Mine for a Day

by Mary Burchell

  But he laughed that aside.

  “Certainly not.”

  “It’s such a long drive—and then you’ll have to do it all the way back again.”

  “I can bear that.” He grinned at her.

  “And tomorrow morning—off again on the same road!”

  “Here, are you trying to get rid of me?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then you be a good girl, and stop talking about trains. I’m driving you back to town.”

  “All right,” she said, and smiled. “Though I did promise your mother I’d look after you, you know.”

  “She didn’t mean it in that way,” he replied, and they got up to go, so that she was not able to ask him exactly what way he thought his mother did want her to look after him.

  If possible, the friendly intimacy of driving in the dark was almost more delightful than the drive down by daylight. They talked very little, but she was aware—and she thought he was, too—of the most complete harmony between them.

  It was as though they had known each other a long time—perhaps always—and they could enjoy each other’s company almost without words. In all her life, Leila thought, she had never enjoyed any relationship like this. It made her feel more alive, more real, more significant as a human being.

  “It’s because I’m in love,” she thought. “And not quite hopelessly in love this time.”

  As they neared her home, she said, rather softly:

  “I don’t know how to thank you, Simon. It’s been such a perfectly lovely evening.”

  “My dear, the thanks are on me,” he assured her. “If anyone had told me a week or two ago that I could feel as well-satisfied with life as I do at this moment, I should have laughed.”

  “Is—is that really true?”

  “Um-hm.”

  “I’m terribly glad,” she said, so fervently that he laughed and replied, rather moved:

  “You’re sweet.”

  He thought, of course, that she was terribly glad on his account only. But she did not, and indeed could not, correct him. So she just enjoyed being called “sweet” and left it at that.

  He didn’t attempt to kiss her when he said good night to her. She guessed he was not a man who kissed easily or frequently, and she was glad of that. But he held her hand for a moment longer than was necessary, and said:

  “We must do this again quite soon.”

  “That would be lovely. And perhaps one evening you’d like to come and have dinner with me. In my flat, I mean. I can’t manage such a ritzy meal as this evening, but I’ll guarantee to feed you pretty well.”

  “It’s a date,” he assured her. “I’d like nothing better.”

  Then he said good night and drove away; And Leila, dazed and a little pale with happiness, let herself into her flat.

  Lying on the mat, dropped from the letter-box, was a letter from Rosemary. She recognized the writing, even before she picked it up. And just as, once before, Rosemary’s writing had brought her a chill of apprehension, so this time she felt her mood of joyous elation fade before a guilty nervousness which she could not control.

  Without even waiting to take off her hat she opened the letter, standing there in the hall by the mirror which reflected an even paler Leila than the one who had come in a moment or two ago. This time it was not a happy pallor.

  Dear Leila [the letter said],

  Everything is all right now with Mother and Dad, and even Peter has given up being brotherly and critical. It was nice to be home, but Durominster is a bit dull after all the excitement. (Because, even if going with Jeremy was a mistake, it certainly made life exciting!) I expect I’m missing Simon. And, now that I’ve satisfied the old folks at home about my being good and safe, I don’t want to put off tackling Simon any longer. Obviously, I can’t ask him to come and see me here—and, if I did, I presume he wouldn’t come. So the only alternative is to inflict myself on you again for a few days, darling, and I’ve decided to come this weekend, before my courage can ooze away again. I’ll probably arrive on Friday when you’re at the office, but if you leave the key with Mrs. What’s-her-name, the housekeeper, or tell her to let me in anyway, I’ll look after myself all right and even have a meal ready for you when you come in.

  Don’t be cross about my deciding on all this so suddenly. One has to do these things suddenly or not at all. I was silly to put off tackling Simon for so long as it is. But I’m determined to remedy that as soon as possible.

  If you have any plans yourself for Friday, go right ahead and don’t mind me. I’ll be all right at the flat, so long as you can arrange to have me let in.

  Love,

  ROSEMARY.

  Leila looked up at her frightened reflection and said aloud:

  “But that’s tomorrow! Friday is tomorrow. I must stop her! I can’t possibly have her coming here now.”

  She even moved towards the telephone, seeking desperately in her mind for some pretext on which she could put off her cousin.

  But Rosemary had provided for everything. She had urged Leila to go on with any plans of her own, insisting that she would manage perfectly well. What could one possibly invent that would make even Rosemary see that she could not come?

  Only if one invented another resident visitor—insisted that no bed was free—lied right and left—

  “I can’t!” Again Leila spoke aloud. “I can’t go on with this concealing and deceiving. And I can’t start a series of specific lies. She will have to come, and I must accept this as the moment when I must let Simon know about her. There is time to think of how I will put it. I’ll tell him in the office tomorrow. I can risk it now. Oh, surely I can!—I might tell him that she is coming to see me, and let him think that it was her letter which gave me all the information about her not marrying Jeremy after all. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. If I put it carefully, it will be all right. And oh, how thankful I shall be to have everything straightforward and truthful again!”

