Friends and Lovers (42 page)

“Moderate” is much more soothing, isn’t it? But we wouldn’t be bogus, for anyone who did come to us would have a pleasant house for their money. And they’d be all the happier for it, too. There is nothing more dismal than dull, stereotyped rooms: it makes people into a pattern of dimness. The trouble is that unless you have lashings of money to spend on a house, it is almost impossible to have an exciting one. It’s silly. Charm and taste don’t—that is, they shouldn’t—depend on money. In fact, money often kills them. Funny, isn’t it, how poverty or wealth can both kill taste? One because it crushes people—you reach the stage when a loaf of bread on the table is more important than a vase of flowers on the window-sill. And the other because it takes away the need for any personal effort—you can hire people, can’t you?” “Yes, my sweet,” Marston said, with a smile.

“But Bunny isn’t given to philanthropy. And he would have to raise your salary. He couldn’t go on paying you that miserable three pounds a week.

He’s an astute blighter really: he only pays you so little because he knows that jobs are so scarce.”

“Well, even if he did have to pay me more he wouldn’t lose money. The idea would make some profit; I know it would. For there are far more people with little money to spend than there are with lots of money.”

“But it all means a lot of work and effort for a comparatively small profit.

Can you imagine Bunny’s genius thriving on anything less than a guinea a yard? Can you imagine him giving up any time or thought to selecting good-looking designs and textures and colours for half a crown a yard, as you suggest? See, darling?”

“Yes. But I could do it. I’d love it. It would be fun beating the ramp on prices, and helping others to do it. I wouldn’t decorate rooms, of course, so Bunny need not fear that I’d steal any of his thunder. I’d choose fabrics and furniture that looked good, and weren’t expensive, and have them all there for the customers to select as they pleased. In any case, people ought to choose their own rooms, just as they choose their own clothes.”

“That’s heresy, if not blasphemy. Don’t ever say that to Bunny or he will blow up into fragments. The only good taste is his taste. Or didn’t you know?” Marston asked, with mock gravity.

“Well, I suppose we all feel that way.”

“You are much too loyal ever to succeed in the interior decorating business.

Or any business. What are bosses for except to sneer at?

One good sneer a day keeps the doctor away.” Lillian Marston laughed.

Strange, she was thinking, how I always find being with Lorrimer such an easy way to spend an afternoon. Here I came up, all full of problems about Chris, and I’ve only mentioned him in asides, as if everything were going swimmingly with us. Of course, it was really no good asking Lorrimer for advice: people who were happily in love always thought life was so simple and why aren’t you like me—look, it’s easy. Not so damned easy. Not by a long chalk.

“And what if Bunny doesn’t like this room?” Marston said suddenly.

“I have thought of that too. If he looks round, and then concentrates on his sherry—and at the end says, “It is too divine, darling. Now, I must really run” —I shall say goodbye with a sweet smile. And I’ll say nothing at all about my idea.”

“But you’ll go on thinking about it.”

“Of course. It is sound, isn’t it? And I’d probably start going cuckoo if I had only cl yard to deal with in my job. Bunny.”

She paused, hesitated, then rose to get a large foldi table.

“Here is something else she said, in a much too offhanc to show you, I’m afraid, as y time … They are designs for furniture and fabrics and colou Marston raised an eyebrow folder.

“I’d like this one,” she and pleasure. She held up the ( angles.

“Yes,” she added, “I do Lorrimer. But where do I find room ready for all these pleasa are not built like that, my swei fully, almost pityingly.

“It woulc ” But supposing people who v alter one, were to choose the from these drawings? Then tl architect and say, “Fit these them with walls.”

“And the architect would cl ” If he’s a good architect he i a customer who wanted an int& “I’ve only one more touch o: even good ones, don’t always w ” We don’t know that until w’ then what is needed are bette] of them.”

Marston smiled and rose, s black suit into its neat line, to the correct position on fc imagined extra inch in disapi beginning to sound serious. h( afraid. I have to dress. Chris aunt has just died and left h Isn’t it surprising what the old come along? There will be lots

“Well,” Penny began, “I I know. I The usual mixtu always gave her voice a slight trying to refuse an invitation. Marston never failed to be amused by this. Why worry about not doing what you didn’t want to do, anyway?

