This Was Tomorrow (23 page)

There was an enclosure for Stephen, in which Evadne had written in a rather hurried-looking way:

Stephen took it very quietly, as might be expected, and pretty soon retired to his own room with his share of Evadne’s message, where he sat down in front of a wood fire and tried to read between its lines. He was more convinced than ever that she was under some duress, and because he had never encountered anything of the kind before his imagination boggled—he thought that was the word—at what sort of entanglement she had got herself into, though it looked very much as though Hermione knew where the body was buried and could dictate her own terms. Hermione was pure poison, of course, but he was firmly convinced that any of the more obvious deductions were too easy and not even to be considered. This was something special, it couldn’t be pigeonholed under any of the usual labels. Evadne had dreamed up a new one, doubtless so simple and original that Freud wouldn’t have known it if he fell over it. Evadne herself doubtless didn’t know Freud from Adam….

Sitting in front of his fire holding her note, Stephen found himself wishing that he could consult Jeff again, and reminded himself that Jeff was busy now. Got to paddle my own canoe
on this thing, Stephen thought. Can’t go putting ideas into Virginia’s head, either. Nor I can’t go round and ask Oliver if his daughter is certifiable, because if she was he’d have done it long ago just for peace. Not Oliver’s fault, anyway, they say it was her mother. I wonder— Damn, I should have had it out with Hermione long before this happened. Easy enough if she’d been a man. But how do you tell a woman to go to hell?

So what do I do now, Stephen thought. Go back to America with my tail between my legs?
If
you
should
still
feel
the
same
the
next
time
you
come
to
England
…. Does she suppose for one moment that I
won
’
t?
But it will be a year before I can bring the new show to London. Anything can happen before then. Even a war. They’ll close the theatres if there’s a war, they say, because of air raids. Sylvia mustn’t stay here then, but if I could get into the Flying Corps—hell, that’s no time to get married, just before you get killed. Time to get married is now, like Jeff….

A
LTHOUGH
his arms were full of parcels, Jeff paused at the hotel desk to collect the afternoon mail and carried it with him to the elevator. The fact that the mail was still there told him that Sylvia had not yet returned from the matinée.

He got their door unlocked, dumped his parcels on the table, hung up his hat and coat, and went into the kitchenette and put on the kettle for tea, while Midge the canary sang a welcome in his cage by the window. And all the time Bracken’s letter lay there beside the parcels where he had left it, waiting for him. He was not accustomed to dread Bracken’s letters, but he knew pretty well what had to be in this one, or the next one, or the one after that. Time’s up, it would say. Back to the salt mines. The honeymoon is over.

Well, it was more than most people got for a honeymoon,
he reflected conscientiously, in spite of losing every evening to the theatre except Sundays, and two matinées a week, since the opening in April. But that, as Sylvia pointed out, was no worse than if he had gone to an office all day every day while she stayed at home, the way it was with most people. They spent the days together, and in the evenings, while she did her performance, he worked on his book. They had something besides happiness to show for their year. Another new Sprague show was ready to go to London if it ever finished its New York run, and Jeff’s novel was accepted and almost ready to go to the printer, with the dedication—
For
Mab
—just as he had promised. A newspaper man seldom has the time or the continuity of thought to write a book, but on leave as Sylvia’s husband he had got round that.

And there was something more. He hadn’t heard from his heart again. Maybe that was one of the things Bracken had had in mind when he gave them the year. You had to get up very early in the morning to beat Bracken to an idea. Sylvia’s serenity and love and laughter had helped Jeff build up his margin on nerves—not to mention the fact that there was also an international lull, if you didn’t count Spanish Civil War, which got nastier all the time, and some new trouble in China, and Mussolini’s friendly visit to Berlin…. You couldn’t call it peace, in the old sense of the word. You couldn’t count on it to last. But at least one March had passed without a Nazi “surprise” and Hitler was still contained within the borders of Germany, and the European balloon had not gone up. The coronation of George VI in London had not been marred by any untoward events, the marriage of the Duke of Windsor to Mrs. Simpson in France had passed off quietly. Baldwin had been replaced as Prime Minister by Neville Chamberlain, who was at least a good business man, and the fifth Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party had seemed if anything a little slowed up. It was not enough to justify optimism, but in times like these one was grateful for an interlude. Till next March? And why always March? Something to do with Hitler’s belief in the stars, no doubt.

Jeff realized that he was wandering round the room avoiding Bracken’s letter, as though waiting for Sylvia to come in before he opened it. The kettle boiled, and he warmed the pot and made the tea, and hunted out the box of macaroons from the parcels on the table. Midge went on singing. He knew as well as anybody that it was time for Sylvia. Then her key turned in the lock and there was the first kiss after hours apart—the reassurance of it, the recaptured delight, the security—Sylvia had come home.

