I Ordered a Table for Six

by Noel Streatfeild

  Adela, while Gardiner was speaking, had sunk back in her chair. She could not stop his flow of words, which tore and slashed at the façade she had built to protect herself. Behind it, still unlooked at, stood the truth. Was it only fear of herself and her weakness which made her think she did not want to see Paul? Was her love still there? Would the agony of these last years dissolve if she saw him? Her mind felt as if it had hands to push away what it did not want to accept and a voice to scream, “No! No! No!” She touched Gardiner’s arm.

  “Not now. Please not now. I’m seeing you on Monday. Let’s talk about this then.”

  Andrew held Claire gingerly; he felt all feet and hands.

  “I don’t know what sort of dance this is exactly.”

  “Don’t let’s worry. Just saunter.”

  Andrew cautiously steered Claire to the centre of the floor. She did not seem to want to talk, and he was glad, for he was afraid if he talked he might pile her up. It was one thing to pile Meggie up, but Claire was a different job. Bit funny dancing with her, she was so light and followed so well it was like dancing by yourself.

  “After the war!” Claire was thinking. “After the war!” Why had the old B. wanted to talk about that? Yet how Lin would laugh at her for minding. “You are a mutt,” he would say. “There’s going to be an after the war, and you may live to see it, so whatever’s on your mind you better shake it out and have a look at it. It’s no good bouncing away from people as though they were nettles, just because they mention the future.” The last night they had been together he had talked like that. They chose to eat at the Moulin d’Or. They had wanted somewhere small where they were well known and would be welcomed. Ernest would always find a table for them. They got their favourite table by the stairs. “I’m off,” Lin said to Ernest. “My last night of decent food. See what you can do for us.” Claire had struggled to pretend to enjoy the food, but though she knew it had been as good as the times allowed, even while she was eating she had not known what was on her plate. She remembered the wine. “Red, I think,” Lin had said, “to make hot blood in my veins. I’m sure a soldier ought to have hot blood.” After some argument they had picked a bottle of Château Mouton Rothschild. It was over coffee and a Fine Maison that Lin had talked. “Old Clauston has everything in order, if I’m killed. I signed the last paper this morning.” She knew he would tell her not to be an ostrich, but she had cried out, “Oh, don’t!” before she could stop herself. That started him. She must be a realist. If he were killed it would not help her that she had refused to face the possibility. “I’ve faced it,” he said, “and I don’t mind telling you the idea doesn’t get any less dreary for looking at it. Still, as a matter of fact, it could easily have happened to us any time. Think of the stuff we’ve eaten, probably inches deep in cholera and bubonic germs, and the queer water we’ve drunk.” She had forced herself to appear to follow his mood. “Not much water. We were more likely to have died of gin.” “It’s preposterous,” Lin had said, taking a deep, satisfying smell of his brandy, “that going for a soldier is what’s made me put my affairs in order.” He raised his glass to his lips and his eyes laughed at her over it. “If I’m killed don’t be an hysterical ass. Don’t let people talk to you about resurrection day, and meeting again dressed in white nighties, and, for God’s sake, don’t go to a séance and let some foul female dress up in butter muslin and say she’s got a message from me. If I’m dead, I’m gone, I’m nowhere. Cling to that, and don’t be fooled into believing anything else.” “Must we,” she had said, “have this dismal talk; it’s spoiling my brandy.” He put his hand over hers. “Yes, we must. It’s our last evening, and I’ve got to say it, and I’d rather do it now than when we’re in bed. If I’ve got to be manure for a French cornfield, or if you’ve got to die in a gas attack, it’s going to be such insupportable hell for the one that’s left that it’s well to face it and plan what we’ll do.” She had been quite pleased with herself that her voice sounded normal. “What’ll you do if I’m killed?” “I’ll have a stab at getting on alone,” he said, “travelling around painting, but I don’t see myself getting enough out of it to make it worth while going on.” She took a cigarette. “You seem to forget the two pretty deaths you’ve chosen for us take place in a war. No painting or travelling for you.” He lit her cigarette. “Oh, war! I suppose as long as that lasts one will go on, hoping all the time for a lucky shot knocking one out. It’s after the war I was thinking of. You can’t very well walk out of a war, but in peace it’s your own affair.” She had looked round the Moulin d’Or. She knew it so well. How often had she and Lin, returning after a trip of peculiar discomfort, filled in their journey by eating imaginary meals there. “We’re turning into the street. They’ve got clean curtains in the window. Go on, it’s your turn. You can open the door . . .” Now, somehow, it was not her old haunt, and Ernest was not an old friend. Because of to-morrow the world was losing its colour, and it wouldn’t come back until Lin came home. She shivered. “Come on. I want to go.” They had stepped into the inky street, but it was a clear night and the moon was rising. Lin stopped a taxi and told him to drive to the Ritz. “You don’t mind, darling, do you, but I want a walk, and we might as well go into the park. I’d like to say good-bye to the quadriga.” They had walked to Buckingham Palace, and Lin had amused himself, and even a little amused her, by inventing the royal apartments, placing embossed coats-of-arms on curiously unlikely objects. The quadriga was a black mass against the moon-illumined sky. “Good-bye, boys,” Lin said to the horses, “take care of yourselves. London wouldn’t be London without you.” When they got in, Lin’s almost packed luggage had made Claire’s heart drop like a stone. In bed she had cried. Lin had not known at first, for she made the tears come quietly, pouring silently down her cheeks, while he whispered to her and held her in his arms. Then he had done a thing he loved doing, he had run his hand over her face, feeling the bone structure. As his fingers had touched her wet cheeks he had snatched them away as if they had been scalded. “Don’t, darling,” he had said, clutching her to him as if he were defying fate to separate them. “Don’t!” “I can’t help it,” she had apologised. “It’s what you said at dinner. I don’t mean facing things—in a way I’d done that—it’s just you saying that about being dead and gone and nowhere. I wish we believed in another world. Most people do. If I thought somehow, somewhere, something of us would meet, letting you go now would be less ghastly. I wish I believed in God. In some sort of shape in everything.” Lin had hugged her even closer. “There isn’t a God, old sweet. If there were, you’d see a bit of reason somewhere. Don’t cry, Claire. I might come back, you know. Don’t finish me off yet.”

