The Most Marvellous Summer

Lady Fox looked astounded. ‘But my dear girl, it is such a splendid opportunity for you to see something of the sophisticated world—you might even meet some suitable young man. If you are worried about clothes I’m sure—’

‘No, I’m not worried about clothes, Lady Fox. I’m not sure that I want to go to London. I really must have a day or two to think about it.’

Lady Fox’s formidable frontage swelled alarmingly. ‘Well, really, I don’t know what to say. It is most important that Roseanne should go—she is so—so countrified and gauche. Vera and Mary are so much younger and already quite self-possessed.’

Matilda, who disliked the two teenagers, agreed politely; Roseanne was dull and had no backbone worth mentioning, but at least she wasn’t rude.

Lady Fox rose. ‘Well, since you seem to want time to think over this splendid offer, perhaps you will let me know as soon as you have decided? Now, will you see to the post and wash the Sèvres? I have to go in to Sherborne. I shall be back for lunch—Sir Benjamin is out so there will be just myself, Roseanne and yourself. Tell Cook, will you?’

She hurried away, looking cross, and Matilda wandered off to the kitchen where she discussed lunch with Cook and had a cup of tea before going through the post.

She was in the china pantry washing the precious Sèvres china when Roseanne wandered in.

‘Matilda, you will come with me, won’t you? I won’t go unless you do. Mother keeps on and on, if I don’t go I won’t stay here either, I’ll run away.’

Matilda eyed her carefully. Roseanne meant it. The worm had turned, and, let loose on an uncaring world, Roseanne wouldn’t stand a chance…

‘I’ll have to discuss it with Mother and Father but I don’t think they would mind, just for a few weeks.’

‘You’ll come? Oh, Matilda, I’ll never be able to thank you enough—I’ll do anything…’

‘No need,’ said Matilda prosaically, ‘I dare say it will be quite fun.’

Her parents raised no objection; she told Lady Fox the next day that she was willing to go with Roseanne and listened to that lady’s monologue about the benefits of London to a girl like Roseanne. ‘Of course you may not get invited to the dinner parties and dances her godmother will arrange, but I dare say you will be glad of that.’

‘Why?’ asked Matilda with interest.

Lady Fox went an unbecoming red. ‘Oh, I have no intention of being rude, Matilda—what I mean is that you will need time to yourself occasionally and there will be no need to attend all the parties Roseanne is bound to go to. I rely upon you to see that she buys only suitable clothes, and please discourage any friendships she may strike up if the—er—young man isn’t suitable. She is very young…’

Twenty-two wasn’t all that young, thought Matilda, and it was high time Roseanne found her own feet and stood on them.

At home, she inspected her wardrobe and decided that there was no need to buy anything new. She had two evening dresses, both off the peg and by no means new, but nevertheless pretty. She had a good suit, blouses and sweaters enough, a skirt or two and a rather nice jersey dress bought in the January sales. She climbed the narrow stairs to the attic, found a rather battered case, hauled it downstairs and packed it without enthusiasm. London in the spring would come a poor second to Abner Magna.

Each day she was taken aside and lectured by Lady Fox about the London visit; she must do this and not that, young men were to be scrutinised and Roseanne wasn’t to go gallivanting off…

Matilda forbore from pointing out that the girl was the last person on earth to gallivant, and anyway with those spots and that unfortunate nose she wasn’t likely to get the chance. Let the poor girl have her fling! However timid, she was a nice girl and perhaps with her mother out of the way she might even improve enormously.

She made suitable replies to Lady Fox’s remarks and that lady, looking at her, wished for the hundredth time that it could have been someone else but Matilda ffinch who was going with Roseanne; the girl was too pretty—more than that, that hair and those wide eyes weren’t to be ignored. She would have to drop a word in Roseanne’s godmother’s ear to make sure that Matilda attended as few dances and parties as possible; no one—no man—would look at the dear girl while Matilda was there, although give the girl her due she wasn’t a young woman to push herself forward; she knew her place, Lady Fox reflected, happily unaware of the superiority of the ffinches over the Foxes.

They were to travel up to London in the Foxes’ Daimler driven by Gregg the chauffeur and gardener. Matilda got up early, made a tour of the rather untidy garden, ate a good breakfast and presented herself at the manor at nine o’clock sharp.

