Faster! Faster! (10 page)

“Can you?”

“It was Andrew Quarrendon.”

“How do you know?”

“By a process of elimination,” said Sal drily.

When Quarrendon came back at three o'clock to fetch his hostess and the picnic tea, Sylvia sat beside the driving-seat.

Claudia had just finished packing the tea-basket. It was the cook's afternoon out.

“I'm just ready!” she cried, flying through the hall with the two heavy baskets. “Here, I'll put these in, and then go and get my hat on. I shan't be a minute.”

“There isn't any hurry,” Sal suggested.

She stood—hatless—by the car.

Claudia was already half-way up the stairs.

When she came down again Mrs Peel was hovering restlessly between the library and the open front-door. She was unable to decide whether she was, or was not, coming with them.

“Is it very hot by the sea?” she enquired suspiciously.

“It was lovely on the cliffs,” Sylvia said. “I suppose it was rather hot.”

“We were sitting in the sun,” Quarrendon reminded her. His face had burnt to a lively scarlet.

“Have you bathed?”

“I'm afraid I don't,” Quarrendon replied, and at the same moment Sylvia answered “Not yet.”

“Not yet!” repeated Claudia in surprise. “What have you all been doing?”

“The others have been swimming. We just sat on the cliffs and talked.”

“I really ought to write to Anna,” Mrs Peel suddenly decided.

“No, do come. We shall all be out—you can't stay all by yourself, Grandmama.”

“There won't be room in the car, I'm afraid.”

“Heaps,” said Sylvia vaguely.

Mrs Peel yielded. She explained, in a short and involved speech, that it would be necessary for her to go upstairs first and fetch a hat and a pair of gloves.

By the time she had said this, had gone, and had come back again, wearing a large shady hat and a pair of wash-leather gloves, and carrying a black watered-silk handbag, a parasol, an air-cushion, and a light dust-cloak, Claudia had reorganized the seating arrangements of the car.

“It will be more comfortable for Grandmama if you go in the back, Sylvia, and let her sit in front. You and Sal and I can all fit in easily, and put the baskets on the floor.”

This arrangement, so excellent in itself, caused Mrs Peel to protest.

She unselfishly urged everybody to move, to let her sit in the middle, to let her sit in the corner, to let her take the baskets on her knee, and to leave her behind altogether.

At last she was persuaded into the car.

Claudia took the seat next to Quarrendon.

“Have you liked your morning?” she said. “It was nice of you to go with the children.”

“I liked it. Is your work done?”

“Yes, for the moment.”

“Why don't you employ a secretary?”

“I can't afford one. Besides, we haven't got room in the holidays, when the children are at home. And I don't think Copper would like it. He'd hate a stranger always in the house. Most men would, I suppose.”

“You work very hard.”

“I rather like it,” declared Claudia, too brightly. “I've got any amount of energy, you know. Besides—” she broke off for a moment and then spoke gravely and quietly, “I expect you've guessed that the children have got nobody to provide for them except me. They're all dependent on what I can earn, practically. I've got a tiny private income—but it's a very small one.”

“Your husband can't get any sort of job?”

“He hasn't had one for a long time,” said Claudia evasively. “I'd give anything if he could find something to do; but it's nearly impossible, isn't it, for a man of his age, who's not been specially trained for anything?”

“I don't know,” said Quarrendon, apparently taking the question literally.

“I'm afraid it is,” Claudia sighed.

She was surprised, and a little disappointed, when he said nothing more.

Tea on the sands was a greater success than tea in the library at Arling had been on the previous day. Copper woke, after sleeping in the shade most of the afternoon, in a mood of amiability, and sitting next to Frances Ladislaw talked with her about South Africa.

The others were cheerful. Even Mrs Peel, established on her air-cushion beneath her parasol, seemed to think well of her surroundings and accepted jam-sandwiches and tea from Claudia's Thermos. The conversation drifted.

