Friends and Lovers (33 page)

The strange female, who wouldn’t have recognized herself by that description, took a hesitating step and then halted. For the last two minutes she had been wondering if she might ask that nice young couple what time it was. So silly of her to have forgotten to pin on her watch; it had been lying on the dressing-table, and she had said, “Now don’t forget that. You know Emily does not like being late for tea.” And she had forgotten it after all. And really you couldn’t trust sundials now, what with all this Winter and Summer Time foolishness, when did you take an hour off or put an hour on, so frightfully bewildering to the poor things? And she had seemed to see only men in the last five minutes. There was one just behind her now.

He couldn’t be following her, could he? And she couldn’t ask a strange man, anyway, what time it was. And tea was at four. And that did mean four o’clock. Emily disapproved of people who arrived early too. And it was a pity, indeed it was, to leave this charming garden even if it was rather cold to-day, so disappointing for spring, before she really must. Not that the people Emily invited totea were not interesting too, but after all they couldn’t quite compare with Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour and Mary— was dreadful how school-children to-day were taught th: nasty word before her name—and Elizabeth, and that awfi Charles II.

Emily always said that this had been a court ( shocking iniquity, and what all these mazes and hidd< gardens were built for was best forgotten, Emily . o; dear, she really must ask these young people the time.

She halted in dismay as she realized that they were in tl middle of a conversation, and a very private one, too.

“N1 insane,” the young lady was saying; ‘sane at last. I know no^ for the first time, why I was born and why I should live : all. It cannot be insanity to find that out. It is the only thir that makes life sane.”

Penny stopped and looked at the shrinking owner of tl timid voice which had spoken and yet had scarcely be heard. The time, David said, was exactly ten minutes pa four. It was their turn to be startled as Emily’s friend sai

“Oh, dear!” in a horrified voice, and rushed out of the gardf with her scarf and umbrella aflutter.

“I probably frightened her,” Penny said, smiling now, b with the deep colour of embarrassment still clinging to h cheeks.

David said nothing. He was wondering why on earth elder females who wanted to know the time just had to come ov at that moment. Why on earth hadn’t she asked the man wt had been so near her? Why had she chosen to interrupt then And now Penny was pretending to laugh at herself and h serious phrases, and when she spoken again it would be abo some ordinary thing, but not about the moment they h; both felt so intensely. He knew that, and yet hoped he w wrong, as he watched the varying emotions in her face. Go he thought suddenly, there isn’t an expression on her fa that I cannot read now, there isn’t one movement of h body that I don’t know off by heart, and yet I cannot be su of her. Knowing, yet not knowing. Perhaps that was wh kept people plunging more deeply into love, knowing and y not knowing. Love was wild contrast: you knew, yet you we unsure; you trusted, yet you were jealous; you were amazi that you had found so much, and yet you wanted more; yc were content with one woman, yet wanted her to be hundred women; you were tied to her more closely with eve hour you spent with her, tied hand and foot, and yet y< were free in a strange new way, startled with such freedom; you were relaxed—feeling, here I am happy, here I am at home—and yet you knew tension and constant effort. Constant effort in a love that had been effortless and natural— because you were unsure, jealous, demanding, desirous, painfully conscious of your own lack of worth—perhaps that was love. Perhaps love lived on constant effort, however effortless and natural it seemed.

Penny was speaking, and he had been right. She was saying, “I had a letter from Mother yesterday. She is coming to London, and she will probably be here next weekend. So no Oxford next Sunday, David!” “Are the family coming too?” David asked. I’ll have to meet Penny’s father soon, he was thinking. But it would have been better to wait until he had gone down from Oxford with a job all nicely landed.

Three hundred a year, sir, with extras on the side to bring it to four hundred. And prospects. Yes, we are young, sir, but—after all, David admitted to himself at this moment, there weren’t so very many young men in Britain who earned four hundred a year to start with.

Penny had been saying that her mother was coming alone, which was strange, and so very suddenly, which was even stranger.

“Probably she has become exhausted or exasperated by those Bonnier Bairns and Restored Ruins and wants to get away from them all. If she is in London during next weekend, why not bring her up to Oxford? I’ll be the very perfect, gentle guide.”

