She Came Back (7 page)

After all nobody stayed the night. The only person who showed any disposition to do so was Inez, but receiving no encouragement, she departed as she had come, with Perry and Lilla.

A fleeting qualm of conscience prompted Milly Armitage to draw Lilla aside.

“Look here, I don’t want her—we’ve got enough on our hands without Inez. But if it means that she’s going to land herself on you and spoil the last evening of Perry’s leave, well, I’ll have her. I suppose if it comes to that, it isn’t really for me to say. If Anne’s back, it’s her house and I’m only a visitor.”

Lilla looked at her with affection,

“Anyone would love to have you as a visitor. And it’s quite all right about Cousin Inez, because she’s staying with her friend Roberta Loam, and they haven’t quarrelled yet, though I think they’re on the brink. Lyn says she’ll come to me tomorrow, so that’s all quite safe and fixed. What are you going to do?”

Milly Armitage made a face.

“Philip wants me to stay on here. Of course I can’t—at least I don’t see how I can—unless Anne wants me too. She says she does, so I suppose I’ll have to try it for a bit. None of it’s easy, is it?”

Lilla said, “No.” Then she squeezed her hands and kissed her very warmly indeed.

Philip came back from seeing them off, with the remark that his cousin Inez was without exception the most disagreeable woman he had ever met. She had been arch with him on the doorstep, had shaken those dreadful curls at him, and screamed parting jocosities about a second honeymoon from the window of the moving taxi.

“Theresa was bad enough. She bounced, and quarrelled, and interfered, but she had an awful sort joie-de-vivre. And she wasn’t vindictive, and she didn’t dye her hair—at least she hadn’t dyed it last time I saw her, because I remember its looking like a large grey bird’s nest.”

“At our wedding,” said Anne. She used a light, pleased voice and spoke as if there had never been a cloud between them since that wedding-day.

Then, before Philip’s silence could become noticeable, she was making herself charming to the Thomas Jocelyns and Mr. Codrington. She was no longer “the claimant” on her probation, but very much Anne Jocelyn speeding the parting guests from Jocelyn’s Holt.

It was some hours later, in the empty time before the evening meal, that Philip found Lyndall in the parlour alone. She had changed into a dark red house-gown which caught the firelight and reflected it back from warm velvet folds. Only one lamp was on, the shaded one by the far window. It showed Lyndall in her red dress crouched forward over the fire with both hands stretched to the blaze. He took a moment watching her. Then he came up to the hearth and stood there.

“I want to talk to you.”

She did not move, but her hands shook a little. She said,

“Yes.”

He looked, not at her, but down into the fire.

“Everything in my mind says that she is Anne—reason, logic, evidence. And everything else keeps shouting, ‘She’s a stranger.’ What else does one do?”

Lyndall said in a small voice like a tired child,

“I can’t tell you that—can I?”

“No. I suppose the fact of the matter is that we are strangers. The point at which we touched is a long way behind us both. We have gone off in different directions. I can’t see any meeting-point ahead. She thinks there might be one, and that we owe it to each other to try and come together again. I have told her that she owes me nothing. I can’t tell her that I don’t owe her anything either. From her point of view I owe her a good deal. However it came about, I did fail her—she was left in danger whilst I went back to safety.”

“Philip!” She turned round, her eyes imploring him.

“Lyn, don’t you see how it must have looked to her—how it might be made to look to anyone? I came away without her—I identified another woman’s body as hers—and I came in for every penny of her money. When she comes home again, you recognize her, Aunt Milly recognizes her—Mrs. Ramage, Mr. Codrington, the whole family recognize her. But I stick out, I go on saying she isn’t Anne, until the weight of the evidence overbears me by main force. I don’t need to dot the i’s or cross the t’s, do I? You see what it looks like— I deserted her, I lied about it, I denied her.”

“Philip—please—”

The rapid, bitter flow of words was broken, but only for a moment. He stared down at her as if he saw, not her, but some fantastic abyss whose unsteady edge might yet give way and launch him headlong.

“Don’t you see? If you don’t, Mr. Codrington does. He told me in so many words how grateful I ought to be for the way in which she is taking it. If she had chosen to bring a case, if she had shown resentment, if she hadn’t displayed the most extraordinary forbearance, my name would be mud. She wants to make it up, she wants to be friends, she wants us to give each other a chance. She doesn’t suggest our living together now. She only asks that we should to a normal and reasonable extent live under the same roof—show ourselves together in public—until all the talk and gossip has died down. What can I do? I can’t refuse her that—can I?”

Lyndall said, “No.” She stood up, moving slowly and a little stiffly, because if she let them, her knees would tremble. She controlled them very carefully, but the effort made her feel like one of those stiff, jointed dolls.

