Mine for a Day

by Mary Burchell

  She has been a very naughty girl, but she is still our dear daughter. Do assure her of that, Leila, if and when you see her. I can’t help feeling that she may have had a bitter disappointment in that man—I lie awake at night worrying about it and wondering where she is now, and what she is doing. If you see her or hear from her, tell her that whatever has happened, we want to see her. Her home is always open to her, and she doesn’t even have to think that she will have to answer a lot of questions if she comes back. Her father and I won’t either question or reproach her. We just want her back. Do tell her so.

  There was a good deal more in the same strain, and as she read the pages of Aunt Hester’s large, generous handwriting, Leila felt her heart ache for her. She loved her erring Rosemary so devotedly. She had never deserved to be harassed and alarmed like this. And they ought not to have left her in her anxiety a moment longer than was necessary.

  Leila blamed herself very much for not having written immediately with the news that Rosemary had turned up safely—neither married to nor injured by the disquieting Jeremy.

  “I’ll make Rosemary write to her this very night,” she exclaimed aloud. “Anyway, she ought to go home and see them and reassure them herself. She owes that to them. I’ll make her telephone and say she will come in the morning.”

  It was doubtful if she would be able to make Rosemary do that, of course. It was the sort of thing one more or less had to take out of Rosemary’s own hands. Make the arrangements for her and then pack her off on the train.

  With a little exclamation of disgust, Leila tried to bring her thoughts back to her anxious aunt, waiting and waiting for news of Rosemary. That was all she must keep in mind when she was deciding what to do.

  But if Rosemary went home-on the train tomorrow—

  “It is for Rosemary herself to decide,” Leila" said desperately, aloud. But she reached for the telephone as she said it.

  After all, the letter had been addressed to herself, hadn’t it?

  It took an astonishingly short time to make the connection. If it had taken longer, perhaps Leila would have thought again and decided differently. As it was, only a couple of minutes seemed to elapse before her aunt’s voice said anxiously in her ear:

  “Yes, yes? Who is it? Is that Leila?”

  “Yes, Auntie. I’ve just had your letter, and I wanted to ring you, up at once. Rosemary is quite safe. She is here with me in the flat.”

  “Oh, my dear child!” Aunt Hester addressed herself impartially to her daughter and niece, and she gave a very badly suppressed sob which went to Leila’s heart.

  “Listen, Auntie—there isn’t any need for you to worry any more. She didn’t marry Jeremy, and she didn’t—I mean there was nothing whatever between them. They seem to have quarrelled and parted almost immediately.”

  “Let me speak to her,” Aunt Hester broke in. “Tell the child she doesn’t need to be afraid about anything. I just want to speak to her.”

  “She isn’t in at the moment, Aunt Hester.”

  “Isn’t in. Where is she then?”

  “She had to go out. I can’t explain just now,” Leila said desperately. Impossible to admit that Rosemary was enjoying a film, while her mother was almost in tears at the other end of the line. “But I know she will be terribly glad to hear that you have written.”

  “But I want to speak to her,” poor Aunt Hester repeated. “I want to see her. So does her father. He’s standing beside me now.” Leila could see them both in her mind’s eye. Middle-aged and bewildered and worried beyond expression.

  “Auntie, I’ll send her to you in the morning,” Leila vowed, and at that moment she honestly believed she thought only of Rosemary’s distracted parents. “I’ll buy her ticket and put her on the train, and you shall see her tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Oh, Leila, you are a good girl,” her aunt cried fervently. “I don’t mind how foolish or indiscreet you have been. You’re a good, kind girl.”

  A good deal moved—and feeling that she hardly deserved this—Leila disclaimed the compliment, with a rather uncertain little laugh. Then, as the three minute signal sounded, she repeated: “Don’t worry. I’ll send her tomorrow,” and her aunt faded out in a salvo of good-byes and reiterated thanks.

