Love Him or Leave Him

by Mary Burchell

  She gave him a rather sad little smile.

  ‘Do you really think that, after what’s happened?’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Miss Hemming,’ he said disagreeably, ‘stop hugging that incident to you like the secret in a Victorian melodrama. I’ve written it off, myself, as one of the inexplicable things which do happen from time to time.’ She thought of what she had heard him say to Deborah, but she could have embraced him for his cross obstinacy at this moment. ‘I advise you to do the same. I should like to have you for my secretary. I’m offering you the job. And I should like your decision by tomorrow morning. That’s really all there is to it.’

  Anne wondered foolishly why she had ever resented his flashes of temper. She thought now—with a sentimental fervour known only to those in love—that she loved him better in this mood than any other. Provided, of course, she could feel certain that he would revert fairly soon to the rather sarcastic air of indulgence which she found equally endearing.

  It said much for Anne’s strength of purpose that, even while she contemplated the attractions of the man she loved, she knew they constructed for her a danger which she must reject.

  ‘It’s very, very kind of you, Mr. Jerome, and I can’t tell you how—how grateful and flattered I am that you should offer me the job. But I really can’t accept it.’

  David Jerome was a man who liked his own way, and opposition usually only hardened him and made him more obstinate. But, for some reason, Anne’s words brought nothing more than a rueful smile to his lips.

  ‘Well, it’s a very handsome speech of rejection, at least, Miss Hemming,’ he said. ‘But you won’t give me any real reason for your decision?’

  She must give him some plausible reason, she saw, and groped hastily in the recesses of her mind.

  ‘I’m nearly sure that I—that I want to make my home here, in the Lake District,’ she told him, in the most reasonable tone she could command. ‘This offer from Robin will give me a real opportunity to find out if that is so. On the other hand, if I—became your secretary, I should have to settle in London again for an indefinite period. I’m not—willing to do that.’

  ‘I see. Well’—he made a slight face—‘I can hardly hope to compete with all the attractions of the Lake District. I see I shall have to look for my new secretary elsewhere. But I’m sorry, Miss Hemming.’

  ‘I’m sorry, too,’ Anne said softly. And she hoped he would never, never know how sorry.

  ‘Is it too late to take one or two letters for me?’

  ‘No. Certainly not. And you know, of course, that I’m willingly do anything else that needs doing during the three or four days you remain here?’

  ‘Yes, I know. When do you start in Robin’s office?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Anne said, with more melancholy indifference than she realised.

  He gave her a very odd glance at that. But her head was bent over her notebook, and she missed it.

  Afterwards, however, when she went downstairs, there was no question of indulging in melancholy indifference with Robin around. He was jubilant about her decision. And in common decency—not to say for the sake of appearances—she had to seem as pleased as he was.

  Deborah added her approval and congratulation to the spate of comment. And little though she valued either, Anne had to smile and be pleasant.

  ‘I shall have to find somewhere to live,’ she said, determinedly forcing her mind on to practical details, so that she should think less of the essential decision. ‘I can’t stay on at a luxury hotel, when I’ve descended to earth and am earning my own living again.’

  Here Deborah proved determinedly helpful, and Anne could not suppress a cynical conviction that she was willing to do all she could to confirm any arrangement which would keep Anne at a safe distance from London.

  ‘I expect Mrs. Thurber will let you have her attic room.’ Deborah said. ‘We’ll walk over and see her this evening.’

  Anne privately thought that Mrs. Thurber’s attic room sounded exactly the sort of place into which Deborah would gladly thrust her.

  However, when they ‘walked over’ that evening, she was bound to admit that Deborah had had the good sense—if nothing else—to select somewhere which would add the weight of its own attractions to her decision to stay in the district.

  Mrs. Thurber’s attic room ran the full length from back to front of Mrs. Thurber’s home—which might have been described either as a large cottage or a small house.

