The Fortunes of Springfield (16 page)

David looked grim but did not interrupt. Caroline hesitated, and then went on:

“Well, last night, I had quite a long session with Terence; and, at long last, he admitted that he hadn’t been to school, but I
could not
get any reasons out of him. He promised that he would go today, and he set off with Wendy as usual. I waited until
the
middle of the afternoon and then I telephoned Miss Burke. He wasn’t there. Yet when he came back to tea, he maintained that he
had been
to school, and nothing would shake him. I know he is lying. I want to get at the reason for it. But I do
think
it has got to a stage where I am not justified in keeping it to myself, and that you ought to know about it.”

“I certainly ought,” said David, grimmer than ever. He rose to his feet and went to the door.

“Where are you going?” cried Caroline.

“I’m going to see Terence,” he said.

“He’s probably asleep.”

“If he is, I won’t wake
him
.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Caroline.

“That is my affair,” he said and went out. Caroline hesitated, and then followed him as far as the bottom of the stairs. She waited. She could hear David’s voice, low and grim, but not the words he said. She could hear Terence’s voice, raised rudely and loudly in reply; and the altercation went on for a while. Then there was a short and ominous silence. Caroline’s heart was thumping. She was ready to believe that the interview was at an end when suddenly she heard Terence crying out, and then another silence that was more ominous than before. She waited, in misery and dismay, until David came downstairs; and then she turned and went back into the kitchen. David, surprised by the white misery of her face, looked after her for a moment in indecision and then followed her.

“There is no need to look like that,” he said.

“You beat him,” said Caroline miserably.

“I spanked
him
,” said David. “It was not a beating. A spanking will do him good.
You
will make a little gangster out of the boy. Playing truant is one thing; lying about it and threatening his little sister are quite others.”

“But that is the wrong way. Why did you do it? Why
did
y
o
u do it?”

“An occasional spanking never hurt any boy.”

“Not a normal boy, but Terence is not a normal boy. What a pity, what a pity! You have put us back weeks and weeks.”

“Nonsense,” said David, surprised to see tears in her eyes.

“Now he will shut himself up again, and I shan’t be able to approach him. Last night, I felt I was getting somewhere. Now we shall be back to where we were
weeks ago. He was used to punishment of that kind; it only made him sullen and intractable.” She stood still, the tears overflowing on to her cheeks.

“Oh come,” said David more gently. “It isn’t as important as all that.”

“But it
is
,”
she cried, wringing her hands. “What we do to Terence now is going to make all the difference to the way he grows up; whether he will be straight and direct, or whether he will always be a problem.” She made an effort not to cry, but it was unsuccessful. “Oh dear,” she said, bringing out her handkerchief, “I’m so sorry; but it is
so
discouraging.”

“Now, now,” said David, momentarily at a
loss. He went to her side and patted her shoulder; then, aware of inadequacy, took her into his arms and let her weep on his shoulder. “Don’t go on like this,” he said gently. “I had no idea it would upset you so much. There, there.”

“I’m sorry,” she said in muffled tones. “I know I’m being silly. But, I
love
those children; and I try so hard to do what is right for them, without really knowing. Just struggling along
...”
Her voice wavered and stopped.

“I have left you too much responsibility,” said David. “You are very young. I ought to have helped you.” After a while, she stopped crying, and made to draw away from him.

“All right,” said David quietly, “stay where you are.” For blissful, contented moments she rested in his arms, against his shoulder, until she felt she had command of herself. Then, with a long sigh, she straightened herself, and he released her.

“Better now?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you.”

He smiled down at her ruefully.

“I have set the cat among the pigeons, haven’t I?”

“Yes, you have.”

“You must tell me what the next move is, and how I can help you.”

“Yes,” said Caroline. “But I have to
think
about it first.”

“Don’t worry too
much ...
I suppose, after all this sort of thing, you won’t be sorry to leave us.”

She looked up at him quickly. She was so tear-stained and looked so young that he would have liked to take her once more into his arms to comfort her.

“Why should I want to leave you?” she asked.

“To marry Duncan Wescott. Isn’t that the idea?”

“Who says so?”

“Many people apparently. Isn’t it true that you are going to marry him?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” she said wearily.

“Well, if it is only your duty to the children that is keeping you here, I want to let you know that you are free to go whenever you choose.”

“And what would you do for the children?”

“There must be other people, Miss Hearst, who can do what you do.”

He wanted to make it easy for her to go if she wanted to go; she thought that he already had somebody in mind who would fill her role. She said:

“I would have liked
to
finish
the job here.”

