Late and Soon

by E M Delafield

  The habit of organization would impel him to deal first with the complexities and uncertainties of telephone communication in war-time between Devonshire and a remote village in South Ireland.

  She found that, without being aware of having done so, she had returned to the hall where Venetia Rockingham still sat beside the fire, directing her bright, delicately-enunciated spate of faintly malicious conversation towards the General, and Primrose still sprawled, motionless, in her distant corner.

  Still motionless and still looking down at the crossword puzzle, she enquired:

  “Anything or nothing? The telephone, I mean.”

  “It was a message to say that Charles Sedgewick is coming back this evening to collect his things, and then going off by the late train. They’re being moved.”

  “My God,” remarked Primrose without expression. She filled in another clue.

  “Being moved?” echoed the General. “Scandalous waste of the country’s money, the way the Army is being pushed about from pillar to post, in my opinion. Are these chaps going abroad?”

  “I think they are, Reggie. Charles Sedgewick is off to London on embarkation leave.”

  “My dear,” exclaimed Venetia.” He hasn’t got embarkation leave all to himself, I imagine. What about the Colonel?”

  “Rory’s got his embarkation leave too, Venetia.”

  “And what are you going to do?” Lady Rockingham asked, looking curiously at her sister-in-law.” Nothing desperate, darling, I do hope and trust. If you ask me, this gives everybody time to turn round—such a mercy, don’t you know what I mean.”

  Valentine rang the bell without answering.

  When Ivy appeared she said:

  “Would you or Esther take Captain Sedgewick’s suitcases to his room, if you please. He’s going on leave tonight. Ask Mrs. Ditchley to send in dinner early. Seven o’clock.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  The girl’s face showed no surprise. Valentine surmised that she had heard the news already.

  After Ivy had left the room Lady Rockingham remarked:

  “I suppose Colonel Lonergan’s batman looks after his packing—or isn’t he going away?”

  “I’m walking into the town now to meet him and talk over what we’re going to do,” Valentine replied.

  It was only as she went out of the house by the garden door five minutes later that she realized, with surprise, that her announcement had met with no comment from anybody.

  She walked as quickly as possible down the avenue and thought that it was growing colder every minute, although the wind had fallen. It had given place to a sullen, snow-laden stillness that enveloped the dark and leafless trees and the sodden-looking earth in a chilled immobility.

  Valentine’s exultation of an hour earlier had all left her. She felt despairing, apprehensive and forlorn.

  It will be all right when I see him, she told herself without conviction. Her mind dwelt upon the immediate present, unable to envisage the idea that Lonergan was going away, leaving England for a destination unknown, from which he might well never return again.

  She had walked rapidly for a mile and a half or more when she saw a tall young figure swinging along the lane, coming towards her. It was Jess, with her dogs.

  Aunt Sophy, recognizing Valentine, rushed wildly to meet her, capering extravagantly and making short rushes backwards and forwards between her and Jess.

  “Hallo!” Jess shouted, lengthening her stride. She was waving a paper above her head. “It’s come! I was absolutely dead right, as usual. Wasn’t it extraordinary, mummie, I just knew that letter would be at the post-office. And it was. I’m to report at Victory House at twelve noon on Thursday. Gosh! that’s the day after to-morrow. I’ll have to take the early train. Gosh! It’s pretty marvellous, having to dash off all in a minute like that, like the Secret Service or something. Mummie, it is okay by you, isn’t it? I mean, you don’t mind, do you?”

  “No, darling. Not if you’re glad.”

  Valentine forced back the emotion that threatened to bring tears into her eyes.

  “I’m dying to tell Madeleine. Gosh! won’t she be thrilled! It’ll make up for the battalion going. Mummie, they’re being sent abroad and they don’t know where, only they’re being issued with tropical kit. They’re getting embarkation leave, straight away now this minute. They’ll all be gone by to-morrow. So’ll I, by Thursday. I wonder what uncle Reggie will say. Mummie, you’ll take care of aunt Sophy, won’t you?”

