Child Friday (8 page)

II

They were not married, after all, for another fortnight, for Alice succumbed to a mild form of influenza which she passed on to Dane and Mrs. Pride in turn. Mrs. Meeker took over duties in the kitchen, and Emily and Shorty went up and downstairs with trays and kept the house clean between them.

Alice was an easy patient, being content to do as she was told and amuse herself by the hour with books and jigsaw puzzles, but Dane, according to Shorty, was not. He fretted at his enforced confinement to bed and
Emily suspected, at the delay to his plans.

“It’s ’ard for ’im, see, lying up there,” Shorty explained. “Can’t read, except that outlandish gibberish that’s too
’eavy to ’old up in bed, and no one to pass the time of day with, except me.”

“I could talk to him, and read, too. The little girl is better now,” Emily said.

“Won’t ’ave you in his room. Afraid you’ll take the ’flu,” said Shorty, but without malice.

“I’m just as likely to catch it from Alice,” said Emily reasonably, and he grinned.

“Well, I don’t suppose he thinks of that
.
”

Shorty had been much less hostile since he and Emily had run the house between them. If he knew of his master’s future plans he made no direct mention of them, except to warn her not to discuss her affairs with Mrs. Meeker.

“She’s a good sort but she talks,” he said. “Mr. Merritt don’t want his business to go all round the village—not till he’s ready, see?”

Yes, Shorty knew.

“You—you’ll never leave Mr. Merritt, I hope,” she said with an effort, trying to convey to him that she herself would never stand in his way.

“Wot, me?” he exclaimed, looking truculent, then his pugnacious little face softened curiously. “If I spoke out of turn when you first come, miss, I’m sorry,” he said. “You and me’ll get on all right, if you remembers I was ’ere first, see? Shouldn’t wonder if you wasn’t brighter than you look, too.”

It was as handsome an admission as she could expect in the circumstances, she supposed, and wondered if he would ever treat her with proper respect once she was Dane
’
s wife.

Dane’s wife
...
There had been little time to
think
o
f the future during the past week, but now with the house returned to normal and Alice going back to school on the morrow, time had caught up with her. She and Dane were to be married in a Plymouth Register Office the day after the child had gone; it was too late to turn back, even if she wished.

She packed Alice’s trunk, more distressed than the child by the coming parting., Alice had, in her way, been an unconscious ally, the small ghost of the unwanted child she, herself, had once been.

O
nly at the last did the little girl cling to her and whisper urgently:

“You’ll be here when I come back—promise?” she said.

Emily hugged her.

“Yes, I promise, and I’ll tell you something, too. Your guardian has taken your advice and is going to marry me, so that makes it safe, doesn’t it?” she said.

“How very sensible of Uncle Dane,” remarked Alice with surprised approval, and Emily laughed.

“It’s a secret, mind, so don’t tell him I told you first
.
”

Dane came into the hall at that moment to say goodbye, and Emily watched, with an odd little ache in her throat for him, the child’s unemotional leave-taking.

“Good-bye, Uncle Dane. I enjoyed my holidays,” she said politely.

He thrust a couple of notes into her hand.

“A small tip to start the term with,” he said.

She thanked him, sounding faintly embarrassed, and carefully putting the money into one of her pockets, turned to go.

“Don’t I get a kiss for that?” he asked unexpectedly, and she hesitated, then reached up and pecked him quickly on the cheek.

“You’re very sensible, Uncle Dane, I’m glad,” she said, and ran out to Shorty waiting in the car.

“Sensible! Because I tipped her?” Dane said a little ruefully.

“I don’t
think
so,” said Emily gently. “I told her we were taking her advice and getting married. Her comment on that was ‘How sensible of Uncle Dane.’ ”

He ran his hand round his chin.

“She’s a queer child,” he observed. “I suppose living with Ben Carey has made her old-fashioned, and I, for some reason, fail to inspire confidence—or is it affection?”

“Alice’s affections are well under control, but so, I think, are yours,” said Emily, and he glanced in the direction of her voice, frowning.

“Did you think I wasn’t fond of her?” he asked.

“I don’t
think
so now,” she answered. “Next holidays you’ll have to try to make friends with her properly.”

"And with you, too, Emily,” he said tentatively. “In some ways I think you and Alice are rather alike.”

