This Was Tomorrow (31 page)

“Who’s going to be the warden?”

“Well, I am, sort of, I’ve signed up for the training, that is, over in the Parish Hall at Upper Briarly. We can’t count on Nigel being here much of the time, he’ll have other things to do. I have to learn first-aid, which of course I once knew very well and it all comes back to me, and how to fit the gas-masks, which we didn’t have last time, and so on. And I’ve registered the cars there too for emergency use. It seems pretty silly so far from London, but they’re bound to try for Bristol and Cardiff from the air, and that takes them practically over our heads, and will create a refugee problem. We are listed as a reception area, and shall have floods of snotty-nosed children and expectant mothers to feed and clothe and house, once things start, I suppose.”

“C-could I help?” Evadne asked with some diffidence.

“Everyone can help. There’s a meeting of the billeting committee at Cleeve next week— Rosalind is making up lists of how many evacuees people can take, and they are probably going to open up the big house for a hospital or convalescent home. You could lend her a hand with that as soon as you feel well enough.”

“I’m not ill, it’s just—I—” Evadne fought off another crying fit. “I want to
try.
I want everybody to know that I’ve stopped being a fool and will do anything I’m told to from now on.”

“Darling, you mustn’t feel—”

“It took a long time, didn’t it.” Evadne sat up and pushed back her hair with a pathetic, dazed gesture, and met her mother’s eyes. “I wonder you’ll speak to me at all.”

“Oh, nonsense, I always—”

“You always expect me to play the fool, don’t you! You must be used to it by now.
Why
do I make so many mistakes?”

“You’re young yet,” said Virginia matter-of-factly, while her heart ached. “Believe it or not, I was the same once.”

“But not about Daddy. You didn’t make any mistake about him.”

“No,” Virginia murmured, drooping on
the side of the bed—for having once set eyes on Archie Campion she had
ceased almost overnight at the age of eighteen to be a flirt and a heart-breaker. “No, that time I was right.”

“I wish I could remember him better,” Evadne sighed.

“I wish
I
could,” Virginia admitted. “I tried so hard—it’s been so long—his voice went first—I can’t hear it any more, the way I could in the beginning. Sometimes I think Nigel’s is very like—Nigel himself is very like—but it’s not the same.”

“But you had him for a while,” said Evadne enviously. “You were lucky.”

“Yes, darling, Luckier than most.”

“Was there ever anyone else—after he died?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“I’ve often wondered. You were quite young—and so beautiful. Why wasn’t there anyone else?”

“There was—
almost
.”
Virginia’s eyes went slowly round the room and to the window. “But I couldn’t quite bear it—to leave this house and all that had happened in it. I let him go instead.”

“Were you ever sorry?”

“Not really. Sometimes I’ve wondered—”

“Don’t you ever see him?”

“No. Oh, no.”

“Where is he now?”

“I don’t even know if he’s still alive.” The words sounded a little desolate.

“Oh, Mummy, how dreadful.”

“He’s probably married and has dozens of children by now,” said Virginia, and straightened, and smiled, and smoothed the sheet. “Wouldn’t you like a meal of some kind? It’s nearly dinner-time.”

“Mummy—what must I do about Stephen?”

“I wondered if you could be leading up to something,” said Virginia. “He’s rung up twice to ask about you, and he’s coming down on Saturday night after the show.”

“Still?” said Evadne in a small voice.

“You weren’t ever in love with Victor, were you?” Virginia asked gently.

“No! Heavens, no!”

“Then what sort of hold on you did he have? Why on earth—”

“I only wanted to
do
something about this war! I felt I had to leave no stone unturned. I thought Victor felt the same way, though of course he never actually surrendered—” Evadne paused, and looked uncomfortable. “I myself haven’t felt right about things since the Anschluss, when they went into Vienna,” she confessed. “Some of them tried to smooth it over, but I could never find out what Victor really thought about it. I suppose he didn’t dare say, even to me. Then when he told me about the old Generals that day in the Park and asked me to help him convince them, I thought it was a ray of hope—I thought he realized that things were really getting out of hand, and that anything was worth a try—and I didn’t know until I got there that it was just a come-on for me. Oh, not that the Generals don’t exist, and Hitler is afraid of them, and there
is
a sort of underground in Germany, Jeff had heard about that. But as for my part in Victor’s plans, apparently I was just supposed to perform as his English mistress—” Under Virginia’s sympathetic eyes she flushed painfully. “I kept telling myself that night in Berlin that it was all too much like an American film to be real,” she said unsteadily. “But Victor hadn’t seen the same films, he was just making it up as he went along—” She hid her face suddenly in her hands, bowed and slender in the big bed. “If only I didn’t feel such a
fool!
”
she cried again.

