No Fond Return of Love Read Free Page B

may have thought it would be draughty, or that you didn’t want to be disturbed,’ said Dulcie, becoming increasingly feeble in her reassurances as sleep threatened to overtake her. ‘I’m sure things will be better in the morning,’ she went on, feeling that this was really the coward’s way out. ‘Do you think you will be able to sleep now?’
    What a pity we can’t make a cup of Ovaltine, was her last conscious thought. Life’s problems are often eased by hot milky drinks.

Chapter Two

    NEXT morning Dulcie was conscious of a tramping of footsteps past her door, almost as if the place were on fire and people were hurrying to safety. It was some time before she realized that it was nothing more alarming than enthusiasm for early morning tea. All these people, whose thoughts were normally on learned matters, had shown themselves to be human. Dulcie got out of bed, put on her dressing-gown and combed her hair. She decided to get a cup of tea for Viola, who had probably slept badly after her disturbed night.
    Aylwin Forbes lay in his bed listening to the clink of spoons in saucers. In his capacity as a lecturer at the conference he had imagined that a servant – perhaps even in cap and apron – would bring him a tray of tea at a suitable time. He was unprepared for the appearance of Miss Randall, in hair-net and pince-nez and the flowered quilted dressing-gown he already knew, standing in the doorway with a cup and saucer in her hand.
    ‘You lucky men, lying in bed while we women wait on you,’ she said, in an uncharacteristically arch tone, perhaps to cover her embarrassment at seeing him all tousled and in his pyjamas. ‘Sugar’s in the saucer – I didn’t know if you took it.’
    She put the cup down on the bedside table and tiptoed heavily from the room.
    ‘Thank you so much!’ he called after her. ‘I didn’t realize we had to …’ but she was gone, and anyway he felt at a disadvantage, lying in his bed.
    He raised himself on one elbow, pushed aside with the spoon the two brownish sodden lumps of sugar in the saucer, and took a sip of tea. It tasted strong and bitter. Like Life? he wondered. Perhaps like the lives of women – his wife Marjorie, and Viola Dace, reclining in a basket chair in that conservatory with her eyes closed. ‘Some problems of an editor’, he thought, recalling the title of his lecture, did not, or were not generally reckoned to, include women. Marjorie – going back to her mother in that prim house overlooking the common: what was he supposed to do about that? Viola was perhaps a litde easier to deal with: he could try to speak kindly to her in the presence of others – not at breakfast, of course, but before or after some other meal, when people strolled round the gardens admiring the herbaceous borders.
    Breakfast was a rather uneasy meal. It seemed as if the strain of being with a crowd of strange people was felt more at this early hour. Conversation flowed less easily, and the absence of Sunday papers seemed to be deeply felt. Even Miss Foy, serving out porridge and then sausages, was rather subdued.
    ‘Bangers,’ she murmured in a low tone, but her observation was received without comment.
    When the meal was nearly over, two men and a little group of women, wearing hats, came in with the self-conscious air of people who have risen early from their beds to go to church, and now hope – though very humbly – for a breakfast they feel they have earned.
    Dulcie noticed that Viola had not yet appeared, though she had seemed to wake up when Dulcie had taken her a cup of tea. As she walked along the corridor to her room Dulcie saw her coming out of a bathroom, wearing the lilac satin dressing-gown, her hair hidden in a flower-printed bath cap to match.
    ‘You’ve missed breakfast, I’m afraid,’ said Dulcie.
    ‘Breakfast?’ Viola repeated the word as if it were unfamiliar to her. ‘I couldn’t face it. I never do eat breakfast anyway. That cup of tea was quite