I and My True Love (8 page)

Quickly she prepared breakfast and set it on a tray to carry upstairs. Seven minutes, she noticed. Walter had almost spent as much time in explaining. As she crossed the hall, she could hear him opening windows in the dining-room to show how busy he was.

As she settled down to breakfast in her room, with a guide to Washington opened beside her, she found she was thinking about Payton Pleydell. He might have excellent taste in Latrobe mantelpieces and an appreciative eye for beauty, but was he such a good judge of people after all? Was he too impressed by surface qualities, by appearance, by people who said “Yes” to him? “Poor Sylvia!” she exclaimed suddenly, and then was a little startled. Now, why had she said that? And said it so feelingly? Last night she had been congratulating Sylvia. Perhaps, she thought as she began to laugh at herself, perhaps when I was dead asleep my mind was alive with its own fancies. Perhaps it was deciding a lot of things for me. Nonsense, she told herself, you’re still ruffled by Walter. That’s all. Vanity, vanity...

* * *

Minna, small and broad, with a gentle cow-like expression on her white peasant face, came into Sylvia’s room with the breakfast tray. She was a silent woman who never expected any attention. She had been brought up on a small farm in Austria, where her father had yelled his commands and his daughters had run to carry them out. Her husband must also have assumed that yelling was one of his inalienable rights, for she avoided Walter as much as possible, worked quickly, and was ready to scurry out of sight whenever the master himself appeared on the scene. It was only with Sylvia that she behaved like a normal human being. But she never said a word against men, as if a violent yell and a well-aimed blow might suddenly be delivered out of the heavens.

“The young lady’s gone out already,” Minna reported as she laid the neat tray on Sylvia’s lap.

“So early? Did Walter give her breakfast?”

Minna, who never understood one-half of what Walter told her, could only shrug her shoulders. “And you’ve a nice present,” she said, remembering the vase she had left outside the door. She smiled as she brought it into the room, holding it up high, delighted with the surprise she was helping to give.

Sylvia looked at the masses of red roses. “Who sent them?” She sipped her coffee slowly.

“There was no card.” Minna set the vase on the dressing-table, so that the roses were reflected in the large mirror. “So beautiful, such expense,” she said admiringly. “Today we must order,” she added almost in the same breath and pulled out from her apron pocket a slip of paper filled with her jagged writing.

“Oh, yes.” But Sylvia still looked at the red roses. And she knew it was Jan who had sent them. “Take them downstairs, Minna.”

Then she studied today’s order, but she couldn’t concentrate. “This seems all right.” She handed the piece of paper back to Minna. She looked again at the roses. “Has Mr. Pleydell had breakfast?” She averted her eyes from the flowers.

“Yes.” Minna looked surprised. Mr. Pleydell was never late.

Did I hope to break the spell, Sylvia wondered, by speaking Payton’s name?

The telephone rang, first of all downstairs, then in the room.

“Perhaps the young soldier calling for Miss Jerold again,” Minna suggested.

“Again?”

Minna nodded and smiled, and left quickly. She had forgotten to take the roses with her, after all.

Sylvia lifted the receiver. “Hallo,” she said.

“Sylvia.” It was Jan Brovic.

She stared across at the dressing-table. Oh, Jan, why do this, why torment us both?

“Sylvia—are you there? Can you hear me?”

No, no... And yet she listened, listened to the worried, urgent voice and her eyes filled with tears. She took a deep breath to steady herself.

“Sylvia!”

“No. Please... no.” She put down the receiver. Then she covered her face with her hands. She was remembering Payton as he had stood at her door last night. He had known all along about Jan; he had never charged her with it. She had gone on living in his house, and he had behaved as if nothing had happened. Until last night. And even then, the admission had been made in Payton’s own way as if to save her shame and embarrassment. Instead, her shame had doubled: guilt was twice as heavy when you hurt someone who protected you so well.

The telephone rang again.

She didn’t move to answer it.

How had Payton found out? And when? When? The word kept ringing as insistently as the telephone bell.

Then at last there was silence.

Silence. And the roses, filling the room with their colour and fragrance. She pushed the breakfast tray aside. She sat quite still, her arms clasped around her knees, her eyes watching the flowers, her thoughts filled with the memories that were coming to life again.

