It would be Eve ready to lay her cards on the table. “All right, I’ll come down.”
He replaced the receiver, checked the money in his wallet and went out. Canned music was still playing in the lift. On the ground floor he walked out into the lobby and crossed over to the leather chairs of the open lounge below the reception desk.
His mind saw her the instant before his eyes did. He had a moment of searing relief mingled with a burst of blazing joy, and then he was moving forward again towards her and Marijohn was smiling into his eyes.
PART II
One
1
Sarah spent the journey across the Atlantic alternating between a volume of John Clare’s poetry and the latest mystery by a well-known crime writer. Occasionally it occurred to her that she hadn’t understood a word she was reading and that it would be much more sensible to put both books away, but still she kept them on her lap and watched the written page from time to time. And then at last, the lights of London lay beneath the plane, stretching as far as the eye could see, and she felt the old familiar feeling of nervousness tighten beneath her heart as she thought of Jon.
She loved Jon and knew perfectly well that she wanted to marry him, but he remained an enigma to her at times and it was this strange unknown quality which made her nervous. She called it the Distant Mood. She could understand Jon when he was gay, excited, nervous, musical, sad, disappointed or merely obstinate, but Jon in the Distant Mood was something which frightened her because she knew neither the cause of the mood nor the correct response to it. Her nervousness usually reduced her to silence, and her silence led to a sense of failure, hard to explain. Perhaps, she had thought, it would be different in England; he would be far from the worries and troubles of his work, and perhaps when he was in an easier, less complex frame of mind she would be able to say to him: “Jon, why is it that sometimes you’re so far away that I don’t know how to reach out to communicate with you? Why is it that sometimes you’re so abrupt I feel I mustn’t talk for fear of making you lose your temper and quarrel? Is the fault mine? Is it that I don’t understand something in you or that I do something to displease you? If it’s my fault, tell me what I’m doing wrong so that I can put it right, because I can’t bear it when you’re so far away and remote and indifferent to the world.”
He had been in the Distant Mood when she had telephoned him in London two nights ago. She had recognized it at once, and although she had done her best to sound gay and cheerful, she had cried when she had replaced the receiver. That had led to the inevitable scene with her parents.
“Sarah dear, if there’s any doubt in your mind, don’t...”
“Far better to be sorry now than be sorry after you’re married.”
“I mean, darling, I know you’re very lucky to be marrying Jon. In many ways your father and I both like him very much, but all the same, he’s many years older than you and of course, it is difficult when you marry out of your generation...”
And Sarah had very stupidly lost her temper in the face of these platitudes and had locked herself in her room to face a sleepless night on her own.
The next day had been spent in packing and preparing for the journey to London on the following day. He would phone that night, she had thought. He would be certain to phone that night, and when he talked he would sound quite different and everything would be all right again.
But the phone call never came.
Her mother had decided Sarah’s distress was due to pre-marital nerves and had talked embarrassingly for five whole minutes littered with awkward pauses on the intimate side of marriage. In the end, Sarah had gone out to the nearest cinema to escape and had seen an incredibly bad epic film on a wide screen which had given her a headache. It had been almost a relief to board the plane for London the following day and take a definite course of action at last after so much restless waiting and anxiety.
The plane drifted lower and lower over the mass of lights until Sarah could see the landing lights of the runway rising from the ground to meet them, and then there were the soft thumps of landing and the long cruise to a halt on English soil. Outside the plane, the air was damp and cool. The trek through customs came next, her nerves tightening steadily as the minutes passed, until at last she was moving into the great central lobby and straining her eyes for a glimpse of Jon.
Something had gone wrong. He wasn’t there. He was going to break off the engagement. He had had an accident, was injured, dying, dead...
“God Almighty,” said Jon’s voice just behind her. “I thought you were a white sheet at first! Who’s been frightening the life out of you?”
The relief was a great cascading warmth making her limbs relax and the tears spring to her eyes.
“Oh Jon, Jon.”
