“I don’t ask it often enough, that’s my trouble,” Arthur Howlett said. “When our daughter grows up, I’m going to make her promise me that the one thing she’ll never do is to marry a medical man. They’re so busy looking after other people’s families they forget their own.”
“That’s not true, Arthur,” Dorothy protested loyally. “You are wonderful to us, but you do work too hard.”
“And in consequence, at times I’m like a bear with a sore head. I know it, Dot, but continue to put up with me, old girl, won’t you?”
“Of course I will, you old stupid.”
She put her arms round his neck and gave him a quick, affectionate hug.
Awkwardly, he stroked the soft fur of Mona’s cape.
“I wish to God I could give you something like that. Oh, damn! How I hate poverty and everything that goes with it!”
“Arthur!” Dot had exclaimed, between laughter and tears.
It was so strange to hear him complain. He never did, and yet she knew that in his awkward way he was trying to tell her that he wanted to give her such things and was never likely to be able to afford them. But Arthur had started up the engine.
“Ready for bed?” he asked.
“Yes,” his wife replied, “but it’s been a lovely evening, hasn’t it? I hope the children are all right.”
They had gone home in silence, only as they reached the front door did Dorothy, as she tumbled out of the car, say sleepily,
“I do wish Mona would marry Michael – they’d be a perfect couple, wouldn’t they?”
And so intent was she on her own thoughts that she hardly heard her husband’s reply,
“My heavens! that’s women all over, match-making at every opportunity!”
Yes, Michael was marvellous that evening, Mona thought.
Looking at him she wondered what he had really thought about her desire to bring a new happiness, or what she called sunshine, into the Howletts’ lives. Did he think she was interfering? she wondered. He had seemed amused and yet she knew instinctively that Michael queried many of the things she said and did. He never attempted to argue with her or, indeed, to cross her wishes in any way – but whenever they were together she had a notion that he was standing a little aloof from her, not entirely a part of her schemes but outside them, watching them, and, she felt uncomfortably, criticising them.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
She noticed that he was frowning as he lit a cigarette.
“I was wondering,” he replied, “if it was true that there was a case of foot-and-mouth disease at Blunham. It isn’t a nice thing to have in the neighbourhood.”
Mona said nothing and he smiled at her.
“I’m sorry. I’m boring you with these farming problems.”
“You aren’t boring me,” Mona replied, “and don’t be so irritating, Michael. You’ve got into the habit of talking like that lately and it couldn’t annoy me more.”
“Why?” Michael asked.
“Well, can’t you see it’s so insulting,” Mona said. “Take a girl like Stella Fairlace, who’s very pretty, but because she isn’t painted and isn’t well-dressed, or overdressed if you like, men like you will sit down and confide in her all their troubles from cows to carrots and feel sure that she will be interested. I’m just as interested, but because I look sophisticated, everyone feels that they must talk to me about nightclubs and caviar. I can’t tell you how boring it is, especially from people who know little about either!”
Michael laughed.
“It’s all very well to laugh,” Mona said hotly, “but it’s infuriating for me. Anyone is interesting on their own subject, the subject on which they have specialised, and everyone, whoever they may be, is boring when they talk about things of which they know nothing.”
“You shall hear every detail of the foot-and-mouth disease if we get it,” Michael promised, “which God forbid!”
He was teasing her and Mona knew it.
“If you aren’t going to be nice to me, I’m going home,” she said.
“Aren’t I always nice to you?”
He got up and stood beside her in front of the fire. He surprised her by reaching for one of her hands, but there was no sign of affection in his gesture. He looked at her long, pink-tipped fingers in an absent-minded manner, then he turned the hand over casually and stared at the network of lines on the palm.
“What do they all mean, I wonder?” he said. “Have you ever been to a palmist?”
“Heaps of them,” Mona replied, “and they all contradicted each other and nothing they told me had any relation to the truth, except perhaps, one.”
“And what did she say?”
“It was a he, an Egyptian. He sat on the steps of the Winter Palace Hotel in Luxor and he said, ‘You are in the sunshine but everything is dark. When everything is dark, very dark, under a cloud bigger than the world, you will find sunshine.’”
There was a pause.
“Most fortune-tellers are thought or mind readers,” Michael said lightly.
He released her hand. Mona had a feeling that before he had spoken he hesitated as to whether to ask her more. Perhaps he had wanted to know if while living in the sunshine she had been in the dark of unhappiness. She could have told him that part of the prediction was true at any rate.
She had been unhappy.
