The Lighthearted Quest Read online

  The

  Lighthearted

  Quest

  by

  Ann Bridge

  FOR

  G. M., P. P., AND P. LE C.

  IN GRATITUDE

  This novel is pure fiction. Real places are mentioned, but none of the characters introduced is intended to bear any relation to an actual person, living or dead.

  ANN BRIDGE

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 1

  I Simply can’t think how to get hold of him,” said Mrs. Monro dolefully, leaning forward in her chair to poke unskilfully at the fire of rather damp logs, which hummed and sizzled faintly in the wrong sort of grate for wood.

  “Have you advertised?” asked Mrs. Hathaway. As she spoke she picked up the tongs, arranged the logs better, and pushed some bits of bark from the log-basket in between them; then kneeling down she began to ply the bellows.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Monro, with a sort of weak pride. “In The Times, and the Telegraph, and the Continental Daily Mail— Edina said I ought to try that.”

  “Quite right. And how long ago was that?” asked Mrs. Hathaway, continuing to blow the fire, in which the bark now began to burn rather more hopefully.

  “Three weeks the Continental one, and five the others, and there’s still not a word. But now that his Uncle’s dead, Colin simply must come home—I can’t run this great place alone.”

  This was at least the eleventh time in the course of a single conversation that Mrs. Monro had said that her son Colin must return to run the property in Argyll, which would be, and indeed effectively now was, his. Since her husband’s death her brother-in-law, Colonel Monro, had taken charge of it for his young nephew, but when he took pneumonia and died the crisis had arisen; and Mrs. Monro, as usual when a crisis arose, had sent for Mrs. Hathaway.

  “When did Colin write last?” Mrs. Hathaway asked.

  “Oh, ages ago; at least nine months. He is so naughty and unkind; it’s really wrong,” said Colin’s mother.

  Mrs. Hathaway in her heart agreed, but she kept to the main issue.

  “Where did he write from, then?”

  “Let me think—was it Tangier, or Casablanca, or Cadiz?—or that place with the funny name? Wait—I’ll look,” said Mrs. Monro, getting up and walking across the worn and faded carpet, with its hideous pattern of bunches of roses tied with ribbon on a black ground, to her cluttered Victorian escritoire, where papers bulged untidily from all the pigeonholes and lay piled in heaps, obstructing the drawers. She poked and pulled and peered ineffectually, while Mrs. Hathaway looked on with the mixture of pity and irritation which her friend always aroused in her.

  “No, I can’t find it. How tiresome,” said Mrs. Monro, stuffing papers back into quite different orifices from those whence she had removed them. She opened a drawer, muttering “This is only bills. Oh, no, here it is,” she exclaimed in triumph, and returned to her chair. “Look, it is from the place with the funny name—Cuter, I should call it, but Edina says it’s pronounced Theeoota.” She handed the letter over.

  Mrs. Hathaway read it with attention. It was short, and uninformative to a degree which to her suggested some form of deliberate concealment. The boat was all right, though they had had a spot of engine trouble; business had been fairly good; one of his partners had gone home—none of them was mentioned by name, Mrs. Hathaway noticed—but he and the others were well; the weather was splendid, and he was her loving son, Colin.

  “Tell me again what exactly the ‘business’ is,” Mrs. Hathaway said, folding up this unsatisfactory missive and handing it back.

  “Selling oranges, or bananas,” said Mrs. Monro. “They go in and buy them in one place, and then sail off and sell them in another. I remember he said about eighteen months ago that they had done very well in Marseilles; that was what made Edina think of the Continental Daily Mail, because it’s published in Paris.”

  Mrs. Hathaway passed over this characteristic non sequitur.

  “I shouldn’t have thought there was much profit to be made out of selling oranges round all those Mediterranean ports,” she said. “They grow them in Africa as well as in Spain, and even in that extreme south-west corner of France, I believe. And if he was going to pick up bananas he’d have to go right out to the Canaries. How big is the boat?—big enough for that?”

