Kissing Kin (11 page)

Camilla read the letter more than once, and pondered it a good deal. Raymond’s reception by the family, and his
reaction
to it, were so much on Calvert’s mind that he had said almost nothing about himself, but it was obvious that even if he kept his injured leg there would be no more fighting for him. One couldn’t help being relieved about that. But
Raymond
meant to go on, in the Flying Corps. Raymond must have the use of his arm, if it took every surgeon in England.

She sat knitting her brows over the letter. What was it that Calvert was trying to say about Raymond? What was between the lines? That about his schooling—and not being able to quote…. “Perhaps he means that Raymond says ‘ain’t’” Virginia suggested lightly when Camilla showed her the letter. “Why doesn’t he tell us what part of the country he’s from, at least?”

“It wouldn’t matter to Calvert now,” said Camilla.

“If he hadn’t any grammar? Or if he came from Missouri?”

“Nothing would matter. He must be one of the family from now on.”

“Absolutely, I quite agree. What’s this about my heckling him?”

“Well, you do sort of—
quiz
people sometimes,” Camilla reminded her uncomfortably.

“I do not! At least not on purpose. Now, don’t you worry, you and Calvert, I’ll make as much fuss of this Raymond boy as though he was Archie, no less! What shall we have for his presents? The fountain-pen? Does he smoke a pipe, do you think?”

“Wasn’t there a wrist-watch sort of left over?”

“A very nice one. Do you want it for him?”

“Yes, please. And the tortoise-shell cigarette case.”

“We
are
going to make an impression!” said Virginia. “I was saving that for Bracken.”

“Bracken has dozens of cigarette cases. If Raymond’s been hard up all his life he’s got to have nice presents. Calvert would want him to.”

“Whatever you say,” said Virginia agreeably. “There’s a little gold lighter too, while you’re at it, that doesn’t belong to anybody in particular so far. I don’t suppose there’s time to get it initialled now. What’s his other name?”

“I don’t know,” said Camilla rather blankly. “I don’t think anyone has said.”

Phoebe rang up from London a few days later to say that Raymond had arrived in pretty good shape and had been put straight to bed. Sir Quentin had seen him and would take the case. Bracken was there when Sir Quentin came and got round him as Bracken usually could and arranged to drive Raymond down to the Hall when he himself came to Farthingale.
Raymond
must go back to bed and rest until Christmas Day, when if all was well he would be allowed to get up and attend the party at Farthingale. The first operation was to take place at the Hall on the day after Boxing Day. If successful, there might be only one after all.

“I see,” said Virginia at the other end of the telephone. “Phoebe, what’s he like? We’re all dying to know.”

There was just the fraction of a pause, while Phoebe seemed to choose a word.

“He’s sweet,” she said. “Worth any amount of trouble.”

“I see,” said Virginia, still pretty much in the dark.

Because he was surgical, Raymond was given a bed in Ward G at the Hall and was therefore not in Jenny’s charge. And as Fabrice was no good with dressings—she had once fainted dead away across the patient when required to hold an
amputation stump—she had been assigned to Ward E (medical) though the Sister there would not trust her with respirations and temperatures. This left him quite outside the family beat except for Clare, who was on night duty in Ward G and who reported to Virginia by telephone the morning after he arrived that he had given her one dazzling smile when she spoke to him and promptly gone off to sleep like a baby and been no trouble at all.

“One of the lucky ones without nerves,” she said. “It’s amazing.”

“But, Clare, what’s he
like?”
pleaded Virginia.

“How can I tell, he’s been asleep,” said Clare. “He’s not good-looking, if that’s what you mean—except for his eyes.”

“What about his eyes?”

“Light blue—or grey—and the rest of him very dark—very weather-beaten. He looks right through you,” said Clare almost resentfully.

“And then goes to sleep.”

“Exactly.”

Virginia sighed.

“Well, I suppose we shall just have to wait,” she said.

Bracken had not been much use either when he arrived at Farthingale after depositing Raymond at the Hall the night before. He described the wound in some detail, and Sir
Quentin’
s opinion of it. He approved the presents they had set aside for the guest. He didn’t think Raymond had a wrist-watch, and he was positive that he smoked a pipe. When questioned further, he seemed, for Bracken, somewhat at a loss.

