She Came Back

“………death,

The undiscovered country from whose bourne

No traveller returns.”

hamlet

The air in the Food Office was cold and stuffy. It would be nice to get out into the fresh air again. It would be nice when this business was over. She hadn’t really been waiting for so long, but she felt an angry impatience. To go through all she had gone through, to come back quite literally from the dead, and to be wasting time standing in a queue for a ration card was, at the very least of it, an anticlimax. She was Anne Jocelyn come back from the dead, and here she was in a queue, waiting for a ration card instead of ringing up Philip.

The people in front of her moved on slowly. She began to think about Philip. Three years was a long time to have been dead. Philip had been a widower for more than three years, and in about half an hour somebody would call him to the telephone and a voice—her voice—would impart the glad tidings that Anne Jocelyn wasn’t dead. It gave her a good deal of pleasure to think about telling Philip that he wasn’t a widower after all.

Suppose he wasn’t there… A curious tingling ran over her from head to foot. It was exactly the feeling she might have had if her next slow step forward had shown her the floor broken away and her foot poised above a descending emptiness. She had a moment of vertigo. Then it passed. Philip would be there. If he had had no news of her, something of his movements, his whereabouts, had been conveyed by careful, circuitous channels to those who had helped her on her way. He had been in Egypt, in Tunisia. He had been wounded and sent home. He was to have an appointment at the War Office as soon as he was able to take it up. He’d be there all right, at Jocelyn’s Holt—sleeping in the tower room, walking up and down the terrace, going round the stables, thinking of all the things he’d be able to do with Anne Jocelyn’s money now that she was dead. Of course he would have to wait until the war was over. But it would take more than a world war to stop Philip planning for Jocelyn’s Holt. Oh, yes, he’d be there.

She moved up one in the queue and went on thinking. Suppose he had married again… Something pricked her sharply. She bit her lip. No—she would have heard, she would have been told, warned… Would she? would she? Her head came up, lips parted, breath quickened. No, she couldn’t reckon on that, she couldn’t reckon on anything. But all the same she didn’t think that Philip would have married again. She shook her head slowly. She didn’t think he would. He had the money, he had the place, and she didn’t think he’d be in too much of a hurry to tie himself up again. After all, it hadn’t gone too well, and once bitten twice shy. A faint smile just touched her lips. She didn’t think Philip was going to react very pleasurably to the idea that he was still a married man.

There were three people in front of her—a very stout woman with a basket full of shopping, a little dowdy creature with a string bag, and a stooping elderly man. The stout woman was explaining at the greatest possible length how she had come to lose her ration card. “And I’m not one to do that in a general way, Miss Marsh, though I suppose there’s nobody that doesn’t lose things sometimes, and I don’t set up to be better than anyone else, but many’s the time my husband’s said, ‘Give it to Mother—she’s as safe as a church.’ So I don’t know what come over me, but put it down somewhere I must of, for when I got home there was Father’s, and Ernie’s and Carrie’s, and my sister-in-law’s that’s on a visit, but as for mine I might never have had one. So I went back and round to all the shops where I’d been, and there wasn’t nobody had seen it…”

The woman behind the counter dived and came up with a book in her hand.

“You dropped it in the High Street,” she said in a resigned voice. “Good afternoon.”

The little dowdy creature moved up. She leaned on the counter and whispered.

Anne stood there, tall, fair, and thin. She looked over the stooped shoulders of the elderly man, shivering a little and drawing her fur coat about her. Her hair hung down over the collar in a rough bob. It had a dull, neglected look, but it was thick, and with a little care it would be bright again. Just now it might have been a light brown burned by the sun, or a much fairer shade dimmed by neglect. She was bare-headed. A long straight lock fell forward on either side, framing a thin oval face, straight nose, pale well-shaped lips, very deep grey eyes, and fine arched brows much darker than the hair.

The coat which she drew close was a very handsome one. The soft dark fur would be flattering when she had got something done to her face and her hair. That was the next thing. She buoyed herself up with the thought. In about ten minutes this ration-card business would be over and she could go and have her hair cut and waved and see what was to be had in the way of facepowder and lipstick. She was perfectly well aware that she was looking a mess, and Philip wasn’t going to see her like that.

