She stepped out on to the platform of a big London terminus carrying her suit-case. She walked slowly towards the exit. She had no idea where she was going. Indeed, she had nowhere to go. Annette felt that she had been driven in a small circle, and that now all her possibilities of movement were exhausted. She pa.s.sed a telephone box. Annette believed in the telephone. She paused to look at it. It was warm and red and brightly lighted. It seemed to her suddenly like a little shrine. Like a traveller who casts himself in desperation before a saint at the wayside, Annette entered. She lifted the receiver as if she expected to hear from it immediately some message of hope. Then she knew what she must do. She was amazed that she had not thought of it earlier. She knew also that it was her last card.

She opened her bag and fumbled for Nicholas's letter. It gave the address of the hotel in Cannes and a telephone number. She picked up the phone again and asked for Continental.

'I want to make a call to Cannes,' said Annette - 'Cannes in France.' As she said this it seemed as hopeless as asking to be put through to Valhalla. But the operator took it calmly. Yes, it appeared that it was quite possible for her to speak to Cannes; it would cost her nine shillings for three minutes.

Annette began to pour pieces of silver out of her handbag on to the floor of the box. Meanwhile, beside her ear a long corridor of sound was opening out telescopically, section after section, and the last piece was to contain the voice of Nicholas. English voices were speaking to each other in a s.p.a.ce of sound - and now suddenly clear and crisp a French voice had joined the conversation. Annette imagined that she could hear the waves of the Channel breaking across the line. A voice in Paris was speaking to a voice in Provence. Annette waited. The intensity of her desire to speak to Nicholas was almost depriving her of breath. At last far away there was the sound of a telephone ringing, a French telephone, a telephone in a hotel in Cannes. A voice announced the name of the hotel. The intermediate voices turned about, speaking back again in the direction of Annette. 'Vous avez la communication, Londres,' said a distant voice.

'Speak up, you're through,' said a voice close beside her ear.

'Je voudrais parler avec Monsieur c.o.c.keyne,' said Annette. She found she was hoa.r.s.e and had to clear her throat.

'Avec Monsieur qui?' said the French voice, rather impatiently.

'c.o.c.keyne,' said Annette, and spelt the name out.

'Ah, c.o.c.keyne? said the French voice. 'Attendez un moment. Qui est d I'appareil?'

'Sa sour,' said Annette. The pressure on her heart relaxed. She kissed Nicholas's letter.

A moment later the voice was speaking again. 'Monsieur est parti, il est parti ce matin. Non, il n'a pas laisse d'adresse.'

Annette put the receiver down slowly. She trailed out of the telephone box. She trailed along the street, touching walls and railings with her hand. Now at last she knew what she was going to do. Annette had been deeply impressed by the failure of her attempt to sacrifice her jewels. It had not entered her head to pursue Jan Lusiewicz or to attempt to retrieve her property from him, since she regarded him as the messenger of fate. Her symbolic gesture had been rejected. Annette left her suit-case at a cloakroom and then she took a taxi to Campden Hill Square. Her plans appeared suddenly small and clear and inevitable. Life had become simple again. She would kill herself.

The intention appeared already conjoined with the method. In one of the cupboards at Campden Hill Square Rosa kept two bottles of sleeping-tablets which she had told Annette were quite enough to be fatal if taken all at once. Annette felt her mind narrowing to a tiny focus. She wanted those two little bottles with the desperation of a lover. She did not conceive that anyone would hinder her; and no one did. The front door was locked, but she let herself in with her key and walked straight to the cupboard. The two bottles were there, and she pocketed them. She looked into her own room. It looked as if someone else were living there. She walked down the stairs again, quietly but not on tiptoe. There were sounds from Hunter's room, but none from Rosa's. She left the house, banging the door. The taxi was still waiting. She gave the name of a discreet and expensive hotel near Hyde Park where her parents sometimes stayed.

The taxi sped away through Kensington. Annette examined the bottles. Rosa had stopped using the tablets some time ago and each bottle seemed to be quite full. Annette hugged them to her. She wanted to be alone with them. She gulped for air, and forced herself to look out of the window. She was impatient for the journey to end. She was still in the world.

The door of the hotel appeared at last, very tall and white. Annette went through it. 'I should like a room facing the Park,' said Annette.

