Bodies from the Library 4, page 12
‘But you must,’ said Geoffrey. ‘You must.’ His jaw was thrust forward in an ugly line, he looked at the frightened girl with hard, glassy brown eyes. ‘You’ll marry Julian, Jenny; or else …’ That threat, ‘or else,’ had been made many times before. It meant ‘or else we will throw you out, you can make your way for yourself without our love.’
Jenny’s heart died within her. Gloria’s much vaunted education of her daughter had amounted to little more than a few odd terms at convent schools where the nuns turned a charitable eye towards unpaid bills.
Ever since then, Gloria’s dread of being recognized as the mother of a girl well out of her schooldays had kept Jenny back in the doubts and uncertainties of adolescence; had kept her unaware and inept, had drained her of initiative to build her own work and her own world. Mr Thoms’s influence kept her in a clerical job in the Department of Anthracite, but that would soon now come to a close; and when there was again competition and a struggle for jobs, she knew herself entirely incompetent to take her own stand.
Life, without the sheltering chic skirts of Gloria, without the impatient, quick, half-grim, half-humorous decision of Uncle Geoffrey, was unthinkable. As long as mummy was behind her … She blurted out hopefully: ‘Perhaps Uncle Geoffrey will make some money again soon on the Stock Exchange …’ The Stock Exchange held the perennial hopes of the Winson entourage, right down to Tiggy and Miss Pye.
Into Gloria’s mind crept a nasty feeling that Jenny might be going to prove too strong for them, after all. Why they hadn’t contrived to get the child married off and safe during the long ‘unofficial’ engagement to Julian, she could not now imagine; but she had been busy attaching Mr Thoms, Julian had gone overseas; and nobody ever did anything for the family but herself. I am sick and tired of poverty, of scraping and saving and cheating, thought Gloria; and had the honesty to ask herself whether it was really not the spice of life to her.
They had had fun, she and Geoffrey, poor though they might have been. Every shock to their pride, every shift and contrivance, every shady adventure growing ever more shady as the years went by, every debt, every trick, every subterfuge, all the little cadgings and scroungings, had seemed to draw them ever closer to each other, as the world drew its skirts farther aside.
Geoffrey was nearing fifty now, and his handsome face had grown lined and grey in the struggle of the past six years; she herself, she knew, had worn better, had lost not a whit of her grace, of that facile, fatal charm. Through it, through Geoffrey’s own almost equal charm, through the intuitive teamwork developed by years of association together, they had contrived to exist in a sort of unstable luxury, more often up than down. And now the end of all this uphill work was in sight; Gloria had hooked a rich old man, and Jenny had hooked a rich young one. And Jenny must not be allowed to let the young one go free.
In the gardens below the terrace strolled Lady Templeton’s guests. The strains of the orchestra floated out to them from the ballroom; Roy had gone off with Evan Stone to supervise arrangements for his song, Miss Pye was, no doubt, tucking in at the buffet as hard as she could go.
Jenny saw Truda and Julian walking far below them, tall and slender and perfectly matched. They were so good-looking! So cool, so confident, so self-sufficient, so utterly unlike herself—she knew that if Julian had not been made for Truda he had not, at least, ever been made for herself. A look of unaccustomed obstinacy came into her eyes. ‘I don’t care. It’s no use. I can’t.’
‘You must,’ said Geoffrey, draining his glass and putting it down on the balustrade with an angry bump.
‘I can’t. I won’t.’
Gloria was bored and irritated. She wanted to go and walk with Thom-Thom through the crowded rooms, with her little white hand in his arm; and tell him how lucky Lady Templeton was to have an emerald pendant, and how she, Gloria, had no jewellery, and sometimes did have a weak little hankering after pretty things, though, of course, underneath, in the real, deep places of her heart, she did not mind one bit.
She said angrily to Jenny: ‘You must tell Julian you can’t release him from his promise after all. Uncle Geoffrey’s right.’
‘I can’t,’ said Jenny. ‘I won’t.’
‘You will!’ said Geoffrey.
‘I won’t, Uncle Geoffrey. I won’t. Mummy, you’re not going to force me to marry Julian, if I don’t love him? Surely you’re not! You wouldn’t do such a cruel and horrible thing—?’
