Absent in the Spring (2 page)

‘How ridiculous. Where do these stories come from?'

‘I can't imagine. Because I'm pretty sure of one thing, Joan and that is that you've always been an admirable mother. I can't imagine you being cross or unkind.'

‘That's nice of you, Blanche. I think I may say that we've always given our children a very happy home and done everything possible for their happiness. I think it's so important, you know, that one should be
friends
with one's children.'

‘Very nice – if one ever can.'

‘Oh, I think you can. It's just a question of remembering your own youth and putting yourself in their place.' Joan's charming, serious face was bent a little nearer to that of her former friend. ‘Rodney and I have always tried to do that.'

‘Rodney? Let me see, you married a solicitor, didn't you? Of course – I went to their firm at the time when Harry was trying to get a divorce from that awful wife of his. I believe it was your husband we saw – Rodney Scudamore. He was extraordinarily nice and kind, most understanding. And you've stayed put with him all these years. No fresh deals?'

Joan said rather stiffly:

‘Neither of us have wanted a fresh deal. Rodney and I have been perfectly contented with one another.'

‘Of course you always were as cold as a fish, Joan. But I should have said that husband of yours had quite a roving eye!'

‘Really, Blanche!'

Joan flushed angrily. A roving eye, indeed. Rodney!

And suddenly, discordantly, a thought slipped and flashed sideways across the panorama of Joan's mind, much as she had noticed a snake flash and slip across the dust coloured track in front of the car only yesterday – a mere streak of writhing green, gone almost before you saw it.

The streak consisted of three words, leaping out of space and back into oblivion.

The Randolph girl …

Gone again before she had time to note them consciously.

Blanche was cheerfully contrite.

‘Sorry, Joan. Let's come into the other room and have coffee. I always did have a vulgar mind, you know.'

‘Oh no,' the protest came quickly to Joan's lips, genuine and slightly shocked.

Blanche looked amused.

‘Oh yes, don't you remember? Remember the time I slipped out to meet the baker's boy?'

Joan winced. She had forgotten that incident. At the time it had seemed daring and – yes – actually romantic. Really a vulgar and unpleasant episode.

Blanche, settling herself in a wicker chair and calling to the boy to bring coffee, laughed to herself.

‘Horrid precocious little piece I must have been. Oh, well, that's always been my undoing. I've always been far too fond of men. And always rotters! Extraordinary, isn't it? First Harry – and
he
was a bad lot all right – though frightfully good looking. And then Tom who never amounted to much, though I was fond of him in a way. Johnnie Pelham – that was a good time while it lasted. Gerald wasn't much good, either …'

At this point the boy brought the coffee, thus interrupting what Joan could not but feel was a singularly unsavoury catalogue.

Blanche caught sight of her expression.

‘Sorry, Joan, I've shocked you. Always a bit straitlaced, weren't you?'

‘Oh, I hope I'm always ready to take a broad-minded view.'

Joan achieved a kindly smile.

She added rather awkwardly:

‘I only mean I'm – I'm so
sorry
.'

‘For me?' Blanche seemed amused by the idea. ‘Nice of you, darling, but don't waste sympathy. I've had lots of fun.'

Joan could not resist a swift sideways glance. Really, had Blanche any idea of the deplorable appearance she presented? Her carelessly dyed hennaed hair, her somewhat dirty, flamboyant clothes, her haggard, lined face, an old woman – an old raddled woman – an old disreputable gipsy of a woman!

Blanche, her face suddenly growing grave, said soberly:

‘Yes, you're quite right, Joan. You've made a success of your life. And I – well, I've made a mess of mine. I've gone down in the world and you've gone – no, you've stayed where you were – a St Anne's girl who's married suitably and always been a credit to the old school!'

Trying to steer the conversation towards the only ground that she and Blanche had in common now, Joan said:

‘Those were good days, weren't they?'

‘So-so.' Blanche was careless in her praise. ‘I got bored sometimes. It was all so smug and consciously healthy. I wanted to get out and see the world. Well,' her mouth gave a humorous twist, ‘I've seen it. I'll say I've seen it!'

