Absent in the Spring (7 page)

‘I don't think you have to go through any Customs at Calais.'

‘No, I believe one goes straight through to the Simplon express.'

‘Brindisi carriage, remember. I hope the Mediterranean behaves.'

‘I wish I could stop off a day or two in Cairo.'

‘Why don't you?'

‘Darling, I must hurry to Barbara. It's only a weekly air service.'

‘Of course. I forgot.'

A whistle blew. He smiled up at her.

‘Take care of yourself, little Joan.'

‘Goodbye, don't miss me too much.'

The train started with a jerk. Joan drew her head in. Rodney waved, then turned away. On an impulse she leaned out again. He was already striding up the platform.

She felt a sudden thrill at seeing that well-known back. How young he looked suddenly, his head thrown back, his shoulders squared. It gave her quite a shock …

She had an impression of a young, carefree man striding up the platform.

It reminded her of the day she had first met Rodney Scudamore.

She had been introduced to him at a tennis party and they had gone straight on to the court.

He had said: ‘Shall I play at the net?'

And it was then that she had looked after him as he strode up to take his place at the net and thought what a very attractive back he had … the easy confident way he walked, the set of his head and neck …

Suddenly she had been nervous. She had served two lots of double faults running and had felt all hot and bothered.

And then Rodney had turned his head and smiled at her encouragingly – that kind, friendly smile of his. And she had thought what a very attractive young man … and she had proceeded straight away to fall in love with him.

Looking out from the train, watching Rodney's retreating back until the sight of it was blotted out by the people on the platform, she relived that summer's day so many years ago.

It was as though the years had fallen away from Rodney, leaving him once more an eager, confident young man.

As though the years had fallen away …

Suddenly, in the desert, with the sun pouring down on her, Joan gave a quick uncontrollable shiver.

She thought, No, no – I don't want to go on – I don't want to think about this …

Rodney, striding up the platform, his head thrown back, the tired sag of his shoulders all gone. A man who had been relieved of an intolerable burden …

Really, what was the matter with her? She was imagining things, inventing them. Her eyes had played a trick on her.

Why hadn't he waited to see the train pull out
?

Well, why should he? He was in a hurry to get through what business he had to do in London. Some people didn't like to see trains go out of stations bearing away someone they loved.

Really it was impossible that anyone could remember so clearly as she did exactly how Rodney's back had looked!

She was imagining –

Stop, that didn't make it any better. If you imagined a thing like that, it meant that such an idea was already in your head.

And it couldn't be true – the inference that she had drawn simply could not be true.

She was saying to herself (wasn't she?) that Rodney was glad she was going away …

And that simply couldn't be true!

Joan arrived back at the rest house definitely overheated. Unconsciously she had increased her pace so as to get away from that last unwelcome thought.

The Indian looked at her curiously and said:

‘Memsahib walk very fast. Why walk fast? Plenty time here.'

Oh God, thought Joan, plenty time indeed!

The Indian and the rest house and the chickens and the tins and the barbed wire were all definitely getting on her nerves.

She went on into her bedroom and found
The Power House
.

At any rate, she thought, it's cool in here and dark.

She opened
The Power House
and began to read.

By lunch time she had read half of it.

There was omelette for lunch and baked beans round it, and after it there was a dish of hot salmon with rice, and tinned apricots.

Joan did not eat very much.

Afterwards she went to her bedroom and lay down.

If she had a touch of the sun from walking too fast in the heat, a sleep would do her good.

She closed her eyes but sleep did not come.

She felt particularly wide awake and intelligent.

She got up and took three aspirins and lay down again.

Every time she shut her eyes she saw Rodney's back going away from her up the platform. It was insupportable!

She pulled aside the curtain to let in some light and got
The Power House
. A few pages before the end she dropped asleep.

She dreamt that she was going to play in a tournament with Rodney. They had difficulty in finding the balls but at last they got to the court. When she started to serve she found that she was playing against Rodney and the Randolph girl. She served nothing but double faults. She thought, Rodney will help me, but when she looked for him she could not find him. Everyone had left and it was getting dark. I'm all alone, thought Joan. I'm all alone.

She woke up with a start.

‘I'm all alone,' she said aloud.

The influence of the dream was still upon her. It seemed to her that the words she had just said were terribly frightening.

She said again, ‘I'm all alone.'

The Indian put his head in.

‘Memsahib call?'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Get me some tea.'

‘Memsahib want tea? Only three o'clock.'

‘Never mind, I want tea.'

She heard him going away and calling out, ‘Chai-chai!'

She got up from the bed and went over to the fly-spotted mirror. It was reassuring to see her own normal, pleasant-looking face.

‘I wonder,' said Joan addressing her reflection, ‘whether you can be going to be ill? You're behaving very oddly.'

Perhaps she
had
got a touch of the sun?

When the tea came she was feeling quite normal again. In fact the whole business was really very funny. She, Joan Scudamore, indulging in
nerves
! But of course it wasn't nerves, it was a touch of the sun. She wouldn't go out again until the sun was well down.

She ate some biscuits and drank two cups of tea. Then she finished
The Power House
. As she closed the book, she was assailed by a definite qualm.

She thought, Now I've got nothing to read.

Nothing to read, no writing materials, no sewing with her. Nothing at all to do, but wait for a problematical train that mightn't come for days.

When the Indian came in to clear tea away she said to him:

‘What do you do here?'

He seemed surprised by the question.

‘I look after travellers, Memsahib.'

‘I know.' She controlled her impatience. ‘But that doesn't take you all your time?'

‘I give them breakfast, lunch, tea.'

‘No, no, I don't mean that. You have helpers?'

‘Arab boy – very stupid, very lazy, very dirty – I see to everything myself, not trust boy. He bring bath water – throw away bath water – he help cook.'

