Under Gemini (7 page)

He said to Rose, “She says she can't wait.”

“Well, darling, I'm afraid she'll have to. I have to go to America for a moment. I promised my mother and Harry. He's made such plans, and he always gets into such a state if he has to change them. I must go. Explain to Tuppy.”

Antony explained. “Later, we'll come,” he promised. “Later, when Rose is back again. I'll bring her up to Fernrigg and you can get to know her all over again.”

So Rose went to New York, and Antony, bemused with love and good fortune, returned to Edinburgh. “I'll write,” she had promised, but she didn't write. Antony penned long, loving screeds which she never answered. He began to fret. He sent cables, but there was no reply to them, either. In the end he put through a wildly expensive telephone call to her home in Westchester County, but Rose was away. A servant answered the telephone in an accent so strong as to be practically incomprehensible. He could only gather that Rose was out of town, her address unknown, and her return date uncertain.

He was beginning to feel desperate when the first postcard arrived. It was a picture of the Grand Canyon with a scrawled and affectionate message that told him nothing. A week later came the second. Rose stayed in America the entire summer and during that time he received five postcards from her, each more unsatisfactory than the one before.

Plaintive queries from Fernrigg did nothing to help the situation. Antony managed to fend them off with the same excuses that he had started making to himself. Rose was simply not a good correspondent.

But, despite these excuses, doubts loomed and grew like monstrous balloons, like clouds darkening his horizon. He began to lose confidence in his own solid, Scottish common sense. Had he made a fool of himself? Had those magical days in London with Rose simply been a blinding illusion of love and happiness?

And then something happened to drive all thoughts of Rose from his head. Isobel telephoned from Fernrigg to tell him that Tuppy was ill: she had caught a chill, it had turned to pneumonia, a nurse had been engaged to take care of her. Trying to sound calm, Isobel did her best to reassure Antony. “You mustn't worry. I'm sure it will be all right. It's just that I had to tell you. I hate worrying you, but I knew you'd want to know.”

“I'll come home,” he said instantly.

“No. Don't do that. It'll make her suspicious, make her think something's really wrong. Perhaps later, when Rose gets back from America. Unless…” Isobel hesitated hopefully. “… perhaps she's back already?”

“No,” Antony had to tell her. “No. Not yet. But any day now, I'm sure.”

“Yes,” said Isobel. “I'm sure.” She sounded as if she were comforting him, as she had comforted him through all the anxieties of his childhood, and Antony knew that he should be comforting her. That made him feel more miserable than ever.

It was like worrying about a grumbling appendix and suffering from acute toothache at one and the same time. Antony did not know what to do, and in the end, with a lack of decision that was quite foreign to his nature, he did nothing.

The nonaction lasted for a week, and then, simultaneously, all his problems came to a ghastly head. The morning post brought the parcel from Rose, untidily wrapped and sealed, postmarked London and containing his engagement ring along with the only letter she had ever written him. And while he was still reeling from the shock, the second telephone call came, from Isobel. That time Isobel had not been able to be brave. Her tears and her very real anguish broke through, and her shaking voice betrayed the shattering truth. Hugh Kyle was obviously worried about Tuppy. She was, Isobel suspected, much worse than any of them had guessed. She would perhaps die.

All Tuppy wanted was to see Antony and Rose. She was yearning for them, worrying, wanting to make wedding plans. And it would be so dreadful, said Isobel, if something should happen, and Tuppy was never to see Antony and Rose together.

The implication was obvious. Antony had not the heart to tell Isobel the truth, and even as he heard himself making that impossible promise, he wondered how the hell he was going to keep it. Yet he knew that he had to.

With a calmness born of desperation, he made arrangements. He spoke with his boss, and with as few explanations as possible, asked for and was granted a long weekend. In a mood of dogged hopelessness, he put through a telephone call to the Schuster flat in London; when there was no reply, he drafted a wordy telegram and sent that instead. He booked a seat on the London plane. Now, at the airport waiting for that plane to be called, he reached into the pocket of his jacket, and took out the letter. The writing paper was deep blue and opulent, the address thickly embossed at the head of the page.

