Kissing Kin (28 page)

And at the obstinate, painful stirring of that old, forlorn hope, Jenny put out the light and turned on her side and hid her face in the pillow and lay still, waiting for it to subside again. One mustn’t begin thinking about that….

Men did still turn up, though, the insistent whisper in her brain went on. Men who had lost their memories, or their identity discs, or had been taken deep into Germany with the retreat and had not been reported to the Red Cross in the confusion. Men still came back, every day…. How many men? What were the odds, now? But they
did
come back, and German hospital and prison records did get lost and burned in the retreat…. Thousands of women, telling themselves the same thing to-night, and for how many of them would it come true?

Shot
down
in
flames
. But they didn’t
have
to die, when that happened, they sometimes—yes, they were sometimes like the
man with the burns who had been in the yellow room after Raymond’s operation—they lingered for weeks in agony and then died in spite of all you could do, and they were better off dead—and in Germany now nobody was going to bother to do much about men like that….

Jenny pulled the pillow over her head and lay tense and motionless, at grips with the old, inevitable horror—Raymond in a German hospital, burned as she had seen men burned, untended, longing for death, and nobody doing the little that could be done for him—Raymond, dying of burns alone in Germany, with no one to care for him….

She knew that this was morbid and cowardly and hysterical—all the things she most despised in other people. But in her present overwrought condition, once it got started like this she could only live through it, like living through a pain, till it let go. Raymond—even his name was solid and comforting—Raymond, help me again—help me to bear it and not make a sound, I mustn’t give us away now….

Teeth set, hands clenched tight, she fought again with quick, shallow breaths the need to fly all to pieces just once, and sob and moan and make a noise, an undignified, humiliating, luxurious, grovelling noise. He got well for me once—he could do it again—he knows I want him back, no matter what’s happened to him—there’s nobody else, if there isn’t Raymond—it’s this not
knowing
—it’s the burns I’ve seen, it’s the other men dying in spite of me, it’s the
helplessness
, it’s not
knowing,
it’s
imagining
things—Raymond—
Raymond
….

In the next room Camilla woke with a start and sat up in bed, listening. The sound went on, like someone crying—and yet not like any crying Camilla had ever heard before. It must be Melchett, crying—had Melchett lost someone in the war? Or was it—Jenny! Camilla landed on her feet on the floor and reached for the light and her robe.

In the passage she met Melchett coming uncertainly out of her own door in curlpapers and a flannel nightgown. They stared at each other a moment, frozen, in the dim light which
came from the open doors behind them, with Jenny’s room between them, where the sound was.

Melchett opened dry lips.

“It’s—Lady Jenny,” she whispered.

“Yes—do you think I ought to go in?”

“Somebody ought—miss. She’ll be ill like that. Hadn’t I better slip down to the kitchen and make a pot of tea?”

“Oh, please do,” said Camilla, thankful for the homely, sane presence of the kindly little woman. “Yes, bring up a tray—leave it on the floor outside the door, and then try to get your sleep, I’ll see what I can do.”

She tapped on the door, got no reply from within, where the sound never stopped, turned the knob quietly and entered the dark room.

Jenny lay face down in the bed with the pillow over her head, gasping, sobbing, strangling, moaning, making uncouth, subhuman, animal noises of grief that Camilla had never imagined before. She closed the door and knelt beside the bed without turning on the light, removed the smothering pillow and laid a gentle arm across Jenny’s shoulders. There was no pause in the terrible crying, and there were words in it, or seemed to be. Shrinking a little, but forcing herself to hear, Camilla leaned closer. The slim body under her arm shook and shuddered, the hand flung out against her was damp and clammy. She caught it in her own warm one, bending over the bed. Gradually the word dawned on her, one word repeated again and again, in an ecstasy of hopelessness—
Raymond
—
Raymond
—
Raymond
….

Camilla crouched there on her knees, taking it in. So that was it. Raymond. And no one had guessed, least of all Calvert. Raymond and Jenny. Since when? How? During the nursing, of course. And afterwards on the day they went to Overcreech—they hadn’t had much time. But why not
tell
anyone? Because of Calvert? That was foolish of them.
Raymond.
She felt quite numb.

