There Will Come A Stranger (15 page)

By the door, Mr. Ogilvie, in a greenish dinner jacket that smelt of moth balls, was gruffly welcoming a group of late arrivals. He was huffy by reason of their lateness, since one was his own nephew, who was staying with him for the dance, and whom he had “lent” for dinner to this particular party, since they were a man short. He had wanted Barry to be here, to be at hand in case of some emergency, and was none the less annoyed though no emergency had arisen.

“Well, well—you
’
re here at last, then! Better late than never, I suppose!” said he, and thrust his nephew willy-nilly into the rapidly re-forming circles of the Paul Jones.

After a few bars the music stopped. The dancers stopped too. Valerie found herself facing a tall, fair young man she had not seen as yet this evening; he must be a late arrival, she decided. And yet—wasn
’
t there something familiar about him?

Then, as her eyes met her new partner
’
s pleasant blue ones, Valerie
’
s widened in incredulous surprise, as she remembered where it was that she had seen this man before.

It had been that afternoon when, newly arrived in London, she had yielded to the overwhelming impulse that possessed her, urging her to go and see where Rory lived. She had felt then, intuitively, that he was Rory
’
s friend. She felt it now, with a renewed conviction.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

As soon as Barry saw the little fair girl looking at him with such wide, inquiring eyes, he knew he was in luck. She really was a sweetie! Quite the most attractive girl he
’
d met in months—extremely pretty, with her shining honey-coloured hair and rose-leaf skin, and above all an appealing air about her guaranteed to make any male feel extra manly and protective.

The band swept off in another tune, but, as he would have taken her in his arms to dance, an odd thing happened. Her expression changed, as though something had suddenly hurt her, and she drew away from him, saying disjointedly that she really was most frightfully sorry, but she
’
d rather that they didn
’
t dance this, and she did hope he didn
’
t mind
?

“No, of course not!” he assured her, truthfully enough, for if they danced it she would be swept away from him by someone else in next to no time, whereas if they sat it out he might persuade her to stay talking to him till the Paul Jones ended.

“Let
’
s find some place to sit, shall we?” he suggested, thinking that probably her shoes were hurting her, or something of that kind. But in that he was mistaken, for as they left the floor she added in apologetic explanation, “Stupid of me, but I—I just can
’
t bear dancing to that tune
—
”

Barry was surprised, for it was one that he particularly liked: something about “Susanna”, with a tantalizing lilt to it that set one
’
s foot fidgeting with the urge to dance.

“Don
’
t you?” he said, “Funny—it
’
s rather a favourite of mine. But I daresay you
’
re more musical than I am—wouldn
’
t be difficult!”

The girl said nothing, and he thought no more of it. When they had found a sofa in a quiet corner he changed the subject.

“I suppose you
’
ve been imported here for the occasion, like myself?” he asked her, having offered her a cigarette, which she refused.

She smiled at him. “Why do you suppose so?”

“I stay here pretty often with my uncle—Henry Ogilvie, who organized this dance to-night. So I know most of the people who live round about.”

Valerie explained that she and her sister were spending a few days with John Ainslie and his sister, at Bieldside, wondering, the while, how she could bring the conversation round to Rory.

“Where do you live, when you
’
re not staying with your uncle?” she asked him, with that end in view.

Barry told her that he lived in London.

“Oh ... Is your home there? Or do you live in rooms
?
”

Gratified by her interest, he told her that he shared a flat with a cousin of his, but to her disappointment did not mention Rory
’
s name. If only he had, she could have told him that she knew his cousin, and having agreed upon the smallness of the world, it would have been quite natural to ask him casually what Rory was doing with himself these days. She would try leading up to it by telling him that she had been to Switzerland last winter; that might make him speak of Rory, particularly if she were to mention Varlet-sur-Montagne.

But as her lips parted, Barry spoke first. “What
’
s your own part of the world?” he asked her.

“Until quite recently I lived in Darlingford. But
now I share a flat in London with my sister
—
”
Valerie began. Her sentence was never to be finished. The Paul Jones had ended. People were
streaming out of the room where they had been dancing, and now a voice exclaimed above their heads, “Hul
l
o, Barry, old boy! I might have known old Henry
’
d haul you here to grace his function!”

