Taken at the Flood Read online

  “It hardly matters to us personally. We’ll be dead and buried, long before she’s middle-aged. How old is she? Twenty-five—twenty-six? She’ll probably live to be seventy.”

  Jeremy Cloade said doubtfully:

  “We might ask her for a loan—putting it on family grounds? She may be a generous-minded girl—really we know so little of her—”

  Frances said: “At any rate we have been reasonably nice to her—not catty like Adela. She might respond.”

  Her husband said warningly:

  “There must be no hint of—er—real urgency.”

  Frances said impatiently: “Of course not! The trouble is that it’s not the girl herself we shall have to deal with. She’s completely under the thumb of that brother of hers.”

  “A very unattractive young man,” said Jeremy Cloade.

  Frances’ sudden smile flashed out.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “He’s attractive. Most attractive. Rather unscrupulous, too, I should imagine. But then as far as that goes, I’m unscrupulous too!”

  Her smile hardened. She looked up at her husband.

  “We’re not going to be beaten, Jeremy,” she said. “There’s bound to be some way…if I have to rob a bank!”

  Three

  “Money!” said Lynn.

  Rowley Cloade nodded. He was a big square young man with a brick-red skin, thoughtful blue eyes and very fair hair. He had a slowness that seemed more purposeful than ingrained. He used deliberation as others use quickness of repartee.

  “Yes,” he said, “everything seems to boil down to money these days.”

  “But I thought farmers had done so well during the war?”

  “Oh, yes—but that doesn’t do you any permanent good. In a year we’ll be back where we were—with wages up, workers unwilling, everybody dissatisfied and nobody knowing where they are. Unless, of course, you can farm in a really big way. Old Gordon knew. That was where he was preparing to come in.”

  “And now—” Lynn asked.

  Rowley grinned.

  “And now Mrs. Gordon goes to London and spends a couple of thousand on a nice mink coat.”

  “It’s—it’s wicked!”

  “Oh, no—” He paused and said: “I’d rather like to give you a mink coat, Lynn—”

  “What’s she like, Rowley?” She wanted to get a contemporary judgment.

  “You’ll see her tonight. At Uncle Lionel’s and Aunt Kathie’s party.”

  “Yes, I know. But I want you to tell me. Mums says she’s half-witted?”

  Rowley considered.

  “Well—I shouldn’t say intellect was her strong point. But I think really she only seems half-witted because she’s being so frightfully careful.”

  “Careful? Careful about what?”

  “Oh, just careful. Mainly, I imagine, about her accent—she’s got quite a brogue, you know, or else about the right fork, and any literary allusions that might be flying around.”

  “Then she really is—quite—well, uneducated?”

  Rowley grinned.

  “Oh, she’s not a lady, if that’s what you mean. She’s got lovely eyes, and a very good complexion—and I suppose old Gordon fell for that, with her extraordinary air of being quite unsophisticated. I don’t think it’s put on—though of course you never know. She just stands around looking dumb and letting David run her.”

  “David?”

  “That’s the brother. I should say there’s nothing much about sharp practice he doesn’t know!” Rowley added: “He doesn’t like any of us much.”

  “Why should he?” said Lynn sharply, and added as he looked at her, slightly surprised, “I mean you don’t like him.”

  “I certainly don’t. You won’t either. He’s not our sort.”

  “You don’t know who I like, Rowley, or who I don’t! I’ve seen a lot of the world in the last three years. I—I think my outlook has broadened.”

  “You’ve seen more of the world than I have, that’s true.”

  He said it quietly—but Lynn looked up sharply.

  There had been something—behind those even tones.

  He returned her glance squarely, his face unemotional. It had never, Lynn remembered, been easy to know exactly what Rowley was thinking.

  What a queer topsy-turvy world it was, thought Lynn. It used to be the man who went to the wars, the woman who stayed at home. But here the positions were reversed.

  Of the two young men, Rowley and Johnnie, one had had perforce to stay on the farm. They had tossed for it and Johnnie Vavasour had been the one to go. He had been killed almost at once—in Norway. All through the years of war Rowley had never been more than a mile or two from home.

