Future Indefinite (14 page)

For a moment, neither spoke. It was Alice who looked away first, of course. She discovered that her cup was empty, but the effort of going for another was beyond her.

“The suggestion is absurd. For me to intrude on him, to presume to advise him, when he knows the situation—indeed the whole world—so much better than I do…it would be an intolerable presumption. I refuse. Please indicate to Mrs. McKay…Where is this Mrs. McKay?” Alice glanced uneasily at the door to her bedroom.

“I left her prostrate on a bed in the Bull in Norwich. She is suffering from lack of sleep, because Valian days do not coincide with ours at the moment. She also wanted to make a telephone call. You wish me to convey your regrets to the Service, then?”

Alice wondered if it was possible to shock this formidable lady. “You may tell them to go and get stuffed.”

The basilisk expression did not change. “The sentiments, if not the precise phraseology, are exactly what I predicted.”

Again, a silence, and this time longer. Miss Pimm appeared to be waiting for something, but Alice could not imagine what. She was certainly not going to go and wag her finger at Edward on behalf of strangers. Even if she knew all the facts, which she certainly did not, and even if she thoroughly disapproved of his actions, which she might, she would not presume to meddle. So what was there left to discuss?

“Have you anything planned for this evening?” Miss Pimm inquired softly.

Try to finish painting the ceiling and the cupboards, by the light of the paraffin lamp. Then open a tin of sardines or something for supper. Whatever it was, it would taste of turpentine. And then go to bed with a candle and
Wuthering Heights
. She could not even play the gramophone, because it was packed in under the bed behind her books and pictures and general paraphernalia. Come to think of, it the kitchen table and the rug were on top of the bed.

“Not much,” Alice admitted.

“Then you shall come and have dinner with us at the Bull. I can bring you back afterward, if you wish.”

Why should she not wish?

“The last time we met, you didn’t drive.”

“‘Didn’t’ and ‘couldn’t’ are not the same,” Miss Pimm said firmly. She rose and headed for the teapot. “Go and change.”

Alice opened her mouth and then closed it, knowing that arguing with a
stranger
was not likely to be productive. Besides, the thought of a decent meal in civilized surroundings had a definite appeal. She hauled herself out of the chair and walked across to put her cup and saucer in the sink.

“Don’t,” Miss Pimm added, “put on anything you would mind losing. Just in case you change your mind.”

Alice swung around, fright and anger boiling up together. “Are you planning to abduct me? Is that what you’re hinting? Because—”

“Of course not. If I planned a kidnapping, Mrs. Pearson, I should not have wasted all this time in conversation.”

“Mrs. McKay, Mrs. Pearson,” Miss Pimm said.

Alice was cautious at first, unsure of the correct protocol. “I trust you had a comfortable journey?” seemed a peculiarly banal question to pose to a traveler from another world—but the mysterious Euphemia turned out to be extraordinarily ordinary, almost disappointing. Her dress was dowdy, her accent working-class Irish, and her manner decidedly unladylike. If she had been smitten by fatigue earlier, she had now recovered, for she sparkled with prankish humor, openly teasing Miss Pimm and making racy little remarks about the handsome soldiers she had seen hanging around the Bull. At a guess, she was in her very early twenties, but she had the confidence of a much older woman.

“The news was good?” Miss Pimm inquired archly.

“Oh, it was grand!” Mrs. McKay said. “They say he’s doing just splendid. Telephones are marvelous, aren’t they?”

The three ladies proceeded to the dining room. It was gloomy and low ceilinged, but it was warm and did not reek of turpentine. At this early hour they had the place to themselves and were granted a table next to the fire and tended by an antiquated and very deaf waiter. As soon as they sat down, Miss Pimm withdrew from the conversation, behaving as if she had cast an invisibility spell on herself. Mrs. McKay, in contrast, began chattering breezily about the rigors of occult travel, how wonderful it was to be Home in England, even if only for a brief stay, the disgraceful weather, the changes she had seen already, and the misfortunes of a couple named Pepper, who had won the lottery for the first postwar leave and had both been stricken with flu a few days after they arrived.

Olympus would not have sent an unprepossessing ambassador, and Alice soon realized that her first impressions had not done Euphemia justice. She was personable and witty in a sharp, juvenile way. If she would just get a fashionable haircut, if she weren’t wearing too much powder, an ill-fitting dress of dowdy brown, and a rouge that clashed horribly with her coloring, then she would be quite a beauty. Men would probably regard her as a stunner already, for her hair was a cascade of fiery auburn and she had an impressive figure. To be fair, her makeup and clothing must be other peoples’ castoffs, for she could have brought nothing with her from Next-door. Who was Alice to criticize when her own hair was full of paint?

The food was vastly better than wartime London had offered, although the only vegetables available in February were turnips and soggy potatoes. Alice gorged herself on roast pork, washing it down with an excellent white wine. Her indulgence in the wine might possibly be an aftereffect of Miss Pimm’s driving—just because the old witch could see around corners did not mean that she had to keep proving the point—but by the time Alice realized that alcohol might be unwise under the circumstances, it was too late to care. Much to her surprise, she discovered she was enjoying herself more than she had in months.

