Dorothy Eden (27 page)

“My young brothers are like that, too,” Millie said cheerfully.

“Jamie has been difficult since his father died,” Harriet explained. “He’ll get over it. He’s felt deserted, and it’s so hard to explain those things to a child. He needs firmness, but kindness, too.” She looked at Millie’s eager face thoughtfully. Yes, the girl would be kind, she was sure of that. “Arabella is no trouble at all.”

Millie’s curious eyes slid around the room.

“This is a lovely flat,” she said. “It’s a lovely building, too. I didn’t know where to come, but the porter showed me. He was ever so helpful.” Her eyes gave a momentary gleam, and Harriet had another abrupt misgiving. Fred, the porter, was a handsome young man with a roving eye, and Millie, at nineteen (did she say she was nineteen? she looked younger), with that thick, loose hair and her bright, rather vacuous, eyes, gave every promise of being fair game.

But would that necessarily affect her efficiency with the children? And what was one to do if one didn’t engage her, with Nannie Brown gone, and no one here tomorrow except Mrs. Blunt?

Because there was really no alternative, Harriet made an abrupt decision. “Could you start at once, Millie?”

“You mean now, Mrs. Lacey?”

“No, tomorrow. You’ll have to tell your mother, won’t you, and bring your things.”

Millie nodded eagerly. “Can I tell her I’ve got the job?”

“Well, we can try, can’t we? You may not like the children, or they may not like you. But I think they will.” Harriet gave her warm charming smile. “Don’t bring a lot of clothes with you, because I’d like you to wear a uniform. It’s neat, and it will save your things.”

“Oh,” said Millie, giggling a little, “I love a uniform. It’s ever so smart.”

Suddenly Harriet knew that the girl was thinking of Fred downstairs in his smart green coat, and again she had a feeling of uncertainty and misgiving. But what of it? The girl was bound to flirt. All pretty nursemaids did.

Nevertheless, as she said goodbye to Millie, the feeling of relief she should have had because her domestic troubles were resolved was absent.

Once more she was prodded by the feeling that she should swallow her pride and let Joe’s parents keep her as well as the children, that she should give up her career and devote all her time to Jamie and Arabella. Was it really pride that forbade her to? Or was it selfishness? The hard, exhausting, fascinating life of the theater had been the thing that had saved her during these last two years, and now she was afraid to be without it

Afraid lest her darkness should be greater than that of Flynn Palmer’s.

It was always with reluctance that she rang Flynn’s doorbell. But Jamie had not come home, and she had to get him. He really was a wretched child. If it were not for him she would almost never have to see Flynn, living in his luxurious flat, piecing together his life, with the help of a good income, a devoted man-servant, and the faithful Zoe. She could give him nothing but a renewed sense of guilt for Joe’s death. It was better that she kept away.

But her obstinate self-willed son and the blind man had found some curious bond of friendship. So here she was once more, waiting for the door to open and to hear Flynn’s voice, “Is that Harriet, Zoe?”

It was Zoe who opened the door. Her long green eyes flicked over Harriet in the instant before she smiled and said, “We thought that would be you, Jamie is the most determined stayer I’ve yet met God help him when he gets to the party age. He’ll have to be thrown out.”

“Darling!” That was Flynn’s voice from the next room. “Tell Harriet to come in and have a drink.”

The inevitable polite invitation. Harriet was aware that she had stiffened slightly, and also realized once more that Zoe did not like her. Heaven knew why. She was not dazzlingly beautiful; she was a widow and the mother of two children. As an actress she was capable and charming, but not brilliant. Also, Flynn, the man Zoe loved, treated her with a casual friendliness that could not under any circumstances be worthy of Zoe’s jealousy.

Nevertheless, the girl, beneath her brittle wittiness, was not friendly. Harriet wondered if Flynn knew that. But even if he knew, why should he care? It was of no importance.

“You’ll excuse me,” said Zoe. Harriet noticed that she had a scrap of organdy apron tied around her slim waist, and there was a minute blob of flour on one cheek. “I’m cooking something rather special for dinner. One has to watch it like a hawk. Jones has gone early because his wife isn’t well, and what with answering doorbells and telephones I’m afraid something tragic is going to happen in the kitchen. Do go and talk to Flynn. Poor darling, he gets bored when I’m cooking, and then says the rudest things about the food, just to get his own back.”

