For Kicks - Страница 33

"Yes. I minded."

"I told Father she had bed about you. I've never told him before about her love affairs, but this was different… anyway, I told him on Sunday after lunch." She stopped, hesitating. I waited. At last she went on, "It was very odd. He didn't seem surprised, really. Not utterly overthrown, like I was. He just seemed to get very tired, suddenly, as if he had heard bad news. As if a friend had died after a long illness, that sort of sadness. I didn't understand it. And when I said that of course the only fair thing to do would be to offer you your job back, he utterly refused. I argued, but I'm afraid he is adamant. He also refuses to tell Mr. Inskip that you shouldn't have had to leave, and he made me promise not to repeat to him or anyone what Patty had said. It is so unfair," she concluded passionately, 'and I felt that even if no one else is to know, at least you should. I don't suppose it makes it any better for you that my father and I have at last found out what really happened, but I wanted you to know that I am sorry, very, very sorry for what my sister did. "

I smiled at her. It wasn't difficult. Her colouring was so blazingly fair that it didn't matter if her nose wasn't entirely straight. Her direct grey eyes were full of genuine, earnest regret, and I knew she felt Patty's mis behaviour all the more keenly because she thought it had affected a stable lad who had no means of defending himself. This also made it difficult to know what to say in reply.

I understood, of course, that October couldn't declare me an injured innocent, even if he wanted to, which I doubted, without a risk of it reaching Humber's ears, and that the last thing that either of us wanted was for him to have to offer to take me back at Inskip's. No one in their right mind would stay at Humber's if they could go to Inskip's.

"If you knew," I said slowly, 'how much I have wanted your father to believe that I didn't harm your sister, you would realize that what you have just said is worth a dozen jobs to me. I like your father. I respect him. And he is quite right. He cannot possibly give me my old job back, because it would be as good as saying publicly that his daughter is at least a liar, if not more. You can't ask him to do that. You can't expect it. I don't. Things are best left as they are. "

She looked at me for some time without speaking. It seemed to me that there was relief in her expression, and surprise, and finally puzzlement.

"Don't you want any compensation?"

"No."

"I don't understand you."

"Look," I said, getting up, away from her inquiring gaze.

"I'm not as blameless as the snow. I did kiss your sister. I suppose I led her on a bit. And then I was ashamed of myself and backed out, and that's the truth of it. It wasn't all her fault. I did behave very badly. So please… please don't feel so much guilt on my account." I reached the window and looked out.

"People shouldn't be hung for murders they decide not to commit," she said dryly.

"You are being very generous, and I didn't expect it."

"Then you shouldn't have asked me here," I said idly.

"You were taking too big a risk." The window looked down on to a quadrangle, a neat square of grass surrounded by broad paths, peaceful and empty in the early spring sunshine.

"Risk… of what?" she said.

"Risk that I would raise a stink. Dishonour to the family. Tarnish to the Tarrens. That sort of thing. Lots of dirty linen and Sunday newspapers and your father losing face among his business associates."

She looked startled, but also determined.

"All the same, a wrong has been done, and it had to be put right."

"And damn the consequences?"

"And damn the consequences," she repeated faintly.

I grinned. She was a girl after my own heart. I had been damning a few consequences too.

– "Well; I said reluctantly, " I'd better be off. Thank you for asking me to come. I do understand that you have had a horrible week screwing yourself up for this, and I appreciate it more than I can possibly say. "

She looked at her watch and hesitated.

"I know it's an odd time of day, but would you like some coffee? I mean, you've come quite a long way…"

"I'd like some very much," I said.

"Well… sit down, and I'll get it."

I sat down. She opened the built-in cupboard, which proved to hold a wash basin and mirror on one side and a gas ring and shelves for crockery on the other. She filled a kettle, lit the gas, and put some cups and saucers on the low table between the two chairs, moving economically and gracefully. Unselfconscious, I thought. Sure enough of herself to drop her title in a place where brains mattered more than birth. Sure enough of herself to have a man who looked like I did brought to her bed-sitting-room, and to ask him to stay for coffee when it was not necessary, but only polite.

