Complete Short Stories (VMC) by Elizabeth Taylor

away yourself. I would come with you, if you liked. You need a holiday.’
    ‘And leave them together?’
    ‘Oh, no, of course.’
    They laughed shakily. Muriel said: ‘It is as well one still has a sense of humour.’

    ‘Thank you, Hester, for all your help,’ Robert said. He handed her a drink and, taking up his own, asked if she had seen Muriel.
    ‘No.’ She had watched her driving away, but thought that Muriel could explain her own comings and goings.
    ‘And I heard her asking Hugh in for a drink. You look very smart, Hester.’ But it was too robustly said, not tender. ‘I suppose it all went off all right. At any rate, it went off. Muriel is splendid at that sort of thing. Never complains, as most women would, although I can see it all seems a great deal of nonsense to her.’
    Before Hugh came, Robert was called away to the telephone and Hester was left alone. The day had tired and confused her, for she had never been quite sure of her duties. Ashamed to stand idle, she had tried to attach herself to the other workers, but Matron’s campaign of defence had not included her. She had managed to hand a few cups of tea and annoyed the senior boys by doing so. Few things are so fatiguing as standing by to help and not being called upon, and now her feet, her back, even her teeth were aching. She drank her sherry and put the glass on the chimneypiece. Wavering clumsily, her hand touched a china figure and knocked it into the hearth. She gave a quick glance at the door, then stooped down to see what damage was done. Muriel’s favourite Dresden girl lay in the fender, an arm carrying a gilt basket of strawberries was broken off at the elbow. Hester prayed for time, as if that could make the figure whole again; but in a school there are so many footsteps and any she could hear above the beating blood in her head might be Robert’s or Muriel’s coming to this room. She pushed the figure behind a bowl of flowers and put the broken piece in her pocket. If she were ever granted a few undisturbed moments she was sure she could have mended it; but now, although no one came and the waiting was unbearable, she could not be certain of being alone. She tried to find a nonchalant pose, sitting on the window-seat, far from the fireplace: then saw her sherry glass still there, incriminatingly near to and drawing attention to the empty place. She went to fetch it and on her way back to the window-seat thought of refilling it, to give a more natural look to her pose. As she was lifting the decanter, Hugh came in.
    Her trembling guilt, the sherry slopped over the table, worried him. ‘They are turning her into a secret drinker,’ he thought; but her confusion touched him immeasurably, for he knew similar sensations, and had learnt new refinements of them at Muriel’s hands. ‘We are always mopping up for this girl,’ he thought, as he dabbed at the table with his handkerchief. Her misery had gone so far beyond accountable bounds that he began to wonder how much she had drunk.
    ‘Where is everyone?’ he asked. He passed his handkerchief under the bottom of the glass before he gave it to her.
    ‘Robert is telephoning.’
    ‘And … Madam?’ For Muriel set up such awkwardnesses in people that they could sometimes not even give her her proper name.
    ‘Went out in the car.’
    ‘Who went out in the car?’ Robert asked, as he came from the hall.
    In Hester’s shattered face, her lips moved stiffly, as if from some rigor, and at last formed the name.
    ‘Oh, I wondered where she was. She’ll be back. Sherry, Hugh?’ Robert’s bustling about could not conceal his perplexity. ‘If people are liars, who makes them be?’ he was wondering. ‘Everything went off well, Hugh,’ his voice wavered upwards. ‘Nothing untoward? No one insulted Matron? Mrs Vallance seemed incensed at something.’
    ‘The wretched boy’s cricket-boot. She kept saying she would much rather both were lost than only one.’
    ‘People often say