  Leila pushed back her hair with both hands. She felt that she had been through an emotional tempest. When her cousin came in, Leila was in the kitchen preparing supper, and she called out immediately:

  “Hello, Rosemary. I’ve been on the telephone to your mother. She’s wild with joy to hear that you’re safe and here with me. It was very wrong of us not to let her know before.”

  Rosemary came and stood in the kitchen doorway.

  “Did she ring up?”

  “No. I rang her. After reading her letter. It’s a very—touching letter, Rosemary. I can’t think why you and I didn’t let her know immediately that you were safe.”

  “Well, she wasn’t really entitled to feel worried,” Rosemary said rather stubbornly. “She might be angry about my marrying Jeremy, or disappointed or anything else like that. But, so far as she knew, I was married and safe—with Jeremy.”

  “She seems to have judged Jeremy a little more accurately than you,” retorted Leila dryly. “That was what made her think she had every right to feel anxious. Anyway, they are longing to see you—both of them. I’ve promised you will go home in the morning to see them, if only for a short visit.”

  “Leila! You had no right to promise that!”

  “I couldn’t do anything else, my dear. You don’t know how eager and anxious they were.”

  “But I don’t think I want to go home.”

  “Then for once you must do something that you don’t want to do,” Leila told her, with quite unwonted sternness. “You’ve done nothing but the things you wanted to do for some time, and a pretty mess you’ve made of it for nearly everyone else concerned. Now you can consider someone else for a change. You can go home and give your parents a little pleasure and relief, in return for all the anxiety you have given them in the last few weeks.”

  Rosemary looked sulky, but impressed.

  “I can’t just rush off like that. What about Simon?”

  “What about him?” Leila was outwardly cool, but her heart began to beat more quickly.

  “Well—what did he say about me today?”

  “Remarkably little.” That at least was true.

  “You mean, he—wasn’t pleased to hear I—I was around again.”

  “It was—exceedingly difficult to get round to the subject at all.” She wondered why she clung to the remnants of the truth, when all the while she was acting a lie. “I don’t think there’s any point in giving you all the details of the conversation, Rosemary. But you can take it from me that a meeting at the present time wouldn’t—wouldn’t serve any useful purpose.”

  “You mean he’s still very angry with me? Did you tell him that I wanted very much to see him?”

  Leila swallowed.

  “Not in so many words,” she replied coolly.

  “But I told you to! It was the most important thing. Whatever else were you talking about, that you forgot the most important thing of all?”

  “We were talking of my concerns most of the time.”

  “Yours?” Rosemary’s surprise was so naive that it was almost inoffensive.

  “Yes. Simon was horrified about my losing my job. He seemed to think he was partly to blame.”

  “Why?” Rosemary wanted to know. And Leila had a few minutes’ reprieve while she explained about Mr. Brogner.

  “Oh—I see. Yes, I suppose he would feel rather badly. Can he do anything about it?”

  “He offered me a job in his own office,” Leila said, as calmly as she could. “I think I shall like it.”

  “Well, at least that will keep you in constant touch with him, and give you other opportunities to—talk to him about me,” Rosemary said.

  Leila didn’t answer that. But there was really no need to do so. When
Rosemary saw a chance to have her own interests looked after, she could not imagine that Leila might fail to take that chance.

  “So you think I ought to go home for a while,” she said at last. “I’ve undertaken to see that you do,”

  Leila replied with a smile. “You really must, Rosemary. You can’t disappoint your parents now. You had better read your mother’s letter. You’ll see for yourself then that you really must go.”

  “Very well.”

  Rosemary wandered off into the sitting-room to read her mother’s letter. And, left alone, Leila leant against the table and shut her eyes for a moment. But whether with relief, or to keep back tears, she was not quite sure.

  After that, there was very little more she had to do about it. Once having accepted the idea of going home—and Rosemary was not unmoved by her mother’s obvious longing to see her—her cousin set to work enthusiastically to pack and make everything ready.

