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By Root 5726 0

the two of them gently, till Anna was nineteen. She had not been teaching Anna for several years before that: she had done no more than escort her to and from day school, see that she practised the piano and make her feel her position as a motherless girl. But she had been quite a feature of Anna's home—that house uphill with a fine view of the river, an oval drawingroom, a terraced garden with almond trees. Anna used to call her Poor Miss Taylor: she had been as much pleased as surprised when Miss Yardes had followed Miss Taylor's pattern and, at the end of her annual holiday, announced her engagement to a widower. Anna and Miss Yardes had just at that time reached an uncomfortable phase of semi-confidence—for one thing, Robert Pidgeon had just appeared, and Miss Yardes was being too conscious of him. Though this loss had made a sad tear in daily habit, it had been on the whole a relief to see Miss Yardes go. Anna took on the housekeeping; the bills went up but meals became more amusing. Anna's father footed the bills without a quiver, and touched her by saying how much nicer this was. It turned out he had only kept Miss Yardes on all this time because he fancied a girl should have a woman about. During Miss Yardes' reign, Anna's father had felt free to form the habit of being self-protectively unobservant: this he did not discontinue after Miss Yardes had gone. He continued, therefore, hardly to notice Robert or any of the less important young men.

Robert had celebrated Miss Yardes' wedding by bringing out to Richmond a package of fireworks; he and Anna went down the garden together and let the fireworks off on the wedding night. On their way back to the house, he kissed Anna for the first time. After that, he had gone abroad for two years, and she began to go about by herself. His subsequent irresponsible behaviour had been, she since understood, just as much her fault as his. This began after he came back from abroad. Late at nights, in fact in the small hours, they would rush in his car up Richmond Hill, to the house in which Anna's father slept soundly, where the thermos of milk no longer waited, where Miss Yardes no longer kept her door ajar. In the drawingroom, the embers of the fire would be coaxed alight again by the knowing Robert, then the Chinese cushion slipped under Anna's head.... They did not marry because they refused to trust each other.

On her marriage, then, Mrs. Heccomb nee Miss Yardes had gone to live at Seale, on the Kentish coast, about seventy miles from London. Here her husband had bought a strip of reclaimed beach, just inland from the esplanade. On this he built a house facing the Channel, with balconies, a sun porch and Venetian shutters to batten against storms. For in winter storms flung shingle on to the lawns, and even, if the windows were left open, on to the carpets and pianos of these exposed houses along the esplanade. This house of his Dr. Heccomb considered a good investment—and so it proved: in July, August, September he, his second wife and the children of his first marriage moved out of Seale and took rooms at a farm inland, while the house was let for six guineas a week. During these summer exiles, Dr. Heccomb drove himself daily to the Seale golf club in a small car. He was popular; all the members knew him well; he came in on every celebration there was. It was on the return from one of these parties that Dr. Heccomb, driving home too gaily into the sunset, drove himself head-on into a charabanc. After this shocking affair, the hat went round at the golf club for Mrs. Heccomb; and the widow received eighty-five pounds in token of sympathy. This did not seem worth investing, so she spent it on mourning for herself and the children, a secretarial training for Daphne Heccomb and a fine cross for Dr. Heccomb in Seale churchyard.

During her years at Richmond she not only had not had to worry about money but had formed rather luxurious ideas. As a widow after several years of marriage she was contented but incompetent. Her well-wishers were more worried about her than she was herself.