The Silver Thaw

by Betty Neels

  But it didn’t last long. She finished her whisky, said good-night to her father and went off to bed.

  A month had seemed such a long time when Tom had told her he was going, but it proved to be otherwise. A good thing in a way, because she was kept busy in theatre and had little or no opportunity of seeing him. Indeed, it had been awkward to say the least when she encountered him on her way off duty after she got back from her days off, but after exchanging a stiff good evening Tom had retraced his steps and walked along the corridors with her.

  ‘There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be friends,’ he pointed out. ‘In this modern age I hope we’ve learnt to be reasonable.’

  Amelia had never felt less reasonable. ‘There doesn’t seem much point,’ she began.

  ‘Surely a meal together somewhere wouldn’t hurt either of us? There’s a lot I want to tell you about this job.’

  She felt astonishment. That Tom actually expected her to adopt the role of old friend and listen to him planning a future in which she should have had a big part and had none... The absurd idea that perhaps if she did so he might change his mind, discover that he couldn’t bear to leave her behind after all, crossed her mind. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘but I want to be back fairly early, I’ve a heavy list in the morning.’

  The evening from her point of view had been an abject failure. Tom had enthused about his job until she could have thrown a plate at him; he seemed to have taken their broken engagement in his stride, overshadowed as it was by an exciting future. Lying in bed, wide awake when she should have been recruiting her strength for the next day’s work, Amelia vowed there would be no more little dinners with Tom.

  It had been difficult to avoid him, but she had managed it, going out a good deal, visiting family who lived in London, shopping for the wedding outfit, rushing off home for her days off. She was able to wish him the best of luck when he came round to say goodbye, her voice nice and steady while her heart felt like lead. How wonderful it would be if one could say exactly what one wished on such occasions instead of uttering meaningless phrases. She cried herself to sleep that night and then got up early to do things to her red eyes and nose. The wedding was on the following day and she had her days off for it, staying with a great-aunt who lived rather grandly in Belgravia. At all costs, she must look her best.

  By the time she went down to breakfast she was looking almost as pretty as usual and no one remarked upon her still pink nose and eyelids. Everyone knew by now that Tom had gone for good and that their engagement was over and although no one had said anything, they had been very kind. They laughed and joked about the wedding now, giving her little opportunity to think. And the day was a busy one, with Mr Thomley-Jones at his rattiest and a new student nurse to guide. She wasn’t going to be any good, anyway, Amelia decided; she would have to go to the office and ask if she could be sent on to a ward while someone with a little more phlegm took her place. Not that Amelia blamed the girl; not everyone took to theatre, but this girl really shouldn’t have closed her eyes when she handed the surgeon a kidney dish in which he intended to deposit various inner portions of the patient on the table, nor should she have screamed when Mr Thomley-Jones, getting impatient, threw a pair of forceps across the theatre. One needed strong nerves to work for him, and the poor girl hadn’t got them. Amelia had a little chat with her before she went off duty and warned her staff nurse to be sure and keep her well away from theatre for the next day or two. ‘I’ll see the office when I get back,’ said Amelia, ‘and try and get her changed.’

  The little problem kept her mind busy while she changed that evening; it was November now, cold and dark and wet. She put on her suit, topped it with the mink coat her father had given her for her birthday, perched a fur cap on her head, made sure that she had all she needed in her case, and left the hospital, trying not to remember the number of times she had taken those same passages on her way to spending an evening with Tom.

  She drove herself to her aunt’s house and found her father already there talking to her great-aunt, a rather forbidding lady who greeted her with: ‘Well, my dear Amelia, so you’ve broken your engagement. I daresay it’s for the best, but one must remember that you’re no longer a young girl.’

  Amelia cast around in her mind for a suitable answer and was grateful to her father for asking her loudly if she could do with a drink before dinner.

  The meal was a stately affair. Her aunt had made no attempt to keep up with the younger generations and Amelia had taken care to bring a silk jersey dress with her, a discreet long-skirted, long-sleeved affair which blended very nicely with the austere furnishings of the vast dining room. And afterwards she went early to bed with the excuse that she had had a hard day and wanted to look her best for the following day’s ceremony.

