Elizabeth went down and closed the gates. She got into the Lotus, driving first to Queens Waterford to discuss with Lady Larkin-Smith the arrangements for the country club dance, next to Pomfret to receive from Mrs Rogers the proceeds from the Cancer Relief collection, lastly to the hairdresser’s in Kingsmarkham. She kept the windows of the car wide open, the top down, and her primrose pale hair streamed out behind her as she drove, like the thistledown hair of a young girl.
At half past one Mrs Cantrip served luncheon in the dining room. Katje’s status gave her the right to eat en famille, but in the absence of Quentin Nightingale she said little. The woman and the girl ate their asparagus, their ham and their blackberry shortcake, in a silence which Elizabeth occasionally broke to comment with pleasure on the food. When they had finished Katje said she would have preferred chipolata pudding.
‘You must teach Mrs Cantrip to make it.’
‘Perhaps I am teaching her this afternoon,’ said Katje, who had difficulties with her present tense.
‘What a good idea!’
‘When you are tasting it perhaps you never wish blackberries again.’ Katje poked about in her mouth, retrieving seeds from between her teeth.
‘We shall have to see. I’m going up for my rest now. If anyone calls or telephones, remember, I’m not to be disturbed.’
‘I am remembering,’ said Katje.
‘Were you thinking of going out tonight?’
‘I meet a boy in Kingsmarkharn and maybe we go to the movies.’
‘Cinema or pictures, Katje,’ said Elizabeth gently. ‘You must only say movies when you’re in the United States. You can take one of the cars if you like but I’d rather you didn’t take the Lotus. Your mother wouldn’t like to think of you driving a fast sports car.’
‘I am taking the Mini, please?’
‘That’s right.’
Katje cleared the table and put the crockery in.the dish washer with the glass and the plates from Denys Villiers’ luncheon tray.
‘Now I am teaching you to make chipolata pudding,’ she announced to Mrs Cantrip, who had been taking ten minutes off with a cup of tea and the Daily Sketch.
‘And what might that be when it’s at home? You know Madam never has no sausages in this house.’
‘Is not sausages. Is cream and jelly and fruit. We have cream, yes? We have eggs? Come on now, Mrs Cantrip, dear.’
‘There’s no peace for the wicked and that’s a fact,’said Mrs Cantrip, heaving herself out of her rocking chair. ‘Though what’s wrong with a good English dessert I never shall know. Mr Villiers ate up every scrap of his.
Mind you, with all that book-writing he gets a hearty appetite.’
Katje fetched eggs and cream from the refrigerator, ‘Often I am asking myself,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘why he is not working in his own home.
When he has a wife too, is odd, very funny.’
‘And might I ask what it’s got to do with you, Catcher? The fact is Mr Villiers has always worked up there. It must be fourteen or fifteen years since Mr Nightingale had the Old House done up for Mr Villiers to work in. It’s quiet, see? And Mr Nightingale’s got a very soft spot for Mr Villiers.’
‘A soft spot?’
‘I don’t know, these foreigners! I mean he likes him, lie’s fond of him. I reckon he’s proud of having an author in the family. Switch the beater on, then.’
Tipping the cream into a bowl, Katjc said, ‘Mrs Nightingale is not liking him at all. Every day in the holidays he is working up there and never, not once, Mrs Nightingale is going to see him. Is funny not to like her own brother.’
‘Maybe he’s not easy to like,’ said Mrs Cantrip. ‘You can depend on it, if there’s a quarrel-and I’m not saying there is, mind-it’s not Madam’s fault. He’s got a very funny manner with him, has Mr Villiers. A nasty temper, like sarcastic. Between you and me, Catcher, I wouldn’t be too happy if I had a boy at that school where he teaches. Now switch that thing off or the crearn’ll all be turned to butter.’
Elizabeth didn’t appear for tea.
The sky was cloudless, like a Mediterranean sky, and the sun, at five, as hot as ever. Out in the grounds Will Palmer lit a bonfire down by the gate which led on to the Kingsmarkham road, fouling the warm, scented air with acrid smoke. He fed it with grass mowings and helped it occasionally with a drop of paraffin. Sweating and grumbling, Sean pushed the motor mower over the terraced lawns.
Mrs Cantrip laid the dining table and left a cold dinner on the trolley.
Fair weather or foul, she always wore a hat when she went outside. She put it on now and went home to her cottage at the other end of the village.
In the Old House Denys Villiers typed three more sentences on Wordsworth and the emergence of nature as artistic inspiration, and then he too went home. He drove slowly and cautiously to his bungalow in Clusterwell, to be followed half an hour later by Katje Doorn, revving up the Mini and making it roar and squeal its way through the villages to Kingsmarkham.
Elizabeth lay on her bed with witch-hazel pads on her eyes, conserving her beauty. When she heard the Jaguar come in she began to dress for dinner.
She wore a pale green caftan with crystal embroidery at the neck and wrists.
‘How’s my beautiful wife?’
‘I’m fine, darling. I lad a good day?’
‘Not so bad. London’s like a hothouse. Can I get you a drink?’
‘Just a small tomato juice,’ said Elizabeth. Quentin poured it for her and for himself a double whisky. ‘Thank you, darling. It is hot, isn’t it?’
‘Not so hot as in London.’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘Not nearly so hot,’ said Quentin firmly. He smiled; she smiled. Silence fell.
Quentin broke it. ‘Katje not about?’
‘She’s taken the Mini into Kingsmarkham, darling.’
‘All on our own then, are we? No one coming in for cocktails?’
‘Not tonight. As you say, we’re all on our own.’
Quentin sighed and smiled. ‘Makes a pleasant change, really,’ he said, ‘to be on our own.’
Elizabeth made no reply. This time the silence was intense and of longer duration. Quentin stood by the window and looked at the garden.
‘We may as well have dinner,’ said Elizabeth at last.
In the dining room he opened a bottle of Pouilly Fuissé. Elizabeth took only one glass.
‘Turning cooler at last,’ said Quentin during the vichysoisse. ‘I suppose the nights will soon be drawing in.’
‘I suppose they will.’
‘Yes, no matter how hot it is at this time of the year, you always feel that faint nip in the air.’ Elizabeth ate her cold chicken in silence.
‘But it’s been a good summer on the whole,’Quentin said desperately.
‘On the whole.’
Presently they returned to the drawing room.
‘What time is it?’ asked Quentin from the french windows.
‘Just on eight.’
‘Really? I should have said it was much later.’ He went out on to the terrace to look at his chrysanthemums. Elizabeth looked at Queen magazine, turning the pages indifferently, Quentin came back and sat looking at her. Then he said, ‘I wonder if Denys and Georgina will look in?’
‘I shouldn’t think so.’
‘I think I’ll give Denys a ring and see if they’ll come over for a hand of bridge. What do you think?’
‘If you’d like it, darling.’
‘No, no, it’s up to you.’
‘I really don’t mind one way or the other, darling.’
‘Well, I’ll just give him a ring, then,’ said Quentin, expelling pent-up breath in a long sigh.
The Villiers arrived and they played bridge till ten.
‘We mustn’t be too late, Georgina,’ said Villiers, looking at his watch. ‘I’ve got a couple of hours’ work to put in at the school library before I go to bed.’