No Fond Return of Love (24 page)

‘You’d think,’ said Dulcie at last, ‘that with a clergyman son there would be some kind of Christian message on the stone.’

‘Well, it’s over thirty years ago – and perhaps Neville hadn’t decided to be ordained at that time. After all, he would only be a boy.’

‘What a grand name it is – Gaisford Arthur Brandreth Forbes,’ said Dulcie. ‘Surely he
must
have been of noble birth?’

They were walking back now, hurrying, with occasional backward glances in case a bus might be coming. But none did.

‘Shall we be able to face Mrs Forbes and Neville at lunch now?’ Dulcie wondered. ‘Won’t it show in our faces, what we’ve been doing?’

But when they reached Eagle House the dining-room was empty. They went in and sat tentatively at a table in the window which was the only one properly laid, with the napkins folded into fancy-shapes, and a vase of daffodils – of the same variety as those they had seen on the grave – in the centre. An elderly woman at once appeared and began to serve them. It was evident that they were the only people lunching there that day, which made them feel both glad and sorry. There was no sign of Mrs Forbes and Neville, and this was perhaps a relief.

‘No doubt they are eating a vastly superior meal behind closed doors,’ said Viola.

After the inevitable tomato soup, however, the lunch was not at all bad. It was at least different from the unimaginative meals of places like The Anchorage.

‘Stag’s liver,’ declared the woman as she put two plates down in front of them.

‘Goodness,’ said Viola faintly, ‘one would really rather not know.’

But it was very good, and there were plenty of vegetables. It was followed by an excellent steamed treacle pudding and a cup of strong Nescafe. This last, had they but known it, had been made by Neville himself, ignoring the protests of his mother, who had wanted to give them the remains of her mid-morning coffee, ‘well boiled’.

They had just finished their meal when he came into the room, still wearing his cassock.

‘I hope Mrs Newcombe gave you enough to eat,’ he said. ‘My mother usually leaves it to her to do the cooking these days.’

‘It was very nice, thank you,’ said Dulcie, her eyes not meeting his, for she was remembering the scene in the cemetery.

‘You’re amused by these pictures” he went on, seeming to follow her glance, which had now settled on a large sepia reproduction of a Roman banquet scene.

Dulcie was embarrassed, being unable to judge by his tone whether he was amused too. She was relieved when he explained with a laugh that the whole lot had been bought at an auction sale by his maternal grandfather for ten shillings.

‘So this hotel belonged to your mother’s father,’ said Viola thoughtfully,

‘Yes – my father married into it, if you see what I mean.’

This interesting piece of information was received in silence, each woman giving it her own interpretation. They got up from the table and Neville followed them out into the hall, where Mrs Forbes was sitting at the reception desk, studying the bookings of long ago or fitting in present imaginary ones.

‘And what are you going to do this afternoon?’ Neville asked.

‘We’d thought of going to look over the castle. I believe it’s open to the public now, isn’t it?’ said Viola.

‘
 
‘
Tis a dirty old place,’ said Mrs Forbes suddenly, lapsing into her native speech. ‘What you want to go there for?’

‘Well, Mother, it’s quite interesting,’ said Neville soothingly – ‘though,’ he added, turning to Dulcie and Viola, ‘the oldest bits have been smothered by some unfortunate rebuilding. But if you’re at all interested in Victoriana you should certainly see it.’

‘Half a crown to go in, they charge,’ cackled Mrs Forbes. ‘ ‘Tis robbery.’

‘You can get a bus from the end of the road,’ said Neville, ignoring his mother. 1 hope you’ll enjoy it.’

‘Odd, isn’t it,’ said Viola, as they sat in the bus, ‘the way he’s just here, apparently doing nothing. How does it solve the problem of poor Miss Spicer and her love for him?’

‘Not to mention her aged mother,’ said Dulcie. ‘I suppose he’s waiting till things calm down – if things like that ever do.’

‘Mrs Forbes didn’t seem to want us to go to the castle-I suppose it must seem rather shocking to the older people – this opening one’s house to strangers. Particularly when it’s the local gentry.’

‘Interesting, wasn’t it, what Neville said about his father marrying into the hotel, as it were,’ said Dulcie thoughtfully. ‘You know, I’m wondering if he
did
perhaps have some connection with the castle. The grand name on the tombstone
  –  
that
ought to give us a clue.’

