Fantails (13 page)

Hugh leaned over the gate, holding a finger towards the kittens, who patted at it enquiringly.

“We’ve been wondering, Jane and I, if you’d allow John to have one of them for his own?” Alison asked. “Only I waited to ask you when he wasn’t there in case you’d rather he didn’t.”

“How nice of you! He’ll be tickled to death. Good for a child to be brought up with animals. I’d had a vague idea of getting rabbits.”

“If you want rabbits for him, I expect Jane could get some for you. That is, if you haven’t any special place of your own?”

Hugh said he hadn’t, and would be most grateful if Jane could tell him where to find a couple and a hutch. Jane was summoned by calling up to her window, and was charmed to be consulted—as we all are. Having discoursed upon the various merits of English Butterflies, Belgian hares, and Dutch, it was agreed that she should buy a pair of blue Dutch babies, eight weeks old, belonging to a friend of hers, and that the Swan House gardener, Weir, should make a hutch. “For he’s an absolutely wizard carpenter, and keen on rabbits too!” Jane assured Hugh earnestly.

When she had gone back to the letter she was writing to Andrew, Hugh lingered by the gate with Alison, discussing whether he should install half a dozen hens at Swan House. “Come and sit down, won’t you?” he presently suggested. She joined him in the garden, and when they had admired the dahlias that were the pride of Weir’s heart, they sat side by side in deck-chairs on the lawn, screened from the windows of the house by a herbaceous border. The smell of ripening plums and pears and apples blended with the fragrance of the roses’ second blooming. Coloured flowers were fading with the daylight, but white ones, insignificant by day, came at this hour into their own, luminous in the gathering dusk, phloxes, gladioli, roses, hydrangeas like silver clots of foam.

They spoke of gardening and books and music. Hugh told Alison a little of his boyhood on the coast of Dorset. Alison told him something of her childhood in the Border country. They discovered a mutual affection for John Buchan, both as an author and for what they knew of him from his books as a human being. Presently silence fell; the silence of companionship, creating not a barrier but a bond.

“This is the way to live!” Hugh said at last. “All the conveniences of a country town on the one hand. Plumber, post office, fishmonger within five minutes’ walk. And on the other side of that wall, river and marsh and woods and fields and farms.”

“I love it. And you like it now, having known it for a week or two in the summer. But if you had to live your life here, wouldn’t you feel terribly cut off from the companionship of your own kind? Clever people who can talk to you of your own interests?”

Hugh turned his head to look at her. His sudden brilliant smile made him look ten years younger. “ ‘Clever’? I wonder what you mean by that? There are so many sorts of ‘clever’! Most of us are inclined to belittle our own brand of it and to admire some other kind. A reputation for cleverness is often acquired simply on the strength of a good memory, which is quite another matter. You may be impressed by my knowledge of the machinery of the human body. I, on the other hand, admire your gift for making people happy.”

“My gift for—
Oh
!” She felt her face grow hot. “What a
nice
thing to say!”

“It’s true,” he said, still looking at her. “I have no use for insincerities. You create an atmosphere—” he broke off, as though he felt he was becoming too personal. “As for my interests, they’re not at all out of the ordinary—books, birds, gardens, music, poking about in antique shops, exploring country places off the beaten track. Things you and I have often talked of. My work does matter to me tremendously, of course, and naturally I like discussing the problems that arise out of it with those who share and understand them. But to live my life out surrounded by my own profession would bore me to distraction! ... I’m seriously considering buying a practice in a country town. This one would suit me well if Sinclair stays on in America.”

“But you’d be wasted in a little place like this.”

“Wasted? Don’t you believe it! Human beings in Market Blyburgh and its countryside have no less need of a physician’s skill when they fall sick than those in Battersea or Mayfair. As for—”

“Oh,
there
you are! I couldn’t
think
what had become of you!” said Lucia’s voice—untruthfully, since she had been listening for the last half hour with straining ears and growing irritation to the murmur of their voices from her bedroom window. Her first impulse had been to join them, but she had kept hoping against hope to overhear something that might be of interest. At last she had come out, her mind made up to be all charm and sweetness to Alison, disarming Hugh of any notion of her unfriendliness he might have gathered from her remark—which had been ill advised, she realised that now—that Alison’s social standing was not their own. It would be time enough on Thursday to lead on Alison to reveal her shortcomings. So, unheard by either of them, she had come padding over the grass.

Hugh rose, his face expressionless. “Take my chair. I’ll get another.” The spell was broken. Though Lucia was charming and for the next ten minutes their friendly talk was pleasant, formality had ousted intimacy. Alison was glad when Jane’s voice called her from her bedroom window. “Alison! Are you down there? You asked me to remind you that they’re coming early for the laundry, but I quite forgot!”—giving her an excuse to say good night and leave them.

