Hungry Hill (46 page)

When a letter came to him from his mother in the spring of ‘74, condoling with him on the death of Aunt Eliza at Saunby and asking for a rather larger cheque than usual, Henry determined, quite suddenly, to go out to Nice and stay with her.

He had not seen her for nearly seven years.

Perhaps, at last, he would be able to persuade her to return and live with them. The truth was that he was lonely, in mind and body and soul, and Molly at fifteen was still too young to be a true companion. The thought of his mother’s gaiety, her wit and her charm, seemed all the more endearing after an absence of seven years. Surely she, more than anyone in the world, would understand this feeling of unbearable loneliness, that became worse, not easier, as the years passed?

He went to France the day after he had seen Hal safely off to his first half at Eton.

The air was brilliant in Nice and the sun shone.

He called a porter, and collecting his baggage, went in search of a fiacre to drive him to the villa.

No attempt on his mother’s part to meet him at the station. She had probably forgotten the day of his arrival. It was pleasant driving along the wide promenade, watching the people. The driver turned away from the sea-front and drove up behind the town, threading his way through a network of little, narrow roads. Once or twice he had to ask his way. They came at last to the Rue des Lilas (in which there were no lilacs), and stopped in front of a small, shabby villa that badly needed a coat of paint. The gate was half off the hinges. When Henry opened it a bell jangled shrilly, and two dogs set up a chorus of barking from inside the house. No one came to the door, however. The driver put down the luggage on the step, and waited.

Henry went round to the back of the villa. The door was also closed, and the dogs went on barking from inside the house. Henry returned to the front.

“Nobody about,” he told the driver.

He became aware that a woman was watching him from a window of the villa next door. He turned his back, and once more wrestled with the handle of the front door. It was the right house, for looking through the glass pane of the door he could see the sitting-room, and a photograph of Johnnie on the mantelpiece.

Then a voice called: “Try under the loose tile-you may find the key there.”

The woman from next door was standing on her verandah. She was about forty-six, rather handsome, with steel-grey hair and strikingly blue eyes. She was obviously amused at the situation.

“Thank you,” said Henry, taking off his hat.

“I don’t appear to be expected.”

He bent down, and found the key under the tile.

He held it up for the woman to see. She laughed, and shrugged her shoulders.

“I thought it would either be there or in the flower-bed,” she said, “Mrs. Brodrick is usually a bit casual about her hiding-places.”

Henry thanked her again, and paying off the driver, he took his luggage inside the villa. The dogs came out of the sitting-room, sniffing at his heels. The room smelt of them. It was stuffy, the windows were all shut. There was a saucer of food for them in one corner, and biscuit spilt upon the floor. Dead flowers were stuffed into cracked vases. The chairs and sofas were creased and stained where the dogs had been lying. On a table was a cup that had held coffee, the dregs were in it still. One of his mother’s shoes lay beside it, and the other had been kicked under a chair. A wood fire in the grate had not been cleared.

Henry left the room and went into the dining-room. This was obviously never used. His mother had her meals on a tray in the sitting-room. The kitchen was full of crockery that had not been washed, and there were vegetables, uncooked, crammed into a coal bucket. He went upstairs and found his mother’s bedroom. Her clothes were littered about the room, and the bed had not been made. There was a tray of breakfast things still lying on the end of the bed. Across the passage was a spare-room, intended no doubt for him. There were clean sheets and blankets folded on the bed, but the bed was not made up. He went downstairs and stood looking out on the neglected garden, feeling sick at heart, and filled with depression. Somehow he had not expected it to be like this. He had made a different picture in his mind. The Englishwoman was still on her verandah, watering some flowers in a pot.

Her house looked neat and clean, different altogether from this shabby, sordid villa of his mother’s. The woman heard his step, and glanced over her shoulder.

“Found everything you want?” she called cheerfully.

Henry suddenly decided to take her into his confidence.

“Look here,” he said, walking towards the verandah, “do you know my mother?”

The woman hesitated a moment, and peeled off her gardening gloves.

