Bodies from the Library 4, page 11
‘And what on earth have you got that mascara on your eyelashes for? They’re quite dark enough as it is.’
‘You’ve got it on your eyelashes, mummy,’ said Jenny, driven to resentment.
‘What’s suitable for me isn’t suitable for a child like you.’
‘I’m not a child,’ said Jenny, indignantly. ‘I’m nineteen.’
‘Nineteen’s nothing,’ said Tiggy proudly, bouncing up and down on the seat of the bus. ‘Mummy’s forty-two.’
‘I’m not forty-two. Pye, I wish you would keep Tiggy quiet and not let her go screaming out these idiotic things—’
‘And Pye’s fifty and I’m seven,’ continued Tiggy, ignoring this outburst and bouncing contentedly up and down.
‘Well, she is right, dear, you are forty-two,’ said Miss Pye kindly, for darling Gloria was so dreadfully forgetful. ‘I remember distinctly, you were thirty-four when Jenny’s father died—’
‘Be quiet, you fool!’ cried Gloria, almost screaming it; and, suddenly conscious of the delighted attention of the bus, hurriedly switched on her charm, appealing with fluttering white hands and mascaraed lashes to the bucolic conductor. ‘Aren’t children awful? I’m forty, every day of it, and not a bit ashamed of that, but it is a bit hard to have a couple of years tacked on, now, isn’t it?’
The ancient succumbed at once. ‘Ee don’t look forty ter me, no, naw nawthin’ loike it,’ he assured her handsomely. ‘More loike twenty, ee do look to me—’
‘There!’ said Gloria, fondly. ‘Isn’t that kind?’ She saved it up to tell them all at the lunch table when they got home. She would smile at Thom-Thom, that funny little crooked smile that turned his old, doting heart upside down with love for her.
She must remember to put some Nuit de Noël on her hands—Thom-Thom had said that never before had he met a woman with such exquisite, tiny, scented hands; and since he had kept her in perfume ever since, it was only fair—and cheap—to indulge him in his little idiosyncrasy. She waved them experimentally under the nose of the conductor, but his nostrils were full of the rich, deep odour of the Devon soil and farmyards, and he paid no heed. Jenny’s blood-stained fingernails caught her attention in contrast to her own pale petal-tips. ‘Jenny! The minute you get home, you’re to take off that horrid varnish.’
‘Oh, mummy, don’t be silly! I always wear varnish in London. This is some of my own.’
Jenny, in London, at her little tuppenny ha’penny job! ‘I don’t care what you do at the Anthracite office, you’re not coming to Lady Templeton’s dance like that. Thom-Thom will hate it!’
‘I don’t see why Thom-Thom should be the judge of how I do my nails.’
‘Jenny!’ said Miss Pye, scandalized. ‘How ever can you talk in that dreadful way? Considering how kind Mr Thoms is, having us all to stay down here for our holidays, taking us all to this lovely party tonight, and actually paying for—well, sending us all off to have our hair done and things—’
The Daunton-Taddlecombe bus hung fascinated upon every word. ‘It’s only because Thom-Thom’s keen on mummy,’ said Tiggy gaily, bouncing up and down.
Miss Pye’s round, grey-green eyes started like gooseberries out of her circular face. ‘Tiggy! Really, Gloria, the things that child says—’
‘Well, why don’t you stop her?’ said Gloria, querulously.
‘Now, Charlotte, don’t you go saying such things in front of your daddy.’
‘Don’t call me Charlotte, Pye,’ said Tiggy, coolly. ‘You know I hate it. And daddy knows perfectly well. He doesn’t mind.’
‘Tiggy!’
‘Well, he doesn’t,’ said Jenny, backing up her small half-sister, unconscious of the greedily listening crowd. ‘He says let’s cash in on it, while we can —’
At this point the bus came, mercifully, to a stop at the Daunton pier-head, and Gloria, torn between mortification and gratified vanity, allowed herself to be tenderly assisted down the steps by the conductor, and set off to the Guardhouse with her quarrelsome brood. Thom-Thom, watching her from the terrace, thought that she looked like some sleek-feathered, exquisite bird, escorted by her two long-legged scrawny chickens, and a fat little bantam hen.
