“Yes,” David said, with a smile to take the edge off his words, “that had all the beginnings of a good one, hadn’t it?”
She nodded. “We hurt each other. And it was all so stupid, for neither of us deserved to be hurt.” She gripped his hand, as she wondered what she would have done if he had not come after her, if he had not taken her arm and kissed her. She suddenly reached up to kiss his cheek. “I adore you,” she said.
They halted at the corner of the street. The wind was shrewd, and the passers-by looked at them curiously. David glanced at his watch.
“Shall we go into another restaurant and have some food?” he suggested teasingly.
“Let’s walk. I have some news for you too, David.” She drew close to him as they walked, ignoring both the wind and the passers-by. “I thought I wouldn’t tell you this evening, because you were so depressed. But it would explain a lot...why I was so angry and stupid and all the things I don’t want to seem to you.” She halted, suddenly aware of the street which they had entered, crowded with Saturday-night holiday-makers. “Where can we talk, David? How far away is George’s flat?”
He looked at her, unable to conceal his amazement.
“Not too far,” he said guardedly. “Ten minutes by taxi.” He made no move. He stood there looking at her, watching her face, asking her no question, just standing there, saying nothing, watching her.
“There’s a taxicab rank, David,” Penny said, pretending to be practical.
“So it is,” he said, with an equally good pretence of surprise.
He smiled, raised one hand, and hailed the first cab, just as he had wanted to do ever since he had seen the row of taxis some five minutes ago. With the other hand he tightened his grip on Penny’s arm.
* * *
The view from George’s flat was one of roof-tops. When they entered it from the tiny square of hall David switched on the light automatically, and then wished he hadn’t been so quick to cut out the magic of the clear night pouring through the large double windows. But Penny must have sensed the sudden nervousness which had attacked him. She walked into the room, looking round it with careful interest. He was amazed at her calmness.
“Some day,” she was saying, “we’ll have a room like this, and a window like this. Only better than this, for it will be ours.” And how happy we shall be... Not for just one day here, one night there, but for always. People who were married did not know how lucky they were to have a home, a place to be together, four walls around one life.
“Put out the light, David; we are blotting out the stars.” She crossed the room to the windows. “I like roof-tops,” she said. “When you have roof-tops you have the sky.” She turned almost instinctively to meet David’s kiss half-way. He caught her in his arms.
They stood there, straining against each other with the pain and desperation of unfulfilled love. And then, suddenly, he released her, dropping his arms as if they did not wish to touch her, moving his body as if to step away from her. But their eyes did not leave each other. Penny’s hand rested on his shoulder, then it tightened, and her arms slipped round him, drawing him back to her again.
“I love you, David,” she said. Tonight, as she looked up at him, holding him, sharing the pain and anguish she found in his eyes, the words had become a promise. Not a promise to be taken lightly. A promise to be kept and repeated forever.
“I love you,” he answered, and in his words there was all the feeling of a vow.
* * *
The room’s darkness was broken by moonlight. Its pale white light spilled in a pool on the floor before the window, overflowed gently into the shadows, diluting their depths into ghostlike transparence.
Penny stirred and then relaxed against David, feeling the strength and peace of his body, the peace in her heart. His arm tightened round her as if to reassure himself. He gently kissed her eyes and lips and throat and then his head rested against her breast. From this couch the sky, with its sprinkled stars, was all that could be seen of the world outside. There was only the sound of fading traffic coming up from the street below: dim, distant, remote from this silver-shadowed room. Time itself seemed to have stopped.
29
VIEW BY MOONLIGHT
When the curtains were drawn and the lamps switched on, and Penny had combed her hair, they sat down together with lighted cigarettes. Penny was in one armchair, David in the other, across from her, on the opposite side of the hearth; because, as he said, he wanted to look at her.
“How domestic this all is,” Penny said, with some surprise, and glanced round the room. “I don’t feel at all like an abandoned woman.”
