Authors: Mary Burchell

Mine for a Day (16 page)

“Yes.” Leila smiled faintly at having the whole crisis reduced to these simple terms. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

The girl slowly wrote out Leila’s bill.

“I wouldn’t worry too much,” she said again, kindly. “No one can ever do more than be sorry and try again.”

“Oh—” Leila caught her breath on a half-relieved, half-amused little laugh. “I suppose you’re right. That’s how life goes on, even after you’ve thought it can’t. You’re sorry and you try again. Thank you. It’s a consoling thought.”

The girl laughed.
“You going to try to get the young man again, too?” she enquired good-humouredly, as she counted out Leila’s change.

“Oh—
no
!”

“Well, at least try to find out if he really cares about the cousin still. If he doesn’t—your chance is as good as the next girl’s.”

“Not after what he knows of me.”

“You’d be surprised how easily men forget that sort of thing. If you had my job and saw what I see, you’d never believe in the permanence of any quarrel—or any making up, come to that,” declared Leila’s counsellor, with a final burst of good-natured cynicism. “Good night. Sleep on it.”

Leila said good night, gratefully and with an irresistible lift of her spirits and, with no desire to walk any farther, took the nearest bus home.

After all, there was a pleasant feeling of sanctuary about the familiar doorway and the familiar stairs. She was not so much afraid of her own thoughts now. Her heart still ached dreadfully over the rift with Simon—that was something which no tabloid philosophy could comfort—but she had been sharply and bitterly punished for anything wrong she had done. Perhaps she might now allow herself just—to be sorry and try again.

She put her key in the lock and opened the front door. Immediately she was aware that someone was already there before her. Not only was there a light on in her sitting-room, but there was that indefinable feeling of another presence in the place.

“Who’s there?” she called out sharply, in something like alarm.

“It’s me—Rosemary,” replied her cousin’s voice, reassuringly if ungrammatically. “How late you are.”

Leila came slowly forward until she stood in the sitting-room doorway.

“But what—are you doing—here?”

Rosemary was sitting in her favourite chair, sipping tea and apparently very much at home. She looked surprised
in
her turn. “Didn’t you expect me? I wrote, saying I was coming.”

“But that was before—” Leila broke off.

“Yes, I know. But I hadn’t anywhere else to go. I mean—it seemed silly to go round looking for a room in a hotel when you’d said I could always come here,
”
Rosemary explained.

“Did it?” Leila was struck, not for the first time, by Rosemary’s singular oneness of purpose. Everything else had to give way before her practical requirements. It was less troublesome to come to her cousin’s flat than to seek out a hotel. Therefore any awkwardness of situation between them might be ignored.

Leila tossed off her hat, an
d
sat down opposite Rosemary.

“You look tired.” Rosemary sounded not unfriendly.

“Do I? Yes, I am, I suppose. I—walked a long way.”

“What for? I mean—were you going somewhere, or were you just walking about?”

“I was just walking about.”

Rosemary was not sensitive to wording, or to the overtones in a voice. But at that she glanced at her cousin.

“Leila, need you—I mean, you needn’t be so cut up over this business.”

Leila leaned back in her chair and pushed her hair from her forehead.

“I’m not—cut up. It wasn’t a very nice scene this afternoon, that’s all.”

Rosemary frowned thoughtfully, as though some recollection teased her.

“No, I suppose not. But you must have expected something like that to happen eventually. Unless you kidded yourself that we should never find out the exact truth, and I don’t see how you could think that. I don’t see the reason for your ever starting on the whole queer business, come to that. Why did you, Leila? Why on earth did you do anything so unlike yourself as to try to make mischief between me and Simon?”

“I didn’t try to make mischief. As I saw it, the mischief had already been made, by your running off the day before your wedding. What I tried to do was to keep you from joining up again.”

“Well, it’s much the same thing. And I still don’t see why—”

“Because I loved him, of course,” Leila said baldly.

For the second time that day, Rosemary’s lips parted in sheerest astonishment.

“You were in
love
with
Simon
?”
Her voice sounded faintly husky with surprise. “But—since when? I mean, when did you start feeling that way?”

“Almost from the beginning.” Leila—utterly tired and defeated—was unable to voice anything but the exact truth, though she knew, even as the words tumbled from her, that she was being unwise to confide in Rosemary like this.

“You mean to say that, even before my wedding, when you were staying with us at Durominster—”

“Oh, yes
.
I hid it then, of course, because he was going to marry you. But, in a dreadful way, I was thankful that you ran off with Jeremy.”