Less than ten minutes now… less than five… The little whispering woman had gone, and the elderly man was going.

She moved up into the vacant place and set down her bag on the counter. Like the coat, it was or had been very expensive, but unlike the coat it showed signs of wear. The dark brown leather was rubbed and stained, a piece of the gold initial A had broken off. Anne undid the clasp, took out a ration-book, and pushed it across the counter.

“Can you let me have a new book, please?”

Miss Marsh picked it up, brought a colourless gaze to bear upon it, raised her eyebrows, and said,

“This is a very old book—quite out of date.”

Anne leaned nearer.

“Yes, it is. You see, I’ve just come over from France.”

“France?”

“Yes. I was caught there when the Germans came. I’ve only just managed to get away. Can you let me have a new book?”

“Well, no—I don’t see how we can—” She gave a fleeting glance at the cover of the book and added, “Lady Jocelyn.”

“But I must have a ration-book.”

“Are you staying here?”

“No—only passing through.”

“Then I don’t see what we can do about it. You’ll have to get your ration-book wherever you’re going to stay—at least—I don’t know—have you got your identity card?”

“Yes—here it is. I was lucky—a friend hid it for me, and some clothes, or I should be in rags, and one would rather not come back from the grave in rags.”

Miss Marsh’s eyes stared. She said nervously,

“I think I had better ask Miss Clutterbuck.” She slipped down from her chair and vanished.

About ten minutes later Anne emerged into the street. She had filled in a form, she had been given an emergency card for a fortnight, and the old identity card to keep until such time as a new one could be issued. She crossed the road and entered a telephone-box.

Mrs. Armitage looked up from the Air Force pullover she was knitting, and immediately dropped a stitch. She was large, fair, and extremely good-natured. She wore aged tweeds and a battered felt hat which was generally over one ear. A spare knitting-needle of a horribly bright pink was thrust into a thick disordered fuzz of hair. Once almost too golden, it was now in a streaky half-way stage which probably went better with the freckled skin, light eyes, and wide genial mouth. The tweeds were, or had been, a regrettable mustard. She would have been the first to admit that they clashed with the room. It would have been quite in character if she had said, “But just think of a room that wouldn’t clash with me!”

This particular room had been decorated for Anne Jocelyn when she married. It was pretty, conventional, and eminently suitable for a bride of twenty, with its flowery chintzes, blue curtains, and old china. The Four Seasons stood in graceful poses on the white mantelshelf. In a corner cupboard the bright colour of a tea-set in bleu-du-roi caught up and repeated the shade of the curtains. The mustard-coloured tweeds were certainly a mistake, and she was as certainly quite unperturbed about it.

Mrs. Armitage leaned towards her niece Lyndall, who was sitting on the hearth-rug dropping fir cones on a reluctant fire, and said in her usual irrelevant manner,

“There’s one good thing about the war anyway—if we had to sit in that awful purse-proud drawing-room I should want to scream, like the girls who wrote to the Daily Mirror the other day.”

Lyn wrinkled her nose and said, “What girls?”

Mrs. Armitage dragged the knitting-needle from her hair.

“Three of them,” she said. “They were bored with their job, and they said they wanted to scream every so often. Well, I should if I had to sit in a room with seven chandeliers and about fifty mirrors.”

Lyndall blew a kiss.

“Only six, darling—I counted them yesterday—and three chandeliers. And I quite agree, but why purse-proud?”

“Because Sir Ambrose Jocelyn, who was Anne’s grandfather and Philip’s great-uncle, built it on with his wife’s money. I expect he did it to annoy her—they didn’t get on, you know. She left him, but he managed to build the drawing-room and that awful north wing first, and I suppose she felt she just couldn’t bear it and cleared out before he spent it all, or there wouldn’t have been anything left to come down to Anne, and Philip would have to sell Jocelyn’s Holt. So it’s all for the best. Oh, lord—I’ve dropped a stitch!”

Lyn giggled. She was a little thing, slim and pale, with rather nice grey eyes and a lot of soft dark hair in a bush of curls. She reached for the pullover.

“Two, darling. You shouldn’t take your eye off the ball. Better give it to me.”

