his family as he was ever likely to get.
“You never know, I might. I’m contra-suggestible. I might even like your folks, it has been known to happen in these cases.”
He gave a hollow laugh. “That’ll be the day! Still, we needn’t even stay within range, when we’re married. We could go abroad, if you’d like it. I bet you and I could do well in Canada. Did you ever think about it?—clearing out and starting fresh somewhere else?”
“No,” said Dinah comfortably, “I never did. And you never did, either, until tonight. Anyhow, who said we were going to be married? Relax, boy, it won’t be that bad!”
He relaxed a little. They were feeling their way steadily along the misty green lane behind the hotel, watching for the open gate that led into the Abbey drive. The entrance was narrow and dark, shrouded in trees. Nothing was left of the monastic buildings that had once stretched clean across the centre of the present village, except the lumpy bases of walls just breaking the ground in two places in the shrubberies. Only the abbot’s lodging remained. They saw the long level of the high roof faintly against a clearing sky, the thick column of the chimneys. Only two lighted windows broke the murky dimness. The house looked dank, dilapidated and cold.
“Look, Dinah, once we’re installed, I’ll take Robert away for a bit—don’t you think?—and let you get down to it in earnest with Mother. You won’t mind, will you? We won’t stay away long. But I’m betting on it that once you’ve broken the ice she’ll be eating out of your hand.” He rolled the car to a halt before the crumbling porch, and turned and gave her a slightly strained smile. “After all, that’s the way you affected
“Straight in at the deep end!” mused Dinah. He was evidently more disturbed by the whole thing than she had guessed. “All right, kill or cure. Maybe we’ll end up in Canada, after all.”
The door opened ponderously but silently on a long, flagged hall, none too adequately lit, that stretched clean through the house and ended at a broad Gothic window. Dinah’s alert eye noted worn mats, bare panelling, a vast oaken staircase, the stone newels of what must be the steps down to the cellar, just to the left of the terminal window, and a narrow little lobby bearing away to the right, and ending in a garden door. The coats that hung in the lobby were so old and so frequently dry-cleaned that they had outlived all their original quality and cut, and most of their colour. Even if there had been nothing else to betray their age, the length of the nearest, a woman’s classic camel coat, would have been enough. Mrs. Macsen-Martel was tall, but even on her this skirt would practically reach the ankle. Everything had been good in its day; and for everything within sight its day was long over.
Someone had heard them come. A door on the right, beyond the stairs, opened, and Robert came out to greet them.
It was the first time Dinah had had the opportunity to study him at such close quarters, and she gazed at him with candid interest, looking for some resemblance to Hugh. The long, lightweight bones were the same, the hollowed cheeks, even the deep setting of the eyes, but in place of Hugh’s vivid colouring and mobility, this one was neutral-tinted and hesitant, almost deprecating, of movement. A profound, almost a fastidious reserve dominated everything in his face, the brown eyes that were at such pains to avoid staring at her, the long, level mouth that opened stiffly to welcome her.
“Miss Cressett, I’m so glad you could come. Let me take your coat.” But he moved too slowly, and Hugh had already taken it. “Do come in, my mother’s looking forward to meeting you.” She was surprised but thankful that he didn’t say: “We’ve heard so much about you from Hugh.” Maybe he was leaving that for the old lady. Someone was certainly due to say it before the evening was over.
Hugh took her possessively by the elbow, and steered her into the drawing-room. Large, lofty, chilly, with a vast fireplace and a very modest fire in the distant wall, and a few good but threadbare rugs deployed artfully to make the maximum impression of comfort where there was little that was comfortable. A great deal of splendid but sombre furniture—there was money there, at any rate, if they cared to realise it—and one superb, high-backed, erect chair placed near the fire and facing the door, with the old woman enthroned in it. A tableau especially for Dinah’s benefit; she had to walk approximately twenty-five feet across the bare centre of the room to reach her hostess, with the faded, lofty-lidded eyes watching and appraising her every step of the way. All those exposed inches of smooth, slim thigh in honey-beige tights, the short, almost boyish cap of dark-brown hair, and greenish eye-shadow, the fashionable chunky shoes that Dave called her football boots… But if I’d worn a crinoline, she thought, watching the old woman’s face every bit as narrowly as her own face was being watched, I should still have come as a shock.
Hugh did the only thing he could do to break the tension, and did it beautifully. He dropped Dinah’s elbow and swooped ahead of her, shearing through the invisible cord that linked the two pairs of hostile female eyes; he stooped and kissed his mother’s grey and fallen cheek, and warmed her face for a moment into genuine life.
“Hullo, Mother! Here’s Dinah, I promised I’d bring her to see you, didn’t I?” He reached for Dinah’s other hand as his mother put up an emaciated claw and allowed her bony fingers to be clasped for a moment in Dinah’s short- nailed, well-scrubbed, capable hand. It was like holding a dead bird, starved in the winter cold. Two rings, old- fashioned ones, but those were surely real rubies in them… and that long string of beads dangling into her lap to complete the elongated effect of every line of her body was neither of glass nor cultures, but pearls. Of course, she’d been from the branch of the family with some money left, until she married Robert senior, and he got his hands on most of it and sent it flying like skittles… I am a right
“So kind of you to give up an evening to a dull old woman like me, Miss Cressett. Do sit down…” She gestured vaguely towards a velvet hassock that would have installed Dinah at her feet, but Hugh was splendidly blind, and whisked up a comfortable leather chair close to his mother’s, to establish them as equals. Dinah gave him a lightning glance that would have liked to turn into a wink, and sat down with as little display of leg as she could manage. Appeasement was not in her nature, but whenever she looked at poor Hugh she had pacific thoughts.
“Perhaps you would care for a glass of something? I don’t drink myself, but perhaps a sherry…?”
“I brought a case of Traminer,” said Hugh unexpectedly, “we can try it with dinner if it suits. I was in town, and had to wait all day for my job, so I went shopping, and got hold of a real bargain. It’s Jugoslav, but it’s as good as most that comes out of Alsace. I know, I’ve tried it! Come and help me fetch it in, Rob, it’s in the boot of the car.”
If it really was, Dinah thought with deep interest, then he’d popped it in there before he even came into the house. Indeed he must have dropped it off inside the yard before he delivered the respray job across in Greenfields, and installed it ready for delivery on his return. Her attention was caught in a new and grave way. If Hugh was as keyed up as all that, scheming with cases of wine and worrying about the impression she was going to make on his mother (not to mention the impression his mother was probably going to make on her!) then there was really nothing else for it, he
