Penny Plain, page 7
'Did he?' said Marian, and her voice became soft and a little flirtatious. 'Do you know I've never seen the inside of your home? You've come here on the rare occasions when I've been able to winkle you out, but you've never once invited me to Plovers Farm.'
'Not for want of inclination, I assure you,' he said, beginning to get to his feet, 'but I don't entertain at all. I'm incurably lazy when it comes to parties, I'm afraid, and after a hard day's work I like to just sit and read or do the crossword by my own fireside. You'd find it very dull.'
'Would I? All the same—'
'Look in for a drink if you'd care to, one of my free evenings, and bring Miss Clay with you. She has fallen in love with my house, she tells me. She falls in love rather easily, don't you, Miss Clay?'
'Stop embarrassing the poor child, and for heaven's sake call her Emma, and have done with it — we all do,' exclaimed Marian, the natural shrillness back in her voice, but Emma, familiar by this time with Max's apparent liking for uncomfortable remarks, remained unflustered by his blatant angling for a rise and merely wondered if it was also his masculine way of keeping Marian guessing.
'May I?' he asked.
'May you what, Mr. Grainger?'
'Call you Emma. We shall, after all, have become quite well acquainted by the time we've worked through all the dogs' possible ailments, imagined or otherwise.'
'Certainly, if you wish, but I hope you won't find you're called out for no reason. I'm not likely to waste your time or Miss Mills's money by bringing you here for a matter I can quite well cope with myself,' said Emma crisply, and saw him smile.
'Well, that will save you a few unnecessarily, Marian,' he said, preparing to take his leave. 'I'm sure Miss Emma Penelope Clay is very well able to cope —she's a most forthright young person.'
`Well, she doesn't know it all, as I've had to tell her,' snapped Marian, giving her kennelmaid a look which plainly told her to remember this was her proper station even though she had been found drinking tea on the terrace on equal terms with her employer.
'Incidentally, how has the old dog reacted to being in the house?' Max asked. 'You've kept him with you, I hope — I told Emma that was the best way to get him back on his feet.'
Marian had risen, anxious to see him to his car and have a last word in private, and she stood for a moment, glancing a little uneasily at Emma.
'Well, no,' she said, twisting her hands together like a little girl expecting to be scolded. 'Emma and Ireen think I'm cruel putting him back in kennels, but he's getting very smelly, Max, and I really do think the time has come when the poor old boy would be happier out of the way.'
He considered her gravely without replying at once, and Emma held her breath, wondering if he was prepared to swing the balance in Corrie's favour with a timely word of protest or condemnation, then she looked away as she heard him answer dispassionately:
'If you've no further use for him as a companion, you're probably right. It's not much of a life for the old chap, eating his heart out in kennels for the remainder of his days. Well, let's have a look at him before I go, shall we?'
In a moment Marian was all smiles, and she even spared a look of regretful apology for Emma.
'I knew you'd see it my way, Max,' she said. `So
much kinder, don't you think, than hanging on from pure sentiment like so many people who only think of themselves ...'
Her voice grew fainter as they left the terrace and Emma did not catch Max's reply, but rage filled her heart as she watched the two of them cross the lawn where the evening shadows lay long and sharp on the grass. Was Max Grainger so easily hoodwinked by flattery and a pretty face that he believed that Marian could have an unselfish thought for others, let alone an old dog that had become a nuisance, or was he simply shrewd enough to turn a blind eye to the whims of a rich client?
When she went down to the kennels later to see to the evening feeds and shut up for the night, Corrie's run was empty and Ireen's eyes swollen with weeping.
`Took him away with him,' she said to Emma's anxious enquiry. 'Miss Mills didn't want nothing done here — said she couldn't bear to watch an old friend go — lyin' bitch! I offered to have him and pay for his keep, you know, Miss Clay, if he could have stayed on here ... but she said she couldn't have someone else's pet taking up space and I couldn't have him at home because Mum goes out to work, too, so ...' Her tears started again, and Emma wept with her, as much for the poor, unhappy girl who had been willing to spend her meagre wages on old Conic because she loved him, as for the loss of that familiar, faithful friend watching and waiting by the run gate.
