To Catch A Unicorn Page 3

  logs were piled high on the cavernous granite hearth.

  "Hul-lo ...' came Cleo's husky voice in lazy greeting, and Laura saw her cousin stretched out on a sofa by the fire, looking sleepy and thoroughly at home, a trolley laden with bottles and decanters and glasses of all shapes and sizes at her elbow, just as though she had lived here always instead of barely a week.

  Laura ran across the room to kiss her, grateful for a return to normality, and even when Cleo drew back, warding off an embrace which might, she said, still be infectious, that, too, was encouragingly familiar.

  "I don't mean to be off-putting, darling, but I can't afford to risk going down with something as unbecoming as 'flu at this juncture," she said with a conciliatory smile, and stretched out a hand for the half-empty glass beside her. "You do look washed out, poor sweet! I hope you're feeling strong enough to cope with Nicky—he's quite worn me out since we've been here, and if it hadn't been for Bella—"

  "Who's she?"

  "Bella Spain, housekeeper-cum-impoverished friend of the family—a very odd bod at times, my dear. It's said that she was one of old Zachary's mistresses in days gone by. She's been here ever since Mrs. Trevayne died when Peregrine was born and virtually brought the younger two up. She's not too sure about me yet, but she's sold on Nicky."

  "Nicky—how is he?" Laura asked eagerly, and wished it had not been too late to go upstairs and tuck him up.

  "Hasn't settled down too badly considering everyone's strange to him, and of course he dotes on the oddities of this preposterous house. Incidentally, that perishing brat of mine isn't being at all co-operative; he seems to have taken a scunner to the only uncle who's important to him. I hope you'll be able to wean him to a more tactful state of mind now you're here."

  "Your brother-in-law might seem alarming to a child at first," Laura said slowly, remembering her own impressions as he had turned the scarred side of his face to her in the unkind glare of the station lamp.

  "Yes, he hasn't Perry's charm, of course. What did you make of brother Dom?"

  "I don't know yet. We didn't get off to a very good start. I mistook him for the devil." Laura had thought to amuse her cousin by recounting the vicissitudes of the journey, but Cleo frowned and poured herself another drink.

  "You aren't, I hope, going to be tiresome while you're here," she said a little sharply. "My newly-discovered in-laws may look romantic like the old-fashioned he-men of fiction, but they're not at all given to whimsy."

  "So I've been told already," Laura said, feeling snubbed, and was relieved when Dominic reappeared carrying a laden tray of tea and set it down beside her.

  "Dom, I helped myself, I hope you don't mind?" Cleo said with a charming but not very serious suggestion of apology for having presumed on his hospitality. "You were so long fetching Laura that my tongue was hanging out—shall I mix you one?"

  "Thanks, but I'll have a whisky and help myself," he replied, and she made a wry little face at him.

  "Sorry—I should have waited to be asked," she said. "It's your fault, really, for making me feel I belong here. Penzion's the first settled home I've had for years—even if it is only temporary."

  "Well, you're entitled to think so if you can stomach our slapdash ways," he replied pleasantly, unstopping a decanter and pouring himself a moderate measure of whisky. "As for waiting to be asked, you ought to know by now none of us stand on ceremony here."

  "Oh, that's nice. Now I shall know we're not treading on any corns if Nicky and I think of this as home," she said cosily, and moved her very decorative legs to make room for him on the sofa with a small silent gesture of invitation.

  Laura poured and drank her tea, aware without rancour that they had forgotten her. She was so used to her cousin's unfailing gift for monopolising male attention that she would have been surprised had she been noticed. Cleo's husky overtones were warm and familiar, but what she said passed un-

  remembered as did Dominic's replies. His was a dark voice, matching the dark Trevayne looks, where his brother's had been light brown with shallow depths, Laura thought fancifully, and jumped when Dominic suddenly asked Cleo a question.

  "By the way, why didn't you tell me you were cousins?"

  Cleo's mischievous, sloe eyes opened wide.