For the first time Joan approached the subject of Blanche's presence in the rest house.

‘Are you going back to England? Are you leaving on the convoy tomorrow morning?'

Her heart sank just a little as she put the question. Really, she did not want Blanche as a travelling companion. A chance meeting was all very well, but she had grave doubts of being able to sustain the pose of friendship all the way across Europe. Reminiscences of the old days would soon wear thin.

Blanche grinned at her.

‘No, I'm going the other way. To Baghdad. To join my husband.'

‘Your husband?'

Joan really felt quite surprised that Blanche should have anything so respectable as a husband.

‘Yes, he's an engineer – on the railway. Donovan his name is.'

‘Donovan?' Joan shook her head. ‘I don't think I came across him at all.'

Blanche laughed.

‘You wouldn't, darling. Rather out of your class. He drinks like a fish anyway. But he's got a heart like a child. And it may surprise you, but he thinks the world of me.'

‘So he ought,' said Joan loyally and politely.

‘Good old Joan. Always play the game, don't you? You must be thankful I'm not going the other way. It would break even your Christian spirit to have five days of my company. You needn't trouble to deny it. I know what I've become. Coarse in mind and body – that's what you were thinking. Well, there are worse things.'

Joan privately doubted very much whether there were. It seemed to her that Blanche's decadence was a tragedy of the first water.

Blanche went on:

‘Hope you have a good journey, but I rather doubt it. Looks to me as though the rains are starting. If so, you may be stuck for days, miles from anywhere.'

‘I hope not. It will upset all my train reservations.'

‘Oh well, desert travel is seldom according to schedule. So long as you get across the wadis all right, the rest will be easy. And of course the drivers take plenty of food and water along. Still it gets a bit boring to be stuck somewhere with nothing to do but think.'

Joan smiled.

‘It might be rather a pleasant change. You know, one never has time as a rule to relax at all. I've often wished I could have just one week with really nothing to do.'

‘I should have thought you could have had that whenever you liked?'

‘Oh no, my dear. I'm a very busy woman in my small way. I'm the Secretary of the Country Gardens Association – And I'm on the committee of our local hospital. And there's the Institute – and the Guides. And I take quite an active part in politics. What with all that and running the house and then Rodney and I go out a good deal and have people in to see us. It's so good for a lawyer to have plenty of social background, I always think. And then I'm very fond of my garden and like to do quite a good deal in it myself. Do you know, Blanche, that there's hardly a moment, except perhaps a quarter of an hour before dinner, when I can really sit down and rest? And to keep up with one's reading is quite a task.'

‘You seem to stand up to it all pretty well,' murmured Blanche, her eyes on the other's unlined face.

‘Well, to wear out is better than to rust out! And I must admit I've always had marvellous health. I really
am
thankful for that. But all the same it would be wonderful to feel that one had a whole day or even two days with nothing to do but think.'

‘I wonder,' said Blanche, ‘what you'd think about?'

Joan laughed. It was a pleasant, tinkling, little sound.

‘There are always plenty of things to think about, aren't there?' she said.

Blanche grinned.

‘One can always think of one's sins!'

‘Yes, indeed.' Joan assented politely though without amusement.

Blanche eyed her keenly.

‘Only that wouldn't give
you
occupation long!'

She frowned and went on abruptly:

‘You'd have to go on from them to think of your good deeds. And all the blessings of your life! Hm – I don't know. Might be rather dull. I wonder,' she paused, ‘if you'd nothing to think about but yourself for days and days I wonder what you'd find out about yourself –'

Joan looked sceptical and faintly amused.

‘Would one find out anything one didn't know before?'

Blanche said slowly:

‘I think one might …' She gave a sudden shiver. ‘I shouldn't like to try it.'

‘Of course,' said Joan, ‘some people have an urge towards the contemplative life. I've never been able to understand that myself. The mystic point of view is very difficult to appreciate. I'm afraid I haven't got that kind of religious temperament. It always seems to me to be rather extreme, if you know what I mean.'