When she was on her feet, she said gently,

“You must do what she wants. You did love her. It will come back again.”

“Will it? On revient toujours à ses premiers amours. I have always thought that a particularly crass sort of lie. I told you we had gone in opposite directions. Lyn, even now, with evidence that I am bound to accept, I tell you she isn’t Anne to me.”

“Who is she?”

“A stranger. I can’t feel that we have ever shared a single experience—not even when she tells me things which only Anne could know.” He moved abruptly. “You are going away?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

There was a long, heavy silence. It weighed on the room, it weighed upon their hearts. Tomorrow she would be gone.

They had nothing more to say to one another, because that said everything. If he put out his hand it would touch her. But he couldn’t put it out. They were already divided, and with every moment of that silence each could see the other receding, whilst between them thought and feeling wrenched and broke.

When Milly Armitage came in, neither had moved from where they stood, yet each had travelled a long way.

The nine days’ wonder died down in the Press. On the whole it had been discreet. Annie Joyce’s connection with the family, the likeness which had made the mistake in identity possible, was handled tactfully, and presently the affair receded. A week after Anne’s return the telephone bell had ceased to ring, and reporters to clamour for interviews.

Anne received a ration-book, which also contained clothes coupons, and went up to town to shop with a cheque-book in her handbag and the knowledge that there was a comfortable sum in her account at the bank. She had a very full day mapped out. Clothes were going to be a problem. Twenty coupons of her own—very aggravating to find that she couldn’t spend more than that before the end of January. Fifty produced by Mrs. Ramage, who preferred saving her money to buying what she called “those utilities.” And the prospect of perhaps another forty from the Board of Trade when her case had been considered, which would certainly take time. Eighteen coupons for a coat, the same for a coat and skirt, eleven for a dress, seven for shoes, and then underclothes—the coupons were just going to trickle away like water through a leaky sieve. Impossible to blame Aunt Milly for giving away a dead Anne Jocelyn’s wardrobe to the blitzed, but enraging to the last degree.

Then she must have her hair waved and set again, and a facial treatment, and a manicure. It was going to be a very full day indeed, but she would have looked forward to it if it hadn’t been for the letter in her bag. She kept telling herself that it was tiresome but no more.

The matter could be dealt with easily enough. She could have dealt with it herself as far as that went. Easy enough to write, perhaps in the third person, something on the lines of “Lady Jocelyn is afraid that there really is not anything she could add to what has appeared in the papers with regard to the death of Annie Joyce. She does not think—” No, that wouldn’t do—too stiff, too much de haut en bas. It was no good hurting people’s feelings. Quite a simple letter would be best. “Dear Miss Collins, I don’t think I can tell you anything that you do not know already about the death of poor Annie Joyce. The cutting you enclose has all the information that I have myself. I would meet you if I felt that it would serve any useful purpose, but I really think it would only be distressing for us both.” Yes, that would do.

She had a fleeting regret that she had not written and posted just such a letter. After all, who was to know that Nellie Collins had ever written to her, or she to Nellie Collins? And even as the thought was in her mind, she knew that she couldn’t hide this or anything else, and that the answer she wrote, or whether she wrote an answer at all, was part of a pattern which was none of her designing—a very strict pattern to which she would be most strictly kept. Just for a moment she had something like a black-out. It was a very strange sensation—between one second and the next a shock like the shock of concussion, leaving her numb, dazed, and reluctant. It passed, and afterwards she would have been frightened if she had let herself think about it.

Fortunately, she had a great many other things to think about. There were still excellent clothes to be got, but you had to look for them, and they were a shocking price. She gave twenty-five pounds for a coat and skirt in a good Scotch tweed, sandy beige with a brown line and a brown fleck— very becoming. Eighteen coupons gone. A pair of brown outdoor shoes, and a pair for the house—fourteen. Six pairs of stockings—another eighteen. She found herself thinking less of the price of a garment than of the number of coupons that had to be given up.

It was three in the afternoon before she really had time to remember that she had been afraid. She stood hesitating imperceptibly between the rather narrow windows which displayed on the one side a smiling wax model with an elaborately dressed head of golden hair, and on the other a snowy hand with tinted nails lying on a velvet cushion. The back of both windows was curtained in the very bright shade called bleu de roi. The cushion under the hand and the golden-haired lady’s draperies were of an equally bright rose colour. A gold scroll over the door bore the name Félise. Anne Jocelyn pushed down the handle and went in.

If she had hesitated a little longer, or if she had not hesitated at all, some things might have happened differently, and some might not have happened at all. If she had gone straight in, Lyndall would not have seen her. If she had waited a little longer, Lyndall would have caught her up before she entered the shop, in which case she probably would not have kept her appointment with Mr. Felix, and she might, just possibly she might, have answered Nellie Collins’ letter herself.