They got out of the bus behind three elderly ladies in – well-cut tweed suits and severe felt hats, one of whom, when she turned round, was seen to be startlingly bearded.

The castle was approached by a steep path leading up through wooded grounds. It looked dark and rather sinister, seen through the trees, most of which were evergreens. They climbed the steps up to it and went in by a heavy oak door, inside which was a small table with tickets, guide-books and postcards laid out for sale. They discovered that a guide was at that moment taking a party round, but both were impatient to start exploring on their own account, so they started to walk through the rooms without waiting for the next conducted party.

The rooms were furnished in a luxuriantly Victorian style, and filled with such nostalgic trivia as waxed fruit under glass, paperweights, shell and seaweed pictures, and stuffed birds. It was difficult to imagine anybody now living in such rooms, though they possessed a certain gloomy cosiness lacking in the austerely beautiful eighteenth-century rooms of the more admired ‘stately homes’.

It was when they were leaning over the red cord to study a particularly striking arrangement of pressed seaweeds that Dulcie’s attention was caught by a rather interesting-looking couple, who had come close enough for their conversation to be overheard. They were a tall, elegantly-dressed woman of about thirty-five, with a fur stole draped casually over her dark grey suit and a frivolous little pink velvet hat, and a younger, smaller man, with dark hair cut in a medieval style, who was rather oddly dressed in tight-fitting blue jeans and an orange heavy-knitted cardigan. He had a flat, rather common little voice, which kept up a non-stop flow of conversation.

‘But, Wilmet,’ they heard him say, ‘how do they keep them
clean?
 Those yellow curtains must be ever so dusty if they’re never taken down. That guide said the brocade was over a hundred years old.
I
 
call it disgusting.
’

‘Yes, specially woven in Lyons,’ said his companion. ‘Don’t you think it’s a beautiful designs’

‘I’d rather have something contemporary that could be sent to the cleaners, or you could wash yourself in Tide. Then you’d know it was
really
clean,’ said the young man smugly.

‘Oh, Keith, you really are absurd!’ The young woman laughed. ‘You’re quite obsessed with things being clean – like those people in television advertisements.’

‘Well,
I
think it’s important,’ he said defiantly. ‘How can you have a really nice home if things are dirty and dusty >’

‘I suppose the answer is that one couldn’t ever imagine this place being described as “a really nice home”,’ said the young woman.

‘Does anybody actually live here now?’ asked Dulcie, plucking up courage to address her, conscious though she was of her own shabby tweeds and heavy shoes in contrast to the other’s elegant appearance.

‘Yes, the family has one wing which isn’t open to the public – but of course they’re only distant relations of the people who used to live here,’ said the young woman in a pleasant, friendly tone. ‘When old Miss Forbes died it passed to them, and they apparently decided to try and make a bit of money out of it.’

‘Weren’t there any nearer relationsÂť’ Dulcie asked.

‘There was one, but he was rather naughty,’ giggled the young man.

The young woman smiled indulgently. ‘Perhaps “naughty” isn’t quite the word. But it seems that the younger son of the last generation of Forbeses – a nephew of the old lady – made an unsuitable marriage, which was all the more distressing because the elder son had been killed in a motor accident.’

‘How do you mean – unsuitable.” Dulcie asked.

‘He married the daughter of somebody who kept a hotel in the town – quite a common sort of person,’ said the young man primly. ‘He was cut off with a shilling.’

So that was it, Dulcie said to herself. Marrying beneath them seemed to be a characteristic of the Forbes family. No wonder Mrs Forbes thought the castle ‘a dirty old place’.

‘It all sounds like a Victorian novel,’ said Viola, disbelieving.

‘Yes, doesn’t it,’ the young woman agreed, ‘but we were assured that it was true. The guide who took us round told us. We felt we had to give him an extra large tip for such an unexpected piece of entertainment.’

‘Oh, but it’s sad, really,’ Dulcie burst out. ‘People may be – people
are
– still living who played a part in the story.’

‘Yes, I suppose they are,’ said the young woman, but at this point she was approached by two other men – one an obvious husband-type and the other tall, fair and handsome.

‘Ah, there you are, darling,’ said the husband. ‘I’ve brought the car up the drive. We thought you’d probably be worn out after all your sightseeing, didn’t we, Piers.’

Piers
, thought Dulcie, with an envious glance at him.

‘Do you
know
,’ said the dark young man, ‘they never take those curtains down to wash them? Would you believe it!’

