– I have heard of this guesthouse, also at Seale-on-Sea. It is much
cheaper and I daresay pretty awfully dim, but as I shall be out all the
time with Peter, I shall not care. Dad and Auntie are much puzzled
as to what I intend to do there all by myself. ‘All by myself’ – little
do they know! Poor Auntie keeps on at me about why won’t I go
with the Robinsons to Cornwall!!!
“I must now tell Peter. How his face will light up! This will be just
the chance he must have been always wanting as much as I have.”
If little Miss Plackman, sore-tried proprietress of the guesthouse,
could have been afforded a glimpse of Ellen’s diary, she would have
murmured, “Ah, yes, I see. I thought so.” Of Miss Plackman’s wetweather troubles, Ellen was not the least. It had been an extra trial,
these past few days, that the only telephone at The Myrtles was on
the desk in Miss Plackman’s office. As a rule, the instrument was not
used much: most of her guests came here to be quiet, and showed
no wish to communicate with the outside world. Since Ellen’s arrival,
however, all that had altered: from time to time the girl had been
rung up; almost incessantly she put through calls. It was Ellen’s wont
to come crashing in and out of the office as though the place were
a public phone box. Not only was it far from being that; it was the
only place the poor lady had to herself. Here it was Miss Plackman’s
habit to seek refuge for occasional breathing space, however short,
in the course of her ceaselessly busy days. In one corner, loomed
over by the large desk, was a little old armchair that had been her
mother’s; into this she from time to time collapsed – kicking her
shoes from her aching feet, closing her eyes, allowing her bright,
professional smile to fade. Here she could be alone with her
thoughts.
This week, her thoughts had been poor company. Miss Plackman
could not fail to be aware of the depression, more than meteoro
logical, that had settled over her establishment. Everybody, it
seemed, was in low spirits. The remorseless rain showed up all the
deficiencies of The Myrtles – deficiencies which in fine weather
never appeared. The place, far too large nowadays for a private
house, began, with everyone kept indoors, to seem far too small,
inadequate for its present purpose – there were not enough sitting
rooms; there was no soundproof playroom in which the pent-up
children could rampage; there was no elbowroom for those indoor
games by which adult energy could have found release. Boredom,
together with loss of appetite, was making people criticise the food.
Several of the ladies had taken to remaining upstairs till lunchtime;
this obstructed the work of the staff, who grumbled. It had been in
the hope of luring her guests down that Miss Plackman had had that
fire lighted in the drawing-room. However, one peep, just now, had
been enough to show her that the device had failed – no one had
been there but the ever-dependable Mrs. Ordeyne and her wellmannered friend. And, of course, Ellen. One had to face the fact: no
one stayed with that girl.
Poor child! There existed in Miss Plackman an incurable friend
liness to youth, an inexhaustible sympathy with the wish for
happiness. But then, did not all these summer guests who came to
The Myrtles bring with them dreams and longings? How much it
meant to everybody, a holiday! She could guess how people
depended for strength and courage, throughout the year to come,
on memories to be stored in a few weeks – so short a time!
Bright hours, the gay, carefree, timeless sense of enchantment –
what fuel to life they were! Officially, when after her father’s death
Miss Plackman decided to turn the old home into a guesthouse, she
had been embarking on a commercial venture. At the same time,
shyly and secretly, she had hoped to add in some way to the good
of the world.
Now, having retreated into her office after her anxious glance
round the drawing-room door, she sat, hearing rain drum on a glass
roof, thinking, How unkind weather can be! Her eyes instinctively
turned, for encouragement, to the martial family photographs on
the wall. Not for nothing was she a soldier’s daughter. Fight on she
would – but oh, dear! Piled on her desk were those ledgers with
their disheartening story, and this was the day on which she did
accounts. Miss Plackman, setting her teeth, forced herself to rise
from the dear armchair and face up to the business. Then the
telephone rang.
“Hullo?” said a pleasant young man’s voice, by now familiar. “Oh,
hullo, that you, Miss Plackman? How are you, this sweet morning?
Rain coming through the roof yet?” This joke was a shade too near
the bone for Miss Plackman’s taste. “Listen,” he went on, “could I ask
you to give a message to Ellen?”
“Unless,” said Miss Plackman, “you’d rather speak to her? I
happen to know she’s in the drawing-room.”
