The Echoing Grove by Rosamond Lehmann Page A

past us brushing our legs, on up the street. Behind the opaque glass windows of the pub on the opposite corner shadows passed and re-passed. Everything looked expectant, supercharged, dramatic: opening shots in a French film, camera turning on doors, pavements, lamp-posts, street-vistas, housefronts, on selected figures; sound track picking up the thin invisible piano, the screech of a rusty wheel, shouts, motor horns and running footsteps, all intermittent between loaded silences, all to build up the atmosphere for what would happen. Anything might happen. Who would slouch shady from that narrow passage, on the heels of that penny-for-the-guy prelude, that flurry of infant mummers? Whom would the swing-swinging pub doors reveal at last, solid against the phantoms? When will they move, that pair of lovers? What are they muttering, their lips stiff, looking hard at each other, then away? She wears her hair shoulder-length, rolled under, she wears a mackintosh and carries a shabby suitcase: clearly she is the heroine. He has a virile sensuous distinction, a prosperous suit of clothes. Upper-class philanderer caught in a fatal net with waif? … Why does that taxi crawl along the street, slow down beside them? Watch now, the plot is about to thicken.
    ‘God, I’m late,’ he exclaimed, consulting his wrist-watch. ‘I don’t want to cut this short but …’ He hailed the taxi. ‘I’ve got to dine out and there’ll be ructions. Can I drop you somewhere?’
    ‘No thanks. Where I’m going would be quite off your beat.’
    ‘Well he can take you on—wherever you’re going.’
    ‘No thanks. I don’t fancy dropping you at your front door.’ Off-hand voice contemptuously underlining my detachment, his lack of curiosity.
    All of a sudden he changed, he was black and blazing.
    ‘Get in. If you think I’m going to leave you on the pavement with that bloody bag … Go on, get in. ’Savage voice. He wrenched the bag from me, pushed me before him into the cab, jumped in, slammed the door, leaned forward to slide the glass partition back and give his address, then flopped back into his corner. I in mine.
    ‘You can make up your mind as you go along where this machine is to deposit you. It’s at your service. I shall get out before we reach my front door.’ Savagely he pushed at the bag with the toe of his shoe. He hadn’t noticed when I picked it up in the flat and carried it into the street. I sat up rigid in my corner, feeling his anger explode, impotent, against me. Presently he put his warm, dry hand over mine and said without expression: ‘Dinah.’ We bowled along hand in hand as so many times before; only, the nerves in our meeting palms were dumb.
    So then I said: ‘Don’t leave me, Rickie. You, you only, know the worst of me. Don’t let me go. Where I’ve got to go back to if you do is much too terrible. No light, suffocation, scorching emptiness, like Hell. I told you I am expected; but in fact there is no one. The person who was there has gone.’ So he took me in his arms for ever and we drove on, on, on …
    We said not another word. He stopped the cab on the far edge of the square, jumped out in a hurry, gave the driver a ten-bob note, told him to take me wherever I said, didn’t look at me, went running towards his house. Never once looked back. Hurried to Madeleine waiting for him behind that door, already dressed for the party, frowning and fidgeting, preparing ructions.
    I told the driver Paddington, I had to tell him somewhere. He was very genial after Rickie’s generosity. He gave me a tip for the Derby when I got out; for which with a beaming smile I thanked him. I was still a pretty girl accustomed to consider myself precious. Where could I go? I could go home: catch the 7.48, be there by nine. What a joyful surprise for them. On the platform I started to have hallucinations: smelted the lime blossom in the garden, heard Bruno bark as I came up the drive. I got confused. The train was