“How old is she?”
“She’s three years younger than I am.”
“But I don’t know how old you are.”
“I’m twenty-eight.”
“Then-she’s twenty-five?”
He burst out laughing.
“Bright girl! How do you do it? Come along-she’s got the kettle on.”
Mollified by the discovery that Elizabeth was well advanced towards middle age, Fancy followed him. She was ready for a cup of tea all right. Having your head in one of those drying machines made you ever so thirsty. She was still farther reassured at the sight of Elizabeth and the friendly shabby room. Miss Moore might be an old friend and all that, but no one could call her a beauty, and she wasn’t a bit smart. That skirt she had on-well, it wasn’t this year’s cut, nor last year’s neither. And the jumper, right high up to the neck and down to the wrists, not a bit smart. Yet almost at once she began to have a feeling that her own scarlet suit was a bit too daring. The feeling went on getting stronger until she could have burst into tears. She couldn’t say Miss Moore wasn’t pleasant, or that she and Carr did anything to make her feel like a stranger, but there it was, that’s what she felt like. They weren’t her sort. That was nonsense-she was as good as anyone, and much prettier and smarter than Elizabeth Moore. Silly to feel the way she did. Mum would say not to go fancying things. And then all of a sudden the feeling went and she was talking to Elizabeth about Mum and Dad, and how she’d got her first job-all that sort of thing, quite nice and comfortable.
When Elizabeth took her upstairs before she left, Fancy stood in front of the fine Queen Anne mirror and said,
“This is an old house, isn’t it?”
She could see Elizabeth reflected in the mirror-too tall, too thin, but something elegant about her, something that fitted in with the house and the furniture.
Elizabeth said, “Yes, it’s very old-seventeenth century. The bathroom used to be a powder-cabinet. All horribly inconvenient of course, but quite good for business.”
Fancy took out her powder-puff and began to touch up a flawless complexion.
“I like new things,” she said. “I don’t know why people bother about old ones. I’d like to have a silver bed, and a suite of that grey furniture, and everything else blue.”
Elizabeth smiled.
“It would be just right for you, wouldn’t it?”
Fancy pursed up her mouth and applied lipstick with an expert touch. She said, “M-” Then, without turning round,
“You’ve known Carr a long time, haven’t you?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Do you think he’d be difficult to live with? I mean, he gets these moods, doesn’t he? Did he always use to get them?”
She could see in the glass that Elizabeth had moved. She couldn’t see her face any longer. Her voice came a little slower.
“I haven’t seen him for a long time. He’s been away, you know.”
“Did you know the girl he married?”
“I saw her once. She was very pretty.”
“I’m like her, aren’t I? I didn’t exactly know her, but--”
“You are a little like her.”
“Same type.”
“Yes.”
Fancy put away her powder-puff and lipstick, pulled at the zipper of her scarlet bag. She said in an odd tone,
“I suppose that’s why-” She turned abruptly. “A girl wouldn’t want to be just a stand-in for somebody else-would she?”
“No.”
“I mean, I wouldn’t want to be jealous about her, or anything like that. I knew a girl that married a widower, and she wouldn’t set foot in the house till he’d cleared out all the pictures of his first wife, and I didn’t think that was right, not with her children there. I told Mum about it, and she said, ‘A man that would forget his first wife would forget you-don’t you make any mistake about that.’ That’s what Mum said, and I wouldn’t be like that, but I wouldn’t want to marry a man if I was going to be the photograph, if you see what I mean.”
“I see exactly what you mean.”
Fancy heaved a sigh.
“He’s ever so goodlooking, isn’t he? But when it comes to living with someone-well, it might be a case of handsome is as handsome does. I mean, you’ve got to think before you go into anything, don’t you?” She gave a little quick laugh. “I don’t know what you’ll think of me, talking like this. You’re sort of easy to talk to, I don’t know why. Well, I suppose we’d better be going.”
On the way home she said,
“She isn’t a bit like I thought she was going to be. She’s sort of nice.”
Carr’s mouth twisted.
“Yes-she’s sort of nice.”
He said it as if he was laughing at her, but there wasn’t anything to laugh at. Carr was funny that way. You did your best to brighten him up and make a joke or two, and you might as well have done it to a brick wall. And then all of a sudden he’d laugh when there wasn’t anything to laugh at. However, so long as he did laugh-
She pursued the theme of Elizabeth Moore.
“Pity she hasn’t got married, isn’t it? I’d hate not to be married by the time I was twenty-five.”
He laughed outright this time-and what was there funny about that?
“Well, my sweet, you’ve got quite a long way to go, haven’t you? What is it-another five years?”
“Six. And I don’t know what there is to laugh about! A girl oughtn’t to leave it too late-Mum says so. She says you get set in your ways, and it’s no good when you’re married, because the man’ll want things his way. I don’t mean to say she’d think he ought to be given in to all along the line, but where there are two, it stands to reason there’s got to be a bit of give and take, and when the children come along- well, there’s a good deal more giving than taking, if you know what I mean. That’s what Mum says, and she brought up six of us, so she ought to know.”
Carr had stopped laughing. He had never felt less in love with Fancy, and he had never liked her half so well. He said,
“Your mother’s a very sensible woman-I’d like to meet her. And I shouldn’t wonder if you didn’t make someone quite a good wife some day, my sweet.”
“But not you?”
She didn’t know what took the words off the tip of her tongue, but there they were-she’d said them right out. And he was looking at her with a funny little smile in his eyes and saying,
“No, I don’t think so.”
Her lovely rose tints deepened. The big blue eyes looked honestly back at him.
“I know what you mean. We both thought perhaps it would do, but it won’t. I knew that as soon as I saw you with that Elizabeth girl. You’ve been fond of her-haven’t you?”
His look went bleak.
“A long time ago.”
“I’d say you’d been very fond of her-I’d say you were pretty fond of her still. You seem to sort of fit in together, if you know what I mean. Were you engaged?”
He used the same words again.
“A long time ago.”
They walked on in silence. Fancy thought, “We can’t go the best part of two and a half miles and never talk. I should scream, and he’d think I’d gone batty. It’s so quiet in these country lanes-you can pretty well hear yourself think.” She spoke to break the silence.
“She’s fond of you too-I could tell that.”
He was frowning, but he wasn’t angry, because he put his hand on her shoulder and patted it.
“You can always start a marriage agency, if you don’t get off yourself. And now we’ll stop talking about me, and you can tell me all about Mum and the other five of you.”
CHAPTER 6
Catherine Welby looked round at her sitting-room and thought how pretty it was. Some of the things were shabby, but they were all good, because they had come from Melling House. The little Queen Anne writing-table would fetch a couple of hundred pounds any time she liked to ask for it.