Friends and Lovers

by Helen Macinnes

  He thrust the letter into his pocket and changed the suitcase to his other hand. As he paused again for a moment on the top step of the long staircase he admitted for the first time that this cold was worse than he had realised. And the lunch-party in Chaundler’s room had not exactly been a cure. It was funny how anxiety could deal the last blow to your health, could crumple it up as surely as any germ. Then he called himself a bloody fool for even allowing himself to think that; and he knocked at the door, and he was smiling as he heard her clear voice saying, “David? Is that you?”

  Her light heels ran to the door to open it. He forgot about Fairbairn and America. He was only thinking how lovely she was, standing there at the opened door, her face flushed, her eyes shining. He had no feeling except the eternal one of surprise that she was always so much lovelier than he had dreamed in his loneliness.

  “Darling,” she said. Her arms were tightly round him. He held her closely, saying with the stupid inadequacy which attacked him when he was emotionally upset, “Darling Penny, I love you.” He kissed her neck and her brow and her ear, and explained, “I mustn’t give you this cold. I’m full of germs.”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” Penny said. “If we share triumphs, then colds will be shared too. But you didn’t tell me in your letters that you had a cold.” And then, seeing that he didn’t want to talk about it, she said, “Our celebration supper is all ready. I cooked it in advance so that I wouldn’t meet you all hot and bothered.” She tried to look not too proudly at the table. There was a cold duck with orange salad, a Brie cheese beside a salad-bowl, a basket of French bread covered with a napkin, strawberries piled on vine leaves, and a bottle of Liebfraumilch. “There’s only the asparagus to drain and cover with butter,” she said. She smiled with delight at having timed everything so well. “Oh, David, I am so happy!” She threw back her head and laughed with pure joy. “How wonderful to have won a victory. I feel like Caesar after a successful campaign. No, you should be Caesar, and I’m the wife who shares his triumphs. No, not Caesar: he was a bald-headed old reprobate with husbands hiding their wives from him whenever he entered a town. Who was the victorious general who loved only one woman? Surely there must be some? The trouble is you never hear about virtue, only about vices.”

  David’s smile broadened. He noted with pleasure, too, that his telegram giving the results of Schools was displayed in the middle of the mantelpiece. The happiness and pride on Penny’s face made him aware of his achievement. “I’ll rush out and sit fifty more examinations,” he said, “if you give me a welcome like this when I get back.” God, it was wonderful to accomplish something, and then see your girl more triumphant than you were. Her laughter, her gay remarks, her dancing steps done in a moment of bursting joy, her excitement and happiness, were infectious. He forgot his throbbing temples and the coldness of his body.

  “Stop it, old girl,” he said smilingly, “or you’ll give me a swelled head.” But he loved it, and then, like all men when they are enjoying the height of their triumphs, he added diffidently, “It was nothing, anyway.”

  “Of course,” Penny said, with a laugh, “nothing at all. Absolutely nothing!” She went out into the landing, saying that it would be a pity to ruin the asparagus.

  He remembered the letter which he had slipped into his pocket as he climbed the stairs. “I brought a letter up here for you. From Edinburgh,” he called through the open door. “Back-slanting writing, square-shaped, with elaborate capital L’s.”

  “That will be from Moira. Throw it on the mantelpiece, darling.”

  David placed the letter near his telegram, and went out into the hallway where Penny was busy measuring coffee in the small alcove kitchen. He lifted the dish of asparagus, which made a neat pyramid on the slices of toast draining the last drops of water. He put his other arm round her waist, hugging her as he said, “This is what I needed,” and made her lose count of the spoonfuls.

  But at dinner, in spite of determined efforts, he could eat very little. He hadn’t eaten much lunch, either, but he had blamed that on Fairbairn’s conversation.

  “Sorry, darling,” he had to say at last. “Everything is perfect. But I seem to be unable to—” He pushed back the nauseating plate of food. “This cold of mine—”

  “David—” Penny began, half rising.

  “No, don’t!” he said sharply. “There’s no need for any fuss.” He rose and crossed over to the armchair, feeling the slowness of his movements. “I’m just tired, that’s all.”

  And he is ill. And he is worried, Penny thought.

  “Sorry, Penny,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. “You see I am a bad-tempered blighter.”

  Penny resisted the impulse to follow him, to find out by talking what was wrong. He was tired, he was ill, he was depressed. More depressed than being tired or ill warranted. Something was wrong.

  She looked down at the gay table now so forlorn. “I think you are a very independent blighter,” she said, in a low voice, keeping her eyes fixed on the pattern of the tablecloth. Water-lilies. Only half an hour ago, they had seemed enchanting with their cool white crispness blocked on water-green linen. Something had gone wrong. But what? Something to do with me? But he loves me just as much as ever, she told herself. And then she wasn’t sure. Yes, he loved her—she had seen that in his eyes when she had opened the door, but perhaps he did not want to be tied to her. Now that he was a free man with a new world before him, perhaps he resented subconsciously the ties that she represented. He was an independent kind of man.

