‘He’s never been able to do without me. Even when I was little. Nanny and I and my governess all following the drum. So many countries and journeys. And then after the war when he was given all those special jobs: Vienna and Rome and Paris. I never went to school because he hated the idea of separation.’
‘All wrong, of course. Only half a life.’
‘No, no, no, that’s not true, honestly. It was a wonderfully rich life. I saw and heard and learnt all sorts of splendid things other girls miss.’
‘All the same …’
‘No, honestly, it was grand.’
‘You should have been allowed to get under your own steam.’
‘It wasn’t a case of being allowed. I was allowed almost anything I wanted. And when I did get under my own steam just see what happened! He was sent with that mission to Singapore and I stayed in Grenoble and took a course at the University. He was delayed and delayed … and I found out afterwards that he was wretchedly at a loose end. And then … it was while he was there … he met Kitty.’
Lacklander closed his well-kept doctor’s hand over the lower half of his face and behind it made an indeterminate sound.
‘Well,’ Rose said, ‘it turned out as badly as it possibly could, and it goes on getting worse, and if I’d been there I don’t think it would have happened.’
‘Why not? He’d have been just as likely to meet her. And even if he hadn’t, my heavenly and darling Rose, you cannot be allowed to think of yourself as a twister of the tail of fate.’
‘If I’d been there …’
‘Now look here!’ said Lacklander. ‘Look at it like this. If you removed yourself to Nunspardon as my wife, he and your stepmother might get together in a quick comeback.’
‘Oh, no,’ Rose said. ‘No, Mark. There’s not a chance of that.’
‘How do you know? Listen. We’re in love. I love you so desperately much it’s almost more than I can endure. I know I shall never meet anybody else who could make me so happy and, incredible though it may seem, I don’t believe you will either. I won’t be put off, Rose. You shall marry me and if your father’s life here is too unsatisfactory, well, we’ll find some way of improving it. Perhaps if they part company he could come to us.’
‘Never! Don’t you see? He couldn’t bear it. He’d feel sort of extraneous.’
‘I’m going to talk to him. I shall tell him I want to marry you.’
‘No, Mark, darling! No … please …’
His hand closed momentarily over hers. Then he was on his feet and had taken up the basket of roses. ‘Good evening, Mrs Cartarette,’ he said. ‘We’re robbing your garden for my grandmother. You’re very much ahead of us at Hammer with your roses.’
Kitty Cartarette had turned in by the green archway and was looking thoughtfully at them.
IV
The second Mrs Cartarette did not match her Edwardian name. She did not look like a Kitty. She was so fair that without her make-up she would have seemed bleached. Her figure was well-disciplined and her face had been skilfully drawn up into a beautifully cared-for mask. Her greatest asset was her acquired inscrutability. This, of itself, made a femme fatale of Kitty Cartarette. She had, as it were, been manipulated into a menace. She was dressed with some elaboration and, presumably because she was in the garden, she wore gloves.
‘How nice to see you, Mark,’ she said. ‘I thought I heard your voices. Is this a professional call?’
Mark said: ‘Partly so at least. I ran down with a message for Colonel Cartarette, and I had a look at your gardener’s small girl.’
‘How too kind,’ she said, glancing from Mark to her stepdaughter. She moved up to him and with her gloved hand took a dark rose from the basket and held it against her mouth.
‘What a smell!’ she said. ‘Almost improper, it’s so strong. Maurice is not in, but he won’t be long. Shall we go up?’
She led the way to the house. Exotic wafts of something that was not roses drifted in her wake. She kept her torso rigid as she walked and slightly swayed her hips. ‘Very expensive,’ Mark Lacklander thought; ‘but not entirely exclusive. Why on earth did he marry her?’
Mrs Cartarette’s pin heels tapped along the flagstone path to a group of garden furniture heaped with cushions. A tray with a decanter and brandy glasses was set out on a white iron table. She let herself down on a swinging seat, put up her feet, and arranged herself for Mark to look at.
‘Poorest Rose,’ she said, glancing at her stepdaughter, ‘you’re wearing such suitable gloves. Do cope with your scratchy namesakes for Mark. A box perhaps.’
‘Please don’t bother,’ Mark said. ‘I’ll take them as they are.’
‘We can’t allow that,’ Mrs Cartarette murmured. ‘You doctors mustn’t scratch your lovely hands, you know.’
Rose took the basket from him. He watched her go into the house and turned abruptly at the sound of Mrs Cartarette’s voice.
‘Let’s have a little drink, shall we?’ she said. ‘That’s Maurice’s pet brandy and meant to be too wonderful. Give me an infinitesimal drop and yourself a nice big one. I really prefer crème de menthe, but Maurice and Rose think it a common taste so I have to restrain my carnal appetite.’
Mark gave her the brandy. ‘I won’t, if you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘I’m by way of being on duty.’
‘Really? Who are you going to hover over, apart from the gardener’s child?’
‘My grandfather,’ Mark said.
‘How awful of me not to realize,’ she rejoined with the utmost composure. ‘How is Sir Harold?’
‘Not so well this evening, I’m afraid. In fact, I must get back. If I go by the river path perhaps I’ll meet the Colonel.’
‘Almost sure to, I should think,’ she agreed indifferently, ‘unless he’s poaching for that fabled fish on Mr Phinn’s preserves which, of course, he’s much too county to think of doing, whatever the old boy may say to the contrary.’
Mark said formally: ‘I’ll go that way, then, and hope to see him.’
She waved her rose at him in dismissal and held out her left hand in a gesture that he found distressingly second rate. He took it with his own left and shook it crisply.
‘Will you give your father a message from me?’ she said. ‘I know how worried he must be about your grandfather. Do tell him I wish so much one could help.’
The hand inside the glove gave his a sharp little squeeze and was withdrawn. ‘Don’t forget,’ she said.
Rose came back with the flowers in a box. Mark thought: ‘I can’t leave her like this, half-way through a proposal, damn it.’ He said coolly: ‘Come and meet your father. You don’t take enough exercise.’
‘I live in a state of almost perpetual motion,’ she rejoined, ‘and I’m not suitably shod or dressed for the river path.’
Mrs Cartarette gave a little laugh. ‘Poor Mark!’ she murmured. ‘But in any case, Rose, here comes your father.’
Colonel Cartarette had emerged from a spinney halfway down the hill and was climbing up through the rough grass below the lawn. He was followed by his spaniel, Skip, an old, obedient dog. The evening light had faded to a bleached greyness. Silvered grass, trees, lawns, flowers and the mildly curving thread of the shadowed trout stream joined in an