“Now, darling,” her mother admonished, “you mustn’t talk like that. You know that little trouble has been completely forgotten – completely. Besides, a lot of people down here really knew nothing about it. It was only the more sensational London papers that made such a fuss. And since then you’ve been married.”
“And widowed,” Mona added.
“Yes, dear. Poor Ned! Do you ever hear anything from his relations?”
“Not a word.”
“I did see something in the paper about his mother the other day,” Mrs. Vale went on. “I think she was opening a bazaar or something like that.”
“She would be. A tiresome woman – I never liked her.”
“Poor thing, I was sorry for her. Such an unsatisfactory way to lose one’s only son. But I never thought that was an excuse for the letter she wrote to you. Why, you might have thought that you’d encouraged him to go dashing about in that idiotic manner!”
“Perhaps I did,” Mona said reflectively.
“Now darling, don’t talk like that,” her mother pleaded. “You always make yourself out worse than you are.”
“That would be difficult.”
“Mona!”
“I’m sorry, Mother. Go on telling me how delighted everyone will be to see me and who you want to show me off to. How do you suggest I dress for the occasion? In sackcloth and ashes as the repentant sinner?”
“Darling, you are being very unkind.”
“I’m sorry, Mummy, I really am.” Mona got up, and putting an arm across her mother’s shoulder, kissed her gently. “It’s just embarrassment that’s making me stupid.”
“Embarrassment?”
“Well, shyness, if you like. It’s so long since I have been home.”
“But it is your home and it has always been there waiting for when you were ready to come back.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s true, it’s always been here waiting for me. I’ve thought about that. I have really, and though I’ve been afraid, it’s been a heavenly feeling to know it was there.”
“Afraid? Why should you be afraid of coming home?”
“Did I say afraid?” Mona asked quickly. “That’s a silly word. Don’t listen to me, Mummy. Go on talking, tell me what you were going to say about your friends. Who is there to see I’m back?”
“Well, Michael for one.”
“Michael! Of course, I had forgotten him. Is he still here?”
“Of course he is, my dear, where else would he be?”
“I didn’t think about it really. Isn’t he in the Army or something?”
“Now, Mona, I told you in my letters how he was wounded at Dunkirk. He has been invalided out of the Army now and I’m afraid he’ll always have a permanently stiff leg. He did everything he could to make them keep him, but it was no use and so he’s back again farming. And a very good thing too, really, the estate got into a terrible way when he was in the Army.”
“Michael!” Mona spoke his name softly. “Do you know, Mother, I hadn’t thought about him all these years and yet I suppose Cobble wouldn’t be Cobble without Michael at the Park.”
“Indeed it wouldn’t,” Mrs. Vale said. “I always hoped…”
She stopped.
“…That I would marry Michael,” Mona finished. “But, darling, of course we all knew that. Why, I was thrown at his head ever since I could sit up in my pram. I remember at a children’s party when you insisted on us dancing together that I pinched him and in retaliation he pulled my hair.”
“Michael was always very fond of you.”
“Yes, that’s true. When I first came out, he did like me in a condescending sort of way. Now, Mother, don’t argue. Michael was very condescending, so dark and so superior, and the Merrill nose gave him a supercilious air.”
“He couldn’t help that.”
“No, I know he couldn’t. There have been Merrills with that sort of nose at Cobble Park ever since there have been Vales with noses turned the other way like mine at the Priory. Well, it’s no use, those sort of noses don’t mix well together, despite all your scheming my darling.”
“You’re a ridiculous child. I shall ask Michael to dinner in spite of all you say.”
“And I shall be delighted to see him,” Mona replied.
She got up from the table and stretched herself.
“Oh, it’s good to be back. You make me feel young again, I feel as if I was seventeen, leaving school and coming out into a big, exciting world full of drama and romance and young men and excitements. What fun I had! Do you remember that first Christmas – the party here, and how we danced even after breakfast, and how we skated on that lake and tobogganed down the hill to the station? How shocked everyone was at the way we went on – and what glorious, perfect fun it all was!”
“I remember,” Mrs. Vale said. “And Lionel was one of our guests. You knew, of course, darling, that poor Lionel had died in America?”
Mona stood still. She felt suddenly paralysed. The one question she dreaded had come.
Two