There was no Distant Mood this time. He was smiling, his eyes brilliantly alive, his arms very strong, and when he kissed her it seemed ridiculous that she should ever have had any worries at all.
“You look,” he said, “quite frighteningly sophisticated. What’s all this green eye-shadow and mud on your eyelashes?”
“Oh Jon, I spent hours—” She laughed suddenly in a surge of happiness and he laughed too, kissing her again and then sliding his arm round her waist.
“Am I covered in Canada’s most soignée lipstick?”
He was. She produced a handkerchief and carefully wiped it off. “Right,” he said briskly, when she had finished. “Let’s go. There’s dinner waiting for us at the Hilton and endless things to be discussed before I take you to your Aunt Mildred’s, so we’ve no time to waste ... Is this all your luggage or has Cleopatra got another gold barge full of suitcases sailing up the customs’ conveyor belt?”
There was a taxi waiting and then came the journey into the heart of London, through the Middlesex suburbs to Kensington, Knightsbridge and the Park. The warmth of London hummed around them, the roar of engines revved in their ears, and Sarah, her hand clasped tightly in Jon’s, thought how exciting it was to come home at last to her favorite city and to travel through the brightly-lit streets to the resplendent glamour of a lush, expensive world.
“How’s Cleopatra feeling now?”
“Thinking how much nicer than Mark Antony you are and how much better than Alexandria London is.”
He laughed. She was happy. When they reached the Hilton she had a moment’s thrill as she crossed the threshold into the luxury which was still new to her, and then they were in the diningroom and she was trying hard to pretend she was quite accustomed to dining in the world’s most famous restaurants.
Jon ordered the meal, chose the wines and tossed both menu and wine-list on one side.
“Sarah, there are a lot of things I have to discuss with you.”
Of course, she thought. The wedding and honeymoon. Exciting, breathtaking plans.
“First of all, I want to apologize for not phoning you last night. I became very involved with my family and there were various difficulties. I hope you’ll forgive me and understand.”
She smiled thankfully, eager to forgive. “Of course, Johnny. I thought something like that must have happened.”
“Secondly I have to apologize for my manner on the phone the other night. I’m afraid I must have sounded very odd indeed but again I was heavily involved with other things and I wasn’t expecting you to call. I hope you didn’t think I wasn’t pleased that you were going to come over to England earlier than expected. It was a wonderful surprise.”
“You—did sound a little strange.”
“I know.” He picked up the wine-list and put it down again restlessly. “Let me try and explain what’s been happening. I arrived here to find my mother had left her house in Halkin Street, so naturally I had to spend time tracing her before I could go and see her. That all took time, and then I managed to meet Justin and have a talk with him—”
“You did?” She had heard all about Justin, and Jon’s plans to invite him lo Canada. “Is it all right? What did he say?”
> “He’s coming to Canada. He hesitated at first, but now he’s made up his mind, so that’s all settled, thank God.” He unfolded the table napkin absentmindedly and fingered the soft linen. “Then there were various other people I had to see—Max Alexander, an old friend of mine, for instance ... and various others. I haven’t had much time to spare since I arrived.”
“No, you must have been very busy.” She watched his restless fingers. “What about the wedding, Jonny, and the honeymoon? Or haven’t you had much chance to make any more definite arrangements yet?”
“That,” said Jon, “is what I want to talk to you about.”
The first course arrived with the first wine. Waiters flitted around the table and then withdrew in a whirl of white coats.
“What do you mean, darling?”
He took a mouthful of hors d’oeuvre and she had to wait a moment for his reply. Then: “I want to get married right away,” he said suddenly, looking straight into her eyes. “I can get a special license and we can be married just as soon as possible. Then maybe a honeymoon in Spain, Italy, Paris—wherever you like, and a few days in England before we fly back to Canada with Justin.”