‘It's certainly simpler,' said Blanche, ‘to make use of the shortest prayer that is known.' And in answer to Joan's inquiring glance she said abruptly, ‘“God be merciful to me, a sinner.” That covers pretty well everything.'

Joan felt slightly embarrassed.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Yes, it certainly does.'

Blanche burst out laughing.

‘The trouble with you, Joan, is that you're
not
a sinner. That cuts you off from prayer! Now I'm well equipped. It seems to me sometimes that I've never ceased doing the things that I ought not to have done.'

Joan was silent because she didn't know quite what to say.

Blanche resumed again in a lighter tone:

‘Oh well, that's the way of the world. You quit when you ought to stick, and you take on a thing that you'd better leave alone; one minute life's so lovely you can hardly believe it's true – and immediately after that you're going through a hell of misery and suffering! When things are going well you think they'll last for ever – and they never do – and when you're down under you think you'll never come up and breathe again. That's what life is, isn't it?'

It was so entirely alien to any conception Joan had of life or to life as she had known it that she was unable to make what she felt would be an adequate response.

With a brusque movement Blanche rose to her feet.

‘You're half asleep, Joan. So am I. And we've got an early start. It's been nice seeing you.'

The two women stood a minute, their hands clasped. Blanche said quickly and awkwardly, with a sudden, rough tenderness in her voice:

‘Don't worry about your Barbara. She'll be all right – I'm sure of it. Bill Wray is a good sort, you know – and there's the kid and everything. It was just that she was very young and the kind of life out here – well, it goes to a girl's head sometimes.'

Joan was conscious of nothing but complete bewilderment.

She said sharply:

‘I don't know what you mean.'

Blanche merely looked at her admiringly.

‘That's the good old school tie spirit! Never admit anything. You really haven't changed a bit, Joan. By the way I owe you twenty-five pounds. Never thought of it until this minute.'

‘Oh, don't bother about that.'

‘No fear.' Blanche laughed. ‘I suppose I meant to pay it back, but after all if one ever does lend money to people one knows quite well one will never see one's money again. So I haven't worried much. You were a good sport, Joan – that money was a godsend.'

‘One of the children had to have an operation, didn't he?'

‘So they thought. But it turned out not to be necessary after all. So we spent the money on a bender and got a roll-top desk for Tom as well. He'd had his eye on it for a long time.'

Moved by a sudden memory, Joan asked:

‘Did he ever write his book on Warren Hastings?'

Blanche beamed at her.

‘Fancy your remembering that! Yes, indeed, a hundred and twenty thousand words.'

‘Was it published?'

‘Of course not! After that Tom started on a life of Benjamin Franklin. That was even worse. Funny taste, wasn't it? I mean such dull people. If I wrote a life, it would be of someone like Cleopatra, some sexy piece – or Casanova, say, something spicy. Still, we can't all have the same ideas. Tom got a job again in an office – not so good as the other. I'm always glad, though, that he had his fun. It's awfully important, don't you think, for people to do what they really want to do?'

‘It rather depends,' said Joan, ‘on circumstances. One has to take so many things into consideration.'

‘Haven't you done what you wanted to do?'

‘I?' Joan was taken aback.

‘Yes,
you
,' said Blanche. ‘You wanted to marry Rodney Scudamore, didn't you? And you wanted children? And a comfortable home.' She laughed and added, ‘And to live happily ever afterwards, world without end, Amen.'

Joan laughed too, relieved at the lighter tone the conversation had taken.

‘Don't be ridiculous. I've been very lucky, I know.'

And then, afraid that that last remark had been tactless when confronted by the ruin and bad luck that had been Blanche's lot in life, she added hurriedly:

‘I really
must
go up now. Good night – and it's been marvellous seeing you again.'

She squeezed Blanche's hand warmly (would Blanche expect her to kiss her? Surely not.) and ran lightly up the stairs to her bedroom.