No Fond Return of Love (3 page)

When the meal was nearly over, two men and a little group of women, wearing hats, came in with the self-conscious air of people who have risen early from their beds to go to church, and now hope – though very humbly – for a breakfast they feel they have earned.

Dulcie noticed that Viola had not yet appeared, though she had seemed to wake up when Dulcie had taken her a cup of tea. As she walked along the corridor to her room Dulcie saw her coming out of a bathroom, wearing the lilac satin dressing-gown, her hair hidden in a flower-printed bath cap to match.

‘You’ve missed breakfast, I’m afraid,’ said Dulcie.

‘Breakfast?’ Viola repeated the word as if it were unfamiliar to her. ‘I couldn’t face it. I never do eat breakfast anyway. That cup of tea was quite enough.’

‘We had sausages,’ said Dulcie, in what she felt was a solid tone.

Viola shuddered. ‘Then I’m
certainly
glad I didn’t come down. What’s the programme for this morning?’

‘First we are to have the lecture by Aylwin Forbes’ – Dulcie hurried over the name, remembering the painful revelations of the night before – ‘and then’ – her tone brightened – ‘there’s to be a short service in the chapel, undenominational, taken by somebody who’s a lay reader and allowed to take services, I suppose, saying “we” and “us” instead or you”.’

Viola looked puzzled, so Dulcie hastened to explain, ‘I mean in the blessing and that sort of thing 
–  
a lay reader can’t say the Lord bless
you
, he has to say
us
, because he isn’t in Holy Orders.’

‘Oh, of course,’ said Viola in a bored tone.

‘I must go and tidy my room,’ said Dulcie. ‘I expect I’ll see you at the lecture?’

‘I expect so,’ said Viola, drifting into her room. It was surprising, she felt, that Dulcie had not offered to ‘bag’ her a seat.

Presumably, Dulcie thought, as she contemplated her hollowed mattress, it wouldn’t be particularly upsetting to hear a lecture on a rather dry topic on a Sunday morning from a man one loved or had once loved. But in this she may well have been wrong, not having experienced the power of the tie that shared academic work can forge between two people. Whatever there had been between her and Maurice, it had certainly not been that. ‘You and your “work”,’ he would say, in a fond, mocking tone that Dulcie found painful to recall at this moment.

The lecture was not to be held in the large hall, but in a kind of lounge, with comfortable chairs and a grand piano shrouded in a holland cover. Soon the air was thick with cigarette smoke, the women seeming to smoke more than the men.

Because of the emptiness of their lives, no doubt, most of them being unmarried, Aylwin Forbes thought, as he shuffled through his notes before beginning his lecture.

But before very long he began to wish that smoking had been forbidden – surely it ought to have been;-for it seemed to be making the room uncomfortably stuffy.

He looks even paler than usual, Viola thought. I could never love a man with a ruddy complexion. Marjorie’s leaving him has affected him in some way, undoubtedly – it must have been a shock to his pride, if nothing else. But now he must begin to rearrange his life. It wasn’t natural for a man to be alone. But was he alone; Did one know even that?

Of course, thought Miss Foy, the journal he edits is fortunate in having an exceptionally able assistant editor. What does A. F.
really
know of the problems of an editor; he didn’t have problems as
she
knew them. Still, it was always interesting to hear one’s own particular kind of shop talked, though she had heard him lecture better than he was doing this morning. She took another crushed-looking filter-tipped cigarette from a squashed packet and lit it from the stump of the old one. Coffee after this, she hoped. She wouldn’t be attending the church service. A brisk walk round the grounds would be more her idea of worshipping God, if, indeed, He existed.

People always look on indexers as unintelligent drudges, thought Dulcie a little indignantly, as she smiled faintly at an old joke he had just trotted out; but a book can be made or marred by its index. And love and devotion are not necessarily the best qualifications, she thought, remembering the wives and others who undertook what was often acknowledged to be a thankless task. He looks very pale. When you have the opportunity to study him like this you can see that he must be very attractive to women.

