Greybeard

The girl looked into her face with immense swimming eyes, nodded, and dashed away towards the hole in the fence. As Venice straightened up and began to walk back towards the house, Patricia Timberlane came out of the back door with two men. One of the men was her husband, Arthur, a man who at forty-odd gave all the appearance of having forgotten his more youthful years. Venice, who liked him — but she was far less choosy than Patricia with her likes and dislikes, and tended to be friendly to anyone who seemed friendly to her — had to admit that Arthur cut a glum figure; he was a man saddled with troubles who had never decided to meet them either stoically or with a sense of defiance.

Patricia held her husband’s arm, but it was towards the other man that she most frequently glanced. Keith Barratt, Arthur Timberlane’s co-director, was a personable man with a too shallow jaw and tawny hair brushed back untidily. Keith was only five years younger than Arthur, but his manner — particularly his manner with Pat, Venice thought cattily — was more youthful, and he dressed more like a man about town.

As Venice went towards them, answering their greetings, she saw a glance like a bird of sweet ill-omen fly between Patricia and Keith. She saw in it — heavily, for there was pain enough — that trouble was nearer than she had thought.

“Venice likes the house, Arthur,” Patricia said. “I’m afraid of damp with the river so close,” Arthur said to Venice. He put his hands in his trouser pockets and stared down towards the river as if expecting to see it rise and engulf them. It seemed to be with reluctance that he swung his eyes round to look at her as he asked, “Is Edgar getting back early tonight? Good. Why don’t you both come round for a drink with us? I’d like to hear what he makes of the situation in Australia. Things look very black, very black indeed.”

“Art, you old pessimist!” Keith said. He spoke in a tone of laughing reproach that pronounced his partner’s name Ah-ha-hart. “Come off it! A lovely afternoon like this and you talk like that. Wait till you get that MR report and see if things aren’t just as bad for everyone. Come Christmas, trade will improve.” In explanation, he said to Venice, “We’ve had Moxan, the market research people, in, to find out what exactly has hit our trade; their report should be with us tomorrow.” He pulled a funny face and slit his throat with a knife-edged forefinger.

“The report should have been in today,” Arthur said. He stood with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched, looking about at surroundings and sky as he spoke, as if tired of talk. “There’s a touch of autumn in the afternoons already. Where’s Algy, Pat? Let’s be getting home.”

“I want you to have a look at the boiler before we go, darling,” Patricia said. “We’ll talk about the boiler later. Where’s Algy? The boy’s never about when you want him.”

“He’s hiding somewhere,” Venice said. “He’s been playing games with the little girl from next door. Why don’t you two look for him? I really ought to be getting along, or I’ll never be ready for Edgar. Keith, be a darling and give me a lift home, will you? It’s not much off your route.”

“But enchanted,” Keith said, and made an effort to look as though he meant it. They said their farewells and went round to the front drive. Keith’s car had brought him and Arthur over from the factory, as Patricia had the Timberlane car. When Venice settled in beside him, Keith drove away in silence; though far from being a sensitive man, he lost some of his assurance with her, knowing that she did not greatly approve of him.

Between Arthur and Patricia a silence also fell, which he covered by saying, “Well, let’s look for the child, if we must. Perhaps he’s down in the summer-house. Why didn’t you keep an eye on him?”

Ignoring this opening for a quarrel — of all her tricks, that one annoyed him most — Patricia said, as they turned towards the bottom of the garden, “The last owners let this place become a wilderness. There’s more work here than you will be able to tackle alone; we shall have to have a gardener. We must have this row of bushes out and perhaps just leave that peony where it is.”

“We haven’t bought the place yet,” Arthur said morosely. His reluctance to disappoint her made him speak more grudgingly than he intended. She did not seem to be able to understand that their business slipped nearer disaster every day.

What Arthur most resented was that this trouble, into which his firm slipped more deeply even as he spoke, should come as a barrier between Pat and him. He had seen clearly, a while ago, that they failed to make a very united couple; at first he had almost welcomed the financial crisis, hoping it would bring them more closely together, for Patricia had listened sympathetically enough to his woes before they married. Instead, there seemed something deliberate in her lack of understanding.