Friends and Lovers (39 page)

Penny’s colour deepened.

“That I want to hear you say that just as vehemently when you are sixty.” She thought over that.

“Darling, I do sound overconfident.”

David shook his head.

“You haven’t even begun to know your own power over–-” He stopped, released her hand. The waiter wheeled the table of hors d’ceuvre before them.

“Well,” Penny said, with pretended lightness as the waiter eventually departed, ‘if we are in a restaurant I suppose we may as well eat.

Besides, I had no lunch to-day … And if we weren’t here, where else could be talk? It is cold in the streets tonight.”

David glanced at her quickly.

“So you are in rebellion too?” he asked quietly.

Penny nodded.

“You know, David, sometimes I feel as if we were being hounded. As if the whole world were in a conspiracy to interrupt us, or interfere with us, or even to separate us. Sometimes it is accidental, but sometimes I feel it is really done on purpose. We just are not allowed to be alone, are we? And, when you come to think of it, not one single person has tried to make things easier for us.

Even our friends give us advice against marrying, against concentrating so much on each other. You can see them thinking, “It won’t last.” And the nicest of them, the kindest—well, they feel sorry.

David, we’ll show all of them, won’t we?” He pushed away his plate. He said with a sudden return of bitterness, “Perhaps your friends are right. I’ve asked too much from you, and I give you too little in return.” He pushed aside the glass of water and felt its coldness spill on his hand. I’ve nothing to give, he was thinking. Nothing.

And now, less than ever. Just words and waiting and talking and promises and words.

“I have had a lot of decisions forced on me in the last five days. Penny.”

She kept silent while the waiter served the omelette. She thought of Margaret. I expected this, she realized, but I hoped it wouldn’t be so.

Margaret … “Let’s begin at the beginning,” she said, more calmly than she felt.

“I know very little of what actually has been happening, you see. I guessed from your letters that there were difficulties.”

David began totell her the brief story of this week. As she had hoped, the telling of it did him good.

Now he was talking about Margaret … After the funeral there had been a long discussion about her future. She had had her own proposals all ready, of course. They were the same old ideas that he should share the house in Cory’s Walk with Margaret and Florence Rawson, and be responsible mostly for its upkeep once he had a job.

Margaret needed only a few years, and by that time she (and Rawson too, naturally) would have had some success, and David would not have to worry about anything. And every one would live happily ever after. Margaret was quite confident about that.

Then David had stated frankly that a much more concrete plan was needed, something practical and not merely a vague kind of ambition.

This suggestion had not been well received. So David had left them and gone back to Fentonsteven’s flat, which had been lent h that neither Margaret nor of this arrangement con vi good discussing anything had gone to see Marg; Music.

He had told them exact They had been understam gar et was a good student, were highly doubtful: she sides, success would not c years, and even afer the f lished. That was a slow, p Margaret could complete tuition and then be quali standing. That kind of we let yourself accept it: it w the piano as well as finar did combine teaching witi artists in any field who d problem.

“Yes,” Penny said.

“And i ” She doesn’t want tote with compromises you new “I suppose you didn’t te ” I could hardly do that would be a failure.”

Penny shook her head i better now than later. So anyway.”

“But, Penny, she wouldn this was only an excuse c her. She is a complicated p And a complicating one as long as she has two har is so helpless. Why doesn’t David looked at her in quite so indignant.

“What ] ing except in music.”

Penny did not reply to t “After all. Penny, you wing for book-keeping, we Margaret’s position and had to worry about your own future.” “I would,” Penny said angrily. Then she restrained herself, and tried to calm her voice.

“So what did Margaret decide? The year’s tuition and expenses, or a job to make her independent?”

“I wish you wouldn’t think of it that way. Penny. It only makes the whole thing more difficult for me.” He was hurt too now. The fact that he had asked himself through a sleepless night why Margaret had not the guts to look for a job, why she had to be so helpless and abandoned in a century when women could earn their own living, did not help to smooth his temper.

