Return to Night (28 page)

“Though, mind you,” he was saying, “I wouldn’t say no to a year in a French studio, doing bit parts and messing about on the technical side. That would be education. But if you once get one of these Hollywood reach-me-down personalities hung round your neck—No, thanks.”

Feeling sufficiently secure in the moment to risk it, she said, “So you don’t want to grasp at the fallen mantle of Valentino?”

She was pleased by his calm, till after a moment of blankness he asked, “Valentino? Who’s he?”

“I forgot. You wouldn’t remember.” They rode on.

“I’m starving,” he said. “Aren’t you? I hope you can eat an enormous tea. Mrs. Pascoe does them.”

They ate it in a parlor adorned with crochet antimacassars on red plush, white china fern-baskets, and mass-produced rayon cushions in hideous modernistic designs. Julian held her hand under the cloth. Afterward he produced, with some triumph, a case completely full of fresh cigarettes.

“You’re improving,” she told him as they got up to move to the plush armchairs. “I wouldn’t even put it past you to have matches as well.”

“You underestimate me. I have a lighter.”

He no longer snatched at a kiss, as though he feared that if he gave her time she would think better of it. He had learned to hold her eyes for a moment before he began. “I don’t think I like you in riding-things,” he said presently. “You look so nice and you feel so inaccessible. What time shall I come tonight?”

“I’ll ring you up. It’s safer that way.”

“I’m sick of being safe. I want everyone to know. Listen; let’s go away somewhere. Now, from here.”

“You’re crazy. Dressed like this, with no luggage?”

“I’ve got some money. You could get things on the way. There’s a little pub on the Wye, just above Chepstowe, Chris and I put up there once. Nobody goes there this time of the year. Ring up and say you won’t be back.”

It was only the concreteness of this last that brought her down to earth. “I couldn’t. I’ve got some ill people.”

“One of the others would see them. Just twenty-four hours, to go on as we are now. One always remembers having wasted things.”

“Would you?” she said. “With your understudy not warned? Even if it wasn’t a very good play?”

He said, “You’ve got me there. I shouldn’t have asked you.”

“I shall be loving you just as much as if I’d gone.”

He thought this over. “No, you won’t. Not that you aren’t right. But there’s no substitute for living.”

On the way out Mrs. Pascoe noticed his eye for the first time, and remarked on it with concern. He laughed cheerfully. “Oh, this? Just a bit of jaywalking in Cheltenham the other day. I stepped out from behind a parked car—silly thing to do-and ran slap into another. It was in reverse, by a bit of luck, and going fairly slowly. I did this on the edge of the curb. It’s nearly better now.”

Mrs. Pascoe was interested, for something very similar had happened once to her husband’s sister. She went into details. So did Julian. An entire episode, complete down to the ministrations of a mythical Samaritan who had asked him in and patched up the cut for him, sprang circumstantially into life. Hilary was fascinated by his glibness.

As they were crossing the yard, she said, “That was a very efficient improvisation.”

“Oh, it wasn’t improvised. That was the Official Version of the Incident, constructed with great pains. Do you approve?”

“It was most convincing.” She had not lost sight of the’ fact that it was her own choice which had made this, and much more of it in the future, necessary. Her shrinking seemed rather hypocritical. “But if you were too much knocked out to feel like traveling, it would seem reasonable to have seen a doctor.”

“I did consider it. But when I woke in the morning, I felt so well. I didn’t think I ought to bother a doctor—much.”

“Shameless creature.” Her disquiet dissolved, as often before, in laughter. “Well, I’ll book you an appointment, and it’s more than you deserve. Be careful where you park the car.”

“I shall be the most private patient you ever had.”

“Night calls are very expensive for private patients.”

“Whatever it costs,” he said, “it won’t be too dear for me.”

She let in the clutch quickly, afraid that someone might have seen their faces from the farm.

Very late that night, when there seemed nothing that could not be said, she asked him a question.

“When you said once that you recognized me—what did you mean?”

“Oh—I remembered your voice, and the feel of your hand.”

“From the hospital, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“But when I went to you then, you thought you knew me.”

He whispered quickly, “What did I say?”

“I can’t remember. I think that you wouldn’t have minded if you’d known I was there.”

“You told me I hadn’t made a fool of myself.” He turned his head away.

“You didn’t, darling. You’d been having a bad dream, I think.”

“Did I talk about that too?”

“No. … You surely don’t remember it now, do you?”

“No. No, I shouldn’t think so.”

“Never mind. But I’d have liked to know who it was I reminded you of. You don’t think I’d be angry?”

“It isn’t that sort of a thing.”

His voice, gruff and embarrassed like a boy’s, was half smothered In the pillow. She said, “Go to sleep. I won’t keep on at you any more.”

“I never thought of your thinking anything like that.”

“I didn’t think what you mean. It doesn’t matter. Good night.”

“Don’t go to sleep yet.”

“It’s terribly late.”

“I always thought somehow that you knew.”

“Sometimes one just talks for the sake of talking.”

“You know really, don’t you? It’s just a sort of a thing I had. When you’re a kid and you’re a good bit on your own …”

She leaned down; it was her own face she was trying to hide, though the light was out.

“… but when one reaches years of discretion one ought to pack that sort of thing up.”

“Everybody has things. Of course they do.”

“You’re crying.”

“I love you so much.”

It was a little while before either of them spoke again. Then he said, “I’ll tell you something. I was afraid to before.”

“Why?”

“Well, because it’s a thing people say. I thought you might not believe it, and if you hadn’t it would all have seemed so sordid, it would have spoiled things, I thought.”

“You know I’d always have believed you.”

“You say that because you don’t know what it is.”

“It can be anything.”

“You see, what I kept thinking was, probably this other man told you the same. Sure to have. He would. I mean, that he’d never had anyone before you. And then you found out it wasn’t true. Well—this time it is. That’s all.”

She thought it was laughter she was holding back, till her eyes ran over again. As soon as she could, she said, “Darling, you ought to have known I’d have believed anything you told me, even that.”

“I don’t think you guessed, did you?”

“How could I have done?”

“I never wanted anyone before. Not enough for it to seem worth doing anything about. I thought one might as well wait, rather than go messing about out of curiosity. That can be pretty dismal, from what people say. It ought to be important, I think.”

She said to herself,
It might have been anyone.

“Actually,” he was saying with some hesitation, “I did have the opportunity offered me once; but that was off-putting, rather than not.”

“Was it? What happened?”

“You don’t want to hear about it, do you?”

“Don’t be silly, of course I do.”

“It’s a pretty pointless sort of story. Still, if you like—It was just a thing that happened one Easter vac, down in Sussex. A man in my year was having a twenty-first, and a bunch of us stayed over for a long weekend. We all did things more or less together, nothing much in the way of pairing off, all quite cheerful and uncomplicated. Then the night before the party was due to break up, this girl came along to my room and said had I got some aspirin, because she couldn’t sleep. I was half-asleep myself and feeling a bit vacant, I suppose; and as everyone had been floating about in dressing-gowns and so on quite freely I didn’t think much about it, except to feel slightly affronted at her thinking I was more likely to be stocked up with aspirin than the women were. I said I was sorry I hadn’t got any, and she came and sat on the side of my bed, and we talked vaguely about one thing and another. She was good fun and pretty in a way, and after I was properly awake I admit I quite enjoyed having her there. In fact, if things had gone on quietly as they were for a bit longer, I don’t know—Well, it’s hard to say. But she suddenly got frightfully intense and started talking about self-fulfillment and God knows what, only it was much more embarrassing than I’ve made it sound. I didn’t know how on earth to stop her. And the more she kept on, the more impossible the whole thing seemed. Is that abnormal, do you think?”

“I’ve felt exactly the same myself.”

“Have you really? Still, that’s a bit different, isn’t it? Well, anyway, after trying for some time to keep the discussion on an abstract plane and not succeeding, I said the trouble was I’d just got engaged, only it couldn’t be given out yet because her people were abroad.”

“I hope that settled her.”

“You might have thought so, mightn’t you? In actual fact, it only seemed to make things worse. Quite honestly, I don’t think even now I could dwell on all the details. I’m afraid in the end I more or less told her to go to hell. And after that, I could have done with some aspirin myself.”

