“The local traders will rage furiously.”
“They will.”
“Can it really pay?”
“At a ton of wheat to the acre—vide Whitaker—we reckon thirty acres of our wheat, plus as much Canadian to make good light bread, would bring us in more than eight hundred and fifty pounds, less, say, five hundred, cost of milling and baking. It would mean baking one hundred and sixty two-pound loaves a day and selling about 56,000 loaves a year. We should need to supply eighty households, but that’s only the village, more or less. And we’d make the best and brightest bread.”
“Three hundred and fifty a year profit,” said Clare. “I wonder.”
“So do I,” said Dinny. “Experience doesn’t tell me that every estimate of profit should be halved, because I haven’t had any, but I suspect it. But even half would just tip the beam the right way for us, and we could extend operations gradually. We could plough a lot of grass in time.”
“It’s a scheme,” said Clare, “but would the village back you?”
“So far as I’ve sounded them—yes.”
“You’d want somebody to run it.”
“M’yes. It would have to be someone who didn’t mind what he did. Of course he’d have the future, if it went.”
“I wonder,” said Clare, again, and wrinkled her brows.
“Who,” asked Dinny suddenly, “was that young man?”
“Tony Croom? Oh! He was on a tea plantation, but they closed down.” And she looked her sister full in the face.
“Pleasant?”
“Yes, rather a dear. HE wants a job, by the way.”
“So do about three million others.”
“Including me.”
“You haven’t come back to a very cheery England, darling.”
“I gather we fell off the gold standard or something while I was in the Red Sea. What is the gold standard?”
“It’s what you want to be on when you’re off, and to be off when you’re on.”
“I see.”
“The trouble, apparently, is that our exports and carrying-trade profits and interests from investments abroad don’t any longer pay for our imports; so we’re living beyond our income. Michael says anybody could have seen that coming; but we thought ‘it would be all right on the night.’ And it isn’t. Hence the National Government and the election.”
“Can they do anything if they remain in?”
“Michael says ‘yes’; but he’s notably hopeful. Uncle Lawrence says they can put a drag on panic, prevent money going out of the country, keep the pound fairly steady, and stop profiteering; but that nothing under a wide and definite reconstruction that will take twenty years will do the trick; and during that time we shall all be poorer. Unfortunately no Government, he says, can prevent us liking play better than work, hoarding to pay these awful taxes, or preferring the present to the future. He also says that if we think people will work as they did in the war to save the country, we’re wrong; because, instead of being one people against an outside enemy, we’re two peoples against the inside enemy of ourselves, with quite opposite views as to how our salvation is to come.”
“Does he think the socialists have a cure?”
“No; he says they’ve forgotten that no one will give them food if they can neither produce it nor pay for it. He says that communism or free trade socialism only has a chance in a country which feeds itself. You see, I’ve been learning it up. They all use the word Nemesis a good deal.”
“Phew! Where are we going now, Dinny?”
“I thought you’d like lunch at Fleur’s; afterwards we can take the three-fifty to Condaford.”
Then there was silence, during which each thought seriously about the other, and neither was happy. For Clare was feeling in her elder sister the subtle change which follows in one whose springs have been broken and mended to go on with. And Dinny was thinking: ‘Poor child! Now we’ve both been in the wars. What will she do? And how can I help her?’
CHAPTER 2
“What a nice lunch!” said Clare, eating the sugar at the bottom of her coffee cup: “The first meal on shore is lovely! When you get on board a ship and read the first menu, you think: ‘My goodness! What an enchanting lot of things!’ and then you come down to cold ham at nearly every meal. Do you know that stealing disappointment?”
“Don’t I?” said Fleur. “The curries used to be good, though.”
“Not on the return voyage. I never want to see a curry again. How’s the Round Table Conference going?”
“Plodding on. Is Ceylon interested in India?”
“Not very. Is Michael?”
“We both are.”
Clare’s brows went up with delightful suddenness.
“But you can’t know anything about it.”
“I WAS in India, you know, and at one time I saw a lot of Indian students.”
“Oh! yes, students. That’s the trouble. They’re so advanced and the people are so backward.”
“If Clare’s to see Kit and Kat before we start,” said Dinny, “we ought to go up, Fleur.”
The visit to the nurseries over, the sisters resumed their seats in the car.
“Fleur always strikes me,” said Clare, “as knowing so exactly what she wants.”
“She gets it, as a rule; but there’ve been exceptions. I’ve always doubted whether she really wanted Michael.”
“D’you mean a love affair went wrong?”
Dinny nodded. Clare looked out of the window.
“Well, she’s not remarkable in that.”
Her sister did not answer.
“Trains,” Dinny said, in their empty third-class compartment, “always have great open spaces now.”
“I rather dread seeing Mother and Dad, Dinny, having made such an almighty bloomer. I really must get something to do.”
“Yes, you won’t be happy at Condaford for long.”
“It isn’t that. I want to prove that I’m not the complete idiot. I wonder if I could run an hotel. English hotels are still pretty backward.”
“Good idea. It’s strenuous, and you’d see lots of people.”
“Is that caustic?”
“No, darling, just common sense; you never liked being buried.”
“How does one go to work to get such a thing?”
“You have me there. But now’s the time if ever, nobody’s going to be able to travel. But I’m afraid there’s a technical side to managing hotels that has to be learned. Your title might help.”
“I shouldn’t use his name. I should call myself Mrs. Clare.”
“I see. Are you sure it wouldn’t be wise to tell me more about things?”
Clare sat silent for a little, then said suddenly: “He’s a sadist.”
Looking at her flushed face, Dinny said: “I’ve never understood exactly what that means.”
“Seeking sensation, and getting more sensation when you hurt the person you get it from. A wife is most convenient.”
“Oh! darling!”
“There was a lot first, my riding whip was only the last straw.”
“You don’t mean—!” cried Dinny, horrified.
“Oh! yes.”
Dinny came over to her side and put her arms round her.
“But, Clare, you must get free!”
“And how? My word against his. Besides, who would make a show of beastliness? You’re the only person I could ever ever speak to of it.”
Dinny got up and let down the window. Her face was as flushed as her sister’s. She heard Clare say dully:
“I came away the first moment I could. It’s none of it fit for publication. You see, ordinary passion palls after a bit, and it’s a hot climate.”
“Oh! heaven!” said Dinny, and sat down again opposite.
“My own fault. I always knew it was thin ice, and I’ve popped through, that’s all.”
“But, darling, at twenty-four you simply can’t stay married and not married.”
“I don’t see why not; mariage manqué is very steadying to the blood. All I’m worrying about is getting a job. I’m not going to be a drag on Dad. Is his head above water, Dinny?”
“Not quite. We were breaking even, but this last taxation will just duck us. The trouble is how to get on without reducing staff. Everyone’s in the same boat. I always feel that we and the village are one. We’ve got to sink or swim together, and somehow or other we’re going to swim. Hence my bakery scheme.”