and parties as possible; no one—no man—would look at the dear girl while Matilda was there, although give the girl her due she wasn’t a young woman to push herself forward; she knew her place, Lady Fox reflected, happily unaware of the superiority of the ffinches over the Foxes.
They were to travel up to London in the Foxes’ Daimler driven by Gregg the chauffeur and gardener. Matilda got up early, made a tour of the rather untidy garden, ate a good breakfast and presented herself at the manor at nine o’clock sharp.
Roseanne, wearing expensive mud-brown tweeds, quite unsuitable for the time of year, looked as though she would change her mind about going at any moment; Matilda bustled her briskly into the car with the promise that they would telephone as soon as they arrived and they drove away.
It was a pleasant morning, chilly still but the sun shone and Matilda, chatting bracingly about the pleasures in store, wanted very much to get out of the car and walk or get on to her old bike and potter off for the day. She listened sympathetically to Roseanne’s uncertain hopes for the next few weeks, bolstered her up with the delights of London in store for her and whenever she had a moment thought about Mr Scott-Thurlow.
The Honourable Mrs Venables lived in Kensington, in a massive red brick flat, furnished with splendour and a regrettable tendency to overdo crimson velvet, gilding wherever possible and dark, heavy furniture. She received them graciously and somewhat absent-mindedly, since she was holding a lengthy telephone conversation when they arrived. They sat while she concluded this and were then handed over to a dour-looking woman who led them down a long corridor to two rooms at its end, overlooking a narrow garden and more red brick walls.
‘There’s the bathroom,’ they were told. ‘You share it. My name’s Bertha.’
‘I’m not going to like it,’ declared Roseanne when they were alone in her room. Her lip quivered. ‘I want to go home.’
‘We’ve only just got here,’ Matilda pointed out. ‘At least let’s give it a try. It’s all a bit strange—you’ll feel better after lunch.’
She was right; Mrs Venables had a great deal to say over the meal, laying out for Roseanne’s approbations the various entertainments she had arranged for her. ‘We shall have a quiet evening here today,’ she said, ‘but tomorrow we might go shopping and there’s an excellent film we might see in the evening. I shall leave you two girls to amuse yourselves during the day—there is plenty to see and do. I have arranged a dinner party or two and there are several invitations for you.’ It all sounded rather fun so that when Roseanne telephoned her mother after lunch she said nothing about wanting to return home.
They spent the next day or two finding their feet. The mornings were taken up with shopping; Roseanne had plenty of money and urged by Matilda bought the clothes she had always wanted and never had the smallest chance to since her mother had always accompanied her. It was a surprise what a difference they made to her appearance, especially when Matilda, given carte blanche at the cosmetic counters, found a cream to disguise the spots and chose lipstick, blusher and eye-shadow and applied them to her companion’s face. ‘Don’t you want to buy anything?’ asked Roseanne. ‘Clothes?’
Matilda assured her, quite untruthfully, that she didn’t.
It was their third day there and they had been shopping again. It was Matilda who stopped outside an art gallery with a discreet notice, ‘Exhibition Within’, and suggested that they might take a look.
The gallery was a series of rooms, very elegant and half filled with viewers, and the first person Matilda saw there was Mr Scott-Thurlow.
CHAPTER TWO
MR SCOTT-THURLOW WASN’T alone: there was a tall, willowy girl beside him, a fashion-plate, so slim that she might have been cut out of cardboard. She was exquisitely made up and her hair was a teased-out halo, lacquered into immobility. She was beautiful but there was no animation in her face; indeed, she looked bored, far more interested in arranging the pleats of her long skirt than viewing the large painting before which they stood.
Matilda, after the first shock of delight, wanted perversely nothing so much as to get as far away from Mr Scott-Thurlow as possible, but Roseanne had seen him too. She darted up to him and caught his sleeve.
‘Fancy seeing you here, Mr Scott-Thurlow—’ for once she had forgotten her shyness ‘—and Matilda’s with me…’
He took her hand and shook it gently and his voice was kind. ‘How delightful to see you again, Roseanne. Are you staying in town?’ He turned to his companion. ‘Rhoda, this is Roseanne Fox; we met in Dorset a few weeks ago.’ He smiled at Roseanne. ‘My fiancée, Rhoda Symes.’
He looked past her to where Matilda was waiting and his smile faded, indeed he looked angry but so fleetingly that watching him she decided that she had imagined it. There was nothing else to do but to join Roseanne, greet him politely and be introduced in her turn to the girl with him.
Rhoda Symes was everything that she wasn’t, reflected Matilda sadly, thinking of her own pleasant plumpness and kind of knowing that in the eyes of this girl she was just plain fat, size fourteen, wearing all the wrong make-up and with the wrong-coloured hair… All the same she gave the girl a friendly smile—if she was going to make Mr Scott-Thurlow a happy man, then she, Matilda, would make the best of it; she loved him too much to think otherwise.
The girl was lovely. Matilda supposed that in all fairness if she were a man she would undoubtedly fall for all that elegant beauty.
They stood and talked for a few minutes until Matilda observed that they still had almost the whole of the exhibition to see and since Roseanne was interested hadn’t they better get started?
She bade Mr Scott-Thurlow a colourless goodbye and smiled without guile at Rhoda Symes, trying not to see the very large diamond on her left hand—a hand which that lady flourished rather too prominently.
‘I say,’ said Roseanne excitedly, ‘isn’t she absolutely lovely? I wonder if we’ll get asked to the wedding?’ She added, not meaning to be rude, ‘Not you, of course.’
Matilda, contemplating a large oil-painting which she thought privately looked as though the artist had upset his paint pots over the canvas, agreed cheerfully to this remark; wild horses wouldn’t drag her to Mr Scott-Thurlow’s wedding—he was, as far as she was concerned, a closed book. Or so she told herself.
Roseanne’s godmother gave a dinner party on the following evening; just a few friends, the Honourable Mrs Venables had said, most of them unattached men of suitable age with a complement of safely married ladies; Roseanne must have her chance and a dinner party was a very good way of getting to know people. Matilda was to attend too although her hostess would have been happier not to have had the competition; she consoled herself with the thought that men didn’t care for such bright red hair.
Matilda did her best to look inconspicuous; she did her hair in a severe french pleat, wore an unassuming gown—grey crêpe and several years out of date—and stayed in the background as much as possible. Nevertheless she attracted the attention of the company, and since she was a nice, unassuming girl the ladies of the party liked her as well as the men. She did her best to see that Roseanne was a success and her godmother had to admit that Matilda hadn’t made any attempt to draw attention to herself. All the same, an excuse would have to be found for Roseanne to go without her to the dinner dance later that week, and Matilda, being told on the morning of that day that she looked poorly and perhaps it would be wise if she didn’t go out that evening, agreed for Roseanne’s sake
