Missing From Home

by Mary Burchell

  “Can we go somewhere and talk?” he asked, with a return to his rather stiff manner. “In case they came in, I mean.”

  “Can’t you just give me her message and leave it at that?”

  “No, I can’t.” Suddenly he looked extraordinarily obstinate. “I’m not prepared to go on following instructions meekly and blindly. I agreed to deliver your sister’s message, since she made such a point of it. But I intend to ask some questions of my own in return.”

  Marilyn eyed him without favour at that. But she could not afford to make terms of her own at the moment. She needed too badly to know Pat’s message. So a little ungraciously she said,

  “Come on, then. We’ll go and have some coffee at a place round the corner. Even if Mother and Dad come home, they won’t look for me there.”

  In silence they retraced their steps to the lift, descended to the ground floor and walked the short distance to the coffee-shop. It was as though neither was prepared to accept the disadvantage of speaking first. And only when they were seated at the back of the dim coffee lounge did Marilyn say briskly, “Well, now tell me Pat’s message. And first of all, how did she get it to you?”

  “She telephoned me at my office. I think I must have mentioned the firm I work for when she and I talked together on the cross-Channel boat. She told me her father was an artist, and I explained that I too was an artist of sorts. Commercial art with Morgan and Petersfield. She evidently remembered the name.” He seemed pleased that at least Pat had remembered this much about him. But Marilyn urged him on to the real point.

  “Go on. When did she telephone?”

  “Hardly more than an hour ago, I’d say. She was evidently a good deal distressed and she said—” his manner softened perceptibly—“that I was the only person to whom she could turn.”

  Marilyn, who knew how wonderfully well Pat could conduct this sort of conversation, nodded understandingly.

  “She said she was going to be unable to keep an appointment with you.” He stopped and stared hard at the girl opposite. “Is that correct? Was there an appointment between you two?”

  “If she said so, it isn’t for me to deny it,” replied Marilyn, who thought that was pretty diplomatic. “I’m asking you a question,” he said angrily.

  “And I’m not answering anything until I hear the whole message,” retorted Marilyn.

  They glared at each other in a hostile manner, as though each were trying to decide who held the better cards. Then he seemed to remember that his principle business was to deliver the message, for he went on rather sulkily,

  “She said—and she made me repeat the words, to make sure I got them right—that I was to tell you she would leave a message with the garage man; that you would understand what this meant when you got there.”

  “Clever old Pat!” exclaimed Marilyn in immense relief, before she could stop herself. For of course, Pat would not expect her to make the discovery about the non-existence of the agreed hotel until she arrived to keep her Wednesday appointment. No doubt she had made a fruitless attempt to telephone, banking on the fact that inevitably her parents would have gone to Westcliff after receiving her letter. And, finding her sister also not at home, she had had to involve this tiresome young man, rather than risk Marilyn losing her head when she found their frail line of communication had snapped.

  “I might say that clever old Pat sounded very much the damsel in distress,” observed Jerry Penrose at that moment, and it was obvious that, like most people who discover that their good nature has been imposed upon, he had arrived at the stage of feeling a bit of a fool and very angry about it.

  “Oh, yes, she would,” agreed Marilyn absently, “she would.”

  “She was so upset,” he went on grimly, “that against my better judgment, I promised to deliver her absurd message. But by now I’ve come to the conclusion that you girls are involved in some disgraceful kind of prank and behaving abominably to your exceptionally nice mother.”

  “Mind your own business,” retorted Marilyn coldly. “We’re grateful for your help over this—this temporary crisis. But I assure you the whole thing is purely a private family matter, and I’d take it as a gentlemanly act on your part if you would now forget that you ever received this message.”

  “Stop talking like someone in a badly written book,” he countered disgustedly. “Gentlemanly act, indeed! And I’m not forgetting anything just to please you. What sort of a fool do you think I am? I’ve obliged your sister by delivering her message. I’ve even—most reluctantly—observed her almost hysterical request to make sure that I saw you alone, without your parents knowing. But farther than that I’m not prepared to go. Now I am going to ask the questions, and you’re going to give the answers.”

  “And suppose I won’t answer?”

  “Then I go straight back to the flat and wait until your parents—or at least your mother—comes in. And I put all my cards on the table and tell her that not only have I heard from Pat, but that I’ve been asked to convey a message to you which shows that the pair of you are in some sort of ridiculous collusion over this disappearance.”

  “You wouldn’t be such a sneak, after promising Pat to deliver the message without letting the parents know! You wouldn’t go back on your word, surely?”

  “I didn’t give my word. I’m not such a mutt as that; and I’m too sorry about your mother’s distress in all this for me to agree to tie my hands without knowing the true circumstances. I promised to deliver Pat’s message to you alone, and I said that, provided you could satisfy me that there was no necessity for me to concern myself further in the business, I would take no further action. But I reserved the right to make that decision only when I had heard what you had to say.”

  “And what was her answer to that?” enquired Marilyn cautiously.

