Men and Angels Page 4

  Judy was undressing—she had one half of her pyjamas on, and was conducting an energetic search under the sofa for the other—and in Rae’s eyes, the more important half. A glimpse of pink silk behind the wireless table caught the searcher’s eye.

  “Oh, there! Thanks.—Who’ve you been out with, Rae?” she asked with her customary directness.

  “Richard. Flicks and dinner.”

  “Oh! Was he nice?”

  “He’s your brother,” said Rae. “Don’t you know?”

  “I mean, did he try anything,” persisted Judy. “Did he just say good night, or did he spin it out?”

  “Ring him up,” invited Rae, “and ask him.”

  “Oh, Rae, don’t be silly,” said Judy, still on the floor. “I’m interested, can’t you see? Richard would tell me to go to hell, and if you’re going to be uncommunicative, then how’m I to know anything at all? I want him to like you, and I want you to like him, and when you get together I want to know what you do. I don’t mean what you do, exactly, but how things are going. This isn’t just indelicate curiosity, it’s an honest desire for knowledge. If you don’t like him, then say so, and I won’t mind—I’ll be a bit surprised, because after all, girls do fall down like ninepins when Richard gets among them, but if you don’t get along with him, then you just don’t, only I can’t just sit here knowing nothing, can I, and you just saying nothing until right at the end, if there is any end. Oh, Rae, go on—tell me!”

  “It is indelicate curiosity,” said Rae. “I like him—and that’s really all. I haven’t the faintest—not the smallest, smallest idea what he thinks of me. I don’t know what he thinks of anything—his feelings are where I suppose everybody’s feeling should be—inside. If he ever falls in love with me, and if he lets me know, I’ll let you know. Is that all right?”

  “It’ll have to be, I suppose,” grumbled Judy. “I wondered all the evening whether you’d gone out with him. I had a terrible time here.”

  “Why?”

  “That Edward came. He was clutching orchids in cellophane, and could he get out who they were for? Not him. I put him on the wobbly chair, hoping he’d go soon, but no. I looked at the orchids and said, ‘Shall I put them down?’ but no. I said ‘Coffee?’ but no.”

  “Was the wireless going as loud as that?”

  “I don’t know—I suppose so. Gosh! I forgot to turn it down—but it doesn’t matter. That flat opposite is still empty. Is it midnight?”

  “Past.” Rae lowered the volume. “When did he go?”

  “Edward? I didn’t notice. I wasn’t going to sit and do a monologue for an unspecified number of hours. I showed him how the door opened, and then I went and washed a blouse and some stockings. When I came back, nothing. Oh, and who d’you think rang up? It’s no use—you’ll never guess. Rosanna. Rosanna Lee, no less. She said Helloo, Judy’—just as she used to, remember? And I said ‘Rose darling, I saw your show the other night and you were terrible!’ ”

  “Oh, Judy—you didn’t!”

  “Why not? She was. She agreed she was, but she says she gets forty pounds a week for being it. Forty pounds a week—for that!”

  “Good heavens,” said Rae, in equal amazement. “What did she ring up for?”

  “To ask us to a party—imagine! You and me at a party with all those peculiarities in that show. It’s her birthday—she’s got hold of eight ex-Madame Soublin’s—you and me and the Mount twins and I forget who else. The only thing is, we can’t go. It’s the Thursday after we go away—I’ll be in this collection of artists, and I must say they get funnier every time I look at them—and you’ll be at Thorpe.”

  Rae yawned. A party of Rosanna’s was nothing to regret.

  “Hope I can get up in the morning,” she said sleepily. “’Night.” She gave a glance round the room. “Judy?”

  “Hm?”

  “Where are the orchids?”

  Judy, wide-eyed, turned her head this way and that and peered under the chairs.

  “Gone!” she exclaimed in astonishment. “He must have bought them on approval!”

  Rae frowned and spoke hesitatingly.

  “I wish you wouldn’t treat people like that, Judy,” she said.

  “Like what?”

  “Well—so rudely.”

  Judy leaned back on her hands and looked up in silence for some moments.

