Stubborn, stubborn, stubborn, she thought. A whole life of being stubborn, and what for? To die, as quick as a snuffed-out candle, at the age of fifty-three. For some reason, she thought of her father carving the Sunday joint; she could almost smell the roast lamb, and picture his square-fingered hands holding the bone-handled carving knife; and the vision coaxed up more tears.
"Would you like a drink, old girl?" asked Nigel anxiously. "Cup of coffee? Brandy, maybe? I must say you look like something out of Tutankhamen's tomb."
"Make me a ... gin-and-bitters," she said. She held her pink dressing-gown around herself as if she were feeling cold. "Bring it upstairs. I'll have to pack. There's a darling."
Nigel looked over her shoulder at Mr. Fearson and Mr. Thurrock, his face questioning. Mr. Fearson shrugged. It was one of those things. Nothing that anybody could do about it. Sorry, like, but there you are. Catriona left the cocktail room and the three men heard the clack-clack of her high-heeled slippers going up the stairs.
"Well," said Nigel, feeling deflated. "Can I get you gentlemen anything?"
"Bit early for me, thanks," said Mr. Thurrock, stolidly.
Nigel went to the black and silver cocktail bar, found a bottle of gin with a piddling measure left in the bottom, and turned it upside down into a martini glass.
"Party last night?" asked Mr. Fearson, nodding at the untidy room.
"What?" said Nigel. "Oh, no, not really. Just a few friends. You know the kind of thing. Few drinks."
Mr. Thurrock said, "Bit of a high time you have down here in London, then, by and large?"
Nigel shook angostura into Catriona's drink, and stirred it with a glass swizzle stick.
"You could say so. Cat enjoys it. I mean Miss Keys."
He disappeared behind the bar, clinking bottles in his search for one whisky. "I suppose you'll have to postpone the Arcadia's maiden voyage, won't you? Next week, wasn't it?"
"Tuesday she sails," nodded Mr. Fearson.
Nigel reappeared, holding up a bottle of Crawford's. "And she still will?"
Mr. Fearson made a face. "I think Mr. Keys would have wanted her to. That's the way I look at it. Mind you, I reckon it's all up to Mrs. Keys now, whether she sails or not. You have to respect a widow's wishes."
"Bit ominous, though, isn't it?" Nigel said, in a bright voice. "The largest passenger liner since the Titanic, and the owner pops off the week before the first voyage? Bit ominous, I'd say."
"Well, this is your own house, sir," said Mr. Fearson, "and in your own house, I suppose you're entitled to say whatever comes into your head."
Nigel stared at him, his face as sharp as an ice-pick. He looked as if he didn't know whether to stamp his foot or demand that Mr. Fearson should leave the house at once, or blow up in a shower of smoke and confetti. As it was, he picked up the drinks from the bar, and snapped, "I see!"
Mr. Fearson said, "You'll ask Miss Keys to make haste, won't you, sir?"
"I'll see to it that she doesn't keep you waiting too much longer than necessary," Nigel retorted.
"Obliged, sir," replied Mr. Fearson, with a smile.
Upstairs, in the brilliantly sunny bedroom, Nigel banged the drinks down on the glass-topped dressing-table and said, "Bit damned Thomas Hardy, your Mr. Fearson."
Catriona had opened her buffalo-hide suitcase on the bed, and was folding up her white tennis skin. She was reflected in the semicircular mirror which stood at the bead of the bed, and reflected again in the mirror on top of the dressing-table, so that the whole bedroom appeared to be peopled with Catrionas in different stages of packing.
Nigel stood with his ankles crossed, feeling peevish.
"I don't suppose you know when you might be back?" he asked her.
She shook her head.
"Well, funerals don't take that long, do they?" he said. "I mean, after a chap's dead, you can't keep a chap above ground for too long, can you?"
"Nigel," she warned him. He recognised the tone of her voice and raised his hand, fingers spread, like an exasperated Italian tenor. Mama mia. Before Catriona had come into his life, he had never even known that anything he said was in dubious taste. His lack of sensitivity had been part of his charm. There was no doubt about it, she had given him some wonderful times. She had even enabled him to glimpse ecstasy. But she had definitely provincialised him. His friend Tommy Tompkins had said to him only two or three days ago, after he had been talking about hare coursing, or showing respect for one's parents, or some such subject, "That's a frightfully Formby thing to say."
Yet, how frustrating it all was. She was so beautiful.
"You'll give me a tinkle when you arrive," he said.
She looked up. "I don't know. I may. Do you really want me to?"
He pouted at himself in the dressing-table mirror. "Do what you like," he said, more to his reflected face than to her.
She paused in her packing. Then she came across to him, and took his hands in hers, and kissed him on the cheek, and then on the mouth, very precisely but also very tenderly.
"You think I'm going for good, don't you?" she said, softly.
He swivelled his eyes around, partly because he was clowning and partly because he was trying to stop himself from crying. "The thought had actually crossed a chap's mind."
"Don't be sad," she insisted. "That was why I fell for you when I first met you, because you looked like the kind of man who would never be sad."
"I see," he said. "Life and soul, that kind of thing."
"That's right. And you're famous. What more could a girl want?"
"Famous, hah!" he said, scornfully. "Two small parts in two medium-to-average West End musicals, and I'm famous! My dear girl, the name of Nigel Myers might twinkle and shine in the saloon bar of the Queen's Elm, but scarcely anywhere else. I shouldn't think a single soul in Ongar has ever heard of me."
Catriona stroked his unshaven cheek, prickled with blond. "I've never heard you so modest," she said. "You're not trying to tell me something, are you? Nigel?"
"Why should I be?"
She lowered her hand. Her two reflections lowered their hands.
Nigel said, "I could be trying to ask you to come back, as quickly as you possibly can. As soon as this beastly Formby business is all over."
"I'll have to make sure my mother is taken care of."
Nigel sighed. "Yes, of course you will."
"And then there'll be the question of probate."
"Of course. Mother and probate and all the rest of the tackle that goes with having a family. When should I expect you? Nineteen twenty-nine?"
"Nigel," she chided him, "we've had such fun together."
"Now I know you're not coming back."
She turned away, back towards the bed, where her half-packed case him open. She had always known, in a strangely lucid way, that if ever she left Nigel, she would never be able to return to him. Not because she didn't actually love him: she did. He was fast and funny and he knew everybody in London who was worth knowing. He had a red Gwynne eight-horsepower runabout with a back end like a small boat, and she would remember their harum-scarum drives through the summer villages of Surrey for as long as she lived. But she was twenty-one now, and the family into which she had been born, for all of her rebellion against it, was calling her back. You can't have the wind in your hair forever. You can't grow old amongst actors.
"I promise you, Nigel, I will let you know how I'm getting on," the said. "I do promise you that."
Nigel looked at her steadily, and then pulled a wry sort of expression—a little too theatrical, but easier than having to show her how he really felt. "Well, old girl, you don't have to make me any promises, you know. Just one: that you'll make sure you're always happy, and that you don't go chaining yourself for life to some dunce who doesn't appreciate what a rare treasure you are."