As it was, Lyn’s moment of startled recognition brought her to a standstill on the opposite pavement just too late for her to be sure that it was Anne whom she had seen. And if that was all, it wouldn’t have mattered, but she wasn’t sure whether she herself had been seen by Anne, because the upper half of that door between the two windows was made of looking-glass. The question was, how much did it reflect, and how much could Anne have seen before she pushed open the door and went in? If it was Anne, and she had seen Lyndall looking at her, she would think—well, what would she think? That Lyn wouldn’t cross the road to speak to her? That she had some reason for avoiding her? It would be quite dreadful if she were to think anything like that. There mustn’t be anything of that sort, ever. There wouldn’t be if she could prevent it.

She had to wait whilst what seemed like an endless stream of traffic went by. By the time she managed to cross over, her courage had gone cold, but it held. She was not yet sure that it was Anne whom she had seen, but she was going to make sure. She had seen a fur coat and a glimpse of blue go into the shop. If there was a fur coat and a blue dress on the other side of that looking-glass door, it wouldn’t take a moment to find out whether Anne was inside them.

She went in, and saw two women waiting by the counter, and a buxom assistant reaching something off an upper shelf with her back turned to the shop. Neither of the two women was Anne Jocelyn, but neither of them was wearing a fur coat, and quite definitely Lyndall had seen a fur coat go in at the looking-glass door.

She stood there waiting for the assistant to turn round. But she didn’t turn round. One of the women was explaining just what sort of setting-lotion she wanted, and every time it was possible to get in a word edgeways the buxom girl said they hadn’t got it, but that something else would do just as well, in fact very much better. Lyndall could see that it was likely to go on for ages. On the spur of the moment she walked across the shop and through the curtained archway on the other side of which the cubicles for hairdressing and manicure would be found. If Anne was having her hair done, that was where she would be. It wouldn’t take a moment to find out. She could always say she was looking for a friend.

As soon as she was through the archway she could hear the swish of running water. The cubicles had curtains, not doors. It was quite easy to look through the curtains. A fat woman with a red neck—a thin one with her head over the basin—a little dark girl having a manicure—a permanent wave—another manicure. Not a sign of Anne, not a sign of the fur coat. After all, it had got to be somewhere.

At the end of the passage between the cubicles was another of those looking-glass doors. She saw her own reflection coming to meet her like a doppelgänger—Lyn Armitage in a grey tweed coat and skirt and a dark red hat, looking scared. It was frightfully stupid to put yourself in the wrong by looking scared. If you were doing something which made you feel not quite so sure of yourself as you would like to be, that was the time to put your chin in the air and look as if you had bought the earth and paid cash down for it.

She pushed the door as she had pushed the other one, and came into a small square space with a wooden stair running steeply up on the left, a door on the right, and another straight ahead. It was dark after the brightly lighted shop, and it was cold after the warm, steamy heat of the passage between the cubicles. There was a damp, mouldy smell. Quite evidently these were back premises with no allurements for customers. Anne wouldn’t be here. And as the thought went through her mind, she heard Anne Jocelyn’s voice.

It frightened her, she couldn’t think why. It was only the voice, no words, but she wasn’t sure—no, she wasn’t sure about its being Anne’s voice. If she hadn’t been thinking about Anne just at that moment, perhaps she would never have thought of its being her voice. She took a hesitating step forward. Now that her eyes were getting accustomed to the changed light, she could see that the door in front of her was not quite shut. It wasn’t open, but it hadn’t latched when it was closed. Some doors are very tiresome like that—they latch and spring open again, or they close and do not latch.

Lyndall put her hand on the panel of the door. She had no design in doing this; it was neither thought nor planned. She saw her hand come up and move the door. It moved quite easily. There was a line of light all down the edge of it like a thin gold wire. She heard the voice which was like Anne’s voice say, “You might just as well let me write to Nellie Collins. She’s quite harmless.” A man’s voice said in a carrying whisper, “That is not for you to say.”

Lyndall took her hand away from the door and turned round. Her heart had begun to beat with suffocating violence. She felt ashamed and inexplicably frightened. If she let herself move quickly, panic might take hold of her. She must get away. She must move quickly, but she mustn’t make any noise. She was very near to feeling that she couldn’t move at all.

Warmth and scented steam met her between the cubicles. She passed the curtained archway, and found the scene in the shop unchanged—the two women by the counter, the babble of voices, the assistant, with her back still turned, shifting bottles. She passed out into the street and shut the door behind her. No one had seen her come or go.