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‘No-no-’
It was Harriet who spoke again.
‘Why, he’s your husband!’
She felt herself in a strange place with an icy wind blowing. It went round, and round-round, and round. And then she was back in the room with Lilian and Harriet looking at her. She said, ‘I ought to have known that.’
And Lilian said sharply, ‘Of course you ought! You had much better be quiet and try to remember!’
CHAPTER 7
Jim Fancourt looked out of the window and saw with his eyes the grey poplars and a flat monotony of fields, but he was not really aware of them. He was too busy with his thoughts, and they were too busy with the problem he had set them. He hoped A
There had been too many already. He wondered how long they would have to wait for a divorce, and for the hundredth time wondered crossly how on earth he came to give way to Borrowdale. And then he was looking back, seeing Borrowdale’s face with the desperate look on it and hearing his voice almost extinct, almost gone, ‘Get her-out of here-get her- away. For God’s sake-do it-do it-do it.’
Well, he had done it, and that was that. Borrowdale was dead, and A
Lilian and Harriet were not the most enlivening companions, but she’d be all right at Chantreys until he got there. He had given her a letter to post in town and told her where to go; and she ought to have been all right with Mrs Birdstock. She would have been all right in any case. What was he worrying about? He’d been a fool to concern himself with her at all. He pushed her into the back of his mind and began to think about Leamington. He would have to see him the minute he got to town, because he’d have to decide on the line they were going to take. It was immensely important. A
In about five minutes he was looking back at A
Nonsense! What was he at? He had got her away, hadn’t he? If Borrowdale had had another day’s life in him he might have known a little more about it. But it wasn’t so hard to make up a story of what he did know. She was Borrowdale’s daughter- like enough to him for that to pass. And if, as he strongly suspected, her mother was Russian and there had never been a marriage, or not one that the Russians would admit-well the rest followed easily enough. A Russian’s daughter was a Russian, no matter whether she had an English father or not. That was their rule even where there had been a marriage, and it was ten to one there had been none in this case.
Looking back on it, he really didn’t see why he had got himself into the mess. It had all been so hurried. Borrowdale gasping his life away after the rock had fallen, and the girl shaking with fright. A feeling of revulsion swept over him. What had it got to do with him after all? Marriage? Nonsense! It wouldn’t hold water-not in England. He’d have to see a lawyer about it when he got home. The plane wouldn’t have taken her if she hadn’t sworn she was his wife.
He switched his mind to Leamington. What was he going to say to Leamington?
CHAPTER 8
Life went on for A
She went out and walked in the garden up and down the untidy autumn flower-beds, not seeing the Michaelmas daisies so nearly over, or the dahlias with their leaves crisped and blackened by the frost but the heads of them still shaggy and decorative, pink and yellow, crimson and white. She walked up and down, her hands clasped together as if they held something which if she let it go would be gone for ever, her thoughts trying to break through the curtain of fog which hung across the path. She tried it every way. She was A
She tried again. She was A
She stood quite still, and the clasp of her hands tightened. Had she left father and mother, a family, brothers, sisters, to become-she didn’t know what or who? No, she mustn’t think that way. Could you forget a family as easily as that? She didn’t think so-she wouldn’t think so. Deep down in her, almost unknown, was something very strong. If she had had father, mother, brothers, sisters, she wouldn’t have forgotten them. She couldn’t have had them. It was like brushing against something incalculable, uncertain. Gone in a moment of time, but even as it went, it left her strengthened, though she didn’t know why.
She began to walk again, and the thoughts went on and on. They beat against the fog and came back to her. Who was she? She was A
But if you stop thinking, you are really dead. She turned round. She wasn’t dead, she was alive. She had got to think this thing out. She started again. She was A