I and My True Love (7 page)

Then she moved slowly away from the door. She looked at the bed, turned down, inviting. Perhaps she was tired after all; perhaps she was even tired enough to forget all about incipient claustrophobia under that smothering canopy.

* * *

When Payton Pleydell came upstairs, leaving behind him a house dark in sleep, he was startled to find that his wife’s bedroom door was opened a little and the thin wedge of light from her reading lamp cut briefly into the passage outside. She waited up for me, he thought with increasing surprise. And then, as he stood at the opened door and saw the still figure propped against pillows, with a book dropped face-down by her side, “She’s fallen asleep,” he said to himself.

Sylvia raised her head. “Payton?”

He came into the room. “My dear, it’s almost two o’clock.” He picked up the book, smoothed the twisted pages, and closed it.

“How did the meeting go?” she asked.

“Slowly. But we covered a lot of ground. And the dinner party? I hear it went well. Kate made quite a hit, apparently. She’s very young, isn’t she?”

“She’s simple and direct and completely honest.” Why must he always call that being “young”?

“Stewart Hallis said she was refreshing.”

“And Stewart feels he is jaded enough to need a little refreshing?”

“Now, now...” Payton laid the book on a side-table. “It’s late, Sylvia. I think you need some sleep. You looked a little tired tonight.”

“It’s the spring coming. It always makes me feel tired and old.”

Payton looked at her affectionately. “You’ll never be that,” he said. “Now, what about some sleep? We’ve a heavy day tomorrow.”

“But I wanted to talk to you.”

“Couldn’t it wait?” He glanced at the clock. And then, as she didn’t answer, he sat down on the edge of the bed. “What’s wrong, Sylvia?” His face, tired and pale as it was, looked sympathetic. The deep worry lines on the broad brow were etched more deeply by the shadowed light of the bed lamp. But the clever observant eyes had softened and he watched her with an encouraging small smile deepening round the firmly cut mouth.

She became nervous. Her words didn’t come as she had planned them. She heard herself saying quickly, “Payton, why don’t you get some leave? Why don’t we go away for a month? Drop everything here. Just go away and rest and get some health and stop being overworked and we’d both feel better.”

He still smiled, but now his eyes showed surprise. “Take some leave,
now?
That’s out of the question, Sylvia.”

“But you are due a lot of sick leave,” she insisted. “You haven’t been ill for years and years, and you’ve got all that sick-leave allowance mounting up.”

“And I’m to pretend I’m sick now, so that I can claim it?”

“Why, no.” She looked at him in surprise. “You don’t have to pretend anything. I just thought you’ve been too much on the job. Surely, they don’t want to work you to the point of a breakdown?”

“Like the one I had in 1945?” he asked, no expression at all now on his face as he guessed her thoughts.

“You’re overworked,” she insisted. “And I need a vacation, too. We’ve had a very hard winter, Payton.”

“But I’m feeling all right,” he said. “You can stop worrying about me: I take good care of myself.” He smiled again, and now there was no encouragement. “Besides, even if you were ill, I couldn’t leave my work at the moment. Not possibly.”

It was as much as he ever told her about his job. From the firmness of his voice, she could only guess that his work was at some important, perhaps even critical stage.

Her fingers creased the white silk blanket cover. “Payton,” she said, “I need a vacation. I want to go away.”

“Go away?” His voice was sharp.

“Yes,” she said, her nervousness increasing, “just for a few weeks.”

“Go away alone? Where?”

She couldn’t think of any place. Then, suddenly, “To Santa Rosita.”

“To California? Isn’t that rather far away? What is its sudden appeal?”

“It just seems—different. I need a change.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to visit Whitecraigs for a week and see your family?”

“I’d get no rest there,” she said. And Whitecraigs was too near Washington. She avoided his searching eyes.

“You know what I think? I think you’re just depressed with this cold late spring. Why don’t you see Formby next week and have a check-up? And then you can follow his advice and feel better. I don’t want to seem heartless, Sylvia, but you don’t look ill—tired with a succession of busy days perhaps—but not ill. And to be quite frank, we’ve a number of important engagements ahead of us. I sometimes think you imagine they are only social. Far from it. They’re very important in their own way.” He watched her, hesitating. Of course, if she were really ill—“You used to like entertaining my friends.”

She said nothing.

“If Amy Clark were less tactless and more inclined to entertain correctly, her husband would be a more successful man.”