  In the front, enchanting dormer windows looked out on to Rydal Water, and at the back, quite incredibly, a circular window, with a swinging sash-movement, looked first on Mrs. Thurber’s old-fashioned garden, and then away to a beautiful view of Raven Crag.

  Bright chintz curtains fluttered at the window, and the few pieces of furniture in the room were old, but good and solid, and dated back sufficiently to pass that significant line which divides the despised old-fashioned from the admired antique.

  Mrs. Thurber herself was a plump, melancholy, rather apologetic little widow, who seemed considerably in awe of Deborah. Even if she had not wanted to have Miss Eskin’s friend from London, Anne felt pretty sure that the poor little thing would have been dragooned into doing so. But, as it was, she responded very willingly to Anne’s friendly smile, and seemed rather happy at the idea of having her in the house.

  She undertook to provide Anne with breakfast and an evening meal, in what she called the parlour downstairs. And Anne decided that she could make quite a pleasant life for herself in the chintz-curtained room upstairs.

  As pleasant, that was to say, as any life could be which did not include David Jerome.

  ‘Well, that’s settled,’ Deborah said, in a tone of satisfaction, as they came away. And Anne had some difficulty in suppressing a smile at the transparency of her thoughts.

  About a hundred yards from the cottage, they met a forceful-looking woman in trousers who was striding along the road, and Deborah stopped to introduce Miss Haskin, who would now be Anne’s next-door neighbour.

  ‘Oh, you’re staying with the poor little Thurber?’ Miss Haskin said, regarding Anne with the large, but rather menacing, benevolence which she extended to the whole world.

  ‘Yes. She seems very kind and nice,’ Anne replied tactfully.

  ‘Yes, yes. Much too kind,’ declared Miss Haskin, who made a speciality of minding other people’s business. ‘She kept that husband of hers alive much too long.’

  Miss Haskin sounded as though killing off a husband were all in a day’s work. But, as she obviously intended this remark as provocative of an extended conversation, Anne felt bound to ask politely:

  ‘Was he ill a long time, then?’

  ‘Not ill. D.T.s,’ Miss Haskin explained, as one woman of the world to another.

  ‘Oh. He drank?’

  ‘Like a fish,’ Miss Haskin said. ‘Like a fish.’

  And Anne felt she could almost see the late Mr. Thurber’s fins.

  ‘Oh, poor Mrs. Thurber.’

  ‘Yes. She’s very well rid of him. Very well rid of him,’ Miss Haskin stated, without fear of contradiction. ‘But she will grieve. So foolish. It’s so much nicer to put flowers on a grave than liniment on bruises.’

  And, with this somewhat peculiar generalisation, Miss Haskin waved a cheery hand and left them.

  ‘I think I’m going to like living here,’ Anne remarked. And her spirits rose one notch from the depths to which they had fallen in the moment she refused to become David Jerome’s secretary.

  Deborah laughed a little.

  ‘Miss Haskin is quite entertaining,’ she agreed. ‘But an inveterate gossip. Don’t tell her anything which you’re not prepared to have broadcast round the district.’

  ‘I shouldn’t,’ Anne assured her dryly.

  And then, as they had come to the place where their paths divided, they said an affable good night to each other and separated.

  During the next few days, a good many changes took place in Anne’s day
-to-day life. To begin with, she moved from the discreet luxury of Merring Towers to the more workaday atmosphere of Mrs. Thurber’s cottage and the undoubtedly indiscreet neighbourhood of Miss Haskin.

  Then, in company with Robin, she went into Ambleside to be interviewed by his senior partner, Mr. Curtis, and to have it arranged that she should begin work at the office on the following Monday morning. She was briefly introduced to her future colleagues, Carol Deeming and Rosemary Blaney, both rather older than herself but obviously the pleasant-mannered, efficient type who make good office companions.

  To all outward seeming, Anne’s life for the next three months should lie in very acceptable paths.

  Only David Jerome would not be there. And beside that fact nothing else seemed to matter very much.