  The wedding was to be at two o’clock and Amelia took her time getting ready for it. She had spent a good deal of money and time on her outfit—a café-au-lait wool crêpe dress and jacket and a large-brimmed melusine hat of exactly the same shade, trimmed with a taffeta ribbon. She looked quite beautiful in it and she made up her face with great care too and pinned on the sapphire and diamond brooch which had been her mother’s. Her patent leather shoes matched her handbag exactly and her gloves were very soft suede. Even her great-aunt, resplendent in velvet and furs, remarked upon the charm of her appearance and her father, never one to notice clothes, pronounced that in his opinion Amelia would outshine the bride.

  She had neither expected nor wanted to do that; all the same it was gratifying to see so many heads turn as they walked to their pew. Among every colour of the rainbow, Amelia’s elegant clothes couldn’t fail to be noted. She exchanged nods and smiles with various of her family sitting round her, settled her great-aunt beside her and composed her face into an expression of someone about to enjoy the ceremony. It was like turning the knife in the wound, she thought. She could have been the one walking up the aisle. She stopped thinking about it, shutting her mind ruthlessly to everything but the present, otherwise she might burst into tears.

  The organ, which had been providing gentle background music for some time, suddenly became very loud; the bride had arrived. No expense had been spared; Barbara, decked out in white satin, yards of old family lace and her granny’s pearls, came down the aisle, clinging to her father’s arm—a thing she wasn’t in the habit of doing, for they didn’t much care for each other—and followed by what Amelia considered to be far too many bridesmaids. They were all ages and sizes and they were all wearing an insipid pink which did nothing for them, especially the one cousin in the family with flaming red hair. She and Amelia were good friends even though they didn’t meet often; she winked as she swanned along behind the bride.

  Amelia didn’t pay too much attention to the service. She knew that if she did she would start thinking about Tom and she had vowed not to do that. Various members of the family and their friends were bound to ask her when she was going to get married and she had rehearsed a number of answers so that she wouldn’t be taken by surprise. As she stood there, singing ‘The voice that breathed o’er Eden’ in an unselfconscious soprano, any casual observer might have been forgiven for thinking her to be one of the happiest people in the church.

  It took a long time for the congregation to leave once the bride and her groom had driven away. Almost everyone there knew everyone else and there was a good deal of lingering while gossip was exchanged. Amelia and her father were among the last to get into their car which Badger, wearing a peaked cap for the occasion, was driving. The reception was being held in Barbara’s home, a solid residence in a solid square, where the houses were still houses and not flats and the residents held little keys to the garden in the centre. The house was large and after her own home Amelia found it ugly, too full of furniture and as many modern gadgets as could be crowded in among it; she had disliked it as a little girl, she disliked it even more now. She gave her father a nud
ge as they went up the wide staircase and they paused for a moment to gaze unbelievingly at a modern painting which looked like the enthusiastic efforts of a very small child.

  ‘Ghastly,’ breathed Mr Crosbie. ‘Let’s get inside and find the champagne—I need it!’

  But first there were the parents of the bride and groom and the happy couple to greet. Amelia offered her cheek and pecked the air in a polite greeting, said all the right things and turned to look round the big room, now packed to overflowing with guests. She knew a great many people, of course; she nodded and smiled to those near enough, waved to those who were too far away for the exchange of greetings and wandered a little further. She stopped so suddenly that one or two people nearby gave her a curious stare, but she didn’t see that. What she saw was Gideon at the other end of the room, standing head and shoulders above everyone else, talking to a pretty red-haired girl. At least, he had been talking to her, presumably, now he was staring at Amelia over everyone else’s head. She tried to smile, a meaningless social smile, but her mouth shook so that she turned her head away quickly.

  ‘Now this is a delightful surprise,’ said Gideon from somewhere close behind her. ‘I had no idea that you knew the bride.’