Penny’s frown disappeared.

“That’s a wonderful idea. We could give her a marvelous day, and she could get to know you properly, and–-” she broke off, her eyes excited, her whole face alive with her delight in such a chance to show David as host.

“Yes,” David said, reading her thoughts.

“We could use an ally in your family camp. How much have you written to them? About us, I mean?”

“Only sideways, darling. You see, it is sort of difficult in my family to mention the word ” love.” Every one would get embarrassed.

But my letters weren’t very successful. I thought that if I mentioned your name here and there, sort of slipped it in, as it were, that would be their cue. They would start asking questions about you. But they didn’t.” Penny wrinkled her brow thoughtfully.

“I tried at Christmas too, to know how matters stood. But I found that awfully Somehow, every time I got the conversation arounc it would be snatched out of my mouth.”

“Never mind,” he said consolingly, ‘your mother was soon as she sees us together. What’s that thing we supposed to have? Intuition?”

“Grandfather MacLntyre has it too,” Penny said.

“I i sure he has guessed about us from my letters. He do much, either, of course. He just slips in a little senti ” Give my regards to David when you see him.” B enough.”

David laughed this time. So that was enough, was Penny know that her grandfather knew?

“Does that approves or not?” he asked.

“Of course he does. He wouldn’t mention you of Then she stared at him as her lighthearted remark less pleasant idea. David was following her train of thought.

“Perh; mother doesn’t approve,” he said gently, watching tl on Penny’s face.

“That would make things rather wouldn’t it?” Penny didn’t answer.

“Impossible?” David asked.

“No,” she said quickly, and tightened her hand in 1 she seemed surprised at her own intensity.

“No,” she more quietly. She looked up at his expressionless faci ing her so intently.

“No, David,” she said, with a wai and the worry had left her eyes.

“You see, I am in li David said, “I don’t hear that often enough.” He his voice light, and his reward was a laugh from Pe hell, he thought, in sudden anger with himself. the are as bad as the Scots, who won’t even mention “love,” because it is embarrassing; they’ve always go the word “love” into a half-joke, for if they can lau it they won’t be in so much danger of being lai What’s wrong with us, anyway? Who is going to anyone except the spiteful, and who cares about thi His voice became serious.

“Anyone looking at yoi could tell why I love you. But why you love me is s hard to understand. So keep telling me.

Penny, that love me. I need a lot of convincing about that. Anc you love me, anyway? Why, Penny?” He put his arms round her and kissed her violently.

“And I bet that old boy over there, studying the box hedge, has been wondering how long it would take me to do that.” Hell, retreating into the famous remark again. He glanced over his shoulder.

“Hello! He’s gone. Good Lord, imagine that! We’re alone!” He kissed her again. He felt her body relax against his, and then he heard the rush and scramble of many pairs of flat-heeled sensible shoes as a cohort of schoolgirls swept into the garden.

“Hell’s bells,” David said under his breath. He took Penny’s arm, and they left the little garden, now a mass of green-and- white hat-bands, all volunteering different information in their high-pitched voices to a thoroughly bewildered schoolmistress. “All we want,” he said savagely, ‘is to be left alone. It doesn’t seem much to ask, but there must be a conspiracy against it. Lord, perhaps that is why people have to marry . to be allowed to be left alone.”

Outside the Maze, a park-keeper looked at them gloomily from under his peaked cap, and reminded them in the voice of doom that It would soon be closed.

Every one, he said pointedly, was leaving.

“Oh, that’s all right,” David said encouragingly.

“If we get lost we’ll wait until you come to fetch us.” The keeper did not seem at all cheered by such cooperation.

“Don’t worry about him,” David told Penny, as he took her arm and led her into a narrow lane of grass bordered by tall clipped hedges.

“All he wants is to get home to his tea or to have a pint of bitter at the Barge Aground. And he couldn’t leave here, in any case, until it is time to knock off duty. What’s more, this is the best part of the day in here; no pack of schoolgirls baying at our heels. And it is warmer too. Even the wind finds it difficult to reach the centre of the Maze.”

