Authors: Anne Weale
CHAPTER FOUR
In
the days that followed
Andrea began to settle down in her new life. Apart from approving the menus that Mrs. Lane, the middle-aged housekeeper, submitted to her each morning, and arranging the flowers that were sent up by train from the Cornish estate twice a week, she had no domestic responsibilities. On the day after their return from Paris the housekeeper had shown her the kitchen and storeroom and staff dining room, but where the servants slept, what their hours of work were and whether they were contented, she had no idea and did not like to ask. Justin had mentioned that Mrs. Lane had run the household for more than ten years, and Andrea was afraid that she might resent any searching inquiries into her methods. It seemed wiser to leave things as they were.
The days began at half-past seven, when Miller brought her early-morning tea, prepared a bath and laid out her clothes. At a quarter to eight she got out of bed, stepped into the dressing gown that the maid was holding ready and began a leisurely toilet. At half-past eight, as the gong boomed in the hall, she went downstairs to the dining room, where Justin was already looking through the
Times
.
Lunch was at one o’clock, tea at half-past four and dinner, unless they were entertaining or going out, at seven. Within this framework of meals her time was her own, with none of the harassing experiments in housewifery that occupy most brides.
Justin suggested that she should open accounts at a number of stores and gave her a monthly allowance, which she thought at first was intended to cover the household expenses as well as her personal needs. Then she discovered
that it was all pin money and that he would continue to deal with the domestic bills.
“But it’s much more than I will need. What could I possibly spend it on?” she protested when she found this out.
“I daresay, you’ll think of something,” he said with his sardonic smile.
All her life she had dreamed of being able to afford anything that took her fancy. Yet now that this was so there seemed to be very few things that she really wanted, and by the end of the first month she had spent only a fraction of the money.
He arranged for her to take riding and driving lessons, and Madeline insisted that she learn to play bridge. Having mastered the intricacies of the game, which, she secretly thought a rather boring pastime, Andrea found herself obliged to attend her sister-in-law’s weekly bridge parties.
Here she met women whose pictures she had often seen in the glossy magazines, women whose husbands’ wealth enabled them to spend most of their time in beauty parlors and dress salons or exchanging gossip over the card tables, women whose children appeared to lead a separate existence in the care of nursemaids until they were old enough to be dispatched to exclusive boarding schools. Almost at once she was invited to sit on various charity committees whose meetings, like the bridge parties, were spent more in idle chatter than in any strenuous organization.
When she had passed her driving test, Justin bought her a small car, and as the weather grew hotter she spent several days driving around in Berkshire and Surrey, taking a picnic lunch and returning to London in time for dinner.
Once, on a particularly fine morning, she asked Justin if he could come with her, but he said briefly that he had a busy day ahead but might manage it later. Whenever she tried to take an intelligent interest in his business affairs, he changed the subject in such a way that to ask any more questions would invite a more pointed rebuff.
Jill and
N
ick were getting married in May, and their little apartment was almost ready. One afternoon when the two girls had been fitting loose covers on the secondhand chairs in the living room, Jill asked Andrea to stay to supper. Nick would be coming along later to finish fixing a tiled splashboard behind the sink and they could have potluck together. So Andrea telephoned home and asked Hubbard to tell Justin that she was busy at the apartment and would be back late.
Nick arrived about seven with a friend whom he introduced as Simon Brennan, a roving reporter on one of the more reputable national newspapers, who had just arrived in England on leave. Apparently they had trained together on a provincial paper and were still close friends.
Andrea studied Mr. Brennan with interest as she remembered his brilliant dispatches from the front line in Korea and his reports from Kenya when the Mau Mau uprisings began. More recently he had covered the terrorist activities in Cyprus and the Suez crisis.
She had visualized him as a tough, hard-bitten man with a forceful personality and blunt manners, but he was nothing like this preconception. Tall and too thin for his height, he had a lankiness reminiscent of an overgrown schoolboy. His
fair hair was bleached almost white by the Middle East sun and his deep sunburn accentuated the blueness of his eyes. He did not look at all like a man who spent his life in the world’s trouble spots, writing trenchant commentaries on the cause and outcome of international dissension. If she had passed him in the street she would have thought he was a lawyer or doctor or scientist, certainly not an itinerant journalist.