  She knew that she was only letting herself express, at this moment, the fear that had lain at the back of her mind in spite of her belief in their love. People could believe, but they could never feel absolutely sure; they were always haunted by the fear that they would lose what they valued most. The more they valued it, the greater the fear of losing it.

  She said very quietly, “David, why don’t you tell me whatever it is? I’d rather know definitely than imagine things.”

  David leaned his head against the back of his chair. He took a deep breath. “Penny, I am not taking this job with Fairbairn. I’ll look for something else.”

  She rose then, and came over to his chair, kneeling beside it.

  He touched her hair. “You don’t seem very upset,” he said, in surprise. “Didn’t you want me to get the job?”

  “Yes. I’m relieved because I was jumping to quite wrong conclusions. I thought you were depressed for another reason.”

  “What reason?”

  “Us. After all, darling, you could have changed your mind about us. Men do, they tell me.”

  “And damn their eyes, whoever they are.” He stared at her incredulously. “Good God, Penny. I can worry about you changing your mind about me, but you don’t have to worry that I ever shall. Just take one look in a mirror. Or re-read the letters I sent you. Good God, Penny.”

  She kissed his hand, and then slipped hers into his grasp.

  “Well,” he said ruefully, “that’s a good lesson to me. I shan’t spare you any worries from now on, my girl. I’ll pour them all out before you, so that you can join me in worrying over the real thing and not over an imaginary piece of foolishness. How would you like that?”

  “Very much,” Penny said cheerfully. “Besides, when we share worries they don’t seem half so bad, just as when we share good news it seems twice as good.” Then she became serious, watching his face thoughtfully.

  “Why give up the job?” she asked gently.

  “Because I don’t want it.”

  She was worried now. “But why? What do you really want to do, David?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer. So she imagined he was just being temperamental about a career, uncertain of what he wanted to do? And then he grew angry with himself over his bitter thought; his temper was on the short side today. He hadn’t told her why he was giving up the Fairbairn job. She had every right to be worried about him. No girl would like the idea of tying herself to an unstable m
an who changed his mind too often about how he was to earn his daily bread. Bread didn’t get earned that way.

  “I am not being a prima donna,” he said savagely, his voice still angry from his own self-accusation. He paused, and his tone became more gentle, but there was still intensity behind it. “I’ll take any job that gives me security and the chance to develop a career I won’t be ashamed of. I must have security. And I must feel that whatever I accomplish today will be less than what I can accomplish ten years from today. Not in power or in money particularly, but in myself.”

  “Fairbairn offered that kind of job,” Penny said. In the next moment she regretted her too quick, too accurate reply as she saw the expression on David’s face. “Well, darling,” she added hastily, “what job will you look for?” Jobs were scarce: she had found that out for herself. It was said that no man with a good Oxford degree was ever unemployed, but it might take a lot of worry and heartbreak to prove that. She sat still, trying to hide her unhappiness, and not succeeding very well. She managed a smile. “Don’t worry, darling.”

  David said, “You know, Penny, you are taking this rather well. Why don’t you lecture me for the spineless chap you must think I am?”

  “But you aren’t, David.”

  “You can’t think that I am exactly a strong-minded character at this moment. Why don’t you try to manage me, make me take the job for my own good whether I wanted it or not?”

  “If you don’t want it, then it wouldn’t be for your own good. And that means it would be bad for me too. Besides, darling, I shouldn’t dare try to manage you. You do the managing in this household. Do you know a most extraordinary thing? I rather enjoy it.”

  “If you make me believe that you’ve learned how to manage me completely.” He regarded her with a smile of pleasure. “Mrs. Bosworth, as well as being in love with you, I have a great affection for you.”

  “Mr. Bosworth, my regard for you is only equalled by my constant devotion.”

  They both laughed. Penny said, “Good. I’ve got a laugh out of you at last. David, you do worry me when you don’t laugh easily. You’re tired. You’ve got a rotten cold—oh yes, you have; that cough you are trying to disguise is almost a graveyard one. And your eyes are—well, peculiar.”

  “Like the things you see staring up at you from the fishmonger’s slab of ice?”

  “Almost. What you need is bed, aspirin, a hot toddy, and twelve hours of solid sleep. How much sleep have you been getting?”

  “Oh, enough.” Sometimes five hours, occasionally six hours a night for too many weeks. And that last night, before the orals, when he had had a sudden attack of worry over the possible floaters in his written papers, he hadn’t been in bed at all. He had kept himself awake with potfuls of coffee, and he had worked by the open window enjoying the cool breeze after the hot mugginess of the day. That was the night he had caught this cold, although he hated to admit it. “It is only a summer cold,” he said determinedly. “Annoying things. Hang on and on.”

  Penny said equally determinedly, “Bed, David. Now. With aspirin and toddy.”

  “Look, darling, that’s the wrong way to phrase that invitation. Besides, I’ve got a job to think about, instead of sleeping myself dizzy in bed. I have to wire Fairbairn by Saturday that I am not available. I hadn’t the brass neck to turn him down today. It is always easier to wire a refusal.”

  “What did Fairbairn want you to do?” Penny asked quickly.