They seemed to melt away, the young woman throwing a vague smile towards Dulcie and Viola as, cherished and secure with her three men, she moved away from them.

‘No wonder she’s tired in those ridiculously high heels,’ said Viola sourly, as they waited for the bus back. ‘What odd people they were! Like characters in a novel.’

‘This whole afternoon has been rather like a novel,’ said Dulcie, ‘I feel as if I’d been rushed through to the end without having read the middle properly. Can you imagine Mrs Forbes as a young girl, being wooed by handsome young Mr Forbes from the castle?’

‘It’s impossible to imagine some things,’ said Viola wearily. She was thinking of the little botde of gin in the bedroom cupboard.

‘The extraordinary thing is,’ Dulcie went on, ‘that these things have always been so, and yet it’s only our knowing about them that has made them real.’

‘You could say that about anything,’ Viola objected.

‘It’s the fourth dimension, isn’t it, or something like that. I wish sometimes that I knew about philosophy. Did you see that portrait on the staircase;’ Dulcie was quickly down to earth again. ‘Could-n’t you see a likeness to Aylwin there?’

The bus came and they got on to it. When they got back to Eagle House Mrs Forbes was in the hall, doing something to the eagle.

‘Moulting, he is,’ she said. ‘I think the moth’s got him, in the neck here. My father was proud of this old eagle.’

Dulcie and Viola crept up to their room, hardly knowing whether to laugh or cry.

MRS WILLITON and Marjorie, as was their invariable custom when travelling, had arrived at Paddington an hour too early for the train. There was therefore nothing to do but to go and have a cup of tea. They had brought their own with them to have on the train, though Marjorie would have liked to have tea in the restaurant car, where there was always the possibility of a romantic or interesting encounter. After all – though this was hardly the time to dwell on it – had she not met Aylwin in very similar circumstances!

‘I’ll keep an eye on the luggage, dear, while you fetch the tea,’ said Mrs Williton, who had found two places at a table. While Marjorie queued at the counter, her mother’s eyes never left the two small suitcases and the canvas shopping-bag that they had brought with them. She did not realize that the other travellers were much too preoccupied with their own luggage to entertain any idea of stealing hers. She always imagined that some lurking stranger was lying in wait, eager to snatch away the cases if her glance should stray from them for a moment. But he’d probably be disappointed in what he found, she thought with grim satisfaction, remembering the woollen dresses, grey pleated skirts, hand-knitted twin-sets, and blouses (in case the weather got warmer), which they had packed.

When the train came in they went to their reserved seats, which were in a carriage not too near the engine (in case there should be an accident) and, of course, in the second class. Aylwin had always tried to persuade Marjorie to travel first class, but Mrs Williton’s natural thriftiness would not hear of this. Money could be put to better uses – the organ fund, for example. Again, Marjorie would have liked to travel first class. The possibilities of a romantic encounter were as great in a first class carriage as in the dining car – greater, even. One never met anybody interesting travelling second class.

Their seats offered some advantage, however – to Mrs. Williton if not to Marjorie. They were on the corridor side, so that Mrs Williton could slip easily and comparatively unnoticeably to the lavatory. This meant, however, that she would not have control of the window, but, as she whispered to Marjorie, ‘You can’t have everything.’

As they entered the carriage, a silent middle-aged couple were already preparing to occupy the window seats, and the man was in the act of getting up and shutting the window. This was very disquieting, and Mrs Williton foresaw a tense atmosphere all the journey. She would be worrying about whether she was getting enough air, and then, if she
did
pluck up her courage and ask for the window to be opened, it might become too draughty. She sat down stiffly on the edge of the seat, like a bird on an unfamiliar nest.

Marjorie opened her favourite woman’s magazine and turned to the serial, hoping to lose herself in it. She did not really want to go to Taviscombe at all, thinking it a dull place and being rather afraid of her mother-in-law. She had reached a state of apathy about her marriage and her feelings towards Aylwin were a mixture of fear, dislike, and boredom. Coming back to live with her mother in the house facing the common had seemed, at the time, ‘an important step’, and she had waited in almost pleasurable anticipation to see what would happen next. But nothing had happened – there had been no dramatic move on Aylwin’s part, and her mother’s friends, after their first ghoulish curiosity had died down, had accepted her living there just as they had done before she married. Indeed, it was useful to have Marjorie at home again to help with church activities, and some people even forgot that she had ever been married and started to call her ‘Marjorie Williton’ again.