Sylvia said sharply, “They haven’t the money, Payton.” And why blame Amy? Payton always ignored Martin Clark, anyway, as if he were of no importance. “Besides, entertaining doesn’t matter so much nowadays.”

“Perhaps not so much; but, still, enough. My dear girl, don’t you think I appreciate all you do?” He took her hand, holding it gently. “This house would go to pieces if you weren’t here.”

“Walter ran it for years before I came on the scene.”

“He’s getting old.”

“He’s getting lazy.” Or perhaps he considered himself a permanent fixture.

“He’s dependable, and that’s what I need,” Payton said, as much on the defensive as he would ever allow himself to be. He rose, adding, “I’ll remember to make an appointment for you with Dr. Formby.” He hesitated for a moment. “Any other news for me?” he asked suddenly.

She evaded his eyes. “Nothing much. The luncheon was dull. I saw Mother there, by the way. Only for a moment, though: she had another meeting at three o’clock. She wants us all to go to Whitecraigs on Sunday.”

“Sunday?” He shook his head. “That’s impossible for me.”

It always was, she thought unhappily.

Payton said, “But why don’t you take Kate along? Say I’m sorry, that I’m nursing a heavy cold.”

“I’ve used that excuse before,” she reminded him. “Really, Payton, for a man who is as healthy as you are, you do think of the strangest excuses.” She was half laughing. But he wasn’t amused.

“Sunday’s quite impossible,” he said stiffly. He bent over and kissed her cheek. “It’s two o’clock, and not a time to argue. Good night, dear.”

He paused at the door to say, “I hear Jan Brovic is back in Washington.”

“Yes,” she said. “We—we were discussing that at dinner.”

There was a silence.

Sylvia said, “What are you going to do, Payton?”

He looked startled for a moment. “About Brovic? Why, nothing at all. Is there any need to do anything?”

She said, wondering why she hadn’t the sense to drop all further mention of Jan—except that to be too silent about him might seem odd, “You used to see him a lot.”

“Things have changed since then.” He didn’t leave, but stood watching her as if he expected her to say something more.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you agree with Martin Clark,” she said, trying to make her voice light. “Stewart Hallis will be shocked.”

“Good night, Sylvia,” he said abruptly and left.

At least, she thought, Payton will show no interest in Jan Brovic. We shan’t see him. And after a week or two Jan will stop trying to see me. It has to be that way. It has to be, for Jan’s own safety. What madness it had been to speak to her today!... But then, Jan had always taken chances. No, it’s all over, she told herself angrily, all over. But why do you persuade yourself so much?

She didn’t answer that. She forced herself to think of Payton, of Payton’s gentleness and trust. She became calm and practical again. She began to pull the pillows into place for sleeping, wondering a little that Payton’s political tolerance for once had found a limit. He was the kind of man whose own thinking was as honest and straightforward as Martin Clark’s, but whose willingness to see all sides of a question made him as broadminded as Hallis. She had been prepared for a small speech on the cruel prejudices of today’s politics, such as he had given when Minlow had resigned and lost some of his friends. Instead, he had spoken as if Jan Brovic deserved any snubs that were coming to him. Jan, she was thinking again, remembering him as she had seen him today. Jan...

She was stifling. She rose and opened the window wide. She stood looking out over the garden. Against a white wall, the yellow forsythia’s long straight sprays were silvered by moonlight. The magnolia tree was a dark shadow, waiting for the warmth of spring: in another month it would be heavy with flowers and fragrance. Dogwood and lilac, they’d come soon, too. The garden was wakening from its cold sleep. Even the grass, this week, had grown to life, fresh and green again; the first daffodils were showing, the early violets...

The curtains beside her were suddenly sucked out by the night air. She turned. Payton, his dressing-gown wrapped tightly around him, stood at the opened door.

“Sylvia, you’ll catch cold. Get to bed,” he said almost harshly. He stood there, unmoving, watching her as she obeyed him. She was trembling a little.

But he didn’t come forward. He said, slowly now, “Sylvia, we were talking about Brovic. I don’t expect you ever to see him again. You understand?”

She lay quite still, scarcely breathing. She stared at his face. He knows, she thought, he has always known about Jan.

He left as suddenly, as silently as he had entered. Sylvia lay staring at the closed door. And at last, she reached out to switch off the light. But she didn’t fall asleep.

