Taken At The Flood

She shivered.

‘Don’t say such dreadful things.’

‘Well—perhaps not a knife. Strychnine in the soup.’

She stared at him, her mouth tremulous.

‘You’re joking…’

He became serious again.

‘Don’t worry, Rosaleen. I’ll look after you. They’ve got me to deal with.’

She said, stumbling over the words, ‘If it’s true what you say—about their hating us—hating me—why don’t we go to London? We’d be safe there—away from them all.’

‘The country’s good for you, my girl. You know it makes you ill being in London.’

‘That was when the bombs were there—the bombs.’ She shivered, closed her eyes. ‘I’ll never forget—never…’

‘Yes, you will.’ He took her gently by the shoulders, shook her slightly. ‘Snap out of it, Rosaleen. You were badly shocked, but it’s over now. There are no more bombs. Don’t think about it. Don’t remember. The doctor said country air and a country life for a long time to come. That’s why I want to keep you away from London.’

‘Is that really why? Is it, David? I thought—perhaps—’

‘What did you think?’

Rosaleen said slowly:

‘I thought perhaps it was because of her you wanted to be here…’

‘Her?’

‘You know the one I mean. The girl the other night. The one who was in the Wrens.’

His face was suddenly black and stern.

‘Lynn? Lynn Marchmont.’

‘She means something to you, David.’

‘Lynn Marchmont? She’s Rowley’s girl. Good old stay-at-home Rowley. That bovine slow-witted good-looking ox.’

‘I watched you talking to her the other night.’

‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Rosaleen.’

‘And you’ve seen her since, haven’t you?’

‘I met her near the farm the other morning when I was out riding.’

‘And you’ll meet her again.’

‘Of course I’ll always be meeting her! This is a tiny place. You can’t go two steps without falling over a Cloade. But if you think I’ve fallen for Lynn Marchmont, you’re wrong. She’s a proud stuck-up unpleasant girl without a civil tongue in her head. I wish old Rowley joy of her. No, Rosaleen, my girl, she’s not my type.’

She said doubtfully, ‘Are you sure, David?’

‘Of course I’m sure.’

She said half-timidly:

‘I know you don’t like my laying out the cards… But they come true, they do indeed. There was a girl bringing trouble and sorrow—a girl would come from over the sea. There was a dark stranger, too, coming into our lives, and bringing danger with him. There was the death card, and—’

‘You and your dark strangers!’ David laughed. ‘What a mass of superstition you are. Don’t have any dealings with a dark stranger, that’s my advice to you.’

He strolled out of the house laughing, but when he was away from the house, his face clouded over and he frowned to himself, murmuring:

‘Bad luck to you, Lynn. Coming home from abroad and upsetting the apple cart.’

For he realized that at this very moment he was deliberately making a course on which he might hope to meet the girl he had just apostrophized so savagely.

Rosaleen watched him stroll away across the garden and out through the small gate that gave on to a public footpath across the fields. Then she went up to her bedroom and looked through the clothes in her wardrobe. She always enjoyed touching and feeling her new mink coat. To think she should own a coat like that—she could never quite get over the wonder of it. She was in her bedroom when the parlourmaid came up to tell her that Mrs Marchmont had called.

Adela was sitting in the drawing-room with her lips set tightly together and her heart beating at twice its usual speed. She had been steeling herself for several days to make an appeal to Rosaleen but true to her nature had procrastinated. She had also been bewildered by finding that Lynn’s attitude had unaccountably changed and that she was now rigidly opposed to her mother seeking relief from her anxieties by asking Gordon’s widow for a loan.

However another letter from the bank manager that morning had driven Mrs Marchmont into positive action. She could delay no longer. Lynn had gone out early, and Mrs Marchmont had caught sight of David Hunter walking along the footpath—so the coast was clear. She particularly wanted to get Rosaleen alone, without David, rightly judging that Rosaleen alone would be a far easier proposition.

Nevertheless she felt dreadfully nervous as she waited in the sunny drawing-room, though she felt slightly better when Rosaleen came in with what Mrs Marchmont always thought of as her ‘half-witted look’ more than usually marked.

‘I wonder,’ thought Adela to herself, ‘if the blast did it or if she was always like that?’

Rosaleen stammered.

‘Oh, g-g-ood morning. Is there anything? Do sit down.’

‘Such a lovely morning,’ said Mrs Marchmont brightly. ‘All my early tulips are out. Are yours?’

The girl stared at her vacantly.

‘I don’t know.’

What was one to do, thought Adela, with someone who didn’t talk gardening or dogs—those standbys of rural conversation?

Aloud she said, unable to help the tinge of acidity that crept into her tone:

‘Of course you have so many gardeners—they attend to all that.’

‘I believe we’re shorthanded. Old Mullard wants two more men, he says. But there seems a terrible shortage still of labour.’

The words came out with a kind of glib parrot-like delivery—rather like a child who repeats what it has heard a grown-up person say.