  “It’s nice to have something stable behind one, after all,” she told Leila. “I shan’t say so to many people, but I don’t mind telling you, Leila—I had a very lucky escape where Jeremy was concerned. Even if he’d married me, I should have hated that life, you know—dragging round on tour, and never a place to call one’s own.”

  “Yes, I don’t think it would have suited you,” Leila said, with admirable moderation.

  Rosemary shook her charming dark head.

  “No. I was a fool ever to risk losing Simon,” she declared, with the most extraordinary confidence that, even now, she had only taken a risk—not actually accomplished a fact.

  Leila was silent—as she had been several times at things which her cousin had said that evening. And then she knew there was something she must ask before Rosemary went away.

  “Tell me,” she said abruptly, “do you really love Simon, Rosemary?”

  “Why, of course I do!” Rosemary turned astonished dark eyes on her. “I was going to marry him, wasn’t I?”

  “Yes. You were also going to leave him for another man,” Leila reminded her dryly.

  “Oh, that’s different. That was a—a sort of craziness,” Rosemary explained. “Maybe you wouldn’t understand. You’re not mad and impulsive, the way I am.”

  “No?” Leila said rather wearily, and she wondered which of them had behaved more madly in the last few days.

  “I tell you—I’ve completely got over Jeremy.”

  “Yes, I had realized that. I just wondered if you were sure it was Simon you wanted.”

  “Well, who else?” Rosemary wanted to know. And Leila saw she would never arrive at what she considered a satisfactory answer to her question.

  In Rosemary’s own mind she was completely and satisfyingly in love with Simon. Whether or not that would be enough to keep Simon happy all his life was a different thing.

  Leila saw that she was back where she had started. And she could only assure her conscience that, once she had had a fair chance to impress herself on Simon’s thoughts and affections, then she would be willing to measure her love honestly against Rosemary’s. All she asked was a little, little time first, so that she didn’t start at a hopeless disadvantage with the girl who had, quite voluntarily, thrown away her right to claim Simon unreservedly.

  The next morning she accompanied a very cheerful Rosemary to the station.

  “Mind, I don’t want to stay in Durominster indefinitely,” Rosemary told Leila. “Just to go back and see Mother and Daddy and reassure them both. I have had a taste of London life—well, anyway, of living in a flat on one’s own like you—and I couldn’t settle down in Durominster again for long. Besides, I can’t believe it isn’t essential that I see Simon soon. If one leaves a man too long to get over something, the chances are that he’ll begin to forget one.”

  “Yes,” Leila said, as non-committally as she could.

  “You’ll—keep me in his mind, in a tactful sort of way, won’t you, Leila? And as soon as his mother is well enough to be told the truth—for I suppose she’s not going on the rest of her life thinking Simon’s married to you—I’ll make my own arrangements about seeing him.”

  “Yes,” said Leila again, but to which part of this speech it was difficult to say.

  Just before the train went off, Rosemary threw her arms round her cousin and kissed her with a genuine affection which made Leila bitterly ashamed of herself.

  “I’ll never be able to thank you enough for all you’ve done,” she exclaimed fervently. “I don’t always show it as much as I should, but I do appreciate the way you always look after me and—sort of pick up the bits after I’ve made a smash of things.”

  “That’s all right.” Leila returned the kiss and Felt rather a Judas. “Don’t get exaggerated ideas about me, Rosemary. Anything I’ve done has been to please myself as much as you. I can be quite as selfish as the next person, believe me.”

  Rosemary laughed at this, accepting it as a deprecating sort of joke. A few seconds more and the whistle blew, the train began to move—and Rosemary was safely on her way to Durominster.

  Leila walked slowly out of the station again, feeling an immense relief and an immense weight of guilt.

  For the rest of the day, she determinedly banished Rosemary and her affairs as far as possible from her mind. Once she allowed them to become an obsession with her, she would be unable to be natural with Simon, and that would defeat any hopes of her own, without doing anything for Rosemary.

