The Happy Prisoner Page 22

  “Muffet!” said Mrs. North. “What on earth are you doing down here at this time of night? You went to bed hours ago.”

  “I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d come down and look for a biscuit. I do love bikkies.” Childish, in a plain white nightgown, a little jacket with a Peter Pan collar, and infinitesimal mules, she was matching her speech to her appearance. “I heard you talking,” she said appealingly, “and I’ve been so lonely all by myself up in that big room. You don’t mind my coming in, do you?”

  “Delighted,” said Oliver, wondering how much she had heard while she was listening outside the door.

  “Do you know,” said Lady Sandys confidingly, “there’s a snake that lives under my bed, and sometimes he crawls up the angle of the wall and looks at me. Then there’s that cupboard. I have to be sure and lock the door very tight so that the ape can’t get out. I hear him rattling at the handle sometimes, when the lights are out.”

  Oliver’s mother looked at him in alarm. She had always known this would happen. She had known Lady Sandys would go over the top one of these days, but when it happened she did not want it to be in her house.

  Oliver cleared his throat. “Er—what kind of a snake?” he asked feebly.

  “Oh, the usual spotty kind,” said Muffet vaguely, dismissing it with a wave of her hand. “Do let’s go on talking about marriage. It’s a subject I could talk about all night.”

  Mrs. North took control of herself and the situation and laid a hand on the loose white sleeve. “Don’t you think we’d better go to bed, dear?” she said soothingly. “It’s very late, and you’re supposed to be catching the early bus in to Shrewsbury in the morning, remember? Unless you’d like to stay in bed, as you don’t feel so well tonight. How about that? I’ll bring you up your breakfast quite late, and you shall have all the papers, and my electric hot bottle, and you needn’t get up all day if you like.” This was just how she used to talk to Oliver when he was a small boy and had been sick in the night.

  Lady Sandys shook off her hand and smoothed out the sleeve with a delicate little flick of her fingers. “Who says I don’t feel well?” she asked. “Of course I’m going to Shrewsbury; I promised I’d do your shopping for you, didn’t I? Now don’t take that away from me.” She was childish again. “I was so thrilled to think that at last there was something I could do to help you.”

  “Of course you shall, dear,” said Mrs. North hastily, “and Smutty shall go with you and help carry the bags.”

  “That old creature. Must I always have her hanging around like a lunatic with its keeper?”

  Mrs. North looked embarrassed. “I just thought it would be a nice change for her,” she amended. “After all, she doesn’t get much fun. You could take her to have coffee and cakes at Lawley’s. They’re making mille feuilles again now.”

  “And have her being sick on the bus coming home? No, thank you.”

  “Well, anyway, let’s go up to bed now, shall we?” said Mrs. North encouragingly. “We can talk about it in the morning.”

  “But I wanted to talk to my Oliver.” Muffet took a step forward into the lamplight. Her head was done up in a piece of magenta net, tied in an enormous bow on top. Being colourblind, she presumably was not aware of what it did to her unmade-up face. Her eyes looked unreal and unfocused, glittering in the light like glass marbles. Was she acting, or was she really a little mad?

  “Not now, dear,” said Mrs. North. “Oliver has to get his sleep, you know, or he gets tired.”

  “And then you’ll say I tired him,” said Lady Sandys quickly, peeking up at her with her head on one side, like a robin looking at a pigeon. “I couldn’t bear that. Good night then, my pet. We’ll have lovely talks tomorrow.” She darted forward, gave him a butterfly kiss and then skimmed away to the door, where she waited, like a little ghost, for Mrs. North.

  “Think she’s all right to be left alone?” muttered Oliver.

  “I’m worried,” answered his mother out of the side of her mouth. “But she’ll never have Smutty in with her. Say, Muffet!” She raised her voice. “If you feel chatty, why don’t you come in with me tonight? That couch of mine is very comfortable, and it wouldn’t take a minute to make up.”

  “My dear, no, I wouldn’t dream of it,” answered Lady Sandys. “I whistle in my sleep, you know. Poor Arthur always used to have to sleep in his dressing-room. Still, it gave the servants something to talk about.”