“Then stay and finish it,” said David impatiently, “and let Duncan wait. Good heavens, he has waited until he is forty-five, surely he can wait a bit longer.” Caroline smiled with little mirth.

“Perhaps because he has waited so long he doesn’t care to wait any longer.”

“Well, only you can make up your mind.”

“You make it sound very simple,” she said, suddenly stung to retort sharply. “But it isn’t simple. None of it is simple. Do you always see everything just plain black or white? Nothing between?”

“Perhaps,” he said, “I don’t like to think of the children losing you
.”

She hesitated.

“And perhaps,” he went on, “I don’t like this marriage because Duncan is too old for you.”

“That is my affair,” she said coldly.

“Well, don’t be tempted by all the security he can offer you to make a marriage that won’t be a success.”

“When I want your advice, Mr. Springfield, I will come and ask you for it. It would be
b
etter if you took an interest in the child
r
en’s affairs rather than mine.”

“Well, if you choose to take it like that
...
But I should think life could hold more for you than being an old man’s darling.
”

“Duncan is not old,” she cried angrily.

“He is forty-five to your twenty-three. Twice your age.”

“
It happens all the time,” she said.

“But why to you? Wait for somebody younger.”

“And suppose I love him?” she asked.

That stopped him. He was silent for several seconds.

“In that case,” he said, “I am sorry. In that case, I must have hurt you unforgivably. I imagined, fool that I am, that it was security you wanted
.”
There was a long pause. “Well, when you want to go, give me as much notice as you can.”

“I don’t want to go yet,” she said.

There was another pause.

“Please go away now,” said Caroline. “Do you mind?”

David turned to go. At the door, he turned and looked back. She looked small and young and disconsolate. He went back to her, holding out his hand. She put hers into it.

“Friends?” he asked, s
miling
down at her.

She nodded, swallowing a lump in her throat.

He gave her hand a hard squeeze, and let it go. As the door closed behind him, Caroline sank into her chair, weary and spent. After a while, she looked across at the ironing board, but she was no longer in the mood for ironing.

“I think I’ll make myself a nice cup of tea,” she said aloud.

CHAPTER
TEN

THE school holidays arrived and the children were home all day, so that Caroline had her hands full. David, whose offer to help had been perfectly genuine, and who intended to devote time and thought to the problem of the children, found himself in the middle of the harvest with no time to spare. It had been a good summer and was a splendid harvest, and he was cheered to think that the weather had made success possible in this first year of his return to Springfield.

Duncan was also busy with his harvest, gathering the rich fruits of the soil into ricks and
barn
s. The sun continued to beat down upon the harvest fields, and made it possible for the children to be out of doors every day.

Then a letter came from Janice Everton, invitin
g
Caroline and the children to their house by the sea. They had found the house of their dreams, but while necessary alterations and decorations were taking place, they had taken the seaside house for a further three months. Thinking that this was too busy a time at Springfield to accept the invitation, but wanting very much to go, Caroline took the letter to David.

“Of course you can go,” said David. “It will do you good.
”

“But can you manage here? With harvest and everything?”

“Yes, we can manage. Mrs. Davis can make the tea for the harvesters, and there is still the barrel of last year’s cider for them.”

“But your own meals. You shouldn’t have to go out for dinner after a hard day on the farm.”

“The Green Lion looks after me very well.”

Still Caroline hesitated.

“It doesn’t seem right to go off to enjoy myself when everybody here will be working so hard.”

“Look at it in this way. You are taking the children for their summer holiday.”

She smiled.

“Well, of course, in this lovely place, they don’t need a
s
ummer
holiday. But I know the little girls will love the sea and the sand again; and I always hope that Terence will make friends with the Everton twins, who would be so good for him.”

“I hope,” said David slowly, “that I didn’t set you back too far by spanking him the other evening.” Caroline blushed, most unexpectedly and annoyingly. His mention of that other evening had come so suddenly, and it was so often in her thoughts, that he had taken her unawares. For that evening had ceased to be the time when David had spanked Terence, and had become the
time,
when David had taken her into his arms aid comforted her; the time of such perfect bliss and sweet content that she was beginning to understand that she could not so far defraud Duncan as to marry him.

“I’m afraid,” said Caroline, “that I said a good deal too much that evening. After all, you are the children’s guardian, and you must think that I take too much upon me.”

David thought that this was why she had blushed. He said:

“Perhaps I, too, took too much upon me that evening. There is no excuse for my intrusion into your private affairs. If I said anything that seemed to reflect
upon Duncan, please forgive me. I know that he is the kind that is the salt of the earth, and I am sure he would always be good to you. I apologize for my tactlessness.”

