Friends and Lovers (49 page)

“Besides, when we share worries they don’t seem half so bad, just as when we share good news it seems twice as good.” Then she became serious, watching his face thoughtfully.

“Why give up the job?” she asked gently.

“Because I don’t want it.”

She was worried now.

“But why? What do you really want to do, David?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. So she imagined he was just being temperamental about a career, uncertain of what he wanted to do? And then he grew angry with himself over his bitter thought; his temper was on the short side to-day. He hadn’t told her why he was giving up the Fairbairn job. She had every right to be worried about him. No girl would like the idea of tying herself to an unstable man who changed his mind too often about how he was to earn his daily bread. Bread didn’t get earned that way.

“I am not being a prima donna,” he said savagely, his voice still angry from his own self-accusation. He paused, and his tone became more gentle, but there was still intensity behind it.

“I’ll take any job that gives me security and the chance to develop a career I won’t be ashamed of. I must have security. And I must feel that whatever I accomplish to-day will be less than what I can accomplish ten years from to-day. Not in power or in money particularly, but in myself.”

“Fairbairn offered that kind of job,” Penny said. In the next moment she regretted her too quick, too accurate reply as she saw the expression on David’s face.

“Well, darling,” she added hastily, ‘what job will you look for?” Jobs were scarce: she had found that out for herself. It was said that no man with a good Oxford degree was ever unemployed, but it might take a lot of worry and heartbreak to prove that. She sat still, trying to hide her unhappiness, and not succeeding very well. She managed a smile.

“Don’t worry, darling.” David said, “You know, Penny, you are taking this rather well. Why don’t you lecture me for the spineless chap you must think I am?”

“But you aren’t, David.”

“You can’t think that I am exactly a strong-minded character at this moment.

Why don’t you try to manage me, make me take the job for my own good whether I wanted it or not?”

“If you don’t want it, then it wouldn’t be for your own good. And that means it would be bad for me too. Besides, darling, I shouldn’t dare try to manage you. You do the managing in this household. Do you know a most extraordinary thing? I rather enjoy it.”

“If you make me believe that you’ve learned how to manage me completely.” He regarded her with a smile of pleasure. “Mrs. Bosworth, as well as being in love with you, I have a great affection for you.”

“Mr. Bosworth, my regard for you is only equalled by my constant devotion.”

They both laughed. Penny said, “Good. I’ve got a laugh out of you at last. David, you do worry me when you don’t laugh easily. You’re tired. You’ve got a rotten cold—oh yes, you have; that cough you are trying to disguise is almost a graveyard one. And your eyes are—well, peculiar.”

“Like the things you see staring up at you from the fishmonger’s slab of ice?”

“Almost. What you need is bed, aspirin, a hot toddy, and twelve hours of solid sleep. How much sleep have you been getting?”

“Oh, enough.” Sometimes five hours, occasionally six hours a night for too many weeks. And that last night, before the orals, when he had had a sudden attack of worry over the possible floaters in his written papers, he hadn’t been in bed at all. He had kept himself awake with potfuls of coffee, and he had worked by the open window enjoying the cool breeze after the hot mugginess of the day. That was the night he had caught this cold, although he hated to admit it.

“It is only a summer cold,” he said determinedly.

“Annoying things. Hang on and on.” Penny said equally determinedly, “Bed, David. Now. With aspirin and toddy.”

“Look, darling, that’s the wrong way to phrase that invitation.

Besides, I’ve got a job to think about, instead of sleeping myself dizzy in bed. I have to wire Fairbairn by Saturday that I am not available. I hadn’t the brass neck to turn him down to-day. It is always easier to wire a refusal.”

“What did Fairbairn want you to do?” Penny asked quickly.

“To do some travelling, make a monthly report using lots of statistics and facts, and write a weekly page for the Economic Trend.”

“But you expected some travelling, didn’t you? I thought your headquarters were to be London, and that you would go on little jaunts into the provinces.

That sounds fun. The report would be hard work, but the weekly article would be a marvelous thing for you.

