This Was Tomorrow (14 page)

For Jeff and Sylvia, reunion meant mostly that he sat patiently in the darkened theatre watching her at work on the stage, waiting for the intervals in her performance when she could slip through the pass door and sit down beside him. They spoke very little then, but sometimes she would slide a slim, clammy paw into his hand. They ate hurried lunches together, either in her dressing-room or at the nearest quick restaurant, and by dinner-time she was limp with nerves and fatigue and had to go to bed early to be ready for another day of the same. All the while Jeff marvelled at her stamina and good temper and matter-of-fact acceptance of the organized hullaballoo which precedes even the best-managed first night. “
I
wouldn’t do it,” he said more than once, in mixed admiration and pity. “Not for all the tea in China. I wouldn’t earn my living in the theatre, not if I had to sell papers on a street corner!”

“Stevie loves it,” Sylvia replied philosophically. “He drops ten pounds before every opening and picks it up again during the first month of the run. He
thrives
on it. You can’t let him down.”

“Who can’t?” said Jeff.

“Well,
I
can’t, for one. I’ll be all right in a couple of weeks, myself. He’s different this time, too—having a bit more fun than usual. I expect it’s the excitement of opening in London, I never saw him so gay.”

At that moment Stephen came down the aisle behind them in the dark and laid his hands on their shoulders from behind.

“Come out back a minute,” he whispered, and they followed him to the dim carpeted space behind the last row of the pit. “Look,” said Stephen, and he wasn’t a bit gay. “I’ve just been talking to Evadne on the telephone. She’s got Hermione’s cold, and they’ve put her to bed, and she says she won’t be able to come to the first night. Now, Jeff, you’ve got to do something. Get hold of Bracken’s doctor and take him there and turn him loose. God knows what sort of quack Hermione has called in.”

“But it’s Wednesday night you open,” said Jeff reasonably. “If she’s in bed now with a feverish cold—”

“
Get
a
doctor!
”
snapped Stephen. “Get somebody who can break down that temperature and put her on her feet!” There was a short, pregnant silence in the dark at the back of the theatre, while they tried in mutual astonishment to see his face. “She’s
crying
because she can’t come on Wednesday,” said Stephen. “And while I was talking, Hermione came and took the ’phone out of her hand and ordered her back to bed and told
me
where to head in. I don’t know what you’re all thinking of,” he said accusingly to Jeff, “to let her live like that. You must know how Hermione is!”

“Sure we know,” said Jeff, rousing to his own defence, and Virginia’s. “But wait till you try to head Evadne off from doing something she’s been Guided to do!”

“Guided or not, she wants to come to the opening on
Wednesday,” said Stephen. “And she’s going to, in spite of Hermione and doctors. Or there won’t be an opening on Wednesday. I’ll postpone it.”

“Because of
Evadne?
”
said Jeff. “How would that look in the papers?”

“It won’t be in the papers. I can always have a cold myself,” said Stephen, and it was then that Sylvia realized with a resounding revelation how things were going.

“Mr. Sprague!” yelled a voice from the stage. “Has anyone seen Mr. Sprague?”

“Coming!” Stephen yelled back. “All right, Jeff, I leave it to you, get going.” And I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised,” he added, “if Hermione was only trying to put something across. If she could keep Evadne in bed and make her miss the fun, she
would.
”

“How right you are,” said Jeff. “I begin to see a blinding light.”

“Well, blind yourself right along to the flat and find put what’s going on up there,” said Stephen. “And let it be known out loud that if Evadne isn’t allowed to come on Wednesday night I shall go to bed myself with double pneumonia until she can. Come on, Sylvie—second act.”

Jeff went straight to Virginia at the Savoy, because, he said, he was
afraid
to go to the flat and face Hermione alone. Besides, he wanted help about the doctor. Virginia heard him with a slow, wondering smile.

“Stephen!” she said. “Stephen and Evadne. Oh, God is good.
That
will stop her nonsense!”

“It’s going to be something, when Stephen locks horns with Hermione,” said Jeff. “I’m looking forward to this.
He’ll
give ’em this absolute what-have-you stuff!”

“He mustn’t be allowed to put Evadne’s back up about it,” Virginia warned him, starting for the telephone to ring up Harley Street. “If anyone attacks Hermione outright, it only makes Evadne sorry for her and she defends her to the death. Tell Stephen to be diplomatic about Hermione, whatever happens.”

