a sort of stop-gap, something to tide over an awkward period? It was, we told each other, only for a little while, a few months at most, just until things got better in England.
Although it’s only a few weeks back that we said it all, it seems like years ago to me; and, just as if it were, indeed, years ago, I can look at the whole thing without too much prejudice. I can’t help wondering, my sweet, just how much we thought we were deceiving ourselves. Although neither of us said as much, I fancy that we were both afraid of facing the simple truth that, barring miracles, there was not a ghost of a chance of my being able to come home in anything like the near future-without going back to the point at which I started when Barnton Heath closed down on me.
So what? Simply this, darling. I have decided to come and take my chance again. I fancy that it was a little unwise of me to take on this job at all; but that is beside the point. You will probably be thinking that this decision is merely the result of a natural home-sickness and love-sickness plus the usual misery of a brand-new job. I wish it were; but I’m afraid it isn’t. I don’t think I’m a particularly chicken-hearted sort of person and I’ve had enough experience to know that the depression that is liable to develop over a new job in strange surroundings and away from old friends is transitory. But this, as I say, is different. It may be that I’m not cut out to be a business man, that I should have stayed in works where I belong; but even if that is true (and I think it is) it doesn’t account for everything. If I were the smartest business man in Europe, I fancy that I should still be making the same decision.
You must be wondering what on earth all this rambling is about, why, after the optimistic note of my second letter (I’d just sacked Serafina and was feeling very competent), I’ve changed my tune so suddenly. I’ll try to be a little more explicit, darling, but you’ll have to take my word for a lot. The truth is that there are things about this job which I didn’t know of when I took it, things that Pelcher and Fitch didn’t and still don’t know, things that, in the few days that I have been here, have landed me in about as absurd a position as you could imagine. I don’t think that I have acted with any less gumption or with any more spirit than any other man in my place would have acted. Nevertheless, the situation is intolerable. I have made my decision in cold blood, and after weighing everything very carefully, I have no conscience about Spartacus. I am in the process of securing a contract for them which will more than repay them for any inconvenience I may cause them.
I have decided to send in my resignation at the end of next month. Why wait? Well, there are some things I have to attend to here which I anticipate will take me some few weeks to dispose of. To be as frank as I dare, my love, I have committed myself to doing something rather foolish, something that, in the ordinary way, I should not have dreamed of doing; but something that in this madhouse we call Europe seems to contain for me at the moment the elements of a crude poetic justice. I must finish what I have begun. Curiously enough, I think your father would sympathise. Do you remember what he was saying that night, so long ago, when we ate at a Chinese restaurant, saw a film afterwards, and then went home? He was waiting for us with a whisky decanter and all the discretion in the world.
I feel sure that all this mystery will irritate you exceedingly. Believe me, I don’t want to be mysterious. If you were here, I should dearly love to tell you all about it. To have to write this incoherent balderdash pleases me not at all. But I knew that you would be making arrangements to spend your holiday here and thought I had better break the news now. You don’t know, dear, how much I am looking forward to being with you again. All my love, sweet, and don’t be too cross with me.
Nicky.
I’m glad to hear that the work is going so well. You professional people don’t know how well off you are. Or do you?
From myself to Alfred Pelcher, Esq.
Via San Giulio, 14, Milano,
April 16.
Dear Mr. Pelcher,
Thank you very much indeed for your letter on the subject of Bellinetti. I quite understand the circumstances and have endeavoured to reorganise the work of the office to suit them.
I have delayed replying to your letter until now as I have been hoping to have something of special interest to report to you. Events have now made that possible, and I am very pleased to be able to tell you that I have secured, in direct competition with our German rivals, an order from the Ordnance Department here for thirty-eight S2 machines of the standard type with minor modifications.
The price at which the order has been secured is 843,000 lire, and although two per cent. of that amount will be offset by an allocation from the special appropriation, the price per machine will still, I think you will find, be higher than any we have been able to obtain previously. Officially, this fact will be accounted for by the modifications. Actually, these modifications are purely nominal in character. Delivery is required within six months.
I am, however, sending full details through to Mr. Fitch in the ordinary way. I thought I would take this opportunity of giving you the news.
Yours sincerely,
Nicholas Marlow.
From Claire to myself.
London,
April 14.
Nicky darling,
I read your letter in the bus this morning and I’m dashing off this reply in the hospital’s time, so it’s going to be shorter than I should like it to be.
Let me say at once, my dear, that never did it occur to me that this Spartacus job was anything more than a postponement of the evil day. But I thought, and still do think, that you were wise to take it. I think that the Barnton Heath mess was a bigger shock to you than you realised yourself. You both under- and over-estimated yourself and started off on the wrong foot to retrieve the situation. I fancy that I may have had something to do with that. I was too anxious to keep your spirits up. You should have begun by worrying yourself sick and ended by not caring a damn. In fact, you began by worrying a little and ended by worrying far too much. Father uttered a mild truth on the subject. “ Your young man,” he said. That’s the way he always refers to you. “ Your young man ought to get a Government job. He’s a technician pure and simple and out of his element in an acquisitive society.” It makes you sound a little flimsy, my pet, but it’s not so wide of the mark. Incidentally, it’s one of the reasons why I approve of you.
But that has very little to do with your letter. To be honest with you, darling, I’m a little worried. Not, I hasten to say, by your decision about Spartacus. I have enormous faith in your judgment and good sense. If you feel that you would be better out of Spartacus, then get out of it with all speed. But as for the rest of it; I’m not going to pretend that I even begin to understand what you’re driving at. Mysterious is a mild word for it. I can quite easily remember what father talked about when we arrived home after we had agreed to make honest folk of one another. Easily, because your replies to the poor dear were so stupid that he asked me at breakfast next morning whether we proposed to get married before or after you had been psychoanalysed. I can’t, I’m afraid, see what possible connection there could be between the Rome-Berlin axis and machine tools, but I’m quite prepared to make allowances for a little mystery. I seem to remember doing a little research for you into the surface tension of gum. You probably have that in mind.
No! what worries me, Nicky, is what you decided to omit from your letter. With you, my love, I never attempt to read between the lines. But I do sometimes read under the lines. You have a habit of crossing out words you don’t like and writing over them the words you do like. Your crossing out is very inefficient on the whole and usually, by holding the paper up to the light, I can read the rejected words. So that when I read you have committed yourself to doing something “ foolish ” and find that the word has been put in to replace a scratched out “ dangerous,” you can understand how I feel.
It is true that “ dangerous ” might have been the wrong word, but it couldn’t have been so hopelessly wide of the mark or you wouldn’t have put it down at all. Besides, taken in conjunction with the rest of your letter (what, by the way, was that “ bit of an accident ” you were so airy about?) it seems to me that it may very well have been the right word, but that you were anxious not to alarm me.
I don’t want to be silly and hysterical about it, but whatever it is you’re doing, Nicky, do take care. Not that I’m such a fool as to think you won’t take care. It seems to me that feminine exhortations of that sort must always
