“Then I put it to E. P. I. that I’d be more valuable after a bit of unpaid recuperative leave “Just a minute,” put in the doctor. “If you’d asked me I could have told you there are no Harshoms in Canada. I happen to know that because “Oh, I’d given up expecting that. Her name wasn’t Harshomit was Gale,” Cohn interrupted, with the air of one explaining.
“Indeed. And I suppose it wasn’t Ottilie, either?” Dr. Harshom said heavily.
“No. It was Behinda,” Cohn told him.
The doctor blinked slightly, opened his mouth, and then thought better of it. Cohn went on: “So then I flew over, to make sure. It was the most agonising journey I’d ever made. But it was all right. Just one distant sight of her was enough. I couldn’t have mistaken her for Ottilie, but she was so very, very nearly Ottilie that I would have known her among ten thousand. Perhaps if her hair and her dress had been” He paused speculatively, unaware of the expression on the doctor’s face. “Anyway,” he went on. “I knew. And it was damned difficult to stop myself rushing up to her there and then, but I did just have enough sense to hold back.
“Then it was a matter of managing an introduction. After that it was as if there were well, an inevitability, a sort of predestination about it.”
Curiosity impelled the doctor to say: “Comprehensible, but sketchy. What, for instance, about her husband?”
“Husband?” Cohn looked momentarily startled.
“Well, you did say her name was Gale,” the doctor pointed out.
“So it was, Miss Belinda Gale, I thought I said that. She was engaged once, but she didn’t marry. I tell you there was a kind of well, fate, in the Greek sense, about it.”
“But if” Dr. Harshom began, and then checked himself again. He endeavoured, too, to suppress any sign of scepticism.
“But it would have been just the same if she had had a husband,” Cohn asserted, with ruthless conviction. “He’d have been the wrong man.”
The doctor offered no comment, and he went on: “There were no complications, or involvements, well, nothing serious. She was living in a flat with her mother, and getting quite a good salary. Her mother looked after the place, and had a widow’s pension her husband was in the R. C. A. F.; shot down over Berlinso between them they managed to be reasonably comfortable.
“Well, you can imagine how it was. Considered as a phenomenon I wasn’t any too welcome to her mother, but she’s a fair-minded woman, and we found that, as persons, we liked one another quite well. So that part of it, too, went off more easily than it might have done.”
He paused here. Dr Harshom put in: “I’m glad to hear it, of course. But I must confess I don’t quite see what it has to do with your not bringing your wife along with you.”
Cohn frowned.
“Well, I thought, I mean she thought, well, I haven’t quite got to the point yet. It’s rather delicate.”
“Take your time. After all, I’ve retired,” said the doctor, amiably.
Cohn hesitated.
“All right. I think it’ll be fairer to Mrs Gale if I tell it the way it fell out.
“You see, I didn’t intend to say anything about what’s at the back of all this about Ottille, I mean, and why I came to be over in Ottawa not until later, anyway. You were the only one I had told, and it seemed better that way… I didn’t want them wondering if I was a bit off my rocker, naturally. But I went and slipped up.
“It was on the day before our wedding. Belinda was out getting some last-minute things, and I was at the flat doing my best to be reassuring to my future mother-in-law. As nearly as I can recall it, what I said was: “
“My job with E. P. I. is quite a good one, and the prospects are good, but they do have a Canadian end, too, and I dare say that if Ottille finds she really doesn’t like living in England”
“And then I stopped because Mrs Gale had suddenly sat upright with a jerk, and was staring at me open-mouthed. Then in a shaky sort of voice she asked: “
“What did you say?”
“I’d noticed the slip myself, just too late to catch it. So I corrected: “
“I was just saying that if Belinda finds she doesn’t like”
“She cut in on that.
“You didn’t say Belinda. You said Ottilie.”
“Er... perhaps I did,” I admitted, “but, as I say, if she doesn’t”
“Why?” she demanded. “Why did you call her Ottilie?”
“She was intense about that. There was no way out of it.
“It’s well, it’s the way I think of her,” I said.
“But why? Why should you think of Belinda as Ottilie?” she insisted.
“I looked at her more carefully. She had gone quite pale, and the hand that was visible was trembling. She was afraid, as well as distressed. I was sorry about that, and I gave up bluffing.
“I didn’t mean this to happen.” I told her.
“She looked at me steadily, a little calmer.
“But now it has, you must tell me. What do you know about us?” she asked.
“Simply that if things had been different she wouldn’t be Belinda Gale. She would be Ottilie Harshom,” I told her.
“She kept on watching my face, long and steadily, her own face still pale.
“I don’t understand,” she said more than half to herself. “You couldn’t know. Harshom yes, you might have found that out somehow, or guessed it or did she tell you?” I shook my head. “Never mind, you could find out,” she went on. “But Ottilie… You couldn’t know that just that one name out of all the thousands of names in the world… Nobody knew that nobody but me…” She shook her head.
“I didn’t even tell Reggie… When he asked me if we could call her Belinda, I said yes; he’d been so very good to me… He had no idea that I had meant to call her Ottilie, nobody had. I’ve never told anyone, before or since… So how can you know.”
“I took her hand between mine, and pressed it, trying to comfort her and calm her.
“There’s nothing to be alarmed about,” I told her. “It was a dream, a kind of vision, I just knew..
“She shook her head. After a minute she said quietly: “
“Nobody knew but me… It was in the summer, in 1927. We were on the river, in a punt, pulled under a willow. A white launch swished by us, we watched it go, and saw the name on its stern. Malcolm said“‘if Cohn noticed Dr Harshom’s sudden start, his only acknowledgement of it was a repetition of the last two words”
“Malcom said: “Ottilie is pretty name, isn’t it? It’s in our family. My father had a sister Ottihie who died when she was a little girl. If ever I have a daughter I’d like to call her Ottilie”
Cohn Trafford broke off, and regarded the doctor for a moment. Then he went on: “After that she said nothing for a long time, until she added: “He never knew, you know. Poor Malcolm, he was killed before even I knew she was coming… I did so want to call her Ottilie for him… He’d have liked that… I wish I had… ” And then she began quietly crying..
Dr Harshom had one elbow on his desk, one hand over his eyes. He did not move for some little time. At last he pulled out a handkerchief, and blew his nose decisively.
“I did hear there was a girl,” he said. “I even made enquiries, but they told me she had married soon afterwards. I thought she... But why didn’t she come to me? I would have looked after her.”