Nobody Asked Me Read online

  ‘Yes. They are nearly eleven now, you know. They both came home from school yesterday. Audrey fancies herself as something of an enfant terrible, I believe, but Theo is quite a nice child when Audrey doesn’t put ideas into his head.’

  Aunt Lydia spoke as though they were the offspring of some remote acquaintance.

  Just then the door opened and a tall, grey-haired man came in. Her aunt’s, ‘Oh, hello, Theodore,’ told her this must be her uncle, but she thought with surprise that he was not at all like the money-making Uncle Theodore of her imagination.

  Thin, and with a rather long, melancholy face, he had much more the air of a student than of a successful financier. He stooped a little and had a slight air of perpetual weariness. But perhaps making enough money to satisfy Aunt Lydia was a weary business, thought Alison with youthful shrewdness.

  ‘Here is Alison arrived two days too early, Theodore,’ said Aunt Lydia. ‘It’s very inconvenient, but I suppose one must make the best of it.’

  ‘I don’t see why it should be inconvenient,’ retorted her husband a little disagreeably. ‘The house is surely big enough. How do you do, Alison?’ And even the formal politeness with which he took Alison’s hand was welcome after Aunt Lydia ’s utter lack of interest in her.

  ‘Thank you-I had a very good journey,’ Alison told him.

  ‘Well, it seems to me it is quite a good thing that you arrived to-day,’ her uncle said. ‘Now you’ll be in time for Rosalie’s party or dance or whatever it is she’s having this evening.’

  Alison was aware of a peculiar quality in the few seconds’ silence which followed that. Then her aunt said smoothly, ‘I think Alison will be too tired after her journey to bother about parties on her first evening.’

  ‘Nonsense, my dear.’ Uncle Theodore’s voice was quite as smooth in return, and Alison was astounded to realise the current of antagonism running between her uncle and aunt. ‘A four hours’ journey couldn’t possibly tire anyone of Alison’s age. What is she? Nineteen? Twenty? Just the age to enjoy a party, and it’s a good opportunity for her to get to know the young set that come here.’

  Aunt Lydia pressed her lips together, and Alison saw that she had no wish whatever for her niece to ‘get to know the young set’ or come to Rosalie’s party, or, in fact, do anything except make herself quite scarce, as she herself had said.

  Alison was by nature rather slow to anger, but she had a streak of obstinacy that could do queer things with her usually sweet temper. And that streak began to make itself felt now, fortified by Uncle Theodore’s obvious disapproval of her aunt’s meanness. So that when her aunt said, ‘I don’t expect the child has a suitable dress or anything,’ she replied impulsively:

  ‘Yes, I have, Aunt Lydia, and I’d love to go to the party.’

  After all, there was the dress she had worn at the last prize-giving. It wasn’t new, of course, but she did look nice in it.

  ‘Very well,’ Aunt Lydia said, and no one could have guessed-or, at least, Alison could not-whether she were annoyed or completely indifferent.

  Without any further protest, she took her niece upstairs, first of all to the small but quite attractive, light room which was to be hers, and then along to what she called the schoolroom, where the twins were already having their tea.

  ‘Here is your cousin Alison,’ she explained, with that little smile which did not warm her eyes. ‘She is going to keep an eye on you during the holidays. I’ve noticed that you both need it. She will have her meals with you and go out with you when you go for walks, and so on.’

  Then she turned to Alison again, as she stood there listening silently to this catalogue of her duties.

  ‘You had better make a good tea with the children now,’ she said. ‘Your uncle will be out this evening, and Rosalie and I shall be having something light in our own rooms, so there won’t be any proper dinner. Come down about half-past eight-if you’re quite sure you want to come.’

  And, without any further attempt to make her niece feel at home, she went out, leaving Alison and the two children to take stock of each other.

  There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, and then Audrey said darkly, ‘I hope you aren’t going to spoil our holidays.’

  But Alison was on familiar ground now, and knew how to deal with difficult little girls.

  ‘I hope not,’ she agreed. ‘And I hope you’re not going to spoil mine either. I’m only just home from school myself, and I’m as glad as you are that it’s holidays.’

