Taken at the Flood Read online

  And she added, heroism giving place to pure female cattiness: “If he really is her brother, that is to say!”

  Two

  Frances Cloade looked thoughtfully across the dinner table at her husband.

  Frances was forty-eight. She was one of those lean greyhound women who look well in tweeds. There was a rather arrogant ravaged beauty about her face which had no makeup except a little carelessly applied lipstick. Jeremy Cloade was a spare grey-haired man of sixty-three, with a dry expressionless face.

  It was, this evening, even more expressionless than usual.

  His wife registered the fact with a swift flashing glance.

  A fifteen-year-old girl shuffled round the table, handing the dishes. Her agonized gaze was fixed on Frances. If Frances frowned, she nearly dropped something, a look of approval set her beaming.

  It was noted enviously in Warmsley Vale that if any one had servants it would be Frances Cloade. She did not bribe them with extravagant wages, and she was exacting as to performance—but her warm approval of endeavour and her infectious energy and drive made of domestic service something creative and personal. She had been so used to being waited on all her life that she took it for granted without self-consciousness, and she had the same appreciation of a good cook or a good parlourmaid as she would have had for a good pianist.

  Frances Cloade had been the only daughter of Lord Edward Trenton, who had trained his horses in the neighbourhood of Warmsley Heath. Lord Edward’s final bankruptcy was realized by those in the know to be a merciful escape from worse things. There had been rumours of horses that had signally failed to stay at unexpected moments, other rumours of inquiries by the Stewards of the Jockey Club. But Lord Edward had escaped with his reputation only lightly tarnished and had reached an arrangement with his creditors which permitted him to live exceedingly comfortably in the South of France. And for these unexpected blessings he had to thank the shrewdness and special exertions of his solicitor, Jeremy Cloade. Cloade had done a good deal more than a solicitor usually does for a client, and had even advanced guarantees of his own. He had made it clear that he had a deep admiration for Frances Trenton, and in due course, when her father’s affairs had been satisfactorily wound up, Frances became Mrs. Jeremy Cloade.

  What she had felt about it no one had ever known. All that could be said was that she had kept her side of the bargain admirably. She had been an efficient and loyal wife to Jeremy, a careful mother to his son, had forwarded Jeremy’s interests in every way and had never once suggested by word or deed that the match was anything but a freewill impulse on her part.

  In response the Cloade family had an enormous respect and admiration for Frances. They were proud of her, they deferred to her judgment—but they never felt really quite intimate with her.

  What Jeremy Cloade thought of his marriage nobody knew, because nobody ever did know what Jeremy Cloade thought or felt. “A dry stick” was what people said about Jeremy. His reputation both as a man and a lawyer was very high. Cloade, Brunskill and Cloade never touched any questionable legal business. They were not supposed to be brilliant but were considered very sound. The firm prospered and the Jeremy Cloades lived in a handsome Georgian house just off the Market Place with a big old-fashioned walled garden behind it where the pear trees in spring showed a sea of white blossom.

  It was to a room overlooking the garden at the back of the house that the husband and wife went when they rose from the dinner table. Edna, the fifteen-year-old, brought in coffee, breathing excitedly and adenoidally.

  Frances poured a little coffee into the cup. It was strong and hot. She said to Edna, crisply and approvingly:

  “Excellent, Edna.”

  Edna went crimson with pleasure and went out marvelling nevertheless at what some people liked. Coffee, in Edna’s opinion, ought to be a pale cream colour, ever so sweet, with lots of milk!

  In the room overlooking the garden, the Cloades drank their coffee, black and without sugar. They had talked in a desultory way during dinner, of acquaintances met, of Lynn’s return, of the prospects of farming in the near future, but now, alone together, they were silent.

  Frances leaned back in her chair, watching her husband. He was quite oblivious of her regard. His right hand stroked his upper lip. Although Jeremy Cloade did not know it himself the gesture was a characteristic one and coincided with inner perturbation. Frances had not observed it very often. Once when Antony, their son, had been seriously ill as a child; once when waiting for a jury to consider their verdict; at the outbreak of war, waiting to hear the irrevocable words over the wireless; on the eve of Antony’s departure after embarkation leave.

  Frances thought a little while before she spoke. Their married life had been happy, but never intimate in so far as the spoken word went. She had respected Jeremy’s reserves and he hers. Even when the telegram had come announcing Antony’s death on active service, they had neither of them broken down.

  He had opened it, then he had looked up at her. She had said, “Is it—?”

  He had bowed his head, then crossed and put the telegram into her outstretched hand.

  They had stood there quite silently for a while. Then Jeremy had said: “I wish I could help you, my dear.” And she had answered, her voice steady, her tears unshed, conscious only of the terrible emptiness and aching: “It’s just as bad for you.” He had patted her shoulder: “Yes,” he said. “Yes…” Then he had moved towards the door, walking a little awry, yet stiffly, suddenly an old man…saying as he did so, “There’s nothing to be said—nothing to be said….”

  She had been grateful to him, passionately grateful, for understanding so well, and had been torn with pity for him, seeing him suddenly turn into an old man. With the loss of her boy, something had hardened in her—some ordinary common kindness had dried up. She was more efficient, more energetic than ever—people became sometimes a little afraid of her ruthless common sense….

