Flowers on the Grass Page 5

  She said that she would come. Although she did not care much for the country, Ossie, as almost landed gentry, with a genuine old cottage almost as good as his own, had always appealed to her. Ossie wished he could have suggested her coming on Saturday and spending the night, but she might not understand that it was only so that she could have more time there. And perhaps—who knew—if he had her there on his own he might make a beast of himself. Doreen was not that sort of girl. Or was she? How did one tell? That was the trouble of never having had a girl-friend before. One was out of touch with modern social customs. Did people—or didn’t they? He thought of what his parents had told him and remembered that no, no, of course they didn’t.

  But there had been those funny things Doreen had said once or twice when they were kissing…. But no, she was not that sort of girl.

  She was the sort of girl for a sofa, though, all right, after lunch on Sunday. It was terrible of Daniel to laugh himself nearly sick when he came home unexpectedly and found them there. He laughed so much that he had to sit down on a chair and slap his thighs. Doreen was annoyed, and went away to tidy herself up.

  Ossie passed a handkerchief across his face, looked at it furtively and jammed it in his breast pocket with the lipstick stains concealed. All he could think of to say was: “Why are you back?”

  “Couldn’t stand it any longer. The old boy started showing me photographs of Jane as a kid. They’d planned a tea party for the locals to meet me today, to gaze on exhibit A—the bereaved husband. Mean of me, I suppose, when poor Lyddie had been making scones all morning like a mad thing, but I escaped. Don’t let’s talk about me, though. I want to talk about you. Why didn’t you tell me this was going on?”

  Ossie tried to explain, and Daniel, when he realised what he was hinting at, laughed more than ever. Even allowing for his upsetting week-end, with those old photographs and everything, it was unforgivably rude of him to say, with Doreen just coming back into the room: “You thought I’d be reminded—oh God, how incongruous! Ossie, you must be even more naïve than I thought.”

  Ossie would not let Doreen be offended. He took her aside and explained how sad it all was. She, infected, perhaps, with the kindliness of the cottage that toned down everyone’s acerbity, played up creditably. She began to talk to Daniel in her intellectual voice about Italian architecture. She even asked him about his book, which was thoughtful of her. Ossie was proud of her, but Daniel got up and went out to the local pub.

  There was no reason now why Doreen should not stay the night, with Daniel there as chaperon. Ossie made up her bed, bade her a chaste good night and lent her his dressing-gown. When he heard her going along to the bathroom, he sat on his bed and ground his teeth. He would not let himself go out and say good night to her again, because Heaven knew what might happen if he met her in his dressing-gown, without her corsets. It was not so much Doreen’s honour as the thought that Daniel might come home and laugh at him.

  Next morning Ossie got up early, left a cup of tea outside Doreen’s bedroom door and took a great deal of trouble preparing breakfast. Quite a family party they would be. But Doreen only ate the yolk of her egg and left all the white, and Daniel came down very late, gulped at a cup of coffee, said it was cold and dashed out to the garage, shouting: “Come on, you two—if you’re coming!”

  They all bought newspapers and read them all the way to London.

  When Ossie was washing up after supper that night, Daniel called through to him, quite casually: “I’m going to let the cottage. I saw an agent about it today.”

  “You’re what?” Ossie came to the kitchen door with a plate in one hand, a wet mop in the other, and his mouth like a goldfish. “Let the cottage? But why? Where will you live?”

  “No sense coming right out here in winter. I’ll get a room somewhere.”

  “Oh, Daniel!” Ossie’s mission came over him like a hot flush. “Please don’t go back to that again. Please” He stood pleading earnestly to the empty dining-room, his face screwed up, persuasively, as if Daniel could see him. “What’s the good of having a home if you don’t live in it?”

  “I don’t want a home.”

  “But you ought to. You know you’ve been better since we came out here.”

  “Have I?” asked Daniel’s unseen voice. Ossie went through to the sitting-room, still carrying the mop, to see from Daniel’s face whether he had said this sadly, or mockingly or gratefully. But Daniel’s face showed nothing. He was leaning back in the armchair with his eyes shut.