An appeal to Gloria’s better nature was always too flattering to be denied. ‘Of course not, darling; of course I won’t. Be quiet now, Geoffrey, Jenny’s my daughter and I’m handling this in my own way.
‘Nobody shall force you into anything, sweetheart; if you prefer to see Uncle Geoffrey in prison and yourself on the streets and poor little Tiggy …’ Her voice broke at the thought of the sufferings in store for poor little Tiggy.
A tear trickled down Jenny’s cheek, but she did not speak. The fear grew bitter in Gloria’s mind that this child might in the end be too strong for her; that Jenny had suddenly grown up, beyond the power of all her delicate bullying, her subtle deception, her camouflaged egotism, her grasping vanity and selfishness. If only Geoffrey hadn’t been so stupid attacking the child directly like this, she thought; automatically shifting the responsibility.
A new light dawned in her eyes and the honey returned to her voice. ‘Of course she mustn’t be forced into anything, Geoffrey,’ she went on smoothly, replacing the arm she had withdrawn from her daughter’s shoulders. ‘I’m going to stand by her and protect her against anything of the sort. Trust mummy, darling; she’s never let you down, now has she! You shan’t marry Julian, my precious, if you don’t want to. But, Geoffrey, I’ve been thinking, now couldn’t we …?’
By the time Mr Thoms came out on to the terrace looking for them all, Jenny, worn out and bewildered, had promised to take action against Julian, for breach of promise.
In the great ballroom, the couples swayed to the music, the house was alive with sound and colour and bright lights, and outside the evening was a wonder of deep blue sky, and, far below the gardens, the tossing of the restless sea; but Jenny, in tears, pushed past Mr Thoms and fled through the crowding dancers to the sanctuary of a bedroom upstairs. Take action against Julian! And Truda, who detested, above all things, publicity, scandal, gossip and ugliness,
If my father was alive, thought Jenny, he wouldn’t want me to do such a hateful thing …! But her father had been dead for many years; he had died all alone while she and Truda and Julian and Roy, in brief cotton frocks and untidy flannels, had played noisy tennis on the rough grass court behind the shabby little house on Haverstock Hill.
Even then, Jenny remembered, Uncle Geoffrey had been horrid, he had made a joke while daddy had lain there, dead on his bed, upstairs. She could not remember the joke, only the horror with which she had regarded him because he had made it, because he had been able to think of a joke at such a time. It had not been till Evan came, dear, kind, friendly Evan Stone, summoned over the telephone by a tearful Miss Pye, that she had been able to give way, to cry out her eyes on a friendly shoulder. That had all been eight years ago; and almost ever since, Uncle Geoffrey had taken the place of daddy in all their lives. ‘I hate him, I hate him, I’ve always hated him …’ she whispered.
Then at last she made her way down the stairs, the green dress clinging, as crisp as a lettuce, to her slender young limbs. Evan Stone met her in the great hall. ‘Jenny, my pet, I’ve been looking for you. I haven’t had a dance yet.’
‘Neither have I,’ said Jenny.
‘Not danced yet! Good heavens, and you a young lady at a ball! Come along, let’s go!’ As they swung into a foxtrot, he gave her a loving little squeeze. ‘You don’t look too happy, Jenny-pop; what’s wrong?’
‘Oh, Evan, I can’t tell you how awful everything is. I’ve got to sue Julian for breach of promise!’
Evan was thunderstruck. ‘For breach of promise! What on earth do you mean? Who’s going to make you do such a thing?’
‘It’s Uncle Geoffrey, really. I’ve simply got to, Evan, I’ve promised now and I can’t get out of it.’
‘Surely, your mother—’
‘Oh, it isn’t mummy; mummy was divine!’ said poor Jenny, honestly believing it. ‘Uncle Geoffrey was going to force me to marry Julian, but she wouldn’t let him, and she said she was going to stand by me, like she’s always done. In the end, she persuaded him to let me off marrying Julian if I would promise to do this; and by that time I was so muddled up and topsy-turvy that I hardly knew what I was doing, and I said I would. It’s all Uncle Geoffrey’s fault, he’s been doing this sort of thing ever since he married mummy … You don’t know how awful he is, he gets you all muddled up.’