“We smile and say good-morning, and chat over the hedge,” she admitted, “but I’ve never been inside the villa. Mrs. Brodrick is nearly always out, as a matter of fact. I suppose you are her son? You’re so exactly like her.”

She stared at him with frank curiosity, and smiled again.

“My name is Price,” she said, holding down a hand over the hedge, “Adeline Price. You may have heard of my husband, General Price, in the Indian Army. He died three years ago, and I’ve been living down here. Listen. Can I do anything? Make you some tea or something? It’s so very cheerless to arrive at an empty house.”

“I wish,” said Henry, “that you would just come in and have a look at this place. Yes, I am Henry Brodrick. My mother must know I’m coming, because I found my letter open on her desk.”

Mrs. Price came down from her verandah and through the front gate.

“There is a maid who comes two or three times a week,” she said. “I’ve seen her go to the back door. A slovenly creature. I wouldn’t have her for a servant if you paid me. I suppose this is one of the days that she hasn’t come.”

They walked through into the villa. Henry watched her face. She was looking at everything with her critical blue eyes, from the dead flowers to the dirty coffee cup.

“H’m,” she said, “bit of a pig-sty, isn’t it? Reminds me of some of our married quarters out in India. Those women didn’t need telling twice, I can tell you. They were more scared of me than they were of my husband. Let’s have a look at the rest. You know, Mr. Brodrick, the place hasn’t been touched for weeks. I’ve never seen anything so disgraceful, not even out in India, and that’s saying plenty. Excuse me for being so downright, but is your mother awfully badly off? Can’t she afford to pay a decent servant?”

The steel-blue eyes held his, and would not waver. Henry shrugged his shoulders.

“No,” he said shortly, “my mother has everything she wants. I can’t understand it. This is all very disturbing.”

Mrs. Price led the way back into the sitting-room. She glanced at the photograph of Johnnie on the mantelpiece. She ran her finger on the frame, and showed it to Henry, black with dust.

“I suppose,” she said, “that Mrs.

Brodrick is just one of those people who don’t care.

I’m afraid I just can’t understand the attitude.

Now listen to me. You’re coming next door to have tea with me, and I shall send my little maid over here to give the place a thorough clean. No, don’t interrupt, please. She’ll be delighted to do it, and I shall be delighted to have a visitor to tea. Come along, and don’t think any more about this. I’ll make my excuses to Mrs. Brodrick when she comes in.”

Henry followed her into the villa next door, protesting politely, saying that she must not dream of going to such trouble.

Mrs. Price waved his protests away. He was not to argue. He was to sit down and have his tea.

He laughed.

“I think you ought to have been a General yourself,” he said.

“That’s what everyone used to tell me,” she said.

“Now, you relax in this arm-chair, and put your feet on the stool, and try some of my guava jelly.

My tea I can recommend, it’s packed specially for me and sent from Darjeeling. I always boil the water myself. No servant can ever make tea.”

It was very pleasing to sit back and be waited upon in this way, thought Henry, and she was right, the tea was excellent, and so was the guava jelly. The room was clean and tidy. There were papers and magazines from England lying on the table. What a contrast to the villa next door!

He began to talk, telling this Mrs. Price about himself, about his children. There was something so sane and encouraging about her brisk, cheerful manner. She was amusing too, her shrewd comments showed her to be no fool.

“Of course you’re put upon, all the time,” she said; “don’t tell me. People always take advantage of a man on his own. And you give way.

Anything for a peaceful life, that’s a man all over.”

“I admit I don’t lay down the law very often,” he laughed, “and when I do Molly puts up an argument in self-defence. That’s the family temperament though. The Brodricks enjoy discussions.”

“I wouldn’t let a girl of fifteen dictate to me,” said Mrs. Price. “I’ve no doubt you’ve spoilt her, and the others too. A good thing the boy has gone to Eton. They’ll soon knock the nonsense out of him there. Pity you go on keeping the governess for the girls. I always think it’s a mistake to carry on too long with old retainers.

They take advantage so, and have absolutely no control over the children.”

“Miss Frost has been with us for years,” said Henry. “I think Molly and Kitty could not bear to part with her.”

“Because they can do what they like with her, that’s why. I believe you’re a sentimentalist, and you hide it under that gay, cynical manner of yours.”

