‘Hasn’t he got any people in London?’

  Silvie shook her head. ‘His dad works in Leeds, he married again, so Humby doesn’t see so much of him now.’ ‘Aren’t you lucky, you’ve got him all to yourself?’ She nodded. ‘I’m to ring up to-morrow morning, and perhaps I may go and see him in the afternoon. Mr Stainer’s ever so kind about it, he says that’s all right for me. It isn’t bad, appendicitis, is it, Mr Rush?’

  ‘Of course not.’ He put his hand out to his cup and then stopped. ‘Have you had your own tea yet?’

  ‘Of course not, Mr Rush, I’ve only just——’

  ‘Well, drink that and listen to me’—he pushed his cup towards her—‘go on, you can get me another afterwards . . . Finished? Now then: am I or am I not the editor of Any More Questions’?

  ‘Yes, Mr Rush.’

  ‘And do I or don’t I know everything?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Rush.’

  ‘And have I or haven’t I had my appendix out?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Rush.’

  ‘All right, then I know what I’m talking about. Silvie, don’t go and see him to-morrow afternoon. It won’t do you any good, because you’ll think he’s dying, and it won’t do him any good, because he’s just feeling deathly sick, and that isn’t the time when you want company.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Rush.’

  ‘Where do you live? Fancy my not knowing after all these years.’

  ‘Raynes Park way, my Aunt Minnie——’

  ‘On the telephone?’

  ‘Well, no, Mr Rush, Uncle Jim’s funny like that, Auntie and I are always at him about it and he says it’s just an excuse for gossiping and going without exercise. Of course, I have got a friend next door——’

  ‘Right. Then you ring up to-morrow from here at lunch-time, and we’ll leave together in the evening, and call in at the Hospital and find out how he is, but we won’t go and see him. And you’ll come home with me, I live just round the corner from the Hospital, we’ll give them my telephone number, and you’ll help me with the book, and we’ll get some dinner sent in, and we’ll go on doing the book, and there we are, all handy and in touch, and knowing the stop-press news, and you can catch the last train home. That all right?’

  Silvie’s eyes opened more and more widely, and tears began to come, and she said, ‘It isn’t because I’m unhappy, it’s because you’re so good to me.’

  ‘Well, the point is, do you feel better now?’

  She nodded. ‘I can’t tell you the difference, it’s wonderful.’

  ‘Then why the devil shouldn’t I have a cup of tea?’

  For the first time that day Silvie’s happy laugh was heard in Prosser’s.

  2

  It was not like having your hair cut.

  They had been very kind, very sympathetic, at the Hospital. Barnaby had just managed to make them understand that Silvie was all that mattered; not the unknown Mr Humberson of Leeds. Funny, he thought, this insistence by hospitals on the next of kin. ‘Will Mr Alfred Peabody, last heard of in Dewsbury sixteen years ago, go to St George’s Hospital, London, where his brother lies seriously ill.’ If he hadn’t seen or written to his brother for sixteen years, would Mr Alfred Peabody mind if he were dying now? Or was it simply that the Hospital didn’t want a body on its hands, and was looking for somebody to whom it could say ‘Yours’ . . . if anything went wrong.

  ‘If anything went wrong’—‘if anything happened’. How impossible to say ‘If he dies.’

  Something had begun to go wrong; something had taken ‘a very difficult turn’. Oh no, no, by no means, he had a good constitution, there was every hope—if nothing further went wrong. Perhaps Miss Silver had better be at hand—oh, that’s good. And we have your telephone number.

  Over his right shoulder he could just see Silvie where she lay on his sofa, her eyes closed. It was half-past eleven, and she had been tap-tapping her fears into the typewriter from seven o’clock, with the one little break for food. ‘I couldn’t eat, Mr Rush, I couldn’t really, it would make me sick.’

  ‘Ever eaten oysters?’

  ‘I don’t think I could.’

  ‘It isn’t a food, it’s a medicine. No trouble to masticate. Just open the mouth and they go down. All the benefit of dinner without the hard work. A squeeze of lemon on each one, spear with fork, insert fork, swallow, and repeat twelve times. Brown bread and butter to taste. Liquid medicine on the right. Very good for you.’