“You’ll soon see for yourself,” he said. “You must form your own opinion of him, you’re bound to anyway, no matter what I say. I like him. Nothing I wouldn’t do for him. He’s older than Calvert, you know, and—hard-bitten. He’s been through more than two years of this war in France. You have to be tough, for that.”

Tough. Weather-beaten. Slept like a baby. Looks right
through you. Sweet, said Phoebe. Hard-bitten, said Bracken. Where were they?

Camilla first saw him on Christmas Day when she went over right after the midday meal to assist at the entertainment, where she was to sing American songs. He had been allowed to dress for the visit to
Farthingale, and so wore khaki instead of hospital blue. His right arm in a sling, but to Camilla’s surprise it had been passed through the sleeve of his shirt and tunic. There had been a slight rumpus about that, as the Ward G Sister could have told her, and Raymond had won, for he refused to go to any party with a dangling sleeve and
unbuttoned
tunic.

Camilla found him in the gun-room, which was full of Christmas greenery and the noise of the gramophone in the relaxed period just after lunch and just before everybody assembled in the ballroom for the entertainment, which was causing a good deal of bustle around the edges. He rose at once to meet her as she appeared in the doorway—six feet and one half inch of him, and
big,
not slender though not too heavily built—with powerful shoulders and eyes the colour of a
knife-blade
in a brown, weather-beaten face; an uncompromising kind of face, rugged and used-looking, with deeply cut lines from the blunt, straight nose to the rather heavy, obstinate lips which drew a little across the even curve of strong white teeth. An unruly plume of straight dark hair had been brushed and brushed, but would not lie flat. He was not good-looking, maybe, but he was impossible to miss in a crowd.

“You’re Raymond,” she said, and advanced smiling, with her hand held out.

“Yes, I’d know you anywhere for Calvert’s twin sister,” he answered. His voice was very low in the noisy room, and she realized too late that he had only his left hand to offer, so that their fingers met in an informal, apologetic way which made for friendliness. His were warm and firm, but let her go at once, and there was an old-fashioned deference in his greeting, without any obsequiousness, which seemed to confer on her
the rank of royalty. His look was long and level, as though to see if she was all that Calvert had said she was, a searching of her character as direct and unselfconscious and uncompromising as a child’s.

“I can’t tell you how pleased we are to get hold of you,” she said with all the sincerity she knew.

“I’m sorry it had to be me instead of Calvert,” he replied simply. “I would have traded places with him if I could.”

“I believe you would, at that,” she said, looking up at him, and he gave a rueful little shake of the head.

“I sure did hate to leave him there like that,” he said.

“We’ll get him over here too, pretty soon, they think. He’s looking forward to being in England while you’re training for the Air Force.”

“If they can get me fixed up,” he said gravely. “I wouldn’t desert the gun as long as one of the old crew was left, honest. But they’re all gone now—I and your brother were the last. And he’s through with this war, you know.”

“Yes, I—gathered that.”

“He’s swell,” said Raymond gently. “You don’t have to worry about him. Whatever happens, he’ll come through—you can count on that.”

“That’s the kind of thing he’s been writing about you.”

He gave again that rueful shake of the head.

“We’ been through a lot together,” he said.

There was something in his speech, a sort of elision rather than an accent, that Camilla could not place, but she was no good at guessing accents, she hadn’t travelled enough. It might be New England, for all she knew, or somewhere in the West. Phoebe ought to know. For some reason one felt shy about asking him where he came from, as though it was none of one’s business unless he chose to speak of it first himself. She laid her hand impulsively on his good arm.

“We can never thank you enough for what you did,” she said.

“He’d have done the same for me,” said Raymond with conviction.

“Oh, there you are, Camilla,” Winifred’s crisp voice cut in from the doorway behind them. “Come along, everybody, stop that row and take your places in Ward F for the show.”

The gramophone stopped abruptly with a squawk and there was a general movement towards the door.

“I’ve ordered a car to take you and Raymond to Farthingale after the carols,” Winifred went on to Camilla. “The other girls are in the procession—you can see it best from the main hall when the programme in the ballroom is over, and still get away in time for tea at Farthingale. Jenny can leave with you, to drive, but Clare and Fabrice will have to help with the men’s tea here and I’ll send them over later, just before dinner. They can dress first, and save a lot of bother. Raymond, you’ve got your arm in the sleeve.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Raymond unargumentatively. His voice was very gentle, his eyes were wide and level.

