No Highway (25 page)

She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not dated up. I’ve got to be in Hollywood on the twenty-seventh, but that’s eleven days from now. I was reckoning I’d stop off in Indianapolis for a few days before flying on home, but I’d just as soon stop over those few days at Claridge’s in London. I kind of like London, for all it’s such a dirty town.”

He blinked at her. “But it would be so expensive for you to go back.”

She said simply, “I wouldn’t pay. All my travelling goes on to the expense account. Honestly, Mr. Honey, I’d be real glad to do that if it would help.”

He was bewildered by this woman, whom with his dead wife he had adored upon the movies; bewildered by her hard competence, by her sophistication, by her carefully tended beauty and her luxurious clothes, by the incongruous kindliness and small-town warmth of her consideration. He had never met anyone in the least like her before, never had dealings with anybody from her world. He said uncertainly, “Well, that would be very helpful, certainly, Miss Teasdale. But it seems an awful lot to ask you to do.”

She said, “I’m interested in this thing, Mr. Honey, and I’d like to see it through. And if I can help any by going back instead of stopping in the Middle West a week, I’d like to do it. After all, it is kind of important, this, and Indiana’s no novelty to me.”

He said, “But can you get a passage back today?”

Her lips tightened. “I can try.”

She left him to think out a letter to me that she could take with her, and found Dobson, and smiled dazzlingly at him so that he took her meekly to the Control, where she was very charming and just terribly sorry to be such a nuisance, but could she get a call down to New York? She delighted the Control Officer for four hours with her conscious charm, and left his office in the end with her return passage to London arranged and little lines of strained fatigue around her lovely eyes. Time was, she thought a little bitterly, when she could do that sort of thing just naturally. With the last remnants of her energy she charmed Dobson into arranging a bedroom for her use, and went and pulled the shade down and lay down upon the bed to rest.

Marjorie Corder was busy all the morning cleaning up the galley and the passengers’ quarters of the wrecked Reindeer and in arranging lunch for the stranded passengers. She found time to visit Mr. Honey with a cup of coffee in the middle of the morning, and to bring him a selection of magazines. She arrived just after Samuelson had visited him again, to break the news to him that C.A.T.O. had refused to carry him any farther in their aircraft. She found him worried and distressed; he told her all about it.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I suppose I’ll have to try and get away from here by train. But now they say there isn’t a train till Thursday.”

“Drink your coffee while it’s hot,” she suggested. “It’ll all come out all right, you see.”

He sipped it obediently. “What are you doing?” he inquired. “Are you going on with the passengers to Montreal?”

She shook her head. “We shall stay here till we get some orders. The aircrew always stay with their own machine. The Hermes that’s coming up will have its own steward.” She smiled. “So after all the rest have gone on, I shall only have you to look after.”

He said diffidently, “I’m terribly sorry to make so much trouble.”

She stood looking down upon him kindly. “Last night you told me where to go if anything happened,” she said, “where it would be safe. I don’t suppose I’d have gone, but it was nice of you to tell me. I’m glad to be able to do something in return. It’s my job to see that you’re made comfortable, of course, but I’d want to do that anyway, for what you tried to do for me.”

He said awkwardly, “I didn’t do anything.”

She said, “You’d rather have your lunch in here, sir, wouldn’t you? You don’t want to mix with the other passengers?”

He said, “Er—if it’s not an awful lot of trouble.”

“Of course it’s not,” she said. “I’ll bring it you about one o’clock. There’s cold meat or hot Irish stew, and I saw some cold salmon in the larder, but: there’s not enough of that to go round so I think the staff are having it. Would you like a salmon mayonnaise?”

He said, “I’d love that, if it’s going.” And he gave her one of his shy, warming smiles.

She nodded. “There’s treacle tart afterwards or semolina pudding.”

“Treacle tart, please.”

She nodded. “And coffee?”

“Please.”

“Bottle of beer?”

“Well—if there is one—yes, that would be very nice.”

She nodded. “Have you got enough to smoke?”

“Well—I would like another packet of cigarettes. Player’s, if they’ve got them.”

“I’ll get you those at once.”

