Perhaps she was wishing that he had stayed at the Lodge for the Twelfth. David felt some of the concealed regret in her voice, accepted a shortbread biscuit, and said quickly, “I wonder if you and your daughter would lunch with me today?” Thank Heaven he had his ticket for London already in his pocket, but he wondered if his remaining thirty shillings would be adequate. Less than thirty bob now: haircut and shave, suitcase in the left-luggage place, tips, bus fare out to the Crescent. He made the calculation quickly. He set down the fine cup on the silver tray, almost letting it fall in relief as he heard her refuse. Politely, sweetly, but definitely. She was already engaged for luncheon. She was so sorry.
“I am too,” he said, now beginning to worry whether Penny was already booked up in this same party or not. Stupidly he had not thought of that before. He had been so damned sure that she would be free. He looked so dejected that Mrs. Lorrimer was suddenly friendly. Perhaps, too, her little subterfuge troubled her. Anyway, she began to talk very pleasantly about Edinburgh.
Then Penny appeared at last. Mrs. Lorrimer’s quick glance took in her daughter’s newest suit, which normally was worn, in the first six months of its existence, only for the most special occasions. That wasn’t all, either. Penelope was wearing her smartest high-heeled shoes, and that expensive blouse which had been bought only last week.
“Well!” Mrs. Lorrimer said, “We wondered what was keeping you.”
David said, “Are you going out to lunch too?”
“Why, no,” Penny said, in surprise. She looked at her mother’s startled face.
“Then I hope you’ll have it with me. You won’t object, will you, Mrs. Lorrimer?”
Mrs. Lorrimer found she was helpless in face of the direct attack. If he had said, “May she?” Mrs. Lorrimer could have said, “I’m sorry, but Penelope can’t manage that today. Perhaps on your next visit.” But now she would seem rude if she said, “Yes.” And she had no real reason for objecting. Except there was just the little feeling that things were moving much too quickly out of her control. She looked at her daughter’s happy smile and at the young man’s face as he waited for her reply.
“Of course not,” she said.
Penny said quickly, “I’ll get my hat.”
“What about your work? I thought you did not want to be disturbed today?” Mrs. Lorrimer asked.
“Oh, that’s all right, Mother. I wasn’t making much headway really. Tomorrow will do.”
“Tomorrow—” Mrs. Lorrimer began, but Penelope was already half-way up the staircase.
David Bosworth rose. “You’ve been awfully kind, Mrs. Lorrimer. Thank you for taking pity on the stranger within your gates.”
Mrs. Lorrimer smiled faintly. There wasn’t anything else she could have done, she thought worriedly. Only she did not wish that this young man wasn’t quite such a stranger. All she knew was that he was poor, clever (this she had learned from questioning her father), and thoroughly determined. Quite admirable qualities, no doubt, if you hadn’t a most marriageable daughter. She wondered if there was still time to say that her engagement for luncheon did not matter, and that she would be delighted to accept his invitation. But Penelope came downstairs at that moment.
She was wearing that new hat, with the rakish tilt, which she had insisted on buying. And her smartest handbag, her best gloves. And David Bosworth was saying that he hoped Mrs. Lorrimer would have lunch with him and Mr. Chaundler on her next visit to Oxford. And somehow Mrs. Lorrimer found herself walking into the hall with them and saying goodbye with a smile.
She stood for a moment at the open door, watched them almost run down the white steps and then start walking in the direction of the bus-stop. They didn’t look back. They were already talking as if they had forgotten all about her. And they looked so exactly right together, Penelope just a head shorter than the man and taking three steps to two of his, Bosworth with his straight shoulders half turned towards the girl as he talked, that Mrs. Lorrimer found herself thinking for a moment how pleasant it was to be young and walk so confidently.
She closed the door, deciding that this wretched morning was all Penelope’s fault. Her father would have to talk seriously to her. If she behaved with such indiscretion in London goodness knew what would happen to her.
