There Were Three Princes

by Joyce Dingwell

  "Bart . . . Bart, stop all this ! " Her voice must have risen, for he stopped.

  "Whatever you believed you saw in Chris and in me —" she went on.

  "I saw it."

  "Was there only because we'd both just spilled out our hearts to each other. No" . . . as he went to make an obviously astringent comment . . . "let me finish, Bart. You see, it's not as you think."

  He did not speak now, but his brows had lifted.

  "Chris Boliver was still married to his dead young wife. For a little while he had thought differently . . . but he was wrong. So wrong," she finished, "he's gone back to America again. To Elvie." She was silent a while, remembering Chris's smiling face, still with that tug of sadness to the mouth, for

  that would always be there, yet an acceptance as well. A serenity.

  "Then I —" she went on.

  "Then you?"

  "That," admitted Verity uncertainly, "I didn't know ... though Chris seemed to think he did."

  "Know what ?" Bart's eyes were boring into hers.

  "I don't know." Restlessly. "I tell you I don't know. — Oh, why are you probing me like this? Why has it to be your side all the time? Why can't I ask in my turn and be told? Ask how did you think I felt that day when I rang — and you answered?"

  "Rang where? Answered what? What in heaven are you talking about, girl?"

  "Rang Adele's apartment. The afternoon of Robbie's funeral. Only two days after —" But at that she stopped.

  "Two days after a marriage that was not a marriage," he finished for her. He paused, his eyes narrowed now. "Couldn't that comprise your answer ?"

  "It could — and it did. That is — until Priscilla told me the truth. Told me about the cheque you handed Adele. Before that I thought —"

  "Thought that Adele and I —?"

  "Yes."

  "You little fool !" Bart's voice was incredulous.

  "I know now," she resumed shakily, "I know you paid her for the legacy she'll never receive ... will you put that down, too, in your little black book ?"

  "Don't talk like that, Verity."

  "Then don't do any more buying of me," she cried.

  "Why not? You bought me, didn't you? You bought me back."

  "Bought you back?"

  "From the devil, you must often have thought." A short laugh. "I was dying that day, Verity ... yes, I was actually dying. That sounds dramatic, but I knew as I lay there following the op that I was slipping out. And I would have — only you came and said it. You said it, Verity."

  "Said what?"

  Bart looked at her for a long moment . . . a desperate, asking look ... then turned away.

  But presently he turned back again, a little amused now, the old sharp Bart showing through.

  "When you heard my voice from Dellie's," he baited, "was your pride badly hurt?"

  "No, Bart" . . . and she said it spontaneously . . . "my heart." — Then she was looking at him in a caught-out surprise and Bart was looking back at her.

  At once she was remembering sitting beside his darkened cot that day after the operation, staring down at him, trying to reach him, to keep him, then saying . . . and she heard herself quite clearly now: "Bart, I'm here. Verity is here. Bart, your wife is here. I'm your wife."

  "Why not?" she came back now. "Why not a heart, Bart? After all — I am your wife."

  Along the corridor the first of the afternoon visitors were beginning to leave.

  "Say that again," Bart was demanding hoarsely.

  "Why not? Why not a heart —"

  "No. No, Verity. Say — say the end."

  The visitors were passing the half-opened door. Some glanced curiously in, but there was nothing to see. Bart was just looking across at Verity, and Verity was still struggling with words that somehow could not come.

  "Say it," he said.

  A nurse put her head round the door, glanced significantly at her watch, and intoned, "Time, please."

  "Time doesn't matter," refused Bart when she had gone, "unless it's the present. I don't want to hear then, Verity, I don't want to hear when, I want to hear now. I want to hear it this moment." He waited.

  "Very well." At last the drought was breaking. "Only you're getting it all, Bart. I was your wife. I am your wife. I will be — Oh, Bart —"

  For either he had managed to lean over, or she had gone to him, but there was no distance between them at all.

  "You do realize," he was whispering ruefully, "that between one thing and another, one therapy after another, it will be quite some time before you can really put signed, sealed and delivered to that wife, my girl?"

  "You do realize," Verity was coming back, "that I don't believe it's going to be any time at all, my man."

  "Time, please." The nurse was thinking that for long-term patient, or so she had been informed, the patient in fifteen looked a very short one. She particularly thought it as Verity was released at last from the patient's arms.

  "You can still wriggle out," he warned her when the nurse had left again. "You spent a night at Adele's, remember. Then you deserted me the next day. There's such a thing as instant annulment for that."

  "But there's still a night on the mountains to be accounted for," she smiled triumphantly back at him.

  "Accounted for truthfully," he reminded her, "remember your name, Verity."

  "I'd sooner," she admitted, "deal in fairytales than fact."

  And as she went down the corridor, the nurse the winner at last, Verity found herself repeating those stories ... those childhood fantasies that she used to practise for Robbie, because Robbie had demanded that his tales be smoothly recited, no indecisions. — She found herself dealing with one particular story.

  ". . . Once upon a time there were three princes, a gracious prince, a charming prince, a prince who was —"

  A prince who was, who is, who always will be my prince. Verity stopped saying it to let her heart sing it instead. Something made her glance up to a window. Evidently Bart had persuaded the nurse — or another nurse — to wheel his bed there. He was waving to her. He was touching his hand to his lips to her.

  She caught the kiss and imprisoned it.

  Threw one back to him.