Part 2 (1/2)

Was.h.i.+ng a lettuce and cutting up the things to go with it was really almost as much trouble as cooking a hot meal, and she herself had never got over an old-fas.h.i.+oned dislike of eating raw green leaves. When her husband had been alive they had always had a hot meal in the evenings, winter and summer alike. He needed it after a day in the City. But now he was gone and Rhoda had been living with them for nearly ten years now and everyone said how nice it was for them both, to have each other, though of course she had the children too. Malcolm was a good solid young man, very much like his father, reliable and, although of course she never admitted it, a little dull. He did not seem to mind about the hot meal in the evenings. But Deirdre was different, clever and moody, rather like she herself had been at the same age, before marriage to a good dull man and life in a suburb had steadied her.

'Shall I lay the table?' Rhoda asked, appearing in the kitchen doorway.

'Oh, thank you, that would be a help. I've put the things out on the trolley.'

'You've forgotten side plates,' said Rhoda evenly, taking four from the plate-rack.

'Have I? Well, I hadn't really finished putting out the things. I just put out some to be getting on with. Then I thought it would be better to start was.h.i.+ng the lettuce.'

Rhoda wheeled the trolley into the dining-room and began to lay the table. It irritated her to see Mabel in the kitchen, doing things so vaguely and inefficiently. Sometimes it was all she could do not to interfere, but they had had 'words' about this when Rhoda first came to live with the Swans and Rhoda was sensible enough to realize that it was Mabel's house and she must be allowed to do things as she liked. For, after all, they got on so well together. They both liked church work, bridge and listening to the wireless in the evenings. And then they looked so alike, both tall and dark with brown eyes; it was difficult to believe that Rhoda was the elder, for she was neater and better dressed, better preserved, one might almost have said. But then she had not been married and had two children. She had always lived very comfortably, keeping house for her parents, living alone for a short time after their deaths, and then coming to live here with Mabel and the children. It was a very satisfactory arrangement and Rhoda was not in the least envious of her sister's fuller life, for now that they were both in their fifties there seemed to be very little difference between them. She would perhaps have liked what she called 'the experience of marriagea vague phrase which seemed to cover all those aspects which one didn't talk about, but she would not have liked to have had it with poor Gregory Swan. She was still sometimes faintly interested in men, as she was now in Alaric Lydgate, but in what way she hardly knew. She certainly did not think of marriage any more.

Every evening there was the arrival of Malcolm and Deirdre to look forward to. After a day at work they were, or should have been, full of interesting little sc.r.a.ps of gossip and information about this and that, and if they sometimes seemed uncommunicative and withdrawn it was quite easy to draw them out with a little tactful questioning and perseverence.

Malcolm came in now as she was laying the table. He was a pleasant-looking young man of twenty-five with brownish hair and eyes and nothing particularly distinctive about him. He put his bowler hat and neat flat brief-case down on the hall table and went into the downstairs cloakroom to wash his hands.

'Had a good day?' Rhoda called out.

'Not too bad, thanks,' he replied, as always, and then went through to the kitchen to get his usual gla.s.s of beer.

Rhoda went into the hall and took up his evening paper which was lying neatly folded on top of his brief-case. There had been a nasty murder, or series of murders ; bodies of women had been discovered in a house in a not very nice part of London, and Rhoda, in common with a great many people in all walks of life, was anxious to read about the latest developments. It was dark in the hall, for the stained-gla.s.s windows on either side of the door did not let in much light, but she sat down and began to read avidly.

'Deirdre's rather late tonight,' said Mabel, pa.s.sing through to the dining-room with a dish of salad in her hand.

'Mm, yes,' murmured Rhoda, turning a page of the newspaper. ' They noticed a strong smell, it says, no wonder.'

'As we are just having salad, I think we had better start without her,' Mabel went on. '1 expect she'll be in soon,'

Deirdre was at that moment sitting on top of a bus which was moving very slowly along a suburban road. The drinks she had had seemed to have sharpened her perceptions and she looked about her in a detached way, noticing her surroundings as if she were a stranger visiting the neighbourhood for the first time. But she was not yet detached enough to appreciate any of the beauties of the scene. The houses seemed to her ugly and their well-kept gardens conventional and uninteresting. The wallflowers and tulips were the same every year and the lilacs and laburnums obviously could not grow in real country gardens. Even the magnolias were not the right kind, with s.h.i.+ny leaves and huge creamy flowers, which one saw growing against Georgian houses in country villages.