  Of course Mrs. Monro had no idea how big the boat was. Edina might know, she said; but Edina was out seeing about draining those fields on McNeil’s farm, that poor John had been so keen on—“It was standing over those wretched drainers, in the East wind, that made him ill and killed him,” said Mrs. Monro, beginning to dab at her eyes.

  “Does Colin ever ask you for money now?” Mrs. Hathaway asked, ignoring her friend’s all-too-easy emotion.

  “No,” said Mrs. Monro, perking up and putting away her handkerchief. “That’s the extraordinary thing. He did ask for three hundred pounds to help to buy the boat, right at the beginning—but since then he’s never asked for a penny. So you see there must be money in selling oranges, Mary, whatever you say.” Mrs. Monro quite often caught the drift of more that was said than her friends ever expected her to, Mrs. Hathaway knew. She considered this last item in silence. For Colin not to ask for money for at least three years was, as his mother said, extraordinary; but nevertheless this business of orange—or banana—selling sounded strangely unconvincing.

  “May I see the letter again?” she said, and having looked at it—“Does he never give any sort of address?” she asked. “This just says ‘Ceuta’.”

  “No—that’s all he ever says and I write ’Poste Restante, Cadiz,’ or whatever it is.”

  “And he never says where he’s going next, so that you could catch him with a telegram?”

  “No. He really is very naughty and unkind,” said Mrs. Monro, beginning to sniff and fumbling for her handkerchief again. “He used to at first, now I come to think of it; but he hasn’t now, for a long while.”

  A gong boomed through the house, announcing lunch; the two ladies went downstairs, past windows on which rain beat violently, borne on a westerly gale. The fire in the dining-room was worse than that in the sitting-room upstairs, and the deaf and immensely aged butler who crept round on flat feet, handing rather surprisingly good food, somehow added to the general sense of depression—obviously, Mrs. Hathaway thought, it would be useless to try to make him get up a good fire.

  “What is this cook you have?” she asked, as a flaked pastry vol-au-vent, full of some meat heavily flavoured with garlic, succeeded a delicious omelette.

  “Oh, isn’t she awful? She’s a Spaniard, and one can’t say a word to her,” said Mrs. Monro. “She will put all these flavourings in, and I can’t stop her, because she can’t understand.”

  “I think her food is frightfully good,” said Mrs. Hathaway. “May I have some more of this?” She got up, the aged butler having retired.

  “Oh, yes, do, if you can bear it. Forbes hates her food—he makes her grill him a chop every day.”

  “Forbes always was a silly old ass,” said Mrs. Hathaway, tucking into her second helping of garlic. “You’re frightfully lucky, Ellen, to get food like this. But why on earth does she stay up here?—your cook? I should have thought a Spaniard would have frozen to death.”

  “Oh, she like
s having the Macdonald’s chapel just next door; she goes to Mass there every single morning. Ronan Mac-donald talks a little Spanish too, and she likes that—but he won’t translate for me,” said Mrs. Monro resentfully.

  There was a sound of dogs scuffling and being rebuked in the hall outside; after a pause the door opened and Edina Monro came in, a tall girl with very dark straight hair cut close to her head, grey eyes, and a dead-white skin—she wore cream-coloured corduroy slacks and a blue seaman’s jersey.

  “Is there some lunch for me? I had to come in, it’s too wet for the men to go on,” she began—“Oh, Mrs. Hathaway, it’s nice to see you. Did you have an awful trip?”

  “It was a bit rough coming round Ardlamont Point, but I don’t mind that,” said Mrs. Hathaway, getting up, with the manners of her generation, to shake hands with the girl. “How are you, Edina? You look well.”

  Miss Monro in fact did look well; there was nothing unhealthy about her intensely white skin, to which not even hours out of doors in a howling gale gave the faintest tinge of colour.

  “Thank you; yes, I am very well,” said Edina, as she spoke going over and pressing the bell after a brief inspection of the food on the side-table. “Plenty, I see,” she muttered, “thank God for Olimpia.—Yes, this revolting climate is in fact incredibly healthy,” she said to their guest, pulling up a chair and sitting down beside her. “Forbes, get me a very hot plate, and then come and lay me a place,” she said, as the butler appeared at the door, a resentful expression on his old face. “And tell Olimpia that we shall want coffee.”

