The Young Nightingales (4 page)

“I’ve always wanted to go to Switzerland,” she said, still blinking in a mesmerised fashion at the light and wondering vaguely why it was that so far not one of her holidays had taken her to Switzerland. She and her father and the rest of the family had been to France and to Italy—and even on one memorable occasion to the West Indies. But never to Switzerland! And surely that was an omission when money had never counted until now
?”
And if I go to Switzerland Toby can come and spend his school holidays there, and it’ll be much more fun for him than if I settled down in England—”

Irina leaned towards her.

“You know very well that we’ll all look after Toby,” she said. “Any spare money I have he can have. And that goes for Conway, too—we discussed it only this morning. And if you’re in this unhappy frame of mind I think you’d better come and stay with me in London before you decide upon any future course of action at all—”

“I’ve already decided upon my course of action,” Jane assured her in that strange, empty, unconvincing tone that yet managed to convey the impression that she really had made up her mind. “I’ll tell Roger about it in the morning. I can’t wait to make the acquaintance of this unknown aunt of his
!”
without any irony at all, which seriously alarmed Irina.

“Rubbish!” she exclaimed, determined to have a word with Roger herself if the opportunity arose. She was not the type to worry unduly about anyone or anything save her work, but Jane was a different type altogether from herself, and she felt there was some reason why she should start worrying about her. Whatever had happened in the library that afternoon Jane, all at once, was a different girl. She looked as if she was badly shocked. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” she said.
“
I’ll
tackle Roger
!”

Jane looked so abs
ol
utely horrified that Irina withdrew the suggestion immediately.

“All right, all right,” she soothed, “I won’t if you’d rather not. But Conway may think it necessary to tackle him. After all, he’s been thinking of him as a prospective brother-in-law for the last two years, when Roger started to behave in a proprietorial way towards you.
And he certainly won’t want him for a stepfather
!”

“Oh, please,” Jane begged, turning away her face. “Do you mind if I put out the light now and sett
l
e down to sleep
?
It’s been a horrible day ... Miranda, at least, was right about that
!”
Irina accepted dismissal, and made her way back to her own room. But before she left she bent once more over her sister.

“At least
think it over
,”
she begged “before you do anything. We all know Miranda. It’s quite possible she’s merely having an affair with Roger which will fizzle out quite soon, and then he’ll turn back to you. She’s probably just dazzled him ... aroused some ardent protective quality. At heart I’m sure he’s all yours
!”

Jane said nothing but reached for the switch of her bedside light.

Irina insisted:

“I mean it
!”

Jane answered quietly, “I’m sure you do, but it doesn’t matter any longer anyway. Because I’ve changed. Possibly Daddy’s death has had something to do with
it!”

CHAPTER FOUR

SEVERAL weeks later, when she caught her first glimpse of towering Swiss peaks against a rose-flushed evening sky, Jane faced up to the knowledge which she had in her heart that she had changed altogether since her father’s death. The shock of his death had affected her in some curious fashion that had brought about a metamorphosis.

She felt detached, able to respond to outside influences in a way she could never have done while she was still in thrall to the compelling and sophisticated charm of her father’s closest friend. If she had been visiting Switzerland for the first time with Roger she would have wanted to share it all with him, and might even have accepted certain criticisms of his and been biased because of them from the outset. Roger was very much addicted to undervaluing things—making light of them. And he deprecated too much childish enthusiasm.

He would have smiled at her—oh, quite charmingly—when her face lit up because of the beauty of the peaks, and the tranquil loveliness of the Alpine valleys. But he would almost certainly have reminded her that they weren’t always bathed in sunlight, and were frequently covered in mist. He would also have recommended waiting until they had seen their hotel accommodation and tested the quality of the food before going round the bend about a spectacular bit of scenery.

Scenery could be come upon almost anywhere ... but a good hotel that looked after its patrons and provided them with first-class meals and served only the finest wines and other means of regaling oneself during a holiday was much more of a rarity.

Jane was not particularly interested in food, and wine was not in the least important to her, so now that she was alone in her railway compartment and about to be decanted from it very soon she gave herself up to honest enjoyment of all that she could see from the carriage windows.

The Swiss train in itself pleased her. It was so clean and comfortable, with impeccable linen covers over the backs and arms of the seats, and a sensation of airiness that was like the light over the mountain peaks.

The guard, in his neat navy-blue uniform, had smiled at her when he clipped her ticket. He had said, “Welcome to Switzerland,
Fraulein
,”
and she had been surprised at the excellence of his English. Shortly after that they had crossed into French Switzerland, and it was a French-Swiss guard who helped her with her luggage when she had to alight, and seemed regretful to see the last of her.

