“No, I haven’t seen him. I was just arguing with you. You think people are all right if they look human. You don’t like Minlow. Yet he looks human.”
“With that blank façade? Either he has nothing at all behind it, or he has a hell of a lot to conceal. Both ways, I’d rate him zero as a human being.” He frowned at his empty glass. “Guess I’ll need another drink,” he added, looking around him. “Minlows and Minlows... Are they all his uncles and his sisters and his brothers and his aunts?”
“You didn’t want to come to this party, did you?”
“Not particularly.”
“But in a way it’s fun,” she tried. “Crystal chandeliers, gay dresses, music, flowers, and people doing nothing but gossip and laugh. It’s amusing to watch them perform. Isn’t it?” She looked at him in amazement. “Aren’t you enjoying any of it?”
“I’m enjoying this part,” he said returning her look. “I like that colour you’re wearing.” The stole had dropped from her shoulders, and the line of her arm curved smoothly up over the slender shoulder to her white firm neck.
“I bet you say that to all the girls you drink champagne with.”
“It’s been a long time, then, since I said it.” He was suddenly grim-faced.
“Yes,” Kate said slowly. She looked at the bright room. “There’s a war on and this doesn’t make sense.” She twisted her glass round, turning its slender stem between her forefinger and thumb, and watched the swirl of bubbles. “That’s why you wouldn’t wear your uniform tonight, isn’t it?”
“I’m now looking straight across at the men whose governments supplied the bullets to shoot at me and the propaganda to label me a bloody fascist imperialist warmonger. What does Hugenberg expect me to do—go over and kiss them?”
“Yet Miriam’s convinced this is the way to have peace— people all being friendly together.”
“And if she converts some of these people to friendship, you know what will happen to them? They’ll be recalled to correction camps. Is that friendly of her, I ask you? She’s putting out her efforts at the wrong level. Sure, I used to think that if the people could get together, then we’d be all right. But I forgot some people don’t have any say in their government at all.”
“They’ll deny that, of course.”
“Then they are admitting that they’re responsible for hidden arrests, secret trials and forced confessions.”
“You’ve got them coming and going,” Kate said with a smile.
Bob grinned suddenly. “I’m not that clever. They caught themselves in their own cleft argument.”
“There’s Miriam now,” Kate said, and then regretted it. For there was Jan Brovic, too, flanked by two quiet, watchful men who listened politely to Miriam. One of them smiled and nodded, and then pointed to the Renoir that hung behind them. Miriam clasped her hands together as her mouth said “Oh!” delightedly.
“Well, I’m certainly glad they’ve got that point cleared up about the use of pink in a portrait,” Bob said bitterly. “If you can discuss painting and music and literature, if you dress correctly, and eat politely, and don’t belch, if you can fake tears in your voice when you talk about the minority problems of America—why, you could get away with murder. Look at Miriam going into her sweetness-and-light act. My God, it sickens me. Can’t she even imagine what lies underneath the surface?” Then he added, more quietly, “Seems to me I’ve met that fellow...” He was watching Jan Brovic carefully, searching his memory. Union Station, the day the train was late...
“Let’s go out on to the terrace,” Kate suggested. “We can be sick together there in peace. I’ll hold your head if you hold mine.”
He rose quickly, with relief, laying aside their glasses, taking her arm as they stepped through the French windows. He looked at the quiet, dark garden. “Thanks for this,” he said. “But won’t you catch cold?” It was still damp underfoot.
“When I start sneezing, you can take me indoors again; only, this time, let’s choose a better scenic point. After all, there are other members of the United Nations to look at. Why concentrate on the cynics?”
“True enough,” he admitted. His voice was natural again. He could even smile. He drew the velvet stole closely around her shoulders, and now that his eyes were accustomed to the long dark terrace—the scattered lamps from the desolate garden seemed lightless after the blazing shimmer of the room—he found a corner sheltered by a massive pillar. The breeze that fanned the terrace, as if hurrying to dry it for the guests, didn’t reach them here. He lit a cigarette for her.
