Air Ticket

by Susan Barrie

  Caro threw back the bedclothes and leaped up in a kind of panic.

  “Oh, why have I slept so long?” she demanded. “Why didn’t somebody wake me?”

  “It’s all right, madam,” the housekeeper said to her soothingly. “There is no bad news from the hospital, and Mr. David said he would not be returning for you until about seven o’clock. You have lots of time to drink this, have a bath and a meal before he comes for you.”

  “I couldn’t eat anything,” Caro told her.

  “We’ll see about that,” the housekeeper remarked.

  Caro caught sight of the telephone on its ivory rest beside the bed, and suddenly she reached out for it. But when she got through at last to the house in Oberlaken, it was to be told by Frau Bauer that the doctor was not there. She sank back on her pillows looking white and perturbed.

  Lucien had asked her to ring, and she had forgotten!

  All at once, as she listened to the water for her bath running not far away, she found herself feeling an almost overwhelming pity for Lucien, who had lost everything that made life worth living for him ten long and empty years ago. Lucien—whose brief hour of enchantment had died almost before it was born, and who had been left with nothing but memories to cheer and recompense him through the years. And memories, even the most magical ones, are cold and comfortless things at times—

  Caro felt tears running down her cheeks, and she put up her hands and hid her eyes. For now even she had failed Lucien!

  She got out of bed, put on her housecoat and sat down by the window, to write a brief note. At least that could be posted without delay and would let Lucien know something of what was happening, and that she had not just flown away out of his life without any thought for him at all.

  When David took her back to the hospital they were greeted by the news that there was still no change, and as the hours passed silently they sat one on either side of Beverley’s bed, scarcely able to remove their eyes from her motionless figure, aware occasionally that there were muffled movements around them, that a nurse stole to the side of the bed, that someone whispered to know whether they would like a cup of tea.

  Toward three o’clock in the morning all three of the watchers beside Beverley’s bed detected a mere flicker of movement. Caro felt the holding back of her breath pain her acutely, while David stiffened into utter immobility. The night nurse leaned forward to watch for something to happen to follow that movement, and what did actually happen was that Beverley suddenly opened her eyes. At first they were blank, quite unseeing, and then they became focused on David’s face, and it was plain at once that she recognized him.

  A tiny sigh escaped her, and a second quiver passed all down the length of her slender frame, and she whispered his name, “David!”

  Her hand seemed to be struggling to move out toward him, and he took it and held it with incredible gentleness. Caro felt as if emotion and tension were choking her, and then as she moved very slightly her daughter’s eyes shifted and saw her. Another whisper left her lips: “Why, mummy...!”

  Caro found herself outside in the corridor, moving like a sleepwalker while the night nurse kept a supporting hand under her elbow.

  “We’ll just leave them alone for a few minutes together,” she said, an immense satisfaction in her voice, “but I’m sure she is going to be all right.”

  Caro felt suddenly as if the earth were not solid. The nurse handed her over to the matron, and the matron looked at her shrewdly and said, “A cup of tea in my office, Mrs. Andreas, and you’ll feel much better. In fact, I’m almost sure you’ll feel better when you get to the office.”

  Caro tried to thank her, but words wouldn’t come. The office door was opened, and inside a light was burning dimly. Someone rose and confronted her, and Caro stared, unbelieving. The office door closed discreetly behind her, and she heard Lucien’s voice say gently, “My poor little Caro!” And then she was sobbing hysterically in his arms.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Much later that night Caro found herself in bed again. She had only a very confused idea of how she had got there. Lucien must have carried her out of the car and up to her room, because she did not remember walking. She remembered the light burning softly beside the bed, hurting her eyes a little, although outside in the garden a blackbird was singing with piercing sweetness and a golden light was creeping across the shaven lawns. The curtains were not drawn across the windows, and she saw the last star vanish, as if put out by an extinguisher, from the tranquil blue sky, just after Lucien had switched off her bedside lamp for her. He bent over her and smoothed her hair back from her brow.

  “Are you quite comfortable?” he asked.

  “Quite,” she answered.

  “I’ll leave you now,” Lucien said, coaxing the soft fringe back into place on her forehead with his fingers. “And I don’t think I need give you anything to make you sleep, because you’re more or less drugged with sleep already. But you’re not to get up in the morning until I see you, Caro. Do you understand that?”

  “But where will you be?” Caro asked. “Where are you going now?”

  “To the local inn, a place called the George. It looks quite comfortable, and I won’t be far away from you.”

  “But why can’t you stay here?”

  “Because I’d rather stay at the inn.”

  “But—”

  “No ‘buts’,” he said, and his fingers moved down and lightly sealed her lips. “Go to sleep and forget everything. Beverley’s going to be quite all right, and even David believes that. And tomorrow I’ll take you to the hospital again.”

  “But what about you, Lucien?” She wriggled free from his fingers, “What about all your patients and ... and everything? How will they get on without you?”

  “I think they’ll just manage,” he answered dryly, and then stooped and brushed her forehead with his lips.

  “No more questions, and go to sleep. Good night, darling—or rather, good morning, but sleep well!”