His mood suddenly altered and when he next spoke to her it was in the tones that he would use to any secretary.

“Shorty will bring the car round at ten o’clock tomorrow,” he said. “See that you’re ready on time, please; our appointment with the Registrar is at eleven-thirty. I have some business to attend to after that, so perhaps you can take yourself to a cinema, if you care for them, to fill in time.”

Emily restrained an unseemly impulse to laugh. As plans for a wedding day, the arrangements had a bizarre flavor.

She said automatically: “Yes, Mr. Merritt,” and when he frowned, amended hastily: “I mean, Dane.”

The morning was wet, with that depressing mixture of mist and rain peculiar to Dartmoor. Emily surveyed her scanty wardrobe and wondered what to wear. She had nothing remotely suitable for a bride, she thought glo
o
mily, but neither would her bridegroom be conscious of what she wore. She selected a wool frock which had seen better days and a hat that had been one of Rosemary’s cast-offs two years ago.

When she was dressed she stood in front of the long mirror to regard herself for the last time as Emily Moon. The reflection was not encouraging. She was too thin, she thought, pulling in the belt of the dress another hole, and the hat, which on Rosemary had looked gay and provocative, on her looked what it was, cheap and out of date. She snatched it off her head and pulled on the navy-blue felt she had worn to the office.

“You’re drab,” she told her reflection severely. “You have no color, your eyes are too large, and your hair’s a mess. Oh, well, I suppose it doesn’t matter in the circumstances.”

She was the first to get into the car, and Shorty suddenly leaned over the back of the driver’s seat and threw a spray of hothouse carnations into her lap.

“Reckon the governor won’t ’ave thought of that,” he muttered sheepishly. “Can’t be wed without a bokay, can you?”

“Oh, Shorty!”

It was nearly her undoing. So unexpected a gesture from someone who had deeply resented her, took the last of her composure.

“Got a pin too,” he said, handing one over. “’Ere, don’t start blubbing, whatever you do. The governor wouldn’t ’arf be sick.”

She pinned the spray to the lapel of her old camelhair coat, hiding her face for an instant against the flowers with their heady scent.

“I’m not much of a bride, am I?” she said, trying to laugh. “I haven’t any glamor, I’m afraid.”

He looked at her thin pointed face with its delicate bone structure, the mobile mouth curving up in a tremulous smile while the tears still clung to her lashes, and was for a moment aware of quality, of an elusive delicacy which he might have fancied when he was younger.

“Well, not to say like some of these flashy dames on the pictures, but you ain’t bad, mind,” he said cautiously. “You got a sort of hungry look that some might go for. Dolled up a bit you wouldn’t be ’arf bad and I’m telling you straight.”

“Oh, Shorty!” she said again, and might even have kissed him if Dane hadn’t come down the steps from the house.

He was wearing the dark glasses he usually affected if he visited a town and Emily was glad that he could not see her. He settled back on the seat beside her, his hat tipped over his eyes, and they started on their wedding journey.

Dane spoke very little. Once he said: “Do I smell carnations?” and when she told him shyly that Shorty had given them to her, observed that he might have thought of that himself; and as the car turned out of the village past Torcroft, he asked Shorty if the house was still empty.

“Coming back next week, so I hear,” Shorty replied. “But the old lady won’t trouble us, sir. ’Ardly ever goes anywhere, so they say.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Is Mrs. Mortimer someone you want to avoid?” asked Emily, struck again by his apparent aversion to the reopening of Torcroft.

“In a sense, I suppose,” he answered reluctantly. “She’s rather an old vulgarian and used to be most persistent. When she finds out that I’ve inherited Pennyleat it’s possible that she might become a nuisance.”

“Oh, I see,” said Emily, wondering if Mrs. Mortimer was one of those embarrassing old women who plagued the life out of any available man. “Still, everyone knows round here that you won’t see people. She can hardly force her way in.”

“No, and I don’t suppose she would,” said Dane rather enigmatically.

They arrived at the Registrar’s Office fen minutes early and Emily found the wait in the chilly room adjoining the Registrar’s a little unnerving. The voices
of another couple getting married could clearly be heard through the thin walls, and Dane sat with his blank stare fixed on a picture he could not see, as if he, too, had
small liking
for the experience.