Jane could have flown out, but for once in her life she had been obstinate. No, she said, she would travel in a more leisurely manner and see something of the route by which she was travelling.

At this insistence Roger had smiled indulgently, after trying very hard to get her to change her mind. It seemed to him ridiculous that a tiresome journey involving a cross-channel ferryboat and at least two trains should be preferred to the swifter, effortless flight by air.

But nothing he or anyone else could say had the slightest effect on Jane. She bought her tickets herself, and said she would prefer it if no one went to the station to see her off.

But Roger insisted. He drove her to Victoria himself, bought her books and magazines, flowers and fruit—which were very awkward things to travel with—and saw her into her reserved seat on the boat-train with an air of being determined to ensure her comfort if he could.

Jane was grateful for his attentions, but quite naturally distrait when the moment of departure arrived. She was watching the people around her, the regular travellers, the tourists who had never left England before, the excited children. She had never realised before, when she had flown abroad with her father, that travel
could
be so exciting ... a real adventure, as if it was the beginning of something, and once fairly launched on one’s way anything could happen.

There were people saying farewells, kissing one another. Roger, she realised with a sudden, acute sensation of dismay, was about to stoop and kiss her, but she backed away in a kind of horror. Afterwards, when she thought about it, she didn’t understand why she had felt quite so much horror
...
and it wasn’t simply that she shrank from the thought of him kissing her, because he had probably kissed Miranda the night before. It was her new self objecting, and her new self had no time or place for Roger Bowman, apart from the fact that she was grateful to him for finding her a job with his aunt.

Roger frowned when he witnessed her withdrawal, said something inaudibly and made to grab her again. But this time she averted her face, jumped back into her
corner
seat and waved to him from the window.

“Good-bye,” she called. “I’ll write and let you know how I get on with your
aunt!”

The train slid away from the platform, and she had an impression of Roger’s lean, dark, handsome face frowning, while he bit angrily at his lower lip.

“Take care of yourself!” he called back.

She subsided into her seat in the packed compartment. She shut her eyes and tried to
feel something
...
regret, concern, just a slight bubbling up of emotion.

But the truth was, she didn’t feel any emotion. And when she opened her eyes she noticed that a child struggling to find a seat on its mother’s lap opposite her didn’t seem to be having much success, because there was already another toddler enthroned there, and she held out her arms to it.

“Come and sit over here,” she invited softly and persuasively. And all the way to Folkestone she held the child on her lap, and fed it with the sweets with which Roger had provided her, and handed over the fruit to the mother just before they parted to be consumed on the remainder of the journey.

The magazines she left behind in the boat-train.

And now here she was in Switzerland, and it was evening and there was a wonderful golden light falling all about her, and despite the fact that it was July the mountain tops when she lifted her eyes to them had a remarkable amount of dazzling white snow adhering to them; and in places the snow was the colour of pink candyfloss, and there were streaming banners of pink floating out across the amazingly blue, blue sky.

She lifted one of her suitcases off the rack, and the French-Swiss train attendant came along at precisely the right moment and helped her down with the other.

“You are going to an hotel,
mademoiselle
?” he said, when he was standing beside her on the all but deserted platform, and she appeared to be wondering what to do next.

“Yes—the Continental. I’m staying there for one night. Can I get a taxi?”

“It should be easy at this hour.” He looked along the platform and signalled a porter, to whom he handed over Jane complete with her two suitcases. There were Customs formalities to be gone through before she found herself in a taxi, and while she was explaining to the driver where she wished to be taken a man emerged from the station behind her and appeared to be disconcerted because there were no other taxis available.

He stared hard at Jane and her roomy, gleaming means of transport, and as soon as her driver shut the door upon her he accosted him without hesitation.

“You will take me, too, Maurice?” he said, removing the heavy pack from his back and dumping it in the road for the other to deal with. “I am in a hurry, and I neglected to arrange to be picked up. You can deposit
Mademoiselle
at her hotel and then drive me-home.”

The taxi-driver turned and fairly beamed at him.

“Ah,
oui, m’sieur
!”
he exclaimed. “But of course
!”
He took note of the fact that his extra passenger was wearing stout boots, thick stockings and a cumbersome sweater over an
open necked
shirt, and that his skin was burned to the hue of mahogany, and added in an enlightened manner: “You have been climbing again,
m’sieur
!
The weather was good, yes?”

“It was good enough. I was sorry to leave.”

“Ah,
yes,
m’sieur,
the mountains are wonderful. I should know, because I was born in a mountain village and have never taken kindly to the towns.” Without enquiring of his other passenger whether she objected or not he opened the taxi door again and bowed quite deferentially as the bronzed man, now deprived of his pack, climbed in. “I will have you home in a matter of minutes,
m’sieur
!”