* * *

May. It had been early May. And a war was over in Europe. “I’m having a party,” Miriam Hugenberg had said on the telephone, “just a few friends. A spur-of-the-moment party. We
must
celebrate. Payton can’t come? My dear, imagine arranging a meeting for tonight of all nights! Then come by yourself. Darling, you’ve
got
to come.”

That’s how it had started, the party for a few friends. They numbered about fifty, at first. Uniforms everywhere, gay dresses worn for the first time in years, laughter, happy excited voices, music for dancing on the terrace, food and wine on the patio, a garden filled with flowers and lighted by sparkling stars set against black velvet. May at its best. The merry month come into its own, at last.

“We’ve still got the Japs to lick,” a Navy captain had been saying to the group around Sylvia. But he sounded more dutiful than gloomy.

“Tomorrow, we can remember that,” a man’s voice said as he joined the group. “But tonight—” Jan Brovic smiled down at Sylvia. “Like to risk a rumba with me?”

And she rose, smiling too, and left the little crowd of uniforms.

“The truth is,” Jan said as they reached the terrace, “I don’t dance very much nowadays. But I couldn’t think of any other excuse to get you away from the Navy. Insistent guys, aren’t they?”

“If you don’t want to dance”—she remembered his wound— “it doesn’t really matter.”

“I don’t suppose a game leg would be noticeable in a rumba. All you do, anyway, is stay on one spot and limp in rhythm.” He slipped an arm round her waist and turned her to face him. “Easy, see?”

It was. He must have been a good dancer once. They didn’t speak, now. He held her in his arms, lightly, at a distance, as the dance required. He looked down at her face, and her eyes were caught by his. And then suddenly, the grasp round her waist tightened and he drew her nearer. He watched the colour come to her cheeks, the nervous half-smile on her lips, and he felt the sudden tenseness of her hands.

Just then, the music stopped. They stood together, his arm still round her waist. She turned her head away, but she didn’t step away from his arm. The music began again. Now it was a waltz. “That defeats me entirely,” he said. “If it had been a polka, I might have managed it: dot and carry one is all right for a polka. But not for a waltz.”

She laughed with him, reaching back to safe ground again, moving away from the quicksand of emotions that had almost trapped her for a moment. She was in control once more.

She said, “I haven’t danced for months. I couldn’t manage a waltz either.” She took a step towards the wisteria-covered pergola that would lead them back to the patio. She made her way quickly, almost as if she were running away. But he followed her.

And the patio was now crowded.

As she hesitated, he took her arm. “No room, here,” he said. “Too bad.” He grinned. She had looked up at him as he spoke. And she had to smile.

“This way,” he said. And he led her to the narrow flight of stairs that would take them down into the garden. She hesitated for a moment. “We’ve got to talk,” he said. “Tonight’s as good a time as any.” She went with him.

There were people, too, in the garden, but he found a path that circled round a rosebed and then skirted a silent row of trees spreading their thick branches over a stretch of short dry grass. They sat under a copper beech, in a purpled mass of shadows. He didn’t touch her. Yes, she thought, let’s talk this thing out. Let it be decided, now. It’s too dangerous to let it drift on like this. And it was she who spoke first.

“You think I’m a coward, don’t you?” she asked.

He looked at her. Was it with the usual smile in his eyes? “No. You’re afraid, that’s all. And I’m afraid, too.”

“Afraid?” She couldn’t quite believe that. Jan afraid of a woman? She laughed. “Afraid of
me?”
she asked with amusement.

“Since the first time we met,” he admitted. “I looked at you for a whole evening and told myself, ‘There’s danger. Jan, old boy, keep out of it. There’s a woman you could fall in love with. There’s a woman who could tie you to her for the rest of your life.’ But I went on seeing you, meeting you, watching you. Because I had been wrong.”

She looked at him quickly.

“Because,” he went on in his quiet voice, “I had already fallen in love with you.”

She tried to rise.

He put out his hand and grasped hers. “Don’t,” he said, “don’t keep running away from me.”