  Claire returned to the present because her eyes were smarting and a lump was in her throat that she could not fight. She stopped dancing and pretended to cough.

  “Sorry,” she said to Andrew, “awful tickle. I’ll go to the cloakroom and get some water.”

  Noel felt increasingly pleased with himself. As anxiety left him, a glow took its place. “I’ve done it! Oh, God, I’ve done it! The two hundred and a nice bit more is as good as in the bag. Let them look at their ruddy old accounts on Monday. Oh boy, is Bob your uncle!”

  “I’m so glad I’ve got this dance with you,” said Meggie. “I thought I wasn’t going to get another word in, and I did so terribly want to finish what we were saying.”

  Noel used a bantering tone.

  “Serious, aren’t you!” He steered her nimbly round a slow-moving couple, his face wearing the mask-like, engrossed look indigenous to it, when he was dancing. “Listen to the music, pretty, and follow me. We’ll make a good dancer of you.”

  “Don’t be silly, talking about idiotic old dancing when we’ve important things to say. You know, meeting you has cheered me up awfully. I know I shouldn’t worry, but I do sometimes, don’t you? It’s when I’m in bed I’m worst. I get time to think then, and get fussed. I think, supposing Paul s
houldn’t get better? Supposing he does something else awful? Do you worry like that? But now I’ve met you I’ll worry less. You mustn’t think Mummy doesn’t worry about him. I’m sure she does, but she never talks about him to me, and Uncle Freddie says I’m not to talk about him to her unless she starts first, and she never has. Of course there’s Uncle Freddie, but he’s different, and sometimes I’ve felt there was only me waiting for Paul. But now, with you, there’s two of us. When I heard how long he’d gone for it felt like always, then Uncle Freddie told me about being less for good conduct, and I got an arithmetic book and marked off the squares for the days he’d be away. Every evening I’ve marked one in blue pencil to show it’s over. There’s pages and pages of blue squares now, and hardly any white ones to fill. Have you ever thought what’s the very first thing you’re going to say to him when you see him? I think that’s going to be terrifically important. It’s got to be something to show how fearfully we’ve missed him, and yet funny, because Paul does so like a laugh. I go over and over meeting him, and each day I think of something different to say. The awful thing is I won’t say any of them really. I don’t think before I speak. Jonesy says I just rattle on and that’s one of my besetting sins.”

  Noel had been turning over in his mind Meggie’s possible utility. He could not quite see how to put the case to her. He decided on a feeler:

  “If I can get leave I’ll go and meet him.”

  Meggie glowed up at him.

  “Oh, will you! I wish I could. I do think he’s lucky to have such a marvellous friend. Lots of people might not have bothered after all these years.”

  Noel spoke slowly, not letting any word out until he was sure it was the right one, and he strained to tune in to her reactions, so as to withdraw quickly if he made a slip.

  “I rather think I’ll persuade the old boy not to come to London. I’ve an idea it wouldn’t be the healthiest spot for him. I had been thinking of a country pub. I suppose there’s nowhere in your part of the world, far enough off to be away from local chat, and yet near enough for you to meet each other.”

  Meggie shook her head.

  “It’s a gorgeous idea, but it wouldn’t work. Mummy’s certain to want him to stay with her.”

  “Now, steady, old horse,” Noel told himself, “there’s a ticklish bend coming.”

  “I’m not absolutely sure of that. If I tell you something, will you keep it under your hat? I particularly don’t want you ever to tell your mother that I talked to you first. She might think it a bit cool of me, and I’m only doing it because you and old Paul are such pals.”

  Meggie raised a puzzled face.

  “I promise, but what is it?”

  “Well, I’m going to drive you and your mother back to-night, and I’m going to hint to her that she should not try and see Paul at first.”

  “You can’t do that. It would hurt her awfully.”

  It was all he could do to hold back a smile.