Roseanne, wearing expensive mud-brown tweeds, quite unsuitable for the time of year, looked as though she would change her mind about going at any moment; Matilda bustled her briskly into the car with the promise that they would telephone as soon as they arrived and they drove away.

It was a pleasant morning, chilly still but the sun shone and Matilda, chatting bracingly about the pleasures in store, wanted very much to get out of the car and walk or get on to her old bike and potter off for the day. She listened sympathetically to Roseanne’s uncertain hopes for the next few weeks, bolstered her up with the delights of London in store for her and whenever she had a moment thought about Mr Scott-Thurlow.

The Honourable Mrs Venables lived in Kensington, in a massive red brick flat, furnished with splendour and a regrettable tendency to overdo crimson velvet, gilding wherever possible and dark, heavy furniture. She received them graciously and somewhat absent-mindedly, since she was holding a lengthy telephone conversation when they arrived. They sat while she concluded this and were then handed over to a dour-looking woman who led them down a long corridor to two rooms at its end, overlooking a narrow garden and more red brick walls.

‘There’s the bathroom,’ they were told. ‘You share it. My name’s Bertha.’

‘I’m not going to like it,’ declared Roseanne when they were alone in her room. Her lip quivered. ‘I want to go home.’

‘We’ve only just got here,’ Matilda pointed out. ‘At least let’s give it a try. It’s all a bit strange—you’ll feel better after lunch.’

She was right; Mrs Venables had a great deal to say over the meal, laying out for Roseanne’s approbations the various entertainments she had arranged for her. ‘We shall have a quiet evening here today,’ she said, ‘but tomorrow we might go shopping and there’s an excellent film we might see in the evening. I shall leave you two girls to amuse yourselves during the day—there is plenty to see and do. I have arranged a dinner party or two and there are several invitations for you.’ It all sounded rather fun so that when Roseanne telephoned her mother after lunch she said nothing about wanting to return home.

They spent the next day or two finding their feet. The mornings were taken up with shopping; Roseanne had plenty of money and urged by Matilda bought the clothes she had always wanted and never had the smallest chance to since her mother had always accompanied her. It was a surprise what a difference they made to her appearance, especially when Matilda, given carte blanche at the cosmetic counters, found a cream to disguise the spots and chose lipstick, blusher and eye-shadow and applied them to her companion’s face. ‘Don’t you want to buy anything?’ asked Roseanne. ‘Clothes?’

Matilda assured her, quite untruthfully, that she didn’t.

It was their third day there and they had been shopping again. It was Matilda who stopped outside an art gallery with a discreet notice, ‘Exhibition Within’, and suggested that they might take a look.

The gallery was a series of rooms, very elegant and half filled with viewers, and the first person Matilda saw there was Mr Scott-Thurlow.

CHAPTER TWO

MR SCOTT-THURLOW WASN’T alone: there was a tall, willowy girl beside him, a fashion-plate, so slim that she might have been cut out of cardboard. She was exquisitely made up and her hair was a teased-out halo, lacquered into immobility. She was beautiful but there was no animation in her face; indeed, she looked bored, far more interested in arranging the pleats of her long skirt than viewing the large painting before which they stood.

Matilda, after the first shock of delight, wanted perversely nothing so much as to get as far away from Mr Scott-Thurlow as possible, but Roseanne had seen him too. She darted up to him and caught his sleeve.

‘Fancy seeing you here, Mr Scott-Thurlow—’ for once she had forgotten her shyness ‘—and Matilda’s with me…’

He took her hand and shook it gently and his voice was kind. ‘How delightful to see you again, Roseanne. Are you staying in town?’ He turned to his companion. ‘Rhoda, this is Roseanne Fox; we met in Dorset a few weeks ago.’ He smiled at Roseanne. ‘My fiancée, Rhoda Symes.’

He looked past her to where Matilda was waiting and his smile faded, indeed he looked angry but so fleetingly that watching him she decided that she had imagined it. There was nothing else to do but to join Roseanne, greet him politely and be introduced in her turn to the girl with him.

Rhoda Symes was everything that she wasn’t, reflected Matilda sadly, thinking of her own pleasant plumpness and kind of knowing that in the eyes of this girl she was just plain fat, size fourteen, wearing all the wrong make-up and with the wrong-coloured hair… All the same she gave the girl a friendly smile—if she was going to make Mr Scott-Thurlow a happy man, then she, Matilda, would make the best of it; she loved him too much to think otherwise.

