There Will Come A Stranger Page 8

  So it had hurt when he had gone away with no more than a casual hope that they might meet again some day, yet had not even taken the trouble to ask for her address: hurt her to realize their friendship evidently meant so much less to him than to herself. It hurt her still...

  Impatiently, for the hundredth time, she checked her train of thought. I must get some occupation for myself, she told herself. I’ve drifted too long, doing nothing very definite, and an idle life leaves too much time for brooding over trivialities as well as tragedies. And there must be something useful I can do! Meanwhile I can at least try to stop dwelling on my own affairs!

  Determinedly she turned her thoughts to other matters. She had been relieved, when Rory had left Varlet-sur-Montagne, that Valerie had shown no sign that her enjoyment had waned with his departure, for she had fancied, once or twice, that her young sister had grown to like that debonair young man more than a little. Evidently she had been wrong, for after his departure Valerie had seemed as gay as ever, if anything even more starry-eyed and radiant. So after all there couldn’t have been anything in it. Probably it was just as well that Valerie, so vulnerable in her inexperience, should not have lost her heart to one who with his charm and gaiety and good looks was sure to have a girl friend—if not several!—impatiently awaiting his return.

  All the same, it was a pity that her Cinderella story would be coming to an end the day after to-morrow without the equivalent of a glass slipper to ensure a happy ending! Not that she had lacked for cavaliers at Varlet-sur-Montagne; towards the end of their stay there someone or other had given her the nickname of “the honey-pot” because of the numbers of young men who gathered round her, offering to take her ski-ing, asking her to have cakes and chocolate with them of an afternoon, to dance with them at night. So in two days’ time she would return to Hawthorn Lodge without the faintest gleam of a romance on the horizon, and everything would be as it had been before.

  Only she can’t go on like that indefinitely, Vivian decided, a little frown puckering her smooth brow. I shall have to think up some new trump card to play for her. But what—?

  Her cogitations ended as the taxi stopped outside their hotel: not the one where they had stayed last time they were in London, which had been too large and noisy for their liking, but a small, quiet one off Knightsbridge, the Cranford, recommended by Susan Prescott. They liked its rather old-fashioned atmosphere, and when they were alone in a pleasant, airy bedroom they agreed that it was far more suitable than the Aldermere, where they had stayed before. Neither felt inclined to see a film or play; they had been up late the previous night. So they had dinner early, and were in bed by ten o’clock.

  Next day was going to be a busy one for Vivian. She had business appointments that would probably take up some considerable time, and a longstanding engagement to dine with an American friend who had known Pete’s family all his life.

  “I wish he’d asked you too,” she said to Valerie at breakfast. “I’m afraid you’re going to have rather a dreary day of it, all on your own! We might just as well have arranged for you to go back to Darlingford to-day instead of waiting, as I’m not coming back with you to-morrow,”—for she was going to spend the weekend with an old friend who had married since they last met, and gone to live at Guildford. Vivian was going to be godmother to her baby girl, who would be christened on Sunday.

  “Oh, I shall be perfectly all right!” Valerie assured her. “I shall have my hair done, and do a bit of window-gazing, and perhaps go to a newsreel in the afternoon. And then I shall be going out to-night with Rory.”

  Vivian was surprised that Valerie had not told her this before. Did her silence mean she was so thrilled about it that she couldn’t bear to speak of it, for fear she might betray emotions she preferred to keep to herself? Had her own suspicions about Rory been well founded, after all? Or did the prospect of going out with him really mean so little to her that she hadn’t thought it worth the mentioning?

  “With Rory? Oh—I’m glad! How nice for you! I didn’t know.”

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Valerie’s voice was casual, and her face was hidden by a silky wing of hair as she bent over her coffee. “We arranged it at that dance, the night before he left. I suppose I didn’t think of it next morning.”

  Vivian still thought it curious that she hadn’t spoken of it in the fortnight that had passed since then. Perhaps she hadn’t felt as casual as she sounded?

