Child Friday (12 page)

Emily helped, herself, in the preparation of Miss Pink’s room. Mrs. Meeker, delighted to gossip
w
hile she worked, brought up surreptitious cups of tea from the kitchen and thoroughly enjoyed her morning.

“’Tes a shame these rooms are never used,” she said, polishing with vigor. “But ’twas the same in Mr. Carey’s time, so I believe. Shut
h
isself up here and saw nobody.”

“Mrs. Pride seems to think Mr. Merritt should do the same,” said Emily, piling blankets on the high old
-
fashioned bed.

“Well, her’s got used to such ways,” Mrs. Meeker said soothingly. “Still and all, I’m wishful to see this body who sent you here.”

“What do you mean, Mrs. Meeker?”

“Well, bless you, ma’am, the whole village knows you came from that agency in London, same as the others.” Mrs. Meeker beamed approval.

“Oh!” said Emily, nonplussed.

“Not but what we thought Mr. Merritt was looking for a wife, mind you, but that becomes plain now, I reckon,” the woman said cheerfully.

“Does it?” said Emily. Shorty and Mrs. Pride had always known the truth, she supposed, but she had not thought the village knew, too. No wonder Vanessa had regarded her with such amusement.

“There was a time, of course, when ’e and Miss
Vanessa
—
”
began
Mrs
.
, Meeker reminiscently. “Still—what’s past is
past and no harm done. Will I fetch the rug from next door in here, ma’am? Tes brighter than this one, I reckon.”

“Yes, do that, Mrs. Meeker,” said Emily, and went downstairs and into the garden to be alone with her conflicting thoughts.

The winds of early March had dropped, and, in the garden, the evidence of spring was waiting to be noticed. The delicate green shoots of bulbs pierced through the soil and buds were already forming on bush and hedgerow. In the orchard the fruit trees wore a young and tender look. Emily climbed into the tree from where she had first seen Alice, and twined her arms about the branches, fighting back the tears.

Why should she mind? What matter what the village thought? But years ago, when Dane had his sight, he had stayed here, and he and the young Vanessa had made love and the villagers had watched that ardent courtship and, in the end, been disappointed.

She saw Dane coming round the house with Bella. He walked across one lawn, and another, then turned to make a circuit of the orchard, and, as always, she watched him, silently willing him protection as if she were, indeed, Bella watching over his footsteps.

He passed immediately beneath her tree and the thin sunshine fell on his bare head so that she found herself remembering:
Black is the color of my true love’s hair.
..
She must have moved, for the bitch looked up with a little whimper and Dane stopped.

“What is it, Bella?” he asked.

The bitch whimpered again and he stretched out a hand to touch the tree and learn the texture and species of the bark.

“Emily—are you up there?” he said sharply.

“Yes,” she said, and knew at once a sense of trespass, remembering his dislike of being observed unknowingly.

But he did not seem annoyed.

“Alice’s tree dyad,” he said. “Come down and
I’
ll catch you.”

She descended with care into his outstretched arms and he held her there, running his hands up and over her shoulders until they reached her face.

“Were you crying?” he asked, feeling wetness on his fingers.

“
Not really. Spring is nearly here, that’s all.”

“Only the very young weep for the spring—or those in love,” he said with faint mockery. “What were you doing up a tree?”

“Thinking.”

“Thoughts that brought tears, evidently. You are too much alone, Emily. It will be a good thing when Alice comes home f
o
r the Easter holidays.”

They walked back to the house through the young, springing grass and up the steps where he and Vanessa had stood so close that morning in February.

“She’s very lovely,” sighed Emily, walking among the primroses.

“Who?”

“Vanessa, of course.”

“Yes,” he said, and echoed her sigh. “I used to think her the loveliest creature on earth.”