  “Look,” she said at last. “You say it’s rude. A man comes here prepared to spend the whole evening cosily, and I won’t play—and you say that’s rude.”

  “Yes, it is rude. You could be a bit frigid, perhaps, or you could show him in some way that you—”

  “With his kind,” stated Judy, “there isn’t any other way. Look at it like this: did he come here tonight for his own satisfaction or for mine? No, don’t argue—just say.”

  “Well, for his, I suppose.”

  “All right. He’s got a few hours on his hands, so he says, ‘I know what I’ll do—I’ll look up those girls, and that’ll pass the time nicely till dinner.’ He’s got nothing to do, and so I’ve got to put aside all the things I’m dying to do, just to fill in his time—is that it?”

  “He merely pays a pleasant—”

  “He merely wants his time filled in, and I showed him he couldn’t fill it in here. When you don’t like people, Rae, I watch you—it takes you four perfectly good evenings to do what I’ve just done in one. What’s rude about it? You wouldn’t have said it was rude if our footman, which we haven’t got, had shoved a caller’s hat back in his hand and said ‘Not at home’—would you? Well, we’ve got no protection of that sort now, so we make our own. Good heavens, Rae, I’ve hardly got time to fit in people I like—why should this Edward, who’s got a whole leave to fill in, fill it in in our drawing-room? Consider—if you’d been here, you’d have been sweet to him and he’d have taken root with his orchids on our doorstep. Would you have liked that?”

  “No, I wouldn’t.”

  “There you are, then,” said Judy. “That’s what I’ve saved us from.”

  Chapter 4

  There were only four days left before Richard’s departure for Thorpe. He was to go on Saturday; Judy would leave the flat on Friday, spend the night at the newly opened Summer School at Allbrook and meet Richard at Thorpe on Saturday for the week-end. Rae was to go down on Monday—Richard had pressed her to go earlier, but she had refused—she felt it better to let the family have a week-end without strangers, and she was also anxious to settle her aunts into the flat before she left.

  She went out with Richard on three successive nights; he parted from her each evening without any arrangements for another meeting, and rang her up at the office the next day. When he rang up on Friday, however, she was unable to fall in with his plans.

  “I’m sorry, Richard, honestly—but my aunts are arriving; and I’ve got to meet them—I told you.”

  “Leave a note,” said Richard lightly. “Back in half an hour.”

  “I can’t. I’m meeting their train.” And also, she added to herself, seeing that they don’t pay for their own taxi, and seeing that they have a decent dinner in the flat instead of wasting their money taking me out, and seeing that they sleep in the beds and let me sleep on the sofa, without arguing and—

  “D’you mean to say,” enquired Richard, “that you’re throwing me down for a couple of aunts?”

  “They’re rather special aunts—I’m awfully sorry, Richard.”

  “But this is a party,” said Richard. “Best frock and a night club.”

  “It sounds lovely, but I’ve known about this other thing for ages, and I can’t let them come to—to just an empty flat and a note.”

  “Make it a convincing note. ‘Called away—Urgent.’ ”

  Rae laughed.

  “It’s easy—but I can’t do it. Some other night, Richard.”

  “My God, you’re serious!”

  “Well—yes.”

  “What’s the matter with these aunts? Totally incapacitated?”
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  “Well, no. It’s just that I’m going off, and they’re coming to—to—well, I mean, they’re coming, and I must be there. You wouldn’t—” She paused.

  “Wouldn’t what?”

  “Well, if you didn’t have anything else to do, I was going to say they’re rather sweet, if you’d—if you’d like to—”

  “Darling,” came Richard’s incredulous voice, “you’re not asking me to spend an evening with your aunts?”

  “Not a whole evening—of course not.”

  “Not even the fraction of an evening. The suggestion,” said Richard, “is appalling. It even has a sinister ring. Besides, I told you—this is a party.”

  “I forgot. But I can’t come, Richard—I’m so sorry.”

  “You’re adamant?”

  “Well—yes.”

