LATE AND SOON: A NOVEL & 8 SHORT STORIES. E. M. Delafield

incredulous.

      "Embassies weren't precisely up my street—even less so then than they are now. But one remembers the name."

      "It was before the last war. You must have been frightfully young."

      "Twenty—as a very simple calculation ought to show you, since you know perfectly well that I'm twenty-four years older than you are."

      "You're terribly age-conscious, aren't you? I think it's silly, especially in a man," Primrose observed coldly.

      "I agree. I wasn't thinking of my age, particularly, especially as I seem much younger to myself than I doubtless do to you."

      "What were you thinking of then?"

      "Temporarily viewing the situation through your eyes: that a lover of yours should have been a young man, already twenty years old, when your mother was a girl. It's an odd, unflattering sort of link with the past."

      "The past doesn't mean a thing to me. Why should it? My mother, of course, lives in it. That'd be enough, in itself, to put me off."

      "How vicious you are, about her."

      "I don't think so. I just happen to dislike everything she stands for. Though I've got personal grievances against her, too. She made a complete mess of me, with the best intentions. Apparently most mothers do that."

      "Did she do it to your sister, too?"

      "I'm not sure about that. On the whole I think not. Jess is terribly normal and rather stupid, and as she was only born six years after I was, the first force of this awful maternal egotism had all been spent on me."

      "You're sure it was egotism?"

      "Rory, don't be such a fool. Nine women out of ten compensate themselves for the emotional disappointments of marriage by concentrating on their wretched children."

      "But there must be other forms of compensation. Taking a lover, for instance."

      "For some women, of course. I don't think mummie was that sort, even when she was younger. Otherwise why didn't she marry again? She wasn't much over thirty when my father died."

      "Was she very young when she married him? She must have been."

      "Nineteen. An idiotic age, but it was during the last war when people seem to have lost their heads pretty badly. It made a hash of her life, I imagine."

      "Weren't they happy?"

      "I shouldn't think so. I remember him perfectly, and he was very dull and completely inarticulate. He couldn't have suited the sentimentalist that mummie is. She's the kind of woman who'd always think of herself as a femme incomprise."

      She paused for a minute.

      "Rory, I believe I'm shocking you."

      "I think you are," he agreed dispassionately.

      "My God, don't tell me you've got a mother-fixation. Did you like yours?"

      "Oh yes. But then the middle classes almost always do. It's part of their tradition."

      "Shut up about classes. It makes me sick."

      "You'll feel better when you've had a drink," said Lonergan smoothly.

      "That's another thing I'd better warn you about at Coombe. You'll never get a drink, unless you can provide your own."

      "I probably can. What about the uncle?"

      "He's given up whiskey for the duration, and I don't think there's anything in the cellar worth speaking of. A bottle of port or sherry is brought up about once a year, and there's supposed to be some champagne waiting to celebrate the peace. Uncle Reggie's called General Levallois. He was invalided out of the Army and he's practically a cripple. Arthritis. He hasn't got a bean, except for some semi-invisible pension, and he's lived with us since I was twelve."

      "Anybody else?"

      "Only Jess. She's volunteered for the WAAF and is waiting to be called up. There are some evacuee kids from London, but I need hardly tell you that, in our democratic way, we make them use the top floor, and the kitchen stairs, and the back entrance. One practically doesn't know they're there at all."

      "Then who looks after them?"

      "The housemaid, I suppose," said Primrose indifferently. "I shouldn't know. I'm practically never at Coombe. I shouldn't be coming now if it wasn't for you."

      "Angel," said Lonergan, in a voice as uninflected and meaningless as her own had been.

      He had loosed her hand in order to replace his on the wheel but presently he sought it again, and when he next spoke his voice was warmer and more eager.

      "You haven't yet told me if you're still in love with me."

      "I haven't fallen for anybody else. Have you?"

      "No."

      They both laughed.

      "Primrose—about this business of being at Coombe together. Is it going to work?"

      "Of course it is. Otherwise I shouldn't have suggested it. I needn't have taken my leave now. I only decided to when I knew you'd been sent here and it seemed obvious that you'd be billeted at Coombe. Personally, I think it's an absolutely Heaven-sent chance."

      "I know, darling. Of course it is. Only—in your own home—and with your family there——"

      "It's a largish house," Primrose observed coolly. "You won't have to behave like the lover in a French farce, if that's what you're afraid of."

      "Thank God for that, anyway. Do they know already—of course they do—that I'm a friend of yours?"

      "Yes. I told Jess on the telephone. What I did say," Primrose elaborated, in a tone of careful candour, "was that we'd met in London at a sherry-party—which is true—and that you quite frequently took me out to dinner. What I, naturally, didn't say, was that I'd only known you a fortnight."

      "Then, officially, how long are we supposed to have known one another?"

      "Better make it a few months. But as a matter of fact, they probably won't ask. I've trained them not to ask me questions."

      "It doesn't follow that they won't ask me any."

      "You can cope with them, if they do. Don't pretend you haven't had practice enough, Rory. And mummie's not at all a difficult person to side-track."

      Lonergan drove on in silence until he presently enquired:

      "Are we stopping at The Two Throstles?"

      "Aren't we?"

      He laughed and turned the car into the gravelled sweep before the white stucco building, low and long, with fumed oak doors and window frames.

      Little plaques above the doors on either side of the entrance bore respectively the words "Lounge" and "Drawing-room" but a painted board leaning against the wall pointed the way: To American Cocktail Bar.

      Primrose walked straight to it, her long, flexible fingers pinching and pressing at the flat curls of her hair.

      Rory Lonergan hung up his cap and overcoat and followed her.

      The place was hot, crowded and thick with smoke. Every high stool at the bar was occupied, but a man and a girl, both in Air Force uniform, were just leaving a table and Primrose, pushing her way past two women who also were evidently making for it, flung herself into one of the vacant chairs and threw her bag on the other.

      Lonergan said to the defeated ladies, neither of whom was either young or smart:

      "I'm so sorry. Won't you take the other chair?"

      They looked confused and abashed, murmuring thanks and disclaimers, and at that moment a party of young officers moved away from the bar.

      "Ah, that's better. Will I get you two of the stools?" said Lonergan, and he allowed an exaggeratedly Irish intonation to sound in the words, knowing that this