Something Light (27 page)

She looked at him and hated him. Everything about the man—his calm and solidity, even his good car, his good clothes—pointed all too painfully her own vagabond dishevelment; the recollection of how she'd slammed him down at Broydon Court (and at Stack's in the Strand) made the impossibility of doing so now—from a sitting position by the roadside, face and hands wet with tears—her very hat like a beggar's cap beside her!—all the more humiliating. As a first move in the direction of dignity, she rose stiffly to her feet.

“If it's the bus you want, you're previous,” remarked Mr. McAndrew. “There's none due for an hour.”

“I've been here an hour,” retorted Louisa.—To her extreme annoyance, reaching down for her hat she felt her knees shake: she had sat too long without stirring, while the heat of the day declined to evening chill. The support of a large warm hand under her elbow, however, merely annoyed her more; she flinched back as from a viper, and took a grip of the bus sign instead.

“They pass every three. It's a very poor service,” said Mr. McAndrew. “Why not let me drive you where you're going?”

“Because there happen to be two things I enjoy particularly,” said Louisa—holding her eyes wide open to let the wind do its best. “One is fresh air, and the other is a nice bus ride.”

“Don't be foolish,” said Mr. McAndrew. “We'll stop on the way for a drink.”

“Do I look as though I needed a drink?” snapped Louisa—rather unwisely.

“To be truthful, aye,” said Mr. McAndrew. “You're shivering with cold.—Not that it doesn't seem to be a habit with you,” he added censoriously. “I've not forgotten all that champagne yet.”

“When you were so childish about your whiskey,” retorted Louisa.

“Be your opinion what it may, you're still shivering,” said Mr. McAndrew. “Will you get into the car, or do I lift you?”

He was undoubtedly capable of it. (Also the only man Louisa knew who was. Mr. McAndrew weighed about fourteen stone, in good trim. He played Rugby football, Louisa almost guessed it, for the London Scottish.) It still wasn't the threat of such a last indignity that swayed her. There was no bus for another hour. (However odious in other respects, Louisa felt Mr. McAndrew reliable about timetables.) And when she did get a bus, or if she walked, to the station, she had no idea when the next train was. Why cut off one's nose to spite one's face? Louisa got into the car.

3

Within a matter of minutes, she nearly got out again.

It had been easy enough, after but the briefest period of conjecture, to connect Mr. McAndrew's appearance outside Chesham Hall with the scaffolding over the Hall winter garden; didn't he specialize in stately homes? So far, so good; Louisa's curiosity was satisfied—for she must have been a little curious—without the need to encourage Mr. McAndrew (instead of slamming him down) by showing it. But as she considered the circumstances more fully, a really horrible suspicion stirred.

“Did you by any chance pinch that
Tatler
I had at Broydon Court?” asked Louisa abruptly.

Mr. McAndrew grinned.

“There was a pair of very fine ankles pictured in it—along with the couple of wee dogs.”

Louisa wasn't deceived. That would-be salacious grin masked, she was almost sure, the even more repulsive aspect of a Good Samaritan.

“Did you by any chance show it to Lady Mary Tablet?”

“I might have done.”

“Did you by any chance suggest
me
to photograph her beastly corgis?”

“Not at all. That was entirely her own notion,” affirmed Mr. McAndrew.

Louisa wasn't deceived. On top of all else, he had managed to
patronize
her.—His mere proximity now revolting, she glanced at the car door, half-minded to pull it open and hurl herself out. They weren't doing much over thirty—or if she did break her neck, what matter? Wouldn't a broken neck solve her every problem? So felt Louisa, at the moment, most sincerely; nor was the thought of Mr. McAndrew involved in all the nuisance of an inquest at all displeasing. She only hoped he'd get his license endorsed … While she hesitated, however (indeed while she still had him in the witness box), the latter so far misread her look as to reach across and wind the window up, then back for a light overcoat which he pulled about her shoulders. The resultant warmth was so grateful, Louisa at least temporarily abandoned thoughts of suicide. Moreover, she'd remembered a come-back.

“It may still interest you to know,” retaliated Louisa nastily, “that your Lady Mary Tablet has just gypped me out of three guineas.”

She continued to feel humiliated nonetheless. Probably no car of its size ever bore a greater burden of resentment, and humiliation, and general ill-feeling.

