Patricia Wentworth: The Catherine Wheel

Miss Silver – #16, 1949

Jane Heron took a few graceful gliding steps and came slowly back round the circle of watching women. Clarissa Harlowe’s dress show was in progress, and she was showing a dress called Sigh no More. There was not very much of it above the waist, just a few opalescent folds, but the skirt was new and rather exciting. There were almost more yards of stuff in it than you would have believed possible, all coming in slim and tight to the waist, but they would swirl like spray in the wind when you danced. Jane lifted her arms in a movement which she contrived to make perfectly natural and took a few floating waltz steps. The skirt flew out. A woman close to her drew in her breath with a gasp. Another said, “Heavenly! But I mustn’t-I really mustn’t.” Mrs. Levington raised her rather harsh voice and called across the room to Mrs. Harlowe, “I’ll have it-but you mustn’t sell a copy for three months.” She turned as soon as she had spoken and beckoned to Jane.

“Come here! I want to see how it fastens.”

Jane came with the graceful submissive air which was part of the job. Inwardly she was thinking that Mrs. Levington wouldn’t get into the dress by at the very least four inches. She wasn’t fat, but she was solid-rather high in the shoulder, rather square in the hip. Handsome, of course, if you liked them that way. Jane didn’t.

It wasn’t her business to mind who bought Clarissa Harlowe’s dresses-they were out of her reach, and always would be. She was there because her really lovely figure added at least twenty-five per cent to the price.

Mrs. Harlowe came up, brisk, businesslike, smartly tailored.

“That will be quite all right, Mrs. Levington. You can have a fitting tomorrow at ten-thirty. No, I’m afraid I can’t make it any other time-we are very busy.”

Indifference bordering on rudeness, that was her line-“Take it or leave it-we can do better than you.” It was astonishing how it went down. It went down with Mrs. Levington now. She accepted her appointment quite meekly. Jane was dismissed.

The dressing-room was full of clothes and girls. One of them went out as Jane came in, a lovely blonde in a thin black afternoon dress made incredibly distinguished by its cut and some clever skirt drapery. Jane took off Sigh no More and hung it up carefully. She had a feeling that she would never look so nice in anything again. It was only her figure that was beautiful. Her face was too small, too colourless. When she looked in the glass she would see a pair of good grey eyes and quite a lot of dark hair, and that was about all you could say for Jane Heron apart from her figure. No one had any fault to find with that. It was slim without being thin. Everything about it was just right. Jane thought a lot of it, and well she might, since it provided her with the roof over her head and her daily bread and butter. It was a good biddable figure too, not the sort you had to pander to and placate. She knew girls who went in daily fear of their hip measurement, and who simply didn’t dare to look at a potato or a pat of butter. There was no nonsense like that about Jane’s figure. If she ate chocolate and suet pudding for a year she wouldn’t put on an ounce. Jeremy had given her a box of chocolates last week.

She turned round from hanging up Sigh no More and began to put on her own clothes. The show was nearly over-she wouldn’t have to go through again. She slipped into a dark skirt, pulled a jumper over her head, and put on her coat. Everyone was trying to dress at once. She had to stand on one leg at a time to change the shoes she had worn for her own dark ones. All the girls were dressing now, chattering nineteen to the dozen.

She managed to get the glass for a moment while she pulled on the small dark turban which went with her suit, and there she was-Cinderella after the last stroke of twelve-no features, no bloom, no colour, except for the lipstick which brightened her mouth. It was too bright really, but you had to make up a bit extra for a show. Jeremy would look sideways and say things about pillar-boxes. Well, let him-she didn’t care.

She came out on to the street and found it icy cold. It was going to freeze quite hard. She exchanged good-nights with Gloria and Daphne and took her way to the end of the street. Sometimes Jeremy met her there, but he wouldn’t tonight because of the show. There just wasn’t any saying how long it would go on.

She turned the corner, and he loomed up out of a doorway. It was heartening when you had been feeling like Cinderella. He slipped his hand inside her arm, and she said,

“Oh, you shouldn’t have come!”

Jeremy Taverner said, “Don’t be silly! How did it go?”

“Two of my things sold. That puts my stock up.”

“The usual frightful women?”

“They’re not all frightful.”

“I don’t know how you stand it.”

“Well, I don’t see there’s anything else I could do which I shouldn’t hate a good deal worse.”

“As?”

“Serving in a shop-nursemaid-companion-”

“There are lots of jobs for women.”

“Darling, I’m not trained for any of them.”

He said in an angry voice,

“Don’t call me darling!”

“Did I?”

“You did. I don’t like it.”

She laughed easily.

“It doesn’t mean anything-one does it all the time. It just slipped out.”

He said still more angrily,

“That’s why!”

The hand inside her arm gripped her quite painfully. She said,

“Darling, you’re pinching me!” Then, with a sudden change of voice and manner, “Don’t be a tiresome toad, because I want to talk to you-I really do.”

In spite of being called a tiresome toad in the sort of voice which makes an intimate and flattering term of it, Jeremy remained angry.

“I don’t see why you weren’t trained for anything. Girls ought to be.”

“Yes, darling, but I wasn’t. My mother married a more or less penniless parson with his head in the clouds, and they never thought about it. They never had any time to think about anything, because the parish was much too big and poor. And they died when I was fifteen, and my grandfather took me in and sent me to the sort of school where they concentrate on your manners and don’t bother about sordid things like earning your living.”

“Which grandfather?” said Jeremy in a different voice.

“Oh, the Taverner one-mother’s father-your grandfather’s brother-old Jeremiah Taverner’s eighth child and sixth son. I know the whole lot off by heart. The eldest was Jeremiah after his father, and then there were Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, and the two girls, Mary and Joanna. Your grandfather was John, and mine was Acts. And if we hadn’t met by accident six months ago at the dullest party on earth we shouldn’t have known we existed. I mean you wouldn’t have known I did, and I wouldn’t have known you did.” She came up close, so that her shoulder rubbed against his arm. “You know, the other six probably all left descendants too, and I expect most of them will have seen the advertisement and answered it. I do wonder what they’re like-don’t you?”

Jeremy said, “It must have been a whale of a family row.”

“Oh, I don’t know-people drift away-”

“Not to that extent. My grandfather used to talk about his twin, Joanna, but I don’t think he ever saw her. He was clever, you know-took scholarships, and got into one of these research laboratories. That’s how my father came to be a doctor. He was killed in nineteen-eighteen. My mother married again and went to Australia, leaving me with the old boy. So we were both brought up by our grandfathers-Hi! There’s your bus!”