Friends and Lovers (48 page)

David sat quite silent. He was too dazed even to listen coherently.

Fairbairn halted his exposition to glance sharply at David’s face.

“It is a wonderful opportunity for any young man,” he said. “You will have a chance to travel through all the States. You will be helped by official sources. Your expenses will be paid by me in addition to your salary, of course. And they will be paid on the American scale while you are there.

That is only fair. Everything costs twice as much in America, and British salaries cannot cope with that. I found that out when I travelled there two years ago.” He smiled at the memory, and paused, waiting for David’s response.

David forced a smile too. It was more than fair. It was a chance in a thousand, the kind of dream that would have excited him as much as Fairbairn, if only there hadn’t been Penny. If only we could get married, he thought.

If only … “How long do you expect this tour to last?” he asked quietly.

“Probably about a year,” Fairbairn said cheerfully. He looked as if he expected David to share his enthusiasm. “America is a big place, you know.

We often forget that. Even if you spent one week in each state and most of them cover more ground than the British Isles that would take you eleven months. The United States is not a country, rerhember: it is a continent.

You will send me a monthly report of facts and figures. And I shall also expect a weekly article for the Economic Trend. I want that written, of course, in a more interesting way than the matter-of-fact reports, and you don’t have to confine yourself entirely in your articles to seasonal unemployment. Anything that touches the social problems will be the sort of thing I’ll need for that page. You’ll find it a varied and interesting job.”

A year, David was thinking. And after that? Probably there would be always some other excuse in life to separate him from Penny. Some other excuse to separate them for another six months, another three months, another year.

His instinct told him to fight against this: it was the beginning of a series of dragging separations stretching into a permanent one. For if he were a good reporter Fairbairn would use him as that: he had been talking only last week of the need to observe methods in European countries, of the need to forget Britain was an island. Fairbairn was thorough. Fairbairn was the man so interested in a job to be done that he would drive his assistants with the tight, unrelenting purpose of a general. No favours could be asked of Fairbairn.

“Well?” he was now saying.

David glanced at Chaundler’s quiet, watchful face. Chaundler knew. He was worried too.

“I must think about this, sir,” David said haltingly.

Fairbairn stared uncomprehendingly at the young man.

“It is a chance in a thousand,” he said, with a hint of rebuke in his voice.

David flushed.

“Yes,” he agreed unhappily.

Chaundler said, “First of all, you need a holiday, David.” He looked pointedly at Fairbairn, who nodded. David gave Walter Chaundler a look of thanks. He was trying to buy David some time, some time to think over the whole business.

“Yes, you need a couple of weeks or so,” Fairbairn agreed. “But you would have to sail by the middle of August.”

David stared at the fallen cigarette ash on the carpet at his feet.

“Let me know by Saturday,” Fairbairn said, with marked finality.

“If it is the responsibility of such a job that is worrying you, you can put your mind at rest. I should never have suggested it if I had not thought you would shape up very well in it.” He began speaking of other things, but there was just the touch of disappointed tolerance in his whole manner. He had been so sure that David was the kind of man to seize opportunity and to do well. Perhaps, of course, he did need a holiday: he had been working hard, and he looked tired. And when you are tired, Fairbairn thought, then you hesitate before new ideas.

Chaundler gave David a quick look of encouragement. He said quietly, “Why don’t you go to bed and nurse that cold of yours? It looks to me as if flu were developing.” “Oh, I’ll be all right,” David said.

“I suppose I’m more tired than I imagined.” He roused himself to carry on with the rest of the conversation.

David found a letter for Penny lying on the table of the dark hall in Fitzroy Square. He lifted it. It was from Edinburgh he noticed, as he climbed the stairs slowly. All his movements had become heavy. Yes, I am tired, he thought. But what else could I expect, anyway? Another week of that strain and I would have cracked up. We all would have.

He remembered the rows of white, serious faces bent over the examination papers day after day. Outside the Examination School there was sunlight and green trees. Inside there was the race against time, the scraping of pens, the worried coughs, the shuffling feet, the rows of desks. The judgment day.