4

When they stopped, not long afterwards, it was at a very small village inn. The benches against the walls were so narrow and hard, if Louisa suddenly recalled the Meares, it was only to hope that when they left her at Dorking station—

How long ago? Only a month? To Louisa it felt like a lifetime.

—they'd been able to sip their one small sherry apiece in brighter surroundings. Louisa couldn't think of any other reason for thinking of the Meares; though perhaps the landlady's expert glance (in this case how mistaken!) showed a slight diminution of umbrage as before a properly respectable couple. (“It's his size,” thought Louisa vaguely, watching Mr. McAndrew insert himself between narrow bench and narrow table.) She looked about again; for all gaiety of décor there was a stuffed pike, under glass, behind the bar, and on one wall an old broadsheet commemorating an eighteenth-century murder. The leaves of a pair of rubber plants shone with a sickly, mortuary phosphorescence—probably floor-polish; which hadn't been applied to the floor. In all, it was one of the most depressing hangouts Louisa had ever struck; and thus at least matched her mood.

“Not that the Meares would notice,” mused Louisa aloud.

They were the first words she had spoken for some time. Mr. McAndrew looked at her.

“I'm glad the cat hasn't got your tongue altogether,” he remarked. “Who might the Meares be?”

Impossible to go back to Kerseymere Kennels, to Teddy and Molly Meare standing hand-in-hand on a railway platform! Taking a short cut—

“Well, they were married,” explained Louisa.

“Most folk are,” said Mr. McAndrew. “I don't see what way that specializes them.”

“Yes, but she didn't know Teddy was a vet.”

Mr. McAndrew glanced at Louisa's tumbler. She'd had only one small whiskey, as yet unfinished.

“No doubt I'll plumb your mind in due time,” he reflected. “I'm still glad to hear you've a few decent acquaintances. A vet's is a very respectable profession.”

“Of course I've never seen them since,” said Louisa discouragingly.

But somehow, just as they'd have wished to do, the Meares broke the ice. Moreover, Louisa was now at that stage of fatigue when it is easier to talk than not.

“They were really why I came to Broydon at all,” she added, “to meet Jimmy again …”

“I understood the name was Freddy,” objected Mr. McAndrew.

“No, Freddy was the one before,” explained Louisa.

“The one before what?” inquired Mr. McAndrew patiently.

“The one I tried first, when I first thought of getting married at all.”

“You surprise me,” said Mr. McAndrew. “I'd never have credited you with such a sensible notion. From the way you carried yourself at Broydon, one would have thought photographing wee hounds—by which I intend canines in general,” said Mr. McAndrew pointedly—“the whole aim of female existence. I never remember a woman,” recalled Mr. McAndrew, “annoying me more.”

Why the thought occurred to her Louisa had no idea. It occurred nonetheless.

“Was it you,” asked Louisa suddenly, “who kissed me when the lights went out?”

5

Now it was Mr. McAndrew's turn to flinch.—He looked a little aside; then up at the stuffed pike.

“Aye,” admitted Mr. McAndrew. “Though more out of opportunism than anything else.”

“Was it you who turned the lights out?” demanded Louisa, pressing her advantage.

“Certainly not,” said Mr. McAndrew, recovering a little. “At a guess, it was some silly young lad wishing to make a pass at a silly young lass. As I've told you, on my part it was sheer opportunism.”

“
I
didn't even know who it was,” said Louisa. “
I
thought it was Mr. Wray.”

“Maybe he could have made a jump, at that,” agreed Mr. McAndrew.

“At least you're not jealous,” said Louisa coldly.

“Of that wee fellow? How should I be?” said Mr. McAndrew. “It was only I you bothered to slam down. I repeat, I felt if anything rather an aversion for you.”

“You still came and took me out to lunch.”

“I've a maybe foolish dislike of eating alone,” explained Mr. McAndrew. “Go on with what you were telling me. You had a notion to get married.”

6

Sadly Louisa thought back over the past weeks: recapitulating, and reviewing, and regretting.

“Well, I suppose it
began
with talking to the milkman about Ibsen.”

“I don't know whether to give you another whiskey or not,” said Mr. McAndrew.

