Читать книгу A Daughter’s a Daughter - Агата Кристи, Agatha Christie, Detection Club The - Страница 7

It was one minute to the quarter-past when Ann paid off her taxi in Harley Street and rang the bell.

The competent Harkness opened the door, smiled a welcome, said: ‘Go straight on up, will you, Mrs Prentice? Dame Laura may be a few minutes still.’

Ann ran lightly up the stairs. The dining-room of the house was now a waiting-room and the top floor of the tall house was converted into a comfortable flat. In the sitting-room a small table was laid for a meal. The room itself was more like a man’s room than a woman’s. Large sagging comfortable chairs, a wealth of books, some of them piled on the chairs, and rich-coloured good-quality velvet curtains.

Ann had not long to wait. Dame Laura, her voice preceding her up the stairs like a triumphant bassoon, entered the room and kissed her guest affectionately.

Dame Laura Whitstable was a woman of sixty-four. She carried with her the atmosphere that is exuded by royalty, or well-known public characters. Everything about her was a little more than life-size, her voice, her uncompromising shelf-like bust, the piled masses of her iron-grey hair, her beak-like nose.

‘Delighted to see you, my dear child,’ she boomed. ‘You look very pretty, Ann. I see you’ve bought yourself a bunch of violets. Very discerning of you. It’s the flower you most resemble.’

‘The shrinking violet? Really, Laura.’

‘Autumn sweetness, well concealed by leaves.’

‘This is most unlike you, Laura. You are usually so rude!’

‘I find it pays, but it’s rather an effort sometimes. Let us eat immediately. Bassett, where is Bassett? Ah, there you are. There is a sole for you, Ann, you will be glad to hear. And a glass of hock.’

‘Oh, Laura, you shouldn’t. Buttermilk and rye bread would have done quite well.’

‘There’s only just enough buttermilk for me. Come on, sit down. So Sarah’s gone off to Switzerland? For how long?’

‘Three weeks.’

‘Very nice.’

The angular Bassett had left the room. Sipping her glass of buttermilk with every appearance of enjoyment, Dame Laura said shrewdly:

‘And you’re going to miss her. But you didn’t ring me up and come here to tell me that. Come on now, Ann. Tell me. We haven’t got much time. I know you’re fond of me, but when people ring up, and want my company at a moment’s notice, it’s usually my superior wisdom that’s the attraction.’

‘I feel horribly guilty,’ said Ann apologetically.

‘Nonsense, my dear. Actually, it’s rather a compliment.’

Ann said with a rush:

‘Oh, Laura, I’m a complete fool, I know! But I got in a sort of panic. There in Victoria Station with all the buses! I felt—I felt so terribly alone.’

‘Ye-es, I see …’

‘It wasn’t just Sarah going away and missing her. It was more than that …’

Laura Whitstable nodded, her shrewd grey eyes watching Ann dispassionately.

Ann said slowly:

‘Because, after all, one is always alone … really—’

‘Ah, so you’ve found that out? One does, of course, sooner or later. Curiously enough, it’s usually a shock. How old are you, Ann? Forty-one? A very good age to make your discovery. Leave it until too late and it can be devastating. Discover it too young—and it takes a lot of courage to acknowledge it.’

‘Have you ever felt really alone, Laura?’ Ann asked with curiosity.

‘Oh, yes. It came to me when I was twenty-six—actually in the middle of a family gathering of the most affectionate nature. It startled me and frightened me—but I accepted it. Never deny the truth. One must accept the fact that we have only one companion in this world, a companion who accompanies us from the cradle to the grave—our own self. Get on good terms with that companion—learn to live with yourself. That’s the answer. It’s not always easy.’

Ann sighed.

‘Life felt absolutely pointless—I’m telling you everything, Laura—just years stretching ahead with nothing to fill them. Oh, I suppose I’m just a silly useless woman …’

‘Now, now, keep your common sense. You did a very good efficient unspectacular job in the war, you’ve brought up Sarah to have nice manners and to enjoy life, and in your quiet way you enjoy life yourself. That’s all very satisfactory. In fact, if you came to my consulting room I’d send you away without even collecting a fee—and I’m a money-grubbing old woman.’

‘Laura dear, you are very comforting. But I suppose, really—I do care for Sarah too much.’

‘Fiddle!’

‘I am always so afraid of becoming one of those possessive mothers who positively eat their young.’

Laura Whitstable said dryly:

‘There’s so much talk about possessive mothers that some women are afraid to show a normal affection for their young!’

‘But possessiveness is a bad thing!’

‘Of course it is. I come across it every day. Mothers who keep their sons tied to their apron strings, fathers who monopolize their daughters. But it’s not always entirely their doing. I had a nest of birds in my room once, Ann. In due course the fledglings left the nest, but there was one who wouldn’t go. Wanted to stay in the nest, wanted to be fed, refused to face the ordeal of tumbling over the edge. It disturbed the mother bird very much. She showed him, flew down again and again from the edge of the nest, chirruped to him, fluttered her wings. Finally she wouldn’t feed him. Brought food in her beak, but stayed the other side of the room calling him. Well, there are human beings like that. Children who don’t want to grow up, who don’t want to face the difficulties of adult life. It isn’t their upbringing. It’s themselves.’

She paused before going on.

‘There’s the wish to be possessed as well as the wish to possess. Is it a case of maturing late? Or is it some inherent lack of the adult quality? One knows very little still of the human personality.’

‘Anyway,’ said Ann, uninterested in generalities, ‘you don’t think I’m a possessive mother?’

