Читать книгу Anna, Where Are You? - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 4

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“I can’t think why you bother about the woman,” said Peter Brandon.

Thomasina Elliot replied with simplicity,

“There isn’t anyone else.”

Peter gave her one of his loftier glances.

“Do you mean she hasn’t anyone else to bother about her, or you haven’t anyone else to bother about? Because in that case—”

Thomasina interrupted him.

“She hasn’t anyone else to bother about her.”

They were sitting side by side on a rather hard bench in one of those small galleries which specialize in winter shows. The walls were covered with pictures from which Thomasina preferred to avert her gaze. She had already changed her seat once because, without being prudish, she found the spectacle of a bulging woman stark naked and apparently afflicted with mumps embarrassing. On reflection she thought she had better have remained where she was, since she was now confronted by an explosion in magenta and orange and a quite horrible picture of a woman without a head holding an enormous frying-pan in her skeleton fingers. She was therefore more or less obliged to go on looking at Peter. She would have preferred not to do so, because he was being superior and interfering, which meant that she would have to be very firm and go on snubbing him, and it is very much easier to snub someone when you can present them with a cold profile. She was, of course, perfectly well aware that she had not been favoured with the best kind of profile for snubbing purposes. It was not regular enough. It was not in fact regular at all, though it had been considered agreeable.

Peter Brandon considered it a waste of time. He preferred her full face because of her eyes. Thomasina’s eyes were really quite undeniable. Unusual too, though more so in England than in her native Scotland, where wide grey eyes with black lashes are by no means out of the way. Thomasina’s eyes were of the bright clear grey which has no shade of blue or green. Peter had once remarked that they matched his flannel trousers to a hair. What distinguished them from other grey eyes was the fact that the bright grey of the iris was rimmed with black. Set off by very dark lashes and a skin which glowed with health, they were well worth looking at. Peter looked at them from a superior height and repeated his original remark.

“I can’t see why you want to bother about her.”

Thomasina had not exactly a Scots accent, but her voice lilted a little. She said,

“I’ve told you.”

“Was she the one with the squint, or the one who breathed very loud through her nose? Being frightfully conscientious about it—like this—” He was a personable young man, but all in a moment he managed to produce a pop-eyed stare and a heavy snuffle.

Thomasina repressed a giggle.

“That was Maimie Wilson. And it’s too bad of you, because she couldn’t help it.”

“Then she should have been drowned in infancy. Well, which was this Anna female—what did you say her surname was?”

“Ball,” said Thomasina in a depressed voice. “And you’ve seen her quite often.”

He nodded.

“Yes—your school leaving party—flowing cocoa and stacks of girl friends. Anna Ball—I’m getting there.... Dark girl with an oily skin and a ‘Nobody loves me—I’ll go into the garden and eat worms’ kind of look.”

“Peter, that’s horrid!”

“Very. Fresh air and exercise strongly indicated. Outside interests lacking.”

“Oh, no, you’re wrong there—absolutely. It was one of the things that made people not like her very much. She didn’t take too little interest in other people’s affairs. It was quite the other way round—she took a great deal too much.”

Peter cocked an eyebrow.

“Nosey Parker?”

“Well, yes, she was.” A kind heart prompted her to add, “A bit.”

“Then I don’t see why you are bothering with her.”

“Because she hasn’t got anyone else. I keep telling you so.”

Peter stuck his hands in the pockets of his raincoat, a gesture equivalent to clearing the decks for action.

“Now look here, Tamsine, you can’t go through life collecting lame ducks, and stray dogs, and females whom nobody loves. You are twenty-two—and how old would you be when I first patted your head in your pram? About two. So that makes it twenty years that I’ve known you. You’ve been doing it all the time, and it’s got to stop. You started with moribund wasps and squashed worms, and you went on to stray curs and half-drowned kittens. If Aunt Barbara hadn’t been a saint she would have blown the roof off. She indulged you.”

Properly speaking, Barbara Brandon was a good deal more Thomasina’s aunt than Peter’s, because she had been born an Elliot and had only married John Brandon, who was Peter’s uncle. She had not been dead for very long. A bright shimmer of tears came up in Thomasina’s eyes. It made them almost unbearably beautiful. She said with a little catch in the words,

“It—was nice.”

