Lady Angkatell moved vaguely across the room, ‘I dare say it pleases them. Midge, darling, it’s sweet of you to have been so helpful.’
‘I don’t think I have been so very helpful.’
‘Oh, haven’t you?’ Lucy Angkatell looked surprised. ‘Well, have a nice sleep now and don’t get up to breakfast, and when you do get up, do be as rude as ever you like.’
‘Rude?’ Midge looked surprised. ‘Why! Oh!’ she laughed. ‘I see! Penetrating of you, Lucy. Perhaps I’ll take you at your word.’
Lady Angkatell smiled and went out. As she passed the open bathroom door and saw the kettle and gas-ring, an idea came to her.
People were fond of tea, she knew—and Midge wouldn’t be called for hours. She would make Midge some tea. She put the kettle on and then went on down the passage.
She paused at her husband’s door and turned the handle, but Sir Henry Angkatell, that able administrator, knew his Lucy. He was extremely fond of her, but he liked his morning sleep undisturbed. The door was locked.
Lady Angkatell went on into her own room. She would have liked to have consulted Henry, but later would do. She stood by her open window, looked out for a moment or two, then she yawned. She got into bed, laid her head on the pillow and in two minutes was sleeping like a child.
In the bathroom the kettle came to the boil and went on boiling…
‘Another kettle gone, Mr Gudgeon,’ said Simmons, the housemaid.
Gudgeon, the butler, shook his grey head.
He took the burnt-out kettle from Simmons and, going into the pantry, produced another kettle from the bottom of the plate cupboard where he had a stock of half a dozen.
‘There you are, Miss Simmons. Her ladyship will never know.’
‘Does her ladyship often do this sort of thing?’ asked Simmons.
Gudgeon sighed.
‘Her ladyship,’ he said, ‘is at once kind-hearted and very forgetful, if you know what I mean. But in this house,’ he continued, ‘I see to it that everything possible is done to spare her ladyship annoyance or worry.’
Henrietta Savernake rolled up a little strip of clay and patted it into place. She was building up the clay head of a girl with swift practised skill.
In her ears, but penetrating only to the edge of her understanding, was the thin whine of a slightly common voice:
‘And I do think, Miss Savernake, that I was quite right! “Really,” I said, “if that’s the line you’re going to take!” Because I do think, Miss Savernake, that a girl owes it to herself to make a stand about these sort of things—if you know what I mean. “I’m not accustomed,” I said, “to having things like that said to me, and I can only say that you must have a very nasty imagination!” One does hate unpleasantness, but I do think I was right to make a stand, don’t you, Miss Savernake?’
‘Oh, absolutely,’ said Henrietta with a fervour in her voice which might have led someone who knew her well to suspect that she had not been listening very closely.
‘“And if your wife says things of that kind,” I said, “well, I’m sure I can’t help it!” I don’t know how it is, Miss Savernake, but it seems to be trouble wherever I go, and I’m sure it’s not my fault. I mean, men are so susceptible, aren’t they?’ The model gave a coquettish little giggle.
‘Frightfully,’ said Henrietta, her eyes half-closed.
‘Lovely,’ she was thinking. ‘Lovely that plane just below the eyelid—and the other plane coming up to meet it. That angle by the jaw’s wrong… I must scrape off there and build up again. It’s tricky.’
Aloud she said in her warm, sympathetic voice:
‘It must have been most difficult for you.’
‘I do think jealousy’s so unfair, Miss Savernake, and so narrow, if you know what I mean. It’s just envy, if I may say so, because someone’s better-looking and younger than they are.’
Henrietta, working on the jaw, said absently, ‘Yes, of course.’
She had learned the trick, years ago, of shutting her mind into watertight compartments. She could play a game of bridge, conduct an intelligent conversation, write a clearly constructed letter, all without giving more than a fraction of her essential mind to the task. She was now completely intent on seeing the head of Nausicaa build itself up under her fingers, and the thin, spiteful stream of chatter issuing from those very lovely childish lips penetrated not at all into the deeper recesses of her mind. She kept the conversation going without effort. She was used to models who wanted to talk. Not so much the professional ones—it was the amateurs who, uneasy at their forced inactivity of limb, made up for it by bursting into garrulous self-revelation. So an inconspicuous part of Henrietta listened and replied, and, very far and remote, the real Henrietta commented, ‘Common mean spiteful little piece—but what eyes… Lovely lovely lovely eyes…’
Whilst she was busy on the eyes, let the girl talk. She would ask her to keep silent when she got to the mouth. Funny when you came to think of it, that that thin stream of spite should come out through those perfect curves.
‘Oh, damn,’ thought Henrietta with sudden frenzy, ‘I’m ruining that eyebrow arch! What the hell’s the matter with it? I’ve over-emphasized the bone—it’s sharp, not thick…’
She stood back again frowning from the clay to the flesh and blood sitting on the platform.
Doris Saunders went on:
‘“Well,” I said, “I really don’t see why your husband shouldn’t give me a present if he likes, and I don’t think,” I said, “you ought to make insinuations of that kind.” It was ever such a nice bracelet, Miss Savernake, reely quite lovely—and of course I dare say the poor fellow couldn’t reely afford it, but I do think it was nice of him, and I certainly wasn’t going to give it back!’
‘No, no,’ murmured Henrietta.
‘And it’s not as though there was anything between us—anything nasty, I mean—there was nothing of that kind.’
‘No,’ said Henrietta, ‘I’m sure there wouldn’t be…’
Her brow cleared. For the next half-hour she worked in a kind of fury. Clay smeared itself on her forehead, clung to her hair, as she pushed an impatient hand through it. Her eyes had a blind intense ferocity. It was coming… She was getting it…
Now, in a few hours, she would be out of her agony—the agony that had been growing upon her for the last ten days.
Nausicaa—she had been Nausicaa, she had got up with Nausicaa and had breakfast with Nausicaa and gone out with Nausicaa. She had tramped the streets in a nervous excitable restlessness, unable to fix her mind on anything but a beautiful blind face somewhere just beyond