Presently Nick went into the kitchen to help Jill finish getting the supper and the other two were left alone, Andrea sewing hooks and eyes on the last chair cover and Simon Brennan sitting on a packing case watching her.
“Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked.
“Not at all.”
He produced a stained corncob pipe and began to fill it from an old oilskin pouch.
“What do you do for a living?” he inquired.
“I used to be a fashion model until I married.”
“Your husband’s the sensible type who believes a woman’s place is in the home, is he?” When he smiled the fine lines of his eyes crinkled and two deep clefts formed in his thin cheeks.
“I don’t really know. The question of carrying on with my career didn’t arise. I should think he probably is. Do you disapprove of wives going out to work?”
He laughed. “I disapprove of work. If I had a couple of thousand pounds put by for my old age, I’d find a quiet cove in a warm climate and settle down to beachcombing for the next twenty years.”
She snipped a thread and looked up at him. “Wouldn’t that get a bit boring after a while?”
“I don’t think so. Most people’s lives are boring anyway. The only time they really come alive is for two short weeks a year when they can forget about scraping a living and do as they please.”
“Mmm, that’s true up to a point, I suppose. But your job isn’t a humdrum one. You aren’t tied to an office desk or a factory bench, going through the same monotonous routine day after day.”
He lighted his pipe and when it was drawing satisfactorily, said, “Come to that, your job must have been pretty easy. I’ve never understood why girls should get fat fees for dressing up and posing for pictures.”
Andrea opened her mouth to repudiate this, caught his eye and smiled.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I used to get terribly cross with people who thought modeling was money for jam. Now I’m doing the same thing myself. I’m afraid I don’t know much about journalism, but I suppose it has drawbacks like everything else. What are the worst ones?”
He shrugged. “Living in hotels. Having to move on just as one’s getting settled. Seeing things that should be splashed across the front page but won’t even get into small print for various reasons. Missing meals to catch editions. Spending your life chasing nine-day wonders.”
And yet,
she thought,
he looks such a relaxed person. One can’t imagine him getting worked up and irritable.
Aloud, she said, “Are you married?”
“If I were I wouldn’t be cadging meals. No, marriage doesn’t fit in with a roving commission, and since I don’t
know any other way of earning money I reckon I’m doomed to be a crusty old bachelor.”
“Couldn’t you get a job like Nick’s?”
“I could, but I wouldn’t care for it. What I said now about moving around being a drawback wasn’t altogether true. After a while the travel bug gets under your skin. Too long in one place and you begin to feel restless.”
A shout of “Come and get it!” from the kitchen interrupted him. Knocking out his pipe in the empty hearth, he held out a hand to pull Andrea up from the floor.
“Oh, I’m stiff.” She rubbed the small of her back and stretched.
It occurred to her that this afternoon was the first time she had worked hard enough to be tired since her wedding day.
After supper Simon helped Nick fix the tiles while Jill painted a bedroom chair and Andrea bound a lampshade frame with white tape. She wondered what Justin was doing, and whether he minded her being out. Should she have telephoned and asked him to join them? Somehow she could not visualize him fitting into this working party.
Later they made coffee and sat talking until Andrea suddenly realized it was past ten o’clock. She had come in a taxi because her car was being serviced, and Simon offered to run her home in his ancient sports coupe. They discussed cars for some minutes until he said, “You know, an evening like this makes me wonder how much I’m missing. It must be a good feeling to have a place of one’s own.”
“Where do you live when you’re in England?”
“I have a service apartment.”
“Your family isn’t in London, then?”
“I have none. My parents were killed in a train smash when I was a kid. I was brought up by a bachelor uncle. We never had a great deal in common. He was a barrister and thought journalism a very raffish sort of trade. What about you? Where do you hail from?”
“The north. I haven’t a family either. I often wonder what it’s like to have a host of relatives.”
“From what I’ve seen it can be pretty trying,” Simon, said dryly. “I have a few remote relatives around the place, but the less we see of each other the better.”
“Aren’t you ever lonely?”
It was, she realized, a rather extraordinary question to ask a comparative stranger, and yet somehow she did not feel a stranger to this man.
He took so long to answer that for a moment she was afraid she had embarrassed or annoyed him.
Then he said slowly, “I suppose all human beings are lonely to some degree. I don’t think having a family or a lot of friends has much to do with it. I remember once being at a party with a crowd of people I knew well and liked, and suddenly in the middle of it all I had a strange feeling that nobody was real, that it was all a sham. Maybe I’d had too much to drink. It certainly doesn’t make much sense in words.”
Andrea watched the crimson taillights of the car ahead of them glowing in the darkness.
“Like waking up from a dream and finding yourself in a strange place,” she said softly. “You suddenly realize that all the people around you have lives of their own that will go on when the party is over. But yours has come to a standstill. You wonder why you’re living as you are and where it will end. You know you want something but you can’t tell what it is.”
It was not until she felt Simon looking at her that she knew she had spoken her thoughts aloud.
“I’m terribly sorry. I don’t usually ramble.” Confusion made her stammer slightly.
“Why be sorry? I’m glad to know someone else has felt the same way. There’ve been times when I’
ve
wondered if I was a crank.”
They had reached the square, and when she pointed out the house he brought the car alongside the curb and switched off the engine. Then he climbed out and came around to the near side to help her.
“I see now why the question of carrying on your career didn’t arise. It must be a full-time job running a place this size,” he said, looking up at the house.
“Can we offer you a nightcap? I expect my husband is still up and I know he’d like to meet you.”
“Thank you, but you must be tired. Perhaps another time.”
“It was kind of you to bring me home. Good night, Mr. Brennan.”
“Good night.”
He took her outstretched hand for a moment, watched her run up the steps and turned away to his car.
Justin was reading in his chair when Andrea opened the library door.
He put the book aside and stood up as she came into the room, but he did not smile at her.
“I’m sorry I’m so late. We were talking and I forgot the time,” she said as he helped her to take off her jacket. She was wearing tapered gray slacks and a dark gray cashmere sweater with a green scarf knotted under the collar.
“I haven’t been in long myself. When Hubbard gave me your message I decided to dine at the club.”
“You didn’t mind my staying for supper, did you?”
“Why should I? Sherry?”
“Please.”
“How is the apartment coming along?”
“It’s almost finished now. Nick brought a friend to supper. Simon Brennan, the
Globe
correspondent. He drove me home.”
“Interesting fellow, I imagine,” Justin said, handing her a glass of sherry and returning to his chair. “From what I’ve read of his stuff I should say he’s one of the few responsible columnists on the national papers. What did you make
of him?
”
“I liked him very much. I expected him to be rather opinionated and
blasé
, but he wasn’t like that at all. Could we have him to dinner one evening? He’s on leave and seems not to have too many friends outside his work.”
“By all means. By the way, have you decided on a wedding present for Jill and young Randell?”
“Yes, I meant to mention it to you this morning. I’ve seen a camphorwood blanket chest that I know Jill would like. Do you think you’d have time to look at it tomorrow?”
“I think I can rely on your judgment,” he said. Andrea bit her lip. She had looked forward to showing him the chest, which was of beautifully carved pale gold
teak but not so expensive that it would embarrass Jill and Nick.
Surely he could not be so busy it was impossible to spare half an hour to approve her choice of present? Before and during their engagement he
h
ad never been so closely occupied, but now, even when they were together, he seemed to grow more and more reserved and taciturn. It was as if their relationship was no closer than that of fellow guests at a house party, and instead of becoming more frequent, the unexpected moments of harmony that they had shared in Paris no longer happened.
Tonight, coming from the companionable atmosphere in the little apartment, she was doubly aware of the chill formality that pervaded this house. Why, even Simon Brennan, a man she had known for only a few hours, was easier to talk to than Justin.
Unconsciously she gave a deep sigh, and he said, “You sound tired. You’d better go to bed.”
She watched him light a cigarette and lean his dark head against the leather-padded wing to watch the smoke rise in a thin blue trail. What was he thinking? Not of her or of the strange life they led together, of that she felt sure. Sometimes she wondered if he ever thought about her except when she happened to catch his eye and he felt a momentary satisfaction at having secured a wife who fitted into his household as suitably as all the other ornaments.
“Sometimes you treat me as if I were a small child,” she said a shade crossly, stung by his remoteness.
“Do I? How would you like me to treat you?” He did not even look at her.
“Oh.... I don’t know.” She made a restless movement. “Not like a schoolgirl to be sent up to bed because you can’t think of anything else to say.”
This time he did look at her, his eyes narrowed.
“On the contrary,” he said softly, “there are several things I could say, but I doubt if they would interest you.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know you.”
Andrea lay back in her chair and closed her eyes.