Rendezvous

The Company tried to persuade me to take a long holiday when Helen was drowned, but in the end they accepted my argument that I needed work more than rest. They put the proposition up again six months later. I was asked to spend the weekend with the Ashtons outside London, and along with hospitality, Freddy and Paula applied friendly but persistent pressure. My initial prescription had, they agreed, quite probably been right. At the same time the body, like the mind, had limitations, and I had been driving mine too hard. What I was heading for, Paula pointed out gently, was nothing romantic: merely a coronary and years of enforced idleness, possibly helplessness. By this time, of course, things had changed with me. The wound, once viciously tender, had scarred over. The scar ached, but bearably. Freddy told me they had booked me for a (Cont. on page 148)Rendezvous(continued from page 123) cruise to the Cape in ten days' time, and I did not argue with him.

I spent the journey out in a torpor which I think I cultivated deliberately as a defense against associating with my fellow passengers. Since Helen's death, I had seen people in one context only, that of work. It was disturbing and frightening to contemplate them in their reality as individuals: they were pointers to pointlessness. I drank a fair deal, but on my own. We moved from cold gray seas and skies to light and warmth and blueness, and I sat on my stool at the end of the bar. I was quietly drunk every night, and not completely sober after 11 in the morning. I did not go ashore with the others when we docked. The chief purser had a tactful word or two with me, and told me about some of the interesting things to see and do in South Africa, but he fairly soon abandoned the attempt to make me see reason. He gave the impression of having met my kind before.

It was on the return journey that I met Cynthia Parker. I was at my usual place in the bar one morning, and was lighting a cigarette when a voice spoke just behind me. I spun round, holding the burning match, and saw her shrink from it.

I said: "I'm sorry."

"It's silly." She had a strong, rather pleasantly harsh voice. "I've been nervous of flame from a child. Even a match. I was asking you if this stool was free."

I bought her a brandy and ginger ale, and within a quarter of an hour she was through the wall of uncooperative blankness that had so successfully kept the others away. She had the unhesitating directness of someone with supreme confidence in herself. In addition, she was intelligent and quick-witted--qualities that one finds in combination all too rarely--and extremely feminine. She had striking looks: the embers, glowing and capable of firing with a smile, of great beauty. She was, as she told me in that first 15 minutes, 66.

It was on the face of it an odd association, even by shipboard standards. Apart from the almost 30 years between us, we had few things in common. I was a dull businessman who had worked long hours in my youth and come up, as they say, the hard way. Only with Helen had I learned anything of the refinements of life, and then for no more than three bitterly short years. Cynthia, on the other hand, had been born into luxury, and had lived in it ever since. She had been married three times, divorcing one husband and surviving two. I got the impression that they had all been wealthy men, and that she was a very wealthy woman. She knew a lot about money. We talked about the stock market one evening, and I found myself out of my depth in no time.

She was a good talker and a keen listener, and the brisk way in which she had forced through the barriers I had put up was flattering. Moreover, she offered femininity without sex, the ideal solace for a man in the mood I was in. What she saw in me was more difficult to establish. Not just an escape from loneliness, at any rate. She had never been a lonely woman and was not likely to be.

She was a hard but not excessive drinker. She partly weaned me from the bar, and many hours that I would otherwise have spent getting drunk were occupied in lying side by side on the sun deck, watching the waves and talking. The first two days I talked about my work and about my childhood. On the third, I talked about Helen. She listened, and said eventually:

"So that was it. I wondered what it was that was sitting on your back, crippling you."

She spoke as a doctor might, pleased with unraveling a difficult case. Strangely enough, that, and the absence of the artificial expressions of condolence that I had grown used to, was refreshing. Sympathy with grief is presumptive, a claim to kinship. She, as far as her reaction was concerned, might never have known sorrow for human loss. That which was a devil to me was to her no more than a curious beastie, a phantasm.

• • •

She told me about her own beastie that evening, after dinner.

We went to the bar for a nightcap, and she was in fine form, talking scathingly about our fellow passengers who had come under her shrewd and wicked eye. To one who, as she did, lived so intensely in the world, the whole escape notion of cruising was anathema. Time wasting, in any class or context, she could neither understand nor tolerate. There was no difference to her between the elegantly groomed and dressed men and women who surrounded us and the young men and women, in Mod or Rocker dress, who lounged vacuously in coffee bars or at street corners. They were all decadent, all contemptible.

