Dorothy Eden (14 page)

Arabia trailed into the room again, and handed Cressida a plate on which was a large slice of rich and creamy cake.

“Eat it all, darling. It’s saturated in brandy. It will do you good. It made the little Stanhope very garrulous with her pencil and pad. Oh dear, I suppose I should be more charitable. But I do insist that people be amusing.”

“Mrs. Stanhope isn’t very well tonight,” Cressida remarked off-handedly. She began to eat the cake, because how could there be anything wrong with it when Arabia had so unquestioningly produced it. That proved what nonsense the Stanhopes talked.

“I’m not surprised at that. She was extremely greedy this afternoon. I think she probably starves herself, poor scrap. Her husband deserted her, you know (not that I blame him), and she’s had to fend for herself and bring up that drainpipe of a boy. That’s why I let her have the rooms. I get absurdly soft-hearted at times, and then I regret it. Eat up your cake, my love. There’s plenty more. If you like it we’ll have one for your party.”

“It’s delicious,” said Cressida with truth.

Arabia gave her radiant smile.

“You are a sweet child. Really, my dear, I love you so much. Is that foolish of me?”

It was a wicked scandal that Mrs. Stanhope should accuse Arabia of trying to poison her. She might indeed play pranks to provide herself with the diversions she found so necessary, but she would not do anything dangerous.

Cressida, finishing her cake with complete trust, said simply, “I love you, too.”

“Oh, my dear!” The hooded eyelids fell to cover the quick gleam of tears. Then the heavily-ringed fingers, like dry old twigs improbably bursting into bloom, patted Cressida’s hand. The old lady was obviously overcome with sudden emotion.

Presently she said, “Forgive me, I wanted to cry a little. It’s so long since I have been happy like this.”

“You’ve grieved for Lucy too long,” Cressida said.

“I know I have. One can waste too much of one’s life on grief and remorse. Useless emotions, both of them. I like to be gay and happy, to laugh and sing. And from this moment I am going to be happy. Away with the past. Away with remorse. Life shall begin again.” Arabia sprang up energetically and ruffled Ahmed’s feathers. He squawked bad-temperedly, and she gave her deep peal of laughter. “Eh, you don’t like that, you old vulture. You don’t like your mistress growing young and skittish again. But she’s happy, she’s happy.”

“Arabia,” Cressida began tentatively. “It was true what you told me about Lucy, wasn’t it?”

Arabia was suddenly still. She stood, a tall, dramatic figure with Ahmed on her shoulder, just outside the rosy circle of light.

“And why should I tell you lies?” she asked haughtily.

“I mean about the way Lucy died,” Cressida persisted, thinking of the photograph which she was now sure Mr. Mullins had meant her to find. For why should Lucy die in that miserable, tragic way if she had indeed been happily married?

Arabia began to speak rapidly. “I admit that in the past I have misled people about Lucy’s death. Perhaps she was not entirely the pure young girl I had suggested. Perhaps things had happened. What was it more than life, after all? But I had loved her so much and I was so shocked and grieved, I was nearly mad for a while. So I built up this fairy-tale nonsense—not nonsense, entirely, for it was that way at the beginning. Lucy was sweet and loving and innocent until—no, no, I won’t talk about it. From now on it’s a closed book.”

“But, Arabia dear, I want to know—”

Arabia swiftly crossed over to Cressida and put her fingers over her lips.

“Not another word, my dear. I have been very wrong to let Lucy haunt your life like this. At first you reminded me of her so much my silly old mind got confused; I mixed present and past. But no more of that. You are yourself and you mustn’t live a dead girl’s life. I’ve come to a momentous decision. I’ve begun to dismantle that room upstairs. I’ve been morbid for too long, and I almost made you morbid, too. Mr. Mullins might like some of the things. The bedside lamp—I gave it to Lucy on her seventeenth birthday. Have you noticed it? It’s an early Meissen figure. Lucy was enchanted with it. I remember—But, no, no more of that.”

“Please go on. I like to hear it.” Anything, even the expensive bedside lamp of Lucy’s youthful pleasure, might lead to the reason for her tragic end.

Arabia shook her head decisively. Her craggy old face had lost its softness and was suddenly stubborn and forbidding.

