Friendly Young Ladies

by Mary Renault

  They turned their eyes, together, to the first bright slant of green along the willows. Somewhere among them a bird began to sing, on a low clear note, agonizingly joyful.

  He lifted himself to look at her. Her life seemed for a moment to stop still; for she had seen in his eyes, at last, a question in answer to which she knew she could not lie. But there was too little vanity in him: he did not ask it.

  “Shut your eyes.”

  She closed them, and he covered them with his hand.

  “You see,” he said, “It isn’t morning.”

  There was already in their kisses the salt taste of farewell.

  She turned more closely into his arms. He had been awake, she remembered, longer than she. She could, perhaps, make it a little easier for him to leave her.

  Smiling and apart, the dead boy’s ghost looked upward, approving the neat varnished rack across the joists, and a workmanlike mend in the roof.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  A BAR OF SUNLIGHT FELL across Helen’s eyes. Even before she opened them, she knew that it must be late. All was well; she had not to leave for town before noon, and her wrist-watch, when sleepily she reached for it, showed ten-fifteen. Yet all was not well, for some reason she could not at once remember. It must be the oddness of Leo’s having overslept too; she woke by habit, about eight, at whatever time she had gone to bed. Reflecting no further, Helen turned with a hand outstretched to rouse her, and found herself alone.

  Her memory cleared. For a moment her mind made the heavy protest of the sleeper awakened to trouble before the brain or the body are ready. She repeated to herself last night’s reassurances. But, before she had got to the end of them, she had thrown back the covers, caught up her dressing-gown as she went, and run barefoot down the ladder. There was no sound anywhere. The dinghy and canoe were in their places; the galley was as it had been left the night before. If Leo had gone out this morning, it was without a meal, without having waked either of the others or laid the table; and it was after ten.

  This time it had been so light, so trivial, so—Helen accepted the word that till now she had avoided—so calculated; foolproof, safety-first. Well, then; perhaps it had justified itself. What if it were the first time Leo had stayed away all night without warning? Helen implored herself not to be an old maid; but without effect. With reluctance, even with shame, she knew that she was afraid.

  She turned from the galley into the living-room, and stood still. So great was her relief that she felt, as people do at such moments, a little cross at the waste of mental strain. Leo was there, with the old rug they kept for sun-bathing thrown over her, lying on the couch asleep. It seemed immediately obvious that, late as she must have come in, she should have done this, and that she should have closed the curtains to shut out the early sun which would, by then, almost have risen. Helen went cheerfully across to fling doors and curtains open. Neither the noise nor the light made Leo stir.

  “After ten,” Helen began to say. But at that moment, coming near, she saw the face on the cushions by daylight. She was silent, before the dead blank abandonment of weariness, the dark transparent eyelids, the outlines of the face dulled as if by deep anaesthesia. For the first time she saw that Leo was fully dressed. From under the edge of the rug a fold of her red skirt hung, crumpled like a rag. A smell of river-damp came from her tumbled hair. Helen leaned nearer, looking at what had seemed at first to be a shadow on the edge of her jaw. The light, falling full on it, showed a dull, darkening bruise.

  Helen’s first and characteristic reaction was to go out into the galley and make tea. The electric kettle made it a quick business, nearly as swift as Helen’s accompanying thoughts.

  She’s been tight; because she’d made up her mind to go through with it this time—I knew that—and it was the only way, I suppose. That bruise; she must have fallen, walked into a wall or something. Let her sleep. Another hour, all day if she only can. But then she’ll wake after I’ve gone, with Elsie staring at her I expect, and asking her if anything’s the matter. … Oh, God, thought Helen, what a waste, what a damned shame.

  There was a kind of finality in sleep like this; as if the mind had come to a blank wall and only sleep was left; it was like a death in little. Helen, who had seen sleep and death in many shapes, found her mind travelling back eight years. “The ward’s fairly quiet tonight. Try and get some gauze folded for the drums. But keep a good watch on that peritonitis in the corner; she isn’t going to do. Might hang on for a week, but you never know. No, no relatives to send for; she wouldn’t admit to having any. Something queer there. Half-hourly pulse chart. Mr. Harper says it’s no good calling him; he can’t do anything more.” Looking back, it seemed to Helen that at the first moment when she had gone behind the cretonne screens with the watch in her hand, and seen the sleeping face on the high pillows, her sense of protest had been as personal as it was now.