“Well, that’s that,” Penny said. Her voice was abrupt. She stared at David unbelievingly. She thought of several truthful things to say about Margaret, but she stopped herself in time.

“Yes,” David said gloomily, ‘that’s that. I can see no other way.

Penny. I’ve tried thinking up plans until I felt I was going stark raving mad. It means,” he paused, and his voice became cold and emotionless, ‘it means that I shall have to support Margaret for a year. We have two relatives—Mother’s brothers, both married, each with families of their own.

They came to the funeral, of course, and they were kind enough to make some gestures, but—well, one is a lawyer in Wales; the other is a doctor in Yorkshire. They invited Margaret to stay with them until she had decided what to do. Their wives looked quite relieved when she refused. She doesn’t want to leave London, you see.” Penny said nothing.

“I went into the cost thoroughly to-day,” David continued, in the same cold voice.

“It will take, altogether, more than half of what I earn. After a year she will be fully qualified and can teach. Anyway, she will be on her own then.” “I wonder,” Penny said bitterly, and then wished she had not said it.

For a moment they looked at each other across the table as if they were strangers.

Then David looked down at the plate of salad, and laid aside his fork.

“I don’t want coffee, either,” Penny said, in a strangled voice. She knew she was unreasonable, even petulant. But it seemed to her as if David was treating his sister with more than necessary care. It paid to be helpless.

Penny thought, with rising anger: if only women were sufficiently helpless, then they could always rely on men being foolish enough to rise to their defence.

Then, as she watched David pay the bill with that tight, tense expression on his face which terrified her, her anger vanished. She rose quickly, afraid that her emotions were going to make her break down in this restrained and elegant restaurant. She hurried into the street, not waiting for David, and began walking quickly away. Then she realized that she had taken the wrong direction, and halted. She stood there, with her face averted, not knowing what to do now, feeling what a fool she must look and was.

“Penny,” David said beside her. He took her arm, and held it firmly, ignoring the slight movement she had made to draw away from him.

“Penny.” He kissed her.

“I should have done that in the restaurant,” he said.

“There isn’t any problem that a kiss can’t begin to solve.”

She laughed happily through her tears. He gave her his handkerchief, and smiled as he watched her blow her nose. Then he folded her arm through his, and they retraced their steps.

“I’m sorry. Penny. I told you tonight that I’ve asked too much of you and given you too little in return. You have every right to be bitter. You would be better off if you had never met me.”

“I wouldn’t. And I’m not bitter. Not with you. Oh, David, how awful it is to feel we are hurting each other. How easily a quarrel can start. Just suddenly. Out of talk.” “Yes,” David said, with a smile to take the edge off his words, ‘that had all the beginnings of a good one, hadn’t it?”

She nodded.

“We hurt each other. And it was all so stupid, for neither of us deserved to be hurt.” She gripped his hand, as she wondered what she would have done if he had not come after her, if he had not taken her arm and kissed her. She suddenly reached up to kiss his cheek.

“I adore you,” she said.

They halted at the corner of the street. The wind was shrewd, and the passers-by looked at them curiously. David glanced at his watch.

“Shall we go into another restaurant and have some food?” he suggested teasingly.

“Let’s walk. I have some news for you too, David.” She drew close to him as they walked, ignoring both the wind and the passers-by.

“I

thought I wouldn’t tell you this evening, because you were so depressed.

But it would explain a lot … why I was so angry and stupid and all the things I don’t want to seem to you.” She halted, suddenly aware of the street which they had entered, crowded with Saturday-night holiday makers.

“Where can we talk, David? How far away is George’s flat?”

He looked at her, unable to conceal his amazement.

“Not too far,” he said guardedly.

“Ten minutes by taxi.” He made no move. He stood there looking at her, watching her face, asking her no question, just standing there, saying nothing, watching her.

“There’s a taxicab rank, David,” Penny said, pretending to be practical.

“So it is,” he said, with an equally good pretence of surprise. He smiled, raised one hand, and hailed the first cab, just as he had wanted to do ever since he had seen the row of taxis some five minutes ago. With the other hand he tightened his grip on Penny’s arm.

