Late and Soon (6 page)

“You haven't yet told me if you're still in love with me.”

“I haven't fallen for anybody else. Have you?”

“No.”

They both laughed.

“Primrose — about this business of being at Coombe together. Is it going to work?”

“Of course it is. Otherwise I shouldn't have suggested it. I needn't have taken my leave now. I only decided to when I knew you'd been sent here and it seemed obvious that you'd be billeted at Coombe. Personally, I think it's an absolutely Heaven-sent chance.”

“I know, darling. Of course it is. Only — in your own home — and with your family there—”

“It's a largish house,” Primrose observed coolly. “You won't have to behave like the lover in a French farce, if that's what you're afraid of.”

“Thank God for that, anyway. Do they know already — of course they do — that I'm a friend of yours?”

“Yes. I told Jess on the telephone. What I
did
say,” Primrose elaborated, in a tone of careful candour, “was that we'd met in London at a sherry-party — which is true — and that you quite frequently took me out to dinner. What I, naturally, didn't say, was that I'd only known you a fortnight.”

“Then, officially, how long are we supposed to have known one another?”

“Better make it a few months. But as a matter of fact, they probably won't ask. I've trained them not to ask me questions.”

“It doesn't follow that they won't ask me any.”

“You can cope with them, if they do. Don't pretend you haven't had practice enough, Rory. And mummie's not at all a difficult person to side-track.”

Lonergan drove on in silence until he presently enquired:

“Are we stopping at
The Two Throstles?”

“Aren't we?”

He laughed and turned the car into the gravelled sweep before the white stucco building, low and long, with fumed oak doors and window frames.

Little plaques above the doors on either side of the entrance bore respectively the words “Lounge” and “Drawing-room” but a painted board leaning against the wall pointed the way:
To American Cocktail Bar.

Primrose walked straight to it, her long, flexible fingers pinching and pressing at the flat curls of her hair.

Rory Lonergan hung up his cap and overcoat and followed her.

The place was hot, crowded and thick with smoke. Every high stool at the bar was occupied, but a man and a girl, both in Air Force uniform, were just leaving a table and Primrose, pushing her way past two women who also were evidently making for it, flung herself into one of the vacant chairs and threw her bag on the other.

Lonergan said to the defeated ladies, neither of whom was either young or smart:

“I'm so sorry. Won't you take the other chair?”

They looked confused and abashed, murmuring thanks and disclaimers, and at that moment a party of young officers moved away from the bar.

“Ah, that's better. Will I get you two of the stools?” said Lonergan, and he allowed an exaggeratedly Irish intonation to sound in the words, knowing that this would somehow reassure them and cause them to think of him, not as a strange man who had spoken to them without an introduction, but merely as “an Irish officer”.

As he had expected, they smiled and looked happier, and he pulled out two of the vacated stools and saw them perched, one on each, like elderly and rather battered birds on over-small gate-posts.

Then he joined Primrose.

“What the hell——?”

“You were damned rude, as you always are. We could have waited. The poor old girls had spotted these chairs before you did.”

“I hate waiting.”

“And I hate bad manners.”

“In that case, I don't really see why you ever took up with me.”

Lonergan looked her up and down.

“As I've told you before, I liked your looks. You've got the most marvellous line I've ever seen.”

“Is that all?”

“Not quite all — though nearly,” said Lonergan. “What are you going to drink?”

“Gin and vermouth.”

He ordered the drinks.

“Why have you got such an obsession about manners?” Primrose enquired out of a long silence, after her second drink.

“It's just another middle-class characteristic.”

“It isn't. My aristocratic parent is the same.”

“Is she now. Diplomatic circles and all. Why didn't she succeed in bringing you up better?”

“Because what makes sense in one generation doesn't in the next, obviously.”

“Well,” said Lonergan, “of course she and I belong to one generation and you to another. That's clear as crystal. Have another drink?”

“Okay. Same again.”

The third round was consumed in silence, but Primrose, sprawling in her chair, pushed out one long slim leg and pressed it hard against Lonergan's thigh.

It was he who eventually moved, suggesting that they had better be going on.

“Okay,” said Primrose indifferently.

She got up and threaded her way past the tables and chairs, moving with her characteristic effect of ruthless, effortless poise. But when they were in the hall Lonergan saw that her eyes were glazed and she remarked in her most indistinct drawl:

“You all right for driving? I'm slightly — very slightly — tight.”

“Well, I'm not. Come on.”

He took her by the elbow and steered her out into the darkness.

“God, I can't see a thing in this damned black-out.”

“You'll be all right in a second. Stand still on the step and don't move while I get the car round.”

When they were on the road again Lonergan said:

“You can't possibly be tight on three small drinks. I suppose you haven't had anything to eat all day.”

“Not a thing, except one cup of utterly filthy coffee for breakfast. I'll be all right, directly.”

She slumped down in her seat, leaning her head against his shoulder.

Lonergan, driving slowly, partly because he was careful in the black-out and partly because he wanted to give her time to recover herself before they arrived, thought that, so long as she remained silent and rather movingly helpless, he could almost make himself imagine that he loved her a little.

The car was turning into the lane that led to Coombe before Primrose spoke.

“I wish we were staying at
The Two Throstles
tonight.”

“So do I,” Lonergan answered automatically, and wishing nothing of the kind since he was perfectly well-known at
The Two Throstles
and so, certainly, was she.

“When you get to the gate, which you'll have to get out and open, I'll tidy up a bit.”

“Right.”

A moment later he stopped the car and, before getting out, pulled her towards him and kissed her.

Primrose returned the kiss fiercely and he felt her hands clutching at him.

She was both exciting and easily excited, but already he wished that he had never embarked on the affair.