  “I’ve told the agents I want to let it anyway,” he said.

  “They’re sending people to see it at the week-end.”

  “It’s a pity,” Ossie said. “Old boy, I think you’re wrong.” Daniel opened his eyes and grinned. “You can’t try and argue seriously with me with that dish-wiper thing tied round your waist. How on earth d’you get it to meet at the back? Turn round. Oh, I see. Pins.” He seemed more interested in the tea-towel which was wrapped round Ossie’s waist like a flag round a lucky-dip barrel than in talking about the cottage.

  Saturday was a trying day. Three lots of people arrived to see the cottage, each time when Ossie was just going to put food on the table. Daniel quite liked the first ones, and was affable to them. They said the right things about the cottage and were more interested in the garden than the plumbing. Because he did not like the others, he put the rent up ludicrously, and when they asked to be shown round, wandered away saying: “Well, there you are. You can see for yourself what there is.”

  On Sunday came two middle-aged spinsters, who made Ossie want to laugh, but Daniel, surprisingly, took to them at once and clinched the let without any ado. One spinster had long, untidy hair, a hand-knitted dress, pottery brooches and a great many little bags and reticules. She went round the cottage with oohs and ahs of delight and sank on her knees to a clump of chrysanthemums. The other one had short neat hair which accentuated her square jaw and bull neck, and wore a suit made of some kind of sackcloth, shoes with sporrans and plaid golf socks up to the knees over her stockings. She went round the house grunting at it, and fondled the dog in the way that he liked. Ossie was afraid they might be thinking of starting a teashop in the cottage, but no, they simply wanted to live there.

  The hand-knitted one was Miss Adelaide Mallalieu, and the sackcloth one was Miss Freda. Daniel was enchanted with them and insisted that they must stay to tea. Ossie went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. While he was waiting for it to boil, he thought for the hundredth time how silly it was not to have an electric kettle like he had in the flat. He had always been meaning to buy one for Daniel. Now, of course, it was too late.

  When he carried the tea things through, Miss Adelaide was saying: “I’m afraid you’ll miss this dear little place dreadfully, Mr. Brett. How can you bear to leave it?” Ossie nearly dropped the tray when he heard Daniel say, quite easily: “Well, you see, my wife was killed here.”

  Miss Adelaide’s eyes filled with tears. She looked down at her hands, twisting them in her lap. Miss Freda leaned forward with the face of a trustful mastiff and said brusquely, but without embarrassment: “I’m sorry. What happened?”

  Ossie would never have dared ask Daniel a thing like that. He had never heard anyone ask it, and he had never heard Daniel talk about the way his wife had died, but now he began to tell the Mallalieus as naturally as if he were used to talking about it every day. Adelaide sat looking at her lap, and Freda sat with her knees wide apart and her knickers showing, muddy feet planted on the rug, nodding and grunting while he told them about Jane and the electric kettle, and how he had to prise her dead hands off it when he found her.

  “Go on, Ossie, pour the tea out, old boy, before it gets cold,” he said, for Ossie was sitting paralysed at the thought of how he might have come gaily home with an electric kettle.

  Afterwards, Daniel was rifling through his desk for some papers relating to the house. He found them among a jumble of unpaid bills, and Miss Adelaide took them over
to the window, for the light was fading.

  “Oh, excuse me.” She turned round. “There’s something personal got in among these.”

  “What is it? ” asked Daniel from the desk, where his attention had been caught by a forgotten file of notes for his book.

  “It’s a poem. By Robert Bridges.”

  “Oh?” Daniel looked up, as if he were listening to something. Dusk was creeping out from the corners of the room, although it was still light outside, where the garden lay spellbound before the approach of night.

  Miss Adelaide turned back to the window, her wispy head silhouetted. “She copied this out.” She said rather than asked it.

  “No.” Daniel stirred, and broke the stillness which lay on the room like water. “I did. She didn’t like it. She said that Bridges and I were selfish to want it that way. So you see——” He got up and switched on a light. “Here’s what you get for being selfish. I wonder if Bridges got it, too? Ossie will know. He runs a library.”

