Kissing Kin (41 page)

She found herself wondering again about Victor, and what would become of him, what harm he could do in London, what she could do about him even now.
The
fact
is,
I
never
want
to
see
you
again.
That wasn’t a nice thing to hear, from anybody, even a man beside himself with nerves and drink—particularly a man who had engaged more of your secret thoughts than you had realized, until on a sudden, reckless, imperial, crusading impulse you offered him yourself for his salvation—and got turned down. Was that what rankled and gnawed—that she had been turned down? Was that why she couldn’t seem to forget Victor, and make a new beginning? Was it just her own wounded vanity that kept him there in her consciousness, a sort of hair-shirt memory, of a time when she had almost made a fool of herself—a supreme, idiotic, futile, world-without-end fool? Because she suspected now, unwillingly, that Victor could never have been changed, and that it would only have been at best a long, bitter, defeating struggle between them, ending heaven knew how, much better never begun, much better left like this, without a lot more things to forget….

It was getting dark on the terrace, and a little too cool. She must go in, or else get a wrap. She should have gone to Vienna with the others after all, they would never be able to tear themselves away from this Dolfuss story till things had simmered down or blown up, whichever they were going to do, and she felt a childish need of company in the desolation the news of Sue’s death had brought. So much of youth and security and old affections went with Sue, it was like the end of a century—one was left face to face with Time, and one felt
frightened and alone. She wanted to shelter under the family wing, and there was so much confusion in beleaguered Austria one couldn’t even get Vienna on the telephone. Should she leave a message for them here at the hotel and go back to Cannes and the Kendricks, they always livened things up…. But the Austrian frontiers were closed, and no one knew when travel would be resumed.

Added to her sharp sense of personal loneliness, was the uneasy feeling of isolation from the rest of the world in this dreaming, doll’s house town—of being cut off from reality at a time when it was only sensible to be abreast of things and know what was going on. If there was another war, Salzburg and its music would be engulfed and out of bounds, it was no place to find oneself stranded, with only a passport between oneself and unthinkable disasters. She remembered how Cousin Sally had been caught in Belgium the last time, and barely escaped from Antwerp in a fishing-boat, with ashes from the burning city dropping in her hair…. And with Sally then, besides Fabrice and Elvire, there was Sosthène.

The sense of aloneness grew on Camilla in a really
devastating
way, and an impulse to bolt for Cannes and lock the door behind her. Cannes had survived the war, intact, and Sally had come back to it and resumed her life there as though there had been no interruption. Sosthène had seen to that, she told herself with a twinge of the old insurgence against
circumstance
. Sosthène was gone now, and there was no one to make sure that Camilla’s life at Cannes remained secure….

She shivered in the evening chill, and sat on wilfully,
tempting
a cold, too listless and depressed to move. She had not thought of Kim for ages, but she thought of him now, with a sort of homesickness. Kim had gone to Hollywood, where he was dangling notoriously after one of the vivid ladies there. And Camilla had not lifted a finger to detain him. She now began to wonder why. She and Kim had suited each other, in a way. He was gay and good-tempered and wouldn’t hurt a fly, and they had had some memorable times together. He
would have come back to her, she was thinking, after that first London episode, like an affectionate but impenitent husband. And soon he would have been off again, no doubt, but always to return if she had wished it, if she had not been too fastidious and independent…. They had always got on together, and laughed at the same things—and they had not been so terribly in love that their tiffs and misunderstandings mattered enough for tears or remorse, and their reconciliations had always been easy and graceful and without rancour, which was really the right way to love, she had come to believe. There was never anything tense and tragic about life with Kim, you went with the wind, you rolled with the punches, you gave as good as you got, and you laughed—God, how you laughed, Camilla thought nostalgically, and you felt young and adventuresome and reckless. And you let it go lightly, without regrets, because the world was full of men who were more than ready to see that you had no time to miss just one of them….

Nothing would ever be the same now as in those mad mid-’twenties when everyone had money to spend and
everyone
thought the war was over. And I’m not so young any more, she thought, flinching. I’m not so adaptable. I wonder—Kim might not like me so much nowadays. Lord knows. I was pretty green in the beginning. Kim taught me a lot. And what is it worth now, I wonder! Victor—she was back to that again—Victor didn’t want it.

I must get out of here and stop this maundering, she thought, with no move to do so. I must go back to Cannes as soon as possible—or to Paris—London, maybe—anywhere—look up people—hear some good music—fall in love again—but it’s all so much
trouble.
And it doesn’t last. The people one falls in love with nowadays take it so hard—not like Kim—or else they don’t take it at all—like Victor….

So finally you come to a time like this, when there’s nobody. Nobody older, because they’ve died. Nobody younger,
because
you haven’t had a child, And you wonder what’s going to become of you as time goes on. Who’s going to be there
when you’re ill and frightened—who’s going to need
you
there if they’re ill and frightened—who’s going to answer if you call out in the night…. Sosthène doesn’t happen to everyone—only to Sally…. And even Sally was alone at the end….

There were footsteps on the terrace behind her, and warm arms were laid around her shoulders. Dinah!

“Sitting out here in the cold,” said Dinah. “We came as fast as we could because Bracken said you would be feeling dismal. They kept stopping the car and asking to see our papers. I see you got the cable—we were hoping to get here first, the way things are.”

“Bad news was bound to get through.” Holding Dinah’s hand, Camilla looked from one to the other of them mistily—they were all there, even Johnny—she brimmed over with relief and pleasure. “How nice of you to think of me—I was feeling
suicidal
, and a hundred years old! I never dreamed you could leave Vienna now, and I was wondering if the same message would get through to you.”

“It’s all over in Vienna, anyway,” said Bracken, sitting down rather heavily. “Dolfuss is dead, poor little blighter—they stood around and let him bleed to death on
a sofa—Schuschnigg is in—frontiers reopened—railroads running—and Hitler with a flea in his ear, thanks to Mussolini!”

“It won’t last long, of course,” said Johnny, sinking into another chair.

“Oh, no, just long enough for a few deep breaths,” Bracken agreed at once.

“And then what?” Camilla asked.

“Then they will try again,” said Johnny. “Meanwhile, how about a nice stiff drink?”

They went upstairs to a warm, lighted room, and there was the clink of ice in tall glasses and pipe-smoke and casual,
comforting
conversation till a late hour. They didn’t say much about Sue—she had left her money to Fitz’s children, and the house to Jeff, Bracken as usual having been named executor—Jeff was a little more silent even than was his habit, awed and
solemn in his inheritance, which he took very seriously. Sue had suggested more than once that if he found he didn’t want the house he might give to to the Williamsburg Restoration people, who would see that it was kept intact and in repair, as they had begun to do with other old houses in the town. But Jeff, who had gone down to see the reconstructed Raleigh Tavern and the Capitol and the Governor’s Palace when they were put on exhibition and was most enthusiastic about the whole restoration project, was still unwilling to let the old Day house go out of his hands. “I might have children,” he said quite solemnly to Bracken. “I wouldn’t like to have them have to buy a ticket to see where Grandmother Tibby lived.” Bracken said he could understand that. “The Palace and the Raleigh had disappeared,” Jeff went on anxiously, lest they might think he was just selfish about the house. “But our place is
alive.
It’s always been lived in. We’ll have to find somebody to go on living in it. God knows the family is big enough!” Bracken said it seemed as though there ought to be someone, certainly. “Stevie Sprague will look after it for me till I can do something myself,” said Jeff, for Fitz’s Stephen was his favourite Williamsburg cousin. Bracken reminded him that Stephen was in New York, dancing in a Broadway show. “Well, Sylvia, then,” said Jeff obstinately, knowing that Stephen’s sister Sylvia would do almost anything her Cousin Jeff asked her to. “I’ll write straight off to Sylvia and tell her I want the place left exactly as it is till I can get back there.” Bracken said by all means, and didn’t they think it was time to go to bed now.

