The Happy Prisoner (48 page)

But he would be able to get about, and his heart was behaving itself. He and Fred had many talks about their future cooperation on the farm and Oliver drew out some of his savings and bought a stud bull, wheeling himself down to the farm to see it arrive with more interest than he had ever felt before in the cattle. It began to look like quite something of a life. Whatever he had told his mother, he had always known at heart he could not marry, hadn't he? He would never be properly fit; how could he marry? So what difference did it make to him if Elizabeth was going to marry Arnold Clitheroe? None. It got everybody tied off very neatly.

During these last days Elizabeth was almost like a ghost in the house. She nursed Evelyn efficiently and devotedly, but her trunk had gone to London and she herself was so soon to follow it for good that she seemed surprised to find herself still at Hinkley. She drifted about, pale and slightly apologetic, unable to settle to anything and avoiding Oliver as much as possible. Once or twice she seemed as though she wanted to try and be reconciled with him, but he snubbed her almost before she had opened her mouth. Women always wanted it both ways. He was not going to have any of this “Can't we still be friends?” business.

When Evelyn was better and sitting up in bed with a tray of tin horses on her lap, Elizabeth was given the week-end off to go to a party in London with Arnold. She would be coming back for a few days to complete the month and collect the rest of her things.

It rained on Saturday, and as Oliver could not go out, he did not bother to get out of bed. He did not feel very well. When he told his mother that he had a headache, she, being preoccupied with what she was going to tempt Evelyn with for lunch, told him it was the muggy weather, which did not make him feel any better.

In the evening he asked for Bovril and biscuits instead of dinner, and Mrs. North said: “Oh, darling, don't tell me you're going off your food when I've just got Evie to start eating again. It's such a worry to me. I was going to come and have dinner in here with you, but if you don't want any I shan't bother. I'll just have some soup in the kitchen.”

“You can't talk about people not eating.”

“That's different. I'm starving, but I've begun dieting again. I haven't really been able to get down to it this last year; there's been so much to think of, what with one thing and another, but I'm really going to try and reduce now. You'll be going around with me soon. We might do a trip to London, hm? And you won't want to be seen with a stout mother.” She waited for an appropriate answer, but he did not feel up to making it, so he smiled instead and she went away.

After he had sipped the Bovril and left it until it got too cold to drink, and had nibbled half a biscuit and thrown the rest out of the window, he read and listened to the wireless, but he was bored with his book and the B.B.C. and himself. He began to wonder what Elizabeth was doing, and tried for the hundredth time to picture the man with the impossible name. She had shown him a snapshot, taken in such dim weather that he could hardly tell which was Arnold and which was the background, but he looked slightly better than he had expected. Oldish, of course, too old for Elizabeth, although he still seemed to have all his hair, and his figure, though peg-topped, was passable. He looked prosperous and kind and not very clever; a nice safe husband if ever there was one. In the background was a tall, narrow house with a conservatory; in the middle ground, Arnold and a long glossy car; in the foreground, an inbred-looking poodle.

The party was to be in a private room of one of the smarter London hotels. He had allowed Elizabeth to tell him that much. The hosts were two business men, on a visit from the North with their wives, to retaliate for the party given last week at an equally smart hotel by London business men and their wives. The menu would be practically identical, Oliver reflected, and neither the brandy nor the jokes any better. The only difference would be that Elizabeth would be there and Arnold Clitheroe, who perhaps had not shone much last week, would shine tonight with a reflected glory. Oliver did not mind betting she could knock spots off any business man's wife. But she was practically a business man's wife herself. Would she become befurred and bosomy and go in for elaborate hats? She would never let her hair down now. The wives of middle-aged business men did not go in for shoulder-length bobs and swinging pageboys. She would perhaps cut it short and have it waved close to her head, and she would go to the hairdresser's too often from boredom, and it would soon get to look stiff and brassy.