  She even told herself that she was glad Rosemary had written, and forced her hand like this. And, although she still experienced a few tremors when she thought of the actual moment of explanation, there was a sort of terrible relief in the knowledge that the weekends of uncertainty and deception were to end.

  Her evening with Simon was partly responsible, no doubt, for her feeling less afraid about the future. It was impossible not to gather confidence and hope from the knowledge that to Simon she was at last a valued and intimate associate.

  If there had not been this complication about Rosemary, she would, at this point, have been enjoying that delicious phase of uncertainty when friendship has not quite developed into love, but shows every sign of doing so.

  There was still the danger, of course, that, however much Rosemary’s defection might have shocked and hurt him, Simon still loved her beyond any argument or logic. But that was something which had to be faced some time. It was possible that Leila would never be in a stronger position than now for facing that test.

  In spite of various doubts and misgivings, therefore, Leila’s general mood when she went to bed was hopeful. Perhaps that accounted for the fact that she slept well and dreamlessly, and went to the office the next morning full of a courageous determination to tell Simon about Rosemary at the first opportunity.

  Her good resolution received something of a check when she learned that, after all, Simon would not be in during the morning. Something requiring his personal attention had occurred at some works just outside London, and Mr. Barraclough had telephoned to him early, asking him to go straight from home to the place concerned.

  She had plenty to occupy her from the previous day but, having screwed her courage to the point of telling Simon most of the truth, she found it almost unbearable to have to postpone the ordeal.

  No one seemed to know if he would even come in during the afternoon. And as the day wore on the cowardly idea began to grow in Leila’s mind that it might be better to make a clean breast of things to Rosemary, ra
ther than Simon.

  If Simon did not put in an appearance at all during the day, and Rosemary was waiting for her at the flat when she returned home, would it not be easier to explain literally everything to her not ungenerous young cousin—even the fact that she herself loved Simon—and trust to the fact that Rosemary’s love for him was not really so deep that she could not bear to think of giving him up? She had given him up once, quite willingly, for Jeremy. Why not give him up again for her cousin’s sake?

  At times this seemed a wonderful solution to Leila. At other times it seemed futile and absurd. And most of the afternoon she wavered to and fro between the two opposing views.

  Then, towards the end of the afternoon, just as she had decided finally, as she believed, that Rosemary should be recipient of her confidences, the buzzer on her desk sounded. This meant that Simon had arrived, after all, and wished to dictate to her.

  For the last hour at least she had decided that he was not coming in to the office that day, and her only problem had been to make up her mind about how much or how little he should tell Rosemary that evening. Now, with a suddenness that was unnerving, she had to decide how much or how little she was to tell Simon.

  With her heart thumping uncomfortably, she picked up her note-book and pencil.

  He would dictate first, of course. Even with most of her attention on her work, she should be able to decide whether his mood were a suitable one for disclosures. She need not absolutely decide what she was going to do until she saw him. But probably it would be best—

  She was at the door now, with her hand on the handle. When she saw him, she must make her final decision.

  Leila went into the room. As she did so, two people turned a puzzled and questioning gaze upon her. One was Simon. The other was Rosemary.

  CHAPTER X

  NEVER, in her most vivid nightmares, had Leila visualized such a situation as this. That she might one day have to make a fairly full confession to one or the other, in circumstances largely chosen by herself, was something she had accepted. But to have to do so to both of them, and with no preparation, was something so dreadful that she almost turned and ran away.

  But Simon’s voice, calm and not at all unfriendly, said:

  “Come on in, Leila. Rosemary was in London and—dropped in to see me. Did you know that she didn’t marry Jeremy Whatever-his-name-was after all?”

  “Of course she knew! I’ve just told you so!” Rosemary broke in, on a note of unusual irritation. “I don’t understand all this mystery. Leila, Simon is pretending he didn’t know anything about my having left Jeremy.”

  “He didn’t know,” Leila said, and even to herself her voice sounded unfamiliar and high-pitched.

  “Sit down, Leila.” Simon spoke with an under-current of concern in his voice, but there was also puzzlement now and a shade of reserve.

  She sank into a chair, largely because she felt unable to stand any longer, while Rosemary’s surprised, protesting words buzzed round her like flies.

  “But you said that you told him. I don’t understand. You promised to explain to him—to try to arrange for him to see me. You said—”

  “I didn’t promise anything,” Leila interrupted with desperate firmness.

  Rosemary’s pretty mouth actually fell open.

  “You did, Leila!”

  “Not in so many words. You—assumed that I would do so. And—and I let you think that I had.”

  “Well, it’s practically the same thing,” Rosemary insisted. “And you almost forced me to return to Durominster, saying it was useless for me to see Simon for the time being. I can’t understand you, Leila. You never played a dirty trick like that on anyone before. At least, not that I ever knew. What came over you? Why did you do it, anyway?”

  “Yes, Leila. Why did you do it? That’s the point,” Simon put in, less excitedly than Rosemary, but in a tone which was a few degrees colder than the one in which he had bade her sit down.

