The Blue Rose (21 page)

“What I’m longing for is a bath,” he said.

“Are you hungry?”

“Not a bit, though I shan’t say no to a cup of tea poured out by you in due course. One’s poor stomach gets so confused with all the changes of hours that it begins to rebel rather. And no wonder. It is very hard on it suddenly to have breakfast thrust on it at midnight!
...”

His tone was so normal that the temptation not to say or do anything—just to let things take their course—was very great. But she had to say something, so for a start she began: “Stephen, what exactly was the business that you had to go for? I don’t think you told me.”

“Oh, darling, it’s a bit complicated. Must we talk about it now? I’ll tell you all about it this evening. Do you know what a flotation is—a flotation of shares?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll tell you all about it this evening,” he said again, “if it interests you.”

“Of course it interests me. Several people have asked me why you went, and I’ve felt such a fool not being able to tell them.”

“Couldn’t you just have said that I’d gone on business? And what concern is it of theirs anyway?
What do we care about people?”

She wanted to tell him then what at least two people
—
Robin and Clive—believed to be the “business” which had taken him to New York, but she had not got the courage. The words would not come. But this evening she would bring up the subject again, if he didn’t, and insist on knowing what his business had been. If he couldn’t tell her, or wouldn’t, she would know what to think
...
But didn’t she know already?

When they got home Antonio was in the hall to greet them. There was also a cable lying on the hall table on top of a pile of letters for Stephen. When Stephen had spoken to Antonio and asked after Vittoria, he tore the cable open. “It’s from Deirdre,” he said. (Deirdre was his sister who was living in Karachi.) “She’s coming home. Flying. Her youngest boy, Peter, has got to have his appendix out and she wants it to be done over here
...
It can’t be too bad as they are allowing him to fly home. They must stay here.”

“When are they arriving?”

“The day after to-morrow. How long will it take to furnish the top floor?
...
Oh, I don’t mean carpet and curtain it and everything, but just put a few bits of furniture in it to make it habitable. Deirdre can have the bed from the dressing-room, and we can buy a small divan for Peter
...”

“How old is he?”

“Four. I’ll just go and send a cable to her over the telephone.”

He took some of his letters with him into the library, where he went to telephone, while Rose went slowly upstairs. Deirdre coming to stay with them? How was that going to affect the situation? If only it had been before all this had happened, how warmly she would have welcomed Stephen’s sister, but now she felt that her visit would only add to their difficulties. She felt utterly weary and longed to fling herself on the bed and blot out everything in sleep. She needed rest in order to brace herself for the evening. She would have to have it all out with him that evening. She sat down at her dressing-table and stared unseeingly into the glass.

In about ten minutes’ time Stephen came into the bedroom, frowning deeply. “I’ve had two of the most extraordinary letters,” he said in a puzzled tone. “One from Robin to say that he is going abroad. He doesn’t know for how long but possibly for two years
...
Did you know anything about this?”

“Oh, yes,” she answered lightly. “He rang up to say good-bye. I haven’t had time to tell you.” She couldn’t look at him as she said this.

“But why so suddenly? He says he’s giving up the Bar
...
It’s so totally unexpected
...
And the other letter’s from Gai asking if she can see me the moment I get back. Will I telephone to her
...”

Rose’s heart missed a beat. “Are you going to?” she asked.

“I have just now. I suggested that she should come round here but she wants me to go round to her. She wants to see me alone. She says it’s desperately important.”

‘Are you going?”

“Yes, I said I’d go round right away. What else could I do? Have you any idea what it’s all about?”

Rose shook her head. Perhaps she should have told him everything, but she was bitterly ashamed of the part she had played and hoped that he would never have to know about it. Besides, if she told him that Robin had fallen in love with her she would also have to tell him what Robin believed their relationship to be, for if she did not tell him that it would make Robin out such an unutterable cad, paying court to his best friend’s wife while that friend was away.

“I’m sorry, darling,” Stephen said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can
...
Is anything the
matter
? You haven’t even kissed me yet.”

She did not feel that she could kiss him at this moment with all these unspoken things between them. How could she ever kiss him again, if it came to that? She took refuge in a pretence of feeling ill as so many women must have done before her. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I’m suddenly feeling so sick.”

He looked at her keenly. “Is it
...
?”

She shook her head, restraining her tears with difficulty. Had it been dismay in his voice or merely anxiety? Anyway, there had been no eagerness, no joy. Why should there be? “I think I’ll lie down for a bit,” she said.

He was very solicitous then, helping her to turn down the quilt and lifting her feet on to the bed, but she had a feeling that he was angry, and when he said: “What I think of that damned coffee bar,” she knew that he was. He went out without attempting to kiss her.