The weighing in the balance, the found wanting. The sheep and the goats.

No matter how brilliant you had been in editing a magazine, in producing a play, in contributing verse to anthologies; no matter how original you had seemed with your decided tastes in clothes and food and conversation; no matter how well you had played music or Rugby or at politics in the Union, this was the day of rendered accounts. It was the same test for all and the same lesson: first-rate brains without the capacity to work would get you no farther than those who worked but had second-rate brains.

It was the day of painful self-revelation, of regret for some, of hope for others, of exhibitionism, of frustration, of submitting your inner pride to the outside verdict.

David paused to rest his heavy suitcase on the first landing. Well, that is all over anyway, he thought: the written papers, and then the oral, and, at last, the posted list of successes and failures. All over, thank God.

Another chunk of life put in a box, wrapped up and labelled “Past. Not to be reopened. No second attempts.” But a rare chunk in its way, for other periods in life did not end so neatly, so completely, with an examiner’s clear mark to tie up all the loose ends. No wonder I feel lightheaded, he thought. And this damned cold which keeps hanging on—how did I get it, anyway? Too little sleep for weeks, a sudden drop in temperature in the early morning while I was working at an open window? His head at this moment seemed made of lead, and it was an effort to lift each damned foot and place it on the next step. His shoes seemed to be soled with east iron. Oh, hell, he thought, I’m just tired and worried. That’s all.

If I can get some rest I’ll be all right in a couple of days. There had not been much rest in these last days at Oxford. After the orals there had been the packing up, the last removal, the payment of bills, the farewells to be made, the summer plans for Margaret to be arranged. Hell’s bells, he thought, doesn’t life ever become simple? One thing over, and another begins.

He thrust the letter into his pocket and changed the suitcase to his other hand. As he paused again for a moment on the top step of the long staircase he admitted for the first time that this cold was worse than he had realized. And the lunch-party in Chaundler’s room had not exactly been a cure. It was funny how anxiety could deal the last blow to your health, could crumple it up as surely as any germ.

Then he called himself a bloody fool for even allowing himself to think that; and he knocked at the door, and he was smiling as he heard her clear voice saying, “David? Is that you?”

Her light heels ran to the door to open it. He forgot about Fairbairn and America. He was only thinking how lovely she was, standing there at the opened door, her face flushed, her eyes shining. He had no feeling except the eternal one of surprise that she was always so much lovelier than he had dreamed in his loneliness.

“Darling,” she said. Her arms were tightly round him. He held her closely, saying with the stupid inadequacy which attacked him when he was emotionally upset, “Darling Penny, I love you.” He kissed her neck and her brow and her ear, and explained,

“I mustn’t give you this cold. I’m full of germs.” “I wouldn’t mind,” Penny said.

“If we share triumphs, then colds will be shared too. But you didn’t tell me in your letters that you had a cold.” And then, seeing that he didn’t want to talk about it, she said, “Our celebration supper is all ready. I cooked it in advance so that I wouldn’t meet you all hot and bothered.” She tried to look not too proudly at the table. There was a cold duck with orange salad, a Brie cheese beside a salad-bowl, a basket of French bread covered with a napkin, strawberries piled on vine leaves, and a bottle of Liebfraumilch.

“There’s only the asparagus to drain and cover with butter,” she said. She smiled with delight at having timed everything so well.

“Oh, David, I am so happy!” She threw back her head and laughed with pure joy.

“How wonderful to have won a victory. I feel like Caesar after a successful campaign. No, you should be Caesar, and I’m the wife who shares his triumphs. No, not Cassar: he was a bald headed old reprobate with husbands hiding their wives from him whenever he entered a town. Who was the victorious general who loved only one woman? Surely there must be some? The trouble is you never hear about virtue, only about vices.”

David’s smile broadened. He noted with pleasure, too, that his telegram giving the results of Schools was displayed in the middle of the mantelpiece.

The happiness and pride on Penny’s face made him aware of his achievement.

