Lonely Road (16 page)

I took the book from her and glanced down the account a little absently; she came closer and looked over my elbow at the page. “Yes,” I said at last, “that was me. Doesn’t seem much like it now, does it?”

“I think it’s wonderful,” she breathed. And then she looked up at me and said: “Mr. Jenkinson showed it me. You don’t mind, do you?”

I smiled at her. “Lord, no,” I said. “Not after all these years. It’s all so long ago.”

She stood there staring up at me, puzzled. “Don’t you like people to know about it? I mean, it says here it was all so splendid, and you got a medal.”

“There wasn’t anything splendid about it, really,” I said quietly. “Only in the history books. It was just bloody murder.”

She stared up at me dumbly.

“I shelled them while they were surrendering,” I said. “The engagement was over by that time.” I stared out of the window at the brilliant, sunlit sea. “I don’t know why I did it—I never did know. There was a boy there with me, a midshipman. He wouldn’t speak to me when we got back to land—just cut me dead whenever we met. The funny thing is, I don’t think he told anyone.”

I paused. “When you go and do a thing like that it makes a difference,” I said. A herring gull came sweeping down the lawn and banked steeply past the window in the sunshine with a little cry. I stood there thinking of the long, similar years that I had lived in Dartmouth since the war, living alone with my ships and with my work. “Things haven’t been much fun since I did that,” I said quietly. “Not like they were before.”

I glanced down at her. “Not so very splendid, was it?”

She looked up at me, and then down at the book. “I think it was wonderful,” she said at last. “Fighting on all alone like that. Nobody could have said anything if you’d given in, could they? I mean, when there was only three of you left.”

I laughed. “It wouldn’t have done us much good to give in. They shelled the panic party in the boats. We wouldn’t have stood much chance in a surrender, and so we just stuck where we were.”

She wrinkled up her brows. “You mean that they’d have killed you if you’d given in?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I dare say. They’d probably have left us out on deck when they submerged.”

She came a little closer to me. “Malcolm,” she said, and it was the first time she had called me that, “you oughtn’t to think so much about the bad things of the war. I mean, everyone who fought had to do bad things, and it was the same on each side. And you only did to them what they’d have done to you if you’d surrendered.”

I stood for a moment looking down at her. “That may be,” I said. “But it was I who did it.”

I was touched by the insight that she had shown; I had never been able to speak to anyone about that business as I had to her. She didn’t say any more, and I took her by the arm and we wandered out into the garden for a quarter of an hour before going in to dress. Passing the strawberry bed we stopped and ate a few, and together we picked a few more flowers for her room, although she said the ones she had would last for “ever so long”. She told me how she used to make flowers last in the Palais when she wore them in her dress with their stalks wrapped up in cotton wool and silver paper, and they kept ever so fresh for days.

Then we went up to dress.

And coming down, I found she was before me in the hall. She had changed into the same blue dancing frock with the silver bodice that she had worn before, that suited her dark loveliness so well. She came up to me as I walked down the stairs, and:

“Please, Commander Stevenson,” she said, and hesitated.

I smiled at her. “Spit it out,” I said.

She didn’t laugh, but looked up at me. “Please,” she said, “I’ve just been thinking. Now that Mr. Jenkinson’s gone and the police and everything, I’d better go back to Leeds. I thought I’d go by train to-morrow morning, if that would be all right. I mean, you won’t be wanting me for anything else now, will you?”

For the moment I was nonplussed. “No,” I said mechanically, “I don’t know that there’s anything else, really.”

She stood there looking up at me, dumbly. I moved closer to her and took one of her hands in mine; we stood there together, looking down at it. “You can go if you like, of course,” I said. “But won’t you stay and have your holiday with me? I’d like it awfully if you would.”

She didn’t look at me. “Are you sure you really want me here?” she said. “Don’t you think I’d be in the way, with all your friends, and that?”

I shook my head. “I meant it when I asked you to come down here for your holiday, that night in Leeds. It was useful
for the police, but that was only half. I meant it for you as well.”