She rambled miserably on. Evan danced round with her, automatically shuffling his feet in time to the music, his mind a thousand miles away. He was forty-five, with a stubby figure, broad shoulders and a pleasant, ugly face beneath sparse reddy-brown hair. He had spent a life of activity till his flying accident had left him with a slight limp and a tendency to intolerable weariness in the face of overmuch exertion, when he had settled down as private secretary to the management of Mr Thoms’s magnificent affairs.
Happy in that job, he had drifted pleasantly along until, one evening in the previous winter, he had found himself at a dinner party, sitting opposite to the woman whom once he had loved. It was twenty years since Evan had first offered Gloria his heart; she had chosen John Sandells and afterwards acknowledged—but only in half-hints, only in tiny confidences—she had chosen wrong.
Eight years ago John Sandells had died; and he, Evan, had gone off on his record-breaking flight and, coming home, had crashed and lain for long months in hospital—and during that time Gloria had chosen again; and, once again, had chosen wrong.
Geoffrey Winson had been well-to-do in those days, but soon after their marriage and Tiggy’s birth, his luck had seemed to run out; and since then—well, Evan hardly knew how they had contrived to live. Facing Gloria across that dinner-table, he had fought against the tide of his returning passion. Gloria had shown no particular enthusiasm for resuming friendly relations.
But Geoffrey Winson, as usual, very much under the influence of somebody else’s wine, had hailed their reunion with delight, and persisted in spending the evening in reminiscences which, in Evan’s opinion, had been much better forgotten. Gloria, meanwhile, had discovered his connection with a real, live millionaire, the biggest mine-owner in South Wales, and had lost no further time in cementing the reunion.
Evan was very soon her slave again, with all the force of his strong and simple heart. Evan could well believe that ‘mummy had been divine’; in his unsuspecting eyes Gloria, for all her little vanities and naughtinesses, could do nothing mean or wrong. He could see that she must have been pretty far driven to have consented to this idea of suing Julian. Not that they’d ever get so far—Julian would simply pay up …
He suggested this to Jenny. I should get hold of Julian and tell him all about it. Tell him that your step-father very badly wants two or three thousand pounds, whatever it is Geoffrey needs; and then Julian can decide what he’s going to do. I suppose he’s got money of his own, I don’t know; anyway he’ll probably prefer that way out …’ That the case would ever come into the courts, he did not for a moment believe.
Roy Silver, meanwhile, was singing the first song of the evening, exquisite in top hat and tails, clinging from sheer world-weariness to the microphone, and Edgar Thoms walked slowly through the gardens by Gloria’s side, and asked himself what on earth he was to do.
It was years since any desire of his had been denied, and here was one more urgent than any he had known before. To have this exquisite creature always by his side, to warm his declining years in arms so generous and warm and white—he clenched his hairy fist at the thought that only one thing stood between himself and happiness untold. Geoffrey! That charming, feckless, penniless husband, to whom she was bound by ties of pity, and no more. Had Gloria been free she would have come to him; she had admitted that last night.
A tear had crept from beneath her gold-tipped eyelashes as she put aside her dear Thom-Thom’s hand and said that, now she had told him the truth, perhaps they must part for ever. Now that he knew that she could never bring herself to desert her—her loyalties, perhaps he would want to break off their friendship … It could never be more than that.
Thom-Thom had at once recaptured the hand and vowed that he loved her the better for her courage and self-sacrifice, as indeed he did. He had made, there under the stars, a great and solemn renunciation; but with the morning sunshine came new hopes and new ideas and, with another night of stars, the passion for self-gratification at work again.
Miss Pye stood placidly at the buffet, all alone, eating sausage rolls and eagerly watching the throng. What lovely girls and handsome young men. What wealth, what luxury.
‘But it isn’t very homey,’ said Miss Pye to herself. I daresay when all these people aren’t here, it seems pretty empty in these enormous rooms.’ Miss Pye’s idea of paradise was something small and snug up at Muswell Hill.
It had been a bad day for her, really, when she had met Gloria, and fallen for that easy charm that was as readily extended to women as to men (if a woman could be as much use, for the moment, as a man). Miss Pye had somehow, without quite knowing how it had happened, been added to the Sandells’ ménage.