  “Pity. Enjoy the aunts,” said Richard lightly, he was gone, and Rae put down the receiver with a slight feeling of sickness. What had she expected? she asked herself. A man on leave, fitting in all he could, making the most of his time—would he spend an evening sitting on the wobbly chair looking at Aunt Hester and Aunt Anne? Rae blushed hotly at her stupidity in suggesting it. She should have said ‘No’ and left it at that. She should have said a firmer and less regretful ‘No’ and rang off. Well, it was too late and perhaps the party would make him forget how naïve she had been.

  She met Judy for lunch in town, chiefly to exchange last-minute reminders. Judy, in a new suit which she called her Artist-in-the-Country, ate a large and heavy-looking omelet and looked across at Rae.

  “I didn’t have time to clear those two drawers in my room for your aunts,” she said penitently. “And I left two pairs of shoes and—”

  “I’ll get things straightened out,” promised Rae. “I’ll have a lot of time—I’m not meeting them until seven.”

  “Meeting them? I thought Richard had decided to have a party—he told me when I rang him up this morning. Haven’t you heard from him?”

  “Yes—he asked me, but I said I couldn’t go.”

  “Couldn’t—why?”

  “Because I’ve told you—I’ve got to meet the—”

  “But good lord,” exclaimed Judy in astonishment, “you don’t mean you couldn’t have left a note or something?”

  “I’m going to the station. I suppose I could have sent them a wire to say I wouldn’t be there,” acknowledged Rae, “but I—well, I didn’t want to.”

  “Well, they’re your aunts,” said Judy, “but I can’t see Richard being very pleased at being shovelled aside to make room for—”

  “He wasn’t very pleased,” admitted Rae, “but you ought to understand, even if he didn’t. They’re coming up to London, which they loathe, and living in a flat, which they loathe even more, and for the next three weeks they’ll rub and scrub and wear themselves out and—”

  “I see all that,” said Judy, “but the future, which is Richard, is more important than the past, which is your aunts. You should have gone out with him—you know they wouldn’t have minded.”

  “They wouldn’t, but I would. It’s the first time I’ve spent my holiday away from home, and I wanted to give them the whole of this week-end.”

  “Well, have it your own way,” said Judy indifferently. “It all comes of having a sense of duty, which I’m glad I haven’t. What a noisy place this is, Rae—d’you often come here?”

  “Yes. It is rather noisy to-day—what’s all that hooting?”

  “All the traffic in London piled up outside this door, blowing their whistles, it sounds like. What’s nicest, Rae— trifle or treacle tart?”

  “Treacle tart.”

  “Then order two, and tell them to step on it—I ought to be getting off.”

  She attacked the tart with relish, glancing up as a policeman entered the door and stood looking about him. After pausing to speak to the occupants of the tables nearby, he made his way towards Rae and Judy.

  “I heard him say there was a terrific traffic block,” said Rae nervously as he approached. “Judy, where did you leave—”

  “That your car, Miss?” enquired the policeman, his round, rosy young face shocked. “Blue two-seater, number—”

  “It’s mine,” said Judy. “It can’t be causing any jam—it’s such a tiddly little car, and I put it right against the edge of the pavement, so you’ll probably find that it’s something else that’s causing the—”

  “Your car, Miss,” said the policeman in slow, measured lunes, “is standing where—”

  “Do I have to move it this minute? I’m just in the middle of treacle tart.”

  “The car,” said the policeman, going back to the beginning, “has no business to be left in—”

  “No—I’m terrible sorry. I was so hungry, and there isn’t a garage nearer than—”

  “The car,” interrupted the policeman, “should have been parked in the—”

  “I know—Court Street. But it was full! I asked the man to push it in, but he said it looked as though someone had done too much pushing already.”

  “The car,” said the policeman, stiffened by the hideous discordancies of a hundred hooters, “the car must be—”

  “Oh, all right—I’ll take it away. Am I under arrest?”

  “No,” said the policeman regretfully.

  “Oh! Well, then, good-bye, Rae.” Judy moved to the door, issuing directions over her shoulder. “Don’t forget— Monday at Sheafton-by-Thorpe. Don’t get out at Thorpe it may sound the same, but it’s not the right station.”

  “Sheafton-by-Thorpe,” said Rae. “Good-bye.”

