"The pain!" repeated Deirdre in a low voice.
"Well, damn it all, Deirdre, it hurt! It isn't that I blame you. I don't. But it hurt."
They were both silent. Then Tim raised her face to his and kissed it with a new tenderness.
"But that's all over now, sweetheart. The only thing to decide is how we're going to break it to Crozier."
"Oh!" She drew herself away abruptly. "I hadn't thought -" She broke off as Crozier and the manager appeared round the angle of the path. With a swift turn of the head she whispered:
"Do nothing now. Leave it to me. I must prepare him. Where could I meet you tomorrow?"
Nugent reflected.
"I could come in to Bulawayo. How about the café near the Standard Bank? At three o'clock it would be pretty empty."
Deirdre gave a brief nod of assent before turning her back on him and joining the other two men. Tim Nuge nt looked after her with a faint frown. Something in her manner puzzled him.
Deirdre was very silent during the drive home. Sheltering behind the fiction of a "touch of the sun," she deliberated on her course of action.
How should she tell him? How would he take it? A strange lassitude seemed to possess her, and a growing desire to postpone the revelation as long as might be. Tomorrow would be soon enough. There would be plenty of time before three o'clock.
The hotel was uncomfortable. Their room was on the ground floor, looking out onto an inner court. Deirdre stood that evening sniffing the stale air and glancing distastefully at the tawdry furniture. Her mind flew to the easy luxury of Monkton Court amidst the Surrey pinewoods. When her maid left her at last, she went slowly to her jewel case. In the palm of her hand the golden diamond returned her stare.
With an almost violent gesture she returned it to the case and slammed down the lid. Tomorrow morning she would tell George.
She slept badly. It was stifling beneath the heavy folds of the mosquito netting. The throbbing darkness was punctuated by the ubiquitous ping she had learned to dread. She awoke white and listless. Impossible to start a scene so early in the day!
She lay in the small, close room all the morning, resting. Lunchtime came upon her with a sense of shock. As they sat drinking coffee, George Crozier proposed a drive to the Matopos.
"Plenty of time if we start at once."
Deirdre shook her head, pleading a headache, and she thought to herself: "That settles it. I can't rush the thing. After all, what does a day more or less matter? I'll explain to Tim."
She waved good-bye to Crozier as he rattled off in the battered Ford.
Then, glancing at her watch, she walked slowly to the meeting place.
The café was deserted at this hour. They sat down at a little table and ordered the inevitable tea that South Africa drinks at all hours of the day and night. Neither of them said a word till the waitress brought it and withdrew to her fastness behind some pink curtains. Then Deirdre looked up and started as she met the intense watchfulness in his eyes.
"Deirdre, have you told him?"
She shook her head, moistening her lips, seeking for words that would not come.
"Why not?"
"I haven't had a chance; there hasn't been time."
Even to herself the words sounded halting and unconvincing.
"It's not that. There's something else. I suspected it yesterday. I'm sure of it today. Deirdre, what is it?"
She shook her head dumbly.
"There's some reason why you don't want to leave George Crozier, why you don't want to come back to me. What is it?"
It was true. As he said it she knew it, knew it with sudden scorching shame, but knew it beyond any possibility of doubt. And still his eyes searched her.
"It isn't that you love him! You don't. But there's something."
She thought: "In another moment he'll see! Oh, God, don't let him!"
Suddenly his face whitened.
"Deirdre - is it - is it that there's going to be a - child?"
In a flash she saw the chance he offered her. A wonderful way! Slowly, almost without her own volition, she bowed her head.
She heard his quick breathing, then his voice, rather high and hard.
"That - alters things. I didn't know. We've got to find a different way out."
He leaned across the table and caught both her hands in his. "Deirdre, my darling, never think - never dream that you were in any way to blame. Whatever happens, remember that. I should have claimed you when I came back to England. I funked it, so it's up to me to do what I can to put things straight now. You see? Whatever happens, don't fret, darling. Nothing has been your fault."
He lifted first one hand, then the other to his lips. Then she was alone, staring at the untasted tea. And, strangely enough, it was only one thing that she saw - a gaudily illuminated text hanging on a whitewashed wall.
The words seemed to spring out from it and hurl themselves at her.
"What shall it profit a man -" She got up, paid for her tea, and went out.
On his return George Crozier was met by a request that his wife might not be disturbed. Her headache, the maid said, was very bad.
It was nine o'clock the next morning when he entered her bedroom, his face rather grave. Deirdre was sitting up in bed. She looked white and haggard, but her eyes shone.
"George, I've got something to tell you, something rather terrible -"
He interrupted her brusquely.
"So you've heard. I was afraid it might upset you."
"Upset me?"
"Yes. You talked to the poor young fellow that day."
He saw her hand steal to her heart, her eyelids flicker, then she said in a low, quick voice that somehow frightened him:
"I've heard nothing. Tell me quickly."
"I thought -"
"Tell me!"
"Out at that tobacco estate. Chap shot himself. Badly broken up in the war, nerves all to pieces, I suppose. There's no other reason to account for it."
"He shot himself in that dark shed where the tobacco was hanging." She spoke with certainty, her eyes like a sleepwalker's as she saw before her in the odorous darkness a figure lying there, revolver in hand.
"Why, to be sure; that's where you were taken queer yesterday. Odd thing, that!"
Deirdre did not answer. She saw another picture - a table with tea things on it, and a woman bowing her head in acceptance of a lie.
"Well, well, the war has a lot to answer for," said Crozier, and stretched out his hand for a match, lighting his pipe with careful puffs.
His wife's cry startled him.
"Ah! don't, don't! I can't bear the smell!"
He stared at her in kindly astonishment.
"My dear girl, you mustn't be nervy. After all, you can't escape from the smell of tobacco. You'll meet it everywhere."
"Yes, everywhere!" She smiled a slow, twisted smile, and murmured some words that he did not catch, words that she had chosen for the original obituary notice of Tim Nugent's death. "While the light lasts I shall remember, and in the darkness I shall not forget."
Her eyes widened as they followed the ascending spiral of smoke, and she repeated in a low, monotonous voice: "Everywhere, everywhere."
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Short Stories Page 259