Peter looked away. If he went on looking at her he might find himself slipping, and it was no time for weakness. Discipline must be maintained. He was helped on this rather arid path by the fact that Thomasina almost immediately tossed her head and said with complete irrelevance,

“Besides, I don’t believe you ever patted my head in my pram.”

“Besides what?” Women were really quite incapable of reason. Thomasina’s dimple showed. It was rather a deep one, and very becomingly placed. She said,

“Oh, just besides—”

Peter now felt superior enough to look at her again.

“My good child, I remember it perfectly. I was eight years old—in fact I was getting on for nine. You needn’t imagine it was a caress, because it wasn’t. You had a lot of black curls all over your head, and I wanted to see if they felt as stiff as they looked.”

“They did not look stiff!”

“They looked as stiff as wood shavings, only black.”

The dimple reappeared.

“And what did they feel like?” Thomasina’s voice had that undermining lilt.

Quite suddenly Peter had the feel of those soft springing curls under his hand. She had them still. He said firmly,

“They felt like feathers. And that’s enough about that. You just brought it up to change the subject, and I’m not changing it. This is not a conversation about your hair, it’s a conversation about Anna Ball. She was one of your lame dogs when you were at school, and you’ve kept on propping her ever since. Now that she has apparently faded out, instead of thanking your lucky stars you go looking for trouble and trying to hunt her up again.”

“She hasn’t got anyone else,” said Thomasina obstinately.

Peter produced the frown which meant that he was really beginning to get angry.

“Thomasina, if you go on saying that, I shall lose my temper. The girl has made other friends, and she has faded. For heaven’s sake, let her go!”

Thomasina shook her head.

“It isn’t like that. She doesn’t make friends—that’s always been the bother. It was horrid for her in the war, you know, being half German, and she got an inferiority complex. Her mother was a morbid sort of person—Aunt Barbara knew her. So I don’t think Anna had much chance.”

“Well, she got a job, didn’t she?”

“Aunt Barbara got her one with a Major and Mrs. Dartrey, to look after their child.”

“Unfortunate child.”

“It wasn’t a frightful success, but she went to Germany with them, and stayed for more than two years. She used to write very grumbling letters, but she did stay. And then they went out east and left the little girl in a nursery school near Mrs. Dartrey’s mother, and Anna went to some kind of a cousin of theirs who wanted a companion. But she only stayed a month. The cousin was a rich nervous invalid, and of course they wouldn’t have suited a bit. Anna wrote to me and said she was leaving as soon as the month was up. She said she had got another job and she would write and tell me all about it when she got there. And she never wrote again. You see, I can’t help worrying.”

“I don’t see why.”

“I don’t know where she is.”

“The woman she was with, the Dartreys’ cousin, would know.”

“She says she doesn’t. She says Anna never told her anything. She’s the vague, ineffectual sort of person who gets a headache the minute you ask her to remember things like names and addresses. I tried for half an hour, and if she had been a jellyfish she couldn’t have taken less interest in anyone except herself.”

“Do jellyfish think?”

“Mrs. Dugdale doesn’t—she just drifts. Anyhow I couldn’t get anything out of her about Anna. Peter, I really am worried. Anna has written to me at least once a week for years. I mean, she always wrote in the holidays, and all the time she was with the Dartreys.”

“To say what a poisonous time she was having, and how foul everyone was!”

“Well, it was rather like that. I was an outlet. You must have someone you can say that kind of thing to. And then all of a sudden she stops dead. It’s four months since she left Mrs. Dugdale, and she hasn’t written a line. Don’t you see there’s something odd about it?”

“She may have gone abroad.”

“That wouldn’t stop her writing. She always wrote when she was with the Dartreys, and she said she was going to write. Peter, don’t you see that there must be something wrong?”

“Well, I don’t see what you can do about it. You put that silly advertisement in the Times, and nothing came of it.”

“And why was it silly?”

“Asking for trouble,” said Peter briefly. “You don’t know when you are well off. Take my advice and leave well alone.”

Thomasina’s colour deepened.

“I wouldn’t mind leaving it alone if I knew that it was well. But suppose it isn’t. Suppose—” She stopped because she didn’t want to go on. It was like coming to a corner and being afraid of what you might find if you went any farther. The colour drained away.

Peter said stubbornly,

“Well, I don’t see what you can do.”

“I can go to the police,” said Thomasina.