Читать книгу The Willow Cabin - Pamela Frankau - Страница 14

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“Mr. Brookfield has gone out to lunch, I’m afraid,” said Vera Haydon and added reproachfully, “He waited a long time. He was expecting you to get in touch with him.”

“I know he was.” The voice sounded heavy and sad. “All right; I’ll call him later on.”

“Can we ring you, Miss Seward? I don’t quite know what time he’ll be back.”

“No, that wouldn’t be any good. I may come into the Gallery this afternoon on the chance of finding him.”

Replacing the telephone, Dennis Brookfield’s secretary thought, “I wonder if she knows how much I hate her.” As soon as she had thought that, she felt awed and guilty. Hatred was a strong word; to hate was unbalanced and Vera had a profound respect for Balance. But her code was no protection against the emotion that she felt for Caroline; it bubbled up like a geyser.

Before the appearance of Miss Seward, she had taken a lively and possessive interest in Dennis’s young women. (Her disapproval admitted to doubts of his relationship with them, but this was filed under the convenient headings, None of My Business, and Anyway I’ve No Proof.) She had treated them as gently, when their ascendancy demanded that he should be brought to the telephone at once, as when their powers waned and she had to tell them lies. There had been an Honourable, whom she had hoped that he would marry, a dancer who was surprisingly Nice, and one actress with a name so well-known that it always seemed to announce itself through the receiver in lights. Those were the days; now there was only Caroline.

“Miss Seward called,” she wrote neatly and rose to place the message on Dennis’s blotter. She returned to her own desk, took from the drawer a piece of chamois leather and began to polish the silver pen-tray, the paper-knife, and the inkpot with the silver top. These things were her pride; they were a symbol of the first importance. They were the gift of Mrs. Michael Knowle.

The gift had been made when that halcyon term of employment came to an end, seven years ago, at the time when Mr. and Mrs. Knowle had decided to lead separate lives. It was a blow to Vera. She had loved Mrs. Knowle devotedly, disapproving as she loved. Mrs. Knowle came under the heading of Impossible Person, but she had the saving grace, the only saving grace; she was well-born. This had made Vera’s love appear reasonable to her in all the trying moments; they were trying because of the unorthodox nature of her duties. Sometimes she had been drafted to take over Mr. Knowle’s appointment-book and shepherd his patients from the waiting-room. Sometimes she had been whisked off to Sussex to regulate the farm-accounts at Cold Ash. Sometimes she had arranged the flowers for dinner-parties. Sometimes she had run errands of an incomprehensible character. Once she had posed with her bare foot on a block of wood because Mrs. Knowle, indulging a painting-spell, had wished to paint a foot. (And this was a tribute to Vera’s high insteps; it was consoling to have high insteps; they were a sign of Breeding and she always mentioned them when she was buying a pair of shoes.)

The telephone rang again; it was the sad, fussy Mr. Kenrick from Orange Street, where the Brookfield Galleries owned an off-shoot, a small picture-gallery dedicated to modern exhibits. Of all Dennis’s preoccupations, this gallery was Vera’s main interest and Mr. Kenrick’s needs were of high priority. Mrs. Knowle had encouraged her enthusiasm for modern art.

“I’m expecting him any minute,” she said. Her intimation to Miss Seward that he might not be back for some time was based on nothing but the desire to irritate Miss Seward. Dennis never took more than half an hour to eat his lunch alone. Which made it all the more exasperating that when he took Caroline to lunch, he might remain absent for over two hours.

“How he can make such a fool of himself; a girl who’s in love with another man....”

She had become aware only gradually that the “Michael” to whom Dennis was obliged to refer so often in making rendezvous with Caroline was the villainous Mr. Knowle. After the suspicion became strong, Mr. Knowle had dissolved her doubts by bringing Miss Seward to an exhibition at the Orange Street Gallery. From that moment Caroline stood finally damned.

Vera rose from her desk and leaned discreetly on the window-sill, looking down into King Street. She saw it, as she saw everything, tinted by her dark spectacles. Dennis was standing on the pavement, looking thoughtfully at the collection behind each of the plate-glass windows. There were four large windows and his inspection was always thorough. Vera could not rid herself of the view that it was a little common to do this; he made her think of a greengrocer standing beside his stall. She was fond of Dennis and she was fond of the Brookfield Galleries, but the position of the one looking at the other embarrassed her. It embarrassed her twice a day; on his arrival in the morning and on his return from lunch.

He was obviously in a mood of gloom when he sat down at his desk; he was obviously cheered by the sight of Caroline’s name on the message.

“And Mr. Kenrick would like you to call him at once,” Vera said.