  She put down the cup and saucer, noisily, on the table. “Wake up, Leo,” she said lightly. “It’s after ten. Here’s some tea.” (Try and drink a little of this, Miss Lane.)

  Leo’s eyelids flickered. She lifted them, slowly. (I was dreaming. I’d forgotten I was here. You’re new tonight, aren’t you?) She contracted her eyes against the sunlight (Helen thought of an incautious flicker of the night sister’s torch), then turned over quickly, and hid her face.

  Helen began to move about the room, busily. As she moved, she talked, keeping her eyes on what she was doing. “I’m only just awake myself. Did you have a lousy evening? Mine was deadly. Roy suddenly reached the stage of explaining how he’s so complex no one else understands him. The worst of it is, I know he’s going to die on me like an operatic tenor, always popping up for another aria. I wish I were more good at getting rid of people.”

  Leo sat up, and pushing aside the rug, looked down at the crumpled scarlet of her dress. “I got in late,” she said. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

  Shaking cereal out of a packet, Helen said, “I guessed you’d be here. Elsie’s not down either. I’ll call her presently, when you’ve changed.”

  Leo stood up. “Thanks for the tea,” she said. “I’ll have it when I come down.”

  With her hair brushed, dressed in her serge slacks and dark-blue jersey, Leo looked whiter than before, and the bruise showed up more strongly. “Thanks for the tea,” she said again.

  “Have another cup, that will be cold.”

  “I’ll have this first.” She drank it thirstily, straight down like a glass of water, and sat looking at the empty cup in her hand. Helen took it from her, and refilled it. Once again she saw the cretonne screens with roses and birds on them, the draped light over the head of the bed, and remembered thinking, “If she would talk. The effort might finish her. But if she doesn’t …”

  She put the filled cup back on the table.

  “Did you go through with it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t worry, my dear. You needn’t ever see him again.”

  Leo took the tea and began to drink it, a little more slowly because it was hot. Her face had the impenetrability which only the extreme of unhappiness can set between people who know each other well.

  “I never shall,” she said.

  Helen looked at the clock, measuring the time that was left before she must leave to catch her train.

  “How tight did you have to get?”

  Leo looked up. Her face, for the first time, expressed something. Helen thought, if she was sober, it’s worse. I wonder how much worse. She laughed, convincingly, and patted Leo’s shoulder. “Well, you never get to the end of human nature. If the Archangel Gabriel had told me Peter would clip a woman on the jaw, under any provocation whatever. … Cheer up, darling. After all, it does leave you square.”

  “Peter?” The pain in Leo’s face had changed to a wondering blankness. She might have been trying to recall where she had heard the name. A kind of dim recollection came into her eyes; she put her hand in her pocket and felt, mechanically, for a cigar
ette. Turning away to light it, she said, “It was an accident. Joe dropped the punt-pole. It slipped out of his hand.”

  “Dropped the …” Helen’s voice trailed to a standstill. She stood with the butter-dish, which she happened to be holding, still in her hand, staring at Leo’s back. “Joe dropped …” Her face altered. She put down the dish on the table, moved forward a step or two, and stayed where she was. “Oh, Leo,” she said. “My dear.”

  Without turning round, Leo said, “Don’t now. I don’t think I … Look here, I don’t seem to be doing anything about breakfast. You’ll be late if you do it all. Go up and dress, and I’ll finish while you’ve gone.” After a moment she added, “Don’t get Elsie down yet, do you mind?”

  Helen paused for a moment; but Leo did not move.

  “All right. I’ll get on. I ought to start in just over half an hour. … I’ll see if Elsie’s about anywhere. If she is, I’ll give her the pumping.”

  “You can if you like,” said Leo. “But I did it this morning, before I turned in.”