  “I’m not so sure. She’s a damn fine woman, and probably only looks at things from the angle of what’s best for him. As I see things, he’ll be pretty much out of luck with himself when he comes out, and I think he better wait to see your mother until . . .” He hesitated, lost to imagine until what. Then suddenly he saw his way clear, “until he can come to her in uniform, you know, having done fairly well and all that. It’ll give him something to work for. You know the stuff.”

  “Do you mean wait until he’s won a medal or something.”

  “That’s the ticket.”

  “It sounds rather like a film.”

  It did to Noel too. He was not at all sure that Meggie was going to swallow the idea. He filled in the time with a platitude.

  “It does sound a bit cock-eyed, but they say truth’s stranger than fiction.”

  Meggie thought his feelings were hurt.

  “I wasn’t criticizing. You’re a much better person than me. I haven’t got the gorgeous faith you’ve got. Somehow, I don’t see Paul getting a medal, or, if he did, I can only imagine him laughing at it. But if you think he might do awfully well, he probably could. I mean, I expect a friend knows a man better than a sister does.”

  “Well, even if he doesn’t do showy stuff, he’ll rub along, and you can see it would give him something if he didn’t go near your mother until he was the tops, so to speak.”

  “Yes, I can,” Meggie agreed. Her voice was doubtful. “But Mummy adores him so. I think he’ll want to go straight to her.”

  “That’s where you’ve got to help. You see, if he just toddled back home, waiting to be called up, he’d meet all the old crowd. I was only a kid and didn’t really know them much, but they weren’t a lot of good. If it was going to help, would you back me in getting him to keep away from her?”

  “If I thought Mummy wanted it I would.”

  “You’ll see if she wants it. If she lets me meet him, it’ll mean she agrees.”

  “You can’t meet Paul and tell him Mummy doesn’t want to see him. That would be simply awful.”

  “I’m not going to. I’m going to tell him he’s to come to you, and you’ll explain.” He felt she was all query and argument. “I’m much older than you, sweet, and I know what I’m talking about. He wants to see absolutely nobody he knew before, until he’s got back a bit. Nobody, not even your mother, must know where he’s staying.”

  “Then what’s he going to do about money? Paul and I haven’t any of our own yet. I’ve got my pocket money, but it’s only ten shillings a week, and seven-and-sixpence of that goes in War Savings, and Uncle Freddie will think it very odd if I stop paying in.”

  “If I can make your mother look at this the way I do, she can send him what he needs through me.”

  “Oh, I see. You mean an arrangement with Mummy like that. But you’re not going to tell her I’m seeing him.”

  “Did you tell her you saw him when he came down after the crash?”

  “No. Did you come to-night because you wanted to talk to Mummy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Only, of course, you’d never thought of me because you didn’t know you were going to see me. Was it me talking about Paul gave you the idea that I would help?”

  “Of course. You seem to me exactly right. You can push around on a bicycle or what have you, and find a pub for him, and you can do for him more than anybody else.” Noel had almost forgotten the real story in the fervour of what he was saying, also Paul and himself and their wants had become tangled in his mind. You said yourself that you absolutely believed in him. That’s what a man needs.”

  The eyes which Meggie raised to his profile were dark with emotion.

  “I should think you must be the best friend anybody ever had. I don’t suppose you care what I think, but I’ll remember you always. I’ll find a pub, and if you give me your address I’ll write and tell you where it is; and when Paul comes I’ll do all I can to make him see what you think he ought to do. It’ll be difficult, because not seeing Mummy will seem odd to him, and not seeing her until he’s done well, and all that, will make him laugh. It is queer my being here to-night and us meeting. Do you suppose people meet accidentally or on purpose? It looks to-night as if it was on purpose, as if we were meant to meet, just so that we could help Paul.”

  “Young girls were very tiresome,” one half of Noel told the other half. This wide-eyed enthusiasm and trust in everybody was too exhausting; but the other half was not listening. It was a lean, struggling half, which had tried to grow and had failed, and it cried now to see admiration and friendship offered to its greater half, who was being sharp and putting the whole Noel on easy street, and would never earn either. The lean, struggling half could now see what the whole Noel had glimpsed, and then missed. How life could be if it were not a lonely struggle, and there were a Meggie to help, encourage, and above all to believe. The lean half made an effort to get on top of t
he greater half, and as usual failed, and all that was achieved was that Noel felt as if he had been pricked with a pin. It was a shame, he so seldom felt on top of the world, and he had no idea why he suddenly felt wretched. He was glad when the music stopped. He felt the conversation needed rounding off. He squeezed Meggie’s arm.

  “Friends?”

  She quite shocked him by her fervour.

  “Yes. The best friend I ever had.”

  Adela pulled herself more or less together and smiled at Andrew.

  “Claire deserted you?”

  “She’s got a cough. She went to get some water.”

  “I reckon if I were in this young man’s shoes,” Gardiner nodded at Andrew, “I’d feel mighty excited to-night. After all that hard grilling training, to be about to start on the real thing.”

  Andrew for the moment ceased to be shy. His eyes shone.

  “I’m pretty bucked all right, sir.”

  Adela, to distract her thoughts, forced herself to take an interest in Andrew. It was amusing, if only she could think about him properly, to remember that this was the son of the great love of Millicent’s life. She must take some share in the conversation.