The view from George’s flat was one of rooftops. When they entered it from the tiny square of hall David switched on the light automatically, and then wished he hadn’t been so quick to cut out the magic of the clear night pouring through the large double windows.

But Penny must have sensed the sudden nervousness which had attacked him.

She walked into the room, looking round it with careful interest. He was amazed at her calmness.

“Some day,” she was saying, ‘we’ll have a room like this, and a window like this. Only better than this, for it will be ours.” And how happy we shall be … Not for just one day here, one night there, but for always.

People who were married did not know how lucky they were to have a home, a place to be together, four walls around one life.

“Put out the light, David; we are blotting out the stars.” She crossed the room to the windows.

“I like rooftops,” she said. “When you have rooftops you have the sky.” She turned almost instinctively to meet David’s kiss halfway. He caught her in his arms.

They stood there, straining against each other with the pain and desperation of unfulfilled love. And then, suddenly, he released her, dropping his arms as if they did not wish to touch her, moving his body as if to step away from her. But their eyes did not leave each other. Penny’s hand rested on his shoulder, then it tightened, and her arms slipped round him, drawing him back to her again.

“I love you, David,” she said. Tonight, as she looked up at him, holding him, sharing the pain and anguish she found in his eyes, the words had become a promise. Not a promise to be taken lightly. A promise to be kept and repeated for ever.

“I love you,” he answered, and in his words there was all the feeling of a vow.

The room’s darkness was broken by moonlight. Its pale white light spilled in a pool on the floor before the window, overflowed gently into the shadows, diluting their depths into ghost like transparence.

Penny stirred and then relaxed against David, feeling the strength and peace of his body, the peace in her heart. His arm tightened round her as if to reassure himself. He gently kissed her eyes and lips and throat, and then his head rested against her breast. From this couch the sky, with its sprinkled stars, was all that could be seen of the world outside. There was only the sound of fading traffic coming up from the street below: dim, distant, remote from this silver-shadowed room. Time itself seemed to have stopped.

Chapter Twenty-nine.

VIEW BY MOONLIGHT.

When the curtains were drawn and the lamps switched on, and Penny had combed her hair, they sat down together with lighted cigarettes.

Penny was in one armchair, David in the other, across from her, on the opposite side of the hearth; because, as he said, he wanted to look at her.

“How domestic this all is,” Penny said, with some surprise, and glanced round the room.

“I don’t feel at all like an abandoned woman.”

“As long as you only abandon yourself to me for the rest of your life I shall’t object,” David answered. He smiled, and then saw that Penny was watching him.

“Well?” he asked, “You too?”

“Yes, I’m so happy, David.” He need only look at her shining eyes, at the soft, eager smile on her lips, to find the proof of her words.

“You are so much more beautiful than I ever dreamed,” he said suddenly serious.

“Penny, why should you love a chap like me? What makes you?”

When she didn’t answer that, but only watched him with that warm smile on her lips, he went on, “You know. Penny, I’ve always been afraid that I’ll lose you. Even now ..

” His voice hesitated.

“Even now, at this moment, I suddenly realize what a nightmare this life would be if, having known you, I lost you.” “We shall’t lose each other,” Penny said, ‘for we shall’t hurt each other.

That is the promise we made, isn’t it?” Then she became serious, thoughtful. Her voice was hesitant in its earnestness.

“I

realized tonight something that I hadn’t realized before. I don’t think girls do realize it until they meet a man like you. No one tells us, you see. All we are told about men is that we should distrust them because they have the power to hurt us. Yet tonight I know that I have every bit as much power to hurt you as you have to hurt me.” She paused.

“It is a terrific responsibility, this being in love.”

David rose and came over to her.

“If we remember that,” he said, ‘we won’t ever lose each other.” He took her cigarette and stubbed it out in an ashtray. He sat down beside her in the armchair, pulling her legs over his lap, sliding his arm around her waist.