  Helen went upstairs. It was then that she saw the outer door of Elsie’s room, swinging slowly, open, in the slight wind. She went inside.

  Leo, she found, had not been impatient of her delay. She had breakfast finished. She was staring, distantly, at the table, as if she might be wondering how it had got there. Helen looked at the clock, counting desperately the minutes to her train. She sat down, and began to pour out tea. Fifteen minutes at the latest. Without interrupting the flow from the teapot, she said, “I suppose you didn’t notice anything out of the way about Elsie, did you, last night?”

  Leo took her third cup of tea, and started on it as if it were the first. “I didn’t see her. I went out before she came back.”

  “She didn’t say anything about going anywhere, earlier on?”

  “Going anywhere? I don’t remember. I think she said she was going somewhere. … She went out, anyway. Yes, she went to the cinema.”

  “I know. I just wondered if you’d know of any reason … Don’t worry about it now—I suppose she just felt like it—but she seems to have packed her things and left.”

  “Has she?” Leo picked up her tea and finished it: she seemed to gather herself together, as people do when someone is making conversation to which they know they ought to attend. “Why did she do that? She wasn’t here. She hadn’t come in.”

  “When I got back, she was in bed. Or, anyway, in her room. The light was on.” Helen took the cup which Leo was holding to be filled again. When this was done she said, “She left a note for you. You don’t want it now, do you? Don’t bother this morning. I’ll read it, shall I, in case there’s anything we ought to do about it. Don’t worry now. Here’s your tea.”

  “Thanks,” said Leo. “If you don’t mind. I’ll read it presently. I’m sorry I’m so dim this morning. I didn’t sleep very long.”

  Helen took the letter out of her pocket and opened it. Looking straight in front of her, Leo went on drinking her tea. But presently her face sharpened and grew aware. She turned and looked at Helen, who had almost finished reading.

  “What does she say?”

  Helen folded the letter together.

  “She says she’s gone home. She thinks it’s time she did.”

  “I’d better see it,” Leo said.

  “You don’t need to. There’s nothing in it. Look, my dear, I’ll have to go in a minute. Go back to bed, why don’t you, and get some more sleep. There’s some medinal in my drawer, take … No; I know where it is; I’ll put some out for you.”

  “I’ll read it now. I’d rather.”

  Helen handed the letter over. She looked at the clock again, and got up from her chair; but at the door she stayed, though she had not meant to stay.

  Leo read to the end of the letter, stolidly, without the least change of expression. When she had finished, she turned it over and read it again. Then she put it down on the table, and made as if to rise; sat down again, and began to laugh. She laughed quietly, almost silently; the gasping indrawn breaths that supplied her laughter, though they shook her body, were silent too. Helen came over quickly, and took her by the shoulders; but Leo laughed on, her elbows on the table, her face in her hands.

  “Leo,” said Helen crisply, “be quiet.” The sound of her own voice made her feel a curious vague consciousness of her clothes. It was some years since she had worn the ones to which the voice belonged. Leo’s shoulders grew still. She took her hands from her face, dazedly, as if she had been sleeping.

  “Sorry,” she said, and reached in her pocket for a cigarette.

  Helen said, “It had to happen. It’s better this way. It’s better than if she knew how things really were.”

  Leo got up, putting the letter in her pocket. “A sharp instrument, I suppose,” she said; and began carrying the breakfast things through into the kitchen. Over her shoulder she remarked, “The family will be calling, when they know where she’s been. It will be just like old times. You always said you’d have liked to meet them.”

  Helen looked at the clock. Five minutes. She had brought her hat and gloves down with her when she had dressed. If she caught the next train, and was lucky with a taxi … if the case started a little late … There was something one used to say when one’s own resources were dry. Joe knows most things. Ask Joe what he’d do. For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar’s angel. … She picked up her hat.

  Leo moved about the room, folding the rug that lay on the couch, straightening things here and there. In her vague progress she came to the pile of papers on the locker. Mechanically she gathered them together. The plan of the ranch lay on the top; under it the pipe, hidden till her movement slid it out. She picked it up, and turned it over, distantly, in her hand.

