Friends and Lovers Page 10

  “What?” she asked, with dawning horror. But she did not need an answer. David’s sudden outburst of laughter was enough. It made everyone in the room turn their heads sharply to look at them for a moment; and strangers’ faces, as they picked up their own conversations again, still held something of the smile which had been brought to their lips quite involuntarily.

  “I believe you would!” Penny said. She imitated his voice: “Doing much body-snatching these days, Dr. Redhead?” After a while, when she could talk without starting to laugh all over again, she said, “Actually we are being rather cruel. He is probably a most worthy young man.”

  With a body-snatching eye, David thought.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, but he did not look in the least repentant.

  “What other stories did Scheherazade tell?”

  “One thousand and one nights of them.” He smiled, thinking of their variety.

  “And the king who listened never got bored? She must have been very beautiful as well as having a lovely voice. But I suppose that after a thousand and one nights she had become a habit.”

  “Probably,” David agreed. And a very pleasant one. The three sons which she produced meanwhile must have been a help too. “She certainly kept her head, which was more than the king’s previous wives had been able to do.”

  “I don’t believe she was afraid of death. She told the stories well because she wanted to tell them. Perhaps she loved the king, and wanted to make him happy.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You think I am being rather silly, don’t you?”

  David’s smile disappeared. “Good Lord, no! I’m interested. Do you really believe she was in love?”

  “Why else would she bother? If you had to tell a different story every night for almost three years to someone you did not love, you would probably give up after three months and petition to be beheaded. Wouldn’t you?”

  David was smiling again. “Probably.”

  “You are as cautious as a Scotsman. I never heard such a collection of ‘probablies’ and ‘perhapses.’”

  “All right. I’ll abandon caution. When can I see you again? Do you ever visit London?”

  She pretended to be very busy pouring a second cup of coffee for him, no cream, three lumps of sugar.

  David pressed his question. “No chance of arranging a holiday there?” If not, then I’ll just have to think up some old excuse to get to Edinburgh for Christmas. A complicated business. Still, he would arrange it somehow. If he won that essay prize on the failure of democracy in Greece there would be enough money to cover expenses.

  She shook her head, and then she relented: he was looking quite disappointed enough. “I am coming to live in London,” she said very quietly.

  “What?”

  “I’m going to the Slade School of Art. At the end of September.”

  He pushed himself back from the table, wrinkling the tablecloth, spilling the coffee. “Well,” he said, and then lowered his voice to a more normal tone; “well, that’s grand.” He studied her face for a few moments. “You know, you can be a devil, too. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You might not have wanted to see me again,” she said gently.

  Before he had recovered his breath to say anything to that, the waitress, with one eye on the clock and the other on an emptying room, came over and frowned at the tablecloth. Some people didn’t know when to stop talking or drinking cold coffee. Imagine them coming to a howff like this, anyway! With clothes and a figure like that I’d let myself be seen, she thought. The man was looking annoyed—did he just want to sit there talking all afternoon, and me with my feet fit to burst? But he tipped well, and that was something unexpected. Usually the students—and he looked like one—left threepence under the plate. Hard-up they were, although they did have an extra glass of beer often enough. Funny kind of hard-upness that. That was men for you: suit themselves, me first, me me all the time.

  “Thank you, sir.” She slipped the tip into the pocket under her apron, and stood there for a minute to watch them leave. Still talking their heads off... And now he had his hand under her arm and was guiding her carefully between the empty tables. Well, she thought grudgingly, as she fingered the tip in her pocket, you’re only young once. And she wished them luck in her bitter, tired way, as she pulled off the stained tablecloth and mopped up the pool of coffee.

  * * *

  Edinburgh Castle looked coldly down on the last visitors still disturbing its peace. A poor lot, who paid money and stared. Once upon a time the price of admission had been a good sword arm, a hot-blooded battle-cry.

  The group of international students was exhausted in everything, even in its good will. Tea had been suggested by Moira Lorrimer, and she was now shepherding her straggling guests towards the Castle gates. Some of the thirstier ones had already started down the twisting cobbled paths, no doubt hoping to find a place where something more to their taste than tea might be found. Well, she had done her best: she had shown them practically everything they should see, and that wasn’t a bad day’s work. Especially when Joan Taylor, who was supposed to be helping to guide the party around Edinburgh, had done nothing but enjoy herself with the Americans.

  “We shall be late,” Moira said to the last small group of lingerers and hoped they would take the hint.

  “Superb!” a French student cried, and swept out her arm to the gardens which lay down in the valley between the Castle’s precipice and Princes Street. Her sense of drama did not seem to irritate the American who was beside her—as he had been for most of the day.

  “On the Rhine we have many old and beautiful castles. Also beautiful rivers.” The German was still informative.

  “Have you?” Moira answered coldly, for the twentieth time. She was becoming tired of hidden comparisons. What was more, after six hours of listening to foreigners she found that she herself had started to speak with their intonations. She had caught herself only ten minutes ago, shrugging her shoulders and saying, “But yes!” to a Frenchman. And after two hours of the Germans, who seemed to have adopted her, for they kept coming over to ask questions or make statements, she was saying “So!” as if it were “Zo!” and, alarmingly, “Please?” With the Italian she had found her eyes opening very wide, and her hands fluttering vaguely in the air. Joan Taylor meanwhile had been having no difficulties at all.

