“Who is it?”
“It’s me, Char.”
“I’m resting.”
“Let me in.”
“No, I’m tired. I’ve got a headache and I’m going to bed.”
“But you must come down for dinner, you must.”
“No, Char, leave me alone!”
Mona felt as if her voice rose, then with an effort she spoke firmly.
“I’m going to bed. I’m not going to argue.”
There was silence as if Char debated whether to try and force her way into the cabin. Then to Mona’s relief she said surlily,
“Very well then, if that’s what you want.”
She moved away. Mona sat tense, listening until she could no longer hear her footsteps and there was only silence. Then feverishly, frantically she started to stuff her clothes into their cases. She felt such a desperate desire to escape it was almost hysterical.
‘I never, never want to see those ghastly women again,’ she told herself.
Eleven
Mona and Lionel had a perfect week together in Alexandria. It was made even more perfect for Mona by the knowledge that she was not returning to Cairo. Lionel had been moved to Vienna, and that was the reason their holiday had been possible.
Mona’s clothes and jewels were sent down to meet her on the ship that took her from Alexandria to Naples. As she stood on the deck and watched the great harbour at Alexandria, with its ships of all nations lying side by side, recede slowly into the distance, she thanked heaven that she had shaken the dust of Egypt from her feet.
‘I loathe the country, the heat, the smell, the people,’ she thought.
But she knew it was Char she loathed because she still felt unclean from the contact with her. And yet, she told herself defiantly, that it had been worth anything to be with Lionel, to charm the lines of care and worry from his face, to know that he was as carefree as a child, as irresponsible in his laughter and his loving as any young boy. For she was not the only one who was beginning to suffer by this unnatural existence. Lionel loved her with all the force of his dynamic personality and his conventional domestic existence was a continual strain.
Ann got on his nerves. She could never have been the right type of wife for him for he needed someone intelligent and sensitive who could respond to his moods. Ann had a solid, sensible character and no imagination. When she accepted Lionel as her husband, she believed their happiness to be complete, with no doubts or misgivings as to the future. She expected, and she found, neither light nor shade in her married life.
To her it was a straightforward, charming existence, with few ups and downs, and those only of a material character. The spiritual issues of life were no problem to Ann – her world was made up of black and white with no half-shades, and in her sheltered existence she had known only the white. She filled her life with small things, with entertaining, with amusements and with seeing to her household. She had no interest in diplomacy, the intrigues of either dictators or statesmen were completely beyond her and she made no effort to understand them.
Her horizon was bounded by her home, and she meant to bring up her children sensibly, neither spoiling them with too much affection, nor fashionably ignoring them. In other words, Ann was the perfect wife for someone who could have been the perfect husband in a moderate sort of way. But Lionel had never understood moderation. He was a clever man, acknowledged as brilliant in his profession, and he suffered, as most brilliant men do, from moods of high elation and deep depression.
He had learnt, however, to control himself so that to the outside world he appeared invariably suave, courteous and distinguished. Only Mona knew at times he was tortured by his own emotions and overwrought, until it seemed as if the fine strings of her nerves were stretched almost to breaking point. He brought to her sympathetic understanding all his troubles and problems, for she alone could save him from himself and charm away his moods of black depression. It amused her sometimes to think how much she knew and how dangerous she might be as a traitor to her own country. There was no doubt that many of Lionel’s successful negotiations, which earned him praise in high places, were due to Mona’s inspiration.
Lionel had no secrets from her, and she hated hiding facts from him. But she could not bring herself to tell him about those awful women and the degradation she had felt at having been so-called friends with them. She had felt that it was almost too fortunate when Lionel had told her that there was no need to return to Cairo and that they were leaving for Austria.
Vienna had indeed seemed a paradise after Cairo. Mona had loved its grey shabbiness, which even in its direst poverty had never become tawdry. Vienna had for her a charm beyond words, she felt as if she perpetually moved to the soft strains of a Strauss waltz. And the people with their smiling faces, their hands outstretched in friendship even while they were in a desperate plight financially, moved her to tears.
The poverty in Vienna was horrifying and yet the courage and bravery of its citizens gave a glamour and beauty even to starvation and penury. Mona stayed at a small hotel that had remained unchanged throughout the centuries. There were big, blue-tiled stoves in the corners of the rooms, religious paintings on the walls, and great gilt beds reminiscent of the days when Vienna really was a city of music and love and laughter.
But the time there had passed all too quickly. Clouds were sweeping over Europe – there were the ominous rumblings and thunderings of the German war machine. Mona left Vienna on Lionel’s insistence two days before Hitler marched in and captured Austria without a shot being fired in her defence. She went to Paris, and Lionel arrived a week later on the diplomatic train.
“What’s going to happen to you now?” Mona asked, and he shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t know,” he replied, “and for the moment, my darling, I don’t care.”
They soon found out. Lionel was posted to Buenos Aires. Once again Mona realised that she would be cut off from social contacts and condemned to continue the lonely life she had led in Cairo. Almost her nerve failed her and she felt that she could not go, but it was useless to tell Lionel that when he turned to her for reassurance, so certain of her love, so sure that she would not fail him.
She agreed – but the night before she left Paris to travel across the Atlantic in a slow Highland boat, while Lionel crossed with Ann in one of the big Royal Mail liners, something happened that might have proved a warning.
They were alone in Paris, for Ann had flown back to England to say goodbye to her parents. They had decided to dine together at one of the little restaurants in the Madeleine. It was so seldom that they had the opportunity of going out together in public that it was something of a gala occasion. Lionel had bought her a huge bunch of orchids to pin on her shoulder against the cool green of her dress and the table at which they dined was decorated with the same flowers.
“How extravagant you are!” Mona had teased him, but he had laughed.
“Nothing is extravagance where you are concerned, darling, only the best is good enough.”
A trite enough saying, but not when Lionel said it.
The band had played while they ate a dinner chosen with the taste of a connoisseur, and drank wines that had lain for years covered in cobwebs in the cellar waiting for just such an occasion. There was a cabaret, but they had been too happy to watch it. Lionel’s hand had held Mona’s beneath the table, and she had felt as young and as carefree as if she were only eighteen and they had just become engaged.
‘I wonder,’ she asked herself, ‘if our love would have lasted had we been married all these years? Would we still have felt this passionate need for each other, this yearning of heart, mind, and soul for the other when we are apart?’
She turned to tell Lionel something of what she was thinking when the words froze on her lips and she sat staring at the doorway, for there, peering in at the crowded room, was Char Strathwyn! She was with a party, and a moment later they were being shown into another part of the room. Quickly Mona picked up a menu card and held it in front of her face, but she was certain in her mind that Char had seen her and noticed Lionel also.
‘Why should it matter?’ Mona asked herself. ‘I’m leaving Paris tomorrow.’
But despite common sense and her own endeavours at reassurance, she knew that it did matter. Char was dangerous. If she did not know who Lionel was, she would find out in some way and she would make use of the information – Mona was certain of that.
Lionel had noticed nothing, but instinctively he realised a few moments later that some magic had gone from the evening.