Really, Lorrimer could be so quaint at times.

“I’ll make myself presentable,” Marston said.

“Where’s that hidden boudoir of yours?” She opened the wrong cupboard door, and then the right one.

“How’s your David?” she asked unexpectedly, as she finished powdering. She watched Penny’s face light up with sudden interest.

“He’s well. I had a letter this morning.” And one yesterday and one the day before. Wonderful letters … Wasn’t Marston ever going to leave.

Penny wondered.

“Don’t you ever run out of things to say to each other?” Marston asked teasingly.

“I suppose you are going to spend the whole evening quite happily writing a letter to him. Most touching.” Her attitude had always been one of tolerant amusement combined with unexpressed liking for these two. At least, it had begun that way. But now, although she kept up the pretence of amusement, she was no longer so very amused.

Penny coloured slightly and smiled.

“It can be fun writing letters,” she said.

“Not my cup of tea.” There was the slight edge of irritation in her light voice.

“How is Chris?” Penny asked quietly, suddenly realizing she had been meant to ask about him from the start of this visit.

Marston shrugged her shoulders.

“Oh, he’s all right.” She stubbed out her cigarette half finished, and began pulling on her gloves with exaggerated care.

Penny looked at her friend in dismay.

“I think Chris is charming.”

“He can also be rather tiresome.”

Penny said nothing, but she was thinking that Marston would not always be twenty-two, or look like Garbo.

“He has become so possessive recently. All this money from his aunt makes him dream of a nice place in the country and settling down. Can you imagine it? He is in such deadly earnest nowadays. To tell you the truth, he is becoming rather a bore.”

Penny began to speak, and then changed her mind.

“Now, what was that?” Marston said, her good humour returning.

“Don’t you ever want to be married? You always seemed to have such a lot of fun with Chris.”

Marston managed to produce a laugh.

“How embarrassing we are becoming, like Buchmanites or something. What a quaint idea, Lorrimer. Of course every one wants to be married. Some day.

But not yet. Unless, of course, you have the luck to meet some one like your David, and then I suppose you grab him while you can.”

“I didn’t grab him.” At least, not that way.

“Don’t lose your hair over it, darling. After all, you are damned lucky.

And you know it, old girl.”

“I know it. But I never thought you did, Lillian. You always think I’m rather a fool about it all.”

“I must admit that you could have a lot more fun than you do have.

What harm is in that?”

“I probably wouldn’t have David for very long.”

“Nonsense, darling. You’d always have him. One sees that kind of man every now and again. It is easy to live with him: one has only to look at his wife to see that.”

“And one always thinks how lucky she is.”

Lillian Marston looked quickly at Penny’s expressionless face. Was she being sarcastic? How odd, for Lorrimer.

“Isn’t she?” Marston asked sharply.

“Of course. And perhaps he is lucky too, although it may take other men to see that. But there is something more than luck attached. Oh, yes, I agree, the first meeting is a matter of pure luck. But after that it is something else.”

“Is it? Darling, I’m boring you. We are talking in circles.

Besides–-” She glanced at the wrist-watch which Ronald had given her last year. She still wore it, not from any sentimental reason, although Chris never quite seemed to believe that, but because it was such a pleasure to look at its charming design.

“Oh, I’m late … I must fly.” Her voice returned to its naturally light tone, and she gave Penny one of her slow, controlled smiles.

“Don’t worry about me, darling. Life is really very gay and amusing—if you don’t think about it. Don’t forget to ask me to that party for Bunny. I’d adore watching his concealed emotions. But don’t make this place too attractive, or he will think you must be overpaid.”

Penny was smiling again.

“Oh, he isn’t such a monster as that, Lillian.”

“Darling, he is the kind of man who calculates whether his friends are worth a five-or a ten-shilling dinner before he asks them out.”

Marston picked up her handbag, took one last look at herself in the mirror, and said,

“Now don’t work too hard. After all, no room is worth too much effort. And it will look marvelous, I’m sure, once you get the smell of turpentine out of it. What does David think of all this?”