Eventually, of course, Mrs. McKay got down to business. She confirmed what Miss Pimm had said about Edward—he had returned to Nextdoor in 1917, then walked out of the station and disappeared. Since then there had been no word of him at all. Now, according to reliable reports, he was openly preaching to the natives in some place called Joalvale, professing to be the foretold Liberator.

“He is taking a terrible risk,” she proclaimed earnestly, although it sounded more like
turrible roosk
. “I just don’t know why Zath and his gang did not kill him immediately. It may very well be too late already.”

Too late to do what?

The green eyes widened—she really ought to try mascara on those sandy lashes. “You do know of the prophecies, Mrs. Pearson?”

“Roughly. Please call me Alice.”

“And you must call me Euphemia!” Euphemia took a sip of wine, then leaned forward with a conspiratorially intent expression. Here came the grifter’s patter. “You understand that what he’s doing could have serious repercussions on the poor natives?”

Whose vocabulary was that? Not hers.

Alice said, “I know that Edward insisted he would not do what you say he is now doing. If he has changed his mind, then he must have good reasons for doing so. Did he take anyone with him when he left Olympus?” He had spoken of a girl Ysian, who had become somebody’s cook….

“Oh, no. Well, at least I don’t think so.” Either Mrs. McKay had never considered that possibility or she had not been briefed on it. “There was a lot of muddle just then, of course….”

The query had thrown her off balance and Alice followed up her advantage. “Muddle? What can muddle a coven of sorcerers?”

“A what?” Looking startled, Euphemia took another drink of wine, then began to speak in her normal manner again, as if abandoning a prepared script. “We’re not that! The Chamber attacked Olympus while Edward was away, and he was the first one back after it happened. Just terrible! The houses were all burned. We’ve only just got the place shipshape and Bristol fashion again. And there were deaths! Not all of us managed to escape in time. Several people were never accounted for. We think one of them was a spy who ran away with the killers, but I suppose it’s possible that one of the others went off with Edward…. Why are you asking?”

Alice chewed for a moment while she tried to think of a tactful way of inquiring about Edward’s possible romance. She couldn’t find one. “It must have been quite a shock for him to cross over and find himself in that. And a worse shock for Captain Smedley.” She had forgotten to ask for news of Julian.

“Oh, yes! They organized the Carrots to bury all the dead.”

“
All
the dead? It was that bad?”

“Dozens! Only four of them were strangers, though.”

“And natives don’t count, of course?”

“They count with me!”

Oh lordy! “I beg your pardon. That was unforgivable. They would count with me, too, and I know they would with Edward. We were both raised in Africa, you know….” As Alice struggled to extricate herself from her embarrassment, she noted that Mrs. McKay was blushing bright enough to make the rouge on her cheeks seem pale, but she was sure that she must be as pink herself. How could she have said such an appalling thing?
Alice, you have been drinking too much!

Mercifully, the waiter arrived then and interrupted the conversation. When he hobbled away, leaving offerings of trifle, generously laced with sherry, Alice tried a fresh start.

“Doesn’t one of the prophecies say that the dead will rouse him? The Liberator, I mean. Two years ago, I thought that referred to the dead he saw in Flanders, but perhaps the seeress meant the dead in Olympus?”

Mrs. McKay shrugged vaguely. “Oh, I don’t pretend to be understanding the prophecies.”

Dead
plural, the massacred Carrots? Or dead singular, the girl Ysian? To ask that of this twittery woman would be a waste of time, but obviously something had roused Edward.

Two other parties entered the dining room and were seated. Euphemia seemed to have forgotten or postponed her mission, which Alice had begun to suspect mattered much less to her than the unexplained good news she had received earlier. She was tossing down wine wholesale, as if celebrating something more than a flying visit to England—not that Alice herself was far behind. Drinking had been frowned on during the war, but now it was all right again.

“It is wonderful to be Home again, even if it’s so brief-like. The war must have been terrible?”

Yes, Alice found herself agreeing, it had been very bad. Millions had died. At the end, the flu had come and killed millions more. Even here in England, it had been bad—food shortages, bombs, the daily casualty lists, women working in factories, social upheaval.

“But it is getting better?” Euphemia demanded. “The men are coming back? Things are getting back to normal?”

“Things will never get back to normal, if you mean what was normal before the war.” Somehow—was it the wine talking or reaction to the loneliness of the cottage?—Alice found herself describing the past bombings, the continuing shortages, and now the strikes, the frustrations, the eternal squabbling that filled the newspapers with gloom and made one wonder what good four years of slaughter and sacrifice had accomplished.

Euphemia made sympathetic noises, her green eyes wide. “And the war touched you personally?”

“Too personally.”

