“Penny — told me. In the beginning.”
“So, Penny confided in you?” A streak of near-physical pain stabbed through Gideon. Confided in Alec, he thought, not in me.
“Yes.”
“In what circumstances?”
“George,” Alec Hobbs said, quietly. “You’re making very heavy weather of this.”
Gideon paused, considering that; gripping the pipe until it strained his sinews and his knuckles, hurtfully. He was silent for a long time.
“Yes,” he conceded at last. “I think perhaps I am. But I’ll do it my way, all the same. What were the circumstances in which Penny confided in you about Kate’s health?”
“We-Penny and I have seen quite a lot of each other, lately.”
“I see,” said Gideon. “You and Penny, close friends.”
Hobbs drew in his breath. He looked a little baffled, and on the defensive: his expression was very set, his eyes wide open, rounded, intent.
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Quite — quite a while.”
“I see.” Gideon pushed back his chair and thrust his way towards the window, staring out over the summery brightness, the colour, the bridge with its ceaseless flow of traffic, the masses of people. His beloved London. He had stood at this window and concentrated on some of the major problems of his professional life, but never before had he stood there thinking with such fierce intensity of personal, emotional family matters.
Slowly, a subconscious voice began to whisper: “Don’t let this get out of perspective, George. Take it calmly, take it calmly. You’ve had a shock remember!” And then his consciousness took over. My God-he’s forty-odd! Penny’s not much more than half his age . . . And behind my back . . . My God-Alec Hobbs!”
He did not look round.
“How long, Alec?” Thank heavens that came out quite naturally.
“It really began at the River Pageant last year,” said Hobbs, flatly. “I was with Penny, remember.”
“I remember.”
“I asked you if you would mind if I took her out to dinner.”
“I remember that, too.” Gideon could see Penny’s eager eyes, her obvious delight in the thought of going to a West End restaurant with such an escort. It had been, for her and for Kate, a golden, glorious evening. But he had never dreamed . . .
“We drifted into the habit,” Hobbs said now, and when Gideon made no comment, went on: “Especially after late rehearsals, or a late performance. I would meet her and we would go to a place in Fulham or Chelsea, or — to my flat,”
“Ah!” Gideon turned round sharply.
They stared at each other very tensely.
Again Gideon’s warning inner voice sounded: “This is today. We’re not living in yesterday — and she tent twenty-one: she’s twenty-five. She’s a young woman.” Then his conscious self reasserted itself: Hobbs and Penny! But she had a young man — she was always having different young men: there was only one with whom she had been serious. Had she told him nothing?
“This is today, remember!”
“George,” Alec Hobbs said, in a very calm voice. “I am in love with Penny. Very deeply in love. But I have — you must know that I would behave as if she were my own daughter. I am not at all sure how she feels about me.”
Gideon was stung to retort: “As a father, no doubt!”
He glared. Hobbs glared. Then quite suddenly, Hobbs’ expression changed and a smile hovered. As the younger man relaxed, Gideon too saw the funny side of it, and realised how overwrought he could soon become. The very realisation made him relax and chuckle.
“Shall we settle for uncle?” Hobbs suggested.
“I don’t care what we settle for,” Gideon said. Hobbs wouldn’t lie to him, Hobbs hadn’t been sleeping with the child, Hobbs — whatever his feelings, his being in love — had controlled himself. He could exert his self-control much more firmly than any man Gideon knew.
Thank God he, Gideon, had pulled himself together! He moved back to his desk — and the telephone shrilled. He started, and this time, snatched it up.
“Yes?”
“There’s still no answer from Mrs. Gideon, sir.”
“Keep trying,” Gideon ordered, and put the receiver down. “It looks as if she’s out shopping,” he remarked to Hobbs. He wasn’t worried, yet. He wasn’t even aware that he had been so astonished — so shocked — by the revelation about Hobbs and Penelope, that he had not given Kate a thought in the past ten minutes. “How often do you see each other?” he asked, then added mildly: “I just want to get the picture clearly, Alec.”
“Of course.” Hobbs took out a flat, gold cigarette case. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
