No Fond Return of Love (21 page)

‘And what did you present her with?’

‘A Wedgwood dinner service and a travelling clock.’

‘Heavens! Will she be doing all that dining and travelling in her retirement?’

‘She isn’t retiring, exactly. Well, she
is
, but she’s getting married.’

‘Surely that’s rather unusual?’

‘Yes, I suppose it is. She’s rather old – about fifty – but she’s marrying a retired admiral, so that’s all right.’

Paul stuck what seemed to be the last carnation into the bouquet. ‘Are you going home to see your aunt?’ he asked. ‘We might travel together.’

It was the rush hour and they got separated on the bus, coming together again like lovers after a long parting. They walked hand-in-hand down the road and were seen by Senhor MacBride-Pereira to stop and kiss rather indiscreetly near one of the street lamps, which cast a sickly glow over their young fresh faces. Then they parted and went into their respective houses.

Orpheus and Eurydice? thought Senhor MacBride-Pereira. Now what have I seen – an end or a beginning? Romeo and Juliet, Paolo and Francesca, or just two young lovers of today, a suburban idyll? He had been sitting in his top-floor front room, reading Eija de Queiroz and eating grilled almonds from a bag at his side, dipping absent-mindedly but steadily into it until the bag was empty. In the summer he would ect sugaredjordan almonds, delighting especially in the mauve ones.

Yesterday evening, at about the same time, he had come home with a parcel from the Scotch House, containing the kilt in the MacBride tartan which he had ordered, to be worn secretly in his room at first before he ventured outside in it. He had long wanted to possess such a garment and was eager to parade before his looking-glass in it, but first it would be prudent to draw the curtains, he decided. Going to the window, he had seen the lady from next door with the fish’s name – Miss Dace – being handed out of a taxi by a gentleman who had kissed her hand in the Continental fashion. The things I see! he said to himself. With a young girl and a boy perhaps it is nothing or of little importance, but with a by-no- means-beautiful woman getting on in years, who knows what it might not be!

Inside her house Dulcie was in the kitchen making lemon marmalade. The window was open at the bottom and the outside sill held several saucers in which sticky deposits of the marmalade at various stages of the boiling had been placed. Dulcie took up the latest one and tilted it anxiously to see if the surface wrinkled.

‘Not yet,’ she sighed rather tragically. ‘Last year it was twenty-five minutes. Why is it taking longer now?’

‘Of course,’ said Viola, who had been sitting at the kitchen table reading
Encounter
, ‘I’m not a great marmalade eater at the best of times.’

Not a great marmalade eater
… Dulcie repeated to herself in a kind of despair. ‘And when would the best of times for eating marmalade be?’ she said aloud.

Viola did not answer.

Another five minutes passed and the marmalade was again tested. It really seemed as if the setting point had been passed now. It would go like a kind of syrup.

‘People blame one for dwelling on trivialities,’ said Dulcie, ‘but life is made up of them. And if we’ve had one great sorrow or one great love, then who shall blame us if we only want the trivial things?’

Viola murmured something, but Dulcie knew that she did not really understand. Lately she had begun to admit to herself that Viola had turned out to be a disappointment. In a sense, Dulcie felt as if she had created her and that she had not come up to expect-ations, like a character in a book who had failed to come alive, and how many people in life, if one transferred them to fiction just as they were, would fail to do that! So perhaps it was not so surprising after all. Viola was just a rather dull woman, wanting only to be loved. Presumably Bill Sedge would marry her – for things seemed to be going that way – and take her to live in Finchley Road, and she would forget all about making an index and searching for facts in libraries and correcting proofs of other people’s books.

‘You
are
coming to Taviscombe for Easter?’ she asked uncertainly.

‘Oh, yes. Bill thinks I ought to get away.’

‘I expect he said the sea air would put roses in your cheeks,’ she said, absent-mindedly rather than cattily.

‘Yes, he did,’ said Viola rather coldly, raising a hand to her cheek. ‘And I have been feeling a bit off-colour lately.’

There was a plopping sound as the evening post fell through the letter box on to the floor.

‘I did hope for a postcard from Tuscany from Aylwin,’ said Dulcie, examining the circulars and bills. Then she saw her own handwriting and felt a faint tremor of excitement. It would be – it must be – the tariff of the Eagle House Private Hotel.

‘The birthplace of Aylwin Forbes,’ she said, opening the envelope. ‘I suppose he was born there – perhaps not literally, but we know it was his childhood home.’