Eighty Two Cadogan Court

London, S.W.1

But Rose's writing, unfortunately, did not live up to the address. Sprawling, unformed as a child's, it meandered cross the page, with the lines trailing downward, and the punctuation nonexistent.

Darling Antony.

I'm terribly sorry but I'm sending your ring back because I really don't think that after all I can bear to marry you, it's all been a horrible mistake. At least, not horrible, because you were sweet and the days we had together were fun, but it all seems so different now, and I realize that I'm not ready to settle down and be a wife, especially not in Scotland, I mean I don't have anything against Scotland, I think it's very pretty, but it isn't really my scene. I mean, not for ever. I flew into London last week, am here for a day or two, not sure what happens next. My mother sent her love, but she doesn't think I should get married yet and when I do she doesn't think I should live in Scotland. She doesn't think it's my scene either. So terribly sorry, but better now than later. Divorces are such messy things and take so long and cost such a lot of money.

Love (still)

Rose

Antony folded the sheet of paper and put it back into his pocket, and felt the smooth leather of the box with the diamond and sapphire ring inside. Then he started in on his beer and sandwiches. There was scarcely time to finish them before his flight was called.

He was at Heathrow at half past three, caught the bus to the terminal, and then took a taxi. London was noticeably warmer than Edinburgh and bright with autumn sunshine. The trees had scarcely started to turn and the grass in the park was worn and brown after the long summer. Sloane Street seemed to be filled with light-hearted children going home from school hand in hand with smartly dressed young mothers.
If Rose isn't there,
he thought,
I shall sit down and bloody well wait for her.

The taxi rounded the corner of the square, stopping in front of the familiar red-brick building. It was a new block, very plush, with bay trees at the head of the wide flight of stone steps, and a great deal of plate glass.

Antony paid off the taxi and went up the steps and through the glass door. Inside there was dark brown wall-to-wall carpeting and palm trees in tubs and an expensive smell, mostly compounded of leather and cigars.

The porter was not behind his desk, nor anywhere to be seen. Perhaps, thought Antony, pressing the bell for the lift, he's nipped out for an evening paper. The lift silently descended. Silently the doors slid open for him. As Antony went in they slid silently shut. He pressed the button for the fourth floor and recalled standing in that very lift with Rose in his arms, kissing her every time they passed another floor. It was a poignant memory.

The lift stopped and the doors opened. Carrying his bag, he stepped out, went down the long passage, stopped at the door of number Eighty-two and without giving himself time to think about it pressed the bell. From inside came the deep note of the buzzer. Setting down his bag and putting up a hand to lean against the edge of the door, he waited, without hope. She would not be there. Already he felt exhausted by what must follow.

And then from within he heard a sound. He stiffened, becoming suddenly alert, like a dog. A door shut. Another door opened. Footsteps came down the short passage from the kitchen, and the next moment the door was flung open. There stood Rose.

Staring at her like a fool, a number of thoughts flew through Antony's mind. She was here, he had found her. She didn't look too furious. She had cut her hair.

She said, “Yes?” which was a funny thing for her to say, but then this was a funny situation.

Antony said “Hello, Rose.”

“I'm not Rose,” said Rose.

4

ANTONY

That Friday was, for Flora, fogged in a curious unreality, a carryover from the events of the previous incredible day. She had intended to do so much and had ended up by achieving nothing.

Physically, she went through the motions of jobhunting and visiting various estate gents, but her mind refused to concentrate on the matters in hand.

“Do you want permanent or temporary work?” the girl at the agency had asked, but Flora simply stared at her and did not reply, obsessed as she was by images that had nothing to do with shorthand and typing. It was as if a well-ordered house had suddenly been invaded and taken over by strangers. They had caught Flora's attention to the point where she could think of nothing else.

“There's a ground-floor flat going in Fulham. It's very small, of course, but if it was just for yourself…?”