“I was told to find a Miss Prescott. Of course, if you would rather not talk about it…”

“There is hardly anything to talk about,” Alice said bitterly. “I was married for less than a week. I had lost a very dear friend in Flanders. He was killed in action the very day that Edward returned to Nextdoor. I married Terry on the rebound, one of those crazy wartime affairs. You probably won’t understand. He was young and brave and terrified. They had this awful urgency, you see, this sense that every day might be their last. They were all so tough and so frightfully fragile at the same time.” The wine drove her onward. “It sounds terrible to say, but it may have been for the—I don’t mean that. It was tragic and I mourn him, of course. What I mean is just I can see now that our marriage was foolish, one of those impetuous wartime romances that might have turned out to be a mistake—”

She clenched her teeth as one might rein in a runaway horse. She had been starved for company so long that her mouth was going to make an ass of her if she gave it half a chance. So much had happened since that bewildering day when Miss Pimm had saved her life and Edward’s with a display of magic. First D’Arcy, then Terry…It was D’Arcy she thought of most, still. Terry had been a transitory madness. The only thing they had had in common was a complete lack of family. A smile, an aura of vulnerability, a lightning romance, a wedding, five frenzied nights of love, a frantic farewell, a telegram…and a cottage.

“I inherited the cottage. It was all he had to leave, his grandfather’s home. His ship went down six days after our wedding. A U-boat. I get a small pension….” She felt guilty every time she spent a penny of it.

She stared down at her empty plate and bit her lip until the pain brought tears to her eyes. Then she took another drink. Her plate was removed. Cheese and biscuits and coffee arrived. The dining room buzzed with conversation, an unfamiliar sound.

After the silence, Euphemia said, “I am terribly, terribly sorry. Our troubles must all seem very trivial to you.”

“No. Not at all. Tell me about Olympus itself. Edward was confoundedly vague about it, and he had so many other things to tell us.”

“Olympus? It’s a monkey house!”

Bewildered, Alice said, “In what way?”

Euphemia seemed to have second thoughts. “Oh, you know—outpost-of-Empire stuff. Exiles in the bush going wild-crazy from boredom. There’s no other stations to visit, no big, fancy Port Said or Singapore within reach. The climate’s so darlin’ that we don’t need to rush off to the hills in the hot season. The men can’t go big-game hunting, because the only weapons around are bows and arrows. There are no letters from Home.”

“And the
Times
is never delivered?”

“Never. Olympus is worse than a lighthouse. We inmates may not admit it, but at times we all became bored to madness. That’s why the Service allows women to be missionaries, dear. Try leaving the little women at home all the time, and they get the crackers. We’re bored, we gossip, we squabble. We—” Euphemia hesitated, then said bitterly, “Monkeys in a monkey house.” She drained her wineglass.

“Oh!”

“The rules don’t apply there, you see. We don’t grow old. The fires don’t cool. We don’t settle into comfortable, down-at-heels middle age.”

Alice was annoyed to discover that this frankness discomfited her. She liked to think of herself as modern. “Edward definitely did not mention that.”

“Ha! No, he was different. Of course he wasn’t there very long, but he was definitely the only man who ever refused Olga Olafson.”

Nettled, Alice said, “I’m not surprised. His morals were always the most rigid thing about him.”

Euphemia found that remark hilarious, and Alice laughed with her.

“To chastity!” Euphemia said, raising her glass, which had mysteriously refilled itself.

Alice clinked it with her own. “In moderation!” They drank. “And how has Captain Smedley fared in Olympus?”

“Oh! Um. Jolly well. Just went off to see if he could help Mr. Exeter. Very popular…” Euphemia’s already flushed complexion became noticeably pinker. “His hand is growing back, you know.”

“No! Really?” Magic in a vague, general sense was hard enough to swallow, although Alice had seen enough of it now to believe in it. To associate a miracle with someone as ordinary and practical as Julian Smedley was somehow more difficult.

“Of course,” Miss Pimm said quietly. The other women both jumped, as if they had forgotten she was there. “Did you ever doubt that it would, Mrs. Pearson?”

“Yes.”

“You should have more faith! A stranger can always heal himself—or herself.” She skewered Alice with an extremely disconcerting stare. Had she grown taller since the evening began or was that just an illusion?

“What—what do you mean?”

“I mean that what you need is a nice tropical vacation.”

“Me?”

“You. Soldiers are not the only people who suffer from battle fatigue. The whole world is suffering from battle fatigue. You have experienced two bereavements in eighteen months. You lost your uncle not long before that, and you thought your cousin also. I suspect your encounter with the Spanish flu was more serious than you admit. Your decision to seclude yourself here in Norfolk was probably very sound, but the vacation I have suggested would be a better alternative.”

Battle fatigue? Shell shock? Alice had never thought of applying those sinister terms to herself. They seemed like a very glib excuse. What she had experienced was nothing to compare with the hell the men in the trenches had endured. “‘Nervous breakdown,’ we used to call it.”

“The name does not matter,” Miss Pimm said firmly. “‘Emotional exhaustion’ would suffice, and you are probably badly run-down physically, also. So why not a holiday—all expenses paid? A few weeks in exotic surroundings? Perhaps not quite as relaxing as a Mediterranean cruise, but probably more enjoyable at this time of year. It is late autumn in the Vales, but the weather will be clement.”