“I—see.” Rosemary looked sober and reflective for once. She also looked a little cautious. “And when he asked you to impersonate me—”

“He didn’t ask me,” Leila reminded her grimly. “It was I who suggested that.”

“So you did!” Rosemary looked half admiring, half shocked, though few things shocked her in the ordinary way. “Was that your idea at the time? To supplant me altogether in the end?”

“No. At least, I don t think so. I just wanted to help him out of his difficulty. But I was glad that the way of doing it meant that I should be with him.”

“Poor Leila. I know it can be pretty awful if one gets struck on a man like that.” Rosemary soun
d
ed genuinely sympathetic, and for a ridiculous moment Leila indulged in the luxury of visualizing a
g
enerous Rosemary choosing to retire gracefully from the scene,
b
ut her cousin’s next words dashed any hopes of that sort.

“I know you won’t believe me, Leila, but one gets over the feeling gradually. When I first had that break-up with Jeremy, I thought I’d never be happy again. But I got over it.”

“That’s—different.”

“Not really. In what way is it different?”

“You weren’t in love with Jeremy.”

“Oh, but I was—terribly—at the time,” Rosemary insisted earnestly. “You’ll see, Leila. There’ll be someone else for you, and you’ll wonder then why ever you wanted my Simon.”

Her Simon! She was casually, affectionately possessive about him again. Leila wondered what had been said after her own departure that afternoon. She gritted her teeth, and tried not to imagine the scene of reconciliation and delight which had given Rosemary the confidence to refer to Simon once more as hers.

If they could really make it up so easily that meant they were
g
enuinely suited to each other, she supposed. But the admission
h
urt horribly.

“I think I’ll go to bed,” she said abruptly, and got up from her chair.

“It’s quite early.”

“Yes. But I’m tired.” She paused in the doorway and looked back at Rosemary. “What—are your own plans?”

“This evening?”

“No. In the next few days.”

“Well, I thought I’d stay on here for a little while, if that’s all right with you,” Rosemary said with engaging simplicity.

Leila bit her lip, and controlled a sudden impulse to hysterical laughter.

‘It’s quite all right with me,” she replied steadily.

In a sense, she supposed, Rosemary was behaving rather
g
enerously and forgivingly. She might well have refused to speak to er cousin again after what had happened.

But then, if she had refused to speak, she would also have had to relinquish the convenience of a bed in Leila’s flat. Perhaps she was the sensible one, and the other people—people who had pride and certain personal reservations—were the fools.

“Rosemary, did—did Simon say anything after I had gone?”

“Yes, of course.” Rosemary smiled roguishly and reminiscently. “He said plenty. What did you think?”

“I didn
’
t mean that.” She passed the tip of her tongue over her lips. “I meant—about me. Did he say anything to you about being—shocked or—disgusted? Or even puzzled?”

“No.” Rosemary wrinkled her forehead, in an obliging attempt to remember if Simon had said anything worth repeating. “No. He didn’t seem at all inclined to discuss you or your part in things. I started to say how strange it was. Because of course it
was
strange, Leila, if one hadn’t the clue about your being sweet on him.”

Leila winced at having her burning, all-absorbing passion reduced to this trite phrase.

“Of course,” she agreed rather coldly. “And what did he reply?”

“He just said: ‘Don’t let’s discuss Leila’s part in things.’ And we left it at that.”

“I see.”

Leila said good night then, and went to her room. There was nothing else for her
t
o learn, nothing else for her to agonize over. That was all he had said. “Don’t let’s discuss Leila’s part, in things.”

Seven words, which could have meant anything or—much more probably—nothing.

As she undressed, and as she lay in bed for hours afterwards, staring into the darkness, she went over those few—few words.

He could have meant that he was too disgusted to want to talk about her any more. Or he could have meant that he still thought too affectionately of her to want to discuss her inexplicable actions with someone who felt as hostile as Rosemary was entitled to feel at that moment. Or he could have meant—and probably did mean—that they need not bother to talk or think about her any more because, now that he had Rosemary again, Leila had ceased to be of any importance.

Yes, that was it, of course. “Don’t let’s discuss Leila’s part in things,” meant, “Don’t let’s bother to talk about her. We have a hundred other more exciting topics to discuss.”

Presently she rolled over an
d
buried her face in the pillow, so that by no stretch of possibility could Rosemary hear her when she began to cry.

