I and My True Love (24 page)

And my trouble is, he thought, that I haven’t one idea what she’s talking about. If this isn’t the damnedest conversation on a dark terrace with my arm holding a pretty girl—

“Bob,” she said suddenly. “Have you ever been in love?”

For a moment, he was silent. “Four times,” he said, trying to keep his voice amused. “Four and a half times to be accurate.”

“A half? What happened—did you change your mind?”

“No. It’s just that she was a married woman, who didn’t even know I was standing around gaping at her. Most unsatisfactory. It didn’t rate anything except a half mark.”

“That’s the cruellest, because most of the time you don’t only feel you are a fool—you know you’re one. I remember...” She laughed softly. “Once I fell in love with a teacher. Of all things!”

“In Berkeley?”

“Yes. Every time he praised my work in class, I felt as if I were soaring right up into a Tiepolo sky—rosy clouds, golden trumpets, you know the sort of thing. Then one day I met him with his wife, shopping together in Shattuck Avenue. And suddenly I saw what an idiot I was. And I cut his classes, out of embarrassment. And then the whole thing faded away, gradually. Why, I haven’t thought of him for months until this minute.”

“I gather he was in love with his wife.”

“Quite obviously.”

“What if he hadn’t been? Or if she hadn’t been in love with him?”

“Then I’d have taken longer to snap out of my daydream. It was probably only a father-fixation, anyway.”

“Oh, now!” he said, a little angrily. “You can fall in love with someone older without tagging Freud on to it.”

“It was only a joke—” she began in surprise. And not a very good one, she decided. Difference in ages didn’t matter if you were in love, anyway. But why bring ages into this? That wasn’t the point she had been making. “I just meant—” she said, and stopped. She could feel Bob’s tenseness. Warned, alert now, she kept silent. Was his story in all the past as he had pretended? Then the small things she had noticed about Bob, the small things that didn’t mean much taken by themselves, the small things that always happened when Sylvia was near or was discussed, all began to take shape and form a pattern.

“Well,” he said, straightening his shoulders and trying to put some amusement back into his voice, “do you think I’m qualified to give you advice? But that bit about being willing to die”—he was really amused now—“well, I guess that rules me out. Dying was the last thing I thought of doing, then.”

“I only meant it—metaphorically,” she said, ashamed of her emotionalism. Yet wasn’t Sylvia’s willingness to give up everything she believed in, for Jan Brovic—wasn’t that a form of dying?

“You know,” he said, “wouldn’t you be better—instead of all this tactful side-stepping—just to tell me what has been worrying you so badly? What’s this story? What problem is it raising?”

She watched the group of men, who had come to smoke a cigarette on the terrace, turn and walk back into the garden room. A woman came out, complained that it was dismal here with the moon hidden by cloud, and hurried her escort back inside the room. Kate said, “Let’s go in, too.” She touched his hand. Inside, there would be so many other people that he might even forget about the story she couldn’t tell, after all. It isn’t strange that he fell in love with Sylvia, she thought. If I were a man, I probably would. And yet she couldn’t altogether account for the depression that had settled over her as deeply as the mist that still hung over the trees and refused to be blown away.

“Sure,” he agreed readily, as if he too suddenly regretted the way he had talked so freely about himself. “Sorry if I’ve ruined the party for you, Kate. I’ll do better this time, I hope.” He smiled down at her and took a step towards the path of light that streamed over the terrace from the French windows, but Kate didn’t move. Her arm, linked in his, had tightened. Warned, he looked away from her face, towards the windows and saw the flutter of a wide filmy skirt as a woman stepped out of the light into shadows.

The skirt had been deep blue—it had reminded him of dark delphiniums when he had seen it earlier this evening—with a scattered sprinkling of flat little glistening things that made him think of raindrops strewn over petals of a flower. “There’s Sylvia,” he said, but why didn’t Kate call out to her? “Let’s go over,” he was about to say. But at that moment, a man came out on the terrace.

It was Jan Brovic. And by the way Kate’s arm suddenly slackened, almost hopelessly, on his, Bob Turner knew that this was what she had been expecting since the moment Sylvia had appeared.

