Friends and Lovers

by Helen Macinnes

  “That’s heresy, if not blasphemy. Don’t ever say that to Bunny or he will blow up into fragments. The only good taste is his taste. Or didn’t you know?” Marston asked, with mock gravity.

  “Well, I suppose we all feel that way.”

  “You are much too loyal ever to succeed in the interior decorating business. Or any business. What are bosses for except to sneer at? One good sneer a day keeps the doctor away.” Lillian Marston laughed. Strange, she was thinking, how I always find being with Lorrimer such an easy way to spend an afternoon. Here I came up, all full of problems about Chris, and I’ve only mentioned him in asides, as if everything were going swimmingly with us. Of course, it was really no good asking Lorrimer for advice: people who were happily in love always thought life was so simple and why aren’t you like me—look, it’s easy. Not so damned easy. Not by a long chalk.

  “And what if Bunny doesn’t like this room?” Marston said suddenly.

  “I have thought of that too. If he looks round, and then concentrates on his sherry—and at the end says, ‘It is too divine, darling. Now, I must really run’—I shall say goodbye with a sweet smile. And I’ll say nothing at all about my idea.”

  “But you’ll go on thinking about it.”

  “Of course. It is sound, isn’t it? And I’d probably start going cuckoo if I had only clients at twenty-five shillings a yard to deal with in my job. Either cuckoo or cynical like Bunny.” She paused, hesitated, looked at Marston again, and then rose to get a large folder from the other end of the table. “Here is something else I’ve been wondering about,” she said, in a much too offhand manner. “Not very much here to show you, I’m afraid, as yet. But later, when I’ve more time... They are designs for rooms, whole rooms, not just furniture and fabrics and colours.”

  Marston raised an eyebrow as she looked through the folder. “I’d like this one,” she said, in a mixture of surprise and pleasure. She held up the drawing and studied it from all angles. “Yes,” she added, “I do like it. I’ll have one like that, Lorrimer. But where do I find a house with such an excellent room ready for all these pleasant shapes and colours? Rooms are not built like that, my sweet.” She shook her head regretfully, almost pityingly. “It would have been so nice.”

  “But supposing people who were about to build a house, or alter one, were to choose the kinds of rooms they wanted from these drawings? Then they could show them to their architect and say, ‘Fit these rooms together and surround them with walls.’”

  “And the architect would clap his hands with joy.”

  “If he’s a good architect he probably would be glad to find a customer who wanted an intelligent house.”

  “I’ve only one more touch of gloom to add, though. Ideas, even good ones, don’t always work.”

  “We don’t know that until we try them. If they don’t work, then what is needed are better ideas obviously, and not less of them.”

  Marston smiled and rose, shaking down the skirt of her black suit into its neat line, pulling the waist-band round to the correct position on her elegant waist, patting the imagined extra inch in disapproval. “God,” she said, “we’re beginning to sound serious. How frightful! I must dash, I’m afraid. I have to dress. Chris is giving a party tonight. His aunt has just died and left him some money. Scads of it. Isn’t it surprising what the old girls hoard up? Why don’t you come along? There will be lots of people you know.”

  “Well,” Penny began, “I—I have some things to do, you know. I—” The usual mixture of politeness and hesitation always gave her voice a slightly worried tone when she was trying to refuse an invitation. Marston never failed to be amused by this. Why worry about not doing what you didn’t want to do, anyway? Really, Lorrimer could be so quaint at times.

  “I’ll make myself presentable,” Marston said. “Where’s that hidden boudoir of yours?” She opened the wrong cupboard door, and then the right one.

  “How’s your David?” she asked unexpectedly, as she finished powdering. She watched Penny’s face light up with sudden interest.

  “He’s well. I had a letter this morning.” And one yesterday and one the day before. Wonderful letters... Wasn’t Marston ever going to leave, Penny wondered.

  “Don’t you ever run out of things to say to each other?” Marston asked teasingly. “I suppose you are going to spend the whole evening quite happily writing a letter to him. Most touching.” Her attitude had always been one of tolerant amusement combined with unexpressed liking for these two. At least, it had begun that way. But now, although she kept up the pretence of amusement, she was no longer so very amused.

