This Merry Bond (13 page)

“Yes, you left your pants suspended on a branch on one occasion,” murmured Michael.

“It was my favorite tree,” Nicky announced dramatically, “and if you cut it down, Simon, you’re taking something from me that can never be replaced.”

“Well, I think that’s rather an exaggeration,” said Simon patiently. “You’ve said the same about a good many things I’ve had to do. It’s a doomed tree in any case, and the safety of the lodge and its occupants really must be considered before your romantic fancies.”

Nicky flushed.

“Everything you can’t understand yourself is a romantic fancy,” she cried quickly. “You haven’t an ounce of sentiment or imagination in you.”

Michael looked from one to the other of them with amusement. It was the first time he had ever heard Nicky be childishly rude to her husband.

“You know, Simon,” he said with his crooked smile, “tradition must seem to you a very meaningless survival, but the fact remains there are still a few fools who enjoy it.”

“Tradition, when it has a proper foundation, is never meaningless,” Simon said shortly. He didn’t know which annoyed him most, Nicky’s heroics or Michael’s impertinences. “But that tree’s coming down, and that’s my last word on the subject.”

He turned on his heel and left them, conscious that in a quarter of an hour Michael would have coaxed Nicky into a smile where he himself would have received black looks for the rest of the day.

It made it no easier that the same afternoon they were all due at the Towers for tennis. Nicky was in no mood to stand her father-in-law’s blunt comments for long, and very soon the atmosphere was extremely uncomfortable. After one particularly uncompromising remark of old Shand’s, Simon saw Michael make a quick sign. For a moment Nicky stared at him, then she began to giggle, made some swift gesture with her fingers, and for the rest of the afternoon both of them gently and politely led the old man on to further crudities.

The old nursery game of Common Enemy. What had Nicky once said to him? “When Michael and I were children we used to play a silly game called Common Enemy. When we met people we didn’t like we had a secret sign and then we baited
them.” His father was Common Enemy. A little grimly, Simon wondered when they would start playing the game against himself.

He stood in front of the house the next morning thinking about the utter failure of his marriage. He looked away to the serene parkland. Green, green, as far as the eye could see, with the rich lush mass of early summer. From being a thing of decaying beauty, Nye was now a carefully tended treasure. He knew that his labors had borne fruit, yet his satisfaction was empty. For what had he recreated all this splendor? To be an ever-growing barrier between himself and his heart’s desire. Perhaps if Nicky had loved him, the work of reconstruction might have been a fulfilment of them both, but as things were...

He became aware of her standing at his elbow. Michael was just then crossing the lawn with, a couple of towels flung over his shoulder.

“
We’re going down to the South Water to bathe,” Nicky said, jauntily swinging ,a brief green swimming suit by its straps. “I suppose your father won’t have us up for trespass now we’re related.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” Simon said, observing her gravely. “But I think it’s too cold for bathing in the river yet.”

“Cold! We’ve bathed there in early May,” laughed Michael.

“Well, don’t stay in too long, Nicky,” said Simon.

Perhaps some of the weariness was still written on his face, for she said in gentle tones: “All right. I won’t,” and, reaching up, she gave him a kiss, then swung off across the sunlit lawn. Simon saw her fling a careless arm around her cousin’s waist as she went.

After their swim, they sat on the bank splashing their legs in the water and Nicky began to tell Michael how old John Shand had caught her bathing there and threatened her with prosecution.

“Charming in-laws you’ve selected, I must say,” Michael laughed.

“Mrs. Shand is a pet,” said Nicky affectionately. “I really believe she’s fond of me. I think she had an awfully hard time with old John when she was first married.”

“Well, of course, the man’s an unspeakable bounder,” said Michael cheerfully. “Thinks of nothing but money and downing the ruling classes. What made you pick on the Shands?”

She gave him a sidelong glance.

“Just one of those things,” she said lightly. “I wouldn’t have picked the old man as father-in-law for choice.”

“Oh, well, I suppose you’ve effectually stopped any more slices being taken off the Nye acres.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s why you did it, isn’t it?”