  “And remember about—”

  “The car,” droned the policeman, “is—”

  “Oh yes, oh yes—why do they make all that row?” asked Judy impatiently.

  “All those persons whom you have kept waiting,” said the policeman, “have important business to—”

  “Important? What’s more important,” demanded Judy, “than finishing off this treacle tart? ’Bye, Rae,” she shouted from the door. “Sheafton-by-Thorpe, Monday.”

  Rae embarked upon the journey on Monday with a fund of recently acquired knowledge. Her aunts, making polite enquiries about Thorpe, had asked what county it was in, and Rae had been obliged to confess that she did not know.

  “But you’re going there!” said Aunt Hester. “Do you mean to tell me you don’t even know what county you’re going into?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Well, where is this place near?”

  “Near?”

  “What is its market town—county town?”

  “County town?”

  “It must be the echo,” said Aunt Hester. “I don’t know how you girls manage to live at all with so little knowledge of anything.”

  “Instinct, dear,” said Aunt Anne.

  “Well, I hope instinct will get her to Thorpe.—What station are you going from, Rae?”

  “Oh, Judy said Paddington—or was it Marylebone?”

  “Either would do,” commented Aunt Anne. “They’ve both got trains—you just get into one and say ‘Thorpe’.”

  “Rae?”

  “Yes, Aunt Hester?”

  “Fetch me an atlas.”

  The atlas had been useless, but the aunts, burrowing, had unearthed an old map marked LONDON & WEST.

  Shaking off the dust of a year, they found that Thorpe was not marked, but Sheafton-by-Thorpe appeared on the thinnest of branch lines in Buckinghamshire.

  “Well, now we know where you’re going,” said Aunt Hester. “You go from Marylebone, and you change, obviously, at this place here—Pierstone. Then your stations are Pierstone, West Plumbley, Thorpe and Sheafton. Did Judy tell you that?”

  “No.”

  “Well, see if I’m not right,” concluded Aunt Hester.

  She was quite right. Rae, enquiring at Pierstone, found that she had to change. Puffing out of the station in the shabby little train, its progress reminded her of the game she had played as a child with d
andelion seeds. A strong puff, and half the seeds vanished. At West Plumbley, at least half of the scanty number of passengers disembarked. Another puff, and at Thorpe half the remainder got off and two of the three carriages were disconnected. Rae gathered her things together and was ready when the train slowed down again, but it was not her destination. She saw a sign reading:

  SHEAFTON ABBOTT

  HALT

  Rae was the last remaining passenger; the train was now running exclusively on her behalf. Looking out of the window as the train moved on again, she wondered where the Sheafton Abbotts were housed. So far as she could see, there was not a dwelling in sight. Trees, a lane, a little winding river, but no houses. Two cows in a field, but no sign of a farmhouse.

  It was pretty, she thought, but a little too uninhabited for her taste. She had been brought up in the country, but her parents’ house had stood at the end of a well-populated village. Shops were close at hand, transport facilities abounded. This—Rae glanced out at the tiny station coming into view—this was going a little too far.

  She stepped out, the sole arrival. The engine-driver stepped down from the cab, passed her with a nod, and vanished into the shed which served as a station. Rae was alone.

  She picked up her suitcase, walked to the end of the short platform and into the lane beyond. There was no sign of Judy, but Judy was not noted for punctuality. Rae dusted a square on the platform’s edge, and seated herself.

  It was seven minutes by her watch when she heard the approach of a car; she stood up, saw the familiar blue and waved. The car drew up, and Rae swung her suitcase into the back.

  “Hello, Judy.”

  “Hello, Rae. Get in.”

  Rae got in, noting something subdued in the small figure next to hers. She glanced at Judy and saw that something was wrong. She wondered what it was, but knew she would not have to wonder long.

  “How’s everything?” she asked.

  “Everything,” said Judy slowly, “is hell, but don’t ask me now, Rae, please. I don’t know how I’m going to tell you.”

  Rae was silent, running over the possibilities. Richard? It was unlikely that anything had happened to him—Judy would have wired or telephoned. Something might have happened to her father or mother—no, not her father—he was dead already. There was an uncle, and a friend. . . .