“I don’t see,” said Alison, “why you couldn’t have married Peter in spite of all this.”
“Don’t you? Do you think that any woman wants to take on a family of assorted dependants? Do you think that any woman would embark on marriage with Peter, of all men, having to worry at the same time about elderly poor relations, a crippled younger brother, a penniless legacy of a ward?
I
would rather wait until I could have Peter to myself; but goodness knows I never knew I would have to wait so long.”
There was silence in the car. Alison was keeping a stiff upper lip. She had no intention of showing any reactions to Lydia’s words, though they had given her so much food for thought that she could hardly take it all in. After a while, she said:
“Where would you like me to drop you?”
Lydia looked surprised then. Of all the things she expected Alison to say, this was the last. She said: “What do you intend to do about the trip?”
“I haven’t decided,” said Alison. “It isn’t a thing to decide all in a moment.
I
have your point of view, of course; but I haven’t Peter’s.”
She knew that this would startle Lydia, and it did. “I should hope you would have the tact—and the decency—not to mention this to Peter.”
“I don’t know why you always expect me to act against my own best interests,” said Alison.
“Because,” said Lydia, in an intense, low voice, “I can’t believe that a girl like you can deliberately want to wreck the chances of somebody else’s happiness. And that is what you are doing. And if you don’t wish to consider my happiness at all, can’t you, for one moment, consider Peter’s? If he does these things from a sense of duty, do you think it is because he
wants
to do them? Do you think he
wants
to take you to Italy? or would he rather be with the friends he has known and loved for years, who speak his language, who are mature as he is mature? When he postpones marriage until certain other problems are off his mind, do you think it is because he
wants
to wait so long? You might, at least, consider Peter.”
“Where,” asked Alison, “would you like me to drop you?”
“Back at the station,” said Lydia. “Please.”
Alison started the car, and drove back to the station. Lydia got out, and turned back with her hand on the handle of the door, as if she were waiting for Alison to say something. But Alison did not speak.
“Well, goodbye,” said Lydia.
“Goodbye,” said Alison.
“I hope you will think over what I have said very well.”
“There is no doubt about that,” said Alison.
She gives nothing away, thought Lydia, and wondered what it was in Alison’s mind to do. She wondered during most of the journey back to town. She wondered at intervals for the next few days; and the anxiety and doubt that Alison caused her to feel, increased considerably her already great dislike of her.
Alison went back to the cottage. She was late for lunch, and Douglas had reached the coffee stage; but he sat at the table while Alison ate her meal, and then had more coffee when she had hers. She was silent and very thoughtful, and at last, he said:
“If it is something
I
can help you with, and if I don’t intrude,
I
should like to help.”
She smiled at him.
“Let me t
hink
about it first,” she said. “It was something in confidence.”
“O.K.,” he said. “But don’t let it trouble you. Come and sit in the garden, and digest that enormous meal.”
They sat in the garden and read the papers. Alison read little, and pretended more; for her thoughts could not be held to the news in the papers. They went back again and again to her conversation with Lydia; or, she amended, to Lydia’s talk to her. She decided that she would take Douglas into her confidence, and get his point of view. So she began by saying:
“Would you be very disappointed if I didn’t go to Italy, Douglas?”
“Of course I would,” he said. “Very disappointed, because I shouldn’t dream of going myself, without my nursemaid.”
“That’s utterly stupid,” she said, for she had not foreseen this possibility.
“Why speak of it, anyway?” asked Douglas, “because you are coming to Italy.”
“No,” she said, “I’m not.”
He looked quickly at her, and she said:
“Listen,
Liebchen,
I’ve got something rather odd to tell you,” and recounted to him the whole of the encounter with Lydia.
“Good Lord,” said Douglas. “How amazing! Lydia must be feeling pretty bad about you, Alison, to go to such lengths.”
“She hates me. The point is that it would spoil the holiday for everybody to have ill feelings of that kind among the numbers.”
“Why on earth doesn’t she have it straight out with Peter?”
“Well, you know, lots of people are simply incapable of having anything ‘straight out’ with anybody; but in Lydia’s case, I can’t help feeling that things haven’t really gone as far between herself and Peter as she likes to pretend.”
“Still, there must be more in it than we think,” said Douglas, “because what is there to prevent
your
going to Peter and telling him what you know, and asking him what he really wants to do?”
“Well, of course, she doesn’t want me to do that; but then, she wouldn’t, because it shows her in a weak position. Even so, I could do it, as you say; and she would be running the risk of it. Well, you can see that I don’t want to go and spoil the party for anybody.”
“Then I don’t go, either.”
“Douglas, you must. It would do you so much good.”
“No fear, not without you. For one thing, I’d be lost without you, in my present stage of progress; for another, it would add to Pete’s responsibilities. I’ll stay here with you. We shall have Guy and George and George’s girl.”
“There’s another thing. We had promised to lend them the cottage for their holiday.”
“Now they’ll have to put up with us in it. They won’t mind. The more the merrier.”
“Of course,” said Alison, “it
will
look more reasonable to Peter if we both don’t want to go; but it does seem a shame to deprive you of Italy.”
“I’ve been before, and, doubtless, I shall go again, so don’t worry too much on that score,” said Douglas.
So that, thought Alison, was settled; and she felt disappointed that she would not be going to Italy after all, with Peter; yet relieved, also, that she was free of what would have been a continual struggle with Lydia.