  “To do some travelling, make a monthly report using lots of statistics and facts, and write a weekly page for the Economic Trend.”

  “But you expected some travelling, didn’t you? I thought your headquarters were to be London, and that you would go on little jaunts into the provinces. That sounds fun. The report would be hard work, but the weekly article would be a marvellous thing for you. What is it you don’t like, David? The travelling?”

  “Not when it takes me three thousand miles away from you for a year, perhaps longer. I bet it will actually take every week of fifteen months, or I’m a Dutchman. Fairbairn wants facts. They take a long time to gather accurately.”

  “Three thous—Where are you to go?”

  “America. For one year. At least one year.”

  “Oh,” Penny said slowly, while her thoughts raced. There was a pause. Then she said, “You must take this job, David.”

  “I don’t want it,” he said quickly, angrily.

  Penny said quietly, “If we could have got married, then you would have taken it?”

  “Then we could have gone together. Fairbairn would have paid my travelling expenses—American scale, too. We could have just managed it financially, even allowing for Margaret.”

  And I could have let this flat to Marston, Penny thought. That money would have balanced Margaret on their budget. She sighed.

  “It would have been perfect,” David said.

  “Yes.” She rose to her feet, and leaned over to kiss him. Then she moved silently away to search for some aspirin in the bathroom. She was searching for aspirin, thinking of fifteen months and no end to the worry, thinking of jobs, what kind, what next, and what was she searching for now? Her mind went blank, and she could neither remember nor think at all. She gripped the cold edge of the wash-basin, stared at nothing, feeling nothing. Suddenly she came to life again, remembered the aspirin, found the small bottle. She held it, looking at it, saying aloud, “What shall we do now?”

  Then she knew what she had to do.

  She would wire Walter Chaundler: he would know where Fairbairn was to be found. She would wire Chaundler telling him that David was ill and could not send a telegram, but that he would accept the job in America. Chaundler would understand the telegram’s hidden meaning. He would help her persuade David. For he knew, as she had just realised, that it was too late now to refuse this job. And David knew too, even if he would not admit it.

  She bathed her face with cold water, powdered it carefully, and returned to the room.

  David was sitting as she had left him, his head leaning against the back of the chair, his eyes fixed on the Utrillo reproduction above the mantelpiece as if he could find some end to their troubles down that silent street of quiet houses with their shutters drawn against the midday sun. Penny began to fold the linen cover off the divan, to strip the cushions and turn them into pillows.

  David roused himself, and made the effort of rising. It seemed to take his mind a long time tonight to tell his body to move. And his body wasn’t one piece, as he had imagined: he realised he was made up of several parts, all of them in conflict at the moment. He knew then that this was more than a cold.

  “Look, darling,” he said, “if I am going to be ill I’d better catch the first train back to Oxford. I probably should not have come here today. Only I’ve had this day circled on my calendar for weeks, and—”

  “I’m going out to buy some whisky and lemons for you,” Penny said with a smile. “Get into bed quickly, won’t you, darling? I want to see you there when I get back.”

  “But—” David began without conviction, looking at the cool white sheets. That pillow was just the right invitation for a throbbing head.

  “Darling, where could you go in Oxford? To hospital? Or to hospital here? Nonsense, darling. The sooner you are in bed the more quickly you’ll be cured.” And hospitals cost money. All illness costs money.

  “But all this trouble—” He was weakening in his protests: he didn’t want to talk, to argue; he only wanted to get into that bed and get to sleep...

  Penny smiled, shook her head, and picked up her handbag. “Shan’t be a minute,” she said lightly, and left the room before he could offer any more objections. Trouble...how strange a man could be. Nothing was trouble if you loved him. If you were in love all the work and worry in the world was no trouble at all. When women started complaining about trouble they were already half out of love. She shook her head in gentle amusement. Then, as she reached the front door, she was serious again, planning what was
to be done. She opened her handbag and counted the money in it. She looked at the coins in her hand. Five-and-ninepence...all that was left of the pound note broken this morning for tonight’s dinner. Mercury should have been the God of Money. She searched for the emergency ten-shilling note which she kept tucked away in one of the bag’s pockets. There was a moment of panic when she couldn’t find it; and then she did. That made fifteen-and-ninepence altogether: enough for whisky, and a thermometer too.

  She hurried into the Square, and turned towards Tottenham Court Road. Fortunately this was not a wealthy district, and shopkeepers in the side-streets were apt to keep longer hours. The wine-and-spirits shops would be closed, of course. But there was always the carrying-out department in the local public-house. If my people could see me now, she thought bitterly, what would shock them the more: David ill in my room, or me visiting the jug-and-bottle department in a pub? It was easy for them to criticise; they had whisky in the house as a matter of course, and money for doctors and nurses and private nursing-homes. But what did you do when you didn’t have money for a doctor or a hospital? Quite simple: you did everything yourself without outside help, just you and your two bare hands.

  Her hurried step broke into a swift run as if to match the urgency of her thoughts.

  38

  THE ROOFS OF LONDON

  David had fallen into an uneasy sleep marked by heavy breathing. There was a dark flush on his face, and his hair lay damp on his brow.