Tiggy clung adoringly to Gloria’s arm, a leggy child with a little protruding belly and two small, fair pig-tails. sticking out almost horizontally from her head; and behind them Miss Pye trudged devotedly, small, round and fussy, buttoned up too tightly in Gloria’s cast-off, and highly unsuitable, clothes. Evan Stone, following Mr Thoms’s glance, also smiled down at them. ‘Gloria looks as though she had stepped out of a band-box, instead of the Taddlecombe bus!’
Gloria looked up and waved to them, smiling the famous crooked smile. ‘What a morning. But we’re all too beautiful for words!’
They dived out of sight into the front door under the terrace, and reappeared in the drawing-room, laughing and chattering. Jenny immediately set about her own defence. ‘Thom-Thom, look at my lovely red nails! Mummy says I must take the varnish off—you don’t think so, do you?’
‘Thom-Thom, can I come to Lady Templeton’s dance …?’ demanded Tiggy.
‘Dear Mr Thoms, everything has been delightful, so grateful for your kindness, such charming attention …’ Miss Pye chimed in.
And, above all, Gloria’s gentle, affected murmur, recounting the adventure in the Taddlecombe bus. ‘No, Thom-Thom. I wasn’t fishing for compliments—I’m simply telling you that this dear old man actually thought I was the children’s sister! Well, very well, Jenny, he didn’t say he thought I was your sister, but he said he thought I was twenty and since you’re eighteen, it stands to reason that—well, all right, you’re nineteen then —but the point is that’s obviously what he thought …’ She had by now quite convinced herself that this was really so.
Geoffrey Winson and Roy Silver came in from a slightly mysterious expedition referred to casually as a stroll on the cliffs; and now the party was complete. Winson was Gloria’s second husband and Tiggy’s father, a neat, dark, smiling man, eager and charming. Roy was half a head taller; his air of deliberate over-sophistication belied by a genuine twinkle in his blue eyes and by a small red patch on the back of his neck, which seemed to promise a little-boy-like tendency to start a nasty boil.
At the entreaty of Jenny, Roy had been ‘borrowed’ from the BBC by Mr Thoms to sing for national savings certificates at Lady Templeton’s party that evening; and since the BBC could, all too easily, spare him, he had been granted permission to spend till Thursday morning in being vocally grateful on Britain’s behalf in any form he desired.
‘Good lord, Jenny,’ he said to his love, administering a somewhat roistering pat on her behind. ‘What on earth have you been doing to your hair?’
‘I had it done at Daphne’s, in Taddlecombe, Roy. Don’t you like it?’ said Jenny, struggling with her wind-blown locks in front of the drawing-room mirror.
‘I like it as it usually is,’ said Roy; and he smiled at her and put up his hand and rumpled her hairset into a mass of tumbling curls.
‘Like that,’ he said. ‘You look like Caro Lamb.’
‘Caro Lamb? Who’s she? One of your BBC girl friends?’ said Jenny, naïvely jealous; and could have killed herself immediately, for, of course, Caroline Lamb was one of Byron’s girlfriends, not Roy’s, and had been dead for a million years …
‘You’re not like her at all, Jane,’ said Evan Stone, laughing, and put his arm round her shoulders, leading her in after the others, to lunch. ‘She was a naughty girl and a foolish girl, and I don’t see the slightest resemblance.’ Poor Caro Lamb had been deserted by a man she had loved with all the half-crazy passion of her wild, wild heart; the thought of little Jenny Sandells dressing up like a page-boy to stand sighing after Roy Silver, outside Broadcasting House, passed through his mind and gave an ironical twist to his lips. Nevertheless, he looked at Roy Silver very coolly and quietly, and hoped it would not be so worthless a young man who was destined, if anyone was, to break Jenny’s heart.
Lady Templeton stood at the head of the great curving staircase of The Towers, receiving her guests. ‘Dear Truda … Dear Julian … Delighted to see you! I’m sorry Lady Audian couldn’t be here, and yet … What would she have thought of some of my guests—?’
‘I think it’s jolly decent of you, Lady Templeton,’ said Julian, cordially. ‘I mean throwing open the place like this—’
‘Three guineas a head, my dear, for a good cause—’
She swept forward in her ugly, unbecoming green velvet dress to welcome eighteen guineas’ worth of savings (dear George had given her an emerald pendant for so splendidly doing her ‘bit’—its value represented nearly half the collected total of the whole week, and she had added the cost of a new dress to go with it, but neither of them were conscious of the slightest inconsistency). ‘Mr Thoms, how charming to see you. And your guests, Mrs Winson; Miss Sandells; er— Miss Pye; Mr Winson … Ah, Mr Silver, it’s you who is so kindly going to sing to us tonight?’ The emerald in its platinum setting bobbed and dangled against the chickeny skin of her ageing throat.