Mrs. Lorrimer, returning to the drawing-room, stared at her three daughters over the mantelpiece. If only they were boys, she thought, if only they could take care of themselves, then she would not have to behave like some old tyrant. She looked at their portrait gloomily, as a fruiterer might look at a window-display of highly expensive, highly perishable peaches.
9
AND THE CASTLE IS TAKEN
David took a deep breath of relief when they reached the pavement and he still found Penny walking along beside him. Until the very last moment he hadn’t been quite sure that he was going to manage it. He felt as if he had scaled the rocks of Edinburgh Castle itself and flouted every gaoler.
“Now what do you want to see first of all?” Penny asked.
“Nothing. Everything. It doesn’t matter,” he answered. You, his eyes said.
She pretended to laugh, but the colour in her cheeks told him that she knew quite well what he wanted to see. He became conscious that he was hurrying her along the Crescent with obvious haste, and slackened his pace.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was making quite sure that your mother would have no afterthoughts, and leave me walking along this crescent by myself. Tell me, does every man who wants to take you out find it as difficult as I did?” The idea, applied to others, seemed rather an attractive one.
“Well, you are sort of unexpected, aren’t you? I mean, Mother knows who the others are. She doesn’t know you. That was the main trouble, I think.”
“And what troubles do the others have to face?” He made a good pretence of joking about it, but he was wondering, with a sudden sharp annoyance, just how many men made the attempt. Looking at Penny, he knew there must be plenty of them, like bees round honey.
“Actually you avoided the main one.”
“And what’s that?”
“You didn’t ’phone. You called at our house.”
“Is there a ban against ’phoning?”
“Not exactly. But there’s a kind of opposition...” She paused in embarrassment: he must be finding her very amusing, and in the wrong way. “It really is much better to call at our house.”
“That makes us respectable?”
“It helps.”
He smiled broadly. “Well, I very nearly wasn’t respectable.”
“We’ve passed the bus-stop,” she said quickly. “Shall we go back?”
“No, let’s walk. Do you mind, Penny?” They couldn’t talk on a bus, and it was a pity to waste any of the few hours he could have with her. Besides, walking helped talking.
“I’d love to walk, David.”
They were both conscious of the strange sound of their first names.
“Good,” David said, with enthusiasm. “Let’s head for the Castle. That’s the place to see, isn’t it? We can find a spot to admire the view, and you can point out all attractions round about.”
“You won’t see much of Edinburgh that way, I’m afraid.”
“I’ll buy a guide-book at the station and do some memorising on the train. Then I’ll be able to give a good account of what I didn’t see today, if you insist. You look startled. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She tried to look natural. And then she laughed suddenly and said, “Do you always behave like this?”
He didn’t answer that. He had never behaved like this before, he thought, as he took her arm to guide her across a street. He didn’t let go either until another fifty yards had been covered and two elderly ladies, in knitted suits, straight-set hats, and chamois gloves, smiled and bowed to a most confused Penny.
David lifted his hat with great politeness. “Sorry, that was my fault,” he said. “I didn’t quite like the sudden gleam of interest in their eyes. Will it
cause any trouble?”
“It will be all right,” Penny said, looking at him curiously. “They are rather sweet old ladies—not like some we might have met.” She gave him the warmest smile that had yet come his way.
After that David found himself forcing a passage for her through the increasingly crowded pavements. He felt the impulse to punch every man between the eyes who looked a moment longer than necessary at the girl walking beside him. I’m sunk, he suddenly thought, as he made some small remark and waited to see the answering smile on her face: I’m sunk, completely and absolutely, and I don’t care if I am. He began talking as amusingly as he could. He might groan afterwards at this display of sheer exhibitionism, but each smile and laugh and comment won now was well worth it. And when they had at last passed through Princes Street, broad, welcoming in the morning sunshine, with its fashionable shops along one side and its formal gardens on the other, and then entered a steep street which looked as if it might lead them towards the Castle, he had his reward.
