The Flowering Thorn Read online

‘Flannel!’ thought Lesley impatiently. ‘His mother ought to have had more sense.’ If flannel caught alight it simply went up like celluloid; and now she came to think about it, there was celluloid there too—that absurd floating swan brought in by Mrs. Lee! It lived by Pat’s bed, looking very much out of place, Lesley remembered, on a steel book-table.… Flannel and celluloid!

  “Having no hearts, partner?”

  She looked: she had. The game progressed while Pat charred to a cinder. She tried violently to concentrate, but it was no good; and with a growing disgust, Lesley felt herself to be experiencing the traditional emotions of the absent hen. Her nest was bare, her chick unguarded: for in such nauseating similes did her predicament naturally express itself. Intellectually, she could conceive no possible cause for alarm: and it was therefore all the more unfortunate that what she had now to deal with was a matter not of intellectual conviction but of female physiology. She was discovering, in fact, that it is almost a physical impossibility for any normal woman to leave a small child alone from seven at night till three in the morning; and her bridge suffered accordingly.

  “Game and rub,” said Elissa, reaching for the score-card. “What is it, darling, drink or the digestion?”

  “One on top of the other, darling,” replied Lesley, with a suitable langour. “So much so, in fact, that I think I’m going to cut the matinée.”

  “But my dear”—Elissa’s hair-thick eyebrows went up and up—“you aren’t as bad as all that, are you?” She looked really quite anxious—it was so unlike Lesley to break up a bridge party, and a nuisance into the bargain. A damnable nuisance, for what the hell were they to do until it was time to go? Aloud she said,

  “Have a brandy, darling, and don’t give way. There’s nothing like bridge for taking the mind off it.”

  For the first time within memory, however, that perfect social conscience was no longer in command. Apologetically, indeed, but with no sign of relenting, Lesley rose to her feet: she was sorry for Elissa, but she was in an agony for Pat; and steadily refusing both cars and cordials, Miss Frewen slipped into her cloak and almost ran downstairs.

  3

  From the windows of the Yellow House not a flame issued. Lesley let herself in, ran quickly upstairs, and there found Patrick peacefully asleep and no matches in the room.

  For a moment she stood gazing, though without æsthetic appreciation, at his pink cheek on the white pillow; then turned back on to the landing and swore from the heart.

  Her return to form being as sudden as complete, she could not now for the life of her conceive what had happened. There had been something—God knew what—that drove her from Elissa’s bridge-table; that caused her to lie, feign sickness, and let down her hostess; and which now, having done its worst, had abruptly departed. It was all utterly inexplicable.

  ‘Of course he was all right!’ thought Lesley, looking back over her shoulder. Through the open doorway she could just see Pat’s bed, low and pale and with a mound in the middle. The mound was Patrick, and it never stirred. Probably it had never stirred in all the time she was away; would doubtless continue unstirring should she go away again. The thought was tempting: the night was young: and as though to add its persuasion, a clock downstairs chose that moment to chime.

  ‘My God!’ thought Lesley. ‘It’s only half-past ten!’

  She stood and listened: the whole house urged her out. It was charming, intimate, a pleasure to the eye: but it did not expect to be inhabited at half-past ten at night. By a whole crowd of people, yes: by two people, perhaps: but not by just one person.…

  With sudden resolution Lesley picked up her white moiré fishtail and went softly downstairs. The telephone was in the hall, where Patrick could not hear it; and there would be ample time, if she rang up at once, to waylay the party before they left for the Adelphi.

  She stretched out her hand, she touched the receiver: and in that instant her bluff was called.

  ‘Burglars!’ said a voice within her mind.

  ‘Nonsense!’ snapped Lesley.

  But it was no use. Even as her lips formed Elissa’s number her mind switched back to the smell of burning.

  ‘I tell you there aren’t any matches!’ argued Lesley with herself.