She had enjoyed the interlude with Hugh, although the last part had been an anticlimax. Although she would be sorry, very sorry indeed, if the Sinclairs did not come back here from America, it would be extremely pleasant if Hugh Brandon stayed on at Swan House. She couldn’t imagine a more delightful neighbour. He was the sort of man to whom one could take any problem, knowing he would try to solve it; any trouble, knowing he would understand and sympathise.

Jane asked, “What are you smiling about?”

“Three sheets, six pillowcases—am I smiling? I’m so pleased about Logie and Sherry that my face is probably one ceaseless grin these days, like the Cheshire cat!—Three bath towels. One roller towel.”

But it was not of Logie that she had been thinking, and she found it difficult to keep her mind fixed on the laundry.
She was remembering something Hugh had said:
“I admire your gift for making people happy.”

It was, she thought, the most delightful and heartwarming compliment that anyone had ever paid her.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The
back of Sherry’s car was stacked with suitcases. One of his, in expensive-looking pigskin; two of Logie’s, that had been her father’s, and though shabby looked solid and good. The wireless as well as all the weather signs promised a hot day; she wore a frock of hyacinth-blue linen under her new camel-hair coat. With Alison’s help she had made the frock from a bedspread they had brought to Fantails when they left Swan House; Alison had meant to use it when the ones in use at present wore out, but they had lasted well, so it had seemed a good idea that the blue one should fill more pressing need.

“All set?” Sherry asked her, getting in beside her.

“All set!” She waved to Alison and Jane standing together by the coach-house door, and looking to Logie, in that moment of parting, particularly dear and reassuring. Sherry raised a hand in salutation. Then they were off.

Any girl must have felt thrilled at the adventure of setting out to meet her future mother-in-law and see for the first time the house that would in the future be her home, but to untravelled Logie there was the added thrill of the unaccustomed motor run through unfamiliar country. They went by Norwich to King’s Lynn, thence across the flat Lincolnshire fields and fenland under great empty skies, and so to Grantham, where they were going to have lunch. “We might have gone by Lincoln,” Sherry said at a road junction, “but if it’s all the same to you, I’m all for hitting the Great North Road as soon as may be.”

Logie marvelled silently at his matter-of-fact acceptance at the details of the journey that set her tingling with excitement: a signpost saying “To The North”; the moment when he told her, “Now we’re on the Great North Road.” Probably, she reflected, he would never realise that much he took for granted was to her a matter for delighted marvelling. “Not a bad pub,” he commented casually of the inn where they had lunch, while Logie was enchanted with the ancient beams, the great fireplaces with their ingle-seats, the lingering atmosphere of an old coaching inn, the friendly old flatfooted waiter who advised them to have the steak-and-kidney pie—“the salmon’s more in season, as you might say, but the chef makes suet crust a treat!”

She saw a woman in the cloakroom glance with startled envy at her bag, Sherry had bought it for her in Asprey’s when they went to London. It was a superb affair of crocodile, gold-mounted, lined with suede, fitted with zip-fastened flapjack, gold lipstick case, mirror, and gold-and-tortoiseshell comb. As she opened it the fragrance, sweet and fresh, of Roman hyacinths rose from her handkerchief, one of the dozen he had given her because hers had blown from her hand in the car. It was of finest linen, lace-edged and hand-embroidered with an L. From Bond Street they had gone to Floris, where he had bought her scent, bath essence, talcum powder, friction sachets, all in Roman hyacinth. He had bought red rose scent for Alison and for Jane jasmine. “Not that she’ll use it,” Sherry had said, “but she can’t be left out.” The bag, the unaccustomed luxury of scent, her new coat, and the fact of wearing Andrew’s nylons made her feel deliciously opulent and sophisticated.

When they had left the streets of Grantham behind and were once more speeding through open country, she spread out her left hand, turning it this way and that so that the two large diamonds flanking the great cornflower-blue sapphire of her engagement ring flashed and sparkled in the sun like frozen dewdrops.

“Penny for ’em?” Sherry asked her, glancing sidelong.

“I was thinking that it’s quite the loveliest ring I’ve ever seen, and that I’d no idea a bag could be as breathtaking as this one you’ve given me. And I was wondering if your mother will think that I’m—well—rather a gold-digger for letting you spend all that money on me!”

“Lord-love-a-duck! If I
hadn’t
spent it on you she’d have thought me a proper skinflint. And quite right, too. Anyhow, darling, does it really matter to you what she thinks?”

Logie was astonished. “
Sherry!
Why, of course it does! Surely you want your mother to like me?”

“Yes. Yes, of course I do.” They were a good five miles further on their way before he spoke again. “Logie, d’you realise all families aren’t like yours?”

“How do you mean?”

“You and Jane and Andrew, Alison too, though she’s no nearer than a cousin, matter a lot to one another.”

“Why, of course we do!”