  “Indeed I will.”

  “And look, are you on your way to meet the Colonel? Because if you are, I saw him in the Square and he told me to tell you it was no good. He looked as sick as mud. He’s got to see some old General or other and he told some chap to ring up Coombe in case he could catch you before you started, to say not to come.”

  Valentine’s heart sank lower. She felt no surprise, only an overwhelming disappointment.

  “He. came dashing across the Square just as I came out of the post-office, and asked if I was going home and told me I’d prob’bly meet you on the road. Gosh, it’s parky, isn’t it? We hadn’t better go on standing here freezing, had we?”

  Valentine turned and walked beside her daughter in the direction of Coombe.

  “It’s a pity about Charles and the Colonel going,” Jess observed. “And Buster and Jack and all the others. They were wizard. I suppose I won’t be able to say goodbye to them now. I’ll only see Charles. He’s coming in at about six, and the Colonel as soon as he can make it. Earlier than six if he can, he said.”

  Jess whistled piercingly to her dog.

  “Did you tell Colonel Lonergan that you were going to Victory House on Thursday?” asked Valentine, in order to break the silence that she felt unable to endure. “What did he say?”

  “As a matter of fac’, I didn’t say anything about it. I thought,” said Jess, elaborately off-hand, “that you might as well be the absolutely first person to be told about it.”

  XVIII

  With his customary efficiency and detachment Charles Sedgewick looked round his bedroom at Coombe and ascertained that his belongings were packed, and his room left in order.

  He took a last appraising look at the old-fashioned wallpaper, the dark, massive furniture, the steel engravings framed in narrow black and gold. It was pretty certainly the last time he’d ever stay in a house like Coombe, he reflected without any sentimental regret—indeed with a momentary relief in the recollection that his mother’s little villa would be comfortably warmed throughout.

  Well, thought Sedgewick, it had been interesting enough to see how these people, so unmistakably in the last ditch, conducted such life as they might be said to have left. Something to be said for the individual, perhaps—he grinned at the remembrance of Jessica, who was a nice kid, young enough and tough enough to find and keep a place in the new order.

  He gave a fleeting thought to Lady Arbell, not because he considered her in any way significant but because his Colonel apparently did. One can’t ever tell, with people of that generation, was Sedgewick’s mental summing-up of his passing surmise. And he added in his own mind: Any more than they can with ours.

  The people who might be liquidated with positive advantage to the community were, in Sedgewick’s dispassionate view, the Rockingham woman, who was a bitch, Hughie Spurway, a degenerate and a pestilential bore, and the old Blimp, General Levallois.

  Thus briefly, methodically, and without qualifying clauses did Charles Sedgewick classify his impressions of these people whom he had tabulated as “the real thing” on his first arrival at Coombe. There remained his awareness of Primrose, and hers of him.

  Sedgewick glanced at his wrist-watch, noted that it was only twenty minutes past six, and with characteristic promptitude decided that he had plenty of time in which to discover whether or not Primrose was interested.

  The non-committal phrase exactly expressed his own attitude of mind.

  With no further backward look at his temporary lo
dging, Sedgewick tramped out of the room and down the dark, draughty passage to the schoolroom.

  She was, as he had expected, sitting over the fire, smoking and with a copy of The New Yorker lying face-downwards on her lap.

  “Hallo, Primrose.”

  “Hallo to you. So you’re off.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Jess has got to go, too. Quite a break-up.”

  “Isn’t it? What about you?”

  “It’s me for the first train to London to-morrow—so long as my poisonous aunt isn’t in it.”

  “Travel up with me to-night. We’ll be making Waterloo at twenty-four hours, if the train’s punctual.”

  “Too much of a rush.”

  “As you say.”

  Primrose turned her head slightly towards him for the first time and gave him her queer, crooked smile.

  “I might turn up to-morrow lunch-time at the bar of the Café Royal.”