  “She gave a couple more sobs—” in retrospect he now seemed to attach less heart-rending importance to those sobs than he had when he first began his story—“but then she finally said she would have to agree to my terms, and she would leave it to you to decide how much to say.”

  “She put it that way?”

  “Exactly that way.”

  “Well then,” said Marilyn, with a sigh that was not entirely regretful, “perhaps I’d better tell you the truth.”

  “That’s the most sensible thing you’ve said so far! Will you have another coffee?”

  “Yes, please. And a Danish pastry. They have good ones here, and emotion always makes me hungry.” He ordered more coffee and some Danish pastries and watched Marilyn closely as she obviously groped for the right words.

  “Just the simple truth,” he told her drily. “You needn’t add any misleading details.”

  “The truth is seldom simple,” Marilyn replied a little sententiously, “and in order to explain what happened today I have to tell you other things too. Private, very personal things, since you insist.”

  She paused and looked at him accusingly, but he remained unmoved. And after a moment she went on, “It starts with the fact that my parents separated about a year ago. They’re wonderful people, both of them, and Pat and I adore them. For the purposes of this story it doesn’t matter which was right and which was wrong. Anyway, Mother says they were both wrong,” she added, in a sudden burst of confidence.

  “I could imagine she would,” he said. “She struck me as an exceptionally civilised and fair-minded person.”

  “Did she?” Marilyn immediately looked more friendly, and continued her story more willingly. “In a way it was their business, of course, rather than ours, particularly as we were almost grown-up!” To the young man opposite she looked singularly young and rather pathetic as she made this broad-minded assertion, and his glance softened insensibly as she sighed and went on, “But it was our life too, and I just can’t tell you how our world fell apart when it happened. They didn’t mean it to. They thought it was enough to say they both loved us still and that we would always belong to both of them. I think they even imagined
it wouldn’t hit us so hard as we were away at boarding school. But you can lie awake and cry just as well in a dormitory as at home. The only difference is that you have to shove your head under the bedclothes if you sniff loudly.”

  “You poor kids!” exclaimed Jerry Penrose. “It’s hard to imagine such a situation when one’s own home life has been all right.”

  “Was yours all right?” Marilyn looked genuinely interested.

  “Oh, goodness, yes! My parents weren’t especially demonstrative, but I suppose they pretty well thought the light shone out of each other. My father died before he was fifty, and my mother never really got over it, though she’s very cheerful and good company. She says you just have to find a new pattern of life and not be too self-pitying. I’m very fond of my mother. That’s partly why I was so sorry for your mother when I saw her so anxious and distressed.”

  “I know, I know! It’s awful to have to make her so unhappy. But it really is in the best of causes,” Marilyn insisted, in her favourite phrase. “You see, Pat and I are convinced they’re still fond of each other, however bitterly they may have quarrelled. Only Dad stupidly took himself off abroad, and what can you do about reconciling them if they’re hundreds of miles apart? Particularly as Dad’s quite dangerously attractive, even now, and the kind that women run after. He truly doesn’t take much notice usually. I mean, he’s not a philanderer or anything drippy like that. But men always fall for subtle flattery if it comes from an attractive female.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really! And you needn’t smile in that superior way. You were purring like a cat yourself when you told me Pat said you were the only person she could turn to.”

  “I was the only person in the circumstances!” He reddened angrily.

  “Yes, I daresay. But her cleverness was in making you feel that was a distinction instead of a bore. But never mind. She likes you, anyway. She told me so.—But let’s get back to the story,” added Marilyn quickly as she saw that her companion would willingly follow that delightful red herring, if allowed to. “Pat and I realised it was vital to get the parents together again, else they’d never discover that they really wanted each other still. So Pat went out to spend three weeks’ holiday with Dad, and we arranged that she should disappear on the way home.”

  “You arranged it? You mean you horrible children deliberately inflicted this misery and anguish on your mother who loves you?”

  “On Dad too,” agreed Marilyn, unmoved. “And not so much of the ‘children’. I bet you’re not all that much older than we are.”

  “Of course lam!”

  “How much older?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jerry Penrose said coldly. “What does matter is that you and Pat did this dreadful thing to your parents, who—”

  “But it worked, didn’t it?” interrupted Marilyn coolly.

  “How do you mean it worked?”

  “Well, Dad came home, didn’t he?” said Marilyn simply. “For the first time in nearly a year he came rushing to Mother’s side, to console her and share her anxiety. And there they are now hareing up and down the country together looking for Pat. She’s wringing Dad’s heart with her pathetic anxiety and he’s warming her heart with the feeling that she’s being looked after again. I reckon there’s a seventy-five per cent chance that it will bring them together again. So long as no interfering busybody thinks he knows better and spoils things.”

  “Meaning me?”

  “We-ell—”

  “But I never heard of such a thing! Situations involving real people don’t just solve themselves like that.”

  “How do you know they don’t? If you’ve never heard of such a thing—and frankly, nor have I—how do either of us know it won’t work? It’s bold and original, and it’s based on our belief that they do really love each other.”

