Some hours later they went on to a nightclub. Again Mona hesitated, wanting to go home and yet feeling it would be disagreeable to break up the party. In the nightclub they joined up with a whole crowd of Judy Cohenn’s friends – raffish, hilarious, and slightly absurd in their eagerness to snatch pleasure where it seemed to Mona no pleasure was to be found. Yet, weary, and indifferent, she lacked the initiative to make an effort and go home alone.
Finally, in the early hours of the morning, they ended up in a studio in Chelsea, drinking gin and beer out of pewter tankards. Once or twice Mona made a movement to leave but every time there had been such an outcry that good-humouredly she had given in. She hated asserting herself and it was easier to stay, than to escape. But she was getting tired and she hoped soon that the whole party would break up and she could go to bed and dream of Lionel.
It was about three in the morning that the tragedy happened. The pretty young man had been drinking a great deal during the evening. Mona had thought him rather unpleasant and had noted that most of the evening he seemed to be quarrelling with Judy Cohenn. Now, the quarrel was getting noisy. The young man was almost in tears – protesting, arguing, waving his hands, his sleeve links flashing ostentatiously with every gesture.
“What’s the trouble?” someone asked the man sitting on the sofa next to Mona.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“The usual ending to a dull story,” he said. “Judy always does take up the most impossible people, gives them ideas above their station and then pushes them back where they belong. Occasionally, they don’t like going. That’s all there is to it.”
“Who is the young man?” Mona asked.
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” was the reply. “The last one Judy picked up was a motor salesman. He lived en prince for about six months and then she tired of him. When I last saw him he was on the dole.”
“I had no idea that she...” Mona stopped.
She was going to say
“…was as bad as that,” but she changed her mind, saying it mentally and adding to herself
‘She’s a horrible woman and I won’t see her again.’
Then there was a sudden cry – a shriek of rage and horror. The young man of the sapphire sleeve links suddenly hit Judy Cohenn in the face, pushed her backwards against a chair and with a scream like that of a frantic animal, rushed towards the open window.
They saw him disappear. They heard the thud of his body on the pavement four floors below…
The scream was echoed from several startled, horrified throats. Mona, silent with terror, thought swiftly,
‘What will Lionel say?’
Four
Mona leant against the old stone wall that bordered one end of the lake. It was a favourite spot of hers, for here, where the lake curved, she was out of sight of the house and sheltered by a background of young silver birches, which marked the boundary between the Priory estate and that of the Merrills.
There was a glimmer of pale winter sunshine forcing its way through the moving clouds. Involuntarily, Mona’s lips moved, and she said aloud,
“A blue sky of spring
White clouds on the wing.
What a little thing
To remember for years –
To remember with tears.”
“Why the tears?” a voice asked, and startled, she turned quickly.
“Michael!” she exclaimed.
“Hello, Mona. Welcome home.”
He held out his hand and she put hers into it, looking up at him in surprise. She had forgotten how tall he was, how dark and good-looking.
“You must have crept up behind me,” she said accusingly. “You’ve given me quite a fright.”
“You’re trespassing,” he said, smiling.
“Nonsense!” she replied. “This part of the lake has been hotly contested for years. Do you remember when your father put up a board ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted’ and mine retorted with one saying ‘If you can catch them’?”
“Of course I remember,” Michael answered gravely.
Mona realised that he knew she was talking at random – talking quickly and nonsensically to give herself time to recover, to blink away the tears that had glittered in her eyes when he had found her. She was half angry with him for catching her unawares.
“Well,” she said, feeling she had regained control of herself, “the old place and the old people don’t seem to have changed much.”
“You’ve changed.”
“I expect so. Grown older for one thing and if you tell me I am thinner, I shall scream. Mummy and Nanny have talked of nothing else since I got back.”
“I wasn’t thinking of your figure or your age, as it happened,” Michael said slowly, “but of your looks. They’ve improved.”
Mona stared at him.
“A compliment! Good gracious Michael, I feel my ears must deceive me!”
She spoke provocatively, but somehow she found it difficult to meet his eyes. There was something penetrating in the way Michael was looking at her. He was always disconcerting, she thought. There was a feeling of force and of strength about him that was overpowering. One always felt he was determinately making for some secret objective, and that he would sweep any opposition, however formidable, from his path.
