Читать книгу Miss Silver Deals with Death - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 6

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Meade had been packing parcels for three hours. It tired her dreadfully. She came out into the street and walked to the corner. She hoped she wouldn’t have to wait very long for a bus—not her usual one, because she had to go to Harrods for Aunt Mabel. It was this sort of extra that was the last straw, but she couldn’t say so, because that would invite the immediate retort, “If you can’t pack a few parcels, and do five minutes’ shopping to save me going right across London, how on earth do you think you’re going to get on in the A.T.S.?”

She had to wait nearly ten minutes for her bus.

It was just on half past five when she came out of Harrods by one of the side doors and met Giles Armitage face to face. Giles, looking down, saw a girl in a grey flannel suit and a small black hat—a little creature with cloudy hair and lovely eyes. The hair was dark, and the eyes of a deep pure grey. They looked at him out of a small, peaked face, and all of a sudden they lit up and shone like stars. Colour rushed into the pale cheeks. Her hands clutched at his arm, and a very soft voice said,

“Giles——”

And then everything went out. The colour, the light, the breath which had carried his name—they all failed together. She gave at the knees, and if he hadn’t been pretty quick with his arm she’d have been down on the pavement. A light little thing and easy enough to hold. It was rather like holding a kitten.

She knew him—that much was certain. He waved to a taxi which had just set down a fare, and put Meade in it.

“Get into the Park and drive slow. Go on till I tell you to stop.”

He got in and shut the door. The girl was lying back. Her eyes were open. Her hands came out to him, and before he knew what he was going to do he had his arm about her. She seemed to expect it, and so in some odd kind of a way did he. She held on to his arm as if she would never let him go. It all seemed the most natural thing in the world. He had the most extraordinary desire to look after her, to put the colour back into her cheeks and the light into her eyes, yet as far as he could remember he had never seen her before. She was saying his name again: “Giles—Giles—Giles—” A girl doesn’t say a man’s name like that unless she is awfully fond of him. The inconveniences of losing one’s memory obtruded themselves. What did you say to a girl who remembered what you had forgotten?

She drew suddenly away and said in a different voice,

“Giles—what’s the matter? Why don’t you say anything? What is it? I’m frightened.”

Major Armitage was a man of action. This had got to be tackled. He tackled it. Those very bright blue eyes of his smiled at her out of the square, tanned face. He said,

“I say—please don’t! I mean you won’t faint again or anything like that, will you? I’m the one to be frightened really. Won’t you have a heart and help me out? You see, I’ve been torpedoed and I’ve lost my memory. I didn’t know anything could make one feel such a fool.”

Meade slipped away from him into the corner of the seat. Giles didn’t remember her. A frozen feeling gathered about her heart. She said,

“I won’t faint.”

It hurt too much for that. He was Giles come back from the dead, and he was a stranger. He was looking at her just as he had looked the first time they met, at Kitty Van Loo’s. And all of a sudden the frozen feeling went and her heart was warm again, because he had fallen in love with her then, at first sight, and if he had done it once, why shouldn’t he do it again? What did it matter that he had forgotten? He was Giles, and she was Meade, and he was alive. “Oh, God, thank you, thank you, for letting Giles be alive!”

He saw the light and colour come back. It gave him the strangest feeling, as if he had created something. He said in a different voice,

“Who are you?”

“Meade Underwood.”

He repeated it, “Meade—Underwood—It’s a pretty name. Did I call you Meade?”

Something flickered and went again, like the flash of light off a bird’s wing. He couldn’t catch it. She said,

“Yes.”

“Have I known you long?”

“Not very long. We met in New York, on the first of May, at Kitty Van Loo’s. Do you remember her?”

He shook his head.

She looked at the bright blue eyes, at the crisp fair hair above the ruddy brown skin, and thought, “He’s well—he’s alive. What does anything else matter?” But she was glad that he didn’t remember Kitty Van Loo.

“I don’t remember a thing, except about the job I went over there to do. I don’t remember going out there, or anything after Christmas ’39. Everything since then has just run into a fog as far as my personal recollection goes. Why”—his voice changed—“I didn’t even remember about my brother Jack being killed. He was with me at Dunkirk, and somehow I knew he was dead, but I couldn’t remember a thing about it—not a thing. I can’t now. I’ve had to get it all from a chap who was there with us. I can remember being in France, and getting away from Dunkirk, and the job I had at the War Office, but none of the personal things. I could tell them all about my job in the States—all the technical part. Funny, isn’t it, but I can remember a fellow in my first regiment, an extraordinarily fine bridge player. He used to get canned every night, but it never affected his game. I’ve seen him so that he couldn’t take in a word you said outside the play, but he knew every card that was out—never made a mistake. I suppose it’s something like that. Well, we met at Kitty Van Loo’s—and where did we go from there?”

He saw Meade sparkle. It went to his head a little. The whole thing was going to his head—this blend of the strange and the familiar. She said,

“Oh, we went places.”

“Nice places?”

“Yes, nice places.”

“Lots of them?”

“Lots of them.”

“And when did you come back?”

She was watching him. She said,

“In June.”

She saw the blood run up under his skin.

“But so did I—at least that’s what they tell me. That is to say, I started to come, and we were torpedoed.” He laughed. “I was picked up by a tramp a couple of days later. I’d got hold of a grating, and I believe they couldn’t get me to let go—had to more or less prize me off it. I don’t remember anything about it myself. I’d been hit on the head, and the next thing I knew I was in a hospital ward in New York, and nobody knew who I was. Well, that’s me. But you said June. I suppose the Atlantic wasn’t by any chance one of the places we went together.... Oh, it was? Well, I hope I saved your life.”

Meade nodded. For a moment she couldn’t speak. It was all too horribly, too vividly present again—the darkness, the noise, and those rending crashes—the rush of the water, coming in, sucking them down—Giles lifting her, heaving her into the boat. She said,

“You put me into one of the boats.”

“You were all right—not hurt?”

“My arm was broken, and some ribs. They’re all right now.”

“Sure?”

“Quite sure.”

They looked at one another. There was a silence. Just as it became unendurable, he said,

“How well did we know each other, Meade?”

She closed her eyes. The lashes lay dark against her cheek. In three months she had not heard him say her name. When she had dreamt of him he had not said it; now he was saying it like a stranger. It hurt too much. He said in a quick, anxious voice,

“You look all in. Can’t I take you somewhere? Where would you like to go? I say, you’re not going to faint, are you?”

The lashes lifted. She looked at him. It was very disturbing. She said in a whispering voice,

“I won’t if I can help it. I think I had better go home.”