I saw, I thought, a weakness in her diatribe, and seized on it. After all, she was here with them. She had told me she lived chiefly in the United States, had been visiting a married sister near Johannesburg and needed to go to London to attend to business matters. I pointed out that she need not have joined our cruiseship. She could have flown to London instead, and the trip would have taken hours instead of days.

She paused before replying and then nodded to the barman, who brought us more drinks. She said: "I've never flown in my life, and never will."

One meets, of course, old ladies who cannot attune themselves to modern developments, but the description was a long way from fitting her. She had told me she kept a Thunderbird at home and was fond of speedboat racing. The firm, quiet negative over air travel made me curious. I asked her:

"Why not?"

She took her drink, lifted it and stared at me over the rim of the glass.

"Through fear," she said.

I shook my head. "Not convincing."

There was silence again and I thought she was shying away from the subject. But after a time she began to speak, in a low voice, and I listened.

• • •

It went back nearly 50 years, to the time when the First War was dragging and grinding itself slowly on and she was a young woman, a girl, of 18. She had been surrounded by admirers since the schoolroom and could have been expected to have a brilliant season. The War was a bore from that point of view. On the other hand, it provided a neverending supply of young, handsome, uniformed men, and a sense of patriotic duty in letting them take her out and give her a good time. And there were good times to be had, even in 1917, for those who had the means of commanding them.

There were dozens of young men, and some she was sorrier to see go than others, but none made much impression on her before Tony Anderson came along. I doubt if she loved him, because I doubt if she ever was able to yield control to that extent, but she was fascinated by him and the fascination, 48 years later, was still evident in the way she talked about him.

He was tall and swarthy, with a fierce black mustache, a slightly hooked nose and deep-blue eyes. He had great physical strength and magnetism: the first time she shook hands with him she was made aware of both. Besides these, he had other impressive qualities. He was the grandson of a duke, the son of one of the better steel millionaires. In her parents' eyes, as in her own, he was entirely eligible. They were engaged six weeks after they met, and at that had been marking time for four.

She had sensed a wildness in him and it had attracted her, but it was only by degrees that she understood how deep the wildness went. He was a man of whims, and iron-willed about indulging them. He decided to buy her a diamond bracelet at one o'clock in the morning, and had the proprietor of a Bond Street shop called from his bed and brought in a taxi to serve him. He took her for a picnic on the river--just the two of them, with champagne on ice and a Fortnum's hamper--and as they tied up by a small (continued on page 230) Rendezvous (Continued from page 148) island on a deserted reach, the air was full of soft sweet sounds: the entire string section of the Royal London Orchestra. All this was flattering and exciting; and a little frightening. Because where he gave, he claimed.

And giving himself totally, he demanded the same of her. She was his, he said, for eternity. She shivered inside, and smiled and said:

"You're very romantic, darling, for all that solid English ancestry. The Prayer Book only says till death us do part."

The blue eyes fixed her, the strong full mouth was unsmiling. He stared at her, and said:

"Let me tell you a story."

"A romantic one?"

"If you like. About my grandmother."

• • •

She had been the daughter of a peer and engaged to a duke. Her father was appointed Ambassador to the Court of the Emperor in Vienna, and she went there with him. She met--no one quite knew how--a young Hungarian. He was completely undesirable; not only a revolutionary but a gypsy. They fell in love. As the date of her marriage drew near, she found herself pregnant. She told her lover and he was delighted. They would elope together and live at peace in a peaceful land. She was his and he was hers. He had faith in her and in their love.

But she was weak and afraid of what was happening to her. She confessed to her father and he took the story to the duke. The duke was a realist. He was also poor, for a duke, while her father, though only a baron, was rich. Her dowry, already impressive, was generously, magnificently increased. The wedding took place, as arranged, and the happy couple went to live in a quiet, remote villa in Switzerland. Her child was born there, and was a girl. Everything had worked out even better than had been hoped. The family's future was safe; and there was time for her to have sons.

Or there would have been time if she had lived.

Her father was still ambassador. They visited Vienna in the spring, almost a year after she had left the place and her lover. They did not stay at the embassy, but at a small hunting lodge in the woods. It was the place to which her lover had been taken by the duke's men. The marital bed was set up in the room in which, while two men held his arms, the duke had stabbed him to death. He was saving this up to tell her the next morning, for, like all realists, he prided himself on his sense of humor. The duchess retired early, while the duke drank his port. When he went up to her she was dead, covered with congealed blood from the stab wound in her breast.

She paused at this stage and I ordered her another drink.

"Gruesome," I said, "and Gothic, but not unlikely. She had killed herself?"

