Tuesday. But what about the Lovats?'
'Oh, let's cancel that too. We can think of some excuse. I want to get away.'
It had been peaceful at Fairhaven with Sandra and the dogs on the terrace and in the old walled garden, and with golf at Sandley Heath, and pottering down to the farm in the evening with MacTavish at his heels.
He had felt rather like someone who is recovering from an illness.
He had frowned when he saw Rosemary's writing. He'd told her not to write. It was too dangerous. Not that Sandra ever asked him who his letters were from, but all the same it was unwise. Servants weren't always to be trusted.
He ripped open the envelope with some annoyance, having taken the letter into his study. Pages. Simply pages. As he read, the old enchantment swept over him again. She adored him, she loved him more than ever, she couldn't endure not seeing him for five whole days. Was he feeling the same? Did the Leopard miss his Ethiopian?
He half-smiled, half-sighed. That ridiculous joke – born when he had bought her a man's spotted dressing- gown that she had admired. The Leopard changing his spots, and he had said, 'But you mustn't change your skin, darling.' And after that she had called him Leopard and he had called her his Black Beauty.
Damned silly, really. Yes, damned silly. Rather sweet of her to have written such pages and pages. But still she shouldn't have done it. Dash it all, they'd got to be careful. Sandra wasn't the sort of woman who would stand for anything of that kind. If she once got an inkling – Writing letters was dangerous. He'd told Rosemary so. Why couldn't she wait until he got back to town? Dash it all, he'd see her in another two or three days.
There was another letter on the breakfast table the following morning. This time Stephen swore inwardly. He thought Sandra's eyes rested on it for a couple of seconds. But she didn't say anything. Thank goodness she wasn't the sort of woman who asked questions about a man's correspondence.
After breakfast he took the car over to the market town eight miles away. Wouldn't do to put through a call from the village. He got Rosemary on the phone.
'Hullo – that you, Rosemary? Don't write any more letters.'
'Stephen, darling, how lovely to hear your voice!'
'Be careful, can anyone overhear you?'
'Of course not. Oh, angel, I have missed you. Have you missed me?'
'Yes, of course. But don't write. It's much too risky.'
'Did you like my letter? Did it make you feel I was with you? Darling, I want to be with you every minute. Do you feel that too?'
'Yes – but not on the phone, old thing.'
'You're so ridiculously cautious. What does it matter?'
'I'm thinking of you, too, Rosemary. I couldn't bear any trouble to come to you through me.'
'I don't care what happens to me. You know that.'
'Well, I care, sweetheart.'
'When are you coming back?'
'Tuesday.'
'And we'll meet at the flat, Wednesday.'
'Yes – er, yes.'
'Darling, I can hardly bear to wait. Can't you make some excuse and come up today? Oh, Stephen, you could! Politics or something stupid like that?'
'I'm afraid it's out of the question.'
'I don't believe you miss me half as much as I miss you.'
'Nonsense, of course I do.'
When he rang off he felt tired. Why should women insist on being so damned reckless? Rosemary and he must be more careful in future. They'd have to meet less often. Things after that became difficult. He was busy – very busy. It was quite impossible to give as much time to Rosemary – and the trying thing was she didn't seem able to understand. He explained but she wouldn't listen.
'Oh, your stupid old politics – as though they were important!'
'But they are –'
She didn't realise. She didn't care. She took no interest in his work, in his ambitions, in his career. All she wanted was to hear him reiterate again and again that he loved her.
'Just as much as ever? Tell me again that you really love me?'
Surely, he thought, she might take that for granted by this time! She was a lovely creature, lovely – but the trouble was that you couldn't talk to her.
The trouble was they'd been seeing too much of each other. You couldn't keep up an affair at fever heat. They must meet less often – slacken off a bit.
But that made her resentful – very resentful. She was always reproaching him now.
'You don't love me as you used to do.'
And then he'd have to reassure her, to swear that of course he did. And she would constantly resurrect everything he had ever said to her.
'Do you remember when you said it would be lovely if we died together? Fell asleep for ever in each other's arms? Do you remember when you said we'd take a caravan and go off into the desert? Just the stars and the camels – and how we'd forget everything in the world?'
What damned silly things one said when one was in love! They hadn't seemed fatuous at the time, but to have them hashed up in cold blood! Why couldn't women let things decently alone? A man didn't want to be continually reminded what an ass he'd made of himself.
She came out with sudden unreasonable demands. Couldn't he go abroad to the South of France and she'd meet him there? Or go to Sicily or Corsica – one of those places where you never saw anyone you knew? Stephen said grimly that there was no such place in the world. At the most unlikely spots you always met some dear old school friend that you'd never seen for years.
And then she had said something that frightened him.
'Well, but it wouldn't matter, would it?'
He was alert, watchful, suddenly cold within.
'What do you mean?'
She was smiling up at him, that same enchanting smile that had once made his heart turn over and his bones ache with longing. Now it made him merely impatient.
'Leopard, darling, I've thought sometimes that we're stupid to go on trying to carry on this hole-and-corner business. It's not worthy, somehow. Let's go away together. Let's stop pretending. George will divorce me and your wife will divorce you and then we can get married.'
Just like that! Disaster! Ruin! And she couldn't see it!
'I wouldn't let you do such a thing.'
'But darling, I don't care. I'm not really very conventional.'
'But I am. But I am,' thought Stephen.
'I do feel that love is the most important thing in the world. It doesn't matter what people think of us.'
'It would matter to me, my dear. An open scandal of that kind would be the end of my career.'
'But would that really matter? There are hundreds of other things that you could do.'
'Don't be silly.'
'Why have you got to do anything anyway? I've got lots of money, you know. Of my own, I mean, not George's. We could wander about all over the world, going to the most enchanting out-of-the-way places – places, perhaps, where nobody else has ever been. Or to some island in the Pacific – think of it, the hot sun and the blue sea and the coral reefs.'
He did think of it. A South Sea Island ! Of all the idiotic ideas. What sort of a man did she think he was – a beachcomber?
He looked at her with eyes from which the last traces of scales had fallen. A lovely creature with brains of a hen! He'd been mad – utterly and completely mad. But he was sane again now. And he'd got to get out of this fix. Unless he was careful she'd ruin his whole life.
He said all the things that hundreds of men had said before him. They must end it all – so he wrote. It was
