A Winter's Child (70 page)

‘What is it?'

‘Just memories, mother.'

‘Oh well – let's close the door on it, shall we, and go down to Feathers'to tea.'

But, quite often these days, Dorothy could be persuaded to have tea at the Crown, one place at least where she could be sure of not meeting Richmal Lyall, and where, sitting at ease in the baroque lounge, she was able to see Kit Hardie no longer as ‘that man', as Edward had taught her, but as the Manager of this comfortable establishment, a figure of authority and considerable charm.

‘The Major is looking well today.'

‘He always looks well.'

‘These pastries are delicious.'

‘They always are.'

But was it true that Amandine Keller was showing signs of discontent with both her lover and his fish shop, particularly now that her husband's restaurant,
Chez Aristide
was about to open its doors? Kit rather thought so.

‘It may be only a
bistro,'
he said, ‘but at least she'd be
La Patronne.
Any idea how to make
mille-feuilles,
Claire?'

‘No thank you. And a bit more than a
bistro,
don't you think? A red and gold awning over the door the last time I was passing.'

‘Don't pass next time,' Kit said. ‘Walk in and see what he's doing. You could probably get away with it. Drop a hint that you might be looking for a job and see if he jumps – and how much. Get him to show you a menu.'

‘You're not worried are you, Kit?'

‘Good Lord.' He gave her his cordial, professional smile, his eyes twinkling.
‘Worried!
What a very peculiar idea. As if
my
customers could be enticed away.'

‘I expect they'll all come back again.'

‘I expect so, I'm not even sure it matters.'

‘And what does that mean?'

‘That I might be thinking of moving on.'

Consternation struck her a hard blow.

‘Kit!'
And what she meant was ‘How can you leave me?'

‘Not yet,' he said, ‘but this was never more than a proving ground, you know. And I've proved myself, I reckon.'

‘So what next?'

‘When I've made up my mind I'll let you know. Strictly between ourselves, of course. I wouldn't want the Croziers breathing down my neck until it's all arranged. And I can't see me giving it much attention until after Christmas at the soonest.'

‘Is that all you can tell me?'

‘It won't be in Faxby. To tell the truth I think Faxby may well have had its day – for a place like this I mean. And a place like Aristide's. Once trade gets really bad the Redfearns and Swanfields and Greenwoods aren't going to feel comfortable sitting here eating their
Contrefilt
and drinking their
Moe:/ t & Chandon
with the unemployed on the prowl outside. They won't want to be seen, which means secluded little places well away from tram-stops and railway stations. Converted country houses in the Dales or up in the Lakes, only available to the carriage trade in their new horseless carriages. Fairly easily accessible too, these days, now that the roads are mended and all the village blacksmiths have turned themselves into motor mechanics.'

‘Sounds risky.'

‘So did the Crown. And you joined me here.'

‘Are you asking me –?'

‘Of course I am. As soon as I can. Just a few minor details to settle first, like raising the money …'

‘Ah yes –! Your bank manager
has
been dining here rather often lately.'

‘He has. I hope we've impressed him.'

‘I'm sure
you
have.'

‘Then let's make it a good Christmas. I could use the bonus.'

It was around Christmas time that Polly, with her fiance¥/ once again in tow, returned to the Crown, causing offence both to Roger's mother and her own; Edith Timms insisting that her son was by no means sufficiently recovered for all this drinking and dancing and ‘gadding about'to keep up with Polly; Miriam offering her tart opinion that if he was well enough to ‘gad about'at all he was well enough to get married.

But a few small problems had arisen with the house Aaron Swanfield's money was building. Delivery dates had been postponed and then, in one or two cases, forgotten. Work had not been done. And, in any case, Edith Timms did not think it advisable for Roger, in his weakened condition, to move into a new house in the frozen depths of winter.

‘You do see, Polly dear, that it wouldn't be wise. So much better for both of you when the sun is shining.'