Her voice came out with difficulty. Through a veil she looked into the eyes of the receptionist. He replied very quietly, almost in a whisper, as if he knew what it was that confronted him. Annette walked up the stairs with extreme slowness. The room was big, with two great windows which opened on to a balcony. Outside, and beyond the road, lay the Park. Women with perambulators were parading in the green walks, and down long vistas of trees children bowled hoops while dogs ran barking behind them. Someone was flying a kite. Annette looked out. Already they seemed to her as remote as figures painted in a book of hours.

'End this farce,' said Annette aloud. She was alone now. 'End this farce.' These words seemed to express the essence of her resolution.

'Why continue in pain?' she said. She looked at the people going to and fro in the Park. Through holes in the clouds a pale sunlight fell upon them in shafts.

'End this farce,' she said. She sat down on the edge of the bed with her eyes glazed. She was the centre of an extraordinary solitude. Her head was growing and growing until it enclosed the whole world. Annette was no longer present. She was become the boundary of the universe and within her all things lived and moved and had their being. Death could not change her now more than she was already changed. 'End this farce,' said the moving lips of Annette.

The telephone rang. Annette started violently and lifted the receiver. It was the management asking if she wanted anything. No, she wanted nothing. She put down the receiver. As she thought, raggedly and incoherently, of what she was going to do, the thought of Mischa was scarcely present to her mind. What came back to her now were the sensations of childhood: the loneliness and boredom and fear of strange places, the hurry and the noise of a world which was never her own, the alien odour of the expensive hotel and the long-distance train. These were the things that had prefigured the present moment.

She took the two little bottles out of her handbag. Is it enough? she wondered. Then she had another idea. She lifted the telephone again. Yes, after all she would like something. Could they send up three bottles of gin? Annette had read in the papers that sleeping-tablets taken after alcohol were twice as deadly.

The waiter came in. Annette did not look at him, but she could see from the corner of her eye that his att.i.tude expressed curiosity and impertinence. He put the bottles on the table.

'Pardon me, miss,' said the waiter, 'how many gla.s.ses shall I bring?'

'One,' said Annette. 'Oh, I mean six, please.' She did not want to arouse suspicions.

'Is there anything else you'd like for your little party?' said the waiter. 'Olives are nice, cheese straws, crisps, we can even do you a - '

'Nothing else,' said Annette. The waiter went away. He returned with the gla.s.ses and then went away again.

Annette got up and walked about the room. She opened a bottle of gin and poured out a gla.s.sful. She drank it rapidly. At once she began to feel a bit different. She drank a little more gin. No half measures, thought Annette. She listened to the silence in the room. To die in silence. She turned about savagely. If she could only pull the hotel down on top of her, leap into a roaring fire, blow herself up with a bomb. Anything rather than this silent ending. Within her desire for annihilation a destructive frenzy awoke to life.

'End it!' exclaimed Annette. She hurled her gla.s.s into the fireplace. She looked at the gin bottles and at the row of gla.s.ses, and a macabre idea came to her. A party. Why not? Slowly she lifted the receiver and dialled John Rainborough's number. She would be attending her own wake.

Rainborough was sitting in his drawing-room trying to make up his mind to telephone Agnes Cas.e.m.e.nt. He had promised to ring her during the afternoon, but had kept putting it off. It was now becoming, in equal degrees, both essential and impossible that he should do so at once; and as he meditated upon this, turning it into a problem of metaphysical dimensions, it gave him the image of his whole life. For Rainborough was now engaged to be married to Agnes Cas.e.m.e.nt. How this thing had happened was not very clear to Rainborough. Yet it was, he was determined to think, quite inevitable. That much was certain. Must face up to my responsibilities, said Rainborough vaguely to himself as he contemplated the telephone. Need ballast. All this wandering about no good. Must root myself in life. Children and so on. Marriage just what I need. Must have courage to define myself. Naturally, it's painful. But best thing really. That's my road, I knew it all along.

These thoughts floated in fragments on the surface of his mind; but underneath there was fear and horror and sheer astonishment. How on earth had it happened? He remembered for the hundredth time the scene in the country lane. The open car was at rest under the opening fans of a young beech tree. The dewy cream of blackthorn was spreading through all the hedges. Beyond a five-barred gate lay a water-meadow rank with kingcups. Miss Cas.e.m.e.nt's perfume was mingled with scents of pollen and manure. Far away there was the sound of a tractor. A bird began to sing in the beech tree. Rainborough had asked her to marry him. He wondered why; and the thought came to him that what had really happened in that moment was that he had become engaged to Miss Cas.e.m.e.nt's red M.G.