‘I’ve always thought that you and Sarah had a very satisfactory relationship. I should say there was a deep natural love between you.’ She added thoughtfully: ‘Of course Sarah’s young for her age.’

‘I’ve always thought she was old for her age.’

‘I shouldn’t say so. She strikes me as younger than nineteen in mentality.’

‘But she’s very positive, very assured. And quite sophisticated. Full of her own ideas.’

‘Full of the current ideas, you mean. It will be a very long time before she has any ideas that are really her own. And all these young creatures nowadays seem positive. They need reassurance, that’s why. We live in an uncertain age and everything is unstable and the young feel it. That’s where half the trouble starts nowadays. Lack of stability. Broken homes. Lack of moral standards. A young plant, you know, needs tying up to a good firm stake.’

She grinned suddenly.

‘Like all old women, even if I am a distinguished one, I preach.’ She drained her glass of buttermilk. ‘Do you know why I drink this?’

‘Because it’s healthy?’

‘Bah! I like it. Always have since I went for holidays to a farm in the country. The other reason is so as to be different. One poses. We all pose. Have to. I do it more than most. But, thank God, I know I’m doing it. But now about you, Ann. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just getting your second wind, that’s all.’

‘What do you mean by my second wind, Laura? You don’t mean—’ She hesitated.

‘I don’t mean anything physical. I’m talking in mental terms. Women are lucky, although ninety-nine out of a hundred don’t know it. At what age did St Teresa set out to reform the monasteries? At fifty. And I could quote you a score of other cases. From twenty to forty women are biologically absorbed—and rightly so. Their concern is with children, with husbands, with lovers—with personal relations. Or they sublimate these things and fling themselves into a career in a female emotional way. But the natural second blooming is of the mind and spirit and it takes place at middle age. Women take more interest in impersonal things as they grow older. Men’s interests grow narrower, women’s grow wider. A man of sixty is usually repeating himself like a gramophone record. A woman of sixty, if she’s got any individuality at all—is an interesting person.’

Ann thought of James Grant and smiled.

‘Women stretch out to something new. Oh, they make fools of themselves too at that age. Sometimes they’re sex bound. But middle age is an age of great possibilities.’

‘How comforting you are, Laura! Do you think I ought to take up something? Social work of some kind?’

‘How much do you love your fellow beings?’ said Laura Whitstable gravely. ‘The deed is no good without the inner fire. Don’t do things you don’t want to do, and then pat yourself on the back for doing them! Nothing, if I may say so, produces a more odious result. If you enjoy visiting the sick old women, or taking unattractive mannerless brats to the seaside, by all means do it. Quite a lot of people do enjoy it. No, Ann, don’t force yourself into activities. Remember all ground has sometimes to lie fallow. Motherhood has been your crop up to now. I don’t see you becoming a reformer, or an artist, or an exponent of the Social Services. You’re quite an ordinary woman, Ann, but a very nice one. Wait. Just wait quietly, with faith and hope, and you’ll see. Something worth while will come to fill your life.’

She hesitated and then said:

‘You’ve never had an affair, have you?’

Ann flushed.

‘No.’ She braced herself. ‘Do you—do you think I ought to?’

Dame Laura gave a terrific snort, a vast explosive sound that shook the glasses on the table.

‘All this modern cant! In Victorian days we were afraid of sex, draped the legs of the furniture, even! Hid sex away, shoved it out of sight. All very bad. But nowadays we’ve gone to the opposite extreme. We treat sex like something you order from the chemist. It’s on a par with sulphur drugs and penicillin. Young women come and ask me, “Had I better take a lover?” “Do you think I ought to have a child?” You’d think it was a sacred duty to go to bed with a man instead of a pleasure. You’re not a passionate woman, Ann. You’re a woman with a very deep store of affection and tenderness. That can include sex, but sex doesn’t come first with you. If you ask me to prophesy, I’ll say that in due course you’ll marry again.’

‘Oh no. I don’t believe I could ever do that.’

‘Why did you buy a bunch of violets today and pin them in your coat? You buy flowers for your rooms but you don’t usually wear them. Those violets are a symbol, Ann. You bought them because, deep down, you feel spring—your second spring is near.’

‘St Martin’s summer, you mean,’ said Ann ruefully.

‘Yes, if you like to call it that.’

‘But really, Laura, I daresay it’s a very pretty idea, but I only bought these violets because the woman who was selling them looked so cold and miserable.’

‘That’s what you think. But that’s only the superficial reason. Look down to the real motive, Ann. Learn to know yourself. That’s the most important thing in life—to try and know yourself. Heavens—it’s past two. I must fly. What are you doing this evening?’

‘I’m going out to dinner with James Grant.’

‘Colonel Grant? Yes, of course. A nice fellow.’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘He’s been after you for a long time, Ann.’

Ann Prentice laughed and blushed.

‘Oh, it’s just a habit.’

‘He’s asked you to marry him several times, hasn’t he?’

‘Yes, but it’s all nonsense really. Oh, Laura, do you think perhaps—I ought to? If we’re both lonely—’

‘There’s no ought about marriage, Ann! And the wrong companion is worse than none. Poor Colonel Grant—not that I pity him really. A man who continually asks a woman to marry him and can’t make her change her mind, is a man who secretly enjoys devotion to lost causes. If he was at Dunkirk, he would have enjoyed it—but I daresay the Charge of the Light Brigade would have suited him far better! How fond we are in this country of our defeats and our blunders—and how ashamed we always seem to be of our victories!’