  “I’m glad,” she repeated, “It was rather sad to feel that we’d lost touch with everyone we met in Switzerland!”

  “I expect we shall be hearing from John Ainslie, too, some time or other,” said Valerie, glad to steer the talk away from Rory.

  “Hardly likely, as he hasn’t got our address!”

  “Oh, but he has! He asked me for it quite a time before he left.”

  “Oh, did he—?” Now it was Vivian’s turn to sound more casual than she felt. There was no reason, none at all, why Valerie should not know how pleased she was that after all her friendship with John would one of these days be renewed—and above all that he had liked her well enough to ensure meeting her again. Yet for some indefinable cause she felt that she would rather keep her pleasure to herself. With it was mingled a faint bewilderment: it seemed so curious that it should be Valerie he had asked for their address, and not herself, with whom he was so much more intimate!

  “I’m glad,” she said, “I liked him—and besides, that means we shan’t lose touch with Susan and Harry either. I meant to ask for their address before they left, but I forgot.” She glanced at her watch. “Heavens—I must be off! See you this evening before dinner, darling, if not sooner. And I do hope you’ll manage to amuse yourself all day.”

  “Of course I will!” Valerie assured her. “It will be an adventure, being on my own in London for the first time!”

  When Vivian had gone, Valerie went to their room. The beds were made. The chambermaid was busy with a duster, but departed, saying she would come back later. Valerie telephoned for an appointment early in the afternoon at a hairdresser’s in Sloane Street, where she and Vivian had had their hair done with great success last time they were in London.

  Then, instead of going out at once, she perched herself on the arm of a chair, hands clasped in her lap, gazing out of the window. But she did not see the houses opposite, nor the plane trees in the street below, for it was Rory that she saw, as she had seen him last against the background of the moonlit mountains when she looked back from the doorway of the Casque d’Or.

  For a long time she sat there, dwelling on her dreams and memories: the dreams and memories that had accounted for her radiance after Rory had left Varlet-sur-Montagne. The memory of his arms, holding her close, her head lying content against his shoulder, as though it were the most natural resting place in all the world. The memory of his lips upon her own, his voice murmuring endearments in her ear, his cheek pressed to hers...

  She dreamed of their next meeting. She would wait for him this evening in the hotel lounge (for no matter how she tried, she knew she never would be able to come down late enough to keep him waiting even a couple of minutes)—proud, when he came in, of his good looks and that intangible quality he had of seeming somehow more alive than other people. His eyes, amused and teasing, would smile down into hers. And then at last they would be alone together in the taxi, and his arm would draw her close again—oh, blissful moment! But she would laugh, and shake her head, and draw away, and tell him that she didn’t want to arrive at the Savoy looking as though she had been pulled backwards through a bush! So he would kiss her only once, lightly, on the dimple he was always teasing her about. And then...

  A key was rattling in the lock. The chambermaid had returned. Valerie said, “It’s all right—no, don’t go away again! I’m just going out.”

  One couldn’t dream for ever, but there were nine long hours to go through somehow until her dreams came true. Oh, hurry, hurry, Time!

  The flat in Ebury Street that Rory
shared with Barry Hughes, his cousin, consisted of two bedrooms and a living-room. It was on the first floor. They shared a bathroom on the half-way landing with the occupants of the ground floor flat, two cheerful young architects with whom they were on very friendly terms. A great deal of traffic went on between the two flats in borrowing and lending sherry glasses for a party, and white ties and waistcoats when one or other of them had been having an unusual run of festive evenings and the laundry hadn’t quite caught up with them, and even socks, when somebody had run right out of them except for ones with large potatoes in the heels, which happened about once a week.

