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Authors: Elizabeth Bowen

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BOOK: The Heat of the Day
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ground out her cigarette. "Look here," she said, "you asked yourself here this evening--it would not be too much to say that you forced your way in--because, you said, it was urgent that you should tell me something. Just exactly what have you come to say?" "As a matter of fact, that is what I've been getting round to. Now we've got there, I hardly know how to put it." She, on her side, could not have sat looking blanker. It was a trick of Harrison's to drop rather than raise his voice for emphasis: he thus now said ultra-softly: "You should be a bit more careful whom you know." "In general?" Stella returned, in a tone which by contrast was high and cool. He had, as though under instruction, kept his eyes on the photograph. "Actually, I did rather mean in particular." "But I am. For instance, I did not want to know you." He took two or three more pulls on his cigarette--perhaps to steady himself, perhaps not--before, still frowning with concentration, unloading more ash on to the Chinese tray. His mind was, where she was concerned, a jar of opaquely clouded water, in which, for all she knew, the strangest fish might be circling, staring, turning to turn away. She glanced at her wrist watch, glanced again at her letters, felt gooseflesh, bit off a nervous yawn. "That's not so much what I mean," he went on, "about taking care. Care should come in more where there's someone you do like knowing--with me, as you say, so far that does not apply. Good: that's that--for the moment. You shy off me because I am not your sort; you can't get me taped because you feel something's missing. I agree: there is--if you cared, I could tell you what. No, I'll tell you--vanity. That's been left out of my composition. You turn round one fine day, for instance, and tell me you can't abide me--after which that, you think, is the end of that." "Yes, I do. I imagine most people would." "Most people you know might. To me, that is simply one more thing that you say." "I can't help that," said Stella, "it's what I mean. You imagine everyone puts on acts?" "You think _I__ put acts on?" "I haven't even thought. I do not care what you do." "Neither do I," said Harrison promptly, pleased. "I don't care what I do. That's where it comes in--no vanity!" "I should have said, no feeling," she abstractedly said. (She was thinking, _was__ this to be, after all, all? Had he hinted and threatened his way in, his way back, for nothing more than one final bid at self-salesmanship, one last attempt to "interest" her? But then--this was itself a point--how had he known she had melodramatic fears? How had he guessed her to be a woman with whom the unspecified threat would work?) "Yes, it's that," she went on. "You can't understand feeling." "I don't understand fine feelings--if that's what you mean. Fine feelings, you've got to have time to have: I haven't--I only have time to have what you have without having time, if you follow me? You and the types you go with, if I may say so, still seem to fancy love makes the world go round. For me it's a bit of a spanner in the works." He directed a look past her, at some shadow behind her head. "You like to trust the people you like to know?" "I suppose so. Why?" "As to one of them, I could tell you a thing or two that might surprise you." "Why, what are you, then--a private detective?" She laughed, genuinely and without a touch of hysteria. "To be fair," she said, "before we go any further I ought to tell you, I do often wonder whether you are quite ordinary in the head. That's to say, I still wonder--you know what I took for granted you were, originally." "Frankness again, ha-ha," said Harrison. "Yes, what a day that was. However, we cleared up _that__ misunderstanding." "I'm not so sure." "What, though, makes you wonder specially now?" "I don't know. I suppose, in some way, the war." "Oh, you mean the war? Yes, it's funny about the war--the way everybody's on one side or the other. Look, I insist on your smoking one of my cigarettes!" He came across to her with his case open: it was as hypnotising as being offered a cigarette across a consulting-room desk or a lawyer's table, and with just that rebellious subservience she had to take one. He returned the case to his pocket, then struck a match--but he fumbled over the business; the flame shook and she drew unkindly back to stare at the shaking hand. He observed it also: "Yes, funny, you know," he said, "this has never happened. Must be being here with you, all on your own like this, if we _are__ doing nothing better than splitting words.