The Clock Strikes Twelve (2 page)

Lydia caught the hand and pinched it lightly.

“All right, chicken. Don’t over-pay your debts— that’s all.”

Phyllida drew back. She opened her lips as if she were going to speak, shut them again, and then said in a hurry,

“Why don’t you like Aunt Grace? She’s always very nice to you.”

Lydia’s eyes were all indignant fire.

“Darling, I adore her—just the same as I adore featherbeds, and bubbly, and pouring myself out in a heart-to-heart talk with someone who makes me feel I’m the only pebble on the beach. I just don’t think it’s frightfully good for one, that’s all. Minute doses and at long intervals, yes, but every day and all day, absolutely and definitely no.”

Phyllida jumped up. She didn’t want to quarrel with Lydia, but if she stayed any longer she would have to quarrel—or agree. She went over to where Irene was telling Miss Paradine all about a spot on little Rena’s chest.

“It only showed this morning, and of course I took her temperature at once, and it was normal. I sent for Doctor Horton and he said he didn’t think it was anything. Of course he hasn’t got children of his own, and I don’t think he takes them seriously enough. I didn’t really want to come tonight. The spot had gone, but of course you never can tell, can you, and I knew you’d understand. But Frank was so dreadfully cross that I thought I had better get dressed after all. You know, I think he’s really unreasonable about the children. He would be the first to complain if I neglected them, but he seems to think that I can go here, there, and everywhere with him just as I used to before we had a nursery. I do wish you’d speak to him.”

Grace Paradine laid an affectionate hand on her arm. She said,

“You’re a very devoted mother, my dear.”

And then Phyllida came up. Irene turned to her.

“Oh, Phyl, I’ve been so worried all day! It was Rena—she had a spot on her chest, and of course I took her temperature at once…”

Grace moved a little away. Frank Ambrose joined her.

“Irene been boring you with the kids’ ailments? She’s always at it. They’re perfectly healthy children, but she worries herself to fiddle-strings over them. If it isn’t one thing it’s another. She’s got a good nurse, and she doesn’t trust her a yard. Look here, Aunt Grace, can’t you put in a word about it? There isn’t anyone else she’d take it from.”

“She’s young,” said Grace Paradine in an indulgent tone.

“She won’t be if she goes on like she’s doing. She can’t do this, and she can’t do that, and she won’t do the other, and it’s always the same excuse—Jimmy’s nose wants blowing, or Rena’s had a sneeze, or a hiccup, or a cough. Why, it was all I could do to get her here tonight.”

Grace Paradine turned a sympathetic look upon him.

“Poor old Frank,” she said.

Lydia, glancing across at them from the other side of the hearth, watched the sulky look fade out of Frank’s face. The heavy lines relaxed. He talked. Miss Paradine listened. Every now and then she smiled.

Lydia shot a sparkling glance at Dicky.

“The best butter—” she murmured.

But when he stared and said “Hullo—what’s that?” she only laughed and said, “Alice in Wonderland, darling.”

And then the door at the end of the room was opened and three people came in. James Paradine first, very imposing. The black and white of evening dress confers an undue advantage upon those to whom much has already been given. Mr. Paradine stood six-foot-five in his shoes. He carried his height with ease and dignity. His fine head was thickly covered with silver hair, but his eyebrows and the eyes over which they arched were as dark as they had been when he was twenty. The ruby and gold of the room became merely background when he came in. A little behind him on his left was his secretary, Albert Pearson, a bun-faced young man in hornrimmed spectacles and the kind of dress suit which suggests a peg in a bargain basement. On his other side Elliot Wray.

Everyone stopped talking. Everyone looked at Elliot. Mr. Paradine came up to his sister and observed with smiling malice,

“My dear, you will be charmed to know that we have another guest. You were complaining only this morning that ten would not make at all a good table. Well, here is Elliot Wray to make the number up to eleven. We had some business together, and I have prevailed upon him to stay.”

Elliot Wray, coming into the room, looked down the length of it to the group of black and white figures about the glowing hearth. They were small and far away—black figures and white figures of the women, black-and-white figures of the men, with the dazzle of firelight behind them and a brightness of gilding and shimmering glass overhead. The three black figures were Grace Paradine and Irene and Brenda Ambrose, the two white ones were Lydia Pennington and Phyllida. His mind named them in this order because he held it to the task. He held his eyes to each in turn before he let them rest on Phyllida. She was pale, she had grown thinner. She wore a white dress and Grace Paradine’s pearls. She stood between Mark and Irene, and she was looking up at Mark. Elliot had come more than half way up the room behind James Paradine before she turned and saw him.

