After the night of McQueen’s dinner party, Fletcher left Heather alone. Sometimes he was sullen in her presence, more often he ignored her. He spent hours in his room poring over papers and blueprints. There were entire days when he also ignored Daphne, a mode of behaviour which flustered Janet more than either of her daughters.
About the middle of July he set out on a business trip to the American west coast which he announced would take about six weeks. On the day of his departure he was quite cheerful. Heather and Daphne both saw him off on the night train and when they returned, Janet was waiting for them with milk and biscuits. It was an old habit which she saw no reason to break. It was also a habit to talk about nothing that mattered to any of them as they ate.
Heather was almost undressed when Daphne came into her room, holding up an old middy blouse she had worn at Brock. “Look,” she said. “I found it in the back of the cupboard in my room. Why on earth it was left there I can’t imagine. Isn’t it a scream? What a beastly little prig I must have been when I wore it.”
Heather pulled a silk slip over her head. “Sometimes,” she said, “you were.”
“Well,” Daphne said brightly, “I’m certainly not one now.” She tossed the middy blouse into a corner. “Remember Miss Davenant? How she used to pitch into me when I played Cleopatra?” She mimicked the voice of a hearty English-woman and sat with her legs apart as she did so. “‘Cleopatra is a woman of the world, Daphne. You must remember that she is a queen, not a debutante.’”
Heather put a dressing gown over her pajamas and curled up in a large armchair by the window. “How exactly like Miss Davenant to select Antony and Cleopatra for a school play!”
“Poor lamb! She was frustrated and never knew it.” Daphne put her arms behind her head and her long fingers reached down to undo the buttons at the back of her dress. “I wonder what she’d think if she happened to see me now.”
“Honest, Daffy–what’s it like to come back here?”
Daphne smiled obliquely, her hands still behind her neck. “How do you think I’ve been doing?”
“Depends on what you’re trying to do.”
“Well, I feel about a million years old, of course. Funny, how we were all taught to believe in sin when we were young, wasn’t it?”
Heather laughed, and the sound appeared to annoy Daphne. “Look at me,” she said. “Would you think a girl brought up by Mummy would ever be able to stand up to Noel and give him what he wants?”
The smile left Heather’s face. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Well, I’ve done all right,” Daphne said. “And believe me–he knows what he wants. My God, when I remember those first few months…” She dropped her hands. “Help me, will you? This damned button is caught.”
Heather got up and unbuttoned the dress. It made her think of the days when she had helped dress Daphne for parties, two years before she had been allowed to go to parties herself. Her hand touched the fine golden hair, lingered on it for a second, then dropped. She returned to her chair and Daphne pulled the dress over her head and gave her ruffled hair a toss. “Noel was interested in you,” she said. “Maybe you didn’t guess, but I could see it.”
Heather felt herself flushing. “But Daffy–”
“Never mind. He has an instinct with women, though. In spite of his manner. That’s why he’s such a shock. It’s always a surprise when a man like that…you should see his father. Noel’s not really a typical Englishman at all. He was always more at home on the continent, in spite of the English manner. His father’s the reason. The old boy’s as exciting as a play.”
Heather felt unable to feed Daphne the cues she seemed to expect. “What kind of a play?”
Daphne’s laugh was like running water. “You are a sweet thing! It would be a shame if Noel–”
“I’m not a child,” Heather said impatiently. “For heaven’s sake, Daffy–when will you get over treating me as if I were a ten-year-old? What’s the matter with his father?”
“Really, I suppose he’s an eighteen-carat beast, but he’s such a terribly brilliant man one doesn’t notice it.” She went on to tell Heather that he had been a major-general in the Indian Army. He was fanatically proud of his ancestry and had been reputed a competent officer. But his military career had ended with a court-martial when he was dismissed from the service for ordering his troops to fire on a crowd in Bombay. After that he spent a lot of time in Germany until the outbreak of war in 1914. Although he had served as an agent of the foreign office while in Berlin, it had not prevented him from acquiring a great admiration for the Prussians. He was living in Germany now.
Heather watched her sister take off the rest of her clothes until she was sitting naked on the bed. “Do you mind if I ask you something?” she said quietly. “Do you really love Noel?”
Daphne laughed. Her slim, lissom body, golden in the shaded light, moved gracefully as she threw her silk underclothes on to a chair. “Give me a dressing gown,” she said.
Heather went to her closet, pulled a garment from a hanger and handed it to her sister. When she had wrapped it tight about her body, Daphne stood for a moment watching Heather’s face. “Love is an old-fashioned word, darling. Why do you bother using it?”
“Do you know a better one?”
Instead of answering Daphne crossed to the dressing table and sat down before the mirror. “It’s not been exactly easy,” she said after a moment, “going from Mummy’s hands into Noel’s.”
Again Heather was aware that she was irritating Daphne in a way she couldn’t define.
“I like being at the top of the class,” Daphne went on. “And you’ve got to be that to hold a man like Noel.” She scrutinized her face in the glass. “I never really understood him until I went up in a plane with him. He’s marvellous in the air. He’s–he’s new. A new species of human being.” In the mirror she caught a smile on Heather’s lips and it seemed to anger her. “My God–can’t you understand what I’m trying to tell you? A man like Noel always tries to break his women down. He’d despise me if he could and he hates me because he can’t.” She filled a dropper with yellow liquid from a small bottle, raised one eyelid and then the other, letting the lotion run beneath them. “Brilliance has been bred and beaten into him.”
Heather watched as Daphne ran a finger over each eyebrow, pushed the hair off her temples and turned her head from side to side as she examined the line of her chin and neck. For the first time she saw that her sister’s beauty was a weapon, a destiny, all she had.
“Never mind, darling,” Daphne went on. “One has to grow up. Sex is much more devious than simply going to bed with a man. After all, even greengrocers do that.”
But Heather was no longer listening. Her whole attention was centred on the sudden new sense of freedom within her. All her life she had admired Daphne’s beauty, had tried to adopt her opinions, had respected her because everyone else had admired her. And now it was gone, that dependence. She was free to judge Daphne and Noel with her own mind, to feel the cold European years that had grown like a shell around Noel Fletcher, to feel them through Daphne’s words and the expression on her face. They had nothing whatever she wanted, for all they possessed was a cold surface beauty and his ability, motivated by a mechanical sensuality, to counterfeit the fire she knew was still alive in the world, somewhere, if she could find it.