What is it you don’t like, David? The travelling?”

“Not when it takes me three thousand miles away from you for a year, perhaps longer. I bet it will actually take every week of fifteen months, or I’m a Dutchman. Fairbairn wants facts. They take a long time to gather accurately.”

“Three thous–- Where are you to go?”

“America. For one year. At least one year.” “Oh,” Penny said slowly, while her thoughts raced. There was a pause.

Then she said, “You must take this job, David.” “I don’t want it,” he said quickly, angrily.

Penny said quietly, “If we could have got married, then you would have taken it?”

“Then we could have gone together. Fairbairn would have paid my travelling expenses—American scale, too. We could have just managed it financially, even allowing for Margaret.”

And I could have let this flat to Marston, Penny thought. That money would have balanced Margaret on their budget. She sighed.

“It would have been perfect,” David said.

“Yes.” She rose to her feet, and leaned over to kiss him. Then she moved silently away to search for some aspirin in the bathroom. She was searching for aspirin, thinking of fifteen months and no end to the worry, thinking of jobs, what kind, what next, and what was she searching for now? Her mind went blank, and she could neither remember nor think at all. She gripped the cold edge of the washbasin, stared at nothing, feeling nothing. Suddenly she came to life again, remembered the aspirin, found the small bottle. She held it, looking at it, saying aloud, “What shall we do now?”

Then she knew what she had to do.

She would wire Walter Chaundler: he would know where Fairbairn was to be found. She would wire Chaundler telling him that David was ill and could not send a telegram, but that he would accept the job in America. Chaundler would understand the telegram’s hidden meaning. He would help her persuade David. For he knew, as she had just realized, that it was too late now to refuse this job. And David knew too, even if he would not admit it.

She bathed her face with cold water, powdered it carefully, and returned to the room.

David was sitting as she had left him, his head leaning against the back of the chair, his eyes fixed on the Utrillo reproduction above the mantelpiece as if he could find some end to their troubles down that silent street of quiet houses with their shutters drawn against the midday sun. Penny began to fold the linen cover off the divan, to strip the cushions and turn them into pillows.

David roused himself, and made the effort of rising. It seemed to take his mind a long time tonight to tell his body to move. And his body wasn’t one piece, as he had imagined: he realized he was made up of several parts, all of them in conflict at the moment. He knew then that this was more than a cold.

“Look, darling,” he said, ‘if I am going to be ill I’d better catch the first train back to Oxford. I probably should not have come here to-day. Only I’ve had this day circled on my calendar for weeks, and–-”

“I’m going out to buy some whisky and lemons for you,” Penny said with a smile.

“Get into bed quickly, won’t you, darling? I want to see you there when I get back.”

“But–-” David began without conviction, looking at the cool white sheets.

That pillow was just the right invitation for a throbbing head.

“Darling, where could you go in Oxford? To hospital? Or to hospital here?

Nonsense, darling. The sooner you are in bed the more quickly you’ll be cured.” And hospitals cost money. All illness costs money.

“But all this trouble–-” He was weakening in his protests: he didn’t want to talk, to argue; he only wanted to get into that bed and get to sleep … Penny smiled, shook her head, and picked up her handbag.

“Shall’t be a minute,” she said lightly, and left the room before he could offer any more objections. Trouble … how strange a man could be.

Nothing was trouble if you loved him. If you were in love all the work and worry in the world was no trouble at all. When women started complaining about trouble they were already half out of love. She shook her head in gentle amusement. Then, as she reached the front door she was serious again, planning what was to be done. She opened her handbag and counted the money in it. She looked at the coins in her hand. Five-and-nine pence . all that was left of the pound note broken this morning for tonight’s dinner.

Mercury should have been the God of Money. She searched for the emergency ten-shilling note which she kept tucked away in one of the bag’s pockets.

There was a moment of panic when she couldn’t find it; and then she did.

That made fifteen-and-nine pence altogether: enough for whisky, and a thermometer too.

She hurried into the Square, and turned towards Tottenham Court Road.

Fortunately this was not a wealthy district, and shopkeepers in the side-streets were apt to keep longer hours. The wine-and-spirits shops would be closed, of course. But there was always the carrying-out department in the local public-house. If my people could see me now, she thought bitterly, what would shock them the more: David ill in my room, or me visiting the jug-and-bottle department in a pub? It was easy for them to criticize; they had whisky in the house as a matter of course, and money for doctors and nurses and private nursing-homes. But what did you do when you didn’t have money for a doctor or a hospital? Quite simple: you did everything yourself without outside help, just you and your two bare hands.

Her hurried step broke into a swift run as if to match the urgency of her thoughts.

Chapter Thirty-eight.

THE ROOFS OF LONDON.

David had fallen into an uneasy sleep marked by heavy breathing.

There was a dark flush on his face, and his hair lay damp on his brow.

Penny rose stiffly from the armchair which she had drawn over beside the bed.

He was too restless. He was getting worse. This wasn’t a cold, this was something which could be, perhaps was now, much more serious. She had a sudden attack of panic, standing there, looking down at him, her fears refusing to be silenced any longer. She ought to have insisted on calling a doctor; she should not have let David talk her out of it. And now it was too late: it was midnight. She did not know of any doctor who lived near here.

The one who had attended the girls at Baker House lived miles away. And he was highly expensive. Hideous, she thought angrily, to be forced to count the cost of being cured. David well again was worth more than all the money in the world. But it was a case of logic, not of meanness.

Either you had money and could buy what you needed, or you hadn’t, and couldn’t.

She stood there, looking down at him, trying to persuade herself that this stage of illness was necessary: you didn’t get better from flu until it was sweated out of your system; you had to go through this high fever. She felt the sheets. They were quite wet. That would never do. She moved over to the bureau drawer where she kept the linen. There were so few sheets there, really, if many changes were necessary. She laid the fresh linen on the small table, now cleared of the abandoned dinner-party, and stood still as she thought of what must be done in what order. She felt almost too tired to arrange the details in her mind, yet the long night had scarcely begun.

“Stop standing there!” she told herself angrily. She began unfolding the sheets to have them ready for the quick change which would be necessary. She searched David’s suitcase for another pair of pyjamas, and found them with two buttons, jagged and useless stumps, broken off by the laundry. Blast them, she thought, and searched for two possible substitutes in her sewing-box.

As she sat on the arm of a chair and sewed the buttons quickly and securely in place she comforted herself by remembering all the things she had managed to do this evening. Mostly telephone calls, but each had meant a separate journey downstairs, for she had not wanted to leave David too long alone.

She had ‘phoned Bunny Eastman and told him she couldn’t possibly come in to the office tomorrow, and would he please post her weekly cheque to her?

She had telephoned Lillian Marston, and found her in the middle of excited packing.

“Darling, couldn’t possibly see you tonight. I’m catching the boat express from Victoria tomorrow at ten, and I haven’t got a thing inside the suitcases yet. To Paris and then to Barbizon, to stay at a little inn and paint the forest and sky. Isn’t it marvelous? Chris’s idea. I call it bribery and corruption. I’ll probably end up by marrying him after all.” So Penny had said it was marvelous; and she did not mention that David was ill.

Then she had telephoned two of her Slade friends, but they had already left town. The long vacation was here, and every one she knew was scrambling out of London, pitying those who were tied to it.

David’s friends, too, were either scattered over the British Isles or gone abroad. Chaundler was preparing to leave for Salzburg. Her grandfather was giving an address to a group of medieval historians at the Sorbonne.

She had telephoned Margaret Bosworth too. She was out at a theatre, so Penny had left a message. There had been no reply to that message, but when Penny had telephoned again, 5 nly twenty minutes ago, Margaret was there. | “Oh,” Margaret had said, when Penny had told her about David, and then there was a pause.

“Could you come here tomorrow?” Penny had asked, swallowing her pride.

There was another pause. Tt is rather difficult. You see, I am leaving for Sussex on the day after tomorrow, and I have so much to do.”