Homing (17 page)

Jeff contained himself with difficulty, restrained by the awful unwritten law—
you can’t print that.
When a man is at his ease among friends with a drink in his hand, you don’t pump him for the newspaper. He may talk a million dollars’ worth of front-page stuff, but you can’t use it.

He told them very little anyway that had not already been in print or rumour. The point was, he had seen it. His mere presence in their midst, untalkative, unexcitable, unpretentious, but authentic, made the nightmare of Warsaw real. It was plain that he had digested his experience, accepted it, made his deductions, and reported accordingly to those who sent him there. He had no desire to shock or frighten his present audience with hair-raising tales. But small anecdotes and word vignettes could not help but emerge if he so much as opened his mouth—the flame-streaked rubble and blood and terror of a bombed city—the raw-boned Stukas in a screaming dive on the target—the stumbling, sobbing lines of refugees shattered and panicked by a hail of machine gun bullets from above—the old lady dressed in her Sunday best and riding in a wheelbarrow—the child who carried a dead bird in a bent and battered wire cage—the boy who wept beside a dying cart-horse….

He had seen a fallen Government go into exile in the crowded border towns of countries which were so far safe—and their faces wore the same dazed hopelessness as the faces in the roadside camps set up by people who had no money to buy shelter and nowhere to go. A world had ended. A nation had perished. Tracy was there when it happened, and it had marked him, but he was not one to dramatize it.

Virginia, watching and listening with the rest, was wrung with pride and pity. Here was a man to love and to cherish. And some fool of a woman had bungled it and gone off with some one easier. Well, that made two fool women, didn’t it. In an hour or so he would be gone again. What could you do in an hour to make up for twenty years? Better to let it go now. Don’t look back. Don’t entangle him. There was no future. There was only a war.

The talk had moved on to Finland, where the Russians were being made to pay for every inch of ground, but where there was no chloroform for the wounded.

“Aren’t we going to help Finland
either
?” Anne cried
unexpectedly
, and then flushed as they all looked at her with surprise and affection. “Can’t we even send them hospital supplies? Performing amputations without anaesthetics is going back to the dark ages!”

And Virginia said, out of her reverie—

“Not as far back as that. It happened in Richmond when my mother was a girl. She was caught trying to carry opiates through the Yankee blockade in her hoop.”

“Oh, Gran, they might have thought she was a spy!” cried Mab, entranced.

“That’s what they did think,” Virginia smiled. “But she had red hair, and she told off the whole Union Army, up one side and down the other, and they let her go—
with
the drugs!”

“Those were the days!” Jeff sighed. “I’m afraid it wouldn’t work with the Russians!”

“But one would have to
try
,” Anne muttered, still smouldering, and “Hear, hear!” said Nigel quietly, so that she sent him a grateful glance and retreated again behind her eternal knitting.

And Nigel thought, A dear creature. Generous and
tender-hearted
, and brave. And lonely, I should think. Why hasn’t some one seen before now, she’s well out of her teens. Roger isn’t making the most of his time. Younger than she is, probably. Besides, she wants looking after, and he’s not able, even if it occurred to him. And then, perceiving the direction of his thoughts, Nigel was astonished and, suddenly reckless, looked at her again….

Luncheon was a bit overhung by the clock, as Tracy was soon due at Cheltenham and the family had to attend the children’s play in the village. When they left the dining room
Virginia found that she had been tactfully manoeuvred into seeing Tracy off alone while the others scattered on their lawful occasions.

With his hand on the inner knob of the front door he paused to look down at her.

“Don’t come outside with me, it’s bitter cold,” he said, and took her hand in his free one. “I shan’t see you again for a while, I’m afraid. This was just a crazy piece of luck today. Do you ever come up to London?”

“Only once since September, to do the Christmas shopping. I don’t know when I’ll get away again. How long have we got here in England, Tracy? When will it start?”

“In the spring.”

“Where will you be?”

“Hard to say, by then.”

“If you are in London—
when
you are in London—can you let me know?” She had not meant to say that, and she instantly regretted the flare of hope in his face.

“I probably can’t give you much notice. But you’ll hear from me,” he promised, gripping her hand and letting it go. “Now and then.”