  "Didn't I, Dom? Well, I suppose I thought you knew. But of course you couldn't be expected to know anything about either of us since we've never met or corresponded until now, could you?"

  "It was Troy who cut himself off in the end," he reminded her. "I wrote more than once after the old man died."

  "Did you? Troy never said, or perhaps he never got your letters—we were always moving on and you know what hotels are about forwarding. To be honest with you we often didn't leave addresses—importunate creditors and other embarrassing encumbrances—Troy's, of course," Cleo said lazily, and gave him a look which plainly intimated they shared the same knowledge of the dead Troy's failing, and that she for one took a worldly and tolerant view.

  "Where's Perry?" Cleo added, tactfully trailing a less controversial red herring. "I thought he was due in on Laura's train. If they'd known in time they could have travelled down together."

  "They did," he replied with a certain dryness. "Perry, needless to say, got off at St. Mewan, presumably for a date with the latest floosie. He'd made good use of his time with your cousin, I gathered, but didn't see fit to disclose his identity."

  "And Laura, of course, gave hers away in the first five minutes and probably talked a lot of indiscreet nonsense. I suppose, knowing Perry's line with susceptible females, he filled you up with blarney to pass the time and you fell for it."

  "He filled me up with more wine than I'm used to, which undoubtedly loosened my tongue," Laura answered coolly enough, and caught Dominic's quick little glance of amusement.

  "I don't doubt, since your cousin is capable of standing up to the devil and demanding his business, she's equal to dealing with less alarming situations," he said to Cleo. "Now, as Miss Smith has finished her tea, perhaps you would like to take her upstairs and show her where she's to sleep and the general layout."

  "Oh, for heaven's sake call her Laura! In a madly indirect fashion you could claim her as cousin, I suppose," Cleo said, and sounded really cross, but she got to her feet, if not very graciously, at least with a belated sense of satisfaction that she was being tacitly assigned the role of hostess.

  Before they could get out of the room, however, the door burst open and a pack of yelping dogs bounded into the room, followed by a very large, angry woman brandishing a saucepan.

  "Devils! Ingrates! Thieves and scullions!" she boomed in a voice like a cracked bell. "Where is Amos, Dominic? Why can't he learn to keep the brutes shut up in the kennels? They've stolen the joint I'd prepared for supper and there's not enough left even to make into a stew. It's too much ... too much!"

  Cleo looked unperturbed, if a shade disgusted, but Dominic simply stood and laughed and' encouraged the dogs with cries of "Worry-worry-worry!"

  "Really, Dom, you can be as bad as Perry at times! Poor Laura is looking as dazed as if she had walked into a madhouse, as well she might," Cleo said with a touch of sharpness, and his laughter died.

  "Your cousin will have to get used to our ways if she's to settle among us for a time," he said, and the old touch of hauteur was back in his voice a reminder, Laura thought, that however boyishly he might choose to behave at times, it should not be forgotten that he was head of the house and unaccustomed to censure.

  The angry woman scooped up what was left of the joint with the utmost sangfroid, deposited it in the saucepan and advanced upon Laura.

  "How do you do, dear child? You don't look at all suitable

  for a nanny, too thin, and too young—oh, much too young," she said as though nothing had happened.

  "We were," observed Dominic still with that air of stiffness, "misled about Miss Smith's position here. She is Cleo's cousin and very kindly just helping out in a domestic emergency. Laura, this
is Miss Bella Spain, our trusted friend and very respected housekeeper."

  "Oh, in that case—" Miss Bella Spain said, and left it at that with what Laura was to find was a familiar trick of inconclusiveness.

  She was, thought Laura, finding her hand taken in a warm but—after dealing with the joint—greasy clasp, a woman of indeterminate age, rather overpowering on first impression. Her hair, piled up in complicated and untidy swathes, was a most unlikely and violent shade of red, her proportions, once Junoesque and splendid, had now tended to sag, and her old-fashioned dress, inadequately protected by a tiny and frivolous apron, was spattered with ancient stains of grease and gravy. There was, nonetheless, something gracious and reassuring about Miss Bella Spain, and Laura said shyly.

