Margot Bennett - The Man Who Didn't Fly

“You sound exactly like a schoolgirl who glues pictures of Paris models inside her science notebook,” Hester said coldly.

“Ah, the elder sister line,” Prudence said, sighing. “I warn you, Hester, in a few years you’ll come to me for advice. I’ll give you some now, if you like, while you stir the sauce. Don’t have anything to do with Harry. He’s not good enough for you. If you marry him you’ll spend half your life looking through a wire grating.”

“Wire grating?”

“Visitors’ day at prison.”

“You’re an insufferable adolescent, Prudence, and I hope your damned dinner burns,” Hester said angrily.

“Oh, Hester, I’m only saying it because you’re so good you can’t see when other people are bad. Please go on stirring the sauce. I’m beating the egg-whites and I can’t stop. Maurice is coming to dinner. I do want it to be perfect. You think you can change Harry but I know you can’t,” Prudence said, beginning to cry.

“You’re dropping tears in the souffle. You’ll spoil it,” Hester said. “I’ll go in and see if Mrs Timber set the table before she left.”

She took off her apron and went to the dining-room, thinking sadly how much easier life was in term-time, when she lived alone. She had a bed-sitting-room in a dingy house in an undistinguished street and there, whatever else happened, she was free from economic pretences. At home her father still dreamt of the easy past when he had sat in the manor house like a benevolent ornament; and even Prudence felt it was a social necessity to provide elaborate meals cooked with butter when they could afford to eat only bread and margarine. With the slightest encouragement her father would have insisted on dressing for dinner. She didn’t see this as going down with the flag flying: it was more like struggling to live underwater in a sunken ship. The pressure was too great; the quarrels were inevitable.

She heard a tapping on the dining-room window. Harry was outside, making expressive faces. She opened the windows and let him in.

“Hester,” he said, “I couldn’t keep away. I get pulled to you like the tides following the moon.” He held out his arms to her. She didn’t respond.

“You’ll have noticed that the ocean follows the moon for eternity but it never gets much closer,” he said. “Do you suppose it’s content with that?”

She moved dreamily towards him and he caught her wrist with one hand. She heard a step outside the door and pulled her hand away. She moved quickly to the table and began to rearrange the knives and forks with excessive concentration like a child who had almost been caught smoking.

Prudence came in, sniffing the atmosphere suspiciously. “Harry! I thought you’d gone home hours ago.”

“Home?” he said harshly. “You mean Uncle Joe’s? Don’t worry, Prudence, I’m going away again.”

“You must stay to dinner,” Hester said doubtfully.

“Oh, Hester! Father would be furious.”

“You needn’t worry about me,” Harry said heavily. “I’ll wait. I needn’t eat. Tell me a room that’s empty. I’ll wait there. Maybe I could sit in the bathroom if no one plans to have a bath at dinner-time. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll take a book and sit on the edge of the bath.”

“Prudence, there’s no pepper left in this thing. Will you get some more,” Hester said.

“We can bring it in later.” Prudence lingered by the door, glowering at Harry.

“Please, Prudence. I want it now,” Hester said angrily.

“Oh, if you’re going to make a scene about pepper,” Prudence said, “I’ll oblige by leaving the room. But I’m coming back right away with your pepper.”

They watched her march out.

“Harry, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“Only that Uncle Joe is turning me out. He thinks I’m not his nephew after all. But that’s nothing. I came here about you.”

“Me?” Hester asked in amazement, as though it had never occurred to her that Harry was more than an acquaintance.

“I had an attack of conscience. I’m not used to it – I feel very queer. What I thought was it would be all right if your father wasn’t your father. I don’t believe in interfering with the course of nature. But I know what Maurice is. He’s practically got it embroidered on his shirt. Hester, he’s a crook of the simplest kind. Can’t you see it?”

“Why don’t you attack him to his face?” she asked contemptuously.

“Because he’s not attacking me,” Harry said in a reasonable voice. “Look, I’ve met a dozen Maurices. He could sell a horse a sack of paper oats for its lunch, and steal the shoes off its feet while it was counting out the change. Your father—”

“Leave my father out of this.”

“He won’t leave himself out. He’s a glutton for money. He’s the kind of man who’s doomed to spend his life exchanging wallets with strangers as a sign of confidence. Maurice won’t hit your father on the head to get his money. He’ll just stand still and your father will ram it into his pockets. All Maurice has to do is look excited, as if he was on to something big and your father will be standing on his head trying to get the hook into his mouth.”

“It’s not true. I know Maurice. I trust him. What have you got against him?”

Harry suddenly grinned, like a man enjoying a private joke. He tried to look serious again, but the intensity had gone out of him, as though he had changed his mind about climbing to the top of a mountain. He looked round him, easy and relaxed, enjoying the view.

“Maurice is disguised as a man who would remember to send his old Nannie peppermint creams at Christmas,” he said lightly.

Hester walked out of the room. She was shaking with anger. There was nothing in her experience to explain Harry’s changes of mood. Talking to him was like discussing the scenery with a fish, or a bird.

Prudence was waiting in the hall, clutching the pepper shaker. “I can hear the car!” she said in a warm voice. “It’s Maurice.”

“I’ll go and see what’s happening in the oven,” Hester said. She went quickly along the hall and back to the kitchen. She needed a few minutes to practise her smile of welcome. She was already struggling to bury Harry’s remarks, but they kept reappearing in her mind like the shoots from a vigorous weed. She reminded herself again how easy it was to like Maurice; what relief his company gave to her father, who needed so badly to talk about war and money with another man who understood these subjects. Maurice treated Prudence and herself with an avuncular affection that was always understanding and never presumptuous. What brought him so close to them all was his air of having the same values; of believing in the same virtues, loving the same countryside, taking the same levelheaded interest in music, painting, archaeology. When they had met him first he was only an occasional visitor to the village inn, since then – and it proved how much he loved the Cotswold country – he had rented a small cottage on the far side of the village. Harry would probably never earn enough money to rent a barn. It was natural that he should resent such a solid member of society as Maurice.

WHEN she had helped Prudence to take in the dinner, Hester was able to look on Maurice with what she thought was the old, untroubled affection. She was surprised to find herself saying: “Did you have a Nannie, Maurice?”

“A Nannie?” He looked at her with his brows lifting, and his face shadowed by his solid, comfortable smile. “Of course I did, but why?”

“No reason at all. I just wondered if you ever saw her now?”

“She’s very old. She lives in Wales. I can’t tell you much about her, except that she’s passionately fond of Edinburgh Rock. So I send her some at Christmas, as a weak apology for not going to Wales.”