Love in these Days

by Alec Waugh

  She did not reply at first. Her head was turned from him. He could not see how the golden-coloured eyes were misted, could not see how dilated they had grown and tender; tender where had been so little tenderness before.

  “Ridiculous,” she said, “because you were afraid that I was in danger of losing money, although you could not know how little or how great the danger was, although you could not even tell whether this effort would save me from it, in spite of all the excellent arguments against your coming. . . . Oh no, Graham, not ridiculous.”

  He laughed nervously.

  “It wasn’t anything,” he said, “when a friend’s concerned.”

  “A friend, and what sort of a friend? A friend that but for this you wouldn’t ever have seen willingly again. For you wouldn’t, Graham Moreton. You can’t look me in the face and say you would.”

  She had turned almost fiercely upon him; her face was close to his, the dead white face with its damson mouth and flaming golden eyes.

  “Would you, Graham Moreton? But for this would you have ever come willingly into my life again?”

  He tried to turn aside the moment with a laugh, to restore their relationship to its old plane of easy comradeship. But she was too sincere, and the situation was too tense.

  He could not look into that face, into those eyes, and pretend that they were ordinary friends, meeting ordinarily. He had to reply truthfully.

  “If it had been,” he said, “that but for this I should never have again seen you, it wouldn’t have been because I didn’t want to meet you.”

  On her lips and in her eyes flickered a brief smile of triumph. They were coming at last, the first slow words of the confession that had been so long delayed.

  “Then why?” she insisted. “Why, why?”

  Her face as she spoke was moved closer to his, so close that he could feel on his cheek her warm and perfumed breath. And he felt weak suddenly, and powerless, alone here in a foreign city, against this force he had resisted so desperately and so long; this force that had come to symbolize for him all that men had hungered for and fought for, that limitless desire for romance, for the mysterious, the unknown.

  During the half-minute’s length of that searching, penetrating glance he felt one by one his defences going down.

  “Why, Graham Moreton?” she repeated. “Why?”

  “Because,” he answered, so softly that the words were almost whispered, “because I was desperately afraid.”

  As she heard spoken at last the words that she had so longed to hear, her eyes half-closed and her lips half-parted, and on her face was such an expression of passive ecstasy as parched plants must know when after a long drought the rain refreshes them.

  “Frightened? But there was no need to be frightened of me,” she repeated. And turning away she looked once again through the open doorway into the street.

  The sun was shining now. On roof and chimney-stacks lingered caressingly its softly diffused radiance. Above them the sky was blue. Into her lungs she drew slowly a long, deep breath. Ah, but how life renewed itself! It was not only happiness that was impermanent. Sorrow was equally short-lived. Life gave even as it took away. This hour at least it had given her to love in, and to be loved.

  “And if it hadn’t been for those ridiculous shares we might never have met again,” she said. “And I should have had to spend a tediously dull evening by myself in the worst city in the world to be alone in.”

  “But I ought,” Graham protested, “to be thinking of my next train.”

  She laughed at that, a light-hearted, gay-eyed laugh.

  “My dear Graham, don’t be absurd,” she said. “You came here to help me in one way, which was very charming of you. Surely you aren’t going to deny me help in another? You’ll surely help me to make what would have been a wretched evening entertaining. You will? But of course you will. Garçon, a paper, please. And while you order me an apéritif, I’ll decide what show you’ll take me to. We’ll dance, of course, afterwards,” she added, “at the Moulin d’Or.”

  • • • • • • • •

  The Café de I’Après-Midi is not one of the restaurants of which you will read in memoirs and in novels. The room is comfortable and is never empty, the food is good, the cellar adequate, but fame and fashion have neglected it. It is not one of the places to which you go to have people pointed out to you, and you will in consequence rarely hear it spoken of by English and Americans. Gwen and Graham went there for no other reason than that they had never been to it before.

  “Let’s go somewhere,” she had said, “where neither of us has ever been before, where neither of us will ever go again: some place that we shall never think of with any associations but our own.”

  And so they strolled negligently down the Boulevard des Italiens, and northwards up the Faubourg de Montmartre.

  “What about that place?” he had said at length; “it looks bright enough. And I’ve certainly never been into it before.”

  “Nor I,” she said. “Let’s try it, Graham.”

  For a long while they pondered together over the menu.

  “It’s most important,” she explained, “that we should make a success of this. It’s the first time we’ve ever dined together; almost certainly it’ll be the last. There won’t be any second chance to remedy our mistakes.”

  They spoke jokingly enough of it, as the last time they would be together. The time had not come yet for- them to be unhappy. There were six, seven, eight hours, perhaps, still in front of them.

  “I think,” she announced after a protracted study of the long, ornately-decorated card, “I think that I shall begin with bisque d’homard; something quiet ought to follow it. An omelette, you suggest. A kidney omelette, and a bird; what bird’s in season now, or don’t they have seasons for birds in Paris? The waiter suggests grouse, and an iced fruit salad with it. A good suggestion. And we’d better finish it with crêpes suzette. The wine list now. I’ll let you choose the wine. That’s a man’s job, only not champagne. I’m tired of champagne. And it’s so certain to be sweet.”