  ‘Oh, Mr Rush, it isn’t champagne, is it? I don’t think I ever.’

  ‘Sparkling cough mixture. Try it.’

  And then tap-tapping again, and Silvie thinking it will be all right if the next word begins with the first half of the alphabet, and Silvie thinking ‘Of course it will be all right because it’s Humby’, and Silvie praying ‘Oh God, let it be all right’. He could see her over his shoulder as he sat working at his desk. At any moment now the telephone might ring—Oh God, let it be all right. There isn’t so much happiness in the world that you can kill it like this. There aren’t so many people in the world loved as he is loved for you to say ‘That love’s wasted, I don’t want it in my world. If it were Barnaby Rush it wouldn’t matter, nobody would mind very much, they’d say ‘It’s sad about poor old Rush, very sudden coming like that’, and Chloe would say ‘Oh!’ and be a little less gay at supper that night, and order beautiful flowers, and write on the card ‘With all my love, darling’. But you mustn’t kill ‘my Humby’. It’s just killing two people at once, and a cowardly way of doing it.

  If he died, how much would Chloe mind? How much would he mind if Chloe died? A sorrow’s crown of sorrow—remembrance of things past, remembering happiness in the past; but how much real happiness was there between a lover and one who loved not? She had got more happiness from their friendship than he. She had taken what she wanted from it. I can’t go on like this, he thought. If she won’t marry me, I must say good-bye. It will be hell for a little, and after that a strange new world and rather exciting. What shall I think about when I’m not thinking about Chloe any more? What used I to think about?

  The telephone bell rang. Silvie, wide awake, terrified, was on her feet. ‘All right, darling,’ said Barnaby, taking off the receiver, ‘it’s going to be quite all right.’

  ‘Hallo, sweetie.’

  ‘Oh, hallo!’ He turned round, shaking his head and his free hand at Silvie. ‘How are you, darling?’

  ‘Which one are you talking to, ducky?’

  ‘Meaning how?’

  ‘The beautiful young blonde stretched at full length on the sofa, or the middle-aged nondescript half a mile away?’

  ‘What’s all this, have you got a television set?’

  ‘Darling, I believe you’re being unfaithful to me. Don’t say it’s the manager’s wife, I couldn’t bear it.’

  ‘You’re talking nonsense, and you know it.’ He couldn’t help sounding unamused. He could feel Silvie at the back of him, saying, ‘Oh, for God’s sake stop! The Hospital may be trying to get on, saying it’s all right, saying—Oh God, saying they want me.’ If Silvie were out of the room, he could explain, but he couldn’t say in front of her, ‘I can’t talk now, there’s a man dying.’

  ‘All right, darling, then if it’s nonsense you can take me out to supper. I’m starving. All particulars when we meet.’

  He knew that he couldn’t; not for a moment was he in doubt of that. But it was strange to find that he wasn’t even regretting that he couldn’t. That would come later, perhaps. All his thoughts now were with Silvie.

  How should he make Chloe understand?

  ‘Darling, I’m very sorry. A friend of mine is having an operation, and we are waiting here for news. I’ll ring up to-morrow, if I may. I must ring off now, because we’re expecting a message from the Hospital at any moment.’

  ‘Oh, I see. I’m sorry. I hope it will be all right. Good-night, darling.’

  Her voice was subdued. Was it a little cool? But who wouldn’t feel annoyed, annoyed with herself, at walking so gaily into tragedy? Perhaps he could have let her down more lightly, if— Oh, what the hell did it matter? Chloe had everything. In one terrible second Silvie might lose everything.

  ‘Sorry, Silvie.’

  ‘It’s all right, Mr Rush, I couldn’t help hearing. I hope you didn’t mind, of course I’m frightfully in the way.’

  ‘Rubbish. It was just a friend of mine.’

  ‘Like me and Humby? Do you mind my asking?’

  ‘Well—like one side of it,’ he said with a little smile. ‘You know, I’ve always thought Humby was the luckiest man in the world.’

  ‘Do you mean she doesn’t love you, Mr Rush?’ said Silvie, shocked that love could be so wasted.

  ‘Well, why should she?’

