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Kate sat quietly, her expression relaxed and friendly. To the casual observer, she was merely a good-looking young woman enjoying a casual conversation, but anybody looking more closely would have seen her fingers clenched so that the nails were cutting into the skin. She was keeping a hard hold on herself, and one more of Estelle’s silly remarks was going to either make her explode with ungovernable rage or burst into hysterical laughter, either of which would cause a humiliating scene. Fortunately, she was spared another exchange when Mrs Manfred turned from the table.

‘What are you two talking about?’ Her attention was no longer on the cards and when her military friend held the pack out for her to cut, she waved them aside. ‘We’ll finish now anyway, Jerome isn’t keeping his mind on the game and I can’t stand playing with a partner who isn’t giving his full attention to the cards.’ She turned again towards the couch and repeated her question. ‘What have you two been talking about?’

Kate recalled a Western film which she had seen and smiled at her mother-in-law. ‘We’re playing a peculiar game of poker, without cards. Estelle’s staking a couple of thousand, but I’m raising the ante.’

‘How high?’ Jerome looked across at her, a slight frown between his brows.

‘One million,’ she returned composedly.

‘And what’s in the kitty?’ The frown had gone and now he looked lazily amused.

‘You are, darling!’ she answered him demurely.

When the last nightcaps had been drunk and the visitors had left, Kate bade her mother-in-law a warm goodnight and began to climb the stairs. Half way up, she was overcome by the nonsensical conversation with Estelle and dissolved into giggles. She was still giggling when she slipped into bed.

‘What’s so amusing?’ Jerome had come back from the bathroom, his shower robe his only garment, and sat himself on the side of the bed.

Kate wagged her head; she couldn’t trust herself to speak, it would all have been nonsense anyway.

‘Was it something Estelle said?’

Suddenly Kate found that there was nothing funny about it any more and her paroxysm of giggles stopped as if they were part of another person. She sat quite still, looking at him, waiting.

‘Was that what the peculiar conversation was about, the thousands and your million? Did Estelle offer you money?’

Kate lifted her chin disdainfully. ‘No, she didn’t offer me money, not her own. She offered me yours, a couple of thousand of it, so I told her it wasn’t enough.’

‘What was it for, an escape?’ His hand closed over her arm, the fingers tightening until she flinched.

‘An escape!’ She giggled again, this time rather hysterically. ‘No, I’ve been about as humiliated as it’s possible to be. Your girl-friend offered to get me a couple of thousand as a pay-off when you’re tired of me. She said I could count on your generosity, but not above a couple of thousand.’ Her mouth twisted bitterly. ‘It’s nice to know one’s cash value, isn’t it? Has she done this sort of thing for you before, I wonder? She certainly handled it with a good deal of aplomb. Well, you. can tell her from me that when you let me go, that’ll be payment enough for me. I shan’t ask for a penny. I’ve kept myself before and I can do it again. I don’t need hand outs from the Manfreds!’ By this time Kate had worked herself into a fine temper and the last words came out almost as a snarl.

The grip on her arm did not lessen as Jerome calmly leaned across and took her other arm and shook her with just sufficient force to make her gasp. ‘Be quiet, Kate! Estelle was on her own business, not mine, as you very well know, if you’ll be quiet and think reasonably about it. I told you before we married that I didn’t envisage divorce, and you remember that, I know. There’s no escape for you, my dear, either with or without a pay-off. I’m very well content with my wife.’ And without further ado, he tossed off his robe and joined her in bed. Kate turned her back on him and scolded into her pillow:

‘Then tell your girl-friend to keep her claws covered when she meets me in future!’

With one hand he turned her to face him while with the other he reached out and switched off the light. In the darkness, she felt his warm breath on her face as he chuckled, ‘Jealous, Kate?’

It
was a grey day with lowering clouds and a gusting wind to drive them when Jerome made his departure for New York. It wasn’t raining, although it looked as if it wanted to, and, according to Hattie and her barometer which she believed in preference to the weather-forecast, it would rain as soon as the wind dropped.

Kate, holding a struggling Philip, watched the car vanish down the drive and then turned with a shiver to re-enter the house where Nanny would be waiting to take Philip away and feed him cough medicine. Kate was rather glad of this. Philip had wanted to go with his uncle and his childish mind could see no reason why this should not be so, therefore he was disappointed and in consequence, cross and badly behaved. She had been holding him up in her arms so that he should see the car for as long as possible and he had been kicking his slippered feet in disgusted misery at being left behind and Kate’s solar plexus had suffered. Yes, Nanny was the best person to deal with Philip in this mood!