  ‘Oh.’ Audrey looked extremely taken aback. ‘But you look quite old for school. How old are you?’

  ‘I think she isn’t young enough to be asked,’ observed Theo mildly.

  Alison laughed. ‘I don’t mind. I’m nearly twenty… And I’m simply starving,’ she added.

  ‘Well, come and have tea,’ Audrey said with a faint show of cordiality, and Theo asked politely, ‘Shall I make you some toast?’

  ‘He nearly always burns it,’ Audrey interjected scornfully.

  ‘Never mind. I like it well done,’ Alison said, and watched, rather touched, while the little boy hacked a slice off the loaf with great solemnity and stuck it on the end of a toasting-fork.

  ‘They’re nice children, really,’ she thought. ‘And I’d rather have tea with them than with Aunt Lydia.’

  They were a good deal alike-pale and stocky, with nondescript hair and well-set blue eyes, but without a trace of their mother’s beauty. They must have been something of a shock to her after the lovely Rosalie, Alison reflected absently.

  But they were willing to be friendly, and to Alison, whose heart had been aching badly, that was extremely sweet.

  ‘Are you going to Rosalie’s party?’ Audrey asked, as they sat eating buttered toast and drinking milky tea.

  ‘Y-yes,’ Alison admitted a little doubtfully.

  ‘I suppose that’s because you’re a relation and not really a governess.’ Audrey spoke with an air of knowing all about the social arrangements of the household.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Have you got a nice dress?’ was the next question.

  ‘Fairly nice.’ Alison was beginning to wonder about the suitability of her dress after all.

  ‘It’s best not to have a very nice one,’ was Theo’s startling comment.

  ‘Why?’ Alison couldn’t help asking.

  ‘Because Rosalie always likes to have the best dress there,’ Audrey said promptly, and Theo nodded in agreement.

  ‘Oh.’ Alison felt apprehensive. But it didn’t seem quite right to let the children discuss Rosalie with her on these lines. So she merely said, ‘Rosalie is very pretty, isn’t she?’

  ‘She thinks so,’ said Audrey.

  ‘She is,’ said Theo at the same moment.

  Alison thought it best to change the subject.

  ‘Have you always had a governess until now?’ she asked.

  ‘We did until Theo went to his prep. school, and then Mother said I’d better go to boarding-school, too.’ Audrey seemed to be the one who usually made the explanations. ‘Miss Kennedy-that was our last one-stayed on for a little while. I think she just did writing letters and that sort of thing for Mother in term time, and then of course she was there to spoil our holidays when we came home.’

  Alison wondered uneasily whether this were to be her role in future: unpaid nursery governess in the holidays and general run-about for her exacting aunt at other times. Her heart sank a little further.

  ‘Can I come and help you unpack?’ Audrey asked.

  ‘If you like.’ Alison got up. ‘There isn’t a great deal to do, but I should like your company if Theo doesn’t mind being on his own.’

  ‘Oh, no, that’s all right, thank you,’ Theo said, and she thought they both looked rather touchingly gratified at having their wishes consulted.

  It was perfectly true. She was glad of the little girl’s company. It helped to stem the tide of loneliness and fear which threatened more than once to engulf her.
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  ‘Not that I don’t expect to stand on my own feet,’ Alison thought unhappily. ‘I didn’t expect to be made a fuss of, but it’s so-so blighting to feel on every hand that you’re a perfect nuisance.’

  When everything was unpacked, Audrey took herself off to play draughts with Theo before going to bed.

  When the little girl had gone, Alison sat on the side of her bed and stared out of the window at the trees in the square.

  She was probably being a fool to think of going to that party to-night, she told herself. Aunt Lydia quite evidently hadn’t wanted her, and Alison felt instinctively that Rosalie’s welcome would be no warmer.

  Better go quietly to bed and keep out of the way, accept at once the position which Aunt Lydia was firmly outlining for her. After all, she was only there on sufferance. And Aunt Lydia had evidently entirely forgotten the days when she had come home to Mother’s family and been welcomed at once as one of them.

  But Uncle Theodore had spoken no less than the truth when he had said she was ‘just the age to enjoy parties’- and so few of them had come her way.