“Remember what Sir Quentin said,” Winifred cautioned him. “The wound can open, and then you’re in for trouble. Don’t go mucking about with the bandage yourself. I’ve arranged for you to sleep in one of the private bedrooms here to-night, so as not to disturb the ward when you come in late. All three girls will be driving back with you, and one of them will help you to bed. I’ll speak to Clare about it. You’re not to try to straighten your arm in any circumstances.”

“No, ma’am,” said Raymond stolidly, and Camilla was conscious of a sudden impulse to hug him, sternly repressed.

“Come along, then, they’re going to begin,” said Winifred, and they followed her to the ballroom.

Calvert was wrong when he said that Raymond was scared about going to Farthingale, though Raymond himself might have used the word loosely regarding his own sensations. Leary, came a little nearer to it, for Raymond was always cautious about unfamiliar ground. A hospital, yes, that could happen to anybody, they meant to be kind and you did as they said and remembered to be polite to them. You hadn’t got to
be friends with them too, you could keep them outside. But places where you were a guest, more might be expected. If they took you inside, because of Calvert, you couldn’t very well insist on them staying outside. And they weren’t the kind of people Raymond was accustomed to. There was an earl somewhere amongst them, and some of the women had some sort of fancy title, and the men were all officers. And it wasn’t as though he was related, like Calvert. Would they be
expecting
somebody
like
Calvert, which he wasn’t nor ever would be? What if he had to eat a meal with them, with only one good arm and a lot of forks? With Calvert there he wouldn’t have minded so much. But Calvert’s sister was, after all, only a girl.

So far he had done all right, and nobody had got across him, except maybe the one they called Winifred, who was a bit of a tartar. She had a right to be, she owned the place, you couldn’t blame her if she knew it. She wasn’t coming to the Christmas party, as her husband couldn’t get leave, and
somebody
had to stay and run the hospital, anyway. He suspected that her absence would probably be OK with
everybody
.

Bracken would be there, which was the next best thing to Calvert, but you couldn’t be absolutely sure what Bracken was thinking behind that poker face of his. He was all right. But if you made a mistake, he’d see it. He’d cover up for you, but it would be there. Bracken was used to a lot of forks.

Sitting beside Camilla in the little gilt chairs in the ballroom, laughing at the minstrel jokes, bewildered by the charades, enchanted with any and all of the music, Raymond was aware in his middle of the sensation which always grew there just before the whistle blew in the dawn. Farthingale in time for tea, in a car with two strange girls. It wasn’t exactly that Raymond was shy, and he had never heard of an inferiority complex. It was just that he liked to know his ground, and choose his company. For the sort of women he was
encountering
here he had a deep-rooted respect and admiration, but he
had always kept to what he considered his place with them. Outside. For the other sort he had a manner of his own, which could be kind or rough as the occasion called for, and which kept them in their place. Outside. From the moment Camilla’s slim hand rested on his sleeve, these familiar barriers had begun to go a bit hazy round the edges.

He had crossed some sort of threshold. If Camilla had told him he had gone through the Looking-glass he wouldn’t have known what she meant, for he was not acquainted with a little girl called Alice. But already, with Camilla’s elbow brushing his in the cramped space, and the faint scent of flowers which seemed to come from her clothes—bewitchment was
beginning
. His outer defences against the things she stood for—hitherto so unattainable as not even to have been desired—were crumbling.

Then Camilla rose and left him, taking her turn on the programme. She sang three songs—
My
Old
Kentucky
Home
, as requested by Jenny,
O
Susannah!
and
Swing
Low,
Sweet
Chariot
—the men were completely enchanted and would not let her go, stamping, clapping, cheering, and beating on the floor with their crutches and canes. For a moment she stood
uncertain
and half laughing, shaking her head, unbearably touched by their enthusiasm. Then she started
The
Long,
Long
Trail,
and got them to sing it with her, which released a lot of pent-up emotion and made everybody feel better. Raymond
appreciated
her poise and warmth, and the clear, true tones of her voice. She was wonderful, he decided, and Calvert had a right to be proud of her. He smiled up at her with an increasing informality as she returned to her chair beside him.