LITMIR.BIZ

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took it without batting an eyelash. She sat there, smoking, not looking at me.

      For a moment or two I was nervous that she might not understand.

      ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘The one thing I’m determined not to do, is to ask you to marry me now. That wouldn’t work out anyway. First you might turn me down, and then I’d go off miserable and probably tie up with some ghastly woman just to restore my vanity. And if you didn’t turn me down what could we do about it? Get married and part at once? Get engaged and settle down to a long waiting period? I couldn’t stand your doing that. You might meet someone else and feel bound to be “loyal” to me. We’ve been living in a queer hectic get-on-with-it-quickly atmosphere. Marriages and love affairs making and breaking all round us. I’d like to feel you’d gone home, free and independent, to look round you and size up the new post-war world and decide what you want out of it. What is between you and me, Sophia, has got to be permanent. I’ve no use for any other kind of marriage.’

      ‘No more have I,’ said Sophia.

      ‘On the other hand,’ I said, ‘I think I’m entitled to let you know how I—well—how I feel.’

      ‘But without undue lyrical expression?’ murmured Sophia.

      ‘Darling—don’t you understand? I’ve tried not to say I love you—’

      She stopped me.

      ‘I do understand, Charles. And I like your funny way of doing things. And you may come and see me when you come back—if you still want to—’

      It was my turn to interrupt.

      ‘There’s no doubt about that.’

      ‘There’s always a doubt about everything, Charles. There may always be some incalculable factor that upsets the apple-cart. For one thing, you don’t know much about me, do you?’

      ‘I don’t even know where you live in England.’

      ‘I live at Swinly Dean.’

      I nodded at the mention of the well-known outer suburb of London which boasts three excellent golf courses for the city financier.

      She added softly in a musing voice: ‘In a little crooked house …’

      I must have looked slightly startled, for she seemed amused, and explained by elaborating the quotation. ‘“And they all lived together in a little crooked house.” That’s us. Not really such a little house either. But definitely crooked—running to gables and half-timbering!’

      ‘Are you one of a large family? Brothers and sisters?’

      ‘One brother, one sister, a mother, a father, an uncle, an aunt by marriage, a grandfather, a great-aunt, and a step-grandmother.’

      ‘Good gracious!’ I exclaimed, slightly overwhelmed.

      She laughed.

      ‘Of course we don’t normally all live together. The war and blitzes have brought that about—but I don’t know’—she frowned reflectively—‘perhaps spiritually the family has always lived together—under my grandfather’s eye and protection. He’s rather a Person, my grandfather. He’s over eighty, about four-foot ten, and everybody else looks rather dim beside him.’

      ‘He sounds interesting,’ I said.

      ‘He is interesting. He’s a Greek from Smyrna. Aristide Leonides.’ She added, with a twinkle, ‘He’s extremely rich.’

      ‘Will anybody be rich after this is over?’

      ‘My grandfather will,’ said Sophia with assurance. ‘No soak-the-rich tactics would have any effect on him. He’d just soak the soakers.

      ‘I wonder,’ she added, ‘if you’ll like him?’

      ‘Do you?’ I asked.

      ‘Better than anyone in the world,’ said Sophia.

       CHAPTER 2

      It was over two years before I returned to England. They were not easy years. I wrote to Sophia and heard from her fairly frequently. Her letters, like mine, were not love letters. They were letters written to each other by close friends—they dealt with ideas and thoughts and with comments on the daily trend of life. Yet I know that as far as I was concerned, and I believed as far as Sophia was concerned too, our feelings for each other grew and strengthened.

      I returned to England on a soft grey day in September. The leaves on the trees were golden in the evening light. There were playful gusts of wind. From the airfield I sent a telegram to Sophia.

      ‘Just arrived back. Will you dine this evening Mario’s nine o’clock Charles.’

      A couple of hours later I was sitting reading the Times; and scanning the Births, Marriages and Deaths column my eye was caught by the name Leonides:

       On Sept. 19th, at Three Gables, Swinly Dean, Aristide Leonides, beloved husband of Brenda Leonides, in his eighty-eighth year. Deeply regretted.

      There was another announcement immediately below:

       LEONIDES—Suddenly, at his residence, Three Gables, Swinly Dean, Aristide Leonides. Deeply mourned by his loving children and grandchildren. Flowers to St Eldred’s Church, Swinly Dean.

      I found the two announcements rather curious. There seemed to have been some faulty staff work resulting in overlapping. But my main preoccupation was Sophia. I hastily sent her a second telegram:

       ‘Just seen news of your grandfather’s death. Very sorry. Let me know when I can see you. Charles.’

      A telegram from Sophia reached me at six o’clock at my father’s house. It said:

       ‘Will be at Mario’s nine o’clock. Sophia.’

      The thought of meeting Sophia again made me both nervous and excited. The time crept by with maddening slowness. I was at Mario’s waiting twenty minutes too early. Sophia herself was only five minutes late.

      It is always a shock to meet again someone whom you have not seen for a long time but who has been very much present in your mind during that period. When at last Sophia came through the swing doors our meeting seemed completely unreal. She was wearing black, and that, in some curious way, startled me! Most other women were wearing black, but I got it into my head that it was definitely mourning—and it surprised me that Sophia should be the kind of person who did wear black—even for a near relative.

      We had cocktails—then went and found our table. We talked rather fast and feverishly—asking after old friends of the Cairo days. It was artificial conversation, but it tided us over the first awkwardness. I expressed commiseration for her grandfather’s death and Sophia said quietly that it had been ‘very sudden’. Then we started off again reminiscing. I began to feel, uneasily, that something was the matter—something, I mean, other than the first natural awkwardness of meeting again. There was something wrong, definitely wrong, with Sophia herself. Was she, perhaps, going to tell me that she had found some other man whom she cared for more than she did for me? That her feeling for me had been ‘all a mistake’?

      Somehow I didn’t think it was that—I didn’t know what it was. Meanwhile we continued our artificial talk.

      Then, quite suddenly, as the waiter placed coffee on the table and retired bowing, everything swung into focus. Here were Sophia and I sitting together as so often before at a small table in a restaurant. The years of our separation might never have been.

      ‘Sophia,’ I said.

      And immediately she said, ‘Charles!’

      I drew a deep breath of relief.

      ‘Thank goodness that’s over,’ I

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