  And she, Lynn, had been to Egypt, to North Africa, to Sicily. She had been under fire more than once.

  Here was Lynn Home-from-the-wars, and here was Rowley Stay-at-home.

  She wondered, suddenly, if he minded….

  She gave a nervous little half laugh. “Things seem sometimes a bit upside down, don’t they?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Rowley stared vacantly out over the countryside. “Depends.”

  “Rowley,” she hesitated, “did you mind—I mean—Johnnie—”

  His cold level gaze threw her back on herself.

  “Let’s leave Johnnie out of it! The war’s over—and I’ve been lucky.”

  “Lucky, you mean”—she paused doubtfully—“not to have had to—to go?”

  “Wonderful luck, don’t you think so?” She didn’t know quite how to take that. His voice was smooth with hard edges. He added with a smile, “But, of course, you service girls will find it hard to settle down at home.”

  She said irritably, “Oh, don’t be stupid, Rowley.”

  (But why be irritable? Why—unless, because his words touched a raw nerve of truth somewhere.)

  “Oh well,” said Rowley. “I suppose we might as well consider getting married. Unless you’ve changed your mind?”

  “Of course I haven’t changed my mind. Why should I?”

  He said vaguely:

  “One never knows.”

  “You mean you think I’m”—Lynn paused—“different?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Perhaps you’ve changed your mind?”

  “Oh, no, I’ve not changed. Very little change down on the farm, you know.”

  “All right, then,” said Lynn—conscious, somehow, of anticlimax, “let’s get married. Whenever you like.”

  “June or thereabouts?”

  “Yes.”

  They were silent. It was settled. In spite of herself, Lynn felt terribly depressed. Yet Rowley was Rowley—just as he always had been. Affectionate, unemotional, painstakingly given to understatement.

  They loved each other. They had always loved each other. They had never talked about their love very much—so why should they begin now?

  They would get married in June and live at Long Willows (a nice name, she had always thought) and she would never go away again. Go away, that is to say, in the sense that the words now held for her. The excitement of gangplanks being pulled up, the racing of a ship’s screw, the thrill as an aeroplane became airborne and soared up and over the earth beneath. Watching a strange coastline take form and shape. The smell of hot dust, and paraffin, and garlic—the clatter and gabble of foreign tongues. Strange flowers, red poinsettias rising proudly from a dusty garden…Packing, unpacking—where next?

  All that was over. The war was over. Lynn Marchmont had come home. Home is the sailor, home from the sea…But I’m not the same Lynn who went away, she thought.

  She looked up and saw Rowley watching her….

  Four

  Aunt Kathie’s parties were always much the same. They had a rather breathless amateurish quality about them characteristic of the hostess. Dr. Cloade had an air of holding irritability in check with difficulty. He was invariably courteous to his guests—but they were conscious of his courtesy being an effort.

  In appeara
nce Lionel Cloade was not unlike his brother Jeremy. He was spare and grey-haired—but he had not the lawyer’s imperturbability. His manner was brusque and impatient—and his nervous irritability had affronted many of his patients and blinded them to his actual skill and kindliness. His real interests lay in research and his hobby was the use of medicinal herbs throughout history. He had a precise intellect and found it hard to be patient with his wife’s vagaries.

  Though Lynn and Rowley always called Mrs. Jeremy Cloade “Frances,” Mrs. Lionel Cloade was invariably “Aunt Kathie.” They were fond of her but found her rather ridiculous.

  This “party,” arranged ostensibly to celebrate Lynn’s homecoming, was merely a family affair.

  Aunt Kathie greeted her niece affectionately:

  “So nice and brown you look, my dear. Egypt, I suppose. Did you read the book on the Pyramid prophecies I sent you? So interesting. Really explains everything, don’t you think?”

  Lynn was saved from replying by the entrance of Mrs. Gordon Cloade and her brother David.

  “This is my niece, Lynn Marchmont, Rosaleen.”