“I’ll rush out and sit fifty more examinations he said, ‘if you give me a welcome like this when I get back.” God, it was wonderful to accomplish something, and then see your girl more triumphant than you were. Her laughter, her gay remarks, her dancing steps done in a moment of bursting joy, her excitement and happiness, were infectious. He forgot his throbbing temples and the coldness of his body.

“Stop it, old girl,” he said smilingly, ‘or you’ll give me a swelled head.” But he loved it, and then, like all men when they are enjoying the height of their triumphs, he added diffidently, “It was nothing, anyway.”

“Of course,” Penny said, with a laugh, ‘nothing at all Absolutely nothing!” She went out into the landing, saying that it would be a pity to ruin the asparagus.

He remembered the letter which he had slipped into his pocket as he climbed the stairs.

“I brought a letter up here for you. From Edinburgh,” he called through the open door. “Back-slanting writing, square-shaped, with elaborate capital L’s.”

“That will be from Moira. Throw it on the mantelpiece, darling.”

David placed the letter near his telegram, and went out into the hallway where Penny was busy measuring coffee in the small alcove kitchen. He lifted the dish of asparagus, which made a neat pyramid on the slices of toast draining the last drops of water. He put his other arm round her waist, hugging her as he said,

“This is what I needed,” and made her lose count of the spoonfuls.

But at dinner, in spite of determined efforts, he could eat very little. He hadn’t eaten much lunch, either, but he had blamed that on Pairbairn’s conversation.

“Sorry, darling,” he had to say at last.

“Everything is perfect. But I seem to be unable to–-” He pushed back the nauseating plate of food.

“This cold of mine–-”

” David–-” Penny began, half rising.

“No, don’t!” he said sharply.

“There’s no need for any fuss.” He rose and crossed over to the armchair, feeling the slowness of his movements.

“I’m just tired, that’s all.”

And he is ill. And he is worried. Penny thought.

“Sorry, Penny,” he said, trying to keep his voice even.

“You see I am a bad-tempered blighter.”

Penny resisted the impulse to follow him, to find out by talking what was wrong. He was tired, he was ill, he was depressed. More depressed than being tired or ill warranted. Something was wrong.

She looked down at the gay table now so forlorn.

“I think you are a very independent blighter,” she said, in a low voice, keeping her eyes fixed on the pattern of the tablecloth. Waterlilies. Only half an hour ago, they had seemed enchanting with their cool white crispness blocked on water-green linen. Something had gone wrong. But what?

Something to do with me? But he loves me just as much as ever, she told herself. And then she wasn’t sure. Yes, he loved her—she had seen that in his eyes when she had opened the door, but perhaps he did not want to be tied to her. Now that he was a free man with a new world before him, perhaps he resented subconsciously the ties that she represented. He was an independent kind of man.

She knew that she was only letting herself express, at this moment, the fear that had lain at the back of her mind in spite of her belief in their love.

People could believe, but they could never feel absolutely sure; they were always haunted by the fear that they would lose what they valued most. The more they valued it, the greater the fear of losing it.

She said very quietly, “David, why don’t you tell me whatever it is?

I’d rather know definitely than imagine things.”

David leaned his head against the back of his chair. He took a deep breath.

“Penny, I am not taking this’ job with Fairbairn. I’ll look for something else.”

She rose then, and came over to his chair, kneeling beside it.

He touched her hair.

“You don’t seem very upset,” he said, in surprise.

“Didn’t you want me to get the job?”

“Yes. I’m relieved because I was jumping to quite wrong conclusions.

I thought you were depressed for another reason.”

“What reason?”

“Us. After all, darling, you could have changed your mind about us.

Men do, they tell me.”

“And damn their eyes, whoever they are.” He stared at her incredulously.

“Good God, Penny. I can worry about you changing your mind about me, but you don’t have to worry that I ever shall. Just take one look in a mirror.

Or reread the letters I sent you. Good God, Penny.”

She kissed his hand, and then slipped hers into his grasp.

“Well,” he said ruefully, ‘that’s a good lesson to me. I shall’t spare you any worries from now on, my girl. I’ll pour them all out before you, so that you can join me in worrying over the real thing and not over an imaginary piece of foolishness. How would you like that?” “Very much,” Penny said cheerfully.