The Chinese Shawl (3 page)

Laura came out on to the street and found Carey Desborough waiting for her. He had been walking up and down, and just as she emerged from the dark entrance he turned and came towards her. He had those few moments to adjust his recollections of Laura last night to Laura this morning. She was wearing a black coat over a bright green dress, and a black cap with a little shiny clasp at the side that looked like silver. He had not remembered that her colour was so bright except when she had blushed, and he wondered whether she was blushing now. He thought not. He thought that something had made her angry, and when he saw how brilliant her eyes were he was sure of it. He felt an irresponsible desire to tease her, to heap fuel on the fire, and see what happened, but she took the wind out of his sails by saying,

“I’m in a most dreadful temper. I’m not fit to go out to lunch with anyone. I shall be perfectly horrid.”

The lines round his eyes crinkled up as if he was going to smile.

“Well, I’m warned. Have you got a very bad temper?”

“It boils over. It’s boiling now. But it doesn’t generally last.”

“Well, suppose we walk a bit and give it a chance.”

Laura nodded.

“It would be a good plan. I really am boiling. Mr. Metcalfe had a cooking fire besides all the rest of it, and there’s a nice cold wind.”

“Did you say an ice-cold wind?”

Laura eyed him severely.

“You know I didn’t. I said it was nice and cold. Perhaps it will cool me down. If I had to go into a hot restaurant like this I should probably burst into flames.”

Carey allowed himself to laugh. He had been wanting to for some time.

“What happens if I ask you why? Does that have the same effect?”

“I don’t know. It might.” She put up a hand to her cheek and could feel it burning right through the glove. She looked at him with a hint of distress. “I am being perfectly horrid. I’d better go home.”

He slipped a hand inside her arm.

“What’s the matter? Did he upset you?”

All at once Laura could laugh. She said,

“Oh, not like that. It was just a stupid business thing.”

“Want to talk about it?”

He got another look—a very frank one this time.

“I want to, but I don’t know whether I’d better. You see, I don’t know how well you know Tanis.”

His face changed and hardened. He said deliberately,

“I know her very well indeed.”

Laura said an outrageous thing. She blushed for it afterwards. She even blushed for it at the time, but she said it.

“Are you in love with her? Are you going to marry her?”

The odd thing was that it didn’t seem outrageous until she had said it. It was somehow vitally necessary that she should know these things, and how was she going to know them if she didn’t ask him? She kept her eyes on his face and wondered whether he would be angry. And didn’t care, because she had to know.

Carey said, “You can put it in the past tense, my dear.”

“You mean you were in love with her?”

“I thought I was—I thought I was going to marry her. But one doesn’t get beyond the thinking stage with Tanis.”

Laura said another outrageous thing. It just seemed as if all the rules about what you said and didn’t say to a stranger had been blown away—perhaps on that fierce gust of anger. This time she said,

“Will she marry Alistair?”

Carey seemed to have scrapped all his rules too. A stranger—there was nothing strange between them. They were answering each other’s thoughts. He said,

“She won’t marry anyone—not yet—not for a long time— not as long as she can get what she wants without paying for it.”

Laura’s voice came back in a whisper.

“What does she want?”

She never took her eyes off him. His face was expressionless and controlled.

“Oh, to see us all make fools of ourselves—to be the candle and watch the moths come up and burn their wings. She hasn’t got any use for them after that. She’s a bright candle, isn’t she?”

Laura didn’t answer him—she hadn’t any voice. She didn’t know what was happening to her, but it hurt—it hurt horribly. Not for herself, but for Carey. The hurt came into her eyes and made a shadow there like the shadow of a cloud on water.

He said quickly, “Don’t look like that. It doesn’t matter any more. Do you hear—there isn’t any Tanis. As far as I’m concerned the candle’s out.”

Laura took a soft breath. She said on that breath,

“She hurt you—dreadfully—” And Carey said,

“It’s gone. It doesn’t matter any more. It never really mattered at all, because she doesn’t matter.” And then he laughed suddenly and said, “Look where we’ve got to!”

They were in a narrow street with a mews opening on to it on one side, and a high building on the other, full of blind bricked-up windows.

