The Hollow - Agatha Christie [33]
‘I’m sure it will,’ he said politely.
‘And you can go on being a doctor.’ Her voice was kind and condescending. ‘You’re quite well known, they tell me.’
‘My dear girl, I’m married. I’ve got children.’
‘I’m married myself at the moment,’ said Veronica. ‘But all these things are easily arranged. A good lawyer can fix up everything.’ She smiled at him dazzlingly. ‘I always did mean to marry you, darling. I can’t think why I have this terrible passion for you, but there it is!’
‘I’m sorry, Veronica, but no good lawyer is going to fix up anything. Your life and mine have nothing to do with each other.’
‘Not after last night?’
‘You’re not a child, Veronica. You’ve had a couple of husbands, and by all accounts several lovers. What does last night mean actually? Nothing at all, and you know it.’
‘Oh, my dear John.’ She was still amused, indulgent. ‘If you’d seen your face–there in that stuffy drawing-room! You might have been in San Miguel again.’
John sighed. He said:
‘I was in San Miguel. Try to understand, Veronica. You came to me out of the past. Last night, I, too, was in the past, but today–today’s different. I’m a man fifteen years older. A man you don’t even know–and whom I dare say you wouldn’t like much if you did know.’
‘You prefer your wife and children to me?’
She was genuinely amazed.
‘Odd as it may seem to you, I do.’
‘Nonsense, John, you love me.’
‘I’m sorry, Veronica.’
She said incredulously:
‘You don’t love me?’
‘It’s better to be quite clear about these things. You are an extraordinarily beautiful woman, Veronica, but I don’t love you.’
She sat so still that she might have been a waxwork. That stillness of hers made him just a little uneasy.
When she spoke it was with such venom that he recoiled.
‘Who is she?’
‘She? Who do you mean?’
‘That woman by the mantelpiece last night?’
Henrietta! he thought. How the devil did she get on to Henrietta? Aloud he said:
‘Who are you talking about? Midge Hardcastle?’
‘Midge? That’s the square, dark girl, isn’t it? No, I don’t mean her. And I don’t mean your wife. I mean that insolent devil who was leaning against the mantelpiece! It’s because of her that you’re turning me down! Oh, don’t pretend to be so moral about your wife and children. It’s that other woman.’
She got up and came towards him.
‘Don’t you understand, John, that ever since I came back to England, eighteen months ago, I’ve been thinking about you? Why do you imagine I took this idiotic place here? Simply because I found out that you often came down for weekends with the Angkatells!’
‘So last night was all planned, Veronica?’
‘You belong to me, John. You always have!’
‘I don’t belong to anyone, Veronica. Hasn’t life taught you even now that you can’t own other human beings body and soul? I loved you when I was a young man. I wanted you to share my life. You wouldn’t do it!’
‘My life and career were much more important than yours. Anyone can be a doctor!’
He lost his temper a little.
‘Are you quite as wonderful as you think you are?’
‘You mean that I haven’t got to the top of the tree. I shall! I shall!’
John Christow looked at her with a sudden, quite dispassionate interest.
‘I don’t believe, you know, that you will. There’s a lack in you, Veronica. You’re all grab and snatch–no real generosity–I think that’s it.’
Veronica got up. She said in a quiet voice:
‘You turned me down fifteen years ago. You’ve turned me down again today. I’ll make you sorry for this.’
John got up and went to the door.
‘I’m sorry, Veronica, if I’ve hurt you. You’re very lovely, my dear, and I once loved you very much. Can’t we leave it at that?’
‘Goodbye, John. We’re not leaving it at that. You’ll find that out all right. I think–I think I hate you more than I believed I could hate anyone.’
He shrugged his shoulders:
‘I’m sorry. Goodbye.’
John walked back slowly through the wood. When he got to the swimming pool he sat down on the