The telephone rang. Rainborough started guiltily and lifted the receiver with a sickly look. But the voice was not that of his bride-to-be. With pleasure he recognized the voice of Annette. He greeted her effusively. A party! How splendid! And straightaway. Just what he felt like. Yes, he'd come at once. So glad she was better. Lovely to see her. He jumped to his feet. As he was leaving the house he remembered that he had not telephoned Miss Cas.e.m.e.nt. He returned gloomily and like a man in a play he spoke his lines. It was not difficult to think of a plausible falsehood. He reflected that this would not be the last. He felt that his marriage had already started.

Annette was telephoning the house in Campden Hill Square. She reckoned that at this hour Rosa would be sure to be at work, and that she might find Hunter alone. Hunter answered the call and exclaimed with delight and relief when he heard Annette's voice. Yes, he'd come at once. How unfortunate that Rosa was out. Yes, at once. After that Annette sat holding the receiver in her hand for so long that the management sent up to ask her either to replace it or to make her call. She dialled Mischa Fox's number. The usual voice told her politely that Mr Fox was still away. She asked for Calvin Blick. In a moment Calvin's voice was heard.

'Mr Blick,' said Annette, 'I'm afraid that I was rather rude and distracted last time we met. I'd be very glad if you could come and take a drink with me now in a quieter atmosphere.' Calvin was glad too, he was delighted, he looked forward, yes at once.

Annette sank back into the chair and drank some more gin. She was glad to think that representatives of both Mischa and Rosa were going to be present. How she would make them sorry, those two! - and for a moment it seemed to her as if it was they who were about to be put down. Annette began to prepare the scene. The room had a bathroom attached to it, and here Annette secreted the two little bottles. She ordered some more gin and some vermouth and some champagne. It occurred to her to wonder whether she should pay the bill. But then with an inward jerk which was half sickening she realized that she had already left the region where one pays one's bills. In the country which she had entered now gin and French was free.

Calvin Blick was the first to arrive. Calvin, who never took things at their face value, looked curiously at Annette. He could see that she had been drinking. 'No, thank you,' he said. 'I never touch the stuff.'

While Annette was ordering orange juice, John Rainborough came in.

Calvin, who seemed to be in a very cheerful mood, greeted him noisily. 'Why, you're looking feverish, my dear Rainborough!' he cried. 'Too much work at the office, eh? You administrative birds are never done!'

'I've resigned,' said Rainborough sourly.

Calvin, who had been aware of this for several days, began a rigmarole of exclamations of surprise and embarra.s.sing questions to which he already knew the answer.

Hunter came in. He looked very dismayed when he saw Calvin, whom he had not seen or heard of since the night of Mischa Fox's party. Annette had withdrawn into a corner and was starting on her fifth gla.s.s of neat gin.

'May I do the honours,' said Calvin, 'if Miss c.o.c.keyne will allow me? What's yours, my dear Rainborough?'

'I'll have some champagne,' said Rainborough. And added, after all I've got something to celebrate! This, however, he said to himself only. Concerning their intentions he had sworn Miss Cas.e.m.e.nt to secrecy. This was a device to keep the realization of his fate from too rudely and rapidly flooding through his own consciousness.

Hunter accepted a little gin, and then went up to Annette, who was standing staring at them all with a strange smile.

'Annette,' he said, 'please come home to Campden Hill Square. Rosa is very sorry for all that's happened and wants you to come back.' Rosa's sorrow was Hunter's conjecture; but he looked upon Annette with real concern.

'Home!' said Annette, catching on to the word. 'Cam' Hill Square isn't my home. I have no home. I'm a refugee!' She looked at them all defiantly. They were looking at her.

'I'm going to end this farce,' said Annette. She poured the rest of the gin down her throat.

'I say, steady on!' said Hunter.

'What price the School of Life now, Annette?' said Calvin.

'It's the end of term,' said Annette. She turned her back on them and looked out of the window. The Park was darkening. A band of dark clouds lay across the sky, and underneath it was the last pale brilliance of the evening. The trees were starkly revealed, every leaf showing. The children and the dogs had gone home. Lovers strolled here and there along the avenues. As she watched, the scene was fading. A blue which was of the night was spread upon the darkness of the clouds.

'Put on the light!' said Annette. She began to draw the curtains.

'Do come home!' said Hunter, in a low voice.

'Let her be!' said Calvin.