  “I wish you’d come in with me,” pursued Mrs. North. “I feel kind of lonely tonight. I’d be glad of company.”

  “O-oh, don’t be such a baby.” Lady Sandys chuckled. “You’re a big girl now, Hattie. You’ll sleep in your room, and little me in mine,” she said in a sing-song voice, relieving Oliver’s mind of its visions of his mother being found in the morning with her throat cut from ear to ear.

  “Can’t you lock her door?” he whispered.

  She shook her head. “Not from the outside. Oh well,” she looked suddenly very tired, and yawned. “We’ll risk it.” Nevertheless, when she had put Muffet to bed she did push a heavy chair up against the door, wedged under the handle, and Oliver was woken next morning out of his best seven o’clock sleep by the uproar that was Muffet trying to get out to the bathroom.

  She seemed perfectly normal next day, and Oliver and his mother wondered whether they had imagined her midnight oddity. She went gaily off in a tweed suit with a little round hat to match to catch the Shrewsbury bus at the crossroads, followed doggedly with the shopping bags by Miss Smutts, who refused to be shaken off.

  Gaily she returned, without most of the things Mrs. North wanted, but with a pile of books for Oliver, bath salts for dear Hattie, and an armful of flowers and a melon bigger than her head for John.

  “How generous of you, dear,” exclaimed Mrs. North, searching the bags in vain for the fish and soap and stamps and note-paper she needed. “You have brought lovely presents. Where did you get them?”

  “At Lawley’s. I put them down to your account, by the way. I’ll pay you back,” she said vaguely, concentrating on the letter she was reading. “Well, doesn’t this beat all! I thought the war was supposed to be over. Here’s the builder tells me he hasn’t even started on my windows, and he’s so short of staff he can’t promise them for another three weeks.” Oliver and his mother looked at each other over the little covered button on the top of her round tweed hat. “Begging to remain, yours truly, etc., etc., etc.… Oh well!” She looked up and beamed from one to the other. “I should worry, as you say in your country, Hattie. I wanted to stay for the wedding, anyway, so that I can help you with it, and of course I couldn’t go back to London with an easy mind until Johnny’s better. Are you sure you don’t mind having me?”

  “Why, of course not,” said Mrs. North hollowly. “I’m only too glad.”

  “Yes, but it’s Smutty. She’s the most devastating bore, I know, and she will eat so much. She was sick in the bus, did I tell you? At least, not in it, but she had to hop out when it stopped at a village and go behind a sort of pigsty, and of course the bus started before she was ready and poor old Smutty had to run after it, pea green.”

  Lady Sandys continued to be fairly sane and on her best behaviour. The half-moon table had been empty for a whole week, and Mrs. North was even optimistic enough to replace on it the vases and pot-pourri bowl for which it was intended. The household kept its fingers crossed and prayed that the excitement of the wedding would not throw her off her balance.

  Violet had kicked the furniture a bit and stuck out her jaw when she heard that Lady Sandys was staying, but as her wedding day approached she began to view it with less glee and more and more apprehension, until she finally became so depressed that she did not care whether Muffet were there or not. Nothing could make it any worse. She wished now, she told the family, that she had not let herself in for getting spliced. She croaked about the wedding like a carrion crow. It would be a flop; she would make a fool of herself; everything would go wrong. If she had to ma
rry Fred, and she was talking about this now as if it was everyone’s fault except her own, why couldn’t she do it in a registry office, without a crowd of rubbernecking old busybodies gawping at her? The dark red silk dress which had been made for her in London arrived, but she refused to try it on. “I shall look a sight, anyway,” she told her mother, “so why know it sooner than I need?”

  Fred did not know what to make of her. She hardly went near him these days, and he took to coming up to the house, in spite of his terror of Lady Sandys. He did not come inside, but his face was sometimes seen for a moment at a window, shadowy and seeking, like one of the lost boys from the Never-Never-Land.

  “It’s just nerves,” Mrs. North told him. “Girls are often like that before their wedding.”

  “Women are funny cusses,” he said to Oliver through the window, standing on the lawn with his hands in his pockets, very man-to-man. “I thought old Vi was perfectly happy, but now she’s as broody as a sitting hen.”

