No Fond Return of Love (32 page)

‘Perhaps I could come over and discuss it with you.’

‘Why, certainly – that might be best. Come to tea this afternoon.’

Better to get it over quickly, whatever it was. It would be nice to work for him, more satisfying than living in Miss Spicer’s flat and getting involved with Neville’s church. Perhaps, in his loneliness, he was ‘turning’ to her, or whatever had been the expression Viola had used when talking about him at the conference to describe what he had
not
done to her. She began to wonder what, if anything, she could say about Marjorie.

Leaning forward in the taxi – for he had still not worked out how to get to Dulcie’s suburb by public transport – Aylwin wondered how he was going to convince her of this curious change in his feelings, when such a short time ago he had foolishly confided in her his love for Laurel. Obviously the pretext of having some work that she might do for him was the best way of arranging to see her, though surely she would not have refused a word of comfort to a lonely and deserted man, he thought, seeing himself now as this character, which was not unlike the lonely old man whom Laurel was to have solaced.

As for his apparent change of heart, he had suddenly remembered the end of
Mansjield Park
, and how Edmund fell out of love with Mary Crawford and came to care for Fanny. Dulcie must surely know the novel well, and would understand how such things can happen. What a surprise it would be, not least to his family and to Dulcie herself, who had so often urged him to make a ‘suitable’ marriage, if, when he was free, this very marriage should come about! Yet here he was being true to type after all. For what might seem to the rest of the world an eminently ‘suitable’ marriage to a woman no longer very young, who could help him with his work, now seemed to him the most unsuitable that could be imagined, simply because it had never occurred to him that he could love such a person. It was all most delightfully incongruous. Just the sort of thing Aylwin Forbes would do.

Who will run down to greet him and be gathered to his heart, Dulcie asked herself, as she had in Taviscombe, the last time she had watched Aylwin arriving in a taxi. Obviously only she could do it, but in her shyness she opened the door cautiously, wondering why he had brought a bunch of flowers when she had so many in the garden.

Senhor MacBride-Pereira, watching in his window, had heard the taxi, but was not quick enough to see who got out. He took a mauve sugared almond out of a bag and sucked it thoughtfully, wondering what, if anything, he had missed.