Mine for a Day

by Mary Burchell

  “Come and sit over here and tell me all about it.”

  She led the way to a garden bench at the end of the path, and after a moment he came and dropped down beside her.

  “It’s about your mother, of course,” she prompted him gently after a moment or two, as he seemed inclined to relapse into his own thoughts.

  “Yes.” He roused himself, and leant forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands lightly clasped. “I think I told you that she will have to have an operation. There’s very little chance of her surviving it, but it’s one of those cases where one must take the chance. She wants to see Rosemary first—”

  “Oh!”

  “Well, she’s never seen her, you know,” he said impatiently, apparently under the impression that he was explaining away some objection of Leila’s. “It has been a fairly short engagement, you see, and there was never a good opportunity. But now it’s—essential. Mother has set her heart on seeing my fiancée—my wife. And she knows as well as we do, though no one has put it into words, that it will probably be the—only time.”

  “Oh—Simon!” Leila exclaimed, overwhelmed not only by the sadness of the position, but by the knowledge that what she had to tell him would make the situation so much worse.

  “I’ve got to explain the position to Rosemary, and I want you to help me. I can’t have her great day spoilt”—an expression of affectionate tenderness brightened his face for a moment—“and, if possible, I’d rather she didn’t know the exact details. But we’ll have to show her that it’s serious enough to justify our postponing our honeymoon for a few days. After the wedding tomorrow, instead of our going off to Paris, as we had planned, we shall have to go to my home for a few days at any rate. Do you think I ought to explain everything to her now, or after the actual wedding, so that at least will be cloudless—and how much should I tell her? You’ll know so much better than I do how a girl feels about these things.” He raised his head and looked at Leila with anxious dark eyes. And because she had never imagined his needing help in solving any problem, and certainly never imagined his looking at her with an air of appeal, she first of all felt her mind go a complete blank, and then everything that was warm and strong and loving in her came to her aid.

  “Listen, Simon,” she said, and she was surprised by the strength and steadiness of her own voice, “this is only part of a much bigger problem that’s arisen since you went away. I’ve been wondering and wondering how I was going to tell you, but now I see the only way is to put it as simply as possible and—and assure you that anything I can possibly do to help you—Well, you only have to ask.”

  She hesitated a moment, groping in her mind for just the right words. “I’m afraid it’s going to be a bad shock for you, but—Rosemary has changed her mind about marrying you tomorrow—”

  “Rosemary has? But, good heavens”—his expression became almost hard and withdrawn—“isn’t it for her to tell me that?”

  “She can’t, Simon. She isn’t here,” Leila stated baldly.

  “Isn’t here?” He repeated her words again and, in the intensity of his anger and feeling, he got to his feet and stood looking down at Leila, who was holding on to her new-found courage at this moment with a good deal of difficulty.

  “But—I don’t understand. Has she had an attack of nerves, or something? Does she resent my having left her so near the wedding? Or—what?”

  “I’m sorry, Simon,” Leila said, quietly, though she felt rather like crying, with excitement and nervousness and pity. “There was much more to it than that. She found she wanted someone else.”

  He sat down slowly on the bench beside her again, and she had the curious impression that he grew a little older before her eyes. “When did you know this?” he asked rather quietly at last.

  “This morning. Not much more than an hour ago. The others don’t know yet.” Suddenly it was a terrible relief to pour out all the details, now that she had told him the one salient fact which mattered. “She—left me a letter. She asked me to tell you.”

  He glanced at her, and Leila thought she saw in his face that impersonal distaste which she had feared he must attach to the instrument of such misfortune. She winced slightly.

  “I—didn’t like the task,” she said.

  “No. Of course not. What did Rosemary say in the letter?”

  “She—apologized for all the trouble she was causing”—he smiled slightly and ironically, so that Leila hurried on—“she was truly sorry and distressed, I am sure of that. But she said she had found out that it was Jeremy she loved—”

  “Who on earth is Jeremy?” he interrupted harshly.

