“Harry, I didn’t mean you to take so many. You’ve left none at all. The garden will be bare.”
“Accept the rosebuds while ye may. One for each year of your life, to emphasise the moral.”
She took them from him gravely, trying to conceal the sudden surging expectation she felt in her veins.
“I’ll take them in,” she said in a low voice.
“If we’re together when you’re twenty-one, I’ll pick you another then.”
“I’ll take them in,” she repeated.
“And then?”
“I’m going to the village,” she said, over her shoulder.
“May I come with you?” he asked, looking at her with his eager, pathetic smile.
“Oh, yes.”
She went quickly to the house with the flowers and arranged them in the wide, blue vase. She put them on a low table by the window, and drew one curtain, so that the sun shouldn’t blight her twenty years too quickly.
She went into the garden again. Harry was waiting by the gate.
“You mustn’t talk to me about Maurice,” she warned him.
“I’m not interested in Maurice at all. It’s Morgan that fills my thoughts.”
“Why? Why do you think so much about Morgan? Have you met him somewhere before?”
“No.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be so mysterious. You know something about Morgan. I wish I did. He said last night he’d been in South Africa, and I think that’s the first thing I’ve heard about his past life. Did you meet him in South Africa?”
“I’ve never set foot in any part of Africa. I’ll tell you about Morgan when the time comes.”
She looked at him with deep uneasiness.
“Don’t do anything – rash. I feel – I keep feeling something terrible’s going to happen.”
“Perhaps it is,” he suggested. “Has your father parted with his money yet?”
She was so sad and angry she was afraid she was going to cry. She caught one hand in the other, and dug her nails into her own flesh, trying to think of the pain instead of her emotions.
“If you think it’s funny,” she said over her shoulder.
“Don’t walk so fast. I think it’s serious. But if it wasn’t your father, I’d stand back and enjoy the comedy.”
She was outraged. “Comedy!”
“Yes, comedy. The man with money who’s determined to lose it in order to get more. It’s one of the classic situations. The newspapers thrive on it, and there must be thousands of people whose vanity keeps them out of court.”
“So you enjoy the ruin of innocent people?”
“Well, innocent of what?” he enquired reasonably. “Greed? Covetousness? A desire to enjoy the benefits of money they’ve never worked for? No confidence man ever got a penny out of anyone who wasn’t dreaming of easy money.”
“I won’t listen. You’re insulting my father. And you always look at things upside down.”
“You’re angry because you suspect it may be the right way to look at them. Hester, you’re making me run to keep up with you.”
“Go away.”
“Don’t you see anything funny in the fact that ruin doesn’t mean anything more now than the loss of money?”
She didn’t answer, and he walked quickly until he was alongside her again.
“Hester, you’re crying.”
“Go away.”
“I have a handkerchief,” he said eagerly, pulling one from his pocket. He looked at it reminiscently. “No, perhaps this one won’t do. I have another handkerchief.” He felt in his pockets, and finally produced a blue handkerchief, still in its virgin folds.
She began to laugh. “It isn’t like you, Harry, to have two handkerchiefs.”
“I’ve had my laundry done,” he said, dabbing tenderly at her cheeks. “But I suppose you want to blow your nose? Oh, well, clean handkerchiefs can’t last for ever.”
“Harry, why are you so horrid about Father.”
“I’m not. It’s just that I see him as a natural victim. How did Maurice get on to him in the first place? Who told him your father was waiting there, tied to a tree by the drinking pool? Was it Morgan?”
“No. He just met Father in the ordinary way. When we had the antique shop. Maurice came in and bought something – I think it was a table. And Father brought him home to lunch.”
“That’s how it would be,” Harry said with satisfaction. “Your father not only attracts calamities, he asks them home to lunch. Talking about lunch…”
“I wasn’t talking about lunch,” Hester interrupted angrily. “When I came out I didn’t want to talk about anything.”
“Then don’t let’s talk,” Harry said in a strained voice. “It will get us nowhere. Nothing will. We’re on a ball, being bowled through emptiness to eternal silence. We’re only pieces of animated dust. Why should we try to hurl our squeaking voices through the universe?”
Hester was frightened. His face was vacant and his eyes looked blind. She felt he was sinking away from her into blackness: she wasn’t prepared to let him go. She caught his head to her and kissed him, and after a second of isolation he responded. They held on to each other for a moment, and then, by a common impulse of self-preservation, separated again.
Hester was exhilarated. She felt like a driver whose brakes had failed at a point of danger and who had miraculously survived. She would proceed more carefully now.
“Harry, how can you talk like that on a beautiful morning?” she said gaily.
The slight but distinct relief on his face vanished. “But I love you, Hester,” he said resentfully. “And of course that makes me particularly miserable when the sun shines,” he added, beginning to grin.
They walked on towards the village, closer in their thoughts than most people, but each still utterly confused by the behaviour of the other.
Hester looked at her watch.
“Is there something I could do to help you?” Harry asked. “What do you have to buy?”
“Some buttons and some white silk.”
“These be feminine mysteries. Anything else?”
“And some coffee from Mad Meg’s. That’s all.”
“Give me the money and I’ll get the coffee.”
“Here you are. A pound note and a pound of coffee,” Hester said.
When they came to the village Hester went into the threatening darkness of the draper’s shop. Harry went on to the grocer’s. It was a good shop, smelling of incompatible foods.
“Delicious,” he said approvingly, while the old woman behind the counter snuffled and mewed.
“A pound of coffee, if you please,” he barked suddenly, like a bad-tempered squire.
“What kind?” she shrilled back, like one of the dangerous democrats of the village.
“How should I know what kind. It’s for Miss Wade, of Tower House. Surely you know what your own customers buy.”
“A pound of best coffee,” she muttered.
“Well, naturally.”
He walked round the shop, examining. “Cheese?” he said absently. “What kind of cheese do they like? I’d better take something in a box. Any Brie? Of course not. No Camembert? Well, really! I suppose I’d better take one of those things wrapped in silver paper. Do you know,” he added more genially, “I’m sure you’d find it worth your while to keep real cheese. Throw in a pound of tomatoes, and some plain biscuits. And charge it all up.”
“Miss Wade always pays,” she croaked.
“Well, today she wants it charged up,” Harry said.
He met Hester in the street.
“Here’s your coffee,” he said. “Six shillings – or was it seven? Anyway, I can’t give you the change at this very moment. I should have paid with your pound instead of my own money. So either I give you back the pound and you owe me seven shillings, or you come into the pub for a drink and I’ll get the pound changed and give you back – what did I say – thirteen shillings.”