She stared at him, the thoughts whirling dizzily in her brain. “But Jon, Mummy and Daddy aren’t here. I—I haven’t bought all the trousseau ... I was waiting till Mummy was here before I bought the last few things—”
“Hell to the trousseau. I don’t care if you come away with me dressed in a sack. And why can’t you go shopping without your mother? I’m sure your taste is just as good if not better than hers.”
“But Jon—”
“Do you really feel you can’t get married without your parents being here?”
She swallowed, feeling as if she was on a tightrope struggling to keep her balance. “I—I just want to be fair to them, and—and I know ... Yes, I do want them to be here, Jon, I really do... But if—I just don’t understand. Why are you in such a hurry to get married all of a sudden?” He looked at her. She felt herself blush without knowing why, and suddenly she was afraid, afraid of the Distant Mood, afraid of hurting her parents, afraid of the wedding and the first night of the honeymoon.
“Jon, I—”
“I’m sorry,” he said, his hand closing on hers across the table. “That was wrong of me. Of course you shall have your parents here. I was just being selfish and impatient.”
“Perhaps I’m the one who’s being selfish,” she said ashamed. “I did say I wanted a quiet wedding—”
“But not as quiet as the one I’ve just suggested.” He wasn’t angry. “It’s all right—I understand. We’ll keep it the way you want it. After all, the actual wedding will be much more important to you than to me. That’s only natural.”
“I suppose so,” she said, struggling to understand. “The wedding’s the bride’s day, isn’t it? And then, of course, you’ve been married before so—”
“So I’m blasé about it!” he teased, and she smiled.
They concentrated on the hors d’oeuvre for a few minutes.
“Sarah.”
Something else was coming. She could sense her nerves tightening and her heart thudding a shade quicker as she waited.
“No matter when we get married, I would like to talk to you a little about Sophia.”
She took a sip of wine steadily, trying to ignore the growing tension in her limbs. “You needn’t talk about her if you don’t want to, Jon. I understand.”
“I don’t want you to get one of these dreadful first-wife complexes,” he said, laying down his knife and fork and slumping back in his chair. “Don’t for God’s sake, start imagining Sophia to be something so exotic that you can hardly bear to tip-toe in her footsteps. She was a very ordinary girl with a lot of sex-appeal. I married her because I was young enough to confuse lust with love. It’s quite a common mistake, I believe.” He drained his glass and toyed idly with the stem as his eyes glanced round the room. “For a while we were very happy, and then she became bored and I found I could no longer love her or confide in her as I had when I married her. We quarreled a lot. And then, just as I was thinking of the idea of divorce, she had the accident and died. It was complete and utter hell for me and for everyone else who was staying at Clougy at the time, especially as the inquest had a lot of publicity in the local papers and all sorts of rumors started to circulate. One rumor even said that I’d killed her. No doubt some vicious-minded crank had heard we weren’t on the best of terms and had drawn his own melodramatic conclusions when he heard that Sophia had fallen down the cliff path and broken her neck on the rocks below ... But it was an accident. The jury said it could have been suicide because she wasn’t happy at Clougy, but that was ridiculous. They didn’t know Sophia and how much she loved life—even if life merely consisted of living at Clougy far from the glamor of London. Her death was an accident. There’s no other explanation.”
She nodded. Waiters came and went. Another course was laid before her. “And anyway,” said Jon, “why would I have wanted to kill her? Divorce is the civilized method of discarding an unwanted spouse, and I had no reason to prefer murder to divorce.” He started to eat. “However, I’m wandering from the point. I just wanted to tell you that you needn’t ever worry that you’re inadequate compared to Sophia, because there simply is no comparison. I love you in many different ways and Sophia I only loved in one way—and even that way turned sour in the end ... You understand, don’t you? You follow what I’m saying?”
“Yes, Jon,” she said. “I understand.” But her thoughts, the most private of her thoughts which she would never have disclosed to anyone, whispered: She must have been very good in bed. Supposing ... And then, even her private thoughts subsided into a mass of blurred fears and worries which she automatically pushed to the furthest reaches of her mind.