  Barry had got back first this evening. He was twenty-five, three years younger than Rory, tall and fair, with blue eyes harbouring a twinkle that belied his quiet manner, and a rather dashing taste in waistcoats. He was getting out his books and papers to start work in preparation for the stiff exams that he must pass before he would be qualified for his intended career as a chartered accountant, when he heard someone taking the stairs two steps at a time, and Rory appeared. The cousins grinned amiably at one another. “There’s a parcel from your mother,” Barry said, nodding towards it where it lay on a small table behind the door.

  “Good! Let’s hope it’s food. It was an awful blow last time when it was those vests and pants she’d most angelically got me in the January sales, just when I’d been driven to replenishing them for myself because the last ones had literally come to pieces on me and ... I say! She’s done us proud this time! One of her fruit cakes, and some eggs—all of ‘em whole, too—and a pie of some sort.” He read the label. “Pork. You’d better start on it to-night, old boy—I’m going out, and it’ll save you forking out downstairs.”

  They had meals in the restaurant in the basement when they could afford it, and when funds were low bought food and ate it in the flat.

  “Thanks frightfully,” said Barry. “Going out again, are you?”

  “M’m. Got a date at the Savoy.”

  “What—again?”

  “Yes. But this one’s of my own choice. Last time I was properly led up the garden path—thought I’d been asked to join a party, then discovered when I got there it was to be just the two of us, and that it was up to me to foot the bill!”

  “Some bills are worth it.”

  “Not this one,” said Rory darkly, remembering how bored he’d been by Hilary holding forth on what the Minister for So-and-So had told her yesterday about the latest policy of his department, and who was going to be the new Governor of Soralia, though it was very hush-hush still, and that the only place to dine and dance in Paris was the Caprice Ecossais, opened a month ago on the Boulevard des Ambassadeurs, only it was so exclusive that you hadn’t a hope of getting a table unless you had some strings to pull.

  “Getting a bit blasé, aren’t you?” said Barry. “Fact is, you’re getting to be a very old man. High time, you settled down and gave up your philandering. You could afford to run a house and a whole fleet of prams on what you spend racketing around!”

  But Rory wasn’t listening. He had taken out his pocket book and was searching through its pages, hoping he wasn’t going to have a nasty shock and find that Valerie’s hotel was on the north side of the Park or in the wilds of Kensington, but was conveniently situated somewhere between Ebury Street and the Savoy.

  He searched in vain, then began going through its pages more methodically, but still without success, and then a third time.

  Barry, busy spreading out his papers, looked up, startled, as Rory exclaimed, “My godfathers! It isn’t here! Now what the devil am I going to do?”

  “What isn’t there?”

  “The address of her hotel. Oh, blast these loose-leaf note-books! All the same I don’t remember tearing out a page since I’ve come back—it must be here—”

  “You tore one out the other day, with an address you’d written down for Peter,” Barry reminded him, Peter being one of the young architects who lived in the flat below theirs. “Could be that you tore out two pages without noticing.”

  Rory ran downstairs and by good luck met Peter, red-haired, freckled, square of build, as he was coming in. “I say—you know that piece of paper I gave you the other day, with that address you wanted? Have you got it still, by any chance?”

  “Sorry, old boy—afraid I haven’t. Put it in the waste paper basket when I’d made a note of it in my address book. I can give you the address, though, if that’s what you’re after?”

  “No—not that one. Oh, Lord—now I am sunk!—I don’t suppose you noticed if there were two pages stuck together? It’s thin paper—could have happened easily—”

  Peter shook his head. “Could have been—I didn’t notice, though. If I had, I’d have given it back to you.”

  “Could I just delve in your wastepaper basket on the chance it’s still there?”

  “Of course!” He led the way into the ground floor flat. “Have a look right away. But it was several days ago, so I’m afraid there’s not much hope that it will be there still.”

  There was nothing in the basket. Rory went back to his own flat.

  “No luck?” asked Barry sympathetically, surprised to see his normally unruffled cousin so distraught.

  “No. I must telephone to the hotel where she was staying in Switzerland. That’s the only hope of getting her address in time. It’s nearly seven already.” Frantically he rummaged through the chaos on his desk, and at last came on what he wanted: Madame Jourdier’s letter telling him she could not have him at the Casque d’Or, but had booked a room for him elsewhere.

