10

She would remember the days following as days of dry summer heat in which Hessell Mortlock drove her along undistinguished streets expressing an interest, however, in their city and allowing her to take the wheel in particular the day they wound up to the Summit a slightly delirious breeze streaming out behind them like a scarf or music in a dated film.

When they were parked in front of what people went to see, Mr Mortlock layed his arm along the back of the seat, and confessed. ‘I’m never all that interested in a view. It’s the company that goes with it.’

He was so gallant, making it clear he accepted her as his equal in sympathy and understanding.

‘My wife Brenda,’ he said ‘ – you know I have been married, Anthea – Brenda was incapable of extracting the little pleasures out of daily life. That is what is important,’ he said, ‘in life.’

It made her feel so serious. She understood the predicament he must have been in – with Brenda who walked out.

Before Mr Mortlock started back east he came in on a hot morning bringing Anthea Scudamore the largest bunch of crimson roses. They were quite an armful.

‘Oh!’ she cried, receiving them, regardless of the thorns.

She stood holding them.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I can never resist buying roses.’

And went upstairs.

Anthea began to arrange her roses, which were of the overpowering kind.

‘Aren’t they fabulous, Mrs Meadling?’

It was a Thursday.

‘I’ll say!’ Mrs Meadling said. ‘The Queen of Flowers.’

She was turning out the living-room for Mummy – only Mrs Meadling would refer to it as lounge.

‘Yairs. Roses,’ Mrs Meadling said. ‘There’s a glut of ’em this year. They can’t give ‘em away down at the stalls.’

‘It’s not a question of money,’ Anthea Scudamore pointed out.

‘It plays its part,’ Mrs Meadling said.

Anthea went on arranging roses. Even after she had carried them into the living-room, she could not resist one more effort to achieve the perfect cumulus of crimson. She liked to look up and catch sight of herself in the glass. She remembered a photo she had seen, of a film star, her bust brushing a bowlful of enormous roses.

All that morning Hessell Mortlock was packing, because, as he said, he was a methodical packer. Almost forgot his aftershave, which Mrs Meadling brought from the bathroom. All his luggage of the highest quality. Genuine pigskin, Mrs Meadling reported.

Mr Mortlock came down finally to where Anthea Scudamore was sitting against her arranged roses. To some extent they had infused her greenish, girlish skin. He began to tell her about his sun-room at Sarsaparilla, and the view from it which was still unspoiled although development had set in.

He said: ‘I let the paddock to a sort of horse-coper. Because what’s the point of its lying idle?’

She agreed.

Then he took her hand, and she was not so surprised at his action as she was at the object of her own hand, with its long, passive, uncoloured, but polished nails.