Men and Angels Read online

  “Secretary to a sort of Summer School for Art students—one of these London Art Schools has rented Allbrook Grange. I’ve got to live in—I don’t fancy living on the job, but if I get fed up I can always have a night or two at home, and anyhow, I’d have week-ends there. And there’s another thing—they’ve got a lot of well-known artists going down to run the school and Aylmer Ferris is going to be down there the whole time. I thought it would be nice if I got him to do a portrait of Mother; if he agreed, I could drive him over at week-ends. He’s one of the best-known portrait painters in the country, and if he’d do a portrait of Mother at his lowest terms, I’d give it to you to take back to Kenya. Would you like that?”

  “I can only tell you,” said Richard, “when I’ve seen the portrait. Do I have to pay for it? If it’s for me, I’d like to see what the fellow’s doing.”

  “Well, but you can’t. You won’t be there.”

  “I’ve got to spend some time at home,” said Richard, “and I’ve got an even better idea than yours.”

  Judy looked surprised.

  “Well, what?”

  Richard turned to Rae.

  “Tell me,” he asked, “when do you do your summer schooling?”

  “Me? I—well, I only get a fortnight,” said Rae. “With luck, three weeks, and I have to take it when the man I work for takes his.”

  “And is there any chance of his taking it in June?”

  “He m-might,” said Rae, stammering a little in her efforts to see where the questions were leading. “Why?”

  “Why don’t you come and spend the three weeks at home?” asked Richard. “I’d have my grey export drophead coupé by then—that’s point one. Two, home’s a bit on the lonely side—it’s—”

  “Rae, you couldn’t!” brought out Judy slowly and reluctantly. “Honestly, you couldn’t. Richard, she couldn’t!”

  “Tell her why,” invited Richard, settling down to his plate of food. “I’ll listen.”

  Judy looked at Rae.

  “I’d love you to go,” she said slowly, “and with Richard there, perhaps—well, it might be different, but you see, there’s nothing to do at Thorpe. When there were four of us there for school holidays, it was marvellous—a nice big house, huge grounds, and nobody for miles—we had wonderful times—didn’t we, Rich?”

  “We did,” said Richard. “And we could again.”

  “No, you couldn’t,” persisted Judy. “Everything’s quite different now. You can’t ask Rae down just as if you were inviting her to an ordinary house in the country.”

  “What’s extraordinary about it?” asked Richard. “Everything. You may as well know, Rae, what you’re in for. It’s lovely country, but it is country, and none of your bus services or easy hops into Town. You can get there, and then you have to stay there. The nearest thing to our house is a farm, and that’s over two miles away. And Mother’s a darling, and there’s nothing really wrong with old Uncle Bertram, once you get used to him—and there’s quite a nice normal woman who’s a friend of Mother’s—she’s called Miss Beckwith. Just those three. Uncle Bertram comes out now and again, because he belongs to a Club in London, but the other two—Mother and Miss Beckwith—live down there and never move. Mother does the cooking, and when she’s finished one day’s meals, she sits down and plots out the next; Miss Beckwith glides round the house counting linen and making beds, and they both feel that the bees have nothing on them. They don’t even listen to the wireless—Uncle Bertram listens to the News every night and keeps them in touch with anything that’s going on—not that they care, but they wouldn’t like people to know. They’ve shut themselves up in a nice little cocoon; the house is like a church, it’s so quiet, and when you go there you step out of life into a sort of—of backwater. It doesn’t worry me—or Richard, or the others. We go down armed with wirelesses and the latest novels and some new records, and we manage. But we don’t take people down any more—it’s like throwing a brick into a duckpond.”

  “Where’s the harm in chucking a brick in a duckpond?” asked Richard. “It’s a harmless sort of amusement.”

  “You still haven’t answered,” said Judy. “What’s the use of landing Rae in a place like Thorpe? What’ll you do?”

  Richard finished a mouthful, pushed his plate aside and turned to Rae.

