Dorothy Eden (3 page)

Cressida put out a tentative hand. “How do you do, Mrs. Bolton. I’m afraid—” She couldn’t yet take in the overpowering figure before her, and her timid words were immediately interrupted.

“But it’s unbelievable! It isn’t true! She’s—Jeremy, where did you find her?”

“At the bottom of your front steps, to be quite accurate. They are a deathtrap, as I’ve always said.”

“My husband liked them,” Arabia Bolton said. “He said marble steps give one a certain distinction. But this girl Jeremy. She’s exactly—tell me, child, what is your name?”

It was no use trying to take in the woman in front of her. Her vision was too uncertain. Surely this Mrs. Bolton, whoever she was, was not wearing a sparkling tiara at a slightly tipsy angle!

“Cressida Barclay,” she replied obediently.

“What else?” the imperious voice demanded.

“Cressida Lucy. The same as the advertisement.”

And then, most astonishing of all, she was wrapped in a suffocating embrace.

“My dear child! You’re the answer to a prayer. If only you knew!”

The excited voice went over her head. “Do you know, Jeremy, I’ve had a dozen applicants, impostors all!”

“How do you know they were impostors?” Jeremy enquired middly.

“Because they didn’t look the part. Cressida Lucy is young, fair, innocent. She’s this girl. It’s amazing. It’s—oh, dear, I don’t think I can stand it. Poor Lucy! Poor, poor Lucy!”

The surprising old woman was actually shedding tears. Her large dark, beautiful eyes filled, and presently the drops spilled over and ran down her craggy cheeks. After a moment she wiped them impatiently away. She took out a handkerchief and blew her large prominent nose. Then she was smiling again, a most compelling warmth filling her face so that one no longer saw its age and bony ugliness.

“Away with the past!” she exclaimed dramatically. “We’re concerned with the present. It’s so full of promise.

Once I thought I could not live without camels and sand and heat and vultures, but there are other things, many other things. Come, my dear, and I’ll show you the flat.”

Cressida made a final protest.

“But I can’t stay here, really. I’ve no job, and I’ve spent my last penny.”

“Then, my dear child, we must find you a job. What do you say, Jeremy?”

“First she needs food,” Jeremy said briefly.

“Ah, yes, of course. What are you giving her?”

“Bacon and eggs.”

“Very good. If you will invite me, I will share them with you. While you are busy I will look at this pretty child.”

Cressida’s alarm, vague at first because of the lingering fumes of brandy, increased. When she had first come to look at this house two days ago, some instinct had made her leave without lifting the heavy dragon-shaped knocker on the front door. She had been filled with some indefinable fear that later, as her straits grew more desperate, she had dismissed with determined scorn. Now she was sure that that fear had been justified. There was nothing at the moment that she wanted more than to be out of the house and in the streets, homeless perhaps and penniless, but free.

It was as if Jeremy Winter read her thoughts. From behind her his voice came reassuringly, as if everything, even the strange old woman fixing her large compelling eyes on her, were completely normal.

“Don’t let Arabia upset you, Cressida. All you do is remind her of her daughter who died.”

I
T WAS ASTONISHING HOW FOOD
brought the odd situation into an almost normal perspective. Cressida suddenly found herself thinking quite sanely. The circumstances were quite simple, and more pathetic than anything else. Arabia Bolton had had a beautiful daughter, Cressida Lucy, who had died at the pitiful age of only twenty-one. For years Arabia had cherished her grief, but now, in her old age, she had suddenly decided that life must be made to give back to her what it had taken away. In all her seventy-five years she had done a great many odd and fantastic things, and had a lot of desires granted her. But this, she said, with tears gleaming again in her great hooded eyes, was the most unexpectedly and perfectly fulfilled wish of them all.

For Cressida was astonishingly like her long-dead daughter. She was fair and young, she had that look of innocence and sweetness.

“My dear, you will stay, won’t you? I’ll find you a job and I’ll charge you just a little rent for the flat, so that you can keep your pride. For I know you have pride, just as my darling Lucy had. All I want is to see you now and then, to have youth in the house, to tell myself that Lucy didn’t really die…”

“She must write to Tom,” came Jeremy Winter’s voice from behind them.

Arabia’s head shot up suspiciously.

