Nobody Asked Me

by Mary Burchell

  ‘Oh, yes, I’m all right now, thank you.’ She smiled bravely. ‘I’m ashamed to have slept so long.’

  ‘I expect it was what you needed,’ he said kindly, and then there was an awkward silence.

  She glanced at him and saw that, if she had slept well, he had not. There was an air of strain about him that went to her heart.

  ‘We have a lot-to talk about, Julian,’ she said a little diffidently.

  ‘Yes, my dear, we have a lot to talk about’

  And then suddenly she wanted nothing in the world so much as to reassure him. She put out her hand and took his gently as he stood beside her chair.

  ‘Julian dear, I want you to know-I don’t blame you in the least’

  His face changed indescribably, and she saw he was intensely moved. She supposed it was a fearful relief to him that she should have guessed so much and that few explanations were necessary.

  ‘My darling child, how dear and generous of you,’ he exclaimed in a low voice. ‘But I blame myself-terribly.’

  ‘Please don’t,’ Alison said sadly. ‘It was our crazy marriage that was to blame. I remember., the very first moment I suggested it, you told me it would be a ridiculous and unnatural position. You were quite right, of course. Something like this was bound to happen.’

  Julian bit his lip, and, even in the firelight, she could see how pale he was.

  ‘Yes," he admitted, ‘something like this was bound to happen. The only thing that lessens my self-reproach is that the marriage can be cancelled without much fuss. You will be able to divorce me quite quietly.’

  ‘Of course,’ Alison began. And then the rest stuck in her throat because it hurt unbelievably that he should expect without question that she would let him go at once.

  ‘But I can’t forget that you must have suffered so much and so unnecessarily, you poor child,’ he said, with an impatient sigh.

  ‘Oh-oh, no,’ Alison assured him, because, for the sake of her pride, she felt she must say something.

  ‘Why were you afraid to tell me, Alison? Was it that I had seemed so blind and stupid that you thought I wouldn’t understand?’

  ‘What-on earth do you mean?’ Alison flushed scarlet, wondering in a moment of furious, shocked humiliation if he were going to sentimentalise about her love for him just as he proposed to leave her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said gently. ‘I’m not trying to force your confidence. What really happened last night is your affair, not mine. But’-he touched her hair softly-’did you really suppose, my child, that you had to go away with him before I would understand?’

  Alison felt her throat go dry.

  ‘What-what are we talking about?’ she said bewilderedly.

  It was his turn to look taken aback, and a little anxious too.

  ‘Why, about you-you and Simon, of course. What is it, Alison? You’re not feeling faint or something, are you?’

  She stared at him.

  ‘Are you-suggesting-that Simon and I-?’

  ‘Don’t, Alison,’ he said sharply. ‘Don’t you understand that there’s no need to pretend any more? It’s I myself who should be blamed, for leaving you so much alone and unloved-for being so blind and uncaring. It was not until we were at the cottage that week-end that I realised you loved him-and even then I thought it might be a passing infatuation; you seemed so afraid of it yourself.’

  ‘Did I?’ she said stupidly. ‘Whatever did I do that made you think that?’

  ‘Your coming along to me that night, you poor baby, as though you were running away from your own self, and then the next morning, when you were so upset after you had been talking to him-and you begged me to take you home, but would give me no explanation. It was pitifully clear.’

  Alison passed her hand over her eyes, and wondered if she were going to scream. It was like some grisly farce, having Julian so earnestly insisting on the very thing she had fought so hard to escape.

  ‘So that was what you meant when you said you guessed at once where I had gone last night?’ she said slowly.

  ‘Yes, of course. I could have shot myself when I realised what I had driven you to. I’d been so unpardonably absorbed in my own affairs and feelings during those early days,. forcing you, in my colossal vanity, to listen to my confidences as though they were the only thing that mattered.’

  ‘You didn’t have to force me,’ Alison said faintly and irrelevantly.

  ‘No, I know. You were always so sweet in your sympathy and understanding,’ he told her quickly. ‘It’s not for me-’ He hesitated, and then went on a little diffidently:

  ‘It’s not for me to say anything; but you’re much too dear and good for Simon too, of course. Only if it’s him you love, you must have him.’