  “I’ll tell you,” he said. “I’ll take you up to the three attics, where all our old treasures are stored. I’ll take you through the woods and show you all the bunny-holes. We’ll swim in our quite private pool, and we’ll sunbathe on its banks. I’ll show you the arbour we built—all by ourselves, in stone. I’ll drive you up and down our hilly roads—only thirty miles from this table and yet so quiet, so unpeopled, so lonely and so peaceful. We’ll go out in the morning and come back late at night. I’ll show you our Duchess, if she’s still alive; I’ll show you our tree-house. Don’t let Judy frighten you—I’ll provide all the entertainment.—How about it? Will you come?”

  There was a moment’s pause.

  “Yes, I’ll come,” said Rae quietly.

  She would go. If it meant holding her chief up at pistol point, if it meant throwing up her job—she would go. She would go more than thirty miles to be near that tall, strong form and listen to the low, teasing voice. He was completely unreadable; she had no means of knowing whether he wanted her as a companion, or whether he was using her to hold off the boredom of a spell of home life. She had no idea what he thought of her. She had come out with childish plans for subjugating Judy’s brother, and she had met an unexpectedly mature man of the world whose provocative, elusive manner must have baffled many older and wiser women. He was only twenty-six, but he appeared years older than the men of the same age with whom she had dined and danced. He had the assurance of thirty and the ease of forty. She had assumed that her friendship with Judy would place her at once on an easy footing with her brother; instead, he had talked down to her and made her feel as though she was still in the shell.

  She looked up and found his eyes on her with what she feared was amusement.

  “I’ve just had the most wonderful idea,” he said. “Want to hear it?”

  “No,” said Edward.

  “You’ve guessed it,” said Richard. “I’m going to let you pay the bill.”

  Chapter 3

  There was a great deal to be done before May came to an end. Richard, after a brief visit to his mother at Thorpe, went up to Liverpool on business; Judy joined the London headquarters of the Art School, and began to work on the arrangements for the move to Allbrook. Rae had to tell her aunts that she would not be spending her holiday with them, and she had also to interview her employer with a view to finding out whether she could have the holiday at all.

  Matters went more easily than she had expected. She spent a restless night composing sentences to be delivered in a firm voice at her office:

  ‘I should very much like, Mr. Marshall, to be free for the last three weeks of June.’

  ‘I take it, Mr. Marshall, that you’ve no objection to my taking my fortnight’s holiday in June? It would suit me very well if you could arrange your Directors’ Meetings so as to allow me three consecutive weeks.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Marshall—my plans are quite complete.’

  ‘In that case, Mr. Marshall, I’m very sorry, but—’

  ‘I repeat, Mr. Marshall—the last three weeks in June—’

  It was very convincing during the night, but on the following morning Rae felt that she would be unable to conduct the interview on firm lines. She would stammer and make ineffectual attempts to put the matter boldly, but it would end in his being irritated and in her giving notice for she was determined to go to Thorpe, and no Mr. Marshall, she resolved, was going to stop her.

  No interview of any kind was necessary, however, for what Rae regarded as the kindest, the most benevolent Providence struck Mr. Marshall down with an attack of jaundice; he was ordered to bed and, since Rae’s duties were connected solely with his affairs,
the firm advised her to take her holiday during his absence.

  So much was over. The aunts still remained, and Rae journeyed to Bath for a week-end to explain that she was spending three weeks at Judy’s home. The aunts were very pleased; if they suspected that there was a young man in the case, they expressed no hopes and uttered no warnings.

  “What,” enquired Aunt Hester, “are you going to do with the flat while you and Judy are away?”

  Rae looked at her in surprise.

  “Do? Well, we hadn’t thought—I mean, we were just going to leave it.” The surprise gave way to a new thought. “Look, Aunt Hester, why don’t you both go up and stay in it while we’re away? You can do shopping, and theatres and—”

  “That wasn’t quite the idea,” said Aunt Hester. “It occurred to me that if you’re going to leave the place empty for three weeks—”

  “Oh, but there’s a caretaker and everything,” said Rae. “He—”

  “Splendid. But it’s always well to wait until a person finishes a sentence—then you know what they’re trying to say.”

