Envious Casca Read online

  ‘I will lay you odds you’re in for a disappointment, ducky. I don’t wish to throw a damper on your girlish enthusiasm, but the moment doesn’t seem to me propitious.’

  ‘It’s all Stephen’s fault for bringing that sickening blonde here!’ Paula said. ‘Anyway, I’ve got Uncle Joe to put in a word for me.’

  ‘That’ll help a lot,’ mocked Stephen. ‘Just fancy!’

  ‘Lay off Joe!’ commanded Mathilda. ‘He may be God’s own ass, but he’s the only decent member of your family I’ve ever been privileged to meet. Besides, he likes you.’

  ‘Well, I don’t like being liked,’ said Stephen.

  Three

  THERE WAS A LIGHT COVERING OF SNOW ON THE GROUND

  on Christmas Eve. Mathilda, sipping her early tea, reflected with a wry smile that Joseph would talk of a white Christmas all day, perhaps hunt for a pair of skates. He was a tiresome old man, she thought, but disarmingly pathetic. No one was trying to make his party a success, least of all Nathaniel. Yet how could he have expected such an illassorted gathering of people to mix well? Pondering this, she was forced to admit that such imperceptive optimism was part and parcel of his guileless nature. She suspected that he saw himself as the beloved uncle, everybody’s confidant.

  She began slowly to eat one of the thin slices of breadand-butter which had been brought up with the tea. What on earth had made Stephen come to Lexham? Generally he came when he wanted something: money, of course, which Nathaniel nearly always gave him. This time it was Paula who wanted money, not, apparently, Stephen. From what she had heard, Stephen had had rather a serious quarrel with Nathaniel not so many weeks since. It hadn’t been their first quarrel, of course: they were always quarrelling; but the cause of it – Valerie – still existed. Extraordinary that Joseph should have prevailed upon Nat to receive Valerie! Or did Nathaniel believe that Stephen’s infatuation would burn itself out? Recalling his behaviour on the previous evening, she had to admit that this seemed very likely to happen, if it had not already happened.

  Valerie, of course, saw herself as the mistress of Lexham: a horrible prospect! And, thought Mathilda, that was odd too, when you came to think of it. Odd that Stephen should have risked bringing his Valerie into close contact with Nathaniel. Enough to ruin all his chances of inheriting Nathaniel’s fortune, you would suppose. Stephen looked upon himself as Nathaniel’s heir; sometimes Mathilda wondered whether Nat had made his will after all, overcoming that unreasoning dislike he had of naming his successor. Like Queen Elizabeth. Strange, in a man usually so hard-headed! But they were strange, these Herriards: one never got to the bottom of them.

  Paula: now, what had she meant by all that nonsense about the evil influence of the house? Did she really mean it, or was she trying to instil a distaste for the place in Valerie’s feather-brain. She would be quite capable of that, Mathilda thought. If there were something wrong, it wasn’t the house, but the people in it. There was an uneasiness, but what on earth possessed Paula to try to make it worse? Queer, flamelike creature! She lived at such high pressure, wanted things so desperately, gave such rein to her uncurbed emotions that you could never be sure when you were seeing the real Paula, and when the unconscious actress.

  The playwright: Mathilda, no sentimentalist, felt sorry for him. Probably he’d never been given a fair chance; never would be given one. Quite likely his play would be found to be a clever piece of work, possibly morbid, almost certainly lacking in box-office appeal. He was obviously hard-up: his dinner-jacket was badly cut, and had worn very shiny, poor kid! There was a frightened look behind the belligerence in his eyes, as though he saw some bleak future lying before him. He had tried to interest Nathaniel, falling between his dread of seeming obsequious and his desperate need of enlisting support. He wouldn’t get a penny out of Nathaniel, of course. What a cruel little fool Paula was, to have bolstered him up with false hopes!