  Penny coloured slightly and smiled. “It can be fun writing letters,” she said.

  “Not my cup of tea.” There was the slight edge of irritation in her light voice.

  “How is Chris?” Penny asked quietly, suddenly realising she had been meant to ask about him from the start of this visit.

  Marston shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, he’s all right.” She stubbed out her cigarette half finished, and began pulling on her gloves with exaggerated care.

  Penny looked at her friend in dismay. “I think Chris is charming.”

  “He can also be rather tiresome.”

  Penny said nothing, but she was thinking that Marston would not always be twenty-two, or look like Garbo.

  “He has become so possessive recently. All this money from his aunt makes him dream of a nice place in the country and settling down. Can you imagine it? He is in such deadly earnest nowadays. To tell you the truth, he is becoming rather a bore.”

  Penny began to speak, and then changed her mind.

  “Now, what was that?” Marston said, her good humour returning.

  “Don’t you ever want to be married? You always seemed to have such a lot of fun with Chris.”

  Marston managed to produce a laugh. “How embarrassing we are becoming, like Buchmanites or something. What a quaint idea, Lorrimer. Of course everyone wants to be married. Some day. But not yet. Unless, of course, you have the luck to meet someone like your David, and then I suppose you grab him while you can.”

  “I didn’t grab him.” At least, not that way.

  “Don’t lose your hair over it, darling. After all, you are damned lucky. And you know it, old girl.”

  “I know it. But I never thought you did, Lillian. You always think I’m rather a fool about it all.”

  “I must admit that you could have a lot more fun than you do have. What harm is in that?”

  “I probably wouldn’t have David for very long.”

  “Nonsense, darling. You’d always have him. One sees that kind of man every now and again. It is easy to live with him: one has only to look at his wife to see that.”

  “And one always thinks how lucky she is.”

  Lillian Marston looked quickly at Penny’s expressionless face. Was she being sarcastic? How odd, for Lorrimer. “Isn’t she?” Marston asked sharply.

  “Of course. And perhaps he is lucky too, although it may take other men to see that. But there is something more than luck attached. Oh, yes, I agree, the first meeting is a matter of pure luck. But after that it is something else.”

  “Is it? Darling, I’m boring you. We are talking in circles. Besides—” She glanced at the wrist watch which Ronald had given her last year. She still wore it, not from any sentimental reason, although Chris never quite seemed to believe that, but because it was such a pleasure to look at its charming design. “Oh, I’m late... I must fly.” Her voice returned to its naturally light tone, and she gave Penny one of her slow, controlled smiles. “Don’t worry about me, darling. Life is really very gay and amusing—if you don’t think about it. Don’t forget to ask me to that party for Bunny. I’d adore watching his concealed emotions. But don’t make this place too attractive, or he will think you must be overpaid.”

  Penny was smiling again. “Oh, he isn’t such a monster as that, Lillian.”

  “Darling, he is the kind of man who calculates whether
his friends are worth a five- or a ten-shilling dinner before he asks them out.” Marston picked up her handbag, took one last look at herself in the mirror, and said, “Now don’t work too hard. After all, no room is worth too much effort. And it will look marvellous, I’m sure, once you get the smell of turpentine out of it. What does David think of all this?”

  “He hasn’t seen it yet. He is coming here some time in May.”

  “You know,” Lillian Marston said, half teasingly, half accusingly, “I’d like to meet him properly some time.”

  “Of course you will,” Penny said conventionally, but she must have also shown some embarrassment—she remembered David’s point-blank refusal to meet any of her friends meanwhile: I’ve little enough time with you to waste it on other people—for Marston jumped to the obvious but wrong conclusion.

  “Oh, don’t worry, Lorrimer,” she said, with amusement. “You know he will be perfectly safe. I have my rules, you know. I never poach on my friends’ preserves.”