“No.” She said it quite violently, sending up a cascade of clear water as she kicked. “At least—” She paused. In the translucent shade of the willows everything seemed very green and still. “I think I thought that with Simon I would be safe,” she said slowly. “He was a sort of force I hadn’t met before: There was something about him that made me—I don’t know. I felt safe.”

“Safe!” Michael’s voice rang scornfully across the water. “You, a Bredon, wanted to feel safe! Let me tell you this, Nick. You would never have married him if I’d been here.” He pulled her around suddenly to face him. His mocking eyes stared down into hers. “And are you going to let them shackle you down for ever in
bourgeois
security?” he demanded. “Are you never going to break away—you with the Bredon
wanderlust
in your blood?”

She drew in her breath quickly.

“I don’t know,” she said a little piteously. “I suppose it’s all wrong
...
Even so, I think I’m often mean to Simon. He can’t help his terrific sense of duty, and he’s done so much for Nye. He ought to have married some clinging little girl who adored him.”

“If you’d let him alone he’d probably have married Stella,” said Michael shortly.

“Stella?” Her eyes flew wide open. “Liza Coleman once said she was in love with him. But then ages ago, you and she—”

“I was a boy,” Michael said. “She soon forgot me. But Simon— Anyway, she hates your guts.”

“Stella hates me!” Nicky exclaimed incredulously. “Whatever for?”

“For taking away her man, my poor little innocent. But she stuck pretty close to him the other night at Freddie’s party.”

“He was rather odd man out in that crowd.”

“Well, he seemed to like it all right,” said Michael with satisfaction. “I expect he thinks of her as a little woman—just his type. Hullo! What is it, my sweet?”

Nicky’s face had contracted in a spasm of pain and she had gone rather white. She leaned against Michael and held both hands to her side.

“
I
don’t know. I had a frightful pain,” she said a little weakly. “I feel rather sick too.”

“Poor poppet. Stayed in too long, I expect.”

“I don’t think so. I’ve had funny pains occasionally ever since Sunray fell on me.”

Instantly he was all concern, and demanded details of every pain she had ever had. Presently she was able to walk slowly back to the house, but when Simon came in after tea, he found her lying on a sofa in the library with a hot-water bottle hugged to her stomach, and Mouse standing by with a forbidding face and a bottle of castor oil.

He rounded on Michael.

“I told you it was too early for river bathing,” he said angrily. “Of course you kept her in too long.”

“I?” Michael spread his hands in amused protestation. “My dear Simon, don’t you know by this time that if Nicky wants to do a thing she’ll do it? Anyway, she says it isn’t anything to do with the cold water.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” said Mouse from behind the sofa. “If it isn’t that, it’s unripe gooseberries, I know you both of old!”

“Well, you’d better get to bed, Nicky, and I’ll get Lucy to come and have a look at you,” said Simon.

“I wish everyone wouldn’t fuss so,” said Nicky plaintively. “I’ll be all right in the morning.”

“I’ve been trying to get her to bed for the last hour,” Mouse said crossly. “But she’s stubborn as a mule—always was. Perhaps you can do something with her, sir.”

Simon bent suddenly and lifted Nicky on to her feet.

“Come on now. Be a good child,” he said. “Bed’s much the best place for you. Would you like me to carry you?”

“Of course not. Don’t
fuss,”
she said, retrieving her hot-water bottle and clasping it to her bosom with a tragic air. “I’ll go t
o
bed, but I won’t have a doctor. Mouse says I don’t need one, anyway.” But once she was in bed she felt lonely and depressed. Strangely enough, she didn’t want Michael’s charmingly turned phrases. She wanted Simon’s rather silent presence in the room.

He came in a little later and she was reminded of that other time when he had come to see her and put her world right. She smiled a little ruefully. Would she only need Simon when she was ill or down, she wondered.

“I think Nick should see a doctor,” Michael’s voice broke in aggressively. “She’s had these pains ever since she had that fall in the winter. There may be something radically wrong.”

Simon didn’t mean to appear unsympathetic, but perhaps the sight of Michael sprawling over Nicky’s bed issuing demands in accusing tones irritated him to such an extent that he could scarcely be civil.

“I think that’s my affair, Michael,” he said crisply. “Now would you mind getting out? I want to talk to Nicky.”