I asked her what subject she was reading, and she said English. She assembled some milk, sugar, and biscuits on the table.

"May I look at your books?" I asked.

"Go ahead," she said amiably.

I got up and looked along her bookshelves. There were the language text books Ancient Icelandic, Anglo Saxon, and Middle English and a comprehensive sweep of English writings from Alfred the Great's Chronicles to John Betjeman's unattainable amazons.

"What do you think of my books?" she asked curiously.

I didn't know how to answer. The masquerade was damnably unfair to her.

"Very learned," I said lamely.

I turned away from the bookshelves, and came suddenly face to face with my full-length reflection in the mirror door of her wardrobe.

I looked at myself moodily. It was the first comprehensive view of Roke the stable lad that I had had since leaving October's London house months before, and time had not improved things.

My hair was too long, and the sideburns nourished nearly down to the lobes of my ears. My skin was a sort of pale yellow now that the suntan had all faded. There was a tautness in the face and a wary expression in the eyes which had not been there before: and in my black clothes I looked disreputable and a menace to society.

Her reflection moved behind mine in the mirror, and I met her eyes and found her watching me.

"You look as if you don't like what you see," she said.

I turned round.

"No," I said wryly.

"Would anyone?"

"Well…" Incredibly she smiled mischievously.

"I wouldn't like to set you loose in this college, for instance. If you don't realize, though, the effect which you… you may have a few rough edges, but I do now see why Patty tried… er… I mean…" Her voice tailed off in the first confusion she had shown.

"The kettle's boiling," I said helpfully.

Relieved, she turned her back on me and made the coffee. I went to the window and looked down into the deserted quad, resting my forehead on the cold glass.

It still happened, I thought. In spite of those terrible clothes, in spite of the aura of shadiness, it could still happen. What accident, I wondered for the thousandth time in my life, decided that one should be born with bones of a certain design? I couldn't help the shape of my face and head. They were a legacy from a pair of neat featured parents: their doing, not mine. Like Elinor's hair, I thought. Born in you. Nothing to be proud of. An accident, like a birth mark or a squint. Something I habitually forgot, and found disconcerting when anyone mentioned it. And it had been expensive, moreover. I had lost at least two prospective customers because they hadn't liked the way their wives looked at me instead of my horses.

With Elinor, I thought, it was a momentary attraction which wouldn't last. She was surely too sensible to allow herself to get tangled up with one of her father's ex-stable lads. And as for me, it was strictly hands off the Tarren sisters, both of them. If I was out of the frying-pan with one, I was not jumping into the fire with the other. It was a pity, all the same. I liked Elinor rather a lot.

"The coffee's ready," she said.

I turned and went back to the table. She had herself very well controlled again. There was no mischievous revealing light in her face any more, and she looked almost severe, as if she very much regretted what she had said and was going to make quite certain I didn't take advantage of it.

She handed me a cup and offered the biscuits, which I ate because the lunch at Humber's had consisted of bread, margarine, and hard tasteless cheese, and the supper would be the same. It nearly always was, on Saturdays, because Number knew we ate in Posset.

We talked sedately about her father's horses. I asked how Sparking Plug was getting on, and she told me, very well, thank you.

"I've a newspaper cutting about him, if you'd like to see it?" she said.

"Yes, I'd like to."

I followed her to her desk while she looked for it. She shifted some papers to search underneath, and the top one fell on to the floor. I picked it up, put it back on the desk, and looked down at it. It seemed to be some sort of quiz.

"Thank you," she said.

"I mustn't lose that, it's the Literary Society's competition, and I've only one more answer to find. Now where did I put that cutting?"

The competition consisted of a number of quotations to which one had to ascribe the authors. I picked up the paper and began reading.

"That top one's a brute," she said over her shoulder.

"No one's got it yet, I don't think."

"How do you win the competition?" I asked.

"Get a complete, correct set of answers in first."

"And what's the prize?"

"A book. But prestige, mostly. We only have one competition a term, and it's difficult." She opened a drawer full of papers and oddments.