  “He’ll want this,” she said. “I must get it to him somehow or other.” She spoke as if everything else were simple, and this one difficulty absorbed her thoughts.

  Fixing her hat at the wall-mirror, Helen said, “He’ll be along for it, I dare say.”

  “No,” said Leo. She opened one of the lockers, the one for oddments, and put the pipe away.

  “Don’t think about it. Go and get some more sleep. … Joe’s sensible. He’s not like the others. He’ll come back again and be just the same.”

  Leo said, as if to herself, “Even that might happen, I suppose.” She looked at the clock. “You’d better hurry; you’ll miss your train.”

  “Yes. The next one wouldn’t get me there. … Look, Leo, I don’t think I’ll go today. I don’t think I can be bothered. I don’t feel like it. I’ll write and say I wasn’t well, I can afford it once, I’ve never done it before.” She began to take off her hat again.

  “Whose day is it?”

  “Morgan Greaves.”

  With sudden concentration, Leo said, “Don’t be silly. You can’t cut Morgan Greaves. You got everything else through him. Don’t take any notice of this, it’s nothing, only a hangover. I’ll be all right when I settle down and do some work. Don’t worry, Helen. I swear there’s nothing for you to worry about.”

  “I ought to go.” said Helen slowly. “He’s trying a new approach that’s never been done before.” She came over to Leo, and looked into her face. “If I do go—will you promise—” She stopped, faced with words for what even her thoughts had not openly formed.

  “Yes,” said Leo. “Of course, my dear.” In the commonplace and slightly apologetic voice of one who fears to stress the obvious, she added, “How could I? He’d think it might be his fault in some way. One couldn’t do that, to anybody. Even if he were no one in particular, even if I didn’t love him.” She began to move away, and turned back again. “It all blows over. We’ll be all right, darling. Good-bye.” She kissed Helen, and went out quickly into the galley.

  Helen went with her graceful brisk walk towards the ferry. She looked capable, soignée, on terms with life. She was thinking, She’ll have peace and quiet, at least, with Elsie not there. (Our little Trojan filly; she looked so
harmless and forlorn, standing outside the gates on the windy plain, but she brought her Ulysses sure enough. … Oh, well.) So now I know. But, of course, I’ve known for years. Two years, I think, as near as I can remember. That’s a long time to go on telling oneself the same lie. … I got all this over before we met each other; if not, I might have been the one. It’s luck, it’s a shape that makes sense, it’s perfectly fair. Whatever happens, that’s the thing to remember. To see things straight, not to arrange them round oneself; if one keeps that, one keeps everything in the end.

  She had reached the ferry-steps, and called in her warm clear voice across the water. Foxy waved to her from midstream. He had a little job on hand; but it would wait for Miss Vaughan. He bared his brown teeth in a pleased, welcoming smile.

  In the centre of Oxford Circus, the policeman stood, a large man, surrounded by his almost visible island of phlegmatic calm. The signal-lights changed, and the dam which had held the current of Regent Street was opened; at his sides, against Oxford Street, the sluice-gates closed. He surveyed the moving and the arrested streams, observing, and fixing with a minatory eye, a car trying to edge in on the outside of the line, a street bookmaker’s tout, a dithering woman making up her mind to cross at the moment when the Oxford Street traffic was about to proceed. Under his gaze, the car and the woman desisted, the tout looked purposeful and hastened on. The signals blinked again. Regent Street froze, Oxford Street melted and flowed. He looked at his watch. Half an hour to go. The road felt hot under his feet, his blue tunic was making him sweat; but his fatigue and irritability concealed themselves, without effort, under the impassive stolidity of his training. A telegraph-boy on a bicycle was trickling dangerously up the traffic-line. A girl with a suitcase was standing outside Swan and Edgar’s, eyeing him. In a few moments, choosing the moment when he needed all his attention for something else, she would plunge across, anxious to know the quickest way to West Dulwich, or whether he had seen a lady pass in a black hat. Why in Christ’s name, he thought, they can’t ask a man on a beat. …