“Why, here we are!” Penny said, with considerable surprise. She looked at her shoes, now lightly coated with fine white dust. “It usually takes an hour to reach the Castle from our house. At least an hour if you are walking.”
David glanced at his wrist watch. They had been walking for more than an hour. “What about some food first? Is there a restaurant near here? I expect we passed several decent places in Princes Street. You should have told me, you know. I’m a stranger here.”
Penny smiled and shook her head. Decent restaurants were expensive. “There’s bound to be a restaurant near here,” she said, “if you don’t mind something simple.”
David wondered if he were hearing correctly. “Isn’t there some place you’d like especially for lunch?” All the girls he had ever met before chose the best restaurant as a matter of course.
Penny shook her head again, and felt some surprise herself. She had thought, when she had dressed so carefully, that she would make a very smart appearance at one of the well-known places. (Who is the girl with that distinguished man? No doubt one of these foreigners who are now visiting the city. An American? No, probably Parisian—you can always tell by the hat.) But now it didn’t matter. Anywhere at all seemed marvellous, wonderful. He is the most extraordinary man I’ve ever met, she thought, as she looked up at him.
“I don’t suppose you have ever missed a meal in your life?” he said, with a strange little smile.
“You make me sound greedy. But actually I don’t believe I ever have. Have you?”
“Sometimes. When I’m busy and can’t be bothered.”
“Frankly I am not very hungry now. Perhaps we shouldn’t bother. We can have something to eat later on.”
“Good Lord, no!” he said vehemently, and flushed. God, did she think he had no money at all? And that remark of his about missing meals—what a stupid kind of thing to let slip! He had passed so many well-fed, healthy faces in Edinburgh’s streets that he had begun to think of it as a city of good restaurants, if only he knew where to look for them. One was always inefficient about restaurants in strange places: in Oxford or London he would have known where to take her to eat. Hell, he thought angrily, and looked about him in desperation. He grabbed her arm suddenly and led her towards a sign.
“This looks a restaurant of sorts. Seems all right. Is it?”
“Yes,” she said. But she was relieved that there was no one in the street who could recognise her as they entered its door, for her mother would have been horrified. A tavern would have been Mrs. Lorrimer’s name for it. But there were white tablecloths and the appetising smell of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, as well as the tobacco smoke and the clusters of bowler hats on the racks which stood beside each row of tables.
“Are you sure it is all right?” David repeated. This seemed a restaurant mostly for men. Probably the food would be excellent.
“Of course,” she said. Why, she thought, with some disappointment, it really looks very respectable!
David was saying, “We might get some decent food here. What chases away my appetite is the tea-room.”
Penny seemed intent on drawing off her gloves. She had always thought tea-rooms, especially the ones in Princes Street, rather pleasant places with excellent cakes. But obviously they weren’t held in such high regard in Oxford. She felt suddenly very naive about her ideas on food.
David noticed her sudden shyness. “Are you sure you don’t mind this place?” Good Lord, he thought, I am becoming more Edinburgh than Edinburgh, worrying about what is done or not done. Or perhaps he was being unfair to Edinburgh judging it by Mrs. Lorrimer.
“Do you like Edinburgh?” he asked suddenly.
“Yes,” Penny said, in surprise, “don’t you?” And then she smiled.
“I like its Princes Street,” he said, “but I don’t know anything about its people. Except you and your mother, and you seem direct opposites.”
“Mother was born and brought up in England. She only came to Edinburgh when she married Father.”
“Oh,” he said. He looked at Penny, and they both laughed, and then she became absorbed in studying the menu.
“If you really don’t care for this place,” he began hesitatingly, and then stopped. Mrs. Lorrimer’s influence was long-lasting, it seemed. He was noticing, for instance, that the tablecloth, although white, was not well laundered, and that the menu was thumb-marked. Penny must have noticed these things at once. Damn, he thought; I’ve bungled things badly: I must look damned inadequate. He scowled savagely in the direction of an interested table. “And who are these young men, anyway?” he asked suddenly. He was delighted when he saw his return stare had routed successfully the watching eyes. He began to feel more efficient again. Well, they asked for it, he thought: bloody rude of them to stare at Penny like that.
