Late and Soon (32 page)

“Nothing, love. Indeed, I know very little myself. By the way, Sedgewick is off to-night. He'll come back to fetch his things and catch the night train up to London. He asked me to let you know. He'll be up about six o'clock.”

“I'll get his things ready for packing,” Valentine answered mechanically. “Am I to say anything about this?”

“Ah, there's nothing private about it. The whole town knows already, and of course the boys themselves are lepping mad with excitement.”

“I suppose so.”

She felt as though she had been stunned and was incapable of thought or speech.

“I must go,” said Lonergan's voice.” I've to book a call to Kilronan post-office, in County Roscommon, God help me, for Arlette. It'll the work of the world to get hold of her, at that, for my sister Nellie's house isn't on the telephone.”

The now familiar pang struck at her heart.

“Couldn't you telegraph beforehand and tell Arlette what time to be at the post-office and ring up then?”

“I have telegraphed, but I don't suppose there's a hope of it's getting delivered in time. I'll have to book the call now for some time this evening and take a chance on their getting hold of her. One thing, she's certain to
be in after eight o'clock, the poor child. Nellie would see to that. Will it be all right for me to take the call at Coombe?”

“Of course.”

“I knew it would be, God bless you. Listen, Val, will you be coming by the road?”

“I can. I think I'd better.”

“I'll try and meet you, with the car. If I can't, will you wait for me at the Victoria? I'll anyway drive you back, though you may have to wait for me in the hotel a little while.”

She assented.

“Then I'll be seeing you in less than an hour's time, my darling. Goodbye and take care of your sweet self.”

“Goodbye, Rory. I'll start at once.”

She replaced the receiver.

Embarkation leave, thought Valentine. That means foreign service. We must marry before he goes. He didn't say that. He said he must put a call through to Arlette. He's telegraphed to her already. That was the first thing he thought of. With the careful reasonableness that she brought always, instinctively and from long custom, to bear upon her own problems she reminded herself that Rory had known he would see her within the hour.

The habit of organization would impel him to deal first with the complexities and uncertainties of telephone communication in war-time between Devonshire and a remote village in South Ireland.

She found that, without being aware of having done so, she had returned to the hall where Venetia Rockingham still sat beside the fire, directing her bright, delicately-enunciated spate of faintly malicious conversation towards the General, and Primrose still sprawled, motionless, in her distant corner.

Still motionless and still looking down at the crossword puzzle, she enquired:

“Anything or nothing? The telephone, I mean.”

“It was a message to say that Charles Sedgewick is coming back this evening to collect his things, and then going off by the late train. They're being moved.”

“My God,” remarked Primrose without expression. She filled in another clue.

“Being moved?” echoed the General. “Scandalous waste of the country's money, the way the Army is being pushed about from pillar to post, in my opinion. Are these chaps going abroad?”

“I think they are, Reggie. Charles Sedgewick is off to London on embarkation leave.”

“My dear,” exclaimed Venetia.” He hasn't got embarkation leave all to himself, I imagine. What about the Colonel?”

“Rory's got his embarkation leave too, Venetia.”

“And what are you going to do?” Lady Rockingham asked, looking curiously at her sister-in-law.” Nothing desperate, darling, I do hope and trust. If you ask me, this gives everybody time to turn round—such a mercy, don't you know what I mean.”

Valentine rang the bell without answering.

When Ivy appeared she said:

“Would you or Esther take Captain Sedgewick's suitcases to his room, if you please. He's going on leave tonight. Ask Mrs. Ditchley to send in dinner early. Seven o'clock.”

“Yes, my lady.”

The girl's face showed no surprise. Valentine surmised that she had heard the news already.

After Ivy had left the room Lady Rockingham remarked:

“I suppose Colonel Lonergan's batman looks after his packing—or isn't he going away?”

“I'm walking into the town now to meet him and talk over what we're going to do,” Valentine replied.

It was only as she went out of the house by the garden
door five minutes later that she realized, with surprise, that her announcement had met with no comment from anybody.