  Jeremy Cloade’s finger moved along his upper lip again—irresolutely, searching. And crisply, across the room, Frances spoke.

  “Is anything the matter, Jeremy?”

  He started. His coffee cup almost slipped from his hand. He recovered himself, put it firmly down on the tray. Then he looked across at her.

  “What do you mean, Frances?”

  “I’m asking you if anything is the matter?”

  “What should be the matter?”

  “It would be foolish to guess. I would rather you told me.”

  She spoke without emotion in a businesslike way.

  He said unconvincingly:

  “There is nothing the matter—”

  She did not answer. She merely waited inquiringly. His denial, it seemed, she put aside as negligible. He looked at her uncertainly.

  And just for a moment the imperturbable mask of his grey face slipped, and she caught a glimpse of such turbulent agony that she almost exclaimed aloud. It was only for a moment but she didn’t doubt what she had seen.

  She said quietly and unemotionally:

  “I think you had better tell me—”

  He sighed—a deep unhappy sigh.

  “You will have to know, of course,” he said, “sooner or later.”

  And he added what was to her a very astonishing phrase.

  “I’m afraid you’ve made a bad bargain, Frances.”

  She went right past an implication she did not understand to attack hard facts.

  “What is it,” she said; “money?”

  She did not know why she put money first. There had been no special signs of financial stringency other than were natural to the times. They were short staffed at the office with more business than they could cope with, but that was the same everywhere and in the last month they had got back some of their people released from the Army. It might just as easily have been illness that he was concealing—his colour had been bad lately, and he had been overworked and overtired. But nevertheless Frances’ instinct went towards money, and it seemed she
was right.

  Her husband nodded.

  “I see.” She was silent a moment, thinking. She herself did not really care about money at all—but she knew that Jeremy was quite incapable of realizing that. Money meant to him a four-square world—stability—obligations—a definite place and status in life.

  Money to her was a toy tossed into one’s lap to play with. She had been born and bred in an atmosphere of financial instability. There had been wonderful times when the horses had done what was expected of them. There had been difficult times when the tradesmen wouldn’t give credit and Lord Edward had been forced to ignominious straits to avoid the bailiffs on the front doorstep. Once they had lived on dry bread for a week and sent all the servants away. They had had the bailiffs in the house for three weeks once when Frances was a child. She had found the bum in question very agreeable to play with and full of stories of his own little girl.

  If one had no money one simply scrounged, or went abroad, or lived on one’s friends and relations for a bit. Or somebody tided you over with a loan….

  But looking across at her husband Frances realized that in the Cloade world you didn’t do that kind of thing. You didn’t beg or borrow or live on other people. (And conversely you didn’t expect them to beg or borrow or live off you!)

  Frances felt terribly sorry for Jeremy and a little guilty about being so unperturbed herself. She took refuge in practicality.

  “Shall we have to sell up everything? Is the firm going smash?”

  Jeremy Cloade winced, and she realized she had been too matter-of-fact.

  “My dear,” she said gently, “do tell me. I can’t go on guessing.”

  Cloade said stiffly, “We went through rather a bad crisis two years ago. Young Williams, you remember, absconded. We had some difficulty getting straight again. Then there were certain complications arising out of the position in the Far East after Singapore—”

  She interrupted him.

  “Never mind the whys—they are so unimportant. You were in a jam. And you haven’t been able to snap out of it?”

  He said, “I relied on Gordon. Gordon would have put things straight.”

  She gave a quick impatient sigh.

  “Of course. I don’t want to blame the poor man—after all, it’s only human nature to lose your head about a pretty woman. And why on earth shouldn’t he marry again if he wanted to? But it was unfortunate his being killed in that air raid before he’d settled anything or made a proper will or adjusted his affairs. The truth is that one never believes for a minute, no matter what danger you’re in, that you yourself are going to be killed. The bomb is always going to hit the other person!”

  “Apart from his loss, and I was very fond of Gordon—and proud of him too,” said Gordon Cloade’s elder brother, “his death was a catastrophe for me. It came at a moment—”

  He stopped.

  “Shall we be bankrupt?” Frances asked with intelligent interest.

  Jeremy Cloade looked at her almost despairingly. Though she did not realize it, he could have coped much better with tears and alarm. This cool detached practical interest defeated him utterly.

  He said harshly, “It’s a good deal worse than that….”

  He watched her as she sat quite still, thinking over that. He said to himself, “In another minute I shall have to tell her. She’ll know what I am…She’ll have to know. Perhaps she won’t believe it at first.”

  Frances Cloade sighed and sat up straight in her big armchair.

  “I see,” she said. “Embezzlement. Or if that isn’t the right word, that kind of thing…like young Williams.”

  “Yes, but this time—you don’t understand—I’m responsible. I’ve used trust funds that were committed to my charge. So far, I’ve covered my tracks—”

  “But now it’s all going to come out?”

  “Unless I can get the necessary money—quickly.”

  The shame he felt was the worst he had known in his life. How would she take it?