“As long as you only abandon yourself to me for the rest of your life I shan’t object,” David answered. He smiled, and then saw that Penny was watching him. “Well?” he asked, “You too?”
“Yes, I’m so happy, David.” He need only look at her shining eyes, at the soft, eager smile on her lips, to find the proof of her words.
“You are so much more beautiful than I ever dreamed,” he said suddenly serious. “Penny, why should you love a chap like me? What makes you?”
When she didn’t answer that, but only watched him with that warm smile on her lips, he went on, “You know, Penny, I’ve always been afraid that I’ll lose you. Even now... ” His voice hesitated. “Even now, at this moment, I suddenly realise what a nightmare this life would be if, having known you, I lost you.”
“We shan’t lose each other,” Penny said, “for we shan’t hurt each other. That is the promise we made, isn’t it?” Then she became serious, thoughtful. Her voice was hesitant in its earnestness. “I realised tonight something that I hadn’t realised before. I don’t think girls do realise it until they meet a man like you. No one tells us, you see. All we are told about men is that we should distrust them because they have the power to hurt us. Yet tonight I know that I have every bit as much power to hurt you as you have to hurt me.” She paused. “It is a terrific responsibility, this being in love.”
David rose and came over to her. “If we remember that,” he said, “we won’t ever lose each other.” He took her cigarette and stubbed it out in an ashtray. He sat down beside her in the armchair, pulling her legs over his lap, sliding his arm around her waist. “It is a pity to waste the mercies,” he said, and kissed her ear. “Now, be co-operative. Look at your arm quite useless. Put it round my neck. That’s the girl.”
“But, David—” She tried to sit up and look business-like. “We have so much to talk about, to decide.”
“It seems to me as if we’ve made the only important decision in all our life,” he said, and kissed the curve of her neck. “And look here, Penny, when you’re married to me you had better not interrupt me when I’m making love. I’ll beat you with the poker if you do.”
Penelope laughed delightedly as if she enjoyed the idea, and let herself relax on his lap.
“Still, David, we have a lot to discuss,” she said mildly. “In my handbag on that table is a letter from Father, for instance. It came this morning. But first of all I must tell you about Mother’s visit, and that I am now hunting for a job. And a room of my own.”
David looked at her in amazement, his interest now fully awakened. Penny began her story.
At its end he was silent for some moments. Then he kissed the hand he had been holding, and said quietly, “I’m sorry I lost my temper in the restaurant. I’m sorry, Penny.”
“But I hadn’t told you, darling, so how could you know? You must have thought I was hardly qualified to talk, with my parents providing a nice, comfortable life for me. I should have told you at once, I suppose, but you were so unhappy and gloomy.”
“I was,” he admitted. But no more. All the desperately unhappy thoughts of these last days had vanished. Tonight death had once more gone back into its proper proportion to life. We lived, not in fear of death, but in spite of death.
“Everything seemed useless,” he said. “Even my work. It is behindhand, as you may guess
. Yesterday I thought that proved I could never manage it anyway. Tonight”—he kissed her hand again—“I know I’ll manage it. I’ll go back to Oxford and work harder than I’ve ever worked.” He kissed her on her lips. “Now I know what I’ve been working for,” he added quietly. “And we’ll manage everything. We’ll get married, sister or no sister.”
He tightened his arms round her, as if by crushing her this way he could hold her forever.
“If we had only my people to struggle against, or only your sister to cope with, we could get married this summer. But my people and Margaret together are going to be a difficult combination. You see, one complicates the other.”
“But I don’t see, darling.”
“Father’s letter says quite frankly that I can’t get legally married without his consent. And I can’t, David. Of course a lawyer would think of that. Now, if we could have shown him that we were in love and that we had three hundred pounds a year to live on—perhaps even more, but certainly three hundred—he would probably have relented in the end. But I know Father, and he will never allow me to get married on three pounds a week, and that is what we shall have left after Margaret is taken care of. And he wouldn’t allow me to get married if I had to have a job in order to add to our income. He doesn’t believe in that. And if I pointed out that a home might suffer just as much from a wife who spends so much time on committees and concerts and bridge clubs and good works he wouldn’t listen. He would only be furious. And that’s no way to win him to our side.”