  These were bright, cherished moments in the relentlessly passing days, clouded by the ever-present thought of parting. They helped Anne to appear cheerful and happy when her heart was aching, and they even served to blunt her own sense of the coming unhappiness.

  On the last evening, she was invited to dinner at Greenslade. Possibly the idea was Robin’s. Probably Deborah felt generous in the moment of victory. Or possibly David Jerome, for reasons of his own, insisted upon it.

  Anyway, with the help of a stick, he limped downstairs and joined the party.

  Even apart from Mrs. Eskin’s rather brooding company, it was all very different from that first dinner-party they had had together at Merring Towers, the evening that Anne had arrived at Rydal.

  Then David Jerome’s company had been the fly in the amber, so far as Anne was concerned. Now it was the most important thing about the gathering. Then she had avoided his eyes and hoped he would not address a word to her directly. Now she found it hard not to watch for his every glance, and when he spoke to her she was happy.

  He spoke to her a good deal, as a matter of fact. Sometimes of things about which the others knew little or nothing. It was inevitable that, during the weeks they had worked fairly constantly together, they should have created a fund of shared experiences and interests, on which they drew for their conversation. But whatever the reason, Anne felt on that happy, sad last evening, that there were some things which would perhaps bring her back to him—if not with the poignancy with which she would remember him, at least with a clarity and individuality which would make certain remembered scenes hers, and hers only.

  And then, quite suddenly as it seemed to Anne, it was all over.

  Robin was Waiting to drive her over to Mrs. Thurber’s, and she was standing by David Jerome’s chair, holding his hand and saying goodbye to him, and trying not to let herself realise that this might be the last time she would ever talk to him.

  ‘Goodbye, my dear. Thank you for all you’ve done,’ he said, speaking, even then, with some of his characteristic abruptness. ‘And if Pennerley writes to complain of my not bringing you back with me, be sure you do me justice and say it was certainly not my fault.’

  ‘I will,’ Anne promised, and even managed to smile in answer to this. And thank you for—for everything.’

  He held her hand unnecessarily tightly for a moment, then gave it a sharp pat and released it.

  She turned away, without actually uttering the word ‘goodbye’, which perhaps was just as well, because it would probably have brought the tears to her eyes. And Deborah would certainly have noticed.

  Instead, she murmured a perfunctory goodnight to Mrs. Eskin and Deborah, and went out to Robin and the waiting car.

  It was a beautiful, clear, starlit night, and, at any other time, Anne would have paused to enjoy the scene with Robin. But tonight she felt that even a word on the beauties of nature would be too much for her. She got into the car, shivered inexplicably, and hastily covered the movement with an exclamation of:

  ‘Oh, it’s chilly!’

  ‘Is it?’ Robin said, in a beautifully unargumentative and matter-of-fact-tone, and leaned over to pull up the window for her.

  Then he drove her home in comparative silence. And by the time they reached Mrs. Thurber’s gate, she had herself under control again.

  ‘Goodnight, Robin. Thank you very much.’

  ‘Pleasure. Would you like to come driving tomorrow?’

  But she knew tomorrow was going to be a difficult day, and thought she would rather not have to keep up appearances in front of anyone. So she said:

  ‘Thank you, but I think I’ll have a quiet day. It’s my last day before starting at the office, and there are several: things I want to straighten out. Letters to write and so on.’

  ‘All right. There’ll be other weekends,’ Robin replied, with good-natured philosophy.

  And to Anne that conveyed just a little comfort for the future. It made her see days and nights when she would not feel so terrible as this, when she would be able to enjoy the scenery she loved once more, and even the friendly, undemanding company of Robin.

  But tonight there was nothing that anyone or anything could do for her.

  She would have been glad to go straight to her room. But, as she opened the front door, little Mrs. Thurber popped out of the parlour, with the pleased air of one who had been alone all the evening and welcomed the sound of a friendly footstep.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Miss Hemming,’ she said, though it was difficult to see who else it could have been, as she and Anne were the only people who had the door-key.

