“Or you can.”
“Darling, why should I? I’m liking it most awfully. No, if you want it done you’ll have to do it yourself. I didn’t give you a ring, did I?”
She shook her head.
“No.”
“Meanness-or lack of time? When did we actually get engaged?”
“The day we sailed.”
“How inartistic-no time for anything! But it lets me out on the score of being mean. It’s a pity you haven’t got a ring though, because it would be so easy for you to push it across the table and say, ‘All is over between us’, wouldn’t it?”
Laughter won the day.
“I can still say, ‘All is over between us’.”
“But you won’t, will you-not before we’ve had coffee? It would cast such a blight. Look here, I’ve got a splendid idea. We’ll go back to town and get you a ring, and then you can break it off with the proper trimmings. How’s that?”
“Perfectly mad,” said Meade.
“ ‘Dulce est desipere in loco.’ Which means, broadly speaking, ‘You’ve got to have some fun sometimes.’ Come along, we’ll skip the coffee-it’s certain to be foul. What sort of ring shall we have-emerald, sapphire, diamond, ruby? What’s your fancy?”
Meade was shaken with that queer laughter.
“Oh, Giles, you are a fool!” she said.
CHAPTER 9
A number of things happened that afternoon. None of them appeared at the time to have any special significance, yet each was to take its place in a certain dreadful pattern. It was like the weaving of threads in a tapestry picture-light for gay and dark for grave, red for blood and black for the shadow which was to fall across Vandeleur House and everyone in it. No thread had any value taken singly, but all together they wove the picture.
Mrs. Underwood, packing parcels under Miss Middleton’s gimlet eye, was having it brought home to her that she couldn’t let her thoughts stray to Carola Roland without being pulled up.
“Oh no, Mrs. Underwood, I’m afraid that won’t do. That knot will slip.”
Insufferable woman. She hoped Meade would be properly grateful, and that she was making good use of her time with Giles Armitage-such a good-looking man-and an excellent match. If only nothing went wrong. That wretched letter-“I don’t see how I can find the money without Godfrey knowing. I haven’t got any jewellery worth two-pence… Miss Silver-I can’t afford her either. Besides, what could she do? I must do something. Suppose they don’t wait-suppose they tell Godfrey. They mustn’t-I must do something. If that was my letter in Carola Roland’s bag… Perhaps it wasn’t-there’s a lot of that sort of paper about-”
“Really, Mrs. Underwood, this won’t do at all…”
Giles and Meade, with the car run off the road on to a common where the late gorse bloomed.
“Meade-darling!”
“Giles, you mustn’t!”
“Why mustn’t I? I love you. Have you forgotten that?”
“It’s you who have forgotten.”
Arms very close about her, lips very near her own.
“Not really-not with anything that matters. It’s only my stupid head that’s had a crack. Everything else remembers you. Oh, Meade, don’t you know I’ve got you under my skin…?”
Miss Garside, grey and restrained, picking up the ring which a stout Jewish gentleman in spectacles had just pushed across the counter in her direction. It was the sort of push which is almost a flick. It carried contempt. She said,
“But it was insured for a hundred pounds.”
The Jewish gentleman shrugged.
“That is not my business. The stone is paste.”
“You are sure?” For a moment horrified incredulity pierced the restraint.
The Jewish gentleman shrugged again.
“Take it anywhere you like, and they will tell you the same.”
Mrs. Willard, on the couch in No. 6, weeping slow, agonised tears, her face buried in a frilled cushion. The couch was part of the suite which Alfred and she had bought when they were saving up to get married. The suite was here-new covers just before the war-but Alfred… Crunched up in a tear-soaked hand was the note she had found in the pocket of the coat she had been going to take down to the cleaners. Not such a very damning note, but more than enough for poor Mrs. Willard who had had no practice in looking the other way. Alfred might be fidgetty and Alfred might be cross; he might reprove her unpunctuality, her untidiness, her easy-going lack of method; he might omit to praise her cooking; but that he should be unfaithful, that he should go straying after blonde persons from the floor above was unbelievable.
But she was believing it. She lifted a disfigured face, straightened the moist note out, and read it again:
“All right, Willie darling, lunch at one as usual. Carola.”
It was the “as usual” which ran the sharpest needle into Mrs. Willard’s lacerated heart. And how dared she call him Willie? A chit of a girl half his age…!
Carola Roland, smiling sweetly at a little man with thin greying hair, very neat, very dapper, the eyes behind an old-fashioned pince-nez gazing at her rather after the fashion of a fish seen through the glass of an aquarium. Mr. Willard would have been much horrified if anyone had been so rude as to tell him that he was goggling. Miss Roland was not unaccustomed to being goggled at. It did not offend her in the least. She regarded it as a tribute. She allowed Mr. Willard to pay for her lunch and to buy her an expensive box of chocolates. Wartime London can still provide them if you know where to go. Miss Roland knew…
The afternoon being fine, old Mrs. Meredith went out in her invalid chair, Parker pushing it, and Miss Crane walking sedately on the right-hand side. A performance, getting the chair down the steps- Bell summoned from the basement, and the chair lowered cautiously, with the three of them easing it down and old Meredith nodding solemnly among her shawls and never saying a word.
They went down to the shops. Miss Crane assured Agnes Lemming that Mrs. Meredith enjoyed it all very much-“She does like a bit of life…”
Agnes had come down for the second time, to change her mother’s library book. Mrs. Lemming had not cared for the one which had helped to make the shopping-basket so heavy in the morning.
“Perhaps, Mother, you could change it yourself on your way out to bridge-”
Only when desperate with fatigue did Agnes venture on a suggestion like this. It wasn’t any good-it never was-but sometimes when you were desperate you had to try. Mrs. Lemming’s delicate eyebrows rose in an indignant arch.
“On my way? My dear Agnes, since when is the library on the way to the Clarkes? Are you really as stupid as you make out? You had better be careful, or people will think you are not all there.”
Coming back from the town, Agnes did not feel that she was really there at all. Her feet moved because she made them move, but her head felt light and odd, and rather as if it might float away and leave her body behind. Everything seemed to have that inclination to float away. Only her tired, aching feet went plodding on along the hard uphill road. All at once there was a hand under her elbow and a voice in her ear.
“Miss Lemming-you’re ill.”
She came back with a start to find that it was Mr. Drake from the flat opposite the Willards who was addressing her in a tone of concern.
“You’re ill.”
“Oh, no-only tired.”
“The same thing. I’ve got my car. Let me give you a lift.”
She managed her shy, nice smile, and then she couldn’t manage anything more. The next she really knew, she was lying on the couch in the sitting-room of her own flat and Mr. Drake was boiling a kettle on the gas-ring. It was so extraordinary that she blinked once or twice. Mr. Drake and the kettle declined to be blinked away. He looked round, saw that her eyes were open, nodded approvingly, and said,