by Jane Arbor
“Now!” Hilary warned. “That’s why I’m ringing—to save you unnecessary fret. There’s been a crash at the airport. We’ve had the usual routine warning to stand by with some emergency beds. But nothing has come in, and I wanted you to know that the London plane had already left on schedule and wasn’t involved at all.”
Tessa’s heart lurched. “But—which plane was?”
“A direct Continental flight. Bound for Amsterdam, we hear—”
“Amsterdam?”
At Hilary’s end there was a slight pause, as if she were taken aback by the shocked intensity of Tessa’s tone. Then she confirmed: “Yes, Amsterdam. But as I’ve told you, we’ve had nothing in, so the warning may be cleared at any minute.”
“But—but there could be casualties without their coming in to St. Faith’s! Hilary, what other details do you know?”
“Nothing, I assure you, beyond what I’ve told you. But why are you so upset? Who else who matters personally to you was travelling today?”
Tessa said in agony: “Neil was. To Amsterdam on the morning flight. And if anything has happened to him!” She broke off, remembering, though scarcely caring now, that she had been at pains to keep her secret even from Hilary’s ears.
She had reckoned, however, without Hilary’s intuition. Hilary puzzled aloud: “Neil? Now who? Neil—Callender. Yes, that’s it. Oh-h-h!” The long-drawn monosyllable was eloquent of all that she had guessed. Very gently she said: “So it’s Dr. Callender who has spared you any further danger from Rex! I knew there must be someone. My dear, I’m so very happy for you!”
“Happy for me?”
“Yes, happy,” said Hilary firmly. “Heavens, I wish I’d never embarked on this, if you’re going to tear yourself to tatters until you hear he’s all right. And as the thing happened over an hour ago and we’ve had no emergencies in yet, what’s more likely than that he’ll call himself just as soon as he can get to a telephone?”
But, unable to bear any more, Tessa said: “He won’t call me—” and hung up on Hilary as her doorbell rang.
Mechanically she went to open it. To her surprise it was Rex who stood framed in the doorway, and though her tiny hope died at once, her next thought prompted that as he would have been at the airport to see Camille off, he might know But even as she whispered: “Oh, Rex—come in!” and put out both hands to him, it was suddenly as if the walls of the little vestibule were drawing in upon her ... bulging out again ... drawing in. It was getting dark too and there was no floor...
From a long way off she heard Rex’s sharp: “Hey!” and his grip on her hands tightened as she swayed towards him. The next thing she knew was that she was on a low chair in her living-room with a relentless hand on the back of her neck, thrusting her head between her knees.
The telephone was ringing, and when she gasped and tried to straighten Rex allowed her to sit back while he went to answer it. Before she remembered that Neil must have already realised he didn’t love her when she had allowed Rex to take that other call, she watched him with vague resentment, thinking, This has happened before—disastrously for me.
She heard him saying: “Yes, I’m here with her. Uh-huh—arrived just in time to catch her as she went down for the count. Yes ... Yes ... Oh, you’ve heard? No ... All right, I’ll report back. ’Bye.”
He came to stand over Tessa, demanding: “Where do you keep your brandy?” And “What’s made poor Hilary so frantic about you?”
Tessa said: “I—only rang off rather abruptly. And there isn’t any. Brandy, I mean. Rex?”
“There wouldn’t be. Lucky I took some along to fill a flask for Camille. Here, drink this. Questions afterwards—mainly mine, I may say.”
From a flask which he took from his pocket he poured a stiff dose and squatted beside her in order to watch her closely as she drank. As she felt warmth and strength flow back he approved: “That’s better. Now—” and put aside the glass.
She reached for his hand and held on. “Were you—were you still at the airport when the Dutch plane crashed?”
He nodded. “It happened right after the London plane had gone.”
“What happened?”
“Something at take-off. I don’t know what for certain. It made a forced landing within yards and the luggage compartment was wrecked.”
“Only the luggage compartment? But St. Faith’s had been told to stand by!”
“Routine, in case. The same thing as asking any doctors who were on the airport to stand by.”
“Did they do that?”
“Yes, but there weren’t any casualties at all and the passengers were advised they could take the next flight. And now my pet, it’s my turn. Why—just why have you been such a prize little idiot since I saw you last?”
“Since you?” She stared at him, remembering when that was.
“You know!” he accused. “That night when I muscled in on Callender’s call! As soon as I realised what was a-doing between you, I warned you. Don’t you dare say I didn’t. And yet you’ve let him think I was there alone with you, that we’d been keeping a guilty assignation together on the very night that Camille was taken ill! What on earth—repeat, what on earth—did you think you were about?”
Tessa began in protest: “Rex, if I did, it didn’t matter by then. He—”
“Not matter?” Rex put a hand to his temple and rocked dramatically. “It didn’t occur to you, I suppose, that I’d got a morsel of reputation to look to as well?”