She brought his cigarettes and a box of matches, and a few minutes later she took an easy chair from the lounge and
carried it along the passage and put it in the office for him. Mr. Honey sat reading the
Cosmopolitan
and smoking his cigarettes in some comfort, warmed by the solicitude of the girl. He felt in better spirits now, ready to face whatever might be coming to him.

The Hermes from Quebec came in and landed before lunch; Mr. Honey stood at his window and watched it taxi in. Miss Corder brought him his tray of lunch, with the salmon and the bottle of beer. “All the other passengers are having their lunch now,” she said. “They’re going on in the Hermes as soon as it’s refuelled. All except Miss Teasdale, who’s decided that she wants to go back to England.”

He said, “She’s very kindly offered to take a note back to Dr. Scott for me. It seems an awful imposition, but she offered to, and it really is a great help.”

The girl said, “I should think she’s very nice, when you get to know her.”

“I think she is,” said Honey. “Of course, one thinks one knows her from seeing her films, but really, she’s quite a different person altogether.” He laughed. “It’s a bit confusing.”

Miss Corder said, “I think her films are lovely. I never miss one if I can help it.”

She went out, and Mr. Honey ate his lunch, and presently stood at his window watching the Hermes load up with its passengers and taxi out towards the runway’s end, watched it as it left the ground and slid off into the distance. He turned again to the
Cosmopolitan;
presently the stewardess came back to take his tray.

“You don’t have to use this office any longer, sir, unless you want to,” she said. “There’s nobody here now except the crew and Miss Teasdale.”

He said, “Well—I’ll sit in the lounge. Where is Miss Teasdale?”

“I think she’s lying down, sir. Shall I bring your coffee to the lounge?”

“Oh—yes, please do.”

He stayed in the lounge all afternoon. Three or four aircraft landed to refuel, and there was a stream of passengers from them in and out, stretching their legs and gossiping together over cups of coffee or short drinks. Mr. Honey sat insignificant in a corner, unhappy. Now that the first excitement had passed, he was miserably anxious about his own position; clearly there was going to be a most appalling row
about the Reindeer, and he was quite unused to rows and hated them. Personal unpleasantness always upset his work; he could not think clearly if his mind was full of hard things that had been said about him, and he liked thinking clearly. Rows frightened him; he would go to considerable lengths to avoid them. For the first time in years the thought of resigning his position at the R.A.E. entered his mind.

If things got too nasty, he could always do that. He could resign and not go there any more. True, it would be a terrible wrench to part from the work he loved; true, he would have to find another job. But he was not unknown in the intimate, unpublicised, middle world of science; he was on blinking and smiling terms with the heads of several other research departments. Perhaps a little niche would open out for him at the National Physical Laboratory or the Admiralty Research Laboratory. He knew people at both places, and he could be happy there, though not so happy as he now felt he had been while dealing with fatigue in light alloy structures.

By tea-time he was in a state of deep dejection. When Marjorie Corder brought him his tea, unasked, she noticed his preoccupation. “Haven’t you been out?” she asked. “Have you been sitting here all the time?”

He nodded. “I’ve had a lot to think about.”

“It’s nice outside,” she said. “There’s a cold wind, but if you wrap up well it’s rather lovely.”

He was not listening to her words; he only heard her sympathy. “I wish they’d cable and say what I’m to do,” he muttered. “I’m afraid I shall have to resign.”

“Resign your job?” she said. She looked down at him with deep compassion; he was such an unhappy little man and yet so terribly clever. “You mustn’t think of that. They’ll understand, back at your office.”

“I think I’ll have to,” he said miserably. “I think it’s the only thing to do.”

She said gently, “Look, I got you some buttered toast, and there’s anchovy paste here and jam. I got you strawberry jam, but would you rather have apricot? There’s apricot if you’d rather have that.”

He roused, and smiled at her. “No—I like strawberry, thank you.”

She poured out his tea for him. “Is that how you like it? I brought you a piece of cherry cake and a piece of madeira, but there’s more of either if you want it.”

“Oh, thank you very much, but I don’t think I shall want any more. I don’t think I shall get through all of this.”

“Well, let’s see you try.”

