Complete Short Stories (VMC) by Elizabeth Taylor Read Free Book Online Page A

re-powdered, cocooned in tulle, coming downstairs and laughed at this illusion, remembering who did go to the ball in the fairy-tale. ‘We must go to a real dance another time,’ Robert said. ‘Not a country hop, but a proper dance, with buckets of champagne.’ But Muriel, rustling across the hall, finished this vision for them. ‘I should sit with Matron,’ he added.
    ‘Oh, it is quite all right,’ Hester said, with a brightness covering her extreme woundedness. ‘I could not have gone with you tonight, or sit with Matron either; because I have another engagement, and now I must hurry.’ With a glance at their halted expressions she ran upstairs, leaving behind an uneasiness and raised eyebrows.
    The cistern in the downstairs cloakroom made a clanking sound and there was a dreadful rush of water. This always embarrassed Muriel, and she turned aside as Rex appeared.
    Hester, at the bend of the stairs, called out in a ringing, careless voice: ‘Oh, do have a lovely time.’
    In this exhortation she managed to speak to them both in different ways – a difficult thing to do. Muriel felt herself condescended to and dismissed, unenvied, like a child going to a treat. But Robert’s guilt was not one scrap appeased, and Hester did not mean it to be. He perceived both her pathos and her gallantry, as she desired. Her apparent lack of interest in their outing and her sudden look of excitement worried him. Even Rex was puzzled by her performance. ‘Now what’s she up to?’ he wondered, as they went out to the car.
    Yet, when she was in her own room Hester could not imagine where she might go. Recklessness would have led her almost anywhere, but in the end she could only think of the churchyard. As Miss Despenser had said, ‘to water the graves makes an outing’, and perhaps she could borrow a grave – Miss Linda’s, for instance – and cherish it in such dull times as these.
    When she arrived in the churchyard, she found that Miss Despenser had finished planting and was vigorously scrubbing the headstones. Dirty water ran down over an inscription. ‘That’s better,’ were her first words to Hester as she came near.
    ‘I watered the plants.’
    ‘Yes, I noticed that.’
    ‘Can I help you?’
    Miss Despenser threw the filthy water out in a great arc over some other graves – not her own family ones, Hester was sure – and handed her the bucket. ‘Clean water from the tap by the wall.’
    ‘Is that where the adders were?’
    ‘Adders?’
    ‘There were some once. I thought they might have come again.’
    ‘This is a fine thing – a stranger telling me about my own churchyard. I know nothing of adders. Are you a naturalist?’
    ‘Oh, no! I am really rather afraid of nature.’
    Miss Despenser threw out her arms and laughed theatrically. ‘You’re a damn witty girl, I know that. When I first met you I thought you were a bitof a nincompoop. You improve on acquaintance.’ She turned to examine the lettering on the grave, and Hester went to fetch the water.
    ‘Afraid of nature!’ Miss Despenser said, when she returned. ‘I appreciate that.’
    The water, swinging in the pail, had slopped over into Hester’s sandals and her feet moved greasily in them.
    ‘So you’re afraid of nature!’ Miss Despenser said, and she grasped the bucket and threw the water over the headstones. Some went over her and more into Hester’s sandals. ‘She is drunk,’ Hester thought, remembering Muriel’s words and feeling annoyance that there should be any truth in them.
    ‘The bucket goes back into the shed and the scrubbing-brush into the basket.’ Miss Despenser shook drops of water off her skirt. ‘And we will go down to call on Mrs Brimmer.’
    ‘Mrs Brimmer?’
    ‘A friend of mine. You are quite welcome. I will look in at the house first and leave the scrubbing-brush. Mrs Brimmer would think me rather eccentric if I went to see her with a scrubbing-brush in my basket.’
    ‘Any adders?’ she asked, when Hester