Kissing Kin (33 page)

“It’s not me,” Camilla hesitated. “It’s nothing to do with me, really, he was a friend of Calvert’s—”

“
Raymond!
” said Dinah suddenly illuminated. “Of
course
, I wasn’t thinking! I should have made more of him. I will, to-night. How did the Shenleys get him?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. He was missing. That’s all we ever knew. Who are the Shenleys?”

“Oh, come, Camilla, you’ve heard of Shenley cars! He’s built a big new factory somewhere upstate in New York, and they’re making planes now—something very special. If
Raymond
has got a job there he’s done very well for himself.”

“It’s what he always wanted to do,” said Camilla. But inside, she could only think of Jenny and what this might mean to her. He had asked about Calvert, not about Jenny. Must Jenny know he was alive?
Couldn’t
Jenny know? What did Raymond feel now, about Jenny…. “Dinah—I want to talk to him. Do you mind?”

“Of course not. Will after dinner to-night do? You can have the study all to yourselves if you like.” Dinah flashed a glance at her as they got into the car. “There’s more to it,” she said. “Am I not supposed to know?”

“It’s not me, you see, I can’t—”

“Oh, all right,” said Dinah good-humouredly. “Let me die of curiosity!”

“After to-night,” Camilla promised uncomfortably. “I must talk to him first.”

Raymond’s evening clothes had been built by Dan’s tailor, and he had forgotten about them too. The scar, now that he was at his ease again, had faded almost to invisibility in the soft drawing-room light, except for the twist to his eyebrow when he smiled, which Camilla continued to find attractive rather than otherwise. During dinner, when the plates were being changed, she caught his eyes across the table and his left lid drooped briefly in the most unnoticeable of winks, as he picked up his fish-knife for the next course. He knew his way through a formal dinner now. He called Paliser Shenley sir, in an unobtrusive way, and was Raymond to all three of them.

The talk was easy and in some ways confidential, with things earmarked to be reported to Bracken when here turned with Johnny in a few days’ time on his way to Locarno. The
Germans were flying again, all right, they said. And their commercial planes could become war planes with no loss of time. While the Germans built planes like those it was suicide for France and England to consider armament limitation. Germany had factories in Sweden, Russia, and Italy for the manufacture of planes with more engine-power than she was permitted under the terms of the Versailles Treaty to construct in Germany—the factories were German-owned, and Heinkel, Junker, and Dornier interests and research were entirely
unrestricted
on the soil of friendly neighbour countries within six and eight hours flying time from Berlin. Germany had ambitious plans for the construction of giant Zeppelins for passenger routes to Asia and America, as soon as the Treaty could be revised sufficiently to give her leeway to begin—that was one of the main objects now, in Germany, the revision of the Treaty and the erasure of war guilt—the Polish Corridor must be eliminated—evacuation of the Rhineland by the Allies must be conceded—restoration of the German colonies—there would be nothing left at all of the Treaty and of reparations and of atonement, if Germany had her way, and the war would be all forgiven and forgotten, and everything would be just the same as it was (for Germany) before the war began, and
everyone
would tactfully pretend not to notice the part Germany had played in 1914—and then Germany would be quite free and more than ready to prepare to try it all over again.

It was not altogether a cheerful dinner.

When they rose from the table Camilla slid her hand through Raymond’s elbow and turned him aside into the little room Bracken used as a study, while the rest went on into the drawing-room. For a moment he stood with his back against the door he had closed behind them, waiting while she snapped on some lights. She sat down on a sofa facing the fire and motioned him to the place beside her. As he took it, with the good side of his face towards her, he said with a sigh. “Tell me about Calvert. Was it bad?”

Camilla told him, and it was pretty bad. When she had
finished he made no comment, gazing into the fire above his pipe, and the silence lengthened between them. She had told it without any mention of Jenny, purposely. But Raymond was not going to mention her either.

“Well, now it’s your turn,” she said at last, and he roused, and glanced at her rather wearily, and drew a long breath.