`You think badly of me for having Conic put down, don't you, Emma?' Marian said when they met at breakfast, and her eyes had the soft, familiar look of brown velvet which always accompanied a bid for tolerance or approval. She would, in due course, produce a peace-offering in the shape of one of her
extravagant fripperies, Emma thought, and replied with polite finality:
`My opinion can hardly affect what you choose to do in your own kennels, as you've already pointed out, Marian, so let's not discuss it.'
After that, the subject was dropped with tacit agreement, and Emma felt she had at least scored a point by refusing to be drawn into personalities, but she did not find it so easy to put Max in his place when she met him by chance in the village a couple of mornings later. She had called at the chemist to collect a prescription for Marian and found him checking over an order for some veterinary supplies which had been delayed in transit.
`Good morning, Emma Penelope, you're looking very fetching in that blue get-up. I see you discard your workaday slacks when you come to the village.'
The blue get-up in question was a crisp cotton dress which she knew became her, but there was something which irritated her about the easy, casual little compliment, and she found herself replying with more asperity than was warranted:
`Kennelmaids do occasionally get out of their working clothes, and appear clean and reasonably well dressed like other people, Mr. Grainger.'
She merely felt foolish, however, when she saw his eyebrows lift and the little quirk of amusement at the corners of his mouth.
'I was not intending to imply that kennelmaids were either dirty or subject to peculiar attire, Miss Clay,' he said. 'I see your prickles are out again, so presume I am out of favour. How about furthering our acquaintance in the Moon where it first began?'
For a moment she struggled with her dignity, then began to laugh.
`You really have a very high-handed way with you
at times, Mr. Grainger, and you'll be late on your rounds if you stop for a drink at the pub,' she said.
'I've a half hour to spare, as it happens, and was going to look in for a beer, anyway,' he replied mildly. 'You might even mellow sufficiently over a glass of sherry to bring yourself to drop the formalities.'
'Calling you by your Christian name wouldn't alter my feelings, and I don't think Marian would like it,' she replied rather primly, and an odd expression crossed his face.
'Your feelings, of course, are your own business, but Marian's can hardly be of much consequence in the circumstances,' he said, and thinking she detected a note of rebuke in his voice, she wondered if he was politely intimating that whatever his relationship with Marian, it could in no way concern her kennelmaid. She tried vainly to think of an excuse to refuse, but he had a hand under her elbow and was already walking her along the pavement towards the swinging sign of The Waning Moon a few doors up.
'Now,' he said when they were seated with their drinks in the little bar parlour, 'will you kindly shed your prickles and give me another glimpse of little Emma Clay who used to live at Plovers Farm and proved such a delightful visitor that Sunday afternoon?'
The customary raillery had gone from his voice and he smiled across at her with such warm humour that she felt again that surprised sense of recognition which had sprung between them as they talked together in the raftered room which, though dimly remembered, had somehow forged an invisible bond.
'It's on account of the old dog that I'm out of favour, isn't it?' he went on. 'You thought I should have persuaded Marian to give him a chance.'
'She would have listened to you,' Emma replied, her
eyes accusing. 'You could have talked her round where poor Ireen and I failed.'
'Yes, I could,' he admitted gravely. 'But I couldn't give back to the old chap the affection that would keep him alive. I could only condemn him to a further prolonging of hope and despair until in gentle protest he would have died. Wasn't it more humane to spare him that?'
Emma felt a lump rise in her throat and blinked rapidly to check any tears which might threaten to disgrace her.
'Of course you were right,' she said at last. 'It was just, I suppose, that I couldn't understand Marian's attitude. She doesn't care for her dogs, you know, they're just a status symbol while they're winning, and after that they've had it.'