  ‘I don’t love Simon,’ she said flatly, but not as though she expected very much to be believed. She was beginning to feel sick and weary again with the utter futility of argument, Besides, it seemed to all of them such a marvellous solution if she would only love Simon.

  She had come to this interview prepared to be brave and magnanimous about Rosalie. and now all that was happening was that she was being gently pushed back towards Simon, by Julian himself.

  ‘Poor little Alison,’ Julian said gently. ‘I expect you scarcely know what your feelings are by now.’

  And at that something went snap in Alison’s brain.

  ‘I know perfectly well what my feelings are;’ she cried, her voice quivering with anger and pain. ‘I’ve known what they were from the very first moment, You all imagine you know what I think and am and want and feel. And you don’t-not any single one of you. You’re stupid, stupid, stupid!’

  And, to her horror, she burst into the flood of furious tears which she had so desperately feared.

  ‘Alison-’ His arms were round her in a moment.

  ‘Oh, let me go, let me go!’ She was struggling and sobbing, scarcely knowing what she was saying.

  ‘Child, child, don’t cry so. No man’s worth such tears.’

  ‘No, you’re right,’ she sobbed furiously. ‘No man’s worth such misery. Not you-nor anyone else.’

  ‘I!’ Julian was thunderstruck.

  ‘Yes-you, you, you!’ gasped Alison in a passion of anger and misery beyond her control. ‘Are you a perfect fool that you never guessed? You, who understand me so well-"little Alison", who must be petted and protected- Alison with her "marvellous detachment" who will listen by the hour while you talk about Rosalie-Alison who loves Simon! Oh, that’s the supreme idiocy of all! It isn’t Simon-it never was Simon. Must you have it in words of one syllable? It’s you I love! And, oh, I wish I were dead.’

  CHAPTER XI

  ‘BE quiet, darling. Do you hear me? You mustn’t cry like that. I can’t kiss you if you cry so.’

  But he was kissing her, all the same-long suffocating kisses on her mouth. Kisses that stopped the words and the tears and almost her breath itself.

  She lay still at last, quivering with spent emotion, catching her breath in little after-sobs that were like a child, in spite of her brave outburst of words.

  ‘You don’t-have to-kiss me just because-I cried,’ she said in a husky, sulky whisper.

  He laughed tenderly at that.

  ‘I’m not kissing you because you cried. At least-a little because of that, of course. But mostly because I’m so desperately, frantically relieved-and because your dear red mouth is the sweetest thing in the world to kiss.’

  Alison leaned her head back against his arm and stared at him.

  ‘I suppose I’m still asleep or something,’ she muttered. Then with a little smile she hid her face against him. ‘Anyway, it’s a heavenly dream,’ came in a muffled voice.

  He rubbed his cheek affectionately against her hair.

  ‘It isn’t any dream, and you’re wide awake.’

  ‘But-but what about yesterday afternoon?’

  She looked up again, and the smile was gone.

  ‘Yesterday afternoon? What about it?’ Julian
asked.

  A little of Alison’s angry bewilderment returned. She passed her hand over her forehead and pushed back her hair.

  ‘Did I or didn’t I see you with your arms round Rosalie, making love to her?’

  An extremely complicated expression came over Julian’s face, and there was a slight pause.

  ‘As a matter of fact, my dear,’ he said at last, ‘you didn’t. I don’t want to sound ungallant, but I’m afraid what you probably saw was Rosalie with her arms round me, making love to me.’

  ‘It’s very much the same thing,’ Alison said sharply.

  ‘Oh, no, Alison. It’s something very different’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ She moved her head against him a little as though it ached, and at that he very tenderly stroked her hair.

  ‘I wouldn’t have chosen to be the one to tell the story, Alison dear,’ he said, ‘but the truth is the only thing possible between us now, and I think I had better be frank.’

  She drew close against him.

  ‘Yes, please. We’ve both done enough of thinking we knew what the other meant and deciding we couldn’t say anything because it wouldn’t be fair to someone else and all that sort of thing.’

