Patricia Wentworth - The Gazebo

The interview had been with Nicholas Carey, and it had ended with his banging out of the house. It was almost the last time Althea had seen him. The very last time was when she had gone up through the wet garden to the summerhouse and heard the rain fall mournfully outside as they took their last farewell. She had withstood his anger and his pleading. She had withstood her own crying need of him. She had lived through the moment when he put his head down on her shoulder. His hot tears had run down and soaked the thin stuff of her dress. It was the hardest moment of all, because she could feel his need of her. It was almost a relief when his anger came on him again – a cold, proud anger that sent her away and slammed the door between them.

All this because Nettie Pimm had told her that Sophy Justice had had twins! She could feel a little bitter stab of humour over that. And then Miss Nettie was saying,

‘Mrs Craddock tells me she ran into Nicholas Carey the other day – in a lift at Harrods. She said he seemed to be in a great hurry, but of course one always is in town. He had just got back from abroad – but perhaps you have heard from him?’ Her little birdlike face had an effect of pecking curiosity.

Althea said, ‘No.’

Miss Nettie went on in her light, bright voice.

‘Oh, well, people drift away, don’t they? And one hasn’t really got the time. But you used to be friends – really very great friends, weren’t you? Only of course you are so fully occupied with your mother. And, by the way, do you want a very good daily – because Mrs Woodley is leaving the Ashingtons. Fancy, after all these years! But, you know, we have her cousin Doris Wills, and she says…’ Here Miss Pimm leaned right over the back of the seat and dropped her voice to a buzzing whisper. ‘The old lady, you know – quite, quite off her head, and Mrs Woodley says if she doesn’t get away she’ll be going queer herself and that’s a fact. So if you do want anyone…’

They couldn’t afford to have Mrs Woodley every day, and Miss Pimm knew it as well as Althea did herself. She didn’t mean to be unkind, but she had a darting, probing way with her. She believed in frankness. People oughtn’t to mind saying if they were hard-up. Althea could say so, couldn’t she? And then she could sympathize and say how dreadfully dear everything was, and she would go home and be able to tell Mabel and Lily that the Grahams really did seem to be hard up, and what a pity it was. The fact that everyone on the bus would be listening did not trouble her at all. Neither she nor her sister had anything to hide, and why shouldn’t everyone be as open as they were? There was, of course, no answer to that. Althea at any rate did not seem to have one. She leaned back as far as she could in her seat and said in a tired voice,

‘Thank you – we have Mrs Stokes.’

‘But only one day a week, I think, and I have never considered her really thorough. Now Mrs Woodley is first-class, and you would find her such a comfort. And you really do look very tired. You can’t afford to neglect yourself, or what would happen to your dear mother? Now with Mrs Woodley…’ It went on until Althea got out at the top of the High Street.

She concentrated on doing her errands. That was something she had learned to do in the last five years. If you made yourself think about what you were doing, not just with a surface attention but as if each thing really mattered, it did help you to get through the day. She got the embroidery silk, refusing a near match at Gorton’s and finding what she wanted at the little new shop in Kent Street. She bought fish and she changed the library book, and made the long detour to the hairdresser who sold the Sungleam preparations. There was just a moment when the drilled routine of her thoughts was broken through. She inquired about the shampoo for her mother. ‘It’s not a dye, is it?’

‘Oh, no, madam. Is it for yourself?’

‘No… no…’ She was surprised at the sound of her own voice. It was just as if she was pushing something away. She went on hurriedly. ‘It’s for my mother. She has fair hair with just a little grey in it – really not much at all.’

The new salesgirl was a good saleswoman. She said she knew just what madam wanted and produced it.

‘It’s really good,’ she said in a pretty, friendly voice. ‘People keep on coming back for more. Now why don’t you try it for yourself? I’m sure you’d be pleased. It’s wonderful how it brings up the lights in the hair. Makes it ever so soft and pretty too.’

It was the girl’s ‘Why?’ that pushed its way in amongst Althea’s ordered thoughts. It hadn’t any business there. It just gate-crashed and stayed – a determined and shameless fifth-columnist. Before she knew what she was going to do she heard herself say, ‘Oh, I don’t know…’ in the kind of tone which is a positive invitation to the enemy to come in.

The girl smiled up at her. She was an engaging little thing with dimples.

‘You’d like it really – I’m sure you would.’

Althea came out of the shop with two bottles of Sungleam, one for fair hair and the other for brown. The girl had also sold her a pot of vanishing-cream, and had tried to persuade her into lipstick and rouge, but she had come to with a jerk and made her escape. Locked away at the back of her mind there were things which must on no account be allowed to push their way out. She was aware of them there, stirring, rising, struggling. Something in the hot scented air of the shop, the whirr of driers in the background, the rows of bottles, the creams and lotions, the vivid scarlet of nail-polish, the whole array of all the frivolous things that minister to beauty, encouraged them to struggle. It was years since she had had her hair done at a shop. It was years since she had stopped using make-up. It was years since she had stopped taking any interest in how she looked.

Five years, to be exact.

She walked on a little way, and then stood still. You can’t just stand still in a crowded street. There has to be a reason for it. She turned and stared into a bookshop which was displaying about twenty-five copies of a book with a jacket where a scarlet skull grinned from a bright green background. It might have been twice as bright and Althea wouldn’t have noticed it. If anyone saw her, she was just looking in at the window. No one was to know that it was because she could no longer turn her face to the street. Civilization has not destroyed the primitive emotions, but it insists that they should function in private. The extremities of happiness, pain, despair, and shame must not affront the public gaze. It was shame, burning and overwhelming shame, that had come upon Althea.

As she walked away from Burrage’s with her shopping-basket heavy on her arm, two things came together in her mind. She had not consciously connected them, but suddenly she saw them in their true relation. Nakedly and plainly, there they were, inextricably linked. Nettie Pimm said that Nicholas had come home – he had come home, and she might meet him at any street corner. So she had bought face-cream and a brightening wash for her hair. If she had stayed in that shop for another five minutes she would have come away with lipstick and rouge as well. She hadn’t thought of it that way, but that was the way it was, and she was shamed right through to her bones. It was like one of those dreams in which you find yourself stripped and bare in the open street.

She took hold of herself with an effort. The open street was here, and she had got to face it. And catch a bus, and go back to Belview Road. She became really conscious for the first time of the twenty-five scarlet skulls glaring at her from the shop window. Once you had seen them it was quite impossible to lose them again. They insisted on being seen and disliked, they forced their way in amongst your thoughts and occasioned an extraordinary revulsion there. Here was murder and sudden death. Crude violence violently displayed. And she was letting herself be worried about a hair-lotion and a pot of vanishing-cream! All at once something in her kicked and it seemed damnably silly. To start with, she probably wouldn’t see Nicholas at all. People in the suburbs go up to town, but no one comes down from town to a suburb unless there is something to bring him there. There was nothing to bring Nicholas to Grove Hill. The aunt with whom he used to come and stay had gone to join a sister in Devonshire. There was very little likelihood that Althea would meet him round any street corner. But if by any chance she did, why should he see her looking as if she had been feeding an empty heart on ashes for the five longest and loneliest years of her life? It was true, but the naked truth could be a terribly shaming thing. She would never see Nicholas again, but if she did see him she would contrive to fly a flag or two.