  “Oh—” She tried to explain Jeremy in a couple of sentences, and found that she was merely disclosing the fact that he was a shadowy figure whom she had never really seen.

  “Never mind about him,” Simon interrupted impatiently. “Go on.”

  “Rosemary said that she knew she was behaving very badly to you and that she felt miserable about hurting you”—she hadn’t said that, Leila remembered suddenly, it was merely what she herself would have felt in the circumstances—“but that it was better she should find out her mistake now than go on with the marriage and—and make everyone miserable.”

  Leila relapsed into silence.

  “You say the others don’t know?” he asked abruptly at last.

  “No. Oh, I must go and tell Aunt Hester!” Leila jumped up anxiously, remembering her other responsibilities. “I don’t want her to find out, without preparation.”

  “Wait!” He put his hand round her wrist, and drew her down sharply beside him again, and she was surprised and slightly dismayed by the almost painful grip of his fingers. “Your aunt doesn’t matter at the moment.”

  “She’s Rosemary’s mother!” exclaimed Leila rather indignantly.

  “I’m not thinking of Rosemary’s mother. I’m thinking of mine,” he retorted brutally. “A great deal depends on her being tranquil and happy in the next few days. If she is going to die”—Leila saw he was past dressing stark truths in optimistic phrasing—“I’m not going to have her last hours clouded by worry and unhappiness about me. And any chance she has of surviving the operation will be halved if she has a shock like this. I’ve promised to bring my wife to see her tomorrow evening, and I’m going to do it. Where can I find Rosemary? She’s got to play the part, even if I never see her again.”

  Leila gasped.

  “I don’t know where she is.”

  “Didn’t she say anything in that letter of hers?”

  “Only that she would be on her way to London with Jeremy by the time I read the letter.”

  “What’s this fellow’s other name? You say he’s in the theatrical world? It shouldn’t be impossible to trace him.”

  “I don’t know his other name.”

  “Then your aunt will know.”

  “I don’t—think so. She couldn’t recall it when she was first telling me about him.”

  “Good God!” cried Simon in exasperation. “Is this man a stranger to you all? Don’t any of you know anything about him?”

  “Not very much,” Leila murmured, feeling that they had somehow failed Simon by not knowing more about Jeremy.

  “In any case, Simon, even if you traced them by tomorrow, I—I don’t think Rosemary would agree to do what you want.”

  “If I explained—” he began, and then stopped. They looked at each other in reluctantly shared comprehension. There were some things one couldn’t explain to Rosemary.

  “No, you’re right,” he said, grim with the acceptance of an unpalatable truth. “She wouldn’t agree.”

  He leant forward again and put his head in his hands. Not dejectedly, but as though concentrating fiercely on some other solution. And as Leila looked down on his dark hair—a little tumbled now because he had thrust an anxious hand through it—she longed to have the right to smooth it, and the wit to suggest some form of comfort.

  She loved him so much in that moment that
she told herself she ought to be able to think of something. She ought to be able to. That was what loving meant, wasn’t it, rejoicing when things went well, and helping when they went ill?

  And then she thought of something. And it was so fantastic—so preposterous—that one either had to reject it immediately, or else put it into practice on the crest of the wave of ridiculous inspiration.

  “Did you say your mother had never seen Rosemary?”

  He nodded without looking up, as though her seemingly irrelevant query hardly reached his consciousness.

  “Then it need not necessarily be Rosemary who goes with you tomorrow. I’ll come with you,” Leila said.

  For at least ten seconds he remained completely motionless, so that she began to wonder if he had even heard her, or if her suggestion seemed so absurd to him that it hardly merited a reply.

  Then he raised his head and looked at her, and she saw hope and a sort of relieved astonishment dawning in his face.

  “My God, Leila! I believe you’ve got the answer,” he exclaimed. “It’s quite—fantastic, of course.”