“Oh, darling. I’m not really laughing. I mean, not at you. It’s the time of night. I never realized there were drawbacks like that to being a man.”

“I see what you mean—well, that’s one way of looking at it, I suppose. I mean, it’s the sort of situation it’s impossible to come out of well, whatever one does, isn’t it? If you don’t mind, I’ll tell you something I’m afraid will really rather shock you. In spite of being completely revolted by the whole performance, after she’d gone I nearly got up and went after her. I think I might have, except that it struck me she might have gone along to somebody else by then. … I never imagined myself telling this story to anyone. Life’s queer, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“It made me wonder whether it wasn’t all rather overrated. Men used to come back after the vac and say they’d done this and that, and one rather felt that being able to talk about it was the principal object, though I hardly know why because when you’d heard one you’d heard the lot. The real people didn’t talk, I suppose, but that doesn’t occur to you till later. … There was one woman who produced a good deal of effect on me. But that was impossible.”

“Why?”

“I only saw her act. I never got the chance to meet her. I don’t think I really wanted to.”

“Tell me. Have I seen her?”

“Ten to one you have.”

“Who is it? Don’t be mean.”

“No, if I do you’ll only say, ‘But, my dear, she’s over fifty.’ Because I happen to know she is. All the same, for quite a while the thing that bothered me most about not getting started on the stage was that I wouldn’t get the chance of playing opposite her before she got too old. I didn’t want to meet her any other way. I suppose you can hardly call that being in love.”

“I dare say you were quite right not to tell me her name.”

“If I did you’d understand, I think; but I won’t. It’s queer to think about now, because it seems always to have been you. … Oh, God, you’re a doctor, why don’t you invent something people can take instead of sleep?”

“I’ve got you instead. That’s enough for now.”

“It is for me.” But he was half-asleep already. Her own eyes were closing when he said, “Will you do something for me? Or rather, not do?”

“Either. Anything.”

“That first day in the hospital. Don’t ever tell me what really happened. Do you mind? I’d rather keep it the way it is.”

“Have I made it true for you?”

“Yes. More than true.”

“I wanted to, even then.”

“God bless you. I mean that, too.”

In the morning she scarcely knew when he went—he was growing quite reliable about looking after his own departure—and woke feeling peacefully happy with the prospect of Sunday ahead, and only a short round of morning visits. In the afternoon Rupert and Lisa went out walking and she decided that it was warm enough for a deck chair in the garden. It was pleasant to lie there, with sun on her face and a rug against the cool wind, and to think about the immediate future and the immediate past. An hour of this had gone by like ten minutes, when an insistent intermittent sound reached her, the voice of the telephone indoors. She sighed and went in to answer it. A male voice, with a strong Gloucestershire burr, said, “Can I have a word with the doctor, please?”

“Dr. Mansell, speaking.”

“Oh, hullo, darling, it’s me. Are you alone?”

“Yes, it’s all right, the house is empty. You did that rather well. How are you, my dear?”

“I’m all right.” His voice was hurried, and so low that she could only hear it with difficulty. “Listen, I’m most terribly sorry, but I don’t think it’s going to be possible tonight. Mother’s back, she got here this morning.”

“I thought it wasn’t till the middle of the week.” Suddenly she felt as if a heavy weight were inside her.

“I know; things wound up sooner than she thought. She wired me at Chris’s, and the wire was returned of course. She got rather worried; it’s all been a bit difficult.”

“I’m so sorry, darling. Of course don’t come; we’ll fix up something later. What about your eye?”

“That was all right. I’m seeing Lowe today. Listen, suppose I can’t let you know when I’m coming, are those glass doors locked every night?”

“They’re supposed to be.” The cautious voice was getting on her nerves. “I’ll unlock them last thing. I’d rather you let me know if you can.”

“I’ll try to. It’s hell about tonight. I don’t suppose we shall get to bed till late, talking and so on. You know the way it is.”

“Of course.”

“You’re not angry? I couldn’t bear you to be.”

“You know I’m not. Don’t worry. I still—It’s hard to say things over the phone, isn’t it?”