The girl was lovely. Matilda supposed that in all fairness if she were a man she would undoubtedly fall for all that elegant beauty.

They stood and talked for a few minutes until Matilda observed that they still had almost the whole of the exhibition to see and since Roseanne was interested hadn’t they better get started?

She bade Mr Scott-Thurlow a colourless goodbye and smiled without guile at Rhoda Symes, trying not to see the very large diamond on her left hand—a hand which that lady flourished rather too prominently.

‘I say,’ said Roseanne excitedly, ‘isn’t she absolutely lovely? I wonder if we’ll get asked to the wedding?’ She added, not meaning to be rude, ‘Not you, of course.’

Matilda, contemplating a large oil-painting which she thought privately looked as though the artist had upset his paint pots over the canvas, agreed cheerfully to this remark; wild horses wouldn’t drag her to Mr Scott-Thurlow’s wedding—he was, as far as she was concerned, a closed book. Or so she told herself.

Roseanne’s godmother gave a dinner party on the following evening; just a few friends, the Honourable Mrs Venables had said, most of them unattached men of suitable age with a complement of safely married ladies; Roseanne must have her chance and a dinner party was a very good way of getting to know people. Matilda was to attend too although her hostess would have been happier not to have had the competition; she consoled herself with the thought that men didn’t care for such bright red hair.

Matilda did her best to look inconspicuous; she did her hair in a severe french pleat, wore an unassuming gown—grey crêpe and several years out of date—and stayed in the background as much as possible. Nevertheless she attracted the attention of the company, and since she was a nice, unassuming girl the ladies of the party liked her as well as the men. She did her best to see that Roseanne was a success and her godmother had to admit that Matilda hadn’t made any attempt to draw attention to herself. All the same, an excuse would have to be found for Roseanne to go without her to the dinner dance later that week, and Matilda, being told on the morning of that day that she looked poorly and perhaps it would be wise if she didn’t go out that evening, agreed for Roseanne’s sake that she had a very bad headache and an early night would do her the world of good.

Of course, during the days she was expected to accompany Roseanne wherever she had a fancy to go, leaving her godmother to pursue her own busy social life, and it was a day or so after the dinner dance that they found themselves in the National Gallery. It was while they were admiring some splendid examples of the Netherlandish school that the young man standing close by spoke to them, or rather to Roseanne.

‘Forgive me,’ he began, ‘I overheard you discussing this picture—you know something about it, do you not? Are you interested in oil-paintings of that period?’

When Roseanne nodded, her beaky nose quivering with the unexpectedness of it all, he asked, ‘You paint yourself?’ Then when she nodded again, ‘Then let me explain…’

Which he did at some length, taking her from one painting to the next with Matilda, intrigued, keeping discreetly in the background. He seemed all right; he had a nice open face, not good-looking, but his gaze was direct, and he had introduced himself and shaken hands. ‘Bernard Stevens,’ he told them, working as a picture restorer for a famous art gallery and painting when he had the time. Roseanne had to be prised away from him after half an hour or so but only after she had promised to meet him there on the following morning, ostensibly to discuss more paintings but Matilda, studying her face, thought that was only partly the reason.

‘You won’t tell Aunt Maud?’ begged Roseanne.

‘Roseanne, you’re twenty-two, old enough to decide whom you want to know. Of course I shan’t breathe a word.’

All the same she played discreet gooseberry the next morning, and again on the following afternoon, only now it was the Tate Gallery. She had been reassured to hear him mention the names of several people whom Roseanne’s godmother had talked of from time to time and he appeared well dressed and had good manners; she was no snob, but just supposing the gentle little flirtation turned into something more serious—she would have to answer to Lady Fox.

They were to go to the theatre on the next evening, quite a small party and Matilda found herself paired off with an elderly man, a widower who told her at great length about his late wife’s ill health, and during the interval, when she had hoped to escape him for a short while, he led her firmly to the bar where he fetched her a tonic and lemon without asking her what she would like. ‘I don’t approve of pretty young ladies drinking alcohol,’ he told her and, because she had a kind heart, she accepted it nicely and sipped at it. She really needed something strong. Vodka? She had never tasted it. Brandy and soda? She looked around her—everyone there appeared to be drinking gin and tonic or champagne.

