doors to him readily: Miles Mallindine’s young, modern parents, Dominic Felse’s policeman father and pretty, shrewd, amusing mother. Policeman was the wrong term, strictly speaking; George Felse was a Detective- Inspector in the Midshire CID, recently promoted from Detective-Sergeant. The progeny of these pleasant couples tolerated him and kept their lordly distance, behaving with princely punctilio if they were left to entertain him; the parents welcomed him and never worried him. Privately they laughed a little, affectionately, at their own sons. Tom found them a pleasure and a relief. And they delivered him, at least, from feeling himself dependent upon Annet’s charity, when he had dreamed of extending to her the largesse of his own.
He drove through the dim rain, and he saw all the procession of new faces, one by one, passing before him. But always Annet, always Annet. And always with gentian eyes fixed ahead, and face turned away from him.
Eve Mallindine had given him a lift once, when the Mini was in the garage for servicing, and run him into town from the Comerford bus-stop. It was pure chance that he had mentioned Annet to her; if anything connected with Annet could be called chance. More probably he was so full of her that he couldn’t keep her name out of his mouth. Had he even betrayed that he was jealous of the young men who danced with her at the Saturday hops in town, and resented her mother’s prim care of her? He was horribly afraid he might have done. Well for him it was Mrs Malltndine. Everything a sixth-former’s mother should be, young and sophisticated and pretty, with a twinkle in her artfully-blue-shadowed eyes, and legs like flappers used to have before the fad for impossible shoes spoiled their gait and made them the same thickness from ankle to knee. Incidentally, she wore stiletto heels herself. How did she manage to walk like a proud filly in them? And how on earth did she drive so well?
She looked along her shoulder at him briefly, and returned her golden-brown eyes to the road ahead. She pondered for a moment, and then she said: ‘I’d better tell you, Tom. Do you mind if I call you Tom? After all, you’re almost
He hadn’t minded. He couldn’t remember when he’d minded anything less. Just sitting beside her was enough to make him feel a few inches taller, and he needed every lift he could get, when he remembered Annet.
‘Barbara Beck isn’t so mad as she looks to you,’ said Eve Mallindine, with a wry little smile. ‘Annet nearly made a run for it, early last spring. With my blessed hopeful. And don’t you dare let him know I told you, or I’ll wring your neck. But you wouldn’t, you’re not the kind. Excuse a mother’s partiality. I wouldn’t like him hurt. And if I’d been seventeen and male, I’d have jumped at the chance, too. They didn’t get any farther than Comerbourne station. Bill got wind of it, somehow – I never asked him how, I was far too busy pretending everything was normal and I hadn’t noticed the row going on. Bill took Annet home, and then brought the pup back and shut himself in the bedroom with him. I’m sure they both behaved with the greatest dignity – not even a raised voice between ’em! Miles was past seventeen, and nearly six feet high, and so damned grown-up – Well, you know him! Poor Bill must have felt at a hopeless disadvantage – if he hadn’t been in a flaming temper. I don’t know which of them I was sorriest for. I kept out of it, and made a cheese souffle. It seemed the most sensible thing to do, they were both crazy about my cheese souffles, and even a brokenhearted lover has to eat.’ She cast a glance at him again, even more briefly, and grinned. ‘They argued for an hour, and neither would give an inch. Poor darlings, they’re so alike. Don’t you think so?’
He didn’t. He saw Miles Mallindine every time he looked at her. Miles wasn’t the most unattractive member of the Upper Sixth, not by a long way. But all he said was, somewhat constrainedly: ‘Where were they heading?’
‘They had one-way tickets for London. Poor lambs, they were twenty minutes early for the train. A mistake! The trouble I had, getting Miles thawed out after that catastrophe. It’s awfully difficult, you know, Tom, for a seventeen-year-old to believe one doesn’t blame him. But I didn’t. Would you? You’ve seen Annet.’
‘No,’ he said; with difficulty, but it sounded all right. ‘No, I wouldn’t blame him.’
‘Good for you, Tom, I knew you were human. But poor Bill has a social conscience, you see. I only have a human one. They made each other pretty sore. Bill felt Miles ought to come right out and confide in him. And Miles wouldn’t. They ate the souffle, though,’ she added comfortably, rightly recollecting this as reassurance that her menfolk were not seriously disabled, physically or emotionally. ‘And to tell the truth, I laced the coffee. It seemed a good thing to do.’
Was he allowed to ask questions? And if so, how far could he go? There must be a limit, and the most interesting questions probably stepped well over it. Such as: why? Why should Miles find it necessary to plan a runaway affair with Annet? Many escorts a good deal less presentable were allowed to take the girl about, provided they called for her respectably at the house, and were vetted and found reliable. The Becks wouldn’t have frozen out a good-looking boy with wealthy parents, excellent prospects, and charm enough, when he pleased, to call the bird from the tree. If he’d wanted Annet, he had only to convince the girl, her parents would certainly have smiled upon him from the beginning. So why? Why run? Apparently there was no question of previous misbehaviour, no girl-in-trouble complications that made a getaway and a quick marriage desirable.
‘It’s all blown over now, of course,’ said Eve, slowing at the first traffic lights on the edge of Comerbourne. ‘Nobody else ever treated it as more than a romantic escapade. But Mrs Beck still thinks Miles planned her poor girl’s ruin. I thought I’d better tell you how the land lay, you might feel a bit baffled if it came up out of the blue.’
Somehow it was too late by then for the ‘why’ question. All he could say was: ‘And is he still – I mean, has he got over her by now?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t ask him. What he wants to tell he’ll tell, what he doesn’t nobody can make him. Me, I don’t try. But getting over Annet might be quite an arduous convalescence, don’t you think so?’
‘It well might,’ said Tom, with brittle care. She was a dangerous woman, she might see all too readily that Miles wasn’t the only chronic case.
‘Ah, well,’ she said cheerfully, putting her foot down as the orange changed to green, ‘he’ll be going up to Queens’ next year, and he’ll have more than enough to keep him busy. I hear he’s coming camping with you next weekend. Thirty juniors to ride herd on, he says. Heaven help you all!’
‘We’ll survive,’ said Tom. If you were the youngest male member of staff, and owned an anorak and a pair of clinkered boots, you were a sitter for all the outdoor assignments, and it was your bounden duty to look martyred and moan about it. No matter how much you actually enjoyed skippering a party of boys up a mountain or under canvas, you could never admit it. ‘Drop me along here by Cooks’, would you? I’ve got to see about some maps I ordered.’
And as he got out of the car and leaned to offer thanks for his ride, glad to be seen with her, complemented by the greetings he shared with her, the amazing woman smiled up at him confidently and calmly, and said: ‘You won’t take them on the Hallowmount, will you?’
She wasn’t even going to wait for an answer, so completely did she trust him to accept and understand what she had said. She gave him a little wave of her hand, and expected him to withdraw head and hand and close the door; and when he didn’t, she sat looking up at him with a quizzical, slightly surprised smile, no doubt thinking him as endearingly male and stupid as her own pig-headed pair.