“Damn it all,” David said angrily, “if it is only money they want...”
“Darling, darling,” Penny said, and kissed him. “Don’t, please don’t. I agree with you. People are not logical. For instance, Mother thinks George Fenton-Stevens is charming and would make a most suitable son-in-law. But look at this—” she waved her arm round the room. “He has this flat.” She glanced at David with a smile. “And you probably know what I found in that cupboard beside the bathroom. I was looking for a towel; I thought that cupboard was the linen cupboard, and I opened it. A very nice black lace nightie; a pair of slippers, all pink and fluffy.” She laughed openly. “So, supposing I had got engaged, formally of course, with the correct ring and the correct announcements, to a man like George; supposing after a very correct period of waiting I got married in white, with engraved invitations and three hundred guests in the very best church—well, I know Mother and everyone would think it was all a most moral arrangement. A most excellent marriage. Tender-hearted ladies would weep with happiness for the bride. Mother would be delighted. Yet at the same time she would never want her daughter to have a second-hand husband. So what’s logical in all that?”
David was still silent.
Penny said, “You see, darling, I’ve been thinking things out all week. If we are serious about each other we must take ourselves seriously. Not let ourselves be persuaded by anyone or anything. We are our own conventions, our own morality. If we keep faith, then nothing we do is wrong. Do you believe that?”
“If I didn’t you would not be here now.” He repeated slowly, “If we keep faith...” That was the whole foundation. “Without it we can build nothing. And marriage is a house you build, not a hotel room you can rent and move into. It has to be well built, too. Not a ramshackle affair.” He raised her face gently towards him, and bent forward to give her lips a long, slow kiss. “Speaking as a man,” he said at last, “I don’t know a better start on that foundation than the proof you gave me tonight: you love me for nothing but myself. That is what all men want, and damned few get it.” This time he kissed her with a violence that startled her. And then pleased her.
“And what do women want in love?” he asked. He watched her face now. It was one of her greatest charms that her thoughts should sometimes be so unconsciously revealed by her expression.
“To be judged so wonderful in love that the man you love will never think of anyone else,” she said at last. “You see, darling, if you were to stop loving me it would be a dreadful confession of failure on my part. And women always like to think they are a success. Oh, David,” she tightened her arms about his neck, “let’s make it a good house. A strong and wonderful house, a lovely house.”
“Yes,” David said. “And to begin with, did I ever tell you how many ways I love you, and why, and how much?”
“Never sufficiently. But, darling, we haven’t finished discussing problems.”
“Remember the poker!” David warned. “They can be discussed—what is left of them—in letters. What are letters for, anyway, except to say all the things you hadn’t time to say when you were talking? And we have done enough talking tonight.”
He rose suddenly, switched off the lamp on the table, and turned towards the window to open the curtains again. “Quotations seem in order,” he said, looking at the stars. “I should now begin with Shakespeare and work down through the lesser poets. Or should I—”
“What are letters for, anyway?” Penny asked, leaning her head back against the chair. “Besides, in letters we can always make the quotations word-perfect. Darling, do you remember how I used to quote chunks and chunks of poetry in my first letters to you? I was trying to show an Oxford man that I really might be educated, even if I did come from Scotland. I’d remember the first line or two quite fairly. And then I cheated: I copied out the other lines from the texts. Sounds awful, doesn’t it, but I was trying so hard... And, at least, give me the credit for having the texts, and for knowing where to look in them.”
“Scholars would say that was more important than having a parrot memory. They are purists, you see. Just as you are, but in a different direction.” He came back to her. “In a very different direction, thank God.” He paused, looking down at her.
