Run! (14 page)

James came into the little office, made some routine enquiry, and waited to see what would happen.

“No, they haven't written,” said Miss Callender. “They always take longer than anyone else. Oh, Mr. Elliot, I've broken it off with Lenny—last night.”

“Much better than going on with it if you're not sure,” said James, feeling stubbornly sure that he was going to marry Sally and that Sally was going to marry him.

Miss Callender heaved a dutiful sigh.

“That's just what Mother said. And I'm sure I can't be too thankful, because really, Mr. Elliot, you've no idea how he went on—last night, I mean. And in front of his mother too part of the time, and she didn't say anything, but she sat there pursing her lips and knitting a black shawl with a purple stripe at the edge. And all at once I saw just how it was going to be for hundreds and hundreds of evenings, Mrs. Rowbotham knitting black shawls and Lenny being jealous if I didn't want to knit them too, and I said, ‘That's enough, Mr. Rowbotham—there's no need to say another word, because we're not engaged any longer, and what I do and what I don't do is no concern of yours,' and I took off his ring and put it down on one of the tidies Mrs. Rowbotham made the year she was married. She's got the whole room full of tidies, and very single thing has to be put down on one of them, so I put the ring there, and I said, ‘Goodbye, Lenny,' and I ran out quick, because I didn't want them to see me cry. Only when I got outside I didn't want to cry any more, and besides, it wouldn't have done, because Bert Simpson happened to come along, and he asked if he could see me home, so I said yes, but we went to the pictures instead. And oh, Mr. Elliot, you can't think what a weight off my mind it was to feel that I could go out with Bert—he's ever such a nice boy and he's always wanted to be friends—and that we could enjoy ourselves, and no business of Lenny's and no scenes afterwards. It just brought it home to me what an escape I'd had.”

As James came out of the office, he was aware of a young man in a blue serge suit and a bowler hat. The slight tilt of the hat displayed tightly crinkled hair of a flaming red which took James straight back to his school study and a fag who always burned the toast for tea. The eyes under the bowler's brim were a light, dancing hazel. James knew him at once, but before he had time to speak the young man darted at him and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Hullo, 'ullo, 'ullo! Got you in one! Daphne said I would find you here. I can't think why we haven't run into each other before. Last time you chucked a dictionary at my head.”

“I expect you had burnt the toast, J.J.,” said James.

“No, not that time—it was the big ink-bottle all over your best flannel bags. Well, well, I dropped out of the blue last night. Literally, you know—I've just flown from India. And I want to buy a car. And Daphne said ‘Run along and do my cousin James Elliot a good turn,' and I said, ‘What James Elliot?' And then she produced the family tree, and I discovered that you really were my James Elliot—old school tie and that sort of thing. So I said ‘Done!' But Sally—by the way, you know my sister Sally, don't you?”

James said yes, he did know Sally.

“Well,” said Mr. Jock West, “have you been having a row with her or something?”

James said no, he hadn't been having a row, and why should he?

“Well, I don't know, but she didn't seem to want me to come round. No keenness about my doing you a good turn, so to speak. She and Daphne weren't seeing eye-to-eye about it, if you know what I mean, so I left them to it and buzzed along.”

“Very nice of you, J.J.,” said James rather grimly.

So Sally had tried to prevent her precious Jocko from coming near him. The sooner Sally adjusted herself to the idea that he and Jocko were going to be brothers-in-law, the better. He said,

“What sort of car do you want?”

Jocko grinned. He had rather a pale face and a lot of freckles.

“Something fast and nippy. Something that will push a hole in the speed-limit and leave the cops guessing.
Quelquechose de sportif,
” he added with an atrocious French accent. “And never mind the price.” He smote James again. “My good man, do you realize that I'm full of money? You don't because I don't, and I don't because Aunt Clementa's lawyers have only just coughed up, and I'd got to the point when no one would give me another ha'porth of credit—dirty dogs! So until I've landed out a good round dollop on something I shan't believe the money's real. Has Sally told you about my Aunt Clementa?”