Annette went into the bathroom. She opened the first bottle and poured a number of tablets out into the palm of her hand. She filled a tumbler with water. As she did so she saw her face in the gla.s.s. Her eyes had become very large and blackand her face stared back at her like a wild face in a dream. As she put one of the tablets into her mouth she watched herself in the mirror. It was easier that way. She swallowed the tablet, and then several more. It was slow work. Her throat seemed to be closing up against them. There was a roar of laughter from the room behind her. Annette poured some of the tablets into the water but they failed to melt. She searched round for something to crush them with. Lying on the floor behind the foot of the washbasin she found a toothbrush, left behind no doubt by the previous guest. She picked it up, but rejected it as unhygienic; then it occurred to her that this didn't matter now. This was a shock. She began to crush the tablets, drinking up the powdery liquid as she did so and adding more water. In this way she finished up the whole of the first bottle of tablets. She started on the second bottle. She found that she was unable to stand, and sat down on a chair. It's working already, thought Annette.

Someone was knocking on the door. Hunter's voice said, 'Annette, are you all right?'

'I'm fine,' said Annette, or something in her head said that, and some noise came out of her mouth. How interesting this is, thought Annette. It will be fun to describe it all to Nicholas. Then the thought followed, I shall never tell this to Nicholas. Only a few tablets remained in the second bottle. Annette put it down. That was enough surely. She was beginning to feel very strange indeed. Her thoughts were moving extremely slowly.

'So this is what it is like,' said Annette half aloud. One's thoughts become so slow, like a clock running down. And never to tell Nicholas.

Annette opened the bathroom door and entered the bedroom again. There were some people there and their mouths were round with laughter. Annette picked up the gin bottle and began to pour out some gin with a shaking hand.

'Annette!' said Hunter close beside her. 'You've had enough to drink.' The gin was splashing over Annette's hand.

'End this farce,' said Annette. She licked the gin from her hand. Then she began to study her hand. It struggled before her like a dying animal. It was a dying animal. Her poor hand, it didn't want to die. She had not asked its permission.

'My poor hand!' said Annette. Then she found that the tears were quietly flowing from her eyes. Perhaps they had been flowing for a long time. She stared at her hand with fascination.

Rainborough and Calvin were looking at her curiously.

'What's the matter with your hand?' said Rainborough. 'Have you cut it?' He took her hand and inspected it.

'Oh, Annette, don't cry!' said Hunter. He sounded as if he were going to cry too. 'Here, have some more gin.' He filled up her gla.s.s and then his own. Annette began to sob hysterically.

'The girl's had far too much to drink,' said Rainborough.

'I don't know,' said Calvin. 'I think there's something else. Annette! Annette!' he called to her loudly, as one might to someone who was already far away.

Annette swung round and subsided into an armchair. Hunter knelt beside her. A black ring was closing upon her field of vision. Somewhere in the centre a light still flickered and she saw the faces of Rainborough, Calvin and Hunter bent over her. Incoherent with sobbing she grasped Hunter by the shoulder. He put his arm about her. 'Stop it, Annette!' cried Hunter in anguish.

Annette was trying to say something, but only sobbing cries would come out of her mouth. It was terrible to hear. 'I've - taken - poison,' she gasped out at last, scarcely audibly through the high continuous wail which was issuing now from her lips.

'What did she say?' said Rainborough.

'She says she's taken poison!' said Hunter.

'She's drunk!' said Rainborough.

'No, I think it's true!' said Calvin, and his eyes were shining.

At that moment the door of the room burst abruptly open and two tall figures came striding in.

'Andrew! Marcia!' cried Annette, and fell back in her chair.

The trio grouped about her, Hunter supporting her shoulders, Calvin peering closely into her face, and Rainborough stooping and holding her hand, were for an instant petrified with amazement. Then, guiltily, they sprang apart. Annette's parents bore down upon her. From either side they raised her up. She hung limply from their long arms.

'She's poisoned herself!' cried Hunter shrilly. 'We must have a doctor!'

After that the room was full of cries and activity. Annette's mother was saying something very rapid and high-pitched in French. Annette's father was asking the management to put him through to a hospital. Annette was moaning with her eyes half closed. Her father was slapping her cheeks and asking her what it was that she had taken. Hunter was uttering incoherent lamentations. Rainborough was explaining to no one in particular that he had not had the faintest idea until two minutes ago that Annette - the thing was unthinkable - really he had had no idea. Calvin watched and poured himself out a little more orange juice. Men in black coats came in followed by men in white coats. The doctor was saying something to the manager of the hotel. Annette was now lying quite limp and quiet. Her father was searching the room.

