Homing (16 page)

“Jeff, what’s the matter?” She had caught the preoccupation in his manner. “Was there something in the News?”

“I haven’t heard it. Was there?”

“I don’t know, I—just thought you looked sort of funny.”

“I can’t help that,” said Jeff. “I’ve got a funny face.”

“I like it,” she said, and laughed, and laid one hand briefly along his cheek. “Tell me what you know about the house called Green Spring.”

“They fought a battle there,” Jeff obliged. “Lafayette and Wayne—before Washington came South.”

“What’s become of the house?”

“It’s gone. Burned down, I guess. The chimney is supposed to be there, but I never found it. Probably wasn’t looking in the right place.”

“I bet I could find it,” said Mab. “Evadne brought me the map I wanted—look, an old one, the way it was then. This is the part I wanted to know about—” She unfolded the map and laid her fingertip north of the Capitol building. “She says there’s a paved road there now, with car parks and petrol pumps.”

“Mm-hm.”

“Jeff?” Her look was searching.

“I’m listening. What about your breakfast? Virginia won’t let
you go with us to the Observers’ Post if you haven’t had some food.”

“Couldn’t you and I stay home? There’s so much here I want to talk about—”

“Don’t you think we ought to lend Roger a hand with this picnic?” he suggested cautiously.

“All right, if you say so.” She began to fold up the map.

“
Good
morning, all,” said Sylvia at the door, with Virginia just behind her. “Look at the early birds. Any worms left for us?” She went confidently to the sideboard.

Jeff rose instantly and joined her there.

“We found a lot of black market bacon,” he said, and
“Jeff!”
cried Virginia in furious denial.

The dining room filled up. Nigel—Phoebe—Roger—the Bank girls, a little shy at sharing the family meals during the holidays instead of bicycling over to the canteen at Cleeve.

There was bustle and chatter over collecting the party for the Observers’ Post. Eventually the pony-cart was brought round, drawn by a fat little horse left over from Evadne’s childhood, and hampers were loaded into it, bikes were rolled up beside it, and everybody went away to bundle up, for it was biting cold, with a wind.

“Aren’t you coming?” said Anne to Nigel, glancing back on her way to the door.

“Well, I—”

“You can take my bike, Sylvia has asked me to ride in the cart. Claudia can’t go because she has to see to the children for this afternoon.”

“I haven’t been on a bike for years,” said Nigel, with a certain wistfulness.

“You’d better get in practice again,” Anne advised him. “Soon we shan’t get round any other way.”

“All right,” said Nigel, to his own surprise. “I’d like to come.”

“Have you got overshoes? It’s frightfully cold.”

“Yes—I must have, somewhere. Mummy,” said Nigel, using the little word without self-consciousness, “I used to have overshoes here, didn’t I?”

“In the cupboard under the stairs, I should think. Do shut the outside door, somebody, as soon as you can.”

The dining room was suddenly very quiet, as the commotion was all drained away to the hall. Virginia, Phoebe, and Oliver were left at the table together in an empty silence.

“I’m only glad I’m not trying to be young now,” said Virginia. “I’m glad I was young when it was easy.”

“They don’t miss it, because they can’t remember how it was,” said Oliver.

“That’s rather like saying dumb animals don’t suffer the way human beings do,” said Virginia. “How do we know?”

Roger reappeared in the doorway.

“I say, Aunt Virginia,” he said in a stage whisper. “Gary Cooper’s big brother has just driven up in a Consulate car and says he knew you when. Shall we bring him in here?”

“G—?” Virginia began, and something like a sunburst began in the pit of her stomach and spread to her fingertips. Roger had put a careless finger on the resemblance which left no doubt about the visitor.

She rose.

“Yes, bring him in here, he’ll want a cup of coffee,” she said, and rang the bell. And to Phoebe and Oliver, who sat gazing at her from their places at the table, she said quite calmly, “Do you remember Tracy Marsh?”

He filled the doorway, making Nigel look like a stripling beside him. He was not in uniform, and had left his overcoat and hat in the hall. His country tweeds had come from the right London tailor and were not new. In twenty years he had not put on more than five pounds, and he was always six foot three. His long, lined, humorous face was tanned—a used-looking face, Phoebe thought, observing for the first time the man they had all wondered about in 1918.