CHAPTER XI

LEILA woke next morning with that sense of physical reluctance which always accompanies a mental desire to escape from life’s next problem. For a moment or two she lay there, wondering why she felt so loath to get up. Then she remembered, and for a panic-stricken fraction of time she told herself that she could never go back to work at Barraclough & Morley’s. That it was quite impossible that she should ever face Simon again.

S
he rapidly canvassed several absurd possibilities. She might telephone and say she was ill. She could prolong the supposed illness and then give notice by post, without ever returning to the office.

But presently common sense ruthlessly forced its way back into her planning. She knew that one could not run away from daily responsibilities like that. Apart from any question of business loyalties, if she turned her back on her present difficulties in that cowardly way, she would be just that much weaker next time she had to handle a crisis.

Later, perhaps, she might make plans to leave. Any constant business connection between her and Simon might become embarrassing and unwelcome for him as well as her, and in that case she would have to find some way of relieving him of her presence.

But at present there was only one reasonable thing to do. Get up and face another day as though nothing had shattered her world yesterday.

Rosemary’s matter-of-fact attitude helped a little. It evidently never occurred to her that her cousin would leave her present employment because of what had happened. A
n
d steadied a little by this, Leila departed for the office, outwardly calm, if inwardly apprehensive.

He sent for her almost as soon as she arrived, and she suffered some bad moments of agonized speculation as she walked from her room to his.

But she need not have worried. He greeted her in his best official manner, and began to dictate almost immediately. His absence the previous day meant that there was an accumulation of letters to deal with now, and presently Leila found her heartbeats returning to normal, her breath coming in less shallow and agitated gasps, and her shorthand outlines assuming their normal degree of accuracy, instead of taking on—as they had in the first five minutes—a certain eccentric novelty of their own.

When he had finished he gave her a few personal directions, but he looked at the papers on his desk rather than at her. Then he dismissed her and she found herself outside his room once more, thankful that the first and worst ordeal was past and telling herself that nothing would ever be so difficult again.

During the next few days his attitude remained much the same, and she told herself that she was immensely relieved. The crisis—if crisis it could be called—had not entirely disrupted their relationship. The situation remained manageable. That was the most she could ask, wasn’t it? She must be thankful.

But as the first acute misery and embarrassment began to recede, Leila became increasingly aware of a restlessness and sense of frustration.

She had thought it would be enough to know that Simon did not dislike and despise her for what she had done. She had believed she could count herself lucky if she retained the right to work for him and if he showed no resentment at the continued association.

She was wrong of course. No girl in love could satisfy herself for long with such meagre fare. Thankful though she might be for the small crumbs of comfort, the negative compensations, Leila began to realize that there was a subtle, but vital, change in her relationship with Simon.

He was never anything but polite to her—but there was no warmth in his manner. He was reasonably considerate as an employer—but no more so than he would have been to any satisfactory employee. Her office life was free from anxieties—but it was also without those unexpected moments of rapture which working for Simon had meant for her.

What more could she expect? she asked herself again and again. And each time her heart answered that though she could not expect more, she also could not help longing for more.

To be with him and have none of those friendly touches of intimacy which had made life so lovely and adventurous—to see him daily and know that he had drawn an immovable barrier across the progress of their friendship—began to be something which she felt she could not bear.

There was nothing she could logically resent. It was just that th
e
situation between them had changed. Even if he were not secretly blaming or despising her for what she had done, the simple fac
t
remained that Rosemary was once more on the scene. R
o
semar
y
was the girl he loved, and Rosemary was the girl with whom he wa
s
planning his future, to the natural exclusion of everyone else.

Sometimes she felt she must throw aside all pride, and batte
r
Rosemary with her desperate questions.

What
h
ad they decided? Were they engaged again? Did they pla
n
to get married, after all? And when?

Rosemary—who could always be curiously secretive about h
er
affairs, and perhaps felt towards her cousin some not unnatur
al
distrust—volunteered no information of her own. She was ve
ry
often out in the evenings, presumably with Simon. But though s
he
would talk brightly about this play or that film which she had attended, she never said if she went alone or with what companion.

Rosemary, reflected Leila with not unfriendly cynicism, was not a girl to attend a play or a film on her own.

At last, when a whole long week had crept past like this, Leila gathered her courage for enquiry.

“How long are you going to stay here, Rosemary?” she asked one evening, with rather more abruptness than she intended.

Rosemary’s eyes opened to a reproachful extent.

“You mean that you’ve had about enough of me?”

