There Will Come A Stranger

by Dorothy Rivers

  Washing the cups, Vivian considered the pros and cons of crepe de Chine and nylon, embroidery and lace, peach and ivory and palest blue. She looked once more at the patterns for the wedding dress, which was to be a glamorous dream of filmy tulle, and the going away outfit, which would consist of a frock in periwinkle foulard and a navy coat, lined with the same material as the dress. She told herself there would be babies before very long, and pictured them—their waving starfish hands, their tiny heads, bloomed with a soft golden down, the enchanting creases round their wrists and ankles...

  They will need me then! she thought. I’ll run the house when Valerie is in bed. I can be baby sitter for them in the evenings, so that she and Rory can go out together. I can help to nurse them when they’re ill. Aunts have their uses!

  Suddenly a great wave of depression overwhelmed her. Meanwhile, she was not an aunt, and never might be! No one needed her. And in that desolate moment it seemed to Vivian that no one ever would again.

  Deep in her forlorn reverie, the sudden ringing of the telephone startled her so that she jumped, knocking her elbow on a chair beside her. With a rueful grimace at her clumsiness, she went to answer its insistent “Prr-prr! Prr-prr!” Always its summons sounded so imperious, so urgent, as though tidings of tremendous import were about to be delivered—when like as not it was nothing of greater consequence than a message that her tweeds were ready to be fitted.

  But it was not the drawling voice of the receptionist at her tailor’s who spoke as she took off the receiver. Briskly impersonal, the operator, having confirmed the number, told her to “hold on for a long distance call.” Waiting, she wondered who it could be. One of her brothers, with some urgent piece of family news? But if it were, he would have waited until six o’clock when cheap calls would begin; already it was after half-past five. Valerie, perhaps, ringing up to ask if she would deal with something that in her state of bemused bliss she had forgotten?

  And then John’s voice, as clearly recognizable as though he were speaking from the flat below, asked, “Is that Knightsbridge 23232?”

  “John! Oh, how exactly like you to ring up just when I’m in the dumps!”

  “Are you?” He sounded perturbed. “Anything serious gone wrong?”

  “Nothing gone wrong at all. Only a silly mood.”

  “My dear, I’m sorry. If only I were nearer you ... Are you very booked up this week-end?”

  “I’m not booked up at all. Rory has taken Valerie to his people for the week-end, so I’m on my own.”

  ‘Good! If you’ll, keep to-morrow and Sunday free for me, I’ll travel south to-night and be with you any time that suits you in the morning.”

  “But—oh, it’s sweet of you! But honestly you mustn’t dream of coming all that way just because I’m in the blues! I’m getting over it already—just talking to you has cheered me up!”

  “I was coming anyway. I told you that, when you were at Bieldside,” he reminded her.

  “Yes. But you’re coming for Valerie’s wedding, in a fortnight. You can’t want to come twice in such a short time?”

  “Can’t I?” John’s voice was amused. “Valerie’s wedding is another matter altogether. This time it’s you I’m coming to see.”

  Finally they agreed that he should come to her soon after ten, and they would then decide how they should spend the day.

  Her thoughts in chaos, Vivian replaced the receiver. Brought so abruptly face to face with the decision she had been shelving ever since returning from Scotland, she felt shaken and irresolute and altogether unlike her usual serene, clear-sighted self. All her problems would be so happily solved if she were to tell John that she loved him and would marry him. Loneliness would be at an end. Her life would run henceforth in pleasant places, sheltered and protected, no longer homeless, rootless, aimless. She would have John to turn to, in perplexity or trouble. She would share his life, perhaps his children. Oh, if she could ... If only she could...!

  Morning dawned upon a perfect May day, warm and sunny. Punctually at ten o’clock the bell rang, and she went to welcome John, looking as fresh, in her trim flannel suit and crisp white blouse, as though she had not lain awake into the small hours, doing battle with herself.

  They spent most of the day in Richmond Park, walking and talking, and sitting beneath an ancient oak where countless lovers must have sat before them. For lunch he took her to an inn beside the Thames. It was so warm that tables had been laid on a flagged terrace by the river. The dappled water slid by silently. Swans floated near them, and the mild air was fragrant with the odours of new mown grass, and wallflowers. They ate cold salmon, and crisp salad with French dressing, and cream cheese; and drank hock, pale gold in the sunshine.

  As they lingered over coffee, he asked her if she would go out with him this evening. “I thought you might like to have dinner at the Savoy?”

  “If that’s what you would like, I should enjoy it.”

  Dressing that evening, Vivian wondered when John would broach the matter that had brought him here. All day she had been expecting him to speak of it. Each knew what was uppermost in the other’s mind, and she felt that on her side self-consciousness had raised a barrier between them, although John gave no sign of being aware of it.

  She was glad that she had had her hair done yesterday, and that her new dinner frock had come from Harvey Nichols. It was a deep midnight blue, simply cut but with the wide décolletage outlined in sparkling jewelled embroidery. Yet, becoming though it was, she did not feel her best when she had finished dressing. The strain of indecision was telling on her; she felt curiously uncertain of herself, even a little tremulous.