“He hasn’t seen it yet. He is coming here some time in May.” “You know,” Lillian Marston said, half teasingly, half accusingly, “I’d like to meet him properly some time.”

“Of course you will,” Penny said conventionally, but she must have also shown some embarrassment—she remembered David’s point-blank refusal to meet any of her friends meanwhile: I’ve little enough time with you to waste it on other people—for Marston jumped to the obvious but wrong conclusion.

“Oh, don’t worry, Lorrimer,” she said, with amusement. “You know he will be perfectly safe. I have my rules, you know. I never poach on my friends’ preserves That was what was known as a good exit line. Penny thought, as the door closed and Lillian’s footsteps began their promised flying: there was no answer one could think up in time. But as Penny walked over to her table and cleared a space for writing-paper and elbow-room she was thinking of several replies.

“I suppose David wouldn’t be safe if she hadn’t her little rules? I suppose he would fall for her if she decided to raise an eyebrow? Of all the–-” Her sense of humour began to reassert itself. She was even smiling broadly as she dated her letter. And then she began to laugh. The only thing that spoiled this joke was the fact that she couldn’t tell it to David somehow.

She stopped laughing then.

She rose and walked restlessly about the room. The open cupboard door reminded her to close it, but she paused there for a minute to look at her reflection in its mirror. What am I, who am I, that a man should love me for ever? Why should I expect such happiness, so much more than many girls ever get? Am I as vain and selfish in my way as Lillian Marston is in hers? She stared at the reflection facing her so seriously. Her eyes were tired with worry and too little sleep.

Her hair was untidy; she found a comb and tried to make it look better, but tonight it wouldn’t go the way she wanted it.

“You look a fright,” she told herself cruelly. Why, she thought again, should I expect so much from life? She closed the door quickly and walked back to the table. She brushed the sudden tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. Stupid, she accused herself; you are overtired.

After a space, when she could start thinking again, she knew the real reason.

It was this separation. If she could see David she wouldn’t have these attacks of gloom. If she could hear his voice she would be confident again.

She picked up his letter and began reading it. She could feel the sudden attack of doubt and depression lifting from her heart.

“I am hearing his voice,” she told herself. She could even hear the urgency of his words. Keep writing me. Penny. Tell me you love me over and over again. Tell me in fifty different ways. Keep telling me. He too was never sure: he too wanted reassurance.

She remembered their last night together. She had awakened at dawn to feel his arm round her waist, to find him raised on one elbow, leaning over her, looking down at her, watching her as he had drawn her out of sleep. He had not moved, had kept looking at her, searching her eyes with his. At last he had said quite simply, “Why?

Why, Penny?” She had smiled, stirring happily in his arms, not knowing what to say. There were a hundred reasons, big and little.

Where could she begin? Then she had put her arms round him and drawn him down to be kissed.

“Because I love you,” she had said, and kissed him again.

When we are together, she thought, a look or a touch is all that is needed to reassure us. But when we are apart we need all the courage that only words can bring. He feels that too. And realizing that, she was happier again: if they were both in need of reassuring, then that was good. That way they would never forget the miracle of being loved.

She began to write. There was a soft, warm smile on her lips as the words flowed on smoothly. This was her first real love-letter in the true sense of the word. It had taken a long time to find courage enough for it, she thought. How afraid we all were, and out of fear how we held back what should be given without asking. And as she wrote it seemed as if her thoughts filled the room with the warmth of memories recalled, with the excitement of future hopes. Its loneliness had vanished.

Chapter Thirty-two.

HOUSEWARMING.

By May full summer had come that year. It astounded and delighted foreign visitors and added another topic of conversation to English dinner-tables. A poor view was taken of the drought—in the Cotswolds cottagers were fetching water by the bucket from far-off wells—and of this appalling heat-wave, with the temperature soaring around seventy-six degrees. (People who tried to introduce a description of Singapore or of New York in summer were politely listened to, but equally silently disbelieved. ) Penny was much too occupied to worry about the weather, and enjoyed the luxury of open windows and the view of green leaves, already at midsummer growth, on the back-gardens’ trees. She had become accustomed to the breathless quality of London air. She would probably shiver now in Edinburgh’s bracing climate.