This Was Tomorrow (35 page)

“There’ll be nobody in the theatre,” said Sylvia. “They’ll all stay home to listen.”

“They already know,” said Stephen grimly.

“It’s like waiting for a first night,” she murmured, and he glanced at her sympathetically.

“We’ll be closed if war is declared,” he said. “You’d better get out of this. Mother will be having a fit.”

“
Just
what
do
you
think
I
am?
”
she demanded indignantly. “Jeff in Prague—you and Evadne here—I suppose you think the
Lake
Country
is good enough for me!”

“Don’t get sore, I only thought if you went down to Farthingale—”

“I will not! I may not be up to Evadne’s kind of job, but I could drive a car, or do canteen work, or
something
useful without leaving London!”

“Sure, there’s lots you can do here, I just—”

“I’ll ask Dinah tonight. She’ll find me a job.”

“O.K.,” he said meekly, for once roused from her habitual good-tempered serenity Sylvia was a handful.

But Sylvia in her dressing-room, putting on her make-up with cold hands that trembled, met her own eyes in the mirror with astonishment and chagrin. What’s the
matter
with me, she thought furiously. Am
I
going to be the one who can’t take it? I’d be all right if Jeff were here. We’d be all right together, anywhere. But people can’t be together in a war. It’s the same as if he was a soldier. It’s only sheer luck that Stephen can be a warden too and work with Evadne. Dinah and I are on our
own. Dinah will tell me what to do, she’s got used to it by now. Is it really the end of the world, or shall we be able to look back at today and feel ashamed of being so scared? Can this be the end of Jeff and me, so soon? Why am I
sick
with fright, like this? It won’t begin till Saturday….

Oddly enough, people did come to the theatre that night and seemed to enjoy themselves. At the end of the performance Stephen took Sylvia back to Dinah in Upper Brook Street and went in to hear about the speech. Dinah was alone and had heard the late news. Hitler’s patience was at an end again, she said wearily. He had boasted about Austria and attacked Benes. He said he wanted nothing from England. He said Czechoslovakia was the last territorial claim he would make in Europe. None of it was new. So Parliament was meeting tomorrow, and the American Ambassador had advised Americans to leave England. And Bracken thought there would be war on Saturday.

But on Saturday came the great reprieve. Chamberlain was back from Munich, where they had traded a ready army of a million men, fortifications second only to the Maginot Line, and valuable munition works, for a little time.

In the midst of the general relief, which amounted to rejoicing, Bracken was haggard and unsmiling, as though there had been a death—as indeed there had been. Sylvia watched him surreptitiously, feeling guilty because of the irresponsible way her own heart had lightened. Czechoslovakia had paid the bill, but Prague was not being destroyed, stone by stone, and Jeff was not dodging German bombs at that very minute. It was wicked to acknowledge, however secretly, that that was what mattered most, but no one could expect her to be sorry. Of course they said it wouldn’t last. But maybe, by the time it got bad again, Jeff would be back in London. She ventured to mention it on Sunday, when Bracken was at home as he had so seldom been during the past weeks to enjoy a cup of tea in Dinah’s company again.

“Will Jeff be coming back now?” Sylvia asked hopefully, and Bracken set down his cup and looked at her, and then at
Dinah, and then, a derisive eyebrow quirked, at Sylvia again.

“
Women
,”
said Bracken, as though he just couldn’t believe there were such things.

“Well, I only thought—”

“I know perfectly well what you thought,” said Bracken, with a mute request for more tea. “Well, that’s Czechoslovakia, you thought, and now can I have Jeff back?”

Sylvia returned his sardonic gaze with large, troubled, steady eyes.

“I know,” she said contritely. “I suppose I have no social conscience.”

For what seemed like the first time in days, Bracken laughed.

“I didn’t know you’d heard of such a thing,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I think Jeff’s had enough for anybody. He’ll be here by the end of the week.”

That was the weekend when Virginia urged them all to come down to Farthingale and collapse—an invitation which was gratefully accepted by everybody. The obvious flaws in the Munich settlement were now becoming quite plain to everyone, and disillusionment had set in. It was not peace with honour, and it would not be peace, they were saying, for even Mr. Chamberlain’s time, and he was past seventy. They had a little more time to get ready. That was all.