  John came to fetch her shortly before eight. Arrived at the Savoy, Vivian would normally have found it entertaining, while they enjoyed their cocktails before dinner, to watch the comings and goings of pretty women in the latest fashions, famous film stars, a cabinet minister, a minor royalty. But this evening she felt too much on edge, too wrought up and taut, to be fully aware of anything save herself and John. They had a quiet corner table. John had already ordered dinner. “I know by now the kind of meal you like, and it’s a nuisance to be interrupted, just as one is settling down, to wade through a long menu.” Vivian was grateful, for in her present frame of mind she would have found it difficult to concentrate on choosing food for which she had no appetite.

  During dinner her uneasiness did not diminish. She might as well have been eating boiled cod as the smoked salmon John had chosen to begin with, and her usual vivacity had deserted her. She knew that she was being a wet blanket, spoiling his evening, and made an effort to be gay, only to feel that she was being artificial. John glanced at her keenly once or twice, but gave no sign of having noticed that she ate with difficulty, and was pale, and quieter than usual: only, as soon as they had finished their angels on horseback, he offered her his cigarette case, though as a rule she did not smoke.

  “You really are remarkably perceptive, aren’t you?” she murmured, as she helped herself.

  “Possibly I know more about you than you realize, my dear!” he answered, as he held his lighter for her. Vivian leaned towards it, glad to avoid meeting his eyes, that saw so much; hoping that he did not notice the unsteadiness of her hand.

  Dancing had begun. She had expected that he would suggest that they should join in, but as soon as they had finished coffee he said quietly, “Now I’m going to take you home.”

  Remorsefully she said, “I’m sorry—I’m afraid I’ve been a very poor companion all the evening! And now you’d probably like to dance—”

  “You wouldn’t. So I wouldn’t either.”

  In the taxi, John leaned back in his corner without speaking. Vivian was silent also. But for once their silence did not hold its usual quality of companionable peace. To-night it was uneasy, tense with the knowledge of unspoken things that must be said.

  And when they have been said, thought Vivian desperately, all our relationship, everything between us, will have been irrevoc
ably changed. Nothing can ever be the same again. I shall have lost him.

  Best to get it over. Best to finish it. Yet she felt she could not face the crisis. As their taxi drew up outside the flats, she said, “John, I won’t ask you to come up with me—I’m so very tired.”

  “I know you are. That’s why we’ve got to talk. You’ll never rest—you’ll have no peace until we’ve had this out.” He took her unresisting hand and held it for a moment in a strong, reassuring clasp, then helped her out, paid off the taxi, and followed her to the lift.

  The sitting-room was very quiet, very peaceful, scented with the spring flowers he had brought her from the garden of Bieldside, wallflowers and polyanthus and narcissi, poignant in their intensity of sweetness. She turned to face him, waiting for him to speak, so that she might give him her reply and put an end to it.

  But John, without a word, strode from the door and took her in his arms, masterful and overpowering. Helpless, with pinioned arms, she could not struggle.

  “John! No—let me—”

  He bent his head and silenced her with relentless mouth against her own. At first she stood there rigid and unyielding. Then, slowly, her resistance lessened and she became submissive, until gradually she responded with an ardour and a tenderness that matched his own.

  At last, releasing her, he said, “How soon will you marry me? I’ve been patient. But I’m very tired of waiting.”

  The radiance left her face. She drew a long breath. “John, I can’t. I never will.”

  He said, not questioningly, but as a statement, “But you love me.”

  Bitterly she said, “Do I? And if I do, what of it? I loved Pete. I love him still. If I were to marry you, it would simply prove me to be inconstant and disloyal and faithless. Not worth your loving. I should despise myself! And you—you would despise me too, when the first glamour had worn off, and you could see me clearly as I am.”

  “So I was right! I’ve always thought that was what might be in your mind, holding you back from me, ever since that night when we had dinner at the Moulin Vert. You spoke then of disloyalty to Pete. Otherwise I would have told you that I loved you long before this. But I waited, hoping you might learn to miss me—”

  “And I did—I did! Until you wrote, asking us stay, I thought you had forgotten me. I couldn’t understand your silence, when I’d thought—you liked me.”

  “I didn’t write because I felt you needed time. And there’s a saying ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder’. Silence sometimes works like that as well ... Darling, the love you gave Pete was the love of a young girl. If you two had grown old together, that love would have changed, as you both changed, in the sharing of experience and suffering: the suffering you have endured alone. The suffering and experience that have made of you the woman that you are now. The woman I love, and who loves me.”

  “Yes ... Yes ... But...”

  “Love isn’t something concrete, something that you can’t give to one human being save by taking it from another, to whom you gave it first. It has no limits. In loving me, you would be taking nothing from Pete. Nor do I want anything that should be his.”

  Vivian was silent. He went on. “Forgive me, darling love, if I’ve seemed rather—brutal. If there had been any other way, I would have taken it. But if I’d let you, you would have gone on keeping me at arm’s length for ever. You would have gone on pretending to yourself, and me too, that you could only give me friendship. And I can’t be satisfied with friendship from you. I want everything you have to give. Your love. Yourself. Our children.”

  There was no more that he could say. He waited for what seemed to him a very long time, watching her downbent profile as she stood in silence, resting one elbow on the mantelpiece.

  At last she turned to him, and he could read his answer in her face, even before she gave him both her hands and said, “I’ve been a fool! But you have made me see sense at last.”

  John’s hands slid up her arms and gripped her shoulders.

  “How soon will you marry me?” he asked her for the second time.

  “Just as soon as it can be arranged,” said Vivian.