“I don’t think I’ll do that, thank you. I’m in a bit of a rush.” As to
that, she perfectly saw his point: those conversations with Ellen,
so clearly dissatisfying at Ellen’s end, had never seemed able to
terminate under fifteen minutes. “Just tell her,” he went on, “that I
wish she’d come round this morning to our hotel. We’ve got a table
tennis going, and we’re a cheery crowd here. It would do her good.
Do get her to come.”
“Well, I’ll do my best, but – ”
“I know,” he said. “‘But, but, but.’ I’ve had nothing but ‘but’ from
her. Something’s eating her, and I wish you could tell me what. She
won’t join us and go to a movie, won’t come and play rummy, won’t
even go for a tramp in the rain.”
“I don’t think she’s got a mackintosh,” hazarded Miss Plackman.
“Heavens,” he said, “hasn’t she? The girl must be nuts. Listen, I
dote on Ellen. I hate to have her feel low, but in this weather what
can one plan? The best hope, as far as I can see, is for as many as
possible of us to get together, all be as merry as possible, and keep
going. That’s what I keep telling her, but she just won’t cooperate.”
“I’ll do my best,” repeated Miss Plackman, not hopefully.
“Do,” he implored. “I’d come for her in the car, but it’s the family
car. Dad and Mother naturally have first call on it, and this morning
he’s running her in to the hairdresser’s. And after all, it’s less than ten
minutes’ walk over here to the hotel. Could you, by chance, fix her
up with a mack?”
“I’ve already tried,” said Miss Plackman. “But I’m afraid she said
there wasn’t one in this house she’d be seen dead in.”
“Well, simply give her the message. It’s up to her.” He rang off.
Miss Plackman, sitting down at her desk, reread the two letters of
cancellation before tearing them up. That would leave how many
rooms empty? Three – no, four next week, when the Begbies left. If
the weather changed, the Begbies just might stay on. If it did not
change, the Thompsons might go back to London a week earlier.
Was it only the rain, she asked herself, that was gradually emptying
The Myrtles? Or was it some infectious bad morale? Together,
I’m sure, she thought, we could face this. It can’t go on forever.
Cooperate, that was what he’d said, cooperate. If only everyone
would. This seemed to her a campaign, with a crucial battle ahead.
St. Swithin’s Day
1
– now, when was St. Swithin’s Day? Tomorrow.
Ellen had spent her holiday shopping money on beachwear of the
most dazzling kind – supplemented by sunglasses on the Hollywood
model, oils that guaranteed a deep, even tan, and a rainbow range of
polishes for her toenails. She had bought a smart-looking, second
hand evening dress from a friend who had grown too fat to wear it.
Two pairs of sandals, a chalk-white light-woollen coat, and a water
proof lipstick completed her purchases. She had, it is true, tried on
one rather glamorous coral-pink hooded raincoat, with the idea of
donning this during a sunshine-shower; but, at this point, she had
discovered her purse was empty. Well, let it go; she had shown
forethought enough by including one cardigan and the flannel skirt.
Her outfit, when she reviewed and packed it, seemed to her quite
ideally planned. Was she not going to meet Romance, on the hot
gold sands, by a whispering deep-blue sea? Three whole weeks, day
after day, of that. By night, moonlight, dance music – finally, kisses.
She’d let drop, to Peter, quite offhand, the fact that she would be
going to Seale-on-Sea. For the fraction of a second, one might have
thought, Peter’s reaction had been somewhat negative. Then, “Why,
that’s where we’ll be going,” he had pointed out. “What an amazing
coincidence! How extraordinary! Now, whatever brings you there?
It’s an awfully nice little place, but it’s pretty quiet. You going with
friends?”
“No,” she said shortly.
He had seemed surprised; for, so far, Ellen had shown an im
passioned ardour for society: she was inclined to crash parties or
tag onto older groups, who did not always want her. “Anyway, it’s
splendid that you’ll be there,” he had added, with rising enthusiasm.
“We must see a lot of each other. You’ll certainly like the crowd.”
“What crowd?” Ellen had asked, with sinking heart. “I thought
you said you were going with your parents.”
