Sunshine Yellow (14 page)

The room in which they had to wait was very quiet, with all the opulent quietness of a Harley Street waiting-room. The door opened and Sir Robert Bolton’s secretary came in and smiled apologetically because of the few minutes’ wait, and then she took Stephen by the arm and guided him across the thick carpet to the great man’s room. Watching them, Penny felt as if this was one of the final obstacles she was ever likely to have to deal with in her life. If she surmounted those obstacles—this one in particular!—nothing that the future could hold would be half so grim.

When she was alone in the waiting-room she felt as if time were something that was stretching itself out like a piece of elastic, and only if she kept very still, and hardly dared to breathe, would it refrain from snapping. Every moment she expected to hear the twang of
it in
that silent room. There were ma
g
azines on a table quite close to her, and she willed herself not to put out a hand and disturb the orderly pile because of the frightful thing that might happen if she did. ... Time, the hollow silence, ending in uproar and crashing about her ears, forcing her to her knees and upbraiding her with tumult because she had made that unwise movement, and now there was nothing she could do but reap the whirlwind.

There were beads of perspiration on her forehead, and her hands inside her gloves were both unpleasantly wet. If only Stephen had let her go in with him, instead of insisting that she wait here! If only he realized what an agony it was to wait, and how infinitely she would have preferred to be there, holding his hand—as he had said she should do only the day before—while Sir Robert made his momentous pronouncement.

There must have been a large number of clocks in the house, for all at once they started to tick wildly, and their ticking beat against Penny’s awareness like the strokes of a hammer. She wanted to put her hands up over her ears to shut it ou
t
...
She wished that the awful silence would return.

And then she heard voices in the hall, on the far side of the white-painted door of the room where she sat. The door opened for the second time, and once again it was the secretary who put in her head.

“Your husband is ready to leave, Mrs. Blair. He’s waiting in the hall.”

Penny almost heard her knees knock as she walked across the floor to join Stephen. Such oceans of carpet there seemed, and she decided that never in the whole of her lifetime would she live in a house with a thick carpet. Stephen had his coat on, and his dark glasses, and the secretary fussed around him as she opened the door.

“Three steps, Mr. Blair. Only three to the pavement, and your chauffeur is waiting. Would you like me to tuck this rug round you?” She had Stephen in the car, sitting calmly in a
corner
of it, his gloved hand holding a cigarette, his dark face turned towards the street and the flow of traffic that passed along it.

Penny got in beside him, feeling her limbs relax on the silver-grey upholstery, but not her mind. The secretary beamed good-bye, the door closed, Waters started up the car, and they slid away from the house with the glittering name-plates beside the elegant front door.

Stephen said nothing as the car nosed its way out into the traffic, but as they turned into Cavendish Square he spoke.

“It would be nice to remain in town and have lunch, but I’m afraid you’d feel rather awkward cutting my food up for me.”

“Of course I wouldn’t,” Penny said. And then, in a thinner voice: “You haven’t told me yet—what Sir Robert thinks. Did he—did he
...
hold out any hope?”

Stephen turned to her, and she felt him reaching for her hand. When he gained possession of it he held it strongly.

“I’m sorry, Penny, but I didn’t realize you didn’t know! Although, of course, how could you know
...
? Sir Robert is fairly certain there’s quite a lot of hope. I won’t bore you by going into a lot of medical details concerning which you know nothing, but there has been a marked improvement since he saw me last. Something he hoped for, but didn’t count on, has happened, and even I myself have been conscious of the improvement. There were moments when I could distinguish black from white, when I even thought I saw your face...
”

“Oh!” Penny said, and in the dizziness of her relief she felt as if the car spun round her. “Oh, Stephen!” the name was a sob.

“Darling, I’m afraid you’re upset.” He had never called her “darling” before, and that alone was enough to stop the car spinning round her. She couldn’t believe her ears, but she wanted to. “These last few months have been a ghastly strain for you, but now perhaps the strain is coming to an end. You’ll just have to hang on to your co
ur
age a little longer, for I’ll have to leave you on your own for a week or so
...
perhaps not much more than a week.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Sir Robert wants to operate, and he wants to do so almost immediately ... the day after tomorrow. That will give him time to see me through before he flies off to the Bahamas.”

Penny closed her eyes in the excess of her relief, but she also had a nasty cold feeling of dread.

“That’s very soon,” she said.

Stephen’s fingers tightened over hers.

“The sooner it’s over the sooner I’ll be back with you,” he said. “A whole man ... my own man again! If the operation is a success!” His fingers tightened still more. “And it’s got to be a success. I’ve a life to lead that I’m highly impatient to get started on!”

CHAPTER XV

The n
ight before Stephen went into the nursing home where Sir Robert was to operate, Penny tried hard to think and behave normally. Veronica had telephoned during the day, and her Aunt Heloise had telephoned.

“Tell Stephen I’ll be at the nursing home tomorrow when he arrives,” Veronica had said. Her voice had sounded thin and strained, as if the news of the operation was a shock. “I wish I’d known this was going to happen and I wouldn’t have made any plans for today. I’d have spent every minute of it with him!” Penny could at least feel grateful that Veronica hadn’t known, and that her plans were not the type that could be cancelled, for she couldn’t have endured a day such as this with Veronica sifting glued to the chair beside Stephen’s, going out of her way to be lighthearted and encouraging but actually revealing more fear than Penny dared to admit to herself she felt.