For the first time then Jenny seemed to become aware of a
presence in the room. She lay suddenly very still, panting, shivering, like a trapped thing, trying to hold her breath.

“It’s all right, honey,” said Camilla softly. “It’s only me. You should have told me long ago, and not tried to bear it alone.”

“He didn’t want me to—tell—” Her voice came swollen and unrecognizable.

“Didn’t—? Why not?”

“He wanted—his commission—first—”

“Well, he got it.”

“He thought—he seemed to think—he wasn’t—good enough—”

“Oh, nonsense, we all loved him!”

“You can’t change him—”

“Were you engaged?”

“If he came back—we were going to—be married—he promised—if he came back whole—don’t ever let him know—I did this—I’d be ashamed—it’s only because of
not
knowing
—if he was hurt they won’t take any care of him there—you know what burns are—I—I get to imagining things—”

“Of course you do.” Camilla put the pillow under Jenny’s head and slid into the narrow bed beside her so that her arm was beneath Jenny, who lay against her shoulder and shook, and soon the lapel of her dressing-gown was drenched with Jenny’s tears, but they came quietly now, like rain. “To-night was bound to be too much for you,” Camilla said sensibly, smoothing back Jenny’s soft hair, drying her face with the edge of the sheet, cradling her like a child against her own warm body.

“You aren’t—angry with me—about Calvert?” Jenny asked pathetically.

“How could I be? People can’t help what happens. I must say I never guessed, or I might have made it easier for you.”

“He wanted it that way.”

“Well. I think he was wrong, bless him, but never mind
that now. You must get away for a few days—have a chance to pull yourself together.”

“You mustn’t tell anybody!” Jenny clutched at her with cold little paws. “
Promise
not to give me away!”

“I promise, silly. It’s perfectly normal for you to have a bit of a holiday, everybody’s been advising you to.”

“Will you come with me—now that you know? I wouldn’t want anybody but you.”

“I’ll manage it somehow, if you like. Where shall we go?”

“I don’t care.” There was a moment’s silence. Jenny was calmer now, and warmer, and had almost stopped trembling. “It’s not fair on you, Camilla, you’ve got troubles of your own.”

“They’ll keep,” said Camilla philosophically. “It would do me good too, to get away. Shall we go to the sea?”

“I don’t care.” Jenny drew a long, quivering breath, and Camilla felt the slight body relax a little in her arms. “I’m glad you found out, I think. I was going kind of crazy alone.”

“I don’t wonder.” Camilla tightened her arm briefly, drew Jenny closer. “Don’t you worry, now, we’ll sit it out together. We’ll go off by ourselves and get the kinks out of us, we’ve earned it.” She heard the clink of the tray being deposited outside the door, and Melchett’s discreet retreat into her own room. “Melchett has made us some tea,” she said casually. “Shall I turn on the light and bring it in?”

“I must look a sight,” said Jenny ruefully.

“There’s only me,” said Camilla, and got out of bed and fetched in the tray.

Melchett had made little Bovril sandwiches as well, and they had a cosy munch, Jenny sitting up in bed with a knitted jumper tied round her shoulders by the sleeves, Camilla on the foot of the bed with her feet under the eiderdown, discussing with determined composure now the best place for a short holiday.

And at the back of Camilla’s mind a small new knot of worry was forming—this was the end of it, for Calvert. He
would have to know some time, that it was Raymond who stood in his way. And she would be the one to break it to him.

Calvert took it very well, as might be expected. Camilla sat with him during a silence in which he put all further hope of Jenny away, for to hope now meant to wish Raymond dead when he might still, by a miracle which happened almost daily, be heard from.

At last he turned his face towards her, unsmiling but
composed
, and said, “Let’s go home. To Williamsburg, I mean.”

“All right,” said Camilla readily. “Let’s.”

“Dinah and Bracken are sailing the end of January. Couldn’t we travel with them?”

“I’ll get Bracken to fix it.”

“That suits me. But what about you? Do you mind too much—leaving here for a while?”

“I don’t think it matters very much where I am, so long as you’re there too.”