  Lynn looked at Gordon Cloade’s widow with decorously veiled curiosity.

  Yes, she was lovely, this girl who had married old Gordon Cloade for his money. And it was true what Rowley had said, that she had an air of innocence. Black hair, set in loose waves, Irish blue eyes put in with the smutty finger—half-parted lips.

  The rest of her was predominantly expensive. Dress, jewels, manicured hands, fur cape. Quite a good figure, but she didn’t, really, know how to wear expensive clothes. Didn’t wear them as Lynn Marchmont could have worn them, given half a chance! (But you never will have a chance, said a voice in her brain.)

  “How do you do,” said Rosaleen Cloade.

  She turned hesitatingly to the man behind her.

  She said: “This—this is my brother.”

  “How do you do,” said David Hunter.

  He was a thin young man with dark hair and dark eyes. His face was unhappy and defiant and slightly insolent.

  Lynn saw at once why all the Cloades disliked him so much. She had met men of that stamp abroad. Men who were reckless and slightly dangerous. Men whom you couldn’t depend upon. Men who made their own laws and flouted the universe. Men who were worth their weight in gold in a push—and who drove their C.O.s to distraction out of the firing line!

  Lynn said conversationally to Rosaleen:

  “And how do you like living at Furrowbank?”

  “I think it’s a wonderful house,” said Rosaleen.

  David Hunter gave a faint sneering laugh.

  “Poor old Gordon did himself well,” he said. “No expense spared.”

  It was literally the truth. When Gordon had decided to settle down in Warmsley Vale—or rather had decided to spend a small portion of his busy life there, he had chosen to build. He was too much of an individualist to care for a house that was impregnated with other people’s history.

  He had employed a young modern architect and given him a free hand. Half Warmsley Vale thought Furrowbank a dreadful house, disliking its white squareness, its built-in furnishing, its sliding doors, and glass tables and chairs. The only part of it they really admired wholeheartedly were the bathrooms.

  There had been awe in Rosaleen’s, “It’s a wonderful house.” David’s laugh made her flush.

  “You’re the returned Wren, aren’t you?” said David to Lynn.

  “Yes.”

  His eyes swept over her appraisingly—and for some reason she flushed.

  Aunt Katherine appeared again suddenly. She had a trick of seeming to materialize out of space. Perhaps she had caught the trick of it from many of the spiritualistic séances she attended.

  “Supper,” she said, rather breathlessly, and added, parentheticaly, “I think it’s better than calling it dinner. People don’t expect so much. Everything’s very difficult, isn’t it? Mary Lewis tells me she slips the fishman ten shillings every other week. I think that’s immoral.”

  Dr. Lionel Cloade was giving his irritable nervous laugh as he talked to Frances Cloade. “Oh, come, Frances,” he said. “You can’t expect me to believe you really think that—let’s go in.”

  They went into the shabby and rather ugly dining room. Jeremy and Frances, Lionel and Katherine, Adela, Lynn and Rowley. A family party of Cloades—with two outsiders. For Rosaleen Cloade, though she bore the name, had not become a Cloade as Frances and Katherine had done.

  She was the stranger, ill at ease, nervous. And David—David was the outlaw. By necessity, but also by choice. Lynn was thinking these things as she took her place at the table.

  There were waves in the air of feeling—a strong electrical current of—what was it? Hate? Could it really be hate?

  Something at any rate—destructive.

  Lynn thought suddenly, “But that’s what’s the matter everywhere. I’ve noticed it ever since I got home. It’s the aftermath war has left. Ill will. Ill feeling. It’s everywhere. On railways and buses and in shops and amongst workers and clerks and even agricultural labourers. And I suppose worse in mines and factories. Ill will. But here it’s more than that. Here it’s particular. It’s meant!”

  And she thought, shocked: “Do we hate them so much? These strangers who have taken what we think is ours?”

  And then—“No, not yet. We might—but not yet. No, it’s they who hate us.”