It was one o'clock when he woke and wondered whether to have some tea. Although he was not technically an invalid any
more, his mother still pampered him with his thermos, and his milk last thing at night. She would probably go on pampering him and he would slide from invalidism into old age with no perceptible hiatus. She was right about the muggy weather. He felt hot and sticky and he threw off his blanket and lay with only a sheet over him. He had smoked too much because he had had a restless day, and his mouth felt dry. He still had the headache, and a backache as well from falling asleep sitting up over his book. He did not really want any tea, but it would be something to do. He was just unscrewing the cap of the thermos when he heard the sound of a car on the drive. Who on earth? He always seemed to be hearing cars on the drive when the rest of the house was sleeping. It made him think of Heather, and the times when she had burst into his room.

It was Elizabeth who burst in this time, and she had been crying again. This was too much. She was almost offensively reserved for nine months and never seen to shed a tear, and now she had cried twice in the last three weeks, told her life story, and got herself engaged to a man with ten thousand a year.

She came in, switched on the light, banged the door and stood with her back against it, looking defiant. She wore a white evening dress and her hair was caught up at the side by a sparkling clip and fell round her neck in just the daffodil bell which he had been thinking she never would have.

“Whose car?” he asked sternly.

“Mr. Peploe's, bless him. He never minds turning out for your family, he said.”

“You are not my family,” Oliver said, “but Clitheroe's.” He was killing time until she chose to tell him what she was doing here when she should be in the ladies' cloakroom talking about servants to the business men's wives while the business men were having one for the road and talking about whatever business men talked about when their wives imagined they were telling
risqué
stories.

Elizabeth shook back her hair. It obviously felt unfamiliar against her neck. She did look pretty, though, even if she had been crying. “I just caught the last train,” she said. “Heaven knows why. I've been wishing all the way down I'd stayed in London. I mean, if I had to run away, why run all the way to Shropshire?”

“Yes, it's hard on Mr. Peploe,” murmured Oliver, “but harder still on Clitheroe.”

“Oh, shut up about Clitheroe,” she said desperately. “I never want to hear his name again.”

“My dear!” Oliver suddenly felt so light-headed with happiness that he could only be facetious. “Don't tell me he's turned out to be a snake in the grass. What's the man done? Aren't his intentions honourable after all? I see you haven't given him back his fur coat; that wasn't very ethical of you, Elizabeth. If you want him horsewhipped, he'll have to come here, because I don't feel well enough to go to London. I haven't been well all day,” he said plaintively.

“I'm sorry,” she said absently, and then blurted out: “I couldn't do it, Ollie! I couldn't do it. All my plans—the life I was going to have—I was so sure—” she rushed forward, fell on her knees by the bed and spread her lovely hair all over his chest. He moved her head gently off the scar over his heart and began to stroke her hair. She was crying again. That made the third time in three weeks.

“Tell your Uncle Ollie,” he said. He took back what he had thought about not wanting to be friends just the same. He would like to be friends with her.

“It was at the party,” she sobbed. She was a bit hysterical, and with her face buried in his pyjamas she was difficult to follow. “It was awful—at least, I didn't think so at first, because it was just like lots of things I've been to with Arnold and his friends, but halfway through I suddenly realised how awful it was. I suppose it was after my third glass of champagne. One of the men kept calling me Little Lady. He's Arnold's best friend, and he'd always have been coming to the house.

It was all so dull, and I didn't fit, though I was the dullest of all. I kept trying to be bright and laugh at the jokes, but all the time I felt I'd like to go away and yawn till my head split in two. I was the youngest by miles, but I was Arnold's fiancée, so that made me the same age as the others. Arnold was asking them all to the wedding and telling them where we were going for our honeymoon. Torquay, you know, and I'd wanted to go to the real seaside, but Arnold loves Torquay. He likes hotels with glass verandas and five courses for dinner and people with napkins over their arm showing him dishes before they serve them, and he will talk knowingly about wine, although I'm sure he knows nothing about it. Oh, Ollie, he is so stuffy. If that's security, I don't want it, it makes me feel so old.

