for his visit? Nora felt a quite inexplicable, ridiculous surge of loyalty towards her family, and a mounting dislike of this silly little intruder. She supposed he wanted to prattle on about his connections with the house and his family history, with everyone hanging on his words. And if it was not that, why did he look so black?
Denis said: “I hope you don’t mind, Mum—”
“No, indeed, though I wonder how you ever got over on a day like this. Denis, I don’t think your sister knows…er—oh, dear me, it’s Fred—no, Frank, isn’t it?”
“That’s right, Mrs. Morris.”
Denis slapped Nora on the shoulder with the odious familiarity that is characteristic of brothers.
“This is our Nora,” he said. “Nora, this is Frank, another of the old Marine roughnecks.”
“How do you do,” she said, very affably because of Jonathan’s scowl.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said.
Mrs. Morris said: “We always seem to get a full house at weekends, Mr. Jonathan.”
“So I see,” said Jonathan. “Yes, so I see.”
CHAPTER THREE
Mr. Jonathan and Denis were seated side by side on the couch, facing Nora and Frank. Denis was quite at his ease, this being his usual place, but Jonathan, despite the assistance of two cushions, was far too low for comfort, and looked displeased. Frank and Denis were talking across the table about Sicily and Italy. Jonathan glowered at them—whether because he felt that he looked absurd or because he considered the story of his family as being more important, it was impossible to tell. The lamplight scored deep lines in his face.
“Another slice of bread, Mr. Jonathan?” said Nora.
“Ah…thank you.”
“Help yourself to the jam. Denis—”
Denis, without pausing in the middle of an anecdote about Naples, reached out with his left hand and skilfully manoeuvred the jam-pot around the sugar basin and along to his neighbour.
“Thank you.”
“Do help yourself, Mr. Jonathan,” said Mrs. Morris. “We’re used to helping ourselves, isn’t it? You mustn’t hang back, or there won’t be any left. More tea? That’s right.”
“And there he was,” said Denis, “flat on the deck—absolutely chocker, I can tell you.”
“Like a colour-sergeant I knew at Clacton, before we joined up with your mob,” said Frank.
He spoke more quietly than Denis, but his words were well-chosen, and there was a pungency in his anecdotes that Nora found attractive, though she did not allow herself to show too much appreciation. She knew that Frank was glancing at her from the corner of his eye, and knew that he liked what he saw; she was used to that sort of glance, and did not intend to encourage it. At present she had enough trouble with Simon. Though Simon, she thought wryly, was not what you’d call ardent.
Frank turned to her every now and then, trying to include her in his audience, and she nodded and smiled politely. He wanted to see her full-face, she knew. As he reached the end of his story—it was much better than the one Denis had told, which, like so many war reminiscences, had meaning only for those who were actually present when the incident occurred—she turned and watched him, frankly appraising him.
He had a fresh, open face with a flattened nose that just escaped ugliness. His hair and eyes were dark brown—thoughtful, warmly appreciative eyes. He returned her gaze as he talked, without embarrassment. There was no trace of the local accent in his voice. When he had finished, Nora said:
“Do you belong in this part of the world?”
“My mother and father came here from Kent the year before the war. My mother was Welsh, but I was born in Kent. Someday I’ll go back there.” She noticed that he said, “I’ll go back there,” not merely, “I think I’ll go back there.”
“You like it better than here?”
“There’s something about it: it’s in my blood.”
“Like malaria,” said Denis boisterously. “He gets regular attacks of it, too—his homesickness, I mean.”
“Places are like that,” said Mr. Jonathan abruptly, breaking in so unexpectedly that even Mr. Morris, stirring his tea in his usual way, the spoon going unceasingly round and round as though he could not halt it, looked up. “They get hold of you,” said Jonathan. “Even across generations, you know. Something grips you…ancestral memories. I’ve met some people in my time—I belong to a society that—ah—brings together many such people.” He cleared his throat impressively. “People who could tell you things that would surprise you. Take the case of my own family now—”
“Mr. Jonathan was telling us,” Mrs. Morris said to her husband from down the table, her lilting Welsh voice coming like a song after the visitor’s moist tones, “that his family owned this farm once—before the Mountjoys, that is. Of course, we didn’t know much about all those who came before the Mountjoys. Funny, isn’t it, how things happen? More tea, Mr. Jonathan?”
“Thank you, no. Yes, we belong here. There are, of course, many branches of the original family, who were not all called Jonathan. They had another name in the old days, our family, and they were very important.” He favoured them with a sinister smile. “Fortunes change; families change; those who were once in power are superseded. But not forever. No, there are some old dynasties that cannot be trampled down for all time. The world needs those on whom it once relied. Rebirth: the world needs rebirth.”
There was an embarrassed silence. “Here’s queer goings-on for you,” said Mrs. Morris silently along the table to her daughter.
“The Mountjoys hadn’t been here long,” said Mr. Morris remotely. He supped his tea. “Nice people. A pity for her when he passed over.”
His irrelevance was welcome. His habit of starting to talk at random had averted many family disputes in the past. He was a man who liked peace in his household. “Funny ideas about the place, they had. The old woman—”
“She was younger than I am,” said his wife eagerly, “and you, for that matter.”
“Mrs. Mountjoy,” Mr. Morris went on imperturbably, “couldn’t abide the house. She couldn’t understand why the old man had wanted to start farming here at all. Said it was too lonely. She was English.” Perhaps he was being scornful; it was hard to say.
“She told me how glad she was to be going when the old man died,” his wife confirmed. “Eerie, she said it was—but what would there be about this house, now? It suits us all right.”
She looked proudly around the table. The Morris family had made a success of the farm; even during the war, with Denis away, they had carried on.
“A place like this,” she said in defiance of some unknown critic, “needs a family, and a family that’s not afraid of hard work, mind.”
“It does,” said Mr. Morris.
Husband
