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Five
“David, when are we going back to London? When are we going to America?”
Across the breakfast table, David Hunter gave Rosaleen a quick surprised glance.
“There’s no hurry, is there? What’s wrong with this place?”
He gave a swift appreciative glance round the room where they were breakfasting. Furrowbank
was built on the side of a hill and from the windows one had an unbroken panorama of sleepy
English countryside. On the slope of the lawn thousands of daffodils had been planted. They were
nearly over now, but a sheet of golden bloom still remained.
Crumbling the toast on her plate, Rosaleen murmured:
“You said we’d go to America—soon. As soon as it could be managed.”
“Yes—but actually it isn’t managed so easily. There’s priority. Neither you nor I have any
business reasons to put forward. Things are always difficult after a war.”
He felt faintly irritated with himself as he spoke. The reasons he advanced, though genuine
enough, had the sound of excuses. He wondered if they sounded that way to the girl who sat
opposite him. And why was she suddenly so keen to go to America?
Rosaleen murmured: “You said we’d only be here for a short time. You didn’t say we were
going to live here.”
“What’s wrong with Warmsley Vale—and Furrowbank? Come now?”
“Nothing. It’s them—all of them!”
“The Cloades?”
“Yes.”
“That’s just what I get a kick out of,” said David. “I like seeing their smug faces eaten up
with envy and malice. Don’t grudge me my fun, Rosaleen.”
She said in a low troubled voice:
“I wish you didn’t feel like that. I don’t like it.”
“Have some spirit, girl. We’ve been pushed around enough, you and I. The Cloades have
lived soft—soft. Lived on big brother Gordon. Little fleas on a big flea. I hate their kind—I always
have.”
She said, shocked:
“I don’t like hating people. It’s wicked.”
“Don’t you think they hate you? Have they been kind to you—friendly?”
She said doubtfully:
“They haven’t been unkind. They haven’t done me any harm.”
“But they’d like to, babyface. They’d like to.” He laughed recklessly. “If they weren’t
so careful of their own skins, you’d be found with a knife in your back one fine morning.”
She shivered.
“Don’t say such dreadful things.”
“Well—perhaps not a knife. Strychnine in the soup.”
She stared at him, her mouth tremulous.
“You’re joking….”
He became serious again.
“Don’t worry, Rosaleen. I’ll look after you. They’ve got me to deal with.”
She said, stumbling over the words, “If it’s true what you say—about their hating us—hating
me—why don’t we go to London? We’d be safe there—away from them all.”
“The country’s good for you, my girl. You know it makes you ill being in London.”
“That was when the bombs were there—the bombs.” She shivered, closed her eyes. “I’ll
never forget—never….”
“Yes, you will.” He took her gently by the shoulders, shook her slightly. “Snap out of it,
Rosaleen. You were badly shocked, but it’s over now. There are no more bombs. Don’t think
about it. Don’t remember. The doctor said country air and a country life for a long time to come.
That’s why I want to keep you away from London.”
“Is that really why? Is it, David? I thought—perhaps—”
“What did you think?”
Rosaleen said slowly:
“I thought perhaps it was because of her you wanted to be here….”
“Her?”
“You know the one I mean. The girl the other night. The one who was in the Wrens.”
His face was suddenly black and stern.
“Lynn? Lynn Marchmont.”
“She means something to you, David.”
“Lynn Marchmont? She’s Rowley’s girl. Good old stay-at-home Rowley. That bovine
slow-witted good-looking ox.”
“I watched you talking to her the other night.”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Rosaleen.”
“And you’ve seen her since, haven’t you?”
“I met her near the farm the other morning when I was out riding.”
“And you’ll meet her again.”
“Of course I’ll always be meeting her! This is a tiny place. You can’t go two steps without
falling over a Cloade. But if you think I’ve fallen for Lynn Marchmont, you’re wrong. She’s
a proud stuck-up unpleasant girl without a civil tongue in her head. I wish old Rowley joy of her.
No, Rosaleen, my girl, she’s not my type.”
She said doubtfully, “Are you sure, David?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
She said half-timidly:
“I know you don’t like my laying out the cards…But they come true, they do indeed. There
was a girl bringing trouble and sorrow—a girl would come from over the sea. There was a dark
stranger, too, coming into our lives, and bringing danger with him. There was the death card, and
—”
“You and your dark strangers!” David laughed. “What a mass of superstition you are.
Don’t have any dealings with a dark stranger, that’s my advice to you.”
He strolled out of the house laughing, but when he was away from the house, his face clouded
over and he frowned to himself, murmuring:
“Bad luck to you, Lynn. Coming home from abroad and upsetting the apple cart.”
For he realized that at this very moment he was deliberately making a course on which he might
hope to meet the girl he had just apostrophized so savagely.
Rosaleen watched him stroll away across the garden and out through the small gate that gave on
to a public footpath across the fields. Then she went up to her bedroom and looked through the
clothes in her wardrobe. She always enjoyed touching and feeling her new mink coat. To think she
should own a coat like that—she could never quite get over the wonder of it. She was in her
bedroom when the parlourmaid came up to tell her that Mrs. Marchmont had called.
Adela was sitting in the drawing room with her lips set tightly together and her heart beating at
twice its usual speed. She had been steeling herself for several days to make an appeal to Rosaleen
but true to her nature had procrastinated. She had also been bewildered by finding that Lynn’s
attitude had unaccountably changed and that she was now rigidly opposed to her mother seeking
relief from her anxieties by asking Gordon’s widow for a loan.