Her Aunt Heloise was helpful, and said, “Of course you must come to us while Stephen’s in the nursing home.”

But Penny made up her mind that she would stay at Old Timbers, and she and Waters would stick it out together. Waters was so devoted to his master, in spite of the latter’s bursts of irritability and frequent abuse, that the next few days would be almost as hard to live through for him as they would for Penny. Together, in the same house, waiting for the same telephone to ring, they would have a kind of bond.

And a bond can be heartening.

But before she let him go into the nursing home there was something that Penny felt she had to say to Stephen. She had to make him understand, without sounding as if she were making a supreme sacrifice, that she understood perfectly the way he felt about Veronica. That she herself would never be an obstacle to their happiness, and as soon as he wanted it she would make an undramatic exit from their lives. Her marriage to Stephen was such a hollow affair that it should be the easiest thing in the world to terminate, and Stephen would know how to go about terminating it.

If the operation was a success, and his eyesight was restored to him, there should be nothing to prevent him leading the full, new, perfect life that he himself wanted to lead. For of course he was referring to Veronica when he said that he was highly impatient to get started on the life he wanted to lead!

He was fond of Penny, he might even be sorry to see her slip out of his life, but he was sensible enough to know that he couldn’t have Penny and Veronica, too. Penny had been useful, had tried to lighten his dark days
...
but Veronica was the woman he loved!

And the difference between finding a woman useful, and loving a woman, was like the difference between the two poles. They were a whole world apart.

It was extraordinarily difficult, however, for Penny to say what she wanted to say to Stephen, that last night before he left her alone at Old Timbers. And she would feel very much alone when he had gone, in spite of the comforting presence of Waters.

They had dinner—rather a special dinner, which Waters had supervised, and which was intended to boost his master’s appetite—and then Waters carried the coffee tray into the library. Penny sat behind the little table and poured out, thinking of Veronica as she did so and recalling her remarks about the Minton china.

Stephen’s behaviour was not entirely normal. He had been silent during dinner, but now all at once he became loquacious—or displayed a tendency to become loquacious. He held out his hand to Penny and invited her to come nearer, and she curled up on the rug beside his chair.

His hand reached out gropingly to touch her hair.

“Do you know what I shall be thinking about this time tomorrow night?” he asked. “I shall be thinking about you and your yellow hair!”

Penny sat very still, her eyes on the fireglow, a cold hand round her heart. This time tomorrow she would be alone!

“What are you thinking about?” Stephen asked. His voice sounded curious. “Penny, I must know! You’re such a kind, eager, impulsive little creature, and yet sometimes you’re very silent. I wouldn’t mind in the least if I could see you and the way you look while you’re sitting silent, but when I can’t see you
...
Penny,” he pleaded, “come a little nearer!”

She stole a few inches nearer, and his hand dropped to her shoulder. She felt it gripping her a little convulsively.

“Penny, there are one or two things I must say to you before I leave tomorrow. If anything should happen to me, you’ll be well provided for. Everything I have is yours ... or will be.”

“Stephen!” she gasped. And then, in a shattered voice: “Oh, Stephen!”

“I’m merely being practical,” Stephen assured her. “You’re my responsibility, and I don’t believe in leaving a lot of untidy ends lying about, when they can all be neatly tidied up. I have every intention of coming through this thing with all flags flying—it really isn’t a major operation, so don’t try and pretend to yourself that it is. But I should feel I was neglectful if I didn’t—discuss it with you as if I were taking a trip abroad, and insuring against possible accidents.”

She closed her eyes. “Possible accidents” sounded ominous to her.

“
There’s one other thing. When it’s all over, and I’m back home again—and we’ll assume the operation is going to be a success!—we shall have to have a fresh approach to things, you and I. We can’t go on as we’ve been going on for the past six months, you know!”

“I know.” The words came out with a rush. “Oh, Stephen, I do understand, and I promise you I won’t be awkward
...
not the least bit awkward! I only want to see you absolutely fit again, and then
...
then I’ll do anything you want me to do. I never imagined I could compete with Veronica, and you mustn’t think I did...
”

“Veronica?”

“Yes. She’s so lovely, and she still loves you
...
I mean, it was all a mistake that she gave you up as she did. She was probably suffering from nerves or something—afraid of doing the wrong thing, and anxious not to ruin your future as well as her own—when she gave you up as she did. If only someone could have talked to her at the time
...
made her see sense!..
.”

“Someone like you, for instance?” Stephen said dryly, lighting himself a cigarette. “A young woman with yellow hair and wise brown eyes who could have preached words of wisdom and prevented that notice being inserted in
The Times
?
And then you and I wouldn’t have got married, would we? And we wouldn’t have had the accident...”

“No,” she whispered.

He crushed out the newly-lighted cigarette as if it was tasteless in an ash-tray at his elbow, and then he spoke even more dryly, and a little strangely.

“So a man’s past must hang round his neck like a millstone for the rest of his days! Is that it? Well, I must confess Veronica is a most attractive millstone, and it never even occurred to me that she was merely suffering from nerves when she broke off our engagement! I’m deeply indebted to you, Penny, for pointing all this out to me, and I’m even more indebted for your w
illingness
to get out of my life once my sight has been restored to me and Veronica is ready to fall into my arms. I always knew you were generous, but that, I would say, is the height—or rather, depth—of generosity!”

Penny swallowed.

“Stephen
...
don’t misunderstand!
...”