Sometimes the children joined in, and sometimes they conducted a side-current of their own—a rapid, unintelligible, allusive spate of words that no one but themselves could follow. When they spoke to their seniors, it sounded quite different. They were then audible and moderately distinct, and made use of co-ordinated words and phrases. And yet, Frances decided, they were perfectly at ease with their mother and with Sal Oliver. With their father they were less so, and with their grandmother less still.

Quarrendon, who was sitting next to Claudia, spoke very little.

When presently Sal Oliver spoke, energetically and with emphasis, of economic conditions amongst
the unemployed, the remark met with instant failure.

“In this country,” said Mrs Peel, “nobody need ever go short of food. To say anything else is absolute nonsense.”

The conversation quickly reverted to subjects more immediately personal.

Frances, saying little herself, sat and listened. She watched her splendid and gifted friend, Claudia, and a sense of growing dismay invaded her.

Claudia was
not
happy, she was not wholly natural—in some queer way, she seemed not even quite real. There was a febrile, excited quality about her gay, animated manner and whenever one of her children addressed her she listened with full attention and answered with a carefully displayed detachment, as though anxious to impress on them her non-parental candour. It would have seemed more natural, Frances could not help thinking, if she had occasionally been absent-minded or even impatient.

In the old days Claudia had been often impatient. The younger, more sweet-tempered Anna had suffered under Claudia's tense, violent, and domineering ways. Even Frances, a frequent visitor at Arling, had not always been spared.

Yet Frances felt that she had liked, and understood, the tyrannical, self-willed, youthful Claudia better than she did the mature Claudia, so self-restrained and so unreal.

Frances was grieved, as she dwelt upon her own criticism, but it did not cause her to bemoan her own disloyalty.

She was fond of Claudia: she would always be fond of Claudia. Nothing of that was impaired because she could not see Claudia as she had, in the years of their separation, seen her. And she reminded herself that there was much, probably, of which she knew nothing, to explain the new Claudia.

Copper, for instance, was—disappointing?

Frances searched anxiously in her mind for the right word by which to describe Copper Winsloe.

One couldn't, she felt, just dismiss him as disagreeable, although he
was
disagreeable, often. To-day, though, he'd been more like the Copper that she remembered—nonchalantly agreeable, quite ready to please and be pleased.

“Well, I shall go for a stroll, I think,” said the object of her thoughts. “Betsy!”

“Where are you going, Daddy?” asked Maurice.

(“Darling
Betsy!” said Taffy extravagantly, as the Airedale capered gaily amongst the brightly coloured horn mugs and plates of the depleted picnic.)

“I'm going up the cliff.”

“Can I come with you?”

“If you like.”

“You must be back in about half an hour, Maurice, if you want to bathe again,” said Claudia.

“Oh.”

Maurice paused.

“I don't know how much of a walk you want, Copper. Are you going to go far?” asked his wife.

“Oh, I don't know,” said Copper curtly. “I can't go timing myself to the minute.”

He strode off without turning to see whether or not his small son was following.

“Maurice,” said Claudia quickly, “will you help to collect the mugs and things? Then it'll be all done, and we needn't hurry over the bathe.”

“Don't you ever bathe?” Taffy enquired of Andrew Quarrendon.

He shook his head.

They began to pack up. Claudia worked with deft efficiency and extraordinary speed, leaving very little for other people to do.

The two girls and Maurice ran down to the edge of the water again. The tide was going out. Presently they could only be seen as black dots on a silvery expanse, against the light of the sun.

Claudia had invited Andrew Quarrendon to come for a stroll along the cliffs. He moved off, his step shambling and uneasy, his head bent as though he found it necessary always to look at the ground as he walked.

“What a curious-looking creature Professor Quarrendon is!” said Mrs Peel in tones of distaste.

Then she announced her intention of going onto the sands, and trailed slowly away down the cliff path.

Sal and Frances followed, Sal in search of a bathing-tent, and Frances to watch Claudia's three children.