  She was breathless with mingled triumph at the reception of her scheme and alarm that she should have committed herself to so much. “But—”

  “It’s not. It’s almost simple,” he countered, impatient at the slightest sign of retraction. “If she—dies, she need never know. And if she lives, I can explain it all to her, much later, when it doesn’t matter.”

  “Ye-es,” Leila agreed, trying hard not to think what other complications might arise. “If you think it’s the best way to keep her mind tranquil and untroubled—”

  “It’s the only way. You’re a good child.” He gripped her hand, and Leila rather nervously returned the pressure.

  “We’d better go and tell Aunt Hester now.”

  “About Rosemary, you mean?”

  “About—everything, I suppose.”

  “Not this latest decision,” he countered quickly. “The fewer people who know about this, the better. I don’t want any well-meaning letters giving the show away.”

  “Oh, but—”

  He ignored her interruption and went on, planning aloud:

  “I should be returning home today or tomorrow anyway. You must invent some reason for leaving tomorrow, too. We will meet somewhere—we might even travel together. Yes, that’s the best idea! I shall quite naturally give you a lift to London.”

  “But I wasn’t leaving for another week,” Leila objected suddenly. “Aunt Hester was relying on me to help clear up all sorts of things after the wedding.”

  “There isn’t going to be a wedding,” he reminded her, so harshly that she realized how wrong had been her impression that the anxiety about his mother had partially blotted out the angry pain at what Rosemary had done to him. “I presume there will be very little to ‘clear up.’ ”

  Leila resisted the impulse to explain that there would probably be much more “clearing up” after a cancelled wedding than after one which took place. Instead, she told herself that she would manage somehow.

  “We’ll arrange something,” she promised.

  “And without explaining to your aunt what we intend to do,” he insisted.

  “If you want it that way. But I don’t see—”

  “It’s no good practising a—a benevolent deception of this sort if half a dozen people are in the secret,” he explained impatiently. “It is simply between you and me. There is no need to tell anyone of your acquaintance. And, for my part, I shall introduce you to my mother and sister, and the doctor, as my wife, which will obviate any possibility of anyone giving the show away by playing their part poorly.”

  “Very well,” murmured Leila, apparently overborne by the weight of his reasoning. But she had, in fact, capitulated completely at the moment when he said it was simply between him and her.

  They went into the house then, to tackle the unwelcome task of explaining to the rest of the family about Rosemary’s flight.

  It was all very painful and upsetting.

  Her uncle kept on saying over and over again:

  “I can’t understand Rosemary! We scarcely even knew the fellow.”

  While her aunt, who hardly ever cried shed tears now and said that Rosemary must have taken leave of her senses.

  But Leila knew her cousin hadn’t taken leave of her senses. She was merely being dear, irresponsible Rosemary to the nth degree.

  “I suppose she must have been writing to this chap,” Peter said, frowning as puzzledly as anyone else over his sister’s behaviour. “He hasn’t been near Durominster lately. Or, if he has, none of us knew anything about it.”

  “No. That isn’t quite right,” Leila felt bound to explain. “I knew he was here.”

  “You did, Leila?” her aunt exclaimed. And everyone regarded Leila rather disapprovingly, as though she had withheld vital information much too long.

  In fact, Simon, who had been staring moodily out of the window while this discussion took place, swung round at that moment and looked at her with something very like hostility.

  “How did you know?” he demanded curtly.

  “Rosemary told me.” She wished she didn’t sound quite so apologetic. “The afternoon before you went away.”

  “Why ever didn’t you tell us then, child?” cried her aunt reproachfully. “You could surely see it was a situation beyond your own handling. Your uncle and I were the proper people to deal with it—since Simon was away.”

  It was Peter who said peaceably:

  “It’s no good blaming Leila, Mother. At that point there wasn’t a situation. It was hardly her business to come running to you to tell you about Rosemary’s friends.”