Looking up, they saw a dark man in a kilt and a tall fair girl, smiling at them. Evidently they were old friends of Barry
’
s. He sprang up to greet them, to all appearances delighted to see them. No one could have guessed that he was fuming at the interruption. After a brief exchange of greetings, he turned to her to introduce them as Michael Cowan and Anne Hume—only to realize he did not know her name.

“
Valerie Stevenson,” she told them, hoping against hope that Rory might have mentioned her to Barry. But Rory had spoken to his cousin of the girl to whom he had lost trace only as Valerie, without telling him her surname, and it did not occur to Barry that this Valerie and Rory
’
s could by the widest of coincidences be one and the same.

The two men drew up chairs, and for the remainder of the interval the other couple joined them, making it impossible for Valerie to turn the conversation in a way that might lead up to Rory
’
s name.

However, as he sat listening to their talk of mutual friends and local news, broken from time to time by polite attempts to draw her into it, she realized that after all this interruption had changed the situation for the better. Now that she knew Barry
’
s name, she could quite easily take the first opportunity to ask him if by any chance he were the “Barry” who shared Rory Wilson
’
s flat; he would conclude that Rory had mentioned him to her by name. And if her intuition had been wrong, and he was after all no friend of Rory
’
s, no harm would have been done.

The band began to play an eightsome. They all rose. Michael Cowan said that he hoped Valerie would spare him a dance later in the evening—for the moment he was heavily embroiled with his own party. Then he and Anne walked on ahead of her and Barry.

Now for it! She turned to him. “Are you
—
?”
she was beginning, when disaster overtook her plan. The others had been wondering what could have become of her after her disappearance from the Paul Jones. John and Harry had been searching for her unsuccessfully. And now Harry, catching sight of her, came up to them.

“Valerie! We
’
ve been hunting for you everywhere! We
’
re making up a set for this!” He caught her hand. “Come on—they
’
ll be beginning any minute now!”

She had to go with him. She couldn
’
t pull her hand away, protesting that she didn
’
t want to dance the reel, that there was something that she desperately wanted to ask Barry. Over her shoulder, as she went with Harry, she gave Barry a despairing look that puzzled him till he decided that he must have imagined it—or else, perhaps, she hated reels!

Desperately Valerie hoped that he would ask her later for another dance. Barry had every intention of doing so; there was nothing he would have liked more. But he had reckoned without his uncle! For the remainder of the evening Henry Ogilvie made good use of his nephew—why else, after all, had he invited him to stay, and paid his fare from London? He bade him first to dance with this disconsolate wallflower, then with that one; now to see to it that the band had plenty to drink, now to find a fourth for bridge with General and Mrs. Manning and their niece.

When at last, turning a deaf ear to a command that he should dance with a plain shy girl, who had been hiding her humiliation at her lack of partners in the cloakroom half the evening, Barry tracked down Valerie to the corner where she was sitting with John and asked her for the next dance, it was too late: she had promised it to Peter Douglas, and it would probably be the last.

“Well, if there
is
another, may I have it?”

Valerie, with soaring spirits, said he might. All through the next dance she willed the band to give them one more extra, putting all her mind to it, so that she danced abominably and Peter thought with some concern that surely she must be very tired
?

But all her willing, all her passionate hoping, were of no avail. As the waltz ended, the pianist struck the opening chords of the National Anthem; the dancers stiffened automatically to attention, and the dance was over.

Still one hope was left to Valerie: she might encounter Barry at the door as they were leaving. But, though she grabbed her coat and left the cloakroom while the others got their
wraps in a
more leisurely fashion, she looked in vain for him among the throng of those who were departing, for he had gone to help in sorting out the chaos in the car park, where a car had stalled across the exit and refused to start again. In a few minutes the others gathered, and there was nothing for it but to go.

All of them were rather weary after expending so much energy in dancing reels, so Valerie
’
s silence on the way back to Bieldside passed unnoticed, and their exchange of good nights was brief. For a little while there were the usual sounds that fill a house at bedtime: running taps and water flowing in the pipes, drawers and cupboards opening and closing, windows being flung wide. Then the house settled into silence.

Valerie lay gazing with smarting eyes through her uncurtained window at the star-pricked sky. If only she had had a second chance to talk to Barry!

Yet if I had, she thought, what would have come of it? I should have heard how Rory is, and what he
’
s doing with himself these days. I might have learnt a little of his life in London. And what good would that have done me? He has forgotten me. I must—I
must
forget him too
...

