Friends and Lovers (24 page)

So she did not mention her visits to Oxford, and as she rose to her feet she was finding a kind refusal for George.

“I’m being collected at seven—a birthday party in the wilds of Chelsea.”

“You’ll have to hurry,” George said, glancing at his watch. “What is your address in town? I’ll ‘phone you soon, and we’ll have dinner together then if my luck is any better.”

Penny did not have to reply to that, for Mrs. Fane had decided it was now quite the obvious time to come forward, and smile and say, “George, you must not monopolize all the pretty girls. And I did promise Malvina that you would come and meet her.”

It was bait that any young man would rise to. But George’s manners were good. He accompanied Penny towards the door. So did Mrs. Fane, pressing her advantage.

“I didn’t realize Penelope knew you, Mrs. Fane? I didn’t even know she was in London. Last time I saw her was at Inchnamurren, where Dr. MacLntyre has a house.”

Penelope. Something at last fitted into place in Mrs. Fane’s jig-saw of hidden worries. MacLntyre. Mary MacLntyre’s daughter.

Neither Mrs. Fane’s step nor voice faltered.

“How extraordinary,” she agreed politely.

“I’m sorry we had so little time to talk. Parties are always such crowded things.”

“This has been a most amusing one. Thank you so much,” Penny said.

Mrs. Fane looked sharply at her.

“Do come and see us again,” she said vaguely.

“So nice having you. Give my love to your mother, won’t you?”

Penny smiled. George was still totally innocent of the effect which his question had produced on Mrs. Fane.

Near the door a group had gathered round Carol and another fair-haired girl.

Rather a beauty. Penny decided. Poor Carol, how awful to have chosen the same style of hair and the same kind of dress, and to have to stand beside some one who outshone her so effortlessly.

“You did not meet my sister in Scotland, did you?” George asked.

“Have you time now? She is over there.”

Penny’s eyes followed his glance, looked at the girl beside Carol for a brief second, and then smiled at George once more.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, and a sudden coldness made her voice elaborately polite.

“But I really am rather late.”

So that was Eleanor.. Penny walked thoughtfully down the smooth sandstone steps into the street. Then, as she saw its length stretch before her towards Baker House, she began to hurry.

Her excuse to George had been perfectly honest, she told herself. She was late.

She arrived breathlessly in the entrance-hall as the large gong gave its final warning. Marston was waiting near the notice-board. Around her, moving slowly towards the dining-room, was the usual Saturday night crowd, some dressed to go out, some dressed to stay in. Faces, pretty and plain, laughing and glum, expectant and resigned. All shapes and colours of faces, thin and broad, short and long, pink, sallow, brown, yellow. Marston signalled, and Penny struggled through the mass of girls towards the notice-board. She smiled to those she knew as she passed them, and some spoke. Fahdi, the Egyptian, was going to the dance tonight, for she had washed her hair, and it sprang out from her head in a thick black, curling mop.

So was Bennett, for she was wearing the new dress and the imitation roses over which there had been an hour’s discussion last night.

MacE wan from New Zealand gave her friendly, “Hello, there!” Neri in her said: beautifully ironed, and six yards around the hem. Evans from Cardiff wanted to borrow that new Faulkner. Mathers from the West Indies suggested a party in her room tonight (bring your own cup, and spoon if you like guava jelly). And at last Penny reached the notice-board.

“That looks simply marvelous,” she said, eyeing Marston’s long black dress and red brocade jacket. But Marston was looking worried.

“He was here,” she said, ‘an hour ago. He could not manage to come tomorrow, so he came tonight instead.”

“David?”

“Yes. We introduced ourselves, and I told him you would be back about seven.”

“Why didn’t you telephone me?”

“Darling, it is good for him to find you aren’t always sitting about, waiting for him. I told him you were at a party, frankly. And I also said that I thought you might be free this evening, but I didn’t know: there was a dance at College which I had been trying to persuade you to go to. Do him a lot of good to realize there are such things.”

Penny looked at Marston.

“Where did he go?” she asked, trying to keep her voice even.

“Out. Don’t worry. He will ‘phone any moment now, and try to persuade you not to go to the dance.”