Hattie met them just inside the door, thrusting a coffee tray into her hands and scolding Mrs Manfred, who was following.

‘You’ll catch your deaths, prancing around outside in this weather, waving goodbye to a lad who’ll only be gone four days! I’ve never heard of such sentimental nonsense. Drink your coffee, Mrs Manfred, and then away with you down to the kennels. That Jessie’s been up to her tricks again, she came in as bold as brass with a pup she’s stolen while you had your back turned. I’ve got it in the kitchen now, wrapped up in a piece of flannel until you can take it back.’

Hattie harried and nagged unmercifully until her mistress had drunk the coffee and was striding back to the kennels with the purloined puppy, her wellingtons making squelchy noises on the gravel path. When she had gone, Hattie turned her attention to Kate. ‘And what’s the matter with you this morning, may I ask? I’ve just been upstairs and that’s no way to leave a bedroom, clothes all over the place! A place for everything and everything in its place, that’s my motto and you’d do well to observe it. Under the bed’s no place for a nightgown, Mrs Jerome!’ and with a disapproving snort, she seized the tray and marched back to the kitchen.

Kate towed an obstreperous Philip back upstairs to the nursery. He was like a record with the needle stuck in one groove, ‘Uncle gone in a car, brrm, brrm,’ until they reached the landing, when he suddenly spread his arms and zoomed off down the passage doing his impression of a jet engine, ‘Fly in a jumbo, wheeeeeeh!’ Thankfully, Kate handed him over to Nanny, who after duly admiring his imitation of a small, fat aeroplane, gave him his cough syrup and settled him down with several plastic toys.

‘Such a pity Mr Manfred has to be away, if only for a few days,’ the small, rotund woman heaved a sentimental sigh. ‘We grow to depend on our menfolk, don’t we?’

Kate frowned. Nanny had adopted the ‘We’ habit. She turned up at odd moments with Philip, saying ‘We have torn our little shirt beyond repair’ or ‘We have a nasty little cough this morning’. Now she was saying ‘We are missing our menfolk’, or words to that effect, and it wasn’t true! Kate wasn’t missing her menfolk. He had only been gone for an hour and she was looking forward to these four days of freedom. Days when she would be able to do, say and wear exactly what she liked. She certainly wouldn’t be missing him! Only it didn’t work out that way.

*

Late in the afternoon, as Hattie had predicted, the wind dropped and it started to rain, a steady downpour which made walks with Philip impossible, and Hattie frowned on Kate’s choice of clothes, a faded pair of jeans and a very sloppy jumper.

‘That’s no dress for a lady’s drawing room,’ she remarked tartly when in the afternoon she found Kate sprawled on the couch, munching an apple and trying to whip up a little enthusiasm for an extremely boring book. ‘Look at you!’ she made it sound disgusting. ‘Your hair all anyhow and tied back with a piece of frayed ribbon and those jeans fit only for the rag bag! Upstairs with you and make yourself decent before I set the tea. I don’t know what Mr Jerome would say if he could see you now!’

‘But he can’t,’ Kate was triumphant. ‘He’s away for four days!’

‘More’s the pity,’ the housekeeper spoke with finality. ‘The sooner he’s back, the better! A sloppy mistress makes a sloppy maid, and the next thing will be young Dodie wanting to wear jeans to push her vacuum cleaner.’

After dinner, Kate had been looking forward to a pleasant chat with her mother-in-law about amateur dramatics, the surrounding countryside and/or dogs, but this was not permitted. Kate cursed her own folly in first finding the sketch which Helen had made of Jerome and then giving it to his mother, for after dinner Mrs Manfred excused herself for a few moments and then reappeared staggering under the weight of several large photograph albums. Jerome’s mother was going to enjoy a nostalgic evening browsing among acres of memories and, willy-nilly, Kate was to accompany her on this trip to the past. Much later, as she clambered into the wide, lonely-looking bed, it was with the firm conviction that Jerome looked just as arrogant and self-sufficient in his christening robe as he did nowadays!