She went away and had her own tea in the staff room, but in her turn she was preoccupied. She recognised in Mr. Honey a man of moods, capable of deep depression; all geniuses, she had read, were men like that. She was not a very talented girl herself, nor very highly educated; she had had to go to work too early. She was firmly convinced that Mr. Honey was a genius and that he was right about the Reindeer tail. She could not help him in the matter of the Reindeer directly, but she might be able to do something to ease the burdens on his mind. It shocked her that he should be talking of resigning from the R.A.E. She felt dimly that if that were to happen her country would have suffered an irreparable loss, because he was the cleverest man that she had ever met. He had seen through into her secret places at one glance, and had known that she would be good with children.

When she went to take his tray, she asked, “Do you play chess, Mr. Honey?”

He looked up in surprise. “Chess? I haven’t played for years. My—my wife and I used to play in the evenings, sometimes. It’s a very good game.”

“I can play a little,” she said. “I’m not very good. Would you like a game or would you rather read?”

He roused. “No—I’d like a game of chess. Are you sure that you can spare the time, though?”

“I’ve only got two passengers left now,” she said, “you and Miss Teasdale, and she’s still lying down. I’ll bring the things along.” She took his tray.

She played three games with him, and beat him once; she suspected that he had contrived to be mated by her, and she liked him for it. In the course of the two and a half hours she had learned a good deal about Elspeth. “What do you do about her clothes, Mr. Honey?” she had asked curiously. “Who buys those for you?”

He said, “Oh, whenever she needs anything I take her to a shop in Farnham. The woman that keeps it is really very helpful, and I buy what she says.”

She stared at him. “But do you just take what’s in the one shop?”

He replied, “Well, yes, I do. I suppose one ought to go to other shops sometimes, but it’s so much easier to do it that way.” He hesitated. “I’ve sometimes thought that Elspeth
isn’t dressed quite like the other girls at school,” he admitted, “I suppose I ought to learn a bit more about what schoolgirls wear. Do you think if I took in
Vogue
, or some paper like that, it would help?”

She was at a loss. “I don’t think that’s quite the right sort of paper,” she said. “I’ll think of something and let you know, if you like.”

“I wish you would,” he said. “She’s getting so big now that I think I ought to do something.” He paused, and then he said, “Mrs. Higgs gives me a lot of advice, but I don’t know that Elspeth isn’t outgrowing that.”

“Who’s Mrs. Higgs?”

“She’s the charwoman. She’s got a lot of children of her own, and she’s really been very helpful.”

“Oh.…”

Later on she asked him, “What do you do at the week-ends?”

He said, “Well, we don’t do very much. Cleaning the house up takes us a lot of time, of course, and then there’s the garden to be done and cooking. It just seems to go.” He turned to her. “There never seems to be time for anything. When—when Mary was there we always had time to do things on a Sunday—photography or hiking in the summer. But now there just doesn’t seem to be time.”

She nodded. “Are you fond of hiking?”

“We used to do a lot,” he said.

“Staying in Youth Hostels?” she inquired, her eyes gleaming.

“Sometimes. Have you done that?” He was interested.

She nodded. “I had a lovely holiday in the Lake District once,” she said thoughtfully. “Four of us, staying in Youth Hostels every night, for a fortnight. It
was
fun.” She turned to him. “That was when I was engaged,” she said simply.

“Oh …” He glanced at her hand, but there was no ring. She saw his glance. “That was a long time ago,” she said. “He was in Bomber Command and got shot down over Dortmund. I thought the end of the world had come. But I suppose it hadn’t.”

“My dear,” said Mr. Honey, “I’m so very sorry.”

She roused herself. “Your move,” she said.

She went away after the third game to assist in serving dinner, and presently Miss Teasdale appeared, looking fresh and radiant and about eighteen years old. She said, “Say, Mr. Honey, I just heard my plane’s coming in around nine
o’clock, so we’ll have time for dinner before I go.” She ordered an Old-fashioned for herself and persuaded him to join her; beer was his normal drink and he took the novelty gingerly, and under the influence he pulled out his wallet and showed her a photograph of Elspeth.

“My,” said the actress, “doesn’t she look cute?”

He agreed. “I think she’s more intelligent than children of her age usually are,” he said. “She’s only twelve, but she’s got a very good grasp of crystallography.”