Polly, who had become very docile since Roger's illness, very much inclined to sit for hours on end in what Edith called a daydream and Miriam a trance, smiled and nodded her platinum head.

‘Yes, whenever you think best.'

What a
dear,
sweet girl, thought Edith, an opinion swiftly revised when her son came home with the milk one morning, looking not so much in a state of trance as in shock, having followed Polly from the Crown to no fewer than three different parties where he sat, as he'd always done, talking to Sally Templeton or buying an occasional drink for the restaurant pianist, Adela Adair, watching, waiting, nodding off over his whisky sour while Polly danced.

She had not danced since the beginning of September. And now she was making up for time lost, time which might hang heavy on her hands next year when she would be Roger's wife, rushing in frantic haste in every and any direction, piling up memories of folly against the day, not far distant, when Edith Timms, who had seemed to be her friend, would oblige her to be serious: a fragile, frenzied butterfly settling everywhere and nowhere until the day – quite soon – when Edith's net would force her to be still.

It did not occur to her to cancel her engagement. Such things, without serious provocation, were simply not done – particularly now when fiancés were not easily replaceable. And Roger had done nothing to provoke her except come down with appendici – tis, for which she could not blame him, and show himself to her – no worse than she ought to have expected – in those crumpled striped pyjamas. She had agreed to marry him – and everybody else, her mother, his mother, her brother Benedict, the authority figures of her life, had taken her very seriously. Money had been spent. Benedict had made certain arrangements, in agreement with bankers and lawyers and Mr Timms, about her trust fund. There was the new house on Lawnswood Hill, filling up with carpets and furniture as if by magic before her eyes. There was her wedding dress. And what of the cupboard on the top landing at High Meadows crammed full of wedding gifts which had already started to pour in before Roger's illness, and for which she had already written notes of thanks? It was simply not in her to call a halt to all that. And far better, in any case, to be the wife of a rich young man, dull and podgy and
balding
she'd noticed lately though he may be, than face a lifetime of spinsterhood – resigned like Sally Templeton, embittered like Adela Adair – at High Meadows.

She was, without really being aware of it, quite desperate, wearing an aura of abandon well suited to the mood of the times. She was a flame in the process of burning out. She was self-destructive, unstable, at the end of her tether. Irresistible.

‘What a treasure,' said Arnold Crozier, gazing at her speculatively across the pale blonde head of the girl he had taken from a station bookstall and was already thinking of putting back again.

‘What a waste,' said Toby, looking sadly at Roger Timms who, once again, had become a feature of the cocktail – bar, sitting placidly among the wallflowers like Sally Templeton until the stroke of whatever hour their mothers had specified called them home, and then, when the jazz band had left too, buying the musical talents of Adela Adair for Polly, plying her with drinks and Turkish cigarettes to keep her at the piano while Polly danced.

Christmas passed in a sleepless haze. January and February, cold and grey for everyone else, were cold and hard but golden for Polly. And it was in this mood that she met Roy Kington again.

She had not forgotten him. She had simply been too proud to talk about him and had made a point of
not
enquiring his whereabouts from his brother, Rex. Although, since Sally Templeton – showing what Polly considered a notable lack of self-respect – had taken pains to find out he had been staying in Cheltenham with his former company commander, naturally Polly knew it too. He had hurt her. He deserved her hatred and she desired that he should have it. Yet when he appeared in the cocktail bar doorway one February night and paused there, lean and hard and arrogant, surveying the scene, she had felt his presence nevertheless like a blow that had reopened both old wounds and deep-rooted, far-better-forgotten delights.

She had not forgotten. She had not forgotten the shame either, the rough handling and the final degradation to which he had subjected her. But what mattered – instantly – was that he should pay attention now to
her,
not to Sally nor hopeful, greedy Adela Adair, nor to anyone in that line of wallflowers he had set so badly a-quiver.

And, to that end, while Sally enthused her joy at seeing him again and Adela Adair dipped her red head and her bare freckled shoulders into the lamplight for his perusal, Polly ignored him.

