Family Gathering Read online

  Natalie said she would very much like a nice hot drink.

  “Well, we’ll go in, then,” said Lady Rome. “Where did I put my trowel?—oh, in there in the barrow. I wonder, my dear, whether you’re too tired to help me move it round to that opening—then somebody will take it away. Now I’ll take this handle and you—well no, it wobbles too much if we both do it.” To prevent this unsteadiness, Lady Rome relinquished her end and allowed Natalie to grasp both handles and push the barrow by herself. “Thank you so much,” she went on. “Now we must find Jason—one never can put one’s hand on him at any given moment, and Lucille won’t find him, of course, because she’s such a silly little thing and forgets everything. Sometimes I wonder if she’s quite right in the head. I don’t know what sort of wife she’s going to make.”

  Natalie, whose head felt less clear than it had done earlier in the afternoon, remembered something that had some connection with Lucille as a wife.

  “I met her fiancé,” she told Lady Rome. “He seemed very nice.”

  “He’s quite a nice young man,” agreed Lady Rome, leading the way out of the garden and towards the house. “Not too much character, perhaps, but then Lucille hasn’t much either so that won’t matter particularly.”

  “But”—Natalie’s confusion grew—“I thought he told me that—that he had never met you—any of you.”

  “Now that’s a nonsensical statement,” boomed Lady Rome, entering the house through a long window which led directly into a small sitting-room. “If he’d never met any of us, he couldn’t have got engaged to Lucille, could he? Sit there, Natalie, my dear, and take some things off and be comfortable, and when you’ve rested a little I’ll make Lucille show you your room. And you’d like some tea, I’m sure, wouldn’t you?”

  Natalie, in whom hope had died, shook her head gently. It was a pity to refuse tea, but since two acceptances had done nothing to procure it for her, a refusal would be as little heeded. She put tea out of her mind and frowned in an endeavour to clear up the problem of her acquaintance with Duncan Macdonald.

  “He said—at least, I was quite sure that he said he’d never met you,” she said, taking the chair offered her.

  “He must have been thinking of somebody else,” said Lady Rome. “He does, sometimes. I’ve often noticed that he has a bewildered look when I’m talking to him. I don’t want to be hard on the poor fellow, but sometimes I’m sure he isn’t quite right in the head. It’s his mother, of course—no child that she brought up could be entirely sane. Philip’s a good deal more sensible than his two dreadful sisters, but—”

  “But,” put in Natalie desperately, “you said Philip.”

  Lady Rome sat in a chair close to Natalie’s and looked at her daughter-in-law in surprise.

  “Of course I said Philip. Aren’t we talking about Philip?” she asked, her voice rattling the show-pieces in the china cabinet.

  “Well—no,” faltered Natalie. “At least—I was talking about Lucille’s fiancé.”

  “That’s all right,” said Lady Rome. “I thought for a moment that we were at cross purposes. Just look at my gloves,” she went on. “One of one and one of something else. I don’t know how it comes about. I keep them all in a drawer in the hall and the drawer is so full that it can’t be closed properly, but there only seems to be one of everything.”

  “Perhaps Philip,” suggested Natalie, “is one of his other names.”

  “Whose other names, my dear?” inquired Lady Rome kindly.

  “I mean—it all seems rather confusing,” faltered Natalie. “I thought that Lucille’s fiancé’s mother was dead.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Lady Rome in a disappointed voice. “She wasn’t yesterday when I went into Hunnytor to get some daffodils for your room—I don’t know what’s happened to ours, but I think everything’s behind this year. And Mrs. Bellamy was far from dead—oh, very far. I spoke to her twice.”

  Natalie pulled herself together.

  “I think there must be some mistake,” she said more steadily. “I met a very nice young man last night—his name was Duncan Macdonald, and he—”

  “Oh—now of course, we know where we are,” shouted Lady Rome. “No, no, no—he doesn’t live in London at all—he’s up in, I can’t remember whether it was Edinburgh or Glasgow, but whether his mother was dead or not, I really can’t tell you.”