“No. I don’t mean that at all,” said Leila, which was true, because she found some sort of comfort in Rosemary’s featherbrained, but undoubtedly cheerful, society. “But I suppose you have some sort of plans for the future. Do you mean to go home soon, or—?”

“Oh, I’m not going home!” Rosemary was good-temperedly positive about that. “Not while Simon is in London.”

Leila swallowed.

“You mean that you—enjoy your opportunities of seeing him
so
often?”

Rosemary gave her a shrewd and rather comical glance.

“Now, look here, Leila, I’m not talking over the situation between Simon and me with you. I don’t want you upsetting things again and—”

“Rosemary!” Leila flushed deeply. “You didn’t think
that
was why I asked?”

“It might have been,” Rosemary countered with composure, “and I’m not sure that I’d blame you, in the circumstances.. But it’s enough if I say the obvious—that the situation is a trifle delicate, and that I don’t intend to have it complicated, intentionally or unintentionally, by anyone else. No offence meant, darling, but a girl has to look out for herself.
You
should appreciate that,” she added, with a touch of friendly malice.

Leila was silent. She wished she had never asked. She had put herself in a false position, and she had given Rosemary a chance to reduce the whole thing to a cheap and faintly ridiculous level.

Also she had obtained no real information.

But Rosemary was the only person she
could
ask. With Simon she had nothing but the barest official conversation. Even to enquire about his mother had become impossible. When she was not with him she would assure herself that she would ask him next time. She even worked out the exact wording. But, when it came to the point, the cool, impersonal atmosphere between them was such that she could not make herself say the pleasant, unexceptional words which she had so carefully thought out beforehand. She could as soon have asked Mr. Barraclough how his wife was—if he had one.

From one day to the next—almost from one hour to the next—Simon and she had become virtually strangers.

And then, towards the end of the second week, something for which she had given up hoping happened. He addressed her by her first name once more. Until now he had managed, most skilfully, not to address her personally at all. But as she gathered up her
p
apers and turned to go, at the end of a long session of dictation,
h
e said:

“Oh, Leila—”

“Yes?” She turned back quickly towards his desk.

“My mother was asking after you yesterday evening. She is very anxious to see you. Do you think you could find time to come down with me one evening?”

“Why—why; of course. I’d—love to.” She tried not to stammer in her eagerness and relief, but she was unable to keep her voice entirely steady.

“When could you come?”

“Oh—any time. I mean—whenever it suits you.” She must not sound too eager and accommodating. Only she could not bear to put this wonderful plan in jeopardy.

“This evening would be too short notice, I suppose?”

“No. No, certainly not. There’s no reason—I could telephone and say I would be late—”

“I don’t want to put you out in any way”—he was completely formal even over this—“but she has not been so well this week—
”

“Oh, I’m sorry!”

“—and we’re anxious to indulge her in every way.”

“Yes, of course. I’ll be pleased to come. I—I’ve been wanting to ask how she was.”

He made no comment on that, and the remark hung rather foolishly in the silence until Leila felt herself blush, because, after all, there had been nothing to prevent her asking, except her own absurd self-consciousness.

“If you can be ready about half-past five,” he said, “I’ll run you down by car.”

“I’ll be ready,” she promised, and escaped into the corridor and to the indulgence of her own rapturous relief.

She walked slowly because she must not have this air of radiant happiness about her when she rejoined her colleagues. She must remember that he had simply asked her to come an
d
see his mother because she—unknowing of the changed circumstances—had made the request. There was nothing significant about it—nothing for her to rejoice over.

But however she might admonish herself, Leila was unable to quell her rising tide of happiness and, in spite of all her efforts to look composed, one of the girls looked up as she came in and said: “Hello! Someone left you a fortune?”

“No.” Leila laughed and flushed. “Why do you ask?”

“You look rather as though you’ve been gazing into a golden future.”

The others glanced up then, and added some laughing comment and enquiry.

“Oh, I—just had rather a nice compliment or two on my work,” Leila fibbed hastily.

“From Mr. Morley?”

“Ye-es.”

“You’re quite a favourite of his, aren’t you?” one of the other girls said carelessly.

“Oh, no!
”
She just bit back the addition, “not now.”

“He’s nice to work for,” remarked the first girl judicially. “I can’t imagine why that girl he was going to marry turned him down.”

“Perhaps,” Leila said slowly, “she regretted it afterwards.”

“Wouldn’t be much good if she did.”

“How do you mean?” Leila swung round quickly.