‘What a crowd! I see the three Miss Pimms are here. I thought they never went anywhere together, but as Sophy Justice married a connexion of theirs I suppose they felt bound to show up. Mabel’s been wearing that blue dress ever since we came to Grove Hill, and whatever induced her to buy it in the first instance I can’t imagine! But none of them have got any taste!’
‘She had it for Sophy’s wedding five years ago.’
Mrs Graham spoke with the complacency induced by the fact that her own dress was quite new. It was of a soft shade of blue with a matching coatee, and it had really cost her more than she was justified in spending, but if they sold the house she could take it off the price and it wouldn’t be noticed. She would, in fact, have got it for practically nothing.
Mrs Harrison said,
‘It looks like it! It must always have been pretty awful anyhow. Where’s Thea? You don’t mean to say she hasn’t come! I’ve brought Nicholas Carey, you know. I wonder whether they will have anything to say to each other! He’s staying with us to clear up all that mess in the attic. He left it with Emmy Lester, and she left it with us, and goodness knows I shall be glad to get rid of it! Why, there is Thea over there by the window talking to Nettie Pimm! My dear, what has she done to herself – I never saw such a change! If I hadn’t known that green dress of hers I really don’t suppose I should have recognized her! You know, Winifred, if you take her away on a cruise looking like that she’ll be getting off with someone and you’ll be left lamenting!’ There was a certain edge on the words.
Mrs Graham’s delicate eyebrows drew together in a frown.
‘What a ridiculous thing to say!’
‘Not at all! Of course I don’t say the men you meet are always serious, but there would be plenty of fun and games. I know I’d go off again tomorrow if I could! But there isn’t much chance of that the way Jack keeps harping on about how much it cost, and the losses he’s been having. Why, to hear him you’d think he expected me to sit down in Grove Hill and economize for the rest of my life! What a hope! You know, I always say one might just as well be dead as dull. That cruise was fun. I haven’t enjoyed anything so much for years. I only wish I had your chance of doing it all over again!’
Mrs Graham looked away.
‘I don’t know that I should care about it.’
Ella Harrison had a moment of exasperation.
What a weathercock Winifred Graham was! She had been keen enough to go on this cruise when she thought she might pick up a man for herself, but the minute anyone suggested that there might be a chance in it for Thea she was off again.
Ella took a look at her own interest in the matter. Fred wanted the house, and she would be doing him a good turn if she got the Grahams to sell. She couldn’t think why he wanted it, but she meant to find out. She was seeing Fred every day – meeting him casually for coffee, going to the cinema with him in the evenings. If he wasn’t falling for her all over again, he was putting on a pretty good act. She knew just what a piece of folly it would be if she let herself fall for him. He was up to something – she knew him well enough to know that. You couldn’t trust him an inch – she knew that too. She oughtn’t to have any truck with him, and that was a fact. Even as the thought was in her mind she knew that she was just as much of a fool about him as she had ever been in the past, and that if he wanted the Grahams off the map she would go all out to help him.
These thoughts were all in her mind as she answered Mrs Graham.
‘My dear, you’d love it! And you’d have no end of admiration. Men always fall for the fragile type! And there’ll be plenty of them! Why shouldn’t Thea have her share? I’ll say that for her, she pays for a bit of brightening up!’
As an exponent of the art of brightness Ella Harrison could certainly speak with authority.
Everything about her appeared to glitter, from the brassy hair, the eyes set off by long black lashes, the teeth which were so much in evidence that she seemed to be advertising somebody’s dentifrice, to the diamond studs in her ears, the dazzling sunburst at her shoulder, and the valuable rings which flashed with every movement of her hands.
The skilfully applied complexion and startling lipstick achieved emphasis from a clinging garment of royal blue, the colour being repeated by a twist of tulle and a jewelled clasp in the hair. She had felt a good deal pleased with herself when she came down the stairs at Grove Hill House to where Nicholas Carey was waiting in the hall. He stood and watched her, and seemed quite unable to look away. It gave her the feeling that she was on the stage again. There was nothing like a staircase for an entrance. She would have been gratified to know that a somewhat similar idea had presented itself to Nicholas, though she might have been offended if she had guessed that he was summing her up with stage directions: ‘A Blare of Trumpets. Enter the Barbaric Queen!’
Althea, looking across the intervening crowd, wondered for the hundredth time or so how her mother could stand the woman. She could put up with her being vulgar and overdressed, but when it came to her pushing this frightful idea of a cruise and selling the house it was just too much. In the last resort, of course, she would be driven into playing her own trump card. The house was hers and it couldn’t be sold without her consent, only she hoped – very much she hoped – that she wouldn’t have to say so.
Nicholas Carey, in the far corner of the room where the massive figure of Mrs Justice practically screened him from view, saw Althea’s face change. He had been watching her whilst Mrs Justice told him all about Sophy’s wedding which he ought not to have missed and then went on to impart the latest particulars about her husband, her elder boy, her second boy, her girl, and last but most important of all, her twins. ‘One of each, and regular little dumplings, she says. And oh, my dear boy, they’ve all got red hair and she glories in it – though between you and me, I do think there’s some chance of its darkening as they get older. At present, she says, it’s just pure carrots. Of course it’s a cheerful colour, and they are a very cheerful family.’
He said, ‘Sophy always was cheerful.’ She rolled on to speak to someone else, and he continued to look at Althea. She had on a green dress. Not linen like the one in the photograph, but it altered the colour of her eyes in the same way. Ella Harrison had tried to make him believe that she had changed, but what took hold of him now was a sense of how little five years had done to make any difference in the familiarity of her every movement, every look. He had shut her image away and locked the door on it and walked in strange exciting paths, and at the end of it all he had come home to find that nothing had changed. The locked place was open and empty. Althea was just across the room from him, and he might never have been away. She turned her head and their eyes met.
It was a most curious experience. It was like waking up and finding that something horrible had never happened. He saw a flush come to Althea’s face quick and bright, and he saw it fade and leave a patch of colour on either cheek. She had put it on so carefully that no one could have told it was not her natural bloom until everything in her failed and left it visible. She began to make her way towards the door.
She had known all along that Nicholas might be there. And so would the Miss Pimms have known, and all the other people who knew about her and Nicholas, and who would all be deeply interested to see them meet again. It was going to be a really absorbing moment for Grove Hill, and there had been times when she felt as if she couldn’t face it, but they passed, because there was something that she could face even less. If it came to seeing him in a crowd or not seeing him at all, there wasn’t really any choice to be made. He wouldn’t come and see her – not after the way they had parted five years ago. Now he was back for an hour or two, a day or two. If she didn’t see him in this little space of time she would never see him again. She stopped reasoning about it. If you are very thirsty in a desert and there is water within your reach, you don’t reason about it and say, ‘It will be worse afterwards,’ you snatch and drink.