  “Dear, we don’t need coffee after lunch,” said Mrs. Monro.

  “Oh, yes, we do—I see you hadn’t ordered it, even for your poor friend after her long journey! Really, Mother, you are barbarous.”

  “I’m sure Forbes doesn’t like the way you speak to him,” said Mrs. Monro, changing her ground.

  “No, why should he? But he does what I tell him, which is more than he does for you,” her daughter replied tranquilly—“Spoilt, lazy old bastard.” Mrs. Hathaway could not restrain a tiny laugh; she liked Edina very much.

  “Well, he is, you know,” the girl said, encouraged by the laugh. “But at least one doesn’t have to carry in trays, or wash up, thank God.”

  A crême brûlé, faultlessly made, followed the vol-au-vent; Mrs. Hathaway, accustomed to the mutton-and-milk-pudding rigours which normally prevailed at Glentoran, mentally echoed Edina’s thanks to her Creator for the Spanish cook. Over the coffee, which the girl made Forbes bring up to the sitting-room, the subject of finding Colin again arose.

  “Mother, you’d better go and rest; it’s past your time,” said Edina, after Mrs. Monro had recapitulated at some length most of what she had said to her guest before lunch—“I made you late, I know, but off you go. You’ll be wretched this evening if you don’t have it.” And with a sort of kindly firmness she hustled her parent off, finding her book and spectacles for her.

  “There—now we can talk,” the girl said with satisfaction, returning to the fire, on which she placed two or three more logs. “It is good of you to come up,” she said. “Poor Mother is in a frightful state.”

  “That’s very understandable,” said Mrs. Hathaway. “But Edina, tell me one thing—how much good would Colin be at running this place, even if you could get him back?”

  “Oh, you know, I think he might manage all right. He didn’t do too badly at Cambridge, or at Cirencester. He’s capable enough; it’s just that he likes changing—he doesn’t seem to care about sticking to one thing.”

  “He would have to stick to this,” said Mrs. Hathaway. “The land is one thing that can’t be left to itself.”

  “Well, he might, now. There wasn’t much point in his sticking up here while Uncle John was running it perfectly, and loving doing it.”

  Mrs. Hathaway meditated.

  “You wouldn’t take it on yourself, Edina?” she presently asked. “Robertson was singing your praises all the way from the pier: ‘Miss Edina gets a grup on things,’ he said,” she added smiling.

  “Oh, yes, I get a ‘grup’ all right,” said Edina cheerfully, “but it’s not really the sort of thing I care to do, nor what I was educated for, at vast expense. And I’m not sure that we can afford it, really.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, there’s not much more than a living for two to be got off this place, and in London I’m making fifteen hundred a year. I give Mother her dress-allowance these days,” said Edina, with a grin.

  “Good Heavens! Fifteen hundred a year!” Mrs. Hathaway was startled. She knew that Edina had taken a good degree in Modern Greats at Oxford, and that she was working at some job in London, but she had never imagined that her young friend was making a living on that scale. “What do you do?” she asked, with interest.

  “Oh, I’m in advertising—the new high-powered sort. In its rather phoney way it’s really very interesting, and now that we’re beginning to get into T.V. it’s going to be more interesting still, and better paid.”

  “Better paid? Gracious.”

  “Oh, yes, I’m due for a rise to two thousand pounds in June, unless my coming off up here bitches it,” said Edina. “They gave me three months’ leave, when I said I had to have it, without a murmur, so I dare say it will be all right. But I want to get back as soon as I can, rise or no rise; there are some rather tricky things coming up soon that I specialise in, and I don’t want anyone else to handle them and probably rot them up—and nor do my bosses,” she added.

  Mrs. Hathaway observed, with slight surprise, that there was nothing objectionable about Edina’s complete self-confidence; it was entirely objective.

