The Most Marvellous Summer. Бетти Нилс
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bed, lending a sympathetic ear; it added a sparkle to Roseanne’s plain face; even the unfortunate nose seemed less prominent and her mouth had taken on a softer curve.
Bernard, Roseanne told her, now that he had made the acquaintance of her godmother, was going to find a way to meet her parents; her godmother was one of the few people her mother listened to, and Mrs Venables liked him. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ breathed Roseanne. ‘Our meeting like that? He thinks I’m pretty, only my clothes are wrong—you always said that too, didn’t you? He’s going to meet me one day and go with me to choose an outfit. I wish we were staying here forever.’
‘Well, if you want a super wedding you’ll have to go home to get ready for it, and the sooner you do that the sooner you can get married. Big weddings take an awful lot of organising.’
Which started Roseanne off again until she gave a final yawn and said goodnight, but on her way to the door she stopped. ‘I’m ever so glad it’s happened to me—I wish it could happen to you too.’
‘Nothing,’ declared Matilda in a falsely cheerful voice, ‘ever happens to me.’
She was wrong; fate had a testy ear tuned in to that kind of remark.
* * *
THEY HAD BEEN for a morning walk and now they were hurrying home as rain, threatening to be heavy, began to fall. There was a short cut to the house through narrow streets lined with small, rather shabby shops and used a great deal by drivers avoiding the main roads. They were turning into it when they saw half a dozen people standing on the edge of the pavement looking down at something.
‘I’m going to see what it is,’ said Matilda and despite Roseanne’s peevish reluctance went to look. A small dog was lying in the gutter, wet, pitifully thin, and also obviously injured.
No one was doing anything; Matilda bent down and put out a gentle hand. ‘Leave it alone, miss,’ said a large untidy man roughly. ‘‘’E’ll bite yer—’it by a car, ’e’ll be dead in no time.’
Matilda flashed a glance at him and got on to her knees, the better to look at the little beast. It cowered and showed its teeth and then put out a tongue and licked her hand.
‘How long has it been here?’ she demanded.
‘‘Arf an hour…’
‘Then not one of you has done anything to help it?’ She turned to look at them. ‘Why, you’re nothing but a bunch of heartless brutes.’
‘‘’Ere, that won’t do, lady—it’s only a stray, ’arf starved too.’
No one had noticed the car which drew up on the other side of the street; Mr Scott-Thurlow was beside her, bending his great height, lifting her to her feet before anyone had spoken again.
‘Oh, dear, oh, dear,’ he said softly, ‘Miss ffinch helping lame dogs…’
‘Don’t you start,’ she warned him fiercely. ‘This poor creature’s been here for half an hour and no one has lifted a finger.’
Mr Scott-Thurlow wasted no time. ‘Get me a piece of cardboard,’ he ordered the man nearest him, ‘flat, mind you, and please be quick about it.’
The people around suddenly became helpful; suggestions filled the air, even offers of help, unspecified. The cardboard was brought back and everyone stood aside watching; they weren’t unkind deliberately, only indifferent—if the big gent liked to get bitten by a dog that was going to die anyway, that was his look-out and they might as well be there to see it.
He wasn’t bitten; he slid the cardboard under the dog, lifted it with the animal trembling on it and carried it across the street to his car, closely followed by Matilda and Roseanne. Matilda turned back halfway across to address the untidy man.
‘Now you know what to do next time an animal gets hurt,’ she told him, and added kindly, ‘I dare say you didn’t think, did you? Standing and looking at something that needs to be done is such a waste of time.’
She smiled at him and he smiled back, mostly because he hadn’t seen green eyes like hers before.
Roseanne was already in the car, sitting in the back. ‘Get inside beside me,’ ordered Mr Scott-Thurlow, ‘and I’ll lay the cardboard on your lap.’
‘A vet?’ asked Matilda. The little dog looked in a bad way.
‘Yes.’
He had nothing more to say until he turned into a side-street and got out. ‘Stay there, I’ll be back,’ he told her and opened a side-door in a long brick wall. He came back almost at once with a burly, bearded man who nodded at Matilda and cast an eye over the dog.
‘Let’s have him in,’ he suggested, and lifted the cardboard neatly off her knees. ‘Coming too?’
Matilda got out of the car, but Roseanne shook her head. ‘I’d rather stay here…’
Mr Scott-Thurlow held the door open and they went in one after the other down a long passage with the surgery at its end. ‘You wait here,’ the vet told her. ‘I’ll do an X-ray first—you can give a hand, James.’
Matilda sat in the waiting-room on a rather hard chair, cherishing the knowledge that his name was James. It suited him, though she doubted if anyone had ever called him Jimmy or even Jim. Time passed unheeded since her thoughts were entirely taken up with James Scott-Thurlow; when he joined her she looked at him mistily, shaken out of her daydreams.
‘The little dog?’
‘A fractured pelvis, cracked ribs, starved and very, very dirty. He’ll live.’
‘May he stay here? What will happen to him? Will it take long? If no one wants him I’m sure Father will let me have him…’
‘He’ll stay here until he’s fit and he’ll be well looked after. I should suppose he’ll be fit, more or less, in a month or six weeks.’ Mr Scott-Thurlow paused and then went on in a resigned voice, ‘I have a Labrador who will be delighted to have a companion.’
He was rewarded by an emerald blaze of gratitude. ‘Oh, how good of you; I’m not sure what kind of a dog he is but I’m certain that when he’s well again you’ll be proud of him.’
Mr Scott-Thurlow doubted this but forbore to mention it. ‘Were you on your way back to Kensington? I’ll run you there; Mrs Venables may be getting anxious.’
‘Oh, I don’t suppose so,’ said Matilda airily. ‘We may do as we please during the day, you know, unless there is some suitable young man coming to lunch. Do you know Mrs Venables?’
They had reached the door but he made no move to open it. ‘I have a slight acquaintance. Rhoda knows her quite well, I believe.’
‘Oh, then I expect you will be at the dinner party next week—a kind of farewell before we go back to Abner Magna.’
He had categorically refused to accompany Rhoda when she had told him of the invitation. Now, on second thoughts, he decided that he would go with her after all.
He opened the door. ‘Then we shall meet again,’ he said as they reached the car. Before he drove off he reached for the phone and said into it, ‘I shall be half an hour late—warn everyone, will you?’
He drove off without a word, leaving Matilda guessing. Was he a barrister, defending some important client, she wondered, or someone in the banking world, making decisions about another person’s money? It would be a clerk at the other end, middle-aged, rather shabby probably with a large family of growing children and a mortgage. Her imagination ran riot until he stopped outside the Kensington house, bade them a polite goodbye and drove off.
‘He doesn’t talk much, does he?’ Roseanne wanted to know. ‘I think I’m a bit—well—scared of him.’
Matilda looked at her in astonishment. ‘Scared? Of him? Whatever for? I dare say he was wrapped up in some business