“Not another word. Lucy is buried at last, and at peace.”

“But won’t you ever tell me any more about her? Not about Larry, even? She was in love with Larry, wasn’t she?”

“I thought so, but a young girl’s mind can be devious, devious and changeable.”

“But the baby—”

“I’ve told you! Now hold your tongue about it!”

It was the first time Arabia had spoken harshly to Cressida. There was no doubting that she meant what she said. The enthralling subject of Lucy, which she had lived on for nearly twenty years, was now closed. It was hard to believe, but it was true. Cressida was to hear nothing more about that enigmatic young girl who had lived light-heartedly and recklessly, and then had prepared for the birth of a baby that was destined not to be born. Arabia, who had been so garrulous, was suddenly going to be exasperatingly silent. Why? Did she truly want to put Lucy out of her mind forever, or was she afraid that Cressida was beginning to discover too much?

Arabia, with her rapid and fascinating changes of mood, was suddenly laughing, her sparkling eyes willing Cressida to do the same.

“Darling child, don’t look so angry and frustrated. Lucy is nothing to you. You are yourself. You have nothing but a name in common.”

“But I wanted to write a story about her,” Cressida said. “It was going to be such an absorbing story—the ball dresses, the red roses, the half-finished diary, the unanswered invitations, the men she loved—”

“Why do you say men?” Arabia, obviously regretting her involuntary question which would have led to further revelations, went on, “Now you have found out how Lucy died her story is no longer innocent and beautiful, so we will speak of it no more. It distresses me too much. We will talk of other things. Won’t you have another piece of cake?”

Cressida looked at her empty plate. Without thinking she had eaten the whole of the cake Arabia had given her, and she felt perfectly well. As of course she would. It was ridiculous to think otherwise.

Was it when Arabia had begun dismantling that pretty petrified room upstairs that she had thought to go down to Cressida’s flat and destroy the notes about Lucy? If that were the simple explanation to that piece of vandalism, then it must merely have been a street prowler who had followed her home. And with Lucy metaphorically buried at last the other senseless and macabre pranks would also cease. So she could really write truthfully to Tom that Dragon House was a pleasant and friendly place in which to live.

“I intend to remake my will,” Arabia said, startling Cressida out of her reflections.

She looked up with sudden apprehension.

Arabia gave her warm embracing smile and said compellingly,

“So boring, leaving one’s money to strangers. You will allow me to give you a little, won’t you?”

“Oh, no! Please!”

“But why not? It would give me so much pleasure.”

“No. Tom wouldn’t allow it.”

Arabia drew herself up. “Tom, I fear, is a very domineering young man. Are you really in love with him?”

“I—why, yes—”

“Frankly, I don’t see how you can be. An adding machine, an account book, then, if one and one make two, then two and two must make four variety. But two and two don’t always make four. Sometimes they make five. Isn’t it
interesting?”

Cressida, under the fascinating old creature’s spell, could say nothing.

“I don’t think your Tom has ever discovered that life can be full of the most wonderful surprises. And if you produced the surprises, I fear he would argue that they didn’t exist, that they were an hallucination. Am I right?”

“Well—”

“You dither, child. So I must be right. A fig for Tom and his opinions, then. Is there any other reason that I can’t leave you a little of my money?”

“There would be—unpleasantness,” Cressida said reluctantly.

“Explain!”

“Among your relatives.” Now she was quoting both Tom and Jeremy. This, probably, was the only fact on which those two would ever agree.

“But I have none!” Arabia exclaimed triumphantly. “Not a single mortal soul in the world. Not a twice-removed cousin or a step-sister or the illegitimate child of a great nephew. So where, may I ask, will the unpleasantness come from? Come, my dear, I have made up my mind about this. So make me happy by being delighted about it. I do so much like to give pleasure.”

“Me, too,” said Cressida, almost in a whisper. That, indeed, was her weakness. She could not bear to cause pain or disappointment. So how could she refuse to accept what Arabia wanted to give her? She would give all the money away, she privately decided, just as she had told Jeremy she would. And, anyway, this thing may never happen. Arabia looked as if she might live for ten or fifteen years yet; and in that time, in an uncertain world, her finances could completely alter. She may not, by then, be a wealthy woman at all.