She got off the bus and hurried along her own road. Mr. Dulke who lived opposite, was cutting his hedge, but she pretended not to see him, walking along with her head bent, fearful of the facetious greeting or comment that might come. Towards the end of the road the houses became larger and there was the church, a modern red brick building with a vicarage to match. The Swans' house stood back from the road and the front garden was overgrown with trees and shrubs. Just inside the gate was a guelder rose bush; Deirdre had loved the greenish-white flower b.a.l.l.s when she was a child, but now the bush seemed to need pruning and the flowers, when they came, were full of green fly. Ah, my childhood, my innocent childhood, she thought, remembering a Tchekov play which she had recently seen. In the middle of the garden path lay a headless doll, no doubt left there by one of the Lovell children from next door. Deirdre pushed it aside with her foot.

'Is that you, dear?' Her mother's voice greeted her as she opened the front door.

'Yes. I hope you haven't waited supper?'

'No, we were just going to start.'

In the dining-room Rhoda and Malcolm were already sitting at the table contemplating their salads.

'I had salad for lunch,' said Deirdre.

'Oh, did you, dear? I hope you don't mind having it again.'

'Well, it's not madly exciting, is it.'

'You could have an egg,' her aunt suggested.

'I don't feel like an egg,' said Deirdre unhelpfully. 'I'd like something different.'

There was an expectant silence round the table.

'Some rice, all oily and saffron yellow, with aubergines and red peppers and lots of garlic,' went on Deirdre extravagantly.

'Oh, well, dear, it's no good wis.h.i.+ng for that sort of thing Lere'said her mother with an air of relief.

'You look rather pink in the face, dear sister,' said Malcolm in a jocular tone. 'Almost as if you'd been drinking.'

'I've had three gla.s.ses of sherry,' said Deirdre rather defiantly. 'I was at the new Library place-Felix's Folly we call it-and there was a sort of party there.'

'I suppose it was for anthropologists,' said Rhoda, bringing out the word with difficulty.

'Yes, there were quite a lot there.'

'What about the one you rather like-was he there?' Mabel asked.

'The one I like?' said Deirdre coldly. 'I can't think who you can mean. I don't like any of them particularly.'

'I thought there was one who lent you some notes or something,' floundered Mrs. Swan. 'I'm sure you said something about it,'

'One of them may once have been a little more polite than the others,' said Deirdre, 'but I don't think I particularly liked him for it,'

'I expect the right one will come along one of these days,' said Rhoda with an aunt's confidence. She liked to think of her niece as being courted by suitable young men, though, from what she had heard of them, she rather doubted whether anthropologists could be so regarded. There was something disquieting about all this going out to Africa to study the natives, she felt. She would have preferred to see Deirdre married to one of Malcolm's friends and comfortably settled in a nice little house nearby.

'You must make us some of this rice you were talking about,' said Mabel quickly. 'I dare say it is delicious and if we weren't going out to bridge or seeing Father Tullivcr about anything it wouldn't really matter about the garlic, would it, Rhoda?' she turned to her sister, anxious to prevent her from making any more remarks about the right young man coming along. Spinsters didn't really know how to deal with young people, and even mothers said the wrong thing often enough.

'All right, I'll get the things in Soho one day,' said Deirdre quite graciously.

'Do you happen to know whether Mr. Lydgate's sister lives rent free with that Miss Clovis?' Rhoda asked.

'Why ever should I? You'd better ask Mr. Lydgate,' said Deirdre. 'Though somehow I can't imagine Miss Clovis letting anyone have anything for nothing.'

'It's a wonder she doesn't live with her brother,' mused Rhoda. 'Of course the house is smaller than this one, but there would certainly be room.'

The older woman speculated on this, while Malcolm finished his meal and left the room. He usually spent the evenings pottering about with his car or at the local club, where the young men of the neighbourhood gathered for mysterious manly purposes. Deirdre was reminded of the African men's a.s.sociations which she had read about in the course of her studies. But the object of many of these seemed to be to intimidate the women, whereas here women were allowed to belong to some sections of the club and might almost be considered as one of its amenities. Perhaps they intimidated the men. Certainly they often led them captive in marriage and Malcolm had recently become engaged to a girl he had met when playing tennis. Deirdre almost spoke her thoughts aloud, but then she realized that neither her mother nor her aunt would appreciate her points and would think she was trying to be 'cynical', which they thought a pity in a young woman of nineteen with a happy home and all her life before her.

When they had finished the meal Deirdre offered to help her mother with the was.h.i.+ng-up.

'No, dear, don't you bother,' said Mabel. 'You've been working all day, Rhoda and I can manage it.'

'You always say that, Mabel,' Rhoda reminded her when they were alone together at the sink. ' What will she do when she has a home of her own?'

'I expect she'll leave everything until she has no more clean crockery left,' said Mabel, who sometimes felt as if she would like to do this herself.

'I can't settle down to listen to the wireless when I know there's was.h.i.+ng-up to be done,' said Rhoda. 'It really worries me.'

'But there are worse things to worry about,' said her sister.