LATE AND SOON. E. M. Delafield
you two of the stools?" said Lonergan, and he allowed an exaggeratedly Irish intonation to sound in the words, knowing that this would somehow reassure them and cause them to think of him, not as a strange man who had spoken to them without an introduction, but merely as "an Irish officer".
As he had expected, they smiled and looked happier, and he pulled out two of the vacated stools and saw them perched, one on each, like elderly and rather battered birds on over-small gate-posts.
Then he joined Primrose.
"What the hell——?"
"You were damned rude, as you always are. We could have waited. The poor old girls had spotted these chairs before you did."
"I hate waiting."
"And I hate bad manners."
"In that case, I don't really see why you ever took up with me."
Lonergan looked her up and down.
"As I've told you before, I liked your looks. You've got the most marvellous line I've ever seen."
"Is that all?"
"Not quite all—though nearly," said Lonergan. "What are you going to drink?"
"Gin and vermouth."
He ordered the drinks.
"Why have you got such an obsession about manners?" Primrose enquired out of a long silence, after her second drink.
"It's just another middle-class characteristic."
"It isn't. My aristocratic parent is the same."
"Is she now. Diplomatic circles and all. Why didn't she succeed in bringing you up better?"
"Because what makes sense in one generation doesn't in the next, obviously."
"Well," said Lonergan, "of course she and I belong to one generation and you to another. That's clear as crystal. Have another drink?"
"Okay. Same again."
The third round was consumed in silence, but Primrose, sprawling in her chair, pushed out one long slim leg and pressed it hard against Lonergan's thigh.
It was he who eventually moved, suggesting that they had better be going on.
"Okay," said Primrose indifferently.
She got up and threaded her way past the tables and chairs, moving with her characteristic effect of ruthless, effortless poise. But when they were in the hall Lonergan saw that her eyes were glazed and she remarked in her most indistinct drawl:
"You all right for driving? I'm slightly—very slightly—tight."
"Well, I'm not. Come on."
He took her by the elbow and steered her out into the darkness.
"God, I can't see a thing in this damned black-out."
"You'll be all right in a second. Stand still on the step and don't move while I get the car round."
When they were on the road again Lonergan said:
"You can't possibly be tight on three small drinks. I suppose you haven't had anything to eat all day."
"Not a thing, except one cup of utterly filthy coffee for breakfast. I'll be all right, directly."
She slumped down in her seat, leaning her head against his shoulder.
Lonergan, driving slowly, partly because he was careful in the black-out and partly because he wanted to give her time to recover herself before they arrived, thought that, so long as she remained silent and rather movingly helpless, he could almost make himself imagine that he loved her a little.
The car was turning into the lane that led to Coombe before Primrose spoke.
"I wish we were staying at The Two Throstles to-night."
"So do I," Lonergan answered automatically, and wishing nothing of the kind since he was perfectly well-known at The Two Throstles and so, certainly, was she.
"When you get to the gate, which you'll have to get out and open, I'll tidy up a bit."
"Right."
A moment later he stopped the car and, before getting out, pulled her towards him and kissed her.
Primrose returned the kiss fiercely and he felt her hands clutching at him.
She was both exciting and easily excited, but already he wished that he had never embarked on the affair.
The idea of carrying it on in the girl's own home was idiotic, tasteless, and repellent to him. He was angry and disgusted with himself for having lacked the courage to tell her so when she had first suggested the plan.
As usual, he had been afraid of hurting her. As though a girl like that, whose affairs were as numerous as they were short-lived, was ever going to be hurt by any man! Least of all, he unsparingly added, a man twenty-four years older than herself at whom she had only made a pass on a meaningless impulse, at a dull party.
Instinctively, he released his hold of her.
"What's the matter?" asked Primrose.
"Nothing. Hadn't we better go on?"
Primrose gave her short, unamused laugh.
"I suppose so."
She had taken his words in a sense far other than that in which he had meant them.
Lonergan got out and opened the gate, drove through and then got out to shut it again.
When he returned Primrose had switched on the light in the roof and was making up her face. Her gummed-looking curls were perfectly in place.
"Ready, Primrose?"
"Not yet."
He sat without moving, his eyes fixed upon her, but neither seeing her nor thinking of her.
In a few minutes now they would reach the house.
Had Primrose Arbell's mother, more than a quarter of a century ago, been that touching child to whom he had made most innocent and idyllic love for a few breathless afternoons in a Roman garden, before—like the catastrophe in a Victorian novel—her parents had sent him to the right-about?
If so, she might well have forgotten the whole episode, his name included. Perhaps he'd have forgotten, too, if it hadn't been for that startlingly unforeseen interview—again, like the Victorian novel—with her parents, and for the odd, rather charming artificiality of such a name as Valentine Levallois. Yet some romantic certainty in him repudiated that idea, even as he formulated it. At all events, he wouldn't now recognize her, any more than she him. And it would be for her to decide whether or no she remembered his name. Whatever Primrose might say of her mother's incompetence Lonergan felt quite convinced that, socially, she was not likely to be anything less than wholly competent.
"Okay now, darling."
"Right."
He drove on.
The house, like all houses now, stood in utter darkness.
He drew up in front of the stone pillars with the lead-roofed portico above the door.
"Ring," directed Primrose. "There's a chain affair, to the left of the door."
Lonergan, leaving her seated in the car, got out and after some trouble found the chain, which seemed unduly high above his head. When he grasped it, he could tell that it had been broken off and not repaired. His vigorous pull resulted in a prolonged mournful, jangling sound, a long way off, that reminded him of country houses in Ireland where there lived, for years and years, elderly and impoverished people.
An outburst of barking followed from within the house, and he could hear someone approaching.
"They're coming, Primrose."
Lonergan stepped back to the car and put out a hand to help her out. He had no intention of