  It seemed to her so overwhelming a discovery that she sat silent thinking about it and forgetting to talk to David Hunter who was sitting beside her.

  Presently he said: “Thinking out something?”

  His voice was quite pleasant, slightly amused, but she felt conscience stricken. He might think that she was going out of her way to be ill-mannered.

  She said, “I’m sorry. I was having thoughts about the state of the world.”

  David said coolly, “How extremely unoriginal!”

  “Yes, is is rather. We are all so earnest nowadays. And it doesn’t seem to do much good either.”

  “It is usually more practical to wish to do harm. We’ve thought up one or two rather practical gadgets in that line during the last few years—including that pièce de résistance, the Atom Bomb.”

  “That was what I was thinking about—oh, I don’t mean the Atom Bomb. I meant ill will. Definite practical ill will.”

  David said calmly:

  “Ill will certainly—but I rather take issue to the word practical. They were more practical about it in the Middle Ages.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Black magic generally. Ill wishing. Wax figures. Spells at the turn of the moon. Killing off your neighbour’s cattle. Killing off your neighbour himself.”

  “You don’t really believe there was such a thing as black magic?” asked Lynn incredulously.

  “Perhaps not. But at any rate people did try hard. Nowadays, well—” He shrugged his shoulders. “With all the ill will in the world you and your family can’t do much about Rosaleen and myself, can you?”

  Lynn’s head went back with a jerk. Suddenly she was enjoying herself.

  “It’s a little late in the day for that,” she said politely.

  David Hunter laughed. He, too, sounded as though he were enjoying himself.

  “Meaning we’ve got away with the booty? Yes, we’re sitting pretty all right.”

  “And you get a kick out of it!”

  “Out of having a lot of money? I’ll say we do.”

  “I didn’t mean only the money. I meant out of us.”

  “Out of having scored off you? Well, perhaps. You’d all have been pretty smug and complacent about the old boy’s cash. Looked upon it as practically in your pockets already.”

  Lynn said:

  “You must remember that we’d been taught to think so for years. Taught not to save, not to think of the future—encouraged to go ahead with all sorts of schemes and projects.”

  (Rowley, she thought, Rowley and the farm.)

&
nbsp; “Only one thing, in fact, that you hadn’t learnt,” said David pleasantly.

  “What’s that?”

  “That nothing’s safe.”

  “Lynn,” cried Aunt Katherine, leaning forward from the head of the table, “one of Mrs. Lester’s controls is a fourth-dynasty priest. He’s told us such wonderful things. You and I, Lynn, must have a long talk. Egypt, I feel, must have affected you physically.”

  Dr. Cloade said sharply:

  “Lynn’s had better things to do than play about with all this superstitious tomfoolery.”

  “You are so biased, Lionel,” said his wife.

  Lynn smiled at her aunt—then sat silent with the refrain of the words David had spoken swimming in her brain.

  “Nothing’s safe….”

  There were people who lived in such a world—people to whom everything was dangerous. David Hunter was such a person…It was not the world that Lynn had been brought up in—but it was a world that held attractions for her nevertheless.

  David said presently in the same low amused voice:

  “Are we still on speaking terms?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Good. And do you still grudge Rosaleen and myself our ill-gotten access to wealth?”

  “Yes,” said Lynn with spirit.

  “Splendid. What are you going to do about it?”

  “Buy some wax and practise black magic!”

  He laughed.

  “Oh, no, you won’t do that. You aren’t one of those who rely on old outmoded methods. Your methods will be modern and probably very efficient. But you won’t win.”

  “What makes you think there is going to be a fight? Haven’t we all accepted the inevitable?”

  “You all behave beautifully. It is very amusing.”

  “Why,” said Lynn, in a low tone, “do you hate us?”

  Something flickered in those dark unfathomable eyes.

  “I couldn’t possibly make you understand.”

  “I think you could,” said Lynn.

  David was silent for a moment or two, then he asked in a light conversational tone:

  “Why are you going to marry Rowley Cloade? He’s an oaf.”

  She said sharply: