The leaping flame, p.12
The Leaping Flame, page 12
“If you aren’t going to be nice to me, I’m going home,” she said.
“Aren’t I always nice to you?”
He got up and stood beside her in front of the fire. He surprised her by reaching for one of her hands, but there was no sign of affection in his gesture. He looked at her long, pink-tipped fingers in an absent-minded manner, then he turned the hand over casually and stared at the network of lines on the palm.
“What do they all mean, I wonder?” he said. “Have you ever been to a palmist?”
“Heaps of them,” Mona replied, “and they all contradicted each other and nothing they told me had any relation to the truth, except perhaps, one.”
“And what did she say?”
“It was a he, an Egyptian. He sat on the steps of the Winter Palace Hotel in Luxor and he said, ‘You are in the sunshine but everything is dark. When everything is dark, very dark, under a cloud bigger than the world, you will find sunshine.’”
There was a pause.
“Most fortune-tellers are thought or mind readers,” Michael said lightly.
He released her hand. Mona had a feeling that before he had spoken he hesitated as to whether to ask her more. Perhaps he had wanted to know if while living in the sunshine she had been in the dark of unhappiness. She could have told him that part of the prediction was true at any rate.
She had been unhappy.
How she hated Egypt! Yet it remained in her mind a vision of colour, of golden sun-kissed desert, of the blue and glittering Nile, of a sky hazy with heat and the distant shimmering of a mirage on the hot sand. She conjured up the shrill cries of the natives driving their camels, of the Arab boys fighting in the rising dust, of the call to prayer from the tall, slender minarets, and mixed with it all was a feeling of blank misery, a yearning for escape and a sense of interminable frustration. Mona shook herself and turned towards the window.
“Don’t let’s talk about the past,” she said, “it makes me depressed, and to anticipate the future is even worse. Shall we go for a walk?”
“It’s too late,” Michael replied. “Besides, there’s tea waiting for you in the hall and someone I want you to meet.”
“Who?” Mona asked curiously.
“My aunt,” Michael replied. “She’s come to stay with me for a little while. She’s closed her house in London and is making a tour of her nephews and nieces.”
“It sounds formidable. What’s she like?”
“What are aunts usually like?”
“Well, in that case I’d better go home and put on my lavender and lace.”
“You’ll do very well as you are,” Michael answered.
He looked at her checked skirt and short beaver-fur coat.
“Well, I shall be interested to meet her,” Mona said. “Somehow, I never think of you as a man with many relations.”
“Which, of course, implies something rude,” Michael retorted.
“How touchy you are! I think it’s a compliment really, I’ve usually hated all my relations.”
‘Except one,’ her heart whispered, ‘except one.’
Michael opened the door and they walked into the great sitting room. Tea was laid before the big open fire place, with its huge logs supported on steel dogs. Seated in front of the tea table was a woman. She was small, with grey hair beautifully arranged, and her hands, moving among the tea things, glittered with rings. The first impression was that she was old, and then one was not so certain. She might have been any age. She was distinguished, but from the moment she held out her hand in greeting, Mona was conscious of a twinkle in the bright eyes that looked her over and seemed to see more than was on the surface.
“Aunt Ada,” Michael said, “this is Lady Carsdale, about whom I’ve talked so much. Mona, my aunt, Mrs. Windlesham.”
“How do you do?” Michael’s aunt said. “I have heard a great deal about you and don’t look so startled, all nice things. How I loathe people who don’t say that at once! One always wonders what they have heard and if one should take steps at once to contradict everything that is likely to be untrue.”
Mona laughed.
“In this neighbourhood everything is certain to be untrue,” she said. “Except about me, and then it isn’t bad enough. Has Michael told you I am the black sheep of Little Cobble?”
“On the contrary,” Mrs. Windlesham said, “he told me that you were a great beauty and I must say for once I agree with every word he said.”
“Thank you,” Mona replied. “How nice you are to me. Michael, can I have a crumpet?”
“Yes, but I don’t think you need one after that tribute,” he said.
