Grave Mistake

He really was an extremely good-looking boy, thought Verity, but she could see, without for a moment accepting the disparagement, what Sybil had meant by her central European remark. He was an exotic. He looked like a Latin member of the jet set dressed by an English tailor. But his manner was unaffected as well as assured and his face alive with a readiness to be amused.

‘Miss Preston,’ he said, ‘I gather you’re not only a godmother but expected to be a fairy one. Are you going to wave your wand and give us your blessing?’

He put his arm around Prunella and talked away cheerfully about how he’d bullied her into accepting him. Verity thought he was exalted by his conquest and that he would be quite able to manage not only his wife but if need be his mother-in-law as well.

‘I expect Prue’s confided her misgivings,’ he said, ‘about her mama being liable to cut up rough over us. I don’t quite see why she shoud take against me in such a big way, but perhaps that’s insufferable. Anyway, I hope you don’t feel I’m not a good idea?’ He looked quickly at her and added, ‘But then, of course, you don’t know me so that was a pretty gormless remark, wasn’t it?’

‘The early impression,’ said Verity, ‘is not unfavourable.’

‘Well, thank the Lord for that,’ said Gideon.

‘Darling,’ breathed Prunella, ‘she’s coming to Greengages with us. You are, Godma, you know you are. To temper the wind. Sort of.’

‘That’s very kind of her,’ he said and bowed to Verity.

Verity knew she had been out-manoeuvred, but on the whole did not resent it. She saw them shoot off down the drive. It had been settled that they would visit Greengages on the coming Saturday but not, as Prunella put it, for a cabbage-water soup and minced grass luncheon. Gideon knew of a super restaurant en route.

Verity was left with a feeling of having spent a day during which unsought events converged upon her and brought with them a sense of mounting unease, of threats, even. She suspected that the major ingredient of this discomfort was an extreme reluctance to suffer another confrontation with Basil Schramm.

The following two days were uneventful but Thursday brought Mrs Jim to Keys for her weekly attack upon floors and furniture. She reported that Claude Carter kept very much to his room up at Quintern, helped himself to the food left out for him and, she thought, didn’t answer the telephone. Beryl, who was engaged to sleep in while Sybil Foster was away, had said she didn’t fancy doing so with that Mr Claude in residence. In the upshot the difficulty had been solved by Bruce who offered to sleep in, using a coachman’s room over the garage formerly occupied by a chauffeur-handyman.

‘I knew Mrs Foster wouldn’t have any objections to that,’ said Mrs Jim, with a stony glance out of the window.

‘Perhaps, though, she ought just to be asked, don’t you think?’

‘He’s done it,’ said Mrs Jim sparsely. ‘Bruce. He rung her up.’

‘At Greengages?’

‘That’s right, miss. He’s been over there to see her,’ she added. ‘Once a week. To take flowers and get orders. By bus. Of a Saturday. She pays.’

Verity knew that she would be expected by her friends to snub Mrs Jim for speaking in this cavalier manner of an employer but she preferred not to notice.

‘Oh, well,’ she generalized, ‘you’ve done everything you can, Mrs Jim.’ She hesitated for a moment and then said, ‘I’m going over there on Saturday.’

After a fractional pause Mrs Jim said, ‘Are you, miss? That’s very kind of you, I’m sure,’ and switched on the vacuum-cleaner. ‘You’ll be able to see for yourself,’ she shouted above the din.

Verity nodded and returned to the study. But what? she wondered. What shall I be able to see?

V

Gideon’s super restaurant turned out to be within six miles of Greengages. It seemed to be some sort of club of which he was a member and was of an exalted character with every kind of discreet attention and very good food. Verity seldom lunched at this level and she enjoyed herself. For the first time she wondered what Gideon’s occupation in life might be. She also remembered that Prunella was something of a partie.

At half past two they arrived at Greengages. It was a converted Edwardian mansion approached by an avenue, sheltered by a stand of conifers and surrounded by ample lawns in which flower-beds had been cut like graves.

There were a number of residents strolling about with visitors or sitting under brilliant umbrellas on exterior furnishers’ contraptions.

‘She does know we’re coming, doesn’t she?’ Verity asked. She had begun to feel apprehensive.

‘You and me, she knows,’ said Prunella. ‘I didn’t mention Gideon. Actually.’

‘Oh, Prue!’

‘I thought you might sort of ease him in,’ Prue whispered.

‘I really don’t think –’

‘Nor do I,’ said Gideon. ‘Darling, why can’t we just –’

‘There she is!’ cried Verity. ‘Over there beyond the calceolarias and lobelia under an orange brolly. She’s waving. She’s seen us.’

‘Godma V, please. Gideon and I’ll sit in the car and when you wave we’ll come. Please.’

Verity thought, I’ve eaten their astronomical luncheon and drunk their champagne so now I turn plug-ugly and refuse? ‘All right,’ she said, ‘but don’t blame me if it goes haywire.’

She set off across the lawn.

Nobody has invented a really satisfactory technique for the gradual approach of people who have already exchanged greetings from afar. Continue to grin while a grin dwindles into a grimace? Assume a sudden absorption in the surroundings? Make as if sunk in meditation? Break into a joyous canter? Shout? Whistle? Burst, even, into song?

Verity tried none of these methods. She walked fast and when she got within hailing distance cried, ‘There you are!’

Sybil had the advantage in so far as she wore enormous dark sunglasses. She waved and smiled and pointed, as if in mock astonishment or admiration at Verity and when she arrived extended her arms for an embrace.

‘Darling Verry!’ she cried. ‘You’ve come after all.’ She waved Verity into a canvas chair, seemed to gaze at her fixedly for an uneasy moment or two and then said with a change of voice, ‘Whose car’s that? Don’t tell me. It’s Gideon Markos’s. He’s driven you both over. You needn’t say anything. They’re engaged!’

This, in a way, was a relief. Verity, for once, was pleased by Sybil’s prescience. ‘Well, yes,’ she said, ‘they are. And honestly, Syb, there doesn’t seem to me to be anything against it.’

‘In that case,’ said Sybil, all cordiality spent, ‘why are they going on like this? Skulking in the car and sending you to soften me up. If you call that the behaviour of a civilized young man! Prue would never be like that on her own initiative. He’s persuaded her.’

‘The boot’s on the other foot. He was all for tackling you himself.’

‘Cheek! Thick-skinned push. One knows where he got that from.’

‘Where?’

‘God knows.’

‘You’ve just said you do.’

‘Don’t quibble, darling,’ said Sybil.

‘I can’t make out what, apart from instinctive promptings, sets you against Gideon. He’s intelligent, eminently presentable, obviously rich –’

‘Yes, and where does it come from?’

‘– and, which is the only basically important bit, he seems to be a young man of good character and in love with Prue.’

‘John Swingletree’s devoted to her. Utterly devoted. And she was –’ Sybil boggled for a moment and then said loudly – ‘she was getting to be very fond of him.’