At last she decided on a trade-scantia with striped mauve leaves, and he took it away to wrap it up for her. In the back of the shop she now noticed a half-finished wreath – white carnations were being stuck into a heart-shaped base,

‘Are you making a wreath?’ she asked in a bright social tone, thinking as she did so what a very odd remark it was to make to anyone.

‘Yes, it’s a bleeding heart,’ he said solemnly. ‘There will be a spray of red carnations coming out of the side here.’

‘What a strange idea. Rather horrible, in a way.’

‘They’re very popular round here. You see, this isn’t really the grandest part of Kensington.’

Laurel smiled. ‘No, I suppose there the wreaths might be more conventional or they might say “cut flowers only”, or even no flowers at all. I wonder why poorer people make more of death? Are the upper and middle classes afraid of showing their feelings in such an obvious way?’

Paul smiled a little nervously, but seemed unable to add anything to the discussion.

‘I must be going,’ said Laurel, wondering if she had frightened him with her brittle, party manner. ‘Oh, and the plant – how much is it?’

‘Three and six,’ he said.

Laurel found a half-crown and two sixpences in her purse; she could hardly have borne to have received change from him.

‘Goodbye,’ she said, ‘and thank you again.’

Paul would have liked to say something more, to ask her to go out with him one evening, but he was too shy to think of anything quickly enough.

A pity he’s so dumb, Laurel thought, hurrying out into the dusk, but there would surely be other meetings. The encounter, as was only to be expected when it had taken place in anticipation so many times, had been disappointing. Paul seemed younger and more callow than she had remembered, though his brown eyes were even more beautiful. Perhaps, really, she liked older men better; even the slightly ridiculous gallantry of Senhor MacBride-Pereira, whom she met in the road, was not unpleasing to her.

‘A young English girl with a pot plant – what could be more charming …’

It was difficult to know how to answer this. Perhaps a Brazilian girl would not be seen carrying a pot plant and the sight was therefore unusual?

‘I’ve bought it for my room,” she said.

‘Ah, your “bed-sitter”. He brought out the word triumphantly, for he prided himself on his command of English slang.

Laurel watched him walk slowly away towards the pillar-box, turning out his feet in their orange suede shoes.

When she reached her aunt’s house, she saw a taxi outside the gate. The driver, grumbling under his breath, was unloading suitcases and carrying them into the house. In the hall she found her aunt and a tall, untidy-looking woman in a rather dirty red coat, anxiously counting out money. Then she remembered with a slight sinking feeling that this was the evening when Miss Dace – Viola – was coming to stay. Dulcie had warned her about it at breakfast.

Repressed spinster, thought Laurel dispassionately, for Dulcie had said that she might be ‘in rather a nervous state’. Life had, apparently, been a bit difficult. Well, it usually was, thought Laurel with all the easy scorn of her eighteen years. Life might improve if Miss Dace – could one
possibly
call her Viola? – were to send that coat to the cleaner and get herself a new hair style.

‘This is my niece Laurel,’ said Dulcie rather nervously. She had put a macaroni cheese in the oven and was now worrying lest it should not be enough. ‘I expect you’re in the middle of cooking dinner,’ Viola had said, which made Dulcie wonder whether she had not better open a tin of some kind of meat and have the macaroni cheese as a first course. Viola had always seemed to eat so little, and was it not, perhaps, better to begin as one meant to go on, with the bigger meal in the middle of the day and a rather small supper? Surely she would not expect meat twice a day?

Viola also had her thoughts. It had seemed such a
very
long way in the taxi, as she watched the fare mounting up on the clock and familiar landmarks were left behind. Olympia had seemed the last bulwark of civilization. And then, when they came to the suburban roads, with people doing things in gardens, she had wanted to tap on the glass and tell the driver to turn back. Now, standing in the hall, she saw that the house was quite spacious. There was a glimpse of a pleasant garden through french windows – just like a scene in a play. Through another open door she could see a table laid for a meal – and there were several decanters on the Edwardian oak sideboard, one of which had some brownish-looking liquid in the bottom. Could it be whisky or sherry or brandy, perhaps, kept for ‘medicinal’ purposes only?

‘You’ll want to see your room,’ said Dulcie, fussing rather. ‘I’m afraid it’s got some old pictures in it – I mean just
old
, not in the sense of Old Masters. My mother was fond of them – they had belonged to
her
mother – so you see …’

‘Yes, the taste of another age,’ said Viola in a detached tone, examining the pictures. ‘How very prosperous “Prosperity” looks, with that elaborate
coiffure
, lace at the throat, and all those pearls. And beside her, on that well-polished mahogany table, a dish – or perhaps an epergne – filled with hot-house grapes and peaches.’

‘Yes, but she has a nice expression,’ said Dulcie. ‘Like the wife of a Conservative Member of Parliament about to open a bazaar, don’t you think?’

‘“Adversity” seems more modern,’ Viola continued. ‘That lank hair and waiflike expression – one sees so many typists and girls in coffee bars looking like that.’

‘This is your bed, of course,’ said Dulcie, indicating the divan with its striped folk-weave cover. ‘It’s rather narrow, but quite comfortable, I think.’

Viola examined it, testing the mattress with her hand, as if Dulcie were an ordinary landlady and she were deciding whether to take the room or not. ‘I’m sure it will be quite comfortable,’ she said.