“What good do you think you were doing me flirting with my friends? But still, it may not be too late. You say you saw him last night? He may not have gone yet,” and he turned away from her abruptly and went towards the door.
“Where are you going?” she cried out.
“To find him.”
“Stephen,” she called, but he was gone. She jumped up off the bed and ran to the door. “Stephen,” she called again down the stairs. “Stephen, don’t go yet. There’s so much more to it. It wasn’t Robin’s fault,” but her only answer was the slam of the front door.
IV
Rose was distraught. What would happen? Would there be a fight? She couldn’t help hoping that Robin had already left for abroad, for if Stephen found him she was dreadfully afraid that he might get hurt with Stephen in his present savage mood. It never occurred to her that it might be Stephen who would get hurt, such was her faith in his strength and invulnerability.
And it was all her own fault. What was she to do? Should she ring up Robin and warn him? Yes, that was what she must do.
When she came to dial his number she found that her hand was shaking as if she had been involved in a bad accident. She got on to his Chambers, for she imagined that that was where he would be at this time of the afternoon, but the man who answered the tel
e
phone informed her that he had left that day for the Continent. Next she rang up his private flat in the Temple—he might still be there packing—but to her relief there was no reply.
Her own duty suddenly became clear to her, prompted by her instinct more than her reason. She must go round and see Gai and do everything in her power to comfort her. She would probably have the door slammed in her face, but at least she must make the attempt. She hurriedly scribbled a note for Stephen which she would leave on the hall table, saying: “Have gone round to try and see Gai”, and was just about to leave her room when the telephone bell rang. She snatched up the receiver, hoping that it might be Stephen, but to her horror she recognized Clare’s voice.
“Is that you, Rose?” The voice carried a note of desperate urgency. “Is Stephen there?
...
He’s got back, hasn’t he? Then where is he? I must speak to him. It’s terribly urgent.”
“He’s gone out,” Rose replied with a surprising calmness, “but he ought to be back soon. Can I give him a message?”
“Has he gone to the bank?
...
Then can you tell me where I might find him?
...
I tell you it’s terribly important.”
“I can only suggest that you ring up here again in about ten minutes. He’s taken the car and he ought to be back soon. I’ve got to go out—I’m in rather a hurry as a matter of fact—but I’ll leave a message for him to say you telephoned.”
“But you must know where he’s gone,” Clare persisted.
“He went round to try and see Robin Johnson, but I don’t think he’ll find him as I believe Robin’s gone abroad, so I imagine Stephen will come straight back here.”
“Oh, thank you. I’ll try and get him there,” and Clare cut off abruptly.
What could this urgent matter be? Rose’s curiosity was naturally aroused and it occurred to her that if she waited for Stephen to come back and then overheard his conversation with Clare it might reveal everything to her, but she felt that she mustn’t delay another moment in going round to see Gai. Stephen’s words, “I don’t know what she may do to herself,” had frightened her; so she merely added another line to her note: “Clare has just rung up and wants to speak to you very urgently,” and left it on the hall table as she went out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
GAI’S reception of her had been coldly hostile, as was only to be expected, but Rose, undeterred, had pushed her way in. It was surprising what determination she could show when she felt it to be necessary.
Gai lived in a charming little flatlet in a square off the Bayswater Road. Rose had never been there before but she received a happy impression of cool green-gold light coming from the rays of the evening sun shining through the trees of the square garden.
Gai’s eyes were swollen with weeping and she was still clutching a wet ball of a handkerchief in her hand. Rose wondered whether perhaps her instinct had misled her. Was it merely an impertinence to have come—an impertinence to be a witness to the girl’s grief for which she was so largely responsible?
Gai evidently thought so, for even after Rose had pushed her way in she said: “Will you please go away. I don’t want to see you.”
“But I must talk to you,” Rose pleaded. “Please, Gai, give me a chance to explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain. Nothing to talk about. I just don’t want to see you. Please go away.”