The front of the little folded card showed what might be described as an artist’s view of the hotel. He – or more likely she – had, as so often, seen his subject illuminated by ‘the light that never was on sea or land’. It appeared to be a kind of Gothic castle, standing back from the road in such spacious grounds that the wrought-iron seats seemed a little out of keeping. Outside the gates stood an Edwardian type of motor car.

‘Oh, do you think Lord Berners ever stayed there?’ said Dulcie rapturously. ‘I suppose some grateful guest – a lady, I think – drew this. She happened to have her sketching things with her.’

‘I wonder when it was done,’ said Viola rather sourly. ‘Years ago, I should think. I don’t suppose it looks a bit like that now.’

‘No,’ Dulcie agreed. ‘It dates from the time when ladies had time to do sketching and things like that. But this “A Corner of the Residents’ Lounge” seems to be a photograph. It would look more real if they had somebody actually sitting in it. It looks rather unlived-in as it is – so does this photo of “One of the Bedrooms”.’

‘They could hardly show somebody in bed.’

‘No – though I shouldn’t mind volunteering to be photographed if I was given due warning. It would make a good picture to have somebody sitting up in bed drinking early morning tea. But how can one think of Aylwin Forbes there – that’s the impossible thing!’

But Viola’s thoughts were on another subject. Had he really meant it when he said that she had brought something into his life that he had never had before? She supposed he might have done – anyone could say a thing like that, really, and it could be true in the most uninteresting ways. But when it was murmured in a mixture of German and English it had an air of greater sincerity. Of course the whole thing was absurd, when one came to think of it. This dapper little refugee, not quite as tall as she was – after somebody like Aylwin – surely not! She remembered him in the shop window that Sunday night, arranging the knitwear among the boughs of artificial cherry blossom. And yet, as she had said to Dulcie, he did make her feel that she was a
woman
, and that – in these pushing, jostling days of the so-called equality of the sexes – was a great deal. Perhaps all love had something of the ridiculous in it. Look at Aylwin, even, collapsing like that at his lecture, and Dulcie’s former fiance, Maurice, with his absurd pronouncements on art and literature. One came across it all the time.

WHEN it came to the point, Dulcie showed a surprising reluct-ance to book rooms at Eagle House straight away. At the same time as she had written to Mrs Forbes for her tariff, she had also obtained a list of hotels and boarding houses from the town’s information bureau, and she proposed that they should stay the first night at one of these and then move into Eagle House, hav-ing first had a look at it from the outside, as it were.

‘As long as we know that Aylwin is
definitely
in Tuscany,’ she said, ‘it’ll be all right. If only he would send a postcard!’ And at that moment, as if in answer to a prayer, the telephone rang. It was Laurel, and at the end of their conversation she let fall casually the information that she had had a card from Italy – ‘from Dr Forbes. A picture of a church.’

‘How nice!’ Dulcie said. But privately she thought it would have been more suitable if he had sent one to Viola and herself. After all, Laurel was only a child. Still, it was kind of him to feel himself responsible for her cultural education.

‘He wouldn’t
mind
us going to stay at his mother’s hotel,’ said Viola. ‘He’d probably expect us to. I can’t think why you’re making such a fuss.’

‘Oh – don’t you know how it is! One goes on with one’s research, avidly and without shame. Then suddenly a curious feeling of delicacy comes over one. One sees one’s subjects – or perhaps victims is a better word – as being somehow degraded by one’s probings…’ Dulcie stopped, her face flushed, then went on, ‘And going to Neville’s church – it had to be done, but I suppose, in a way, it isn’t right to go to a church for such a reason. And then to find out
that
about him – it was like a judgment.’

‘But it wasn’t our fault. It would have happened whether we’d gone there or not. In fact, it had already happened. Our going or not going had nothing to do with it.’

‘One wonders how it all started,’ said Dulcie rather desperately. ‘I mean, my interest in the Forbes family.’

‘At the conference, I suppose.’

‘Yes, that must have been the beginning. If Maurice hadn’t broken off our engagement, I shouldn’t have gone to it and seen Aylwin, but then, being the sort of person I am, it might have happened anyway …’ she broke off in confusion.

‘But going to Eagle House will be just rather amusing,’ said Viola soothingly. ‘There couldn’t be anything upsetting there.’