She took another sip and while appearing attentive to her companion’s remarks—still about his wife too—glanced around her. There were some lovely dresses, and the grey crêpe was drowned in a sea of silks and satins. There was a vivid scarlet gown worn by someone with her back to Matilda and standing beside it, looking over the silk shoulder, was Mr Scott-Thurlow, watching her.

She went pale with the strength of her feelings at the sight of him and then blushed. It seemed impossible for her to look away but she managed it and she hadn’t smiled because he had looked unsmilingly at her.

She tossed off the tonic and lent a sympathetic ear to her companion’s description of his late wife’s asthma, murmuring in all the right places and not really hearing a word.

She went to bed later, feeling unhappy, longing for a scarlet gown in which she might dazzle Mr Scott-Thurlow and at the same time wanting to go home then and there. She even wept a little and then her common sense came to the rescue; scarlet would look hideous with her hair and no way could she go home and leave Roseanne just as the girl was beginning to find her feet—perhaps she would find romance too.

And it seemed likely; two days later, attending a preview of an up-and-coming portrait painter and this time with their hostess, Matilda was intrigued and delighted to see Bernard Stevens. He was with a friend of Mrs Venables and naturally enough was introduced, and presently he bore Roseanne off to make a tour of the rooms while Matilda stood between the two older ladies and listened with interest while Mrs Venables asked endless questions about Mr Stevens. The answers seemed to satisfy her and Matilda reflected that their month in London would make one of them happy, at least. That night after they had gone to bed Roseanne came along to her room, brimming over with excitement. She should get excited more often, thought Matilda, sitting up in bed, lending a sympathetic ear; it added a sparkle to Roseanne’s plain face; even the unfortunate nose seemed less prominent and her mouth had taken on a softer curve.

Bernard, Roseanne told her, now that he had made the acquaintance of her godmother, was going to find a way to meet her parents; her godmother was one of the few people her mother listened to, and Mrs Venables liked him. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ breathed Roseanne. ‘Our meeting like that? He thinks I’m pretty, only my clothes are wrong—you always said that too, didn’t you? He’s going to meet me one day and go with me to choose an outfit. I wish we were staying here forever.’

‘Well, if you want a super wedding you’ll have to go home to get ready for it, and the sooner you do that the sooner you can get married. Big weddings take an awful lot of organising.’

Which started Roseanne off again until she gave a final yawn and said goodnight, but on her way to the door she stopped. ‘I’m ever so glad it’s happened to me—I wish it could happen to you too.’

‘Nothing,’ declared Matilda in a falsely cheerful voice, ‘ever happens to me.’

She was wrong; fate had a testy ear tuned in to that kind of remark.

* * *

THEY HAD BEEN for a morning walk and now they were hurrying home as rain, threatening to be heavy, began to fall. There was a short cut to the house through narrow streets lined with small, rather shabby shops and used a great deal by drivers avoiding the main roads. They were turning into it when they saw half a dozen people standing on the edge of the pavement looking down at something.

‘I’m going to see what it is,’ said Matilda and despite Roseanne’s peevish reluctance went to look. A small dog was lying in the gutter, wet, pitifully thin, and also obviously injured.

No one was doing anything; Matilda bent down and put out a gentle hand. ‘Leave it alone, miss,’ said a large untidy man roughly. ‘‘’E’ll bite yer—’it by a car, ’e’ll be dead in no time.’

Matilda flashed a glance at him and got on to her knees, the better to look at the little beast. It cowered and showed its teeth and then put out a tongue and licked her hand.

‘How long has it been here?’ she demanded.

‘‘Arf an hour…’

‘Then not one of you has done anything to help it?’ She turned to look at them. ‘Why, you’re nothing but a bunch of heartless brutes.’

‘‘’Ere, that won’t do, lady—it’s only a stray, ’arf starved too.’

No one had noticed the car which drew up on the other side of the street; Mr Scott-Thurlow was beside her, bending his great height, lifting her to her feet before anyone had spoken again.

‘Oh, dear, oh, dear,’ he said softly, ‘Miss ffinch helping lame dogs…’

‘Don’t you start,’ she warned him fiercely. ‘This poor creature’s been here for half an hour and no one has lifted a finger.’

Mr Scott-Thurlow wasted no time. ‘Get me a piece of cardboard,’ he ordered the man nearest him, ‘flat, mind you, and please be quick about it.’