The room’s silence grew under the silvered light from the windows. The traffic in the street had now ceased. In the deep quiet Penny looked up at David. She was startled for a moment. There’s so much about men that I never knew, she thought in amazement; but if I am to be as happily married at the age of fifty as I am now, then I must learn. The age of fifty, viewed that way, seemed even attractive. David had taken hold of her hands. He was trying to be so impersonal, so thoughtful, that a wave of love flooded her heart and broke out into her smile.
“Tired, darling?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said truthfully. And then, her smile deepening, “No.”
He laughed. His momentary nervousness had gone.
“Darling,” he said, with a sudden deep emotion which held them together in a tightening grip. “I love you. I love you forever.”
30
OXFORD REALITY
David’s life at Oxford became austerely simple. He set himself to work with an intensity that surprised even Chaundler, who found himself in the strange position of advising a pupil to take things easy. David would answer with a smile, “But it seems to agree with me, Walter.” And Chaundler would have to admit to himself that Bosworth seemed happier than he had been last year, and that he was less worried and more sure of himself than he had been last month.
“Besides,” David said one day, after another fatherly lecture by Chaundler on the wisdom of working with black coffee until four o’clock in the morning, “I have to make quite sure of this job with Fairbairn, you know.” Walter Chaundler agreed, but he also suggested, in that halting, quiet-voiced way of his, that David was practically sure of it already. Fairbairn had lunched at length on two occasions, and had dined once, with David; and during these meetings—as Chaundler well knew, although David was not supposed to realise it—David’s brains had been skilfully though subtly examined, and David’s personality and capabilities had been carefully reviewed. So Chaundler contented himself by smiling, when David looked sceptical at such confidence and replied, patting the books he held under his arm, “Well, this is one sure way of making sure.”
David had to make sure. There was the competition of Marain, for instance. Marain, until he had discovered that David was Fairbairn�
��s possible choice in his search for talent in this year’s crop of graduates, had been thinking of a career combining writing with politics. Now he suddenly decided that a job with Fairbairn would be interesting and useful, and entirely suitable for his own talents. His plan of campaign had been quite simple and direct. His uncle owned a small but important economic quarterly, which Fairbairn would have liked to buy and build up into a monthly magazine. And although Marain would not work on the staff of his uncle’s journal, for he was always scornful of nepotism, he somehow had no compunction about arranging a luncheon in town where his uncle played host to his nephew from Oxford and Mr. Fairbairn.
David learned about this luncheon from Burns. David and the American had come to know each other in an easy, casual kind of way, and Burns liked David enough to make a special visit to Mrs. Pillington’s lodgings and drop the news about Marain in the middle of a conversation about Dos Passos.
David looked sharply at Burns, and then said as casually as possible, “Well, of course, Marain’s a good man. Clever. Probably get a good First if he will only allow himself to appear to work.” He paused, trying to disguise the worry which this piece of news had started churning, and forced himself to say, “He would probably be very good in the Fairbairn job.”
Burns looked at David with irritation. “Well, I wouldn’t let myself be beaten with thoughts like that.” Hell, he thought, I’d fight Marain every inch of the way. And no quarter. Marain has asked for it. Didn’t Bosworth see that he had told him about this straw in the wind not as a piece of Oxford gossip, but as a warning? Hell, didn’t Bosworth know that he liked him? There was a real warmth in Bosworth that attracted Burns; if there were more Bosworths in Oxford he wouldn’t be so damned homesick for America. It was not the coldness of the climate but the coldness of the people which depressed him over here. You could never relax and stop worrying, either about the way you spoke or the way you liked to dress or the way you liked to eat. You could not be natural without feeling you had to apologise for it. You couldn’t even talk about being natural without someone quoting Oscar Wilde at you in a most unnatural voice—“The greatest affectation of all is that of being perfectly natural.” You were always trying to behave as people expected you to behave. England expects... Quite, as they would say. And, he reflected as he watched David’s impassive face, you might as well not waste your breath in warning an Englishman. For warnings implied knowledge that he did not possess, and that, of course, was unthinkable. And if you were fool enough to make the gesture and waste your breath, what did you get? The glacier stopped moving a couple of inches each year and froze dead in its tracks.
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