“Thanks,” he said again. “And don’t worry. My blood pressure is under control now.”
“I wasn’t worrying: I was just trying to make up my mind.” How quick he was to notice, she thought. Just those few seconds by the light of a match and he had noticed the frown on her face.
“About what?”
It may have been the anonymous feeling that the darkness gave, it could have been the steady touch of his arm against hers, but she had the impulse to tell him all she knew about Jan Brovic and Sylvia. Then she fought the impulse down. It wasn’t any business of Bob’s. It wasn’t her business, either. People were supposed to be free to choose. Free even to choose disaster? And yet—
“About a story I heard,” she said at last, so absorbed in her own thoughts that she didn’t notice he had been measuring the pause.
“It must have been a long one,” he said jokingly.
“No. But I don’t know how it is to be solved.”
“Stories don’t always have solutions. Often, they just drift away, like some people’s lives.”
“This one won’t drift away.”
He tried to see her face clearly, but he could only sense its worry.
She said, “I don’t know all the story. That’s the trouble. So I can’t see the solution. If I did, then I’d know what was right to do, what was wrong.”
“Has someone got to do something? Why not let it develop naturally?”
“And then feel guilty for the rest of my life because I didn’t act in time?”
“Well, if it’s as serious as that—” Again, he tried to make out the expression on her face. His eyes, now accustomed to the shadows, could only see that she was watching him intently. “More problems?” he asked gently.
“More problems,” she admitted. A small smile showed her pretty teeth for a moment. “How old are you, Bob?”
Startled, keeping his face serious with an effort, he said, “Twenty-three. Practically decrepit.”
“I’m twenty-two,” she said despondently. “Sometimes, I feel as if I were fifty.”
“Is that what Washington has done to you?” he asked with a laugh, but she didn’t respond.
“I’ve never been in love, not really in love,” she said slowly. “That’s my trouble: if I knew what it was like to be willing even to die for someone, then I could know what to do now. Or what not to do.”
And my trouble is, he thought, that I haven’t one idea what she’s talking about. If this isn’t the damnedest conversation on a dark terrace with my arm holding a pretty girl—
“Bob,” she said suddenly. “Have you ever been in love?”
For a moment, he was silent. “Four times,” he said, trying to keep his voice amused. “Four and a half times to be accurate.”
“A half? What happened—did you change your mind?”
“No. It’s just that she was a married woman, who didn’t even know I was standing around gaping at her. Most unsatisfactory. It didn’t rate anything except a half mark.”
“That’s the cruellest, because most of the time you don’t only feel you are a fool—you know you’re one. I remember...” She laughed softly. “Once I fell in love with a teacher. Of all things!”
“In Berkeley?”
“Yes. Every time he praised my work in class, I felt as if I were soaring right up into a Tiepolo sky—rosy clouds, golden trumpets, you know the sort of thing. Then one day I met him with his wife
, shopping together in Shattuck Avenue. And suddenly I saw what an idiot I was. And I cut his classes, out of embarrassment. And then the whole thing faded away, gradually. Why, I haven’t thought of him for months until this minute.”
“I gather he was in love with his wife.”
“Quite obviously.”
“What if he hadn’t been? Or if she hadn’t been in love with him?”
“Then I’d have taken longer to snap out of my daydream. It was probably only a father-fixation, anyway.”
“Oh, now!” he said, a little angrily. “You can fall in love with someone older without tagging Freud on to it.”
“It was only a joke—” she began in surprise. And not a very good one, she decided. Difference in ages didn’t matter if you were in love, anyway. But why bring ages into this? That wasn’t the point she had been making. “I just meant—” she said, and stopped. She could feel Bob’s tenseness. Warned, alert now, she kept silent. Was his story in all the past as he had pretended? Then the small things she had noticed about Bob, the small things that didn’t mean much taken by themselves, the small things that always happened when Sylvia was near or was discussed, all began to take shape and form a pattern.