She wondered if some other girl had lain here in this very room in years gone by, watched by those same indifferent stars, listening to the music of the river flowing through the quiet night; wondered if that girl, too, had grieved for love whose course had gone agley. If that were so, time must have long since cured her trouble. And in due course, she thought, it will heal mine too. Yet though she knew that she must strive, and go on striving, towards forgetfulness until she found it, with strange perversity she felt the misery she suffered now was almost preferable to forgetting Rory.

Barry had been hoping that a long week-end at home in Devon might have made Rory take a less gloomy view of life; or even that he would meet another girl there, who might distract him from his brooding over this Valerie. Secretly Barry considered him well rid of her, for she must be a horrid little baggage to ignore his letter of apology and explanation.

However, on returning to the flat he was depressed to find that Rory, who had arrived back before him, was evidently in no better a frame of mind than when he went away, but was as gloomy and morose as ever: testy and irritable, too, in startling contrast to the good-natured, gay companion of the days before that wretched evening when he
’
d lost the girl
’
s address and failed to find her. Ruefully Barry hoped this dismal state of affairs might improve soon, before one or other of them lost his temper and they had a row.

A few days after his return from Scotland Barry, returning in the evening from the office, found that as often happened, Rory, whose daily journey was a good deal longer than his own, was later than himself.

Pouring himself a glass of sherry, he switched on the wireless in the middle of a programme of light music; he enjoyed a cheerful accompaniment to his study of the evening paper.

A dance tune lilted out into the room. It was the very one that little fair girl he
’
d got hold of in the Paul Jones the other night had said she couldn
’
t hear to dance to. Softly he whistled it. Presently a tenor voice began to sing the words.

“My small, my slim Susanna,

Come out with me to dance,

And I will teach you how to kiss,

And weave a sweet romance—”

The door was flung wide. Rory crossed the room in two strides and turned the wireless off. “That blasted tune
—
!”

Barry was aghast: his cousin looked distraught. Trying to pass off the incident casually, he said mildly, “Funny—it
’
s rather a favourite of mine, but you
’
re the second person I
’
ve come across in the last few days who couldn
’
t bear it!”

Rory said nothing. He lit a cigarette; he smoked incessantly, these days.

Worried, and puzzled too, Barry returned to studying the racing page. But the printed words made little sense to him, for he was trying to piece together fragments of a puzzle that eluded him. He had a curious feeling that if only he could make them fit together confusion might be clarified.

That girl had said she couldn
’
t bear to dance to this particular tune. But why
?
It was a charming tune, and popular. So surely it must have been for sentimental reasons that she wouldn
’
t dance. Girls were like that.

And now, here was old Rory hating it as well, and one was pretty sure it was because of some association with that girl that he was so upset about, that Valerie
...

The girl in Scotland had been Valerie too!
Valerie Stevenson! But surely—no, it couldn
’
t be. It was too far-fetched to make sense! And yet
—
?

“I say, old boy!” said Barry, “That girl of yours—I know her name was Valerie, but what was the rest of it?”

“Stevenson. Why?” said Rory curtly.

“Valerie Stevenson! My godfathers!” said Barry, “
I
believe I
’
ve found her for you
!”

Fifteen minutes later, a taxi cruising along Ebury Street was frantically hailed by two young men. One of them gave the driver an address off the Brompton Road, told him to hurry like the devil, and leapt into the cab. The other slammed the door, calling, “Good luck, old boy!”

His passenger seemed in a proper state, and no mistake! the driver thought. If he had said to take him to Queen Charlotte
’
s, one would have thought he
’
d just had news his missus had got triplets, at the very least!

Rory leaned forward tensely as the taxi slid away up Ebury Street. So far, so good. They
’
d got through right away to John, whose number they had been given by Enquiries. By the greatest piece of luck they
’
d caught him just as he was going out to fish. Rory himself had taken over then from Barry.

“That you; John? Rory speaking! Rory Wilson
...
Could you give me Valerie
’
s address? I had it but I lost it, like a fool
...
Hadn
’
t got yours, so I couldn
’
t ask you if you knew hers, but by an incredible bit of luck the cousin I live with ran across her at some dance—says she and Vivian were staying with you
—
”

John knew nothing of what had happened between Valerie and Rory, save that Valerie had seemed disinclined to talk of him when John had mentioned him. Rory
’
s frantic S.O.S. came as a complete surprise to him. But he was careful to let no surprise sound in his voice as he gave Rory the address and asked him for his own, saying that he would be in London before long, and they must meet then.

