“What?”
“I believe there’s a blitz on.”
We all stopped talking for a moment. A faint suggestion of distant gunfire merged into the noise of traffic from the street, the revving up of a lorry’s engine somewhere just outside the back of the building. No one else at the other tables round about showed any sign of noticing indications of a raid.
“I don’t think so,” said Moreland. “Living in London all the time, one gets rather a good ear for the real thing.”
“Raids when I’m on leave make me bloody jumpy,” said Stevens. “Going into action you’ve got a whole lot of minor responsibilities to keep your mind off the danger. A gun, too. In an air-raid I feel they’re after me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
I asked how much hand-to-hand fighting he had been engaged in.
“The merest trifle.”
“What was it like?”
“Not too bad.”
“Hard on the nerves?”
“Difficult to describe,” he said. “You feel worked up just before, of course, rather like going to school for the first time or the morning of your first job. Those prickly sensations, but exciting too.”
“Going back to school?” said Moreland. “You make warfare sound most disturbing. I shouldn’t like that at all. In London, it’s the sheer lack of sleep gets one down. However, there’s been quite a let-up the last day or two. Do you have raids where you are, Nick?”
“We do.”
“I thought it was all very peaceful there.”
“Not always.”
“I have an impression of acute embarrassment when bombed,” said Moreland. “That rather than gross physical fear — at present anyway. It’s like an appalling display of bad manners one has been forced to witness. The utter failure of a party you are giving — a friend’s total insensitiveness about some delicate matter — suddenly realising you’ve lost your note-case, your passport, your job, your girl. All those things combined and greatly multiplied.”
“You didn’t like it the other night when the glass shattered in the bathroom window,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “You were trembling like a leaf, Moreland.”
“I don’t pretend to be specially brave,” said Moreland, put out by this comment. “Anyway, I’d just run up three flights of stairs and nearly caught it in the face. I was just trying to define the sensation one feels — don’t you agree, Nick, it’s a kind of embarrassment?”
“Absolutely.”
“Depends on such a lot of different things,” said Stevens. “People you’re with, sleep, food, drink, and so on. This show I was in —”
He did not finish the sentence, because Priscilla interrupted. She had gone rather white. For a second one saw what she would be like when she was old.
“For God’s sake don’t talk about the war all the time,” she said. “Can’t we sometimes get away from it for a few seconds?”
This was quite different from her earlier detached tone. She seemed all at once in complete despair. Stevens, not best pleased at having his story wrecked, mistook the reason, whatever it was, for Priscilla’s sudden agitation. He thought she was afraid, altogether a misjudgment.
“But it isn’t a blitz, sweetie,” he said. “There’s nothing to get worked up about.”
Although, in the light of his usual manner of addressing people, he might easily have called Mrs. Maclintick “sweetie,” this was, in fact, the first time he had spoken to Priscilla with that mixture of sharpness and affection that can suddenly reveal an intimate relationship.
“I know it isn’t a blitz,” she said. “We long ago decided that. I was just finding the conversation boring.”
“All right. Let’s talk of something else,” he said.
He spoke indulgently, but without grasping that something had gone badly wrong.
“I’ve got rather a headache.”
“Oh, sorry, darling. I thought you had the wind up.”
“Not in the least.”
“Why didn’t you say you had a head?”
“It’s only just started.”
She was looking furious now, furious and upset. I knew her well enough to be fairly used to Priscilla’s quickly changing moods, but her behaviour was now inexplicable to me, as it obviously was to Stevens. I imagined that, having decided a mistake had been made in allowing him to join our table, she had now settled on a display of bad temper as the best means of getting him away.
“Well, what would you like to do?” he said. “We’ve got nearly an hour still. Shall I take you somewhere quieter? It is rather airless and noisy in here.”
He seemed anxious to do anything he could to please her. Up till now they might have been any couple having dinner together, no suggestion of a particularly close bond, Stevens’s ease of manner concealing rather than emphasising what was happening. Now, however, his voice showed a mixture of concern and annoyance that gave more away about the pair of them. This change of tone was certainly due to incomprehension on his part, rather than any exhibitionistic desire to advertise that Priscilla was his mistress; although he might well have been capable of proclaiming that fact in other company.
“Where?” she said.
This was not a question. It was a statement to express the truth that no place existed in this neighbourhood where they could go, and be likely to find peace and quiet.
“We’ll look for somewhere.”
She fixed her eyes on him. There was silence for a moment.
“I think I’ll make for home.”
‘But aren’t you coming to see me off — you said you were.”
“I’ve got a splitting headache,” she said. “I’ve suddenly begun to feel perfectly awful, too, for some reason. Simply dreadful.”
“Not up to coming to the station?”
“Sorry.”
She was nearly in tears. Stevens plainly had no idea what had gone wrong. I could not guess either, unless the comparative indifference of his mood — after what had no doubt been a passionate interlude of several days — had upset her. However, although young, and, until recently, probably not much accustomed to girls of Priscilla’s type, he was sufficiently experienced with women in general to have certain settled principles in dealing with situations of this kind. At any rate, he was now quite decisive.
“I’ll take you back then.”
Faced with the prospect of abandoning a party where he had begun to be enjoyably the centre of attention, Stevens spoke without a great deal of enthusiasm, at the same time with complete sincerity. The offer was a genuine one, not a polite fiction to be brushed aside on the grounds he had a train to catch. He intended to go through with the proposal. Certainly it was the least he could do, but, at the same time, considering Priscilla’s demeanour and what I knew of his own character, even this minimum was to display magnanimity of a sort. He accepted her sudden decision with scarcely any demur. Priscilla seemed to appreciate that
“No.”
She spoke quite firmly.
“Of course I will.”
“You’ve got all your stuff here. You can’t lug it back to Kensington.”
“I’ll pick it up here again after I’ve dropped you.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Of course I can.”
“No …” she said. “I’d much rather you didn’t… I don’t quite know … I just feel suddenly rather odd … I can’t think what it is … I mean I’d rather be alone … Must be alone…”
The situation had become definitely very painful. Even Mrs. Maclintick was silenced, awed by this interchange. Moreland kept on lighting cigarettes and stubbing them out. It all seemed to take hours of time.
“I’m going to take you back.”
“No, really no.”
“But —”
“I can take you back, Priscilla,” I said. “Nothing easier.”
That settled things finally.