"No. Why should she? She had no idea her lover was not still alive. That very day she had asked a maid to make inquiries for him. She was safe and could afford to be romantic again. And besides, she was a coward who could not stand the sight of blood."

"Then her husband killed her."

"Not that, either. There was a reversion clause in the dowry, and the bulk of the money went in trust to her daughter. Though he was under suspicion for a time. You see, there was no trace of the dagger."

"Then...?"

"A burglar, the police decided. An unknown man had come in, surprised the duchess in her bed and killed her to stop her raising the alarm. And then fled."

I sipped my brandy. "It sounds reasonable."

"That's what I said."

"But he--your fiancé--didn't agree?"

"He was a quarter gypsy, remember. That was the part of his ancestry that fascinated him, not the rest. He had gone to Hungary, found the tribe, lived with them for a time. He had learned their beliefs. One was that violent death tied the spirit to the spot in which death came. And that where there had been great love, or great hate, the spirit could make its claim whenever the person who had inspired it passed that way. It was a belief that had its social value. In cases of murder, suspects were bound and left in the place where the murder had occurred. It was not unusual for them to be found dead the next morning."

"Not surprising, either," I said. "So his view was that his gypsy ancestor had come back to claim his faithless love? And had stabbed her to death with a ghostly knife?"

"Yes. He believed that."

"You still haven't told me why you are afraid of traveling by air."

"He was a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps. Those were the days of the zeppelins over London. One night, he attacked one and brought it down in flames. It was a very daring attack, pressed beyond the limits of ordinary courage. Quite reckless. He came down, burning, with the zeppelin. They gave him a Victoria Cross posthumously."

"Even now, I don't understand."

She said slowly: "He told me that I was his, belonging to him through life and beyond death. When he told me about his grandfather and grandmother, he meant that he would come for me if I betrayed him. And I did betray him." Her still magnificent eyes fixed on mine. "I was pregnant, too. Within a month of his death I gave myself, and his son, to another man."

I protested. "How can you call that betrayal? You had nothing to do with his death."

She shrugged. "His death did not matter to him. What mattered was his love, his pride. He had made provision for me, in case of his death. He expected that I should bear his son and live as his widow, until death reunited us. I married instead. That was the betrayal."

I shook my head. "And you think, because of that..."

"He died in the air. If he waits anywhere, it is there. I can face death as well as most. But not death in a burning aircraft. Not death and him together."

"Nearly fifty years ago," I said. "And based on a melodrama fifty years older than that."

"What is fifty years?" She stared at the array of bottles behind the bar. "I remember him better than I will remember you the day after we leave this ship."

• • •

We said goodbye at Southampton, with no expectation of meeting again. Nor did we. I went back to my work. I thought of her at times, in the quiet hours of the night when, not being able to sleep, I went downstairs to commune with a bottle of whiskey. It was the irony of it that struck me most. Two people meeting on shipboard, with nothing in common but a preoccupation with death. One wishing the dead could rest, but fearing their survival. The other willing to give anything to call them back, but knowing they were dead.

Then, by chance, I saw her name in a newspaper, and read the story in which it appeared. And the following day I resigned my job and came down here.

• • •

I have a room in a boardinghouse in Poole, but I spend little time there. The boat I have got is a small but sturdy one, and I take her out in all but the worst of weather. It happened not far outside the harbor--not more than a mile out. A sudden squall, and the friends Helen was with not as skilled as they should have been in the handling of a boat like that. She capsized, and the man who skippered her managed to swim to shore. The others did not. I could not trust myself to speak to him then, and still cannot.

But at least there is hope now or, if not hope, a dream to follow. The story was about Cynthia and about her death. She had died in her hotel room, in a fire. It was thought, the story said, that she might have been smoking in bed and fallen asleep.

She did not smoke, thought, and she feared all flame, even a match. The hotel proprietors were quick to point out that there had been no negligence on their part. Each floor, each room was individually fire proofed, the electrical wiring impeccable. It was, after all, a very new hotel. And yet she had died by burning.

For what she had forgotten was that in 50 years the earth had risen to meet the sky. It was a very new hotel, the Metropolitan Towers, and it soared high above the crawling roofs of London. Forty-five floors, and her room was on the forty-second. Say 500 feet. I checked in an old copy of The Illustrated London News. The zeppelin had already been hit and was losing height when he made his last run-in. Down to 500 feet, they estimated, heading west over Mayfair.

It took her nearly 50 years to come, unwillingly, to her trysting place. I have only been here a year, so far. I live modestly and have the means to do so for a long time yet.

Each day, each tide is different, but the sea never changes.