Faster! Faster! (3 page)

Everybody, excepting Professor Quarrendon, offered suggestions or rejected the suggestions of other people. Even Mrs Ladislaw asked: Why not a piece of poetry?

“People usually think that sounds too difficult, I believe,” said Claudia.

“A crossword puzzle, then. You do make them up, don't you?”

“Oh yes.”

“For two papers,” cried Maurice proudly.

“Claudia!” said Mrs Ladislaw with admiration. “It's terribly clever of you.”

“It only needs a very good dictionary and a
certain amount of general knowledge. One gets into the knack, and after that it's easy.”

Quite true, thought Sal, but in some extraordinary way it sounded as though it wasn't really true, but just an expression of modesty.

“Some of Mother's are marvellous,” put in Sylvia. “She tries them on us sometimes, before she sends them up.”

“A custom in Sparta. Motto of a famous Corsican,” muttered Frances Ladislaw with wide eyes.

“That would be Napoleon,” said Mrs Peel unerringly.

“Oh yes, I suppose it would. But I didn't really mean anything. I was just thinking about crossword puzzles, and clues. I can't ever
imagine
being able to make them up.”

“Claudia works too hard,” said Mrs Peel mournfully.

Still the Professor, gazing through his thick lenses at everybody in turn, said nothing and seemed to listen for something.

Sal Oliver could see that Claudia was growing anxious about him. She had brought him to Arling—pleased and dazzled, no doubt, as so many people were, by her brilliant efficiency, her charm and good looks—and now it was obvious that family life and family conversation were proving too much for him. Sal knew already that he was unmarried, and lived by himself.

She turned to him.

“Do you do crossword puzzles?” she enquired.

Quarrendon shook his head.

“I'm afraid not.”

“Neither do I,” Taffy remarked in a detached tone. “I wish I did, but I can't see the fascination of them.”

Claudia smiled at her daughter.

“That's all nonsense, really. You
ought
to be very good at them.”

Taffy smiled back, though shaking her head as if to show that she did not relinquish her point. Quarrendon, turning his eyes on Taffy, this time allowed his gaze to dwell there for a moment, reflectively.

The air had vibrated with a faint hint of hostility during the brief interchange of words between Claudia and her younger daughter. Perhaps it was that, Sal thought, which had arrested his attention. She wondered whether he was slightly in love with Claudia. A good many people were.

The conversation went on—inconsequent, cheerful, and allusive.

“Claudia,” Mrs Ladislaw was saying, “you write as well, don't you?”

“Sometimes.”

“You must tell me where to find your things. I've been away so long—I don't know anything. Six years!”

“Oh dear—these children must have changed a great deal” their grandmother suggested.

(Taffy and Maurice scowled, and even the gentle Sylvia looked indignant.)

“Yes. They have, of course. But Claudia hasn't. She doesn't look a day older.”

“She looks thin,” said Mrs Peel. “Yes, darling, you do. You work too hard.”

“Hard work never hurt anybody yet,” said Claudia abruptly. “Besides, there isn't any alternative.”

For a moment her face looked older, and hard.

There was a smothered shriek from Taffy. Hastily, although with kindness, she shoved His Lordship off her knee and rushed to the wireless.

“There's something I frightfully don't want to miss,” she explained, with an apologetic look at Sal. “I'll put it on quite softly.”

She flung herself onto the floor and began to manipulate knobs.

“You hadn't got a wireless when I saw you in London years ago,” said Mrs Ladislaw. “I suppose everybody has one now.”

“Nearly every cottage in the village has one,” Sylvia replied.

“That,” said Mrs Peel regretfully, “is perfect nonsense.”

Nobody paid the slightest attention to the remark. Of course, thought Sal, it was exactly the kind of thing that one would expect her to say. Women like Mrs Peel had been talking and thinking—in so far as they could be said to think—in that way for years. The difference now was that nobody ever troubled to argue with them, or contradict them.

“If I love again,”
proclaimed a thin voice from the ether.

Everybody went on talking.