  Alison might be scared and lonely and forlorn, but at the back of that the most distinct feeling of all was a very definite and obstinate desire to go to that party.

  It seemed such a harmless wish, really. It couldn’t possibly matter to Aunt Lydia if just one quiet girl were added to her guests. And, on her first day out of school for more than two years, Alison found the prospect of an evening in her lonely little bedroom very disagreeable.

  ‘I’m going,’ she decided defiantly. ‘After all, Uncle Theodore obviously never thought of my doing anything else.’

  Her spurt of bravery lasted while she was dressing, but when she was ready she went slowly over to the glass to see if her reflection would do anything to bolster up her fading courage.

  The light was poor, and the room showed darkly behind her like the background of an old picture. Uncomfortably aware that she looked anything but smart or ‘with it,’ Alison wondered if perhaps the girl in the glass looked a little bit like an old-fashioned picture with her long, fair hair and childish fringe.

  The simple white dress which had seemed so pretty when she had gone up in it to receive ‘First Prize in English Literature, and Second in European History’ didn’t somehow suggest a smart London party, however small and informal.

  ‘But I don’t care. I’m going,’ Alison told herself in a husky but determined whisper.

  And two minutes later she was descending the wide, shallow stairs with a firmness she was far from feeling.

  A friendly servant in the hall below volunteered the information that ‘madam is in the long drawing-room’, and pointed out the door to her.

  Long was the right word, thought Alison with dismay as she stood at the door and saw, across terrifying vistas of space, Aunt Lydia-a picture of slender elegance in the most beautiful black evening dress she had ever seen.

  The girl in the short ice-blue dress who was leaning her arm on the mantelpiece and looking down into the fire must, of course, be Rosalie.

  At Alison’s entry, her aunt gave a slight exclamation, and Rosalie turned. Her eyes were ice-blue too, and her hair, which seemed to be gathered together on her beautifully poised little head in a careless pile of curls, was a wonderful shade somewhere between auburn and bronze.

  She didn’t say a single word of greeting as she watched her young cousin all the way across the long drawing-room. Then Aunt Lydia said:

  ‘Is that the only dress you have, Alison?’

  ‘Yes.’ Alison felt the colour deepen in her cheeks.

  ‘Oh, dear.’ Her aunt’s air suggested that things had really become too much for her.

  ‘What’s the matter with it?’ Alison wished that nervousness wouldn’t make her sound so rude.

  ‘Nothing,’ Rosalie said, speaking at last in a slow, cool voice. ‘Nothing at all-except that it’s rather like a nightdress.’

  Fury suddenly burnt up Alison’s nervousness.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said swiftly. ‘To dear Alison, with love from Cousin Rosalie, I suppose?’

  ‘Now, don’t bicker, girls,’ Aunt Lydia said without the slightest show of interest. ‘The dress is dreadfully unfortunate, of course, but, well-’ She shrugged.

  ‘At least it shows which of us is the poor relation, you mean,’ retorted Alison, whose temper was getting out of hand.

  ‘But that’s just it,’ drawled Rosalie, looking all over her in a way that made her wince. ‘Who wants poor relations hanging about? They’re always so embarrassing, and quite dreadfully in the way.’

  ‘Hush, Rosalie,’ said her mother mildly, while the furious, incredulous tears started into Alison’s eyes. She was no match for Rosalie in a duel of this sort, and, with a little gasp of anger and misery, she turned to rush out of the room and upstairs again.

  But at that moment the first of the guests began to arrive, and it was impossible to make her escape.

  Alison scarcely knew what she said in answer to the one or two perfunctory remarks which were made to her. In each case her aunt had introduced her carelessly as, ‘My little niece, Alison, just home from school.’ And her tone of tolerant boredom would have prevented anyone from wishing to make the little niece’s acquaintance.

  It’s too bad of her,’ thought Alison wretchedly. ‘Making me sound like a schoolgirl.’ It had been difficult enough being deliberately kept at school until one was twenty, without being made to feel like a child among grown-ups now.

  Oh, why, why had her aunt and cousin said such cruel and hurting things? They had not only destroyed any pleasure she could have in the party; they had destroyed every bit of confidence and poise she had.