It seemed to her a long time since she had been in contact with youth, and she was innocently pleased and surprised because Sylvia and Taffy and Maurice seemed so willing to talk to her, and
showed no signs of the contempt for her middle-age that various arraignments of the modern young in literature had led her to expect. On the contrary, she found them polite and kind and very friendly.

Quite soon, as she strolled up and down the wet sands, Taffy came and joined her.

Taffy was wearing a little backless white bathing-suit, laced up at the sides, barely covering her slim breasts, and leaving her back exposed to the waist.

Frances thought that she had seldom seen anything lovelier than those long lines, that smooth, unblemished young body. At first, dazzled by Sylvia's rose-and-gold prettiness, she had thought Taffy's small freckled face and straight sandy bob insignificant-looking. Now, she wondered how she could ever have thought so.

The girl's eyes would have redeemed any face from insignificance. They were so green, so deeply-set between two rows of curving lashes, above all, so ardently expressive.

“Are you going for a walk? Can I come with you?”

“I'd love you to—but you mustn't bother about me. Don't you want to swim again?”

“No,” said Taffy.

She pulled off her white rubber helmet and shook her hair loose.

“No, the tide's too far out. Sal and Sylvia will have to walk simply miles before they even get out of their depths. I'd like to come with you, if I may.”

“It's nice of you,” said Frances sincerely. “Do you remember last time I stayed with you, Taffy? It was when you were living in Hampstead, and I used to take you and the little dog—Jock, he was—for walks on the Heath.”

“Of course I remember. Jock died—poor darling. I often think how he'd have liked the country.”

“I suppose he would.”

“His Lordship was pleased, when we took him to Arling,” said Taffy thoughtfully. “At first I was terrified he might run away, and go back to Hampstead. You know how they always say cats go miles and miles to find their old homes. But he never did anything of the kind. Just settled down, and was perfectly happy.”

“He'd probably be happy anywhere with you, wouldn't he?” Frances suggested kindly. “I'm sure people are most unjust when they say that cats don't get fond of people.”

“Of course they do! His Lordship never goes to anybody else when he can come to me. When I'm away at school, he never takes any notice of anybody. Not even Mother.”

Frances felt rather touched at Taffy's earnestness on the subject of her cat. It made her seem so child-like.

“Do you like your school?” she ventured to ask.

“Not frightfully,” said Taffy. “I'm not in the least unhappy there, but just slightly bored. I get sick of the chat about games, and mistresses, and school-things generally. I shall be glad when I leave.”

“What are you going to do when you leave?”

“As a matter of fact,” said Taffy, suddenly immensely grown-up, and not at all the same person that she had been three minutes earlier, “as a matter of fact, I should be rather glad to talk to you about that, if you don't mind. I'd already thought you might possibly be able to help me.”

“My dear, what can
I
do?”

“You might talk to Mother—that is, if you don't utterly disapprove of what I'm going to say. You know my Aunt Anna—Mrs Zienszi—don't you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I want to go to America with her. She's got no children of her own, you know, and she's perfectly willing to take me. In fact, she suggested it. She'd send me to College—there's a place called Bryn Mawr that sounds too marvellous—I might get some kind of a scholarship, perhaps—and I'd either spend the hols.—vacations I mean—with them, or else get some kind of job out there, like American girls do. Aunt Anna and I have talked it all over. She's frightfully nice and frightfully generous—and they really are frightfully rich and could afford to have me. And of course, sooner or later, I should be earning.”

She looked at Frances, eagerly and rather anxiously.

“What do your parents think?”

“Daddy hasn't said anything—I'm not sure if he even knows about it—and Mother won't take it seriously. But as a matter of fact, I haven't really put it to her in earnest, yet. I'm waiting till I've taken my school-leaving certificate. I'm going to
talk to my headmistress, and get her on my side.”

“Will that be difficult?”

“I don't think so. She's got a good deal of sense. Rather an academic outlook, of course, and she's spent too much of her life amongst women and girls—but she's moderately broad-minded, and very intelligent. She'll see the point of it.”