“Everybody feels more or less like that at some time or other, for some reason or other,” Virginia said sensibly. “Feeling foolish is even worse than feeling ashamed, I always think. But people forget. You just live through it.”

“But I’ll have to tell Stephen—”

“You won’t have to tell him anything. Haven’t you learned about Stephen yet? He’s a Sprague, and he’s in love. Just leave the rest to him.” Virginia took her daughter’s hands away from a tear-wet face and wiped it with her own fragrant handkerchief. “There. And if you really want to do something
about the war, you won’t have far to go. Farthingale is too small for most emergency use, but Clare has heard of a nursery school with a couple of young mistresses that might fit in. Or of course we could take in a few convalescent officers, or billet a few whole ones if there should be a camp anywhere near. In either case I shall try to arrange something that will let us keep a few rooms to live in. The Hall will go for a hospital, again, like the last time, with Clare in charge. You could do VAD there, if you liked.”

“I’ll do
anything!
” Evadne promised wildly. “The nastiest, dirtiest jobs that nobody else wants—I’ll do them!”

“That’s splendid,” said Virginia, determinedly unemotional. “But you’ll have to stay in bed a little while first and rest. Then we’ll see. Now, how about dinner? What would you like?”

When Evadne woke late on
Sunday morning and rang the bell for a cup of tea, a folded note was on the tray:
Sweetheart,
may
I
come
up
with
your
breakfast
and
ask
you
—
again
—
to
marry
me?
—
S.

Tears of gratitude and weakness and disbelief welled up, blurring the words. The maid was still in the room, drawing back the curtains, so that bright sunlight streamed along the carpet to the foot of the bed. Evadne sat with the tray across her knees and her face in her hands, tears dripping through her fingers. There was a tap on the half-open door, and Stephen’s voice said casually, “Do you want time to powder your nose first, or may I come in now?”

The maid said, “Good morning, sir,” approvingly, and tiptoed out.

Stephen crossed the room with his light, quick tread and removed the tray, which he placed securely on a table. Then he sat down on the bed and made Evadne comfortable against his shoulder, his face in her hair, and said, “There, now—” and “Poor little soul—” and “Let it come, honey, cry all you want to, I can swim—” And then he said, cradling her as the sobbing quieted, “Stevie’s here, you’re all right now—” Until at last she lay against him, spent and comforted, looking up into his face which bent above her. And because she saw
that he asked nothing of her yet, with an understanding so profound that she could hardly bear her own gratitude, she began from that moment to worship him as he had never even dreamed. She reached up one hand and touched his cheek as though to make sure he was real, and he turned his head to catch her fingers with a kiss, and they fled to anchor possessively on his coat lapel.

“Stevie.”

“Right here,” he said, and his arms tightened round her.

“It’s hard to believe there are people like you.”

“Who, me?” said Stephen, embarrassed. “Ten for a cent, where I come from.”

“I only want one.” She quivered into a smile.

“One’s enough,” he said. “If I wrap it up will you take it with you?”

“Oh,
darling
—!” cried Evadne, and buried her face in his coat and wept again, because she loved him so.

Again he held her patiently, making no effort to stop her tears, sure at last that she was his and that there was plenty of time.

Downstairs in the living-room, Jeff and Sylvia sat alone together with the Sunday papers. Sylvia threw down the
Observer
and said into their companionable silence, “Will you have to go to Prague if this keeps up?”

“Not till after the wedding, I hope,” he grinned, with a glance towards the stairway, and Sylvia smiled tenderly in the same direction.