“Rex, I’m sorry! I never thought—”
“Oh, forget it. I only stuck that in to see if it would bring you to your native senses. Just one little word—We were amply chaperoned. Kindly refer to Sister Pugh of St. Faith’s.’ ‘Camille had invited herself and Rex, and should have been there herself. Ref.—even the dinner-table was set for four.’ Yes, that was all you had to say. After wasting years on an outsider like me, you get a man who adores the ground you walk on, and yet to keep him, or even to save him from agonies of doubt, do you say that word? Not on your life! But why? And again—why?”
Tessa covered her face with her hands. “You don’t understand,” she murmured hopelessly. “After that first call he made no other move. And when we met the next day he made it so clear that he had gone back on loving me that I stopped short of explaining about you. He—he was no more interested than if a couple of complete strangers had got themselves compromised. And I wouldn’t appear to plead with him!”
Rex said patiently: “Look, moon-wit—you’ve got one packet to learn about men! This one believed the worst; you allowed him to, and he was sick with disgust and jealousy and disillusionment for just one reason and a good one—because he loves you! He told me so himself, less than a quarter of an hour back.”
Tessa raised her head. “Neil told you so?”
“Yes. Listen. I’d hung about, as I’ve told you, and I. saw him come off the runway with the other passengers. But he didn’t stay with them, and when I was going to collect my car we met on the forecourt. Well, I don’t bear the chap any malice now, so I said, Bad luck, and wasn’t he going on after all? He looked a bit affronted, surveyed me from a great height and said no, as his journey was fruitless without some papers which were in a bag of his which took a pasting when the luggage-hold was stove in. I asked him then whether there was anywhere I could drive him, and he said, No, why should there be?
“To that I said I didn’t know why there should, but I’d have thought he’d at least want to make tracks to tell his girl that he was all right. He snapped? ‘Girl? What girl?’ So I said, ‘Tessa, of course,’ and that if he wasn’t going to carry the good news from Aix to Ghent, I should. Well, that tore it. He said he had no doubt that I should have a better and cosier opportunity than he had, and that if I hadn’t, I’d probably make one without any trouble. And if I didn’t mind, he’d be moving on.
“But, I did mind. He wasn’t going to get away with that. I said he could justify that remark or apologise for it. And if he didn’t,
though I realised he could lick me, we’d better take off our coats.”
“Oh, Rex!”
“Psst! Let me finish. I went on to say that as there were probably by-laws against squaring up on public property, he’d better get into the car and we’d select a more private spot. He looked as if he’d see me further first, but to my surprise he got in. As for me, I hadn’t driven a yard before it dawned. For some unknown reason he hadn’t learned the truth about the night he rang you up! So I told him, gently and in words of as few syllables as possible.”
“He—he listened? He cared?”
“He lapped it up hungrily. But what does Santa Rex get for his pains? You have to stage a delaying action by fainting on my hands, so that your swain has probably got tired of waiting and has gone back to drown his sorrows at the hostelry where we cemented our friendship over a pint before we came on here!”
“You’ve brought Neil here?”
“Where else? But I told him I’d need about ten minutes to put in the necessary spade work on you—”
Tessa sprang up, her cheeks flaming. “Rex, no! I can’t—I—”
Rex said calmly: “No choice, my pet. He’s handsomely given me twelve and a half minutes already. More I couldn’t expect of a chap as desperately in love as he is. And I left your door ajar—”
He broke off. Tessa was no longer attending. As Neil came in and held his arms wide to her, for the second time she had the odd illusion that he and she were alone, that Rex was no longer there. And when, a second or two later, he was not, she and Neil were already close ... close, asking and answering with their kisses, being burned in the same flame of sweetness, sharing the exultant whisper of their hearts—‘I love! I am loved!’
Presently they stood back a little shyly, gently swinging hand as children do.
Neil said: “ ‘Face to face’, beloved! And thought there would be so much to say!”
“So did I. And now I can’t find anything!”
“Never mind. It’ll come. We’ve all our lives ahead.” They kissed again, lightly this time, savouring the pretence that they could cheat passion so, hold it at bay for fun ... But it was some time afterwards that Tessa, her face against his shoulder, murmured: “Neil?”
“Yes?” With an arm about her he led her to a chair.
“Neil—why did you let me think you had found out you didn’t care after all?”
He tilted her chin so that he could look into her eyes. “You thought that! My heart, nothing I said or did could have—”
“Everything you said! Don’t you remember? That you had believed we were of one mind, but that you hadn’t known how things could change; that finding Rex with me wasn’t any longer any business of yours. Don’t you see how I read into that that you were telling me you didn’t want me to explain because you weren’t interested any more?”