II

Louisa Pink arrived in time for tea on Friday. Emily drove into Plymouth to meet the train, and, as she stood waiting on the draughty platform, she was struck by the strangeness of welcoming as a guest a woman whom she had always held in awe and to whom she had been accustomed to apply for work. A tremor of nervousness seized her. Would Miss Pink’s sharp eyes see more than they were meant to, or would she merely admit a blunder and return to London dissatisfied with her own machinations? Emily’s clothes might be new and smart, she thought with a sigh, but inside them she was still the same diffident girl whose lack of confidence Miss Pink had always deplored. She remembered then the pound note which had been thrust into her hand in order to buy herself a square meal and gathered courage at the memory of that unexpected kindness.

Miss Pink emerged from the train, as smart and fresh as wh
e
n she had started. The careful make-up was as faultless as ever and not a grey hair escaped from its immaculate setting under the fashionable little hat
.
For a moment Emily felt ill-dressed and insignificant, then Miss
Pink’s shrewd eyes swept over her and she smiled with evident approval.

“Why, Emily, how nice you look!” she exclaimed, and handed a spare coat to Emily and her suitcase to a porter with her remembered efficiency.

On the drive to Pennycross she chatted easily about the. journey, her fellow passengers and the London weather, then asked suddenly:

“Is it working?”

“My marriage?” said
Emil
y without evasion. “Yes, I t
hink
so.”

“Well, you certainly look the better for your change of fortune. Have you forgiven me for not telling you the true state of affairs when I sent you down here?”

“Why didn’t you?” asked Emily curiously. She had often wondered.

Miss Pink sighed.

“I don’t know. There was a curious kind of innocence about you which, perhaps, I thought might have recoiled in fright. Or perhaps I was just gambling on the fact that you might be what Dane was looking for, in which case he could tell you himself. Were you shocked?”

“Shocked? No, I don’t think so. From his point of view I
thin
k it seemed quite nat
u
ral.”

“And from yours?”

“I don’t know. Those first weeks were somehow a little unreal. In the end—well, I was rather desperate, you know.”

“Desperate enough to marry a stranger who was blind.”

“
His
blindness made it possible,” Emily said gently, and Louisa Pink gave her a quick look.

“H’m
...
” she said and glanced with distaste at the bleak, rolling moorland which stretched before them.

“Not my cup of tea,” she shivered. “Do you find it lonely, Emily?”

“Not really. Haven’t you been here before, Miss Pink?”

“No. I knew Dane in the old days, though we’ve always kept up, of course. You’d better call me Louisa, by the way. Dane does.”

Emily made no answer. The thought of addressing the slightly alarming deity of Pink’s Employment Agency so familiarly rather shocked her.

“You haven’t altered much, have you?” said Miss Pink with a smile of amusement. “I hope you don’t let Dane walk over you.”

Emily watched the meeting between her husband and her erstwhile agent with interest. It was so rare for him to welcome a stranger under his roof that she had wondered uneasily if he might not have already regretted the invitation. But Louisa greeted him as though she had only seen him yesterday, and Dane received her with a complete lack of embarrassment. They were clearly old and tried friends.

“You l
o
ok wonderful,” she said. “Seclusion seems to agree with you—or is it really Emily? What a Godforsaken spot to choose, though!”

“You are much too urban for Dartmoor, Louisa!” he mocked. “Besides, one doesn’t choose one’s inheritance. One is merely grateful. Did Emily drive you circumspectly?”

“Very, but I think she’s a circumspect young woman. Your speeding days are over, Dane, and a good thing, too.”

Emily saw Dane’s little quirk of wryness and thought of Vanessa handling the car with such sureness, driving with the dash and brilliance he could appreciate.

“I’m safe but uninspired,” she said, taking her place at the tea-table.

“I trust you are only referring to driving a car,” Miss Pink remarked a little dryly. “Well, Dane, you’ve made a great improvement in Emily since I last saw her.”

Dane’s eyebrows rose.

“Have I?” he asked mildly.

“I was referring to her clothes, of course. I’m glad to see you’re generous.”