“Yes, it is warmer,” Penny agreed, with some surprise. Somehow she hadn’t noticed how cold it had been in the more open gardens until she had felt the contrast in here. When she was with David she never seemed to notice anything very much, except what he said or how he looked.

“Temperature rising steadily.” He halted as they came to a block of hedge.

“Well, this couldn’t have been the right path after all. Now, either we can start all over again or we can stay here. If we were very astute and walked a couple of miles we probably would reach the centre of the Maze. Or we could quite possibly walk a couple of miles and find ourselves back here.

What do you think?”

“I think we ought to save ourselves the trouble,” Penny said.

“After all, I suppose one path looks exactly like another, so that I’ve really seen all the Maze in the first few minutes.”

“Or we could be very coy, and you could run away and we’d both get lost—you running away, and I giving chase. That used to be one of the chief sports here in earlier days. Maids-in-waiting or the Windsor Beauties all around, gay girlish laughter, manly oaths.”

“A complicated way of arranging your pleasures. And it would be so very unkind to the old keeper: we’d get lost separately instead of together, and then he would have twice the work to do. He’d be late for that pint of bitter. We couldn’t do that, could we?”

“No, we couldn’t do that to him,” David agreed, and they both began to laugh.

“We’ll get out easily enough, so that we can stay as long as possible in here. We took the first turn to the left, then to the right, and again, to the left. Reverse that, and we’ll come out in time to let the old boy have his tea at a nice warm fire. I’m all against cruelty to park-keepers.” And then David, watching her face, put aside all pretence of joking. His voice became serious.

“Penny, darling.” He took her in his arms, and kissed her as he had wanted to kiss her since the first minute they had met that day.

The long kiss was over, and he drew back just for a moment to see her face again. She met his eyes, her arms tightened round his shoulders.

She said, in a low voice, intense in its honesty, “Oh, David, I am so happy.”

“I love you,” he answered. He kissed her again. At this moment, holding her, knowing that she loved him, he was happy too: the only moment, he thought, that one is completely, really, truly, safely happy. Could happiness only be measured in moments? That was the difference of being a man and being a woman in love. A woman in love would say, “I am happy.” Being in love was enough. But when could a man say it and not measure it in moments? When he had possessed her and was sure of her? When she was safely married to him? Or was he ever sure?

*I love you,” he repeated. He pretended to smile, but Penny, looking up at him quickly as she heard the strained note in his voice, saw the lines above his mouth deepen, not with laughter, but with some emotion nearer pain. For a moment his unhappiness in love reached out to draw her into his unsatisfied longing. I don’t want to hurt him, ever, ever, she thought. I only want to make him happy as I am happy, yet all I have done is to torture. I am cheating somehow: I am being dishonest somehow, and yet …

“I do love you, David,” she said.

“I do.” “I know,” he said gently. He smiled now, and ruffled her hair—any piece of foolishness to chase the worry out of her eyes. He cursed himself for having let the disguise slip from his face, so she had seen too deeply into his real feelings. He thought, I’m damned if I’ll blackmail her with pity. / cannot go on like this; I cannot bear seeing you and yet not seeing you, loving you and yet not having proof of your love. That was the easy way to win a girl: blackmail with pity, playing on her desire to have you happy as you want to be happy. And I’m damned if I’ll force her into anything before she makes up her own mind. That was another easy way to win, and then, ultimately, to lose her. When she comes to me, he thought, she will come because she wants me. As I want her. And then I’ll have her for ever, not just for a year or two years. I’ll be sure.

“For ever,” he said aloud.

She astounded him by throwing her arms round him and kissing him with passion as intense as his own.

“Penny,” he said unsteadily.

“Penny.”

And then the bell sounded the closing of the maze, breaking the moment with its harsh voice.

“A sense of humour,” David said, as they retraced their steps, ‘is obviously a necessity in love. Otherwise you’d become a solid chunk of frustration.”

Penny nodded, busy with the technique of combing her hair, powdering her nose, and looking into the small mirror of her handbag. She was thinking that the short distance to the entrance was considerably longer than they had imagined.