The first couple were ushered out as Dane and Emily were summoned. They came out flushed and gigg
ling
and the bride walked straight into Dane.

“Excuse me!” she exclaimed, examining her enormous bouquet with annoyance. “Why don’t you look where you’re going?”

Emily saw Dane’s mouth tighten painfully. She put a hand under his elbow to guide him into the other room and felt him tremble.

“Don’t mind,” she whispered. “Don’t mind. They’ve all gone now.” The ceremony was soon over. It was all very impersonal, thought Emily unhappily. The Registrar gabbled his words as if anxious to be done as soon as possible and the two strange witnesses looked curiously at Dane and seemed surprised when Emily had to guide his hand to sign the register.

Soon they were outside again in the wet and cheerless street and Shorty standing at the door of the car gave Emily an encouraging wink. He drove them first to the
offices of Dane’s lawyers, where Emily waited outside in the car. When Dane had finished his business there he told Emily she had better get herself some lunch. Later he had some matters to discuss with his old firm of research chemists who had their West Country branch in Plymouth. It would probably take some time, he said, so an afternoon at one of the cinemas seemed indicated.

“But what about you?” asked Emily, her heart sinking at the prospect of being left alone in a strange city for hours. “Won’t you be having lunch too?”

“I never eat in public places now if I can avoid it,” he replied. “Shorty will find me a sandwich somewhere. Here’s some money. You had better feed at the Grand as it’s close by, and meet us there at five o’clock sharp.”

Emily would have much preferred to have a sandwich too, but Dane seemed anxious to be rid of her, so she went to the hotel and ate a solitary luncheon, embarrassed by the waiter who, assessing her by her shabby clothes and air of uncertainty, paid her scant attention. Only the bright new wedding-ring on her finger reminded her that this should have been a day for rejoicing, a day to remember always.

She took herself to the nearest cinema because there was I nothing else to do, and wept quietly through most of the film.

I
I
I

Looking on her wedding day, Emily sometimes chided herself for inconsistency. What, she wondered, had she a right to expect? Their visit to the Registrar had, from Dane’s point of view, been simply a matter of expediency, one more appointment to add to the business of the day.

He had not left her alone afterwards from any sense of heartlessness, but because for him their marriage was incidental.

She was not, however, in this reasonable state of mind when they reached home soon after six o’clock. Dane seemed tired and spoke very little as Shorty drove them through the darkness, and Emily sat, turning her wedding
ring round and round on her finger, staring out at the rain which still swept across the country
.

The lights were on in the hall at Pennyleat and Bella came bounding out of Dane’s study
,
twisting her elegant tawny body into contortions of rapture as she fawned on her master. He stopped to make a fuss of her and Emily, watching his face, thought, with a pang: “He’s fonder of his dog than he is of me.”

“She’s missed you,” she said, trying to stroke the bitch, but Bella would have none of her and had eyes only for Dane.

“She’s unused to being left for so long
.
I seldom go anywhere without her,” Dane said, and Emily observed i
n
a voice unlike her o
w
n that in that case it was a pity Bella had not accompanied them to the Register Office.

Dane looked at her sharply, as if he could read the expression on her face, but he only said mildly:

“I scarcely think she would have been admitted.”

Mrs. Pride appeared suddenly from the kitchen regions. Emily
saw that she wore her best black dress and the little apron she reserved for special occasions.

“May I offer my congratulations, sir—madam?” she said in an expressionless voice. She had always prided herself on saying the correct thing in the hearing of those who paid her good wages, but her hard eyes flickered over Emily with barely concealed contempt.

“I’ve moved Miss—Mrs. Merritt’s things as instructed,” she finished.

“But I am very comfortable where I was,” said Emily with surprise, and almost heard the woman sniff.

“If you would care to come up I will show you your new room,” she said.

“I don’t think there’s any need to be quite so formal, Mrs. Pride. It will be the room next to mine, Emily—you know your way,” Dane observed, and Emily flew up the stairs, conscious that in Mrs. Pride’s eyes she had sunk still lower by reason of her gaucheness.

She had never had cause to enter Dane’s room but she knew where it was. The room next to it was large and rather Victorian, with massive furniture and a double bed with a high carved bedhead of cupids and fluttering scrolls.