  Muttering “Varlet-sur-Montagne 32,” Rory was making for the telephone when Barry said, “Time you began to change. I’ll see to it, if you like.” Rory relinquished the receiver. “It would save time if you could just get through for me.” He disappeared into the adjoining room, to reappear at frequent intervals in various stages of undress to ask impatiently, “No luck yet?”

  Twenty minutes had gone by, and he was immaculate in tails and white tie, freshly shaved, with ruffled hair smoothed into place, before at last the call came through. Barry relinquished the receiver to him. After several minutes more of agonizing delay while Elise fetched Madame Jourdier, and Madame searched for the address, with passionate relief Rory heard the distant voice telling him that “The hotel where Madame Howe and Mademoiselle Stevenson stay in London is the Aldermere, in Barkstone Street, W.i.”

  “Got it?” asked Barry, as Rory replaced the receiver.

  “Yes, thank heavens! She’s at the Aldermere. Phew! That was a bad moment! I’m going to be late, too, after all that. Thanks a lot, Barry, for all you’ve done.”

  Barry, unwrapping the pork pie from its cellophane, cocked a ruminative eyebrow as he heard his cousin running downstairs. It wasn’t often Rory got in such a stew. Looked as though his light-hearted philanderings with a long procession of Pamelas and Susans, Saras and Sylvias and Prues, was coming to an end at last!

  Rory got a taxi without difficulty. “The Aldermere!” he told the driver, and dropped back in the seat with a sigh of relief.

  That had been a close shave, he told himself. And only now, when he had come so close to losing Valerie, had he fully realized how much she meant to him: that Valerie alone could give him all he needed in a woman—darling, funny little Valerie, so touchingly inexperienced in worldly matters, yet so profoundly wise in the important ones! Life would be transformed with Valerie for a companion, laughing at the same things that amused him, thrilled with every new experience he could give her, gentle and kind and utterly natural, good and gay, loving and laughing, all in the same enchanting blend!

  Rory smiled to himself as he remembered little things he loved about her: the way her dark-lashed eyes, too large for her small heart-shaped face, would laugh at him although her lips were grave; her wide smile, and her funny little tilted nose, and the way her dimple deepened in her cheek when he amused her; her walk, light as a drifting leaf; the feeling of her waist beneath his hand when they
were dancing, slender and pliant; her hair, shimmering in the sun, as soft and fine as pale gold silk. Often he’d longed to touch that shining hair of hers, but the one time he’d had her in his arms it had been tucked away under her fur-lined hood.

  He smiled again, remembering how her head had lain so trustfully against his shoulder as though it felt at home there; and his eyes darkened as in memory he felt her lips, so soft and innocent and shy beneath his seeking mouth, so sweet in their response!

  His taxi drew up by the Aldermere. Twenty to eight. All things considered, it might have been a lot worse, though he hated having kept her waiting. Saying to the driver, “Wait a minute, will you? I shall want you to go on to the Savoy,” he went inside with long swift strides.

  No sign of Valerie in the lounge. Somehow he’d thought she would be sitting there; there was no coquetry in her make-up, no notion that it would enhance her value in a man’s eyes if she kept him waiting.

  He went to the hall porter. “Miss Stevenson is expecting me. Will you let her know I have arrived? The name is Wilson.”

  The porter’s face went blank. “Stevenson?” he repeated, and went to the reception desk. “Gentleman asking for Miss Stevenson. Nobody of that name staying here, is there?”

  The receptionist shook her blonde head. “Not just now, there isn’t.”

  “She’s with her sister, Mrs. Howe. Perhaps you’ve got them both under the same name,” Rory suggested.

  Light dawned on the receptionist’s perplexed face. “Oh, We did have two sisters, Mrs. Howe and Miss Stevenson, about a month ago. But they’re not here now.”