  “I’ll buy you a drink there.”

  “Okay.”

  His eyes held hers for a moment and then they both laughed, —brief, excited, mirthless laughter.

  Sedgewick walked over to the armchair and pulled Primrose onto her feet.

  “Mind my cigarette,” she said.

  “Chuck it away.”

  “‘Save to defend’,” she mocked.

  Then she threw the half-smoked cigarette, stained with her lip-stick, into the fire.

  It was nearly nine o’clock before Lonergan returned to Coombe. A succession of telephone messages had announced one. delay after another, and the last one had said that no dinner was to be kept for him.

  Dinner at Coombe had been early, and immediately afterwards Primrose, offering no explanation to anyone, had gone in Sedgewick’s taxi to the station and seen his train pull out from the darkened little country platform.

  The taxi brought her back as far as the gates of the avenue and there she got out and prepared to walk to the house, swearing between her teeth at the cold that slashed through her belted leather jacket and thick skirt.

  A car hooted behind her and she saw and recognized it preparing to take the entrance, travelling slowly.

  Primrose flashed her torch onto the path ahead, swinging it backwards and forwards, and the car came to a noisy standstill.

  Lonergan leant out and opened the door.

  “It’s me,” Primrose said, and she climbed into the seat next the driver’s.

  “What in God’s name are you doing, girl, catching pneumonia out here?”

  “Pneumonia is right,” said Primrose, and she leant back and dragged at the rug on the back seat.

  “Here, wait a minute.”

  Lonergan switched off the engine and put the rug over her knees, tucking it round her.

  “History repeating itself,” Primrose remarked. “Remember driving me out from Exeter last Saturday?”

  “I do,” he answered gently.

  “Go on. Start her up. You’re driving me to the house, aren’t you?”

  “I am, of course.”

  He started the engine again and the car bumped away over the uneven surface between the dark clumps of the gorse bushes and the groups of leafless trees.

  “You’re late,” Primrose said.

  “Indeed I am. It’s been one thing after another, all day. Has Sedgewick gone?”

  “Yes. ’Smatter of fact, I’ve just been seeing him off.”

  “You have?”

  After a pause, as though Lonergan had been silently taking in the implication of that statement, he said:

  “So that’s the way of it. Well, Sedgewick’s a good lad, tough as they come, and he deserves a slice of luck. He’ll be on the high seas a week from now.”

  “So’ll you.”

  “I shall.”

  “I shan’t be seeing you again. I’m going back to London to-morrow.”

  “So Sedgewick gets his slice of luck.”

  “If that’s what you call it,” she agreed.

  “It is,” said Lonergan, and in his voice was a smile that she could not see.

  They were nearing the house.

  “Primrose, you’ll call this a lot of nonsense —but I want to tell you that there’s a good deal that I’m terribly sorry about. Forgive me.”

  “Forget it,” Primrose said, in her indifferent drawl.

  The car jolted its way round the oval grass plot before the stone pillars. Primrose swayed deliberately to the movement and, as her whole slim length fell against him, she put her hand over Lonergan’s on the gear-lever.

  He slipped the clutch into neutral, and the car stopped.

  For a moment they both remained motionless. Then Primrose pulled herself upright and opened the door of the car.

  She swung her long legs over the step.

  “Good-night, Rory. Thanks for the lift.”

  “Good-night, my dear.”

  “Damn this black-out, I can’t see a thing.”

  He saw the flash of her torch as she stumbled forward, under the lead-roofed portico.

  “Are you all right, Primrose?”

  “I’m okay.”

  The tiny light of the torch went out.

  “In case I don’t see you again, good luck and all that.”

  Her voice reached him through the darkness and the echo of it was immediately lost as the doors banged-to behind her.

  As he walked into the hall Lonergan’s eyes sought anxiously for Valentine.

  He saw her at once, and that she looked pale and very tired. The others were there too—Lady Rockingham and the General and Jess — sitting in silence, whilst the voice of a B.B.C.. announcer passionlessly enunciated the cheerless items of the Nine O’Clock News.