He had told him Valerie
’
s telephone number, too, and for a moment Rory had thought of ringing up immediately. But the telephone was too impersonal. He
’
d got to see her face to face, at once
...
Oh, Lord
—why
must every traffic light in London switch to red just as they were coming up to it?

The taxi turned at last into the quiet cul-de-sac. Rory thrust a note into the driver
’
s hand, in far too great a hurry to wait for the change due to him, charged up the steps, plunged through the door, and found himself in a narrow hall, facing a lift. Flat five was on the top floor, according to a notice on the wall. Stepping in, he pressed the appropriate button, and was borne aloft.

Now for the first time it occurred to him that Valerie might be out. He simply couldn
’
t stand it if she were! He wouldn
’
t go away, though. He would wait outside her door till she came back, till midnight if need be, or longer
...

The lift stopped. Rory stepped out on the landing by the door of flat five, and pressed the bell.

Valerie had been alone all afternoon, for Vivian had gone with friends to see a film, and had not yet returned. Valerie had been asked to go too, but had made some excuse; she had not felt inclined for going out.

Solitary inactivity was unendurable these days to Valerie, .for if she were idle her thoughts invariably strayed to Rory and the might-have
-
been. So this afternoon, left to her own devices, she had done some washing, pressed a suit of Vivian
’
s, made a cake, prepared a
soufflé
for their supper. Then, tired out, she put a match to the fire that was still necessary of an evening, and sat beside it, drinking a belated cup of tea.

She was exhausted mentally as well as physically. It was a constant strain to smile when she was feeling miserable, to appear cheerful when her heart was heavy, but she had been doing it valiantly day after day: she couldn
’
t bear that even Vivian should suspect the true state of affairs. Besides, one couldn
’
t go about depressing other people by being dreary!

But now, as she sat there alone beside the fire, her courage was at a lower ebb than ever before. For weeks a heavy weight of tears .had lain, unshed, behind her eyes, and now they suddenly brimmed up and overflowed. Fiercely she adjured herself, “Oh, don
’
t be such a soppy
fool
!”
blinked back the tears, and blew her nose, but unavailingly. The struggle was too much for her. Shaken by sobs, she slid on to the floor, and laying her arm upon her chair buried her face in it, and at last abandoned herself to her grief.

Thankfully she remembered that Vivian would not be back for some time, since she was going on from the cinema to a cocktail party. By the time that she returned cold water and a powder puff would have obliterated some of the traces of her weeping, and she could attribute those remaining to a headache.

How long she had been weeping she had no idea, when to her horror she heard the ringing of the bell. It was too late for a tradesman to be delivering—some friend must have called, with the intention of dropping in to have a chat!

Distraught, she sprang up and through swollen lids looked at her reflection in the mirror over the fireplace. Tear-stained face, red eyes and pink
-
tipped nose—she couldn
’
t, simply
couldn
’
t
face a visitor in this state! There was only one thing to be done. If she stayed perfectly quiet, whoever was waiting on the outside landing would in time conclude that there was no one in the flat, and go away.

Tensely she stood there listening. Presently the bell rang again, shrilling a long, imperious summons. Still she did not move.

Out on the landing, Rory grew more desperate with every passing moment. They were out. They must be, for if he could hear the bell so clearly out here, it must be audible in every corner, of the flat. Looking at his watch, he saw that it was half past six. If they had gone out for the afternoon they would most likely be returning soon. Unless, of course, they had been shopping, and had then gone on to see a film or have a meal with friends. If that were so, it might be long enough before they turned up!

Without a thought of dinner, he decided he would wait here all night if he
h
ad to.

When the bell did not ring a third time, Valerie relaxed, concluding that the visitor was gone, although she had not heard the clang of the lift door, as one usually did. Perhaps whoever it was had for some reason walked downstairs. At any rate, she thought, the episode had made her pull herself together! Now she would be able to repair the ravages of her tears in good time before Vivian returned.

First, though, she would put the room in order. Straightening the rug and beating up the flattened cushion of her chair, she took the tea tray and went with it to the kitchen, meaning to wash up before she sought first aid for her betraying face.