  As quick as thought her mind immediately substituted a masked face at the window, a sudden beam of light—Patrick sitting up shrieking, and a hand over his mouth! Like the original fire-piece, the scene flashed before her with an extraordinary perfection of detail: she could see the hairs on the man’s hand, the stitching on Pat’s collar.…

  Her hand dropped back. Even her hand was in the conspiracy. Lesley regathered the folds of her dress and turned again to the stairs. For her hand was perfectly right. The momentary panic had become a permanent frame of mind; and Lesley had little heart to go out in the certain knowledge that half an hour later she would once more be driven back. Her fears had been disproved, and by the mere sight of Patrick’s slumber: at the bare thought of leaving him, they were again raising their heads.

  With a sudden fierce resentment, a feeling more like hatred than any she had yet experienced, Lesley moved softly into Pat’s room and stood looking down at him. Sweet, deep, untroubled: only a child could sleep like that, a child secure in its tyranny; and for the first time, sick with prevision, she saw that she had given herself into bondage.

  Which would seem to show that the old are sometimes right.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The following morning Lesley woke to a mood of cold and bitter lucidity: the mood that should have descended, a week or more earlier, in Mrs. Bassington’s drawing-room. For half an hour, in Toby Ashton’s bed, she lay marshalling the facts, co-ordinating them into a whole, and considering the result with a complete lack of enthusiasm. For the first and dominant fact was this: that her new and permanent home, which incidentally should be found as soon as possible, would have to contain, in addition to Patrick and herself, a maid who slept in. It would mean extra food, extra wages, above all an extra room; it would mean a fifty per cent increase in expenditure, and with nothing to show but the same liberty of movement to which she had always been accustomed.

  Lesley turned over in bed and reached for a cigarette: then suddenly altered her mind and took the dressing-gown instead. A certain natural efficiency, almost atrophied by disuse, was urging her to be up: she felt an impulse towards paper and pen, towards rows of figures and division by fifty-two. Bathing, dressing, powdering, the impulse persisted; till at breakfast she took a pencil and did arithmetic on The Times.

  The result was so depressing, and many of the items so inevitably provisional, that she scored all through and turned instead to look for a flat. At the enormous number to be let her confidence returned a little; and having noted down the addresses of the dozen most attractive, Lesley put on her hat and went out for the morning.

  2

  The first of the flats was in Hyde Park Terrace, the last in Campden Hill: at each of which addresses, as at the ten intervening, there successively took place either one or other of the following dialogues.

  “Good morning,” said Lesley.

  “Good morning,” replied the housekeeper. (She was twice a landlady, and once a reception-clerk: but the term will serve.)

  “I want,” continued Lesley, “four rooms, furnished, kitchen and bath.”

  The housekeeper, smiling affably, would then lead the way. All housekeepers smiled to begin with, for there was something in Lesley’s appearance—a businesslike elegance, an air of solvency—that went straight to their hearts. After a swift examination of premises, however—

  “I shall have with me,” added Lesley, “a small boy.”

  It was a phrase she had pitched on after considerable thought, but the effect on the housekeepers was not always happy.

  “A small boy, Madam?”

  “Yes, four-and-a-half.”

  “I’m sorry, Madam, but we don’t take children.…”

  That was the first version. The second,
proceeding smoothly past Patrick to the question of rent, lasted about five minutes longer, was terminated by Lesley instead of the housekeeper, and always on the same note.

  “It’s charming, of course,” agreed Lesley, “but far too expensive.” The words were on her lips, in the course of that morning, at least five times. During the next few days they practically lived there.

  She was at last experiencing, in fact, the disadvantages of so small a town; for the residential districts as Lesley visualised them amounted to no more than a dozen square miles or so between Chelsea and the Regent’s Park. Within this desirable area lived all the people one knew, so that it was naturally rather crowded; but Lesley would no more have thought of looking over the fence, so to speak, than of booking a seat in the upper circle.

  In a moment of disquiet, however, she did wire to Paris to beg Tony’s hospitality for a further week: and with ten days’ grace instead of three returned once more to her round of house-agents.