First staying overnight; then spending a weekend; a week; and finally, gradually, moving in for good. Soon her little savings had gone, her annuity was mortgaged, even bits and bobs of jewellery had been put into pawn. ‘Such an adventure, Pye! I don’t know how you dared face that awful old man—but you’re so brave! And, of course, the minute we have some money, you shall get them all back!’ She had got them back; and pawned them again; and got them back again.
The minute Gloria and John—and later, Mr Geoffrey—had had some money, they had all gone deliciously off to the pop-shop to get out ‘Pye’s crown jewels …’ It had been fun; she had to admit that with darling Gloria everything was fun; but she was becoming tired now; it was time Mr Geoffrey kept his promise to pay back the sums he had borrowed from her, over the accumulated years.
She knew that a month ago Geoffrey could quite easily have paid her back. He had preferred to gamble with his money—and lose it all on that nasty Stock Exchange. It was too bad. Too bad. Here she was, in the position of a dependant, living on their bounty—or rather on Mr Thoms’s bounty—used in a thousand ways by Gloria, nothing more than a governess to Tiggy and receiving as little thanks. It was just too, too bad. I shall speak to Mr Geoffrey tomorrow, thought Miss Pye, emboldened by Lady Templeton’s hock-cup. I shall tell him I will not stand it. I shall say he will have to pay.
Roy, his duties at the microphone ended, made his way straight to Jenny. ‘Oh, Roy, darling, it was lovely; your song was lovely!’
‘My song was damned awful,’ he said angrily. ‘How can you expect me to put up a decent show, when you spring these horrible surprises on me, just before I’m due to go on? A breach of promise case! It’s too revolting!’
‘Roy, please don’t be angry with me; it isn’t my fault—of course, I know it’s dreadful …’
‘On the contrary, Jenny, I think you and your family have excelled yourselves. How much are you hoping to make out of this little enterprise—?’
Jenny stared up at him, white and shaking. ‘Oh, Roy—this has been such a terrible evening; I’ve been wandering about trying to find Julian and tell him, and when I finally saw him he was talking to Uncle Geoffrey and looking dreadfully sort of black and grim, and after that I didn’t dare to speak to him about it.’
Roy said stiffly: ‘You haven’t answered my first question; how much are you hoping to get out of this disgusting affair?’
‘I think Uncle Geoffrey needs two thousand pounds,’ said Jenny, abandoning herself to the hateful, horrible truth.
‘Two thousand pounds! Good lord,’ said Roy, shrugging. ‘I’m not a millionaire, but I’d have raised that much myself, somehow, rather than see you a party to such an act.’
‘Oh, Roy,’ cried Jenny, thrilled beyond words at such open declaration of interest by her hitherto somewhat off-hand lover. ‘Would you really? Two thousand pounds! Would you really have given all that money for me—?’
But he jerked away her grateful, clinging hands, moving his handsome shoulders impatiently. ‘You don’t seem to realize it, Jenny, but I happened to be—well, genuinely fond of you. I may not make a lot of set speeches like your ex-boyfriend, Julian, I may not go down on my knees and tell you you’re all the world to me. Well, never mind.
‘I made a grave mistake, that’s all. You’re not the kind of person I thought you were. It’s over. It’s done with. I’ve just been a fool … A fool …’
The band finished the strains of the last waltz of the evening, and rumbled into a roll of drums to strike up ‘God Save the King’. Roy stiffened to attention, padded shoulders well back, hands at his sides.
In the doorway leading out to the terrace, Julian and Truda stood, elegant, rich, well-groomed, with secretly linked little fingers. At the buffet, Miss Pye drained her last glass of hock-cup and drew herself up to attention, carefully dignified. Out in the garden, Gloria and Mr Thoms caught the familiar roll of drums, and hurried forward to put in an appearance before the dance should end; and from their several vantage points on the dance floor, Evan Stone and Geoffrey, bored with their casual partners, watched Gloria’s entrance with expressions of amusement, indulgence, and a tiny, ugly pinprick of doubt.