Then handing them to his aunt, added,
“Mona wondered if she ought to go home and put on her lavender and lace when she heard she was to meet you, Aunt Ada.”
Mrs. Windlesham chuckled.
“People always expect Michael’s aunt to be a staid old lady with lace-up corsets and a bustle,” she said. “I’m beginning to think there must be something wrong with Michael.”
Mona laughed and Michael said grumpily,
“This is really the end if both of you are going to set on me. It’s not fair! I thought at least I should have one person to be kind to me when you arrived, Aunt Ada.”
“Kind! Nobody’s ever asked me to be that,” Aunt Ada said. “Most people nowadays seem to want one to be amusing or daring – don’t you think so, Lady Carsdale?”
Mona had come to the quick conclusion that she liked Michael’s aunt. She had a sharp, amusing way of talking, but, although she appeared to know the world, there was also something wise and rather restful about her.
‘A really nice relation to have,’ she thought.
“Tell me all the excitements,” Mrs. Windlesham went on. “You know what men are like when you ask them to tell you about people in the neighbourhood. I’ve got as far as their names and addresses, their ages and the number of the children they have, but as for knowing their peculiarities Michael’s about as informative as Who’s Who, which I always thought was very dull reading.”
“My aunt likes inside information about people,” Michael explained. “She makes a hobby of collecting specimens of mankind, as other people collect stamps or odd bits of china. When I go to her house in London, I find all sorts of oddities there. One man, I’m certain, was a murderer.”
“Now who was that?” his aunt said with a puzzled face. “Oh, I know who you mean. No dear, he was never had up for anything worse than arson.”
She turned to Mona.
“I’m afraid it is rather a failing of mine to study people. I like knowing about them, watching for characteristic traits, it’s far more interesting than reading a book.”
“But often far more expensive,” Michael interrupted.
His aunt smiled at him.
“You are thinking of that young man who persuaded me to put money into a non-existent gold mine,” she said. “Oh well, we must all pay for our pleasures, and I don’t suppose that the gold mines in which I have speculated over my whole life would add up to more than you have expended giving young women orchids and taking them to the theatre.”
“Oh, but those are not Michael’s extravagances,” Mona laughed. “When he’s feeling reckless he indulges in a cow or a new tractor! But I’m on your side, Mrs. Windlesham, I think that one’s pleasures are worth paying for, but I can’t say I enjoy people as a whole. Some of them are too strange, too peculiar, to be anything but nauseating.”
“I rather like being nauseated,” Mrs. Windlesham said with relish.
They all had to laugh at the tone in which she spoke.
“It’s no use, Mona,” Michael said, “you could no more talk Aunt Ada out of collecting people than you could stop a dipsomaniac when you caught him beside a bar.”
“Not a very elegant simile,” Mrs. Windlesham interposed, “but I understand what you mean. Now, Lady Carsdale can tell me about the people in Little Cobble. You are useless, Michael, so run away and add up the farm accounts or do something to keep your mind occupied. We shall be at least an hour.”
“All right, I’ll leave you then,” Michael said. “Don’t encourage her too much, Mona, otherwise she will find out all about everyone too quickly and leave me. I rather like having her here.”
“Don’t flatter me too fulsomely,” his aunt said.
Then as he left the room, she turned to Mona.
“A nice boy, but he never had many party graces. His father was just like him. I can’t think what you’ve been doing to let him grow up like that.”
“Like what?” Mona asked.
“Gruff and abrupt,” Mrs. Windlesham said. “It’s a form of shyness, of course. All the Merrills are shy, although they’ll never admit it.”
Mona smiled.
“I can’t believe that,” she said. “I always think of Michael as above such things.”
“And that’s where you are quite wrong,” his aunt replied. “Michael is both shy and sensitive. As a boy he was particularly so and then he adopted that rather hard veneer to protect himself, just as a tree grows bark. I’m not certain that you haven’t a good deal to do with his bark being so tough.”
