Taken at the Flood Read online

  “I realize everything. I’m not afraid. Really, you know, Jeremy, I’m rather enjoying myself—”

  “That, my dear,” said Jeremy, “is just what causes me such anxiety.”

  She smiled.

  “Come,” she said. “You mustn’t keep that bucolic young man waiting too long. Go and help him to fill up form eleven hundred and ninety-nine, or whatever it is.”

  But as they came out of the dining room the front door banged shut. Edna came to tell them that Mr. Rowley had said he wouldn’t wait and that it was nothing that really mattered.

  Thirteen

  On that particular Tuesday afternoon, Lynn Marchmont had gone for a long walk. Conscious of a growing restlessness and dissatisfaction with herself, she felt the need for thinking things out.

  She had not seen Rowley for some days. After their somewhat stormy parting on the morning she had asked him to lend her five hundred pounds they had met as usual. Lynn realized that her demand had been unreasonable and that Rowley had been well within his rights in turning it down. Nevertheless reasonableness has never been a quality that appeals to lovers. Outwardly things were the same between her and Rowley, inwardly she was not so sure. The last few days she had found unbearably monotonous, yet hardly liked to acknowledge to herself that David Hunter’s sudden departure to London with his sister might have something to do with their monotony. David, she admitted ruefully, was an exciting person….

  As for her relations, at the moment she found them all unbearably trying. Her mother was in the best of spirits and had annoyed Lynn at lunch that day by announcing that she was going to try and find a second gardener. “Old Tom really can’t keep up with things here.”

  “But, darling, we can’t afford it,” Lynn had exclaimed.

  “Nonsense, I really think, Lynn, that Gordon would be terribly upset if he could see how the garden has gone down. He was so particular always about the border, and the grass being kept mown, and the paths in good order—and just look at it now. I feel Gordon would want it put in order again.”

  “Even if we have to borrow money from his widow to do it.”

  “I told you, Lynn, Rosaleen couldn’t have been nicer about it. I really think she quite saw my point of view. I have a nice balance at the bank after paying all the bills. And I really think a second gardener would be an economy. Think of the extra vegetables we could grow.”

  “We could buy a lot of extra vegetables for a good deal less than another three pounds a week.”

  “I think we could get someone for less than that, dear. There are men coming out of the Services now who want jobs. The paper says so.”

  Lynn said dryly: “I doubt if you’ll find them in Warmsley Vale—or in Warmsley Heath.”

  But although the matter was left like that, the tendency of her mother to count on Rosaleen as a regular source of support haunted Lynn. It revived the memory of David’s sneering words.

  So, feeling disgruntled and out of temper, she set out to walk her black mood off.

  Her temper was not improved by a meeting with Aunt Kathie outside the post office. Aunt Kathie was in good spirits.

  “I think, Lynn dear, that we shall soon have good news.”

  “What on earth do you mean, Aunt Kathie?”

  Mrs. Cloade nodded and smiled and looked wise.

  “I’ve had the most astonishing communications—really astonishing. A simple happy end to all our troubles. I had one setback, but since then I’ve got the message to Try try try again. If at first you don’t succeed, etc…I’m not going to betray any secrets, Lynn dear, and the last thing I should want to do would be to raise false hopes prematurely, but I have the strongest belief that things will very soon be quite all right. And quite time, too. I am really very worried about your uncle. He worked far too hard during the war. He really needs to retire and devote himself to his specialized studies—but of course he can’t do that without an adequate income. And sometimes he has such queer nervous fits, I am really very worried about him. He is really quite odd.”

  Lynn nodded thoughtfully. The change in Lionel Cloade had not escaped her notice, nor his curious alternation of moods. She suspected that he occasionally had recourse to drugs to stimulate himself, and she wondered whether he were not to a certain extent an addict. It would account for his extreme nervous irritability. She wondered how much Aunt Kathie knew or guessed. Aunt Kathie, thought Lynn, was not such a fool as she looked.