“Medical students,” Penny said.
David glanced at her sharply. “Do you know them?”
Penny shook her head. She had liked the quickness in his voice somehow. “You can always tell them. It’s their clinical interest.”
David relaxed, and a smile spread over his face as he ordered lunch. By a skilful process of suggestion and elimination he managed to make her decide in half the usual time she needed to cope with a menu.
Well, she thought, as the full-bosomed, thick-waisted waitress in drab black retired with the completed order, well, it is rather nice to have someone to make up your mind for you— especially if he decides on the things you really wanted to have, anyway. She wondered if he always knew what he wanted so very quickly; and thank goodness the dye in her new suede gloves was fast and her hands were not streaked with blue as she had feared. And did that medical student with the red hair know her, for he looked as if he did recognise her—students had a way of knowing you without your ever having met them— and was he perhaps a friend of any of Moira’s friends? And then she suddenly thought, I don’t care even if all the family find out; I don’t care if I get into the most awful row. This, she decided, as she listened to David’s voice and watched the smile in his eyes, this is fun. She laughed suddenly.
“A good joke?” he said.
“I’m feeling rather good,” she said. She told herself she shouldn’t have admitted that, but her tongue had outwitted her.
“Are you?” He looked pleased. He said quietly, “So am I. Nice feeling, isn’t it?” Their eyes met and held in the same way they had met and held in Mrs. McDonald’s cottage. And the effect was still the same. Penny took fright, retreating into words. David was silent, watching her as she talked. She felt suddenly that he knew why she was talking like this, and she fell silent too.
“And what happened then?” he asked. He must have been listening after all.
“Nothing very much. I’m afraid I’m boring you.”
He shook his head slowly.
The waitress brought the food, and the intrusion brought them back to earth. Besides, the roast beef was tender and properly underdone, the roasted potatoes were
crisp and hot, the vegetables were an appetising green and did not taste of baking soda, and they were both hungry.
David congratulated himself on his choice of restaurant. It could cook. As he drank the excellent ale which he had ordered—Penny would have nothing to drink—he said, “Thank heavens you are a girl who can eat.”
She looked up quickly, horrified.
“No, please don’t,” he said. “That was a compliment I was trying to pay you. There is nothing sillier than the girl who picks daintily and leaves most of the food on her plate. She probably thinks she is being aesthetic or something, although how anyone can be aesthetic when they don’t appreciate an art like good cooking I can’t imagine. Actually she always reminds me strongly of the princess in The Thousand and One Nights. The one who ate rice with a bodkin. Only rice, grain by grain; everything else refused. Remember her?”
Penny, whose knowledge of The Thousand and One Nights had been limited to one volume of carefully selected passages, to Rimsky-Korsakov’s music, and to the bowdlerised version of the Christmas pantomime, wrinkled her brow thoughtfully. “I don’t know it,” she admitted. “I thought I knew The Arabian Nights pretty well, but I don’t know that story. How did it end?”
“Well, roughly—without Scheherazade’s interruptions—she ate the grains of rice by day, drugged her husband’s coffee in the evening, and went out by night with her friend, the ghoul, to tear a few graves apart. Nice clean fun, don’t you think?”
Penny thought over that, and then the full implication dawned on her. She laughed and pushed back her empty plate.
“I was only trying to show you that I was paying you a compliment when I said I was glad you liked good food. But I suppose I haven’t Scheherazade’s charm as a teller of tales.”
“Actually,” Penny said, with mock seriousness, “you should not mention ghouls or graves in Edinburgh. Burke and Hare... Remember them?”
“Why, of course, they worked here... Good old subconscious: it keeps on going all the time, doesn’t it?” He glanced over at the party of medical students, and caught the red-haired man watching Penny again. “Now I know what to say to your medical friend if he doesn’t stop looking over in this direction.”
Friends and Lovers Page 9