The Wedding Group by Elizabeth Taylor

Author:Elizabeth Taylor [Taylor, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Littlehampton
Published: 2010-11-04T06:00:00+00:00

‘I came to ask Cressy out for a drink.’

Toby held the door open wide. ‘A splendid idea,’ he said. ‘Alexia just said that we should invite her down and we were both wondering how we decently could not. However, we had this very minute decided that we mustn’t leave her up there crying on her own another evening – no matter what conditions we had at the beginning. You see,’ he said, opening the door of the sitting-room, ‘we are not entirely heartless – though very nearly. He has come in the nick of time, Alexia.’

She looked up with relief from peeling a pear. The remains of supper were on the table, wine-glasses, a plateful of walnut shells, and opened books – a scene of easy peacefulness. David could understand what a sacrifice they had been about to make.

‘Yes, we are very nearly heartless,’ Alexia agreed.

‘What is all this crying?’ David asked.

‘It’s worse than ever, I can tell you.’

‘Oh, come off it, David,’ Toby protested. ‘She is a love-sick wraith. You’ve started something you know, and we are suffering for it. We think you are very nearly heartless, too.’

‘And for the slipperiest customer we’ve ever known,’ Alexia said calmly, ‘we find this entanglement surprising.’

‘Entanglement? What has the child got into her head now?’

There was no need for a reply, and Alexia began to eat her pear.

‘I’ll go and ask her,’ David said. ‘But perhaps she won’t want to come.’

This seemed to need no answer, either. Toby looked longingly at his open book. ‘I’m afraid she may be rather a tear-stained little thing for the Horseshoes. But no doubt she can blot herself and put on a dash of powder.’

‘If she wants, I will lend her my dark spectacles,’ Alexia offered.

Cressy opened her door, holding some knitting in her hand. She was very much taken aback at seeing David, and said incoherently, ‘It won’t come right. I have to keep unpicking it.’ She put the knitting to her eyes, and turned away. The room looked like some old-age pensioner’s last, lonely refuge.

‘Well, forget it for now,’ he said, ‘and let’s go for a drink.’

‘How can I, looking like this?’ she asked dramatically.

‘Alexia said she’d lend you her dark glasses.’

‘So you’ve been talking about me. How, for God’s sake, did they know my knitting had gone wrong?’

‘It’s not your knitting that’s gone wrong – or if it has,’ – he looked doubtfully at the strange-shaped thing she was holding – ‘if it is, that’s not what’s troubling you.’

‘I don’t want to go to the Horseshoes. Father Daughtry might be there.’

‘Well, we can go somewhere else, somewhere a bit farther on to give you more time to recover. You don’t look too bad, anyway. Nothing that a bit of powder won’t put right.’

‘I look terrible.’

She really did. He picked up a brush and began to smooth her tangled hair, while she stood before the little looking-glass, her knees bent so that she could see into it, and dabbed her face with a grubby powder-puff.

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