A Gathering Storm(57)

‘Yes, of course I am,’ she said.

‘Oh, this is silly. I’ll get Peter,’ Angie said, wrenching open the door and marching out. A moment later Bea heard the taxi move away and Peter followed Angie into the room.

‘Ashton,’ he said. ‘It’s good to see you.’ He seemed nervous, as though the air were charged with a strange current.

‘I’ll order some tea,’ Angie said, stepping over to the bell. Later, Bea arrived at the exact word for the expression on her face. It was smug.

Rafe left around six, soon after Mrs Wincanton arrived home, greeting him with enthusiasm. ‘I’m afraid I’m due back on duty,’ he told her. ‘I’d have loved to stay longer.’

‘I’ll write to you, I promise,’ he said to Beatrice when she saw him to the door. After he’d left she leant against the front door and tried not to cry When she returned to the drawing room, Oenone and Angie were arguing about Angie’s social arrangements. Peter muttered some excuse and disappeared past her upstairs.

‘I hope Peter looked after you today,’ Mrs Wincanton said, taking off her gloves. ‘Oh dear, obviously not. What have you done to your poor leg?’ Beatrice assured her that she was all right and Mrs Wincanton went off to change.

Angelina was reading the Bystander and smoking a cigarette as though nothing had happened. Beatrice looked for signs of guilt or anxiety in her, anything that would give reality to the scene she’d broken in on that afternoon. Perhaps it was all some sort of dream, she thought wildly, or perhaps the whole thing meant nothing at all. Maybe it hadn’t to Angie, that would be typical, but she knew in her bones that Rafe would not have been acting lightly.

Just now, Angelina seemed more bothered by the fact that her mother had forbidden the outing to Quaglino’s. She threw her magazine on the floor with a sigh.

‘I’m quite sure Richard Bestbridge is not the kind of companion Mrs Marlow would regard as suitable for her daughter,’ Angie said, mimicking her mother. In fact, as Beatrice understood it, the reason was more complicated. Her mother had bought tickets for the Priestley play and booked a table for them all to have supper out first.

Angie yawned. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I can’t think why I’m quite so tired. Must be the thought of Music at Night. How did you get on with Pete earlier? Did he bore you to death?’

‘Not at all,’ Beatrice replied, a little stiffly. ‘He knows so much. It makes one feel very humble.’

She walked upstairs in a trance. Normally she’d have been enchanted to see a show, but not tonight. They got to the theatre somehow, but she hardly concentrated on a word. Her mind’s eye was on a more dramatic tableau. Angie, Rafe, those clasped hands, the adoring expression on Rafe’s face – yes, it had been adoring, she knew that now. Round and round in her head the picture went. She felt sick.

‘Are you all right, Beatrice?’ Oenone Wincanton asked her in the interval. ‘You look a little peaky to me.’

‘Just tired, thank you,’ she lied. ‘I’m really enjoying it.’

When she went to bed she locked the door again. The last thing she wanted was Angelina, coming in with her questions and her confidences. She lay awake for some time. Downstairs, doors opened and closed. There were footsteps and deep male voices, then Oenone’s laughter. She must have drowsed, for when she awoke, she heard the front door bang with a solid, final sound. More footsteps, people going to bed, then just darkness and silence. No, there was the slightest sound. There, again. Someone was trying the door of her room. ‘Beatrice?’ A male voice. Low. She said nothing and waited fearfully for whoever it was to go away. Eventually the floorboards creaked, and somewhere nearby a door closed. It was a long time before Beatrice slept, and then, it was fitfully.

She rose early, packed, and departed before breakfast. The letter she left Mrs Wincanton was brief but polite, her excuse admittedly a weak one, that she felt she ought to get home as she hadn’t seen her parents for months.

There were recriminations. Mrs Wincanton wrote her mother a hurt letter, saying she hoped they hadn’t offended Beatrice. Mrs Marlow wrote back apologizing for Beatrice’s rudeness and blaming her daughter’s being out of sorts on exhaustion.

Then, the day before Christmas, a letter arrived for Beatrice from Rafe. She took it upstairs and read it in her bedroom, her tears splashing onto the paper.





Chapter 13


All Christmas she was not herself. Christmas Day passed in St Florian with the usual rituals, her mother attending early Mass before accompanying her husband and daughter to the Anglican service, then the fussing over a pair of pheasants Mr Marlow had been given by Colonel Brooker, and which he insisted that his wife carve carefully to pick out the shot. Beatrice pinched the palm of her hand, listening to his whining voice with a rising anger. How could she care about food when her world had come to an end?