Several couples were whirling gravely about. Amongst them she noted Bevan Seymour, upright and slender, dancing with Harriett with an air of condescending vivacity, his bright teeth showing all the time. Her eyes were ready for Ted. She was going to meet his for the first time—just one look, and then she would fly for her life anywhere, to anybody. And he would find her and make her look at him again. Ted. He was not there. People were glancing at her, curiously. She veiled her waiting eyes and felt their radiance stream through her, flooding her with strength from head to foot. How battered and ordinary everyone had looked, frail and sick, stamped with a pallor of sickness. How she pitied them all.
“Let us take a short turn,” said Max, and his arms came around her. As they circled slowly down the length of the room she stared at his black shoulder a few inches from her eyes. His stranger’s face was just above her in the bright light; his strange black-stitched glove holding her mittened hand. His arms steadied her as they neared the conservatory.
“Let us go out,” she heard him say, and her footsteps were guided across the moulding, her arm retained in his. Meg Wedderburn was playing and met her with her sentimental smile. In the gloom at her side, just beyond the shaded candle, stood Ted ready to turn the music, his disengaged hand holding the bole of a tall palm. He dropped his hands and turned as they passed him, almost colliding with Miriam. “Next dance with me,” he whispered neatly. “Will you show me your coffin?” asked Max as they reached the garden steps.
“It’s quite down at the end beyond the kitchen garden.”
20
“There are raspberry canes all along here, on both sides—trailing all over the place; the gardener puts up stakes and things but they manage to trail all over the place.”
“Ah, yes.”
“Some of them are that pale yellow kind, the colour of champagne. You can just see how they trail. Isn’t it funny how dark they are, and yet the colour’s there all the time, isn’t it? They are lovely in the day, lovely leaves and great big fruit, and in between are little squatty gooseberry bushes, all kinds, yellow and egg-shaped like plums, and little bright green round ones and every kind of the ordinary red kind. Do you know the little bright green ones, quite bright green when they’re ripe, like bright green Chartreuse?”
“No. The green Chartreuse of course I know. But green ripe gooseberries I have not seen.”
“I expect you only know the unripe green ones they make April fool of.”