It had been through this turning of phrases that Flossie’s husband and her secretary came to understand each other more thoroughly. Flossie was asked by a weekly journal to contribute an article on the theme of women workers in the back country. She was flattered, said Terence, but a bit uneasy. She came into the study and talked a good deal about the beauty of women’s work in the home. She said she thought the cocky-farmer’s wife led a supremely beautiful existence because it was devoted to the basic fundamentals (she occasionally coined such phrases) of life. ‘A noble life,’ Flossie said, ringing for Markins, ‘they also serve –’ But the quotation faltered before the picture of any cocky-farmer’s wife, whose working-day is fourteen hours long and comparable only to that of a man under a sentence of hard labour. ‘Look up something appropriate, Miss Lynne. Arthur darling, you’ll help her. I want to stress the sanctity of women’s work in the high country. Unaided, alone. You might say matriarchal,’ she threw at them as Markins came in with the cup of patent food she took at eleven o’clock. Flossie sipped it and walked up and down the room throwing out unrelated words: ‘True sphere … splendour … heritage … fitting mate.’ She was called to the telephone but found time to pause in the door and say, ‘Away you go, both of you. Quotations, remember, but not too highbrow, Arthur darling. Something sweet and natural and telling.’ She waved her hand and was gone.
The article they wrote was frankly heretical. They had stood side by side in the window and looked over the plateau to the ranges, now a clean thin blue in the mid-morning sunshine.
‘When I look out there,’ Arthur Rubrick had said, ‘it always strikes me as being faintly comic that we should talk of “settling” on the plateau and of “bringing in new country”. All we do is to move over the surface of a few hills. There is nothing new about them. Primal, yes, and almost unblotted by such new things as men and sheep. Essentially back among the earlier unhuman ages.’ He added that perhaps this was the reason why no one had been able to write very well about this country. It had been possible, he said, to write of the human beings moving about parasitically over the skin of the country, but the edge of modern idiom was turned when it was tried against the implacable surface of the plateau. He said that some older and therefore fresher idiom was needed, ‘something that has the hard edge of a spring wind in it, something comparable to the Elizabethan mode.’ From this conversation was born his idea of writing about the plateau in a prose that smacked of Hakluyt’s Voyages. ‘It sounds affected,’ said Terence, ‘but he only did it as a kind of game. I thought it really did give one the sensation of this country. But it was only a game.’
‘A fascinating game,’ said Alleyn. ‘What else did he write?’
Five more essays, she said, that were redrafted many times and never really completed. Very often he wasn’t up to working on them, and Flossie’s odd jobs absorbed his energy when he was well. There were many occasions when he fagged over her speeches and reports, or dragged himself to meetings and parties when he should have been resting. He had a morbid dread of admitting to his wife that he was unwell. ‘It’s so tiresome for her,’ he used to say. ‘She’s too good about it, too kind.’
‘And she was kind,’ Ursula declared. ‘She took endless trouble.’
‘It was the wrong kind of trouble,’ Fabian said. ‘She oozed long-suffering patronage.’
‘I didn’t think so. Nor did he.’
‘Did he, Terry?’ asked Fabian.
‘He was extraordinarily loyal. That’s all he ever said, “It’s too good of her, too kind.” But, of course, it wasn’t much fun being the object of that sort of compassion. And then –’ Terence paused.
‘Then what, Terry?’ said Fabian.
‘Nothing. That’s all.’
‘But it isn’t quite all, is it? Something happened, didn’t it? There was some crisis, wasn’t there? What was he worrying about that last fortnight before she died? He was worried, you know. What was it?’
‘He was feeling ill. He had an idea things were going wrong in the background. Mrs Rubrick obviously was upset. I see now that it was the trouble with Cliff Johns and Markins that had put her in a difficult mood. She didn’t tell him about Cliff and Markins, I’m sure, but she dropped dark hints about ingratitude and disappointment. She was always doing it. She kept saying that she stood alone, that other women in her position had somebody to whom they could turn and that she had nobody. He sat over there in the window, listening, with his hand shading his eyes, just taking it. I could have murdered her.’
This statement was met by a scandalized hush.
‘A commonplace exaggeration,’ said Fabian at last. ‘I’ve used it repeatedly myself in speaking of Flossie. “I could have murdered her.” I suppose she got home with her cracks at Uncle Arthur, didn’t she? Every time a coconut?’
‘Yes,’ said Terence. ‘She got home.’
A longer silence followed. Alleyn felt certain that Terence had reached a point in her story where something was to be withheld from her listeners. The suggestion of antagonism, never long absent from her manner, now deepened. She set her lips and, after a quick look into the shadow where he sat, took up her work again with an air of finality.
‘Funny,’ said Fabian suddenly. ‘I thought she seemed to be rather come-hither-ish with Uncle Arthur during that last week. There was a hint of skittishness which I found extremely awe-inspiring. And, I may say, extremely unusual. You must have noticed it, all of you. What was she up to?’
‘Honestly, Fabian darling,’ said Ursula, ‘you are too difficult. At one moment you find fault with Auntie Floss for neglecting Uncle Arthur and at the next you complain because she was nice to him. What should she have done, poor darling, to please you and Terry?’
‘How old was she?’ Douglas blurted out. ‘Forty-seven, wasn’t it? Well, I mean to say, she was jolly spry for her age, wasn’t she? I mean to say … well, I mean, there it was … I suppose –’
‘Let it pass, Douglas,’ Fabian said kindly. ‘We know what you mean. But I can’t think that Florence’s sudden access of playfulness was entirely due to natural or even pathological causes. There seemed to me to be a distinct suggestion of proprietary rights. What I have I hold. The bitch, if you will excuse the usage, Douglas, in the marital manger.’
‘It’s entirely inexcusable,’ said Ursula, ‘and so are you, Fab.’
‘I don’t mean to show off and be tiresome, darling, I promise you, I don’t. You can’t deny that she was different during that last week. As sour as a lemon with all of us, and suddenly so, so keen on Uncle Arthur. She watched him too. Indeed she looked at him as if he was some objet d’art that she’d forgotten she possessed until someone else came