  But Ossie did not know. He did not like this conversation. He had not liked any of this afternoon since tea-time and he wished these women would soon go away. He could not understand it. After all his weeks of tact and consideration, these imprudent women had got far closer to Daniel in a few hours.

  When they had gone, and Daniel was looking through his books to see which he must take away, Ossie thought that he would try bluntness, if that was what Daniel wanted.

  “I say, old boy,” he said bluffly, “I’ve been feeling bad.”

  “I told you kippers and leeks didn’t mix,” said Daniel, reading.

  “No, but listen. I know you laughed at the time, but that day you suddenly decided to let the cottage—it was because of finding me and Doreen here, wasn’t it? Made you think— made you think of you and Jane-”

  “My God!” Daniel spun round. “Don’t make me sick. As if it could compare——How dare you even mention her name, you blundering fool? As if you and that toothy—that-” His stammer assailed him and he beat the air for words.

  This was too much. Ossie was roused at last. “I’ve had just about enough!” He hated the way his voice always went shrill when he got angry. He rushed squeakily on, before Daniel could become articulate: “After all I’ve done for you —you talk to me like a dog. You insult Doreen. You let the cottage with no thought for me, when you know I promised my sister she could have the flat another month. I gave up my home for you! I-”

  “I never asked you to!” shouted Daniel.

  “Didn’t you want me?”

  “No!”

  “Well, don’t think I wanted to come!” They stood a yard apart and yelled at each other in the low room. Suddenly Daniel gave a shout of laughter and fell over the arm of the sofa onto his back with his legs in the air.

  “Oh God, that was wonderful, wonderful. Done me a power of good. I like you a hell of a lot, Oswald. You’re a great chap.”

  Ossie felt wonderful, too, and next morning when he had packed up his things and left the cottage for good they parted better friends than ever before.

  Ossie looked forward now to the future. They would go on being friends, and he would see Daniel a lot in London. They might even share a flat, and if Doreen did not like it, no matter. No matter either that she was still annoyed about what had happened at the cottage. If she wanted to be like that, and flaunt Morris at Ossie whenever he suggested an evening’s entertainment, all right. He and Daniel could get on quite well without her.

  A few days later in the library, when he asked Peter Clay to send Daniel along with some overdue books, he said: “Don’t you ever know anything, Ozzie? He’s cleared out— * chucked the job and cleared out. No one knows where he’s gone.”

  Chapter Three

  Doris

  Doris was getting No. 4 ready for a new guest. The floor did not trouble her much, but she spent quite a long time on the taps and the veneered top of the dressing-table. Dusting and polishing she liked—things that showed—but those bits of fluff and dried mud at the bottom of the wardrobe she just pushed back into a corner. There was no means of getting them out, anyway, with that ridge at the front. Furniture was always made as inconvenient as possible. Doris was used to that.

  She stepped on to a chair and dipped her finger into the well on top of the wardrobe, looked at the finger and wiped it on her apron. No point doing anything about that. It would only make the dusters dirty. She banged all the drawers open and shut. She had not brought any drawer paper up with her, so the paper would do for one more guest. She threw a little knot of brown hair out of the window, likewise the hairpin and the razor-blade. A hairpin and a razor-blade in a single room? Yes, because Miss Rigges had been one to take trouble with her appearance, even though it was not the bathing season. No other explanation was possible. The Lothian Private was not that kind of hotel. There was a gentleman once who was asked to leave. No scandal. Mrs. P. had simply given him a more suitable address.

  Doris threw the razor-blade and the hairpin without vigour, and they landed on the jutting lead roof below. Oh well. There were other bits of rubbish out there. This was not a window to look out of, giving only on to the roofs and side walls of the houses that climbed away from the sea.

  Doris wiped round the basin and reminded herself to ask Mrs. P. to unlock the soap cupboard. She glanced under the bed and gave one scythe-like swish of the broom there. The bed itself she made carefully, tight and cold as a coffin. One thing she was good at was making beds. Her mother, who had been a nurse, had taught her. Since the age of ten Doris had had a passion for mitred corners and eighteen inches of turn-down.

