after her.
“Note here for you, Nurse Lingard.”
She came back, her heart lurching, recognising the hand.
“No,” she longed to say, “keep it and throw it away, I don’t want it.” She took it with a slur of thanks.
“Mr. Freeborn left it.” The porter’s sandy eyebrows bristled with interest. “You only missed him by a minute or two.”
“It doesn’t matter, thank you.”
She put it in her pocket, and went up to her room. She could still tear it up, now, in its envelope, and go away, her half-dulled wounds untouched. Sitting down on the bed, she opened the envelope with cold clumsy hands.
Mic had written:
“Dear Vivian,
“I let you go yesterday because we were neither of us in a state to improve things by prolonging them. Even now I find I haven’t much to say. You know about me, and whether you find me intolerable or not won’t depend on my excuses or apologies, but on your temperament and habits of mind. In any case I don’t want to excuse anything, except a moment of blind selfishness for which no excuse can exist. Even that I can’t repent of as full as decency demands; the results have been too important to me.
“You will wonder, if that’s all I have to say, why I couldn’t have left you in peace. I would have, for a little longer anyway, if you hadn’t said good-bye so finally. You meant it, obviously, at the time, and small wonder. Do you still? I think, myself, that ours isn’t the sort of relationship that can cease to exist so easily. Neither of us, I imagine, has ever been much amused by the standard boy-meets-girl manoeuvres. We are people first, and belong to our sexes rather incidentally. We liked one another as people, and, as a person, I shall miss you damnably if you go. Does it matter so much that I kissed you once because you looked like Jan? It might, if it could happen again, but it couldn’t. Believe that, and sometime I’ll tell you why.
“Can’t we still pursue a few human interests together? I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t feel this would be easier for you than for me, since it was I who made a fool of myself, not you. Write to me sometime, and tell me what you think.
“Yours, any way you like,
“Mic”
Vivian lay down on the bed, her face on the cool surface of the letter. She thought, He must be lying, of course, to save my face. How could he not know that I kissed him, and held him, and wanted him?—And still want him, added her restless body; she jerked herself upright again. Or perhaps he thinks I respond like that naturally to any sort of kiss. Or was he really so beside himself he can’t remember what did happen? (I kissed you once, he says.) But that isn’t the way he writes. She read the letter again. It was very tidy: not a first copy, she thought. Is it really possible that he thinks I’ll answer it?
“Because you looked like Jan.” She found herself reading and re-reading it; it was, somehow, a relief to see it written down. A sentence among other sentences, it diminished, falling into place in the ground-plan instead of filling the sky. It went over the turn of the page—“I kissed you,” on one side, “once because you looked like Jan,” on the other. She sat reading the first half, slowly, for a long time; then flipped the page over quickly and read the second.
Looking suddenly at the clock, she found that she had been there for half an hour, had missed dinner, and had five minutes to change and get on duty. The letter she pushed into her pocket. There was no time now, she said to herself, to tear it too small for the corridor maid to read.
Valentine met her at the door of Verdun.
“Oh, there you are, Lingard. Run along quick to Malplaquet. You’re extra there today. They’ve a big bunch of casualties in—something blew up at the power station, I think.”
Extra again, thought Vivian wearily, as she walked the long corridor to the men’s surgical wards. Never knowing your off-duty. But I forgot, it doesn’t matter
“Note here for you, Nurse Lingard.”
She came back, her heart lurching, recognising the hand.
“No,” she longed to say, “keep it and throw it away, I don’t want it.” She took it with a slur of thanks.
“Mr. Freeborn left it.” The porter’s sandy eyebrows bristled with interest. “You only missed him by a minute or two.”
“It doesn’t matter, thank you.”
She put it in her pocket, and went up to her room. She could still tear it up, now, in its envelope, and go away, her half-dulled wounds untouched. Sitting down on the bed, she opened the envelope with cold clumsy hands.
Mic had written:
“Dear Vivian,
“I let you go yesterday because we were neither of us in a state to improve things by prolonging them. Even now I find I haven’t much to say. You know about me, and whether you find me intolerable or not won’t depend on my excuses or apologies, but on your temperament and habits of mind. In any case I don’t want to excuse anything, except a moment of blind selfishness for which no excuse can exist. Even that I can’t repent of as full as decency demands; the results have been too important to me.
“You will wonder, if that’s all I have to say, why I couldn’t have left you in peace. I would have, for a little longer anyway, if you hadn’t said good-bye so finally. You meant it, obviously, at the time, and small wonder. Do you still? I think, myself, that ours isn’t the sort of relationship that can cease to exist so easily. Neither of us, I imagine, has ever been much amused by the standard boy-meets-girl manoeuvres. We are people first, and belong to our sexes rather incidentally. We liked one another as people, and, as a person, I shall miss you damnably if you go. Does it matter so much that I kissed you once because you looked like Jan? It might, if it could happen again, but it couldn’t. Believe that, and sometime I’ll tell you why.
“Can’t we still pursue a few human interests together? I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t feel this would be easier for you than for me, since it was I who made a fool of myself, not you. Write to me sometime, and tell me what you think.
“Yours, any way you like,
“Mic”
Vivian lay down on the bed, her face on the cool surface of the letter. She thought, He must be lying, of course, to save my face. How could he not know that I kissed him, and held him, and wanted him?—And still want him, added her restless body; she jerked herself upright again. Or perhaps he thinks I respond like that naturally to any sort of kiss. Or was he really so beside himself he can’t remember what did happen? (I kissed you once, he says.) But that isn’t the way he writes. She read the letter again. It was very tidy: not a first copy, she thought. Is it really possible that he thinks I’ll answer it?
“Because you looked like Jan.” She found herself reading and re-reading it; it was, somehow, a relief to see it written down. A sentence among other sentences, it diminished, falling into place in the ground-plan instead of filling the sky. It went over the turn of the page—“I kissed you,” on one side, “once because you looked like Jan,” on the other. She sat reading the first half, slowly, for a long time; then flipped the page over quickly and read the second.
Looking suddenly at the clock, she found that she had been there for half an hour, had missed dinner, and had five minutes to change and get on duty. The letter she pushed into her pocket. There was no time now, she said to herself, to tear it too small for the corridor maid to read.
Valentine met her at the door of Verdun.
“Oh, there you are, Lingard. Run along quick to Malplaquet. You’re extra there today. They’ve a big bunch of casualties in—something blew up at the power station, I think.”
Extra again, thought Vivian wearily, as she walked the long corridor to the men’s surgical wards. Never knowing your off-duty. But I forgot, it doesn’t matter
Similar Books