  Stephen: Mathilda stirred restlessly as her thoughts drifted towards Stephen. Cross-grained, like his Uncle Nathaniel. Yes, but he was no fool, and yet had got himself engaged to a pretty nit-wit. You couldn’t ascribe all Stephen’s vagaries to his boyhood’s sick disillusionment. Or could you? Mathilda put down her empty teacup. She supposed adolescent boys were kittle-cattle: people said they were. Stephen had adored another feather-brain, his mother, unlike Paula, who had never cherished illusions about Kitten.

  Kitten! Even her children had called her that. What a name for a mother! thought Mathilda. Poor little Kitten, in the widow’s weeds which had suited her so well! Lovely little Kitten, who had to be protected from the buffets of this cruel world! Clever little Kitten, who had married, not once, but three times, and who was now Mrs Cyrus P. Thanet, indulging her nerves and her extravagant tastes in Chicago! Yes, perhaps Stephen, who had seen through her so reluctantly, and had taken it so hard, had been soured by his discovery. But what the devil possessed him, then, to get engaged to Valerie, surely a second Kitten? He was regretting it, too, if his indecent laughter last night were anything to go by.

  Valerie herself ? Resolutely stifling an impulse to write her off as a gold-digger, Mathilda supposed she might have been attracted by those very peculiarities in Stephen which would most quickly disgust her: his careless rudeness, his roughness, the indifferent, sardonic gleam in his deep-set grey eyes.

  Mathilda found herself wondering what Maud thought about it all, if she thought anything: a question as yet undecided. Maud, with her eternal games of Patience, the chatty biographies of royal personages which she wallowed in! Mathilda felt that there must be more to Maud than Maud chose to reveal. No mind could be quite so static, surely! She herself had sometimes suspected that Maud’s placidity masked a good deal of intelligence; but when, idly curious, she had probed Maud to discover it, she had been foiled by the armour of futility in which Maud so securely encased herself. No one, Mathilda was ready to swear, knew what Maud really thought about her preposterous husband, about her brusque brother-in-law, about the quarrels that flared up between Herriard and Herriard. She did not seem to resent, or even to notice, Nathaniel’s contempt of Joseph; apparently she had acquiesced in the arrangement which made her a guest on sufferance in her brother-in-law’s house.

  That Joseph found nothing to irk him in his position as hanger-on could not surprise anyone who knew him. Joseph, thought Mathilda, had a genius for twisting unpalatable truth to pleasing fiction. Just as Joseph saw Stephen as a shy young man with a heart of gold, so he would, without much difficulty, see Nathaniel as a fond brother, devoted (in spite of every evidence to the contrary) to himself. From the day of his first foisting himself and his wife on Nathaniel’s generosity, he had begun to build up a comforting fantasy about himself and Nat. Nat, he said, was a lonely man, ageing fast; Nat did not like to admit it, but in reality he leaned much on his younger brother; Nat would, in fact, be lost without Joe.

  And if Joe could see Nat in such false colours, in what roseate mist did he clothe his own, faintly ridiculous person? Mathilda thought that she could read Joe clearly enough. A failure in life, it was necessary to his self-esteem that he should see himself as a success at least in his crowning part of Peacemaker, Beloved Uncle. Yes, that would explain Joe’s insistence on this dreadful family gathering.

  A laugh shook Mathilda as she flung back the bedclothes, and prepared to get up. Poor old Joe, trotting from member to member of this house-party, and pouring out quarts of what he fondly believed to be balm! If he did not drive Nat at least to distraction, it would be a miracle. He was like a clumsy, well-meaning St Bernard puppy, dropped amongst a set of people who were not fond of dogs.

  When she walked into the dining-room presently, Mathilda found that her first waking fears were already being fulfilled. ‘Good morning, Tilda! A white Christmas, after all!’ Joseph said.

  Nathaniel had breakfasted early, and had gone away. Mathilda sat down beside Edgar Mottisfont, and hoped that he would not think it necessary to entertain her with conversation.

  H