  Julian smiled.

  ‘Very well, then. You’re thinking, aren’t you, that when Rosalie broke off her second engagement I was full of angry regrets at not being free to take things up with her again?’

  ‘Well, weren’t you?’

  He shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘But you were fearfully put out when Audrey told us about the broken engagement. I remember, because-because it made me so frightened and miserable.’ Alison’s voice quivered.

  He bent his head and touched her cheek with his lips.

  ‘I was put out-not because I wanted Rosalie, but because I didn’t, by then. And I wished to God she’d stay contentedly tied up to someone else.’

  ‘Julian! You didn’t want Rosalie any more? When did you first find that out?’

  ‘It began on the night of that dance. Do you remember? You went off for a while with Simon.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I remember,’ Alison agreed a trifle grimly.

  ‘And I had a long talk with Rosalie.’ He stirred a little embarrassedly. ‘It’s horrid to have to say it, but she said the most beastly and spiteful things about you. She was angry, I suppose, because I refused to regard our marriage as more or less non-existent. She so obviously hated you, my poor little Alison, and I’d just been finding what a dear, warmhearted, loyal child you were.’

  Alison pressed her head against him silently.

  ‘She tried so hard to disparage you in my eyes, and all the time she was really showing me odious side-lights on herself. I don’t know whether the sweet sanity of being with you had restored my judgment a little, or what, but everything she said seemed self-revealing. It wasn’t all done in one evening, of course. But that was the beginning. And then, when we came home-’

  Julian stopped suddenly, and, gently putting his hand under her chin, he tilted up her face so that he could look into her eyes.

  ‘My little girl,’ he said quietly, ‘your sweetness and tenderness to me that night will be with me always. I had repaid your eagerness to help me with nothing but unkindness and impatience. You might well have been sick of the sight of me.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ murmured Alison, smiling to herself.

  ‘And instead, you were so dear and understanding. You even laughed at me very gently, so that I shouldn’t take myself with such fatuous seriousness. I cannot tell you how you seemed to me, in contrast to Rosalie’s behaviour that evening.’

  Alison coloured faintly.

  ‘I don’t think I was specially nice,’ she said doubtfully.

  ‘No? Well, you were "nice" enough to make me fall in love with you,’ he said simply.

  ‘Oh, Julian-was it then?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was then that it started.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t’-her eyes fell-’you wouldn’t-stay with me when I asked you. You just said good night and went away.’

  ‘Darling’-he caught her close-’don’t you understand? It seemed to me just the supreme instance of your generosity-that you were offering me your companionship because you thought I was unhappy. It was a moment of blinding self-revelation, because it was then I suddenly realised that if I stayed with you it wasn’t just sympathy and companionship I wanted.’

  ‘I see.’ She hesitated, and then said in a low voice, It wasn’t just sympathy and companionship that I wanted either.’

  He kissed her wordlessly at that-another of those passionate, overwhelming kisses that were yet so different from Simon’s way of kissing her.

  ‘And so, after that, you began to be quite relieved that Rosalie was safely engaged to someone else?’ Alison said presently.

  ‘Yes. It seemed to me for a short while that everything was going to work out marvellously. I was falling in love with you-and a divine experience it was-and I thought you were falling in love with me. Then came this bombshell of discovery that all the time you loved Simon, as I supposed.’

  ‘Poor Julian,’ Alison laughed softly. I never liked Simon much, you know. It-it was all on his side really.’

  ‘Yes, I see that now. But it seemed to me that I deserved no better than that you should love someone else. I had held you so lightly and carelessly when you could have been mine. It was only just that I should lose you. Sometimes I hoped you would get over it, and at other times I tried to tell myself that you must have whatever would make you happy.’

  Alison stroked his arm.

  ‘You were prepared to let me go if it meant my happiness?’

  ‘Well, yes-of course. I hope I had so much decency left, It was the least I could do. And then, to complicate things abominably, Rosalie broke off her engagement,’

  ‘It’s funny to think how horrified we both were about that, and all the time we needn’t have bothered at all,’ Alison said thoughtfully.