The heavy door closed behind him. She stood a moment, staring at the panels as though she could see through them to where his car moved away down the drive.

As she turned back into the hall Sylvia was coming down the stairs with her floating dancer’s tread which made no sound on the carpet.

“
He
is a lamb,” said Sylvia. “Mind you have the good sense to keep track of him!”

“It’s a bit hard to do,” Virginia smiled.

“But worth some effort,” said Sylvia. She was wearing a brown fur cap on her honey-coloured hair, and carried a fur-lined coat over her arm. “The cart is coming round again, and the bikes are still there. How do you mean to transport this gang to the Parish Hall?”

“I hadn’t thought,” said Virginia, with unaccustomed vagueness.

“Shall I cope?” Sylvia asked sympathetically.

“Please.”

“Very well, you and Phoebe and I in the cart. Jeff and Mab can take the footpath, and the others can use the bikes. That comes out even. O.K.?”

There was nothing to do but nod assent, though Virginia felt a dim reservation somewhere.

“We can switch round coming home, if we like,” said Sylvia, and sat down on an oak chest to put on her overshoes, glancing wisely at Virginia as she did so. “He’ll be safe enough at Cheltenham,” she said, and Virginia laughed.

“At least he doesn’t seem to be headed for Finland,” she remarked with relief.

“He’s been to Finland,” said Sylvia, stamping into her boots. “Or St. Moritz. That was a snow-tan. You don’t get it sitting round the Ritz bar in Paris.” Her direct blue gaze dwelt affectionately on Virginia’s confusion. “That’s quite a boy you’ve got there, I only hope you gave him a little encouragement!”

“Well, I—nobody knows when he’ll turn up again.”

“Keep your fingers crossed,” said Sylvia cheerfully as the rest of the party began to trickle down the stairs.

Jeff felt that to object to Sylvia’s innocent arrangements would have been more noticeable than to accede to them without comment, and so found himself setting out alone with Mab, along the narrow path which wound through a little wood and across a stream and past the old grey church to the village.

It was probably only an accident that they had never walked there alone together since the time a few days before his marriage to Sylvia when he tried to find words to comfort a broken-hearted child who would not admit even to him that she was suffering. You mustn’t hold this against Sylvia, he had said that day. We grew up together, we’ve always been in love—some day I’ll be coming to your wedding, he had said, feeling futile and heavy-handed. Promise to let me look him over first, won’t you—promise to wait for me, wherever I may be…. But that wasn’t at all what he had meant to say, and when she leaned against his shoulder, shaking with suppressed sobs, he had thought, but she’s a
child
, she’ll get over this—it’s worse than I thought, I mind it myself, he discovered. And then the swift inner uncertainty—shall I feel like this when Mab marries?—what is this between us, as though she wasn’t a child at all?—if it wasn’t for Sylvia, he had thought in astonishment—but it
is
Sylvia, it’s always been Sylvia, for me….

Now it was three years later, and Mab was less of a child. And only this morning Oliver had said he must be careful.

She was taller now, walking beside him in one of their easy
silences—more self-possessed, more knowing. But still not wise enough to hide it, Oliver said. She had hidden it at the wedding, though, composed and smiling in her pink bridesmaid’s dress. How does it feel, he had wondered then, to watch the person you love best in the world being married to some one else? And now he thought unwillingly, Some day I shall know. Some day it will be my turn, to see Mab married. Because she must marry, he thought, walking beside her in the narrow path, their shoulders brushing. She must not be allowed to waste her life, because of me. Somehow I must make her see that she must look beyond me, for love. Perhaps if she did go to Williamsburg—that might be the pattern—there might be some boy there who is meant to make her forget me…. But he knew very well that Williamsburg was not the answer. At Williamsburg she would find Julian.

“Are you thinking about the last time we walked here?” Mab asked quietly at last.

“Well, no, I wasn’t—not exactly,” he answered with his new caution. “When was that?”

“You know when,” said Mab. “It was just before your wedding and you were going to America for your honeymoon, and I begged you not to come back here if there was a war, and you said, What kind of heel did I take you for? And you said I was the one who would be in America if there was a war, and I said I wasn’t a coward.”