  When she had finished, she paused by the door for a quick look round. It was a nice enough room for the money. Whoever was coming had got the best eiderdown in the place, though some guests complained that it would not stay on the bed. The gentleman who was in here last winter used to tie his dressing-gown cord right over, which was a great nuisance to undo when Doris came to make the bed.

  Sometimes Mrs. P. chose to come up and inspect before a guest arrived, so—one thing more. Doris looked at the notice on the wall by the light switch to make sure that the last occupant had not written anything rude against the part where it said: “TO FACILITATE THE ORGANISATION OF THE HOTEL AND THE CONSEQUENT FELICITY OF THE STAFF, GUESTS ARE URGED TO ATTEND PUNCTUALLY AT MEALS.” It didn’t mean a thing. Felicity was a girl’s name. There had been a girl at Doris’s school called that.

  Not that Miss Rigges would “have written a remark, but you never knew. Quite ordinary people did the queerest things. Doris never thought twice about it. She did not trouble herself much about who came and went in the rooms. It didn’t do to think too much and fancy things. You could go nervy that way. You had your own life. The best thing was to forget the guests as much as possible and just do the job. Sometimes she forgot that she only had the job because of the guests. She was intolerant of people who wanted to miss breakfast and lie in late on a Sunday morning. It put her behind with beds, and after seven years of making their beds, cleansing after them, feeding them, Doris had come to think of cleaning, bedmaking, waiting at table as her business, not theirs. Mrs. P. had got like that, too. Once when an invasion scare had emptied the hotel, she had made Doris clean the rooms just the same every day. Doris had not objected. It gave you something to do.

  Although she was what you’d call a mobile woman, they had not called Doris up, because her eyes were so shocking. They were better now, with these new glasses whose thick lenses made her eyes look like beads in the head of a teddy bear. She had read a piece in a magazine that said you must wear your hair soft and fluffy to distract from your glasses, so Doris had a perm every six months and washed her hair herself, without setting it, so that it stood out twice as thick. Jimmie always said that he liked her better when it was straight, needing a new perm, but men never knew.

  “And another for No. 4,” the porter said, passing through the pantry where Doris was laying the early-morning tea-trays.

&n
bsp; “He’s never come yet,” Doris said.

  “Oh, he hasn’t?” said Ferdie. “I suppose I didn’t get out of bed at long gone twelve to let him in.” The door of the Lothian was locked at eleven-thirty, and anyone gadding later must take a key, which did not happen often with their type of guest.

  “What’s he like?” asked Doris without interest, spooning tea into the pots with a screwed-up mouth, for Mrs. P. would not unlock her cupboard to give her any more if she ran short at the end of the week.

  “Nothing extra,” Ferdie said. “Youngish for us.”

  “Oh—traveller.”

  “I daresay. I didn’t see his looks much. A window got banging when I was opening the door, and while I was gone fixing it he was off upstairs. Smallish bag he had,” said Ferdie, with a Sherlock Holmes air. “Short-term lodger—you’ll see.”

  Ferdie had not been at the Lothian as long as Doris. He had not yet learned not to take an interest. He had a married daughter in the other part of the town who was always on at him to tell her things. She wished he worked at the Queens or the Imperial, so that he could tell her about famous people. No one famous ever came to the Lothian. Ferdie, however, always had it in the back of his mind that one day there would be a murder done there. That would be something. His picture in the London, as well as the local papers.

  Doris slammed another plastic tray on to the pantry shelf. “Just look at that!” She indicated the curling cigarette burn on the edge. Would they never learn that you couldn’t treat modern improvements the same as the old stuff?

  “I don’t know what time he wants his tea,” Ferdie said. “He’d gone up before I could ask.”

  “Oh well,” said Doris. “He’ll get it now, while the kettles are boiling, and like it.”

  When she went into No. 4, she screamed and had to lean against the door, collecting her heart together.