Mary Burchell - Nobody Asked Me

‘Won’t you come and drink to my happy engagement, too, Julian?’

In the startled, amused hush that fell upon the others, he came slowly forward.

‘Of course.’ He took the glass steadily from her fingers. ‘And in return you must drink to mine.’

‘What-do you mean?’

Rosalie’s own glass shook, so that some of the wine spilled and ran down over her fingers.

‘Simply that our mutual decision earlier in the evening left us both free to repair a-mutual mistake.’ Julian smiled full at her-not insolently, but with a sort of dangerous courtesy. ‘While I drink to your happiness with Myrton, you must drink to my happiness with Alison.’ And he bowed slightly to her over the rim of his glass.

‘Alison!’

Rosalie turned quite pale with shocked anger, while a little ripple of laughter and something like applause went round the group.

‘Are you surprised? Then I must have hidden my feelings better than I knew. But now you know, I’m sure you will not grudge us your congratulations. Your health and happiness, Rosalie-and you too, Myrton.’ And he turned for a moment to the blond youngster who was Rosalie’s latest acquisition.

‘Very well done,’ murmured Uncle Theodore to no one in particular. But Alison heard him.

She supposed she ought to find some sort of satisfaction in this turning of the tables on Rosalie. But she felt no such thing. Instead, there was just a scared distress in her heart, a cold sense of apprehension. For it was her engagement- her one precious, fragile link with Julian-that was the subject of this frightening duel.

It seemed an odd way to celebrate marriage, she thought unhappily.

As for Aunt Lydia ’s reaction, that was entirely unexpected-until Alison realised that she was doing her best to convert Rosalie’s blank and furious dismay into a decent retreat.

‘My dear child!’ Aunt Lydia bumped her cheek gently against Alison’s in simulation of a kiss. ‘Well, I must say I am exceedingly surprised. Aren’t you, Theodore?’

‘Not in the least,’ her husband said drily, and he glanced across at Rosalie with such patent dislike that even Aunt Lydia was checked for a moment in her flow of conventional eloquence.

‘Poor Aunt Lydia,’ thought Alison dispassionately. ‘Her family aren’t standing by her very well.’

‘I’m a good deal surprised myself, Aunt Lydia,’ she said timidly. ‘But-but it’s a very nice surprise.’

‘Very.’ Aunt Lydia ’s supply of synthetic sympathy was running out. ‘A little breathtaking, though,’ she added.

‘Rather like matrimonial "Family Coach",’ observed one of the guests. But Aunt Lydia only paid that the tribute of a very bleak smile.

‘It will have to be a very short engagement, won’t it?’ remarked someone else.

‘Oh, yes. But we don’t mind that.’ Julian put his arm round Alison again and drew her to his side. ‘Do we?’

Alison shook her head wordlessly.

Then he whispered, ‘Don’t tremble so.’ And his voice was so gentle that she suddenly wanted to weep.

Perhaps he guessed how overwrought she was, because he glanced round and said, ‘But we’re wasting all our evening, standing about talking. Why aren’t we dancing?’

And a moment later, Alison found herself swung away from the group to dance with Julian, and, when the others found that the tenseness of the crisis was passing, they soon followed suit.

‘Feeling better?’ His voice sounded quietly just above. her head.

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘Could you manage to smile a little, then?’

She looked up quickly and smiled unsteadily at him. It was curiously like the very first evening of all, only this time it was his pride that must be saved, she thought with fierce determination.

‘That’s better. You’re a good, brave child, Alison,’ he said. ‘You backed me up splendidly.’

‘I don’t think I did much,’ replied Alison honestly. ‘And anyway, I was terrified.’

‘Were you? Well, I think you might well be excused on the grounds of having used up all your courage in the library.’

She knew he was smiling a little at that, but she didn’t dare look up, because his words brought back that incredible scene so clearly.

‘Does the idea of this rush engagement scare you, Alison?’ he asked after a moment.

‘Oh, no.’

‘It’s the only way we can manage it, you know. Because we shall have to leave in early November.’ He sounded a little troubled.

‘I know. It doesn’t matter.’

‘Doesn’t it? You make things very easy,’ he said gently. But Alison didn’t think ‘easy’ was quite the word to describe that evening. She felt terribly tired-emotionally tired-and more than once during the evening she found herself wincing uncontrollably because Julian’s tenderness to her was all a pretence.

It was very well done, but it was pretence. It couldn’t be anything else. Only a few hours ago she had seen him white and distraught because another girl had thrown aside his love for her.

And every now and then, like an electric sign flashing out in the night, there flickered across her memory the words she had heard him say to Rosalie that day weeks ago in the library:

‘The girl’s nothing whatever to me. I don’t care two pins about her.’

Once she thought in panic, ‘What have I done? It can’t be anything but terrible, being married to an indifferent Julian, yet feeling as I do. I must have been mad to rush so.crazily into this.’

Then she remembered his saying, ‘You’re a good, brave child.’ And she thought, with a little humble rush of gratitude, that, in a way, she had been allowed to save him.

At the end of the evening, he drew her out into the hall to say good night to her.

‘I shall look in to-morrow and see you then,’ he told her. And that, too, was oddly like the first evening. Only, of course, she hadn’t really seen him for months after he had said that before.

Didn’t he remember? Men were so queerly insensitive, she thought. Or perhaps it was just that she was ridiculously sensitive that evening.

She drew a long breath, and just then he gave a very slight exclamation and stared hard at her upper arm.

‘What have you done to your arm?’

She didn’t say anything. She knew what it was without having to look at the five tiny bruises.

Very lightly he fitted his fingers and thumb against the marks.

‘Did I do that?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said quickly.

But he looked extraordinarily concerned. She thought he was going to say something. And then, the next moment, he had bent his head and touched her arm very gently with his lips.

‘I’m sorry, my child. That seems very poor gratitude. But thank you for everything.’

His voice was not entirely steady, and he went away after that without even saying good night.

But Alison didn’t notice. She couldn’t have said a word herself. She only stood there with her hand over her arm, as though she would hold the imprint of his first kiss there.

At last, with a little sigh, she turned and went back into the room where the rest of the family were.

The moment she came in, Rosalie turned on her.

‘What do you imagine you’re doing?’ she demanded furiously. ‘Have you no decency at all-snatching at Julian less than ten minutes after he was free?’

Alison pushed back her hair from her forehead with a characteristic gesture of nervousness.

‘I don’t know why you’re complaining, Rosalie. You don’t want Julian. You said so-without much display of the decency you mention. Well, I do want him and’-her voice trembled very slightly-’and he wants me. You’re going to be happy with Rodney Myrton. Why shouldn’t Julian and I be happy too?’