So their apparent reconciliation meant that the tragedy of ffolkes Manor was to have at least one positive consequence. It had paradoxically saved a marriage that might have died had Raymond Gentry not. For the Rolfes, the word ‘tender’ for too many years had meant something akin to ‘raw’ and ‘bruised’. Now it really looked as though there was a chance it could once again come to mean ‘soft’ and ‘romantic’.
One positive consequence – or two? For, last but not least, we arrive at our pair of young lovers. Selina and Don were snuggled up on the smaller of the two sofas. And though they were whispering, or imagined they were whispering, communicating in a language too intimate to be spoken aloud, the fact that virtually everybody else was conversing in low voices made it impossible to avoid overhearing what they were saying.
‘Oh, Don darling,’ said Selina, peering with such undivided attention into the depths of the young American’s eyes you’d have thought he would either have to close them or turn aside from her field of vision, ‘was I awfully cruel to you? I didn’t mean to be, really I didn’t. It’s just that – I suppose I let myself get carried away.’
Even if Don had been listening to every word she had uttered, it was obvious from what he himself said next that only one of those words had truly registered.
‘Selina,’ he whispered, ‘you called me –’
‘“Darling”? Yes, I did. Do you mind?’
‘Mind? You’re asking me if I mind? Darling, darling, darling Selina, I’ll mind only if you don’t call me darling! From now on, I’ll expect every sentence you say to me, every single question you ask me, to end in darling! I won’t ever be content with just Don. Matter of fact, I never, ever want to hear you pronounce my name again. From now on, for you, I’ve only got one name – darling.’
Selina laughed, a high, bright, tinkly laugh, like someone grinning aloud. It was the first time she’d laughed since the body had been discovered. Maybe even the first time since her arrival at the house.
‘Why, Don – I mean, darling! darling! – how eloquent you’ve become.’
‘Now you’re making fun of me.’
‘No, no, really I’m not. I thought that was a very poetic little speech.’
‘Oh, if you take me at all, Selina, you’ll have to take me as I am. I don’t kid myself I’m any kinda poet.’
‘Darling, please stop running yourself down. My – well, my infatuation, I suppose I have to call it, with Ray – it wasn’t really him, you know – to be honest, I’m no longer all that sure I ever actually liked him – it was the world he represented.’
She perused the semi-circle formed by her parents’ guests.
‘You see the sort of milieu I come from. I do adore every one of them. Most of all Mummy and Daddy, naturally, but also Evie and Cora and the Vicar and Cynthia and … Goshsakes, they’re all frightfully sweet and everything, but they’re so much older, so much more settled, than I am. I was beginning to feel I was a prisoner in this house. I craved life and experience and adventure, and Ray opened doors for me, doors into worlds whose existence I knew about only from books and mags and films.’
‘You do realise, my darling,’ said Don, comically solemn in his youthful ardour, ‘that I can’t open those doors for you. They’re just as closed to me as they were to you. And seeing what effect they had on you – like your using the word “milieu”, that’s such a Raymondish word! – I mean to keep them closed.’
‘I do realise it. And it’s because of that I love you, not in spite of it. That’s what you’ve got to understand.’
‘Oh, I know I’m a colourless character, a bit of a cookie cut-out figure.’
‘What are you talking about? You have absolute oodles of It.’
‘It? What’s It?’
‘Haven’t you read your Elinor Glyn?’
‘Why, no, I –’
‘What? You never read It? It’s a modern classic.’
‘I’m not really the bookish type, you know, Selina.’
‘It means sex appeal, you egregious darling!’
Don’s eyes opened wide enough to swallow up the whole visible world.
‘Hot dog! You – you think I’ve got sex appeal?’
‘I’m telling you, oodles of it, you clod, you mad, wonderful clod!’
It was all too much for him.
‘Oh gee – oh gee!’ he stuttered, overwhelmed by the speed at which his luck seemed to have turned. ‘And I always thought I was just, you know, tall, dark and one-dimensional. My only excuse was that that’s how I was made by my Creator.’
‘And He did a wonderful job. He,’ she repeated, before adding archly, ‘or She.’
‘She?’ Don jovially echoed her. ‘A female God, eh? Should I take that to mean you’ve become a – a – whaddya call ’em?’
‘What do you call what?’
‘You know, those harpies who chain themselves to the Parliament gates and wave their umbrellas in the air and proclaim emancipation for women?’
‘Feminists?’
‘Feminists, yeah! So you’re a feminist now, are you?’
‘That’s for me to know and you to find out,’ said Selina, a roguish smile playing on her lips.
‘Well, don’t worry, I’ll soon cure you of that nonsense. There’s only one person who’s gonna be allowed to wear the pants in our marriage and I promise you it ain’t going to be the little wifey!’
‘But, Don, women already have the vote.’
‘Not in my home they don’t! Besides, you’re too beautiful to be a feminist.’
‘Oh, you dope, you darling, you sweet, sweet peachereno!’ giggled Selina. ‘I never realised you could be so masterful!’
‘Hot dog!’ Don cried again.
This time, however, he truly did cry out, causing everybody in the room to interrupt their own conversations and stare at him in amusement.
He blushed to the roots of his hair.
‘Sorry, I –’ he began to say in an embarrassed voice.
But he never did manage to complete his apology. Suddenly, at the french window, Mary ffolkes buried her face in her hands and burst into loud, heaving sobs.
Everybody looked at one another – which is another way of saying that nobody knew where to look.
Selina was the first to respond. Followed close behind by Dr Rolfe, she rushed over to the window.
‘Why, Mummy, what is it?’ she cried out. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
As Selina cradled her, Mary ffolkes tried to speak, but hiccoughing sobs were shaking her whole frame.
‘Now, now, Mary, my dear,’ murmured Rolfe in his dulcet bedside voice, deftly unpinning the Cairngorm brooch which held the collar of her taffeta dress in a secure clasp, ‘you must try to remain calm.’
Sliding a protective arm around her shoulders, he whispered softly to Selina:
‘Let’s get her over to the sofa. She needs to lie down for a few minutes. I’m afraid what’s happened has been just too much for her. I might have known the strain would tell. She’s not as young as she used to be. Her heart, you know …’
Together, propping her up, they began to walk across the room. Already half-way, however, the Colonel’s wife had not only steadied herself but was attempting to tidy up the strands of hair that were flopping over her forehead, a nervous tic familiar to everybody who knew her well.
‘Thank you, but I’m really all right,’ she mumbled almost inaudibly. ‘Do please forgive me, I’m being such a silly-billy.’
When they reached the sofa, Selina hurriedly plumped up a cushion and rested her mother’s head against it, while Rolfe, stretching her two legs out lengthwise, removed her shoes.