She walked as quickly as possible down the avenue and thought that it was growing colder every minute, although the wind had fallen. It had given place to a sullen, snow-laden stillness that enveloped the dark and leafless trees and the sodden-looking earth in a chilled immobility.

Valentine's exultation of an hour earlier had all left her. She felt despairing, apprehensive and forlorn.

It will be all right when I see him, she told herself without conviction. Her mind dwelt upon the immediate present, unable to envisage the idea that Lonergan was going away, leaving England for a destination unknown, from which he might well never return again.

She had walked rapidly for a mile and a half or more when she saw a tall young figure swinging along the lane, coming towards her. It was Jess, with her dogs.

Aunt Sophy, recognizing Valentine, rushed wildly to meet her, capering extravagantly and making short rushes backwards and forwards between her and Jess.

“Hallo!” Jess shouted, lengthening her stride. She was waving a paper above her head. “It's come! I was absolutely dead right, as usual. Wasn't it extraordinary, mummie, I just
knew
that letter would be at the post-office. And it was. I'm to report at Victory House at twelve noon on Thursday. Gosh! that's the day after to-morrow. I'll have to take the early train. Gosh! It's pretty marvellous, having to dash off all in a minute like that, like the Secret Service or something. Mummie, it
is
okay by you, isn't it? I mean, you don't mind, do you?”

“No, darling. Not if you're glad.”

Valentine forced back the emotion that threatened to bring tears into her eyes.

“I'm dying to tell Madeleine. Gosh! won't she be thrilled! It'll make up for the battalion going. Mummie,
they're being sent abroad and they don't know where, only they're being issued with tropical kit. They're getting embarkation leave, straight away now this minute. They'll all be gone by to-morrow. So'll I, by Thursday. I wonder what uncle Reggie will say. Mummie, you'll take care of aunt Sophy, won't you?”

“Indeed I will.”

“And look, are you on your way to meet the Colonel? Because if you are, I saw him in the Square and he told me to tell you it was no good. He looked as sick as mud. He's got to see some old General or other and he told some chap to ring up Coombe in case he could catch you before you started, to say not to come.”

Valentine's heart sank lower. She felt no surprise, only an overwhelming disappointment.

“He. came dashing across the Square just as I came out of the post-office, and asked if I was going home and told me I'd prob'bly meet you on the road. Gosh, it's parky, isn't it? We hadn't better go on standing here freezing, had we?”

Valentine turned and walked beside her daughter in the direction of Coombe.

“It's a pity about Charles and the Colonel going,” Jess observed. “And Buster and Jack and all the others. They were wizard. I suppose I won't be able to say goodbye to them now. I'll only see Charles. He's coming in at about six, and the Colonel as soon as he can make it. Earlier than six if he can, he said.”

Jess whistled piercingly to her dog.

“Did you tell Colonel Lonergan that you were going to Victory House on Thursday?” asked Valentine, in order to break the silence that she felt unable to endure. “What did he say?”

“As a matter of fac', I didn't say anything about it. I thought,” said Jess, elaborately off-hand, “that you might as well be the absolutely first person to be told about it.”

With his customary efficiency and detachment Charles Sedgewick looked round his bedroom at Coombe and ascertained that his belongings were packed, and his room left in order.

He took a last appraising look at the old-fashioned wallpaper, the dark, massive furniture, the steel engravings framed in narrow black and gold. It was pretty certainly the last time he'd ever stay in a house like Coombe, he reflected without any sentimental regret—indeed with a momentary relief in the recollection that his mother's little villa would be comfortably warmed throughout.

Well, thought Sedgewick, it had been interesting enough to see how these people, so unmistakably in the last ditch, conducted such life as they might be said to have left. Something to be said for the individual, perhaps—he grinned at the remembrance of Jessica, who was a nice kid, young enough and tough enough to find and keep a place in the new order.