Penny shook her head miserably.

“Not David,” she said slowly.

“Look, Lorrimer, I was only trying to help you.” “I know,” Penny said. That was the trouble: people trying to help.

But Marston couldn’t know just how much time or money it cost one, who had little of either to spare, to come ap to London. Nor had she remembered that the Fanes’ invitation had come that morning, so that David had not heard about it yet. Penny began to climb the stairs.

The hall was empty now. From the dining-room came the clatter of plates and the sudden outburst of talk as Grace was completed.

“What about dinner, such as it is?” Marston called. And then, as Penny did not answer her, had not even heard her, she went into the dining-room.

“Absolute nonsense,” she said to herself.

Penny walked slowly up the stairs to her room, closed the door wearily, sat on the edge of her bed without turning on the light. She wondered where David had gone this evening. And she wouldn’t see him tomorrow. He would not ‘phone either: she knew her David. Probably, at this very moment, he was trying not to think that she went to parties all the time and never told him.

He would argue with himself that if she wanted to go to dances he was not going to dissuade her.

“Oh, David!” she said aloud. And blast Marston. Her way isn’t my way, or David’s. Blast her.

She crossed over to the window, trying to calm herself. After all, things could be explained in letters. And things could also be misunderstood. It suddenly appeared to her that a very small, very trivial incident could cause a lot of damage.

Gower Street was quiet now. London’s Sunday sleep always seemed to begin here on Saturday evening. A few people hurried to keep a dinner engagement or strolled out for a pleasant night. Occasional taxis, some cars, but no more lorries or vans: a quiet street, an empty, lifeless street, a desolate street. And then a man came out of the darkness, halted under the lamppost at the corner almost opposite Baker House, and stood there looking at its rows of windows. It was David. Penny rapped on the glass sharply, but she was too high up for anyone in the street to hear. She had forgotten to turn on the light, so that he could not even have seen her. But she only remembered these things as she reached the hall, and scrawled her name in the “Out until 11.30’ register. He will be gone, she told herself, and dropped the pen, and ran towards the door. The sedate maid on hall duty rose from her chair and stared at the slamming door. Well, reely, she thought, and opened the door curiously.

She saw Miss. Lorrimer running—running, mind you— across Gower Street, and heard the tearing screech of a taxi as it braked suddenly. The cabby was kicking up no end of a fuss, too. So there hadn’t been an accident, although that hadn’t been Miss. Lorrimer’s fault. The maid shook her head disapprovingly and closed the door. A fine way to behave, giving people a turn like that? And for what?

Just what in the whole wide world was worth that? She sat down in her corner once more picked up her copy of this week’s Pam’s Very Own, and turned to the third instalment of young Lord Utterley’s still unrequited passion for the beautiful Muriel Midgeley.

Chapter Eighteen.

DINNER AT MARINELLLI’S.

At first David thought Penny had been hit by the taxi. But in the next moment she was on the pavement beside him, laughing as if she had not even noticed.

“Damn’ fool,” he said roughly, and caught her arm. Then he kissed her.

The taxi driver leaned forward to add his comment. David turned to the man with an ugly look on his face, but Penny said, “Please, David,” and her hand on his arm pulled him gently away. Penny, David had to remind himself, hated scenes. But it would have given him a lot of pleasure to have had one: that was the mood he had been in for this last hour or so.

“It was my fault, David,” she was saying, in a very subdued way for Penny.

“But I didn’t see him. I didn’t see anything except you. And I was so afraid that you might have disappeared into London before I could run down all those stairs and out of the door.”

It was difficult, David thought, to be very polite, charming, and just a little diffident. That was what he had intended to be.

Remembering too how he had felt in that moment when he was sure she had been hit, he halted, looked at her, and then kissed her so hard that her lower lip was cut.

“Just to make sure you are really here,” he said, as he reached for his handkerchief.

“Sorry, darling. But I happen to love you, you see.

You shouldn’t be allowed out without a bodyguard.”

Penny hugged his arm. Everything was all right again … She was with David, and there were at least three hours left to them before he had to catch that train. She would explain all about Marston and the Fanes to him.

