Free Dubious Legacy by Mary Wesley Page B

lavatory.’
    ‘Mine, who has given up smoking, has to have a surreptitious cigarette. He’s all right after that,’ said Barbara. ‘Ten-fifteen is a good moment.’
    ‘We’d better toss for who telephones first,’ said Antonia, waving to Matthew standing on the doorstep with James. Matthew waved back. Barbara, watching Henry’s dogs, who had been drooping despondently in his absence, prick up their ears and wag their tails, said, ‘How dearly your dogs love you. Look, they are rushing to meet you.’
    Henry, slowing the car to a walking pace as the dogs galloped to meet him, said, ‘Ah, dogs.’
    Comparing Henry’s dogs’ unstinting affection with his wife’s apparent lack of it, Barbara asked pertly, ‘Don’t you admire us for not rushing as you did into a romantic trap? We shall probably have happy, stable marriages.’
    Letting this impertinence pass, Henry said, ‘Such hard little heads on teenage shoulders.’
    Barbara said, ‘We are almost twenty, Henry, not quite the prototypes you thought us.’
    Henry laughing, said, ‘I agree I got you wrong there.’ Bringing the car to a stop, he said, ‘I wonder what sort of children you will have.’

EIGHT
    ‘H ERE, GIVE ME THE secateurs. Crying like that, you can’t see what you are doing.’ Antonia snatched the secateurs from her friend. The girls were in the walled garden cutting flowers from a border which ran along one wall. Here flowers grew separately from the vegetables, but whereas the vegetables were tended with exactitude, the flowers had to fend for themselves, springing up through disorderly weeds. ‘These are marvellous.’ Antonia snipped at some nettles and reached towards a clump of Regale lilies. As she cut she laid each stem horizontally in a trug half-full of Mrs. Simpkins pinks. As she picked, she sneezed; prone to hay fever, she was affected by their scent. ‘These are marvellous,’ she repeated. ‘I shall make an arrangement backed by artichoke leaves.’
    ‘They’ll make it look heavy. And you can’t put those on the dinner table, they smell too strong,’ said Barbara disagreeably.
    ‘Then I shall put my arrangement on the bar,’ said Antonia equably. ‘Why must you be so negative? Honestly, Barbara, do stop crying, your face will be a mess. You know your nose swells when you cry.’
    Barbara whimpered, ‘O-o-o.’
    ‘Nor can I grasp what there is to cry about,’ continued Antonia, snipping at the lilies. ‘Oh, delicious.’
    ‘My mother—’
    ‘But you said she took it well. And your Pa is pleased, too. Oh, I say, look at these lilies of the valley.’ Antonia pushed away some invading buttercups.
    ‘They also smell too strong,’ said Barbara morosely.
    ‘Oh, there is no pleasing you. They will do beautifully for a centrepiece, we don’t need a “cache-mari”.’
    ‘What’s a cache-mari?’ Barbara snuffled.
    ‘A tall arrangement the Edwardians had on dinner tables to conceal their flirtations from their husbands and vice versa; my great-aunt told me.’
    ‘Husbands—’
    ‘Why don’t you walk it off, Babsie? Leave the flowers to me,’ said Antonia, kindly.
    ‘I—’
    ‘Go on. But come back in time to try Margaret with the dresses. I’m not braving that woman on my own. Here, take my handkerchief.’
    Barbara took the handkerchief and left, blowing her nose and mopping her eyes.
    Left to herself Antonia muttered, ‘Some people!’ and crouched down to pick lilies of the valley.
    Barbara let herself out of the garden by a door in the wall, crossed a stable yard and climbed a gate into a field of buttercups. As she walked she repeated to herself what her mother had said on the telephone. ‘Such a nice young man,’ she mimicked her mother. ‘Your father and I used to know his family. In a good job, too! Your grandparents will be pleased. A sensible age, not too young. We liked him so much when we met him (she said graciously). I am sure you will be very happy—No, I can’t tell your father