  Going down the High Street, she caught a glimpse of her Uncle Jeremy letting himself into his front door. He looked, Lynn thought, very much older just in these last three weeks.

  She quickened her pace. She wanted to get out of Warmsley Vale, up on to the hills and open spaces. Setting out at a brisk pace she soon felt better. She would go for a good tramp of six or seven miles—and really think things out. Always, all her life, she had been a resolute clearheaded person. She had known what she wanted and what she didn’t want. Never, until now, had she been content just to drift along….

  Yes, that was just what it was! Drifting along! An aimless, formless method of living. Ever since she had come out of the Service. A wave of nostalgia swept over her for those war days. Days when duties were clearly defined, when life was planned and orderly—when the weight of individual decisions had been lifted from her. But even as she formulated the idea, she was horrified at herself. Was that really and truly what people were secretly feeling everywhere? Was that what, ultimately, war did to you? It was not the physical dangers—the mines at sea, the bombs from the air, the crisp ping of a rifle bullet as you drove over a desert track. No, it was the spiritual danger of learning how much easier life was if you ceased to think…She, Lynn Marchmont, was no longer the clearheaded resolute intelligent girl who had joined up. Her intelligence had been specialized, directed in well-defined channels. Now mistress of herself and her life once more, she was appalled at the disinclination of her mind to seize and grapple with her own personal problems.

  With a sudden wry smile, Lynn thought to herself: Odd if it’s really that newspaper character “the housewife” who has come into her own through war conditions. The women who, hindered by innumerable “shall nots,” were not helped by any definite “shalls.” Women who had to plan and think and improvise, who had to use every inch of the ingenuity they had been given, and to develop an ingenuity that they didn’t know they had got! They alone, thought Lynn now, could stand upright without a crutch, responsible for themselves and others. And she, Lynn Marchmont, well educated, clever, having done a job that needed brains and close application, was now rudderless, devoid of resolution—yes, hateful word: drifting….

  The people who had stayed at home; Rowley, for instance.

  But at once Lynn’s mind dropped from vague generalities to the immediate personal. Herself and Rowley. That was the problem, the real problem—the only problem. Did she really want to marry Rowley?

  Slowly the shadows lengthened to twilight and dusk. Lynn sat motionless, her chin cupped in her hands on the outskirts of a small copse on the hillside, looking down over the valley. She had lost count of time, but she knew that she was strangely reluctant to go home to the White House. Below her, away to the left, was Long Willows. Long Willows, her home if she married Rowley.

  If! It came back to that—if—if—if!

  A bird flew out of the wood with a startled cry like the cry of an angry child. A billow of smoke from a train went eddying up in the sky forming as it did so a giant question mark:

  ???

  Shall I marry Rowley? Do I want to marry Rowley? Did I ever want to marry Rowley? Could I bear not to marry Rowley?

  The train puffed away up the valley, the smoke quivered and dispersed. But the question mark did not fade from Lynn’s mind.

  She had loved Rowley before she went away. “But I’ve come home changed,” she thought. “I’m not the same Lynn.”

  A line of poetry floated into her mind.

  “Life and the world and mine own self are ch
anged….”

  And Rowley? Rowley hadn’t changed.

  Yes, that was it. Rowley hadn’t changed. Rowley was where she had left him four years ago.

  Did she want to marry Rowley? If not, what did she want?

  Twigs cracked in the copse behind her and a man’s voice cursed as he pushed his way through.

  She cried out, “David!”

  “Lynn!” He looked amazed as he came crashing through the undergrowth. “What in the name of fortune are you doing here?”

  He had been running and was slightly out of breath.

  “I don’t know. Just thinking—sitting and thinking.” She laughed uncertainly. “I suppose—it’s getting very late.”

  “Haven’t you any idea of the time?”

  She looked down vaguely at her wristwatch.

  “It’s stopped again. I disorganize watches.”

  “More than watches!” David said. “It’s the electricity in you. The vitality. The life.”

  He came up to her, and vaguely disturbed, she rose quickly to her feet.