It was no use Laura looking, because she had no idea where they were, or how they had got there. She hadn’t even realized that they had stopped walking. She discovered now that they were standing on a narrow, dirty pavement just opposite the entrance to the mews. An errand-boy went by on a bicycle quickly, but otherwise the place seemed quite deserted. She said in a bewildered tone,

“Where are we?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

When they had emerged into a recognizable road and found a taxi Laura began to wake up. It felt just like that— as if she had been asleep and had one of those dreams which don’t make sense, but which leave you still charmed when you wake up and have odd snatches of remembrance coming through the waking up, like the half remembered snatches of a tune. She sat back in her corner and wondered at herself, and wondered why she wasn’t ashamed of the things she had said. It had all started with her being angry, but being angry didn’t account for it.

She saw Carey watching her, and before she knew she was going to speak she said,

“Why did we say those things? I don’t. …”

“Nor do I.”

“Then why did we?”

“Don’t you know?”

She shook her head.

“It frightens me. I can’t stop. I’m doing it now.”

His eyes were smiling into hers.

“What are you doing?”

“Saying things.”

“Instead of just thinking them?”

She nodded. Her eyes really had a frightened look.

“I’ve never done it before.”

“I haven’t either—not like this. I shouldn’t be surprised if it meant that we were falling in love.”

She changed colour, but the change was to white, not red. She looked for a moment as if she had been shocked right out of her senses. There was a rushing sound in her ears like water, like great waves. And then Carey saying her name urgently.

“Laura—what’s the matter?”

“I—don’t—know—”

Then he saw the colour come back and her lips begin to tremble.

“Laura—are you all right?”

She said, “Yes.”

He was holding both her hands.

“Would you mind if I fell in love with you? Because I’m going to.”

She made a very great effort. She shut her eyes for a moment and thought hard about how she had been brought up, and what Aunt Theresa would say. It was all quite mad. She opened her eyes again and pulled her hands away. Then she said in a voice that was not as firm as she had hoped it was going to be,

“Please don’t talk like that.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s quite mad.”

She heard him laugh.

“Didn’t you like it?”

Laura didn’t say anything. She knew just what she ought to say, but the words wouldn’t come.

He went on.

“I’ve shocked you, offended you. Is that it?”

There were still no words.

“Because if I have, you might be honest enough to tell me. You’re an honest person, aren’t you? Well then, you’ve only got to look me in the eye and say you don’t want me to fall in love with you.”

Laura’s tongue was suddenly loosened.

“What would you do if I did?”

He said, “Fall a little deeper.”

And at that inopportune moment the taxi drew up.

Perhaps the moment was not so inopportune. Everything had gone at racing speed—a race without rules, without bounds. Laura at least was thankful for the halt. She went into the cloakroom and did the best she could with her face, but a powder-puff has its limits. She could, and did, tone down the carnation in her cheeks, but there was nothing to be done with the shining look which met her in the mirror, or with the new soft line of her lips. She considered what the powder-puff had effected, and decided that it was a pity. The colour had been very becoming. She found she was smiling, and before she could change her mind again she pulled a handkerchief out of her bag and was wiping the powder off. Then she went out and found Carey in the hall.

He took her down a flight of steps into a small irregularly shaped room which seemed to be quite full of people, but when they had threaded their way among the tables, there was the one he had reserved, set right into the corner. They sat facing one another across it.

Laura discovered that she was hungry—frightfully hungry. And the food was extraordinarily good—hors d’œuvres, and a fishy thing, and a sweet with layers of cocoanut and chocolate frozen hard, and a hot chocolate sauce.

Carey made a charming host. He looked at her as if he loved her, but he talked of all the things which Laura liked talking about—safe, interesting things which had nothing to do with the race which had taken them so far and at such a break-neck speed.

It was over the coffee that she told him why she had been angry.

“My cousin Agnes Fane wants to buy the Priory and leave it to Tanis. I don’t know why that made me so angry, but it did. One minute I was sitting there just polite and interested, and he was telling me all about the feud and the relations, and the next minute I felt as if I was going up in a puff of flame exactly like a firework. It was a horrid feeling.”

“It must have been.” His voice was sympathetic, but his eyes laughed.

“I’ve got a temper—I told you I had—but I’ve never been so—so unreasonably angry. It’s rather frightening, because I did feel as if I could have done anything—” She paused, and then repeated the last word. “Anything.”

He saw that she had turned quite white, and that she really did look frightened. He said in a steadying voice,

“What did you do?”

Her colour came back again with a rush.

“I just said that I wouldn’t think of selling, and when he tried to persuade me I listened for a bit, and then I got so boiling that I couldn’t any more, so I came away.”

Carey said thoughtfully,

“So he tried to persuade you—”

Laura nodded.

“He’s Cousin Agnes’s lawyer too. He knows her awfully well. Aunt Theresa says he wanted to marry her. Anyhow they’re very old friends, so of course he would be on her side.”

