Catriona picked up a pale blue angora cardigan and folded the sleeves over. She couldn't say anything at all, not without crying; and just now she didn't want to cry, not in front of Nigel. She wanted him to think that she had left him bravely, and cheerfully, and that they could still be friends. But when she thought of the way they had run headlong down Box Hill on an August afternoon, and of beer and sandwiches in smoky country pubs, it was difficult not to feel so sad and nostalgic that the tears ran down her cheeks anyway.
"You'd better go, my love," said Nigel. "I don't want to make things worse for you than they are already."
She nodded, and tied up the last of her lipsticks and her jars of rouge in her washbag.
"I'll bring the case down," Nigel told her.
By now, Mr. Fearson and Mr. Thurrock had moved into the hallway, and Mr. Fearson had his hand on the door-handle. Outside in the sunshine a taxi-cab was waiting, its driver reading a copy of the Daily Mirror. Mr. Fearson took Catriona's arm as she came down the stairs, and led her out into Royal Hospital Road. Mr. Thurrock mutely offered to take the suitcase from Nigel, but Nigel insisted on stowing it on to the taxi's luggage platform himself.
"You'll take care then, old thing," said Nigel, as the cabbie opened the door, and Catriona lowered her head to climb in.
"You too," she whispered, and then got inside, sitting in the shadow of the far corner. Nigel had an unusual view of the broad shiny seat of Mr. Fearson's black trousers as he hefted himself in after her; and Mr. Thurrock, who was last, raised his hat to Nigel with all the morbid impudence of an undertaker.
"We're indebted, you know," he said.
Nigel stood on the pavement in his flashy dressing-gown as the taxi pulled away from the curb and chugged off in the direction of Sloane Street. The tiny oval window in the back of the taxi's hood was tinted dark brown, and so he saw nothing of Catriona as she drove out of his life, not even the brim of her hat. A Chelsea pensioner in his bright scarlet military tunic came across the road to where a standing, and watched the disappearing taxi with equal interest.
"They a not worth it, you know," he remarked, in a phlegmy voice, as the cab turned the corner.
Nigel looked at him. "What aren't?"
"Women," said the pensioner. "They say they're going to wait for you, but they never do. Women and their promises! Mine didn't wait."
Nigel said, "Oh, I'm sorry," and then went back into the house.
TWO
Her mother was resting in the day room when Catriona arrived home. She was propped up in a white-painted basketwork chair with far too many cushions, and she was wearing a tiny and menacing pair sunglasses, presumably to hide her swollen eyes. She had just finished a mug of Home & Colonial Beef Tea, but she hadn't been able to touch the ham salad that cook had prepared for her.
The day room had always been her mother's room; it was a small pretty parlour with French windows which gave out on to a flight of stone steps, and on to that part of the garden which her father had always liked to call the nattery—where Mother's friends would gather on summer afternoons to natter. Unlike almost every other room in the house, there were no etchings or oil paintings of ships in the day room, just pink flowery wallpaper and gilded mirrors. In the corner stood an unfinished embroidery of Balmoral Castle.
"You came, darling," Catriona's mother cried tearfully, lifting her hands. "Oh, my dear Catriona, they brought you back."
Catriona crossed the room and knelt beside her mother's chair. They embraced each other, tightly and awkwardly. Catriona stroked her mother's auburn-tinted hair, and scratched her hand on one of her mother's diamond combs. Her mother wept and trembled in a tussle of frustration and grief, and Catriona knew that there was nothing she could say or do to help her, not now, and maybe not ever. Her father had been the firm ground on which her mother had walked, and the vault of heaven above her head. His death had been more than the loss of a husband: it had been the sudden and utter vanishing of every recognisable landmark in her life. It was as if she had been abruptly blinded as she was walking across an unfamiliar pasture.
"I was afraid you weren't going to cuh-uh-ome," sobbed her mother. She had to take off her dark spectacles to dab at her eyes with the corner of her handkerchief. "After what happened last time, well, I just didn't know."
"Mother, of course I came," Catriona soothed her. She took her hand and squeezed it twice. Her mother's hands were knobbly with diamond and sapphire rings—ugly Victorian rings that were probably worth thousands and thousands of pounds. She always wore them, and even today she hadn't forgotten to put them on. But her dress was plain and unfamiliar and black, with a jet brooch at her neck, and double pleats of black lace over the bust, and she wore black shoes and black stockings. Her mother had always looked like Catriona expected she would look in twenty years' time, and somehow the black dress reinforced that impression. A black and white photograph from tomorrow.
"Is Isabelle here?" asked Catriona. "I saw the Crossley parked outside."
"Mr. Fearson sent her a telegraph very first thing," said her mother. "She's having a light supper now, with Mrs Brackenthorpe. She's been wonderful, of course. Everybody's been wonderful. But your poor father, my darling. It was such a shock. And so young, and so vigorous."
"Hush, mother," said Catriona, but her mother didn't seem to hear her.
"He went to church as regularly as anyone," she said. "Every Sunday, Holy Communion and Evensong, both. So how could the Lord have taken him so young? Only fifty-three! His life only two-thirds lived! And to think of the sinners and the ruffians who live to a ripe old age, and have never once seen the inside of a chapel! That's what I've been asking myself today. How could the Lord have taken so obedient a servant so young?"
Catriona stood up, and brushed her skin straight. "Mother," she said, "you really must try to rest. It's no good thinking about why Father died. You have to start thinking about helping yourself now. That's the way he would have wished it, wouldn't he?"
Her mother let out a wretched sob, her lips as wet as a child's. How do I know what he would have wanted? He never told me what he wanted. He was just there."
"Mother, rest. I'll see if Isabella can get something to help you sleep."
"Sleep? How can I sleep? The last time I slept, I woke up to find that I'd lost the only person I've ever cared about. I never want to sleep again."
"Mother," said Catriona, and bent forward to hug her mother very close to her. "I do love you, Mother."
At that very moment the door opened and Isabelle came in with a piece of blackberry and apple pie on a plate. When she saw the uneaten salad and Catriona, she said, "Oh," in an affronted tone, as if all of her painstaking nursing was being thrown back in her face. Isabelle was her mother's younger sister, a narrower, thinner, sourer version of her mother, with skimpier hair, a sharper nose, smaller breasts, and bonier ankles; Catriona's father always used to say that when Isabelle had been younger, she had been "quite a dazzler". But care and jealousy had prematurely worn her out, while Catriona's mother, by contrast, had grown smooth-faced and placid.
"You're going to have to eat something sometime, you know, dear," said Isabelle. "And cook did make a special effort to give you something light and tasty. Hallo, Catriona. I'm surprised to see you back so prompt."
"My father's dead," said Catriona, simply, standing up straight.