“I!” Mona exclaimed. “Why should you think I have made Michael shy and nervous?”
“Well, haven’t you?” Mrs. Windlesham asked.
She looked at Mona with such knowing eyes that she had to laugh.
“Kamerade!” she cried. “I see I’m up against an expert in psychology. All right, I have teased Michael, but I never thought he minded. In fact, that’s why I went on, hoping that one day he’d squeal.”
“Of course you did, and then they say we aren’t barbarians,” Mrs. Windlesham sighed. “My dear, very few of us are civilised, the instinct to be cruel is strong in the best of us. So you were cruel to Michael with your teasing and taunting and you sharpened your quick wit at his expense and he got more and more hoary and prickly to the touch?”
“You’re making me feel guilty,” Mona exclaimed.
“Not I,” Mrs. Windlesham replied. “You are feeling rather pleased with yourself to think that you had such an effect on Michael. I only hope one day he gives you the spanking you deserve.”
“I’m not certain he hasn’t,” Mona said.
She was remembering that kiss in the Long Gallery. That hard, brutal, insulting kiss for which Michael had apologised afterwards.
“I’m very glad to hear it,” Mrs. Windlesham said, “but I’m not certain that you’ve been punished enough. There’s a glint in your eye when you tease Michael that bodes ill for the poor lad. But never mind, I shall know more after I have been here a few days. Tell me about the other people in this flat and rather desolate-looking country.”
As Mona walked home she smiled at the remembrance of Mrs. Windlesham’s interest. She had a quick, perceptive mind and the way she managed to pierce through what was unimportant, to the kernel or root of the matter, was entrancing to watch.
‘I shall go up and see her tomorrow,’ Mona thought. ‘It’s so like Michael to have an aunt like that and never talk about her. I wonder what the story of her life is. That would be worth hearing.’
At the same time, Mona had made up her mind that she herself must be careful. It would be difficult to hide anything from Mrs. Windlesham, she thought, if she were really determined to hunt one down, though instinctively she knew that Michael’s aunt was trustworthy.
Thinking over the afternoon she realised that she had told Mrs. Windlesham a lot to hear nothing in return. That was the secret of learning. To be a good listener and to be able to impact wisdom without making it boring.
‘Perhaps old age to such people,’ Mona thought, ‘has its compensations, and yet who wants to be old?’
For the first time since Lionel had died, she wanted not death but life. A life that was vivid and vital again, holding interest and hope, having a future instead of only a past.
‘Am I getting sensible or merely older?’ she asked herself. ‘Perhaps both.’
She was singing as she opened the door of the Priory. The hall was in darkness, Nanny and Mrs. Vale had already put up the blackout. Mona switched on the light and saw a letter waiting for her on the hall table.
‘Who can have written to me?’ she wondered and hoped it was from Ned’s lawyers to say there was some money waiting for her in the bank.
She picked up the envelope, and then, as she stared at it, was suddenly very still. That slanting, flowing writing – where had she seen it before? Wildly she thought it was impossible, that she was mistaken, but her fingers trembled and even as she slit open the envelope, she knew she was not deceived. There was only one person in the world with handwriting just like that.
Ten
Mona could remember very clearly the first time she had met Char Strathwyn.
It had been at the races in Cairo. She was waiting to draw her winnings on a previous race and noticed a woman standing not far away from her, looking disconsolately at the fortunate queue of those who had gambled successfully. She was an ugly woman, exaggeratedly thin and dressed with almost masculine severity, in a tussore coat and skirt and a hard Panama hat.
She might have been any age, for she had that dried-up, weather-beaten look that women get after spending years in the East and indulging in too much whisky after sundown. Without thinking Mona stared at her. Suddenly the woman smiled and ashamed of her rudeness, Mona smiled back. The woman sauntered across to her.
“You have been lucky then?” she said in a deep, slightly husky voice that somehow was in keeping with her appearance. “I wish to goodness I had. You don’t know anything good for the big race do you?”
Mona looked at her card. It had been marked for her by Lionel the day before and when she followed his advice, she nearly always made money.