She watched his lips as he repeated each phrase she had quoted. Then: “My darling, I do see. But at that time I’d no idea I had said anything you could misunderstand. I admit I was too sore at heart to be able to bear to hear what I thought would be your plausible attempt to justify Girling’s having been in your flat. When you said, ‘I can explain’—something snapped and I knew I could not listen, that’s all.”
“But your having found Rex there had to be explained!”
“Logically, yes, I suppose. But I was in such a state that I told myself that if you cared, you couldn’t allow it to happen—with that particular man. As I saw it, I’d come back unexpectedly: I had surprised you with him; therefore all you’d said about its having ended between you had been self-deception or—lies.”
To that Tessa said slowly: “I’m wondering whether—in any circumstances at all—I could misjudge you in the same way?”
“You misjudged me far enough,” he reminded her, “to allow the obscure things I said to mean for you that, having found I didn’t love you, I wasn’t honest enough to tell you so!”
Tessa hesitated. “It wasn’t only what you said that morning. I was almost prepared for something of the sort after you hadn’t tried to telephone me again or come to me overnight. I knew you could have done, and when you didn’t, that was the real beginning of my despair.”
The hand which had lain gently over hers gripped it fast. “Mine too—at the point of my decision not to try to get in touch with you again. That happened after another telephone call I had made. I called you first from the airport as soon as I got in. But I had to see Judith before she left for London, and when I reached my flat at last I had to ring Sir Bartram about a patient of mine whom Judith had sent in to St Faith’s while I was away. You know, don’t you, what I heard from Usherwood about Camille?”
“That—that she had been taken dangerously ill while Rex was with me,” breathed Tessa.
Neil nodded. “I told myself that, as a doctor, he could not possibly have not known she was sickening for something. They would have talked about her symptoms; he would have got her stepfather to overhaul her. Yet he had left her quite callously—and come to you.”
“They weren’t on very good terms,” Tessa offered. “I think it’s quite possible she had deliberately hidden as much as she could from Rex.”
“Yes, he has explained that, as well as the truth about her having sent him to you. But it only needed that news from Sir Bartram to revolt me completely. Then I disengaged my telephone in case you rang—and agonised all night because you couldn’t!”
He was smiling now, but Tessa was still grave. She drew her shoulders together in a slight shiver. “I’m frightened, Neil. Could it—the same sort of cruel misunderstanding, could it ever happen again?”
“You mean after we are married?” He paused, watching her, seemingly enjoying the spectacle of her happy confusion at the question. “It could, I suppose. But not—and I’m sure of this, Tessa—not if we never for a moment doubt our love for each other, yours for me, mine for you. And in marriage—our marriage—doubt is going to be unthinkable. Other things perhaps—differences of opinion, pettinesses here and there, even a few quarrels—but never, never doubt, because marriage, dearest, is going to express for us more than we can ever say, mean or misunderstand in words. But am I going too fast? Have I actually asked you yet to marry me?”
“Not yet.”
“But will you?”
Paying him out for his obvious puckish delight in seeing her colour mount, she teased: “I’ll tell you—when you have satisfied my curiosity about something else! That first day of all, when you returned to Judith in her car, what did you say about me?”
She had thought he wouldn’t conceivably remember, but he did not even hesitate. “Then? Ah—When Judith said I’d been unchivalrous to you, I said, ‘You’d be pretty unchivalrous if you’d just seen the girl of girls you could marry—and she was being kissed by some one else.’ But how did you know I’d said anything about you? And will you marry me now?”
“Judith began to tell me but stopped. And—yes, Neil, I will—”
He drew her into his arms again, his kisses at first tender, then rough with the promise of all that lay ahead for them. When he released her again he said exultantly: “I’m not just content to be going to marry you. I want to tell the world! Whom can we tell? What about your chaperone, Sister Pugh?”
Tessa said: “Rex will have told her, I think. Besides, she’ll be serving her patients’ dinners by now.”
“How prosaic—and how necessary! Well, Girling knows. Judith, I think, has always been in less doubt of the issue than we have ourselves. Who else is there? I know—let’s finally satisfy Lady Catterick!”
“We can’t reach her.”
“Oh, no—she is on her way to Majorca and well among the clouds.”
Tessa chuckled delightedly. “ ‘Among the clouds’! What a perfect description of Godmother’s woolly grasp on anything which doesn’t directly concern herself! And anyway, she doesn’t need telling. She is still firmly convinced that she knows!”
Mock-ruefully Neil shook his
head. “Then there’s nobody to tell—except ourselves again. Here goes. I love you, Tess, and I’m going to marry you just as soon as I can. I’ll work for you, live for you, adore you—”
But Tessa only whispered: “I love you, Neil—” and went once more into the shelter of his arms, the place of their assurance that the rest of their lives would be one long doing and enjoying and finding peace—together.
The End
