Love Him or Leave Him

by Mary Burchell

  Without appearing to attach much importance to it therefore, she contrived to limit their outings to a reasonable number, and this left her a good deal of time at home —for ‘home’ was how she very soon came to think of Mrs. Thurber’s cottage.

  The old lady herself was good company, and Miss Haskin—who favoured them with almost daily visits—was excellent, if slightly unsafe, company.

  She was, as Deborah had said, an arrant gossip. That is to say, she was an enthusiastic purveyor of local news and views. She was not the type of gossip who invents what she cannot discover. And Anne soon learned that if Miss Haskin prefaced a disclosure with ‘I know for a fact that—’ almost certainly her information would be correct.

  What was rather astonishing and shocking was the number of things Miss Haskin did contrive to know for a fact.

  At first, Anne even suspected her of eavesdropping. Presently she discovered that Miss Haskin exercised a sort of amiable form of ‘third degree’ upon her victims. And so well understood was this among her many acquaintances that most of them, on seeing her approach, either made a hasty get-away, or resigned themselves to giving a recital of anything they thought could interest her, without even waiting to be cross-questioned.

  If, however, Miss Haskin had nothing to offer but a juicy bit of speculation, she was quite frank about the fact. She would then open her bulletin with the words, ‘Mind you, I have no idea if this is correct, but there is a strong rumour that—’

  There were, Anne found, quite strict rules in Miss Haskin’s code, and she had the impression that, if one categorically appealed to her about anything concerning oneself and said, ‘Will you please, Miss Haskin, not pass that on to anyone. It would cause me great unhappiness,’ the probabilities were that the information would remain locked in Miss Haskin’s well-developed bosom.

  No one, however, so far as she knew, had ever applied these unusual tactics to Miss Haskin, and Anne hoped she would not have any occasion to do so herself.

  One evening, about a fortnight after David Jerome’s return to town, Anne came in, to be greeted by Mrs. Thurber with the news that ‘there was an interesting-looking parcel waiting for her’.

  ‘What makes it interesting-looking?’ Anne inquired with a smile.

  ‘It’s so well packed, for one thing,’ replied Mrs. Thurber, to whom parcels were irregular lumps shrouded in oft-used brown paper, tied with several thicknesses of string knotted together, and addressed two or three times in any blank space left available.

  Certainly, judged by these standards, Anne’s parcel looked interesting. It was beautifully packed, tied with fine multi-coloured twine, and addressed—once only—on the well-designed label of an exclusive Bond Street store.

  ‘I can’t imagine—’ Anne began.

  Then sudden incredulous excitement set her heart racing. She cut the attractive string, in spite of Mrs. Thurber’s protests, and ripped open the parcel.

  Inside was, first, a beautiful fountain-pen and pencil-set, and then, packed in individual boxes, an address-book and telephone-pad in nut-brown crocodile leather.

  Mrs. Thurber twittered with excitement and approval. But in the first moment, Anne almost thrust the beautiful presents aside, in her eagerness to find some message with them.

  She found it—in the box with the address-book. David Jerome’s card, and, written on the back of it:

  ‘To use in the new job, and in thanks for all the good work you did for me. D.J.’

  ‘Oh, the darling!’ exclaimed Anne.

  ‘They must have cost a great deal of money,’ said Mrs. Thurber.

  She was so impressed by the luxurious detail of the gift that Anne had to let her hang over each item a little longer though she really ached to escape to her own room and read those few words on the card over and over again.

  Mrs. Thurber had hardly finished her detailed examination when the loud, and strangely arch, ‘Coo-ee’ with which Miss Haskin usually announced her presence was heard in the kitchen. And, a moment later, the lady herself came into the room.

  ‘Look what a lovely present Miss Hemming has just had sent her,’ exclaimed Mrs. Thurber, with a sort of pride in the compliment paid to her young lodger. ‘From that nice Mr. Jerome that she worked for.’