  “In any case, the mischief is done.” Simon’s voice sounded cold and flat against the rather excited tones of the others. “It’s a pity Leila didn’t see better what was coming, since she seems to have been in Rosemary’s confidence. But there’s no point in bringing that up now.”

  “I wasn’t in her confidence,” began Leila distressedly. But she saw Simon was in no mood to be interested in exact shades of meaning. He turned away from her, with a gesture of weariness and disgust which went to her heart—on his account as well as her own—and, in order to conquer the tight feeling in her throat, she addressed herself to the difficult task of explaining to Aunt Hester that she would have to leave on the morrow.

  “Oh, Leila, why?” Her poor aunt looked so dismayed and put out that Leila’s heart smote her.

  “I had a letter this morning, Auntie,” she began, very much disliking the lie. “They—they’ve got things in running order at the office much sooner than they expected. And, as there is a great deal of work, they would like me as soon as possible.”

  “I was relying on you for some help in putting everyone off and—and so on,” Aunt Hester said reproachfully.

  “But I’ll do all that today,” Leila assured her eagerly. “It would have to be done today, anyway, you know.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. I can’t imagine what Great-uncle John will say. He always disapproved of Rosemary and said we spoilt her, anyway.”

  Leila remained silent. And at that moment Simon said, as though the idea had just occurred to him:

  “I can give you a lift, if you are going to town tomorrow, Leila. I shall be going myself in the afternoon.”

  “Oh, but—do you think that’s—well—tactful?” Aunt Hester exclaimed.

  “Tactful?” Simon looked surprised and not very pleased. “Why should it be tactless?”

  “Well—don’t you see?” Aunt Hester actually produced her handkerchief again. “You and Rosemary were to go off by car tomorrow afternoon. Now, if you—if you go off with her cousin instead, it looks almost like a substitution. In a manner of speaking,” Aunt Hester added, as though she were a little shocked herself at the picture her own words had conjured up.

  “I don’t see why anyone should exercise their imagination so far,” declared Simon, the more emphatically perhaps since Leila w
as looking most uncomfortable over her aunt’s unconsciously correct description of the case.

  “You don’t know what people are like in a place the size of Durominster,” Aunt Hester insisted.

  “I had better go by train,” Leila said.

  “Very well.” Simon looked quite indifferent.

  But afterwards he got her by herself and said:

  “I’ll pick you up at Barham Junction, Leila. It will be quite simple.”

  “Do you think it’s wise? I mean—it’s only about a dozen miles down the line.”

  “My dear girl, we aren’t engaged on any guilty enterprise,” he replied, half amused and half impatient.

  And she flushed, felt foolish, and said hastily: “No—of course not. I’ll catch the two-thirty train and meet you there.”

  During the rest of that day Leila felt she lived in a state of complete unreality. It was not only the distress and bewilderment of reversing everything she and Aunt Hester had been doing in the last week—it was the frightening, enchanting realization behind all this that tomorrow she was to take on—though temporarily and quite without real substance—the role of Simon’s wife.

  There was no time to indulge in reflection or reminiscence. By the time she went to bed, she was so physically tired that she literally, could not lie awake and sort out the impressions of the fantastic day. She fell asleep almost immediately, and slept dreamlessly and well.

  She woke on what was to have been Rosemary’s wedding morning to the incredible realization that it was, in a remote and fanciful sense, her wedding morning. At least, today she was to take on the identity of Simon’s wife.

  Suddenly the idea seemed much more frightening and dangerous to her than at any other time before. Not because of any inherent risk of complications or even scandal. But because she realized, with painful clearness, how hopelessly this adventure with Simon would bind her to him.

  For him it was a desperate expedient, dictated simply by his love and anxiety for his mother. For her it would be a dangerously emotional experience that would make of her melancholy dreams a richly coloured and thrilling reality from which she could never hope to escape.