Rose then took what was perhaps the only line that Gai was capable of responding to at that moment; she burst into tears with a suddenness that startled Gai out of herself. After that it was comparatively easy to win her round. Gai saw that Rose was almost as miserable as she was herself, and that put them on a footing of equality. She no longer had to stand on her dignity. This hated rival had suddenly dissolved into a soft-hearted girl in need of
her
comfort.
An hour later they were discussing Gai’s situation with a certain detachment, and under Rose’s gentle persuasion Gai was almost beg
innin
g to feel that Robin’s disaffection was the best thing that could have happened to her. “He’s not the marrying kind, I’m sure,” Rose was saying. “I don’t think he would ever have made you happy. You deserve something so much better. You are
so
attractive. That’s what Robin himself said and it’s true
...”
“Did he say that? Did he say I was attractive?” Gai asked eagerly.
“Yes, he certainly did. And so you are—and quite lovely too.”
So large a portion of love is wounded vanity, and Rose, understanding this intuitively, did all she could to build Gai up while at the same time belittling herself, and particularly Robin’s infatuation for her which she dismissed contemptuously as “a flash in the pan”. But she could not lower herself to Gai’s level of unhappiness without giving a great deal of her own story away. She had to confess that her marriage had been a failure and that Stephen no longer loved her.
“It’s that Frenton woman, isn’t it?” Gai asked, and Rose nodded her head. “But you swear to keep it to yourself,” Rose said. “I don’t know yet what I’m going to do about it. I’ve got to have it out with Stephen, but as you know he only got back from New York this afternoon
...
”
“Where’s he been with
her,”
Gai put in. She had obviously got this information from Robin.
They got away at last from the subject of their respective heartaches and Gai told Rose all about herself. She had lost her job, apparently, as well as Robin, but she was not sorry about this because she had hated the work and had only hung on there because it didn’t seem worth changing jobs when she expected to be married so soon. The thought of marriage brought back her tears, but they didn’t last long this time. The trouble was that she was completely at a loose end. She would have to get another job soon but there wasn’t anything that she particularly wanted to do. And she had very few friends left now because she had neglected her friends shamefully all the time she was going about with Robin. “I always wanted to keep myself free for him,” she told Rose, “and he would never let me know in advance what he was doing. He hated having to make plans. At first I used to make dates and then chuck at the last moment if he asked me out, but people soon got tired of my doing that and I began to be asked out less and less.”
“It was no life for you,” Rose put in. “Living on tenterhooks like that. You’re much better out of it. Of course it hurts at first—making a break always does—but you’ll be so much happier in the long run. I’m sure you haven’t been happy for a long time.”
“No, I haven’t. I’ve been miserable for so long that I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to be happy
...
I was so jealous of you and Stephen when you were engaged
...
Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“That’s all right.”
“Being in love in the kind of way I’ve been in love with Robin is like clinging to the edge of a cliff. It’s hell and yet one is too frightened to let go for fear of dropping into nothingness.”
“Yes,” Rose said, catching on to the simile, “while all the time there is only about a foot between you and the solid earth. Now you’re back on the earth and you’re going to be all right.” She had a sudden brain-wave. “Let’s go round to my cousin’s coffee bar,” she said, “and get something to eat.”
“Oh, I couldn’t eat anything.”
“They make a specialty of soup there and one can always get soup down when one can’t eat anything solid.”
“No, I can’t go out with my eyes like this
...
But I mustn’t keep you.”
“You’re not keeping me.”
“You must be wanting to get back to have it out with Stephen.”
“That can wait,” Rose said with a sigh. “I’m only concerned with you now. I’m not going to leave you like this
...
But I would like you to meet Francie.”
Gai couldn’t be persuaded to go out. She said that she looked too awful for words but she promised that she would go round there with Rose in the morning.
Rose came to the conclusion that she could not leave her alone that night, and when she told Gai firmly that she was going to stay with her, Gai stopped protesting and owned how much she hated the idea of being left alone.
