Kissing Kin (34 page)

“Coward.”

He laughed again, without resentment, and his eyebrow peaked grotesquely.

“I guess I am, at that,” he admitted. “It’s kind of like going over the top again. You wouldn’t come along and blow the whistle for me?”

Camilla shook her head.

“Jenny won’t bite you.”

“And you’re
sure
it’s all right for me to—”

“You won’t ask me that when you see her. Can you start for England tomorrow?”

“That all depends on Mr. Shenley. I don’t think he’ll
need me every day while the Conference at Locarno is on. We were going on to the Dornier works at Pisa after that.”

“Let’s go and ask him.” Camilla rose.

“You know—if anything comes of this, I’ll never be able to thank you enough,” he said seriously.

“I’d like to see her happy.”

“And you?”

“Oh, me, I’m in a rut,” said Camilla, moving towards the door.

The kindest of men, Paliser Shenley was very pleased to give Raymond leave to go to London and fix things up with his girl there. He even rang up Paris and got Raymond a seat in the London plane, and advised him to go the Langham Hotel, as it was nearer to Regent’s Park than the Ritz, where they had all stayed before, and was very comfortable.

So Raymond found himself unpacking his bag in Portland Place before he had managed to formulate his approach to Jenny. His natural inclination was towards the telephone, but he knew that wouldn’t do. Jenny believed that he was dead. He couldn’t just ring up and say he wasn’t. Nor he couldn’t just ring her doorbell in St. John’s Wood and be standing there on the mat. She’d think she was seeing things.

A hot bath and a change of clothes didn’t bring any
revelations
, either. He sat down at the writing-desk in his room and began a letter to her—tore it up and began another—and tore that up.
Dear
Jenny:
I
wasn’t
killed
in
the
crash,
but
I
let
you
think
so,
because—
No.
Dear
Jenny:
I
thought
you
would
forget
me
and
marry
somebody
more
your
kind—
No. What on earth did you say to a girl who thought you were dead?
Dear
Jenny:
I
happened
to
run
into
Camilla
and
she
said—
He threw down the pen and went out into the early October dusk of London. He turned southward, deliberately avoiding St. Dunstan’s and the St. John’s Wood address which Camilla had given him. He went down Regent Street and came all too soon to Piccadilly
Circus where it seemed that some decision was required of him before he went further.

He was unaccustomed to dilemmas like this which could not be reasoned out in a decent length of time, and he was getting angry with himself. Moodily he turned into a cheerful-looking restaurant and followed a head waiter to a table against the wall. Wine card and menu were put into his hand. He ordered a whisky cocktail and a cutlet, and made a solitary meal, aware that he might have had Jenny’s happy face across the table—he was wasting time—but after so many years, did a few more hours matter? He left the table without a sweet and emerged again into the Circus, which swirled with theatre-time crowds. He thought of going to a play—leaving further action till tomorrow. Coward, said Camilla. He stepped into a taxi and returned to his hotel. There he wrote out a telegram and sent it off and sat down in the lounge with the evening papers.

Dear
Jenny:
I
am
at
the
Langham
Hotel.
I
met
Camilla
by
accident
at
Salzburg
and
she
said
you
would
see
me.
I
shall
wait
here
for
you
to
telephone
and
let
me
explain.
Raymond.

She might not be at home this evening, of course. He would probably have to wait till about lunch-time tomorrow before he heard from her. Even then she might not want to see him—she might write instead—Jenny knew how to write letters—or she might want time to think it over….

He sat with the
Standard
open before him, forgetting to turn the page, and thought about Jenny. Now that he had sent the message and burnt his boats, a mounting excitement gripped him, a real stage-fright. What should he say on the telephone about the scar, she must be warned. Or would it be best to wait and watch her face, so as to be sure if it was too great a shock at her first sight of it, unprepared? Jenny had a face you could read like a book….

