This Was Tomorrow (16 page)

Believing that Hermione had found in her the first true friend of a lonely, misunderstood lifetime, and that without her now Hermione would be bereft and neglected all over again, Evadne subdued her gregarious impulses and her natural frankness and became Hermione’s devoted shadow. She tried to learn always to think and to weigh before she spoke, she tried to be content that their few friends should be all of Hermione’s choosing, mostly from the very mixed company encountered at their meetings—and Hermione took care to choose the least interesting ones. Their daily routine at the flat was set by Hermione’s inclinations, caprices and tyrannies. Even their food was subject to Hermione’s diet fads and fancies, on which Hermione kept her figure and Evadne grew quite thin.

As for Victor, Hermione suspected just as Jeff did that he would never want to marry Evadne. His Nazi training, his diplomatic future, and his national preoccupation with war were against any permanent connection with an English girl. The association with Victor was the way Hermione allowed Evadne enough rope to simulate freedom. And she fostered Evadne’s hope of bringing Victor into the Cause as a harmless sort of hobby that would end perforce with his ultimate recall to Berlin.

Then Stephen came.

At first he seemed to Hermione just another cousin from America, less tiresome than Jeff because he paid some attention to her own sacred self, but—Hermione had never had any use for men because they had never taken much notice of her—negligibly male. But Stephen proved to be different. Carelessly, in his natural kindness, he spread round her his easy good-nature,
his affectionate banter, his constitutional way with women. Hermione had never seen anything like him. She was still smarting from having had to acknowledge publicly that she had been in love for years with a man who showed nothing but indifference to her, if not outright animosity. Her recent overtures to Jeff were a little overplayed because of her self-conscious conversion to the idea that their relations were strained by her unrequited love for him instead of by a straightforward childhood jealousy, and he was plainly still impervious to her changed personality. So she suddenly ceased her unsuccessful amateur wooing of Jeff and began to allow herself in secret to imagine what it would have been like to be in love with a man so forthcoming as Stephen. Not, of course, that she intended anything should Come Of It, because of course she and Evadne were doing very well as they were. But it did just occur to her now and then….

And nothing was further from Stephen’s mind.

Nevertheless, he had Hermione to thank for Evadne’s unexpected loss of impetus in the plans for returning to Germany to attend the summer Olympic Games. Hermione had no interest in sports, and had been mortally bored at Garmisch the previous winter, playing second fiddle to Evadne and Victor. Besides, she understood now that the movement was unpopular in Germany and had no future there under the Hitler régime, and that Victor was only encouraging Evadne because it gave him an opportunity to see her. And above everything else, Hermione was lazy, and hated the occasional discomforts and inconveniences of even luxurious travel. She was very snug in the Bayswater flat with Evadne in conscientious attendance, and London can be delightful in summer. And to settle any last-ditch sense of duty to the Cause in Evadne she bought a small car, and because she was too nervous to drive it herself she put Evadne in charge of it, as though it were her own. This meant also that Evadne had to do chauffeur duty at any given moment. But once in a while as a great treat she was allowed to take the car out herself. And this meant that she must always say where she was going, with whom, and when
she expected to return, and to account for any deviation from schedule when she got home.

Both Stephen and Victor drove much bigger and handsomer cars of their own, but it gave Evadne pleasure to take them about in hers when she had the chance. Once on a Sunday she had driven Stephen out to Richmond Park for a picnic lunch—they had spread a cloth on the grass and eaten there, with a bottle of hock (Stephen’s idea) and a near-doze in the sun afterwards, and a drive home through late golden light with long shadows.

Evadne had run on after lunch that day about the Cause, its beliefs and its aims and its virtues. Stephen didn’t interrupt or change the subject. He found her zeal merely touching, and in his sophisticated, somewhat disillusioned, but secretly and simply religious viewpoint the ideas she attempted to expound had a horrid fascination. Stephen had been brought up to believe in God and to attend Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg. He had never doubted God, but he would as lief have said so in everyday conversation as he would have gone out in front of the footlights with nothing on. Most of what Evadne said and quoted to him seemed so obvious as to be childish, and the rest really shocked him. And as for writing those letters, that part nearly gave him the giggles. But he preserved a respectful gravity and silence and let her talk, lying on his back on the grass with his hands locked behind his head, gazing up at the leaves between them and the pale English sky. He wanted to laugh, and play the fool, and make love, and lay plans for their immediate future. But he wisely stayed as he was, not moving, not interrupting, until she said suspiciously, “Stevie—?”