The party fanned out, moving towards the ballroom and the buffet. Jenny caught at her mother’s arm. ‘Oh, mummy, look! There’s Julian.’
‘Why, we forgot to tell you!’ cried Mr Thoms. ‘We were all so taken up with the results of the beauty treatments at lunch that we forgot to tell you … They’re coming over for the racing on Wednesday, he and Truda Deane. They’re staying overnight, and racing with us against the Greensleeves.’ He hurried off to pay his respects to Lord Templeton, leaving Geoffrey Winson and Gloria and Jenny alone.
Jenny put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, mummy! How frightful!’
‘Why frightful?’ said Geoffrey, accepting a whisky and soda from the man behind the bar, and leading his family out on to the marbled terrace looking down over Daunton and the bay.
‘Well, I mean … I mean it’s so awkward, Uncle Geoffrey! I mean, after all, I used to be engaged to Julian; and now he’s keen on Truda, and I’m keen on Roy; and of course Truda’s keen on Julian, too, and Roy’s keen on me—’
‘Do you mean to say, Jenny,’ said Geoffrey, staring at his stepdaughter with angry eyes, ‘that you’ve definitely released Julian from his engagement? I told you you weren’t to.’
‘Well, I can’t help it, Uncle Geoffrey. He released himself. I mean, the very fact that he wants to marry Truda releases him. It’s only a form, asking me to let him go.’
‘It’s nothing of the sort. Julian Messenger’s a gentleman. If you hold him to his engagement, he won’t insist on getting out of it. He couldn’t.’
‘Well, but, Uncle Geoffrey, it’s no use! I mean, Julian and I thought we were in love, but I suppose we just didn’t know, because actually we were getting quite bored with each other and writing terribly feeble letters while he was overseas; and then when he came back, he realized that he was in love with Truda all the time, and anyway, by that time I’d met Roy again, and I was getting keen on him.’
Gloria sat perched on the marble edge of the balcony, small and soignée in her straight, white ankle-length frock. ‘I do wish, Jenny, that you wouldn’t use that dreadful expression! “Keen on him”—it’s too awful. And my dear child, whatever Thom-Thom says, that plain green frock does not suit you. It’s not your style, it’s too old. You may as well remain youthful as long as you have youth.’
‘Never mind her style,’ said Geoffrey impatiently. ‘What’s all this nonsense about Julian? Did you know about this, Gloria?’
‘Well, I knew that Jenny and Julian had broken things off. If he’s marrying Truda, Geoffrey, I don’t really see what we can do about it.’
‘He’s not marrying Truda, you can take that for certain,’ said Geoffrey, who always knew everything where money might be concerned. ‘The old Audian hag would have fifty thousand fits. She controls the money-bags, Truda and Julian being second cousins or whatever it is, and her wards—and she won’t let them marry each other, that’s flat. You’ll see!’
‘I don’t see why she should be so much against it,’ said Gloria, lazily. ‘They aren’t near enough relations for it to be inter-marriage and dotty babies and all that kind of thing.’
‘Dotty babies or no dotty babies, she won’t allow it. There’s been too much inter-marriage already in the family. Lady Audian kept Julian and Truda apart as much as she could after they were grown up; she won’t allow that marriage!’
‘What’s the financial position exactly, then?’
‘Lady Audian has control of the fortune till Truda’s twenty-five; then she has the power of making it over to Truda absolutely or not at all. One thing or the other. If Truda doesn’t have it, it goes to a cat’s home, or something.’
‘What a peculiar will!’
‘Well, it was her own husband’s will; and he left that portion of the money to be bequeathed more or less at her discretion. She’s as rich as Croesus in her own right anyway. They’re all rich together, blast them!’
‘I don’t think Julian’s got much now; and if Truda gets it all he won’t have any of it.’
‘He’s got quite enough to go on with, I can assure you; he may not be rich by Truda’s standards—she’s been brought up like a princess; but he’ll do nicely for Jenny, and incidentally for you and me.’