--Look here, if it's your nature that's up against me, _be__ up against me; it's your nature I want--you as you are." "Exactly what _do__ you want?" "You to give me a break. Me to come here, be here, in and out of here, on and off--at the same time, always. To be in your life, as they call it--your life, just as it is. Except--" He stopped, to mark the crux of the matter, command himself and, from then on, alter his tone. He returned to the fireplace, picked up the photograph, turned it face to the wall. "Except," he said, "less of that. In fact, none at all of that. No more of that." She could not believe he was saying what he could be heard to say, so looked at him in hardly more than surprise. Evidently he thought she was acting blank. "Don't let's waste time," he said, "_I__ know how it is. I've checked up on that affair." She said, indifferently: "I imagine most people know." "Most people don't know the half--in fact, no one does. Certainly not you." "What don't I know?" "What I know." "You want me to ask what that is?" "Better not, I think. Better just take the hint." "Or you would not," she said, "would you, call this an attempt at blackmail?" He looked at her out of the corner of one eye. Whereupon she flamed up. "You're suggesting," she asked, white with tension and rage, "that I should break off one friendship, begin another--with you? And I'm to do both at once, in a minute, now, with no more questions than at a government order, less trouble than I should have these days in changing my grocer, less fuss than I should make about changing my hat? Nothing, you take it, could be simpler--what _I__ call feeling does not enter at all. Even so, with what may no more than look like feeling, one has got, I'm afraid, to waste just a little time. That you do not expect to waste time you make quite clear. You keep hinting at something, _something__, that should cut out all that. It may, of course, be simply that you see yourself, as you manifestly do, as a quite exceptional man. But no, no--you mean to convey that there's something more. What, then?---then what? I should like to know what you mean. I should like to know what you think you have up your sleeve. You mean, I am to do as you say--'_or else__,' 'otherwise'...? Well, otherwise what?" "It's funny," said Harrison, "when you begin 'you mean,' you remind me of a girl I met in the park. I would say, for instance, 'How blue the sky is,' whereupon she'd say, 'You mean, the sky's blue?' " "I cannot wonder at her; quite ordinary things you say have a way of sounding, somehow, preposterous. But in this case you are saying something preposterous--or trying to. You must be clearer, though, if you're trying to frighten me." "I'm afraid, you know, I have somehow done that already. You sounded rattled when we talked on the phone." "You ring up like the Gestapo," she said with a laugh or yawn. "That would be just the impression I'd hate to give you.--Then, you haven't a thing in the world to be frightened of?" "Who would dare say that these days?" She, sitting bolt upright, paused, moulding the stuff of her dress over one knee. "Obviously," she went on, "only a fool would say so at any time at all. Who has not got fears? However, one learns to say, 'Such things do not happen.' " "Ah, but they do." She raised her eyes. He said: "Only look round you." "Yes, the war. I had been thinking of life in general." "What's the difference? War, if you come to think of it, hasn't started anything that wasn't there already--what it does is, put the other lot of us in the right. You, I mean to say, have got along on the assumption that things don't happen; I, on the other hand, have taken it that things happen rather than not. Therefore, what you see now is what I've seen all along. I wouldn't say that puts me at an advantage, but I can't help feeling 'This is where I come in.' " "In other words, this is a crooks' war?" "I shouldn't call it that. It's a war, of course; but for me the principal thing is that it's a time when I'm not a crook. For me there've been not so good times when I did seem to be a bit out in my calculations, so you must see how where I'm concerned things have taken a better turn: everything about adds up to what I made it." "What you wanted to tell me, then, was about yourself?" Harrison apparently could not blush, but in a flash his face took on the expression that in other faces goes with a change of colour, a chagrined rise of blood. "In fact, not.--Sorry," he shortly said. "As a rule myself s not one of my topics; it only ever could be if it ever interested you--which _could__, you know, happen," he added, frowning again. "Is it so odd I should want a place of my own?" "What seems to me most odd is the way you expect to make one." He, as though directed by some involuntary thought of hers, turned to stare at the back of the reversed photograph. "You'd feel bad about him, sore about him?" he said. "In that case, I ought to tell you--worse could happen to him than saying goodbye to you." "Oh, I expect so," said Stella with her most idle air. She soon, however, dropped into staring at him with an accumulation of weariness, distaste, mistrust, boredom, most of all the strain of her own sustained ungentleness and forced irony. Hesitating, he touched his moustache--as though it concealed a spring which could make his mouth fly open on something final. She was looked