It was something in Mark’s face that made her turn. Those gloomy, brooding eyes of his had waked up, become startled, interested. Phyllida turned to know why, and saw her husband. She hadn’t seen him for a year, and she couldn’t believe that she saw him now. The sheer unbelievable shock of it made her put out a hand and clutch at Mark Paradine’s arm. And then, before she had time to think, everything in her raced and sang—her blood, her heart, the thoughts which she could neither understand nor control. Colour and beauty rushed upon her. She had one of those moments which are outside time and reason.

Elliot Wray went past her to his hostess and gave her a formal greeting which was as formally received. He shook hands with Irene and Brenda, found Lydia stretching up on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek, and came to a standstill before his wife. His brief, “Hullo, Phyllida!” might have been spoken to the merest acquaintance. Then he turned back to Lydia. Lane opened the door and announced that dinner was served. James Paradine offered his arm to Irene, and the others fell in behind them, Phyllida with Mark, Brenda with Elliot, Lydia with Dicky and Albert Pearson, and Grace Paradine with Frank Ambrose.

In the large dining-room more colour, more gilt, more bright unshaded lights. A wallpaper of sealing-wax red was mitigated by a row of gloomy family portraits—three generations of Paradines in black broadcloth, and the wives of two of them in velvet and brocade. All had the appearance of being tolerably uncomfortable in their best clothes and large, expensive frames. They all stared downwards at the company taking their seats.

James Paradine remained standing for a moment at the head of the table. His eye travelled round it. He inclined his head a trifle and said in a conversational voice, “For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful.” After which he too sat down, and Lane placed a massive silver soup-tureen before him. In this, as in other matters, Mr. Paradine preferred the elder fashion. He liked to ladle out the soup for his guests, and to carve for them at the head of his own table. He intended to do both tonight. He liked to see the board spread with a snowy damask tablecloth, the naked mahogany reserved ceremonially for the dessert and wine, and what he liked he had.

Elliot found himself on the left of the table between Brenda and Lydia. There was a monstrous silver épergne between him and Phyllida on the other side of the table. The decoration of holly and white chrysanthemums which it supported afforded brief views of her when she turned, now to Mark on her left, and again to Albert on her right. A chance-caught glimpse of dark curling hair, of the turn of a cheek no longer pale but vividly coloured—these came his way, but not much more. In the face of sharp exasperation he told himself that what he was feeling was relief. Why should he want to look at Phyllida? There was more between them than a clutter of vegetation. He turned to Lydia. Her eyes were sparkling up at him.

“Why did he say grace? He doesn’t as a rule, so we all sat down. Do you suppose we’re going to receive something very special?”

“I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Do you know what it is?”

He said drily, “Wait and see.” And then, “Where have you been, and what are you doing?”

“Been? All over the place. Doing? My duty of course. Don’t I always?”

“Well, shall we say what form has it been taking? You’re not a W.A.A.F., or a Wren, or an A.T., are you, by any chance?”

The green eyes looked mournful, the red head was shaken.

“I feel I might go off pop if I signed papers and promised to do what I was told. I just sit in an office and translate things.”

“What sort of things?”

“Ssh! Not a word! What would you say if I told you I could read Icelandic at sight?”

Elliot laughed.

“I should say you were lying.”

“And you’d be too—too right. What it is to be a brain! How many things have you invented since 1941? It was 1941 the last time I saw you, wasn’t it?”

“It was.”

She nodded.

“Last New Year’s Eve. I kissed you under the mistletoe. Perhaps I will again if you’re good.”

“I don’t feel at all good, I’m afraid.”

She raised brows which were becomingly darkened to match the darkened lashes.

“How odd, darling! How do you think Phyllida is looking?”

If she hoped for a rise she didn’t get one.

“I haven’t had much opportunity of judging, have I?”

Lydia darted a glance at him.

“No, you haven’t, so I’ll tell you. She’s too pale, she’s too thin. She’s unhappy, she’s bored, and she’s tied up hand and foot. What are you going to do about it? You can be thinking up the answer whilst I talk to Dicky. And don’t stab me in the back, because it’ll make a mess of my brocade, and I can’t afford a funeral this month anyway—not after paying my income tax and the rent of my flat.”

The last words were said over her shoulder. Before they were fairly out of her mouth Dicky was saying,

“Look here, fair’s fair. I took you in, didn’t I? You’ve got to talk to me till Aunt Grace is done with Frank.”

Elliot addressed himself to a sulky and offended Brenda. It took so little to offend her that on any other occasion he might not have bothered to bring her round, but in the circumstances he had to be talking, to be interested, occupied—anything but the discarded husband lingering superfluous on the scene. He exerted himself to such purpose that Brenda relaxed sufficiently to inform him that she was thinking of joining the Women Police.

“What a marvellous idea!”

She stared suspiciously.