The drums rolled, the conductor’s baton lifted, the first violinist stood bow to strings … And suddenly, wildly, above the first deep downsweep of the national anthem, ringing through the room, came the voice of Lady Templeton, piercing and shrill and wholly uncontrolled. ‘My emerald! My emerald pendant! It’s been stolen! It’s gone!’
PART II
Jenny’s heart died within her. Gloria’s much vaunted education of her daughter had amounted to little more than a few odd terms at convent schools where the nuns turned a charitable eye towards unpaid bills.
Ever since then, Gloria’s dread of being recognized as the mother of a girl well out of her schooldays had kept Jenny back in the doubts and uncertainties of adolescence; had kept her unaware and inept, had drained her of initiative to build her own work and her own world. Mr Thoms’s influence kept her in a clerical job in the Department of Anthracite, but that would soon now come to a close; and when there was again competition and a struggle for jobs, she knew herself entirely incompetent to take her own stand.
Life, without the sheltering chic skirts of Gloria, without the impatient, quick, half-grim, half-humorous decision of Uncle Geoffrey, was unthinkable. As long as mummy was behind her … She blurted out hopefully: ‘Perhaps Uncle Geoffrey will make some money again soon on the Stock Exchange …’ The Stock Exchange held the perennial hopes of the Winson entourage, right down to Tiggy and Miss Pye.
Into Gloria’s mind crept a nasty feeling that Jenny might be going to prove too strong for them, after all. Why they hadn’t contrived to get the child married off and safe during the long ‘unofficial’ engagement to Julian, she could not now imagine; but she had been busy attaching Mr Thoms, Julian had gone overseas; and nobody ever did anything for the family but herself. I am sick and tired of poverty, of scraping and saving and cheating, thought Gloria; and had the honesty to ask herself whether it was really not the spice of life to her.
They had had fun, she and Geoffrey, poor though they might have been. Every shock to their pride, every shift and contrivance, every shady adventure growing ever more shady as the years went by, every debt, every trick, every subterfuge, all the little cadgings and scroungings, had seemed to draw them ever closer to each other, as the world drew its skirts farther aside.
Geoffrey was nearing fifty now, and his handsome face had grown lined and grey in the struggle of the past six years; she herself, she knew, had worn better, had lost not a whit of her grace, of that facile, fatal charm. Through it, through Geoffrey’s own almost equal charm, through the intuitive teamwork developed by years of association together, they had contrived to exist in a sort of unstable luxury, more often up than down. And now the end of all this uphill work was in sight; Gloria had hooked a rich old man, and Jenny had hooked a rich young one. And Jenny must not be allowed to let the young one go free.
In the gardens below the terrace strolled Lady Templeton’s guests. The strains of the orchestra floated out to them from the ballroom; Roy had gone off with Evan Stone to supervise arrangements for his song, Miss Pye was, no doubt, tucking in at the buffet as hard as she could go.
Jenny saw Truda and Julian walking far below them, tall and slender and perfectly matched. They were so good-looking! So cool, so confident, so self-sufficient, so utterly unlike herself—she knew that if Julian had not been made for Truda he had not, at least, ever been made for herself. A look of unaccustomed obstinacy came into her eyes. ‘I don’t care. It’s no use. I can’t.’
‘You must,’ said Geoffrey, draining his glass and putting it down on the balustrade with an angry bump.
‘I can’t. I won’t.’
Gloria was bored and irritated. She wanted to go and walk with Thom-Thom through the crowded rooms, with her little white hand in his arm; and tell him how lucky Lady Templeton was to have an emerald pendant, and how she, Gloria, had no jewellery, and sometimes did have a weak little hankering after pretty things, though, of course, underneath, in the real, deep places of her heart, she did not mind one bit.
She said angrily to Jenny: ‘You must tell Julian you can’t release him from his promise after all. Uncle Geoffrey’s right.’
‘I can’t,’ said Jenny. ‘I won’t.’
‘You will!’ said Geoffrey.
‘I won’t, Uncle Geoffrey. I won’t. Mummy, you’re not going to force me to marry Julian, if I don’t love him? Surely you’re not! You wouldn’t do such a cruel and horrible thing—?’
An appeal to Gloria’s better nature was always too flattering to be denied. ‘Of course not, darling; of course I won’t. Be quiet now, Geoffrey, Jenny’s my daughter and I’m handling this in my own way.
