About half-past one on the previous day, Mrs. Prideaux had been at home in the Knightsbridge flat after passing a profitable morning doing some necessary shopping, in an atmosphere quieter than it would have been in her daughter’s delightful but masterful company. Elizabeth had taken a morning plane for Paris where she was to spend a long week-end with friends.
As Mrs. Prideaux came through the hall the telephone bell rang.
“May I speak to Mrs. Prideaux, please?” It was a man’s voice, young and guarded and grave.
“This is Mrs. Prideaux. What is it, please?”
“This is British Overseas Airways Company. I am afraid … there is some very serious news I have to give you, I am afraid, Mrs. Prideaux.”
There was a pause; a questioning pause. The General came pottering out, swishing discontentedly with The Times at the Corgi, Useless, who had also strayed into the hall; then paused, for his wife had held up a warning finger.
“What’s the matter, Mag?” he demanded loudly. “You’re ratty about something. You’ve turned pink.”
“Mrs. Prideaux? Are you there? Are you all right?”
“I’m perfectly all right, thank you,” Mrs. Prideaux said steadily, with the pink deepening (“do be quiet, Reggie). Go on, please.”
“It’s … your daughter, Miss Prideaux, I’m afraid. There has been an accident … I am very sorry to have to inform you …”
“There may have been an accident,” Mrs. Prideaux interrupted, “but it hasn’t affected my daughter because I was talking to her in Paris ten minutes ago. Whoever you are, I hope—”
She checked herself, hesitated; then quickly replaced the receiver.
“Some lunatic, no doubt,” said the General in a moment, looking at her uneasily. She had sat down on a chair and was gently lifting the string of pearls lying on the neck of her jersey.
“Of course. All the same, dear, I think I will have some brandy.”
“I’ll get it,” said he, and bustled off muttering.
Mrs. Prideaux was now stroking the head of the Corgi pushed against her knee. She was feeling thankful that Elizabeth had always been so understanding about the nervousness afflicting her mother since the latter had started the C. of L. If she had not been, and had not taken it for granted that she should always telephone her mother on arriving at the end of any journey, the cardiac weakness that Mrs. Prideaux had had from her girlhood might today have … done something tiresomely dramatic.
As may be imagined, the General caused enquiries to be made about this incident, but the caller was never traced.
Gardis stirred at last and looked at the clock. It was almost eight. Lady Fairfax was going with her husband to dine at a house whence the company’s table-talk would be televised, and had long since left; the various foreign servants were out roaming the streets of the West End; she was alone. She was not often so, except occasionally when hurrying from one party to another, and she loathed her own company; particularly now, on a sad evening in late summer when the stillness in the room seemed an accusing presence, compelling her again and again to turn and look into what she, and her life, had become. She looked, at last, for she was tired, and no longer a young girl, and she was sick of holding out against the insistent silence.
And what she saw was unbearable.
She sprang up; she was supposed to go to a party somewhere, but she had now forgotten even having said that she would be there. She ran to the telephone; it was three days since she had spoken to him, threatening him with hatred if he dared to accept Elizabeth’s invitation to go with her for the following week-end to Prideaux.
She had had to bite her tongue until it bled to keep herself from gasping out—was he going to marry Liz?
But now she could bear it no longer. It wasn’t love or the other thing, it was like being terribly hungry. Since he had left her, she had felt nothing but darkness and bitter cold.
She was broken; she muttered the words over and over to herself while she dialled the number of the Hampstead flat: “I’m broken up, I’m all broken up, I can’t even get warm, I’ve been like ice for days, you must … you must …”
The bell rang in the rather sad silence of Charles Gaunt’s rooms. Benedict, who was just running downstairs on his way out, turned back only because he thought that it might be Elizabeth.
When he heard the familiar harsh voice all the muscles in his stomach contracted in the awful familiar clutch.
“Please may I come and see you, Ben? I’ve got to bring back … that book of Picasso drawings. … I just thought I’d like to see you again, as I’m off the day after tomorrow.”
A pause. He stood holding the receiver, not thinking or seeing. The low dark sound washed over him like the waves of a twilit lake.
“I’m quite all right now. I’m … I won’t …”
But he knew that she was not all right. He knew her voices so well; the mocking note and the hysterical note and the self-pitying note, and the note of hate and that of desire; and as he listened he heard the note he dreaded more than all the others. It was the bad little girl talking to him; the lost one who had run away from the grown-ups to walk alone on the shores of a twilit lake and let the wind blow through the curl on her forehead. She was crying for her lost toy, rubbing her knuckles into her eyes and gulping as she stumbled along, and it was getting dark.
He did not love her any more but his heart was wrung.
“I’ll come over, shall I?”
He did not answer. He was going into London to see Elizabeth.
“Ben …?”
“Yes, all right then. All right. Where are you?”
“At home. Be with you in ten minutes.”
When the room was again quiet he walked over to the door. He stood there a moment; then went back to the telephone. But it so happened that he was not meeting Elizabeth alone that evening, but was going to the flat to meet some of her friends and had not to be there until about nine; there was no real necessity to telephone her and warn her that he might be detained.
