Mary Stewart by Madam Will You Talk

Author:Madam Will You Talk
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-06-01T14:51:37+00:00

CHAPTER XV

Madam, will you talk?

(old song)

The dark water heaved below the wall, oily looking, webbed with a flotsam of straws and pieces of cork. It was strangely fascinating, as well as soothing, to watch the lift and fall and sway of the drifting fragments in the shallow gleam of the street-lamp.

I said : “Johnny was my husband.”

“Was?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Oh, I see. I’m sorry.”

I turned, like him, to face the sea, leaned my elbows on the wall and concentrated on the moving water.

“He and I were married in the war—he was in the R.A.F. We had two years, so I suppose we were lucky. Then he was killed over Pas de Calais.”

“Bomber?”

“No. Fighter escort.” Away out over the sea the milky haze had begun to withdraw from the moon. The horizon swam up out of darkness to meet her faint light.

“Some day,” I said, “I’ll tell you about Johnny. But not now.”

He glanced at me quickly.

“Because of this—because of what’s happened?”

“Because you kissed me, do you mean?”

“Because I love you, Charity.”

“No,” I said. “Not because of that. What happens to me now doesn’t alter what happened to me before. What was between me and Johnny was a real thing that we built very carefully for ourselves, and, when we built it, it was perfect and satisfying. But because it was blasted to bits by a German shell, that doesn’t mean I’m never to try and build anything else among the ruins. Johnny isn’t a ghost, you know, tagging along at my elbow, reminding me to mourn.”

“When I first saw you,” he said softly, “you were crying.”

“I know,” I said. “And it’s true I was thinking about Johnny. But the memory of my life with him isn’t likely to get up and forbid me to live any more, or any differently… One ought to build even better the second time, and I can still build.‘And Johnny——” I said, turning to Richard Byron, “why, Johnny would have egged me on.”

He straightened up, and his arms went round me, this time very gently. He was smiling, and his eyes had a little steady flame deep in the grey. He held me a little away from him and looked at me, his lips curving.

“I love you, Charity,” he said again. “You’re so sweet and you’re so sane. My God, I think you could almost make the world seem a sweet, sane place again, the way it used to be… Am I to take it that you’re telling me to go ahead and kiss you again?”

“Why, no, I—”

“Because I’m planning to,” said Richard Byron.

And did.

It seemed hours later, and the moon had laid her trail of silver out to sea, when we stood again, side by side, elbows on the wall again, and began to talk.

“… Enough of this side-tracking,” said Richard. “I’ve got to think, and you’ve got to help me, so you’ve got a right to know the story. It’s a pretty filthy one to drag you into—”

“It seems to me,” I said mildly, “that I’m in fairly deep as it is, and entirely through my own efforts.

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