“I still don’t like to think about some of it,” he said. “But I guess I was lucky, at that.” In brief, blunt sentences he told of being taken prisoner in the German retreat, with that wound in his face and minor burns—of being dragged, only half conscious and full of fever, in any kind of transportation, from place to place as the German army moved eastward—no one reset the stitches, he rarely had fresh dressings, infection set in, and he dreaded the loss of his eye. Finally he was left at a
convent
along the way with a dozen other half dead or dying men, and an elderly nun did the best she could for him. There were days, weeks, in fact, when he had no idea where he was, or even who he was—he had lost his identity disc, he said, and so naturally was not reported to Geneva. It was the spring of 1919 before he was able to crawl about again and remember a life before the crash of his plane. And then they let him have a mirror. “It was nothing like this then,” he said without
self-consciousness
. “I’ve had three operations on it since then. I’m not going to have another. It’s no use any more, it was
neglected
too long. And a face like mine isn’t worth bothering about, so long as it doesn’t scare the dogs and children.” His money had been taken from him, but he had picked up enough German to make his way—when he began to get well he worked for a while in the village where he had found himself when he left the nuns’ care—odd jobs—gardening—tinkering—farm labour—as long as he made himself useful, people asked few questions in the chaos of post-war Germany—gradually he travelled westward again, towards France—walked across the border without papers—

“But your
people
,” Camilla interrupted at last. “It was wicked not to let anybody know—”

“There wasn’t anybody but yon and Calvert,” he said simply. “My Aunt Emma had died in the summer of 1918, and I had nothing to go home for. Calvert had enough troubles of his own, I thought—and naturally I didn’t want anybody to see me—I hoped you’d just forget about me, in time. I planned it that way.”

“Was that fair to Jenny?” she asked softly, and he stared at her.

“Did she tell you?”

“No. I found out by accident. She was dying of it,
Raymond
.”

“She didn’t—she’s all right now?”

“She didn’t die, no.”

“Poor Jenny,” he said, and sat looking into the fire.

“Well, so you got to France and then what?” she insisted.

“I spoke enough French. I got along. Everybody was too busy to care where I’d come from or where I belonged. There were hundreds of men like me all over Europe then—men that for one reason or another couldn’t go back home. Then I got sick somehow, on the farm where I was working—bad food, I guess—they thought I was going to die and a doctor came out from the nearest village. He was wonderful. He said my face could be fixed up a little—not like it had been before I was hurt, but better than it was. I hadn’t any money, of course, but he sent me to another doctor, a surgeon, and they arranged for me to work out the money, driving their cars and gardening and things like that—I think they wanted someone to experiment on. Well, it was better when they finished, and that was two operations. And when I’d paid off that debt I shipped home as a grease monkey on an American freighter. I knew I could always make a living as a mechanic in America, and before long I got a job in the Shenley Long Island works. One thing led to another there, and they let me have a corner of the shop to do some work of my own. One of my gadgets caught on, and the front office sent for me. And so on. Mr. Shenley paid for the third operation on my face, in New York.
I tell him it’s no good going on with any more. Does it look too bad?”

“It doesn’t look bad at all.” There was another long silence, which he would not break. “You haven’t—married, then?”

He turned to look at her slowly, removing the pipe from his mouth.

“Are you crazy?” he said.

“But, Raymond—aren’t you going to let Jenny know—ever?”

“Looking like this?” He shook his head. “I was no beauty before.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“There were always plenty of other reasons, without this one,” he said patiently.

“Don’t you want to hear about Jenny—now?”

He stirred uneasily, and would not meet her eyes, busying himself with his pipe.

“If you can honestly tell me that you’re in love with
somebody
else now,” said Camilla, “I’ll shut up.” She waited. “
Is
there somebody else?”

“You know damn’ well there isn’t. But by now Jenny will have got over all that, she wouldn’t—”

“How do you know?”

His eyes came round to her then, wide and steady and knife-grey.

“She hasn’t got married?” he asked incredulously.

So Camilla told him about Jenny, and the work she did at St. Dunstan’s, and the last time she and Jenny had met, over the tea-cups in the three drab rooms where Jenny lived alone. When she had finished he was sitting very still, the pipe clenched between his teeth.

“I didn’t know it would be like that,” he said finally, with a visible effort to speak calmly. “Honestly, I had no idea—” He rose, and bent over the hearth, tapping out his pipe. When he straightened, the scar was a crimson zigzag from cheek to
hair. “What do you think I ought to do?” he demanded directly.