17

All evening, in the crowded bustling rooms, with their constant movement and chatter, Sylvia had listened and smiled and talked, seemingly absorbed in the faces and conversation around her. All evening, she had been only conscious that Jan was watching her from a distance just as she would snatch brief glances of him. Their eyes would meet occasionally, and then slip away as if they were strangers. But she was left with a quickening pulse, a tingling excitement, and the impulse to laugh out of sheer unexplained happiness if only to relieve the mounting tension. For in some ways the presence of Jan here, so near and yet out of contact, out of touch, was almost unbearable. The fact that other people were so intent on conversation—the difficulties of foreign languages made them listen more carefully—made her secret seem all the safer, and this strange emotional suspense all the tighter.

* * *

She was standing near the supper table, at the time. She was one of a small group, mostly strangers to each other, making conversation about the new
Fledermaus
they had seen in New York that winter. And then, quite suddenly, she saw Jan walk towards the supper table. Walk towards her. She forced all her attention back to the group around her, smiling at their remarks, feeling each step of Jan’s that brought him nearer. He had passed her, and now stood at the table.

“My cigarette,” she said, and looked round vaguely for an ashtray. The man beside her said, “Just a moment. Let me—” and looked round for an ashtray, too.

“Oh, there’s one!” she exclaimed, and moved quickly to the table. “Excuse me,” she said to Jan, reaching to stub out the cigarette, her eyes teasing him as she smiled a polite apology. But she hadn’t startled him, or even amused him. He said, “Pardon,” and pushed the ashtray over towards her. “The terrace,” his quiet voice added. As she turned back to the group she had left, letting them draw her into the flow of their remarks once more, she heard him asking for a Scotch and soda.

A few moments, she thought, a few moments and I’ll drift away with the excuse of looking for Kate. Where was Kate, anyway? And Bob? Payton wasn’t in sight: he was probably still sitting in the library talking to a group of men who disliked standing around making light conversation.

She glanced across the room at the two men who had stayed so close to Jan all this evening. But they had been neatly trapped by Miriam Hugenberg’s performance as the perfect hostess: she was introducing them in a burst of atrocious French to a pretty dark-haired girl. And now Miriam, her duty done in that direction, was coming forward to the group around Sylvia, no doubt deciding that it too needed a little dislocation. Miriam had a quick eye for interrupting, separating, joining together and parting asunder.

Sylvia didn’t have to invent any excuse about looking for Kate. Miriam, triumphant in her successes, led her away and even started convoying her towards the terrace windows. “Darling,” Miriam said, her eyes flitting around the groups of guests like two bright butterflies testing each promising colour in a rich flower garden, “darling, I’ve been trying to see you all night. What’s this I hear?”

Sylvia’s step faltered for a moment. “What have you heard?” She forced herself to look normal.

“About you, darling.” Miriam’s quick eyes were now studying her face. “Is it serious?”

Sylvia’s face tightened.

“Darling, you’ve got to take better care of yourself,” Miriam said. “You really do look much too fine-drawn. It isn’t worth it, I tell you, to let your health break down. I’m as busy as the next woman, but I always—ah, Mr. Gunner—are you leaving—so early?” She turned to smile to the guest who wanted to make his goodbyes.

“I must find Kate,” Sylvia said to Miriam, and excused herself from a last-minute introduction. The windows were beside her, now. She forced herself not to look back at the supper table to see if Jan were still there. He would be watching her, she knew.

And then, even as she reached the nearest window, even as she was about to cross its threshold, she saw Stewart Hallis. He was talking to a red-haired woman who was sitting on a small couch pushed back against the wall behind one of the opened windows. For a brief moment, Sylvia hesitated. But he hadn’t glanced in her direction, he hadn’t noticed her. And her next step took her outside on to the terrace.

He couldn’t have seen me, she told herself again, he wasn’t even looking in my direction. A breath of wind caught the wide-flowing skirt of her dress and she pulled its soft folds quickly back into the shadows where she stood. She shivered, perhaps with the effort of reaching the terrace, perhaps with the raw air that struck her bare shoulders, or perhaps with the memory of Jan’s serious face. He would never have suggested this meeting, if he hadn’t been desperate.

Jan came out on to the terrace.