“Oh, I see. I think Emily is probably blushing. You will have to be careful of her sensibilities
,
Louisa.”

Miss Pink looked sharply from one to the other of them, saw Emily’s heightened color, and gave her a reassuring smile.

“It’s always embarrassing to be discussed in public,” she said briskly. “Now, Dane, tell me your news since last we met.”

Emily listened to their talk, while she poured out the tea and attended to their wants. She thought Dane seemed unusually forthcoming, as if this link with the past, in the shape of Louisa Pink, released some inhibition in him. They spoke of names and places of which Emily had never heard, of Dane’s past work and the work that was still left for him to do; they spoke of Alice and his possible plans for her future, and they discussed the problem of the day, comparing them with those of yesterday. Vanessa’s name was never mentioned and Emily wondered if Miss Pink had known her.

When tea was finished, Emily left them, feeling herself in the way. She called Bella, to let her out for a run, and as the door closed behind them, Louisa Pink observed: “That’s a nice child. Are you making her happy, Dane?”

He filled a pipe, and sat back, puffing at it contentedly. “I hope so,” he said. “How did you hit on the right person so unerringly, Louisa?”

“I don’t know that I have,” she retorted. “I’m not sure Emily isn’t too self-effacing for you.”

“Meaning just what?”

“Well, you might be a little alarming to a young girl pitch-forked suddenly into such a strange situation.”

“That was your responsibility,” he said. “I own I hadn’t bargained for someone quite so young and inexperienced.”

“Yet you married her—and pretty quickly, too.”

“Perhaps I took advantage. It was rather like t
aking
a little s
kinn
y cat into one’s home and doing one’s best.”

“Not the
sort of motives I would have imputed to you,” she remarked dryly. “You’re not regretting things, I hope?”

“Not on my own account, but—Emily causes me uneasiness, sometimes. I feel she doesn’t quite realize what she’s taken on.”

“I
think
she realizes very well. It’s not a bad exchange, you know, from her point of view—a home and security in return for loyalty and consideration.”

“
Would you have thought the same at that age?”

“Oh, me!” Louisa stretched comfortably. “I was always a careerist. I never wanted that sort of security, but Emily’s different.”

“I wonder why you picked her.”

“Well,” she said humorously, “the two candidates I first selected were hardly successful, were they? I thought I’d better try someone less sophisticated, someone with a more proper appreciation for benefits conferred, besides—she’d been on my books too long.”

He smiled.

“You’re scarcely as inconsequent as that,” he said. “On the face of it, Miss Emily Moon, unsuccessful in love and self-preservation, was an odd choice.”

“I had a hunch,” she replied doggedly. “Besides, I wanted to do the girl a good turn, as well as you.”

“Yet you didn’t tell her the main reason for. her employment here?”

She looked a little ashamed.

“At the last I baulked,” she admitted. “I thought I might scare her off—and, in any case, you were the right person to do your own courting.”

He laughed a shade grimly.

“What an old-fashioned word to apply to such a prosaic arrangement! Have you never thought, Louisa, that you might have a lot to answer for?”

For a moment she looked angry.

“Well!” she exclaimed indignantly. “I like that! You appealed to me because of an old friendship, when I told you at the time that what you needed was a matrimonial agency, and now you want to reproach me. You both had your month’s trial and presumably went into things with your eyes open. If anyone has anything to answer for, it’s you, my dear.”

“All right, all right, I wasn’t reproaching you,” he said. “I believe you’re really a sentimentalist under that hard-boiled exterior, Louisa. Perhaps you had thoughts of playing Cupid.”

She looked at him for a long, silent moment before she replied. She had
argued with him in the carefree days of his youth, in the first bitter weeks after
his accident, in the moment of decision to shut himself away in his newfound
inheritance and let the world go by. She had had no patience with this last, but
now, she thought, he had conquered the handicap of his body if not of his mind.