“No—I’ll pick them up myself—I can if I put my mind to it. Yes, I suppose it was lucky for Philip that Anne and the money were there. Of course people aren’t keen on cousins marrying now. Funny how fashions change, because in the Victorian novels it was quite the thing—even firsts, which is a bit too near. Anne and Philip were only seconds, and as he came into the title and the place, and she had the money to keep them up, everybody said it couldn’t have been better—except that I don’t know how they would have got on if it had lasted, because of course Anne—well, Anne—” Her vpice trailed away. She pursued the lost stitches.

Lyndall’s colour rose.

“Anne was sweet,” she said, her voice quick and warm.

Mrs. Armitage coerced a stitch into its place on the pink needle and said vaguely,

“Oh, yes, Anne was sweet.”

Lyn’s colour brightened.

“She was!”

“Oh, yes, my dear.” The light eyes blinked. “Of course I remember you had a—what do you call it—a crush on her when you were a schoolgirl, didn’t you? I had forgotten. But you didn’t see much of her after that—did you?”

Lyndall shook her head.

“Only at the wedding. But I’ve never forgotten the summer holidays the year before the war, when Anne and her aunt were here on a visit. I’ve often thought since how easy it would have been for Anne to be horrid about it. You see, there were you and Mrs. Kendal, and Philip and Anne. Anne was nineteen and quite grown up, and I was only sixteen and a horrid little scrub. I must have been an awful nuisance, but Anne was wonderful. Lots of girls would have been horrid and high-hat, and not wanting to be bothered with a flapper, but she was wonderful. She took me everywhere and let me do everything with them. She was sweet. And if Philip didn’t get on with her after they were married, it must have been his fault.”

Mildred Armitage looked across her dishevelled knitting.

“They both liked their own way,” she said. “They were both only children, and Anne was very pretty, and she had a lot of money, and she hadn’t found out that it’s not all jam holding the purse-strings when you’re married to anyone as proud as Philip.”

Lyn’s eyes came to her face with a wondering look.

“Is Philip proud?”

“Oh, my dear—proud!”

“Well, is he?”

Mrs. Armitage shrugged her shoulders.

“Well, well—” she said. “Anyhow there wasn’t a great deal of time for things to go wrong, was there? And perhaps they wouldn’t have gone wrong at all—or perhaps they would have gone wrong and come right again. It’s no use worrying about it now—she’s gone, and there it is. You can think about her as kindly as you like.”

“She was wonderful to me.” The three times repeated phrase had the effect of a response in some private litany of loyalty and regret. “It was lovely of her to have me for a bridesmaid.”

She got up and went back to the middle of the room, tilting her head and looking up at the full-length painting over the mantelpiece. It was Amory’s famous Girl with a Fur Coat, and it had been painted from Anne Jocelyn a few weeks after her marriage. Soft dark fur over a thin blue dress, pearls hanging down, a smiling oval face and rosy lips, gold-tinted hair in a cluster of careless curls, the soft bloom of youth and happiness. Anne Jocelyn looked out of the picture as if she were alive. A young girl, bare-headed, drawing her coat about her, smiling as if she were just starting off for a party—smiling at all the pleasant things that were to come. And a year later she had died in the dark on a Breton beach to the rattle of machine-gun fire.

Lyndall’s eyes widened. She went on looking at the picture, all its colours bright under the electric light. Anne’s room— Anne’s picture. And Anne dead at twenty-one. The anger in her leapt up. She turned on Mildred Armitage.

“Why weren’t you fond of her?”

The knitting sank in a heap on the mustard-coloured lap. The pale eyes blinked as if with surprise.

“My darling child, I hardly knew her. Anne’s mother didn’t cotton to the Jocelyns very much. You’ve got to remember that Marian was old Ambrose’s daughter and she was brought up to look upon him as a monster. He took another woman to live with him, and they had a boy—and you can imagine that didn’t go down very well. So Marian grew up hating the Jocelyns, and she brought Anne up to do the same. It wasn’t until she died that her sister-in-law Mrs. Kendal— quite a sensible woman—allowed Anne to meet any of us. Not, of course, that I’m a Jocelyn, but when my sister married Philip’s father we were just lumped in with the rest. So I didn’t see Anne till she was turned nineteen.”