“Mm-hm?”

“You’re not paying attention.”

She noticed as he turned his head towards her that his eyes were as clear and level and defenceless as a baby’s, nothing hidden, nothing shirked. She was not experienced enough to know that she was seeing for the first time the eyes of a completely honest man completely in love, with nothing to hide.

“Why should you think that?” he asked slowly, looking up at her as he lay.

“Well, you—you hadn’t said anything—or moved—”

“You had the floor.” Except for the turn of his head he had still not moved.

“You were half asleep,” she accused, and looked away uneasily from that unwavering gaze.

“I heard every word. You’ve got a lovely articulation, if you’ll allow me to say so, and your voice is placed just right. How did that happen?”

“Mummy, I expect. She used to go on about it.” Her eyes came back to his, reluctantly. “What made you say that?”

“We notice such things in my business. Maybe I was wondering why I love you so much.”

“Now, Stephen—”

“Well, don’t run away, I can say so, can’t I?”

“We—haven’t known each other very long,” she reminded him.

“Long enough. For me, anyway.” With one of his quick, fluid movements he turned over and laid his hand on hers in the grass between them. “Don’t make any mistake about this, will you. I’m not fooling. I want you for the rest of my life. New York—Williamsburg—London—Paris—wherever I am, I want you to be there too.”

His hand on hers was warm and firm and undemanding. It stayed where it was, and she knew that Victor’s would soon have slid up her arm if she had not withdrawn. And Victor had never said anything about the rest of his life. More than a little stirred, with a new bewilderment, she sat looking down at their hands and wondering what to say.

“You don’t know what to say, do you,” he said, as though reading her mind. “It’s not what you want, is that it? What
do
you want, Evadne?”

“I don’t know,” she said with her devastating candour, and he bent his head and kissed her fingers as they rested in his.

“Good,” he said. “That gives us a little leeway.”

But Evadne was still thinking. New York—Williamsburg—Paris. It would be fun. It would be very gay and perhaps quite exciting sometimes, but it was a selfish idea surely, for if she went with Stephen what would become of her work for the Cause and what would Hermione do without her? No one else understood Hermione as she did, Hermione said so herself, and it would be very wrong to desert her when she had never been so happy and so well taken care of, she said to herself. At first it had been only an experiment in living, but now that they had taken on the new flat and furnished it themselves, and had laid such wonderful plans for working together for peace and tolerance in the world….

‘Please tell me what’s going on in that crazy head of yours,” Stephen said gently. “Can’t I help?”

But it was all so complicated to try to tell, and she knew he still did not sympathize with or comprehend the high aims and ideals of her associates in the Cause, so she only said, “I don’t see why you should love me so much. I’ve never been able to do anything for you.”

“Thank God for that!” said Stephen fervently. “Don’t start, will you!”

After a moment’s doubt, Evadne decided to smile.

“What a funny boy you are,” she said in an elderly way.

“Oh, yeah, I’m funny, all right,” he agreed cheerfully. “
I
think a girl like you should have somebody doing things for her, instead of the other way round. Silly, isn’t it?”

This time Evadne laughed.

“That’s better,” he said, and sat up, and somehow without seeming to move at all he was close to her, her shoulder against his chest, his arm round her, warm and firm and kind,
so
kind,
and for no reason at all she wanted to bury her face against him and cry. Yet she had nothing to cry about, surely, she was quite happy with Hermione and her work…. “Honey, can’t you relax?” he was saying against her hair. “Can’t you laugh like that a little oftener, and learn to be young and foolish while you are?” He put his other hand under her chin and turned her face up to his. “I want you to have a good time,” he whispered. “I
want to make a fuss of you—give you things—take you places—see you laugh. I want you to be happy—like this.” He kissed her, and she let him, thoughtful and passive in his arms, thinking, Yes, I do like him, he makes it sound very simple, but what about poor Hermione? “Well?” he queried against her lips. “Say it, darling—you aren’t in love with me, are you. Not yet.” He kissed her again, experimentally, and felt her yield to it in an inexperienced, rather touching way. “But you could learn,” he said, and his arm tightened. “In about ten easy lessons.”

