She considered this, but when she looked at him, saw him still courteous in his extreme tiredness, her tears returned.
‘Oh, Willi! How can I ever thank you? You are so kind.
‘So kind,’ she repeated, she herself like a tired infant whose tongue cannot extricate itself from a single phrase, ‘So kind, so kind —’ And so, in her gratitude, she gave away what advantage she had gained and became once more a distracted woman seeking the protection of an old friend.
The Baron, as if he too would make a concession, and anxious to place her in a less pathetic light, asked, ‘What are you writing these days?’
‘Oh, the same book. But I haven’t done much lately.’
‘The work on the twentieth-century novel?’
‘That’s right. Form in the Modern Novel.’
‘How’s it going so far?’
‘Not bad. I’m having difficulty with the chapter on realism.’
Suddenly she felt furious with the voices for having upset her arrangements. She had planned to start work that week; to put all her personal troubles out of her mind. And now, this ghastly humiliating experience.
She broke down again. ‘It ought not to have happened to me! This sort of thing shouldn’t happen to an intelligent woman!’
‘It is precisely to the intelligent that these things happen,’ said the Baron. Both he and Caroline were drinking brandy neat.
After a while the Baron made more coffee, and then, thank God, it was dawn.
The Baron had put up a protest, but eventually he had let her leave his flat. By daylight she had revived, with that unaccountable energy to which nervous people have access, not only in spite of a sleepless and harrowing night, but almost because of it. The Baron had put up a protest but he had let her go after she had promised to keep in touch with him during the day. She wanted to be out of his flat. She wanted to return to Kensington. And to contact Laurence; he would return to London. She would have to face the housekeeper at her flat; she was sure the other tenants must have complained of the last night’s turmoil. ‘The housekeeper is a brute, Willi,’ Caroline had said, as she collected her things.
‘Give her ten shill-ings,’ said the Baron.
‘It’s a man.’
‘Give him two pounds.’
‘Perhaps a pound,’ said Caroline. ‘Well, Willi, I do thank you.’
‘Two pounds would be on the safe side,’ pursued the Baron.
‘I’ll make it thirty shillings,’ said Caroline, seriously.
The Baron began to giggle quietly. Then Caroline, thinking it over, was taken with laughter too.
‘I like to haggle.’
‘All women do.’
On the way to Hampstead underground, she sent Laurence a wire. ‘Come immediately something mysterious going on.’
‘The voices may never come back,’ she thought. In a way she hoped they would. Laurence might easily be the means of tracking them down by some sheer innocent remark. That was the sort of thing he could do. She did not think the voices would speak to her if she was with anyone else. But Laurence would investigate. She had almost a sense of adventure in her unnatural exhilaration. It was a sharp sunny day. In the train, she put a pound note and a ten-shilling note in a separate place in her handbag, and smiled; that was for the housekeeper. On the whole, she hoped the voices would return, would give her a chance to establish their existence, and to trace their source.
It was nearly nine-thirty when she reached Queen’s Gate. A convenient time. The tenants had left for their offices, and the housekeeper had not yet emerged. She closed the door quietly and crept upstairs.
Laurence kept the door of the telephone box open to let in the sun and air of the autumn morning.
‘Still no reply?’
‘Sorry, no reply.’
‘Sure you’ve got the right —?’
But the operator had switched off. He was sure she hadn’t got the right number — at least — maybe — Caroline must have gone somewhere else for the night. Perhaps she had gone to Mass.
He rang his parents’ home. There had been no word from Miss Rose. His mother was at Mass. His father had just left. He sent Caroline a wire from the village post office, and went for an exasperated walk, which turned cheerful as he anticipated Caroline’s coming to stay at his grandmother’s. He had arranged to prolong his holiday for another week. When he reached the cottage half an hour later, he found a wire from Caroline.
‘There’s been a mix-up at the post office,’ he told Louisa.
‘What, dear?’
‘I sent Caroline a wire, and apparently Caroline has sent one to me. But they must have got the messages mixed up somehow. This is the message I sent to Caroline. The very words.’
‘What dear? Read it out, I don’t understand.’
‘I’ll go and speak to the post office,’ Laurence said swiftly, leaving at once. He was anxious to avoid the appearance of concealing the wire from his grandmother, after admitting that it contained his own message. He read it again. ‘Come immediately something mysterious going on.’ It ended, ‘love Caroline’.
At the post office, where a number of Louisa’s neighbours were buying tea and other things, Laurence caused a slight stir. His outgoing message was compared with the one he had just received. He distinctly overheard the postmaster, in their little back office, say to his daughter, ‘They’ve both used the exact same words. It’s a code, or something fishy they’ve arranged beforehand.’
He came out and said to Laurence, ‘The two telegrams are identical, sir.’
‘Well, that’s funny,’ Laurence repeated the words, ‘something mysterious going on’.
‘Yes, it seems so,’ said the man.
Laurence cleared off before the question could become more confused and public. He went into the phone box and asked for Caroline’s number. It was ringing through. Immediately she answered.
‘Caroline?’
‘Laurence, is that you? Oh, I’ve just come home and found a wire. Did you send a wire?’
‘Yes, did you?’
‘Yes, how was it supposed to read? I’m so frightened.’
The little parlour in the Benedictine Priory smelt strongly of polish; the four chairs, the table, the floors, the window-frame gleamed in repose of the polish, as if these wooden things themselves had done some hard industry that day before dawn. Outside, the late October evening sun lit up the front garden strip, and Caroline while she waited in the parlour could hear the familiar incidence of birds and footsteps from the suburban street. She knew this parlour well, with its polish; she had come here weekly for three months to receive her instruction for the Church. She watched a fly alight on the table for a moment; it seemed to Caroline to be in a highly dangerous predicament, as if it might break through the glossy surface on which it skated. But it made off quite easily. Caroline jogged round nervily as the door opened. Then she rose as the priest came in, her friend, ageing Father Jerome. She had known him for so many years that she could not remember their first meeting. They had been in touch and out of touch for long periods. And when, after she had decided to enter the Church, and she went weekly to his Priory, her friends had said, ‘Why do you go so far out of London for instruction? Why don’t you go to Farm Street?’ Caroline replied, ‘Well, I know this priest.’