“Yes.” She should go and see it. It sounded perfect. “Yes. I'll think about it.” And she stepped out into the street and continued on her way, aimless and preoccupied.

Part of the trouble, of course, was that she was short of sleep and physically exhausted by the traumas of yesterday. It had been a hysterical evening. Flora and Rose had dined together at Seppi's, finished the champagne, been presented with a second bottle, and sat over coffee until Seppi, with a queue of customers waiting for tables, had reluctantly had to let them leave. Rose had settled the bill with a credit card. The dinner cost more than Flora could believe possible, but Rose dismissed it airily. She said not to worry because Harry Schuster would settle the account. He always did.

They then found a taxi and drove to the Shelbourne Hotel, where Rose made derogatory remarks about the decor and the staff and the inhabitants, while Flora, embarrassed and trying not to laugh, explained the inexplicable situation to the sad lady behind the reception desk. A porter was finally persuaded to haul all the suitcases back out into the waiting cab, and they headed for Cadogan Court.

The flat was on the fourth floor. Flora had never dreamed of such luxury—so much carpeting, concealed lighting, and space-age plumbing. Plate-glass windows slid aside to allow access to a little balcony crammed with pot plants; a button could be pressed to draw the filmy linen curtains; in the bedrooms the carpets were white and about two inches deep (maddening if you dropped a ring or a bobby pin, Rose said), and the bathrooms all smelt of the most expensive soaps and oil.

Flora was carelessly assigned a bedroom (pale blue curtains made of Thai silk and mirrors everywhere) and told to unpack, which she did, to the extent of taking out her nightgown while Rose sat on the bed.

An idea suddenly struck Flora. “Do you want to know what your father looks like?”

“Photographs!” Rose sounded as though she had only just heard of such a thing.

Flora pulled out a big leather folder and handed it over to Rose, and they sat together on the big bed, dark head against dark head, their twin reflections caught in mirrors all about the room.

There was Seal Cottage, and the garden, and the wedding shot Flora had taken of her father and Marcia coming out of the church. There was the big one of him sitting on the rocks below the cottage, with a backdrop of sea and gulls, his face very brown and the breeze blowing his hair.

Rose's reaction was gratifying. “Oh, he's great! Like some smashing film star with spectacles. I can quite see why my mother married him. And yet I can't either. I mean, I can only imagine her married to a man like Harry.”

“You mean a rich man.”

“Yes, I suppose I do.” She peered at the photograph again. “I wonder why they got married in the first place? Do you suppose they had anything in common?”

“Perhaps a mutual infatuation. They met on a ski holiday. Did you know that?”

“No kidding.”

“Ski holidays are a bit like ocean voyages, or so I've been told. Wine-like air and tanned bodies and nothing to do except physically exhaust yourself and fall in love.”

“I'll remember that,” promised Rose. She was suddenly bored with the photographs. She tossed them down on the silk bedcover and looked long at her sister. Without any change in the tone of her voice, she asked, “Would you like a bath?”

So they both had baths, and Rose piled records onto the recordplayer while Flora made a pot of coffee. In their dressing gowns (Flora's, her old school one, and Rose's, a miracle of drifting flower-splashed silk) they sat on the king-size velvet sofa and talked.

And talked. There were many years to cover. Rose told Flora about the house in Paris and the finishing school at Chateau d'Oex, and the winters in Kitzbühel. And Flora filled Rose in on her own history (which didn't sound nearly so exciting), making the most of the finding and buying Seal Cottage, the arrival of Marcia into their lives, the jobs she had taken in Switzerland and Greece. That reminded her of something.

“Rose, did you say
you
were going to Greece?”

“I may be. But after this summer of flying around the United States, I'm beginning to feel I never want to get into another plane. Ever.”

“You mean you spent the whole summer out there?”

“Most of it. Harry's been planning this trip for years, and we did everything from shooting the rapids on the Salmon River to riding down the Grand Canyon on muleback, hung about with cameras. Typical tourists.” She frowned. “When did your father get married again?”