‘There are three of you, then, you, the cook, the boy? You must have a lot of time when you aren't working. Do you read?'

‘Read? Read what?'

‘Books.'

‘I not read.'

‘Then what do you do when you're not working?'

‘I wait till time do more work.'

It's no good, thought Joan. You can't talk to them. They don't know what you mean. This man, he's here always, month after month. Sometimes, I suppose, he gets a holiday, and goes to a town and gets drunk and sees friends. But for weeks on end he's here. Of course he's got the cook and the boy … The boy lies in the sun and sleeps when he isn't working. Life's as simple as that for him. They're no good to me, not any of them. All the English this man knows is eating and drinking and ‘Nice weather.'

The Indian went out. Joan strolled restlessly about the room.

‘I mustn't be foolish. I must make some kind of plan. Arrange a course of – of thinking for myself. I really must
not
allow myself to get – well – rattled.'

The truth was, she reflected, that she had always led such a full and occupied life. So much interest in it. It was a civilized life. And if you had all that balance and proportion in your life, it certainly left you rather at a loss when you were faced with the barren uselessness of doing nothing at all. The more useful and cultured a woman you were, the more difficult it made it.

There were some people, of course, even at home, who often sat about for hours doing nothing. Presumably they would take to this kind of life quite happily.

Even Mrs Sherston, though as a rule she was active and energetic enough for two, had occasionally sat about doing nothing. Usually when she was out for walks. She would walk with terrific energy and then drop down suddenly on a log of wood, or a patch of heather and just sit there staring into space.

Like that day when she, Joan, had thought it was the Randolph girl …

She blushed slightly as she remembered her own actions.

It had, really, been rather like spying. The sort of thing that made her just a little ashamed. Because she wasn't, really, that kind of woman.

Still, with a girl like Myrna Randolph …

A girl who didn't seem to have any moral sense …

Joan tried to remember how it had all come about.

She had been taking some flowers to old Mrs Garnett and had just come out of the cottage door when she had heard Rodney's voice in the road outside the hedge. His voice and a woman's voice answering him.

She had said goodbye to Mrs Garnett quickly and come out into the road. She was just able to catch sight of Rodney and, she felt sure, the Randolph girl, swinging round the corner of the track that led up to Asheldown.

No, she wasn't very proud of what she had done then. But she had felt, at the time, that she had to know. It wasn't exactly Rodney's fault – everyone knew what Myrna Randolph was.

Joan had taken the path that went up through Haling Wood and had come out that way on to the bare shoulder of Asheldown and at once she had caught sight of them – two figures sitting there motionless staring down over the pale, shining countryside below.

The relief when she had seen that it wasn't Myrna Randolph at all, but Mrs Sherston! They weren't even sitting close together. There were four feet at least between them. Really, a quite ridiculous distance – hardly friendly! But then Leslie Sherston wasn't really a very friendly person – not, that is, a demonstrative one. And she certainly could not be regarded as a siren – the mere idea would have been ludicrous. No, she had been out on one of her tramps and Rodney had overtaken her and with his usual friendly courtesy, had accompanied her.

Now, having climbed up Asheldown Ridge, they were resting for a while and enjoying the view before going back again.

Astonishing, really, the way that neither of them moved nor spoke. Not, she thought, very companionable. Oh well, presumably they both had their own thoughts. They felt, perhaps, that they knew each other well enough not to have to bother to talk or to make conversation.

For by that time, the Scudamores had got to know Leslie Sherston very much better. The bombshell of Sherston's defalcations had burst upon a dismayed Crayminster and Sherston himself was by now serving his prison sentence. Rodney was the solicitor who had acted for him at the trial and who also acted for Leslie. He had been very sorry for Leslie, left with two small children and no money. Everybody had been prepared to be sorry for poor Mrs Sherston and if they had not gone on being quite so sorry that was entirely Leslie Sherston's own fault. Her resolute cheerfulness had rather shocked some people.

‘She must, I think,' Joan had said to Rodney, ‘be rather insensitive.'

He had replied brusquely that Leslie Sherston had more courage than anyone he had ever come across.

Joan had said, ‘Oh, yes,
courage
. But courage isn't everything!'

‘Isn't it?' Rodney had said. He'd said it rather queerly. Then he'd gone off to the office.

Courage was a virtue one would certainly not deny to Leslie Sherston. Faced with the problem of supporting herself and two children, and with no particular qualifications for the task she had managed it.

She'd gone to work at a market gardener's until she was thoroughly conversant with the trade, accepting in the meantime a small allowance from an aunt, and living with the children in rooms. Thus, when Sherston had come out of prison, he'd found her established in a different part of the world altogether, growing fruit and vegetables for the market. He'd driven the truck in and out from the nearby town, and the children had helped and they'd managed somehow to make not too bad a thing of it. There was no doubt that Mrs Sherston had worked like a Trojan and it was particularly meritorious because she must, at that time, have begun to suffer a good deal of pain from the illness that eventually killed her.

Oh well, thought Joan, presumably she loved the man. Sherston had certainly been considered a good-looking man and a favourite with women. He looked rather different when he came out of prison. She, Joan, had only seen him once, but she was shocked by the change in him. Shifty-eyed, deflated, still boastful, still attempting to bluff and bluster. A wreck of a man. Still, his wife had loved him and stuck by him and for that Joan respected Leslie Sherston.

She had, on the other hand, considered that Leslie had been absolutely wrong about the children.

That same aunt who had come to the rescue financially when Sherston was convicted had made a further offer when he was due to come out of prison.

She would, she said, adopt the younger boy, and an uncle, persuaded by her, would pay the school fees of the elder boy and she herself would take them both for the holidays. They could take the uncle's name by deed poll and she and the uncle
would make themselves financially responsible for their future.