  ‘You mean she loves somebody else?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I don’t think so. I think she would have told me. I think I should have known.’

  ‘Oh! . . . Have you been in love with her a long time?’

  ‘Three years.’ With a little laugh at himself, he said, ‘It’s pretty hopeless, isn’t it?’

  Silvie looked at him with mournful eyes.

  ‘I wish I could do something for you like they do in stories,’ she said. ‘So as to make it all come right. I keep thinking how I’ve been telling you about my Humby all these years—what you must have thought. Must have seemed sort of awfully selfish to you—sort of triumphing over you.’

  He picked up her hand and kissed it.

  ‘You’re a dear, Silvie, I’ve loved knowing you were happy.’

  ‘Oh!’ She drew away from him. All the present came suddenly and terrifyingly back to her. Happy, he thought bitterly. What a word to choose!

  He went back to his desk. ‘I’ll ring up, shall I? They ought to be able to tell us something by now.’

  He dialled. She heard him speaking.

  I’ll count, thought Silvie. By the time I get to fifty I’ll know. One, two, three, four, five, oh God, help me, six, seven, eight, now they’re going to find out, I won’t think of that, I’ll just count, nine, ten . . . I’ll shut my eyes and count, he’ll tell me when he knows, thirty-one, thirty-two, I’ll hear him hang up . . . Oh God, you can’t, I can’t . . . forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven—Click!

  Mr Rush’s face when he turned round! Oh, God! Oh, Humby, my darling! Oh, thank you, God!

  ‘I’m going to cry,’ choked Silvie. ‘I don’t care, I’m going to cry.’ She began to laugh in a silly way. ‘What did they say?’

  ‘They’re very pleased. It all seems quite straightforward now. What else? All like that—all ordinary now. Hair-cut. Oh, Silvie!’

  She was crying now, no doubt about it. He became business-like.

  ‘I think a drink, don’t you? And then you can have a wash and brush-up, and then you can write him a little letter, and then I’ll take you home in a taxi, more comfortable, and you can call in here in the morning, and we’ll go round to the Hospital on the way to the office. After which,’ he smiled at her, ‘I shall hand you back to Humby and Mr Stainer. Here you are.’ He gave her a glass. ‘Humby!’

  ‘Humby!’ She drank, and looked at him, and then lifted her glass again. ‘You!’

  3

  The fire was not quite out when he got back. He mixed himself a drink and sank into a chair. He felt tired and peaceful and happy.

  It was one o’clock. Chloe was dancing. With whom, he wondered. He knew them all by name: Everard, Claude, Percy, Tommy, Julian (a new one), Colin, Arthur, and a dozen others. They had had surnames once, but he had forgotten most of them. Old names dropped out; new names took their place; here and there a ‘regular’ seemed immovable. He was one of the regulars—there were only three or four of them. Were they the ones she liked best, or the ones who loved her most? Or was it the same thing, their constancy making them the objects of her particular affection?

  I ought to be feeling happy, he thought, because Silvie is happy again, but it isn’t just that. It’s because I’m horribly conscious of having done a kind thing. I’m really feeling rather smug. And the fact that I’m feeling smug now doesn’t mean that I did a kind thing just in order to feel smug. But it does mean that, if I’m complacent over a very ordinary act of kindness, I don’t do them very often. Perhaps I don’t get the chance . . .

  I could have taken her out to supper, it would have made no difference to Silvie, she could have gone back by train and been much too happy to notice the difference. Why didn’t I? I just didn’t want to. I wasn’t in the mood. Chloe isn’t real, that’s what it is, she isn’t real. She’s something in a picture-book. She’s two-dimensional. Has she got a heart? Has she got a heart? If not, what happened to it? Who killed it? When? When she was a child? Her first love-affair? Somebody broke it, or iced it up, or what? Supposing I said t:o her I’ve got two orphan children to look after (‘No, darling, not mine’), they’d go to some horrible Charitable Home if I didn’t, it means I shall be extremely hard up, and—I’m terribly sorry, darling, but we shan’t be able to go to the Savoy, or the Ritz or the Berkeley any more. What would happen? Should we meet just as often? Would she understand and sympathize and approve? That’s it, you see, I don’t know; because we should be up against real life, and she doesn’t belong to real life. That’s why, compared with Silvie, she didn’t matter just now.