“So we agreed to ride it out together, didn’t we,” said Jeff. “Well, here we go.”

“I’m afraid I’m not so brave as I thought I was.”

“You mean you’d like to go to Williamsburg now?”

“Oh,
no
, I couldn’t leave Gran! But I hate the
waiting
! It’s a funny thing to say, but I think we’ll all feel better once the bombs begin!”

“Well, yes, I think you’ve got something there,” said Jeff. “As a matter of fact, Oliver was saying somewhat the same thing only this morning.”

“People like Oliver must be pretty disgusted, they went to so much trouble to settle it a few years back, and now look!”

“It was only an armistice in 1918,” said Jeff. “Funny how we got used to that word, forgot its real meaning, and expected it to last.”

“Funny how you get used to almost anything, if it goes on long enough.”

“Do you, Mab?” He glanced at her quickly.

“Oh, Jeff, I can’t stand all this tip-toeing!” she cried, half laughing, half exasperated. “Everybody but Sylvia goes round holding their breath for fear Sylvia will find out that I love you more than anybody in the world! Sylvia already knows that, she’s always known it! It’s nothing new, it hasn’t made any difference to Sylvia and me, I love her too, and you’d be lost without her, I can see that! She’s not afraid I’ll put poison in her tea, in fact when you’re away we hold each other up!”

“I see,” he said with some difficulty. “What brought this on?”

“It’s just something in the air, lately, as though—as though there was something
wrong
about my feeling the way I do about you, and about Williamsburg! Well, after all, it’s not a book we’re living in, is it, or a play! Nobody’s jealous or miserable or going crazy or committing suicide to provide a third-act curtain! Suppose I do know that there’ll never be anyone to hold a candle to you as long as I live, I’m not going to die of it! That’s what I mean about getting used to things, though I suppose I haven’t said it very well. When you married Sylvia I thought it would kill me, but I realize now how childish that was. I see you all the time just the same, and Sylvia and I depend on each other. I couldn’t do without her now, any more than you could. I’ve got
used
to it, Jeff.”

“Yes, I see,” he assented, still groping. “The thing is, Mab—Well, it’s looking ahead a bit, but perhaps it’s a question of your not being willing to give anybody else a chance to make good later on, if you go on thinking I’m so all-fired perfect—”

“You’re not perfect!” she cried, and laughed at him.

“Oh, is that so! What’s wrong with me, then?” he demanded, pretending dudgeon, and she laughed again, and pausing in the path threw her arms around him gaily, her face buried in his coat.

“I don’t know, I just had to say that, you looked so smug, there must
be
something, but I don’t know, don’t you see, I’ll never know, because I love you so—”

He was silent, standing still in the path with one arm laid lightly around her while she clasped him in that childish embrace, which loosened suddenly as her head came up. Their eyes met, his smiling, puzzled, and compassionate, hers questioning and alert, for she had felt through the heavy coat the muffled drum-beat of his heart.

“Jeff?”

“Yes, dear?” He could find no other words to answer the sudden uncertainty in her tone. Her hands were still on his sleeves, her upturned face was very near—green eyes, like Tibby’s—it was as though the portrait stood there, breathing, between his hands—as though time itself had slipped and shifted, and Julian stood with Tibby in his arms again—my darling—
Tibby,
my
darling
….

“Jeff, is it all right now?”

“You are sure nothing will cure you of this?” he said, unaware that they were Julian’s words, not his. “You are quite sure you won’t just wake up some morning able to see that I am a very ordinary sort of man, no better than a lot of others, and maybe not so good?”

“I shall never see that, as long as I live.” She laid a small warm hand—Tibby’s hand—against his cheek. “What is it?” she whispered. “You look very queer.”

He drew in a giddy breath, not moving under her hands.

“I feel very queer,” he said.

“Why? Why do you look like that, Jeff?”

“Like what, my darling?”

“Almost as though you were sorry for me.”

The bright, cold world in which they stood steadied round him again. He found her hands, and loosed them from his sleeves.

“I wouldn’t presume,” he said gravely, and she was not sure what he meant, but moved on with him obediently in silence, till they came to the church at the top of the village street, and life engulfed them again.