The Happy Prisoner (43 page)

“Mostly. Elspeth and I went to her people for a week.”

“Go to your people at all?”

“Once,” she said, shutting up her face.

“I see. I—er—yes. Er—your father all right?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Oh, good,” said Oliver over-heartily. He often wondered just what crime Mr. Gray had committed that she would never talk of him. She went out to find Mrs. North and came back almost at once.

“Why is Evelyn crying?” she asked accusingly.

“
I
don't know. Is she?”

“She's in her room, face downwards on the bed. I couldn't get a word out of her.”

“Poor little devil. She's got something to cry about, as a matter of fact.” He told her about Honey and Bob. He told her everything. He told her about the sports, and about the London trip that never came off; he told her how badly Bob
had broken it to her that they were not going to live on a ranch but in a thirtieth-floor apartment in New York and that Evelyn would go to High School every morning with Honey's maid Archer. It took quite a long time. It was a relief to have someone on whom to unload it, and Elizabeth was always a good listener. She did not ask irrelevant questions or break in like most women to tell you of some parallel experience of her own.

“I do wish she hadn't got to go,” Oliver said when he had finished. “But Bob wants her, and she is his child, even if she does seem more like ours. It's rotten for the kid not having a mother, and having Honey is worse than having none. Still, I needn't tell you that. You should know.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You not having a mother, I mean.”

“Oh, I see. Yes.”

On Sunday, the day before the Linnegar family were to leave for Liverpool, there was to be a rally of the local children's Pony Club in the meadow opposite the house. The events would take place on the flat ground, the spectators, proud mothers, disapproving Nannies and possessive grooms, could watch from the hill. Violet and Fred had been working like blacks to arrange it. All the day before, Oliver watched them building jumps knocking in poles, marking out a judging ring and a paddock with sheep hurdles. He had wheeled his chair to the edge of the lawn and shouted directions at them until the rain sent him indoors.

“Let's pray it doesn't rain tomorrow,” he said to Evelyn, when she was having her last supper but one in his room.

“I don't care if it pours,” she said raptly, “as long as I win the jumping. Daddy doesn't think I can ride, you know. Did you hear him say riding lessons in an indoor school?” The scorn in her voice was tremendous. “If he sees me win the jumping, perhaps he'll buy me a horse.”

“You couldn't very well keep it in New York.”

“I'd find somewhere. I'd keep it in the back garden.”

“Skyscrapers don't have back gardens, darling.”

“Oh, Uncle Ollie.” Over a plate of cornflakes, she looked at him like Electra. “I don't want to go.”

“I know you don't now, but there'll be all sorts of things you'll have there that you can't get here. What about all that ice-cream and chocolate you were always talking about?”

“Oh, that. I was only a baby then. And I hadn't thought about leaving Dandy. After all I've taught him, and he's such a
wonderful jumper—touch wood for tomorrow. How can I bear it? I cried yesterday. Elizabeth came in, but I didn't tell her why. I didn't want to make her cry too.”

“Elizabeth never cries.”

“She jolly well does. She cried once like Billy-o when I was sleeping in her room. Ages ago it was—when that girl was here that smoked cigarettes all the time and said Bloody and David and I weren't allowed to.”

“What was she crying about?”

“She wouldn't tell me. I offered her a bit of chocolate, but she wouldn't have it, so I suppose she had a tummy ache. That's enough to make anyone cry, isn't it, Uncle Ollie?”

“It is indeed. Oh—good evening, Honey. Lord, is it time for drinks already? I haven't mixed them yet.” He wheeled himself across the room to the cocktail table. Evelyn paced sedately after him carrying her mug, plate and spoon. “Good night, Uncle Ollie,” she said.

“Get me the ice before you go to bed, there's a good girl.”

“O.K. Wish me luck for tomorrow.”

“You bet.” Evelyn went out without appearing to notice that her stepmother was in the room.

“What's happening tomorrow?” asked Honey chattily, helping herself to one of Oliver's cigarettes.