  “Love, old chap,” said Oliver. “Takes ’em that way sometimes. You ought to be flattered.”

  “No, don’t muck about,” said Fred. “I’m serious. Y’see, I’ve never been able to understand all along how she came to accept me. I just couldn’t believe my luck, and, naturally, this sort of thing makes me think she’s changed her mind.”

  “Not she,” said Oliver. “But why not have it out with her? Might clear the air a bit. How do you know she’s not wondering whether you’ve changed your mind?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Fred looked down and made patterns in the flower-bed with the toe of his boot. “Vi and I, y’know, we don’t jaw much—don’t need to as a rule. What’s she doing now?”

  “In the drawing-room, I believe, reading the paper.”

  “Gee, is she? I might see her if I look through the window, then. I haven’t seen her for two days.” His face, oppressed and saddened by the weight of his nose, looked wistful. It seemed that he really did love her. Oliver wondered what Violet looked like to a man who loved her. Did he see her as she was, or enhanced? How would she wear the magical aura, and how would her voice sound when, beloved, its most casual word was musical and full of meaning?

  Fred slunk off and was back in a moment. “Mm,” he said, “she’s there. She’s got that blue thing on. I like her in that blue thing, but”—he laughed indulgently—“she hates skirts, you know, can’t bear ’em. Says she’s only happy in trousers. And, I must say, she’s the only woman Fve seen look well in ’em. See her turned out for hunting in a bowler hat and a white stock on that mare of yours—she can knock spots off the county ladies. Not that I don’t mean she’s not a lady,” he stammered. “She’s too much of a lady for me, that’s the trouble.”

  Oliver, who couldn’t bear to see Fred growing redder and humbler, changed the subject. “I wish I could be there to see you married.”

  “I wish you could like hell, old boy,” said Fred. “You’d back me up. Old Ken’s all right—he’s going to be best man, you know—but he’s as scared of the whole business as I am.”

  “Lots of whisky beforehand,” said Oliver. “That’s the secret.”

  “You bet,” said Fred. “We’ve planned that. And we’ll chew tea afterwards,” he said solemnly. “Sweetens the breath like magic.”

  “And there’ll be lots of booze afterwards,” said Oliver, “to help you through the reception. It was a bit of luck Stanford getting hold of that champagne for us. It’ll make it a much better party.”

  “Mm,” said Fred without enthusiasm. Stanford Black was one of the people who made him blink and go sweaty in the palms. He hoped Vi would not mind his hands being sweaty. Hers never were; they were dry and rough and strong.

  One of the few cheerful features of the wedding was that John would be able, after all, to give Violet away. He was out of bed now, although still rather feeble, and a nasty yellow colour where his tan had paled. He swore tactlessly that it was due to Elizabeth’s good nursing that he had recovered so quickly from his severe attack of flu. He and Elizabeth had become quite friendly over it, and shared one or two jokes and allusions which no one else understood. Heather had all along taken the line of: If Elizabeth’s there, there’s nothing I can do, and had confined her ministrations to John to leaving him in a howling draught every time she went in and out of the room, and airing her grievances about his mother at him while he lay in bed unable to escape. She was slightly revolted by illness, and had always made a great song about the children’s disorders. She sprinkled eau-de-Cologne all over John, who hated it, and would ask him ten times in an hour now he could bear the room so hot and stuffy. If he coughed too much, she would say she was sure he could stop if he tried, and she left all his handkerchiefs for Elizabeth to wash, saying that if she wanted to have the kudos of nursing him she could have the dirty work as well.

  Oliver, who was feeling rather jaded, taunted her with being jealous of Elizabeth.

  “Jealous!” Heather tossed her head. “What on earth for? There’s no more between them than there is between her and you. It’s simply this rather arch patient-and-nurse atmosphere. No, I’m afraid it’s the most pathetically innocent relationship. I don’t believe Johnny knows how to flirt; he never did with me. I remember the first time I met him, at the Strakers’ dance, he stared hopelessly at me all evening and just sat looking miserable when I was dancing with anybody else. Poor Johnny, his technique was terrible, I’m sure it wouldn’t work on Elizabeth after her London boy friend who sends her home with orchids on her coat. He wouldn’t ask a girl if he could kiss her, like John used to. If I’d worn glasses, he’d probably have asked me politely if I’d like to take them off. There are men who do that, you know. I had a girl friend who wore glasses and she said it was hideously shaming, and when they did that she used to stop the taxi and get out.”