  “But isn’t he,” pursued Natalie, “Lucille’s fiancé?”

  “Oh dear me, no,” said Lady Rome. “Goodness gracious me, no. All that’s over and done with, but of course I can see now why you looked so bewildered when I mentioned someone quite different.” Lady Rome gave a short laugh that sounded more like a donkey than any donkey Natalie had ever heard. “Well, well, well, that’s all cleared up,” she went on. “Of course you’ll be meeting Philip and unfortunately you’ll have to meet his mother, too—she has a special interest in you because the only thing that kept her here all these years was the hope of entrapping William— though she’s more than four years his senior. William wouldn’t look at her, so she had to fall back on the little pretence that he wasn’t a twice-marrying man. You must be nice to her—you’ll find it difficult, because she’s a horrid creature, but I always think it’s easier to be nice to people when you’ve scored off them. She’ll try and drop a few years off her age, but you mustn’t be taken in. No lines on her face, of course—it’s extraordinary how young a woman can keep if she never does any thinking. Not that poor Lottie Bellamy could think if she tried, poor woman, because I’ve maintained from the time she was sixteen that she isn’t quite right in the head. And now, my dear Natalie”—Lady Rome rose and held out a hand—“come along and I’ll find Lucille to take you to your room—that’s if you feel you wouldn’t rather have some tea before you go up? I always think that after a cold journey people ought to drink something hot.”

  Natalie only had one desire—to find a place where she could be alone until she had recovered from the confusion of the past hour. If she could escape from the booming voice for a little while—

  The door opened and Lucille’s flute-like notes fell sweetly on her tormented ear.

  “I can’t find Grandfather,” she announced, “but Jeremy telephoned to say he’ll be back soon after dinner. He sends you his love,” she added, turning to Natalie. “Did Granny give you any tea?”

  “I’ve been trying to persuade her,” said Lady Rome, “but she refused.”

  “I thought you said yes in the garden,” said Lucille.

  “Well, I’m sure you shook your head when I asked you just now—didn’t you, Natalie, my dear?” inquired Lady Rome in kind concern.

  Natalie admitted that she had, indeed, given a refusal, and Lucille gave a little murmur of regret.

  “You should have had some,” she said, leading Natalie out. “It’s two hours to dinner and dinner isn’t very substantial.”

  “Far from, far from,” said Lady Rome. “Sometimes I think we’ll all drop dead like those people after an earthquake or an atom bomb who don’t actually do it at the time but who simply fall down afterwards and nobody knows why and then they discover that they’ve been walking round for a long time to all intents and purposes dead. But you’ll know all about that,” she told Natalie, “because of course you were in London for all the bombs—or did you go away?”

  Natalie said that she had not gone away.

  “Then there you are, of course—you must know all about that sort of thing. One of my cousins was there practically all through the War and they fairly rained on her and she did a canteen too—did you do a canteen with all those bombs coming down on you?”

  Natalie admitted that she had made sandwiches at a canteen but that no bombs had, in point of fact, fallen on her.

  “Well, that was lucky,” said Lady Rome, “or you wouldn’t be here now and we shouldn’t be able to look after you for William. Now run along with Lucille, my dear, and if you want to look over the house afterwards you shall, but practically every
thing is under dust sheets. Take her up, Lucille. You’re in William’s room, Natalie, my dear. St. Philomena. All the bedrooms are saints, don’t you know, and there can never be any mistake if you get lost, because every door has its own little saint in the form of a knocker on the door. Just look for St. Philomena and there you are.”

  Natalie followed her stepdaughter up one side of a double flight of stairs, along a wide gallery and through a heavy oak door. She walked down an apparently unending corridor, Lucille silent but with her arm through her stepmother’s. An opening in the corridor disclosed another flight of stairs carpeted in a beautiful shade of blue, and at the top of this Lucille stopped and opened a door.