‘No, I suppose not. Oh, let’s have a cup of tea!’ Dulcie took the kettle to the sink and began to fill it in a kind of frenzy. ‘And which of all these other hotels shall we stay at on the first night? Blen-cathra, Strathmore, Lomond House – how curiously Scottish the names of boarding-houses always are! Moranedd and Min y Don – those are Welsh, I suppose. Here’s Eagle House, but it doesn’t say anything special about it. The Anchorage – “bright Christian atmosphere” – should we try that?’

‘We might,’ said Viola doubtfully.

‘Yes,’ Dulcie agreed, equally doubtful. ‘Why is it that one suspects a place that actually
claims
to have a bright Christian atmosphere? What is one afraid of?’

‘A certain amount of discomfort – and that the Christianity will manifest itself in unpleasant and embarrassing ways,’ said Viola.

‘And that one will have to endure the company of those who call themselves Christians. Shall we risk it? It seems to be almost opposite Eagle House, judging by this map – and the Welsh and Scottish places might be worse.’

In fact, the window of their room looked out on to the turning down which Eagle House lay. It looked smaller and darker than the artist’s impression, and there was no motor car of any description outside. Dulcie stationed herself at the window until darkness fell and nothing more could be seen.

‘Perhaps it isn’t really open for Easter,’ she said, ‘but we shall have to find somewhere else to go tomorrow.’

They had been extremely lucky, so the manageress informed them to get in at The Anchorage for this one night. ‘We are fully booked for Easter,’ she informed them. ‘It is really our speciality,’ she added somewhat obscurely.

She was a tall, neat-looking woman of about forty-five, wearing rimless glasses and a very clean white nylon overall, which made her look like a dentist’s receptionist. She had a high-pitched, tinkling laugh, perhaps the ‘bright’ part of the Christian atmosphere.

‘Do you know a hotel called Eagle House?’ asked Viola casually.

‘Oh, my goodness!’ The tinkling laugh rang out. ‘You wouldn’t want to go there! I’ve heard it’s very old-fashioned inside.’

‘A Mrs Forbes is the proprietress,’ said Dulcie.

‘Yes, old Mrs Forbes. She’s quite eccentric.’ She pronounced it ‘essentric’, which gave the word a new significance. ‘And there’s been talk about the place – things that go on there.’

‘Things? But it’s not licensed, is it?’ asked Dulcie naively.

‘No – but there’s something about it. I see that clergyman son is back – the good-looking one. Now why should a clergyman leave his parish at a busy time like this?’ The manageress’s eyes, disconcertingly magnified through the rimless glasses, gave Dulcie a penetrating stare, under which Dulcie’s own glance faltered, and she found herself stammering, ‘Well, er – I don’t know, really. There might be all sorts of reasons. Perhaps to give a bright Christian atmosphere to the hotel for Easter,’ she added naughtily.

‘He certainly won’t give it that by going about in his cassock,’ said the manageress firmly, apparently taking no offence at Dulcie’s remark. ‘And of course, it isn’t necessarily a
clergyman
who provides a Christian atmosphere in a place. Oh, no! Quite the contrary, sometimes. A lot of dismal Desmonds some of them are!’ The laugh rang out again.

‘Is there a Mr Forbes?’ Dulcie asked.

‘Well, there must have been, mustn’t there? But we don’t see him about now. I suppose he’s passed on,’ she added comfortably.

‘Oh, how I’d like a drink,’ said Viola, when the manageress had left them, to attend to some domestic matter. ‘I really think we shall have to go out and buy something to drink here.’

‘You mean gin?’ asked Dulcie, in a rather fearful tone.

‘Yes, why not?’ Viola’s tone had almost a note of challenge in it.

‘No reason, really. It just seems rather depraved to drink it in one’s bedroom.’

‘How old-fashioned you are in some ways, Dulcie,’ said Viola impatiently.

‘Yes,’ Dulcie agreed humbly. ‘I suppose I am. People obviously do these things all the time now. I feel a wine might be more appropriate – there’s something rather pleasing about the idea of sitting up in bed drinking wine. There might even be special vintages recommended for drinking in the bedrooms of unlicensed hotels.’

‘Here’s a shop open,’ said Viola. ‘You’d better leave this to me.’

‘Good evening, ladies!’ A dark, good-looking man seemed to be lying in wait for them, almost, behind the counter. He stood against a background of bottles, many of unfamiliar and intriguing aspect.