1939

“I am Mrs. Rubrick of Mount Moon,” said the golden-headed lady. “And I should like to come in.”

The man at the stage-door looked down into her face. Its nose and eyes thrust out at him, pale, all of them, and flecked with brown. Seen at close quarters these features appeared to be slightly out of perspective. The rest of the face receded from them, fell away to insignificance. Even the mouth with its slightly projecting, its never quite hidden, teeth was forgotten in favour of that acquisitive nose, those protuberant exacting eyes. “I should like to come in,” Flossie Rubrick repeated.

The man glanced over his shoulder into the hall. “There are seats at the back,” he said. “Behind the buyers’ benches.”

“I know there are. But I don’t want to see the backs of the buyers. I want to watch their faces. I’m Mrs. Rubrick of Mount Moon and my wool clip should be coming up in the next half-hour. I want to sit up here somewhere.” She looked beyond the man at the door, through a pair of scenic book wings to the stage where an auctioneer in shirt-sleeves sat at a high rostrum, gabbling. “Just there,” said Flossie Rubrick, “on that chair by those painted things. That will do quite well.” She moved past the man at the door. “How do you do?” she said piercingly as she came face to face with a second figure. “You don’t mind if O- come in, do you? I’m Mrs. Arthur Rubrick. May I sit down?”

She settled herself on a chair she had chosen, pulling it forward until she could look through an open door in the proscenium and down into the front of the house. She was a tiny creature and it was a tall chair. Her feet scarcely reached the floor. The auctioneer’s clerks, who sat below his rostrum, glanced up curiously from their papers.