“So I am, but you know how people collect – old friends of theirs,
old friends of mine, and so on. However,” he had said quickly, for
he had sensed a drop in the atmosphere, “if you’d rather, we can
always pull out – go swimming, dancing, or take the car off some
where. Round there it’s very attractive country – woods, and inns
where they let you eat outdoors, and best of all, there are the downs,
of course. It’s wonderful up there on a summer night. Don’t know
what it is,” he had said, waxing lyrical, “but there are places that
seem to belong to another world. One feels anything might
happen.”
Anything might happen. On those magic words, Ellen had
pinned her hopes.
Peter, at twenty-two, combined the most winning bonhomie and
high spirits with a so far apparently quite disengaged heart. Every
one liked him, and he liked everyone: he had something warmer,
more genuine than mere charm. Moreover, he had an attractive
way of giving his whole attention to whomever he happened to be
talking to: this built people up in their own eyes, making them feel
more interesting than they did normally. That this, when a girl was
in question, could be misleading, Peter had no idea: his simple wish
was that everyone should be happy and feel good. Unlike many
popular men, he was quite unspoiled; he worked hard, got on well
at the office, and was a devoted son.
Yes, Ellen, in the bestowal of her affections, had made an excel
lent choice. All that now remained was to get him all to herself –
away.
The worst, unforeseen, had happened – rain, spelling frustration.
Indoors, no place to be alone; nowhere to go, sit, be. Would she go
to his hotel, to hang around, making just one more of the crowd?
Ellen shook her head stonily. She would not.
After tea, on the eve of St. Swithin’s, the rain stopped. This event,
so important to many, was not dramatic: the downpour simply
thinned, wavered, lightened, and slowly ceased. Clouds, as though
still undecided, still hung low; a heavy drip-drop from trees was to
be heard through The Myrtles’ garden, across whose humid air stole
the scent of sweet William, syringa, flowering privet. A moist gleam,
not yet sunshine, began to filter through from the west; in the
distance the sea first paled, then brightened. One by one, the guest -
house people opened their windows and drew in deep, incredulous,
happy breaths. Soon, then, there began a movement outdoors –
children were buttoned into their jackets and hurried out for a blow
on the sea front; elderly couples set off two by two.
Mrs. Ordeyne, having put on her hat and coat, paused on her
way downstairs to tap on Miss Kerry’s door. “Anything I can do for
you in town?” she called. “Or would you care to come, too?”
No answer: either Miss Kerry was not there or she was sleeping
off the fatigue of a day indoors. Mrs. Ordeyne, philosophical, went
her way.
Miss Kerry was in her room: at the sound of the knock and voice
she sat frozen; not, till her friend’s footsteps were out of hearing,
daring to breathe. Though her heart smote her, she could not,
simply could not at this moment bear to face anyone. In the act of
slipping the letter she had just written into an envelope, her hand
shook; she felt knocked to pieces by what had been an agonising
decision. Before sticking down the envelope, she paused – had she,
in her desperation, expressed herself clumsily? Had she not made
herself clear? Might she give unnecessary pain? She must make sure.
Once more unfolding her letter, she scanned its last pages with eyes
burning with unshed tears.
“So don’t,” she had written, “don’t, after all, come here. This
terrible weather, now, on top of the strain of all these years we have
lived apart, has unnerved me. It is a bad omen. If things between us
were to go wrong again, after all this waiting, all we went through
before, it would be unbearable, wouldn’t it? As for this place – well,
if you could see it, you’d understand: there would be nowhere for
us, literally nowhere. The last straw, for me, has been a miserable,
disappointed girl in this house, lashing and throwing herself about;
she’s to me a sort of parody of my inside self. I remember, it was my
lack of calm that for both of us ruined things, long ago.
“You may say, if we don’t meet again now, then better not meet
again at all. I’ve a feeling you will say that: if you do, I must accept
it. I have lived in my thoughts of you all these years; I shall live in
them every day till I die.”
Yes, there it was: said. She was sadly, coldly certain that she was
right. To hesitate, at this last moment, to reconsider, would that not
only be to drag out the pain? Swiftly she closed, addressed, and
stamped the letter, then crossed the room to put on her raincoat.
Passing the window, she noticed for the first time that the rain had
stopped. “What of that?” she told herself fiercely. “It will begin
again!” Taking gloves from a drawer, she saw herself, suddenly, in the
mirror – the blue of the raincoat brought out the vivid blue of her
eyes. I could have been beautiful, she thought.