Mary Burchell - Nobody Asked Me

With a tremendous effort, she dragged herself back to the present. Her uncle was looking at her now a little puzzledly, she thought.

‘I-I’d marry him just the same if he were quite a poor man. Is that what you mean?’ she got out at last.

He didn’t answer directly, but he gave a satisfied little laugh. And after a moment he said:

‘And who is this friend of Julian’s who is going to advise you?’

‘Someone called Jennifer Langtoft. I met her last night. She seemed very nice.’

‘Langtoft? Simon Langtoft’s sister, isn’t she?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hm! Couple of adventurers,’ her uncle remarked disagreeably.

‘Julian says he is perfectly trustworthy in business,’ Alison felt bound to say.

‘Oh, that may be. Though I should never trust that type far myself,’ Uncle Theodore declared. ‘That wasn’t quite what I meant.’

But he didn’t offer to say what he did mean, and Alison felt a little diffident of asking. In any case, so far as she was concerned, the Langtofts had been kind, and. as they were not likely to figure in her life for more than a week or two, the matter didn’t seem of very great importance.

‘Well, Alison,’ her uncle said-and she realised that he had taken out his cheque-book and was beginning to write in it-’if you’re beginning on your shopping to-day, you had better feel you have something behind you.’

Alison flushed a little, and smiled as her uncle handed her the cheque. Then, as she glanced at the amount, she went scarlet and then quite pale.

The cheque was for a thousand pounds.

‘But, Uncle Theodore!’ Alison pushed back her chair and got rather unsteadily to her feet. ‘I couldn’t possibly take all this. It’s-it’s a fortune!’

‘Nonsense,’ said her uncle. ‘I’m certain Rosalie will be extremely dissatisfied with twice that amount.’

‘It’s nothing to do with Rosalie. It’s just between you and me. And I-I don’t know what to say.’ Alison threw her arms round her uncle’s neck and kissed him.

‘There, Alison.’ He patted her shoulder firmly. ‘There’s no need to be so emotional about it. Having taken on the responsibility of your welfare, I naturally expect to see you decently provided for when you marry.’

‘Don’t try to explain it away,’ Alison said, rubbing her cheek against him affectionately. ‘It’s so wonderful of you.’

Her uncle gave her a kiss, and pushed her away, but not ungently.

‘You’re a good child,’ he said. ‘I hope you’ll be happy with your Julian.’

‘Oh, I shall, I shall,’ Alison told him fervently. And at that moment she believed it.

As soon as he had gone, she ran up to her room to get ready. She was to meet Jennifer at their flat in Chelsea, and her uncle’s kindness had already given a delicious air of excitement to the whole business.

It was not only his actual generosity. It was his whole attitude. Everything was so different, so different, if only someone showed a little kindly interest.

The very sun shone more brightly, she thought when she got outside.

The Chelsea flat, if rather less solidly dignified than her uncle and aunt’s house, was at least as luxurious. And, as a quiet-voiced manservant ushered Alison into the black and oyster lounge, she couldn’t repress the amused reflection that Simon Langtoft had certainly not gambled away all their money.

Jennifer came in almost immediately, and seemed pleased at Alison’s admiration.

‘Yes, it’s a nice flat, isn’t it?’ she agreed. ‘I’m rather proud of it, because I’m responsible for choosing all the decorations here. Simon is crazy about a cottage we have in Sussex, so he lets me do what I like here, and I let him have a free hand there. Then we can’t quarrel.’

‘But I shouldn’t think you ever quarrel, anyway,’ Alison said with a smile.

‘No, practically never. I’m pretty good-tempered and he is very, so there’s scarcely ever an explosion Would you like to see the rest of the place? It won’t take s moment.’

Alison thought she would, and Jennifer led the way through the spacious and beautifully arranged flat.

It was just as she was going out of Jennifer’s bedroom that Alison saw the photograph of Julian Not exactly the Julian she knew. Younger, not quite sure of himself, and a tiny bit sulky.

‘Why that’s Julian, isn’t it?’ she said involuntarily.

‘Yes. Jennifer picked up the photograph and held it out to her ‘Have you never seen that one of him? It was very good at the time.’

Alison took it wordlessly. Of course she had never seen it. She had never seen any photograph of Julian, nor shared any part of his life. She felt a wave of angry pain which she was ashamed to identify as jealousy.

She pretended to study the photograph intently, and at last Jennifer said:

‘You’ll have to get him to give you a copy if you like it so much.’

‘Yes;’ Alison said rather flatly, as she handed the photograph back But of course she could never ask Julian for a photograph Anyone else could. Any casual. half interested, uncaring acquaintance. But she couldn’t because if might imply something that she dare not have implied.

Yet Jennifer had his photograph-and she kept it in her bedroom.

It was an absurdly small incident to spoil the whole morning, and yet, struggle as she would to be sensible about it, Alison was unable to shake off her resentment and depression.

As she sat beside the capable Jennifer in the little car which she drove herself, as she listened to her, obviously in her element, at the famous dress-house to which they went, Alison thought more than once:

‘She would have been perfect in the position of Julian’s wife. I wonder if she is thinking that too?’

For Alison was beginning to realise that, open and gay and vivacious though Jennifer seemed, she didn’t really give away any more than the deliberately inscrutable Simon.

‘Perhaps that is the secret of appearing sophisticated and finished,’ Alison thought wistfully. And then, a trifle anxiously, ‘I shall have to learn how to do it too, if only for Julian’s sake.’

There were a lot of things she was going to have to learn for Julian’s sake.

‘And I don’t mind. I’ll try so hard-so terribly hard,’ Alison told herself with passionate sincerity. It was ridiculous and pathetic, but she suddenly found that, instead of watching the languid mannequins as they swayed past, she was praying frantically, ‘Give me a little time-just a little time. Please, God. I’ll learn to be like these people, so that Julian will be happy with me. Only don’t let him notice the difference and be disappointed, before I have time.’

‘Alison, how serious you are!’ Jennifer turned from a discussion with the saleswoman, and laughed slightly. ‘Don’t you like any of these?’

‘Oh, yes!’ Alison felt she would not have dreamed of insulting this elegant salon and its dazzling occupants by suggesting she didn’t like anything. Besides, she did like them. Only, even with Uncle Theodore’s cheque in her handbag, it was hard to believe that any of these Rosalie-like creations were really to be hers.

However, the next two hours did a good deal to convince her otherwise.

Jennifer was not at all overbearing. She gave Alison’s own timid suggestions an attention which Aunt Lydia would have scorned to show, and contented herself with advising from her greater experience, without making Alison feel mentally deficient.

It was when the question of her wedding-dress itself arose that Alison became unexpectedly positive.

‘She is too young for the hardness of dead white,’ the saleswoman said. ‘She needs the softness of old ivory.’

‘Something cloudy in effect, I think,’ began Jennifer, frowning thoughtfully.