The newspaper blurred before his unseeing gaze and there was only Jenny’s face, its parted, eager lips, its honest, trustful eyes. She always looked at you as though you were the King. The old, abiding ache of his longing for Jenny had hold of him
again, and he could only surrender to it as he had not done for a long time. If he lost her now, if he lost her again … But Camilla must know. Camilla was so sure. Jenny had always been so sure. And it wouldn’t be Indian Landing now, nor night school, nor greasy overalls. That was all behind him. His father’s house was still there, his own house now, and the town was still there, pretty much unchanged, and always would be—he meant to go back to it for summer holidays. But Jenny wouldn’t have to get a job and try not to be an expense—he was remembering that day on the terrace at the Hall and Jenny sitting beside him on the little folding stool in her blue VAD dress, with tears dropping down on her hands—
When
this
war
is
over
dukes
aren’t
going
to
matter
—
nobody’s
going
to
care
who
I
am,
we
needn’t
tell
them
in
America
…. But Camilla had told them that night in Salzburg, and nobody had seemed to think twice about it, not even Dinah, who was a ladyship herself. Of course things were a little different now, with Paliser Shenley behind him—no one but Jenny had foreseen Paliser Shenley in 1918….

“
Raymond.
”

It was a sound barely above a whisper, and Jenny stood beside his chair.

He rose in a single movement, dropping the paper, and their hands came together, and there were her parted lips and her shining eyes, and—she had had no warning about the scar. He smiled down at her, and felt the familiar,
inevitable
upward twist of his face, and Jenny did not so much as blink.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” he said, more in surprise than in rebuke, with amusement too at the way Jenny never could do things by halves. “I would have come to you.”

“I couldn’t wait for that,” said Jenny. “I just grabbed my hat and coat and ran till I saw a taxi. I forgot to bring any money. He’s waiting outside to be paid. It will cost you one and ninepence.”

He laughed. He pressed the small, warm fingers in his.

“I guess I can stand that,” he said, but before he could move towards the door she held him, with both hands.

“Or we could take the taxi back to my flat where we can talk,” she said, with a glance round the quiet lounge and the people drinking after-dinner coffee and settling in for the evening.

He paused, looking down at her searchingly—and knew that it was all right with Jenny, that she wasn’t holding anything against him, that he didn’t have to explain and apologize, that it was enough for Jenny that he was there, between her hands again. She looked tired, he thought, and too thin, and so small, and she stood so straight—but tired. And sort of forlorn. Living alone, like that, earning her own living, or part of it, holding out for him, when she must have had dozens of chances to do better. Stubborn. Her chin was sticking out right now. Something like pity flooded through him, a warm tide of tenderness, and he made what was perhaps the most
impulsive
speech of his life so far.

“If we take that taxi back to your place,” he said quietly, “it means that you’re going to marry me—
now,
as soon as we can.”

Jenny looked back at him gravely, without reservations of caution.

“Is that what you came to London for?”

“I came to London to show you this face. Camilla said—” He hesitated.

“Said it wouldn’t scare me?” Jenny suggested. “Did you really think that would make any difference to me?”

“Doesn’t it?”

“The taxi meter will say two shillings by now,” said Jenny. “And besides, you can’t possibly kiss me here, it would cause raised eyebrows.”

But he did, a quick hard one, and the Langham lounge tactfully pretended it hadn’t seen, and then watched them wistfully as they departed, hand in hand, to the waiting cab.

When they had seen Raymond off to Paris and the London plane, Camilla reacted in a vast desolation which she attributed to the basest reasons and accused herself of selfishness and envy. Jenny and Raymond had earned it. She ought to be glad. She
was
glad. But she had never felt so lonely in her life, not even when Calvert died. She knew that she was entirely unequal to preserving her usual equanimity in an intimate family party at Stresa. She needed some time to herself to get hold of things. She decided to stay on alone at the Oesterreichische Hof, and join them later, possibly for Christmas in London.