“Then it’s settled,” Arabia cried. “I’ll telephone my solicitor tomorrow. Oh, this has been a lovely, lovely evening. Now away to bed with you.”

I
T WAS TRUE WHAT
Arabia planned to do did make her very happy. All her life she had done impulsive generous things, and they had always given her happiness. For a long time the knowledge that she had no one who really cared about her for herself had been like a cold stone in her heart. Oh, plenty of people had been charming to her, with the thought in the back of their minds that the foolish old woman would have to die one day, and then perhaps they could acquire some of her money and promptly forget her.

But this girl was different. She breathed sincerity. When she had told Arabia that she loved her, she had meant it. Arabia had known too many people in her long life not to be able to recognise truth when she encountered it. Cressida was a dear sweet child, and fate had brought them together. The spring, no matter how brief it might be, had come back for these golden days. And a ghost had been exorcised.

Now she could sleep soundly, as she had not done for so long. The evil had gone out of the house.

Arabia went about turning out lights and humming spiritedly.

“You old vulture,” she said affectionately to Ahmed, and carried him in to stand on her bedpost.

Ahmed who was likely to live to be a hundred and fifty, she would bequeath to Cressida too. He would take with him a little of her rich voluptuous past. He could not talk about it, but it would not matter if he could to Cressida, who would understand—except perhaps for that one thing. But that ghost was exorcised. There would be no more hissed voice in the quiet of the night. Now there was peace and springtime. It would last until the day of her death.

Tomorrow she must get in touch with her solicitor. And it would be a good idea to get Miss Glory started on the preparations for the party. They would make another liqueur cake, since Cressida, bless her, had liked it so much. It served Mrs. Stanhope right if she had been ill that afternoon. She had been so greedy, eating up all she could get, and those eyes of hers, magnified behind the strong glasses, had roved round the room taking in everything. One had had the impression that her thin little hands had longed to seize things.

Ah well, poor scrap, she hadn’t had much of a life. One must be kind. One could afford to be kind now that one was so happy. It would not be so difficult putting up with a bore.

Now Moretti, suddenly, had ceased to be a bore. He had definite possibilities. Those avid, light-coloured eyes, and his magical feet. Yes, there was amusement to be had there. The party on Saturday must start either very early or very late to enable Moretti to be there. Very late, perhaps. They could eat and drink and dance until daylight. The last time she had done that had been in Algiers—how long ago?—more than fifteen years. But she still remembered the moon setting and the roof-tops and minarets growing ghostly, and then pink-flushed as the light deepened. That was when she and that handsome French-Moroccan had driven to the outskirts of the city and hired camels and ridden before breakfast. Crazy days! The English had turned up their noses at camels. Nothing but the best horse-flesh for them. Ah, the heat, the smell, the sense of timelessness those old cities gave one…

But she had had to come back to this house finally. It was then she had thought to placate Lucy by reopening that charming room upstairs and pretending that it was only awaiting an occupant. For fifteen years she had put fresh flowers on the dressing-table, and dusted and cleaned with her own hands. Sometimes she had spent hours in there imagining she could hear Lucy’s laughter and her light happy voice, imagining the little slippers had Lucy’s feet in them, or the bedclothes were thrown back to admit Lucy’s slender body.

Now that kind of daydreaming was finished, for she had reality, not a ghost. Mr. Mullins would be asked to take away the lamp made from an old Meissen vase, the gilt-framed triple mirror, the period dressing-table and stool, the bed with its elaborately carved ends. The clothing she would have destroyed, and then the room, empty and anonymous, shut up. In this way Lucy’s ghost would be gone forever. She had made a mistake in allowing it to remain for Cressida to become acquainted with it. But how was she to have known that Cressida would be so lovable and sincere?

No damage had been done. If Lucy were not talked about any more Cressida would quickly forget the story that haunted her. Her eager young mind would seize on something else. She would fall in love, not with that dull country cabbage, Tom, but with someone handsome and vital and amusing. There would be another wedding in Draggon House.

Another wedding…Arabia’s happy dreaming ceased. Lucy’s ghost was not quite laid. There was just that tiny lingering thing, that doubt. The knitted baby’s sock. How had it got into Lucy’s room? And why?