  ‘Very, very handsome,’ declared Miss Haskin, examining everything and—Anne felt sure—accurately pricing each article. ‘From Deborah Eskin’s fiancé, eh?’

  It was at this point that Anne decided to put her theory about Miss Haskin to the test.

  ‘Miss Haskin—and Mrs. Thurber, too, of course,’ she added, for decency’s sake, ‘I should be very much obliged if you wouldn’t mention this present to anyone. It was very kind of Mr. Jerome to send it, and I think he felt under some obligation to me because I did some typing for him without payment. But I do know that Deborah Eskin can be rather—rather silly and difficult about these things. I would prefer her not to know anything about the gift. She might—quite unreasonably—be hurt.’

  ‘She wouldn’t be hurt,’ Miss Haskin retorted with candour. ‘She’d just be plain mad. A silly, jealous, acquisitive creature, Deborah Eskin. I agree with you that the less said, the better. I shall not say a word. And nor, I’m sure, will Mrs. Thurber.’

  She glanced majestically at poor little Mrs. Thurber, who never gossiped, anyway, even about anything which she ‘knew for a fact’.

  ‘Of course I shan’t say anything,’ Mrs. Thurber declared, with the air of a rabbit eschewing violence.

  ‘Good,’ observed Miss Haskin, taking the whole matter in hand. ‘It’s to be hoped he has had the good sense not to mention it to Deborah himself. Though he can hardly have a great deal of sense ever to have become engaged to her.’

  ‘He’s a man of excellent sense,’ Anne asserted dryly, because she could not bear to have David Jerome criticised, even for so obvious a piece of misjudgment as becoming engaged to Deborah.

  ‘Is that so?’ said Miss Haskin, largely unmoved by the comment. ‘Well, perhaps she did most of the running. Yes, I remember now—she did.’

  Anne usually made it a rule not to encourage Miss Haskin with questions. But this she could not resist.

  ‘Do you know that for a fact, Miss Haskin,’ she asked, hypnotised into using Miss Haskin’s own telling phrase.

  ‘Let me see,’ Miss Haskin obligingly delved back into the recesses of her phenomenal memory. ‘I think "I—do. Yes, of course, I remember now. Maggie Kentner told me, and she’s pretty reliable. She accompanied the Eskins—not Robin, but the girl and that silly mother of hers—on a trip to Portugal. And this Jerome—what is he? Dick? Donald—’

  ‘David,’ Anne supplied obligingly.

  ‘Oh, yes. This David Jerome was there. And Maggie Kentner says Deborah was the only Englishwoman of personable age anywhere around. Though personally I would rather have Maggie herself, though she can’t be a day less than sixty-five, than that humourless plaster cast, Deborah. But of course, a man wouldn’t see it that way.’

  ‘No,’ Anne agreed.

  While Mrs. Thurber contributed the indulgent remark that it was natural for a man to like something young and pretty.

  Miss Haskin, who, on the whole, took a poor view of men, snorted contemptuously.

  ‘I don’t know that I’d call Deborah Eskin pretty,’ she said.

  ‘Most people would call her decidedly good-looking,’ Anne replied, with strict justice. ‘And, though I know she hasn’t much sense of humour, she has a sort of repose when things go well, and I could imagine that might appeal to a busy, active man.’

  ‘You mean she doesn’t say much because she hasn’t much to say,’ Miss Haskin paraphrased, rather unkindly. ‘Well, I suppose that has its attraction for some men. Anyway, she must have worked hard, with whatever weapons God gave her. For she came back engaged to this man, and, according to Maggie Kentner, he’s quite a catch.’

  While secretly agreeing with the unknown Maggie Kentner—though probably for different reasons—Anne managed to
look as though the subject were not of more than academic interest to her. She explained, quite casually, to Miss Haskin that David Jerome had once been her employer, and that was why she was mildly interested.

  To which Miss Haskin replied indulgently:

  ‘Oh, I know all about that.’