  ‘Yes. It seems to me we’ve harrowed our feelings over lots of things without any need.’ Julian’s smile was rather rueful.

  ‘You mean I was stupid to misinterpret the scene yesterday with Rosalie?’ Alison said quickly.

  ‘No more stupid than I for misinterpreting the situation with Simon,’ Julian told her. ‘It must have seemed pretty conclusive. Actually, she rang me up at the office, you know, and-well, begged me to come along and see her as soon as I got away from that late interview. I had someone in the room at the time, and it was a little difficult to keep up a persistent refusal.’

  ‘And when you got there, of course, she staged a scene?’

  Julian squeezed Alison tightly against him.

  ‘Yes. It was-very unpleasant altogether,’ he said a little nervously. ‘You don’t want to hear about it, do you?’

  She shook her head with a smile.

  ‘I don’t want to hear about anything but that you love me.’

  ‘Well, you’re going to hear about that for the rest of your life,’ he told her earnestly.

  At that moment, the telephone bell shrilled, and, leaning over, he took up the phone in one hand while he kept the other arm close round her.

  Alison lay back, looking up at him, and loving every line of that thin, keen face.

  ‘All right, I’ll hold the line,’ she heard him say.

  ‘What is it?’ Alison whispered.

  He smiled down at her.

  ‘Foreign telegram coming over the wire. Hello. Yes?’

  She watched interestedly while surprise, vexation, and then something like amusement crossed his face.

  ‘No, no answer at present. I’ll call back later,’ he said, and replaced the receiver rather deliberately.

  Julian was silent for a moment, and she said again, ‘What is it?’

  He didn’t answer that directly. He said instead, with an odd, smiling glance, ‘Would you like to go to Buenos Aires, after all?’

  ‘Buenos Aires!’ Alison hesitated. ‘I-I d
on’t know. Would you?’

  ‘Not specially now,’ he admitted.

  ‘Well then, nor would I,’ Alison said emphatically. ‘Why?’

  ‘The question has come up again and they want someone to go out there almost right away.’

  ‘Oh.’ Alison looked doubtful. ‘What will you do about it, Julian?’

  Julian looked thoughtfully round the room. She didn’t know that the sudden tender darkening of his eyes meant he was realising how dear this home of his had become. Finally his glance came back to her.

  He bent down and lifted her out of her chair right into his arms.

  ‘I think, darling,’ he said, ‘that I shall strongly recommend Simon Langtoft for the job.’

  And he kissed her as she had wanted to be kissed ever since that first evening in Aunt Lydia ’s house.

  About Mary Burchell

  Ida Cook was born on 1904 at 37 Croft Avenue, Sunderland, England. With her old sister Mary Louise Cook (1901), she attending the Duchess' School in Alnwick. Later the sisters took civil service jobs in London, and developed a passionate interest in opera.

  A constant presence at Covent Garden, the pair became close to some of the greatest singers of the era; Amelia Galli-Curci, Rosa Ponselle, Tito Gobbi and Maria Callas. They also came to know the Austrian conductor Clemens Krauss, and it was through he that Cooks learned of the persecution of European Jews. In 1934, Krauss's wife asked the sisters to help a friend to leave Germany. Having accomplished this, the sisters continued the good work, pretending to be eccentric opera fanatics willing to go anywhere to hear a favourite artist. Krauss assisted them, even arranging to perform in cities they needed to visit. The sisters made repeated trips to Germany, bringing back jewellery and valuables belonging to Jewish families. This enabled Jews to satisfy British requirements as regards financial security – Jews were not allowed to leave Germany with their money. Using many techniques of evasion, including re-labelling furs with London labels, the sisters enabled 29 persons to escape from almost certain death.

  The Cooks' own finances were little precarious, and when Ida obtained a contract with Mills and Boon to published her first novel in 1936, she left the Civil Service to write full time. As Mary Burchell, she became a prolific writer of romantic fiction. Her great popularity helped the success of Mills and Boon, and guaranteed substantial income after the war. For many decades, her writing supported her two passions: refugees and young opera singers. Her flat in Dolphin Square at various times housed homeless European families.