  “Daddy said we were to put you in here,” she said. “It was his room and all his things are in it. That bell doesn’t always work,” she went on. “At least it works, but sometimes nobody hears it. If you want me, I’m up three stairs just along there, in St. Agnes. Granny and Grandfather are down the blue stairs and to the left.” She smiled at Natalie. “Now I’ll leave you,” she said. “There’s a bathroom just next door. Can I do anything else?”

  Natalie thanked her and shook her head. She was longing to question Lucille about her engagement, but was held back by a dread of appearing interfering. She found her courage as Lucille made a move to leave.

  “Lucille”—she looked at her appealingly—“I’m so puzzled about your—your fiancé.”

  Lucille, for a moment, looked as puzzled as her stepmother.

  “Philip?—Oh, you haven’t met him. Well, yes,” she added, “I think you said you had.”

  “I met—I met somebody called Duncan Macdonald,” said Natalie, “and—”

  She stopped. A delicate flush had overspread Lucille’s features and there was a cloud in her eyes.

  “Duncan?” she murmured. “Yes, we were engaged. When I went up and stayed with Jeremy, I—I don’t know what happened, but—” She paused for a moment and then continued. “I was half-engaged to Philip before I went to London,” she said, “so I shouldn’t have got engaged to somebody else.”

  “But—” began Natalie.

  “When I came back and said I was engaged,” went on Lucille, “everybody congratulated me, but they all thought it was Philip—we’ve known each other all our lives and people always expected that we’d get married one day. And—perhaps you think me very silly—but nobody seemed to believe that, just in a week, I’d met somebody else, and I can’t go on disagreeing with people for very long—I mean I can’t argue and quarrel—perhaps you don’t understand—”

  “Yes, I understand,” said Natalie.

  “And so,” ended Lucille, “I—well, Duncan and I aren’t engaged any more.”

  “But,” said Natalie, “he still thinks—”

  Lucille shook her head gently.

  “No—I wrote,” she said. “I only wrote the other day and I addressed it to his home, but they’ll send it on to him and he’ll know by now.”

  Natalie’s heart sank. She knew that it was mere prejudice to dismiss the unknown Philip’s claim, but she had liked Duncan—how much, she had scarcely realized until now. He was not a young man who would forget easily—as quickly as Lucille appeared to have forgotten. She looked at the girl standing in the doorway. Lucille’s brow had the tiny pucker which had appeared on it at the first mention of Duncan’s name, and her eyes were dreamy, but she did not look seriously distressed. She looked, Natalie thought, like somebody who was wondering where she had left her keys.

  Left alone, Natalie unpacked her suit-cases and stood in the middle of the room wondering if a bath would refresh her and relieve the oppression which was settling on her mind. She was tired, but she realized thankfully that she had got through two meetings without undue distress, and only two now remained. She found herself murmuring a prayer that Sir Jason would speak more quietly than his wife. If she had to sit through dinner with two people shouting at her—

  Her prayer was answered to the full. Not only did Sir Jason speak quietly—he scarcely spoke at all. It was perhaps not to be wondered at that a man who for so many years had listened to a voice like Lady Rome’s should grow to dislike any form of conversation. Sir Jason’s greeting, though kind, was conveyed in as few words as possible and no speaker and no subject could hold his attention after the first sentences. Natalie found comfort in the knowledge that her father-in-law’s society would be a refuge from his wife’s vocal assaults.

  Dinner was, as Lucille had predicted, unsubstantial. Natalie, who felt that she could have eaten a side of beef and several helpings of one of the more filling kinds of suet pudding, found herself looking sadly at a plate on which rested a small slice of chicken, some thinly cut, crisp potatoes, and a spoonful of green vegetables. She would, she hoped, be able to appease her hunger on whatever followed. What followed was a small helping of trifle flanked by two squares of lemon jelly. She watched anxiously as the aged butler, assisted by a youth who reminded her in some way of Slippy, removed the plates. Sometimes, she reflected hopefully, people served a savoury dish at the end of a meal, and there might be one of those tinned-fish-on-hot-toast dishes—or even some fruit—though there was little fruit at this time of the year—

  There was nothing except some excellent Madeira and, later, in the large, chilly hall, some coffee. Natalie drained her cup and regretted bitterly that the usages of polite society forbade her asking if she might go into the kitchen and cut herself a large crust of bread.