But not at the moment: at the moment explanations would only seem like excuses. Later, once dinner had begun, she would tell him all about it. For explanations were necessary. She felt that instinctively. You could reason out that adults did not have to explain to each other, but instinct was so often more accurate than reasoning. At least. Penny thought, when she acted on instinct with David, she was always glad: and when she reasoned things out she was often sorry she had not followed her first intuition. Reasoning might be good for facts and figures, but it wasn’t enough for human beings.

For instance, this sort of thing could easily happen again—a trivial thing hardly worth explaining it might seem. And it could happen again .. and again … always small and trivial, always hardly worth explaining. And then, when some really dangerous crisis between David and herself did arise—and human beings always seemed to have periodic crises—it would be all the past differences, unexplained, which might make understanding so difficult. Yes, Penny decided, sh, would tell David later, tell him casually and amusingly That would be the best time, once they had settled comfort ably at a table in Marinelli’s and dinner had begun.

They crossed over Tottenham Court Road, busy am garish, with that early-Saturday-night feeling when wornei put on their smartest clothes and men have extra money ir their pockets, when the evening stretches ahead pleasanth and everything is still to be enjoyed. No disappointments, n( disenchantments yet, David thought. A good hour of thi week, welcoming every one with a bright smile, saying, “Nov go ahead; enjoy yourselves.” A good hour, perhaps one of th best hours in the week. Something of the feeling o expectancy in the air caught him up too. He looked at Penn^ with pride: once they were inside Marinelli’s and seated a a table for two, once he had ordered some food and wine, h< would tell her. All the excitement which had accompaniec him to London on his train journey began to return to him God, what a disappointment it had been to arrive at Bake] House and find Penny wasn’t there. What a hellish hour wandering round dark Bloomsbury squares by himself arguing with himself, persuading, wondering, while all the time the amazing news which had put him into such higt-spirits on the train was turning into a frustrated chunk of gloom.

From Tottenham Court Road a narrow side-street led there to Charlotte Street, empty and quiet at this hour. Only the little foreign restaurants and shops were brightly lit, smal oases of warmth and hospitality in a cold, dark street.

Marinelli’s was crowded, as usual, with journalists and students, painters and writers. When you entered you felt almost blinded, suffocated, deafened.

Then you go accustomed to the bright light, and the warmth was pleasant and the Babel of noise made you feel you were one of a group and not a lonely individual. You could ignore, or yoi could take part in, the arguments going on around the larg< tables. No one worried whether you did or did not. And as well as the voices explaining and expounding and laughing, there were the orders shouted in Italian towards the kitchen window, where the face of Marinelli’s eldest soi would appear every now and again to shout back. There wa; the noise of plates and glasses as Marinelli’s four daughters served—with generous smiles, Italian phrases, and flashing glances.

There were the sudden bursts of conversation between Mrs. Marinelli, at the cash-desk by the door, and Mr. Marinelli, moving among the tables.

Now, as Penny and David entered the narrow, glass-panelled door with its three missing letters (M rinel it informed you), Mrs. Marinelli gave them a loud, Neapolitan welcome, which would also act as a warning to her husband to find room for two more. Marinelli’s youngest son Giuseppe, balancing plates of steaming spaghetti with its cardinal caps of rich red sauce, shouted that there was a free table upstairs. “For two?” David asked.

“Si si.” He laughed heartily. Always a table for two. “Near window,” Mr. Marinelli put in. He pointed to his legs, shook his head, smiled apologetically for not leading them upstairs personally, pursed his mouth, raised his shoulders, gestured with his hands. Mr. Marinelli had, as he had once explained in detail, very close veins.

As they climbed the narrow wooden stairs, so tightly built against the yellow plaster wall, with its hand-painted panels (views of Naples done by Mr. Marinelli’s second son, helped by an artist who had needed a month of free dinners) and its bright pink paper flowers fashioned by one of Mr. Marinelli’s daughters, the one with the slow, lazy smile of La Gioconda), David said, “There are three reasons why I like this place. No one stops talking to bother looking at us. We aren’t expected to leave the minute we finish coffee. And I get you to myself.”