Mary Burchell - Nobody Asked Me

Alison sighed and ruffled up her hair worriedly.

‘If only Aunt Lydia wouldn’t frighten me so much,’ she murmured.

That evening, she dressed with the greatest care, for she had an odd, proud little feeling that she must not let Julian down in front of his sophisticated friends. After all, it was the first time he was showing her off.

She put on the amber frock which had already seen her through such extraordinary adventures, and she brushed her hair until it looked like a gold silk cap.

Then she looked in the mirror, and saw that there was no need to put even the slightest touch of colour on her lips. They were soft and red and faintly damp like a child’s; and her eyes, wide and dark and velvety, were rather like a child’s too.

She was ready when Julian arrived, which seemed to amuse him a little.

‘You are a model of punctuality, Alison,’ he remarked. And she remembered that probably Rosalie considered it good policy to keep a man waiting indefinitely.

‘Well, I hate having to wait myself,’ Alison said candidly, ‘so I always take it that other people hate it too.’

‘A very proper and Victorian point of view,’ commented Julian, smiling, and he glanced at the amber dress as though he certainly had not seen it last night.

Alison’s small reserve of security deserted her.

‘Do you mean I look too Victorian in this?’ she asked nervously.

‘You look sweet,’ he told her carelessly. And, putting her evening coat round her, he took her out to the car.

To her surprise, there was a chauffeur to drive, that evening.

I didn’t know you had a chauffeur,’ she said involuntarily.

‘No? I have him mostly for long-distance driving. But sometimes in the evening, if I don’t want to be bothered with the car, he comes along. Why?’

‘Oh, nothing. I just wondered. Julian?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you very-I mean, do we have to keep up a good deal of social style when we-when we are married?’

He looked surprised.

‘I’m a pretty rich man, if that’s what you mean. I don’t know that I keep up very much style, as you call it, here. But of course out there there will be a big house to run, and a good many servants to look after, and a lot of entertaining to do. It’s just the natural thing there; part of the life, you know.’ And he smiled a little, as though the thought of it gave him pleasure.

‘And you really love the life, and want to get back?’

‘Of course, Alison.’ He sounded a trifle impatient, ‘That’s the sole reason for my side of this arrangement, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, of course.’

She spoke quickly, and hoped he didn’t notice how her colour had risen.

He might have noticed her colour and her silence, but just then the car drew up outside the floodlit portico of the Mirabelle, and he handed her out without comment.

There were a good many people in the spacious lounge, with its warm golden walls and its concealed lighting, but Simon and Jennifer Langtoft were not easy to overlook. They came forward at once, Jennifer in a frock of geranium red which owed nothing of its effect to ornament and everything to perfection of cut.

‘She’s the most finished person I’ve ever seen,’ thought Alison, and hoped that she herself didn’t look too much like a schoolgirl out for a treat.

But it didn’t seem to be any part of Jennifer’s social technique to make other people uncomfortable. She shook hands quite warmly and said:

‘I thought Julian told me you wanted advice about choosing your trousseau. But it looks to me as though you know all about what suits you already.’

‘She doesn’t want advice. She wants moral support.’ That was Simon Langtoft, speaking in a rather slow, lazy voice. ‘Then when she presents the bills to her father, or whatever poor wretch has the privilege of paying, she can justify everything by saying, "Well, Jennifer Langtoft says it’s absolutely necessary." Am I right?’ And he smiled straight into Alison’s eyes before he bent his head and lightly kissed her hand.

Alison had never had anyone kiss her hand before, and she found it rather thrilling and quite astonishingly gratifying. It would have seemed theatrical from most men, she supposed, but it was quite right as Simon did it.

‘No, I wasn’t really arguing it that way,’ she told him with a smile. ‘It’s only that I’ve never had to choose a big wardrobe before, and if Miss Langtoft doesn’t mind-’

‘I don’t mind in the least,’ Jennifer assured her. ‘I think the next best thing to buying expensive clothes yourself is to watch someone else being extravagant.’

‘No getting her into bad ways, Jennifer,’ warned Julian. ‘Don’t forget that I shall be the husband and universal provider afterwards.’

‘I shall not forget,’ Jennifer said.

She spoke banteringly, just as the two men had, but for some reason the way she said those words-’I shall not forget-reminded Alison forcibly of what Aunt Lydia had said. And for a moment she felt extremely uncomfortable.

As they came into the more brilliantly lighted restaurant, Alison had a better opportunity of studying the brother and sister. She had thought at first they had no single feature in common, but now she saw that they were alike in one thing -their extraordinarily dark eyes, which were not merely dark brown, but an absolutely genuine black. Their intensity gave a tremendous arresting character’ to both faces.

In Jennifer, the eyes were bright and sparkling. They matched the smooth black hair which was moulded to her admirably shaped head in one sweep, except for where it turned back one side towards the crown of her head in a long curve of extreme severity.

‘She has hair like a classical statue,’ thought Alison. ‘I wonder how on earth it’s done.’

Her face, a trifle too thin for youthful beauty, was rather like that of a statue too, and her figure was faultless.

No wonder Julian had described her as good-looking.

And of Simon he had said that he was the sort women always ran after but never caught.

Yes, Alison could imagine that was true.

His eyes were much more dangerous than Jennifer’s- opaque and quite unfathomable, with a glance that was extraordinarily direct, but all the more disconcerting for that You could look straight into his eyes, but you would never read what was hidden there.

In sharp contrast, his hair was almost fair, with a rather ingenuous wave in it; his mouth was firm, but his chin quite unmistakably cleft.

Alison thought she had heard once that a man with a cleft chin was invariably charming but unreliable, and wondered if there were anything in it.

He was an extraordinary man, she thought, but undeniably attractive.

Then Jennifer wanted to discuss the important matter of the trousseau, and the men talked business together for a while. But, although Alison thought her mind was entirely on what Jennifer was saying, she really noticed, too, how curiously Simon’s voice changed when he discussed business matters. It became decided, abrupt and entirely different from when he was speaking to her.

‘Of course, it complicates things, your going to the other side of the world, and having summer in the winter and that sort of thing,’ Jennifer was saying. ‘But we’ll manage all right’

‘I think Jennifer has been reading up Buenos Aires in the Encyclopaedia Britannica all day,’ said Simon, turning to Alison again. ‘She knows all about the climate, products, and population by now.’

‘Don’t be silly. I knew before,’ Jennifer said.

‘Did you really? How revoltingly learned of you,’ Simon. observed.

‘Nonsense. I just happened to read it up some time ago,’ his sister explained.

‘Most eccentric. Whatever made you do that?’