Jane’s slim eyebrows arched as she found herself sharing the seat with her fellow traveller. He must have been on her train, but he had probably boarded it at a station a little way down the line, and therefore was not in a sense a fellow traveller.

And she did think he might have asked her whether she objected to his being given a lift.

“Good evening,
mademoiselle
,” He nodded at her coolly. “It was fortunate for me you were not already on your way when I emerged from the station just now.”

“Yes, I suppose it was.”

She was conscious of being rather travel-stained herself, and his eyes were critical as well as being quite frank in the way they regarded her. He did not attempt to disguise his interest in her—purely temporary interest, of course—and the fact that she was English was given away by several things. Her voice was unmistakably English, her clothes were smart, but there was a certain formality about them which told him she came from a conventional background, and a small hand-case which she carried had her name clearly inscribed on it
—Jane Nightingale.

He smiled, and his teeth flashed hard and white and perfect.

“I am very grateful to you, Miss Nightingale, for ensuring that I get home without any loss of time.”

Jane hardly knew what to say. She was tired, she wanted to be able to enjoy the scenery—the glorious brilliance of the lake as it flashed past their windows, the white hotels, the shops, the well-laid-out gardens and the blaze of summer flowers on the lake shore—but with a pair of slate grey eyes with tiny greenish lights in them watching her every movement from under shapely black brows and an even more shapely, deeply tanned forehead detachment of any sort or kind was impossible. She found herself fumbling with her gloves and wishing they were on her hands because her hands were grubby, and above all loathing the thought of the shine on her nose, and trying hard to think of some appropriate comment because he had paid her the compliment of addressing her in English. And from his interchange with the taxi-man it was quite obvious that his native tongue was French.

He laughed suddenly and softly from very close beside her.

“Sit back, Miss Nightingale, and enjoy the view,” he suggested. “Relax. You must have had a somewhat tiresome journey if you have been travelling by rail. Are you on holiday? Why did you not fly out?”

“Because I prefer to travel by rail,” she answered stiffly.

His eyebrows ascended.

“Then I trust you were lucky enough to get a sleeper, but at this time of year it is not always possible unless you book well in advance.”

This sounded so much like Roger—who had made quite a scene because she had refused even to think of reserving a sleeper—that it caused her to answer more stiffly still.

“No, I sat up in my compartment and dozed whenever I found it possible. There were lots of other people in the carriage and it wasn’t always easy.”

“You mean they snored?”

“When they weren’t eating oranges and drinking coffee out of flasks. Then there were several children.”

“Who also ate oranges, but did not, I trust, drink coffee out of flasks?'” She was looking deliberately away from him, but it was easy to detect the humour in his voice. “Coffee is bad for the very young.”

“Is it?” She glanced swiftly at him and then away again. “But when you’re travelling third you have to make do with whatever comes to hand, and milk doesn’t keep on a long hot journey.”

“You make the journey sound really alarming, and on the whole I think I would prefer to stay at home and forgo my holiday rather than face up to such an ordeal.” He produced a cigarette-case from his pocket and she realised that he was offering it to her. “Do you normally travel third-class?” he asked with interest.

“No.”

“Only on this occasion? It was, perhaps, an experiment.”

“In—in a way, I suppose.”

“You will forgive me if I state the obvious ... and that is that you do not look like a third-class passenger.”

She had declined a cigarette, and he lighted his own. It had a pleasant smell
... she suspected it was a somewhat expensive blend of Turkish and Virginian tobaccos. Yet—to quote his own words in a slightly different context—he did not look like the kind of man who could afford expensive blends of anything, unless his shabby climbing kit was a form of disguise. She shot another curious glance at him, and although he was very personable and extremely healthy-looking, she was inclined to adhere to her first impression of him, and that was that, unless he liked dams in his shirts, he was some kind of lower-salaried man ... possibly a clerk in a local office who had just had his fortnight’s holiday and spent it in the mountains.

“Well?” he asked, surveying her quizzically.
“Do I look very disreputable?”

“No, er
...
No, no, of course not
!”
The taxi was slowing, and she realised that they had arrived at her hotel. He glanced up at the impressive white fa
c
ade of it and nodded his head in approval.

“You should be comfortable there,” he said.
“It is a good choice.”

She gathered together her handbag and gloves, and prepared to nod to him coolly and say a frigid farewell, but he climbed out on to the pavement and insisted on handing over her cases and making sure that the hotel porter would relieve her of the necessity of carrying them into the hotel. Then he bowed in an attractively formal manner and wished her a happy holiday.

“Make the most of it,” he said. “You will fall in love with Switzerland before you leave.”