  "How do you do, Miss Spain? Nicky knows me very well, so you needn't have fears on account of my thinness or my youth. Do you think I could see my room?"

  "Of course. Cleo, take your cousin up while I get these shockers back to their proper quarters. Is the head giving trouble, Laura?" said Dominic.

  "It aches a bit," she said, grateful that he had remembered, and he told her firmly that she was to go early to bed and he would send up something to help her sleep.

  "You'd better have something upstairs on a tray, and if you're not better in the morning I'll get the doctor. We don't want to find we've ignored something serious, do we?" he said, beginning to chivvy the dogs out of the room.

  Laura was asleep long before her host's promised sedative was sent up, and morning found her quite refreshed. She sat up in bed to take curious stock of her new quarters which last night had made only a dim impression. The room was

  reminiscent of the old-fashioned bedrooms of country hotels, only very much larger; the bedstead high with a profusion of brass knobs and scrollwork, the massive furniture ill-matched but adequate for most needs, the marble-topped washstand and the faded sprigged paper on the walls reminders of a much earlier decade. Auntie Flo would have been quite at home here, thought Laura, and felt a little embarrassed by the advent of Miss Bella Spain bearing a laden breakfast tray.

  "How are you?" she enquired in her booming voice, depositing the tray with scant attention to comfort or security on Laura's knees.

  "Quite recovered, thank you," Laura replied. "You shouldn't be waiting on me, Miss Spain."

  "Just this first morning. Your cousin," she went on, drawing back the curtains with a violence that provoked a shower of dust from the pelmet, "was remiss in not explaining who you were. We thought you were the little boy's nanny, or I would have seen you had a better room—not that this one was ever assigned to servants, you understand; they have their quarters in the other wing—not of course that we have any servants now, but you follow, I trust. Eat your breakfast, dear, before it gets cold."

  Laura, who did not follow at all, obediently began on the breakfast which, doubtless owing to a prolonged journey from the kitchen without the protection afforded by covers and tea-cosy, was already cold.

  "How is Nicky?" she asked, since Bella showed no signs of going. "I really should have been up earlier to take him off my cousin's hands."

  "No need as it's Sunday—no need at all," Bella said, adding as if that explained it, "The boys won't be at the works, you see."

  It seemed odd to hear the two very adult Trevaynes referred to as the boys and did not throw light on Nicky's apparent lack of requirements, but Laura was eager for information about the family business.

  "What does the quarry produce?" she asked, but Bella looked vague.

  "Granite and stone for building—sometimes the most beautiful quartz, only of course that hasn't much value—china clay, naturally," she replied. "I'm really not at all clear about it, dear child—Dominic will explain it to you. Now, you were asking him about the little boy. We are strange to him still and he keeps asking for Moo-moo—a pet, no doubt, or even a toy?"

  "Oh, that's me," said Laura, with a surge of warmth that she had been missed by someone. "It's Nicky's own invention —I don't remember why. Hasn't he—hasn't he made friends with his uncles?"

  "Peregrine, yes, but not Dominic. The scar, perhaps, frightens him."

  "How did he get it—the scar, I mean?" Laura asked without thinking, and felt reproved for curiosity when Bella looked vague and replied as if she had not heard.

  "Peregrine, of course, has a way with children and women alike. It comes of not caring sufficiently to make himself unpleasant, you see. Troilus was the same. You are not like your cousin at all, are you, dear child? Dominic fears you may have a weak chest, but he's accustomed, of course, to a more robust type. Your cousin, now, could well be Cornish. She has great attraction, has she not—what used to be called in my day beaute du diable—so much more descriptive than glamour-puss, or a dish, I always think."

  At the same moment Cleo herself popped her head round the door to enquire for Laura's well-being, and Bella smiled upon her with absent appraisal.

  "Are you going out with the boys, dear child?" Bella asked. "Sunday's the day they like a good tramp with the dogs."

