Five Smooth Stones (82 page)

The telephone rang, and the hand that held a brush, trying to bring a tricky color into line, jerked so uncontrollably that a three-inch streak of yellow sprawled across the canvas, ruining a morning's work.

Marcia Travis's voice said, "Sara, my dear. I got your message. Where in the world have you been?"

"Busy, Marcia—I mean, sort of—and feeling guilty about not having called. How are you?"

"Wet to the skin, pet. I just came in, and it's utterly foul outside. I'm going to change and then drink pots of hot tea. Join me?"

"I—I shouldn't. I just started—"

"Nonsense. Bundle up and get into a cab and come over. Do hurry. And don't for heaven's sake go out without your brolly. It's quite teeming out there."

She cleaned the canvas hurriedly, trying to erase the concrete evidence of taut nerves that for weeks had been short-circuiting her coordination and control. She had paid no attention to it before, but now she could hear the rain pounding on the skylight, sluicing off nearby roofs. If she was lucky —very lucky—there would be a cab in the rank outside a nearby hotel; if she wasn't she would have to stay at the studio. Even with raincoat and hat, umbrella and rubbers, this rain would defeat a Londoner as far as walking anywhere was concerned.

She was lucky. A cab had just drawn into the rank, and swung forward at her frantic arm wave. Ten minutes later, in spite of a sensation that she had been drowning in an upright position just walking across a sidewalk, she smiled, warmed and glad when Parsons opened the door of the Travis house. Sara had never doubted that Parsons had been picked by Marcia's father, never a stickler for tradition, as a conversation piece, and then kept on as an indispensable part of the family. He was a short, chubby, rosy-cheeked, chatty and beardless Santa, a non-butler type if she had ever seen one. His hair, at seventy, was luxurious and snowy and he exuded an air of boundless optimism at all times. His wife was several inches taller, angular and severe, with a repressed maternal instinct that embraced everyone connected with the family, even Marcia's younger sister, Ursula, excepting only Ursula's frequent husbands. "She couldn't abide any of 'em," Marcia had said once, lapsing into a New Englandism.

The tall narrow house in a short street just off Wigmore had been left to Marcia by her father, and the Parsons had never doubted that they went with it. "For which, thank God," said Marcia. The younger sister, of whom Sara was never able to recall anything but red hair and a mingled smell of cocktails and expensive perfume, used the house as headquarters between marriages and between mysterious trips to Paris, Rome, Madrid, Berlin, and once—no one ever found out why—to Moscow. It was kept open for her, with the Parsons in residence, whenever the Travises were in the States, or at some far-off corner of some geographically obscure but politically important country. Every inch of it was Marcia's, from the faded chintzes on the huge, comfortable chairs and couches in the ground-floor sitting room to the gracious eighteenth-century drawing room on the floor above.

Sara surrendered her outer clothing to a clucking and concerned Parsons. "Horrid weather," he said. "Horrid. Able to catch a cab, were you?... Lucky, I must say.... Never mind, can't last forever, you know...." He hung her raincoat carefully on the old-fashioned umbrella-hat-stand in the small outer entrance hall, and took her rain hat away from her with gentle reproof when she started to cram it into the coat pocket. As though they were both platinum mink, no less, she thought. He preceded her to the door of the sitting room, and Sara noted with a grin that he was carrying her rubbers at arm's length, their final destination without doubt a spot near the kitchen stove to dry out their innards where water had intruded.

She sighed, beginning to relax, and moved gratefully to the sitting-room grate and its glowing coal fire. Her legs were damp and chilled, and she backed up to the blaze, hiking her skirts so the warmth could reach her thighs. She was able to smile almost gaily at Mrs. Parsons when she entered with r tray of tea things.

"Good afternoon, Miss Sara. Nice to see you.... You'd best take off those shoes, and I'll see you have some slippers... Now, now, there'll be no one but you and Mrs. Travis... We'll just sit them on the fender and they'll be warm it no time.... Nasty day, it's been; very nasty...."

Sara submitted as she had once before when she had showed up for tea, flu-ridden, flushed with fever, and croaking dangerously. Mrs. Parsons had all but put her to bed bodily and for a week she had been babied and bullied, fed gruels and broths and custards and chops, until one afternoon, weakly recovering, she had lain back on her pillows after tea and wept silently, large tears of self-pity rolling down her cheeks at the realization of the vast desert of loneliness in which she had been living and to which she would return, and in which she would live out her life.