“You know, it makes me feel quite young again,” she observed, and went to sit on the arm of his chair, so that he turned his face quickly into her breast and they remained with their arms around each other, not speaking. Finally Sylvia said, “Jeff, how are we going to work this thing?”

“How do you mean—work what?”

“If Evadne does marry Stephen now he can get along, can’t he, and find a new dancing partner, so I can stay with you?”

“In
Prague?
Hunh-unh.”

“We’ll ask Bracken to let you off Prague. Johnny can do it.”

“Camilla might have something to say about that.”

“Oh, Jeff, they’re
used
to it!” she wailed. “We’ve had such a little time together!”

“Can’t take that away from us, can they?” he said comfortably, and there were voices in the hall, and she had to leave it at that for the time.

Evadne slept all afternoon, exhausted but happy, and Stephen came in behind her dinner tray, which had been held back until he finished his own meal downstairs. There was a good deal of foolishness while she ate, or pretended to, and more than once she was threatened again by tears, but his light touch saw them through without disaster, and after feeding her the pudding a spoonful at a time he removed the tray, drew up a big chair facing her at the bedside, turned on a small radio on the night-table, and began to fill a pipe. Music flowed out into the room and was quickly muted to an undertone for the quiet, unimportant things they said. A long silence fell between them. Their eyes met unselfconsciously, and they smiled at each other and she extended a hand on the coverlet. He could reach it from where he sat, and their fingers met and clung.

“Oh, Stephen, you
are
good, I almost missed anything like this,” she said unsteadily.

“This,” he replied with pardonable satisfaction, “is the sort of thing I had in mind all along.”

“I shall be all right soon. Perhaps I can get up tomorrow.”

“No hurry. I’ll come and sit.”

“Does it matter so much to you, really? Just being together like this?”

“Fishing,” he said, with a knowing look, and bent forward to kiss her fingers in his on the coverlet.

“Those people who only see you dancing—wouldn’t they be surprised if they could see you now?”

“Like something you wind up with a key, and now it’s run down,” he suggested, and quirked an eyebrow at the radio which was playing nostalgic waltzes. He turned it up a little,
laid down his pipe with care, and rose, pushing back the chair. “We’ll show ’em who’s run down,” he said, and even as he stepped backward from the chair he took up the beat and began to dance.

It was all spontaneous fooling set to music, made up as he went along, just for her, just to amuse the sick child, the captive princess. And it resolved itself, in and out among the furniture in the high, spacious room, and even across the foot of the big bed, into a lyrical flirtation in pantomime with a totally invisible dream-girl whose imaginary fingertips were held in his, who was twirled and tossed and wooed in a hilarious waltz-time satire of musical-comedy passion which brought delighted laughter and applause from the audience in the bed. When it ended in a highly acrobatic back-bend for the invisible partner, and the radio announcer’s silky tones replaced the music, Evadne cried, “Oh,
Stephen,
it’s the best you ever did, and it’s
mine,
all
wasted,
can you ever do it the same again?”

He switched off the radio voice, pushed the chair back to the bedside, and resumed his pipe, breathing as easily as though he had sat there all the time.

“If I ever want to,” he said modestly.

“But you
must,
you must do it for Sylvia, and you must put it in a show!”

“It wasn’t all that good,” he said. “We’ll work on it. Might amount to something.”

“Oh, darling, you’re such
fun!
”
she cried, quite carried away. “I shall wake up screaming every night now for fear I’ve lost you after all!”

“Then the sooner we get married the better,” he suggested promptly, and she sobered.

“Those meetings next week—I’ve lost faith in them. I—can’t go to them now.”

“Good,” said Stephen, round the pipe.

“But, Stephen, it
wasn’t
just self-importance, as Victor said it was. I did believe in them. I did think there was some hope that we could—”

“Not any more,” he told her gently. “Too late for that kind
of thing now, it only gives a wrong impression. It’s no good converting hundreds more bewildered Britons who don’t mean to start a war anyhow. No good teaching them to be Christians in the arena waiting serenely for the lions to come and tear them to bits—not these days. Not unless you can first convert the
lions.
Since you can’t do that, you may as well face it—and not turn all four cheeks, as somebody has put it.”