He gave a fleeting thought to Lady Arbell, not because he considered her in any way significant but because his Colonel apparently did. One can't ever tell, with people of that generation, was Sedgewick's mental summing-up of his passing surmise. And he added in his own mind: Any more than they can with ours.

The people who might be liquidated with positive advantage to the community were, in Sedgewick's dispassionate view, the Rockingham woman, who was a bitch, Hughie Spurway, a degenerate and a pestilential bore, and the old Blimp, General Levallois.

Thus briefly, methodically, and without qualifying clauses did Charles Sedgewick classify his impressions of these people whom he had tabulated as “the real thing” on his first arrival at Coombe. There remained his
awareness of Primrose, and hers of him.

Sedgewick glanced at his wrist-watch, noted that it was only twenty minutes past six, and with characteristic promptitude decided that he had plenty of time in which to discover whether or not Primrose was interested.

The non-committal phrase exactly expressed his own attitude of mind.

With no further backward look at his temporary lodging, Sedgewick tramped out of the room and down the dark, draughty passage to the schoolroom.

She was, as he had expected, sitting over the fire, smoking and with a copy of
The New Yorker
lying face-downwards on her lap.

“Hallo, Primrose.”

“Hallo to you. So you're off.”

“That is correct.”

“Jess has got to go, too. Quite a break-up.”

“Isn't it? What about you?”

“It's me for the first train to London to-morrow—so long as my poisonous aunt isn't in it.”

“Travel up with me to-night. We'll be making Waterloo at twenty-four hours, if the train's punctual.”

“Too much of a rush.”

“As you say.”

Primrose turned her head slightly towards him for the first time and gave him her queer, crooked smile.

“I might turn up to-morrow lunch-time at the bar of the Café Royal.”

“I'll buy you a drink there.”

“Okay.”

His eyes held hers for a moment and then they both laughed, —brief, excited, mirthless laughter.

Sedgewick walked over to the armchair and pulled Primrose onto her feet.

“Mind my cigarette,” she said.

“Chuck it away.”

“‘Save to defend',” she mocked.

Then she threw the half-smoked cigarette, stained with her lip-stick, into the fire.

It was nearly nine o'clock before Lonergan returned to Coombe. A succession of telephone messages had announced one. delay after another, and the last one had said that no dinner was to be kept for him.

Dinner at Coombe had been early, and immediately afterwards Primrose, offering no explanation to anyone, had gone in Sedgewick's taxi to the station and seen his train pull out from the darkened little country platform.

The taxi brought her back as far as the gates of the avenue and there she got out and prepared to walk to the house, swearing between her teeth at the cold that slashed through her belted leather jacket and thick skirt.

A car hooted behind her and she saw and recognized it preparing to take the entrance, travelling slowly.

Primrose flashed her torch onto the path ahead, swinging it backwards and forwards, and the car came to a noisy standstill.

Lonergan leant out and opened the door.

“It's me,” Primrose said, and she climbed into the seat next the driver's.

“What in God's name are you doing, girl, catching pneumonia out here?”

“Pneumonia is right,” said Primrose, and she leant back and dragged at the rug on the back seat.

“Here, wait a minute.”

Lonergan switched off the engine and put the rug over her knees, tucking it round her.

“History repeating itself,” Primrose remarked. “Remember driving me out from Exeter last Saturday?”

“I do,” he answered gently.

“Go on. Start her up. You're driving me to the house, aren't you?”

“I am, of course.”

He started the engine again and the car bumped away
over the uneven surface between the dark clumps of the gorse bushes and the groups of leafless trees.

“You're late,” Primrose said.

“Indeed I am. It's been one thing after another, all day. Has Sedgewick gone?”

“Yes. 'Smatter of fact, I've just been seeing him off.”

“You have?”

After a pause, as though Lonergan had been silently taking in the implication of that statement, he said:

“So that's the way of it. Well, Sedgewick's a good lad, tough as they come, and he deserves a slice of luck. He'll be on the high seas a week from now.”