He turned away from the telephone; then hesitated. At this moment he felt a strong desire to hear the confident delicious voice saying Elizabeth here. It meant to him sweetness and gaiety and joy.
But almost at once, it seemed, the front door bell was ringing through the quiet house.
“I was lucky; got a taxi right away.” She spoke breathlessly as she looked at him, and her eyes were frightened, but she was a perfectly groomed and dressed young woman, standing upright with gloved hands clasping an elegant bag. “I … you were just going out, weren’t you?”
“Yes, but there’s no great hurry. Will you …” he hesitated; the book of Picasso’s drawings was under her arm. But she was stepping into the hall.
“Oh, I’ll come up. Just for a minute.”
Now she was all right. Now the darkness had lifted and the bitter cold was thawing and the lonely sense of deprivation was going away. She followed him, almost gasping with relief.
Benedict, too, was relieved. The bad little girl had spoken to him over the telephone, but Miss Randolph of Wide-meadows, Long Island, was coming after him up the stairs, and although he had not often met this young lady he knew that she was easier to deal with than any of the other manifestations of Gardis. He could hardly believe that it was she who had called; because it seemed too good to be true.
When they were in the living-room, she put the book of Picasso drawings carefully down on a chair, then took off her coat. A pink dress was revealed, and loops of yellow crystal, and yellow crystals were swinging from her ears. But her lipstick was the wrong pink. It was a flaw in her appearance, and for some reason when he saw it his sense of relief began to grow less. He stood, watching her.
She did not say anything for a moment, but sat down rather carefully, looking at the carpet, and shook her head at an offered cigarette-packet. In fact she was trying to throw off the trance induced by momentary relief from pain, but, as well, she could not think of anything to say. He and she h
ad never been great talkers when they were together, and this was probably the last time that she would ever see him.
“’Came to say good-bye, really,” she said suddenly, looking up.
“The day after tomorrow?” he said, and she nodded.
“I’ll just stay for a minute,” as he did not speak, “if—you won’t mind?”
“Oh, for God’s sake. If I won’t mind.”
“Well, we haven’t seen each other for quite a while, that makes—anyone—feel queer.”
Benedict did not answer; he was frighteningly touched by the carefulness of her grooming and her dress. The wonderfully exotic charm of her appearance moved him not at all, but the signs that she was trying to pull herself together did.
Gardis was frightened too. She had come because she was starving for the comfort which she had learned during the last three days that only he could give, but she was beginning to feel desperate again: in two days she would be at home: in the States: and he would be more than a thousand miles away.
She looked up and fixed her eyes on him, within them the hate which she felt for all men. She hated them, indeed, but she could not do without them, and this one she knew she could never learn now to do without, because she had never felt thus about anyone before.
“I must go,” he said, looking away from her.
The thought of Elizabeth, and his wish to be with her, were very strong; their mere presence within him was like an escape from the atmosphere in the room of tension and pity.
“Come along,” he said gently. “I had some more money this morning. I’ll get us a taxi.”
Gardis slowly stood up. She had not come here meaning to weep, or rave; she had only put on her best clothes to make herself feel better, and come because she had to see him. She had not meant to plead. She hated him. But she looked down at the floor, and all at once the uncontrollable and welcome despair came welling up, with the hard and difficult tears. No need now to try any more.
“I hate you. You hurt me,” she croaked, in a tone so low that the words were deformed as they came out through her trembling lips. She began to sob, in her aching throat, “Why …? I hate you … why do you … so mean to me? You’re my friend. We’re friends, I never had a man friend before and you’ve got to stick by me.” She sank to the floor and sat there rigidly, beating with one hand on the carpet, with her dark shining head sunk far down on her breast. The long hysterical moans began, while he stood looking down at her. “You’ve got to stay with me. I haven’t got anyone but you.”
Benedict stood still for a moment. Distinctly, in the eye of his mind, where the poet’s bright or terrible images perpetually floated, he saw the face of Elizabeth and heard the gay clear ring of her voice, which, already, after two weeks, was beginning to sound within his own body when he heard it, as a beloved voice will. Oh, but now the lost little girl was rubbing her eyes with her fists.
An unbearable pang of pity shook him. He knelt quickly beside her and gathered her into his arms. The musky scent of her hair sickened him for a moment.
“Darling, there. There.” He rocked her to and fro. “I am your friend. I am, truly.”
“Don’t want you to love me or promise or … just be my friend for ever.”
“But I do promise.”
“Truly?” The reddened, drowned eyes looked up.
“Truly. Now … oh Gardis.” He held her closer, looking vaguely round the room, then gently kissed the fall of her tumbling hair.
He would never get away now. The bad little girl had got him and they would serve a life-sentence together. The pity, welling remorselessly within him, was almost strong enough to prevent his realizing the fact.
“I say, you do look green. Is something the matter?”