Camilla lay awake a while, turning over in her mind the talk of Williamsburg and the Sprague cousins, who had grown out of her knowledge and were all in their twenties now. She was contemplating with the first stirrings of new interest the idea of returning home to see for herself the rebirth of the little town which had been Virginia’s first capital when she fell asleep. It would be something to do, she thought drowsily. It would be a
reason
for doing something, which she had
seemed lately to lack. But it would doubtless make her feel very old….

They had made no plans for the morning, promising each other to sleep late and recover from recent excitements, and Camilla breakfasted in her room. When she wandered into the sitting-room of Bracken’s suite looking for company, she found only Johnny, behind the London
Telegraph.

“Hullo,” he said. “Waiting for you. Had breakfast?”

Camilla said she had, and asked where the others were.

“Gone out for an airing. Said we could find them at
Tomiselli
’s eventually.”

“That’s good,” said Camilla vaguely, standing at the window in full sunshine. “What a glorious day. Shall we go along after them now?”

“No hurry.”

“I was sort of surprised to see you here last night. I thought at least you’d be watching the pot boil in Vienna.”

“Complaining?” Johnny sat looking at her, his arms along the back of the chair, and his legs crossed, lounging, easy, friendly.

She smiled at him with sudden, grateful affection.

“No. Glad to see you.”

“Good.”

There was a pause. She stood by the window looking at him.

“What’s the matter with you this morning?” she asked suspiciously.

“Me? Nothing. I mean no more than usual. Why?”

“You look sort of funny.”

“Can’t help that. It’s my face.”

She laughed, more than the joke was worth, just because it was there at all. She felt oddly relaxed and unaccountably at peace, considering the way the world was going. Unless—

“Johnny, you aren’t holding out on me? There isn’t
something
nasty afoot that you haven’t told me?”

“Not so far as I know.”

She picked up the
Telegraph
and scanned its headlines briefly.

“Are we really going to have another war?” she asked, her eyes on the page.  

“’Fraid so.”

“When?”

“Soon. The soothsayers have picked 1938.”

“Four years,” she said thoughtfully.

“Mm-hm.”

“Not long, is it.”

“Not long, no.”

“What will it be like?”

“Bad. You scared?”

“I suppose I shall be, when it comes.”

“Oh, shucks, you’ve seen wars.”

“Gas, and germs, and—things like that, dropping on us out of the air?”

“Probably.”

“Johnny—where will
you
be, in another war?”

“Oh, here and there and roundabout. They always miss me. What do you plan to do in the meantime, that’s the question.”

“You mean, till it starts?”

“Mm-hm.”

“I don’t know. I’ve been wondering. To tell the truth, I don’t seem to care much. That’s bad, isn’t it. After what they were saying last night about Williamsburg being rebuilt the way it used to be I sort of thought I’d like to see it. But
without
Aunt Sue—I might go to London, of course, but the Season is over there, everybody’s in the country.”

“Going to be a royal wedding in the autumn—Prince George and pretty Marina. Very gala, no doubt.”

She made an uninterested face, and threw down the paper, and went to stand again at the window in the bar of sunlight, looking out at the mountains.

“I must be getting old,” she said. “I just don’t give a damn.”

“I think,” said Johnny, without moving, “that this is the day I have been waiting for all my life.”

Preoccupied, she hardly heard him, then turned slowly to look at him in a dazed sort of way.

“What did you say?”

“Think back,” said Johnny, sitting still, and saw that she recalled his words with uncertainty. “You heard me,” said Johnny, and rose at his leisure and went to her. “We’ve got four years,” he said. “At the outside. And after that, God help us. Will you give them to me?”

“Why—Johnny—I—”

“I want you to marry me, Camilla.”

“I didn’t—I—never thought—”

“Neither did I. We’re bright, aren’t we.” He laid his arms around her, and felt her slim body pliant and unresisting in his hold. “You were always the most exciting, mysterious,
perennial
thing,” he murmured. “I kept coming back, like a fly, remember? Or didn’t you notice?”

“I did, rather.” She laid her check against his smooth-shaven one with a sweet, melting movement, and he felt her hair soft against his face and the fragrance that always clung about her was warm and near. “But, Johnny—”