  The next few days were some of the strangest Caro had ever lived through. In many ways they were exceptionally happy. Beverley not only recognized her when she saw her for the second time, but she was definitely pronounced out of danger—and she hadn’t lost her baby, either! David was like someone who had received a reprieve, and Lucien was with Caro for the better part of every day. But he continued to make the George his headquarters.

  “I’m perfectly comfortable,” he remarked with rather an odd smile when she ventured to suggest that he could be more comfortable as a guest of her son-in-law, who would have been delighted to have him.

  “But—” Caro began.

  “You make use of far too many ‘buts’ nowadays,” he told her when, on the fourth day, she had lunch with him in the cozy dining room at the George. It was a most comfortable room, with a wide-open fireplace with horse brasses ranged along the top of it, and a log fire on the hearth.

  Caro regarded him with eyes that reflected much of her secret perturbation. Lucien was different from the Lucien she had lived with all summer. It wasn’t so much that there was a gulf between them, because sometimes she had the feeling, amounting almost to a conviction, that there was no gulf, and with him she no longer felt keyed up and frustrated, deprived of something she longed for because it was not there for her to possess. She did feel deprived—perplexed and deprived—but she felt now that it was something that was being deliberately withheld from her, but that it was there, and it was hers, if only she could reach out and grasp at it.

  There was mostly a rather tenderly amused smile in his eyes when he looked at her, but at other times the eyes were grave.

  “What are you thinking about, Caro?” he asked.

  “You,” she answered, drawing a deep breath. “All the things I said to you that—that last night in Oberlaken.”

  “You probably meant them, so why are you worrying about having said them now?”

  “Because I didn’t mean all of them! Because I don’t—I don’t wa
nt to leave you!”

  “That’s something, at least,” he murmured.

  Caro’s eyes became still more troubled.

  “Lucien, I’m awfully sorry for ... some of the things I said.”

  “And the others?”

  She lowered her eyes and looked down at her lap. Her fingers started to play nervously with the pleated skirt of her suit.

  “I can’t take them all back.”

  “No, I’d already gathered that you can’t do that.”

  Lucien leaned across the table and looked at her. “Caro,” he asked quietly, “do you know why I haven’t asked you to join me here? Why I’m not even certain I’m going to ask you to come back to Oberlaken with me?”

  “No.” She looked at him with suddenly frightened eyes.

  “The answer is simply that you and I have got to have a talk before we can make any plans for our future,” he told her. “So far I haven’t succeeded in making you very happy, although when I married you, Caro, that was what I wanted to do more than anything else. You were so small—you are so small— and you always struck me as furiously defenseless. And no one seems to have spent very much time looking after you in the past!

  “When we married I wasn’t sure whether you were in love with me. You might easily have been merely attracted to me, and I wasn’t absolutely certain that the kind of attraction you had for me was the kind of thing that could endure forever—not at the time I asked you to marry me! But I had to ask you, because I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you—and having married you I knew beyond all shadow of doubt that I adored you! It’s true I was married before, and that I was very much in love with my wife, but I was not capable at that time, although all my friends will give you assurances to the contrary, of loving in quite the way I’ve come to love you! Perhaps it’s because you’re so altogether different— you’ve never been spoiled, or fussed over, or been in a position to demand things. You’re gentle and self-sacrificing, and you don’t really demand anything at all. And that’s why I want to give you so much!”

  “O-oh...” Caro breathed, and lifted her eyes and gazed at him. He reached out and his hand covered one of hers.

  “Does what I’ve told you make our problem any simpler?”

  Her fingers turned and clung to his.

  “But, Lucien, you—you shut me out so,” she whispered. “There were days when—when you didn’t seem to be aware of me at all—”

  “That was because I was very much preoccupied this past summer, and I was hoping to take you away from everything the very instant I could ... I was living for taking you away, and it never occurred to me that I was neglecting you. That to you it seemed like neglect has horrified me ever since—I had the feeling that you mightn’t be able to forgive me, to take me back and give me another chance! And, oh, Caro, if you won’t give me another chance I don’t know what I’m going to do!”

  Her eyes were like soft gray stars, and at the same time her lips trembled.

  “Lucien, you know I couldn’t—live without you!”

  “Couldn’t you, my dear one? Are you sure?”

  “Quite sure!” Her fingers clung to his convulsively. “The last few days have taught me that, even if I didn’t know it before—and I did!”

  “And there have been moments when I’ve wondered whether perhaps you and Brian Woodhill—”

  As she looked at him with amazed and faintly shocked eyes he continued soberly, “He fell for you so noticeably as soon as he met you, and I’ve been consumed with jealousy because he had so many opportunities to see you when I couldn’t. That afternoon when he took you out on the lake, for instance—I think I could cheerfully have thrown him into the water when he brought you back with your small feet wet.”

  “I had my bad moments of jealousy, too. Apart, I mean, from anything to do with your first wife.”

  This time he looked at her in faint amazement.

  “To whom are you referring?”

  “No one in particular—all the women like Lola dei Panandi and Olga and even Fraulein Neiger, because she could always establish contact with you, and I couldn’t!”