  They all said the same thing.

  For the accommodation Madam required, and at the rent Madam was prepared to pay, Madam would probably do better to try the suburbs.

  Lesley listened incredulously: it was as though they advised her to try Australia. There were the suburbs, of course, through which one occasionally passed in a car, and where people out of Punch borrowed each other’s mowers: but as for living there—

  ‘Impossible!’ thought Lesley; and so reached the disturbing conclusion that in the whole of London there was nowhere to live. All was impossible, Town outside the ring-fence, the suburbs outside Town; and so step by step, fighting every inch of the way, she was driven into the country.

  3

  “But darling!” exclaimed Elissa, with her first breath after the bombshell. “You surely don’t expect you’ll like it?”

  “On the contrary,” replied Lesley, “I expect to loathe it. But it’s only till he goes to school.”

  “Four years, my dear!”

  Lesley shrugged.

  “Unfortunately, there’s no alternative.”

  For perhaps two minutes they smoked in silence. Then Elissa drove the stub from her holder, and said abruptly:

  “Darling—we all think you’re splendid, of course, but aren’t you being rather a fool? Surely you don’t intend giving up your whole life to the child? It’s—it’s unreasonable.”

  “It’s hardly a question of ‘intending,’” said Lesley wearily. “I’ve taken the thing on and I’ve got to see it through. I can’t afford to see it through in Town, so I’ve got to see it through in the country. As I said before, there’s no alternative.”

  From Elissa’s second cigarette rose an immaculate smoke-ring.

  “But darling—I may have got it wrong—but from what you first told me—you haven’t done anything actually legal, have you?”

  “No, it didn’t seem necessary. There was no other claim, and I simply … undertook him.”

  “Well, then,” Elissa looked up, her long black eyes full of a bright lucidity. “Quite honestly, darling, wouldn’t it be better to face the facts and push him into a home?”

  At the other end of the couch her friend was perfectly still. ‘To get rid of him!’ Lesley was thinking. ‘To get rid of him and be free!’ It was what she longed for with her whole soul.…

  “Seriously, why not, darling?” asked Elissa again.

  Lesley looked up, for the question started a curious train of thought. If with her whole and sovereign soul, then why not, indeed? What was it that could prevent her? And examining her soul more closely, Lesley at last became aware that the general state of its opinions was by no means what she had been assuming. There was a very definite feeling, it appeared, in favour of holding on: a feeling so powerful and unexpected that she could liken it only to a minor revolution. She thought, ‘If I don’t see this thing out I shall have something rotten inside me for the rest of my life.’ Rotten like an apple—the brown decaying core under the firm red skin.…

  And aloud she said,

  “No good, my dear. The boats are burned. I shall take an attractive little cottage somewhere, not too far from Town, and have people at the week-ends. It might really turn out rather amusing.”

  Elissa regarded her with a contained astonishment. Unlike some other of Lesley’s friends, she had never hesitated to express an absolute belief in the story of Pat’s parentage; but the strain on her faith was growing momentarily heavier. She reached for her bag and took out a powder-box.

  “You’re amazing, my dear,” she said sincerely. “I couldn’t do it, not even with Yogi. When shall you go?”

  “As soon as I can. Poor Toby’s still in Paris, waiting to come home. And … Elissa.…”

  “What, darling?”

  “Don’t cut me off with a shilling.”

  For the first time in an intimate friendship of six years’ standing emotion touched them. With genuine self-forgetfulness Elissa left her nose unfinished and put out a long, narrow hand.

  “Darling! Of course not! We’ll all come down and see you in shoals. I adore the country really, if there’s anything to go for. And I know what I will do, darling—I’ll give you all my old records to take away with you.”

  As well as she could Lesley disguised the bitterness of her answering smile. She had been without her gramophone for the last five years—ever since going to the Beverley, in fact, where the latest electric models were built into soundproof walls; but Elissa’s memory was notoriously bad. And feeling already a little like a charitable institution, Lesley kissed her friend on either cheek and walked uneasily home to Toby’s Yellow House.

