Isabelle ignored her. "You really ought to make an effort with the salad, dear," she persisted. "Cook will be frightfully hurt if you don't even make an effort."
Catriona's mother looked sideways at her supper tray. Catriona said, "You don't have to eat it if you don't want to, Mother. I don't think ham salad is the best antidote to grief, anyway."
Catriona's mother continued to stare at the supper tray, and two large tears rolled out from under her dark glasses and down her cheeks. She was thinking, probably, as Catriona was thinking, that this was the first supper she was having to eat without her husband. Her first supper alone, and all of those lonely suppers ahead of her, for the rest of her life. She could never conceive of marrying anyone else. What other man was so much a part of the fabric and the firmament of Formby; what other man was big enough to build the world's largest passenger liner and still care for everything that his wife wished for?
"I'll send Gwen for the tray, then," said Isabelle.
Catriona said clearly, "No, Aunt Isabelle. Please I'd really appreciate it if you took the tray away now."
Isabelle hesitated by the door. Then fussily she came across and picked up the tray. "I hope you don't think that you'll be running things around here," she said, in a voice as sharp as a lemon-drop. "Not after your scarlet goings-on. Actors and the like. I've heard all about it, don't you worry."
"I'm not worried," Catriona told her levelly.
"Not even ashamed, I shouldn't wonder," said Isabella.
"Izzy," put in Catriona's mother wanly. "I do wish you wouldn't. Not now."
"Well, I'm sorry, I'm sure, but even at the worst of times some things have to be said, don't they?" Isabella retorted. "She wasn't what you'd call a model daughter, was she? Never did a solitary thing that Stanley wanted. But now he's been taken, she's around the honeypot soon enough, isn't she, the busy little bee?"
Catriona pressed her hands together as if she were praying, and lowered her head. She could never get to grips with Isabella's bitterness: it was like a wriggling sour-tempered hedgehog that hated its life, but refused to be helped. The whole family knew why Isabelle was so bitter, of course; and Isabelle knew they knew. But she couldn't help herself. When she was seventeen, she had been far prettier than Catriona's mother, and she had always had dozens of boyfriends. She had eloped with Tony, a dashing young commercial traveller who had dazzled her into believing that he was going to make a million out of selling Brooke's Monkey Brand soap throughout the northwest of England. But now Tony was a shop-assistant in Liverpool, selling ready-made gents' suits and celluloid collars, and Isabelle was having to make do on 6 pounds seven and nine a week; while Catriona's mother, who had gradually developed during her twenties into a young Victorian woman of ravishing looks, had at last married Stanley Keys, the self-made shipping magnate, after meeting him at a teatime concert in Formby, and was now the mistress of five large houses, seven motorcars, and a fleet of passenger liners that before the War had been the acknowledged to be the most gracious ships afloat. Of course, Catriona's mother had always helped Isabelle out with occasional gifts of money. The Crossley motorcar had been a birthday present. But Isabelle's bitterness had not been softened by her inability to say no. Isabelle had her pride, naturally, but not that much pride.
"I'm just pleased that Catriona is here," her mother told Isabelle in a gentle voice. "This is a time when I'm going to need all of my family around me, without any prejudice or favour shown to anyone. And if you do think of poor Stanley's fortune as a honeypot, well, just remember that Stanley never denied any of his relatives or friends any of the honey. He was a Christian: a man who believed that everybody had a right to a fair share of luxury, if there was any luxury ever to be had."
Isabelle gave a petulant shrug. "I'd better instruct cook about dinner tonight, if Mr Deacon's coming. And I suppose Mr Fearson will want to stay, too."
"I would like it if he were to," said Catriona's mother.
I just hope we have enough cutlets to go around," Isabelle replied, as if someone had already plucked her dinner off the end of her fork.
When she was gone, Catriona took her mother's hand again and stroked it.
"I'm sorry," said Catriona's mother.
"There's no need to be," Catriona told her. "I think I'm used to Aunt Isabelle after all these years."
"It's not her fault, really," said Catriona's mother. "I can understand how she feels. Fate is very unjust sometimes, or at least it appears to be. She doesn't seem to realise that I would gladly give up everything—the house, the shipping line—just for one more day with Stanley. Just for one more minute. We were very happy, you know. Very much in love."
Catriona smiled.
"Are you going to be staying long?" asked her mother. "You don't have to rush back to London straight away?"
"I'll stay for as long as you need me."
"But there's nobody waiting for you, is there? What about that actor boy, Terence?"
"Nigel."
"Oh, yes. Nigel. Won't he be waiting for you?"
Catriona stood up, and walked across to the French windows. It was dark outside now, and she could see her own reflection in the glass, like a ghostly waif standing outside in the garden without even the courage to knock.
"I think I've left Nigel."
"For good?"
"I think so."
Her mother turned around in her chair and looked at her sympathetically. She felt sorry for Catriona, but of course it was also good news. Catriona's waywardness with boys had been the cause of more family dissention than almost anything else, and the Yorkshire relatives in particular had been so scandalised that they had sent Catriona no birthday presents since she was fifteen. The day that her father had discovered that Catriona was playing around in bed with Monsieur Nasillard, her young French tutor, he had furiously sent her off to live with his spinster sister in Morecambe. Every visit of Catriona's to Formby after that had been short, sharp, and attended by hellish arguments. Stanley Keys had loved his daughter too much to disinherit her, or punish her too severely or for too long: but he had come to believe at last that she was a girl with a will and a passion of her own, and when she was eighteen he had given her enough money to go to London, and stay with one of his retired liner captains and his wife, knowing quite well that she would soon find her own friends and lovers, and her own place to live.
He may never have really known how much Catriona had adored him, nor how much she had wanted him simply to say that she could continue to stay at home, and live with the family in a state of truce, even if they couldn't actually live together in accord. It probably wouldn't have worked, anyway. He had probably done the right thing, letting her have her head. But if only he had asked. It would have meant that at least one of her parents understood that she wasn't really the confident, casual, promiscuous girl she appeared to be.
At least one of her parents would have known that she needed more love and encouragement than most children; that her prettiness and her brashness were masks behind which she hid a baffling uncertainty a and an almost addictive need for reassurance. But she realised now that expecting her father to penetrate her personality as deeply as that had been too much. He had been a rich, busy man, and he had been preoccupied with the financing and the building of the world's largest and most luxurious ocean passenger liner, the Arcadia. Apart from loving her, plainly and straightforwardly, what else could he have found the time to do? She thought it was strange that she could not remember what his face had actually looked like. Did people vanish from memory so quickly, when they died? Yesterday he had been alive. He had made telephone calls and eaten a mutton pie. Today, he might just as well never have existed.