“You know perfectly well. The Pony Club show. It's the ambition of Evie's life to win the jumping. I think she will too,” he went on eagerly, with his back to her, forgetting to whom he was talking. “That pony may be only a little fellow, but he jumps amazingly well for an Exmoor. He's got that unusual length from the stifle to the hocks, you know; I believe that's what does it. It was smart of Vi to pick him out at that age. Evie's worked awfully hard on him, and she's done wonders too. She's got far more patience with a horse than most grownups. If only she can keep him from running out to the right tomorrow.… He gets his head down, you know, and yaws on the bit, and of course she's not strong enough to haul him in. Oh, excuse me,” he said as Honey gave a delicate yawn, “I was thinking aloud; I didn't mean to bore you.”

“She's too obsessed by horses, that child,” said Honey fretfully. “It's all she can think or talk about. High time she was taken into civilisation, if you ask me. She'll have to take the straw out of her mouth and get herself a few social graces, or my friends will think I've mothered a moron.”

“Poor kid,” said Oliver rudely, “if you're going to try and turn her into one of those harassed little prodigies one sees on the films.”

Don't be ridiculous, Ollie.” She called him “Ar-lie,” in a caressing drawl. “I only mean she must be a bit more sociable. You're not exactly sociable yourself, are you?” Her voice was low, but by the frissons in his spine he felt she was coming near his chair. She was, much too near. “You don't like me a lot, do you?” she murmured, close enough for him to smell her.

“Not much,” he said briskly, jogging the cocktail shaker in a businesslike way.

“Well, that's just too bad, because I like you such a lot.” She passed his chair, lightly touching his shoulder with her fingertips and leaned against the table in a mannequin attitude, stomach flat and pelvis tipped forward. “I think you're a pretty swell guy,” she said, with a college-girl candour that did not go with the crevasses worn into her face between the nose and the corners of the mouth, and the vitiated texture of her skin. “It's too bad you've fended me off all this time, because I know we'd have so much in common. I understand how it is with you, you see, on account of I had to lie up with my back all that time when I was a very young girl. I got so lonely. People used to visit with me, of course, but I used to long for someone to talk to—intimately. I used to read poetry, just the way you do—Shelley, Keats, Siegfried Sassoon.…”

Oliver's brain began to panic, and the reflection that Siegfried Sassoon could hardly have been writing poetry when Honey was a very young girl was its last coherent thought. He began to feel suffocated, on the point of breaking out into a sweat. He wanted to let out a yell, spring out of his chair, and pelt into the fresh air.

He wondered why she suddenly took her eyes off his and tightened her mouth, before he realised that Evelyn had come back into the room.

“There isn't much ice, I'm afraid, because the fridge isn't working properly,” she said, going round Oliver on the opposite side to Honey and putting the bowl carefully on the table. Although she was untidy about her clothes and hair, she was a neat-fingered child. She never spilled or slopped things, and she could be trusted to help Mrs. North with the flowers without leaving wet marks on the furniture under all the vases.

“You wait till you get to New York,” said Honey, who had not entirely abandoned the pretence of being sweet to Evelyn. “My fridge is three times as big as yours and has a rotary mixer for making ice-cream. What do you think of that?”

“I don't like ice-cream,” said Evelyn crushingly. “At least I
did until everybody kept trying to make me like going to America because of the ice-cream.” She went out with dignity and Honey shrugged her bony shoulders and held out a hand for her drink. Oliver watched her predatory fingers curl round the stem of the glass like a claw.

“Funny kid,” she said. “Say, Ar-lie, do you think she'd care all that much if Barb and I didn't show up at this affair tomorrow? After all, we don't know anything about horses, and I want so much to take him over to see those people at Much Wedlock or whatever you call it. My greatest friend, Ellie Bamburger, gave me their address and she'll think it so odd if we don't go.”

“You're not going,” said Oliver firmly. “At least, I don't care what
you
do, but Bob must stay here. She's set her heart on it.”

“But I can't go on my own; I can't drive a car with a right-hand drive.”

“Well, hire a car, go on a bicycle, hitch-hike, anything you like, but you're not taking Bob away from here tomorrow. It was bad enough about the sports; if you spoil this for Evie, I'll kill you.”

“My gracious, don't be so intense.” Honey laughed at him. “Actually, darling, I have rung this Mrs. Barnet and told her we'd both be over to tea. She wants so much to meet Bob, and I didn't think it would matter all that much.”

“Listen, Honey,” said Oliver, gripping her wrist in his vehemence and feeling as if he had grasped the handle of an electric shock machine on a pier, “if you don't let Bob stay and see Evie ride tomorrow, I'll strangle you—like this”—he began to twist her wrist—“quite quietly and comfortably. The wheelchair murder, the paper will call it; they'll make quite a thing of it.”

“Ollie!” She tried to pull away her wrist, half frightened, half enjoying it. “What are you doing? You're hurting me!”

He twisted a little harder. “Good. I just want to make sure you understand. Now do you promise, or do I break your arm now and your neck tomorrow?” He felt like Buck Ryan.

“Ollie—stop it! Oh! Yes—yes, of course we won't go if you feel that way about it.”

He dropped her wrist and she stood rubbing it carefully, contemplating him with admiration. “My, aren't you strong? Quite a lad, aren't you—don't care what you do, and all that?” She mocked him. Then she became serious, and dropping her
head, gave him a sultry look. “It certainly is a pity you and I couldn't have got together. I believe we could have had a lot of fun. Oh, don't be afraid,” she purred, “I'm not making a pass at you. No kidding, Ar-lie, I do like you so much. I admire you. I've wanted to tell you before, but I was afraid you'd snub me. You're kind of a chilling person, you know. I've wanted to tell you that I just couldn't be sorrier for you. You're so brave and so cheerful that a lot of folks might not realise how badly you must feel, but I know how sad it is, when you're so young.…”

“I'm not all that young,” Oliver said, “though I suppose I must seem so to you.” For some time after she had gone he glowed with the satisfaction of having achieved the kind of remark that usually only suggests itself about half an hour too late.

It poured with rain again on Sunday morning, and Evelyn had a fight with her aunt about whether she was to ride in a mackintosh. Her desperate face, plastered with damp red hair, presented itself at Oliver's window while he was eating his lunch. He had been kept in bed for the morning as a precaution against the fatigue of an afternoon's sociability.

“Uncle Ollie,” cried Evelyn, her face streaming with rain or tears. “I can't, I can't.”

“Don't often hear you say that,” said Oliver with his mouth full. “Ma's always complaining you think you can do anything. What can't you?”

“Ride in this awful school mac. She says I must, but it's got no slit in the back and it's much too long, and Daddy said once I looked like an orphanage child in it. I
can't
wear it. What's the good of having that new riding jacket? I shan't get wet; you don't when you're moving. Oh, do speak to her, don't let her make me wear it. She says I mustn't catch a cold because of travelling tomorrow, but I don't care if I do. I don't care if I catch a cold and die after today.”

“Calm yourself,” Oliver said. “I'll see what I can do. Go and have your lunch and don't say any more about it, and I'll talk to Ma.”

“Oh, Uncle Ollie, you are a darling, you are a pet,” she gabbled. “I do love you. How can I bear to go away and leave you, with your poor leg and everything? There'll be nobody to ride in the hill field for you to look at. Will you write to me? Promise? Not that she'll probably let me read it; I bet she'll open all my letters and take them away.”

“Who's she?”

“You know quite well, so don't be governessy. I say, do you think it's getting any lighter? Do you? I'm sure I did see a teeny bit of blue sky just then. How big is a Dutchman?”

“Evie,” called Elizabeth, coming into Oliver's room with his pudding, “go and have your lunch. We started ages ago.”

“I couldn't eat anything. How d'you think I
could
, when I feel sick whenever I think of this afternoon?” Evelyn was surprised at her obtuseness.

“Have this biscuit and cheese then.” Oliver handed it out of the window.

“All right, if you promise—you know what.”

“O.K., O.K., don't pester so. I've said I would.” She went away, looking tiny in the tent-like mackintosh, nibbling abstractedly at the sodden biscuit.

The grooms and children who had arrived with ponies during the morning had sheltered at the farm, but after lunch, when the rain became a drizzle and then a few gusty drops and then ceased altogether as the wind rose and blew the clouds away, they began to emerge and dot themselves about the hill field. While Elizabeth was helping Oliver to dress, Evelyn burst into the room, unrecognisably spruce in a shirt and tie, her new tan riding jacket and stiff jodhpurs that stuck out in a point on the seat and made her legs look like matchsticks.