  “Sorry, Auntie.”

  “As I say, it struck me that if you’re going to leave the place empty for three weeks, it would be a good opportunity for us to go up and give it a good going-over.”

  “Who’s ‘us’?” enquired Aunt Anne anxiously.

  “You and me. It’ll require all of three weeks’ hard work from two people—you and me—to remove the accumulation of filth that those two girls have—”

  “Filth, Auntie?”

  “—that those two girls have lived in for the past year. The last time I went up, the bag of the vacuum-cleaner had a split in it, and the dust came out as fast as it went in.”

  “We ordered a new bag, Auntie.”

  “And has it come?”

  “Well, no—not yet, but—”

  “Have you ever taken the things down that were thrown on that tall cupboard?”

  “No, Auntie. We—”

  “How often have you had the rugs up?”

  “Well, we—”

  “When did you last scrub the larder shelves?”

  “As a matter of—”

  “Or dust the bookshelves?”

  “We—”

  “And when did you last have the curtains down, or the blankets washed, or the sink-boards scrubbed or the lampshades dusted and the—”

  “I think, Hester,” broke in Aunt Anne, “that while you’re at the flat, I’ll run up and spend some time with poor—”

  “Poor nothing,” said Aunt Hester. “The place is a pigsty. We shall go up and give it a thorough do.”

  Rae reported this conversation to Judy, who looked round the flat with a new curiosity.

  “Pigsty?”

  “Yes, it is,” said Rae. “They’re quite right. When we come back, it’ll all smell of strong soap and wax polish.

  We’d better clear some of the accumulation of papers and rubbish out of those drawers.”

  The clearing disclosed a great deal of unanswered correspondence, Accounts Rendered, crumpled paper patterns and a miscellany of snapshots.

  “Golly!” Judy, abandoning all attempts at tidying, sat cross-legged on the floor, turned up the wireless, and settled down to a happy session with the photographs. “Look—there’s you that day down at Rottingdean, and—”

  “I can’t hear,” said Rae.

  Judy repeated the information in a loud voice, and the conversation continued over the strident sounds issuing from the radio. They had no thought of turning it down; noise was their natural background, confusion their natural element. They rose to music, dressed to two programmes going simultaneously and thought silence uncanny. Papers accumulated round Rae as she sat sorting and tearing.

  “Whose card is that you’ve just torn up?” asked Judy.

  “Uncle Fabian’s. He never writes when he invites you. He just sends his card with the time and place written on the back and a pretty little bit like: ‘May I have the pleasure?’ or ‘I do so hope you can come.’ ”

  “And then you go and all you get’s a drive. Honestly, Rae, I don’t see how you can be right about girls going about with him. He might be good-looking, or even young-looking—I don’t say he isn’t, but can you see me, for instance, going round with a man of forty whatisit?”

  “With this one, yes,” said Rae. “If he weren’t my uncle, and if I didn’t know how really mean he is, I could enjoy being with him.”

  “What—you mean even if you had the chance of going out with someone young? I don’t believe it.”

  Rae gave up the attempt to explain her uncle’s success with girls. It would be impossible to tell Judy that charm was ageless, and that when Fabian Hollis was fifty, sixty and more, he would still attract with his air of breeding, his unusual good looks, his wit and knowledge of the world. In time, she knew, girls tired of him. Wit and charm were all very well, but so were theatres and dances and dinners, none of which Fabian provided. More was expected from a man with a Rolls-Royce than drives in the Park. When it became obvious that no more was forthcoming, it was natural that girls would look for something more practical than polish.

  Richard returned from Liverpool early in June and rang Rae up at her office.

  “How long is the day?” he enquired without preamble.

  “You mean—”

  “Quite so,” said Richard. “Five or five-thirty?”

  “Half-past, I’m afraid.”

  “My God!” said Richard. “Haven’t you got a Union? How about a nice dark cinema with a nice light dinner afterwards?”

