“No, Harry, he wouldn’t like it. Oh, I do wish you had some normal conventional feelings,” she said in despair.
WEDNESDAY (2)
“HAS Harry gone?” Morgan asked.
“He hasn’t stayed to lunch,” Hester said, looking quickly across the table at her father.
Morgan’s flat, usually expressionless face, registered a brief smile, and he began to talk rapidly. He was like a clock that after days of standing unwound on a mantelpiece has suddenly been jolted enough to make it tick again. Everyone always felt relieved when Morgan spoke.
“When Harry stays to lunch,” he said, “the next thing that happens is that around two in the morning I’m being asked to play Donegal Poker. You have two cards each and you take away the value of the one from the other. Then you bet a penny, or a shilling, or a pound that the difference in your cards is bigger than the difference in his. Or if you don’t want to bet you put your money in the kitty instead. And you get extra from the kitty for every point you win by. It’s a gambling game,” he added unnecessarily. He glanced at Wade. “If any girl decides to marry Harry, she’ll have a bad time.”
“This is wonderful soup, Prudence,” Hester said.
“I had to grate twelve onions with my eyes shut,” Prudence said. “I’d better warn you that my cooking phase is nearly over. I’m going on to dress-designing next. Why would any girl who married Harry have a bad time, Morgan?”
“Gamblers are always losing the housekeeping money,” Morgan said.
“Always? Don’t they sometimes win?” Prudence asked. She was still at the age when contradiction is automatic.
“Not often,” Morgan said, looking around for help. His conversational phase was over, and he wanted to be left alone on the mantelpiece again.
“I thought they sometimes had syndicates and died rich,” Prudence persisted.
“Not many do.”
“And some gamblers make fortunes on the Stock Exchange and go to Hunt balls. It would be O.K. being married to a gambler like that. The real thing is not to generalise,” Prudence said sternly.
“Harry doesn’t make fortunes on the Stock Exchange. He plays Donegal Poker in the small hours,” Morgan said angrily. He was usually a very quiet man, emotional only about his illnesses, but Prudence could annoy him very quickly. She was sixteen, not at all shy in her assumption that she had the solution to all human problems; and she added to this common adolescent feature a frightening competence. She could light a fire with one match and mend broken fuses.
“I don’t see that Donegal Poker would ruin his wife,” she now said scornfully. Morgan wasn’t old enough to be treated with the dubious respect she gave her father. He was about forty, too old to count, not old enough to be allowed indulgently to revel in his imaginary illnesses, and he had a twinging smile that scraped uneasy symbols on her mind.
Wade took no part in the discussion. He was lost in a private world of monetary calculations, where the house, miraculously restored, was crammed with guests who paid large sums of money and incurred no overheads. He began to pencil figures on the tablecloth. ‘9 at £10 each.’ Then he thought of Maurice, and looked up smiling.
“How would everyone like a little trip to Madeira this winter?” he asked genially.
Hester smiled at him unhappily, beginning to realise that her father was like a greyhound, doomed for ever to run round a circular track after an electric hare that would never be caught. She stood up, and began to gather the plates.
“The dining-room is so far from the kitchen,” she said. “Couldn’t we move the dishes by bicycle, Prudence?” She wasn’t entirely used to the house. Her father had bought it, an astoundingly bad investment, when he had been forced to sell The Grey House to cover his losses on the fruit farm.
In the kitchen they found Harry with the soup saucepan in front of him. He was eating from it with a spoon.
“There was no sherry in any room at all,” he explained. “So I thought I had better come out here to say goodbye. Who’s lunching here today?”
“Morgan. He pays for his board, so we have to toss him a biscuit now and then,” Hester said coldly.
Harry pushed the saucepan away. “Morgan’s got so much anxiety in his heart he walks with a list to the left side. He has the merit of being very fond of the game of Donegal Poker. I’m still a hungry man, Prudence. You’ll give me a spoonful from that casserole before you take it in?”
“If you help with the washing-up,” Prudence said, scowling.
“We can discuss that later,” Harry said easily. He emptied some of the meat from the casserole on to his soup plate.
“Morgan drinks without getting any pleasure from it,” he said. “He drinks alone in his room.”
“Harry, how do you know?” Hester asked.
“I’ve seen the empty bottles. He hides them in his wardrobe, like Hemingway.”
“But how did you come to look in his wardrobe?” Hester asked, shocked.
“It’s the place to find empty bottles. Why is Morgan hanging around that room your father is painting?”
“Is he?”
“When I couldn’t find any sherry I went up there again. He shot out of the room like a clay pigeon from a trap.”
“We’d better take what’s left of the casserole to the diningroom,” Prudence said bitterly.
“If you don’t want him in that room, getting in the way, I’ll tell him doctors have discovered this new paint is a prime cause of T.B. That will send him off to London for an X-ray,” Harry said.
Prudence hovered in the door with the casserole. “Come on, Hester.”
“How long is it since anyone was in the room – the attic room?” Harry asked.
“Years, I suppose,” Hester said over her shoulder.
She was worried when she went back to the dining-room, and she found it hard not to take too obvious an interest in Morgan’s face. She had never before met a secret drinker, and she looked at him now with a mixture of clinical interest and human sympathy; she saw nothing but a cold, reticent face, with features that suggested strength far more than weakness. She wanted to help him, but she was surprised when she heard herself saying:
“I want to walk to Furlong Hill this afternoon. Would you like to come, Morgan?”
“A walk?” he asked grudgingly. “I don’t know. I’m not sure. Yes, yes, thank you, Hester. In about an hour?”
“Morgan is a bit queer,” Prudence said when the two girls were alone in the kitchen.
“He’s probably going to sit in his wardrobe with the door shut, drinking,” Hester said. “I wonder where Harry is?”
When she went up to the attic she found Harry. He seemed to be tapping the walls.
“What are you doing, Harry?” she asked.
“You saw. I was tapping the walls. Looking for more weak spots.”
Morgan’s uneasy face appeared in the doorway. He stared at the sand and broken plaster on the floor.
“I didn’t know you were going to make so thorough a job of this room,” he said accusingly. “Are you going to have all the walls down?”
“Very likely,” Harry said.
“If I were your father,” Morgan said to Hester, “I should leave this room alone. It’s too big a job for one man.”
“But I’m going to help,” Harry said.
Morgan wavered in the doorway, then left.
“He looks worried,” Hester said.
“He does indeed,” Harry said thoughtfully.
He walked up and down the room, not speaking to her, and she went to the window and looked out again over the trees.
“Do you hear a ticking?” Harry asked from behind her.
She listened. “Only my watch, I think.”
“It’s not that.”