Patricia Wentworth: Wicked Uncle

She could feel his eye on her dress. It was a blue dress, and she had bought it because she liked the colour, and of course that was a mistake. If you’ve only got one dining-out dress, it’s simply got to be black, and no matter what else you do without, it’s got to be good. Then you just go on wearing it until one of you dies.

She met the eye with firmness mitigated by the dimples.

“It’s no good-I know it all by heart-it hasn’t got any line, and line is what sees you through. But it’s a nice colour, isn’t it?”

“My child, it’s a disaster.”

Dorinda was not lacking in spirit.

“What’s the good of saying that when I’ve got it on? The pink one was worse-I’ve given it away. And you can say what you like, this one suits me. Tip said it did.”

“Tip Remington is in the maudlin state of mind in which he would say anything.”

“Buzzer said so too.”

“Did he?”

Justin’s voice was completely uninterested in Buzzer Blake. He was consulting the menu, and proceeded to catch the head-waiter’s eye. After an intimate and technical discussion he turned back to Dorinda, who was solacing herself for her lost lunch by thinking that it sounded as if it was going to be a heavenly dinner, and said,

“Are you engaged to either of them?”

She came out of a lovely dream of food and met his eyes frankly.

“Well, I don’t know-”

Justin’s eyebrows rose, as at a social solecism.

“Hadn’t you better find out? I should hate to interfere, but you can’t marry them both.”

“Oh, I’m not marrying them. I don’t want to marry anyone for a long time.”

The soup arrived. It smelt heavenly. It was very difficult to take it slowly enough, but Aunt Mary’s iron training held. One of the last things she had said to Dorinda was, ‘Well, I’ve only got fifty pounds a year to leave you, but I’ve taught you how to behave like a gentlewoman.’ There were moments when she found it inconvenient. This was one of them. She was very hungry.

Between sips she imparted her views on matrimony.

“You see, it lasts such a long time, unless you go in for divorce, and that always seems to me rather nasty, unless you’ve simply got to.”

Justin looked faintly amused and said,

“It can be overdone.”

Dorinda pursued the theme.

“Suppose I married Tip. He’s twenty-four, and I’m twenty-one. It might go on for about fifty or sixty years. It’s a frightfully long time. Of course he’s got plenty of money. He’s in his uncle’s office and he’ll be a partner in a year or two, and it would be rather nice to have one’s own flat and a car, but I’ve got a feeling I’d get tired of being married to Tip-” She broke off to help herself to sole meunière.

“Then I shouldn’t do it.”

Dorinda said, “Oh, I’m not going to-at least I don’t suppose I shall, unless the Oakleys really do turn out to be pure poison like the red-headed girl said. Do you know, she looked nice. I wouldn’t have minded knowing her.”

“It isn’t the slightest good trailing red-headed herrings across the path. The point is not what you either think or don’t think about getting married, but what these wretched lads think you are thinking. Have you, or have you not, given either or both of them to suppose that you will marry him?”

Dorinda beamed.

“Justin, darling, this is the most lovely fish I’ve ever tasted. I’m so glad I didn’t have any lunch.”

He looked at her severely.

“Neither red herrings nor soles, Dorinda. Have you, or have you not?”

“Do you think I could have some more?”

“You can if you like, but you’d better see what’s coming.”

After an earnest study of the menu she sighed regretfully and said perhaps she had better not- “It all sounds too lovely.”

“Well then, perhaps you’ll answer my question.”

Whilst the waiter was changing their plates she gazed at Justin, and he had occasion to observe that the offending dress really did make her hair look very bright. To the callow taste of Tip Remington and Buzzer Blake it would doubtless appear that it was becoming. On the other hand, it was improbable that they would notice or appreciate the fact that her lashes were of exactly the same golden brown. If she ever started darkening them, he would have to speak to her about it, because it was a very unusual colour and from the purely aesthetic point of view she couldn’t be allowed to play tricks with it.

When they had helped themselves to chicken en casserole with mushrooms and all sorts of other exciting things in the gravy, he put his question again.

“Well,” said Dorinda, “I might say, ‘What has it got to do with you?’ ” Her tone was perfectly friendly.

“Are you going to?”

She laughed.

“I don’t suppose I am. The trouble is-”

“Well?”

“It’s so hard to say no.”

This had the pleasing effect of making Justin laugh. On the rare occasions when that happened Dorinda always felt that she was a social success. Her eyes became several shades darker and her colour deepened.

“Well, it is,” she protested. “I like them both dreadfully. If anything, I think I like Buzzer best, but perhaps that’s only because he hasn’t got any money, which gives me a fellow feeling. But I don’t really want to marry someone who has absolutely nothing, because when I do get married I should like to have some children, and if one hadn’t got anything at all, it would be a bit difficult to bring them up.”

“It might be.”

“Oh, it would. I’ve thought about it a lot. You see, I think two boys and two girls would be nice. And there’s not only bringing them up, with shoes, and school books-even if all the education is free-but it’s putting them out in the world and getting them jobs. So I don’t think it would be a good plan to marry Buzzer even if I wanted to. And I should feel a bit low if I married Tip just because there would be enough money.”

“My good child, if you attempt to marry either of them, I shall come and forbid the banns.”

Dorinda evinced a frank interest.

“How do you do it?”

“I’ve no idea, but I shall make it my business to find out. You’d better stiffen the backbone and practise saying no for five minutes every morning in front of the looking-glass. You can’t marry everyone who asks you.”

“Nobody has except Tip-not really. Buzzer just said he couldn’t-not until he got a proper job, but would I wait for him. I don’t know if you’d count that or not.”

“I shouldn’t count either of them. Look here, will you promise me something?”

Dorinda possessed a vein of caution. It prompted her to ask,

“What is it?”

“Don’t get engaged to anyone without asking me. And don’t be in a hurry. Generally speaking, I should say the idea is not to get engaged unless you mean to get married, and not to get married unless you feel you must. Didn’t your Aunt Mary ever tell you that?” There was a slight quizzical smile in his eyes.

Dorinda said candidly, “She told me never to get married at all. You see, she had a complex about men. Because of the Wicked Uncle.”

“I never met your Aunt Mary, but she sounds a most unpleasant woman.”

Dorinda did her duty by the dead.

“Oh, she wasn’t really. It was frightfully good of her to bring me up, you know. Nobody else wanted to, but she thought it was her duty and she did. I was only two, and I must have been a lot of trouble.”

If Justin had a softened thought of Dorinda at two, smilingly unconscious of being a nuisance, he showed no sign of it. He simply disliked the late Mrs. Porteous a little more.

Dorinda pursued the theme.

“The Wicked Uncle really was an uncommonly bad lot. He used to go off and run riot, and then come back, take anything she’d got, and go off again.”