“I rather like being nauseated,” Mrs. Windlesham said with relish.
They all had to laugh at the tone in which she spoke.
“It’s no use, Mona,” Michael said, “you could no more talk Aunt Ada out of collecting people than you could stop a dipsomaniac when you caught him beside a bar.”
“Not a very elegant simile,” Mrs. Windlesham interposed, “but I understand what you mean. Now, Lady Carsdale can tell me about the people in Little Cobble. You are useless, Michael, so run away and add up the farm accounts or do something to keep your mind occupied. We shall be at least an hour.”
“All right, I’ll leave you then,” Michael said. “Don’t encourage her too much, Mona, otherwise she will find out all about everyone too quickly and leave me. I rather like having her here.”
“Don’t flatter me too fulsomely,” his aunt said.
Then as he left the room, she turned to Mona.
“A nice boy, but he never had many party graces. His father was just like him. I can’t think what you’ve been doing to let him grow up like that.”
“Like what?” Mona asked.
“Gruff and abrupt,” Mrs. Windlesham said. “It’s a form of shyness, of course. All the Merrills are shy, although they’ll never admit it.”
Mona smiled.
“I can’t believe that,” she said. “I always think of Michael as above such things.”
“And that’s where you are quite wrong,” his aunt replied. “Michael is both shy and sensitive. As a boy he was particularly so and then he adopted that rather hard veneer to protect himself, just as a tree grows bark. I’m not certain that you haven’t a good deal to do with his bark being so tough.”
“I!” Mona exclaimed. “Why should you think I have made Michael shy and nervous?”
“Well, haven’t you?” Mrs. Windlesham asked.
She looked at Mona with such knowing eyes that she had to laugh.
“Kamerade!” she cried. “I see I’m up against an expert in psychology. All right, I have teased Michael, but I never thought he minded. In fact, that’s why I went on, hoping that one day he’d squeal.”
“Of course you did, and then they say we aren’t barbarians,” Mrs. Windlesham sighed. “My dear, very few of us are civilised, the instinct to be cruel is strong in the best of us. So you were cruel to Michael with your teasing and taunting and you sharpened your quick wit at his expense and he got more and more hoary and prickly to the touch?”
“You’re making me feel guilty,” Mona exclaimed.
“Not I,” Mrs. Windlesham replied. “You are feeling rather pleased with yourself to think that you had such an effect on Michael. I only hope one day he gives you the spanking you deserve.”
“I’m not certain he hasn’t,” Mona said.
She was remembering that kiss in the Long Gallery. That hard, brutal, insulting kiss for which Michael had apologised afterwards.
“I’m very glad to hear it,” Mrs. Windlesham said, “but I’m not certain that you’ve been punished enough. There’s a glint in your eye when you tease Michael that bodes ill for the poor lad. But never mind, I shall know more after I have been here a few days. Tell me about the other people in this flat and rather desolate-looking country.”
As Mona walked home she smiled at the remembrance of Mrs. Windlesham’s interest. She had a quick, perceptive mind and the way she managed to pierce through what was unimportant, to the kernel or root of the matter, was entrancing to watch.
‘I shall go up and see her tomorrow,’ Mona thought. ‘It’s so like Michael to have an aunt like that and never talk about her. I wonder what the story of her life is. That would be worth hearing.’
At the same time, Mona had made up her mind that she herself must be careful. It would be difficult to hide anything from Mrs. Windlesham, she thought, if she were really determined to hunt one down, though instinctively she knew that Michael’s aunt was trustworthy.
Thinking over the afternoon she realised that she had told Mrs. Windlesham a lot to hear nothing in return. That was the secret of learning. To be a good listener and to be able to impact wisdom without making it boring.
‘Perhaps old age to such people,’ Mona thought, ‘has its compensations, and yet who wants to be old?’
For the first time since Lionel had died, she wanted not death but life. A life that was vivid and vital again, holding interest and hope, having a future instead of only a past.
‘Am I getting sensible or merely older?’ she asked herself. ‘Perhaps both.’
She was singing as she opened the door of the Priory. The hall was in darkness, Nanny and Mrs. Vale had already put up the blackout. Mona switched on the light and saw a letter waiting for her on the hall table.
‘Who can have written to me?’ she wondered and hoped it was from Ned’s lawyers to say there was some money waiting for her in the bank.
She picked up the envelope, and then, as she stared at it, was suddenly very still. That slanting, flowing writing – where had she seen it before? Wildly she thought it was impossible, that she was mistaken, but her fingers trembled and even as she slit open the envelope, she knew she was not deceived. There was only one person in the world with handwriting just like that.
Ten
Mona could remember very clearly the first time she had met Char Strathwyn.
It had been at the races in Cairo. She was waiting to draw her winnings on a previous race and noticed a woman standing not far away from her, looking disconsolately at the fortunate queue of those who had gambled successfully. She was an ugly woman, exaggeratedly thin and dressed with almost masculine severity, in a tussore coat and skirt and a hard Panama hat.
She might have been any age, for she had that dried-up, weather-beaten look that women get after spending years in the East and indulging in too much whisky after sundown. Without thinking Mona stared at her. Suddenly the woman smiled and ashamed of her rudeness, Mona smiled back. The woman sauntered across to her.
“You have been lucky then?” she said in a deep, slightly husky voice that somehow was in keeping with her appearance. “I wish to goodness I had. You don’t know anything good for the big race do you?”
Mona looked at her card. It had been marked for her by Lionel the day before and when she followed his advice, she nearly always made money.
“I don’t know much about it myself,” she confessed, “but I have been told ‘Mizpah’ is a good choice. He’s an outsider, of course.”