  Sir Jason, standing before an enormous fireplace in which burned a few small logs, put down his coffee cup and addressed her kindly. She studied his thin, lined face with the long white moustache and faded blue eyes and found as little trace of William there as upon Lady Rome’s large, flaccid countenance. She longed to see Jeremy, but the evening wore slowly on and he did not appear. Sir Jason, looking at her tired face, broke into his wife’s description of the new houses which were to be built between Hunnytor and Dummerton West.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” he said. “Natalie ought to go up to bed.”

  “Of course she ought,” agreed Lady Rome. “She looks completely worn out and she can see Jeremy in the morning. I don’t suppose he’ll want to go off anywhere, but nobody knows, because young people jump about so extraordinarily these days. I don’t think it’s good for them, and I don’t think they’ll live as long as we’ve done, but of course we shall not be here to see. Still, we shall have had our day, and I can’t say I feel particularly old, but then nobody ever does. My old grandfather used to tell me that he couldn’t understand why all his old friends kept dropping down and dying all at once, and then he discovered that they were all dying of old age. They—”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” said Sir Jason, looking up from the newspaper he had been studying. “Natalie isn’t in bed yet.”

  “No, and she must go at once,” said Lady Rome. “Lucille—”

  Lucille disentangled herself from the two large dogs with which she had been playing on the hearthrug. “Lucille, take Natalie upstairs and see if they’ve done everything properly. Good night, my dear”—she put her face close to Natalie’s and closed her eyes, waiting for her daughter-in-law’s kiss—“sleep well and come down whenever you please and don’t worry about breakfast. We never have a very substantial breakfast.”

  With this knowledge to cheer her, Natalie said good night, gently refused Lucille’s escort upstairs, and made her way to her room by means of certain landmarks which she had memorized. She closed her door and began her preparations for the night. She found, however, that her knees were shaking and her thoughts so tangled and confused that she could do nothing. She sat on the edge of the bed and closed her eyes, and the moment she did so, felt herself engulfed by a wave of depression that almost unnerved her. In a momentary panic, she opened her eyes and stared at the nightdress laid out beside her. She was to stay here—to sleep here, far away from Helen, far, far from William—for there was nothing of William in this cold house with its ghostly splendour and its mile
s of corridor, its bellowing mistress and its terse lord. She was cold and tired and she was also very hungry, and it was wicked, at her age, to have imagined that she could transplant herself and make a place for herself among strangers. She wanted to go home to Helen and to her little kitchen with the bread tin near at hand and a piece of cheese in the dish in the green cupboard. She wanted—

  A knock sounded on her door and Natalie, pressing her hands together, struggled for self-control. The knock was repeated and, rising, she went to the door and opened it.

  For a moment she stared stupidly at the young man on the threshold. William’s head—she had loved to take it between her hands; William’s eyes and nose and firm, kind mouth; William’s…William’s son.

  Jeremy Rome saw his stepmother’s eyes, blue and bewildered in the sweet face. The next moment they were drowned in a rush of tears that coursed down her face as fast as she could mop them with her inadequate handkerchief.

  “Oh,” she gasped. “Oh, Jeremy.”

  Jeremy stepped into the room, closed the door, and took his stepmother into a firm embrace. Natalie, her head resting comfortably against his chest, gave up the attempt to dry her eyes and let the healing tears fall on to his shirt in a drenching cascade. Jeremy stood still and let her weep, his hand beating a soothing tattoo on her shoulder.

  “There, there,” he murmured. “There, there, there. Welcome home.”

  Chapter 4

  Jeremy Rome was a young man to whom success had come early, easily and almost unsought. A good artist, he had for some time been undecided as to how seriously he would devote himself to his art. While he was debating the matter, he went up to London, bought a secondhand car of doubtful merit and proceeded to drive it the two hundred miles separating him from his home.