Rainborough emerged from the bathroom. 'This is what she took,' he said. 'It looks like sleeping-tablets. Luminal, probably.' He held up the two bottles.

Hunter dabbed his eyes. 'Let me look,' he said. He examined the two bottles. Then he sat down on the bed and began to laugh helplessly.

'The boy's hysterical,' said Rainborough.

For a moment Hunter was speechless with laughter. When at last he was able to stammer out a few words he said, 'Annette's suffering - from too much gin and an overdose of milk of magnesia!' He rolled back among the pillows.

Twenty-Four.

IT was about an hour later. In the hotel room there remained now only John Rainborough and Marcia c.o.c.keyne. Hunter had accompanied Annette and her father to the hospital Calvin had disappeared; and it was some ten minutes since Andrew had telephoned to say that Hunter had indeed been right, and that Annette was by now almost recovered. After she had been extremely sick, her mistake had been explained to her. It was a long time before she was convinced. At the moment she was weeping tears of rage.

'How did you know where to find her?' asked Rainborough.

'We went of course to Campden Hill Square,' said Marcia, 'and there quite open upon the table was a note which Hunter had left for Rosa to say where Annette was. So we came at once.'

'Won't you have a drink now?' said Rainborough.

'Mais oui,' said Marcia, 'some champagne perhaps. We have something to celebrate, no?'

This phrase made Rainborough sigh deeply as he poured out the champagne. He then took a liberal quant.i.ty for himself. 'May I order you a taxi?' he asked.

'But no,' said Marcia, 'I have my own car outside. Let me rather take you home.'

Rainborough thanked her and they prepared to leave. He helped her on with her coat. Indeed she was beautiful. She had the same pale skin and small head as Annette, but a straighter nose and more luxuriant chestnut hair which fell in a rolling ma.s.s on to her neck. Approaching near to this radiant stuff, Rainborough inhaled a perfume which made him pause in astonishment. After the harsh sweetness which emanated from Miss Cas.e.m.e.nt and Miss Perkins the scent of Marcia was of a celestial subtlety. It was not exactly a scent of flowers. It was more like a scent of wood. Sandalwood perhaps, thought Rainborough. He had never smelt sandalwood, but he suddenly felt sure that it must smell like this. It occurred to him suddenly that the whole extraordinary ensemble of powder, perfume and paint which gave so artificial a surface to Miss Cas.e.m.e.nt lay upon Marcia as a natural bloom. She was an exotic flower, like flowers which Rainborough had seen in southern countries, which were hardly like flowers at all, yet were undoubtedly products of nature. Rainborough's norm was still the wild rose, although he no longer even desired these simple blossoms.

With an effort he restrained himself from plunging his nose into the shining ma.s.s of Marcia's hair to smell it ecstatically. The coat was now on, and Rainborough walked politely round to the front. Here he observed her eyes, which were of a rather dark flecked blue colour and set wide apart. Upon the wide expanse between them how glorious a privilege, thought Rainborough, it would be to imprint a kiss.

Marcia was saying something for the second time.

'Oh yes!' said Rainborough, and told her his address. They walked together down the stairs.

Outside it was night. At the door, revealed in the bright light of the portico, stood a black Mercedes. Rainborough stumbled towards it submissively and stooped into its soft red interior. He lay back helplessly on the cushions. With undisguised admiration he watched Marcia start the engine. It was dark in the car. Rainborough sat with one leg curled under him watching in the rapidly pa.s.sing illumination of street lamps and neon signs the beautiful profile of his companion appearing and disappearing. When they reached his door it did not even occur to him to ask her in, so inconceivable did he find it that they should have to part so soon.

Marcia came into the house. Rainborough put on lights and fires. He pulled the curtains to conceal the wrecked garden, pale with fallen stones and builders' timber. Then he poured out drinks for Marcia and himself. The sandalwood perfume filled the room. He offered her a cigarette and struck a match. As he held the flame up, lighting the pallor of her face, his hand was shaking violently.

Marcia took his wrist between two cool white fingers and held his hand steady while she lit the cigarette, looking all the time into his eyes. 'Mais qu'est-ce que vous avez?' she said. 'You are distressed, Mr Rainborough. My little girl will be all right. But you are still upset, I think?'

'Yes,' said Rainborough. To h.e.l.l with your little girl, he thought. He realized he was drunk. He had a feeling of ground subsiding far under his feet. 'Yes,' he said, 'I have various troubles.'

Marcia drew at the cigarette. Then she suddenly handed it back to Rainborough. He put it to his lips. It was like a healing draught.