Zoe vanished into the kitchen. She was not yet married to Flynn, but the atmosphere was purely domestic. Did she do this deliberately to make Harriet feel an outsider? Harriet, chiding herself for over-sensitiveness, went across to the living room.

“Come in, Harriet. I’m sorry we kept Jamie so long, but he was helping me.”

“That’s very charitable of you,” Harriet said in her low, warm voice. “Knowing Jamie, I’m not sure—”

“I was helping!” Jamie interrupted indignantly, getting up from the floor where he was surrounded with what looked like a pile of old yellowed letters.

“Actually that’s quite true,” Flynn affirmed. “Those are part of a collection of family letters I discovered when one of my old aunts died. I had been planning some day to publish them, particularly the ones written by my great-grandfather. I’d actually made a start on them, but then my secretary left. If she hadn’t done so I’d have sacked her anyway. She had a very deliberate, genteel voice. If you can imagine love letters read aloud in that sort of voice—well—”

Harriet saw the quick impatience on his face. Once, she reflected, it had probably been a pleasant ordinarily good-looking face with a high forehead, well-marked brows, a mouth ready to smile. Now it was thin, taut, too prominently boned. Behind the dark glasses it had a look of watching and assessing.

“How very interesting!” she said. “So that’s what Jamie meant when he said he was being your secretary. And how, may I ask, is his reading?”

“I’m not reading them. I’m sorting them,” Jamie corrected. “That’s right, isn’t it, Flynn.”

“That’s right, Jamie.”

“But how can you trust a five-year-old with what may be a valuable manuscript?”

“Jamie is quite trustworthy.”

Harriet did not miss the rebuke. So Flynn Palmer thought she did not trust Jamie enough, her five-year-old, noisy, irresponsible, disobedient son who could not be depended on for one moment, and who was the reason for the departure of no less than four nannies. Because Jamie behaved himself reasonably well with Flynn, Flynn thought he knew all about him and exactly how he should be managed. Harriet flushed with resentment.

This she tried to conceal, because another thing about Flynn was his uncanny ability to divine a mood or the nearest shade of feeling in one’s voice. That was a part of blindness, of course, and was necessarily more acute in a man who already had a brilliant brain. From the beginning of their acquaintance, partly from pity and partly from a reluctance to become sentimentally involved, she had followed a course of the strictest neutrality.

She changed the subject by saying, “I’ve just engaged a new nursemaid for the children. She’s young and pretty, and I think will be much better than poor old Nannie Brown, who really was past looking after children.”

“What’s her name?” Jamie asked.

“It’s Millie, darling. And she likes little boys, she says.”

“She won’t like me.” Jamie’s voice was half bravado, half plain fact. He found, Harriet realized, a kind of dark glory in being disliked. Already he was scowling with the effort of thinking what new pranks he could get up to.

“Come along, old man,” Flynn said. “It’s rather a thing to be liked by pretty girls. You ought to try.”

“They’re all wet,” Jamie said succinctly.

Flynn smiled broadly. Harriet found herself once more with that fleeting desire to have seen his eyes and what expression they would have had. She had never seen them. But then neither had he ever seen her. Nor displayed any slightest curiosity in her appearance…

She was widow of the man for whose death he felt responsible. An impossible situation.

“Jamie, we must go. I’ve left Arabella alone. Thank you for being so patient with him, Flynn,”

“Not at all. Jamie, have you clipped all those letters together?”

“Yes.”

“Not quite all,” said Harriet. “Here’s one on the chair.”

She picked up the creased sheet covered with sprawled writing, black against the yellowed paper. A sentence leapt to her eyes. Involuntarily she began to read.

“What is it, Harriet?” came Flynn’s inquisitive voice.

“Only one letter Jamie missed.”

“Never mind. Jones would have found it. He never destroys anything.”

“You never told me the letters were like this!”

The slight breathlessness of her voice made
him
tilt his head into a listening attitude.

“Read it,” he said.