She danced.

He stood, leaning against a pillar, allowing Sally and Adela to watch him: watching her.

He went away and, although she was very sweet to Roger on the way home, she managed to excuse herself from permitting him what had become the usual, clumsy liberties.

‘I'm so tired Roger – and I have a headache.'

Fortunately, or perhaps not, Roger Timms was somewhat in awe of headaches, his mother having suffered from them at every crisis point of his life and her own, and believed – as Edith had taught him – that at such times a man must tread very warily.

‘Beastly old headache again,' she told him the following evening at the Crown. ‘It's so smoky in here. I'll just step outside for a breath of air. No. Don't come with me. I want to be quiet.'

‘All right, Polly.' He smiled, resumed his seat again, having heard his mother use the same words a hundred times and when Edith did not wish to be disturbed one did not disturb her. All women, it seemed, were the same.

‘Where's she going?' asked Sally Templeton sharply.

‘For a breath of air.' He believed it. And although Sally Templeton probably knew she had gone out to meet Roy Kington, she was a ‘lady'and did not know the words to say so.

She met him in the alley behind the hotel, coming to deliver a message of contempt for him, to pronounce a final, scornful goodbye to which he replied, ‘I couldn't forget you, Polly.'

She had not expected that.

‘I left Faxby because of you. I couldn't stay once you'd got engaged to that chap. I've just come back to see my mother and then – well – no use in hanging around now, is there?'

He had, in fact, left Faxby because he had been promised a job in Cheltenham and would not have returned had it materialized. He had remembered Polly as a flighty bitch who had led him on, had tried to make a fool of him, and upon whom the tables had been turned. Seeing her again, sensing the desire she was arousing in other men, he had made up his mind to have another crack at getting her himself.

It meant no more to him than that.

‘I couldn't stop thinking about you, Polly.'

He had, in fact, met a woman in Cheltenham, older and wiser than himself who had taught him a certain amount of amorous expertise, explaining to him that the female of the species can more easily, and sometimes
only,
be aroused by affection, by making her promises not of orgasm but of love.

‘I – I've missed you, Polly.'

The effect on her was everything and more than he desired.

‘I don't believe you.' But, because believing him was what she wanted most that moment in the whole world, it would only take another word or two to convince her.

‘Why did you bring that dreadful girl to my mother's party?'

A natural soldier he moved at once to the attack in order to defend himself. Revenge, he told her. Madness of course but then, who was to blame for that but Polly herself who had hurt him driven him half-crazy? He'd been ready to kill her. He'd thought he probably might, and if it were true what the poet said and each man kills the thing he loves, well then, he'd leave her to draw her own conclusions.

Leaning against the alley wall she gazed at him, mesmerized.

‘Kiss me goodbye,' he said curtly, throwing the command at her with pain – he hoped, she thought – at the edge of his voice, letting her know that it was her fault he was abandoning his comfortable home and his widowed mother and possibly his native shore, although in fact he had already quarrelled with his mother, was at present living in furnished accommodation with a trio of like-minded bachelor friends and had made no firm plans to go anywhere.

She swayed forward, a gorgeous prize rabbit, he thought, into his snare but remembering the advice of his friend in Cheltenham, all he did was kiss her, as gently as he could, his self-control made easier than it might have been by the fact that he was due to meet a girl of exceedingly available virtue at her flat in an hour or two.

‘Roy darling – don't go.'

‘Why?' And he sounded harsh. ‘I have nothing to stay for. Have l?'

Had he indeed? Later that night when Roger Timms parked the car a discreet few yards from the front door of High Meadows and put a damp, plump hand on her bare knee, her revulsion was so great that she leapt out of the car and ran from him, crying out over her shoulder no more than the shocking truth that she was going to be sick.

She spent the next day cowering in bed, tearful, feverish, her head aching and her stomach queasy, unable to bear either the smell of food or of the flowers her fiancé – or perhaps her fiancé's mother – had sent her.