She raised her head; she had got a colour, and her eyes were very bright. “You mean you really want me to stay the whole time?” she said. “Six more days?”

“Of course I do,” I said. “If it’s not too dull for you.”

She sighed happily. “It’s all so perfect here. It’s going to be the loveliest holiday I’ve ever had.” She rippled into laughter. “Won’t Ethel be jealous when I tell her!” Ethel was her friend who had gone to Scarborough. “And she’ll never believe me when I tell her I’ve been good.”

I laughed and took her arm. “I don’t suppose she will,” I said. And so we went and dined.

I forget what we talked about at dinner that night; I only remember that the telephone bell rang in the middle of it. I left the table and went to it in the library, and it was Joan speaking from her house in Golders Green.

“Is that Malcolm?”

“Speaking,” I said.

“Oh, Malcolm—this is Joan this end.” I said something polite. “What I rang you up about was this: can we come down and spend the night with you to-morrow—me and Philip? We’ve got a couple of days for the
Irene
, and Philip wants to have a talk with you. Oh, just one minute, he’s here.”

Stenning came to the telephone. “Evening, Stevenson; I say, is it you who’s been putting the C.I.D. on my track again? I had a fellow called Norman call to see me two or three days ago—wanted to know all sorts of things. He said I’d told you, or something. Yes, I met him once before—not a bad cove, is he?” I sometimes think that Stenning must know everybody in the world. “Well, what I thought was this: Joan and I might come down in time for dinner to-morrow night, and we’d have a chat about it before going off in the
Irene
. How’s that?”

“Quite all right,” I replied. “You won’t be able to have your usual room, though. You’ll have to put up with single ones.”

He asked: “Why’s that?”

Some things can hardly be explained over the telephone. I said: “It’s occupied.”

I heard him laugh. “I remember when I was a young man I used to live in sin a bit myself,” he said genially. There was a scuffling noise at the other end; I could imagine Joan throwing a cushion at him. “That’s all right, old boy—we quite understand.” I smiled; he had an uncanny flair for hitting near the mark. “All right, we’ll be down in time for dinner. Can I land in Thompson’s field?”

“I expect so. I’ll get him to clear that shed. It’s a Moth, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” he said. “All right, I’ll see you then.”

I hung up the receiver and went back to Mollie in the dining-room. “That was my cousin and her husband,” I told her. “Speaking from London. They’re coming down here to spend the night to-morrow.”

She stared at me in alarm. “Coming here?”

I nodded. “I think you’ll like them.”

She waited till Rogers was out of the room, then beat towards me. “Please, Commander Stevenson,” she said, “don’t you think I’d better not be here when your cousins come?” She paused for a moment. “I mean, it looks so funny for you.”

I laughed. “Not half so funny as it does for you.”

She smiled. “I don’t mind a bit about me. But, I mean, it looks so awful for you with your friends, having a strange girl in the house, and everything.”

I buttered a bit of toast. “If my friends don’t like the way I carry on they needn’t come,” I said phlegmatically. “I’d rather have the strange girl, myself.” I paused. “As a matter of fact, you don’t need to worry about these people—really. They’ll only be here for the one night, and you’ll like Joan.”

She asked me: “What’s their name?”

“Stenning,” I said, “Sir Philip and Lady Stenning. I expect you’ve heard about him, haven’t you? The flying man.”

She stared at me, wide-eyed. “I saw him on the pictures once. Is he your cousin?”

“His wife is. Lady Stenning is my cousin Joan.”

“Oh——” She thought about it for a minute, and then she said: “Don’t you think I’d better just
go
away while they’re here? I mean, I’m sure Lady Stenning will think it awfully funny, won’t she?” She said: “I could just go down and stay in the town till they’ve gone.”

“If you talk like that,” I said, “I’ll ring up and say they can’t come.”

She laughed and said I mustn’t do that, and we went on with dinner, but I could see that she was not at ease. She talked carefully, and a little absent-mindedly, about unimportant things, but said no more about it till the table was cleared and we rose to
go
into the other room. In the hall she hesitated.