  And Anne simply had not the courage to inquire how much ‘all about that’ comprised.

  Presently—when she felt she could do so without either giving offence or rousing suspicion—she gathered up her presents, and took them with her upstairs.

  And here, in this attic-room, spread them out and examined them afresh, while she imagined David limping into the Bond Street shop and choosing them for her—his mind completely on her, while he decided what would please her most—and then writing that message, because he remembered the pleasant times they had shared together.

  She had not been so happy since David went away. And loveliest and most comforting of all was the thought that she could, quite legitimately, write to him now. That, in fact, she must do so.

  And even to write to him made her feel a frail connection with him which warmed her heart.

  Most of that evening she spent composing a letter to him. It must be short, but express all her becoming gratitude for his generous gift without in any way giving so much as a hint of her real feelings. No wonder she made at least a dozen drafts before she decided on the one she had first composed. And even that did not really satisfy her.

  For since she must not say what she wished to say, and found little pleasure in saying only the things which were permissible, it was difficult to arrive at any sort of compromise.

  However, in the end, the letter was written. And she walked through the cool of the evening to post it herself.

  The post-box was the same which had received the famous ill-fated letter to Firth & Farraday, and for a moment Anne gazed upon it with a sort of superstitious dislike. She almost yielded to the impulse to walk to the other end of the village and post her letter elsewhere. But her common sense prevailed, and she slipped her letter into the box.

  It was still quite light, and, instead of turning homewards, she strolled on farther along the lane.

  A few minutes later she rather regretted the impulse, for she saw Deborah coming towards her, also with a letter in her hand. And, although the two girls were on perfectly amiable terms, Anne did not pretend to herself that Deborah’s company gave her any pleasure.

  However, there was nothing to do but go on to meet her.

  They greeted each other and strolled back towards the pillar-box together.

  ‘I’ve just been writing to David,’ Deborah said, by way of conversation.

  And with difficulty Anne kept herself from replying:

  ‘So have I.’

  Instead, she asked, with nothing more than perfunctory politeness:

  ‘How is he?’ And she was not sorry for the opportunity of asking even Deborah for news of him.

  ‘Very well. His ankle seems to be strengthening all right.’ Deborah appeared quite willing to be agreeable and informative, so far as her disposition permitted. Now that David was back in London and Anne safely anchored here, she had ceased to look for trouble.

  ‘Probably,’ reflected Anne, with faintly cynical amusement, ‘she regards me now simply as “a girl in David’s office who might have given quite a lot of trouble if I hadn’t put her in her place”.’

  ‘Have you made any wedding plans yet?’ she forced herself to inquire. Because recently she had realised that, somehow, she always thought of Deborah as engaged to David. Never, never his wife. And it was time she forced herself to contemplate that inevitable development.

  ‘Probably we shall be married towards the end of the year,’ Deborah told her. ‘I—we had thought of early autumn. But David thinks it will be difficult for him to get away for any length of time until a good deal later than that. Of course, this long sick leave has rather upset things.’

  ‘Of course,’ agreed Anne, thinking, with a rueful little smile, that it had rather upset things for her, too.

  They parted once more at the pillar-box, and Anne went on alone towards Mrs. Thurber’s cottage.

  David would receive her letter—and Deborah’s—by the same post. Would he, in the joy of receiving a letter from his fiancée, practically overlook hers? Anne wondered.

  It was difficult to imagine David in any such state of mind—over Deborah, or anyone else, Anne decided. And, from that, it was not very far to the question—how did he regard Deborah?

  However much she might resolve not to pay too much attention to Miss Haskin’s gossip, Anne could not remain entirely unimpressed by what had been said. Besides, nothing in David’s manner had ever suggested the passionately devoted lover.

  He was not one to wear his heart on his sleeve, of course. And yet, Anne thought, she could imagine that where his feelings were deeply stirred he would be as frank and impulsively open about the fact as he was in his sudden flashes of anger.