She was alone and she was lying on the bed, but there was no question now of sleep. She could only think of the interview about to take place between him and Gai. What would Gai tell him? What did she want to see him about? When had she come up from Brighton? That morning? Probably she wanted to see him in order to get him to intercede for her with Robin. Perhaps she didn’t know that Robin had decided to go abroad and hoped that Stephen might be able to make things right between them. There was a niggardly little fear at the back of her mind that Gai might inform Stephen of the real reason for the break between them
—
or at any rate the immediate cause of it—but surely Gai herself did not know that reason? Surely Robin would not have told her? He would have made some other excuse for breaking with her—incompatibility, the fact that he had never really been in love or that he wasn’t ready yet for marriage and that Gai’s other chances were being spoiled by her being seen so much about with him. Oh, there were a dozen excuses he could have given without bringing Rose into it
...

In order to get her mind off the subject she tried to think what they would need to buy for Deirdre’s visit. The bathroom upstairs was fully equipped and there was linoleum on the floor of the two rooms which they had planned to use one day as nurseries. It was linoleum left over from the last tenant (they intended to have the floors carpeted before they used the rooms) but it was better than bare boards. She could easily get some chintz to-morrow and run up some rough curtains on Vittoria’s machine. There was already a built-in hanging cupboard and, as Stephen had said, the bed from his dressing-room could go upstairs for Deirdre, and they could spare the bedside table and the lamp from the dressing-room too, so all they would have to buy would be a divan for Peter and a chest of drawers and a dressing-table. (They had plenty of linen.) She was sure she could get the furniture delivered in time if she ordered it to-morrow morning. Whatever happened she wanted Deirdre to feel that there were comfortable quarters and a warm welcome awaiting her. Would it be better, therefore, to leave any explanation with Stephen until after she had returned to Karachi? No, that might be weeks, and how could she go on all that time sharing the same house with him, the same bed, with this terrible suspicion eating at her heart?

In spite of all these questions and dilemmas she must have dozed off, because she was woken suddenly by the door being flung open. It was Stephen and he advanced in what seemed to her, in her half-waking state, a menacing way, and now stood glaring down at her. “Now, will you please tell all you know about this business,” he said in a voice so hard that she would never have recognized it as his.

She sat up, startled, fully awake now. “About what
business?”

“You know perfectly well. About Robin and yourself
...”

“Oh, that
...
What has Gai told you?”

“That doesn’t matter for the moment. I want to know what
you’ve
got to tell me. It’s no good trying to find out just how much Gai knows and then fitting your story to it. I want to know
all
you know and I want the truth
...
“You mean about diem breaking with each other?”

“I mean about Robin breaking with Gai, and the reason for it.”

“I only knew yesterday, I promise you. It came as a terrible shock to me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“There hasn’t been time.”

“Of course there has been time. You let me go and see Gai without telling me anything, without saying a word. I asked if you knew anything about it and you said no. You lied to me. I suppose you thought that Gai did not know the truth. When did you see Robin last?”

“Yesterday.”

“Is that when he told you he was going abroad?”

“Yes.”

“And yet you said that he had telephoned to tell you. Another lie. Where did you see him yesterday?”

“I had dinner with him at the Caprice
...
At least
—
at least we started to have dinner. But I couldn’t finish it I had to come home. I was too upset. He told me that he had broken with Gai and I was dumbfounded.”

“And did he tell you why he had broken with her?”

“He didn’t have to tell me. I guessed.”

“Oh, so you guessed. I’m not surprised.”

“It wasn’t my fault. Honestly it wasn’t, Stephen. I was terribly shocked. And he said that that wasn’t the real reason either. He said that he had never really been in love with her, that it would be much better for her too in the end. What had happened had just given him the courage to do it, that was all
...”

“What
had
happened?”

“You know.”

“It’s just exactly that that I don’t know
...
Was it his falling in love with you, or was it thinking that his love was returned?”

“I think he did believe that it was returned in some degree,” she had to confess.

“And were you so surprised that he should believe that?”

“Yes, I was.”

“Can you honestly tell me that you haven’t led him on at all? Don’t trouble to deny it. I don’t want you to lie to me a third time. I saw you with my own eyes and heard you with my own ears flirting with him in the garden that night—that last time he had dinner with us, when Tony was there
...
You were always asking him here and you hardly ever asked Gai
...
And now I will tell you what Gai says. She accuses you of deliberately taking him away from her.”

“Oh, no, no, it isn’t true,” Rose protested, covering her face with her hands.

But Stephen dragged her hands away. “It’s no good trying to hide your face,” he said savagely. “Whether it was deliberate or not you’ve done it. You’ve come between them. You’ve ruined both their lives.”

“Oh, no. It isn’t true. Robin said that he never really loved her
...”

“And she says that they were perfectly happy until you came on the scene, and then gradually he began to change. She can date it almost exactly. And then that last night
—
the night when you encouraged him in the garden—when she was in bed with the flu, he came and told her what he felt about you and what he beli
e
ved you felt about him
—
what he had been
led
to believe by
you.
Since then she has been trying with patience and understanding to win
him
back. She thought things were better, and then yesterday morning she got a letter from him breaking with her
...
A pretty brutal letter too, I may say, after all they have been to each other. She showed it to me. The poor girl is nearly out of her mind. She didn’t know he had gone abroad. I’m frightened of what she may do
...”

“Oh, Stephen, I’m so sorry, so desperately sorry. I didn’t mean it. I only encouraged him because he was such a friend of yours
...
”