prevented her from starting a business on her own with money borrowed from relations and friends.
She had seen too much of that.
She would borrow no money-use no influence.
She had found a job for herself at four pounds a week and if she had actually been given the job because Madame Alfrege hoped that Midge would bring her 'smart' friends to buy, Madame Alfrege was disappointed.
Midge sternly discouraged any such notion on the part of her friends.
She had no particular illusions about working. She disliked the shop, she disliked Madame Alfrege, she disliked the eternal subservience to ill-tempered and impolite customers, but she doubted very much whether she could obtain any other job which she would like better, since she had none of the necessary qualifications.
Edward's assumption that a wide range of choice was open to her was simply unbearably irritating this morning. What right had Edward to live in a world so divorced from reality?
They were Angkatells, all of them! And she-was only half an Angkatell! And sometimes, like this morning, she did not feel like an Angkatell at all! She was all her father's daughter.
She thought of her father with the usual pang of love and compunction, a greyhaired, middle-aged man with a tired face.
A man who had struggled for years, running a small family business that was bound, for all his care and efforts, to go slowly down the hill. It was not incapacity on his part-it was the march of progress.
Strangely enough, it was not to her brilliant Angkatell mother but to her quiet tired father that Midge's devotion had always been given. Each time, when she came back, from those visits to Ainswick, which were the wild delight other life, she would answer the faint deprecating question in her father's tired face flinging her arms round his neck and saying, 'I'm glad to be home-I'm glad to be home.'
Her mother had died when Midge was thirteen. Sometimes, Midge realized that she knew very little about her mother. She had been vague, charming, gay. Had she regretted her marriage, the marriage that had taken her outside the circle of the Angkatell clan? Midge had no idea. Her father had grown greyer and quieter after his wife's death. His struggles against the extinction of his business had grown more unavailing.
He had died quietly and inconspicuously when Midge was eighteen.
Midge had stayed with various Angkatell relations, had accepted presents from the Angkatells, had had good times with the Angkatells, but she had refused to be financially dependent on their good will. And much as she loved them, there were times such as these, when she felt suddenly and violently divergent from them.
She thought with rancour, they don't know anything!
Edward, sensitive as always, was looking at her with a puzzled face. He asked gently:
'I've upset you? Why?'
Lucy drifted into the room. She was in the middle of one of her conversations. '-you see, one doesn't really know whether she'd prefer the White Hart to us or not.'
Midge looked at her blankly-then at Edward.
'It's no use looking at Edward,' said Lady Angkatell. 'Edward simply wouldn't know; you, Midge, are always so practical.'
'I don't know what you are talking about, Lucy.'
Lucy looked surprised.
'The inquest, darling. Gerda has to come down for it. Should she stay here? Or go to the White Hart? The associations here are painful, of course-but then at the White Hart there will be people who will stare and quantities of reporters… Wednesday, you know, at eleven, or is it eleven-thirty?' A smile lit up Lady Angkatell's face. 'I have never been to an inquest! I thought my grey -and a hat, of course, like church-but not gloves-'You know,' went on Lady Angkatell, crossing the room and picking up the telephone receiver and gazing down at it earnestly, 'I don't believe I've got any gloves except gardening gloves nowadays! And, of course, lots of long evening ones put away from the Government House days. Gloves are rather stupid, don't you think so?'
'Their only use is to avoid fingerprints in crimes,' said Edward, smiling.
'Now, it's very interesting that you should say that, Edward- Very interesting-what am I doing with this thing?' Lady Angkatell looked at the telephone receiver with faint distaste.
'Were you going to ring up someone?'
'I don't think so.' Lady Angkatell shook her head vaguely and put the receiver back on its stand very gingerly.
She looked from Edward to Midge.
'I don't think, Edward, that you ought to upset Midge. Midge minds sudden deaths more than we do.'
'My dear Lucy,' exclaimed Edward. 'I was only worrying about this place where Midge works. It sounds all wrong to me.'
'Edward thinks I ought to have a delightful, sympathetic employer who would appreciate me,' said Midge drily.
'Dear Edward,' said Lucy with complete appreciation.
She smiled at Midge and went out again.
'Seriously, Midge,' said Edward, 'I am worried-'
She interrupted him:
'The damned woman pays me four pounds a week. That's all that matters.'
She brushed past him and went out into the garden.
Sir Henry was sitting in his usual place on the low wall but Midge turned away and walked up towards the flower walk.
Her relatives were charming but she had no use for their charm this morning.
David Angkatell was sitting on the seat at the top of the path.
There was no overdone charm about David and Midge made straight for him and sat down by him, noting with malicious pleasure his look of dismay.
How extraordinarily difficult it was, thought David, to get away from people.
He had been driven from his bedroom by the brisk incursion of housemaids, purposeful with mops and dusters.
The library (and the Encyclopaedia Britannica) had not been the sanctuary he had hoped optimistically it might be. Twice Lady Angkatell had drifted in and out, addressing him kindly with remarks to which there seemed no possible intelligent reply.
He had come out here to brood upon his position. The mere week-end, to which he had unwillingly committed himself, had now lengthened out, owing to the exigencies connected with sudden and violent death.
David, who preferred the contemplation of an Academic Past or the earnest discussion of a Left Wing Future, had no aptitude for dealing with a violent and realistic present.
As he had told Lady Angkatell, he did not read the News of the World. But now the News of the World seemed to have come to The Hollow.
Murder! David shuddered distastefully.
What would his friends think? How did one, so to speak, take murder? What was one's attitude? Bored? Disgusted? Lightly amused?
Trying to settle these problems in his mind, he was by no means pleased to be disturbed by Midge. He looked at her uneasily as she sat beside him.
He was rather startled by the defiant stare with which she returned his look. A disagreeable girl of no intellectual value.
She said, 'How do you like your relations?'
David shrugged his shoulders. He said:
'Does one really think about relations?'
Midge said:
'Does one really think about anything?'
Doubtless, David thought, she didn't. He said almost graciously:
'I was analyzing my reactions to murder.'
'It is certainly odd,' said Midge, 'to be in one.'
David sighed and said:
'Wearisome…' That was quite the best attitude. 'All the cliches that one thought existed only in the pages of