  “It’s getting quite dark. I must hurry home. What time is it, David?”

  “Quarter past nine. I must run like a hare. I simply must catch the 9:20 train to London.”

  “I didn’t know you had come back here!”

  “I had to get some things from Furrowbank. But I must catch this train. Rosaleen’s alone in the flat—and she gets the jitters if she’s alone at night in London.”

  “In a service flat?” Lynn’s voice was scornful.

  David said sharply:

  “Fear isn’t logical. When you’ve suffered from blast—”

  Lynn was suddenly ashamed—contrite. She said:

  “I’m sorry. I’d forgotten.”

  With sudden bitterness David cried out:

  “Yes, it’s soon forgotten—all of it. Back to safety! Back to tameness! Back to where we were when the whole bloody show started! Creep into our rotten little holes and play safe again. You, too, Lynn—you’re just the same as the rest of them!”

  She cried, “I’m not. I’m not, David. I was just thinking—now—”

  “Of me?”

  His quickness startled her. His arm was round her, holding him to her. He kissed her with hot angry lips.

  “Rowley Cloade?” he said, “that oaf? By God, Lynn, you belong to me.”

  Then as suddenly as he had taken her, he released her, almost thrusting her away from him.

  “I’ll miss the train.”

  He ran headlong down the hillside.

  “David…”

  He turned his head, calling back:

  “I’ll ring you when I get to London….”

  She watched him running through the gathering gloom, light and athletic and full of natural grace.

  Then, shaken, her heart strangely stirred, her mind chaotic, she walked slowly homeward.

  She hesitated a little before going in. She shrank from her mother’s affectionate welcome, her questions….

  Her mother who had borrowed five hundred pounds from people whom she despised.

  “We’ve no right to despise Rosaleen and David,” thought Lynn as she went very softly upstairs. “We’re just the same. We’d do anything—anything for money.”

  She stood in her bedroom, looking curiously at her face in the mirror. It was, she thought, the face of a stranger….

  And then, sharply, anger shook her.

  “If Rowley really loved me,” she thought, “he’d have got that five hundred pounds for me somehow. He would—he would. He wouldn’t let me be humiliated by having to take it from David—David….”

  David had said he would ring her when he got to London.

  She went downstairs, walking in a dream.

  Dreams, she thought, could be very dangerous things….

  Fourteen

  “Oh, there you are, Lynn.” Adela’s voice was brisk and relieved. “I didn’t hear you come in, darling. Have you been in long?”

  “Oh, yes, ages. I was upstairs.”

  “I wish you’d tell me when you come in, Lynn. I’m always nervous when you’re out alone after dark.”

  “Really, Mums, don’t you think I can look after myself?”

  “Well, there have been dreadful things in the papers lately. All these discharged soldiers—they attack girls.”

  “I expect the girls ask for it.”

  She smiled—rather a twisted smile.

  Yes, girls did ask for danger…Who, after all, really wanted to be safe…?

  “Lynn, darling, are you listening?”

  Lynn brought her mind back with a jerk.

  Her mother had been talking.

  “What did you say, Mums?”

  “I was talking about your bridesmaids, dear. I suppose they’ll be able to produce the coupons all right. It’s very lucky for you having all your demob ones. I’m really terribly sorry for girls who get married nowadays on just their ordinary coupons. I mean they just can’t have anything new at all. Not outside, I mean. What with the state all one’s undies are in nowadays one just has to go for them. Yes, Lynn, you really are lucky.”

  “Oh, very lucky.”

  She was walking round the room—prowling, picking up things, putting them down.

  “Must you be so terribly restless, dear? You make me feel quite jumpy!”

  “Sorry, Mums.”

  “There’s nothing the matter, is there?”

  “What should be the matter?” asked Lynn sharply.

  “Well, don’t jump down my throat, darling. Now about bridesmaids. I really think you ought to ask the Macrae girl. Her mother was my closest friend, remember, and I do think she’ll be hurt if—”

  “I loathe Joan Macrae and always have.”