“He oughtn’t to have a side.”

Laura laughed.

“Why, he couldn’t help it. He’s known her for simply ages. He’s fond of her—you can see he is. I’m horrid, but I’m not so horrid that I would expect him not to be fond of her, and not to try and get her what she wants. It’s all quite reasonable, you know. I can see that now I’ve stopped boiling. Tanis has been like her daughter—it’s quite natural she should want her to have the Priory. And as Mr. Metcalfe says, I couldn’t live there myself, because I’ve only got a hundred a year besides the rent Cousin Agnes pays me, and if she died nobody might want it, or if they did they mightn’t give me as much. It’s all quite reasonable.”

“But you’re not going to sell?”

“I don’t feel reasonable about it at all,” said Laura.

He poured her out another cup of coffee. Then he said in a tentative voice,

“You’re fond of the place?”

She shook her head.

“I’ve never seen it. There are photographs which belonged to my father—I used to get a sort of thrill from looking at them and thinking, ‘It doesn’t matter who lives there. It’s mine really—it belongs to me.’ And I used to plan what I would do with the rooms. Most of the furniture belongs to Cousin Agnes, but there are some old bits that have been there ever since the house was built. I used to plan curtains and chintzes, but of course it was just a game. Aunt Theresa always told me I couldn’t possibly live there unless I married someone with enough money to keep it up, and she always finished up by saying I wasn’t in the least likely to do that.”

He looked up, began to laugh, and then was suddenly grave again.

“Is she making you a good offer?”

“Twelve thousand pounds. Mr. Metcalfe said it was very generous.”

“It’s a fancy price. You know, you ought to go down and see the place. Can’t you do that?”

“I couldn’t unless Cousin Agnes asked me.” She hesitated, and then came out with, “I think she’s going to.”

“You’ll go?”

“I don’t want to.”

“Don’t be silly! Of course you must go! For one thing, it will smash this feud business, and for another, don’t you see, you may simply loathe the place, and then it’s too easy.”

“Suppose I don’t loathe it—suppose I fall passionately in love with it?”

“That’s quite easy too—you dig in your toes and wait for a handsome husband and three thousand a year.”

“If he had three thousand a year he’d probably be hideous.”

“Then you’d have to go on waiting.”

She looked at him with the frank, confiding look he liked so much.

“Do you know the Priory? Shall I like it? Have you been there?”

“Oh, yes, I know it quite well.”

“Shall I like it?”

“I don’t know, my dear. Anyhow you ought to go down if Miss Fane asks you.”

Laura nodded reluctantly.

“I suppose I ought.” She brightened. “Perhaps she won’t ask me.”

The afternoon went by. They saw a play, but in each of them the current of thought and feeling ran too strong to leave any but the most surface attention free. Each was too conscious of the other to know what was passing on the stage. There was light, and colour, and music. The players came and went and said their lines. The curtain rose and fell. And all the time the unseen current ran like a race.

They came out into the dark and found a taxi. Blackness shut them in. Carey said suddenly,

“They don’t know whether I shall be able to fly again.”

Something in his voice brought Laura out of her dreams. She said in the quick, soft way she had,

“Oh—why?”

“That crash—it’s done something to my sight. I can’t judge distances any more.”

“You’ll get all right—I’m sure you will.”

“I may. It’s one of those things they don’t know about. It’s hell.”

She put out her hand and found his.

“You’ll get all right—I know you will.”

They sat like that with the dark going by them. Neither of them spoke. When the taxi stopped and they were standing under Cousin Sophy’s porch, he broke the silence to say,

“No one knows except you.”

Laura didn’t say anything. She put out her hand again in a groping gesture. It brushed his arm, and suddenly he was holding it to his face, kissing it.

“Laura! Laura!”

She reached out and held him.

“Don’t mind like that! Oh, Carey, please!”

“I’m a fool—I’ve no right—”

She shook him a little, or tried to.

“You’re not to talk like that! I won’t have it! You’ve got to be sensible and give yourself a chance. Why, it isn’t any time yet. You’ve been worried—strung-up. You haven’t given yourself a chance.” But in her heart she was saying, “Tanis hasn’t given him a chance.”

She came very near to hating Tanis then. It was like coming near to the open mouth of a furnace. The heat rushed out. It took her breath and blinded her. She shrank in the wind of it, and was afraid.

Carey felt her tremble. She put up her face to his, and when he touched it it was wet. She said through tears,

“Please, Carey, please! It’s going to be all right.”