  In the end he chose a Corton.

  But they might have left the selection of the dinner to the waiter for all the notice they took of the various dishes that were set before them; they might as well have been eating stale sandwiches at a station buffet. They were conscious only of themselves, and of this brief moment of time that was granted them to be together.

  “And you’re going where,” he asked, “tomorrow?”

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve made no plans.”

  Incredulously he raised his eyebrows.

  “I just felt tired,” she said. “I came away. Just that. To be away. That was all I wanted.”

  “And yet you ought to find life terribly entertaining.”

  “Entertaining,” she laughed, a brief, mocking little laugh. “I don’t know what there is in it to be called that.”

  “Your friends, your freedom.”

  “Freedom! Do you know what freedom is? It’s the loneliest thing beneath the sun. It means that you’re not afraid of losing anything. That there’s nothing you can’t dispense with. That’s loneliness, to be like that.”

  “With so many people to whom you matter?”

  Again she shrugged her shoulders.

  “I expect,” she said, “that they could manage without me as easily as I could manage without them.”

  In the balcony above the restaurant an orchestra was playing softly. From the street outside came the confused murmur of a city’s traffic. Within the room on all sides of them was a clatter of plates, a scurrying of waiters, a surge of conversation. Islanded in that ebbing sea of sound, they looked deeply into each other’s eyes.

  “There are one or two,” he said, “who are going to find it pretty difficult.”

  She made no answer. Difficult, perhaps. But how much more difficult for her. He had Joan to go back to—Joan, who loved him, who would m
edicine him back to happiness. There was his work. There were his games: there were his clubs and friends; the innumerable interests and enthusiasms that make up the background of men’s lives. For a while the loss of her would hurt him. She must mean something to him. You didn’t rush across Europe after a woman that meant nothing to you. She mattered to him all right. He would find it difficult, but he would not find it impossible, to replace her. He would not return, as she would be returning, to a world emptied of excitement.

  She remembered the sensation of nausea that had overcome her in the train: remembered how she had found impossible for her that monotonous game of attraction she had played so long. If she had found that game impossible then, how much more impossible would she find it now; now that she had this proof that Graham cared for her?

  And she would have to return to it; she knew that. There would be nothing else for her to do.

  She shuddered as she pictured the life that awaited her. The scheming, the insincerity, the deceit, with all the time this ache in her heart for Graham.

  Still, for this brief hour, at any rate, he was hers.

  • • • • • • • •

  They had taken seats for a revue at the Concert Mayol called “Cachez Qa,” and as it was early they decided to walk there from the restaurant.

  The day that had begun so gustily was closing softly. The wind had dropped; the pale violet of the sky was unflecked by clouds. Faintly over the sable stretch of roofs the outline of a sundered moon was showing.

  “It’ll be a wonderful night,” he murmured.

  The boulevard was crowded, noisy with light and colour. In café after café there was not a vacant table. So full of life this city, and with themselves so utterly alone in it.

  At the corner of the Faubourg Montmartre he placed his hand upon her arm to guide her across the road. The soft flesh trembled as his fingers touched it. Troublingly her powdered fragrance rose about him. Her shoulder touched lightly against his. In silence, his hand still upon her arm, they walked along the boulevard. He scarcely dared to breathe for fear of breaking the moment’s magic.

  A taxi with lifted signal was passing beside them along the pavement. Impetuously Graham waved his hand at it.

  “Do you mind?” he said huskily. “It’s so marvellous. I thought we might drive for a moment in the Bois.”

  She inclined her head.

  Flooded with beauty, the dark fragrant spaces were stretched about them. Through the trees under the moonlight the receding waterways were burnished spears of silver. Above them the violet of the sky was deepening to purple. In the west the soft after-greens of sunset still lingered faintly. Down the long curving avenues an endless stream of cars and taxicabs was passing. An endless stream of lovers clasped close in the cushioned darkness, indifferent to the occasional revealing gleam of lamp and headlight; indifferent to scrutiny; indifferent to censure; indifferent to everything but the need and nearness of each other. From the shadowed distances rose the rich fragrance of an autumn night.

  Silent, and with half-closed eyes, Gwen Lawrence lay back in the corner of the taxi. From time to time, as the car jolted over the uneven gravel, her shoulder brushed lightly against his. On the seat between them the little fingers of their hands were touching.

  But she was not certain that she wanted him to take her hand in his, was not certain that she wanted to hear now the stammered words of passion. There was a time for all things; the time would come when her body would tremble for the need of his arms about it; when her lips would part, dry and expectant, for his kiss; when her ears would strain for the broken, beating words.

  It would come soon enough, in its own time, that moment. It was enough that they were together now. Through a mist she heard him speaking to her.

  “Nothing, whatever happens,” he was saying, “can take away the marvel of this night from us. It’s ours for all time. We’ll have had this whatever happens.”

  She made no answer. There was no answer to be made. This, whatever might come to them, was theirs. Nothing could take this from them; that on a scented September night they had driven, hand resting against hand, through the Bois on the brink of an avowal.

  They were touching now, it might well be indeed, the highest point that their loving of each other would ever reach. Never again might they care so much. Things happened that way sometimes. Still, there was this moment first.