“Freddy would,” said Louisa. “—Actually I don't want one, but I've never, you must have noticed it, met any man freer with drinks. Freddy's is a quite wonderfully generous nature,” said Louisa.—“What I would like is something to eat.”

“It surprises me you didn't marry him yourself,” observed Mr. McAndrew, returning from the bar with a meat pie, “if such was your aim, and you've so fine an opinion of him.”

“It surprises me too,” acknowledged Louisa, “now. But perhaps it wasn't just Enid—”

“The widow?”

“Or butterfly on buddleia.”

“I hope you're not running a temperature,” said Mr. McAndrew. “Do you feel any warmer?”

“Warm as toast,” Louisa assured him.—It took her a moment to discover why; then she realized that she was wearing his overcoat. At some point she must have thrust her arms into the sleeves. As a garment it was far too big, but the ample tweed folds were wonderfully cozy, over a linen suit …

“It's to be trusted you've a good thick dressing gown,” said Mr. McAndrew worriedly.

“Two,” lied Louisa.

“You'd better take that back with you,” said Mr. McAndrew—obviously a hard man to deceive. “If it wasn't a butterfly on a buddleia—for heaven's sake!—put you off the old rip, tell me what did.”

“Well, perhaps I felt even then—subconsciously, you know—that he was past starting a family.”

“In my opinion, it's an aspect that might have struck you outright,” commented Mr. McAndrew.

“At least I'm not as old as Sarah wife of Abraham!” retorted Louisa, stung—also slightly confusing the point. “I didn't know I wanted a family, then, myself. It was only after Mr. Clark—”

“I'm glad to find you read your Bible,” said Mr. McAndrew. “But just for the record, what's become of this Jimmy?”

Louisa sighed.

“He
turned out to have something quite different in mind altogether.”

“Ah!”

“Bamboo,” corrected Louisa.

Mr. McAndrew went back to the bar and fetched a couple more meat pies.

“At least old Freddy taught me money isn't everything,” mused Louisa. “Won't you have one yourself? They're very good. All I learnt from Jimmy was to steer clear of bamboo.—Which I suppose was useful too in its way; now that I look back, I can see I spent far too much time in the pansy beds among the bamboo bushes … Isn't that pie all right?”

“It beats me how you can tackle a second,” said Mr. McAndrew frankly.

“Well, I'm hungry,” said Louisa. “I generally am,” she added thoughtlessly.

“O my dear lass!”

Louisa looked at him in surprise. He instantly fixed the stuffed pike again.

“We'll find some more decent place on the road,” he promised. “Get on now to Mr. Clark.”

Louisa sighed anew.

“One thing
he
taught me I hope I'll never be ungrateful enough to forget. I'd never, really, disliked a man before, I was so fond of them; after Mr. Clark I don't see how I can ever be such a sucker for them again. I only wish,” sighed Louisa, “he hadn't had such a nice family …”

A silence fell, as she remembered Paul and Catherine and Toby; a tear fell, salting not unacceptably the meat pie.

“Is yon the last?” prompted Mr. McAndrew.

Louisa nodded.

“I've given it up,” she explained. “I suppose you could say I've made a pretty fair fool of myself. But I only wanted to get married!”

“Well, there's nothing wrong with that,” said Mr. McAndrew kindly. “Still, what a daft way, by your own account, you set about it! Don't you know that a woman wanting to marry should let herself be
courted?”

7

“For instance, if you'd thoughts of marrying
me,”
continued Mr. McAndrew, after a further pause, and now transferring his gaze to the broadsheet about the murder, “you should begin by letting me take you out a bit. To Sunday concerts at the Albert Hall, for example. So we'd get to know each other.—D'you happen to be free this coming Sunday?”

“Well, yes, I am,” said Louisa.

“Then there's Kew Gardens, if the weather doesn't break. Wet or fine, there's the British Museum.”

“Or Westminster Abbey,” suggested Louisa, more and more interested.

“London's filled with suitable spots,” said Mr. McAndrew. “The point I'm making is, that's how you should let yourself be courted.”

The more Louisa considered it, the more the notion appealed to her. Wasn't it indeed something she realized herself—
che va piano va sicuro?
And how delightful (recalling the other half of her device) to be oneself in the position of monkey softly-softly padded after by Mr. McAndrew! But there was a serious drawback.