Fanfare for Tin Trumpets by Margery Sharp

Author:Margery Sharp
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2020-10-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIV

I

Considering the severe emotion under which he laboured, and his imperfect knowledge of the ground, it was small wonder if Alistair took longer than was strictly necessary to get from the Haymarket to Carey Street. He went on foot, because ’buses were by this time very scarce, and because it did not occur to him to take a cab. His speed, however, could not have been much under five miles an hour; and with the assistance of the police (many of whom he completely misunderstood), he reached Bloomsbury shortly before one in the morning.

About this point it struck him that he had forgotten the number of the house. As far as he could recollect, it was about next but one to the far end—assuming, of course, that he entered the street from his original direction; and these speculations occupied him so completely that he might have overshot the turning altogether but for a lucky collision at the required corner.

“Look where you’re going, can’t you?” snapped his victim.

Alistair did so, and saw a short, swarthy, remarkably broad-shouldered young gentleman in evening dress.

Time being precious, he apologized as insultingly as possible and hurried on.

Never in all his life had he seen houses that looked so much alike. They each had a strip of garden, a flight of steps, and a pointed porch. If it wasn’t the one next to the end he would have to start ringing the bells. . . .

And then suddenly he saw her. She was standing under one of the porches, letting herself in with a latchkey: and just in time he called quickly:

“Cressida!”

She looked down and saw, standing under the lamp-post, brightly lit as a figure on the stage, a character actor in the part of Alistair French. Every line and movement of his upturned face was defined with dramatic clarity: the actor had ruffled his hair, blued his eyelids, stressed the romantic shadow under the cheekbone: he was the Alistair of Alistair’s dreams. Then she looked again and saw that he was also Romeo at the balcony, de Bergerac before the Spanish lines, and Shakespeare’s Henry the Fifth.

But under the shadow of the porch Alistair could see only the white oval of her face and the white fur about her throat: and to these he called, “Cressida!” meaning Helen, Lucrece, Iseult, Madonna.

“What is it?” she asked, the door half-closed behind her.

“Come down, Cressida. I’ve got something to tell you.”

(To go up the steps, he was thinking, to go up the steps and be close to her in that sheltered darkness. To push aside the fur, and find her shoulder smooth and sweet-smelling and warm in the darkness. To push the warm fur from her sweet shoulder, to feel her smooth throat filling his hands, to follow with his hands the subtle curve from ear to sweet warm shoulder. . . .)

“Come down, Cressida,” he cried again, holding fast by the railings. The door clicked shut behind her and she came out of the warm sweet shadow down the white steps.

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