“What do you mean by that, Elliot?”

“What should I mean? I think it’s a perfectly splendid idea.”

Brenda sniffed.

“Well, I can’t say that I do, and I can’t say I’m looking forward to it. But if you grant the necessity for women police you will agree that they require a personnel, and that being the case, I feel it my duty to apply for enrollment.”

“I expect you’ll enjoy it.”

The pale eyes stared aggressively from between those very light lashes. He found himself thinking, “Why on earth doesn’t she dye them?” and then remembered that there had been a row, a really epic row, because Lydia suggested her doing so. Phyllida had told him all about it. Echoes of her voice—the way she had looked… He stiffened, and heard Brenda disclaim any intention of enjoying herself. Dicky was saying to Lydia,

“I suppose you know that you’re giving me palpitations every time I look at you.”

“ ‘Heart-throbs’—by Richard Paradine.” Lydia gazed back at him soulfully. “What a pity you can’t work it off in verse. It would get it out of your system beautifully, and I’d love to have a book of poems dedicated to me. White leather, I think, with a little gold tooling and ‘To Lydia’ inside—or perhaps just ‘To L—.’ What do you think?”

“The critics might get ribald about ‘To L—.’ What about ‘To Lydia whom I adore’?”

“‘Because she never is a bore,’” said Lydia. “What would you rather be, Dicky—hideously, revoltingly ugly and very amusing, or frightfully beautiful and dull? I’ve never been able to make up my mind.”

“You don’t have to—you’ve got the best of both bargains.”

She sketched a kiss and blew it at him.

“Thank you, darling—and all the nicer because it isn’t true. If it wasn’t for my hair and my complexion and the fact that I dye my eyelashes, I’d be nothing but Irene’s younger sister—‘A plain little thing, but not her fault, poor girlr so we must be kind to her.’ And so much better for my moral character, because I would simply have had to go in for the domestic virtues—the only refuge of the plain.”

Dicky’s head swam a little. It always did when Lydia looked at him like that. He said,

“Look here, do you want me to propose to you whilst you’re eating turkey? Because that’s where you’re heading.”

“I don’t know—” said Lydia, in a meditative tone. “It would be a new experience—no one’s ever done it before. But a man did once tell me he adored me when we were having mulligatawny soup, and he choked in the middle and very nearly passed out. It was rather unnerving, and my soup got cold whilst I thumped him on the back. So perhaps not. I’d hate to spoil the turkey.”

Phyllida was between Albert Pearson and Mark Paradine. Conversation with Albert was instructive rather than entertaining. He was always ready to tell you the distance from Saturn to the earth and from Colombo to Singapore, or the exact number of vitamins in the new margarine, or the origin of coal, or all about who invented steel—a mine of information produced in such a manner as to rob it of any possible spark of interest. Long practice enabled Phyllida to smile and let instruction pass her by.

When he had finished telling her a few facts about concrete, she turned back to Mark, and thought as she turned how unhappy he looked. Irene on his other side was talking to James Paradine. Mark was for the moment unattached. His face in repose was so gloomy that it worried Phyllida.

She said, “What are you thinking about?” and smiled.

The heavy lines relaxed.

“Nothing worth talking about, Phyl.”

“Well, what shall we talk about? Have you been reading anything good lately?”

He took the opening with relief. They talked about books, about films, about music. To Elliot on the other side of the table they seemed very deep in conversation. The épergne screened them, but once when Phyllida leaned sideways he saw her shining eyes and brilliant cheeks. The champagne in her glass was untasted—it was something else which had lighted all her candles. As he pursued a rather laboured conversation with Brenda he was wondering just what had lighted them. His first sight of her in the drawing-room had showed her pale and listless. Or was that just his imagination? No, it wasn’t. His heart had turned over because she looked so pale.

Brenda Ambrose was staring at him with an air of offence.

“Really, Elliot—I don’t believe you heard what I was saying!”

He dragged his thoughts from Phyllida and made the best amends he could.

The turkey disposed of, a flaming plum-pudding was set before James Paradine, while Lane and a parlourmaid handed jellies and mince-pies. It was when Phyllida was helping herself to a spoonful of jelly that the turn of her body brought her into Elliot’s view. He saw her, and looked away. The eyes which he had wrenched from her face became fixed upon the hand with which she was steadying the proffered dish. It was her left hand, and it was as bare as the day she was born—a bare hand and a bare arm— nothing to break the line from shoulder to wrist, from wrist to fingertips. The painful colour rushed into his face, burned there, and receded slowly, leaving him cold. It had not occurred to him that she would take off her wedding ring. Catching him unprepared like that it was like a slap in the face.

When the hot blood had sunk, he was as coldly angry as he had ever been in his life.