“She said she'd left you some money.”

Jocko tipped his hat on to the back of his head and ran his fingers through his hair.

“Some money! Did she tell you how much it was? Five thousand—”

“Five thousand pounds?”

“
A year
!” said Jocko. “Think of it! Get it into the head—if you can! I haven't been able to yet. Fifty pounds a year and my pay—that was my form. Sally had a godmother who left her three hundred a year, but my little private income was fifty. And Aunt Clementa leaves me five thousand pounds a year and a stately home of England—also a hush-hush letter which got lost when I fell over a precipice in the Tyrol last year! By the way, Sally will be livid if she knows I've told you that. She's got the most frightful bee in her bonnet about the letter, and the accident, and all that. I suppose she hasn't said anything to you about it?”

“Why should she?” said James. “If you don't mind expense, and want a really first-class sports model—”

Jocko declined the red herring.

“Oh, well, she might, you know. Of course I don't know how well you know her.”

“You'd better ask her,” said James, and began to talk about cars in a firm, professional voice.

He was assisted by the appearance of Mr. Parkinson, but presently, Jocko having demanded a trial run, he found himself heading in the direction of the Great West Road.

“I should think she'd be just what you want.”

“Well, I'm going to try 'em all,” said Jocko. “And we've got to get somewhere where we can let her out. Thirty miles an hour's no use to me—I'd just about as soon walk. Didn't Sally tell you about the house Aunt Clementa left me? It's called Rere Place. Aunt Clementa was a Rere—the last of the family. They've got a coat-of-arms with three rere-mice in it—bats, you know—and I think they were a pretty batty lot. There are some awfully queer tales about the house. Sally hates it, but I'm going to live there.”

“You're not going to chuck the army!”

“I don't think so. I'd rather like to do a spot of racing at Brooklands, but I haven't made up my mind. I've got six months' leave, and I thought I'd open up the house and see how I liked it. Besides, there's that letter. I expect the old girl was batty, but there's just the chance—Did I tell you about the letter, or didn't I?”

“You didn't tell me what was in it,” said James.

“Not didn't—
couldn't.
You see, I don't suppose I ever read it, because Sally says I got it at breakfast, and she says I began to read it and shut up and put it in my pocket. And then we all went climbing, and I took a toss, and the next thing I knew was about three days later, and I couldn't remember anything about anything. I mean I couldn't have sworn that I'd had my breakfast that day, or gone climbing, or taken a toss, so naturally I didn't remember whether I'd ever finished reading the letter or not. If I did, I'd forgotten all about it, but quite likely I didn't. And the letter was gone. That's where Sally's bee comes in—she swears somebody pinched it, and I'm not at all sure she doesn't believe that somebody tried to do me in. Now I ask you—”

James gave a quick glance at him. He had an air of being innocently surprised, but then J.J. always did look innocent when he knew he had burned the toast. He thought there was a gleam in the greenish hazel eyes.

James said nothing.

Jock West laughed.

“Cautious Scot—aren't you? How much did Sally tell you?”

“You might ask her,” said James with his eye on the road.

“Hang it all, Elliot, who could possibly want to do me in?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, there you are. All the same, I'd like to know what was in that letter. I wonder if I did read it all, because I can only remember—”

“Oh, then you do remember some of it?”

“Suppose I do?”

James glanced at him again.

“Then I think I should shut my mouth on it.”

XIX

James got no answer from Sally. By the third evening he had reached the point of ringing Daphne up to ask whether she had delivered his letter. Daphne's voice, irritatingly sweet, came fluting over the wire.

“Of course, darling. I gave it to her at once—that evening. She was at the Osbornes', and I pushed it under her cloak when she was going away and said, ‘Hush—not a word!' And, darling, if it's any comfort to you, she blushed like fury. I really do feel a little bit sorry for poor Henri, because he's
very
devoted, and everybody's been saying that they're engaged, or just going to be, for simply ages.”