Perhaps he could ask for a window to be opened, Aylwin thought, for the room really was extraordinarily hot. Although he was not reading from his notes, he was disconcerted to find that he had lost his place and for a moment he stopped speaking, unable to remember what he had been going to say next. He found himself looking into the audience. Viola Dace was gazing at him – that was the only word for it; embarrassed, he turned his glance elsewhere. Miss Foy’s cigarette holder seemed to be jutting right into his face, then it receded, the room became very dark and from a long way off he heard a woman’s voice, rather a pleasing voice, saying, ‘Something’s the matter – he’s ill!’

Dulcie had hurried up to the platform when she saw him clutch the stand on which his notes were arranged and then stumble, but the chairman had taken him by the shoulders and sat him down in a chair.

‘Brandy!’ called Miss Foy in a loud voice, looking hopefully around her. But it seemed unlikely that any would be forthcoming in such circumstances and company.

‘There is water here,’ said the chairman, pouring some from a carafe which stood on the table.

‘I have some smelling salts,’ said Dulcie calmly. ‘They should revive him, and perhaps a window could be opened?’

Fancy carrying smelling salts about with her, thought Viola scornfully, but wishing that she could have supplied them

Aylwin opened his eyes. ‘Where am I?’ he asked, really knowing perfectly well where he was, but feeling that some such remark might excuse his weakness.

‘You were in the middle of giving a lecture and you – er – had a nasty turn,’ said the chairman solemnly.

Aylwin smiled. ‘Ah, yes, “a nasty turn”,’ he repeated, his Hps quivering with amusement.

Why, he’s beautiful, thought Dulcie suddenly. Like a Greek marble, or something dug up in the garden of an Italian villa, the features a little blunted, with the charm of being not quite perfect.

‘So stupid of me,’ he murmured. ‘I felt rather odd for a moment. But I’ve just had flu.’

‘Well, it’s nothing to be ashamed of,’ said Dulcie, rather in a brisk nurse’s manner. ‘The room was so frightfully hot. I think I should go and he down in your room if I were you,’ she added sensibly.

‘Yes.’ He looked up at her gratefully. ‘Perhaps I shall.’ The lecture had been nearly finished and he always disliked the quarter of an hour or so of pointless questions at the end. Nobody could expect him to go on with it now.

‘Oh, dear,’ lamented Miss Foy, ‘I
had
wanted to ask … but perhaps later, when he’s feeling better.’

The chairman was still standing on the platform, wondering whether it was necessary to bring the proceedings formally to an end. He decided that nothing of the kind was needed, for anything he could say would be an anticlimax after the dramatic scene that had just taken place. He stepped down from the platform and looked rather ostentatiously at his watch.

‘Half an hour to go before the service in the chapel,’ he said to nobody in particular, but as he was the lay reader who was to conduct it he felt that some reminder was necessary. Most of the women seemed to have gathered round Forbes, he noticed, and were all prescribing different remedies and courses to be followed – strong sweet tea, a good rest, a
darkened
room, a brisk walk in the fresh air, were some that he heard.

His thoughts turned to the service and he hoped that the unfortunate occurrence would not have an adverse effect on the numbers attending it. He also hoped that the harmonium was in good working order and that the lady who had offered to play it was reasonably competent.

‘Of course I’m really an Anglo-Catholic,’ said Viola rather crossly as she and Dulcie walked in the garden, not mentioning Aylwin Forbes, who was sitting on a seat being talked to by Miss Foy. ‘I had hoped to be able to get to Mass somewhere.’

‘Some people went to a Communion service in the village,’ said Dulcie vaguely. ‘Would that count?’

‘Yes, but I couldn’t get up for it after that wretched night. I don’t think I closed my eyes till dawn and then I slept until you came in with the tea.’

‘I hope I didn’t wake you,’ said Dulcie anxiously. ‘I thought you might like to have a cup.’ That was the worst of trying to be helpful, she reflected; so often one did the wrong thing.

‘I should have had to wake up some time,’ said Viola, not really answering the question. ‘And it was kind of you to bring the tea, even though it was Indian.’

Dulcie bowed her head and they walked in silence into the little chapel, which seemed to be filled with a greenish light from the leaves of rhododendrons and other shrubs pressing against the windows. A youngish woman, looking grimly determined, sat pedalling at the harmonium.