“He’s better brought up than I was,” said Jeff. “I find it very difficult not to dot her one now and then, myself, but Steve is still a Southerner about women, he’ll do it painlessly if anyone can. I had thought of getting Evadne stage-struck, to take her mind off things, but if we can get her Stephen-struck it will work the same. Although, if you don’t mind my saying so, he might have fallen in love with somebody a lot
easier,
if you know what I mean.”

“Stephen can cope,” said Virginia. “Much better than Mark, or anyone like that. It will be the making of her. She’s not
really
hard to get along with, she just needs an
object
in life.”

“You mean objective,” said Jeff. “Well, she doesn’t deserve any such luck as Stephen, I hope you can bring that home to her as time goes on.”

Virginia’s suspicion that their own doctor, who had known Evadne since she was small, had not been called to Bayswater as he should have been, was confirmed when she talked to him on the telephone. As they had no idea who was in charge there, if anyone, he was reluctant to interfere, and they left it that Virginia should go the flat at once and exercise her own judgment. If Evadne was able to be moved in a closed car to Virginia’s rooms at the Savoy, he would come and see her there.

The car was sent for, and Virginia and Jeff set out, both looking rather grim.

“I do hope we’re not making too much of this,” said Virginia as they reached the corner of the Queen’s Road. “They may have a perfectly competent man. I should feel an awful fool if we took her away over Hermione’s dead body and then she couldn’t go on Wednesday night after all, or got worse. But I haven’t raised four children to let Hermione tell me what’s what about a feverish cold.”

Hermione opened the door to their ring, and stood looking at them in angry surprise.

“Well!” she said uncordially. “This is an honour!”

Virginia brushed past her into the flat, saying sweetly, “I wondered how you were getting along with all these colds,”
and before the words were out of her mouth there was a cry from Evadne’s bedroom—“Mummy! How perfectly marvellous! Hermione said you’d get the germ too if we asked you to come!”

“Since when have I dodged my children’s germs?” asked Virginia, sitting down on the edge of the bed and laying a knowing hand on Evadne’s ears and forehead. “Not much fever, is there? Is your throat sore?”

“A little bit. But I’m nothing like as bad as Hermione was, really. She’s being
much
too careful of me, bless her.”

“Have you had anything to eat?”

“Just a cup of tea. I’m not hungry.”

“No eggs? No broth?”

“Broth for luncheon.”

“Out of a tin?”

“Oh, yes, it’s just as good, you know.”

Virginia found the thermometer on the bedside table, shook it down, and stuck it in her daughter’s mouth. It came out showing a scant ninety-nine.

“Get right up out of there and dress,” said Virginia. “The car is downstairs. You’re coming back to the hotel with me.”

“But Hermione says—”

“Never mind that,
I
say you’re to see your own doctor at once, and we’ll do as
he
says.” Virginia went to the wardrobe and chose a thick wool dress. “Put that on. And you’d better drink a glass of port wine before you start, to keep you warm.”

“There isn’t any, I’m afraid,” Hermione said from the doorway, with some satisfaction.

“Well, sherry, then. Whisky. Anything.”

“There’s no liquor here, Mummy,” Evadne explained as she got out of bed. “We don’t have it.”

“My God,” said Virginia simply. “Would you run to a cup of tea?”

“I think it’s most unwise for her to go out today,” said Hermione, standing her ground. “She’s been very feverish and coughing.”

“I don’t know what sort of doctor you may have had,” Virginia began, and—

“Oh, I didn’t have a doctor,” Evadne reassured her. “That was Hermione. We didn’t think it was necessary for me.”

Virginia looked from one to the other. Hermione met her eyes defiantly. Evadne, bending over her slippers, did not see the glance at all.

“Get your clothes on, Evadne,” she said, and started for the kitchen to make the tea herself.

The dirty dishes from luncheon were stacked on the sink, and the meal, whatever it was, appeared to have come entirely out of tins, which stood, unrinsed, among the dishes. Cold, soggy tea leaves were still in the pot, and the kitchen smelled of burnt toast. A saucepan half full of some congealed substance remained on the stove. Virginia set it aside and lighted the fire under the kettle.

“It won’t be my fault if she has a relapse now,” said Hermione, watching from the doorway.