“Darling, I’ve asked Stevie in for a cup of tea, he’s a little down today. Somebody stopped him in the lobby on the way in, but he’ll be right along.”

“That’s good, I’ve just wet the tea,” said Jeff, using an old North Countryism that they liked.

Stephen lived in the same hotel and on the same floor, but in a separate suite. He had been very firm about that, when they engaged the rooms. He was always scrupulous about not intruding, until they had almost to beg for his company, and there was a while when they were uncertain whether to leave him alone with his unspoken misery about Evadne or to try to pry him out of his shell. By now they had all shaken down to a less self-conscious basis. He often had tea or dinner with them, especially on matinée days, and they usually planned their Sundays all together. What he did for recreation the rest of the time remained obscure. His rooms were full of books of all kinds—he read a lot, especially at night, sometimes all night, if they had known. And he spent endless hours perfecting gruelling dance routines, building up new tricks, and doing a little composing of his own on the piano—the present show was the first to combine the work of himself and his father as a new partnership which gave Fitz enormous satisfaction and was a howling success with the customers. They knew he wasn’t looking for consolation in a bottle or from any of the women who would have been only too pleased to supply it. They were almost sure that he never heard from Evadne direct, because of his undisguised eagerness for news of her in the other letters from England. That he was still in love with her was very plain.

“Ooh, you’ve been to that French place for macaroons,” said Sylvia, as Jeff took her hat and coat from her and carried them into the bedroom. “Hullo, Midgie, are you a good boy?”

“
Yike!
”
said Midge, who was waiting to be spoken to, and he put up his crest and jumped up into his swing, showing off.

“There’s a letter from Bracken,” said Jeff, returning from the bedroom. “I haven’t opened it yet.”

“Nice fat one.” Sylvia laid it aside and shuffled through the others without much interest. “Aren’t you going to read it?”

“Well, I—thought I’d wait till you came.”

“Oh, darling—bad news?”

“It’s got to be bad news one of these days. Our year is about up.” They went into each other’s arms and stood quietly, holding each other.

“My own news isn’t too good,” she said at last, her cheek against his. “We’re selling out ten weeks in advance.”

“Oh, hell, that’s up till March ist! I can’t possibly wait here that long!” he cried.

“That’s what I mean. But you know how Stevie is, as long as people will buy seats he won’t close the show. He says he’s got no right to throw the whole cast out of work just because the star, who happens to have a bank-roll, is fed up.”

“Is he?”

“I don’t know. I wish I did. He keeps to himself so. And he’s so thin.”

“He’s always thin,” Jeff reminded her.

“Not late in the run like this, only at the beginning—I mean thin so you can’t see his shadow,” she sighed. “I’ve got to work with him tomorrow morning, I’m afraid, he’s got a new dance dreamed up—with bells! The trick is to keep them silent when you don’t want them to tinkle.
He
can do it now.
I
shall go mad, learning! Bring in the tea, darling, he said not to wait.” She cleared a place on the table, set out the china, and filled two cups. “Christmas presents?” she inquired, nodding at his parcels.

“Mostly. No peeking.”

“Wish we could have gone to Williamsburg.”

“Wish so.”

“Hadn’t we better see what Bracken says?”

But just then Stephen rang and knocked—he always did both, though they left the door unlocked for him. Having signalled his arrival, he strolled in, wearing his between-shows garb—a turtle-neck sweater, slacks, and ancient tweed jacket with one button fastened. The sweater today was canary-coloured, the tweed was brown. He had removed all traces of make-up as he always did even on matinée days, and his long, lined, naturally plain face looked too fine-drawn and white, Jeff thought, with the recurrent pang of futile conscience that he and Sylvia could be so content while Stephen’s life was still all messed up.

“Mmmm—macaroons,” said Stephen, reaching for one, and Sylvia handed him a cup of tea.

Tired as he was, he waited till she had chosen her chair, and then set the macaroons within her reach before he himself collapsed bonelessly into a corner of the sofa. She noticed as they sipped and chatted that his left foot was rotating gently on its ankle.

“Stevie—that foot. Is it all right?”

“Oh, sure, sure.” He disappeared behind his cup.

“You don’t forget it,” she remarked.

“The old man is getting so he can’t take it, I guess,” he confessed lightly. “It’s that jump from the table in the second act. I’ve got so I dread it all evening—the table gets higher and higher as the time comes—when I’m on it, just before we take off, it might be the Eiffel Tower. Say, why wouldn’t that be a good idea?” He sat up. “Start with a sort of low coffee-table thing, and have it on trick legs that raise it another notch each time we come round to it—till finally they just know we can’t make it again, and that time we use our backsides—we
sit
our way over it!” He snapped his fingers. “Something new for London! Let’s get at it tomorrow.”