  After the dim quiet of the Bois their eyes and ears were dazed by the light and noise of the Champs Elysées. Through the thronged and sounding boulevards the cab rattled its way unevenly towards the Concert Mayol, and a sensation of fatigue replaced the exultation that a few minutes earlier had sent the blood beating so swiftly through Gwen’s veins.

  Wearily she rested the back of her hand against her forehead. Out of a world of illusion they had returned to a condition of reality. From the world that they could dream in, into the world that they had got to live in: the world of promises and obligations, the world of limitless to-morrows.

  With a jolt and a rattle the cab drew up beside the pavement. While Graham grappled with the intricacies of the French coinage, Gwen Lawrence stood watching the crowd with customary unpunctuality filter its way some fifteen minutes after the advertised time of the performance into the entrance of the theatre.

  “Not that there would be much to miss,” she thought, “for half an hour.”

  Graham was standing with his back towards the theatre, his head bent down and forward over a complicated bundle of paper money, from which he appeared to be disentangling the correct sum with the greatest difficulty and not a great deal of success; and as Gwen Lawrence stood waiting without impatience for him, she became conscious slowly of a curious and appraising glance that was being fixed on her from the doorway of a restaurant on the opposite side of the road.

  “I know that girl,” she thought, and, lifting her eyes she returned the glance.

  For a moment their eyes met in a look of recognition, but of unacknowledgment. For a moment unwaveringly they stared each other in the face. Then the young girl turned away, touched the sleeve of an elderly gentleman: a commissionaire was beckoned to, a whistle was blown, and a taxi had drawn up between them, obscuring her.

  “There we are,” Graham was saying cheerfully. “So sorry I’ve been so long. Everything was in a most appalling mess. Now we can enjoy ourselves.”

  Thoughtfully Gwen turned and followed Graham into the theatre. Had she seen him, she wondered, the girl with flaxen hair and the cornflower-blue eyes? There had been the taxicab between them, but she could not tell how long she had been standing. And would she have stared quite so hard at her had she not seen Graham first?

  “I wonder,” she asked herself as the attendant led her to her seat, “I wonder if I ought to tell him?”

  • • • • • • • .

  “N’oubliez. N’oubliez. N’oubliez.”

  With a shaking of elbows and a rustling of skirts, the chorus of the Moulin d’Or tripped its way down from the small stage at the far end of the cabaret to prance in uneven line on the narrow stretch of the polished dancing floor.

  “N’oubliez. N’oubliez. N’oubliez.”

  A glimmering sheet of silver under the hard radiance of the limelight, with fluttering wrists and outstretched gleaming arms, La Folie Désirée swayed sideways and backwards from her hips to the music’s ragged rhythm.

  “N’oubliez. N’oubliez. N’oubliez.”

  From the shadowed, congested tables the refrain was echoed back. Forks were tapping the tune on plates and glasses; heels were beating in time upon the floor. Here and there came the note, clear and penetrating, of a whistle. The lips and eyes of the dozen swaying figures in the silver pool of limelight mirrored the gaiety and laughter and animation of that crowded room.

  “N’oubliez. N’oubliez. N’oubliez.”

  On a sudden crashing chord the music ceased. The slim swaying girls sank backwards with arms outflung, upon their heels; poised there a moment wh
ile the sea of clapping and applause burst over them, then, leaping to their feet scampered away hurriedly to their dressing-rooms.

  From the orchestra broke noisily the first notes of a recent foxtrot. Lights were flashed on again about the room. The huddled group of waiters beside the kitchen door dispersed. There was a popping of corks; a clatter of plates; a ripple of talk and laughter.

  A slim, graceful man rose from his seat and stretched out his hand to the girl beside him. With slow, languid steps he drew her into the rhythm of the dance. For a moment they danced alone; then another couple joined them, and another. In a few moments the narrow strip of floor was crowded.

  They were dancing shoulder to shoulder almost. Only the most skilful dancers could do more than walk. There was a waving of hands, a hailing of acquaintances, a shouting of Christian names. Eyes were bright and lips were laughing. Trouble and the to-morrows of the world were put aside. On the many-stringed lute of the gay city’s gaiety here momentarily the fingers of happiness had trembled.

  Sad, however, and irresponsive, Gwen Lawrence and Graham Moreton sat side by side at their round table against the wall. It was half-past two. Only a few moments remained to them of the space of hours that at dinner time had seemed so ample.

  “In fourteen hours’ time,” he was saying to her, “I shall be in London.”

  She was leaning forward across the table in that attitude so characteristic of her, her chin rested on the white and latticed bridge of her slim fingers, her face turned from him.

  “It was hard before,” he said. “I don’t know how I’m going to endure it now. It’s gone too deep.”

  At his side a waiter was lifting from its bed of broken ice the obligatory bottle of champagne. But the bottle was still half full and their glasses scarcely a quarter empty. With a sucking sound the bottle sank back again into the bucket.

  The waiter hesitated, then moved away. It was useless to invite a further order. They were too concerned with one another. The foie gras savoury on their plates was scarcely touched. His time could be spent more profitably at other tables.