  Now the very handsome Italian, who had more often than was truly necessary brushed against her arm—and twice, it had to be admitted, against her hips—was beside her once more. She flinched instinctively, and held her elbows out stiffly, as he walked much too near her, so that she found herself moving forward at a tangent until she was practically against the wall.

  “I am sorry,” he said, with his deep, rich smile, as if he had just noticed that she was practically off the path again. “So very sorry.”

  “Yes, yes,” she answered, but still kept her elbows in a defensive position. He had magnificent eyes, and he used them well, almost as well as his hands.

  “I have a riddle,” he was saying, dropping his voice to a friendly murmur.

  “But what?” Stop talking that way, she told herself angrily. “What is it?” she asked quickly.

  “Are the hearts of Scottish girls as hard as the rock on which they placed their castle?”

  Moira looked wildly around for help. But, for once, the German had left her, the Americans had walked on with Joan Taylor and the French girl, and the Chinese scholar had retired into contemplation of the colour qualities of the smoke which hung over the distant roof-tops.

  She said weakly, “Perhaps they are.”

  “No, no, no. Impossible!” He halted suddenly and grasped her arm. “Look, see! There are sensible people here. There is a girl with a heart that sings, and a young man who is allowed to listen.”

  Moira looked, in spite of herself, towards the couple he had pointed out. They were standing at the rampart, leaning forward and resting their elbows on it. They were standing very n
ear each other, for one thing. For another, the man was not even pretending to look at the city stretching out below them. He was watching the girl’s face.

  “Most touching,” Moira said very coldly. And then she stared.

  “Are you ill?” the Italian asked anxiously.

  “No.” She made the effort of giving him a reassuring smile, which he interpreted in all the wrong way. She said, “We are very late. We must hurry.”

  “Yes?” the Italian asked hopefully, as he steadied her by the arm once or twice and she didn’t even notice. But it turned out that they were only late for tea, and his charming blonde iceberg was surrounded once more by the phalanx of tedeschi, who were still discussing the view. The Italian wondered, what was a view without a pretty girl to share it sympathetically?

  Moira found her conversational powers more strained than ever at the tea-table. Her feet felt like burning lead, and her mind kept asking questions. The only answers it found didn’t soothe her. Yes, that had been David Bosworth with Penny. And in full view of the whole city, as it were. Just wait until I get home, Moira thought angrily, and her annoyance turned to outraged virtue. She ate one of her favourite cream-filled chocolate éclairs with as much pleasure as if it had been made of linoleum.

  10

  THE END IS ALWAYS GOODBYE

  “Time to leave,” David said. And then he looked at Penny and added, “Of course, I could easily miss this train. Then you might have dinner with me. Would you?”

  “I couldn’t,” Penny said slowly. “I promised that I would be home for dinner.”

  “I suppose it would be tactless to ’phone up and say you weren’t coming.” He hadn’t asked it as a question, but he was watching her face for a reply. “All right, then,” he said. “Time, gentlemen, time.”

  They began walking very slowly down the steep Castle road.

  “I’ll come home with you first,” David said. “I’ll find a taxi.”

  “I don’t think so, David. Not here. And we haven’t very much time left, have we?” She turned back the cuff of his jacket and glanced at his watch, and then she shook her head. She smiled up at him this time, and said, “Besides, I travel about Edinburgh every day by myself. I am not quite such a wilting lily as all that!” Then, as he didn’t join in her laugh, didn’t smile, didn’t say anything, but just stood still looking at her, she said quickly, anxiously, “What’s wrong, David?”

  “Nothing,” he said then, “nothing.” She likes me, he thought; she really likes me. She wouldn’t have done that if she hadn’t liked me. Damned fool, he told himself, how do you know she wouldn’t? You only want to believe that; you don’t know a damned thing about any of her gestures, how much or how little they mean. “Penny,” he said suddenly, and then stopped himself in time. Penny, will you write to me, he had been going to say. Better not ask—it sounded pretty silly, anyway. Better write to her, and then see if she answered his letter.

  “Yes?”

  “It is Penny, isn’t it? Not Penelope? Why?”

  “I don’t like Penelope,” she said. “I mean, I like it as a name, but I don’t like it being attached to me. People make jokes about it, you see: they make it rhyme with antelope, or they think up funny things to say about it. I wish they wouldn’t. They ruin names, don’t they?”

  “They do their best. I’ve often thought that Dr. Johnson was wrong: puns aren’t the lowest form of wit. Making jokes on names is quite the easiest and silliest way to raise a laugh.”

  “We should all be given numbers to identify us until we reach the age of eighteen. Then we could choose the name we really wanted. It is pretty awful at times what parents will think up for the christening.”

  “Probably they are thoroughly desperate and bewildered by that time,” David suggested. “Anyway”—he looked at her with a smile as he paused—“anyway, Penny it is.”

