Free The Green Gauntlet by R. F. Delderfield Page A

packing up and down, ‘You’re missing Andy, aren’t you, Margy?’
    ‘Like hell I am.’
    ‘Me too. I was thinking, this is the first time we’ve ever been parted. We’ve always done the same things and wanted to do them at the same moment. We had a hell of a lot of fun in the old days, the four of us.’ He stopped pacing and looked down at her. ‘Did you ever really like Monica?’
    ‘No,’ she said, ‘and she didn’t like me, but I put up with her for your sake.’ She looked at him speculatively for a moment. ‘Come to that, were you all that smitten? It always looked to me as if she married you and then woke up to the fact that she had married two men, not one.’
    It was, he thought, a very shrewd assessment but he was not prepared to admit it, or not yet. ‘That’s cock,’ he grumbled, ‘Monica and I hit it off until she got these bloody silly ideas about Service life. She wasn’t upstage when she was in bed!’
    ‘No,’ Margaret said, ‘I can believe that. The snooty type usually aren’t. But you don’t live in bed, do you?’
    She seemed to dismiss the subject and reached out to turn on the radio. Light music dribbled from the set, one of the current morale-boosters about the white cliffs of Dover. She said, kicking off her shoes, ‘I’m a bit tight, Stevie. I keep feeling giggly and then maudlin and anyway, I’ve got to be out of here by five-thirty tomorrow. I’d better turn in now. I’ll brew you a cup of tea and kiss you good-bye in the morning!’
    ‘Kiss me now,’ he said, for some reason feeling immensely grateful to her.
    ‘Not likely! I’ve had half a bottle of Burgundy and three brandies and I can’t hold liquor like you and Andy. If I felt your arms round me you’d have to put me to bed in a straight jacket!’ She lifted her hand and walked, with deliberate steadiness, into the bedroom, continuing to talk to him through the open door as he made up his couch. ‘Don’t open the windows no matter how stuffy it gets! You can’t do it without taking the blackout down and that A.R.P. whippersnapper will be hammering at the door in five seconds flat.’ He heard her yawn and stumble. ‘Are you all right, Margy?’ She didn’t answer so he finished making his shakedown and looked in at the open door. Her clothes were strewn about the floor and she was already asleep with the bedside light still burning. He crossed over to switch it off and looked down on her, noting her pleasing chubby face, fresh complexion, and that absurd peek-a-boo hair-do. He thought, glumly, ‘Old Andy always did know what he was doing, the lucky old sod!’
    He awoke with a start, blinking into the blackness of the big room and seeing nothing but hearing, close at hand, a rhythmical sniffing, like someone tormented by a running cold. The couch, big as it was, did not accommodate him and he had cramp in one leg. It was cold and very still. No sound came from outside, only the long, regular sniffs from close at hand. He sat up, hitching the blankets about his shoulders. ‘Is that you, Margy?’ and when he thought he heard a mumble between the sniffs, he said, ‘Hold on, I’ll turn on the light.’ But she said, urgently, ‘No, Stevie! Leave the light be,’ and he waited, puzzled and mildly apprehensive.
    ‘What is it? Don’t you feel so good?’ and when the sniffs moderated and there was a short silence, ‘Is it Andy? Can’t you cope, Margy?’
    Then she was beside him and he felt her bare shoulders under his hand. She was wearing no dressing-gown, just a flimsy silk nightdress and suddenly he felt a terrible compassion for her as he might have felt for a child left out in the dark and the rain.
    He dragged a blanket from the couch, threw it over her shoulders and held her close to him. ‘Don’t mind me,’ he said, ‘if you want to snivel all night snivel and be done with it!’ and he sat there feeling deeply moved by her helplessness and wondering with part of his mind, where her