She looked across at him and smiled. Those blue eyes were certainly very penetrating.

“I’ve talked too much about myself,” he said, glancing at his watch, “and it’s nearly seven o’clock.

No sign of my mother. What about dining with me in Nice, and telling me about yourself instead?”

Mrs. Price blushed, and seemed suddenly ten years younger. Henry was amused. She had probably not dined out since her husband died.

“Please do,” he said. “It would give me such pleasure.”

She went up to change, and came down in twenty minutes in a black dress and fur cape that made a fine background to her grey hair. She looked very well indeed. Henry had also changed, returning to his mother’s villa to do so. The place had been swept and left spotless by Mrs. Price’s maid, his room cleaned and the bed made up. He was filled with gratitude.

“Thank heaven she was looking out of that window,” he thought. “But for her I believe I should have caught the next train home.”

They walked to the corner of the avenue and hailed a fiacre, and drove down to dinner at one of the large hotels on the front.

“This is such a treat,” she said. “I live so quietly these days. And in India there was so much entertaining. I’ve missed all that more than anything else.”

“You ought to come to London,” he said, “not bury yourself down here.”

She rubbed finger and thumb together, and glanced at him expressively.

“A soldier’s widow’s pension isn’t a large one, Mr. Brodrick,” she said. “My income goes farther here than it would do in England… .

Look at that minx over there. Why do French women put so much paint on their faces?”

“Because they are not naturally so handsome as you Englishwomen,” said Henry gallantly. “Come on, I’m going to order you the best dinner that Nice can provide.”

It was fun, he decided, to dine opposite this woman, who was undeniably attractive and amusing, and enjoyed her food and her wine, and made such an agreeable companion. The restaurant was filled with people, and a band played in one corner, light classical stuff he knew and liked. He had not enjoyed himself so much for years.

“This is a great deal better,” he said, “than sitting down to an egg and some of those vegetables from the coal bucket at my mother’s villa.”

“Don’t put me off my food,” said Mrs.

Price, with a mock shudder. “My maid has already told me what she found in the larder, but I shall spare you.”

After they had drunk their coffee, and listened a while to the music, Henry suggested a visit to the casino.

“We may as well be real dogs while we are about it,” he said.

The night was warm and still. He hummed a bar from Rigoletto, and helped Mrs. Price into a fiacre.

“You know,” he said, “when I stood in front of that villa this afternoon my spirits went down to zero. It really was a miserable moment.”

“I know,” she said; “you poor thing. I felt so sorry. And how are the spirits now?”

“Higher than they’ve been for months, for years,” he said, “for which my very grateful thanks.”

She blushed again, and laughed, turning the subject. There were many people in the casino, and they had to walk slowly amongst the crowd, pushing their way from room to room. The bright unshaded lights made a glare, and there was something monotonous in the flat voice of the croupier, the click of the little ball on the table for roulette. They watched some of the play, peering over the shoulders of the people in front of them. The atmosphere was stifling.

“Couldn’t stick very much of this,” said Henry to his companion. “What a waste of time, eh, day after day?”

“Appalling,” she agreed. “I should have a splitting head in an hour.”

They moved away into the next room. Two men coming out were laughing together.

“But she’s always like that,” one of them was saying: “has a flaming row with the croupier whenever she loses.

They say she’s lived here for years.”

“Do they ever throw her out?”

“I believe so, when she gets too excited.”

As Henry and Mrs. Price drew near to the table they saw that many of the people were laughing, and several at the back were pushing those in front to get a clearer view. The croupier was arguing with someone, talking in broken English, and a woman was trying to shout him down, first in French and then in English.

“But, madame,” the croupier was saying, “do you want me to call a gendarme? I cannot have these constant interruptions.”

The woman was talking at the top of her voice.

“It’s an outrage, the whole place ought to be broken up,” she said. “The management are taking my money through trickery. I’ve caught you at it, time and time again. In my country they’d shoot you in the back for it, and a damned good riddance too. I’ll show you up; I have influence at home, I know people in Parliament, my cousin is the Earl of Mundy…”