  “But—” Jerry Penrose was obviously wavering, and yet distressed to find that he was—“I promised your mother I’d keep in touch with her, do everything in my power to help her to find Pat. I’d feel the most utter skunk if I joined this disgraceful deception, even as a passive partner. As it is, I feel awful at having sent her off to Westcliff on what is obviously now a false scent.”

  “If you hadn’t interfered you wouldn’t have raised her hopes unduly,” Marilyn pointed out severely. But he looked so startled and unhappy over this viewpoint that she relented and said, “As a matter of fact, she and Dad would have gone off to Westcliff anyway this morning, because Pat wrote from there and they got the letter by the first post.”

  “She wrote?” He brightened up considerably at that.

  “Very meagrely,” Marilyn explained. “Saying little more than that she was perfectly all right. But it did take off the worst edge of their anxiety.”

  “Thank heaven for that! But—mind, I don’t want to sound as though I’m condoning this business—but if the anxiety is over, mightn’t your father go back to Munich almost right away?”

  “No.” Marilyn shook her head. “Because, you see, the anxiety is not over. They still don’t know where Pat is—or why she went away or when she’s coming back. In fact, they still don’t have any idea of what has happened to her.

  “You really are diabolical, aren’t you?” he exclaimed angrily.

  “No. Only desperate. And sometimes I’m very frightened too.” Marilyn gazed sadly across the table at Jerry Penrose, in a way that made him profoundly uncomfortable. She lacked Pat’s real beauty, and she had nothing like such a talent for making people do what she wanted. But Marilyn possessed one priceless gift. She could cry to order. And as she looked mournfully at her companion she forced two big tears into her eyes and made them spill down her cheeks.

  “Oh, please don’t!” he cried in the utmost dismay.

  “But you make me so miserable—and anxious. You talk about Mother’s anxiety, and I know it’s awful for her, poor darling. But what about my anxiety, when you sit there trying to decide if it’s your duty to ruin all our hopes and plans, just because you think you know what is better for our family than we do ourselves?”

  “I don’t think that,” he protested. “How could I? I didn’t even know any of you existed a week ago.”

  “Well, that’s what I mean,” said Marilyn reproachfully. “How can you think it your business to interfere when you know so little about the people concerned?”

  “I’m just thinking of your mother—” he began unhappily.

  “Do you suppose I’m not thinking of her too? Do you suppose Pat isn’t thinking of her while she plays out this horribly difficult part? It’s because we want her—and all of us—to be happy again that we’re doing this thing.”

  “You don’t think—” he sounded more diffident now and nothing like so sure of his course of action—“you don’t think you might be tragically mistaken in the way you’re going about things?”

  “We think it’s worth trying. We think a bit of unhappiness now may prevent a great deal more unhappiness later. We may be wrong, but we feel we have to make the attempt. All we ask is that no one spoils the whole thing, just as it’s showing some signs of succeeding.”

  “Oh, all right! You win,” exclaimed Jerry Penrose. “I’m not a bit happy about it, and I feel I’m letting down your mother in some way, after she appealed to me to help her. But the way you put it leaves me very little choice. You make it sound as though even the best-meant interference might do a lot more harm than good—”

  “That’s right,” interjected Marilyn joyfully. “Oh, I’m so glad you see it that way at last! And if it’s any consolation to you, I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll keep in touch with you and let you know when it all works out all right. And then you can see Pat again and receive her thanks in person. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “I’d like to see Pat again, of course. But I’m hanged if I know how I’m going to explain my part in things to your mother.”

  “You probably won’t have to,” Marilyn assured him soot
hingly, as they rose and made their way to the cash desk, where he insisted on paying for them both. “By the time you’re due for Pat’s personal thanks, I hope Mother will be so radiantly happy that she won’t much mind what any of us did to bring about a reconciliation between her and Dad.”

  “Well, I hope you’re right,” he said sceptically.

  “I know I am.” Marilyn actually shook him cordially by the hand as she said good-bye, for her sense of relief at having at last silenced him was immense. “If Mother is a bit anxious and miserable now, it’s nothing compared to the joy she’ll feel later.” And with a confident wave of her hand, Marilyn turned and walked rapidly homewards, while Jerry Penrose made his way more slowly towards the Underground, increasingly certain that he had somehow been stampeded into doing something he would presently very much regret.

  Marilyn hummed contentedly as she re-entered the block of flats. There was a very good morning’s work behind her. She had re-established contact with Pat—or nearly so—she had silenced the tiresome scruples of Mr. Jerry Penrose, and she had cheered herself insensibly by talking a great deal of the happy times ahead when their scheme would have succeeded, and the need for all this complicated deception no longer existed.

  Her confidence, however, might have been slightly shaken if she could have guessed at the depths of her mother’s despair at that moment.

  The morning’s expedition had started well. It was almost like old times to be sitting beside Greg in the car, with a long drive in front of them. And the fact that she was certain she was going to find Pat at the end of it raised Clare’s spirits to a pitch almost in keeping with the brightness of the day.