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"Oh, Johnny; I was so frightened I'd lose you
. . . ." In gulping whispers, she poured out
the secrets of her heart
How does a girl accept graciously and gratefully a love she has stumbled on so miraculously...? And then, how does she keep it?
Vision Of Love
by SYBIL BURR
ILLUSTRATED BY JOE BOWLER
CHRISTINE awoke with her heart-racing. She sat up, her eyes turning instinctively to the hanger on the wardrobe. With a feeling of incredulous joy she stared at her wedding dress.
She slipped out of bed. The clock in the hall dropped six strokes into the hushed air.
Five hours to go, Christine thought. Surely nothing can possibly happen to snatch it from me now. I can't get run over because I shan't be going out until, it's time. I haven't cut myself. So I can't get poisoned. I saw Johnny last night. He still loved me then.
Christine knelt in front of the dress, passionately grateful to fate, which had given her this opportunity to prove that she could achieve things like other people.
She realized suddenly that she was shivering with cold. The new blue brocade dressing gown, bought to match the new blue nylon nightdress, lay over a chair ready to be packed.
Christine averted her eyes.
She reached for the familiar camel-hair, conscious of the birth-pangs of a new fear beneath the old.
In the secret places of her mind she had conquered her fears only as far as putting on the wedding dress and walking up the aisle of St. Marks towards Johnny.
Beyond the miracle of Johnny wanting to marry her, she had not dared to think.
Her bedroom door opened quietly. Christine swung round. Her mother was standing in the doorway.
"Oh, you're up," Mrs. Bertram said briefly. "You'd better be quick in the bathroom. Susan's coming to see to your hair. What a pity you've never been clever at managing your own. You won't want to keep Susan waiting."
Mrs. Bertram's last remark wasn't a question. It was a command.
Meekly, Christine gathered up her towel, stifling a small mutinous desire to ask if today it might not be her privilege to keep Susan waiting for once.
But even as she went past her mother towards the bathroom, she knew she would never dare.
She knew how fiercely proud of Susan her mother was, of her sister's fortunate marriage, her lovely house, her good solid husband who was even now worth good solid thousands.
Christine knew that in her mother's eyes, Johnny, with only a very junior position in his father's business, cut a very poor figure indeed.
But still, Mrs. Bertram's back plainly indicated as Christine watched her descending the stairs, such an awkward girl is lucky to have got anybody at all.
As she ran the bath water, Christine was miserably aware that she was awkward. She had had it impressed upon her all her life.
How different from Susan, everybody said. Susan was so pretty, so elegant. She had so much confidence.
Susan was never ignored by the waitresses in tea-shops. She never had to bear the rude remarks of a conductor because she hadn't been quick enough getting off a bus.
There weren't such things as embarrassing situations for Susan.
Once more; the bridal nightdress caught Christine's eye as she reentered her bedroom.
The new fear, maturing with hideous speed opened its eyes and smiled at her. A soft evil smile that reminded her of how gracefully Susan would have dealt with the details of her wedding night.
Christine looked at her bed with its plain oak head board.
Many times she had followed the lines of the grain with her finger, finding little faces among the wavy lines. Now she had slept alone for the last time.
Never again would she be able to creep into the comforting solitude of a bed, big enough only for one where no one saw her tears.
The house was beginning to awaken. She heard her father’s ponderous tread along the passage; and the high anxious twitter of Aunt Nell, her mother's sister, as unlike her remote ambitious mother as Christine herself was unlike Susan.
Breakfast for Christine was a blur, coming into focus only when Aunt Nell said archly: "Butterflies in the tummy, Chrissie, dear?" and her mother retorted sharply : "It is time you gave up calling them Susie and Chrissie. They're not children now."
RUNNING back upstairs, Christine wished desperately that as a child she had had someone to comfort her fears,
For a panic-stricken moment, staring at the waiting nightdress, Christine wondered if Aunt Nell held any comfort. Even as the thought trickled through, her mind, she knew it was useless.
Weddings for Aunt Nell ended with the triumphant burst of the wedding march and showers of confetti. A veil was drawn over anything beyond. One did not mention such things. They were strictly for husband and wife in the privacy of their bedroom.
As she slowly drew on the sheer nylons and the lacy slip, Christine kept her eyes on Johnny's face in the photograph. To no one else had she confided so many secrets.
She remembered how they had, even discussed the sort of room they would like for, their honeymoon.
"Warm and quiet," Johnny had said, "where we can talk all night if we want to, with nobody to look pointedly at the clock; drink coffee at three in the morning."
Christine had laughed and added an elegant dressing table with a big round mirror and a bowl of white roses. And the serene secret glow of candlelight.
Looking at the lovely picture afterwards in her heart, Christine had seen only warm comforting love beneath the scent of the roses, only the kisses of a most beloved friend.
The love she had seen in the secret room had been a picture of love only. It, had no relation to the realities of flesh and blood.
Christine wondered if Johnny worried about their wedding night, too. He was gazing at her out of the photograph with his usual friendly grin.
His kind eyes looked into hers as they had done so many times.