  “Thank you very much.”

  “Thank you very much yes, or thank you very much no?”

  “I’d like to come, thank you,” said Rae.

  “Don’t sound so prim. Say ‘Yeah, that’s a date.’ Haven’t you got any cross-talk?”

  “Well, no,” said Rae.

  “Ah!” The tone, light and teasing, brought him vividly before her; she could almost see the provocative expression in his eyes. “Ah! You’re the slow one. How do I pick you out from all the other typists when you come out of the cage?”

  “I’m in black,” said Rae.

  “Black. And what are all the others in?”

  “Well, they’re in black, too.”

  “That’s the end,” said Richard, and rang off.

  Rae spent a good deal of the rest of the afternoon in the washroom, trying to do something with her hair, which before the telephone call had seemed the picture of perfection. After doing it four times, she decided it would have to stay as it was. She washed her face and made it up slowly and carefully, wishing she had some of Judy’s dark, pretty colouring. Blondes were all very well, but they lacked sparkle—and Richard seemed to expect sparkle.

  She went back to her typewriter and stared at the keys. She was feeling a little confused. The familiar objects on her desk had an odd look, as though they were far away instead of at her elbow. The white letters on Mr. Marshall’s door looked misty and the figures in the main office seemed to be moving slowly and heavily instead of with their usual scuttling haste. Everything was vague—until she thought of Richard Ashton.

  Rae took out her handkerchief and rubbed her palms, which felt moist. The tired feeling which had weighed on her for the past hour seemed to increase, and at last she pushed her work aside, examined her symptoms and confronted the question which she would have much rather avoided: Was she, or was she not, falling in love?

  If she was, she decided, she was doing it in rather a hurry. She had thought—and talked—a great deal about love, but her position, in her dreams, had always been a very strong one. It had been one of cautious deliberation; should she, or should she not, return the affection which was being laid at her feet? That was all a girl had to do—make up her mind. The man fell in love, the man wooed, the man hoped, the man waited—all a girl had to do was to take her time and be sure it was not just excitement and the size of the sapphire.

  Fighting down a feel
ing of panic, she reviewed her position. She was falling—she had fallen—in love with Richard Ashton. She had seen his handsome likeness every day in the flat for the past year; she had discussed him with Judy; she had allowed Judy to bring them together in an undisguisedly hopeful way; she had met him, and she had behaved like an unsophisticated schoolgirl. If he had asked her, an hour ago, to go to Ceylon instead of to the cinema, she would have said yes with the same meek, obvious alacrity.

  The door with the white letters opened, and it became imperative to put love in its place. Rae worked hard for the next two hours and found herself steadier at the end of it. Falling in love before being encouraged was unwise, she acknowledged, but perhaps the encouragement would follow.

  She was relieved to find that some certainly followed over dinner. Richard, now in possession of his export model drove her to a riverside restaurant and ordered the meal without any reference to her whatsoever; he watched her as she drank, under his orders, a whole glass of wine, and allowed her to sleep it off against his shoulder in the car. He drove home slowly, putting one of her hands on the wheel and his own firmly over hers. Arrived at her door, and oblivious to the unconcealed interest of the hall porter, he explained that he always kissed a girl after taking her out, in case she felt under any obligation. When he raised his head, Rae had to admit, a little breathlessly, that all sense of obligation was gone.

  The porter took her up in the lift, merely remarking that it was a fine night for that sort of thing. And the street, he ended less cordially as he took the lift down, a fine place.

  Rae opened the door of the flat and went in slowly, making a mental summary of the evening. Her sense of humour, for some reason—perhaps, she thought, the wine—seemed to be in better working order. The grim thought of loving, unloved, had lost its sting. She had begun the evening with some vague ideas of being more distant, less amenable. Well, she hadn’t been amenable; she had merely behaved as any intelligent lamb would behave when an eagle swooped down and got its claws round it. Frightening, yes, but worth it for the wonderful feeling of being born up into the sky.