  ‘Yes, Mrs. Thurber. Did I disturb you?’

  ‘Oh, no, dear. I was just having a last cup of tea. Come and have one, too,’ Mrs. Thurber urged.

  It was impossible to deny her the little company she craved. And murmuring something about, ‘Well, for ten minutes,’ Anne followed her back into the parlour and sat down in one of the surprisingly comfortable horse-hair Victorian chairs which were dotted about the room.

  ‘Did you have a nice evening?’ Miss Thurber inquired, but in a kindly, rather than an inquisitive way. Unlike Miss Haskin, she did not mind other people’s business for them.

  ‘Yes. Very nice, thank you,’ Anne said, rather sadly.

  Mrs. Thurber handed her a cup of tea, and gave her a bird-like glance.

  ‘So nice that you’re sad it’s over,’ she said, more as a statement than a question.

  ‘Something like that.’ Anne smiled at her. ‘I had to say goodbye to someone tonight. And I hated doing so.’

  Mrs. Thurber nodded sympathetically.

  ‘Even temporary goodbyes are always sad,’ she said, with a sigh for the departed Mr. Thurber, even if he had drunk like a fish. ‘But one grows used to it, my dear. One grows used to it.’

  ‘Oh, does one?’ Anne exclaimed, with a note of real pain in her voice. ‘Yes, I suppose one must, of course. But does one want to? I mean, growing used to someone’s absence suggests that one gradually forgets the joy of his presences That—that is, anyone’s presence,’ she added confusedly, in case Mrs. Thurber should start any elementary detective work.

  ‘You’re very young,’ Mrs. Thurber’s kind old voice said soothingly. ‘Most of your life is in front of you.’

  Anne bit her lip. At that moment she felt she didn’t want to contemplate a long life in front of her without David Jerome.

  ‘I don’t know that that’s much comfort, Mrs. Thurber,’ she said, with a sigh.

  ‘I meant that there’s plenty of time and opportunity for many other happinesses to come your way. When you’re young, it seems that if you can’t have exactly what you want, life is hardly worth living. But, as you get older, you realise that very often one thing will do instead of another.’

  ‘And one person instead of another, Mrs. Thurber?’ Anne asked with a doubtful little smile.

  ‘Possibly, my dear, possibly. But I’m not so sure about that,’ Mrs. Thurber admitted. And she glanced fondly towards the mantelpiece, over which hung—or rather, loomed —a photograph of Mr. Thurber in his courting days, superb in a stiff white collar, his hair en brosse, and his elegant moustache twisted to incredible points.

&nb
sp; Anne’s glance followed hers.

  In any other mood, she might have had difficulty in suppressing a smile at the thought of Mr. Thurber as the embodiment of romance. But, just at the moment, she felt very tender towards anyone who cherished loving thoughts.

  So, rather surprisingly, she got up and kissed Mrs. Thurber goodnight—which seemed to please the old lady immensely.

  And then, as she climbed the stairs to her starlit attic, she reflected on the strange, but undoubted, fact that the original of that preposterous photograph had once been to the fluttering Mrs. Thurber what David Jerome was to herself.

  CHAPTER NINE

  During the next few weeks, Anne began to settle down to her new life.

  Her work, she found, was reasonably interesting and well within her capabilities. And certainly driving into Ambleside with Robin each morning and out again each evening was very much more enjoyable than struggling for a seat on the Underground, or watching the buses go past request stops or halt for a grudging half minute at compulsory stops, while the conductor bawled, ‘Hurry along there, please! Two only.’

  Sometimes, in the evenings, Robin and she would go for walks or drives. But she had determined from the beginning that he must not be unduly encouraged to pass beyond the stage of casual friendship. She had no wish to inflict on him the same sort of pain she had suffered, and was still suffering, on David’s account. And, though she could not, of course, undertake to control Robin’s feelings, at least she did her best not to let him cherish hopes which she could not fulfil.