“I don’t know much about it myself,” she confessed, “but I have been told ‘Mizpah’ is a good choice. He’s an outsider, of course.”
“Thanks very much,” the woman said. “Perhaps you will bring me luck. I need it.”
She hurried away to place her bet, and Mona forgot about her until an hour later, when, as she walked towards the paddock, a voice at her elbow said,
“I couldn’t be more grateful, you’ve done me a good turn.”
She turned to see the woman in the tussore coat and skirt.
“Oh, you backed ‘Mizpah’ then,” she exclaimed. “I am so glad. It was a good price too, wasn’t it?”
“Thank you a thousand times, I’m so grateful,” the woman insisted. “Do you know anything else?”
There was a greedy look about her eyes and the way she spoke, and Mona’s instinctive reaction was to say “No,” and to leave her, but she was too good-natured. It struck her that perhaps the woman was really in want, and so, looking through her card, she said,
“I’ve got nothing for the next two, but ‘Le Prince’ in the last race is, I am told, a certainty. He’s the favourite, so I’m afraid you’ll only get a very short price.”
“Thank you,” the woman said fervently, then added, “Are you going to the paddock now?”
“I thought of it.”
“Let’s go together,” the other suggested.
Mona accepted because it would have been difficult to refuse.
“My name’s Strathwyn,” the stranger went on, “Char Strathwyn.”
“Mine’s, Mona Vale.”
She was reserved, for suddenly, without reason, she disliked this encounter. She was used to meeting people casually and yet something about this woman repelled her.
‘I’ll get rid of her,’ she thought. ‘I’m certain to see someone I know and that will be an excuse.’
But she was soon to learn that having once met Char Strathwyn it was impossible to shake her off. She was persistently at one’s heels like a raffish and rather disreputable dog. She followed one about – at least so it seemed to Mona in the next few weeks. For she grew used to seeing that tussore coat and skirt loom in the distance and know with a sinking of the heart that it was Char again.
They soon got to Christian names and soon assumed a friendliness that Mona was far from feeling – somehow it was difficult to analyse her feelings about Char Strathwyn. She was sorry for her, sometimes she almost hated her, but she could not bring herself to be really rude, to tell her that she did not want to know her and ignore her eagerness to be friends.
Occasionally it was a relief to have another woman to talk to. When the hours of loneliness were too frightful, Mona even welcomed that thin face with its bright restless eyes like those of an inquisitive monkey. She learnt little about Char’s personal life for, in her desire to avoid confidences, Mona made no effort to inquire closely either into Char’s past or present. Gaunt and unattractive, Char had a distinctive personality, although one could find many such middle-aged women, usually widowed, wandering about the East alone because they had no homes and no belongings, having given the best years of the lives to upholding some outpost of the Empire. They journey from port to port, from capital to capital, as if in search of something that they never found – perhaps the will-o’-the-wisp was only their own youth and enthusiasm which had been lost during their first years east of Suez.
Char knew a lot of people – and if she did not know them, she would manage, sooner or later, to scrape an acquaintance. Sometimes Mona would shudder, as she watched her, asking herself if one day she might become like Char in her desire for companionship, in her search to find an antidote to an inner loneliness. Char also knew a lot about people. She made it her business. There were few secrets or intrigues of which she did not manage to get an inkling. She was like a dog with a hidden bone. She scented it and dug on indefatigably until it was discovered.
Whether of diplomacy, international politics, or scandal, sooner or later Char knew all there was to know, and Mona guessed that at times she made a good thing out of her knowledge. She soon realised that Char was a dangerous person with whom to be acquainted in her position. It was so essential that her association with Lionel should never be disclosed.
In a place like Cairo, where everything about everybody was common property, they had to be more careful than they had ever imagined would be necessary when they were in Paris. There it had been easy for Mona to have a flat and for Lionel to visit her. In Egypt such a position was impossible and all her anticipations of the unhappiness and suffering that awaited her with Lionel’s new appointment were justified.