“Won’t it?” said Virginia. “Where do you keep the tea, in the dustbin?”

Hermione found the tea, in its blue tin behind a drying loaf of bread on a shelf, and handed it to her.

“It’s all that interfering man,” she complained. “He rang up and got her all upset about missing the first night. Surely he could spare just two of us from his Roman triumph!”

“Don’t you want to go on Wednesday yourself?” Virginia asked, rinsing the teapot at the sink.

“I suppose I shall have to, if he drags Evadne back into it, sick or well. She’s going to sit with me, mind. Bracken said our seats were together.”

“Very well,” Virginia conceded wearily. “Don’t you
ever
clean this place up?”

“Mrs. Spindle comes in every morning. I’m not very handy in a kitchen, I’m afraid,” said Hermione as though it was something to be proud of. “I’ve done the best I could for Evadne, but it’s been very inconvenient.”

“I suppose it was more convenient for her when you were ill.”

“Oh, Evadne
likes
messing about with food,” Hermione replied coldly, and wandered away to the living-room where Jeff was waiting, his hat still in his hand.

“Why is it,” said Evadne gratefully as she drank the hot, strong tea her mother had brewed, “that
nobody
makes tea the way you do?”

“Never mind the blarney,” said Virginia, pleased. “Drink it down, and let’s get out of here.”

“I oughtn’t to go like this, you know. Hermione has been awfully good to me, I don’t want her to think I don’t appreciate it.”

“Good to you, how?” said Virginia sceptically.

“Well, making me stay in bed and keep warm, you know—she had to go out herself and buy the food, which she hates to do—and she brought me some flowers—”

“And tried to keep you from going to the theatre on Wednesday night!”

“But she was in bed for five days herself, and for me that would be Friday, and—”

“All right, all right, put your hat on,” said Virginia, and Evadne obeyed without further argument.

When their doctor called at the Savoy he left a bottle of medicine for a night cough, prescribed a stiff hot whisky and lemon at bedtime, and told her to wear something warm on Wednesday night and not get overheated. That was all.

“I knew it,” said Stephen, gratified, when Jeff reported to his room after the rehearsal. “Hermione was just throwing her weight around. But for me, she’d have got away with it!”

“Look, son,” said Jeff patiently, sitting down on Stephen’s bed while he bathed and changed. “Nobody tossed Evadne to the wolves. She packed up and
went,
of her own free will.”

“Well, now there are going to be some changes made,” Stephen threatened.

“Yeah,” said Jeff without conviction. “Wait till she starts changing you. You’ll find yourself surrendered to God, acknowledging your essential sinfulness in public, having a quiet time every morning, listening-in and receiving guidance, recording your thoughts in a little black book to share at the next meeting—and so on.”

“Do they really talk like that?” Stephen asked.

“And what’s more,” Jeff went on, “the next step is continuance, which means you’ll come round trying to change me, and that’s when you get a poke in the nose.”

“Honest, she hasn’t said a word to me about God,” said Stephen.

“Wait. She’s had a cold.”

“Well, anyway, I’m done for,” Stephen confessed cheerfully. “She’s young, and crazy, and confused. But I’m not a bit confused. I know what I want, and I’m willing to sweat it out till she grows up some.”

“I suppose you realize,” Jeff remarked gravely, “that the desire for sexual sin can be richly sublimated.”

Stephen gaped at him.

“Where did you hear that?”

“At one of their meetings. I sneaked in at the back.”

“Was Evadne there?”

“She was. But she didn’t see me, I sneaked out again. I felt the way I did the time I treated myself to a burlesque show. All red around the ears and a little sick at my stomach. Spiritual nudity is no more attractive than near-naked girls on a gangway.”

“No kidding, she
believes
this stuff?”

“There’s a lot in it to believe,” Jeff admitted. “It’s the way they go about it that won’t stay down with me.”

“Why can’t they just go to church when they feel it coming on?” Stephen inquired sensibly. “I do.”

“There seems to be a lot of people who are more self-conscious about going to church than about standing up before a lot of back-slapping well-wishers and solving their personal problems by public discussion,” said Jeff.

“Well, the whole thing sounds very screwy to me,” Stephen concluded without heat.

“Steve, look. You mean this, don’t you? You’ve got it bad for Evadne?”