Lyndall went on looking at her with those wide, accusing eyes.

“Why didn’t you like her?”

She said like, but she meant love. How could anyone have known Anne without loving her? There wasn’t any answer to that.

Mildred Armitage made a small vexed sound.

“How on earth do I know! One doesn’t get fond of people in a hurry like that—not at my age. She was young, she was pretty, she had pots of money, and Mrs. Kendal obviously meant her to marry Philip. Well, she married him, and it didn’t last long enough for anyone to know how it would have turned out.”

“But you didn’t like her!”

At the angry quiver in Lyndall’s voice Milly Armitage smiled her wide, disarming smile.

“Don’t get in a rage. You can’t help your feelings. Jane Kendal wanted her to marry Philip, and I didn’t.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because they were cousins, for one thing. I didn’t think two of a trade would agree. Jocelyns have all got a perfectly lethal streak of pride and self-will.”

“Anne hadn’t!”

“Hadn’t she? She wanted to marry Philip, and she married him.”

“Why shouldn’t she?”

“No reason at all except that her mother would rather have died than let her do it. I don’t blame Anne about that—I don’t blame either of them. There wasn’t any reason why they shouldn’t marry, but if there had been it wouldn’t have made a ha’porth of difference. Jocelyns are like that. Look at Theresa Jocelyn, going off and living in a Breton château. And why? Because she took up with old Ambrose’s illegitimate granddaughter and had a furious row with the family on her account. Joyce—that was the name—Annie Joyce. Ambrose called the woman Mrs. Joyce—as near to Jocelyn as he dared go—and the son, Roger, carried it on. Annie was his daughter, and there wasn’t a bean, because Ambrose never signed his will. So when Theresa, who was only an umpteenth cousin, came blinding in and wanted the family to take Annie to their bosom and give her an income, there weren’t any takers, and she quarreled with everyone and rushed off to France and rented a château. She had quite a lot of money, and of course everyone thought she would leave it to Annie.

But she didn’t, she left it to Anne, who’d got plenty already. Sent for her to come over and told her she was going to have the lot, and she must always be kind to Annie because the poor girl was an orphan and had been done out of her rights. Philip said it was indecent, and of course it was. After all the fuss she’d made about the girl!”

Lyndall’s eyes were stormy. She hated injustice. She loved Anne. The two things struggled in her. She said like an abrupt child,

“Why did she do it?”

“Theresa? Because she was a Jocelyn—because she wanted to—because her crazy fancy for Annie Joyce was over and she’d taken a new one for Anne. She came over to the wedding and fell on their necks. A dreadfully tiresome woman, all gush and feathers. To be quite honest, I’m surprised that she had managed to keep out of having a finger in the family pie for as long as she did. The wedding was a perfectly splendid excuse, and it’s my belief she jumped at it. She was probably sick to death of her precious Annie Joyce and all set for a new craze. I believe she would have come back to England for good, but she got ill. By the time she’d sent for Anne it was too late to move her, and things were hotting up in France. That’s when the rows began. Philip put his foot down, and Anne put hers down too. He said she wasn’t to go, and she went. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so angry.”

“He’d no right to be angry!”

“My angel child, when married people begin to talk about their rights, it means something has gone pretty far wrong between them.”

Lyndall said,

“Did they make it up?”

“I don’t know.”

“It would be dreadful if they didn’t.”

Milly Armitage had her own ideas about that. Philip had certainly not been in any mood for reconciliation when he left England. She had never seen an angrier man in her life.

It would have been better if she had kept her thoughts to herself, but she was really incapable of doing so. She said,

“He was in a most frightful rage—and for the lord’s sake, why are we talking about it? It was a horrid tragic business, and it’s over. Why don’t we leave it alone instead of screwing our heads round over our shoulders and looking back like Lot’s wife? Uncomfortable, useless things, pillars of salt. And I’ve dropped about fifty stitches with you glaring at me like a vulture.”

“Vultures don’t glare—they have horrid little hoods on their eyes.”

Milly Armitage burst out laughing.

“Come and pick up my stitches, and we’ll have a nice calming talk about natural history!”