5

Kate awoke, as she usually did, at half-past six, not that she thought there was any particular virtue in early rising, but simply because a firmly established habit was hard to break. Each day’s life had begun briskly on the ranch at Santa Rosita; and at Berkeley, classes started at eight o’clock. So here she was, wide awake, ready to get up there; and there wasn’t a sound from the rest of the house.

“I’ve too much to see, today,” she told the canopy arched overhead, “to lie here and stare up at you.” She rose and had her shower, dressing quickly, her excitement growing with the strangeness of the new world that lay outside her windows, waiting to be explored. It was almost seven o’clock, now. The house was still as silent as an empty church.

She opened one of the windows wide and leaned on its high, narrow sill. Below was the street, clean-washed by heavy rain which had fallen mysteriously during the night. I might have been dead for all I heard it, she thought. While we’re asleep, we are dead; and yet when we’re asleep the mind is alive. We see and hear nothing if we’re deep in sleep, but poets can waken to write lines they hadn’t imagined yesterday. I wish I were a poet and could write about this empty street, lonely as it is now, pulling me back a hundred and fifty years or more. Now, it looks real. It looks possible. It isn’t invaded by men in smart double-breasted suits or women in nylon stockings and short skirts to turn it into something quaintly historical.

But once, almost two hundred years ago, this narrow street would have been called contemporary. These houses would have been thought fine specimens of all that was up to date. Who wanted a Jacobean house, or even early Georgian? After all a new house
was
new, wasn’t it? And Robert Adam, that young modernist in Scotland, was designing the most exciting rooms down to the last detail. (Poor Robert, fame had robbed him of his first name.) No doubt, Robert had prided himself on being new and different, she thought—oh, why don’t I think of things like that to say at dinner parties?

A glossy car, very 1951, with a wide set of chromium teeth in full grin, drove through the street and broke the spell. She turned away from the window. I’m hungry, she admitted. It was half-past seven. And breakfast?

She went downstairs quietly. There was a soft movement in the hall. Walter, wearing a green apron, carrying a dustpan filled with cigarette stubs, had come out of the drawing-room. His solemn face looked startled for a moment. He was a man of about fifty, with a solid waistline and a thatch of white hair well-watered into place. But even at this hour, in shirtsleeves and apron, he still managed to look the gentleman’s gentleman imported from London. In his own way, he was a period piece, too.

“Good morning, Walter.”

“Good morning, Miss Jerold.”

“When’s breakfast?”

“Minna will prepare your tray and take it upstairs along with Mrs. Payton’s. At nine o’clock, miss.”

“Oh—And Mr. Pleydell?”

“He has breakfast downstairs. At a quarter past eight. He likes to breakfast alone.”

There was a slight pause. “I’m hungry, Walter,” she said, and waited with amusement.

“I’m sorry, miss.” He frowned at the dustpan of cigarette stubs. “I’ve to clear the downstairs rooms and air them. Then I make and serve Mr. Pleydell’s breakfast.” His accent had become more pronounced, as if to reprimand her for forcing him to make distasteful explanations.

“Oh,” she said. Was Walter actually advising her to go upstairs, climb back into bed and wait for a breakfast tray? “Of course,” she said, smiling, “you could direct me to the nearest drugstore for a cup of coffee.”

But Walter was not amused.

“Perhaps,” she said, slightly quelled, “you would ask Minna to give me breakfast now?”

“Minna doesn’t come here until half-past eight.”

“Look,” she said, annoyed, “I know I’m a nuisance breaking into your routine, but I am hungry.”

He glanced unhappily towards the dining-room, as if to show politely the work he had still to do. “Mr. Pleydell likes—”

“Quite.” That’s how Payton would talk. “So just show me the kitchen and let me find some breakfast for myself.” He was horrified.

“Where’s the kitchen? Through this door?” He looked so unhappy that she smiled to cheer him up. He has his routine, she thought, and he is stuck with it. “It’s all right, Walter. I can cook.”

His face was frozen, disapproving. She pushed open the door into the pantry. If that’s a servant, she thought, then give me an automatic dishwasher. How stupid can people get? Not one suggestion to offer, except a scarcely hidden wish that I’d vanish, melt into the air. Perhaps that’s what he really wants— all of us to melt into thin air and leave him in peace in this house, with three good meals a day and only his own cigarette stubs to clear away.