There was one small brush with Estelle which took place on the second day of Jerome’s absence. Kate was wrapped up firmly in a waterproof and was cheerfully plodding along the narrow lanes to Hathersage where Nanny had ordered her to purchase some buttons for the cardigan being knitted for Philip. It wasn’t a long walk and Kate was enjoying it when a red sports car pulled up alongside her. Estelle leaned across from the driver’s seat and opened the door.

‘Get in,’ she commanded savagely, and when Kate obliged, she sat staring through the windscreen, making no attempt to drive on.

‘I have to buy some things in Hathersage for Nanny.’ Kate was gentle. ‘I’d like to get there before the shops close.’

Estelle ignored it. ‘Why haven’t you gone?’ she demanded. ‘There’s nothing to stop you now.’

The inside of the low-slung car was claustrophobic and Kate felt as though she was surrounded by a thick black cloud of violence.

‘I know about you.’ Estelle set the car in motion. ‘Jerome isn’t the only one who can make enquiries. 1 know he only married you to get Philip.’ At Kate’s look of surprise, the girl grinned with savage satisfaction. ‘I’m quite well acquainted with a past friend of yours, not so friendly now, I’m sorry to say; I made it my business to get acquainted, so I know all about you. Get out now, while you can.’

‘I can’t do that.’ Kate leaned back wearily in the seat.

She found even a few minutes with Estelle very exhausting, there was so much violence about the girl, ill-controlled violence.

‘Why not? You’re nothing special,’ Estelle’s hands tightened on the steering wheel and her foot jabbed down hard on the accelerator. ‘Don’t you realise there’ve been dozens of women like you? Jerome likes a bit of amusement, and that’s all you are to him, a bit of amusement. You don’t mean a thing!’

The car bucketed round a corner much too fast and Kate felt the rear end skid slightly. This was definitely not the time to aggravate Estelle further. The girl was like a wild thing, snapping and clawing, uncaring of whom she hurt. Kate shut her mouth firmly, closed her eyes for the rest of the short journey and got out of the car in Hathersage conscious only of relief that she had emerged from the ride, unhurt and in one piece. But Estelle couldn’t leave the matter rest.

‘Why don’t you go?’ she hissed the question through the open door of the car. ‘I’ve told you, you’re only one in a long string. I’ll help you if you can’t manage by yourself.’

Kate shook her head. ‘I can’t,’ she said gently. ‘He married me!’ And then she stepped back swiftly as Estelle slammed the door and started off in one jerky movement which threatened to leave Kate a bleeding and broken mess in the gutter. She stood watching the tail lights receding and felt a mild surprise at herself. Not once during the altercation had she even thought about Philip! Here had been the opportunity to get away and perhaps, if she was lucky, take the boy with her, and she had refused it. She must be mad, quite mad!

Jerome came home on Saturday and on the following Monday she and he paid a flying visit to the Kensington house. Jerome had put his foot down firmly and with force. Philip was not coming. He was quite reasonable and logical about it.

‘Philip stays here. He has his nanny,, his grandmother, Hattie and Dodie. How many more women are needed to care for one small boy for a few days?’

‘I want him with me.’ Kate had also been firm, only Jerome didn’t call her firmness ‘firm’, he had given it another name.

‘Don’t be obstinate, Kate. We’re going down to see what the decorators have done and to choose the rest of the furniture. Philip will only be in the way....’

‘Philip is never in the way,’ she raged quietly.

‘.... and the upset and the travelling won’t be good for him,’ Jerome continued as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘He stays here!’ He raised his eyebrows as she turned a furious face on him. ‘Be reasonable and if you won’t consider Philip, consider Nurse Hogg. She’s not a young woman....

‘She needn’t come,’ Kate interrupted. ‘I can look after him myself.’

' ... and the travelling, the constant attention our nephew demands? The poor woman will be exhausted.’ Once again it was as though she hadn’t interrupted him. ‘And don’t say that if Philip doesn’t go, you won’t go, because you
will
go, if I have to carry you out to the car and tie you in the seat.’

Kate was not stupid, she knew when she was beaten, and she was also honest enough to admit to herself, but only to herself, that Jerome was correct. She remembered vividly Philip, tired and cross on the plane from Rome to London, she recalled the appalling mess in the back of the car on the journey up from Bodmin, and she mused over Nanny’s inexhaustible patience and unfailing good humour in keeping the little boy happy and amused on the way from London to Derbyshire. So she gave way as gracefully as possible, although she made it sound definitely grudging.