  Lonergan began an apology for his lateness, but was immediately checked by an impatient gesture and portentous glare from the General.

  He looked at Valentine with a despair born of fatigue, urgency and exasperation, and she got up and came towards him.

  The telephone bell cut shrilly into the careful silence, the General ejaculated angrily and Jess scrambled up from her seat on the floor.

  “It’ll be for me,” said Lonergan. “I’ve a call to Roscommon.”

  He strode to the telephone, and Valentine sank back into her chair again.

  Lonergan, pushing into the dark corner where the telephone so inconveniently stood on a bracket in an angle of the wall, fumbled for the electric-light switch, failed to find it, and cursed.

  He was in a mood of acute nervous impatience that he knew well and had reason to dread.

  The stereotyped phrases and unexplained delays to which the telephone operator subjected him did nothing to allay it.

  He had three times repeated his own number and explained his requirements before, through a variety of buzzing noises and fragmentary directions, the connection was made.

  “Kilronan post-office,” said the far-away voice, putting the authentic Irish stress on the last word.

  Lonergan explained that his call was for the young French girl living at Miss Lonergan’s house opposite. Could she be fetched at once, please?

  “I’ll ask me brother will he step over. Is it Miss Nellie you’re wanting?”

  “It is not. It’s her niece, that’s staying with her.”

  “The young foreign girl would that be?”

  “It would. If you could have her fetched to the telephone, I’d be grateful. It’s urgent. I’ll hold on.”

  The disembodied voice ejaculated sympathetically and Lonergan was left to the strange, intermittent sounds that penetrated through the receiver into his right ear.

  The time seemed endless.

  He made another effort to find the light-switch with his disengaged hand and failed again.

  “Have you finished?” enquired the thin English accents of the local operator.

  “I have not. Don’t cut me off, please. They’ve gone to fetch someone.”

  “Okay.”

  The three-minute signal sounded.

  He was afr
aid the operator would cut him off, and his urgent request to her not to do so seemed to fall into space and met with no reply.

  Lonergan began to rehearse what he would say to Arlette, as he had been doing at snatched intervals throughout the day.

  She’d be distressed, the poor little thing, and she’d written that she so much wanted to see him. Nellie was the kindest creature in the world, but she was narrow-minded, provincial and inclined to domineer, and it was plain that Arlette wasn’t happy with her.

  And now this—She’d think it was her last hope gone.

  Lonergan wished to God she’d come to the telephone quickly and reminded himself with dismay that Nellie, as likely as not, would come with her. But they’d talk in French, anyway, and Nellie could make what she liked of it.

  The time signal sounded again and Lonergan groaned.

  A noise like that of an exploding cracker assaulted his hearing.

  A voice spoke, but the words were indistinguishable.

  “Arlette?”

  Suddenly the voice became clearly audible.

  It was the Irish operator in Kilronan post-office again.

  “You’re out of luck entirely, sir. Believe you me or believe you me not, that house is empty only for old Maggie Dolan.”

  “What?” said Lonergan blankly.

  “They’ve gone into town for the St. Vincent de Paul Grand Concert and they’ll not be home till all hours, says Maggie Dolan.”

  Lonergan thanked her mechanically.

  It must be the only night in the whole year, he thought, that Nellie would be setting foot out of doors after dark and taking Arlette with her.

  He slowly replaced the receiver, and found that his hand was shaking and his forehead damp.

  I’ll try again to-morrow morning early, he told himself—but without any conviction.

  His nerves were on edge and he was in the grip of that panic desolation of spirit that, in its degree, periodically assails all artists.

  Oh, God, I mustn’t let myself go, he thought. If only all these people would get to hell out of here and leave me

  alone with Val——

  Resolved to see her at once and alone, he went back into the hall.

  Only Lady Rockingham still sat there, her hands idle in her lap, the wireless on the table now silenced.