  "Perry's not up yet—he didn't get back till all hours from his junketings last night," Cleo replied. "Dom said he'd drive me up to the village for cigarettes when the pubs open. I'm not madly enamoured with good tramps myself. Will you be able to take Nicky over, Laura?"

  Bella, beaming vaguely upon them both, observed that in Zachary's day Sunday mornings were spent in more profitable occupations than walking or driving, and their women knew

  just what to expect, and then sailed out of the room, the uneven hem of her outdated skirt trailing after her like a train.

  "What an extraordinary person," Laura said as the door closed. "Is she really the housekeeper?"

  "She keeps house, which, dear Laura, is entirely different," Cleo retorted. "It's said she was a singer in some third-rate opera company before old Zachary took up with her, but I don't imagine she was much good, judging by the bursts of song she treats us to ... Perry says she hoped the old boy would eventually marry her after a decent interval when his wife died, but he never did, and she just stopped on and reared the kids, and now she's become a habit."

  Poor Bella Spain, thought Laura compassionately, accepting the crumbs because they were better than nothing, and spoiling another woman's children for want of some of her own...

  "Are there no servants?" she asked.

  "Daily women from the quarry cottages—wives of the Zion workers, I believe, but Bella and Amos really run the house between them in an erratic sort of fashion."

  "The person who was supposed to be responsible for the dogs?"

  "Oh, those crummy dogs! Amos let them loose on purpose just to annoy Bella. He's a very rude old boy, a fire-eating chapel type who's been here for ever, and seems to do all the odd jobs about the place. He's convinced we're all earmarked for damnation and absolutely fascinates Nicky. Aren't children odd? Dom seems to scare him, but Amos's awful predictions and threats of hell-fire don't worry him at all."

  "He probably thinks he's a sort of wizard or something. Nicky's a great boy for make-believe," said Laura with a reminiscent smile, and her cousin moved impatiently.

  "Which you encourage," she said a little sharply.

  "There's no harm in that at his age. He hardly ever has other children to play with," Laura replied, and her cousin said discontentedly:

  "Well, do try to talk him round to a liking for Dom. I

  could cheerfully throttle the little beast when he turns sullen and awkward. He would have to pick on Perry, who couldn't care less but likes to score off Dom."

  "You mean, he deliberately encourages the boy?"

  "He doesn't even have to try—he's just Troy over again, and Troy could always manage Nicky."

  "Oh, I see—well then, it's understandable."

  "No, you don't see at all, Laura. There's more to it than manner and a physical likeness. They have certain traits in common which you wouldn't understand. Troy enjoyed taking away somebody else's toys, even i
f he didn't want them himself. It attracted me once—it still attracts me—but unfortunately it's Dominic who holds the purse-strings and it's his good graces that are important."

  "I don't understand. Troy didn't take you from anyone, it was the other way about," Laura said, and Cleo made an irritable exclamation.

  "Oh, be your age, darling! You don't know the half of that old story."

  "But what else is there to know? Boy and girl elopements may be foolish, but they're hardly criminal."

  "Well, I wasn't suggesting anything criminal! Anyway, forget it, it's dead and past, and who cares anyhow? Your job here is to guide my contrary child's thoughts in the right quarter. He listens to you, so start softening him up. You can try softening up the lordly head of the house too, if you like."

  "I wouldn't dare," Laura giggled, and Cleo shot her a suspicious look.

  "What on earth are you talking about?" she said impatiently. "He surely didn't make a pass on the way home from the station, did he?"

  "Certainly not—in fact he warned me that the Trevaynes had no time for romantic fancies," said Laura with a fleeting smile, and shook the fine, mouse-coloured hair back. The gesture exposed the disarming nakedness of her curved forehead and lent her eyes the clear, untroubled look of childhood. For a moment her cousin saw her as she might appear to a man already sated with too many easy conquests and she

  said with a faint touch of malice:

  "If I didn't know you better, darling, I'd say that sounds as if you'd tried a tentative pass on your own account. You really ought to do something about your hair, Laura—why don't you have a perm and go to town with one of those brightening rinses?"