  She smiled. And then she said, in surprise, “Look, we are walking in the wrong direction! The station is up to our left.”

  “Is it?”

  She wasn’t quite sure if he had been trying to lose that train after all. She coloured, and looked quickly away.

  “I expect your mother will hold it against me if I don’t take you home safely,” he tried. I’d even risk the horrors of a family dinner if I could see her for four more hours, he thought.

  “Mother won’t know. She is at the clinic this afternoon, weighing other people’s babies and telling them how to feed them.”

  “Is your mother a doctor?” he asked, with amazement.

  “No. It’s voluntary work. Mother and some of her friends have been doing that for years.”

  Lady Bountiful, David thought. I might have guessed that. Still, Mrs. Lorrimer deserved some credit for the will to make an effort: there were those who were rich and never even thought of the poor at all.

  “You aren’t very impressed,” Penny said, watching his face carefully. “Don’t you like good works?”

  “They are useful in an emergency. And as far as they go,” David said carefully.

  “But volunteers can be—”

  “I know,” he said. “They have hearts of gold, and they give up their time, and what would we do without them? And it doesn’t matter that the birth-rate is low where it should be high, and high where it should be low, or that so many people should be stunted physically and mentally. You would think it would be cheaper in the long run for a state to spend money on professional people to take over everything to do with health. Besides, the volunteer basis doesn’t reach far enough. If we depend on people who volunteer to help, then only some of those who need help will volunteer to ask for it. But if it is on a professional basis, then people learn to be business-like about it, and they’ll ask for help knowing it is legally theirs and not a matter of charity.”

  “But—” Penny began again. She looked at the strange bitterness in his face, and she felt suddenly bewildered and unhappy.

  He shook his head. “No,” he said more gently, “let’s not begin anything we can’t finish, Penny. I’ll argue with you if you’d like that, when you come to visit me at Oxford. You will come, won’t you? We’ll have lunch at the George, and then we shall walk out to the Trout for tea. Will you come?”

  “I’d love to,” Penny said. It did sound wonderful, although she wondered what on earth the George and the Trout could be.

  “That’s settled, then.” He sounded pleased. He was, indeed, relieved: he had been worrying how to phrase that invitation for the last fifteen minutes, and for the last fifteen seconds before she had answered he had been afraid of a polite little reply promising nothing.

  Then something began to happen to their conversation. They were practically silent by the time they reached the station. They halted at its entrance, Penny pretending to be absorbed in the busy street, David studying the pavement at their feet. He was thinking with some disappointment that this might be as far as the well-brought-up girl could go, and he had better not break any more taboos by suggesting that she should come into the station and see him off. She was waiting for him to say, in that easy way of his, “Why are we standing here?” But he didn’t suggest that she should come into the station, and he seemed quite immovable. His silence made him suddenly appear remote. He is half-way to London already, she thought, and in London we shall probably meet again as strangers. Probably, too, she would never see either this George or the Trout, whatever they were. That was another world—his world. He had come into hers for a day, because he had been passing by, and because it had pleased him. For a day. She watched the hurrying people on the street, noticing neither their faces nor their clothes. She felt miserable.

  This is the anti-climax, David thought. Goodbyes were always depressing affairs. You said either too much or too little. And afterwards you thought of all the things you should have said, which would have been just right, neither too much nor too little.

  He roused himself to say very quickly, “Well, thank you, Penny. Tell your mother that I think Edinburgh
is a lovely, lovely place.”

  “Goodbye,” she said. Well, here it was... First you said goodbye, and then perhaps goodbye again, and you kept using the same phrases as you held out your hand.

  “Goodbye.” He took her hand. “I hope I wasn’t a nuisance.”

  “Oh, no!” She looked up at him. “I’ve had a marvellous day.” She said it as if she meant it, he hoped. He still held her hand. Damned if I don’t kiss her in front of the whole ruddy town, he thought. But then, at that moment, a stranger’s shoulder rubbed him, and a stranger’s voice said, “Sorry!” and then, “Good afternoon, Miss Lorrimer!”

  David dropped Penny’s hand, raised his hat, smiled and said, “Well...”

  “Goodbye, David.”

  “Goodbye, Penny.”

  She gave him one of her brightest smiles, and then turned to walk quickly away. He watched her. The worst thing about saying goodbye, he decided, was this feeling of uncertainty. Would he ever see her again? For that depended on her too.

  The man who had greeted her was waiting at the corner, ostensibly for the traffic to slacken pace. Then he looked round and saw Penny (as David knew damned well he would), and changed his mind about crossing the road. He was accompanying her towards Princes Street instead.

  David lost sight of them in the crowd. He swore under his breath and went into the station.

  He bought a newspaper to read in the train, and disagreed savagely with the leader and every article in it.

  Then he sat in the gathering dusk and watched the fields flow past his window, and wondered gloomily just what had happened to him. By the time he had reached York he wasn’t even bothering to wonder. He was trying to balance a sheet of paper on a book and make his writing legible. This letter was going to be posted, he told himself grimly.