Free Long Summer Day by R. F. Delderfield Page A

appearance breaking into her reflections, had startled her, so that, in a sense, her anger had been counterfeit. He remained standing where she had stood, wondering if she would circle the west wing and appear at the crest of the drive, but when he heard or saw something of her he fell to thinking about women in general and his relations with them in the past.
    His experience with women had been limited but although technically still a virgin he was not altogether innocent. There had been a very forward fourteen-year-old called Cherry, who had lived in an adjoining house in Croydon, when he came home for school holidays and Cherry had succeeded in bewitching but ultimately terrifying him, for one day when they were larking about in the stable behind her house, she had hinted at the mysterious differences between the sexes and when, blushing, he had encouraged her to elaborate, she had promptly hoisted her skirt and pulled down her long cotton drawers, whereupon he had fled as though the Devil was after him and had never sought her company again, although he watched her closely in church on successive Sundays, expecting any moment to see forked lightning descend on her in the middle of ‘For all the Saints’. Then there had been a little clumsy cuddling at Christmas parties, and after that a flaxen-haired girl called Daphne whom he had mooned over as an adolescent and had thought of a good deal in the Transvaal but now he had almost forgotten what Daphne looked like and had not recalled her name until now. Finally there had been an abortive foray across the frontier in the company of a self-assured, toothy officer, called Prestcott-Smythe, the two having ventured into a brothel at Capetown, where Paul spent a few embarrassing moments with a Hottentot whore. The experience was something he would have preferred to forget and indeed, almost had forgotten save for the girl’s mousey smell and repellent gestures. After that the Veldt and the exclusive company of men until he was wounded, and in the hospital any attempts to establish extra-professional relationships with volunteer nurses had been nipped in the bud by the Countess who regarded every officer as her personal prerogative. So he stood thinking, glancing round the musty nursery and wondering what compulsive memories had directed the girl here when she had every reason to suppose that the house would be empty. The rocking horse, and the faded scarp screen offered no answer and apart from the few scraps of peeling wallpaper there was little else in the room. Then, unexpectedly, he saw her again, riding a neat bay round the south-western corner of the house below the window and as he watched she flicked the horse into a slow canter at the head of the drive and they passed out of sight under the avenue of chestnuts. He saw a swift flash of blue as she passed the gate pillars and then nothing more, so that excitement ebbed from the day and he made his way down the shallow stairs, letting himself out and carefully re-locking the door.
    Dusk was falling outside and a blue mist lay under the woods enclosing the house from the back. The front windows, were blank and there was no life in the house, not even the original block beyond the pillars. He noticed also that paint and plaster were peeling from parts of the façade and that the old building now looked more like a near-ruin than a dignified woman awaiting the return of dead men. Yet the vivid memory of the girl’s eyes and pale, waxlike skin remained as he made his way back to the lodge and as soon as he had settled over a toddy with Rudd he told the agent of his encounter, expecting surprise and possibly indignation at a trespass but Rudd only shrugged when he described the girl and her curiously aggressive reception.
    ‘That’ll be Grace Lovell,’ he said, carelessly, and when Paul asked if she was a granddaughter of the old Squire Rudd chuckled.
    ‘By no means,’ he said, ‘simply a family hanger-on of a kind,