It seemed hardly suitable that the first hymn should be ‘All things bright and beautiful’. Dulcie sang in a loud indignant voice, waiting for the lines

The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate,

God made them high or lowly and ordered their estate,

but they never came. Then she saw that the verse had been left out. She sat down, feeling cheated of her indignation.

The lay reader then gave a short address. He tried to show how all work can be done to the Glory of God, even making an index, correcting a proof, or compiling an accurate bibliography. His small congregation heard him say, almost with disappointment, that those who do such work have perhaps less opportunity of actually doing evil than those who write novels and plays or work for films or television.

But there is more satisfaction in scrubbing a floor or digging a garden, Dulcie thought. One seems nearer to the heart of things doing menial tasks than in making the most perfect index. Again her thoughts wandered to her home and all that needed to be done there, and she began to wonder why she had come to the conference when she had so many better ways of occupying her time. It was not until the lay reader, in his extempore prayers, made a vague reference to ‘one of our number who has been taken ill’ that she remembered Aylwin Forbes and his beauty, the way his eyes had opened when she bent over him, the hollows of his temples. The sight of him had made her forget Maurice for a moment. Then there was Viola who, in spite of her rather hostile manner, seemed to be an ‘interesting’ person, somebody who might even become a friend.

Before lunch she saw the two of them standing in the vinery together, and it occurred to her that she might easily see them again – if not by chance, then by asking them to her house for a meal one evening. She almost began to plan the menu and the other guests.

Aylwin lifted his glass to drink the cold dark wine which might almost have been made from the wizened grapes hanging above their heads. Only in a Mediterranean climate can one experience a shock of pleasure from the roughness of such a wine, he thought. Certainly not in Derbyshire.

‘Evenings are really better than lunch-times for me,’ Viola was saying, ‘and there’s more time to talk.’

DULCIE lived in a pleasant part of London which, while it was undoubtedly a suburb, was ‘highly desirable’ and, to continue in the estate agent’s words, ‘took the overflow from Kensington’. ‘And Harrods
do
deliver’, as her next-door neighbour Mrs Beltane so often repeated.

Dulcie did most of her work at home – an arrangement which dated from the time when her mother had been alive and in need of attention during the day. Now she was free, but she still preferred not to be bound by routine and had built up a useful reputation as a competent indexer and proof-corrector, the sort of person who could even do a little mild ‘research’ in the British Museum or the libraries of learned societies.

The day after she got back from the conference was a brilliant September morning. She did a little work on an index, washed some clothes and had lunch in the garden. The woman who came to help her in the house was due in the afternoon, and she prepared herself to listen to her varied conversation.

Miss Lord was a tall grey-haired spinster who had formerly worked in the haberdashery department of one of the big Kensington stores. But she had found the long mornings, standing about with nothing much to do, boring and exhausting, and had turned to housework, for which she had a natural talent and which nowadays did not seem to be regarded as in any way degrading. Probably because of her connection with haberdashery she had a passion for small gadgets and ‘daintiness’, as she put it, which was encouraged by the advertisements on commercial television with their emphasis on this aspect of life. She did not care for men, with their roughness and lack of daintiness, though the clergy were excepted, unless they smoked pipes. She herself liked a filter-tipped cigarette with a cup of tea or coffee, and she sat smoking one now, while Dulcie made Nescafe at the stove.

‘I tried a new place for lunch today,’ she said.

‘Oh? “What did you have?’ Miss Lord always told Dulcie exactly what she had eaten for lunch on the days when she came in the afternoon.

‘Egg on welsh and a Russian cream,’ said Miss Lord. ‘Quite nice, really.’

‘It sounds…’ Dulcie hesitated for a word – ‘
delicious
,’ she pronounced with rather more emphasis than she had intended. ‘What exactly is Russian cream?’

‘It’s a kind of mousse with a sponge base and jelly on the top,’ said Miss Lord. ‘The jelly can be red, yellow or orange.’ She finished her coffee. ‘Were you going to throw these flowers away? Unsightly, aren’t they.’ She bundled up some slimy-stalked zinnias and dahhas in
The Times Literary Supplement
and went out to the dustbin with them.

‘The garden’s looking lovely,’ she said as she came back. ‘Will you be cutting some fresh flowers for these vases?’