‘It doesn’t matter whether he’ll do for us or not,’ said Jenny. ‘Even if he can’t marry Truda, Uncle Geoffrey, he still doesn’t love me any more. Besides, I’m—’
‘If you say just once more that you’re keen on Roy, Jenny, I shall scream,’ said Gloria, languidly sipping hock-cup, looking about her, to see if she were being watched, and down to where the couples strolled on the wide green lawns.
They stood, the three of them, alone on the terrace, in the blue light of the summer evening; and into the gay spirit of the party there began to creep a note of sinister compulsion, which Jenny recognized only too well. ‘Uncle Geoffrey, please …’ She stared at her step-father with fear in her wide brown eyes.
Gloria withdrew her attention from the drink and the flirtations on the lawn, and decided that it was time to take a hand. ‘This seems an absurd place to discuss it, but while we’re on the subject, Jenny, I do think, darling, that you’d better tell Julian you can’t let him go. After all, he was in love with you and I daresay, if he did but know it, he still loves you, sort of underneath! If he can’t marry Truda because of the, old lady, then he’ll all the more readily stick to you. As for Roy, you know perfectly well that that’s nonsense. Roy’s got nothing but this fiddling little job with the BBC and how he manages to do as well as he does, I can’t imagine. Besides, you’ve known Roy since you were both kids. You used to be like brother and sister.’
‘I’ve known Julian since we were both kids, too.’
‘Don’t interrupt when I’m speaking to you, Jenny,’ said Gloria severely, switching in a moment from kindly counsellor to outraged maternal dignity. ‘That’s got nothing to do with it. The point is, that Roy’s as poor as—as we are; and Julian’s rich.’
‘Perhaps Lady Audian will disapprove of me even more than of Truda.’
‘Lady Audian doesn’t care tuppence who Julian marries as long as it isn’t Truda; it’s Truda she’s thinking of. She’ll be delighted to marry him off to you and put a stop to all that.’
All the light had gone out of Jenny’s party. She sank back on the marble balustrade, huddled in her slim green frock, her hands to her face. ‘But mummy—!’
‘I can’t think how you can be so utterly ungrateful,’ cried Gloria, working herself up by comfortable degrees to one of her well-known rages. ‘Here you have a charming, rich, handsome young man, that no time ago you were madly in love with, and you’ve only to marry him to put us all on our feet again. All these years we’ve worked for you and thought for you, Uncle Geoffrey and I; there’ve been times when—well, I won’t go into that, Jenny, but you’ve been too young to know how we’ve suffered,’ said Gloria, whose sufferings had never taken her and Geoffrey further than considerably over-staying their welcome in some comfortable country house.
‘You’ve been too young to appreciate how we’ve skimped and denied ourselves, always thinking of you, and only of you. “Darling, she’s not your daughter, after all,” I’ve sometimes said to Uncle Geoffrey—haven’t I, Geoffrey?—but he’s always replied the same thing: “If she’s your daughter she’s mine, and she must be cared for and thought of just as it she were my own—!”’
Geoffrey Winson tried to look as though these sentiments had never been far from his mind. ‘And of course there’s Tiggy,’ he said gloomily.
‘And Tiggy! Your little sister, Jenny! She’s got to be educated somehow, brought up as you’ve been; and how it’s to be done, I simply do not know. We’re at the end of our tether now, absolutely at the end!’ She stared at her husband and daughter with almost genuinely haggard eyes.
‘You could borrow some money from Thom-Thom,’ suggested Jenny, anxious to be of assistance.
Gloria was electrified. ‘Borrow from Thom-Thom! Borrow from Thom-Thom! How could we do such a thing—when Thom-Thom’s our friend?’ She recollected that Jenny was aware of how much the sacred claims of friendship had already permitted her to borrow from Thom-Thom, and added hurriedly: ‘I mean, if we borrow any more from him, we might not be able to pay him back.’
‘And then he’d stop asking us down here and we shouldn’t be able to borrow from him,’ said Geoffrey.
They could not help laughing at so abrupt a conclusion to all these fine aspirations; and it drew them together a little, formed them into a band of conspirators, battling together in loyalty and unity against an unfriendly world. ‘But, mummy darling, I don’t see, honestly, what I can do.’
‘You can marry Julian,’ said Gloria, drawing her daughter towards her and taking her small brown hand in hers.
‘But I can’t!’