London was suddenly booming, and the show had many more weeks to run. ARP training would intensify rather than slack off. As was usual in a crisis, the family drew together and took stock. Bracken said he gave it till March, anyway.

“Oh, Bracken, how can you
know
when it will start?” sighed Virginia.

“Well, maybe till harvest time,” said Bracken, filling his pipe. “They won’t wait longer, I should think. Dictators can’t afford to wait. Poland will go next, I expect. Danzig. What fools the Poles are to play his game now!”

Mab, whom they had all forgotten, spoke quietly from her place beside Sylvia. She had developed a diffidence about sitting close to Jeff all the time, but it seemed as though she found
some comfort in proximity to Sylvia, who was also Jeff’s property.

“Are we going to have a war,
anyway?
”
she asked with a kind of resignation, and Sylvia put an arm round her swiftly, saying, “It’s beastly, isn’t it, they’ve only sort of put it off, I’m afraid. But if things get too bad you can always go home to Williamsburg.”

“Oh, I couldn’t leave Granny now,” said Mab, apparently putting Virginia before her own parents. We’ll be all right here, I should think. It’s Jeff I was worrying about, Bracken—next time couldn’t you keep him here at the BBC with you?”

“I expect I could. If you feel that would be the safest place.”

“Well, it’s in England, isn’t it?” said Mab logically. “One can’t be sure what might happen to him anywhere else. In England you sort of know where you are.”

“That’s very true,” said Bracken gravely. “And I imagine that when the time comes we can keep him amused here, one way and another.” His pipe was well alight now, and he settled back with it, running his eye over them all in a paternal sort of way, and they all looked back at him attentively, waiting for what might come. “Well, here we go again. Mind if I make a few suggestions?” he asked politely, and they assured him that they didn’t, and his gaze came to rest first on Stephen. “Going to run through Christmas?” he asked, and Stephen said it looked like it now. “That would still leave time for Evadne to see Williamsburg,” said Bracken.

“And for Williamsburg to see her,” said Stephen. I’d thought of that.”

“Don’t hurry the new show, then,” said Bracken. “You’ve got a foot you’re supposed to favour. Why don’t you take a year off, the way Jeff and Sylvia did—do you good.”

“Pop would get a kick out of that,” said Stephen. “We could write the whole new show together, from the beginning. Take our time to it.”

“God knows what’s coming,” said Bracken. “Have a holiday while you can. Look.” He pointed at Evadne’s radiant face. “About time you two had a honeymoon.”

“It’s a plot,” said Stephen, looking at her. “Are you in on this?”

“I am now,” she said.

Sylvia came and sat on the arm of Stephen’s chair, leaning on his shoulder.

“Stevie, I’ll never desert you, you know that. But let’s rest the foot, h’m? You go to Williamsburg with Evadne, and I’ll stay here with Jeff, and—don’t let’s start the new show for a while, h’m?”

“I guess I’m outnumbered,” said Stephen.

“Well,” Jeff said when he and Sylvia were alone in their room that night, “it’s nice to know that if they really want this war I’m going to be able to take it.” He came and knelt down and put his arms around her where she sat brushing her hair at the dressing-table. “Thanks to you,” he whispered.

“Me?”

“It’s only because of you I can trust my heart. It stayed right on the job, Sylvie, through everything, and I’ve heard gunfire now, up where the rioting was. Till now, I was afraid we might be sorry we took a chance and went ahead and got married. But it’s going to be all right. I can take anything that comes. Have you any idea what that means to me?”