  He possessed himself of her other hand and looked down at her with troubled earnestness.

  “Lola dei Panandi uses perfume that makes me feel sick,” he said, “and Olga has always been my very good friend. And Fraulein Neiger is a mere infant who will marry a very nice bank clerk one day.”

  She smiled at him a trifle mistily.

  “We’ve both been rather silly, haven’t we?”

  “Silly?” He carried one of her hands up to his lips and held it there. “I think I’ve behaved criminally! I should have realized that everything was new and strange to you, that you had far too much time to think about nothing at all, and that you needed reassurance—constant reassurance until you were quite, quite certain that our marriage was meant to be.”

  “The—the day that little Maria Ferenza died I was hurt because you—you didn’t even tell me until I asked,” Caro told him a trifle huskily.

  “My dear one,” he said softly, “you’ve such a tender, gentle heart, I didn’t find it easy even to introduce the subject until you asked me what was wrong.”

  “But I want to share your life, and I don’t want to be shut out from things that closely concern you,” she confided urgently. And you did take me to see Maria—”

  “Yes, and she thought you were very pretty,” he told her, looking at her small oval face with devouring eyes. “And so you are! Much, much more than pretty ... And in future I’ll never shut you out from anything, my little love!”

  A couple of late lunchers entered the dining room, and Lucien stood up. He suggested that they go out to the car, and once they were in it he drove her back to Beverley’s compact Georgian house. David was at the hospital, and there was only the housekeeper there. She was eager and anxious to bring them tea in the white-and-gold drawing room that looked out onto a shaded lawn at the back of the house, so Caro smiled gratefully and said that they would love some tea, and led the way into the drawing room.

  Lucien moved to her and took her by her slender shoulders. He looked long and earnestly into her upturned face.

  “Caro, I made you unhappy. I even neglected to notice that you were thinner—not very much thinner, but as a doctor I should have noticed it. As my adored wife you should not have been permitted to be unhappy at all, but I promise you I won’t ever permit you to be unhappy again! Do you believe me when I make you that promise?”

  “Oh, Lucien, yes,” she breathed, and suddenly she was in his arms, where she had craved to be. His heart was beating violently below her cheek that was crushed against him, and his lips were moving almost wildly in her hair.

  “My darling, my darling,” he told her unsteadily, “I love you more than anything in the world!”

  She turned her lips up to his. The kiss scorched along all her veins, was like a fiery ecstasy that thrilled her through and through.

  “Tell me how much you love me, my precious Caro.”

  Her arms wound themselves around his neck. She whispered how much she loved him, watching his dark lustrous eyes adoring her. And just before Beverley’s housekeeper came bustling into the room with the tea tray, and they were forced to draw apart, he told her, “I’m going to take you away, my darling— right away at last! We’re going for a trip to the Bahamas, and we’re going to stay away for a month at least. Will that make up to you for some of the unhappiness I’ve caused you this past summer?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A good many weeks later in the middle of November, Caro once more found herself in the tiny kitchen of her London flat. Mrs. Moses had just departed, after giving the house what she called a “good going through,” there was a savory lunch in the oven, and Caro was arranging a bowl of out-of-season violets.

  As she stood in front of the draining board and looked at herself in the mirror above the sink, she felt a little shock of surprise. It was the same face, but if anything it a
ppeared much younger, and any lines that had been there before had now vanished altogether,

  She carried the violets into the lounge and then looked around her a little sadly. For soon now the flat would no longer be hers; it would have definitely passed into the possession of David and Beverley, and Caro was there to remove her most personal things. She was bequeathing all the furnishings to Beverley, but Mrs. Moses had been helping her sort out the books she wanted to take away with her, her portfolios of sketches, artists’ materials and so forth, and they were already stacked neatly on the couch. She picked up a tiny miniature of Beverley, dusted it and looked at it very lovingly before she added it to the pile, and then noticed that it was almost one o’clock. And Lucien had promised to be back by one!

  She flew to the window, with her heart knocking uneasily, to watch for him. Her nails dug into the palms of her hands, and she felt something inside her lurch sickeningly. The clock on the mantelpiece chimed one o’clock, and she turned a little pale. And then the front doorbell shrilled determinedly and she flew to open it, her relief so great that she was quite speechless when she finally had the door open.

  She stood there in her blue housecoat, looking at Lucien with such wild relief in her eyes that he felt positively alarmed.

  “Good heavens,” he exclaimed. “What’s happened? Has the place been burgled in my absence?”

  No. Of course not.” She clung to his arm. “I couldn’t think what had happened to you, and I was getting so anxious.”

  His eyes laughed down at her for a moment, and he was about to ask her how he could be more punctual than he had been when tenderness replaced the laugh, and he took her in his arms and held her tightly for several seconds.

  He bent and kissed her upturned lips. “Something smells good,” he said. “Have you been indulging your passion for cooking?”

  “Yes. The only grievance I have with my life nowadays is that I never really have an opportunity to cook when we’re at home. Frau Bauer wouldn’t understand it if I asked her to let me cook the dinner sometimes.”