“Here,” she whispered from the shadows beside the windows.

He stepped into them, putting his arm around her shoulders. He looked around for some place more sheltered, less exposed to wandering guests.

It was a long terrace, one end marked by white pillars which formed a decoration for a jutting wing of the house. At the other end, there was a screen of wisteria, disguising a pergola which led from the terrace to the covered porch. (Miriam liked to call it a patio. That was where she used to give her summer dinner-parties, he remembered.) From where they stood by the windows, the pergola and its massive wisteria looked like a wall of tangled branches. He hesitated for a moment, but then he remembered, too, that only people who knew this house would realise that the pergola even existed. Tonight, most people here were strangers. With his arm still round her shoulders, drawing her close to him, he hurried her over the bands of light and shadows to the sheltering wall. A small arched entrance led to a stretch of complete blackness. Beyond that, there was the covered patio with its dimmed lights and its subdued voices. But here, in the wisteria-covered passage, it was dark and silent.

He took off his jacket and slipped it over her shoulders. Then he took her in his arms, holding her against the warmth of his body, calming her trembling, finding peace even for himself in their long kiss. Outside of their tree-bound world, the wind stirred gently, and a raindrop, shaken free from a bough overhead, fell on his cheek. The quiet voices from the dining terrace had ceased. Darkness and silence were around them. His heart twisted. Darkness and silence.

“We can’t stay long,” he said, speaking quickly, quietly. He felt the soft curve of her cheek with his. His hand touched her throat.

“Stewart Hallis—” she said quickly.

“He was talking to a red-haired woman.” Jan’s voice was unworried.

“Did he see you?”

“He didn’t look my way.”

“I don’t think he noticed me, either. And I never saw him until it was too late.”

“Don’t worry, darling. If he did see us, what does it matter?” He kissed her ear.

What did it matter? A hidden innuendo, an amused look, an ironic witticism. “If he recognised us last night at the garage in Blairton—” she began. What did it matter? At most, he’d use that knowledge as a hidden little threat to stop her influencing Kate against him. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. She could deal with Stewart Hallis and his subtle blackmail. Unpleasant, but unimportant.

He kissed her eyes. “Darling, darling.” He kissed her lips. “And I can’t even see you,” he said sadly. “It’s the last time and I can’t see you.”

“The last—?” She had almost cried out, but his lips silenced her.

“For a little while,” he said. “The last time for a week or two. A month, perhaps, at most.”

“Jan!”

“I want you to go away,” he said. “At once. Make up any excuse, but go away. Leave tomorrow. When I have to ’phone you again, I don’t want to find you there to take my call.”

“But what will they say?”

“Let Czernik say what he likes.” Something caught his attention, for he turned to look over his shoulder. Then his hand reassured her. “Just a couple by the pillars at the other end of the terrace,” he told her. “Don’t worry, darling, they aren’t noticing anyone but themselves.”

She kissed his cheek. She was still thinking about Czernik.

“But your job here—”

“That can’t be helped now.” And then, as if to end her fears, “I never meant to succeed in it. I was only giving the appearance of trying. They’ve nothing against me on that score.”

“Then what have they got against you?”

“Nothing. I hope.”

“But why send me away? Jan—what has happened since I last saw you?”

He hesitated. “Nothing for you to worry about.” I’ve worried enough for both of us, he thought. And this morning, I did what I could. He remembered Martin Clark’s voice over the telephone, alarmed, angry, incredulous, and then at last believing.

“Jan—is it your family? Have you heard bad news?”

“I’ve heard nothing at all.” Nothing, nothing... That seemed to be all he could say to her.

“If the escape failed”—she felt his grip tighten round her waist—“surely you’d have known. They would have shipped you back to Czechoslovakia at once.”

“Not necessarily,” he said. Not as long as they still found me useful to them here, not unless I gave myself away and they knew I was connected with the escape. “Sylvia,” he said, and then he halted abruptly, his cheek pressed against hers. They both listened to the sudden break in silence from the main terrace. And they recognised the voice.

Sylvia took a deep breath, half-shuddering, but Jan’s arms gave her confidence and his gentle kiss on her brow gave her courage. They stood, close together, unmoving, silent, waiting for whatever might happen now.