'Perhaps the result of my good offices hasn't been so satisfactory after all,' he said a little wearily. 'You aren't cut out for the harder side of your job, as I think I've already told you. Now, I must be going. What days off do you have?'
'Wednesdays and every other Sunday afternoon providing there are no stud bookings. Why?'
'Obviously because I desire to pursue our acquaintance. Does that surprise you?'
'Well, I think it does, rather. You don't strike me at all as the sort of man to be bothered with uninformed young girls.'
'But I don't find you at all uninformed, Emma Penelope. On the contrary, for one so young, you have much, I suspect, that you could teach me.'
'Now you're laughing at me!'
'A little, perhaps, but don't let it trouble you,' he replied. 'Can I give you a lift back to the Court? I'm going that way.'
She wished he had dropped her at the gates as she
had suggested when, having been deposited at the house, she saw Marian coming down the steps, and knew by the expression on her face that she was both surprised and annoyed.
`You've taken your time, I must say,' she snapped at Emma, snatching the chemist's parcel from her with irritable haste. 'I want that bale of straw shifted before lunch. Max, you'll come in for a drink now you're here, won't you?'
`Thanks, but we've had a couple at the Moon, and I must get on,' he replied, and Emma thought in view of Marian's plain hints that kennel duties had been neglected in order to take time off, it was hardly tactful of him to mention the fact.
'I see ... oh, Max, as you're here, could you spare a minute to have a look at the pups? They're due for their second inoculation at the end of the week,' Marian said as he got back into the car.
`Sorry, no time now Emma tells me there has been no reaction, so they can wait till Friday. So long,' he said, and drove away.
`Are you by any chance setting your cap at Grainger?' Marian enquired in a soft little voice, before Emma had time to escape to the kennels.
`Of course not — how absurd! '
`Yes, isn't it? But you wouldn't be the first, you know. Max can make himself charming when he chooses to unbend, and kennelmaids are fair game, anyway, as you should know.'
`What do you mean?'
`Nothing. All the same, you might remember that I have prior claim to any attentions the eligible Mr. Grainger may see fit to bestow, and I imagine he knows which side his bread is buttered. Well, get cracking on those extra chores or you'll be late for lunch.'
Wilchester Show was being held the following week, where it was hoped Flight would pick up his second Certificate and, with luck, Best of Breed as well, and Emma worked on him with the anxious patience of a devotee. That Flight should win for the sake of the good name of the kennels was incentive enough for her conscientious heart, but there was also the private and personal wish to achieve the highest awards by reason of her share in him, because, thought Emma fondly, however doubtful the point of ownership, Flight was hers in spirit, for he had given his heart no less than she had given hers. He would watch for her as poor old Corrie had watched for Marian, but with none of the despair, his eyes liquid with love and trust, following her every movement, his pricked ears quivering in sensitive response to every inflection of her voice, his whole beautiful body one co-ordinated desire to please.
Emma loved the early mornings when she liked best to do her training, sure of Marian's safe keeping in her bed. She would kick off her sandals and rejoice in the wet coolness of the grass under her bare feet, and sometimes she would dance a little in sheer delight while the dog leapt round her, sharing in the pleasures of these early morning treats.
She was engaged in this childish but harmless occupation a couple of mornings after her meeting with Max Grainger, when an unexpected voice hailed her from a neighbouring field, making her jump guiltily. The thought that strange eyes might have observed and ridiculed her innocent capers filled her with embarrassment.
`Who — who is it?' she called, and at first did not recognize the figure in breeches and gumboots leaning against a haystack.
`Only me, enjoying a charming surprise perform-
ance. Do you often do this?' said Max Grainger, beginning to stroll across towards the dividing fence.
`Hul-lo, Max!' she cried, running to meet him, and it seemed natural and quite unextraordinary to find him there.
`What on earth are you doing here at this hour of the morning?' she asked, leaning her elbows on the fence and propping her chin on her hands.