Even Taffy, without altering her position on the floor, joined in.

Then Copper slouched into the room.

Almost at once he turned to his younger daughter.

“Switch off that row,” he directed.

Taffy, looking sulky, obeyed.

“Tea, dear? Maurice, let Father have that chair.”

Maurice obeyed.

“Don't give me that strong tea!” exclaimed Copper. “For God's sake, how long has it been standing? Can't we have some fresh?”

“Of course,” said Claudia equably. “Please ring, somebody.”

The whole atmosphere of the room had altered.

Taffy had gone quickly out through the window, carrying the cat with her.

Maurice, in a lowered voice, was muttering to Sylvia about his snapshots.

Presently he let a number of them slip to the floor. But he uttered no exclamation. Helped by Sylvia, he began to pick them up, crawling cautiously about amongst the chair-legs behind his father's back.

“Have you seen the evening paper, Copper? Sal brought one down. I saw it in the hall, and put it in the smoking-room.”

Claudia, evidently enough, was endeavouring to distract her husband's attention from the youthful clumsiness of their son. For a little while she succeeded, by dint of manufacturing remarks about the contents of the evening paper. But Maurice's perambulations, unskilfully conducted, brought him into contact with the leg of his father's chair.

“What the—what a clumsy little owl you are,
Maurice! Here—hop it.”

“Just let him get his photographs, Copper.”

“He can get them later. I want my tea.”

Maurice looked at his mother. She smiled reassuringly at him, but signed to him to go out.

Sylvia followed him, by the window.

“Poor little things!” exclaimed Mrs Peel.

Copper Winsloe scowled.

“Here's some fresh tea,” said Claudia. “Look, you've got green sandwiches at your elbow.”

She might have been dealing, kindly and wisely, with a spoilt child—and indeed, it was as a spoilt child, and a disagreeable one, that Copper showed in his wife's drawing-room. He was not the same person as the man who had met Sal at the station, and talked with her on the way to Arling. Sal had seen this metamorphosis of Copper Winsloe before, many times. It never failed to rouse her to mingled regret and exasperation.

The conversation, now, was a completely artificial affair carefully kept by Claudia on lines adapted to the ill-humour of her husband.

Claudia's own unruffled calm remained admirable. Equally effective was the dramatic suddenness with which the light had left her face and the eagerness fled from her voice and manner.

Words, even tears, could not have served better to underline the boorishness of Copper Winsloe's behaviour.

It was all quite clear to everybody, thought Sal bitterly—including Copper himself.

Quarrendon, she saw, was observing them both. In the gentle grey eyes of Frances Ladislaw was
to be seen a puzzled and deeply disturbed expression.

“Have you brought down anything that I ought to see to at once, from the office?” Claudia enquired of her partner.

“Nothing much. Mrs Ingatestone has fixed up one or two things—I've brought down notes. And there are some cheques for you to sign.”

“I'll do those at once,” said Claudia, getting up.

“You needn't. And it won't make any difference. No one will get them before Tuesday.”

“I'd rather have them now.”

Claudia's desire to get things done at once was an obsession. Every night before going up to bed she pulled the day's leaf off the tiny calendar that hung on her desk, so that the next day's date should confront her in the morning.

“Can't you give the office a rest?” Copper enquired.

Claudia shook her head.

“I daren't,” she said simply. “If once I let things begin to pile up——”

She threw a look at Quarrendon.

“You
know what it is?”

“Oh yes,” he agreed. “I know. But I'm afraid in my case things are allowed to pile up. They're doing it now.”

It was the longest speech that Sal had heard from him, and she was struck by the charm of his voice, so much more distinguished and agreeable than was his appearance.

He had risen as he spoke, and moved to the window, where he stood looking out at the August garden. Sylvia went by.

“Do you play tennis?” she called out.

“Very badly, and I've no racquet.”

“Never mind, we'll lend you one. Come along.”

He obediently went.