“You say ‘of course.’ It’s not ‘of course’ at all. To many people pleasure and possessions are of far more importance than their kith and kin. To some, appearances count before all else ... Even when I was at my prep school, I knew well enough that if I’d been unsightly in some way, or even undersized and pale and puny, my mother would never have bothered to come near me at half-term. As it was, I was presentable enough and well grown, and captain of the cricket eleven and the rugger team, and all that, so she came—because I was a credit to her. But because that’s her attitude, I don’t instinctively turn to her for sympathy when things go wrong, as you would turn to Alison and Andrew. Trouble and failure don’t appeal to her. She likes success.”

A hazy cloud drifted across the clear skies of Logie’s happiness. In that case, she was thinking, Sherry’s mother certainly won’t like
me!
She must have wanted someone with a title, or a girl who’d made a name for herself on the centre court at Wimbledon, or flying round the world in record time, for him. She won’t be one scrap pleased with just an ordinary nobody, in spite of that charming letter she wrote me…

As though he guessed what she was thinking, Sherry said, “No need for you to be nervous. She’ll like you, all right. You’re pretty in the right way.”

Logie asked, laughing, “What do you mean, ‘the right way’?”

“A patrician way. You’ve got the air of being thoroughbred. That’ll appeal to her. She’d infinitely rather have a lovely shrew as daughter-in-law than a plain jane with a heart of gold.”

“A shrew!” Logie assumed an air of offended hauteur. “If
that’s
how you regard me, Major MacAirlie, we had better terminate our engagement here and now. Be good enough to stop the car. I would prefer to walk home.”

“Certainly, Miss Selkirk!—No. On second thoughts we will continue our journey, in order that my maternal parent may see the termagant from whose clutches her son has had the good fortune to escape before it was too late.”

“Idiot!—Oh, Sherry, I
am
enjoying myself.”

“We might have had a motoring honeymoon abroad, as you enjoy it, but with currency restrictions one would be always torn between affording a drink or a bath—a sordid business. But the Highlands in October are usually at their best. Autumn colouring and all that sort of thing. How’s that for an idea?”

“Perfect!” For the moment she was able to forget the ordeal lying immediately ahead, of meeting Sherry’s mother, in thinking of the golden autumn that would see the start of their new life together.

Near Catterick Bridge they left the main road for a narrower cross-country turnpike. Logie was fascinated by the unfamiliar country, the stone farmhouses, many of them roofed with slabs of stone, the open views, the distant Cleveland hills, the rushing, brawling streams, so different from the slow-flowing waters of Suffolk. On either side of the wide, cobbled village street were sturdy stone-built cottages and small shops. Several of them had curved windows with a pane or two of bull’s-eye glass like Beatrix Potter illustrations. Facing them at the top of the street, where the road turned sharply to the left, was a white gate, standing open. Sherry drove through it and along a short drive. On one side was a field where Highland cattle grazed and on the other a thick belt of spruces, giving out an aromatic tang of resin. Then between wide stretches of scythed grass, dotted with flowering shrubs—“This is a mass of daffodils in spring,” Sherry told her—and so between smooth lawns up to the pillared door and shallow steps of a Georgian house. In Logie’s eyes it was imposing. It had rows of twelve-paned windows that looked out across a sweep of gravel, and beyond that a lawn, to a wide view of harvest fields and pasture, with here and there farm buildings or a spinney or the dark mass of a wood breaking the patterns of the walls, and far away a range of hills that in the light of the late afternoon were blue as grapes against the turquoise sky.

As Sherry switched off the engine the door opened and a pair of labradors pushed past a grey-haired parlourmaid. Indifferently they surveyed the car, then snuffed the air and plunged on Sherry in rapturous welcome. One, as he opened the door of the car to get out, stood on its hind legs, forepaws on Sherry’s shoulders, pinning him in his seat, trying to lick his face. The other, whining in a frenzy of excitement, tried to push past her companion; while Sherry, laughing and protesting, was unable to move. “Rajah! Down, old boy! Steady, Ranee—your turn in a minute, my old lady!”

The parlourmaid, prim in her frilled cap, advanced upon them. “A fine opinion the young lady’ll have of us, welcoming her this way!” She seized Rajah by the collar and dragged him from the car, her wiry frame being apparently possessed of more strength than Logie would have credited her. ‘Tell those nasty brutes of dogs of yours to mind their manners, Mr. Sherry, and come away in. I have tea waiting on you in the library, for I don’t doubt you’ll be able for another cup if you have had any on the road. The mistress bade me tell you she was sorry she had to go to Cletterby to bridge. She had it all arranged this long while past, before she knew when you’d be coming. Rajah! For my sake be quiet or you’ll have my arm torn off me! Bide you a wee while, my bonnie lamb. Your master’ll be giving you a fine petting when he’s got himself unfolded.”

Sherry laughed, stretching his long limbs. “ ‘Unfolded’ is the right word for it, Mary!—Logie, you must be half dead. This is Mary. I suppose she has another name, but though I’ve known her for about fifteen years—”