‘Don’t’
‘Well, there’s no blinking it you know, they would if they thought she was going to die.’
‘Then oughtn’t we to send for her maid whatever her name is?’
‘Yes, if she could get in. And then she has fits.’
‘Good heavens, we don’t want two on our hands.’
‘She probably had one when I rang up an hour ago. I don’t know what to do,’ she said. ‘Sorry for crying,’ and she began to powder her nose.
‘I think what we are both afraid of,’ said Evelyn, ‘is that parcel she had and what was inside it. She never belonged to any societies for animals, did she? She never kept pigeons herself I mean?’
‘Of course not. Besides she used to shoot.’
‘You know I have absolute faith in searching out whatever it is that is really worrying one underneath what seems on the surface to be the matter with anything if you understand me, Claire, my dear. And I know in my case it was her having picked that pigeon up somewhere and then seeming so ill. She can’t have bought it or she would have had it delivered, unless she got it off a barrow, but then they don’t sell them on barrows. D’you see what I mean? But if she just found it dead and picked it up what did she want it for, it was so dirty? I’m sure that’s what’s been worrying us, but when you come to think of it, darling, there’s nothing in it, is there? What is it after all? Now if it had been a goose or some other bird. No, that isn’t so I don’t suppose it would have been any less odd. Anyway it is definitely not a thing to worry about.’
At this moment Max came out of her room.
‘She’s better,’ he said.
‘Max, dear,’ said Claire, ‘you’ve been too sweet about it all, getting her this lovely room and everything, I don’t know how to thank you, it’s been too kind of you.’
‘Nonsense,’ he said, ‘bad business. Where’s Robert?’
‘Oh, my dear,’ she said, ‘don’t ask me that. Where do you suppose, in the Bar I should think.’ At this Amabel appeared in a fur coat and drew him away, and as Claire hurried back in with Evelyn she said to herself how like a man to come out as if he had settled everything and made her better just by going in.
She was better, but they could not help feeling that she was improving only to get worse. She lay fretful and conscious, propped up in bed.
‘Why am I here?’ she said.
‘Oh, Auntie May, you are ever so much better, aren’t you? Now you mustn’t lie there worrying, just relax?’
‘Where am I?’
‘Now don’t bother your head about anything, you’re quite all right and now you are going to have a nice long rest.’
‘What happened to me?’
‘You mustn’t bother your head about anything like that. Nothing happened to you really, you just fainted. Now lie back and get back your strength.’
‘Excuse me,’ she said, and her one eye you could see looked agitated, ‘no, child I never fainted, I never have.’
‘Oh, Auntie May, how could you be so naughty, you’ll upset yourself in a minute, do be careful after all. You’ve made us all quite anxious, well not that exactly,’ she said, because those two old nannies had shaken their heads at this, ‘but, of course, we were all distressed, shall we say you were not feeling quite the thing?’ she said and went rambling on while her aunt, who had given up wondering and had given up listening and whose only feeling was of exhaustion as though she had been pounded for days, had enough strength left to know she had always disliked Claire, just as she had never got on with her mother.
When they were in that room upstairs where Julia had asked him not to muss her about, Amabel’s first words were ‘kiss me’ and this more than anything showed the difference between these two girls, not so much in temperament as in their relations with him.
After some time she drew back and powdered her nose. He walked round and round where she was sitting as though she were a river and a bridge off which he felt impelled to jump to drown.
‘Be quiet,’ she said, ‘sit back.’
He stood in front of her and she fixed him with her eyes which drew him like the glint a hundred feet beneath and called on him to throw himself over. He had always been drugged by heights and turned away experiencing that longing and demand to see again as they feel who want to jump when they look down. Her eyes were expressionless and brilliant.
‘Darling,’ she said at last, ‘you didn’t really mean to do that to me.’
‘I was mad.’
‘I thought you of all people couldn’t mean it.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Didn’t what?’ she said, feeling her way.
‘Mean it,’ he said.
They spoke slowly in soft voices and both of them now kept entirely still.
‘When you rang up I knew it wasn’t you speaking somehow, you sounded different. Why do we have to be like this to each other?’
‘I’m the only one,’ he said, ‘I was mad.’
‘But why?’
‘I don’t know. Mad. Mad.’
‘Don’t go on telling me you were mad,’ and here she raised her voice, ‘no one’s mad these days! What was it?’
‘This awful weather. Felt I had to get away,’ he mumbled.
‘I’m sorry. But then what came between us to make you speak the way you did?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t.’
‘And you knew what my doctor said, I told you. If you didn’t want me to come you’d only to say so. That’s been the wonderful thing about us.’
‘I did want you to.’
‘We’ve had that pact from the very beginning, if one of us wanted to go away you could or I could without saying a word. What made you ring up like that?’
‘But I swear I wanted you to come.’
‘And then to lie to me like you did,’ she said, even softer. ‘To say just that you wouldn’t come out to-night after you’d said you would. I’m not sure now what you did really say you upset me so.’
‘I was in an awful state,’ he said.
‘Just when the doctor told me I ought to get away from this frightful weather and everything else. But all I want to do is understand. Darling, what made you do it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, we’re both of us free, we can do as we want but what did make you do it?’
‘Am, darling,’ he said, ‘don’t you think you could come along,’ he said, not knowing her things were packed. ‘Do, darling, now, if it isn’t too much. I always meant you to come.’
‘But, dear,’ she said, ‘what am I to believe? There’s your voice over that beastly phone I wish it had never been invented, saying first that you would meet me to-night when you knew you were going and then again within twenty minutes saying you wouldn’t be there.’
‘The first time I didn’t know whether I was going or not.’
‘Didn’t you? But then was it nice to invite me when you didn’t know if you would turn up? Oh, Max, when you think of what our evenings have been.’
‘I know.’
‘I sometimes wonder if you ever have known at all.’
‘I’m hopeless.’
‘But why,’ she said, and pulled at her handkerchief, ‘if you would only tell me so I could understand.’
There was a pause. She was looking over her shoulder away from him. He had been dazed but he hated tears, he never found them genuine and as he thought she might be going to cry he spoke more sharply, taking the initiative.
‘Look, darling,’ he said, ‘it’s this way. Come away with me now. Your maid can pack and follow on by aeroplane if she doesn’t catch the train. Forget what I’ve been and let’s have our lovely times over again. Darling, couldn’t we?’