Having escorted him in, Nigel faded from view, and sounds in the drive soon indicated the departure of the picnic mission.

“Well, Tracy,” said Virginia steadily, and advanced with her hand held out, “where on earth have you dropped from?”

He stood still and let her come to him. It made no difference to him that two people he had never seen before were also in the room with nothing to do but look on at his meeting with Virginia. Without a glance in their direction, sublimely unself-conscious he stood with her hand in his, looking down at her.

“I know I should have asked permission to come,” he said. “But when we found I was headed for Cheltenham today,
Charles said it would be all right if I stopped here on the way.”

“Indeed it is,” said Virginia, recovering her hand. “And I suppose you can’t say what brings you to Cheltenham.”

“Sure, I can say,” he drawled. “Man I’ve got to see happens to be there.”

“You remember Phoebe and Oliver Campion,” she said, walking beside him into the room towards the table.

“I remember hearing about them, but we never met, I guess.”

He shook hands composedly, and Virginia said to Melchett, who had answered the bell and stood waiting—“Bring a pot of coffee for Captain—I mean Mr.—what is it now, Tracy, General?”

“Colonel, I guess, will have to do.”

“Colonel Marsh would like some coffee,” Virginia said to Melchett. “Do sit down, Tracy, you must be perished with cold. How about some eggs and bacon?”

“No, thanks, I’ve had breakfast. Just some coffee would be nice.” He sat down easily at the corner of the table, and Virginia removed the plate before him and brought a fresh setting from the sideboard.

“You’ll stay to lunch, won’t you?” she suggested as she did so, and his slate-grey gaze came up to her face.

“I didn’t expect to,” he said.

“Could we persuade you?”

“If I could make a phone call.”

“Make a dozen,” said Virginia, smiling down at him.

“It wouldn’t inconvenience you?”

“Of course not, we’d be delighted. You won’t mind if the family tries to pump you, will you! Are you allowed to tell about Warsaw?”

“Some.”

“And about Johnny and Camilla in Berlin?”

“Haven’t seen ’em lately,” he confessed, without elaborating.

“Have they got shelters and gasmasks and things in Berlin?”

“They’re living at the Adlon. Its bar is better than its shelter. Between the two, I guess they’re best off. So far.”

The coffee came, and Virginia poured it out for him. Phoebe and Oliver exchanged glances and on the flimsiest excuse drifted away. Virginia sat with a cigarette, facing Tracy and his cup of coffee across the table.

“Well,” he said, and the long laughter lines each side of his
mouth deepened. “It took another war, but here I am again. It’s amazing how you don’t change.”

“What did you expect? A doddering old woman?”

“I expected you to be different. And you aren’t.” His eyes ran affectionately over her slim figure, the short, greying curls, the heart-shaped, cleverly made-up face.

“You know I am, and I know I am, but thank you anyhow. Men have the best of it after forty. So I can truthfully say—neither are you!”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m just the same.” He glanced round the sunny room. “So this is Farthingale,” he said.

“It’s hard to realize we never met except in London.”

“You showed me some pictures of it once—while I was in the hospital. I used to try to imagine what it would be like, instead of counting sheep at night. I knew where I was the minute I came to the entrance today. It’s a beautiful house. I’m glad it didn’t have to be overrun with city kids.”

“I was fortunate. I got the Bank overflow from Cleeve.”

“So Charles said. You stuck to what you told me—that day at the hospital. You didn’t marry again.”

“No. What about you?”

He nodded.

“You told me to. So I tried. It wasn’t any good.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Maybe my heart wasn’t in it the right way. She soon took up with an Air Force man who had more time to spare.”

“Divorce?”

“Yep. She married him. Got a couple of kids now. Must be she knew what she wanted. Me, I’m back on the old beat.”

“What
were
you doing in Warsaw, Tracy?”

“Snooping.” He grinned.

“How did you get out? Bracken asked in Paris—Biddle didn’t know.”

“He knows now.”

“It must have been pretty ghastly, wasn’t it—in Poland?”

“It was rough,” he conceded.

“Will it be as bad here? In London, I mean. Is it coming?”

She watched him light a cigarette—his lean, fine hands, brown from the sun. How had his summer tan lasted like this, into December? Where had he been, since Warsaw fell? Italy? The Mediterranean—?