Dinah was surprised, but she was always willing that people should have their own moods and foibles in peace, and she advised Bracken to let Camilla be, as it was plain she wasn’t happy. Bracken thought the thing to do in that case was to have lots of company and plenty to think about besides
oneself
. But Dinah said he wasn’t to try to live Camilla’s life for her, and he subsided with the proviso that if she got tired of it Camilla should send them a telegram at once and come straight on to the hotel at Stresa. Camilla promised, and felt relief mixed with her misery as she watched them drive away, the Shenleys in one car, Bracken, Dinah, Jeff, and Johnny in the other. At least she wouldn’t have to put a face on things for a few days. She could moon about, and feel sorry for herself because things weren’t so simple for her and Sosthène, and she must try to answer the letters Kim was writing from Paris, and sort herself out again.

She was still at it more than a week later when the new Pact had been initialled at Locarno and the Conference was
adjourned
in a general glow of optimism very different from the break-up at Genoa three years before. The nations of the world had forsworn war. Germany’s signature was there with the rest. Not Russia’s. But Russia might begin to feel lonely now….

The Shenleys had gone on to Pisa and Raymond was to join them there, with Jenny as his bride. They would all come back through Paris and sail from Boulogne in November, and
Jenny would be setting out for America with a Paris trousseau as a gift from Kate Shenley. The happy ending, Camilla thought, with a sigh. And I helped. Well, God knows Jenny would have done as much for me.

Dinah’s broadmindedness was not quite sufficient to take the observant Jeff into Sally’s household at Cannes, so they were going straight through to London, and Bracken suggested that Camilla come with them to Farthingale and stay for Christmas. Camilla shook her head, but confessed under pressure that there was nothing else she had to do instead.

“Ever been to Switzerland?” Johnny asked her unexpectedly.

Camilla said she hadn’t.

“You ought to come to Switzerland for winter sports,” said Johnny. “Can you ski?”

Camilla said she couldn’t.

“I’ll teach you,” said Johnny. “Of course you may break your neck, but in that case you wouldn’t have anything more to worry about.”

Camilla said she thought that might be a very convenient state of affairs.

“And if it’s only your leg you break,” said Johnny, “you get a nice rest and time to catch up on your reading.”

Camilla said it all sounded most attractive.

They were having cocktails before dinner in the sitting-room of Bracken’s suite at the Oesterreichische Hof, and just then a page knocked on the door and handed in a telegram for Bracken. Nobody took any notice, because Bracken was always getting telegrams. Johnny was in the midst of a lively description of Chamonix in its valley at the bottom of Mont Blanc, with enthusiastic footnotes by Dinah, who had been there at the same time last winter, when Bracken said, “Oh, dear,” in an odd sort of way, and they all stopped talking to look at him.

He passed the telegram to Dinah, who said slowly when she had read it, “You and Camilla will have to go, I can’t possibly take Jeff there.”

“Where?” Camilla asked, and Bracken said, without
thinking
to break it to her, “Sosthène died suddenly last night—heart, of course, we all knew it could happen, but Sally is prostrated. We’ll have to go and see to things for her, I suppose, she’s counting on
it.” And he and Johnny began talking about trains and whether Dinah should stop in Paris or go straight on to London with Jeff.

Camilla sat very still, waiting for the room to stop going round, waiting for some sort of equilibrium to return. She felt as though something had fallen on her, and her stomach was cold and queasy, and her heart seemed to be trying to come through her side, and her face felt stiff and white, like a stone….

“Camilla—” Dinah’s voice came to her from a long way off. “Camilla, what
is
it?”

“I’m sorry, I think I’m going to faint,” Camilla said quite distinctly, and the room reeled again, and she shut her eyes.

“Oh, nonsense, nobody faints nowadays,” said Johnny’s voice, and she felt a vigorous arm between her sagging shoulders and the back of the chair, and the rim of a glass pressed cold against her lips. “Drink this down, quick.” The icy liquid struck her throat, and she strangled and leaned against him, coughing and shaking her head. “That’s better,” said Johnny. “Got to learn to take your liquor, though, and you from the South.”