The idea of carrying it on in the girl's own home was idiotic, tasteless, and repellent to him. He was angry and disgusted with himself for having lacked the courage to tell her so when she had first suggested the plan.

As usual, he had been afraid of hurting her. As though a girl like that, whose affairs were as numerous as they were short-lived, was ever going to be hurt by any man ! Least of all, he unsparingly added, a man twenty-four years older than herself at whom she had only made a pass on a meaningless impulse, at a dull party.

Instinctively, he released his hold of her.

“What's the matter?” asked Primrose.

“Nothing. Hadn't we better go on?”

Primrose gave her short, unamused laugh.

“I suppose so.”

She had taken his words in a sense far other than that in which he had meant them.

Lonergan got out and opened the gate, drove through and then got out to shut it again.

When he returned Primrose had switched on the light in the roof and was making up her face. Her gummed-looking curls were perfectly in place.

“Ready, Primrose?”

“Not yet.”

He sat without moving, his eyes fixed upon her, but neither seeing her nor thinking of her.

In a few minutes now they would reach the house.

Had Primrose Arbell's mother, more than a quarter of
a century ago, been that touching child to whom he had made most innocent and idyllic love for a few breathless afternoons in a Roman garden, before — like the catastrophe in a Victorian novel — her parents had sent him to the right-about?

If so, she might well have forgotten the whole episode, his name included. Perhaps he'd have forgotten, too, if it hadn't been for that startlingly unforeseen interview — again, like the Victorian novel — with her parents, and for the odd, rather charming artificiality of such a name as Valentine Levallois. Yet some romantic certainty in him repudiated that idea, even as he formulated it. At all events, he wouldn't now recognize her, any more than she him. And it would be for her to decide whether or no she remembered his name. Whatever Primrose might say of her mother's incompetence Lonergan felt quite convinced that, socially, she was not likely to be anything less than wholly competent.

“Okay now, darling.”

“Right.”

He drove on.

The house, like all houses now, stood in utter darkness.

He drew up in front of the stone pillars with the lead-roofed portico above the door.

“Ring,” directed Primrose. “There's a chain affair, to the left of the door.”

Lonergan, leaving her seated in the car, got out and after some trouble found the chain, which seemed unduly high above his head. When he grasped it, he could tell that it had been broken off and not repaired. His vigorous pull resulted in a prolonged mournful, jangling sound, a long way off, that reminded him of country houses in Ireland where there lived, for years and years, elderly and impoverished people.

An outburst of barking followed from within the house, and he could hear someone approaching.

“They're coming, Primrose.”

Lonergan stepped back to the car and put out a hand to help her out. He had no intention of walking into the house without her.

“Are you all right, now?”

“I'm okay,” said Primrose.

Her voice sounded sullen as though she had dropped her words from one corner of her closed mouth, as she did when she was either out of temper or seeking to make an impression.

He guessed that both states of mind might be hers just then.

A young girl in a cap and apron opened the door, very gingerly so as to avoid showing any light, and Primrose — ignoring her — walked in.

Lonergan followed.

He said “Good evening” to the maid and she answered “Good evening, sir” in pert, cheerful tones. He wondered what she thought of Primrose.

They went through glass-panelled swing-doors and were met by a renewed outburst of barking.

“Hallo!” said a girl's voice, and he saw the speaker scramble up from the floor in front of the fire, gathering against her the barking puppy, its awkward legs and large paws dangling.

“Hallo,” said Primrose, and she swung round to face Lonergan immediately behind her.

“Meet my sister Jess,” she muttered. “Colonel Lonergan —Jess.”

Jess shook hands.

He was surprised to see how young and school-girlish she looked.

“Sorry about all the noise,” she cried, slapping the head of the barking, wriggling pup. “Shut up, aunt Sophy. Look, Primrose, don't you agree that she's the
exact
image of aunt Sophy?”

“She is, a bit.”

“Aunt Sophy,” began Jess, turning to Lonergan, and
then she broke off, and exclaimed: “Here's mummie.”

He watched her coming through some further door, crossing the hall towards them.

Prepared as he was in advance for the meeting, it yet astonished him profoundly to see, in that first instant, that he could perfectly recognize in this woman of his own age the young nymph of the Pincio Gardens.

She wasn't, of course, a young nymph now. Time had washed the colour from her brown hair — the wave in front was entirely silver — and from her face. Only the dense blue-green of her eyes remained. It flashed across his mind that he had never seen eyes of quite that colour since, and it did not occur to him until long afterwards that the eyes of Primrose were of exactly the same arresting, unusual shade.

The very shape of her face — a short oval, with the beautifully-defined line of the jaw still unmarred — brought back to him the sheer sensation of pleasure that, as a draughtsman, he had before experienced at the sight of its sharply cut purity of outline.

He moved towards her and she held out her hand, smiling.

“Colonel Lonergan? How do you do?”

Curiously taken aback, although for what reason he had no idea, Lonergan shook hands and repeated her conventional greeting.

“Oh! I remember your voice,” she most unexpectedly exclaimed — and he was not sure that the unexpectedness had not struck herself as well as him.

“And I remember your face,” he answered, and for an instant they seemed to stare at one another.

“Hallo, mummie,” said Primrose. She stood by the fire without moving, and her mother, after a tiny hesitation, went to her, and putting an arm round her shoulders, kissed her in greeting.

The house, the large front bedroom assigned to Lonergan, even the water in the chipped white enamel water-can standing in the flowered china basin on the old-fashioned washstand, were all as cold as Primrose had foretold. He was glad to hurry downstairs but he felt that the evening was likely to prove a strange one.

That past and present should so overlap was disconcerting enough, but Rory Lonergan, who had regretfully and at the same time competently, deceived a great many people had never yet seriously deceived himself and he was already aware of a sense of tension, almost of foreboding, that came from within himself and threatened others as much as himself.