Their eyes met bleakly, and then their hands, right to left, in a quick, life-saving grip.

“We’re an unlucky pair, aren’t we,” Calvert said at last.

“Well, at least we’re both in it together.”

“Yes. There’s an odd sort of comfort about that.”

That evening in the drawing-room the twins announced their decision to return to America when Bracken sailed next month, and Sally spoke slowly out of one of her serene silences.

“I think that is a very good idea. I am homesick too.” They sat staring at her while she turned to Sosthène, who was as usual within reach of her hand and seemed entirely unsurprised at her remark. “Would you like to see the place where I was born, my dear?”

“Very much,” he answered gently. “If you think it would not make you sad.”

“I have a brother,” said Sally musingly. “It seems strange to think of Sedgwick still there, and Melicent, with
grandchildren
growing up now. There is no
longer any need for me to concern myself about Fabrice—once I have seen her married to that lion-tamer of hers. I should like to go home, I think.”

Camilla swallowed with an almost visible effort and managed to say, “Aunt Sue will be delighted, darling, I’m taking Calvert to her. There’s no one at all in her big house, though Cousin Sedgwick’s is pretty full.” And then, at last, against their will, her eyes met Sosthène’s in a long, troubled, searching look, and wrenched away again—anywhere—but away. What would it mean to them, not to be separated after all, she was wondering blankly. What would it be like to see him day after day in Sue’s house, more intimately, more continuously than ever before, and under the eyes of the whole family?
Surprisingly
she found no pleasure in the prospect—only a sort of apprehension and uneasiness. Sue would know before long, it was impossible to conceal anything from her. Who else? Phoebe had been able to keep her secret because Oliver was not there. And how would Sosthène be explained in
Williamsburg
? How would they feel about him? It was a very different background from war-time England and Virginia’s casual ways. People at home would want to know who Sosthène
was.
Who was he?

“Dear little Sue,” Sally was saying dreamily. “I cannot imagine Sue old, like the rest of us. Is she still in love with poor Sedgwick?”

The low-voiced question, so lightly put, seemed to go off like a cannon in the listening room. It was not a thing the family ever spoke of. Bracken, who knew the story from his mother, had somehow not realized before that Sally must have known it too.

“Dear heart, we don’t—you must promise not to ask Sue things like that,” he said gently, rebukingly, and Sally looked at him with swift amusement and incredulity.

“Is it
still
a secret?” she asked, smiling. “Such naïveté from everybody! I had half forgotten how charming they all are,
in Williamsburg. Sosthène, my angel, you have no idea—we shall put our foot in it a dozen times a day! Such discretion, it will demand of us! Bracken, you will see about the tickets for me? I must have an outside room, be sure, and not too many stairs to the promenade deck.”

“There are lifts, darling. I’ll attend to it,” said Bracken, looking nevertheless a trifle floored, and the twins exchanged glances over this new glimpse into unsuspected mysteries from before their time.

Knowing that Sosthène was always down early to take Mimi for her walk before breakfast, and being an early riser herself, Camilla was already in the dining-room when he came in the following morning, before anyone else had appeared.

He joined her at the sideboard with his courteous first
greeting
of the day and his grave, lingering look, and their elbows brushed as they served themselves from the hot dishes. Camilla suddenly set her plate down with a little bump and faced him.

“Sosthène. I don’t—know what to think about this, I don’t know that I like it. I never dreamed that she would ever go back to Williamsburg too.”

Sosthène put down his own plate deliberately, and laid one elbow on the sideboard, his kind, amused eyes at her disposal.

“Don’t you want me to come?” he said, very low.

“I don’t know, I—” She paused, gazing up at him helplessly.

“Were you running away?” he asked then.

“No, not exactly. It was Calvert’s idea to go back, and I don’t seem to care much where I am so long as I’m of some use to him. I must stick with him now, no matter what he wants.”

“Mm-
hm
,” said Sosthène, with the faintest hint of
satisfaction
. “So now you see how it is—how no one is free.”

“
They’re
free,” she reminded him rebelliously. “
They
decide, and we’re trapped.”

He shook his head, still smiling.

“They need us. That is their prison, the same as ours.”