Earth and High Heaven by Gwethalyn Graham

Author:Gwethalyn Graham [Graham, Gwethalyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cormorant Books

VI

Miriam had met Marc in the last week of August. The four of them, Erica, Marc, Max Eliot, and herself were to have had dinner together, but that morning Max Eliot had left unexpectedly for England, and Miriam brought John Gardiner instead. John was the complete opposite of Max in almost every respect — blond, towering, physically hard and innately kind — and he and Marc took an immediate liking to each other. They were both in uniform, John with a red First Division patch on his sleeve. As soon as Marc had finished ordering, they began to talk about various men they both knew among the officers of the First Battalion of the Gatineau Rifles, who had been stationed near John’s unit on the south coast of England for almost a year.

They were well away, and Erica said to Miriam, “Where’s Max?”

“He’s gone.”

“Where?”

“England. He left on a bomber this morning.”

“When is he coming back?”

Miriam was looking at the wall behind John’s fair head, her dark eyes wide and her face unnaturally stiff. She said at last, as though she had had to wait in order to be sure that she would say it casually, “I haven’t the remotest idea. I got the air last night.”

A little later when she had finished her cocktail and Marc had ordered another one for her, she observed to Erica as the two men went on talking, “I guess I always knew it was going to happen. I had such a strong feeling about it that I even tried to plan the whole thing in advance, so that if or when it did happen, I wouldn’t make any fuss.”

“And did you, darling?”

“No,” she said under her breath. “No fuss.” She glanced at Erica and went on in the same even tone, “I can’t let go because if I do, I’ll probably just go to pieces. I hate crying, it always makes everything so much worse. What shall we do after dinner?”

“We might go somewhere and dance.”

“You should have seen me getting the air at two o’clock this morning. I was really terrific, Eric. Not that it makes any difference. An exit is just an exit, whether you mess it up or not.”

“You should have stayed home, darling,” said Erica, watching her.

“Not on your life. I’m going to get good and drunk.”

“How do you like Marc?” asked Erica after a pause.

Miriam looked at him and said, “He isn’t exactly what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“He looks marvellous in uniform,” remarked Miriam irrelevantly, and then answered, “Somebody you could probably do pretty much what you liked with ... up to a point, that is.”

“Oh, dear no,” said Erica, shaking her head.

“No,” said Miriam, “evidently not.” Since she was the first member of Erica’s family that Marc had really met, she realized now that what she had chiefly expected was that Marc would try to make some kind of an impression. Not an obvious effort, of course, but still, an effort. She had supposed that he would put himself out at least to some extent.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.