Jon was smiling at her across the table, the special message of laughter and love in his eyes. “You still want to marry me?”
She smiled back, and suddenly she loved him so much that nothing mattered in all the world except her desire to be with him and make him happy. “Yes,” she said impulsively. “I do. But don’t let’s wait for my parents, Jonny—I’ve changed my mind. Let’s get married right away after all...”
2
At half-past eleven that night, Jon dialed a London telephone number.
“Everything’s fine,” he said into the receiver presently. “We’re marrying this week, honeymoon in Paris for ten days, a pause for a day or two in London to collect Justin, and then we all go back to Canada—and well away from the anonymous phone caller and any danger of Sarah finding out anything. It’s best for her not to know.”
A pause.
“Yes, I did. No trouble at all. She didn’t even ask any questions about Sophia. I concentrated on the angle you suggested.”
Another pause. The night deepened. Then: “How will I explain to her? It’ll look pretty damned odd if I go back there, especially in view of my conversation with her tonight about Sophia ... Why yes, of course! Yes, that’s reasonable enough ... All right, I’ll see you in about a fortnight’s time, then. Good-bye, darling ... and think of me.”
3
The hotel in Paris was very large and grand and comfortable, and Sarah beneath her gay smile and excited eyes felt very small and lost and nervous. Later in the evening at the famous restaurant she tried to do justice to the food that was placed before her, but the nervousness and tension only increased until she could not eat any more. And then at last they returned to the hotel, said goodnight to the team on duty at the reception desk and travelled up in the elevator to their suite on the first floor.
Jon wandered into the bathroom. As Sarah undressed slowly she heard the hiss of the shower, and knew that she would have a few minutes to herself. She tried not to think of Sophia. What would Sophia have done on her wedding night? She wouldn’t have sat trembling through an exotic dinner or spent precious minutes fumbling to undress herself with leaden fingers ... Perhaps Jon had lived with Sophi
a before he had married her. He had never asked Sarah to do such a thing, but then of course she was different, and Sophia had been so very attractive—and foreign ... Being foreign probably made a difference. Or did it?
She sat down at the dressing-table in her nightdress and fidgeted uncertainly with her hair. I wonder what Sophia looked like, she thought. I’ve never asked Jon. But she must have been dark like Justin, and probably slim and supple. Darker and slimmer than I am, I expect. And more attractive, of course. Oh God, how angry Jon would be if he could hear me! I must stop thinking of Sophia.
Jon came back from the bathroom and threw his clothes carelessly into an armchair. He was naked.
“Perhaps I’ll have a bath,” said Sarah to her fingernails. “Would it matter, do you think?”
“Not in the least,” said Jon, “except that we’ll both be rather hot in bed.”
The bathroom was a reassuring prison of steam and warmth. The bath took a long time to run, almost as long as it took her to wash. She lingered, drying herself and then paused to sit on the stool as the tears started to prick her eyes. She tried to fight them back, and then suddenly she was caught in a violent wave of homesickness and the tears refused to be checked. The room swam, the sobs twisted and hurt her throat as she fought against them, and she was just wondering how she would ever have the strength to return to the bedroom when Jon tried the handle of the locked door.
“Sarah?”
She wept soundlessly, not answering.
“Can you let me in?”
She tried to speak but could not.
“Please.”
Dashing away her tears she stumbled to the door and unlocked it. As she returned blindly to the stool and the mirror she heard Jon come in. She waited, dreading his mood, praying he wouldn’t be too angry.
“Sarah,” she heard him say. “Darling Sarah.” And suddenly he had taken her gently in his arms as if she had been very small, and was pressing her tightly to him in a clumsy comforting gesture which she found unexpectedly moving. She had never before thought him capable of great tenderness. “You’re thinking of Sophia,” he whispered in her ear. “I wish you wouldn’t. Please, Sarah, don’t think of Sophia any more.”
The Dark Shore Page 7