  That was what was known as a good exit line, Penny thought, as the door closed and Lillian’s footsteps began their promised flying: there was no answer one could think up in time. But as Penny walked over to her table and cleared a space for writing-paper and elbow-room she was thinking of several replies. “I suppose David wouldn’t be safe if she hadn’t her little rules? I suppose he would fall for her if she decided to raise an eyebrow? Of all the—” Her sense of humour began to reassert itself. She was even smiling broadly as she dated her letter. And then she began to laugh. The only thing that spoiled this joke was the fact that she couldn’t tell it to David somehow. She stopped laughing then.

  She rose and walked restlessly about the room. The open cupboard door reminded her to close it, but she paused there for a minute to look at her reflection in its mirror. What am I, who am I, that a man should love me forever? Why should I expect such happiness, so much more than many girls ever get? Am I as vain and selfish in my way as Lillian Marston is in hers? She stared at the reflection facing her so seriously. Her eyes were tired with worry and too little sleep. Her hair was untidy; she found a comb and tried to make it look better, but tonight it wouldn’t go the way she wanted it. “You look a fright,” she told herself cruelly. Why, she thought again, should I expect so much from life? She closed the door quickly and walked back to the table. She brushed the sudden tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. Stupid, she accused herself; you are overtired.

  After a space, when she could start thinking again, she knew the real reason. It was this separation. If she could see David she wouldn’t have these attacks of gloom. If she could hear his voice she would be confident again.

  She picked up his letter and began reading it. She could feel the sudden attack of doubt and depression lifting from her heart. “I am hearing his voice,” she told herself. She could even hear the urgency of his words. Keep writing me, Penny. Tell me you love me over and over again. Tell me in fifty different ways. Keep telling me. He too was never sure: he too wanted reassurance.

  She remembered their last night together. She had awakened at dawn to feel his arm round her waist, to find him raised on one elbow, leaning over her, looking down at her, watching her as he had drawn her out of sleep. He had not moved, had kept looking at her, searching her eyes with his. At last he had said quite simply, “Why? Why, Penny?” She had smiled, stirring happily in his arms, not knowing what to say. There were a hundred reasons, big and little. Where could she begin? Then she had put her arms round him and drawn him down to be kissed. “Because I love you,” she had said, and kissed him again.

  When we are together, she thought, a look or a touch is all that is needed to reassure us. But when we are apart we need all the courage that only words can bring. He feels that too. And realising that, she was happier again: if they were both in need of reassuring, then that was good. That way they would never forget the miracle of being loved.

  She began to write. There was a soft, warm smile on her lips as the words flowed on smoothly. This was her first real love-letter in the true sense of the word. It had taken a long time to find courage enough for it, she thought. How afraid we all were, and out of fear how we held back what should be given without asking. And as she wrote it seemed as if her thoughts filled the room with the warmth of memories recalled, with the excitement of future hopes. Its loneliness had vanished.

  32

  HOUSE-WARMING

  By May full summer had come that year. It astounded and delighted foreign visitors and added another topic of conversation to English dinner-tables. A poor view was taken of the drought—in the Cotswolds cottagers were fetching water by the bucket from far-off wells—and of this appalling heat-wave, with the temperature soaring around seventy-six degrees. (People who tried to introduce a description of Singapore or of New York in summer were politely listened to, but equally silently disbelieved.) Penny was much too occupied to worry about the weather, and enjoyed the luxury of open windows and the view of green leaves, already at midsummer growth, on the back-gardens’ trees. She had become accustomed to the breathless quality of London air. She would probably shiver now in Edinburgh’s bracing climate.

  Strange how we adapt ourselves quickly, she thought. Last May my whole life was centred round Edinburgh. Now it is here. And things which I hadn’t even dreamed of then are opening up before me. She thought of her first ambitions, and found she was smiling at herself. It was such an obvious reaction to want to live on the Continent in romantic places and become a great painter. Instead there was that folder growing richer with designs, more carefully worked over than when Marston had seen them. And there was this room, at last completed and ready for her visitors this week (Lillian Marston and Bunny were to be the first—they were coming this afternoon), which had given her a very practical lesson in her new career. For now it was more than a job of work which gave her economic freedom; now it was the beginning of a career. Bunny Eastman would decide that today. Or would he? If he didn’t like her ideas, then someone else might some day.