“Tom?”

“He’s my fiance,” Cressida explained, with dignity.

“And do you intend to marry him?”

“Of course.”

A shadow passed across Arabia’s face. Briefly her heavy eyelids drooped. Then she said firmly, “But not for some time. You’re much too young.”

“In June 1957,” Jeremy put in. “Tom is a patient man.”

“He—he plans things,” Cressida said defensively.

Arabia’s face suddenly sparkled with humour. It made Cressida think of sunlight on a wrinkled and sun-faded leaf. She had an unwilling feeling of magnetism. No one person, she thought, especially no one the age of this old woman, should have so many moods and so much colour and vitality. Cressida, who was kind-hearted and sensitive, would have found it difficult to disappoint any old person, but Arabia was not just an ordinary old woman. She was long accustomed to getting her own way, and it was a foregone conclusion that Cressida would have been unable to disappoint her, even had she dreaded the thought of staying in Dragon House and playing the part of the dead-and-gone Lucy.

But now, with food comfortably inside her, she was no longer foolishly superstitious and afraid. After those two past dreadful days she had fallen on her feet. She had found a temporary haven, and most important of all, she didn’t need to go humbly back to Tom, confessing that he had been right and she wrong. He would have been so unbearably smug. Somehow, before she married him, she had to prove to him that she too had a mind and taste and discrimination. He had too long thought of her as an amenable child to be humoured and indulged, but not to be treated as a mental equal. This was her opportunity to prove him wrong and in doing so to make their love much stronger and deeper.

She would do this, and at the same time make a lonely old woman happy. It seemed very simple and straightforward, and all at once she was very happy about it.

Arabia was leaning forward, her tiara threatening to fall over her eyes, her face alight with interest.

“Tell me about this Tom.”

“He’s an accountant.”

Arabia nodded wisely. “Ah, yes. Figures. Totting up columns. That explains the planning. A methodical mind. Will you be good at balancing your housekeeping money?”

“I shouldn’t think so. I’m forgetful.”

“Tut, tut. That’s one difficulty you will have to overcome. Marriage is a series of overcoming difficulties. Did you know that? My first husband used to expect me to jump fences every morning at the crack of dawn. I just couldn’t stand it, especially liking camels so much better than horses. Now it never worried me to mount my camel and set off over the sand dunes in the fresh morning air—ah, how wonderful that was. But I don’t suppose camels will come into your marriage, my dear.”

“Mrs. Bolton was married to an explorer,” came Jeremy’s calm voice in the background.

“How interesting,” Cressida said, in some bewilderment.

“That was my third husband,” Arabia said. Her eyes began to brood. “We went everywhere—Egypt, the Arabian desert, Tibet, Mongolia, the old silk route to China. Ah, life was rich. You must come upstairs and see my relics. But first let us dispose of this methodical Tom.”

Cressida, who had thought her sanity and clear-headedness had come back, was now floundering again. She had a bewildering feeling that Tom, sensible, matter-of-fact, level-headed Tom, was going to become one of this fantastic old woman’s relics, which no doubt already included camels and dead husbands.

“She must write to him,” said Jeremy again. “That is, of course, providing she has decided to stay.”

“But of course she is going to stay. We are going to find her a job. What can you do, my dear?”

“I write a little,” said Cressida. “I’m good with flowers. I can make my own clothes if I have to. I know quite a lot about antiques. I’m afraid this all sounds very ineffectual. Everyone I went to in London thought so. They expected me to be at least a debutante or to have a university degree.”

The old lady’s hand, which was surprisingly strong and broad, and the thick square fingers of which were covered with rings, came down triumphantly on Cressida’s knee.

“Mr. Mullins! The very man.”

“Is he?” said Jeremy doubtfully.

“But of course. I’ve been his best customer for years. When I’m not buying from him I’m selling to him, and of course he cheats me right and left, the old scoundrel. But I adore him. He’s the very man.”

“What is he?” Cressida asked uncertainly.

“An antique dealer. He has the dustiest shop in London. I’ve been telling him for years that he must employ someone to brighten things up. Cressida is exactly the person he wants. And if she likes antiques, how she’ll adore his collection. Now for the letter.”

“The letter?” Cressida’s mind was struggling once more in the backwash of Arabia’s volubility.