  (A little anxiously he glanced down the roll of his relations, wondering if any orphans were indeed likely to come his way . . . There seemed to be no immediate danger, thank God.)

  That first time we met. At Allingham’s. Pompous ass. We talked and laughed, I sat next to her at lunch, we wandered round the gardens together. That was all. And then she offered to drive me back to London, and we held hands all the way. We had supper together; I kissed her good-night. Well, what? What did she think when she was alone? Was she triumphant? ‘One more captive to my bow and spear, one more feather in my cap?’ Or was she disappointed? ‘I thought he was going to be the one—but he isn’t.’ What does she want? What is she looking for? . . .

  It was easy for those who didn’t know her to think of her as Any Man’s Mistress, or for those who knew her a little better than that to dismiss her as cold and heartless, taking all and giving nothing. Easy for a woman whose husband had been enchanted; easy for a man whose assurance had been disappointed. Barnaby recognized this, but was not troubled by it. They were wrong. There was some quality in her which put her outside such easy classification; a sort of detachment from the world; as if she came from nowhere and were going nowhere. As if she were not really interested in mortals, but had picked up the tricks and the language. Laugh at me, thought Barnaby. If I were twenty, you would be right. If I were in my second childhood, perhaps you would be right. But I’m thirty-five. And there’s Everard Hale, who has been everywhere and met everybody; a man of the world if ever there was one. Are we all romantically in love, idealizing something worthless? It doesn’t seem possible. Some of us must have grown up.

  The fire had died down. Barnaby gathered himself out of his chair, and put his empty glass back on the table. Silvie was herself again; the book was nearly ready; he had finished with the dentist for another six months. A delightful world. And Chloe—the best company in it— always there. He would ring her up to-morrow. Heaven to be with her again. Chloe!

  He went to bed.

  4

  It was Chloe who rang up.

  ‘Hallo, darling,’ she said, so quietly that he could hardly hear. ‘I’m sorry about last night. Is it all right?’

  ‘Thank God, yes. It was My Humby. Appendicitis, and looked rather bad for a moment. I was terrified.’

  ‘Was that Silvie with you?’

  ‘Yes. He was at St George’s just round the corner, and she had nowhere to go. So she came and helped me with the book, while we waited for news.’

  There was a little silence; and then she said, as if she were thinking of something else, ‘You were going to show me those puzzles he makes. You never did.’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling, I forgot all about it. I’ll bring them next time. When will that be, sweetheart?’

  ‘What are you doing this evening?’

  His heart leaped; his brain raced over the possibilities, and rejected them doggedly.

  ‘Silvie was coming back with me again, and we were going to try and finish off the book—and keep an eye on Humby.’

  There was another silence.

  ‘Are you there, darling?’ asked Barnaby.

  ‘I didn’t sleep at all last night,’ said Chloe’s quiet voice, ‘that’s why I’m ringing up so early. When do you get to the office?’

  ‘Ten normally. I was going to be there at half-past nine this morning.’

  ‘Could you look in here for five minutes on the way? What are you doing now?’

  ‘Middle of breakfast.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, darling. I’m always interrupting you.’

  ‘Never. It’s all the other things which are the interruption. May I have thirty seconds for silent calculation?’

  ‘Go on with your breakfast while you’re thinking. I’ll hold on.’

  Silvie again. Silvie was coming round this morning. She had to be at the office at nine-thirty, so she would be here not later than nine. They would look in at the hospital together. Well, that was all right, she could go on by herself, he needn’t get there till ten.

  ‘Hallo, darling?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Calculations worked out and checked by cross-bearings. I shall be with you at nine-twenty to the dot. Will that be all right, darlingest?’

  ‘Lovely. Good-bye till then, my dear one.’

  What did it mean? What did she want?

  He was still wondering as he sent up his name by the porter. The porter, Barnaby thought, must have wondered too, or perhaps he was past wondering.

  The outer door was open. He rang and she called ‘Come in, darling’, and again ‘Come in’ from behind her bedroom door.