An Unofficial rose

What Randall did in London was a mystery to all. In the last few years, and especially since Steve died, he had taken to spending more and more time in London, where he kept a little flat in Chelsea. A

During Fa

'And this afternoon perhaps you'd make another search for Hatfield, A

'He's gone right away, Hatfield, said Miranda. 'He won't come back ever.

'Yes he will, said A

'My hedgehogs drank that milk.

'Anyway you try and find him, and take Pe

'He wouldn't come back with me, said Miranda. 'He doesn't like me. He's a one-woman cat.

'Well, off you go to change, it's after ten-thirty. Which doll are you taking to church this time? Is Poussette the lucky one?

'That's not Poussette! said Miranda scornfully. 'That's Nanette!

You always mix them up. She uncurled herself and began to make for the door, trailing the doll in one hand.

Half-way there she stopped and turned back to Hugh. 'So sad. I never remembered to ask Gra

The door banged behind her. Avoiding A

Chapter Three

'I W O U LD N' T stand for it a moment if I was your missus!

'Wouldn't you, Nancy? And what would you do about it, would you beat me? Why, I believe you would! Laughter followed.

Pausing on the stairs of the tower, Hugh recognized with distaste Nancy Bowshott's voice issuing from the half-open door of Randall's room. He hated this familiarity with the servants, he hated everybody knowing that all was not well. A

Hugh retired, coughed, and went noisily up the remaining stairs.

He knocked and put his head round the door. Nancy Bowshott, a plump girl with a great deal of chestnut hair and a discontented face, who was credited with having a brute for a husband, hastily put down a glass upon the table. she picked up her dustpan, patted the neat tight handkerchief out of which her mane bulkily emerged at the back of her head, and looking a little red, slid past Hugh with a murmured 'Good morning'. Hugh entered and closed the door behind him.

Looking a little like something by Hogarth, Randall lounged behind his table on which were to be seen a bottle of whisky, two glasses, three bowls of roses, a pile of notebooks, some scribbled sheets of paper, an overflowing ashtray, a banana, a half-eaten biscuit, a pair of secateurs, and an original volume of prints by Redoute which had cost Randall a very large sum of money at Christie's. Without a coat, displaying striped braces, his crumpled collarless shirt open at the neck, he surveyed his father with an air of benign and meditative encouragement, like an Abbot giving audience. The room smelt of alcohol and roses.

'Well, Randall, said Hugh. 'Well, Father, said Randall.

Hugh's relations with his son, uneasy in the latter's childhood, impossible during his adolescence, and embarrassed in the early days of his marriage, had unaccountably improved of late. Hugh was not sure whether this was due simply to an increasing need to replace Sarah, or whether it was not co

'I was just wondering, said Hugh, 'whether I could persuade you to come over to Seton Blaise with the rest of us this evening.

'Well, I don't think you can, said Randall, tilting his chair and till benign. 'I don't like those people and they don't like me, and I don't really see why I should expose myself to their blood disapproval.

'All right, all right, said Hugh. Did they disapprove of Randall? He didn't know. Mildred, with her long tolerance of Humphrey and her skill in defending him, was surely not a censorious woman. Mildred: he thought of her for a moment. Yes, he remembered kissing her, but he could not recall the details, except that it was summer.

Quiet in Randall's attention, Hugh crossed to the window and looked out. From the tower it was possible to see over the tops of the beech trees and over the nursery garden which looked from here like a set of embroidered squares with the roses showing against the bare earth, as it followed the plump arc of the sharply falling hillside. Near to the foot of the hill arose the short spiky spears of a sweet chestnut plantation, and beyond it a little patch of woodland, where the wild berry was but lately over, half veiled a group of conical oast houses in a blur of green. The village, hidden under the other spur of the hill, showed between luxuriant elms, golden-yellow now in the bright sun, only the slim upper part of the church spire. Beyond again was the far-receding level of the Marsh, its grassland, its willows, always a little paled and silvered. Hugh gazed at it, almost invisible to him in its familiarity, and heard up above his head Miranda bounding noisily about her room and singing in a tone that was meant to be heard 'Aprиs de ma blonde'. She had a pretty little voice.

'I've had a letter from Sarah, he said. 'Would you like to see it?

'No, thanks, said Randall. He added. 'Letters from Sarah give me a pain. She's treated me like a composite entity ever since I got married. She begins «Dearest A