Second Best Wife (13 page)

Georgina pulled her clothes together with a heightened colour. 'If I'm going to look after her, I ought to go to her now,' she insisted. 'Poor girl! She sounds as though she's having a terrible nightmare, as if she's really asleep. I wish we could wake her up!'

'To her it's a nightmare, a nightmare of fire and death, but she won't talk about it. She never has.'

They went together to Celine's private sitting-room, where the girl sat for long hours on her own, refusing any company or occupation, preferring to spend her time staring with unseeing eyes into space. Now she was struggling to get away from Miss Campbell, who was attempting to calm her.

'I won't! I won't!' she was screaming. 'I won't tell them anything!'

Miss Campbell looked grim. 'Who would believe such nonsense? No one has ever seen a demon a hundred and twenty feet high, you stupid girl! Certainly not one with the head of a bear! I never heard such nonsense!'

'It was there!' roared Celine. 'I saw it! It had a thing like an elephant in its hand —an elephant-shaped cup! And then there was the fire again!'

Georgina pushed Miss Campbell to one side, taking the girl into her own arms. 'Shall we look for this demon together?' she asked her, hugging her tight. 'It's all right, Celine. I believe you!'

'It won't be there now,' Celine sobbed. 'It never is. Before, it was something else, but now it wears a mask and it drinks blood. I couldn't have imagined that, could I?'

'No,' said Georgina carefully, 'I don't think you could.'

Celine stopped yelling, amazed by this reaction. 'Nobody ever believed me before!' she sobbed. 'Never! Never! Only I've never seen a demon like this one before. He was
horrible!'

Georgina's eyes met her husband's. 'William will find out his name and, when you know who he is, you won't be afraid of him any longer,' she promised soothingly. 'I'm sure he has a name.'

'They never have names!' Miss Campbell snapped.

'The first one did,' William remembered, sounding surprised himself.

'The first one was an Aborigine character.' Miss Campbell sniffed.

'She shouldn't be encouraged in her fancies, sir. If you ask me, she frightens herself deliberately. I've no sympathy with her!'

'So I've noticed, Miss Campbell,' William returned smoothly. 'Happily, it seems that my wife has. Shall we leave her to finish calming Celine by herself? We would be better employed discussing the terms of your notice, I believe.'

Miss Campbell turned venomous eyes on to Georgina's startled face. 'You'll regret it!' she spat out. 'You'll both regret it!'

CHAPTER SEVEN

The atmosphere at dinner was decidedly frosty. Georgina tried to tell herself that the depression was centred on Miss Campbell, but it was finally borne in on her that Miss Campbell was completely herself again, as was Celine, and the only person who seemed to be suffering from reaction after the scenes of a couple of hours earlier was herself.

She did her best to respond to Celine's overtures of friendship, but all she really wanted to do was to escape from the lot of them, to shut herself in her room and to howl herself to sleep.

‘What are those masks in the hall?' she asked the girl— unwisely, she thought, the second the words had left her mouth.

‘There's a whole craft industry centred round them in Sri Lanka,' Celine told her shyly. ‘Do you like them?'

Georgina wondered how to answer. ‘They're very colourful,' she said guardedly.

‘I like them,' Celine volunteered. ‘I like the small ones and the ones that don't move. They're different from— from—' Her mouth quivered and she looked fearfully across the table at Miss Campbell.

‘Madam shouldn't have reminded you,' Miss Campbell reproached Georgina. ‘Now, now, chicken! You don't want to water down your soup with your tears, do you? You get on with your food, my dear, and forget all about your little adventure. We don't want you having nightmares in the night, do we?'

The blankness came back into Celine's eyes. ‘The moon is getting full now,' she said.

‘That's right, dear.
Girls and boys, come out to play, The moon doth shine as bright
as
day!'

A brand new suspicion crossed Georgina's mind. She turned impulsively towards her husband. ‘Did you know Miss Campbell when you were fifteen?' she demanded.

His lips twitched. ‘No, that was my own inspiration,' he answered. ‘It was a long time ago, Georgie. Isn't it time you forgave me for that?'

‘Never!' She glared at him, but a little giggle inside her betrayed her. ‘It wasn't funny, William. It wasn't at all funny for me!'

‘You made far too much of it — then and now.'

'You
didn't have to listen to that dreadful rhyme being whispered by all and sundry every time you appeared anywhere. It hurt badly for years and years, especially as I was only trying to defend Jennifer from that little creep. It hurt terribly! I'd liked you up until that moment, you see, and then that had to happen!'

'My dear girl, you didn't like me at all! You were as prickly as a hedgehog.'

'I was ten years old.'

He smiled slowly. 'Is that an explanation or an excuse?'

She smiled too. 'You were so large. It never occurred to me that you might be feeling out of place at a children's party. All I was thinking about was how much I hoped you'd like me! You had a beautiful bicycle and I wanted to go for a ride on it. I thought you might take me upon the crossbar —'

'I invited you for a ride later on,' he reminded her. 'You refused.'

She flushed, looking young enough to be ten years old all over again. 'I had to refuse! I didn't want to have anything to do with you after —after coming out with
that!'

'It could have been worse, my dear. I might have said:
There was a little girl who had a little curl, Right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good, But when she was bad, she was horrid!'

'That wouldn't have done the same damage,' Georgina said at once. 'I wouldn't have minded that half so much.'

'Why not?' he asked, intrigued.

'That could have been anyone, the other one everyone knew to be me!'

He shrugged, losing interest. 'You do have a little curl, though. You had it then, and you have it now. Mother used to refer to it as your "kiss-curl". You have pretty hair, Georgie Porgie, even if it does lead a life of its own. It never stays put like Jennie's does.'