“To the methodical Tom. What shall she say, Jeremy? Shall she say she has another interest of the heart?”

Jeremy’s eyebrow lifted into its crescent shape.

“That, I fear, is not strictly true. As yet.”

“No, but I think this Tom deserves a fright. He sounds too smug, like my first husband.”

Abruptly Cressida gave a smothered laugh. She found herself liking this strange and unpredictable old woman very much.

“Actually he is, a little. But I never tell him lies, Mrs. Bolton.”

“Call me Arabia, dear child. Lucy always did, although I was her mother. You’re quite right, you shouldn’t tell lies unless absolutely necessary, and then only white ones. Never mind, we shall think of something to say to Tom. Now I am going to take her from you, Jeremy. She is mine, not yours.”

Jeremy Winter gave the smile that turned his face into deep lines and shadows. His eyes gleamed brightly.

“She is mine to draw. That’s why I brought her in.”

Cressida had a flash of temper. “Otherwise you would have left me lying in the street?”

“Perhaps I would have called a taxi.”

Arabia patted Cressida’s arm.

“He thinks of nothing but his wicked pencil. If he annoys you or makes you fall in love with him I will give him notice.”

Cressida took a quick backward look at the dark, laughing face of Jeremy Winter.

“I am already in love,” she said with dignity.

“Ah, yes, my dear. To your balance sheet. Very wise, very safe. You hear that, Jeremy? You have her on paper only. And Tom has her in envelopes with postage stamps. At present she really belongs to me. And Lucy.”

It was much later that Cressida actually began the letter to Tom. She had meant to write him a polite but cool and reserved letter, because their quarrel and Tom’s obstinate smugness still rankled. But she was a natural writer, and it was not long before the reserve vanished, and her excited thoughts came pouring on to the paper.

“My dear Tom,

I promised to write when I was safely settled in London, and now I am able to do so. I have had the most extraordinary last few hours. I had read an advertisement about a flat in a house belonging to an extraordinary old woman called Arabia Bolton. I will tell you presently how I got the flat, but first I must describe Arabia.

She is the most incredible, fascinating, bewildering, comic old woman. She lives on the top floor of this house, among an amazing conglomeration of things. One of her husbands (she has had three) was an explorer, and they gathered every kind of bizarre thing on their travels, and now Arabia says she has brought all the world into a London room. She has two parrots, one live and one stuffed. There are Chinese ivories, enormous Indian brass trays, a pair of elephant’s tusks over the door, drapings of Burmese silks on the couches, a Bedouin sheik’s headdress hanging askew over an African death mask. I can’t begin to tell you everything. And in the midst of all this Arabia sits like a queen, a slightly tipsy one because of her crooked tiara.

But I must come to the point of the story. Arabia had one child, a daughter, who was the darling of her heart but who, tragically, died when she was twenty-one, just before she was to be married. This was all about twenty years ago, and at first Arabia travelled furiously about the world to forget her grief. She lived in villages in the desert, and rode camels (she has a passion for them), and made friends with the Bedouins, and visited places like Baghdad and Istanbul. But now she is too old to do that any more, and she has had to stay at home and grow more and more dull and sad.

Then the other day she thought suddenly that there was no need to be lonely and unhappy. Life doesn’t have to be dull. There are always ways to liven it up. The best way to do this is to try to get your heart’s desire, even though it seems impossible. Lucy, her dead daughter, was Arabia’s heart’s desire, and I admit that to get her back was impossible.

But Arabia is the kind of woman who never admits that anything is unattainable. She had the brilliant idea of advertising her downstairs flat to let to a girl called Cressida Lucy—her daughter’s names, and mine! Do you see the extraordinary coincidence? Because Arabia says not only have I Lucy’s size and colouring, but I am almost the age she was when she died.

This does not mean that Arabia is expecting me to stay with her forever. She just wants me to live in her house for a while, talk to her sometimes, and bring back an illusion of Lucy’s youth and innocence.

So how could I refuse her? Apart from being terribly sorry for her she is an absolute poppet, and I adore her already. Also, I like being here, and I’m just so excited about going to work for Mr. Mullins, a friend of Arabia’s who has an antique shop. The whole thing sounds extraordinarily like fate, don’t you agree?