“I’ve never been in love – except with actors and people I haven’t met. That was when I was young. I’ve never wanted to marry anyone.”
He didn’t take up the offer to talk of marriage, but sat down again beside her.
“What made you come here now, Hester?”
“I came here to think, too,” she said, flushing. “I’d like to be buried here.”
“Now?” Harry asked. “You’re in a hurry, aren’t you?”
“Of course I didn’t mean now. It was only a mood.”
“Anyway, you couldn’t, unless they made a special place for you, like Napoleon or Lenin. Just tell me how you’d like it. What about a mortician’s dome in rose-coloured plastic?”
“It’s nothing to laugh about,” Hester said, beginning to laugh. “I was being perfectly serious. I’d like to be buried here. There are vaults at the other end. Prudence and I used to play here with the Peters boys, and they raised one of the stones and we all went down and sat beside the coffins and smoked Father’s cigars. He used always to have boxes of cigars, it was before we lost our money. Prudence was the youngest, much, but she was the only one who wasn’t sick.”
“You were all sick in the vault?” Harry enquired with interest.
“Oh, no,” Hester said in a shocked voice. “Even the Peters boys wouldn’t have done a thing like that.”
“Is this a roundabout way of telling me I have a rival called Peters?”
“I’ve told you. I’ve never been in love. I don’t know what it’s like to be in love,” she said stiffly.
“I don’t know what it’s like for a girl. It makes a man want to smoke. Have you a cigarette on you, Hester?”
“I bought some for Father this afternoon.” She took a packet of cigarettes from her bag, and gave it to him. He lit one, and absently put the packet, with his own matches, in his trouser pocket.
She considered the action.
“You can give me a cigarette case for my birthday next month. I like cigarette cases and watches – they give a man something to pawn in time of need,” he said easily. “Let’s get back and have some tea, shall we?”
They walked back together, without exchanging a word of love. They went quietly in by the back door to the kitchen.
Harry sat down, with a sigh.
“Put on the kettle, there’s a good girl,” he said. “Hester, you’ll do me a favour? If Morgan talks of changing his room, you’ll tell me?”
She stopped, with the teapot in her hand.
“But why?”
“One of my peculiar ideas. I’m always having them. I’ll offer you something in exchange. Don’t trust Maurice.”
“I thought it was Morgan who interested you,” Hester said.
“Morgan is a special case. Do you know something, Hester? Your father is a man who lures catastrophes. He’s what you might call accident-prone, but his accidents are all economic. I think Maurice is going to be one of them.”
Hester poured the tea. “I wish people just for one day would stop warning me against other people,” she said drearily. “If you want to know, I don’t believe anything you say about Maurice. He’s – he’s splendid. He’s the best friend we have.”
The door opened, and Morgan’s pale face, looking bonier than ever, appeared.
“Harry,” he said grimly, and came into the room. “Harry, I want a word with you.”
Harry put his cup down. “Is it going to be an ugly word?” he asked regretfully.
Morgan advanced. “Have you been in my room?”
“And what would I be doing there?”
“I told you he was no good, Hester,” Morgan shouted. “I don’t know what he was doing in my room. If he came to pilfer he did a clumsy job.”
“You should know,” Harry said. He was beginning to grin in an excited way, like a nervous sniper marking down his target.
“You’ve been searching my room.”
“If you accuse me of searching your room, you’re accusing yourself of having something to hide,” Harry said in a reasonable voice.
“Get up and I’ll hit you,” Morgan invited.
“Then I’d better keep sitting.”
Morgan stepped forward and caught Harry by the back of the neck. He forced his head down, then stooped and caught the back legs of the chair and jerked them up. Harry sprawled on to the floor. Morgan stood over him, waiting. For a second he looked almost happy, like a ghost seeing a joke.
“Get out of this house,” he said.
“It’s not your house, Morgan. You can’t order him out of it,” Hester said.
Harry stood up slowly, and the other two watched him, waiting for the reprisals.
Harry stepped forward and sat down on the nearest chair.
“Shall we continue the conversation, Morgan?” he asked.
Morgan was walking forward when Hester stepped in front of Harry.
“No, Morgan,” she cried.
Wade came bristling through the door.
“What’s all this, what is it, Hester?”
“Shall I tell him?” Harry asked insolently.
“We’ll settle this later,” Morgan said, muted and polite, like a hangman discussing business with the prison governor.
Harry looked quickly at Hester and her father.
“It’s only a little row in napkins and a blue bonnet,” he said airily. “It may never grow up at all. By dinner-time it will have shrunk back to an embryo.”
Wade coughed, and looked at his feet. He was a man of natural goodwill, who could have been very happy if everyone else had been the same. He could handle all the inhabitants of the ideal world, but reality often left him pained and confused.
“Harry, we can’t, honestly we can’t have that kind of row here.”
“Did I start it then?” Harry appealed to Hester.
“I don’t know,” she said angrily.
“You’ll see. By dinner-time Morgan and I will have our arms round each other’s necks, exchanging tips for tomorrow’s races, although it’s a strange thing I’ve never been able to care if a horse has three legs or runs on roller skates.”
Wade looked at him hopelessly.
“Harry, I hate to say it, but I haven’t asked you to dinner. Maurice is coming over tonight. I wanted to have a private talk with him.”
“Then I’ll go back and dine with Uncle Joe,” Harry said without embarrassment, “I’ve been neglecting him a bit, lately.” He turned to Hester with his face drooping into melancholy again. “Goodbye, Hester.”
“I’ll walk as far as the village with you,” Wade said. “I’ve run out of cigarettes.”
“Don’t bother to go down for a little thing like that,” Harry said quickly. “Here!” He felt in his pocket and brought out a packet of cigarettes. “Have these. You can give me them back some other day.”
WEDNESDAY (5)
HARRY found Moira lying in sulky idleness on a chaise longue by the sunny windows. Blue lights were shining in her black hair.
He sat down on the floor beside her.
“Would you like the curtains drawn, or is your hair guaranteed fadeless?” he asked her.
“Harry, where have you been all day?”
“At the Wades’.”
“It’s Hester,” she said sharply. “Oh, it’s so unfair, I’m absolutely excruciated with boredom here when you’re away. Just because she’s younger you’d stay with her all day for a single smile. But I’m left to smile alone.”
“I wouldn’t stay with anyone all day for a smile,” Harry said coldly. “I have to eat somewhere until I sell another poem. Uncle Joe’s making it difficult here.”