  She wished she could faint or collapse. Just go out, leaving the situation to solve itself. Leaving them to think what they pleased, imagine what they pleased. Anything—anything—so that she did not have to give them reasons for having done the inexplicable.

  But she remained fully conscious. And they went on waiting for her to reply—Rosemary leaning forward in her chair, flushed and bright-eyed, and Simon standing by the desk looking down at herself, gravely, and at last a little suspiciously.

  “I thought I was acting for the best,” she brought out huskily at last.

  “The best for whom?” enquired Rosemary rather pertinently.

  “All of us. But mostly—Simon.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Rosemary frowned in angry bewilderment. While Simon said:

  “You will have to explain that a little further, you know, Leila.”

  She pushed back her hair with a nervous hand, and tried again. “When Rosemary first came back so—so careless and assured about—picking things up again just where they had left off, I thought—I thought Simon ought to have some time to think clearly, not to be swept into—into an infatuation again—”

  “Really, Leila!” Simon exclaimed in protest and some anger. “You had no right to regard my feeling for Rosemary as an infatuation. And it was the most unwarrantable interference to try to arrange my life for me in that way.”

  “I meant it—for the best,” she murmured again rather desperately.

  “But why did you set yourself up to judge?” he wanted to know. “I don’t understand your attitude. There’s more in this than you have explained so far, I feel.”

  “I’ll say there is,” Rosemary put in sharply. “Otherwise, why be so—deceitful and systematic about it all? If you didn’t actually lie to me in so many words—and I still think you did—you certainly gave me a definite and deliberate impression that you’d talked things over with Simon, and found that he didn’t want to forgive me, and that I’d have to wait for a better opportunity to talk him round.”

  Simon bestowed a rather complicated glance upon her at that, but it was not devoid of a certain amused indulgence.

  Curiously enough, while that glance struck fresh despair to Leila’s heart, it also steadied her a little.

  “I’m sorry if it seems to you both that I acted badly,” she said, much more calmly. “I think myself that perhaps I used some—questionable means. But I honestly believed that anyone who could run off the day before her wedding with another man, and then find she didn’t want him after all, needed some time before she could be sure that she really wanted to be on with the old love again.”

  “You had no right to take it on yourself to decide about that, though,” protested Rosemary indignantly. “It had nothing to do with you.

  “Yes, it had,” Leila retorted, stung. “You had forced me into the position of having something to do with it. You had left it to me to tell Simon of your disgraceful behaviour. You had left it to me to settle the terrible tangle you had left behind—and Simon, on his part, agreed to my even impersonating you. You left it to me to explain to him when you chose to come back. And now you try to say it all had nothing to do with me. Am I to have no opinion and no feelings in the matter?”

  There was complete silence in the office for a second or two. Then Simon said rather coldly:

  “I don’t quite see where your feelings entered into it, Leila. An opinion you were, of course, perfectly entitled to hold. But, even so far as that was concerned, you seem to have gone to the most extraordinary lengths to impose your opinion on Rosemary and me. It was, after all, entirely for me to decide what I wished to do after Rosemary returned. I can’t for the life of me see why you thought you were entitled to withhold the news of this from me. Still less why you should engage in this elaborate deceit. And as for forcing Rosemary to return to Durominster when—”

  “I didn’t force her to return.”

  “Yes you did,” Rosemary declared. “You even saw me on to the train, as though I were a prisoner on remand.�
��

  “I don’t think we need picturesque details of that sort, Rosemary,” Simon said dryly. “The fact is, Leila, that you took the most elaborate precautions to prevent my knowing the very thing Rosemary most wanted me to know—that she had returned, and that she was sorry for what had happened.”

  “I thought—”

  “And in addition,” he continued slowly, frowning as though some recollection angered or pained him unexpectedly, “in addition, you deliberately evaded my own specific enquiry about whether there was any news of Rosemary. You deliberately deceived me, too, Leila.”

  She sat there with her head bent. Anguish and humiliation washed over her in waves. She wished she could die. To faint was not enough now. One recovered from a faint. And she didn’t want to recover. She didn’t want ever, ever, to have to face Simon again, or to take up life again, to think daily, hourly, of the depths of shame to which she had sunk in her efforts to make him love her as she loved him.

  Now, she could not imagine why she had ever embarked on this mad and wicked course: She was appalled to think that she had implied all sorts of untruths in her attempt to keep Simon and Rosemary from meeting, and she could not understand now how she had possibly justified her behaviour to herself, either on Simon’s account or her own.

  It was like recovering from some sort of delirium and viewing her conduct with shocked sanity. And to have Simon, of all people, accusing her—with justice—of deceiving him, was something she felt she could not bear.

  Only—she had to bear it.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” she whispered, with what she knew was dreadful inadequacy.

  He made a little movement of something between impatience and embarrassment. And she knew then that the lovely friendly intimacy between them was gone for ever.