However another letter from the bank manager that morning had driven Mrs. Marchmont into
positive action. She could delay no longer. Lynn had gone out early, and Mrs. Marchmont had
caught sight of David Hunter walking along the footpath—so the coast was clear. She particularly
wanted to get Rosaleen alone, without David, rightly judging that Rosaleen alone would be a far
easier proposition.
Nevertheless she felt dreadfully nervous as she waited in the sunny drawing room, though she
felt slightly better when Rosaleen came in with what Mrs. Marchmont always thought of as her
“half-witted look” more than usually marked.
“I wonder,” thought Adela to herself, “if the blast did it or if she was always like that?”
“Rosaleen stammered.
“Oh, g-g-ood morning. Is there anything? Do sit down.”
“Such a lovely morning,” said Mrs. Marchmont brightly. “All my early tulips are out. Are
yours?”
The girl stared at her vacantly.
“I don’t know.”
What was one to do, thought Adela, with someone who didn’t talk gardening or dogs—those
standbys of rural conversation?
Aloud she said, unable to help the tinge of acidity that crept into her tone:
“Of course you have so many gardeners—they attend to all that.”
“I believe we’re shorthanded. Old Mullard wants two more men, he says. But there seems a
terrible shortage still of labour.”
The words came out with a kind of glib parrotlike delivery—rather like a child who repeats
what it has heard a grown-up person say.
Yes, she was like a child. Was that, Adela wondered, her charm? Was that what had attracted
that hard-headed shrewd business man, Gordon Cloade, and blinded him to her stupidity and her
lack of breeding? After all, it couldn’t only be looks. Plenty of good-looking women had angled
unsuccessfully to attract him.
But childishness, to a man of sixty-two, might be an attraction. Was it, could it be, real—or was
it a pose—a pose that had paid and so had become second nature?
Rosaleen was saying, “David’s out, I’m afraid…” and the words recalled Mrs.
Marchmont to herself. David might return. Now was her chance and she must not neglect it. The
words stuck in her throat but she got them out.
“I wonder—if you would help me?”
“Help you?”
Rosaleen looked surprised, uncomprehending.
“I—things are very difficult—you see, Gordon’s death has made a great difference to us
all.”
“You silly idiot,” she thought. “Must you go on gaping at me like that? You know what I
mean! You must know what I mean. After all, you’ve been poor yourself….”
She hated Rosaleen at that moment. Hated her because she, Adela Marchmont, was sitting here
whining for money. She thought, “I can’t do it—I can’t do it after all.”
In one brief instant all the long hours of thought and worry and vague planning flashed again
across her brain.
Sell the house—(But move where? There weren’t any small houses on the market—certainly
not any cheap houses). Take paying guests — (But you couldn’t get staff — and she simply
couldn’t—she just couldn’t deal with all the cooking and housework involved. If Lynn helped
—but Lynn was going to marry Rowley). Live with Rowley and Lynn herself? (No, she’d never
do that!) Get a job. What job? Who wanted an untrained elderly tired-out woman?
She heard her voice, belligerent because she despised herself.
“I mean money,” she said.
“Money?” said Rosaleen.
She sounded ingenuously surprised, as though money was the last thing she expected to be
mentioned.
Adela went on doggedly, tumbling the words out:
“I’m overdrawn at the bank, and I owe bills—repairs to the house—and the rates haven’t
been paid yet. You see, everything’s halved—my income, I mean. I suppose it’s taxation.
Gordon, you see, used to help. With the house, I mean. He did all the repairs and the roof and
painting and things like that. And an allowance as well. He paid it into the bank every quarter. He
always said not to worry and of course I never did. I mean, it was all right when he was alive, but
now—”
She stopped. She was ashamed—but at the same time relieved. After all, the worst was over. If
the girl refused, she refused, and that was that.
Rosaleen was looking very uncomfortable.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “I didn’t know. I never thought…I—well, of course, I’ll ask
David….”
Grimly gripping the sides of her chair, Adela said, desperately:
“Couldn’t you give me a cheque—now….”
“Yes—yes, I suppose I could.” Rosaleen, looking startled, got up, went to the desk. She
hunted in various pigeonholes and finally produced a chequebook. “Shall I—how much?”
“Would—would five hundred pounds—” Adela broke off.
“Five hundred pounds,” Rosaleen wrote obediently.
A load slipped off Adela’s back. After all, it had been easy! She was dismayed as it occurred
to her that it was less gratitude that she felt than a faint scorn for the easiness of her victory!
Rosaleen was surely strangely simple.
The girl rose from the writing desk and came across to her. She held out the cheque awkwardly.
The embarrassment seemed now entirely on her side.
“I hope this is all right. I’m really so sorry—”
Adela took the cheque. The unformed childish hand straggled across the pink paper. Mrs.
Marchmont. Five hundred pounds ￡500. Rosaleen Cloade.
“It’s very good of you, Rosaleen. Thank you.”
“Oh please—I mean—I ought to have thought—”
“Very good of you, my dear.”
With the cheque in her handbag Adela Marchmont felt a different woman. The girl had really
been very sweet about it. It would be embarrassing to prolong the interview. She said goodbye and
departed. She passed David in the drive, said “Good morning” pleasantly, and hurried on.
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