  “I know, darling, but does that really matter? Marjorie will, I’m sure, feel hurt—”

  “Really, Mums, it’s my wedding, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, I know, Lynn, but—”

  “If there is a wedding at all!”

  She hadn’t meant to say that. The words slipped out without her having planned them. She would have caught them back, but it was too late. Mrs. Marchmont was staring at her daughter in alarm.

  “Lynn, darling, what do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing, Mums.”

  “You and Rowley haven’t quarrelled?”

  “No, of course not. Don’t fuss, Mums, everything’s all right.”

  But Adela was looking at her daughter in real alarm, sensitive to the turmoil behind Lynn’s frowning exterior.

  “I’ve always felt you’d be so safe married to Rowley,” she said piteously.

  “Who wants to be safe?” Lynn asked scornfully. She turned sharply. “Was that the telephone?”

  “No. Why? Are you expecting a call?”

  Lynn shook her head. Humiliating to be waiting for the telephone to ring. He had said he would ring her tonight. He must. “You’re mad,” she told herself. “Mad.”

  Why did this man attract her so? The memory of his dark unhappy face rose up before her eyes. She tried to banish it, tried to replace it by Rowley’s broad good-looking countenance. His slow smile, his affectionate glance. But did Rowley, she thought, really care about her? Surely if he’d really cared, he’d have understood that day when she came to him and begged for five hundred pounds. He’d have understood instead of being so maddeningly reasonable and matter-of-fact. Marry Rowley, live on the farm, never go away again, never see foreign skies, smell exotic smells—never again be free….

  Sharply the telephone rang. Lynn took a deep breath, walked across the hall and picked up the receiver.

  With the shock of a blow, Aunt Kathie’s voice came thinly through the wire.

  “Lynn? Is that you? Oh, I’m so glad. I’m afraid, you know, I’ve made rather a muddle—about the meeting at the Institute—”

  The thin fluttering voice went on. Lynn listened, interpolated comments, uttered reassurances, received thanks.

  “Such a comfort, dear L
ynn, you are always so kind and so practical. I really can’t imagine how I get things so muddled up.”

  Lynn couldn’t imagine either. Aunt Kathie’s capacity for muddling the simplest issues amounted practically to genius.

  “But I always do say,” finished Aunt Kathie, “that everything goes wrong at once. Our telephone is out of order and I’ve had to go out to a call box, and now I’m here I hadn’t got twopence, only halfpennies—and I had to go and ask—”

  It petered out at last. Lynn hung up and went back to the drawing-room. Adela Marchmont, alert, asked: “Was that—” and paused.

  Lynn said quickly: “Aunt Kathie.”

  “What did she want?”

  “Oh, just one of her usual muddles.”

  Lynn sat down again with a book, glancing up at the clock. Yes—it had been too early. She couldn’t expect her call yet. At five minutes past eleven the telephone rang again. She went slowly out to it. This time she wouldn’t expect—it was probably Aunt Kathie again….

  But no. “Warmsley Vale 34? Can Miss Lynn Marchmont take a personal call from London?”

  Her heart missed a beat.

  “This is Miss Lynn Marchmont speaking.”

  “Hold on, please.”

  She waited—confused noises—then silence. The telephone service was getting worse and worse. She waited. Finally she depressed the receiver angrily. Another woman’s voice, indifferent, cold, spoke, was uninterested. “Hang up, please. You’ll be called later.”

  She hung up, went back towards the drawing room, the bell rang again as she had her hand on the door. She hurried back to the telephone.

  “Hallo?”

  A man’s voice said: “Warmsley Vale 34? Personal call from London for Miss Lynn Marchmont.”

  “Speaking.”

  “Just a minute please.” Then, faintly, “Speak up, London, you’re through….”

  And then, suddenly, David’s voice:

  “Lynn, is that you?”

  “David!”

  “I had to speak to you.”

  “Yes….”

  “Look here, Lynn, I think I’d better clear out—”