Camilla Seton, with the lightest of touches on the reins, kept her horse moving at Elizabeth’s side. It was the next afternoon, and the two were under the trees of Richmond Park. Camilla spoke with the bluntness which sometimes broke through her characteristic silence.
“No. Well—yes.” Elizabeth screwed the letter, which had arrived as she left the house, into an extremely small ball and shied it into a bush. “I’ve been stood up and given the brush off, if you care to know.”
“Not your poet?” Camilla’s tone was actually awed: really, one couldn’t rely on anyone; absolutely no-one was safe. Even Robin, perhaps … Her eyes widened and she quickly shook her head, as if to dodge an alarming fly.
Elizabeth nodded. Her face looked very like that of the Hon. Georgiana, and the lines in which it was set brought out the shape of her chin. She did not, however, relax the hand and eye she was keeping on a rather temperamental mare. After a pause during which they walked the horses some hundred yards under the yellowing oaks, Camilla observed that it was hard luck.
“No; it’s my own fault,” Elizabeth answered calmly. “You see, it’s the first affair I’ve ever had with someone middle-class, and I ought to have known what would happen.”
“Poor Penny got the brush-off from George Charteris, and he isn’t middle-class.”
“I know, but he didn’t not turn up to a party, and not telephone, and then write to her to say he’d gone off to Spain with a girl who doesn’t wash, and not one word of apology.”
Camilla reflected for some four minutes. “Perhaps he minds so much he can’t apologize,” she sagely observed at last.
“Perhaps. But I don’t mind. I could mind.” She looked calmly into the blue distance at the end of the turf ride. “But I shan’t let myself. I shall concentrate on getting my tea-shop with Sely. (‘Don’t like her friends but the girl herself is all right.) Now let’s gallop.”
The horses romped away under the yellow leaves through the sweet damp-scented air, and soon the riders were lost in the promising distance.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE VOICE OF MY OLD LOVE
NELL HAD BEEN the second person to hear the news of Gardis and Benedict’s flight, because Elizabeth had told her a few hours after she had read Benedict’s letter.
The two were engaged to see The Beach together, and while they had been watching Martine Carol sympathetically interpreting that type so interesting to Elizabeth, Nell had been surprised to hear a sniff. Cautiously, barely moving her head, she glanced sideways. The glare from the screen was reflected in a ribbon of wet on Elizabeth’s cheek.
“I’m sorry I was silly in there,” Elizabeth said later, when they were sitting in an Espresso bar.
“Don’t you usually cry at films? Lots of people do,” said Nell, who never did. She was not surprised at Elizabeth’s remark, having suspected since the sniffing that something more was wrong than sympathy with the poor little tart in the film.
“Oh heavens, no.” Elizabeth seemed reluctant, yet wanting, to talk.
“But it was very moving, wasn’t it?”
“Oh yes—poor poppet. What ticks they were. But it was really that Existentialist girl in the film that set me off. She was so exactly like Gardis.”
Nell only nodded, with emphasis. She had been wondering why this comment had not been made before, and had deduced that the battle must still be rolling underground—although Elizabeth was apparently victor in the field.
“You-see-they’ve-gone-off-to-Morocco-together.” The sentence came out in a rush.
“Gardis and Benedict have?”
Elizabeth nodded.
Nell looked down at her coffee cup. She was still trying to think what to say, when Elizabeth went on very decidedly:
“But don’t let’s talk about it, please. And don’t go blaming yourself all around the town for having introduced us, Sely, because it was good while it lasted and it’s been a useful lesson and in a few days I shan’t care a bit.”
But Nell for the rest of the evening wore two red spots of anger in her face and her lips were compressed.
“Record one lost soul more!” Another faithless male, another girl given the brush off, another blow at those foundations of faith and trust which were always
, after repeated shatterings, trying to rear themselves in the average female heart. Even Elizabeth, the managing puss, was not safe. It was at this point in her sentimental education that Nell began to think: I don’t think I shall marry if I’m asked. There’s too much occupational risk.
It was not perhaps surprising that her indignation should have concentrated itself upon her cousin John.
She went home that evening determined to seek him out and demand his opinion of what had happened, and ask him if he wasn’t pleased with the results of his plotting (because she was absolutely certain that he had been plotting).
But he was not to be found, and no-one had seen him all that day. Nell went to bed, still in a fine fury, without having told the news to her parents; after all, it affected them only indirectly, and she did not want to become drawn into a discussion about John’s friends and then, inevitably, John.
And the next morning something happened which put the flight of Gardis and Benedict out of her mind.
The television set ordered by Lady Fairfax came, before Nell left for her work, and Anna, making no pretence of being anything but rather annoyed at the arrival of the great moon-stone-faced thing, telephoned to her sister-in-law to thank her for it. Nell was whisking a broom through the hall, removing the traces of the television men’s presence.
Her mother tendered some rather exasperated, though also amused, thanks for the magnificent present, and assured Lady Fairfax that they would be able to use the set that afternoon: yes, the men had simply reconnected everything; Peggy would remember that the Palmer-Groves had had one? and of course the Gaunts had one upstairs … Then Nell heard her say:
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