‘Miss Graham, what is the real state of your mother’s health?’

Althea lifted a hand and let it fall again. The acanthus leaf had marked the palm. She said,

‘I don’t know. If she upsets herself she has an attack. Dr Barrington says she mustn’t be allowed to upset herself.’

Miss Silver said gravely,

‘It is a doubtful kindness to encourage a selfish course of action. May I inquire whether the cousin you spoke of would still be available as a companion for your mother?’

‘I should think she would. I know that she has had losses and is finding things difficult. She has a couple of rooms in a friend’s house, but I don’t think the arrangement is being a great success. The friend has recently taken up table-turning and automatic writing, and my cousin doesn’t approve of it. We could pay her a salary, and I think she would be quite good with my mother. The trouble is that if I write to her and wait for her to make up her mind and let me know, it will get round the family and come back to my mother. Cousin Bertha writes reams to all the relations every week. None of them could keep a secret if they tried, and of course they don’t try.’

Miss Silver found her sympathies warmly engaged. She stopped knitting, rested the now considerably lengthened pink frill upon her lap, and said,

‘Emily Chapell!’

Althea repeated the name in an inquiring voice.

‘Emily Chapell?’

Miss Silver beamed.

‘She would be extremely suitable.’

‘I don’t think…’

The knitting was resumed. Miss Silver inclined her head.

‘She is not a trained nurse, but she has had a good deal of nursing experience. A very dependable person and, most fortunately, disengaged. If you decided on an immediate marriage, she would be able to move in as soon as you had broken the news to Mrs Graham.’

Althea could say nothing but ‘Oh…’

Miss Silver’s needles clicked.

‘I have known her for twenty years, and I have never known her to fail in tact and good temper.’

Althea had a picture of Miss Silver and Emily Chapell as twin angels shooting back the bolts of her prison doors and throwing them wide. She heard Miss Silver say,

‘Your cousin would naturally require a little time to consider your offer and to give notice to her friend. Miss Chapell would, I am sure, be prepared to remain with Mrs Graham until her arrangements had been made.’

Althea leaned forward. The doors were opening, but could she – might she step across the threshold? She looked at Miss Silver with piteous intensity and said,

‘Oh, do you really think I could do it?’

ALTHEA RETURNED HOME to find Mrs Graham in an extremely fretful mood. She held forth for some time on the congenial theme of selfishness in the young, with particular application to a daughter who left her mother alone whilst she wasted time and money on going to town.

‘And if it was to shop, I am sure there are very good shops here in the High Street.’

‘I didn’t go up to shop.’

Mrs Graham looked at her suspiciously.

‘Then what did you go up for?’

‘To see a friend of Sophy’s.’

‘A friend of Sophy Justice’s – of course she’s Sophy Harding now, but it seems so much easier to say Sophy Justice – why on earth should you go and see a friend of Sophy’s?’

‘I thought I should like to see her again.’

‘Oh, you’ve met her before?’

Althea said, ‘Yes, I’ve met her,’ and then hurried on with, ‘I thought Nettie Pimm was lunching with you. You told me she was, and I left everything ready.’

‘She rang up at the last moment and said she couldn’t come. She said she wasn’t feeling well.’ A delicate sniff expressed Mrs Graham’s opinion of Nettie’s ailment. ‘Most inconsiderate I call it, and I let her see I wasn’t pleased. And then on the top of that Mr Jones rang up again about the house. He said Mr Worple had withdrawn his offer of seven thousand five hundred. You know, there’s something about Mr Jones that I don’t like at all. He sounded quite pleased about the price having come down. And I told him that it wasn’t any good his going on worrying us, because I didn’t like Mr Worple and I didn’t feel at all inclined to sell to him. He reminds me of someone we saw in a film. I can’t remember who he was, but Mr Worple reminds me of him, and in the film he really wasn’t at all the sort of person I should care to sell a hosue to. After all, one does owe a certain duty to the neighbourhood, and we have been here for more than twenty years. And with my health what it is, I shouldn’t like to feel that I hadn’t got a home to come back to. I did think the cruise we were planning might be good for us both, but one couldn’t be sure of congenial companionship, so I have really given up the idea. A few weeks in a nice hotel by the sea would be quite a different thing. One would have one’s own comfortable home to come back to at any time. I really think that is a necessity. I am sorry that you should be disappointed about the trip, but my mind is quite made up. For one thing I shouldn’t care to have to call in a strange doctor. Dr Barrington understands me, and that is everything. So I told Mr Jones it wasn’t any good thinking I would sell, and I rang up Mr Martin and told him too.’