  Besides, she needed to have all her wits about her when she was starting a new job. It was no good looking on this new development as just a step forward in her own personal happiness. It was also to constitute the important business of earning her own living, and Leila had never taken that anything but seriously.

  Quite late that evening Simon telephoned to her, and seemed astonished that she should be surprised at his doing so.

  “I thought you liked to have a daily bulletin about Mother,” he said.

  “Oh, I do, of course. I didn’t think of your being kind enough to ring me on purpose, when you would be seeing me at the office in the morning, anyway.”

  He laughed.

  “I don’t bother to think up reasons for not sharing the good news with anyone who appreciates it as much as you do. She is keeping up her strength splendidly. I was allowed to stay for about ten minutes today. She sent her love to you, and hopes you will come and see her when she is allowed non-family visitors.

  “Indeed I will, with the greatest pleasure!”

  “She even added that, after all, you were practically ‘family,’ ” he continued, and she knew from his voice that he was smiling, “and that you ought to have some sort of prior claim.”

  “She said that? She is a darling,” Leila exclaimed, and felt happily, though illogically, that this estimate of herself somehow gave her some sort of right to interfere benevolently in Simon’s affairs.

  Long after they had rung off she sat there, thinking affectionately, and with some comfort, of Simon’s mother.

  “I dare say she would have lost her heart fairly easily to Rosemary, too,” Leila thought, trying to be just. “She evidently didn’t care much for what she had gathered of Rosemary from a distance. But then, of course, one has to see Rosemary and know her personally. If Simon finally chooses her”—after all one had to face that possibility—“I expect Mrs. Morley will be quite happy about it. Only—she does like me. And I love her.”

  The firm of Barraclough & Morley, of which she was now to be a member, consisted, Leila found, of three partners. The elder Barraclough was more concerned with the administrative side of the business nowadays, but he was a real power in the firm, and Leila was assured by her immediate colleagues, that first day, that “the old man was a bit of a terror.”

  However, she was not likely to have very much to do with him personally, and everyone agreed that Mr. Morley was nice to work for. “A bit of a stickler for accuracy,” one of the girls said, with reminiscent ruefulness, “but fair, on the whole, and usually good-tempere
d.”

  “He may be a bit sticky at the moment,” one of the others told her. “He was going to be married a week or two ago, and it didn’t come off, for some reason or other. So if he’s a bit grim and difficult, make allowances.”

  Knowing that close connections with the “heads” are not apt to be popular in any office, Leila contented herself with saying that she had heard something of the sort. And then Simon’s bell rang, and she went into his room.

  He looked up from his post and smiled at her as she came in.

  “Settling down all right?” he enquired.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  She sat down, and looked friendly but official, for she did not want Simon to think that she intended to trade in any way on their relationship outside the office.

  She thought—though she did not actually see him smile about it—that he was rather amused by her attitude. But evidently he approved it, too. For, without further comment, he began to dictate to her, as though she were simply his new secretary and nothing else at all.

  At the end, he gave her one or two words of explanation about various aspects of her work, and dismissed her with a smile, and a friendly: “Come and see me about anything you don’t understand.”

  This first morning, Leila was to find, set the key-note for her office relationship with Simon. He was a busy man—Barraclough & Morley was a flourishing firm—and in the office, first things came first.

  He kept her informed of the very slow, but fairly steady, improvement in his mother’s health, but otherwise their relations were considerably more impersonal than they had been for some time. Leila was quite satisfied that it should be so. For her, it was almost enough just to see him and work with him. It was true that, in theory, she had counted on this new situation to establish her in his mind—even perhaps in his heart—securely enough to count for something whenever Rosemary did attempt to come back into his life. But, judging from the happy and thankful letter she had received from Aunt Hester, there was certainly no immediate likelihood of Rosemary returning to London. And for the moment Leila was satisfied to enjoy a situation which was infinitely more delightful than any she would have dared to hope for a few weeks ago.