“You are quite a stranger, dear child,” she exclaimed. “Why have you deserted us like this?”
“I don’t seem to have had a moment to myself,” Mona explained, but Mrs. Windlesham was not listening.
“Is that the Mrs. Strathwyn of whom I have heard so much?” she asked, peering at Char. “Introduce her to me.”
“A new addition to your collection?” Mona asked with a mischievous smile. Mrs. Windlesham glanced up at her but did not smile in response.
“Perhaps – go and fetch her, my dear.”
Mona did as she was told, and instantly Jarvis Lecker was at her side again. He had an irritating way of walking so close that his arm touched hers. He had, too, an almost possessive attitude towards her whenever they met other people. She realised that it was not entirely personal but a characteristic gesture of awkwardness – because he was not used to the company of women, he over-emphasised his attentions to them.
For the last week Jarvis Lecker had been continually at the Priory. He had come to lunch and had stayed to tea. The following day he had invited himself to dinner and every day after that he had made some excuse or another to call. He took Mona and Char for drives in his car, he escorted them into Bedford for shopping. He also loaded the household with presents. He brought them a turkey – a luxury that was almost unprocurable in the neighbourhood – he produced a ham, which he said had been sent from Ireland, caviar from Fortnum and Mason and several cases of wine.
There were flowers too, bunches of orchids, carnations and violets, which must have cost exorbitant sums. Mona and Mrs. Vale were embarrassed by such ostentatious generosity, but Char was delighted. She made no secret of her admiration for Jarvis and grew annoyed with Mona when she would not enthuse about him.
“Millionaires don’t grow on gooseberry bushes, not in these days, at any rate.”
“But I don’t want them to,” Mona retorted.
“Don’t be absurd,” Char said. “Everyone likes to have a rich man about the house and you could do with one too. Don’t let’s pretend between ourselves. It can’t be much fun for your mother to manage this big house on her tiny income.”
Mona shrugged. She resented fiercely that Char should discuss her mother’s private affairs, yet she hesitated to say so. But Jarvis Decker did not need Char to champion him, he was quite prepared to speak for himself. He had the dominating assurance of a self-made man. He was used to riding roughshod over people’s feelings, to overwhelming them with his personality, to getting what he wanted by sheer force of determination.
Mona would have been blind indeed if she had not realised very quickly exactly what Jarvis Decker wanted now, and she felt, almost hysterically, that she could not cope with the situation. Char had been at the Priory a week and showed no signs of terminating her visit. Mona had been trying to summon up the courage to ask her point-blank when she thought of leaving.
She had decided she would do so tonight or tomorrow morning, however difficult it might be to approach the subject. Perhaps after Michael’s party would be a good time, she thought, for during the week everyone they met had talked of little else and it would have seemed unreasonable to have suggested Char’s leaving before it took place.
Having introduced Char to Mrs. Windlesham, Mona turned away from Jarvis Lecker who was trying to monopolise her attention and, finding Stanley Gunther at her side, plunged into a conversation with him.
“Isn’t this fun?” she asked. “Aren’t you proud of your idea, Mr. Gunther? I had no idea that we might expect anything so exciting in Little Cobble.”
“Nor had I,” the Vicar replied smilingly. “The Major’s been most extraordinarily kind about it. I never meant to ask him for anything on such a grand scale.”
“It’s very good for him,” Mona said. “This house is far too large for a bachelor.”
She was talking without really thinking of what she said, then Jarvis Lecker’s voice broke in on the conversation.
“So our host’s a bachelor? Well it doesn’t look as if he will be for long. That’s a very attractive young creature he’s talking to now.”
Mona glanced across the room and saw Stella Fairlace gazing up at Michael. She was looking particularly attractive tonight in a simple black dress, poor in quality and cut, but which showed up the colour of her hair and the creamy quality of her skin.
“She is pretty,” Mona admitted, and realised what a handsome couple Stella and Michael made.
They might have been the models for ‘The Perfect English Man and Woman, A.D. 1942’. Strong and healthy, lovers of the country, such people would maintain a high standard of civilisation, would serve their country to the last drop of blood and give to a world, torn and damaged by war, a new generation capable of reconstructing a finer and better type of democracy.
Yes, doubtless Jarvis Lecker was right, Mona thought. Michael would marry Stella Fairlace, or someone like her, and absorbed in farming would find a steady, uneventful happiness.
Suddenly she felt alien to the whole party. Here were a collection of simple people enjoying an evening’s entertainment, which for them was the height of gaiety and amusement. How could she and the people she had brought with her be anything but a foreign element in their midst? She looked at Char and thought of the sort of parties at which she had seen her in Cairo – parties in some low nightclub, where the atmosphere was thick with smoke and more than half the guests would have had too much to drink. Parties where large sums of money would change hands – when perhaps the dawn would bring misery and maybe even thoughts of suicide to some who had lost, not only more than they could afford but everything they possessed in the world.
Yes, that was Char’s milieu, surrounded by people to whom ‘adultery, fornication and all other deadly sins’ were not merely words but familiar acquaintances to be treated casually and indifferently. And Jarvis Lecker – Mona knew his type so well – the businessman who had got himself to the top by methods not too clean or too open to close inspection, and who, having got to the top, wanted to buy the best. Nothing would convince him, she knew, that some things could not be bought, that there were things beyond price, beyond the purchase of any man, be he as rich as Croesus. To the Jarvis Leckers of this world, everything had its cash value, even herself.
With an effort, she dragged her thoughts back to what was going on around her. She realised that Stanley Gunther was staring at her and thought he must have asked a question to which he had received no answer.
“I am sorry,” she said. “What were you saying to me?”
“It was Mr. Lecker who asked you if you’d care to dance,” the Vicar replied, “but you were far away from us in the land of dreams.”
“Actually I was thinking about you all.”
The Vicar smiled.
“Nice thoughts, I hope.”
“But naturally.”
She saw Mrs. Windlesham beckoning to her and crossed to her side.
“Mrs. Strathwyn has never seen the Long Gallery, Mona,” Mrs. Windlesham said. “I must get Michael to take her round.”
“May I be allowed to be your escort?” the Vicar asked Char. “I have studied the pictures here for many years and flatter myself I know them almost as well as their owner.”
“Yes, that’s a good idea, Vicar,” Mrs. Windlesham said. “Take Mrs. Strathwyn along and don’t forget that the large Van Dyck has been moved to the library.”
“I won’t,” Stanley Gunther promised and they moved away.
“Well?” Mona asked.
Mrs. Windlesham knew what she meant.