  “What did you do when John asked you if he could kiss you?”

  “Oh, I let him,” said Heather drearily. “I was kind of in love with the poor mutt.”

  “And aren’t you now?”

  “Oh, Ollie, I don’t know. Don’t keep on at me, I feel terrible.”

  “You want a change of scene, my girl, that’s what’s the matter with you. You’re as fed up with all of us as you are with John. Wait till you get to Australia; you’ll feel quite different.”

  “I’m not going to Australia.”

  “Blast, I thought we were getting rid of you.”

  “Muffet says if we go she’s coming too, if you please. John wants to take her because he thinks he can’t leave her behind to fend for herself. Oh, she says she’ll have a separate house, or igloo, or whatever you have in the Bush, but I know what it would be. She’d be on our doorstep all the time, and so would her creditors.

  “How d’you feel?” she asked him suddenly, looking at him. “I feel rotten today,” he admitted. “I don’t know why.” “You look it. You look like I feel, pale yellow, with touches of blue.”

  “Not about the lips, I hope,” said Oliver anxiously, reaching for the mirror. “Oh God.” He thumped his chest cautiously. “Why can’t one change a dud heart like the dynamo on a car?”

  “You haven’t been having proper attention lately,” said Heather triumphantly. “Miss Elizabeth’s got a new interest in her cocky little head. She’s paid to nurse you, though, not John.”

  “I thought you weren’t jealous,” he said. “Anyway, it’s not you who pays her. Nor me either,” he added glumly. “God, Heather, it’s awful to be so dependent. I shall have to get up and start earning money soon.”

  “Let’s you and I run away, Ollie, shall we, and live somewhere where you don’t need to work because you don’t need much money. You just lie around in shorts eating fruit and soaking up the sun, and at night you go to cafés, and gipsies come and play to you, and you put a glass of brandy on their violin.”

  “You’d need money to buy the brandy.”

  “It would be very cheap brandy.”

  Oliver put his hand on his chest aga
in. “If I run away,” he said, “it’ll have to be with someone who’ll push me around in a bath-chair. I can’t see you doing that, Heather, wheeling me onto the front and tucking in my rug before you settle down beside me with your knitting.”

  “Good Lord, we’re not going to Eastbourne,” she said. “Don’t be so damping. I’m offering you the tropics, and intoxicating wine, and music, and women with long brown legs, but all you want is Wincarnis in a South Coast town with Elizabeth. Yes, I mean it,” she said vehemently. “Go on, admit it. You’re as jealous as hell of Elizabeth and John—just as jealous as I am!” She left him triumphantly, and he picked up the mirror and made a moue with his lips. They certainly did look shockingly blue.

  Chapter 9

  As Violet’s wedding day approached, inexorably and too rapidly it was not only the bride who began to wish it need never come. It was like all parties: fun to arrange and talk about at first, but less and less fun as the hosts begin to get cold feet, and to wonder whether the drink will hold out and what they will do if people stand about in lifeless groups, and to wish that they had some new clothes and had not invited so many people and, finally, that they had never thought of the party at all.

  Even Mrs. North, who loved to entertain, was depressed about it because she was so tired. She and Elizabeth had been cooking like mad things for three days before the wedding, and the family were getting tired of makeshift meals. “It’ll be worse after the party,” Heather said. “We shall be eating leftovers for days. You never saw such a mountain of food as they’ve made. It’s absurd. People are never going to eat all those sausage rolls and cakes and cheese straws in the middle of the afternoon.”

  Mrs. North, still flushed from her concentrated oven work, looked a little dashed. “You never know,” she said. “It’s far better to have too much than too little. And some of them may not have had any lunch if they’ve come long distances. I’m sure Fred’s friends will eat hearty, anyway.”