  Penny, arranging sherry glasses and decanter on the birch tray, paused to admire the natural grain of the wood and its silver blond colouring. She was laughing at herself again: last May she would never have had the thought that an idea can go on to live after others reject it. Last May she would have accepted Bunny’s refusal or his scorn. Now she would question it and act on the answer she would find. Still, she was nervous: rejections were always depressing, even if you didn’t accept them as the final verdicts.

  She tried the tray in two different places, decided it looked best in a third. She arranged the deep yellow roses on the mantelpiece for the fourth time. She gave a last practical look around the room. I love it, she thought happily. She danced across the room, sang five high notes of no song in particular, and ended with a full circle swing on one foot. Happy, happy, Penelope, she thought, and danced for an imaginary David. He is coming on Friday, on Friday, she sang. And then she heard footsteps on the stairs. She stood breathless, collecting her delightfully scattered wits, and then she dashed to the cupboard, catching a glimpse of her face in the mirror before she closed its door once more. Yes, it is he who brings the stars to your eyes, she thought.

  When Marston knocked and called a casually cheerful greeting Penny was seemingly calm again. She opened the door, concealing, with some difficulty, her pride in ownership. Even Marston, although she had hardly expected Penny to be placarded with “All My Own Work,” was surprised at the perfect offhand welcome. And then, as she entered the room somewhat dubiously with Ernest Boniface Eastman, she was still more surprised. “Well!” she said, and both eyebrows went up. She had taken care to tell Bunny before they reached Fitzroy Square that really Lorrimer must have been quite mad to choose such an impossible flat, and she had described it accurately as she had first seen it. Her eyes met Penny’s, and there was an amused glint in them.

  If the strategy was good, the tactics were superb. Penny talked of everything and anything ex
cept the room. Bunny, his long legs curled round each other, his thin, greyhound body slouching half sideways in the armchair—now covered in dark green linen to pick up the leaf colour in the curtains— rested one hand against a slightly drooping head and balanced a glass of surprisingly good sherry in the other. This was his favourite attitude when he was charmed—“the wilting-rose position” Penny called it. Suddenly, as he finished his fourth glass of Bristol Cream, he could bear this no longer. He leaped up. He leaned an elbow on the mantelpiece, and stood there for a moment. No detail in the room escaped him. Probably cost next to nothing, probably no more than a hundred quid all told. Still, most people would not guess that: it took the professional eye to add up the cost.

  “I do like this; I really do,” he began.

  Marston bent her head to search for matches in her handbag. Now we’re off, she thought. She lit a cigarette, and looked at Penny with increasing respect. If only she doesn’t become too serious, Marston hoped. But Penny was suiting herself admirably to Bunny’s tempo. “Moderate Modern” was explained, lightly, gaily, practically, and she even avoided arousing Bunny’s petulance. But he was, as Marston had predicted, extremely wary.

  “Amusing,” he was saying, “yes, an amusing idea. But, my dear, I simply haven’t the time. Or the energy. Life is crushing enough as it is. Imagine sweating over designs and colours at five shillings a yard, when the amount of creative energy put into them should bring eighteen-and-six at least.”

  Penny looked at her curtains pointedly. “One-and-ninepence a yard,” she admitted frankly, and then smiled with all her charm. “But you wouldn’t be spending your energy on designs for this idea. That would be a shocking waste of your time.” She cleared her throat, and kept her eyes determinedly turned away from Marston. “No, Bunny, the good cheap materials are all there, ready for sale, just waiting to be picked out from the bad cheap materials. All one has to do is to think of using them differently. These curtains of mine are made of material which was sold for dresses, which would have been hideous; but it is all right for curtains. Of course, the whole room was done on practically nothing. You would see that at once.”