Georgina could have told him that she didn't use hair lacquer as her sister did, but she didn't. She sighed instead, wondering rather bleakly if there would ever come a time when he would cease to compare her with Jennifer all the time. She glanced out of the window at the steadily falling rain and took consolation from the thought that her sister would have hated everything about the bungalow and the sodden scenery. Jennifer was a fair-weather person in all senses of the word. She hated wet weather as much as she hated having to put herself out on another's behalf. Nobody could be more pleasant while everything was going well, but when she was crossed nobody was safe from her ire.

'It's all right,' she muttered inelegantly. 'It suits me as it is.'

His eyes mocked her. 'It certainly does!' he agreed. Celine came suddenly to life, pointing her knife at Georgina in a manner which caused Miss Campbell to click her tongue disapprovingly. 'Georgie Porgie ran away when the others tried to play! Did you run away, Georgina?'

'Not she!' William said on a laugh. 'She gave them all a bloody nose!'

'I did not!'
Temper flared inside Georgina. 'You and Duncan were the only two—ever!'

'The others must have been wise enough to keep their distance!' William taunted her.

To everyone's surprise and to her own consternation, her eyes brimmed with tears and they ran unchecked down her cheeks. She wiped them away with an angry hand, ashamed of displaying such weakness before her tormentor. But he was already on his feet, standing over her with his arm round her shoulders.

'Georgina, you little fraud! You've never cared before when I teased you! What did I say?'

'Nothing, nothing at all!' she sniffed dismally. 'I
like
being told how unattractive I am!'

Celine's eyes were as round as saucers. 'Georgina's crying!' she announced. 'Nobody ever cries here but me!'

'I'm sorry,' Georgina muttered.

'I think you're nice!' Celine crowed. 'You can't help being in love with William. Most married people fall in love — Stuart told me so. He says I'll fall in love one day and I won't have any more nightmares.' Her face flickered with a new anxiety. 'But I don't want to cry about it, I want to be happy! Why doesn't William make you happy?'

'He does,' Georgina claimed, her voice muffled by her hand.

'Do I?' There was a note in William's voice Georgina had never heard before. 'Then what are you crying about?' Her face crumpled. How could she possibly tell him that? She scrubbed angrily at her cheeks and fell back on the oldest excuse in the business. 'I'm tired and I have a headache!'

He pushed the curl back from her forehead. 'Crying won't make you feel any better, my sweet. Why don't you skip the rest of dinner and go to bed?'

Georgina was very conscious of Miss Campbell's silent contempt, pointing out the inadequacies of the new mistress of the household as eloquently as if she had enumerated them one by one.

'I can't understand it!' Georgina said on a desperate note. 'I don't usually cry at all!'

Celine stabbed her knife excitedly in the air. 'You're pregnant!'

'I can't be!' Georgina wailed.

'Not yet,' William confirmed, failing to control a yelp of laughter. 'Celine, behave yourself! You're embarrassing my bride of a couple of days!'

'Is that all it is?' Georgina murmured, surprised. 'It feels much longer!'

'An old married lady!' William mocked her, but there was a new gentleness in his voice that made her heart thump so hard she felt quite faint.

'It feels like for ever!' she moaned.

The glint in his eyes was for her alone. 'It is for ever! Off you go, my sweet. Sleep tight.'

Once she was in her room, however, she didn't know what to do with herself. The sound of the rain on the roof was like distant applause and oddly soothing to her. She tried to tell herself that the rain was doing the tea a tremendous amount of good, but she didn't really care. She liked the noise it made and that was enough for her. For a few moment she sat on the edge of her bed and made herself think about William. It took all her determination and concentration not to dwell on the good bits and ignore the bad. She wanted to live again those few minutes she had spent in his arms before Celine had started screaming. Then she remembered that even then he had had Jennifer in his mind, though for once she had come out of the comparison the winner in her husband's eyes.

Never had she longed more for the delicate, fair beauty of her sister than now! Just for once it would have been nice to have been Mount Everest looking down on Snowdon, instead of the other way round. Or, better still, to have been the only person in the world for William for a little while, instead of always being an also-ran, tagging along behind his greater desire for her sister.

She picked up her night things and went into the bathroom. The light spluttered and flared when she switched it on and a long peal of thunder warned of a coming storm. Hastily she switched the light off again, afraid that the whole system would blow up when she saw the stream of water that was running down the walls. There was no hot water. It was very nearly the last straw, but she calmed herself and washed as well as she could in cold water and in the dark. Thoughts of various horrid insects she had read come out from their corners in tropical rain-storms happily remained only on the fringes of her mind. What she couldn't see, she wouldn't believe in!

But she did see the gigantic shape that fleetingly went past the window. She was rooted to the spot in horror. It was taller than the house and made a peculiar rattling noise as it passed.

She flung open the window and saw it again, disappearing down the tree-lined driveway. To her relief she saw it was nothing to be afraid of after all. It was nothing more than a gigantic stuffed scarecrow with a mask instead of a head.

'Hey there!' she yelled out of the window.

The masked figure wavered to a stop and then came slowly back towards the bungalow. 'Excuse me, madam. Did you want me or something?'

'Yes. What are you doing with that thing?'

A thin, wiry man stepped from under the plaited figure. 'Excuse me, madam, someone take it away. I take it back again.'

Georgina eyed the figure with distaste. 'What is it?'

'Mahasona, madam.'

'It's hideous!'

'Oh yes, madam, but it mean nothing nowadays.' The tone was so soothing that Georgina suspected that the man wasn't half as sure about that as he pretended to be. 'We need it for the dance. This is the demon Mahasona. He gives you bad stomach, make you very ill—cholera, dysentery. Very bad demon!' He smiled with an effusiveness he obviously hoped would soften Georgina's stony expression. 'After the dance he go away and everyone keep well!'