“I will, but I’d better get on now or she’ll find no one to meet her.”
“Goodbye, and don’t forget to come in tomorrow.”
“I won’t,” Mona promised, and drove on down the hill.
She liked Lynn Archer and she was amused to find that Lynn shocked the village, which was not used to lady novelists in trousers or women who, like her, said “Damn” when she couldn’t get the groceries they required at the local shop.
Mrs. Gunther had already declaimed her as being a scandal to the neighbourhood, but Dorothy Howlett agreed with Mona that she was an asset and they had discovered too, that underneath her superficial sophistication she was an adoring mother and a very domesticated wife.
The train was pulling into the station just as Mona arrived. She jumped out and telling the stationmaster’s small boy, who was playing in the yard, to hold the pony, hurried on to the platform. Though she was expecting her, it was quite a shock to see Char’s weather-beaten narrow face smiling at her from the window of a First-Class carriage. She got out on to the platform and held out her hands.
“Here I am, safe and sound,” she said. “How are you, Mona? But there’s no need to ask.”
Char spoke in her dry, abrupt manner, which made any compliment she paid sound as if she was being critical. Her voice, too, was deep and dry. Mona had forgotten that particular dryness of Char’s voice as if, like her skin, it needed oiling.
“I’ve got a suitcase in the van,” Char said.
When the porter got it out for them they carried it between them to the governess-car. Char was looking just the same, Mona thought. She had merely changed her tussore coat and skirt for one of brown tweed of an indefinite speckled pattern, which made her look rather like a shaggy, unattractive bird. Now that she was actually here, some of Mona’s apprehension vanished.
‘Why did I worry?’ she asked herself. ‘After all, she’s only a woman, middle-aged, lonely and unwanted.’
They started off in silence, and then as they reached the hill approaching the village and the pony started his slow climb, Char leant forward and put her gloved hand on Mona’s knee.
“I am glad to see you,” she said. “It’s a long time since we met, isn’t it?”
“Years.”
“But I did see you once after you left Egypt – in Paris.”
Mona felt the blood surge up in her face. She had not expected Char to be so blunt, and while she knew that she ought to be expressing surprise, asking where, and pretending that she had not seen her, somehow she could do none of these things. Instead she flicked the pony lightly with the whip and said,
“I don’t suppose we shall see Paris again for a long time.”
“Doesn’t look like it,” Char agreed.
Mona knew that her eyes were on her face, taking in every detail of her expression.
They were nearing the top of the hill and Mona pointed ahead.
“Here’s the village. You will see it’s very rural, in fact, I’m afraid, Char, you will find it very dull.”
“I don’t mind that. Nothing could be duller than London when one has been away for years and all one’s friends are dead or lost.”
“I haven’t been to London except the day since I came home.”
“Did you see anyone you knew?”
Mona shook her head.
“No, I went up on business to see my solicitors.”
“Why did you come home?”
“I couldn’t get any money out of America,” Mona replied.
Even as she said the words, she knew that Char was playing with her as a cat plays with a mouse. Char knew why she had come home, Char knew a great many things about her! She waited, and Char’s voice, dry and arid as the desert sands, confirmed her suspicions,
“I saw that your cousin Lionel died very suddenly in Washington,” she said. “It must have been an awful shock for you.”
Twelve
Char pulled off her hat and threw it down on the bed with a sigh – but the sound she made did not express weariness but rather triumph, as if she had reached her journey’s end and achieved some task to which she had set herself.
She looked round the big bedroom with appraising eyes. She noted the heavy oak four-poster with its tapestry hangings, the walnut chest-of-drawers, the Chippendale mirrors, and ancient oil paintings on the walls. She guessed their value and noted, too, the shabby, threadbare carpet, the curtains that were faded, patched and darned, the old-fashioned Victorian wash-hand-stand, with its badly cleaned brass hot-water can.
Char’s scrutiny missed nothing – then she crouched down for a moment in front of the fire, holding out her thin fingers to the blaze. She was delighted to be at the Priory. She had half-expected that Mona would prevaricate, or make excuses when she replied to her letter, and she had been prepared to fight her way in. But her resolution had not been tested, instead she had received by return of post an invitation to stay.
Char wondered if Mona had any idea how pleased she was to see her again. She had sensed that her own feelings were not reciprocated, but that was to be expected. Char was used to being unwanted, to knowing that people preferred her absence to her company. Meeting dislike and distrust wherever she went, she had grown immune to their power to hurt, except very rarely. This was, perhaps, one of the rare occasions.
Mona meant something to her which no one else had ever meant. She could not explain it even to herself. It was not affection, that would have been to alien an emotion for Char’s make-up. No, it was a kind of instinct, almost a superstition, to cling to Mona because she believed her lucky.
‘A golden girl’, was how she thought of her.
From the moment Mona had come into her life at the races it seemed to Char that her luck had changed. The tips Mona had given her had brought money – afterwards everything she did seemed literally to turn to gold in her hands. She had been on her beam ends, she had no idea how she could carry on, until Mona had turned the tide that had threatened to submerge her. Even when Mona had disappeared out of her life, she had left an aura of luck behind her, for that trip up the Nile had been lucky for Char. She had made a contact on the boat that was to have far-reaching effects.
One of the men who made up their party at poker was to prove immeasurably useful to Char for some years afterwards. She attributed all her good fortune to Mona. She made the girl a talisman and the mere thought of her seemed to invite success. It gave Char confidence, just as Mona’s presence had given her confidence when they went anywhere together. Mona was so vital, so alive, she seemed to leap forward on the upward wave of life and that was what Char had never been able to do.
Feeling the warmth now on her hands, she felt as if it had penetrated her heart – a heart so withered, so shrivelled up by the experiences of years, that it had ceased to have any existence save as an anatomical organ.