For a moment, there was silence. She didn’t rise, after all. There was no strength in her body. She sat still, feeling the warmth of his hand encircling hers, the uneven beating of her heart. She tried to reach back to reality, back to Payton Pleydell and his wife and their ordered life. Reality? She looked down at her hand, caught in Jan’s, at the arm that had held her as they danced.

“How many weeks since we first met?” he asked.

“Seven.”

“How many times have we been invited to the same party?”

She looked at him.

“Five dinners, three luncheons, and nine cocktail parties.” He laughed, and she found she was laughing too. “And how often have I seen you passing by, on the street? Or lunching with someone else? Or visited your house for an evening of talk and discussion? Do you think I came there to listen to a lot of men? I came to watch you.” He was serious now. He lifted his hand and touched her cheek. “And how often have I walked past your house, late at night, and looked at a lighted upstairs window and wondered if it were yours?”

“Jan—this is madness—this is—”

“Madness? It’s more real than that solid mass of bricks.” He looked at the distant house and its bright lights. Then he turned to face her. “And you’ve felt that, too,” he said.

Yes, she had felt it. She met his eyes. She was no longer running away. She was coming to meet him.

He put both arms around her, drawing her close to him. He waited for a moment, his eyes still searching her face, and then he kissed her.

It was the test, and they were trapped. She had thought she would say when the kiss ended, “See, Jan—I’m just another woman. And your kiss is just another kiss.” But she could say nothing, nothing at all except “Jan, oh Jan!” And even then her voice was lost in the wonder of the moment, and his kisses silenced her surprise.

The music from the terrace faded, the laughter from the garden’s shadows drifted away. The distant house vanished. There was only the perfume of roses, the soft cool earth beneath her shoulders, the dark blanket of trees shielding them from the bright-eyed inquisitive stars.

This is the way all love should be, she had thought, this is the way all love should be.

They didn’t return to the house. Jan had said, “I’ve a car somewhere around here. Let’s leave.”

“Now?”

“Why not?”

She laughed. “Why not?”

“We shan’t be missed,” he told her, leading her along a narrow path. They began to run, hand in hand. A couple of truants from school, she thought, and laughed again. She looked over her shoulder at the house, at the crowded terrace with its riot of happy voices and shimmering lights. Then she looked up at Jan. She stumbled and he caught her at once. He was smiling.

“We’ve escaped,” he said, and his smile widened.

* * *

The telephone rang and ended the dream.

She sat still, her arms clasped around her knees. Her fingers were tightly gripped. She unclenched them. She covered her ears. She closed her eyes and her head drooped. She blotted out everything—the roses, the telephone, even the memories that had quickened so treacherously.

At last, she rose. The telephone was silent now. Silenced as the dream. She began to get ready for the day ahead.

When she came out of the shower, she found Minna waiting for her with a message. There had been a call from Mr. Pleydell’s office.

“From Mr. Pleydell?”

“From that woman.”

“His secretary?”

“You go to see the doctor at half-past three.”

“Oh, really, now!” But there was little use exclaiming. There would only have to be more explanations if she didn’t go and see Dr. Formby after Payton had arranged it. “All right,” she said. “When Miss Black calls again tell her I’m now going to my Civil Defence class; then I’ll be at the Shoreham for that Red Cross luncheon; then I’ll drop in to see Dr. Formby on my way home.” Payton, she thought, would understand that little recital: Miss Black might think she was an idiot, but Payton would understand. The Dutiful Wife, or How Can I Say I’m Sorry? A bitter little comedy in one act. “Has Miss Jerold returned?”

“No,” Minna said placidly. “Are you ill, going to that doctor?” Her face slowly became anxious.

Sylvia shook her head.

“I’ll make you an egg soup,” Minna said. “For dinner I’ll make that.” And she nodded her head. She had eaten her own way out of her troubles so often that it seemed the only sensible advice to offer, much more sensible than medicine and pills.

“I wonder where Miss Jerold is?”

“It is a nice morning to take a walk. She had a book with her. The book with a picture of the streets.”

If a girl could travel across a continent by herself, she certainly ought to be able to find her way around Georgetown. “I hope she hasn’t forgotten that Mr. Hallis is going to call for her, this morning.”

Minna was impressed. “Mr. Hallis comes here?” she asked to make sure of the message. “This morning?”