  ‘She’s my cousin.’ She gave him a fleeting glance and looked away again. ‘We’ve known each other all our lives.’ She added lightly, wishing very much to know: ‘And you? I hardly expected...’

  ‘Oh, I’m a friend of the groom’s.’ He tucked a hand under her elbow and began to work his way through the press of people around them.

  ‘I don’t really want...’ began Amelia.

  He took no notice, but when he reached a wall, he stood her up against it, took two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter and stationed himself in front of her so that she couldn’t see anything or anyone, only his vast person, attired so correctly in morning coat and grey waistcoat.

  ‘And how is Tom?’ He asked the question idly, but his eyes were sharp under their lowered lids.

  She took a gulp of champagne. ‘He’s fine.’

  ‘Any plans to follow in your cousin’s footsteps?’

  ‘Not just yet. He’s—he’s got a super job, though.’

  ‘Indeed? Where?’

  She had been a fool to have told him that. Now she would have to tell fibs, for the very last thing she was going to do was to let him know that Tom had gone. She finished the champagne and said: ‘I’d like some more, please,’ which gave her a few seconds in which to think up something, only she didn’t. She wondered instead what he would say if she told him that she had made a discovery; that it wasn’t Tom at all whom she loved but he, standing there smiling at her. ‘Across a crowded room,’ she thought a trifle wildly. She felt peculiar again; she had felt like that when she had met Gideon for the first time and she knew now, with all the clarity of hindsight, that she had fallen in love with him then and had never allowed herself to acknowledge it.

  She tossed off most of the champagne and Gideon said, half laughing: ‘You’ll be stoned if you drink any more.’ He smiled at her lazily. ‘You look delightful; very grande dame. I like the hat and your hair bundled up like that.’

  ‘Bundled?’ she began indignantly. ‘It took hours and it’s stuffed with pins. I really ought to circulate.’

  ‘Presently. There’s a song—I’m strongly reminded of it—“Some enchanted evening,” although the only line appropriate to us is the one “Across a crowded room”.’

  ‘Oh, did you think of that? So did I.’

  ‘Now that’s interesting, Amelia. And why do you look so sad? You looked sad in church too, but perhaps you don’t know that.’

  She wanted desperately to put out her hand and clutch his arm and explain why she was sad, and not because of Tom, who had suddenly become quite unimportant, but because she loved him so much and he didn’t care two straws for her.

  ‘I’m very happy,’ she said a shade too loudly. As the waiter went past she took another glass of champagne.

  ‘Happy? Oh yes, and I’m sure you will be—because you will make your own happiness. You’ll tend it with all the care of someone holding a last candle in the dark. You’ll learn to make do with second best; a great many men and women do, you know. Just a few know what real happiness is—to love someone so much that nothing else matters any more, only the two of you and the life you share.’ Gideon smiled faintly. ‘We could have been like that, you and I. You know that deep in your heart, don’t you, my darling? And do you know something else? If it would make you happy, I would give up all I have and live in a desert with you, or on top of a mountain. I’d pluck the moon from the sky and hang the stars round your beautiful neck. The world could be paradise.’ He sighed. ‘But most of us, as I said, make do with second best.’

  Amelia drank in every word, her insides glowing with excitement. He loved her—he must, to talk to her like that. She had only to explain...

  The next minute she knew that she never would. He laughed suddenly and the mockery in his laugh was so blatant that she winced. ‘What nonsense one talks at weddings! Come and meet Fiona; we came together—we’ve known each other for a long time.’

  Amelia felt numb. Presently she was going to feel simply frightful, but now shock and champagne had made everything dreamlike. She allowed herself to be led across the room to where the red-haired girl was talking to a small group of people, smiled and chatted and laughed gaily at the usual little social jokes, drank, very unwisely, some more champagne, and contrived not to look at Gideon at all. Presently she was able to excuse herself on the grounds of having a talk with friends whom she hadn’t seen for some time, and drifted away, smiling vaguely at everyone as she went.