Mrs. Parsons stalked out, and she heard Marcia's steps on the stairway, then the ringing of a telephone. The footsteps came faster, and Marcia called, "I'll answer it, Dell—" and then she heard Marcia enter the study just behind the sitting room. The door was open slightly, and Marcia's words, clear and incisive, were audible. Sara squirmed uncomfortably; she hoped the call was not a personal one, perhaps her husband calling from the United States, something she knew he did frequently. She dropped her skirt over now warm thighs and put one stockinged foot forward to tiptoe over and close the study door, then stood, motionless, listening shamelessly.

"... Who? Oh, Hunter! Dear, I can't hear you.... You're
where?...
I still didn't get it, but wherever you are you shouldn't be there in this weather.... Who? David Champlin? Of course. I'll be here, dear.... I'll tell him whatever you say.... Here, your flat, or a hotel? Whatever he decides? Right... Five-fifteen from Oxford, Padding-ton? I'll be waiting for the call.... Tell me again where you are.... Chillingsworth? But, darling, that's only four

miles from the Burleighs.... Of course I don't mean for you to walk in this weather! I'll just get through to them, shall I, and see about rescue? A car or raft or something..."

By the time Marcia had said "Chillingsworth," Sara, fully shod, was in the hall, Marcia's words still audible. She narrowly avoided a collision with Mrs. Parsons, who was bearing down from the rear with a laden tray and a pair of soft slippers tucked into the pocket of her apron.

Sara dodged adroitly and gasped: "I have to go, Mrs. Parsons. I have to—I've forgotten something. Something dreadfully important. Please tell Mrs. Travis I'll call her right— right away—" She was in the small vestibule now, slipping into a cold damp raincoat, ramming the plastic rain hat down over her head.

"Miss Sara! You can't—"

"I have to—" The outer door was open now, the knob in her hand. If Mrs. Parsons had not been carrying a laden tray, Sara would not have put it beyond her to restrain her physically. As the door closed behind her and she entered a world of water and streaming pavements again, she heard an anguished, distant cry from Mrs. Parsons, "Your
rubbers!—"

Mrs. Parsons and her mistress met in the middle of the sitting room, the housekeeper's hands shaking visibly as she put plates of sandwiches and cakes on the table in front of the fire. Marcia Travis, frowning in bewilderment, looked around the room and said, "Miss Sara? What happened? I know I heard her come in—"

"She ran off, madam. Like she was possessed. Said she'd forgotten something important—"

Marcia looked out the window at a wet and fast-darkening world. "In
that?"

"Yes, madam. And without her rubbers. Something dreadfully important she said it was—"

"It's not like—" Marcia stopped, turned slowly, and looked at the door to the study, closed now. "Delia, that door was open." She began to laugh softly. "Miss Sara didn't forget anything. Take back all but four of those cakes. I don't trust myself with them. And that other teacup. I'm quite sure I'll be toasting my toes and drinking tea alone today."

***

Whatever I do I mustn't get lost.... You could live in London twenty years and get lost in five minutes.... Thank God it's Paddington and not Euston... There's an underground near.... No, there isn't, and I don't dare take it if there is.... Or a bus. I can walk faster than a bus car go in this rain and traffic.... Cut through behind Wigmore Street, that's the way to do it.... Then Edgware Road.... More cabs on Edgware... then there's a Gardens.... What Gardens? Oh, God, what Gardens..."

A freshet of rain cascaded from her hat and down her neck, and she realized she had instinctively grabbed her umbrella—you're a real Londoner now, Sara—and hadn't even opened it. With the umbrella open she was even blinder than she had been before, and not much dryer. She stepped from
a
curb and felt water up to her ankle and as she crossed the street felt one low walking shoe full of water; the other matched it when she stepped up on the opposite sidewalk. There were taxis, hurrying, scurrying hordes of taxis, all occupied and most of them probably headed for Paddington too. She waved at them futilely.... Please, God, please let some compassionate soul take pity and offer me a lift.... No one did, and she knew she was wasting precious minutes. She tried to look at her wristwatch, but the tiny crystal was too wet and the light too poor to see it by.... It must be, had to be, later than four thirty.