“Oh, Raymond—not what you
ought
. What do you
want
to do?”

“I want Jenny, of course,” he said with his often child-like simplicity. “Just the same as I always did. But I gave up any idea of that in Germany years ago. It didn’t stop me wanting her, but it made me decide to lie low, so far as she was
concerned
. What would she say now if I walked in—like this? If I was going to expect her to be—I mean, if I’d meant to go back there I would have let her know before now. I’ve got no right to think she still remembers—what we said when I was at Farthingale. I’ve got no right to—”

“Jenny’s got a right to decide that, Raymond.”

“Do you think she’d forgive me?” The idea seemed to strike him with the first faint ray of hope.

“Raymond—have you forgotten how Jenny is?”

“No.” He began to walk up and down on the hearthrug, not looking at her, looking inside himself with excitement and a lingering doubt. “No, I haven’t forgotten anything about her. Not one single thing. I’ve thought about her till—all that time I was sick, I thought about her, and how it was the other time, when she was looking after me—I’ve thought about Jenny till I almost went out of my mind. And so I had to stop. I had to put her away, and think about engines instead—build engines in my head—go back to the shop and work all night with grease up to my eyebrows—I studied—I learned all kinds of things—so as not to think about Jenny. I’d just got it sort of lined up so I could get along like that—and then Mr. Shenley decided on this trip, and the first place we went was England, to the Hendon show—and it started all over again. I actually thought once I saw her there—”

“You probably did.”

“Well, Germany fixed that, anyway—what we saw there, and heard them say, and the way I felt, to see what they’re up to, in Germany—sort of took my mind off everything else
for a while again. And now
you
begin!” He faced her on the hearthrug, almost angrily. “What am I supposed to do now?” he demanded.

“Why don’t you go and see her?”

“But I
can’t
just walk in on her, I—” He came and sat down on the sofa again, chastened and polite like the boy they had known in England. “You’ve got to break it to her,” he said. “Will you write her a letter?”

“I think you’re the one to do that.”

“I’m not much good at letters. Will you help me?” he asked humbly.

“Really, Raymond, you of all people must know what to say to Jenny!”

“I never did,” he confessed. “You see, in France my letters were all read by the C.O. And anyway—I don’t know how to write things down.”

“Poor Jenny,” said Camilla, smiling.

“You see, I’m afraid if I just show up again like this, out of the blue, she might think I—
expect
something. I don’t want her to feel—
obliged
to see me again, if she’d rather not. That’s why I thought if you wrote to her and said you had seen me, we could tell by what she wrote back—”

“Coward.”

He laughed a little, the eyebrow kinked upward, and his eyes were candid and sweet.

“It isn’t that,” he said. “Not entirely. It wouldn’t be fair to her to—”

“I suppose you think you’ve been being fair to her all these years!”

“I meant to be,” he said unargumentatively, stating a
self-evident
fact. “I thought I was doing the best thing for her, honestly. I thought she’d marry Calvert—or somebody else, if she had the chance to forget me—if she wasn’t sorry for me—”

“It’s not you
I’m
sorry for,” said Camilla. “It’s Jenny.”

“Do you honestly think she could ever be happy married to
me?” he asked, between exasperation and patience, appealing to her commonsense as though he already knew the answer would be in the negative.

“She thinks so. That’s what matters. But only if you want it yourself, Raymond—not if you’ve changed or outgrown it yourself.”

“Well, what do you think?” he asked with his engaging simplicity. “Every time I’ve gone up a notch—when they called me into the office and began to talk about patents—when Mr. Shenley gave me a real job like this I’ve got now—when they fixed my face the last time—when he asked me to come on this trip with them, like one of the family, and I bought these clothes—I always thought of Jenny. Because it was as though she’d known it was going to happen, long before I did. I don’t mean I’ve got much money, even now—not yet. I’m still learning, and I can’t save. It takes all I get to keep up, the way I have to live now, the way I’d want to live—with Jenny, if I had her. But I never thought I’d see her again. I thought by now she’d have a family of her own,
somebody
her own kind and I wouldn’t want to embarrass her, I—but as it is, from what you say she’s got a right to be sore at me. It’s like not keeping a date with a girl, the way it’s turned out. Maybe she wouldn’t want to see me now, maybe—”