  Barbara and her husband left soon afterwards and the guests began to leave too, slowly at first and then in a steady stream until there were only a dozen or so members of the family left. Amelia, chattering feverishly to an uncle she hadn’t met in years, watched with despair as the pretty redhead made a graceful exit with Gideon at her heels. He had said his goodbyes, but not to her, only a casual wave of the hand as he reached the door.

  Amelia managed to delay her own departure for another ten minutes, despite her father’s impatience, and when at last they went out into the street where Badger was waiting with the car there was no sign of Gideon. It was very foolish of her to feel disappointed.

  ‘I had a chat with Gideon,’ remarked Mr Crosbie as they settled themselves in the car. ‘Extraordinary meeting him again like that. You had a talk with him, of course?’

  ‘Yes, just for a minute or two.’ Amelia kept her voice casual with a great effort. ‘It—it was strange seeing him there.’ A sudden horrible thought made her exclaim: ‘Father, you didn’t say anything about Tom and me?’

  ‘Certainly not, my dear. Didn’t think he’d be interested, anyway. Very wrapped up in that pretty girl—old Boucher’s youngest daughter, wasn’t she?—got a funny name; F something...’

  ‘Fiona—yes, he was. If you ever see him again, though I don’t suppose you will, don’t tell him anything, Father, please.’

  ‘Just as you say, my dear.’ He shot her a quick glance she didn’t see. ‘But it’s highly unlikely that we shall, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know that. Father, do you suppose Aunt will mind if I go back to St Ansell’s directly after dinner? I’ve a busy morning tomorrow. I can get a taxi, there’s no need to get Badger out again.’

  They dined in state again, while her aunt carried on a monologue about the wedding, not really wanting anyone to do more than agree with her from time to time, and Amelia was glad to escape presently. She bade her elders goodbye, got into the taxi fetched for her, and found herself half an hour later in her room at the home. It looked small and sparsely furnished after the spacious one at her aunt’s house, but at least it was quiet and she could sit and think, but not for long, unfortunately. Her fri
ends, coming off duty one by one, wandered in and out wanting to know about the wedding while they offered cups of tea or perched on her bed to talk. It was late by the time she was alone again, but she didn’t go to sleep; she sat up in bed, trying to understand how she could have been in love with Gideon and not known about it—and how, she wondered unhappily, was she going to get through the rest of her life without him, never seeing him or speaking to him again? It didn’t bear thinking about, and much worse than that was knowing that he didn’t care a button for her.

  ‘It’s no good crying over spilt milk,’ she admonished herself out loud, and promptly did.

  Chapter SIX

  CHRISTMAS WAS VERY NEAR. Amelia went about the task of buying presents with a complete lack of enthusiasm. Instead of looking at handbags, ties and belts for all her numerous relations, she found herself in the Burlington Arcade, staring at men’s cashmere sweaters, picturing Gideon in them. It really would not do, she told herself furiously, prowling round Harrods in search of something for Bonny, only to fetch up at a counter displaying ties. She had chosen several, all pure silk and very expensive, in her mind before she was able to stop herself.

  She would be on duty for the whole of Christmas this year, keeping the theatre in a state of readiness with the aid of a skeleton staff, and she wasn’t sorry about this. They were bound to be busy. The holiday periods were always worse when it came to emergencies and she would have no time to think about her own affairs. There were several parties and dances she would go to, of course, for the family was a large one and any number of them lived in London.

  Amelia spent time in the choosing of some new outfits for these functions, and a great deal of money too. Barbara and her husband had invited her to an evening party on the day after Boxing Day, and she had found just the thing for it; a french navy chiffon over a satin slip, lavishly embroidered with sequins. She had been extravagant over her shoes too, for they were ridiculous satin ones which she would only wear with that particular dress, but she knew she would look eye-catching—although just whose eye she wanted to catch was something she didn’t go too deeply into. At the very back of her head she cherished the forlorn hope that Gideon might be there, but common sense told her that he wouldn’t. Christmas was a family time, he wouldn’t go gadding about in another country—besides, she had made it her business to find out that the pretty redhead had gone to America...