“Stevie, please, I—can’t think when you do that.”

“Good,” said Stephen. “That’s just what I want to hear.” He bent his head again. There was a brief interlude, and he found as he had suspected that she went to his head like strong drink, and that all the warmth and eagerness of her were fundamental and real and could be turned into all the things he had ever dreamed of. “See what I mean?” he murmured with some confidence then. “We’re wasting time. When it’s like this there’s no sense in waiting, we don’t want to lose any of it, let’s get married, darling, what’s to stop us?”

“Oh, Stephen, I couldn’t decide—anything, all at once like this—I have to—”

“Have to what?” He looked down at her, and she stayed there in his arms, gazing off across the grass to where deer grazed in a clearing. Her lips were soft and smiling, her bright hair was swept back against his rough sleeve where it clung and shone, but her eyes were hidden and troubled. “Have to what?” he repeated patiently. “Ask Hermione?”

“Well, I do have to think of her, after all.”

“Why?”

“Because she and I are very close, and—I—”

“How close?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, and he wondered if she did. “We’ve taken on this new flat together—she
counts
on me—it’s a very beautiful friendship—”

“Bit lopsided, isn’t it? All give on one side, all take on the other.”

“She’s lonely.”

“Why?”

“She’s very reserved, and—people get down on her for no reason at all.”

“Plenty of reason. Everybody won’t let her wipe her feet on them the way you do.”

“Oh, Stephen, she doesn’t! That’s just her manner!”

“Well, whatever it is, she has only herself to blame. And anyway, you can’t spend all the rest of your life being Hermione’s only friend. By and by people will begin to think things.”

“Don’t be silly, it’s not as though I was living with a man!”

“If you were,” he said deliberately, “I might be able to deal with it better.”

“Would you want me anyhow?” she inquired in some surprise.

“I just want you. Period.”

To his incredulous delight, Evadne made a little movement which could only be described as nestling, as though she was comfortable there, and as grateful as a tired child for the clasp of his arms round her.

“It would be nice,” she said wistfully with a little sigh.

“All right. When?” he replied promptly.

“Not—not just yet, Stephen. I’ll have to—I don’t know how to tell her, I—can’t—just—” But her fingers closed on a fold of his tweed sleeve and clung.

“Honey, I’m going to put my foot down,” he said after a moment. “You can’t go on living like this, it’s not good for you, and it’s too—ambiguous. I don’t like it. It gives a wrong impression.”

Evadne sat up, unwillingly pulling herself together as with a weary resuming of her burden, pushing herself back with a hand on his chest, looking indignant and a little rumpled.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said again, and “I think you do,” he answered levelly, meeting her eyes.

“But people
can’t
think anything queer,” she argued hotly. “Women like that always wear funny clothes?”

“Do they?” said Stephen, and gave way to a small smile, and took both her hands. “Sweetheart—let’s put an end to it, that’s the best way.”

Evadne withdrew her hands.

“If I thought for one moment that you thought—” she began angrily.

“It’s not me, I know what to think,” he said, with resolute quietness. “But the whole thing is all wrong, don’t you see—you don’t
belong
like that, you belong with me.”

“Are you asking me to give up my Work?” she asked coolly, becoming more distant by the moment.

“Now, honey—”

“You’ve never even bothered to come to one of our meetings,” she accused him. “You’ve never even been
open-minded
on the subject. I don’t think you’ve got any right—”

“All right, so I haven’t any right,” he agreed soothingly. “Except that I love you. And I want you to be happy. You are happy like this with me, and I don’t believe you’re altogether as happy with Hermione.
Or
with Victor, for that matter!”