She had talked herself into a better humour, and Althea left it at that.

At a little after nine o’clock Nicholas Carey rang up. The telephone was in the dining-room, with an extension in Mrs Graham’s bedroom. On the not infrequent occasions when she felt a disposition to rest she was thus able to enjoy long gossipy conversations with her friends. She could also listen in to anything Althea said when using the instrument in the dining-room. With this in mind Althea, lifting the receiver and hearing Nicholas Carey’s voice, had to consider what chances there were of being overheard. Mrs Graham was in the bathroom. If the taps had been running when the bell rang, she probably wouldn’t have heard it. If her mother was already in her bath she wouldn’t get out of it to answer the telephone. The chances were that it would be safe enough to talk to Nicky, but prudent to keep the conversation on noncommittal lines. She began with a quick,

‘I told you not to ring me up.’

His voice came back, lazy and teasing.

‘Counsel of perfection, darling. I want to see you. No don’t say you won’t, or you can’t, or you don’t want to.’

‘I wasn’t going to.’

He went on as if she had not spoken.

‘Because it’s perfectly easy – you let the cat out and come out with it.’

She could not help her voice laughing a little as she said,

‘We haven’t got a cat.’

‘Very remiss of you! But the principle remains the same. The operative words are “You come out”.’

‘Oh, Nicky, I can’t.’

‘Darling, I warned you about saying that. If you don’t come out, I shall come in.’

‘You can’t do that!’

He said, ‘Watch me!’

She had a perfectly clear picture of what he was looking like at the other end of the line – frowning brows, eyes with a spark of malice, lips just curling into a grin. When Nicky was in that sort of mood he didn’t really care a damn. He was perfectly capable of marching into the house and saying what he wanted to say. If she didn’t open the door, he was capable of breaking a window. She would have to slip out. She said in a hurry,

‘Well, just for a moment.’

‘Me come in, or you come out?’

‘I’ll come out.’

‘Good girl! Half past ten. In the gazebo.’ He rang off.

The hand with which she put the receiver back was not quite steady. Half past ten was too early – her mother might not be asleep. She had her bath at nine, her cup of hot Ovaltine between a quarter to ten and ten o’clock, and as a rule she would be fast asleep before the quarter past. No – half past ten ought to be all right. But suppose it wasn’t – suppose her mother was still awake. Part of the picture of herself as an invalid was the belief that she lay awake for hours, suffering but unwilling to disturb Althea. Suppose that for once she really did lie awake, not for hours, but even for one half hour. Althea turned quite cold at the thought. She wanted to see Nicky every bit as much as he wanted to see her, but they oughtn’t to risk it. A scene or an upset now would be a danger which mustn’t be risked – not now, at the very minute when the prison doors were opening to let her through. She had meant to ring Nicky up from the call-box at the corner as soon as her mother was in bed. She had meant to ring him up and to tell him that she would marry him at once – tomorrow if he wanted her to. Then they could get Emily Chapell down and have her handy and choose their time for breaking the news. It was all beautifully planned in her mind. She had a perfectly clear picture of it with everything going smoothly to a beautiful climax in which her mother resigned herself to the inevitable and gave them her blessing. It hadn’t seemed incredible when she planned it, but it did seem incredible now. If only Nicky hadn’t rung up…