“Is it true you’ve had pain for so long?” he asked her when they were alone. It hurt him to think she had confided in Michael when he himself was in ignorance.

“Oh, very little. Only now and again, and never as bad as this,” she said.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Her eyes fell before his direct gaze.

“Oh, I don’t know. I didn’t think it was important. It wasn’t anything really.”

“Well, you’ll see Lucy tomorrow to make sure.”

“Oh, Simon—” She looked at him with frightened eyes. Illness was a thing that had never touched the Bredons. “You don’t think there could be anything really wrong?”

“I don’t suppose so for a moment,” he said gently. “But it never hurts to find out, does it?”

“I suppose not. Will you come and sit by me?”

He obeyed, touched that she should want him. She snuggled up against him with a little sigh of relaxation.

“Please stay with me,” she said, and fell asleep.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

“
I don’t think you’ve anything to worry about,” Dick Lucy told Simon the next morning when he examined Nicky. “Let me know if she has a return of the pain. But she is thoroughly run down and much too thin. I’ll send her a tonic.”

He was in a hurry. There was a great deal of sickness in the village and he was not disposed to take a serious view of Nicky’s attack.

“All the Bredons live on their nerves,” he said. “Make her rest. Her father’s always dragged her about from one end of the earth to the other. It’s not surprising she should be feeling the effects now.” Stella was sitting in the car waiting for her father, and Simon said on impulse:

“Why don’t you stop to lunch, Stella? It would cheer Nicky up to see you, and I’ll take you home afterwards.”

The girl hesitated, but Lucy said briskly: “That’s an excellent idea. It’s dull for Stella doing my rounds, and I’ve got a heavy day in front of me.”

The morning wasn’t a great success. Nicky didn’t want to see Stella. She had nothing to say to her and she watched the girl’s eyes following Simon’s every movement with an irritation that surprised her.

“Lucy says you must rest,” Simon told her. “So I’m afraid tonight’s party is off.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Stella, disappointment making her voice sound high and abrupt. “For all of us?”

She and Michael had been going with Simon , and Nicky, to a dance in the district.

“Well—” Simon began a little awkwardly.

“There’s no reason why you three shouldn’t go,” Nicky said sharply. “I don’t much care anyway. The Levitts give lousy suppers.”

But when dinnertime came, Michael appeared in a dinner jacket and announced that he wasn’t going.

“But look here, Michael—” Simon began with exasperation. “You can’t cry off at the last minute.”

“Why not?” asked Michael coolly. “In point of fact, it’ll be much better to have even numbers, and I think one of us should stay behind and keep Nicky company.”

He said it with a faint air of malice, enjoying the annoyance that came into Simon’s face. Nicky said nothing, but lay back in her chair on the terrace, watching them both with an odd expression.

Simon bit back the sharp retort that was on the tip of his tongue. If Michael was deliberately trying to put him in the wrong over the affair, he wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing it. Stella had come up to the house for dinner, and in front of the girl he could scarcely argue the point.

“I’m sorry, Stella,” he said briefly to the girl. “It looks as if you’ll have to put up with me for the evening.”

“Stella won’t mind,” said Michael, with a grin, and indeed the girl’s small face had lit up with a pleasure she didn’t attempt to disguise.

Nicky was very silent through dinner, and once or twice Simon glared at her enquiringly.

“You’re tired,” he said as later he helped Stella into her coat. “Please don’t keep her up late, Michael.”

He spoke curtly, and he had a last impression of Nicky standing under the great candelabra in the hall as she bid him goodbye, Michael’s arm thrown carelessly about her shoulders. She was certainly thin, and her eyes looked tired and heavy-lidded. There was something in the attitude of the pair of them that vaguely disturbed him.

“We won’t be late back,” he said abruptly as he followed Stella out to the waiting car.

Michael and Nicky sat out on the terrace smoking cigarettes while they watched the shadows lengthening on the grass.

To her own surprise, Nicky was thinking that it should have been Simon who should have offered to stay behind with her. Michael was always so much quicker over the little things. But Simon might have offered.

She became aware that Michael was watching her with a faintly quizzical expression.

“I’m a much more amusing companion,” he said softly and she laughed. Damn Michael! He was far too quick.

“Why didn’t you go with them?” she asked.

“Because
I
wanted to stay with you, my pigeon,” he retorted. “Besides, I would have been bored stiff.”

“I don’t think Simon particularly wanted to take Stella alone.”

“Jealous?”

She moved impatiently.

“Of course not. But I think she’s rather fond of him, after all.”

“Perhaps she’s the woman you said he should have married.”

“Michael, sometimes I hate you.”

“You do nothing of the kind, my sweet. You’ve made a big mistake and you’re beginning to know it.”

She looked at him with startled eyes.

“What do you mean?”

His own eyes, bright, restless, and at the moment holding in them a reckless certainty, met and held hers.

“I mean that you should have waited for me, and you know it,” he said, the laughter going out of his face.

Nicky shivered. The blue mists of late evening were creeping up through the woods and the air seemed suddenly cold.

“You know you only talk like this because you’re up against something you can’t have,” she said violently. “Charles always wanted the women he couldn’t get.”

“And usually got them,” said Michael calmly. “And let me tell you this, Nick. You’re no exception to the rule yourself. You’re a Bredon the same as the rest of us, even though you have married a shoe factory.”

There was some quality in his voice that stung her to defence of Simon.

“You talk about Simon as if he only represented commercial commodities,” she said quickly. “What is there so amusing about a shoe factory?”

“Nothing, my sweet,” said Michael blandly. “And if you’d been in love with the fellow there wouldn’t have been anything amusing in that either. Get wise to yourself, Nicky. What are either of you getting out of this crazy marriage, anyway?”

She was silent, and he was suddenly on his feet and standing over her.

“Darling, you were meant for me, and I was meant for you,” he said. “We’re two of a kind—always have been. Do you remember those ridiculous secret societies we used to have as children? Do you remember how we knew what each other was thinking before a word was said? We have something you could search the world over and never find.”

A great quietness seemed to have fallen over the darkening country. Nicky stared beyond Michael to the sleeping woods. Do you remember? There was danger in such thoughts, for there was so much to bind these two.

“But, Michael,” she pleaded. “We were like brother and sister—we
are
like brother and sister.”

“Brother and sister!” he exclaimed. “Why, we aren’t even first cousins! You might have known I was coming back for you. ‘When Nicky is twenty-one she’ll be a woman,’ I told myself. And then I was coming back.”

She knew he was dramatizing the situation. She was almost certain that he had never consciously thought of marrying her until he had returned to find her already married. But there was an urgency about him that stirred her imagination. Two of a kind. Perhaps they were.

He pulled her to her feet, taking her into his arms with a roughness that was new in him.

“What are you waiting for?” he demanded angrily against her mouth. “Don’t you know you’ll have to come with me in the end? What holds you to him? Has he ever kissed you like this
...
and this? What do you know of love at all?”

She yielded to him, too tired to resist, and for Nicky, as yet untouched by any man’s love, there was a quality in his lovemaking that aroused her to an unexpected response.

He let her go as abruptly as he had taken her, and she stood there, exhausted and bewildered.

“You see I was right,” he said with a slow smile. “Simon has taught you nothing, as I told you long ago. Come away with me, Nick. We’ll roam the earth till we’re old, and then Nye will be waiting for us.”

“Nye is Simon’s now,” she said in a tired, disembodied little voice.

“Nye could never be Simon’s,” Michael said. “He’s only the tenant. He could never belong in a million years!”

“Oh, Michael!” She pushed the heavy hair out of her eyes with a weary gesture. “Don’t let’s be so childish. It’s all make-believe really. I can’t leave Simon just when I’ve married him!” She was trying to laugh.

“What are either of you getting out of this marriage?” he asked again.

She stood very straight and still, and a wave of bitter honesty made her answer without thought:

“He’s given me all he could. Paid our debts, taken over our liabilities. But I’ve given him nothing. I thought I was right to take what I could get because he held me to a bargain. He called me a cheat. He’s got nothing out of our marriage
...
nothing.”

She saw a strange expression come into his eyes, and he said slowly:

“I’m beginning to see. By God! Nick, I can wait now.”

Too late she realized that she had told him the one thing that would finally seal his determination to get her. She had given him the key to the whole situation and he would never rest now in his efforts to break down her resistance. Without a word she turned and fled into the house and up the stairs to her own room.

Long after midnight she lay tossing from side to side, waiting for Simon to come in. She must talk to him before she went to sleep, break through that reserve of his and ask for a fresh start. Michael must go. She would tell him tomorrow. There was no safety for her while he held such knowledge of her affairs.

It seemed long afterwards that she heard him come in and listened to him moving quietly about next door. But he didn’t come to his own bed beside hers, and presently she heard the sharp click of the electric-light switch, and the thin pencil of light under the door between their rooms went out.

Nicky woke late the next morning to find Mouse standing over her with a breakfast tray, an anxious look on her small, puckered face.

“Sakes alive, Nicky! I’ve never known you to sleep so heavy,” she said. “I’ve spoken to you three times. It’s nearly half past ten.” Nicky struggled into a sitting position, pushing the tumbled hair off her forehead. She looked white and exhausted and still seemed drugged with sleep. Mouse placed the tray across her knees and stood watching her eat, with arms akimbo.

“Did you have more pain in the night?” she demanded sternly.

“No,” Nicky said. “I just didn’t sleep very well. I believe I stayed awake till after six. What a beastly day.”

Heavy summer rain was pouring down outside her bedroom windows and the sky was gray and overcast.

“Where’s everybody?” Nicky asked.

“Mr. Simon’s gone to Horsham on business. He won’t be back to lunch. Michael’s taken a horse and Lord knows when we’ll see him again.”

“In all this rain?” exclaimed Nicky.

“Just like him. He’ll come in soaked and like as not catch his death.”

“Oh, nothing ever happens to Michael,” Nicky said.

She didn’t know if she was glad or not that her interview must be postponed. She would have to speak to Michael some time, she supposed, but last night’s unhappy impulse to talk to Simon seemed, in the raw light of morning, foolish and ineffectual.

Lying there in the darkness, she had worked herself into a fever of doubt and misery, putting one construction after another on his decision to sleep in his dressing room. Had he been annoyed at Michael’s attitude? Was he shutting himself away from her more completely still? What had he and Stella talked of on the long drive home together? But now, common sense drove out those other thoughts. He had probably not wished to disturb her, that was all. Still, he might have made Michael take Stella to the dance last night, and stayed behind himself. He might have looked in this morning to see how she was.

“Did Simon leave any message for me?” she asked, but Mouse shook her head.

“Not that I know of. Just said he wouldn’t be back for lunch and you weren’t to wait.”

“
I
see.”

Nicky spent a desultory day doing nothing in particular. Michael didn’t return for lunch, and after tea, Nicky went into the drawing room and opened the piano. She pulled out stacks of old music, and struggled sternly with half-forgotten fugues and sonatas as if she were working for an examination. The difficult phrasing soothed her and gave her a savage satisfaction. She didn’t hear Simon come in and was unaware of him until he spoke.

“You sound very determined,” he said, and she looked up to see him standing beside the piano gravely watching her.

“It gets something out of my system,” she said. “I must start practising again.”

“Feeling better?” He studied her face critically, but the failing light of a wet afternoon blurred the shadows under her eyes and she looked quickly down at the keyboard, watching the fingers of one hand pick out a fragment of German
lieder.

“Oh, I’m all right,” she said impatiently. “Did you have an amusing evening?”

“It was unexpectedly pleasant,” he said. “I think Stella enjoyed herself, anyhow.”

“You like her, don’t you, Simon?”

“I’m very fond of Stella,” he admitted frankly. “And I think she has rather a thin time one way and another. Couldn’t we have her up here a bit more?”

“Ask her whenever you want,” said Nicky and began to play Chopin’s
Marche Funebre
in swing time.

He looked a little puzzled, but before he could reply, Michael, his red head glistening from the rain, came into the room and stood looking at them, his hands in the pockets of his soaking coat. Nicky saw the grin of appreciation on his face. That was the sort of joke he would understand.