You're a fool, Sara.... You're a damned fool... to go through all this just to see him.... Just to see
David?
No!... But you can't make it.... You'll be too late.... It's only Edgware now.... You'll be standing in the middle of that great cold station all alone like a drowning cat, looking, looking... and you've insulted Marcia.... She'll understand. I don't mind telling Marcia.... David, David, wait for me.... All I want, all I want is just to see you....

"Sorry. I'm so sorry. Let me pick it up for you. There. I
was
looking where I was going only I couldn't
see
where I was going. I'm sorry."

A delay. A precious two minutes lost.... Damn the rain... damn, damn everything, including me.... Taxi! Oh, God, there's an empty one.... No, there's a stupid man in the back seat, and I hope his stupid moustache catches fire when he lights that stupid cigarette.... Edgware Road, miles of it, all of them wet and slippery.... God, I must be in Maida Vale by now.... The signs... I ought to look at the signs... Gardens... Sussex Gardens... I'm getting closer.... If I stopped and poured the water out of my shoes, I could run....

"Yes! Here! Here, taxi!" This was a miracle, pure and simple....

She tumbled into the cab, saw pools of water form on the floor, and felt a gust of wet air blow through the window behind the driver as he opened it. "Paddington, Miss?"

"Yes! Yes! Paddington Station."

"Naow, naow, miss. There's nothing to worry about. We'll myke it."

David, David, just at first you'll be lost in that station.... You'll have to stop and look around... look for Hunter, who won't be there.... That will make up for the time I lost when I bumped into that woman.... David, David...

***

His first British train was all that David had hoped for; only the lack of a seat that would recline as American train seats did bothered him. He gave the compartment he was riding in a figurative pat of approval, forgave its shortcomings, and lighted a cigarette. He tried to peer through the sheets of rain that blotted out everything but a narrow trackside strip of country, gave up, and after a quick, furtive look at his two fellow passengers—a woman knitting and a man reading a newspaper—he flipped open his copy of the overseas edition of
Time
and found that not a paragraph made sense. He closed it and fastened his gaze on the gray, rain-drenched world through which they were traveling. Hunter had told him about ewes with twin lambs in the fields, but there were no ewes and no lambs, twin or otherwise, visible under the pouring skies. Sara was getting closer to his thoughts; he could feel her wriggling into his mind, and once entrenched, a field full of twin lambs, each with two heads, would not be able to banish her.

Another confrontation with Sara I can't take, he thought. It seemed as though all the years of his life after leaving Pengard had been one heart-wrenching break from Sara after another, followed inevitably by a shattering, resolve-destroying confrontation. Yet he had survived those periods of being apart from her; more, he had survived and carried forward whatever he was doing. Let it be that way now; whatever his original motives in coming here, let it be that way now. For Sara's sake as well as his own, let it be that way now.

He would stay with Hunter, or at the Travis home instead of a hotel. He firmly put aside his previous decision to stay at a hotel where he would have more freedom of movement. He had been kidding himself about that "freedom of movement." A chance to go out, without anyone else's knowledge, find Russell Square and perhaps catch sight of Sara: that had been the "freedom of movement" he had wanted. Maybe he still wanted it, but he wasn't going to take it. Not now, after a quiet hour to think it over in and realize that he was no longer a damned kid, that he was, had to be, mature enough to fear another confrontation, more—to avoid one instead of taking a step that could only be defined as seeking one out. He'd taken Sara's absence now for a year and a half; in another year the feeling of loss would be lessened; a few more and it would become the vague background against which he would live out his life, free from the flood and ebb tides of happiness and pain. And that, he told himself, was a damned good analogy. Another flood could drown him; another ebb would be more than he could take. Let it be, he thought; let it be the way it is.

When he emerged into the dark, noisy cavern of London's western terminus his concern was mainly whether Hunter would be there. He had a confused feeling that everyone around him was speaking a foreign language, that only the signs were in English. Where in hell was Hunter? Nonchalant about a lot of things Hunter might be, but his old man had trained him to punctuality. In this rain, though, anything could happen, and traffic jams were a dead certainty; he'd give him ten minutes, then call the Travis home and hope to get Marcia.