  She knew she was smiling too much, from sheer nervousness, but the muscles of her face seemed beyond her control, and she kept on finding herself with her back almost pressed against the wall. It required a real physical effort to launch herself among the gay, laughing, chattering crowd. And when she did, no one took the slightest notice of her.

  They all appeared to know each other-called each other by Christian names or preposterous nicknames, exchanged quick-fire repartee, not perhaps specially witty, but all bearing the hall-mark of their own particular type and language. They were well dressed, stylish, absolutely sure of themselves.

  ‘It’s no good. I ought never to have come,’ thought Alison desperately. ‘I’m the most utter, utter outsider among them.’

  She was back again by the wall, half hidden by the curtain of a long window, burning with the shame of her own inadequacy. She wondered if her aunt would be unbearably amused and triumphant if she slipped away to the solitary safety of her own room. It would be a terrible hauling down of her flag, of course, but that chilly little room which had seemed so lonely before appeared like a haven of refuge now.

  Alison glanced across the room. Aunt Lydia was leaning back in her chair, sipping a drink and smiling up at a tall man beside her. The odd thing was that he wasn’t smiling at all in return, although Aunt Lydia ’s manner verged on ingratiating.

  With an interest that was a slight check to her own personal misery, Alison watched him until he turned a little so that she could see him almost full face.

  He was older than most of the men there-thirty at least, dark, powerful, and unusually good-looking.

  ‘Not specially good-tempered,’ thought Alison, who was, without knowing it, quite a shrewd judge of people. ‘Certainly not a "drawing-room man". I wonder why Aunt Lydia ’s making such a fuss of him?’

  But perhaps Aunt Lydia was not exactly making a fuss of him, because just then he flushed slightly at something she said, and looked up with an arrogant little lift of his eyebrows, and Alison saw how startlingly light his grey eyes were against the dark skin of his face.

  She hadn’t taken ‘First Prize in English Literature’ for nothing, and she thought suddenly, with an odd little feeling of amusement, ‘He has what the Victorian novelists used to call "a flashing eye"!’
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  But just then someone turned on the radio, someone appeared and whisked away the rugs from the polished floor, and the animated groups began to break up into equally animated couples.

  With an instinctive bid for safety, Alison slipped right behind the curtain into the deep embrasure of the window. She didn’t know which would be more awful-to stand about as a perpetually smiling wallflower while everyone else danced, or to be forced to try out what was, after all, only schoolgirl dancing among these incredibly finished young people.

  It was cold here by the window, and she shivered in the despised frock. She was conscious of weariness too, after the strain of the last few hours, and there was nowhere to sit down. She stood first on one weary foot and then on the other.

  ‘A good opportunity for her to get to know the young set,’ Uncle Theodore had said. And ‘just the age to enjoy parties.’ She felt her mouth quiver perilously as she thought of the fiasco it had all been, and clamped her little white teeth down hard on her lower lip. She wouldn’t cry-she wouldn’t.

  Through the curtain the sounds of the music came to her and snatches of conversation: then something much more connected as Rosalie and someone else stopped beside the curtain.

  ‘She seems to have disappeared now,’ Rosalie said.

  ‘She means me,’ thought Alison, with a nasty prickle down her spine.

  ‘Does it matter?’ That was the dark-eyed, rather feverish-looking youth who had been paying Rosalie so much attention during the evening.

  ‘No. Except that I rather wanted to plant Bobbie Ventnor on her. He’s quite tight already, and I’d like to see her cope with him. It would be funny to have him trying out some of his really fruity stories, with her all blushing and shocked in her little white nightie.’

  ‘I hate her! Oh, I do hate her!’ thought Alison passionately, clenching her hands.

  ‘Yes-where did she get that funny little thing she’s wearing?’ Rosalie’s companion sounded bored and faintly disgusted.

  ‘I don’t know. I imagine she made it herself.’ And they both laughed as they moved off again.

  ‘I must get away,’ Alison thought wildly. ‘I don’t care what Aunt Lydia thinks-I don’t care what anyone thinks. I hate them all. I must get away.’