“Nothing is settled,” said Caroline. “I have not made up my mind to marry Duncan.”

“But the opportunity is there?”

“Oh yes. He has asked me—many times.”

“Well, as I said before, you mustn’t let your concern for us hold you back. You must, naturally, settle your affairs in your own way, and I won’t bother you about them; but as far as this immediate plan is concerned, it would do you good as well as the children to join your
friends
, the Evertons. Go and have a good time.”

“It’s very kind of you,” said Caroline, and went away to write to Janice, looking forward to the holiday but looking back at David and how much she would miss him; knowing that he would not miss her, with harvest to occupy his working hours and Patricia to console his leisure ones. For Patricia had been in the south of France for nearly a month, and never had she borne a holiday so impatiently, wondering what David was doing in her absence. On her return she had come at once to Springfield, and lost no opportunity of visiting David, or getting him to visit her.

She was not at all sorry to hear of Caroline’s departure. This took place on a Sunday, since David had insisted on driving them and Sunday was his free day; and they started early in the morning to reach the Evertons’ by lunch-time. They stopped at Emily’s cottage to greet her, but as she was now busy with her summer visitors, they did not hinder her, and went on after a few minutes.

David had intended to begin his return drive in the afternoon, but was persuaded, without too much difficulty, to postpone it until the evening.

“We will all swim this afternoon,” planned Janice, presiding over the terrace luncheon table with its four
adults and six children, “and have a picnic tea on the beach. That is the earliest we will let your Uncle David go—we might even persuade him to stay for supper.”

They made a colourful group, Janice dark-haired and in her scarlet swimsuit, Caroline in her blue, and the
gail
y
striped towels and bath wraps lying on the sand. The children rushed abo
u
t, in and out of the water, sque
aling,
making sandcastles, smashing them down
a
gain,
rolling and romping in the sand. Janice and James, David and Caroline lay in the sun lazily, now silent, now chatting, until James fell asleep. David said:

“I
think
I’ll swim. Anybody coming?”

“Yes,” said Caroline.

“I’ll wait for James,” said Janice.

David and Caroline walked towards the water. He thought how small and young she seemed in her swimsuit, with her hair blowing in the wind. She stood at the sea’s edge to tuck her hair into her swimming cap. “Where did you learn to swim?” he asked.

“At school,” she replied. “I always loved it, but never had much opportunity to do it.”

“Can Terence swim?”

“A few strokes. He learned when we were here before. He should improve rapidly now. I hope to teach Wendy this time, but she hasn’t much confidence.” They went in together and swam side by side for a while. Then David went off and away with powerful strokes, and Caroline, after swimming and floating serenely, went back to find the children and give Wendy another lesson. Later, they had their picnic tea, and later still, all the children in bed and sound asleep, the four adults sat on the terrace and had
s
upper in the sunset li
ght
that gradually changed to a restful twilight.

“I must go,” said David, “but it is a wrench.”

“Have a last cigarette,” said James, offering his case. David took one and lit it.

“Do we need the lights?” asked Janice.

“No,” said James, “it’s nice like this. And peaceful, too, with all the little perishers in bed.”

They sat at the table, with its big wooden bowl of fruit and its colourful chequered cloth, all losing their colours now in the dim light. The wooden seats were benches built against the wall, with cushions of check on the seats and backs. Janice and James sat on one, the ends of their cigarettes glowing and fading; David and Caroline on another, facing the sea, which was rapidly becoming one with
the
sand and the dunes and the rough hedge and garden. David’s right hand held his cigarette. His left arm lay along the top of the bench behind Caroline. She did not know it was there, for she was sitting forward with her elbows on the table, listening to the pleasant, sporadic talk, and to the waves breaking on the sand at high tide; but after a while, she moved and leaned back, and realizing then that his arm was there, would have sat up straight again, but that his hand on her shoulder pulled her gently back. She relaxed in the peaceful darkness.

James was speaking. He was saying how they would all miss the sea when they moved into their own house, and this pleasant terrace which gave them the illusion that they were living out of doors. But Caroline did not listen. She was aware of David only, of David’s arm along the back of the bench,
o
f his hand that lifted the cigarette to his mouth and lowered it again. She was still wearing the sun-dress of yellow cotton that she had worn on the beach, and that left her shoulders bare. The little jacket that went with it was still on the bench beside her. And she could feel the tweed of David’s coat sleeve warm against her cool flesh. Then his hand touched her shoulder as if by accident, and did
n
ot move away but stayed there, warm on her coolness, heavy and comforting. A slight movement would bring her into his arm, but she did not make it. She was almost breathless, sitting there
in
the close dusk, praying that he would not move.