A door obviously communicated with the room next door and the old-fashioned dressing-table had voluminous petticoats of starched muslin.

“
Well
!
This evidently was once
somebody’s
bridal suite!” said Emily aloud, and began to laugh hysterically.

She found herself wishing that Alice was still in her little room along the passage. She would miss the child, and the future alone with Dane, in this isolated house, stretched alarmingly ahead.

She began to make herself ready for dinner. Her belongings had been arranged neatly in drawers and cupboards and Emily knew a sense of discomfort that all her poor possessions had been revealed so nakedly to Mrs. Pride who must have moved them. The shoes that needed resoling were ostentatiously placed apart from the others, no doubt in rebuke, and the
torn
cover of her hot-water bottle had been taken off and replaced by another.

She went down to the library where someone had already switched on the lights so that she did not have to feel her way to a chair.

“Emily?” asked Dane, as he heard her close the door. “Good. There’s a champagne cocktail waiting for you. Shorty thought it would be more suitable than sherry on this occasion. I hope you like your new quarters.”

“The room seems very comfortable, thank you,” she replied. “I wonder what Mrs. Pride thinks.”

He frowned.

“Why should she think anything?”

“Well, my promotions have been so rapid. From the servants’ wing to the bridal suite in not much over three weeks. It
was
once a bridal suite, wasn’t it
.
”

“Very likely.”

“All those cupids and things! Why did you have me moved there?”

T
he lamplight fell across his face, and his high-bridged, dominant nose cast an arrogant shadow.

“Well, my dear girl, wasn’t it the obvious thing?” he demanded impatiently. “Mrs. Pride would have thought it still odder if you’d been left where you were.”

“Oh!”

“I shan’t trouble you because there’s a communicating door between us, I assure you, but I presume you wouldn’t object to coming in
to me occasionally if I’m unable to find something? It will save Shorty a journey.”

“Of course not,” she said, feeling rebuffed by the slight astringency in his voice.

“Good. You sound a little unlike yourself this evening, Emily. I’m afraid you’ve had a dull day,” he said, and she began to laugh
.

He glanced quickly in her direction, detecting the quality of her laughter and said sharply:

“Have you had your cocktail yet? No? Well, drink it up, it will do you good. What was so funny, anyway?”

She reached for the glass that stood waiting for her and took a generous swallow.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It only struck me as funny to be told I’d probably had a dull day because I’d gone out to get married.”

He reached for his own glass, sipping the champagne thoughtfully, and when he next spoke, his voice held a shade of doubt.

“I’m afraid I didn’t manage the day very well,” he said. “Tell me, Emily, are you regretting things already?”

The ready tears filled her eyes but she managed to keep her voice steady.

“No,” she said. “No, of course not, Dane. I supp
o
se, to any girl, getting married must be an event, even—even if it means nothing.”

“And I’ve cheated you?”

“Because there wasn’t confetti and champagne and a wedding breakfast? I never expected it.”

“You’re very gallant, aren’t you? That wasn’t what I meant.”

“Whatever you meant,” she said gently, “I have no regrets. I can only hope you’ll have none either.”

He swallowed the rest of his drink at a draught and sat twirling the stem of the glass between his fingers.

“It’s too late for regrets for either of us,” he said a little harshly. “Personally I can only have gratitude and I hope you’ll remind me of that if I seem to take you for granted.”

The household soon settled back to normal, indeed, thought Emily, going about the familiar daily routine, except for the fact that she had changed her name, nothing had really altered. Mrs. Pride made it plain from the start that she expected the running of the house to be left in her hands as before, and Shorty, although he never entirely returned to his former hostility, had his difficult moments and small jealousies.

Only Mrs. Meeker marked any change, being
torn
between her natural interest in a wedding and indignation that such an event could happen under her nose without her knowledge. Emily had to endure endless blunt questions the first few mornings and share many surreptitious cups of tea before the topic was exhausted, but Mrs. Meeker was a kindly soul and always ready to intervene with Mrs. Pride, whom she disliked. Her unruffled West Country cheerfulness was more than welcome and she was someone with whom to laugh.

Emily worked with Dane most mornings, attending to his correspondence and accounts and, when he was in the mood for it, the more complicated compiling of his book. It was not easy then to remember that she was his wife as well as his secretary, and once she addressed him quite naturally by his surname and he began to laugh.

“You musn’t let me drive you too hard,” he said. “After all, I owe you something more than barking at you like a disgruntled employer.”

“You don’t bark,” she said, laughing with him. “But I do find it hard to remember sometimes. Mr. Merritt seems to come out more naturally than Dane.”

“That’s bad. It means you must still feel like an employee.”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

She asked the question in all innocence, but the amusement died out of his face.

“No,” he answered brusquely. “If I’ve made you feel I that then I’ve failed in what I set out to do. There can be friendship, I hope, in our relationship—friendship and equality. I’m not such an egocentric boor that I consider my wife no better than a paid servant.”

She closed the reference book in which she had been searching for a chemical combination he wanted and sat with it in her lap.

“You’ve never made me feel that, Dane,” she said gently. “It’s just that sometimes I forget I
am
your wife.”

“Yes—yes, I suppose so,” he said, and suddenly decided to abandon the morning’s work and take Bella for a walk.

Emily had learnt not to ask to accompany him on these
o
ccasions, but this time he made the request himself. As she walked beside him he put a hand under her elbow and felt the light buoyancy of her movements.

“You’re too young,” he said abruptly. “You need fun, young companions
.
Who can tell you when you look pretty and appreciate a new frock or hair-style.”

“I’m not pretty, and I’ve never had much fun,” she said.

“Well, fun is what you make it, I suppose, but as for looks—well, you remember what Alice said the first time she
saw you.”

“Children aren’t to be relied on. They have queer, unconventional ideas about beauty,” she said.

“On the contrary,” he retorted, “children frequently recognize the truth. Besides, there’s nothing conventional about beauty.”

She
w
as silent. Let him see her through Alice’s eyes, she thought humbly; it was strange that the first time she should be made aware of a beauty she did not possess was through a man who did not care for her.

After that morning he would take the trouble to enquire how she would like to spend the rest of the day. Once he suggested that they should take the car and make an expedition round Dartmoor so that she might get to know the famous beauty spots, but this, as Shorty had foretold, was hardly a success. Emily had not driven Dane in the car yet and, already nervous, she committed every fault from crashing her gears to stalling her engine.

He sat beside her in a silence which grew grimmer with every mile. When they reached the group of tors which could be seen from the windows of Pennyleat, he ordered her to stop.

“Where are we?” he asked, and she replied nervously that the last signpost had read Tavistock one way and Princeton the other.

“Turn back and go home,” he said, adding unkindly: “I suppose you
can
reverse?”

She turned the car with difficulty, almost in tears, and drove back the way they had come. When they reached the house he told her to leave the car outside and let Shorty put it away. The little cockney came out of the garage in time to hear this last remark and grinned complacently.

“Couldn’t get on without me, after all, could you, sir?” he said cockily, then catching sight of Emily’s dejected face, added: “Still and all, Miss Moon—I mean Mrs. Merritt—ain’t had much practice with motors, and this ’ere car’s tricky for a lady, see?”

“I daresay,” retorted Dane, feeling for the handle of the door. “Then the less she drives it the better for all concerned.”

Shorty shrugged and took Emily’s place behind the wheel.

“I’ll take you out on the quiet and give you a few ‘ints-
l
ike, see?” he told her in a hoarse whisper. “It’s worse for ’im on account of being blind, you understand. Likely as not imagining h’accidents ’arf the time.”

Dear Shorty, thought Emily gratefully, following Dane into the house; he would, it appeared, always stand by her in a crisis.

Dane apologized later for
his
churlishness. It was probably difficult for her to understand what torture the drive had been for him, he told her.

“Apart from the fact that you appeared to me maltreating a first-class engine, it’s this damned helplessness of mine that got me down in the end. I could do nothing to help you if you got yourself into trouble. But I’m sorry—I probably only made you nervous.”

“Yes, you did,” she admitted. “Don’t bother, Dane, I understood. I’m probably better at typing.
”

She had learnt most of the small things that could irritate
him
now; a familiar object out of place, a clumsy action of his own, the unexpected presence of someone he had not known was in the room. Above all she had learnt not to help him unless particularly asked, and this was the hardest lesson of all.