One of the men said: ‘I always thought old Clith was the perfect bachelor; shows you never can tell, doesn't it?' and Arnold raised his glass towards me and said: ‘It's love, gentlemen, love that makes the world go round.' I suddenly felt suffocated and I was afraid I was going to cry, so I made some
excuse and went to the Ladies. The attendant asked me if I wanted my coat, so I said to myself: Why not? And without thinking twice about it, I hared down the corridor and out into the street and there was a taxi waiting, just as if it was meant.

Wasn't it awful of me to run out on him? I don't know what he'll say to his friends. All the way down in the train, I kept imagining him searching frantically round the hotel with his eyes getting closer and closer together. He'll be so hurt, but I'll never be able to explain. Having kept up this act with him for so long, I'd never explain what I was really like and what I really wanted.”

“What do you want?”

“I want you!” she wailed like a child.

It was enough to make anyone's heart thump and pound and the blood sing in their ears, particularly someone whose heart and blood were prone to do that even when not kissing the girl one loved.

“D'you know,” he said dizzily, “I haven't kissed anyone since I was knocked out. I'll have to get into training.”

She sat back on her heels and looked at him. “Oh, Ollie darling, you look awful!” she cried. “Not a bit well,” assessing him in a motherly, not a professional way. “Oh, what have I done? I've upset you!” She put her hand on his heart. “Ollie!” She was professional now. “Let's look at your watch.” She counted, her eyes widening. “Darling, your heart—oh, what have I done?” He wagged his head at her and grinned. He felt very odd, as if his head had come right off and were bowling round the top of the walls.

His heart was going so fast that it was making him sweat. When she had taken his temperature she was in a panic. No nurse should panic like this just because the patient is a little ill. “Kiss me,” he said foolishly, and reached out his arms, but she was farther away than he thought, and he clutched the air and nearly fell out of bed.

She put him back. “Do be careful. Oh dear, what shall I do? Your pills … yes …” He saw her at the corner cupboard, miles away. “Damn,” she said from the distance, “there aren't any.”

“Never mind the pills,” he said thickly, but she did not seem to hear, so he wondered whether he had spoken at all.

“I've got some in my room,” she said, nearer now. “Lie still till I get back. Oh, look at you, all uncovered!” She drew up the blanket, and, as there were no more, pulled off Arnold Clitheroe's fur coat and laid it over his chest.

When she got back he was laughing weakly and rather inanely, with a lolling head. “What's the matter?” she asked, wondering whether he were delirious.

“It's too funny,” he said, and it was difficult to get the words out clearly. “It's a good thing you're going to marry me and not be a nurse. What a nurse!”

“Here are your pills,” she said soothingly. “Take them. I'll hold the glass for you.”

“I don't want pills. I've just had a look at my chest. If you'll take this damned great fur rug off me for a minute you'll see I've got measles.”

Mrs. North, pattering down the stairs to see who was making all that hysterical laughter, found it was Oliver, with a temperature of a hundred and three and looking it, and a girl in a long white dress with her hair all over the place, whom she did not at first recognise as Elizabeth.

Great granddaughter to Charles Dickens, Monica (1915-1992) was born into an upper middle class family. Disillusioned with the world in which she was brought up, she acted out – she was expelled from St Paul's Girls' School in London for throwing her school uniform over Hammersmith Bridge. Dickens then decided to go into service, despite coming from the privileged class; her experiences as a cook and general servant would form the nucleus of her first book,
One Pair Of Hands
, published in 1939.

Dickens married an American Navy officer, Roy O. Stratton, and spent much of her adult life in Massachusetts and Washington D.C., but she continued to set the majority of her writing in Britain.
No More Meadows
, which she published in 1953, reflected her work with the NSPCC – she later helped to found the American Samaritans in Massachusetts. Between 1970 and 1971 she wrote a series of children's books known as The Worlds End Series which dealt with rescuing animals and, to some extent, children. After the death of her husband in 1985, Dickens returned to England where she continued to write until her death aged 77.