  At the moment she was taking it very calmly. But then, he thought, Frances would never make a scene. Never reproach or upbraid.

  Her hand to her cheek, she was frowning.

  “It’s so stupid,” she said, “that I haven’t got any money of my own at all….”

  He said stiffly, “There is your marriage settlement, but—”

  She said absently, “But I suppose that’s gone too.”

  He was silent. Then he said with difficulty, in his dry voice: “I’m sorry, Frances. More sorry than I can say. You made a bad bargain.”

  She looked up sharply.

  “You said that before. What do you mean by that?”

  Jeremy said stiffly:

  “When you were good enough to marry me, you had the right to expect—well, integrity—and a life free from sordid anxieties.”

  She was looking at him with complete astonishment.

  “Really, Jeremy! What on earth do you think I married you for?”

  He smiled slightly.

  “You have always been a most loyal and devoted wife, my dear. But I can hardly flatter myself that you would have accepted me in—er—different circumstances.”

  She stared at him and suddenly burst out laughing.

  “You funny old stick! What a wonderful novelettish mind you must have behind that legal façade! Do you really think that I married you as the price of saving Father from the wolves—or the Stewards of the Jockey Club, et cetera?”

  “You were very fond of your father, Frances.”

  “I was devoted to Daddy! He was terribly attractive and the greatest fun to live with! But I always knew he was a bad hat. And if you think that I’d sell myself to the family solicitor in order to save him from getting what was always coming to him, then you’ve never understood the first thing about me. Never!”

  She stared at him. Extraordinary, she thought, to have been married to someone for over twenty years and not have known what was going on in their minds. But how could one know when it was a mind so different from one’s own? A romantic mind, of course, well camouflaged, but essentially romantic. She thought: “All those old Stanley Weymans in his bedroom. I might have known from them! The poor idiotic darling!”

  Aloud she said:

  “I married you because I was in love with you, of course.”

  “In love with me? But what could you see in me?”

  “If you ask me that, Jeremy, I really don’t know. You were such a change, so different from all Father’s crowd. You never talked about horses for one thing. You’ve no idea how sick I was of horses—and what the odds were likely to be for the Newmarket Cup! You came to dinner one night—do you remember?—and I sat next to you and asked you what bimetallism was, and you told me—really told me! It took the whole of dinner—six courses—we were in funds at the moment and had a French chef!”

  “It must have been extremely boring,” said Jeremy.

  “It was fascinating! Nobody had ever treated me seriously before. And you were so polite and yet never seemed to look at me or think I was nice or good-looking or anything. It put me on my mettle. I swore I’d make you notice me.”

  Jeremy Cloade said grimly…“I noticed you all right. I went home that evening and didn’t sleep a wink. You had a blue dress with cornflowers….”

  There was silence for a moment or two, then Jeremy cleared his throat.

  “Er—all that is a long time ago….”

  She came quickly to the rescue of his embarrassment.

  “And we’re now a middle-aged married couple in difficulties, looking for the best way out.”

  “After what you’ve just told me, Frances, it makes it a thousand times worse that this—this disgrace—”

  She interrupted him.

  “Let us please get things clear. You are being apologetic because you’ve fallen foul of the law. You may be prosecuted—go to prison.” (He winced.) “I don’t want that to happen. I’ll fight like anything to stop it, but don’t credit me with mo
ral indignation. We’re not a moral family, remember. Father, in spite of his attractiveness, was a bit of a crook. And there was Charles—my cousin. They hushed it up and he wasn’t prosecuted, and they hustled him off to the Colonies. And there was my cousin Gerald—he forged a cheque at Oxford. But he went to fight and got a posthumous V.C. for complete bravery and devotion to his men and superhuman endurance. What I’m trying to say is people are like that—not quite bad or quite good. I don’t suppose I’m particularly straight myself—I have been because there hasn’t been any temptation to be otherwise. But what I have got is plenty of courage and” (she smiled at him) “I’m loyal!”

  “My dear!” He got up and came over to her. He stopped and put his lips to her hair.

  “And now,” said Lord Edward Trenton’s daughter, smiling up at him, “what are we going to do? Raise money somehow?”

  Jeremy’s face stiffened.

  “I don’t see how.”

  “A mortgage on this house. Oh, I see,” she was quick, “that’s been done. I’m stupid. Of course you’ve done all the obvious things. It’s a question then of a touch? Who can we touch? I suppose there’s only one possibility. Gordon’s widow—the dark Rosaleen!”

  Jeremy shook his head dubiously.

  “It would have to be a large sum…And it can’t come out of capital. The money’s only in trust for her for her life.”

  “I hadn’t realized that. I thought she had it absolutely. What happens when she dies?”

  “It comes to Gordon’s next of kin. That is to say it is divided between myself, Lionel, Adela, and Maurice’s son, Rowley.”

  “It comes to us…” said Frances slowly.

  Something seemed to pass through the room—a cold air—the shadow of a thought….

  Frances said: “You didn’t tell me that…I thought she got it for keeps—that she could leave it to any one she liked?”

  “No. By the statute relating to intestacy of 1925….”

  It is doubtful whether Frances listened to his explanation. She said when his voice stopped: