This Was Tomorrow (32 page)

“But don’t you see—without that to believe in I feel naked and cold and—lost. Suppose I
was
all wrong—what have I got now to go on with? I—one wants to believe in
something.
”

He might have said, “Try believing in
me
,” or something equally silly, and got her laughing again. But instead, he knocked his pipe out very slowly, giving it great attention, and said without looking at her, “Have you been to church lately?”

“Ch-church?”

“One of those stone things with a steeple and a bell and stained-glass windows—and an ordained clergyman to do all the talking. There is a certain decency,” said Stephen, busy with his pipe, “about a good Episcopal service. Or have you forgotten?”

“Can it stop the war?”

“No. I’m afraid nothing can stop the war now. The only thing to do is to make sure Hitler doesn’t win it when he starts it.”

“You think he
will
start it?”

“I think he has to learn the hard way that he has to stop somewhere. Don’t you?”

She sighed.

“I suppose that’s what Mummy meant when she said about the work she was doing here, taking up first-aid again and all. She and Camilla and Phoebe were all nurses in the last war, it will all come back to them. As soon as they let me get up I shall start learning it myself. Do you think I would make a good VAD?”

“You’d feel so sorry for your patients you’d promise to marry them all.”

“Would you be jealous?” she asked with a sidelong look.

“Not very. Especially not if you married me first.”

“I will.” Her hand came out to him again, with curved, appealing fingers. “Oh, Stephen,
I
will!
”

He took the hand, which was a little cold and moist, in his two warm ones.

“And wilt thou have this woman—” he said quite solemnly. “Yes, please God,
I
will!
”

“So now that we’re married,” said Evadne with a long, dreamy look, “what do you want to do, Stephen? I can’t stay here in the country with Mummy, if you’re in London with the show. From now on I just want to be where I can see you every day.”

“How things have changed,” he marvelled. “I never thought I’d live to see it. Well, they tell me you will have to take it quietly for a month or so—I’ll come down here every weekend. And then we’ll be married and live at the Savoy, if you like, or find a flat of our own.”

“Hermione doesn’t intend to stay in London if there’s a war,” she said thoughtfully. “If she should want to give up the flat we could take it for ourselves, and I could join the ARP or something. She says the wardens are busy-bodies, but if Mummy thinks it’s worth doing even down in the country—”

“The theatres will close if there should really be a war,” he said. “I suppose I’m too old for combat flying, but I might get into the Air Force by the back door somehow.”

“But you’re an American.”

“So what? Do I sit around acting neutral?” he demanded. “Not me?”

“Come be a warden with me, then.”

“Maybe. We’ll see. Anyway, we’re in it together, understand? You won’t go riding off in all directions trying to save everybody but me, will you.”

“I promise to save you first.”

“We’ll save each other,” he promised. “Or have we done that already?”

“Stevie—” She held out her arms and he came to sit on the edge of the bed. “Stevie, don’t let me make any more mistakes. I promise to
obey
—”

The war of nerves was on now. People took Holidays as Usual, people went on getting married at St. Margaret’s in white satin, the King and Queen attended the Paris Exhibition and came home safely—but the newspapers were full of talk about sanctuary for civilians, blast-proof shelters, gas-detection and gas-masks for everyone, barrage balloons over London, evacuation of the too young and the too old and the too pregnant.

As soon as Evadne was allowed to get up, still feeling rather weak and wobbly and tearful, as though she had had influenza, which was the only remaining result of the prolonged nervous shock she had undergone, Virginia suggested that she come along to one of the lectures at the Upper Briarly Parish Hall, adding as a further inducement that the man was going to talk about gas-masks. With a slight fastidious shrinking in her midriff, Evadne reminded herself that one must make a beginning somewhere, and was ready in the drawing-room when Rosalind arrived to collect them. Virginia had not yet appeared, and there was a moment that threatened to be awkward as Rosalind entered the room and their separate knowledge of Victor confronted them.

Since Evadne’s return from Germany, Rosalind had not ceased to blame herself for not taking Edward’s unwelcome suggestion that she talk to Evadne, straight from the shoulder, about Germans and Victor in particular. She was still wondering if Evadne would have reacted to the facts of Conrad’s betrayal and death by refusing ever to countenance Victor again—and so been spared the consequences of their continued association. And she was still reminding herself that anyway it was too late
now,
that to tell the story now of that interview at Cleeve would be nothing but hysteria and could serve no
purpose whatever, as Victor had finally done for himself without any help from her. Unless—there was, she supposed, the possibility that Evadne still cherished some kind of feeling for him, if only acute disillusionment, and so ought to know how ingrained the beastliness was, not just with women, not just this present madness, but for years past—corruption in the blood and bone and brain, inhuman and deadly. And suppose then Evadne said, “Why didn’t you
tell
me?” There was no good answer to that. But perhaps it should be faced, if there was any chance that Evadne was not cured for ever of infatuation or illusion….

And Evadne, painfully conscious of Rosalind’s relationship to her own private nightmare, was trying to think of some way to make her see that it needn’t matter between them, and was wondering if it would help to tell her about what he had called the joke. It was a remark which Evadne had not understood at the time, but Rosalind must have the key to it. Neither of them would ever seen Victor again, and both were profoundly thankful. Would it bring any peace of mind to Rosalind, she wondered, to know what he had said about his father that last day in London?

For a moment they stood looking at each other with a mutual compassion, and then Evadne said, “I used to blame you for being hard-hearted—back in the days when I thought I knew it all. You knew much better than I did, of course.”

“I’m afraid I did,” said Rosalind heavily. “Would you have listened to me then if I—”

“No, probably not. I wouldn’t listen to anybody, would I.” Evadne was able to smile. “Mummy says it’s one of those lessons we don’t have to learn twice, and that it need never come up again. But there’s one thing I think perhaps I ought to mention, if you don’t mind—it might make you think a little better of him, in the end.”

“I’m afraid I know pretty well what to think,” said Rosalind gently.

“Did you know that he had turned to his father’s friends now, for help?” And as Rosalind only stood staring at her, she
went on. “He said that he wished you could know, but it was too late. That day in the Park when he asked me to go to Berlin he said, ‘I go to beg from the men like my father who are still alive in Germany.” He’s trying to make the old Generals understand in time that Hitler is being misled into a war he can’t win as easily as he thinks. Victor said he wished you knew that because you would think it was a good joke, and—he tried to laugh at it himself and couldn’t. I didn’t know quite what he meant, but—I thought you might.”

“Yes—” Rosalind’s face was very still and white. She walked down the room away from Evadne and stood at a window, looking out across the lawn and seeing nothing. “Yes, I know—what he meant.”

“But you can’t laugh either,” said Evadne, puzzled.

“Conrad is laughing,” said Rosalind, motionless at the window. “Wherever he is now, Conrad must find it very funny indeed.”

“Victor seemed to think it odd you had never told me about him.”

“He would,” said Rosalind tonelessly. “But now it’s just—one of those things that needn’t come up again.” She turned from the window and came back slowly to where Evadne stood, and laid her hand—she was not a demonstrative woman—on Evadne’s sleeve. “Thank you for telling me that, it clears things up a little for me. I wish we could both forget them—both—but we shan’t be allowed, shall we, with a war coming on. Their war.”

“You don’t think the old Generals will—”

“No. They’re too old—and there aren’t enough of them left.”

Virginia’s brisk step crossed the hall and she came in, pulling on her gloves.

“I didn’t know you were here,” she said to Rosalind, with a quick glance from one to the other.

“Charles won’t be here, he’s going over the big house with a man from some Ministry or other,” said Rosalind. “If the Ministry does take it over, they want to cut up all the rooms
into little ones and put in fitted basins. Isn’t it awful? And all sorts of modern kitchen equipment, and perhaps central heating. It’s nice to know
somebody
intends to be comfortable in this war!”

They went out to Rosalind’s car and she drove them to Upper Briarly, where the gas lecture was to take place. As they had all lived in the neighbourhood so long they knew almost everybody who had turned up at the Parish Hall, and there was inevitably a social air about the whole thing which rose above its grim purpose. But when the man from London produced the snoutish little black affair with the transparent eye-piece and the buckled straps, and put it on his own head to demonstrate how simple it was, and spoke a few words hollowly through it, everyone got a half-hysterical sense of total unreality. It could not be. Pretty soon they would all wake up in bed at home. This was England, and the war had been over a long time. There couldn’t be
another
one. Not
already
….

Stephen’s show went on as usual, to good business. People wanted to be taken out of themselves and to forget the news. Americans were besieging the steamship lines for homeward passage, but Stephen and Sylvia had no patience with that. Some of the cast, with anxious families cabling and telephoning from New York, got uneasy and arrangements were being made to replace them.

Arriving at Farthingale for the weekend after Germany had called out reserve divisions for opportune “autumn manoeuvres”—in August—Stephen listened to Evadne’s account of her first-aid lessons and gas lectures, and the stories, funny and not so funny, about how people reacted when they were asked to list all their spare rooms and to indicate their preference, if any, in evacuees—unattended children, children with pregnant mothers, pregnant mothers with no children yet. He saw with relief that her eyes were shining again, and her boundless, bountiful willingness to take trouble about people and to get along with people was functioning as warmly now for potential war waifs and bomb casualties as it had ever done in the interests of Soul Surgery. And when she paused for
breath he said, “Honey, let’s get married
now.
This week. And don’t say it’s so sudden.”

“All right,” said Evadne simply, as though he had asked her out to dinner. “I’ll have to come up to Town, this being Sunday we can’t arrange to do it while you’re here this time. And I haven’t done a thing about a wedding dress yet, I—”

“Wear that one.”

“
This?
”
It was a flowered silk with a black belt at her narrow waist and short sleeves. “People don’t get married in things like this! I’ve got rather a nice plain blue—it’s at the flat. Oh, and that reminds me,” she went on, while Stephen gazed at her with admiration and perpetual wonderment, “Hermione is in a funk and wants to get rid of the flat at once. Some friends of hers are taking a house in the Lake Country and have asked her to join them.”

“What kind of spiritual rearmament is that?” he asked with a grin.

“Now, Stevie. I thought it might be very convenient. For us, I mean. We could live there. After we’re married, I mean.”

“Would you like to?” he queried in some surprise, but there was no room in Evadne’s practical, home-making mind for such things as morbid associations.

“It’s quite nice, don’t you think? And handy to everything. The bedroom Hermione has is quite large, and we could use mine as a guest-room, it’s got twin beds.”

Stephen swallowed and said he didn’t see why not.

“Of course, if we can’t get her out in time we could go to a hotel for a few days,” Evadne added.

Stephen agreed dazedly that they could.

“Then I’d better come up tomorrow and see her and arrange to take over the lease, or whatever it is she signed,” said Evadne. “And we could get the licence. What’s the matter, you look sort of funny.”

Stephen said doubtless he would come to in a minute, and her face fell anxiously.

“D-don’t you want to take the flat? I only thought—”

“It’s the altitude,” said Stephen, and put a hand dizzily to
his head. “Don’t you realize what you’ve done? I’ve been working on this, man and boy, for more than two years, and now here we are, married and living in Hermione’s flat,
this
week!
”

“Well, I—don’t want to rush you,” she murmured, looking rather pink, and they fell into each other’s arms with laughter.

By now the build-up was on the annual orgy of the Nuremberg Congress. Johnny was in attendance there, and when Bracken’s Vienna correspondent contrived to fall down a flight of stone steps and break a leg, it meant that Jeff was suddenly dealt an assignment to cover Prague.

Sylvia took the news of his immediate departure without any fuss, but began to feel very gone in the middle, like before a first night. Jeff, having felt his oats in the Berlin affair and lost a lot of misgivings, responded to his orders like a war-horse to the trumpet—printer’s ink was in his blood, Johnny was his lifelong hero, and now it was his turn, now he was one of them,
now.
The time before he had to catch a plane was mercifully only a matter of hours and everyone was very brave about saying goodbye to him. When he had gone Stephen carried Sylvia off to have tea at the Queen’s Road flat, where he and Evadne had been established for about two weeks, and which had suddenly begun to look as though it was lived in, with the addition of a comfortable Sprague clutter.