The cigarette was finished, however, and he had a long drive before him.

“Well, now it must be done,” he said regretfully.

“Couldn’t you come down and spend a weekend?” asked Janice.

“Not just now, I’m afraid, with harvest on us. Much as I would like to.”

There began a general move. David said:

“Please don’t disturb yourselves—I can get myself off.” And his hand held Caroline down as she would have got up. On a moment of impulse, she turned her head and rested her cheek on that restraining hand, so fleetingly that he could not be sure if she had meant to do it; and then she had got up with the others, and all four of them were walking through the soft night to David’s car. Then he was gone.

Caroline lay in her narrow bed that night, with the little girls in another bed in the same room sleeping peacefully, and cried a little for the hopelessness of her love for David, and chided herself for building up a meaningless incident into something so important and breathtaking. To walk with him was a joy, to
talk to him was, each time, a fresh adventure; to be touched by him was to be in confusion and turmoil.

Patricia had been the greater part of an hour preparing herself for her birthday dinner-party, and now, bathed and perfumed, her hand-made underclothes mere wisps of chiffon and lace, she took the new dress from its hanger and slipped it on over her head. It was a birthday present from her eldest sister and her husband, strapless, clinging at the top, foaming into great width at the bottom, a marvellous creation of bead and pearl embroidery on net. Perhaps the loveliest dress she had ever had, thought Patricia, and one to open the eyes of Oriel and Peggy and Penelope, all of whom were glad of any occasion to don their most beautiful clothes. A final touch here and there to her freshly washed and set hair, the putting on of the pearl necklace that had been a twenty-first birthday present, the clasping of Grandmother Close’s old ruby bracelet, and she was ready.

It was not lost upon Patricia that her family was beginning to be a little anxious about her marriage. She was the only one of a large family still unmarried, and she was now aware that the family watched her passing birthdays with some apprehension. She was the youngest. T
h
ey were all fond of her. They did not want her to be left on the shelf, and this was her twenty
-
ninth birthday. Nearly thirty! The other girls had been married at twenty-one and twenty-three. They had been mothers, securely settled, at Patricia’s age. They talked to each other, and to their mother, about David and the possibility of a marriage. However tactfully they did it, Patricia was aware of it and their solicitous anxiety oppressed her; the more so since she found the successive birthdays weighing heavily upon herself. But looking into her long mirror, pleased with the glamorous reflection she saw there, she was convinced that anybody might take her for twenty-five—even younger. Her mother came into the room.

“Darling! Oh, that
is
pretty! what a very beautiful birthday-child you look, Patricia. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No, thank you. I have just finished. Will I do?”

“It is perfect. How extravagant Elizabeth and Harry have been. Let us come down together to wait for the guests.”

They went downstairs, where some of the family were already dressed and waiting. They had come earlier in the day for a reunion and gossip, and Paul, one of Patricia’s brothers, began to hand round the sherry and cocktails. Duncan arrived, and a little later Oriel and Peggy; then Penelope and David almost together. Patricia carried him a drink.

“Many happy returns,” said David. “There is a parcel in the hall for you. You look like a fairy princess tonight.”

“It is pretty, isn’t it?” said Patricia, whirling for his benefit. Her hair was shining and her eyes sparkling. “Shall I go and see what is in the parcel now?”

“Leave it until later.”

“Well, thank you very much. There are to be twelve of us for dinner, and about thirty people afterwards for the dance; and I warn you that I am going to be very selfish, for after all it is
my
birthday, and dance at least half of the time with you.”

“I shall be scalped by the other men,” smiled David.

“And you are to sit between Penelope and me at dinner.”

Patricia had made sure that Oriel was as far away as possible, and then, and all through the evening, she monopolized David quite shamelessly; but as most of the people present were already under the impression that an engagement was
immine
nt (and many of them expected it to be announced at this party), nobody took exception to that. Least of all David. For David had been working very hard. The harvest was almost in, he was in the mood for relaxation and pleasure, and dancing with Patricia in her luxurious gown, delicately perfumed, her eyes sparkling invitation at him, could certainly be classed as pleasure. When, in the middle of the
dancing
,
she declared she was too warm to go on, and wanted to see what was in her parcel, David went with her into the hall. There were two or three parcels, but Patricia was interested only in David’s. She said: