Free The Little Girls by Elizabeth Bowen Page B

I can’t cook and talk, so today I thought better not.”
    “The situation in Southstone is rather desperate. Fortunately, we have Trevor’s devoted nurse.”
    “Who does she nurse?”
    “She cooks, and muddles around. But one has got to face it, she’ll soon be senile. And then, what?”
    “Then you pension her off.—I say, Sheikie, how many children have you?”
    “I had, actually, none.”
    “How d’you mean, ‘actually’?” pursued Dinah.
    “She has two ‘steps,’ ” Clare said, sombre with boredom, raising her muzzle from her plate. She banged round her mouth with her napkin. “Better than nothing. Now ask her if they have children, and we’ll be through.”
    “Oh no we won’t!” said Dinah. “I have five grandchildren.”
    “What did you start by having?”
    “Oh, two sons.”
    “Oh, you clever girl, you,” said Mrs. Artworth.
    “I wish we could have some wine,” said Dinah to Francis, who had re-entered. Butler-impersonation today had made him banish what was generally on the table, within agreeable reach, to a far-off sideboard. One was bereft of everything but the salt and pepper and a round of butter stamped with a lion’s head. To wait at table, he had discovered, was one form of absolute domination: the waited-on ladies waited upon his will. Dared they rise and make raids while his eye was off them? He defied them to. Also, talk—keeping going, if not swimmingly— tethered them where they were. He had dug out, for the occasion, three large lace mats. He had the interest of noting that formal splendour, topped by his own performance, cast gloom on one of the guests and needled the other—to the blonde it was obviously occurring that the splash being made was not for but at her, less to please than afflict her and get her down. Had that intention been Mrs. Delacroix’s, he would have seen it as rightful and her as human. But the fact was that Mrs. Delacroix, tearing off in her car after doing the flowers, had omitted to tell him anything, other than there being about to be one lady for luncheon and three chops. He’d been left to use his discretion. Well was it that Francis had briefed himself, and thoroughly, as to the psychological background of this luncheon. The cut of the jib of Mrs. Artworth (whom, recall, he’d taken to be the lady) had caused him at once to whisk out the lace mats, then rehearse his “waiting” around the kitchen table, with, as thunderstruck standin, the day’s widow. In him, discretion and malice were identical.
    Kicking the door open, to bring a tray in, he had heard the ladies drop the subject of childbirth.
    “That will be all, I think, for the time being,” Dinah said—each chop having found a plate and the vegetable dishes completed their jiggling course. “Go and have a rest.” Enraged, Francis left them. Sheila, doubting the door to be truly shut, said: “They say Orientals are all ears.”
    “I am, now, all ears.” Clare took one slash at her chop, then, ominously, rested her knife and fork. She looked round the table. “All ears for whatever Dicey has got to say.—So are you , or aren’t you?” she rapped at Sheila, who, though not yet fully adjusted, declared: “Of course!”
    “Just what have you got to say for yourself, my girl?” the culprit was asked, in what was meant to be an objective manner. “You jolly nearly ran into serious trouble. What you thought you were doing, we’d like to know.”
    “Some explanation’s due, I honestly think,” supplemented Sheila, though declining to raise her eyes from the lace mat. “I mean, after what we’ve been put through.”
    “Well?” Clare boomed. “Come on, Dicey. We’re waiting.”
    “Mumbo, don’t be so pompous!” exclaimed their hostess. “And apart from that, what is all this about—so completely suddenly? I couldn’t be more in the dark if I were Frank. What is this potion you two’ve been brewing up?— And I won’t,” she went on, wonderfully mildly