‘Nobody shall force you into anything, sweetheart; if you prefer to see Uncle Geoffrey in prison and yourself on the streets and poor little Tiggy …’ Her voice broke at the thought of the sufferings in store for poor little Tiggy.
A tear trickled down Jenny’s cheek, but she did not speak. The fear grew bitter in Gloria’s mind that this child might in the end be too strong for her; that Jenny had suddenly grown up, beyond the power of all her delicate bullying, her subtle deception, her camouflaged egotism, her grasping vanity and selfishness. If only Geoffrey hadn’t been so stupid attacking the child directly like this, she thought; automatically shifting the responsibility.
A new light dawned in her eyes and the honey returned to her voice. ‘Of course she mustn’t be forced into anything, Geoffrey,’ she went on smoothly, replacing the arm she had withdrawn from her daughter’s shoulders. ‘I’m going to stand by her and protect her against anything of the sort. Trust mummy, darling; she’s never let you down, now has she! You shan’t marry Julian, my precious, if you don’t want to. But, Geoffrey, I’ve been thinking, now couldn’t we …?’
By the time Mr Thoms came out on to the terrace looking for them all, Jenny, worn out and bewildered, had promised to take action against Julian, for breach of promise.
In the great ballroom, the couples swayed to the music, the house was alive with sound and colour and bright lights, and outside the evening was a wonder of deep blue sky, and, far below the gardens, the tossing of the restless sea; but Jenny, in tears, pushed past Mr Thoms and fled through the crowding dancers to the sanctuary of a bedroom upstairs. Take action against Julian! And Truda, who detested, above all things, publicity, scandal, gossip and ugliness,
If my father was alive, thought Jenny, he wouldn’t want me to do such a hateful thing …! But her father had been dead for many years; he had died all alone while she and Truda and Julian and Roy, in brief cotton frocks and untidy flannels, had played noisy tennis on the rough grass court behind the shabby little house on Haverstock Hill.
Even then, Jenny remembered, Uncle Geoffrey had been horrid, he had made a joke while daddy had lain there, dead on his bed, upstairs. She could not remember the joke, only the horror with which she had regarded him because he had made it, because he had been able to think of a joke at such a time. It had not been till Evan came, dear, kind, friendly Evan Stone, summoned over the telephone by a tearful Miss Pye, that she had been able to give way, to cry out her eyes on a friendly shoulder. That had all been eight years ago; and almost ever since, Uncle Geoffrey had taken the place of daddy in all their lives. ‘I hate him, I hate him, I’ve always hated him …’ she whispered.
Then at last she made her way down the stairs, the green dress clinging, as crisp as a lettuce, to her slender young limbs. Evan Stone met her in the great hall. ‘Jenny, my pet, I’ve been looking for you. I haven’t had a dance yet.’
‘Neither have I,’ said Jenny.
‘Not danced yet! Good heavens, and you a young lady at a ball! Come along, let’s go!’ As they swung into a foxtrot, he gave her a loving little squeeze. ‘You don’t look too happy, Jenny-pop; what’s wrong?’
‘Oh, Evan, I can’t tell you how awful everything is. I’ve got to sue Julian for breach of promise!’
Evan was thunderstruck. ‘For breach of promise! What on earth do you mean? Who’s going to make you do such a thing?’
‘It’s Uncle Geoffrey, really. I’ve simply got to, Evan, I’ve promised now and I can’t get out of it.’
‘Surely, your mother—’
‘Oh, it isn’t mummy; mummy was divine!’ said poor Jenny, honestly believing it. ‘Uncle Geoffrey was going to force me to marry Julian, but she wouldn’t let him, and she said she was going to stand by me, like she’s always done. In the end, she persuaded him to let me off marrying Julian if I would promise to do this; and by that time I was so muddled up and topsy-turvy that I hardly knew what I was doing, and I said I would. It’s all Uncle Geoffrey’s fault, he’s been doing this sort of thing ever since he married mummy … You don’t know how awful he is, he gets you all muddled up.’