“Honey, I’m not going to try to fool you,” he was saying
slowly. “You know as well as I do, this is a new kind of war. Spain was the test-tube. Barcelona—Guernica—that was the experiment. Then Warsaw. They’re learning fast.”

“And now Helsinki. What’s next? London? Paris?”

“The Lowlands,” he said with quiet assurance. “They want the coast, before they go for London.”

“Holland? But, Tracy, the dykes—they can flood it. How long could Holland hold out?”

“A month.”

“
Tracy!
What about Belgium?”

“A little longer, with a lot of help. Denmark they could take any minute by long distance telephone.”

“But France?” she urged, feeling a draught. “Surely France will hold?”

“Yes, the French Army is all right.”

Eager for reassurance, she missed the reservation, if there was one.

“I still don’t understand the Western Front,” she said, and as he made no reply, “I suppose we aren’t supposed to.”

“You always smelled so sweet,” he said, apparently at random. “Even if I couldn’t see you, after all these years I’d still know you were in the room now.”

“Tracy—”

“Where’s the harm?” he asked reasonably. “There’s a war on, Virginia. Again. We’re right back where we started from.”

“Or where we stopped.”

“You can’t blame me, can you? You’ve no right to look so much the same. Women are supposed to age, as time goes on.”

“Oh, Tracy, I have, I have! I—”

“And it wouldn’t matter anyway. If you had.”

“But Tracy—”

“You don’t want the others to know, is that it? You don’t want to be kidded about your old beau. You won’t have to worry about that, I guess. I’m off to France very soon.”

She looked up at him doubtfully, drawn as always, resisting still.

“It’s what you said before.”

“Almost. I said something else too.”

“Now, Tracy, please, I—”

“I said—Let me come back, if I can.”

A moment more she sat with her eyes on his. Then with a
swift, impulsive movement she was standing beside his chair, his head held against her breast, his arms around her.

“I was wrong that time—I was wrong—I didn’t think it would last—Tracy, I’m sorry—I spoilt your life—I’m sorry—” She was crying helplessly.

He shifted in the chair and drew her down on his knees.

“Now, now,” he said. “Everybody has to learn the hard way, I guess. It could have been worse. I got here, didn’t I?”

“It’s too late—”

“Who says it is?”

“We’ve got another war—”

“What’s a war? You never did this before.”

She took the folded handkerchief from his breast pocket and mopped herself with it, while he sat with his hands around her waist, looking up at her.

“I’m behaving like a schoolgirl,” she said unsteadily.

“Maybe it’s time. Maybe it’s time you acted young again.”

With a faint, final sniff she replaced the handkerchief and removed herself from his lap. He let her go, but his hands lingered.

“I thought you must be dead,” she said. “It was much worse not to know, after I began to suspect you were in Warsaw. And then Bracken said they had lost you—”

“Yep, I sure thought I was a goner for a while,” he admitted cheerfully, with no further details. “Remember that, won’t you, when it hots up here. Remember the odds. It seems as though each bomb was aimed at you personally, signed, sealed, and delivered. And then it lands a half a mile away.”

“Tracy, what do you do about being scared?”

His slow smile spread affectionately.

“You rise above it,” he drawled.

“I suppose I shall be afraid when the time comes,” Virginia said thoughtfully. “I suppose I was last time, when we had the Zeppelins, but somehow I can’t remember much about that. Isn’t it odd how long ago it seems? We talked about invasion then, didn’t we—more than we do now, I think. So far, my worst time this war was the week before Munich last year. By the time it really began I had grown a sort of callous. I hope it lasts.”

“Oh, come,” he said gently. “You’ve heard gunfire before. You’ll be all right.”

“One thing we didn’t foresee last time, though,” she went
on, staring rather blindly at the window behind him. “It was bad enough to have the young men go. Now it’s the girls too. My Evadne—Edward’s Mona—and wait till you see Mab, she’s only fourteen—”

When the pony-cart returned just before lunch, Virginia was sitting in the drawing room with Tracy Marsh, drinking sherry.

The rest of them gathered round the fire with their own glasses, trying not to stare at him, but obviously mesmerized by so glamorous a figure, fresh out of Warsaw, and on top of that an American, and furthermore a beau of Virginia’s.