“What does Kenrick want? I don’t think I want Kenrick,” said Dennis sleepily. She told him what it was that Kenrick wanted, but he continued to pay no attention, to look through catalogues and make notes on his blotter. She stared at him with affectionate irritation. Her spectacles darkened his skin and his hair to more than their natural darkness. In these tones, the strain of Jewish blood was emphasised; with the hawk-profile and the expensive, unnoticeable clothes.

Vera could not feel happy about the fact that Dennis’s grandfather had been called Brückfeldt, and that he had made and mended picture-frames in Charing Cross Road. She was not anti-Semitic; that would have been shameful at this moment in the world’s history; she simply thought that it was A Pity about Jews. They ran to unsuitable activities such as growing side-whiskers, charging interest and spending week-ends at Brighton. Of course, she reminded herself, Dennis had cleverly mitigated the taint with two generations of mixed ancestry; and he had a public-school education.

Caroline Seward opened the door of the sanctum without knocking. Vera was forced to admit that she looked more than usually elegant; she was wearing a beautifully-cut black cloth coat and a black turban that ended in a long scarf. The elegance included her gloves, her handbag and her shoes (the details, Vera knew, that could prove or disprove a woman of Breeding).

“Don’t you look lovely?” Dennis was saying, while Vera was wondering what had made Miss Seward so palpably unhappy. She looked pale and she did not smile at all.

“Please—Dennis—if you’re not busy——”

There he was, snatching his hat, saying that he had nothing whatever to do. “Mr. Kenrick wanted to speak to you,” Vera reminded him.

“Well, why don’t you go round to Orange Street and put him out of his misery? Ask the switchboard to take messages while you’re gone.”

“What time shall I expect you back?”

“Oh ... not to-day,” said Dennis, and they went out. Leaning on the window-sill, Vera watched them emerging. Caroline put one hand on Dennis’s arm and they walked away together, disappearing round the corner of St. James’s Square.

Vera went to collect her hat and coat from the little cloakroom at the back of the building. It was amiable to walk among the foreign persons who did not spend their days in offices. She took the longer way to Orange Street.

She wished that she could stop thinking about Caroline, the last companion whom she would have wished to go with her along Pall Mall. “She is not pretty,” Vera reminded herself strenuously as she came past the Carlton Hotel. How could the high head of curly hair, the large greenish-brown eyes, the prominent cheekbones, that blunt nose and square mouth, add up to a semblance of beauty? Yet it was so; they did; and now she was remembering also the warmth of the deep voice and the movements of the body with its long bones.

“Large bones,” Vera corrected herself as she turned up the Haymarket; “She has Large Bones. Like me.” There was no other resemblance. Vera knew that her own aspect was somehow heavy and muddy, though she would sometimes think of it as Distinguished because that adjective had been used once by Mrs. Knowle. Mrs. Knowle had said, “You look very distinguished,” when Vera had changed into black velvet to eat supper alone with her at Cold Ash. It had been a lovely, intimate evening, with Mrs. Knowle at her most peaceful. Cold Ash was a beautiful house; Vera hoped that they would never sell it; she knew that it was let and she knew the names of the tenants. A surprising amount of information came to her indirectly through Dennis; sometimes she thought that her affection for Dennis rested only upon the foundation of his link with the Knowles; she had no other link. Mrs. Knowle was always abroad now.

Damn Caroline Seward; blissful to understand that Mrs. Knowle refused to divorce her husband. “Not that he would marry her anyway; that sort of girl never does get herself married,” Vera repeated as she came to the door of the gallery. “And as for him....”

At first acquaintance, Vera had been susceptible to Mr. Knowle’s good looks and placid charm of manner. Gradually, as the tension between husband and wife became apparent, she had learned to see him for what he was; the charm was only the professional stuff that his female patients were happy to pay for; the placidity was only evidence of his obstinate self-will. Mr. Knowle was a bully and Vera could see that Mrs. Knowle, for all her assets of wealth and breeding, was a little afraid of him. He had the morals and the arrogance of a Turk. “What that man ought to have is a harem. The impertinence of it; he was a nobody; just a nobody.” She would have liked him to have a common voice. She would have liked Caroline Seward to have a common voice.

Vera entered the gallery and for a moment she was newly aware of it; empty of visitors, with its soft tawny walls and the pictures imposing their queer silence, the glistening black marble leopard lunging across his stone pedestal. She liked it better this way than when it was full of people appraising the latest exhibition. Except that on those days she would sometimes watch the door, playing a game wherein Mrs. Knowle walked suddenly in among the crowd and saw her and called to her and presently, over a cup of tea, told Vera that she was living alone now and would like her to come back; “You always understood me better than anybody else,” Mrs. Knowle said in this dream, “And I am lonely; I do need a companion as well as a secretary....”

Now Vera saw Mr. Kenrick coming towards her through the alcove from the inner room, and prepared to hear his troubles.