That night she took him a soothing milk drink before Hannah took over with his sleeping tablets, and somewhat to her embarrassment he returned to the subject they had been discussing that morning on the terrace.
“The whole point of my present situation is that I’ve got to recover my memory before I take any decisive steps,” he said to her. He was once more frowning and looking worried. “It seems absurd that I can’t even be absolutely certain that I did once propose to Claire,” he added.
“She would hardly say that you had done so if you hadn’t,” she replied, smoothing his top sheet as an excuse to keep her hands occupied.
“You don’t think she would?” and he stared hard at her.
“Would any woman as attractive as Miss Brown? There must be a lot of men in the world who would like to marry her.”
“You think she’s as attractive as all that?” “You said yourself only a few days ago that she’s almost unbelievably attractive.”
“So I did and so she is.” He lay back against his pillows and smiled at her – not as if he had anything very much to smile about, but as if he was suddenly rather drily amused. “I suppose I ought to consider myself an exceptionally fortunate man because she’s consented to become my wife! ”
“Well, don’t you?”
He smiled more widely, and even more drily.
“I don’t know. I feel like someone groping a perpetual fog, and although all that I see of Claire is very easy on the eye I simply can’t manage to recollect her… as I should be able to do if she’d ever made a very great impression on me.”
“When I first saw you at the Three Sailors you were very anxious to buy Tremarth. Was it because you were planning to get married, do you think, and you wanted somewhere familial where you could set up a home with Miss Brown?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t know.” His eyes twinkled. “But I do know this house affects me in a most extraordinary way. I know that I’ve been here before, often – and I know that I always wanted to return to this place.”
“You can’t remember visiting here when you were a schoolboy?”
Another shake of the head answered her.
“You can’t remember my aunt? You were a little afraid of her, I believe, but in a way I suspect you were fond of her, too. She was quite a personality.
“And you? You tell me that you were often here during my visits?”
“On more than one of your visits. I treated you abominably, but you were always very kind to me – quite exceptionally kind considering I was such a little beast.” She looked concerned by the memory of her own beastliness, and the little she had done to repay him for his determined cherishing of her. “Even Aunt Jane thought I treated you rather shabbily.”
“And yet you refused to sell your house to me when I asked you to do so! ”
Startled, she looked at him.
“You – you remember that?”
His eyes avoided hers. He stared out of the window at the moonlit sea.
“I didn’t say so. I think you must have told me so yourself.” He frowned at the shimmering pathway that was lying like a golden sword-thrust across the gently heaving indigo bosom of the restless Atlantic. There are occasions when, I suppose, you could say that I do remember some things… Not very relevant, perhaps.” “What sort of things?” she asked, with a queer sort of breathlessness.
He looked up and directly into her eyes.
“I remember a little girl with red hair.”
“Me?”
“Since your hair is very red now it must have been as remarkably red when you were a child! ”
“Then your amnesia must be getting better. You are recovering! ”
He shrugged against his pillows as if he was not prepared to agree with her entirely.
“You can say that if you wish, but it is when people are growing older that they remember in detail the things that happened to them when they were a child. I can remember nothing at all that has happened to me in recent years – not even your refusal to sell to me this house.” She felt a trifle perplexed by the slight perverseness of his attitude.
“But perhaps if you tried a little harder_”
“Do you think I’m not constantly trying to penetrate the fog that is all I’ve got left of a memory?” he demanded, with such a spurt of irritation that she practically recoiled noticeably. “Especially when it seems that short of a miracle happening I’m doomed to become a married man within a matter of a few weeks, possibly less.”
“Then you honestly don’t – don’t want to get married?”
All at once his grey eyes were disconcerting hard grey pools of mockery. “What gives you that impression?” he asked. “Something I said about a miracle depriving me of the opportunity to become the husband of one of the most delightful and enchanting young women I’ve ever set eyes on? Substitute the word ‘disaster’ for ‘miracle’ and you’ll realise that the one thing I’m looking forward to is getting married! In fact, I find it hard to wait… And that’s easily understandable, isn’t it?”
Charlotte felt herself turning a dull, but rather painful, red. He was amusing himself at her expense… She realised that. And although she couldn’t quite understand the reason he seemed to think it was no more than she deserved that she should be treated unkindly. Between the almost feminine fringes of his thick black eyelashes his eyes held her in a sort of contempt… And with her knowledge of all that she had done for him in the past few days, including the sacrifice of her own bedroom
– that seemed to her a little unfair. In fact, unreasonable, unless it was the result of his amnesia.
She stared back at him suddenly a little critically and curiously. Just how much did he remember of his past?
A little girl with red hair!
“I was a very plump little girl,” she remarked suddenly and soberly. “I had a large number of freckles, too.”
“You had nothing of the kind… And you were as slim as a sprite! ” “When you came here the other day to look over the house Waterloo behaved in a most extraordinary manner. He was most unfriendly towards you! ”
“He was not.” He seemed complacently satisfied because he was able to make the admission. “He was almost effusively friendly.” She gathered up the empty glass that had held his hot milk drink, and made for the door.
“Good-night, Mr. Tremarth,” she said softly. “I hope you have an absolutely undisturbed night, and are very much better in the morning!”
When she joined Hannah in the drawing room she was both looking and feeling extremely thoughtful, but Hannah was curled up on a settee in front of the television set that had been installed a few days before, and was not in a mood to be distracted. Her attention was, in fact, glued to the television screen, and she answered abstractedly when Charlotte spoke to her.
“Sit down,” she advised, “and put your feet up. Looking after invalids in a house of this sort is rather more than a trifle exhausting. If we were to go in for it in a big way we’d have to have a lift installed.”
Charlotte ignored her advice, and wandered rather aimlessly about the room. She was in no mood to talk, but there was something she might have asked Hannah if the latter had not been so obviously wrapped up in the development of an exciting television drama. But what was really rather remarkable was the way she fairly sprang to her feet and blushed like an eager schoolgirl when a tap came on the open French window and Dr. Mackay, without waiting for an invitation to do so, walked in between the quiet grey falls of brocade curtaining and greeted them with the coolness and assurance of an old and well-tried friend.
“It’s a wonderful night,” he observed. “I wondered whether one or other of you would care for a breath of air? I realise you’ve got a parent to attend to, but it doesn’t need two of you to sit with him and hold his hand, and in any case I imagine by this time he’s settled down for the night?” and he looked directly at Hannah as he spoke.