“Instead of the bells? I’m in favour of it,” said Sylvia.

“
Besides
the bells. Ten o’clock on the stage, don’t forget. I’ll have Al rig up something.”

Sylvia looked at him compassionately and nodded. There went her own Christmas shopping for another day, but love for her brother welled up in her as she watched him drinking his tea in a corner of the sofa. He had never been better in his life than he was now, so far as the paying customers were concerned. His little miracles with canes and hats and handkerchiefs and other dancing props caused gasps and applause in the middle of his numbers, and he had even trained a chorus of perspiring young men to do some of his own tricks in a shadow-dance arrangement. (His patience here had made Sylvia’s head ache. “No, son, look—watch my eyes—not like, that, son, watch my left arm—once more, son, keep your elbows down—
that’s
the boy, oops, almost, try it again now, keep your left elbow down—all right, fellas, once more, all together now, poppa’s coming too this time, wait for the beat—too
fast,
fellas,
relax,
don’t beat the beat—slower, son, you’re too anxious, there’s no fire—keep your elbow down, son—” And so on, by the hour, easy, smiling, helpful, soft-voiced, with the patience of Job—his only let-down when he would occasionally cut loose himself, a tapping, twisting, leaping whirlwind, to show them how it would look when they got it right.)

While the curtain was up and the house was full his inspired fooling never flagged—his humorous hands, his transfiguring grin, his lightfooted grace of movement, his brief comic Donald Duck rages, his mischief, his
joie
de
vivre,
his all-enduring devotion to a wrong-headed heroine. Sylvia herself knew and wondered at the perfection of his nightly performances, with no faking, no fumbling, no slacking off. She knew that his elbow would be exactly there for her hand as she swung round to it, that his fingers would always catch hers at the same split second, that his shoulder was ready for her weight, that his hands on a lift were sure and gentle. She threw herself into their numbers with all she had of skill and timing and apparent abandon, and they achieved a spontaneity that she at least had never experienced before. Stephen himself said that she got
better all the time, and she felt the hours of punishing practice his perfectionism imposed were all worth while.

But when there was no audience—that is, when nobody present had bought tickets to see him—all the bounce went out of him. He was cheerful, even-tempered, and polite—elaborately normal. But he did not make up the weight he always lost before an opening, he did not enjoy his food, and his eyes showed that he was not sleeping well. It was perfectly plain to anyone who knew him that there was something very heavy on his mind, and Sylvia had no doubts about what it was. He had left England without seeing Evadne again—he had had no alternative short of putting detectives on the number of her car before it could get to the Continent. Or he could have hung about for weeks until she chose to return from the conference at Lausanne. Sylvia wondered sometimes if they had been right to advise him to sail with them and let Evadne see how she liked being without him, if that was what she thought she wanted. They had pointed out that when he returned in a year’s time with a new show he might find her chastened. “If I don’t find her married to somebody else,” he had qualified once, and Jeff said grimly, “Over Hermione’s dead body!” Anyway, Stephen had little choice but to agree at the time. The new show was waiting for them in New York, and Jeff and Sylvia were counting on a few days in Williamsburg before rehearsals began.

For Stephen the year had been a long drawn-out agony of just living through it, day by day. He had written to Evadne now and then, not too often, not too intimately, and she had never replied. Of course she had asked him not to write. And of course he could not be positive she had received the letters—but on second thought he had addressed one of them to her at Farthingale, just in case Hermione did try to interfere…. It was not answered either.

So Stephen had endured his year, as it were incommunicado, picking up crumbs from Virginia’s letters and Bracken’s, keeping his fingers crossed so long as there seemed to be no news, while the show looked like running for ever in New York, and that table got higher each night, as though it already had the
trick legs he was going to set Al to figuring out in the morning. His left ankle was not bearing up. And he found himself rearranging in his mind the steps which led up to the table so that he could land on the other foot for a while—there were difficulties connected with the dress Sylvia wore and the fact that he had hold of her at the time and they made the leap together—nothing that couldn’t be ironed out with a few rehearsals on the alterations….

“Stevie, why don’t you put up the notice?” she was saying over her cup of tea, and he stopped waggling his left foot—there was an ominous little grinding in the ankle joint—and looked scandalized.

“
Can
’
t!
We’re selling out now till March!”

“Yes, I know, but—”

“Are
you
all right?” He focused on her in sudden anxiety.

“Oh, yes, I’m O.K., but—”

“I suppose one of these days you’ll spring a baby on me,” he said resignedly, and Jeff grinned.