“Well,” he said, straightening his shoulders and trying to put some amusement back into his voice, “do you think I’m qualified to give you advice? But that bit about being willing to die”—he was really amused now—“well, I guess that rules me out. Dying was the last thing I thought of doing, then.”
“I only meant it—metaphorically,” she said, ashamed of her emotionalism. Yet wasn’t Sylvia’s willingness to give up everything she believed in, for Jan Brovic—wasn’t that a form of dying?
“You know,” he said, “wouldn’t you be better—instead of all this tactful side-stepping—just to tell me what has been worrying you so badly? What’s this story? What problem is it raising?”
She watched the group of men, who had come to smoke a cigarette on the terrace, turn and walk back into the garden room. A woman came out, complained that it was dismal here with the moon hidden by cloud, and hurried her escort back inside the room. Kate said, “Let’s go in, too.” She touched his hand. Inside, there would be so many other people that he might even forget about the story she couldn’t tell, after all. It isn’t strange that he fell in love with Sylvia, she thought. If I were a man, I probably would. And yet she couldn’t altogether account for the depression that had settled over her as deeply as the mist that still hung over the trees and refused to be blown away.
“Sure,” he agreed readily, as if he too suddenly regretted the way he had talked so freely about himself. “Sorry if I’ve ruined the party for you, Kate. I’ll do better this time, I hope.” He smiled down at her and took a step towards the path of light that streamed over the terrace from the French windows, but Kate didn’t move. Her arm, linked in his, had tightened. Warned, he looked away from her face, towards the windows and saw the flutter of a wide filmy skirt as a woman stepped out of the light into shadows.
The skirt had been deep blue—it had reminded him of dark delphiniums when he had seen it earlier this evening—with a scattered sprinkling of flat little glistening things that made him think of raindrops strewn over petals of a flower. “There’s Sylvia,” he said, but why didn’t Kate call out to her? “Let’s go over,” he was about to say. But at that moment, a man came out on the terrace.
It was Jan Brovic. And by the way Kate’s arm suddenly slackened, almost hopelessly, on his, Bob Turner knew that this was what she had been expecting since the moment Sylvia had appeared.
17
All evening, in the crowded bustling rooms, with their constant movement and chatter, Sylvia had listened and smiled and talked, seemingly absorbed in the faces and conversation around her. All evening, she had been only conscious that Jan was watching her from a distance just as she would snatch brief glances of him. Their eyes would meet occasionally, and then slip away as if they were strangers. But she was left with a quickening pulse, a tingling excitement, and the impulse to laugh out of sheer unexplained happiness if only to relieve the mounting tension. For in some ways the presence of Jan here, so near and yet out of contact, out of touch, was almost unbearable. The fact that other people were so intent on conversation—the difficulties of foreign languages made them listen more carefully—made her secret seem all the safer, and this strange emotional suspense all the tighter.
* * *
She was standing near the supper table, at the time. She was one of a small group, mostly strangers to each other, making conversation about the new Fledermaus they had seen in New York that winter. And then, quite suddenly, she saw Jan walk towards the supper table. Walk towards her. She forced all her attention back to the group around her, smiling at their remarks, feeling each step of Jan’s that brought him nearer. He had passed her, and now stood at the table.
“My cigarette,” she said, and looked round vaguely for an ashtray. The man beside her said, “Just a moment. Let me—” and looked round for an ashtray, too.
“Oh, there’s one!” she exclaimed, and moved quickly to the table. “Excuse me,” she said to Jan, reaching to stub out the cigarette, her eyes teasing him as she smiled a polite apology. But she hadn’t startled him, or even amused him. He said, “Pardon,” and pushed the ashtray over towards her. “The terrace,” his quiet voice added. As she turned back to the group she had left, letting them draw her into the flow of their remarks once more, she heard him asking for a Scotch and soda.