She rambled miserably on. Evan danced round with her, automatically shuffling his feet in time to the music, his mind a thousand miles away. He was forty-five, with a stubby figure, broad shoulders and a pleasant, ugly face beneath sparse reddy-brown hair. He had spent a life of activity till his flying accident had left him with a slight limp and a tendency to intolerable weariness in the face of overmuch exertion, when he had settled down as private secretary to the management of Mr Thoms’s magnificent affairs.
Happy in that job, he had drifted pleasantly along until, one evening in the previous winter, he had found himself at a dinner party, sitting opposite to the woman whom once he had loved. It was twenty years since Evan had first offered Gloria his heart; she had chosen John Sandells and afterwards acknowledged—but only in half-hints, only in tiny confidences—she had chosen wrong.
Eight years ago John Sandells had died; and he, Evan, had gone off on his record-breaking flight and, coming home, had crashed and lain for long months in hospital—and during that time Gloria had chosen again; and, once again, had chosen wrong.
Geoffrey Winson had been well-to-do in those days, but soon after their marriage and Tiggy’s birth, his luck had seemed to run out; and since then—well, Evan hardly knew how they had contrived to live. Facing Gloria across that dinner-table, he had fought against the tide of his returning passion. Gloria had shown no particular enthusiasm for resuming friendly relations.
But Geoffrey Winson, as usual, very much under the influence of somebody else’s wine, had hailed their reunion with delight, and persisted in spending the evening in reminiscences which, in Evan’s opinion, had been much better forgotten. Gloria, meanwhile, had discovered his connection with a real, live millionaire, the biggest mine-owner in South Wales, and had lost no further time in cementing the reunion.
Evan was very soon her slave again, with all the force of his strong and simple heart. Evan could well believe that ‘mummy had been divine’; in his unsuspecting eyes Gloria, for all her little vanities and naughtinesses, could do nothing mean or wrong. He could see that she must have been pretty far driven to have consented to this idea of suing Julian. Not that they’d ever get so far—Julian would simply pay up …
He suggested this to Jenny. I should get hold of Julian and tell him all about it. Tell him that your step-father very badly wants two or three thousand pounds, whatever it is Geoffrey needs; and then Julian can decide what he’s going to do. I suppose he’s got money of his own, I don’t know; anyway he’ll probably prefer that way out …’ That the case would ever come into the courts, he did not for a moment believe.
Roy Silver, meanwhile, was singing the first song of the evening, exquisite in top hat and tails, clinging from sheer world-weariness to the microphone, and Edgar Thoms walked slowly through the gardens by Gloria’s side, and asked himself what on earth he was to do.
It was years since any desire of his had been denied, and here was one more urgent than any he had known before. To have this exquisite creature always by his side, to warm his declining years in arms so generous and warm and white—he clenched his hairy fist at the thought that only one thing stood between himself and happiness untold. Geoffrey! That charming, feckless, penniless husband, to whom she was bound by ties of pity, and no more. Had Gloria been free she would have come to him; she had admitted that last night.
A tear had crept from beneath her gold-tipped eyelashes as she put aside her dear Thom-Thom’s hand and said that, now she had told him the truth, perhaps they must part for ever. Now that he knew that she could never bring herself to desert her—her loyalties, perhaps he would want to break off their friendship … It could never be more than that.
Thom-Thom had at once recaptured the hand and vowed that he loved her the better for her courage and self-sacrifice, as indeed he did. He had made, there under the stars, a great and solemn renunciation; but with the morning sunshine came new hopes and new ideas and, with another night of stars, the passion for self-gratification at work again.
Miss Pye stood placidly at the buffet, all alone, eating sausage rolls and eagerly watching the throng. What lovely girls and handsome young men. What wealth, what luxury.
‘But it isn’t very homey,’ said Miss Pye to herself. I daresay when all these people aren’t here, it seems pretty empty in these enormous rooms.’ Miss Pye’s idea of paradise was something small and snug up at Muswell Hill.
It had been a bad day for her, really, when she had met Gloria, and fallen for that easy charm that was as readily extended to women as to men (if a woman could be as much use, for the moment, as a man). Miss Pye had somehow, without quite knowing how it had happened, been added to the Sandells’ ménage.