The people around suddenly became helpful; suggestions filled the air, even offers of help, unspecified. The cardboard was brought back and everyone stood aside watching; they weren’t unkind deliberately, only indifferent—if the big gent liked to get bitten by a dog that was going to die anyway, that was his look-out and they might as well be there to see it.

He wasn’t bitten; he slid the cardboard under the dog, lifted it with the animal trembling on it and carried it across the street to his car, closely followed by Matilda and Roseanne. Matilda turned back halfway across to address the untidy man.

‘Now you know what to do next time an animal gets hurt,’ she told him, and added kindly, ‘I dare say you didn’t think, did you? Standing and looking at something that needs to be done is such a waste of time.’

She smiled at him and he smiled back, mostly because he hadn’t seen green eyes like hers before.

Roseanne was already in the car, sitting in the back. ‘Get inside beside me,’ ordered Mr Scott-Thurlow, ‘and I’ll lay the cardboard on your lap.’

‘A vet?’ asked Matilda. The little dog looked in a bad way.

‘Yes.’

He had nothing more to say until he turned into a side-street and got out. ‘Stay there, I’ll be back,’ he told her and opened a side-door in a long brick wall. He came back almost at once with a burly, bearded man who nodded at Matilda and cast an eye over the dog.

‘Let’s have him in,’ he suggested, and lifted the cardboard neatly off her knees. ‘Coming too?’

Matilda got out of the car, but Roseanne shook her head. ‘I’d rather stay here…’

Mr Scott-Thurlow held the door open and they went in one after the other down a long passage with the surgery at its end. ‘You wait here,’ the vet told her. ‘I’ll do an X-ray first—you can give a hand, James.’

Matilda sat in the waiting-room on a rather hard chair, cherishing the knowledge that his name was James. It suited him, though she doubted if anyone had ever called him Jimmy or even Jim. Time passed unheeded since her thoughts were entirely taken up with James Scott-Thurlow; when he joined her she looked at him mistily, shaken out of her daydreams.

‘The little dog?’

‘A fractured pelvis, cracked ribs, starved and very, very dirty. He’ll live.’

‘May he stay here? What will happen to him? Will it take long? If no one wants him I’m sure Father will let me have him…’

‘He’ll stay here until he’s fit and he’ll be well looked after. I should suppose he’ll be fit, more or less, in a month or six weeks.’ Mr Scott-Thurlow paused and then went on in a resigned voice, ‘I have a Labrador who will be delighted to have a companion.’

He was rewarded by an emerald blaze of gratitude. ‘Oh, how good of you; I’m not sure what kind of a dog he is but I’m certain that when he’s well again you’ll be proud of him.’

Mr Scott-Thurlow doubted this but forbore to mention it. ‘Were you on your way back to Kensington? I’ll run you there; Mrs Venables may be getting anxious.’

‘Oh, I don’t suppose so,’ said Matilda airily. ‘We may do as we please during the day, you know, unless there is some suitable young man coming to lunch. Do you know Mrs Venables?’

They had reached the door but he made no move to open it. ‘I have a slight acquaintance. Rhoda knows her quite well, I believe.’

‘Oh, then I expect you will be at the dinner party next week—a kind of farewell before we go back to Abner Magna.’

He had categorically refused to accompany Rhoda when she had told him of the invitation. Now, on second thoughts, he decided that he would go with her after all.

He opened the door. ‘Then we shall meet again,’ he said as they reached the car. Before he drove off he reached for the phone and said into it, ‘I shall be half an hour late—warn everyone, will you?’

He drove off without a word, leaving Matilda guessing. Was he a barrister, defending some important client, she wondered, or someone in the banking world, making decisions about another person’s money? It would be a clerk at the other end, middle-aged, rather shabby probably with a large family of growing children and a mortgage. Her imagination ran riot until he stopped outside the Kensington house, bade them a polite goodbye and drove off.

‘He doesn’t talk much, does he?’ Roseanne wanted to know. ‘I think I’m a bit—well—scared of him.’

Matilda looked at her in astonishment. ‘Scared? Of him? Whatever for? I dare say he was wrapped up in some business transaction; of course he didn’t want to talk. Anyway you’ll change your mind next week—he’s coming to your godmother’s dinner party, so we shall see him then.’