Simmel could hardly keep his voice steady. But when he spoke the words were firm and determined. ‘I have a problem, you see. Because in about five minutes you’ll be getting out of this taxi, and if I’m not careful I shall never see you again.’
He expected her to stop the taxi and to get out then and there. And he almost wished she would, because he knew he was going to fail in love, just as clearly and as vividly as he knew then that he wasn’t in love with Kate and never would be. And the thought of the agonised gyrations his emotions would be going through in the near future if she didn’t get out (and even if she did) was a very frightening one.
The girl looked amused and gentle and taken-aback all at the same time. Eventually she said: ‘It must have taken a lot of courage to say that! ‘
Dick was glad it was over. He smiled wryly. ‘It did!’ he said. ‘And now, of course, I must apologise.’
‘Naturally!’ she affirmed. ‘You have committed the unpardonable crime of being a human being.’ She looked at him with frank good humour. ‘I gather you find me attractive,’ she said, thinking ‘he’s a pleasant young man and it’s quite right for him to be nervous and he’s young for his age.’
‘That is putting it mildly.’
‘Well, that’s nice. I like to be found attractive.’
‘I should have thought it must be pretty monotonous!’
‘I’m not as horrible as that! And you must admit your way of going about things is hardly monotonous!’
‘I couldn’t think of any other way of doing it,’ he said with great honesty. And suddenly for one instant he thought of Kate, and felt sorry and embarrassed and wretched about her. Because he knew that whatever happened now things would never be the same again. When this girl, on reaching her destination, politely but firmly wished him a permanent good-bye — as he felt sure she would — he couldn’t just go back and pretend to himself or to Kate that he hadn’t learned, within a period of seconds, that another sense had been added to the ones he already possessed.
The taxi stopped at some lights, and an illuminated shop window made it possible for him to see the girl’s face in more detail. She was lovely but not beautiful. There were some little wavy wrinkles across her brow that shouldn’t really have been there, and her nose was funny. It was her eyes and lips that stole the picture, and the neat, well-defined chin.
She was watching him now, amused to find him studying her so intently and openly. He reddened at being caught at it, and started searching hastily for a cigarette.
‘No, thanks, I don’t,’ she said. ‘But you go ahead.’
He lit it a little clumsily, and that made him feel even more self-conscious. ‘I’m like an idiotic school-boy,’ he thought, ‘who’s just seen a Girl for the first time.’ Aloud he said: ‘I’m not very suave, am I?’
‘No,’ she admitted frankly, ‘you’re not. It doesn’t matter very much, does it?’ The taxi had turned off the main road. ‘Look, I’m nearly home. Why don’t you come in and have a drink of something? Daddy won’t mind; though you mustn’t be offended if he doesn’t notice you. He sits behind The Times and pretends you aren’t there.’
Dick, taken completely by surprise, managed to say something more or less coherent, and opened the door of the taxi for her. She insisted on paying half the fare. ‘You’d better tell me who you are.’ she said, as they went up the steps to the front door. Papa might get a bit of a surprise if I have to ask you your name when I introduce you — if I succeed, that is, in getting his attention at all!’
‘Simmel. Dick Simmel.’
‘And I’m Sophia Tripling. You call me Sophie.’ They entered the house and crossed the hail to the library, which was a big, panelled room heated by a large open fire. A newspaper, behind which a thin column of smoke rose to the ceiling, was held motionless by someone in a comfortable arm-chair. At the click of the door being shut, the paper was lowered and raised again, revealing in the short interval between the two movements a pleasant but austere figure smoking a pipe.
‘Good evening, m’dear,’ said the voice behind The Times, apparently non-committal and uninterested in tone. A page was turned over. ‘Y’mother’s gone to the theatre.’
‘This is Dick Simmel, Daddy.’
‘Good evening, sir!’ said Dick in his conference voice. This was greeted by a slight grunt, and Dick didn’t know quite what to do next. Sophie smiled at him as if to indicate that the formalities were now over. ‘I’ll fix you a drink,’ she said to Dick. ‘Come into the kitchen and help me get the ice.’ When they got there she said: ‘He likes you.’
Dick wanted to ask her how she could possibly tell, but he couldn’t think how to ask the question without seeming rude. She set his curiosity at rest, however, as she opened the refrigerator (a very old one with the freezing unit outside on the top) and struggled with an ice-tray. ‘You can tell by the kind of grunt,’ she explained. ‘It’s a complete language in itself, really. That’s the approving grunt. You’ve passed.’
‘Frankly, I’m terrified.’
She put the ice-tray under the tap. ‘I know. Everybody else is too. But you don’t have to be. You see, he’s a kind of general, and apparently they nearly all talk like that.’
Dick cottoned-on. ‘General Sir Horace Tripling,’ he said. A statement, not a question.
She looked up, surprised. ‘You’re well informed,’ she said.
‘You don’t have to be all that well-informed to know the name of the Deputy Chief-of-Staff,’ he said, neither with awe nor with casualness. She didn’t say anything to this.
‘Now we go back,’ she explained, ‘and talk about whatever we like. He won’t listen. Any further grunts you may hear from time to time will be comments on the day’s news.’
A sixth sense told Dick that there was some sort of inner purpose in her taking him back to the library when there so obviously must have been another room in which they could talk. It didn’t strike him particularly, however, that he was being paid a compliment thereby. It merely made him that much more nervous. He found that she was adept at keeping him at his ease as much as possible, which made up for some, at least, of the ordeal.
He certainly didn’t realise that Sophie had, in fact, already decided that she liked him and wanted to get to like him better.
She knew he would dry up the moment they got into the library, so she kept the conversation going for him. ‘Mummy’s gone to see My Fair Lady. She had dreadful trouble getting tickets. But she finally triumphed, and she’s taken some friends of ours along. Have you seen it?’
Simmel was torn between considerations of tact and honesty; for in fact he had been to the opening night. His difficulty must have shown in his face, because she guessed or very nearly. ‘I can see I’ve got you worried, so that means you probably saw it in New York. Right?’
He couldn’t help smiling. ‘The awful truth is that I went to the opening at Drury Lane.’
The girl handed him his drink and they sat near the fire. She chose the foot-stool and made him sit in the chair.
The smile she returned was a curious combination of mischief and reassurance. ‘You don’t have to be tactful with us!’ she said. ‘We always find that the things we regard as our most conspicuous successes are invariably capped by everybody else’s. We’re really terribly behind the times.’ The glow of the flickering fire illuminated her in a manner that no art photographer could have arranged deliberately. One part of her face was in deep shadow, cast by the even curve of her hair, throwing the rest of her features into highlight. The whole effect was one of gentle soft-focus, but etched and retouched here and there by the vitality of youngness, so that you were intensely aware that the woman in her was alert and alive without the fact being overstated in the set of her lips or the lie of her body. Here was not the English Rose, thought Dick Simmel, the frail creature of pedestal worship; but a woman to be won, who would become warm and strong in your hands — if yours were the hands in which she chose to be contained.