“Please,” she said, “I’ve only got this evening-frock, you know, and it’s two years old.” She looked down at it critically. “It’s terribly grubby. Do you think it will be all right for Lady Stenning?”

I smiled. I think she thought that Joan would look at her through a lorgnette, and that Stenning would wear a morning-coat and talk about the League. “I wouldn’t worry about that,” I said. “They’re flying down, so they won’t bring much stuff. I don’t suppose Joan will want to change at all. And anyway, she hasn’t got a dinner-frock that’s a patch on that one.”

She beamed. “I’m glad you like me in it,” she said. “It was awfully pretty, but it’s an old thing now.”

We went into the library and had our coffee sitting on the chesterfield, and over it she told me how she had had that dress in the first instance for a speciality dance she used to do when she was in a Palais in Manchester, and she told me how she had altered it to make it into a dinner-frock. And from that we went on talking about dancing and music, till at last I said: “Wouldn’t you like to play the piano a bit to-night? I’d like it awfully if you would.”

She looked very doubtful. “I don’t play very well, and I haven’t got any of my pieces here. I don’t think I could play
anything except dance tunes out of my head. You wouldn’t care so much about those, would you?”

“Rather,” I said. “Play
Body and Soul.”

She laughed, and slipped over to the piano. I sat over on the other side of the room with my cigar while she crashed into the jazz melody; she played well, with a spirit and energy which made up in that sort of music for her occasional slips. I moved to a chair nearer the piano and presently, warming to her work, she began to sing the words.

She had a trained voice, and for a time I wondered where she had got it from, until I remembered her early training for the chorus. That night she sang those dance songs with a naïve feeling that robbed them of all crudity and gave them a new interpretation to me. She showed them to me as the folk songs of the people that I know so little of, the working England and America that I scarcely knew. I sat there thinking how much I had lived apart since the war, that I knew so little of her side of life.

The night closed down about us and I lit a reading lamp above her piano. She sat there fingering the keys and talking to me about the songs and dances that she knew, showing me the snap and rhythm of the airs, telling me the steps for each. That subject was peculiarly her own. From the semidarkness of the hall I sat and watched her at the piano, the slim lines of her neck and shoulders merging gently into the silver bodice of her dress. She had gained a colour from her pleasure in the music; in the soft light I saw that she was very beautiful.

And presently she said: “Oh, and I know another one. I do think this is pretty; it comes out of a play called
Bitter Sweet
. It’s sort of different to the rest of them.” She played the foxtrot air for a few minutes, and then sang quietly:

I sat there very quiet, listening to her; she had grown absorbed in her song. It seemed to me that I was listening to something more than a scene out of a revue, that I was listening to a confession of the philosophy which guided her among the various hazards of the life she had to live. I felt that she was paying me a singular honour in singing that to me, perhaps unconsciously.

Her voice died away into the lonely silence of my house. She dropped her fingers from the keys and sat there motionless. “That was very beautiful,” I said.

She turned to me, her eyes shining in the dim light. “You mean you really thought that?—that it was nice?”

I stirred a little in my chair. “It suited you,” I said.

She sat there gazing down at me, not quite understanding what I meant. “It’s my favourite,” she said at last. “It is pretty, isn’t it?”

She got up and closed the piano; with that song she had finished singing for the night. I crossed to the side table where they leave my night-cap. “You’d like a drink after all that singing,” I suggested. “What would you like?” I eyed the table. “There’s whisky here—and lemonade. Would you like a gin and tonic?”

She hesitated. “Do you know what I’d like—if it wouldn’t be a dreadful trouble?”

I paused. “What’s that?”

“A cup of tea.”

I rang the bell and ordered tea, and we went through into
the model room. By the
Jane Ellen
model case she stopped. “Was this the ship?” she asked.

I nodded. “That was the ship.”

She stood there looking at the model for a long time, very still, one hand resting on the case. And then: “It was a splendid thing,” she said.