Enough to Kill a Horse by Elizabeth Ferrars

as if she feared Sir Peter’s death might happen at her cocktail party.
    ‘He’s nobody’s grandfather,’ Clare said. ‘His sons were both killed in the war.’
    This remark brought an uneasy seriousness into the room. Clare had spoken with the curious emphasis which had entered her voice each time she had spoken of Sir Peter. But as if she saw that her words had been in the wrong key, she went on quickly, ‘Has Fanny been showing you the house, Laura?’
    There was a pause before Laura answered, ‘Yes. It’s perfectly lovely.’
    But that was in the wrong key too, subdued and somehow not convincing. Clare saw Kit, whose blue eyes had settled on Laura’s face in a long, dreaming stare, wrinkle his forehead slightly, as if he were not quite sure that he had heard her correctly.
    ‘Yes, and I’ve been showing her how we could divide it up,’ Fanny said. ‘As it used to be two cottages, it’d be quite easy. It’s just a case of putting a wall back and doing some plumbing. It’ll be rather fun to work it out.’
    ‘But it’ll spoil your lovely house,’ Laura said. ‘I’d hate to think of doing that.’
    ‘It won’t spoil it at all,’ Fanny said.
    ‘Oh, but – ’
    ‘Not at all,’ Fanny said firmly. ‘As I told you, it’s how it was meant to be. Now let’s go and have lunch.’
    She steered them all through to the dining room.
    She was in a nervous mood, which showed by the way that her florid face had reddened as soon as she had drunk a little sherry and also by the way, as they all sat down, that she kept on talking. But it was a gay kind of nervousness and she seemed to be pleased with Laura. She asked her a great many questions about her journalistic work and also about her child. Because of the child, Fanny said, perhaps the young couple should take over the larger part of the house, the better part. Again Laura protested, saying that she could never allow Fanny and Basil to put themselves out in such a way.
    Clare was interested in Laura’s reaction to Fanny. It seemed to Clare that Laura found herself liking Fanny far more than she had expected and that this set her some kind of problem for which she had been unprepared.
    There was a wariness about her, a look of waiting. Her face, her large blue eyes, her small, pretty mouth, were as unexpressive as ever, but there was tension in the poise of her small, sleek, dark head and in the movements of her hands.
    She had adopted a slightly childish manner towards Fanny, deprecating and excessively modest, as if she were a very young and inexperienced girl, rather than a widow of thirty-two or three, mother of a child and a tolerable success in her profession. If Fanny thought that there was anything inappropriate about this, she did not show it, but talked on cheerfully. Basil was his usual quiet self, attentive and apparently charmed, but Kit, almost unable to remove his eyes from Laura’s face, had a bewildered air, a look of raised eyebrows, of being ready to make a protest of some sort.
    A ludicrous memory came to Clare. She had once gone to a market and bought a chicken to cook for a small dinner-party that she had been giving that same evening. The stallholder had taken the chicken behind the counter and wrapped it up in paper. When Clare had reached home, she had removed the wrappings and found inside not a chicken but two widgeons. As it turned out, they had been excellent and the dinner quite successful. Nevertheless the incident had been disconcerting. She had not quite succeeded, somehow, in adjusting herself to the widgeons. And that was how Kit looked now, just as if he had bought himself a chicken in the market and it had turned into two small, plump widgeons.
    When lunch was over, Fanny sent Laura and Kit away and took Clare into the kitchen to help her with the washing up.
    The kitchen, entirely modernized, with plenty of stainless steel and built-in cupboards, was littered with Fanny’s preparations for the party. She was a very