Sylvia came and stood by the window. Her uncovered hair stood out in a bronze halo round her head, and she wore a faded mauve cotton frock that showed the outline of her tall, lithe young figure. She looked incredibly young and slight, lovely with that soft, ephemeral bloom that passes with the last vestige of childhood.

Sal wondered how much the Professor noticed of that enchanting prettiness.

“Frances, will you play too?” Sylvia enquired of her godmother.

“I should like to come and look on, if I may. I won't play now.”

“You will to-morrow,” said Sylvia contentedly.

They went off to the court.

“Get me those cheques, Sal, if you please,” said Claudia—not in the tone of one who was concerned with what anybody pleased.

“For God's sake, Claudia, let up. It can't make any difference if they're signed to-night,” groaned her husband.

“They're upstairs, in my case. It'll do if I bring them down at dinner-time,” said Sal.

“Darling, do give yourself a rest,” urged Mrs Peel. “You've been at the writing-table all day long.”

That's done it, thought Sal.

It had.

Claudia went straight to the door.

“I'll bring down your case, Sal,” she said.

Copper Winsloe ejaculated “Oh my God!” in a disgusted voice and left the room.

Mrs Peel sighed, fidgeted, went to the window and then came back again to the deserted tea-table.

“What do you think of the children, poor little things?” she asked unhappily.

“They look extraordinarily well and cheerful,” said Sal—replying thus on principle, although the words happened also to be the expression of her true opinion.

“Yes, I think they do,” their grandmother agreed without, however, brightening very much.

“Sylvia grows prettier every time I see her,” said Sal encouragingly.

“Oh yes, poor little Sylvia, she's very sweet. She reminds me of a miniature I have at home, of my mother. It's
most
curious,” said Mrs Peel, “but there's a very strong likeness. I don't know why Claudia pretends not to see it.”

It was the unalterable conviction of Mrs Peel that anybody who disagreed with her was only pretending.

Sal, who thought she knew very well why Claudia did not admit the alleged resemblance, made no reply.

“You know,” said Mrs Peel abruptly, “she works too hard. It's too much for her. I'm very worried about Claudia.”

“The holidays make a break.”

“She seems to me to work just as hard, only she doesn't go up to London every day. Look at all she does! Her own housekeeping, and her writing, and the work she gets from the office, going on all the time.
And
the children.”

“They're growing up, now. In any case there's no need for her to wear herself out for the children. She ought to make
them
consider
her”

“Of course. It's what I've said all along,” wailed Mrs Peel.

She hadn't said it all along—and if she had, it wouldn't have checked Claudia's impulse towards self-immolation on the altar of her ideal of maternity.

“Has Sylvia heard any more about her job?” Sal asked, in order to change the conversation.

“Oh, poor little thing! I can't bear to think of it. But they say that girls all do, nowadays, and I'm afraid it's more or less necessary. But she'll marry, of course.”

Claudia returned, and gave Sal her case.

“Here you are,” said Sal, handing her the cheques in a little sheaf. “If you'll give them back to me when they're signed, I'll send the lot off to Ingatestone. She'll be back at the office on Tuesday morning.”

“I shall be there myself on Tuesday,” Claudia said, going to the writing-table. “I'm going up with Sylvia, about her job.”

“We were just talking of that.”

“Darling,” said Mrs Peel anxiously, “do you really
know
what kind of people poor little Sylvia
would be thrown with? You can't tell very much in one interview, can you?”

“One interview?” said Claudia, raising her eyebrows. “But it won't be
my
interview, Mother. It'll be Sylvia's. It's her affair, not mine. She's going to see them by herself, and to tell me about it afterwards, I hope.”

“I thought you said you were going up to London to see about it.”

“Oh no. I'm going up because Sylvia asked me to, and because I've got to be at the office.
She's
going up to see about her job. You know I've always made my children take their own decisions.”

Sal Oliver, for her part, knew that this attitude on the part of her daughter was one that always drove Mrs Peel into a frenzy of fretfulness. It implied a not very obscure reproach to her own entirely dissimilar methods of bringing up her daughters, and it also made clear Claudia's complete indifference to her mother's views.