They cooked some eggs for their supper in Gai’s cupboard of a kitchen and Rose rang up home to tell Stephen that she would be staying the night there. Antonio answered the telephone and informed her that Stephen was not there. “Has he been back?” she asked. No, it seemed that he had not been back. The thought jumped into her mind, “Clare has got hold of him. He is with her.” She asked dully whether there were any messages. No, there were no messages but “La Signora Frenton” kept ringing up to ask for “I
l
Signor”. She must have rung up almost a dozen times. “Then he can’t be with her,” Rose thought. “Where on earth is he?”
She asked Antonio to give him a message when he came in: she was with Miss Spalding and would be spending the night there, so he knew where to get her if he wanted her, and she gave Antonio the telephone number.
All the rest of the evening she was expecting him to ring up but the telephone bell did not ring once. She spent a very uncomfortable night on the sofa but she was glad that she had stayed because Gai, after falling into a deep sleep of exhaustion, woke suddenly after a few hours in a suicidal mood as she remembered her loss and her sense of it broke over her in a fresh wave of misery. Rose was able to talk her into calmness again and got up to make both of them a cup of tea.
At eight o’clock in the morning she rang up her own house again, only to be told that Stephen had not come back all night, and that “La Signora Frenton” had just been on the telephone again asking for him. For the first time Rose began to feel uneasy. What
could
have happened to him? Ought she to go to the police? Or was he staying away merely because he was so angry with her? Yes, that was the most likely explanation, he was staying away in order to punish her
...
She recalled that Deirdre was arriving the next day and thought to herself: “Thank goodness, he will have to come back to meet her anyhow.” She suddenly felt angry with him. It was cruel of him to stay away like this and make her so anxious, or had he by any chance stayed the night with Robin? She dialled the number of Robin’s fiat without telling Gai what she was doing, but there was no reply.
At half past nine she rang up the bank, but Miss Davies would not even have known that Stephen had arrived back in England if she had not heard it from Clare, who was, apparently, trying to get hold of him there as often as at the house.
Gai was feeling better and Rose took her round to the Botticelli and introduced her to Francie and Derek. “Show her your flat,” she said with a wink to Francie, and when Francie, who was very quick on the uptake, had gone with her upstairs, Rose said hurriedly to Derek: “Do see what you can do for her. She’s just been let down by her young man and is out of a job and is feeling just about at the bottom in every way. Could she work here?”
“I should say she could if she’d like to.”
“I haven’t suggested it to her, but will you? I’ve got to go now but I’ll leave her with you, and do do all you can for her, will you? You know, keep her as busy as possible. All she wants is to be taken out of herself until the worst is over—not given time to think.”
“This is the place for that all right,” Derek said. “You leave it to me. I’ll do all I can.”
“I’m sure you will.”
Who should come into the bar at this moment but Shane, Derek’s erstwhile assistant. “Well, well, well,” Derek greeted him. “How are you, stranger? Come back to work for us?”
Shane shook his head. “I’m far too busy, but I had a free moment and I thought I must just come and look you up. I’ve missed you
...
How are you, Rose? Nice to see you.”
“It’s nice to see you too, Shane. How’s it going?”
“It’s exciting,” and his eyes lit up. “It’s the life all right!”
Francie and Gai appeared from the flat above. “Well, if it isn’t Shane,” Francie said and she kissed him warmly.
“Unfortunately he’s not come back to work for us,” Derek put in.
“This is a friend of mine, Shane—Gai Spalding,” Rose said. As Shane shook hands with Gai, Rose noticed that he looked at her with more than casual interest.
“Let’s all have a coffee to celebrate Shane’s visit,” Francie said.
“I’ve got to go,” Rose replied. “We’ve got Stephen’s sister and her little boy coming to stay with us to-morrow and I must make the spare room habitable for them, but I’ll leave Gai with you.”
Rose could see that it was on the tip of Gai’s tongue to protest, but fortunately Derek put in quickly: “You two go and sit down like honoured customers while Francie and I wait on you.” Gai sat down hesitatingly as Shane pulled out a stool for her and then sat down beside her and immediately began to engage her in conversation.
Rose waved good-bye to them all and went out with her fingers crossed. Something told her that Gai was going to find not only a job at the Botticelli but a new life and new interests and new friends, and, very possibly, a new romance.