Sylvia held him quietly, his face hidden against her breast, feeling as though he had only just now come home. Since his return from Prague two days ago he had been remote and troubled and preoccupied—withdrawn from their usual intimacy, seeming to need nothing from her beyond her presence, which he appeared to welcome, and silence, which he seldom broke. She knew that he was very tired, and that his emotions had been lacerated by the things he had seen and heard during his trips into the border territory and in Prague after the Munich verdict, when people wept hysterically in the streets, and foreigners were besieged by pitiful strangers who begged them for help with visas and escape plans. Remembering Dinah’s advice, she had tried to efface herself and make no demands on his attention until he had adjusted himself to whatever was pressing down on him. She had resisted unwise
impulses to shake him out of it for his own good or to try to cheer him up. She knew by some sure instinct that when you had come right up against it, as Jeff had, you had no use for people who advised you to brace up, or who pointed out bright spots. She knew that there is nothing so infuriating, when you are bearing all you can, as shallow, unrealistic optimism from someone who has not experienced the same disaster. There was nothing anyone who had stayed in London could say to a man who had witnessed the agony in Prague. It was worse than Vienna, for Vienna had never had a hope, and Prague—for a while—had hoped for a fighting chance.

Jeff stirred in her arms, settled against her with a sigh, and said, “Hullo.”

“Hullo, darling, have you come back?”

“Yep, I’m back. Thanks for waiting till I got here. You know, if I’d tried to talk about it any sooner I’d have cried like a baby.”

“You don’t have to talk about it now.”

“Not about—what happened over there. But about us. That I want to get said. Honey—when the bombs start here I want you to go home.”

“I know I promised to obey,” said Sylvia. “But that is where I draw the line.”

“Am I going to have trouble with you?” he asked, not moving.

“About that you are.”

“Who’s the boss around here?”

“You are. Till you start treating me like women and children.”

He sat back on his heels, his arms still round her, his hair a little rumpled, and looked up into her face.

“It’s no good gambling that it won’t happen, you know. It will. Next year—the year after that—as long as Germany is Nazi it’s not going to let up. I know now what it feels like to live in a city which expects to be bombed any minute—to have people you love living there beside you. And I want you out of it.”

“Millions of Englishwomen—” she began.

“You weren’t born here.”

She reached out and smoothed his hair, and he rose away from her hand and walked thoughtfully round the room.

“This is the first time we haven’t seen eye to eye about things, isn’t it?” he said, and she made no answer at all, simply waited quietly where she sat, for him to come back to her. “So you’re going to get tough about it,” he said, eyeing her from the middle of the room. She smiled at him. “I see,” said Jeff, and thought of Bracken’s ultimate authority and then thought No, I must settle this thing myself, this is between Sylvia and me. “It’s not that I don’t think you’re brave—” he began.

“I’m not brave, a bit. I found that out last week. I shall be terrified,” she remarked, and went back to brushing her hair.

“So was I,” said Jeff. “So is everybody. I guess that’s not got much to do with it, after all.” He stood a moment, watching the rhythmic, unconcerned sweep of the hairbrush through her honey-coloured mane. “I’d like to get this settled now, so there won’t be any argument at the last minute,” he suggested.

“It is settled,” said Sylvia. “I’m staying here.” She laid down the brush and rose and stood looking at him. “I thought you said you had come back,” she said. “So what are you doing way over there?”

They met half-way.

This sixth of the Williamsburg novels,
This
Was
Tomorrow
displays all the charm and dramatic power readers look for in the work of Elswyth Thane. Her skilful and delicate portrayal of
the loves of Jeff and Sylvia, of Stephen and Evadne, will delight and fascinate.

Jeff was a foreign correspondent, widely-travelled and charming. Stephen and Sylvia were musical-comedy stars, whose gay and light-hearted performances delighted London audiences. But it is Evadne who dominates the story. Evadne, whose short chestnut curls and gentle curving smile made her quite irresistible to Stephen, had a passionate desire to help the world—a crusading complex—which led her to adopt a Cause and very nearly to lose her Stephen. It was only Stephen’s tact and understanding that helped Evadne to cease her vain pursuit and to direct her energies into a love that made both their lives rich and exquisitely happy.

The loves of these two couples trace a bright thread through the rich pattern of English society at the time when the rise of a European dictator and the snare of appeasement were a situation that is ominously contemporary.

In
order:

Dawn’s Early Light

Yankee Stranger

Ever After

The Light Heart

Kissing Kin

This Was Tomorrow

Homing