Patricia Wentworth - Out of the Past

He began to think about Carmona. The Trevors would be able to tell him where she was and what she was doing. She touched their world, but she did not really belong to it. The years between twentyone and twentythree were years in which a good many things might change. He would not admit that they might have set an insurmountable barrier between himself and her. He would not admit that she might have married Alan Field. Or anyone else. Always when he thought of coming home it had been in his mind that he would be coming home to Carmona. He had heard of her once or twice. In a letter from Maisie Trevor-“Carmona has been here to stay. Horribly dull for her. Tom really ought-” From Mary Maxwell, who was an old friend and had stayed in the same house no more than a month ago-“She’s some sort of a cousin. Rather an unusual girl. I’m very fond of her. I hope she isn’t going to marry that wretched Alan Field. He’s a kind of stepcousin of hers, and people are always saying they are engaged, or are going to be-”

No, she hadn’t married Alan Field. In some curious way he had been quite sure that she would not. She was going to marry James Hardwick.

They were coming into a station, and as they drew in, another train drew out. There was a moment when the two trains passed each other, one just starting, the other slowing to a halt, and in that moment he saw Carmona Leigh. Across the brief space which separated the two trains they looked at one another. She had a window seat, and so had he. It seemed as if he had only to put out his hand and he would be able to touch the glass through which she looked. What he saw jerked at his heart. Her eyes were wide and she was very pale. It was not the pallor which he had seen before. She had been happy then, she was not happy now. There was no time for her to close her face against him. If she was pale now, it was from sorrow of heart. The windows slid away, her face slid away. She was gone.

He found out that the train was going to London.

In between displaying his delphiniums, which were in full bloom, old Tom Trevor told him that Carmona was marrying Alan Field in a week’s time.

Carmona Hardwick came up the zigzag path from the beach. The afternoon was hot and she took her time. She wore a sleeveless linen frock and a big shady hat. Her legs were bare and she had green sandals on her feet. The whole effect was cool and pleasing. She was thinking that Pippa would arrive in the middle of a blazing afternoon. All very well to say, “Don’t bother to be in, or meet me or anything,” because of course you had to. She hadn’t seen Pippa Maybury for three years, and there was a time when they had been very fond of each other. These school friendships didn’t last…

Pippa was always a bit of a goose…Three years was quite a long time…They had both married…A slight shade came over her face.

She reached the top of the cliff, and took the path which led along it to the house which James had inherited from his great-uncle Octavius Hardwick. Much too big for them and it would have to be sold, but meanwhile they could spread themselves, have all their friends to stay, and enjoy James’ leave.

In spite of being called Cliff Edge the house stood a little way back. There was a stone wall between it and the cliff path, and a private gate into a bare formal garden where old figureheads of ships stared out to where the horizon met the rim of the sea.

The house was hideous-very flat and bare outside and the rooms full of plush curtains and frightful Victorian furniture.

There was a driving-road on the far side and an approach featuring a good deal of stone work. The six urns which flanked the entrance had blazed with scarlet geraniums in great-uncle Octavius’ time. They were empty now, and two of them were cracked. Carmona looked at them and thought they had better sell the place as soon as they could, because it really did look very shabby and it would cost the earth to do it up. They would certainly never want to live here.

She had her foot on the bottom step of the half flight leading from the front door, when a sports car whizzed in at the gate and came to an abrupt stop beside her. Pippa, in scarlet slacks and a sleeveless jersey, sprang out and embraced her. When last seen her hair had been a fair brown. It was now platinum. She wore dark glasses with scarlet rims which she took off and snapped away in a startling red and white bag as she brushed Carmona’s cheek with her own. Her eyes at least had not changed. They were as bright, as blue, and very nearly as dazzling as the sea.

“Darling!” she said. “What a frightful house! But how nice to see you! You’re not going to live in it are you? You really couldn’t! I’m sure it’s got black beetles, and a basement, and the sort of old-fashioned range that simply eats up coal! You must tell me everything! But I’d better put the Tick away first-it belongs to George Robertson, and he’s rather mean about his things! He was quite frightfully peeved when I ran into a lamp-post and smashed the windscreen of the car he had before this one-and it was more or less dropping to pieces anyhow and well overdue for the scrap heap!”

The three years since they had last met were gone. Pippa was just the same. The current young man’s name had been Jocko then, it now appeared to be George. That was all. Whatever it was, he would be considered as a provider of cars, flowers and other unconsidered trifles, and more or less treated like dirt whilst kind, stodgy Bill Maybury looked on with a tolerant smile. Carmona had a moment’s faint wonder as to what James would do or say if she were to start borrowing cars and being continually here, there and everywhere with one infatuated young man after another. All at once she shivered and felt cold. Too silly-because the sun was really hot today.

The garage was a converted stable balancing the large Victorian conservatory on the other side of the house, denuded now of its palms, its climbing heliotrope, its plumbago, its begonias and pelargoniums. When the Tick had been put away with the narrowest escape of a grazed mudguard, Carmona led the way up a flight of steps into the tessellated hall.

Pippa’s comment was frank.

“Darling, how fierce! Too, too like the kind of hotel one’s grandmother might have stayed at!”

Carmona laughed.

“Well, we really are rather like a family hotel at the moment. We’ve got the Trevors here. You remember Maisie and Tom?”

“Of course-he was your guardian. Rather a lamb.”

“And Adela Castleton-”

Pippa made a face.

“Darling-not the Lady Castleton! Because I don’t know if I can bear it! I’ve a sort of idea I met her once, and she looked at me as if I must have got there by mistake! That kind of nose, if you know what I mean!”

Carmona knew quite well. It was the kind which lent itself to disapproving of the young. She passed hurriedly to Esther Field.

Pippa burst out laughing.

“Aunt Esther! Is she here too? Still dropping stitches and calling everyone ‘My dear’? Well, I must say you are doing the relations proud!”

“She’s the only real one. The rest are just because of being guardians and things, but Esther was my mother’s sister.”

“And Alan Field’s stepmother. Carmona-where is Alan?”

“I don’t know.”

They had passed out of the hall into what Octavius Hardwick had called the morning-room, an apartment which looked north and never got the sun, its natural gloom being further intensified by a carved overmantel of some black oriental wood and curtains of indigo plush.

Carmona shut the door. It wasn’t the slightest use hoping that Pippa would drop the subject.

“You don’t know? But, darling!” Pippa’s eyes were alive with interest. “Surely Aunt Esther-”