  4

  The news that Lesley Frewen was looking for a cottage automatically enriched her acquaintance with more writers and painters than she had ever known before. They brought one another to the Yellow House, they gave studio parties from Hampstead to the King’s Road, they hovered, in short, like bees round a honeysuckle: and in the pocket of each was the five-year lease of a cottage on the Welsh border. Or such at any rate was the impression left on Lesley: who also formed the opinion that painters as a class (even more than writers) were extraordinarily reckless about signing agreements.

  To this point she herself attached the utmost importance; and on a lease of that length would have turned down the Trianon. Accessibility from Town, furniture with the cottage, a monthly tenancy—such were her essential requirements. Next in order ranked indoor sanitation, bathroom and electric light: a telephone she was prepared to put in herself. Only long before the telephone made its appearance, the writer or artist of the moment had always drifted disconsolately back to the bar, leaving Lesley (except for an increasing familiarity with modern art) exactly where she started. After agreeably wasting about three days, therefore, she again sought the counsel of age. Not from Mrs. Bassington, of course, whose counsel had arrived unsolicited, and remained largely unread, in a letter of five pages; but from old Graham Whittal.

  “If I were an estate agent in heaven,” said Mr. Whittal thoughtfully, when she had finished detailing her requirements, “I might be able to help you. As things are, I can only suggest Harrod’s. Have you tried them?”

  “This morning,” said Lesley. “They’re all too big and beautiful. No, why I came to you, Uncle Graham, was because I thought you’d know land-owners.”

  “In these days, my dear? The ones who could have sold, and the others have gone bankrupt.”

  “All the better, darling, they’ll be quite pleased to let me a cottage. Try and think who you were with at Eton: lots of little boys must have been landed in those days.”

  Obediently, Mr. Whittal thought. Back and back to an age when money was never mentioned and a young man of fashion had bought his first opera hat.…

  “There’s old Kerr. He’s got a place in Bucks.”

  Lesley’s face cleared.

  “Bucks! That’s just right. An easy run.”

  “But I don’t know whether he’s got any cottages. You see, most of them, my de
ar, are being lived in already.”

  “But you can find out,” prompted Lesley.

  “I’ll write to him, if you like.”

  “Why not ’phone?”

  “He hasn’t got one.”

  “How ridiculous!” said Lesley. “Then I suppose the cottage won’t have one either?”

  “You may be practically certain of it, my dear,” said Mr. Whittal gravely.

  With equal irony she met his glance.

  “Yes, I’m used to my luxuries, aren’t I, darling? I shall have one put in.”

  ‘What’s she carrying off now?’ thought old Graham. An uncomfortable young woman, with her bitter-sweet voice and the underlying harshness! And yet—and yet—what did he or anyone else know about the young? Was it the underlying harshness, or the underlying hurt? What had been happening to her all these years?

  And aloud, very gently, he said to her,

  “My dear, have you ever considered the future?”

  Lesley took out and employed a lipstick. When she had finished, and with mouth renewed in a hard scarlet line, she said,

  “Don’t worry, Uncle Graham. I know what I’m doing.”

  “I know a good deal of what you’re feeling—”

  For a moment she looked at him, startled.

  “— And whatever happens in the immediate future, I can promise to get him into Horsham. That takes care of his education. But as for your going and burying yourself in the country, giving up everything you enjoy to play the incompetent nursemaid—it—it’s fantastic. After all, my dear—he’s got along quite successfully for the last four years.”

  In the pause that followed he saw that his niece was trying not to laugh because she still wanted something out of him.

  “Darling—”

  He made an odd gesture of irritation.

  “Don’t bother, my dear. You can have it without.”

  “All right, Uncle Graham. It’s only a trick of speech.” As quick as thought she was back to that odd underlying bitterness. “But you will talk as though he were my adored bastard. It’s terribly funny.”