  “Yes,” she said after a pause. “I see that you really oughtn’t to be held up here. But have you any ideas as to how to get hold of Colin?”

  “No—that’s what so tiresome. Maddening boy! Have you, Mrs. H.?”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about it, since your Mother told me what she knows—which is little enough,” said Mrs. Hathaway. “And I have got the impression that there is something rather funny about the whole thing.”

  “Funny or phoney?”

  “Well, both, really. Anyhow, writing is no good, since his last address is nine months old; and advertising is no good, because either he doesn’t see the papers, or if he does he doesn’t choose to answer. I think someone will have to go and find him.”

  This time it was Edina who was startled. She opened her grey eyes very wide.

  “That’s a thought! But I don’t see quite how anyone would set about it. You mean go and enquire at all these film-scenario ports?”

  “Yes. And the boat must be registered—what’s her name, by the way?”

  “Oh, that damnable child has never even told us that!” Edina exploded. “He really is too tedious.”

  “Well, all the more reason for on-the-spot enquiries,” said Mrs. Hathaway. “Three or four young Englishmen, cruising about and selling oranges or bananas or whatever they do sell—I don’t really much believe in the orange part, myself—ought to be tolerably identifiable.”

  “You know, I believe you really have got something there,” said Edina. “But who’s to do it? Would you go?”

  “Oh, no, I should be useless at badgering consulates and accosting harbour-masters, or whatever one does to find missing yachts—it would have to be someone young and enterprising.’

  “Anyone in mind?” Edina enquired, eyeing Mrs. Hathaway rather suspiciously.

  “Yes. Julia, I thought,” that lady replied.

  “Julia? Do you think she’d be any good? Well, yes, I suppose she might—she’s not really half as stupid as she looks,” said Edina. “But would she go? She has oodles of money of course—but one’s only allowed a hundred pounds, and I should think all this foraging around in Tangier and places would cost a lot.”

  “That’s why I think Julia would be so suitable. She’s a journalist, and they can get extra foreign allowances for trips.”


  “She’s a pretty half-baked journalist; only this free-lancing for weeklies, and the Yorkshire Post now and then,” Edina objected.

  “Oh, my dear child, I’m sure that doesn’t matter a bit. I know a woman who writes for most terrible magazines, things you’ve never even heard the names of, and she is always rushing off to Cannes and St. Moritz and so on to write up the film-stars and their clothes and all that—she gets colossal foreign currency allowances, I know.”

  “I see. Yes, well then Julia is quite a thought. She could get away all right, I expect. I don’t suppose her papers would mind,” said Edina, rather cattily.

  Mrs. Hathaway laughed.

  “All right—let’s ring her up tonight,” Edina went on. “The sooner we find him the better, for me as well as for Mother. Only I still wonder if Julia is up to it.”

  “Oh, don’t underestimate Julia. You don’t really know her much, do you?”

  “Well, no. One has one’s own friends, somehow. Do you know her well?”

  “Yes—her mother was a friend of mine,” said Mrs. Hathaway, rather slowly. It flicked into Edina’s mind, belatedly, that she had heard that after Mrs. Probyn’s death and Major Probyn’s re-marriage, Mrs. Hathaway had befriended Julia, their only child. Colin and Edina were not very closely related to her. Julia’s mother had been their father’s first cousin, and had often brought her to Glentoran when they were all children; but after Mrs. Probyn’s death all that had ceased—the Monros had never greatly cared for Major Probyn, and liked his second wife even less. Julia had been left a considerable fortune by her grandmother, so that she was able to lead a quite independent life, not shackled to her father and step-mother; she worked as a journalist because it amused her, not because she was in any need of earning her living, and she had been abroad a good deal, as Edina, feeling rather exculpatory, now pointed out to Mrs. Hathaway—one didn’t see so much of people if one never knew whether they were there or not, she explained.

  “Yes, of course,” said Mrs. Hathaway pleasantly. “I don’t blame you for not knowing Julia, Edina—I’m only pinpointing the fact that you don’t! C’est une constatation, as the French say.”