'Sick cow at Gubbins's farm, hence the gumboots and general disarray,' he replied with a jerk of the head in the direction of the farm which lay behind him. 'Now, do tell me, Emma Penelope, what makes you leap and prance in abandoned glee at an hour when respectable young ladies are still in their beds?'
He looked different and rather alarmingly attractive with his dark hair ruffled and his chin bearing evidence that he had not had time to shave, but his voice was the same, lazily amused, with just a hint of the ease with which he could turn to a sharp setdown.
`Was I being abandoned?' she asked, with such innocent concern that he threw back his head in a burst of merriment.
'No, my literal child, you were gay and natural and wholly charming,' he said, and smiled delightedly at the colour which flooded her face.
`You're not used to compliments, I suspect, Miss Clay,' he teased. 'Have there been no young men around to make you pretty speeches?'
No, I don't attract young men very much, and the few I've met don't attract me,' she said.
`O-ho! Is your ambition to end as an old man's darling, then?'
`Certainly not! I have no ambitions where romance is concerned, in any case.'
`Haven't you? That, my provocative child, is a very rash statement — it's also something in the nature of
a challenge — but perhaps you knew.'
He really was a most disconcerting person, thought Emma, beginning to recover her normal attitude in the presence of comparative strangers, and he was looking at her in a very odd fashion.
'No, I didn't know. And if you've read something I didn't intend into my rather silly remarks, Mr. Grainger, I hope you'll forget it,' she said very stiffly.
'Good gracious me!' he exclaimed, observing her discomfiture with an interested eye. 'What's driven you back into the role of dutiful employee?'
'Well, I am an employee, and it's time I let the dogs out and did the morning feeds. Come, my love, my gorgeous golden Flight, you must want your breakfast.' As the dog jumped up to lick her face, she held his head against her breast for a moment with such unconscious tenderness that the laughter left Max's eyes.
'He's your romance, isn't he? He and the others you've lost your heart to. That won't satisfy you forever, you know,' he said, and she looked up at him, startled.
'If you're trying to tell me not to build on ever owning Flight, I've faced that already,' she said, 'but while I'm here, there's no harm in pretending, is there?'
`That's not what I meant, but no matter,' he replied with a tinge of impatience. 'Does this coming Sunday happen to be the one you have off?'
The abrupt question flustered her, and she frowned, without giving and serious thought to the inconsequence of her answer.
`Yes, it is,' she replied, `so long as nothing crops up. Why?'
'Why? Because I'm trying to arrange a date with you, you ridiculous creature. Would you be interested
in spending a Sunday afternoon pottering about your old home, listening to my edifying conversation and, of course, getting my tea?'
'Yes, why not?' she said, and to herself she added silently: Why not ... why not ... I just amuse him and for me he's only ... Well, what was he? A stranger she had met by chance, for whom she had felt an unwarranted aversion, or rather an antagonism born of the unpropitious moment, perhaps, rather than a personal dislike. It was, she discovered, rather difficult to continue to dislike a person who, when he chose, would seem to offer a little more than a casual passing of the time.
'Very well,' he said. 'You know your way now, over the fields and down the lane to the bridge — or shall I come and fetch you?'
`No, of course not,' she answered quickly, thinking of Marian's probable reaction to a date which afforded such a polite attention. 'Anyway, I may not be free. Week-ends are our busy time, and I may be needed here.'
'You can let me know tomorrow when I come over for the second inoculations,' he said, and turned with a careless wave of the hand and walked away across the field to the farm.
To Emma, the matter of her free afternoon seemed suddenly very important. She wanted passionately to renew acquaintance again with her old home, and she had to admit to herself that Max Grainger, for all the mixed feelings he could arouse in her, was beginning to stir a totally unfamiliar emotion. She asked Marian as casually as possible if she would be free to make arrangements for her time off, but Marian evidently had made arrangements of her own which dispensed with the services of a kennelmaid.
'Dawson's coming down for the day,' she remarked