Slowly Harriet began to read aloud:

“When you left me at the gate yesterday I turned to watch you go back down the avenue. It was raining, you remember, and you had pulled your hood closely over your head, so that, hurrying along, you were suddenly anonymous, indeed, you were any small anonymous woman hastening to what? A warm fireside, a house full of people to welcome you, a lover? It was as if you had vanished into an unidentifiable multitude of people, and I was left completely alone. Oh, my darling, never cover your head with a hood again. Leave out just one strand of hair, just one beacon to light me back to you…”

Harriet stopped. She was aware of the man, with his familiar listening attitude. She knew he was waiting for her to continue. But she could not. She was remembering the feel of Joe’s fingers in her hair, and hearing his voice, bluff, a little shy, “If we ever have a baby daughter, darling, you must spare her some of this stuff…” She was trying desperately not to cry.

“Well—” came Flynn’s voice, at last.

“You—you didn’t tell me they were love letters like that.”

“I said they were worthy of publication. Actually, most of them are not love letters. They’re angry tirades against politics, war, the Inland Revenue, the Prime Minister. Great-grandfather was anti everything—except love, of course.”

“Flynn, you must do something with them!”

“That’s what I’m trying to do.”

“You must—” Harriet was suddenly aware that Zoe was standing at the door watching them. She did not know how long the girl had been there, whether she had heard the whole of the letter or seen Harriet’s shamed efforts not to cry. She was still wearing the absurd, fetching apron. She was a little flushed from the heat of the kitchen and looked beautiful. And full of antagonism. That was so plain that even Flynn, his head turned away, must have sensed it.

But all she said was, “I’m finding a new secretary for Flynn. Darling, will you be ready to eat in ten minutes? Harriet, we’d love to have you stay.”

“No, no, I can’t of course. Jamie must go to bed, and I’ve left Arabella alone. Jamie, darling, say good-night to Flynn and come along.”

It was easy to go. She was only eager to be upstairs in her own flat, no longer the momentary subject of Flynn’s speculation and Zoe’s hostility.

Nevertheless, when Jamie, with less fuss than usual, was in bed, the flat seemed very quiet, very empty. She found the supper Mrs. Blunt had left for her in the refrigerator, decorated with its printed instructions. “This needs heating for thirty minutes. Oven about 350.” It was not the elaborate meal Zoe was preparing downstairs, but it didn’t matter, for she scarcely tasted what she was eating. Neither did the lines of dialogue in the script propped beside her plate make any sense to her.

She was seeing instead the scrawled black lines on that yellowed sheet of paper.
You were any small anonymous woman hastening to what—a warm fireside? A house full of people? A lover?

M
ILLIE WAS VERY EXCITED
indeed. She thought Mrs. Lacey was sweet, so young and attractive, and her a widow, poor thing. She wasn’t afraid of not being able to cope with the children. Find her the small boy whom she couldn’t manage. She was still thinking of that pretty little bedroom with radio and all, just for herself.

Mum would be mad about her leaving home, of course. But even Mum at her most intimidating could be managed. And managed she must be, for Millie was determined to go and live in Manchester Court. She had made up her mind as soon as she had seen Mrs. Lacey and the lovely flat and all. Though at that stage, if Mum had been awfully difficult, she might have given up the idea.

But something had happened as she left the block of flats that had completely made up her mind so that it would never be changed. She had had a conversation with Fred, the handsome porter, and she thought she had fallen in love at first sight.

It was absurd, really. Fred had merely told her where to find Mrs. Lacey’s flat, as she went in. Although she had noticed him favorably then, with his broad shoulders, his wavy hair and his bright brown eyes, she hadn’t expected him to look at her particularly. The thing that excited her so much was that he had. For as she came out after her interview he had come up to open the doors of the lift for her, and had smiled, flashing his white teeth, and said conspiratorially.

“Get the job?”

“How’d you know I was after a job?”

“I knew the other was leaving, so I put two and two together.” Again came the flashing smile. “I told myself Mrs. Lacey would like a nice-looking girl like you.”

His brown eyes were full of admiration. They flicked over Millie in an experienced way.

“You’re a smooth one, aren’t you?” she murmured.

“Not me, miss. I just like to help. That’s what I’m here for. I’d like to see Mrs. Lacey get settled with a nice girl. I like to know everyone’s happy around here.”

His frankness left Millie at a loss.

“Yeah, that’s my job,” said Fred, straightening his broad shoulders. “And if you come I’d like to know you’re happy, too.”