First staying overnight; then spending a weekend; a week; and finally, gradually, moving in for good. Soon her little savings had gone, her annuity was mortgaged, even bits and bobs of jewellery had been put into pawn. ‘Such an adventure, Pye! I don’t know how you dared face that awful old man—but you’re so brave! And, of course, the minute we have some money, you shall get them all back!’ She had got them back; and pawned them again; and got them back again.
The minute Gloria and John—and later, Mr Geoffrey—had had some money, they had all gone deliciously off to the pop-shop to get out ‘Pye’s crown jewels …’ It had been fun; she had to admit that with darling Gloria everything was fun; but she was becoming tired now; it was time Mr Geoffrey kept his promise to pay back the sums he had borrowed from her, over the accumulated years.
She knew that a month ago Geoffrey could quite easily have paid her back. He had preferred to gamble with his money—and lose it all on that nasty Stock Exchange. It was too bad. Too bad. Here she was, in the position of a dependant, living on their bounty—or rather on Mr Thoms’s bounty—used in a thousand ways by Gloria, nothing more than a governess to Tiggy and receiving as little thanks. It was just too, too bad. I shall speak to Mr Geoffrey tomorrow, thought Miss Pye, emboldened by Lady Templeton’s hock-cup. I shall tell him I will not stand it. I shall say he will have to pay.
Roy, his duties at the microphone ended, made his way straight to Jenny. ‘Oh, Roy, darling, it was lovely; your song was lovely!’
‘My song was damned awful,’ he said angrily. ‘How can you expect me to put up a decent show, when you spring these horrible surprises on me, just before I’m due to go on? A breach of promise case! It’s too revolting!’
‘Roy, please don’t be angry with me; it isn’t my fault—of course, I know it’s dreadful …’
‘On the contrary, Jenny, I think you and your family have excelled yourselves. How much are you hoping to make out of this little enterprise—?’
Jenny stared up at him, white and shaking. ‘Oh, Roy—this has been such a terrible evening; I’ve been wandering about trying to find Julian and tell him, and when I finally saw him he was talking to Uncle Geoffrey and looking dreadfully sort of black and grim, and after that I didn’t dare to speak to him about it.’
Roy said stiffly: ‘You haven’t answered my first question; how much are you hoping to get out of this disgusting affair?’
‘I think Uncle Geoffrey needs two thousand pounds,’ said Jenny, abandoning herself to the hateful, horrible truth.
‘Two thousand pounds! Good lord,’ said Roy, shrugging. ‘I’m not a millionaire, but I’d have raised that much myself, somehow, rather than see you a party to such an act.’
‘Oh, Roy,’ cried Jenny, thrilled beyond words at such open declaration of interest by her hitherto somewhat off-hand lover. ‘Would you really? Two thousand pounds! Would you really have given all that money for me—?’
But he jerked away her grateful, clinging hands, moving his handsome shoulders impatiently. ‘You don’t seem to realize it, Jenny, but I happened to be—well, genuinely fond of you. I may not make a lot of set speeches like your ex-boyfriend, Julian, I may not go down on my knees and tell you you’re all the world to me. Well, never mind.
‘I made a grave mistake, that’s all. You’re not the kind of person I thought you were. It’s over. It’s done with. I’ve just been a fool … A fool …’
The band finished the strains of the last waltz of the evening, and rumbled into a roll of drums to strike up ‘God Save the King’. Roy stiffened to attention, padded shoulders well back, hands at his sides.
In the doorway leading out to the terrace, Julian and Truda stood, elegant, rich, well-groomed, with secretly linked little fingers. At the buffet, Miss Pye drained her last glass of hock-cup and drew herself up to attention, carefully dignified. Out in the garden, Gloria and Mr Thoms caught the familiar roll of drums, and hurried forward to put in an appearance before the dance should end; and from their several vantage points on the dance floor, Evan Stone and Geoffrey, bored with their casual partners, watched Gloria’s entrance with expressions of amusement, indulgence, and a tiny, ugly pinprick of doubt.
The drums rolled, the conductor’s baton lifted, the first violinist stood bow to strings … And suddenly, wildly, above the first deep downsweep of the national anthem, ringing through the room, came the voice of Lady Templeton, piercing and shrill and wholly uncontrolled. ‘My emerald! My emerald pendant! It’s been stolen! It’s gone!’
PART II