at narrowly. "A lot could happen to him," he said. She made no observation. He went on: "At any moment--which would be too bad, eh? As against which, it might not. If you and I could arrange things, things might be arranged." "I don't follow you." "The fact is, our friend's been playing the fool. _Is__ playing the fool, I should say, for all he's worth." She said sharply: "Is he in a mess about money?" "Not so simple as that. You may find this far from being a pretty story. Want it?" "Just as you like." Harrison cleared his throat. "For reasons you'll see," he said, "I can't tell you the whole thing. In fact, if we'd got the whole thing he would not still be where he is--however, there still is something we're working on. He's, as you know, at the War Office--that's probably all you do know: we've no reason to think that in any social relations he's not been ordinarily discreet. _You__ may have some rough idea what he's doing, but I should doubt that he's ever given you more. Unfortunately he's giving considerably more in another direction. We've traced a leak--shortly, the gist of the stuff he handles is getting through to the enemy. For a good bit of time this has been suspected; now it's established, known." "This is silly," she interjected. "Now the point is, he's being given rope. The open point is, just how much more rope we can afford to pay out to him? There's one argument for leaving him where he is, up to what he's up to, till we've got his contacts; there's one very big thing we're after compared to which your friend's small fry. He's watched--as a matter of fact, I'm watching him. He repays watching--as I told you, I've got to like the chap; I'd be in a way sorry to have things happen to. him. But they might, I must tell you frankly--because here, you see, we come to the other argument, in favour of pulling him in right now. He's not doing half he hopes, but he's doing _some__ damage. In that case, we'd put ourselves back as to the other thing. However, some do say, pull him in double quick, stop _that__ rot, cut our losses.... For my own part, I'm keeping an open mind." "And this open mind of yours, is it so important?" He said modestly: "Well, you might say it is. Just as things are now, I could tip the scales either way. The thing _could__ just turn on the stuff on him I send up. As to that, if you follow me, I do use my judgement. I _could__ use my judgement a bit more.... I am, for instance, holding quite a bit of stuff on him that I haven't turned in yet. It ought to go in--I can't quite make my mind up. Perhaps you could help me to?" She looked at him and began to laugh. "I _could__ leave things over," he went on, with the air of one intensely pursuing an inner argument, "for quite a time. In that case who knows what might not have happened--this whole show might be over; he might for some reason think better of it and drop this little game of his of his own accord; he might just somehow be lucky. There's no saying. Anyhow, it's a hope--if he _could__ be kept out of trouble a bit longer. And when I say that rather depends on me, what I feel is, it rather depends on you." "Yes, I quite see." He said with relief: "You do?" "Perfectly. I'm to form a disagreeable association in order that a man be left free to go on selling his coun-try." "That's putting it a bit crudely," Harrison said, downcast. "It might matter more how one put it if we'd been for a moment talking about the same man. Evidently I have been right--you _are__ crazy. When did you think this up?" He said dubiously: "It doesn't make sense to you?" "I'm afraid not." "Now, why?" "Well, first and last, I suppose, because _you__ don't make sense: you never have. Quite apart from Robert and everything in the world that I know of him, there are people one simply does not believe, and you are one of them." "Well, I don't know..." he said. "What don't you know?" "Quite how to make you see. I can't give you any proof--I'm in deep enough already, having said what I have." "Exactly--yes!" she exclaimed. "That would be another thing, if one needed anything more. If this story were for one instant true, if you for one instant were what you hint you are, would you tell _me__, me of all people, knowing I'd go with the whole thing straight to Robert? Of course I'll anyhow tell him, simply as something comic. What else would you expect?" She threw the words in his face, which reacted as though to a light if insulting buffet from a balloon--it remained stony, certain and, in a way to detest but not to discount, mature. He said: "Expect? I'd have expected the sort of person you are to have a better head. Warn him? That would be a pity--but not for me. Once known to have been put wise, he's no more use to us, so then he _does__ get pulled in. No, speaking as the chap's friend I should certainly not do that." "So, I take this from you, ask no more questions, break with Robert?" "That would be best for him." "Yes, but wait a minute--'known to have been put wise'?

BOOK: The Heat of the Day
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