Several things that Lydia had said, were, Alison knew, meant to hurt. She had meant to wound when she talked of Peter’s charity. Had not Peter’s charity extended far enough, she had asked. True, thought Alison, I do live on Peter’s charity, though I have never thought of it like that, and I am sure Peter has not. She had meant to wound when she talked of a family of assorted dependants; ‘a penniless legacy of a ward.’ But who suggested that I should be his ward, thought Alison. Not Mother, not me. It was Peter’s own idea. Though, of course, even Douglas admitted that he had a strong sense of duty; and I suppose he might consider me merely a duty. This made her feel rather miserable, and she could only console herself a little by reminding herself that she had been useful where Douglas was concerned.
Douglas, however, was now getting better every day. Having started to pick up, he improved at an incredible rate. He now walked without sticks at all. True, it was rather an unsteady walk at times; he said laughingly that the wind of Alison’s passing would blow him over; but it was not as bad as that. He walked well, and was gaining confidence. He talked of starting to work; at least, of going to the office with Peter, and familiarising himself with the work of the firm, and Peter had agreed that, after the Italian trip, he would think about it. So I have until after the Italian trip, thought Alison; and when Douglas begins to work, then I must begin, too. And she wondered what she would be able to find to do in this country. Her languages were her only asset; she would have to find a job that would utilise those.
“Well,” said Douglas, “I suppose, if we have decided not to go, we had better ring up Peter and tell him.”
“Oh, that is much too casual,” said Alison, “just ringing up and saying it on the telephone. I think I should go to town and talk to him.”
“Shall I come with you?”
“No, thank you. You might let the cat out of the bag. As it is, he will think that we want to stay here with our friends, and won’t know how sorry we are to miss Italy
...
And I’m sure we can be just as happy here,” she added, rather unhappily, so that Douglas smiled lovingly on her to cheer her up.
Next day, she rang up the town house, but Priscilla informed her that Peter would not be back until late at night; so she left a message that she would meet him next evening before dinner, and travelled by train after lunch that day. Priscilla had waited tea for her, and they sat talking. It occurred to Alison that nobody gave enough thought to Priscilla. True, she seemed intent on keeping herself out of the way, but it would be as good for her as for anybody else to have a change from the daily routine.
“Why don’t you come down to the cottage, Priscilla?” she asked suddenly. “It’s time you had a holiday, and it’s lovely down there just now.”
“Oh, my dear, who would look after Peter?”
“The servants, of course. If they can’t look after one man between them, and one man who is nearly always out of the house, then it’s high time they could.” Priscilla shook her head.
“They get slack, you know, when there’s nobody here to keep an eye on them.”
“I don’t think they’ll get slack while Peter is coming in and out. You ought to give yourself a holiday, Priscilla. Why not come back with me?”
“It does sound rather nice,” said Priscilla, who was touched because Alison had thought of her; and so they settled it. Later, when tea things had been removed, and Priscilla had gone to her own room, Alison heard Peter come in, and greeted him with a smile as he came into the drawing room.
“Well, there,” he said, smiling down at her, “it’s nice to see you again. You’re looking very well.”
“I ought to, Peter, lying about in the sun most of the time. It’s disgusting really.”
“When we have sun,” he said. “Although I must admit we’ve had enough to cook you a lovely golden brown.”
She laughed. He sat down in an armchair near her, thinking how radiant she was. The golden tan emphasized the whiteness of her teeth, the sparkle in her eye; and her golden hair had a fresh and wind-blown look about it that never came out of a hairdresser’s shop. It knew the air and the sunshine.
“I hope nothing has gone wrong, that you had to come up to see me,” he said.
“Oh no. Everything is all right.”
“Then why?” asked Peter.
“Oh, it was only about the holiday, Peter. Douglas and I think that we would rather stay here in England, if you don’t mind, instead of going to Italy with you and your friends.”
He looked at her sharply.
“But I do mind,” he said. “I very much wanted you to come.”
She smiled at him, a little regretfully.
“I knew you would say that,” she said, thinking that mere politeness demanded some sort of protest. She knew that to suggest that she and Douglas were intruding on to a group of old friends, would bring forth more protests, and was not the right line to adopt. So she said:
“Douglas thinks it might be a little hectic for him, actually. He
is
very much better and stronger, but he doesn’t want to be too energetic
...”
“It would only be the journey that, would make any real demands on him,” interrupted Peter, “and that should be easy enough in the car.”
“Well, in any case, we do want to stay here,” said Alison.
“That is the real reason, isn’t it?” asked Peter. “You don’t want to come to Italy, but would rather stay here?”
“Well, you see,” explained Alison, not wanting to hurt him, “they are all old friends of yours—and older than we are—not that that really matters, of course
...
And you see, Guy and George and a girl called Susan are coming to the cottage at that time for a holiday; and we could all have quite good fun together
...”
She had a feeling that she wasn’t doing this very well, and tailed off into a rather apologetic silence, smiling at him as if she would plead with him to understand.
Peter looked at her for a long time. Are we all that older, he wondered. Do we, to these young people, to Douglas and Alison and Guy and George, seem so much older? No, he thought, that is an excuse; just as the holiday all together is an excuse. She and Douglas want to be alone. They could be alone in Italy a good deal of the time; but they would rather be together here. Perhaps there was already an understanding between them, and he would hear of it in due course; perhaps they were waiting for some specific date
—
Douglas’s return to work or some such thing. He remembered coming upon them on the beach, Douglas lying face down on the sand, Alison’s brown fingertips caressing his back. He looked at Alison, so young, so frank, so pretty. He was definitely sorry that they were not coming to Italy.