  His manner to Deborah was always—correct, she supposed was the word. He neither neglected nor slighted her. But that seemed rather a negative comment to be able to make on a man’s approach to his beloved.

  ‘Am I just looking for what I hope to find?’ Anne wondered. ‘Discovering indifference in what is simply an undemonstrative manner, just because I want to put up something—anything—against the idea that he really loves her?’

  Perhaps he and Deborah suited each other just because they neither of them cared for emotional displays. Perhaps he would always be a man to whom business came first, and personal relationships a long way after, and, for that very reason, Deborah, with her rather shallow depths, appealed to him.

  Anne sighed as she opened the cottage gate and went up the garden path, between rows of sweet-scented stocks and the almost barbarically beautiful snapdragon.

  At any rate, it would be foolish and wrong of her to assume anything else. No type of comfort was more insidious and dangerous than that drawn from seeing things as one wished them to be, rather than as they were.

  For some reason she did not quite define, even to herself, Anne refrained from telling Robin about the gift from David Jerome. It was not that she wanted to make any great mystery about it. But, since he was actually in the same house as Deborah, he was almost sure to mention it to her, unless specifically asked not to. And to make such a request of Robin would, Anne felt, imply very much more than she wished to have implied.

  In any case, she wanted something—just this one thing—to be between her and David only.

  As the weeks began to slip away, she told herself that she was growing happier and more—resigned. It was high summer now, and sometimes, on the loveliest day of all, when she was out on the hills, either alone or with Robin, she even hoped that she was beginning to recover from her useless devotion to David Jerome.

  Life had to go on, and the world was very beautiful. There were other joys to experience, and she must not mourn ungratefully after what she could not have, and so lose the enjoyment of what still remained to her.

  Anne became quite good at addressing herself in this philosophical manner, and she really imagined that she made some considerable impression on herself.

  Then something happened which showed her the futility and hollowness of all this self-persuasion.

  Robin was driving her into Ambleside one morning, and suddenly, quite simply and without preparation, he said: ‘Oh, David wired last night. He’s coming up here for the weekend—arriving tomorrow.’

  She felt like someone who plunges into cold water. The shock, the exhilaration, the hint of fear. And with it the sheer physical reaction which makes one gasp.

  ‘David? Coming here? But why?’

  ‘He didn’t say. Just to see Deborah, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Yes, of course.’

  To see Deborah. Quite simple. And she had allowed herself to think—even perhaps to hope—that Deborah did not really mean much to him.

&
nbsp; She had also allowed herself to suppose that she was getting over him, that other things and other people might be beginning to mean as much as he did. Now she saw how foolish that all was.

  Nothing—nothing in the world—mattered except that David was coming tomorrow, and she would see him.

  At least, if she were lucky, she would see him.

  With a horrid spasm of fear, she realised that, if his time were so short, there would be no reason for him to seek her out and spend even a few minutes with her. His time would be Deborah’s, and certainly Deborah would not make any suggestions about his wasting time with someone else.

  She might not see him. There might be no opportunity. She could not make the opportunity. She was past the age when she could hang about, like a stage-struck schoolgirl, hoping to catch a glimpse of her divinity.

  Unless Robin or Deborah or David himself did something about it, she might spend an agonising weekend, knowing that David was here, within half a mile of her, but as completely beyond her reach as if he were still in London.

  ‘Is he staying any longer than the Saturday and Sunday?’ Every extra day, after all, would increase her chances of seeing him.

  ‘I hardly think so. He only said the weekend, and I know he hadn’t really anticipated getting away at all during the summer. There must have been a good deal to make up, when he got back to London.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’m a—a little surprised that he’s coming so far for such a short time.’

  ‘So am I, quite frankly. I should have thought it would have been simpler for Deborah to go to London. I think, after all, there must be something more in it than his just rushing up here for a sight of his beloved.’