James said something short and rude about Henri, and rang off. He then looked up Ambrose Sylvester's number and dialled it. Just what he would have done it if had been Ambrose himself, or the decorative Hildegarde, or the devoted Henri who had answered, he did not stop to think, and fool's luck favoured him. It was Sally who said “Hullo!”

James's heart gave an uncomfortable thump. He said in a voice that sounded like someone else's,

“Sally, is that you?”

There was a pause. Then Sally said,

“Yes. Who is it?”

“James. Sally, why didn't you answer my letter? Daphne says she gave it to you. Sally—
darling
—”

“You've got the wrong number,” said Sally in a small cold voice. “Will you ring off, please.” And with that the receiver was hung up and the line went dead.

James, quite white with anger, returned to the studio and raged up and down there, restraining himself with a good deal of difficulty from kicking holes in his cousin Gertrude's canvases. He felt a special urge to kick a hole in Eve. Several holes. It would have been extraordinarily assuaging to fling Eve down on the studio floor and stamp on her, and her symbolic lobster, and her horrible blue tadpole.

He tore himself from this thought to sit down and write a violent letter to Sally, but when he had written about five sheets he got up suddenly and crammed them into the stove, where they burned away to nothing in about half a minute. A second letter followed the first. It ran less to violence and more to passion. James found himself writing at great speed, and without stopping to think, the sort of things which it had never previously occurred to him that anyone in real life could possibly write, or think, or say. The fact that he was not only doing it, but doing it in the most unreserved manner so appalled him that he stopped in the middle of the third sheet and cremated the document.

He had just begun a third letter which was to combine poignant reproach and the sort of phrases that would go straight to Sally's heart and wring it, with perfect restraint, dignity, and a regard for the fact that he was going to be Sally's husband and must therefore begin as he meant to go on and take the upper hand. Not, it will be perceived, a notably easy task.

He was, in fact, finding it notably difficult, when he heard a faint sound of something. It was so faint that he wasn't quite sure whether it had just begun or whether he had been hearing it for some time. The trap was open, or he might not have heard it at all.

He went half way down the stair to listen, and the knocking came again. There was someone at the outer door.

James went to it, drew back the bolt, and let in a rush of cold wind, and Sally. She was bare-headed, and wrapped in her black velvet cloak. When he put his arms round her she felt as cold and stiff as a piece of wood. He kissed her, and she shivered and pulled away, and went before him up the stair, climbing slowly and as if each step were an effort. They came into the studio, and he shut the trap. They stood looking at one another, and neither of them had said a single word. Curious, primitive business of love. He had tried to hold her, and she was not to be held. His touch had said all that the burned letters could have said for him, and she would have none of him, and of his love. She stood under the light, very cold, very pale, clutching at her cloak and looking at him with bright, reproachful eyes. She was Sally who had been most dear and tender and had turned suddenly into this inaccessible stranger. Why, she could have looked at him no differently if he had insulted her in the street. This was not to be borne, and he had no intention of bearing it. He said in an abrupt, matter-of-fact tone,

“What's the matter?”

Sally's eyes were as angry as the green fire which has fed on salt. They really seemed to have flames in them, little dancing emerald flames. She said with a cutting edge to her voice,

“I told you not to write, and you wrote. I told you not to telephone, and you rang me up. Can't you get it into your head that it's dangerous?”

James said, “Drop it!” and then, “It's no good your taking that sort of tone with me. You can't drive me, and you'd better not try.”

Sally glared.

“I don't want to try.”

“And I won't be spoken to like that either! What's wrong with this show is that you're trying to run it and it's got out of hand. You tell me I'm to do this, and that, and the other, and I'm not to do this, and that, and the other, and all the time you're keeping me in the dark, telling me the bits you choose and keeping back the bits you don't choose. And if you ask me, you're making a damned muddle of the whole thing, and if there's any dirty work going on, you'll land yourself, and me and J.J. in some particularly nasty mess!”