A few moments, she thought, a few moments and I’ll drift away with the excuse of looking for Kate. Where was Kate, anyway? And Bob? Payton wasn’t in sight: he was probably still sitting in the library talking to a group of men who disliked standing around making light conversation.
She glanced across the room at the two men who had stayed so close to Jan all this evening. But they had been neatly trapped by Miriam Hugenberg’s performance as the perfect hostess: she was introducing them in a burst of atrocious French to a pretty dark-haired girl. And now Miriam, her duty done in that direction, was coming forward to the group around Sylvia, no doubt deciding that it too needed a little dislocation. Miriam had a quick eye for interrupting, separating, joining together and parting asunder.
Sylvia didn’t have to invent any excuse about looking for Kate. Miriam, triumphant in her successes, led her away and even started convoying her towards the terrace windows. “Darling,” Miriam said, her eyes flitting around the groups of guests like two bright butterflies testing each promising colour in a rich flower garden, “darling, I’ve been trying to see you all night. What’s this I hear?”
Sylvia’s step faltered for a moment. “What have you heard?” She forced herself to look normal.
“About you, darling.” Miriam’s quick eyes were now studying her face. “Is it serious?”
Sylvia’s face tightened.
“Darling, you’ve got to take better care of yourself,” Miriam said. “You really do look much too fine-drawn. It isn’t worth it, I tell you, to let your health break down. I’m as busy as the next woman, but I always—ah, Mr. Gunner—are you leaving—so early?” She turned to smile to the guest who wanted to make his goodbyes.
“I must find Kate,” Sylvia said to Miriam, and excused herself from a last-minute introduction. The windows were beside her, now. She forced herself not to look back at the supper table to see if Jan were still there. He would be watching her, she knew.
And then, even as she reached the nearest window, even as she was about to cross its threshold, she saw Stewart Hallis. He was talking to a red-haired woman who was sitting on a small couch pushed back against the wall behind one of the opened windows. For a brief moment, Sylvia hesitated. But he hadn’t glanced in her direction, he hadn’t noticed her. And her next step took her outside on to the terrace.
He couldn’t have seen me, she told herself again, he wasn’t even looking in my direction. A breath of wind caught the wide-flowing skirt of her dress a
nd she pulled its soft folds quickly back into the shadows where she stood. She shivered, perhaps with the effort of reaching the terrace, perhaps with the raw air that struck her bare shoulders, or perhaps with the memory of Jan’s serious face. He would never have suggested this meeting, if he hadn’t been desperate.
Jan came out on to the terrace.
“Here,” she whispered from the shadows beside the windows.
He stepped into them, putting his arm around her shoulders. He looked around for some place more sheltered, less exposed to wandering guests.
It was a long terrace, one end marked by white pillars which formed a decoration for a jutting wing of the house. At the other end, there was a screen of wisteria, disguising a pergola which led from the terrace to the covered porch. (Miriam liked to call it a patio. That was where she used to give her summer dinner-parties, he remembered.) From where they stood by the windows, the pergola and its massive wisteria looked like a wall of tangled branches. He hesitated for a moment, but then he remembered, too, that only people who knew this house would realise that the pergola even existed. Tonight, most people here were strangers. With his arm still round her shoulders, drawing her close to him, he hurried her over the bands of light and shadows to the sheltering wall. A small arched entrance led to a stretch of complete blackness. Beyond that, there was the covered patio with its dimmed lights and its subdued voices. But here, in the wisteria-covered passage, it was dark and silent.
He took off his jacket and slipped it over her shoulders. Then he took her in his arms, holding her against the warmth of his body, calming her trembling, finding peace even for himself in their long kiss. Outside of their tree-bound world, the wind stirred gently, and a raindrop, shaken free from a bough overhead, fell on his cheek. The quiet voices from the dining terrace had ceased. Darkness and silence were around them. His heart twisted. Darkness and silence.
“We can’t stay long,” he said, speaking quickly, quietly. He felt the soft curve of her cheek with his. His hand touched her throat.
I and My True Love Page 19