It seemed impossible that he could turn into that lurking predatory shadow at her shoulder.
She remembered most vividly the look on the face of the actor who had been playing Edward Barrett in The Barretts of Wimpole Street, a play she had been to see with Susan.
When his daughter had marvelled that her mother could have loved him and borne him so many children Edward Barrett had implied that it had been his wife's duty.
A hot gloating look had suffused the actor's face. Christine shrank at the remembrance, her heart cold.
IN an hour Christine would be married. There was no longer any need for the old fear. There was no room for it beside the new.
Suddenly she heard a car enter the drive. That would' be Susan's car.
Her sister came swiftly upstairs and into the room. She looked poised and lovely as usual.
"Ready?" she asked, smiling.
"Nearly," Christine mumbled, fighting wildly with the folds of her wedding dress.
" Silly!" Susan laughed. " You have to undo the hooks first. Now, put it on the right way round, you goose. And for heaven's sake, try to stand up straight. You're not going to be executed."
"Susan," Christine whispered. "Is it easy?"
The lovely face looked down at her in amused bewilderment.
"Is what easy?"
"Being a wife," Christine whispered again. "Not the cooking and sweeping part. Being on your honeymoon."
Susan burst into a peal of laughter. " My dear girl," she cried, "what bee have you in your bonnet this time? You’re not a child, are you?"
Christine felt a flush of shame and frustration sweep over her.
"You're not asking me about birds and bees, are you?" Susan said.
Christine's face was suddenly cold.
"Please don’t bother about it any more, Susan. I wasn't asking you about that. It doesn't matter."
"All right then," Susan replied, smoothing Christine's hair. " Now I'll tell you something. What you really want to know is how to keep him, isn't it? Every man's got a weak spot somewhere. Find that out right away and you're on a winner. A little wifely blackmail can secure astonishing results."
Christine felt a sick sensation rising into her throat.
"I don't think I want to keep him that way," she said.
Susan smiled and, patted her cheek.
"You mean you don’t think you'd be able to, pet."
"You ought to have had a sip of brandy," her father said irritably, as he waited for the two bridesmaids to gather up Christine’s train. "White as a ghost. Susan looked like a queen at her wedding.
Christine laid her hand on her father's arm. She began the long walk towards the distant altar.
THE church revolved before her eyes, a coloured kaleidoscope of flowers, stained glass and craning heads whirling faster and faster until it had turned itself into a cyclone and she was caught in the still windless centre and saw only Johnny's eyes.
Christine fixed her gaze on the kind familiar face. Slowly all other thoughts fell away into unimportance.
The whirl of colour came to rest. She was beside him, facing the holy silence of the altar.
"Dearly beloved," intoned Reverend Blackett, "we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony."
Christine swallowed aware that the moment had come from which there was no going back. She turned her head and looked at Johnny's downcast eyes, a wild, beseeching glance.
She moved her hand against his coat. Instantly she felt his little finger hooked over hers in their own secret hold, a hold, so firm and assured that it bruised her bone.
Once more everything slipped into a blur. There was only the round moving face of the Reverend Blackett and Johnny's finger hooked over hers in the folds of her wedding dress, a finger to which she clung for dear life. .
I am married, Christine thought, her heart blank and drained.
She laid aside the wedding dress, listening curiously to the voices and the clink of glasses downstairs.
The familiar was slipping fast away. The strange unknown beginning to fall like the fading light of the afternoon.
She heard Johnny come up the stairs to fetch her case. He was laughing with Aunt Nell.
"You don't have to knock, dear boy," Aunt Nell was reproving him, "You're married now."
Christine's door remained closed. She heard his soft knock. It was the first time anyone had stopped to knock on her door.
Once more the Edward Barrett of the play rose before her eyes. How strange, Christine thought. Edward Barrett would have said he had the right to enter without permission.
Yet the one with the best right is the only one who has ever knocked. Suddenly she felt a strange, almost hilarious, lightening of her depressed spirits. .
CHRISTINE walked down the stairs beside Johnny, looking at the eyes in the hall, amused teasing eyes, eyes full of curious speculation.
"How lucky it's spring," Aunt Nell whispered as she kissed them.
Johnny burst into a shout of laughter as the car swept into the road. Christine laughed too, still caught in the magic of that lightenmg of her heart. .
Susan had been to Paris for her honeymoon.
When Mrs. Bertram had heard of Christine's and Johnny's choice, she had informed the papers and her friends that they had left for an unknown destination, not impressed by Johnny's assertion that the loneliest place in the world is London.
"Happy, darling?" he asked, as the train drew towards Victoria. Christine nodded.
"Do we have to go straight to the hotel? " she faltered.
Johnny seemed to hesitate for a moment. It seemed to Christine as if he looked almost relieved.
"Only to dump our bags in the hall," he said at last, nodding towards a taxi. "We're going to that musical you wanted to see."
Christine looked up at him in the darkness of the taxi.
"That was ages ago. Did you actually remember my saying I wanted to see it?"
He drew her against his shoulder and put a row of light kisses along her forehead.
"I remember every little thing you've ever said. And a lot of things you haven't said as well."
Christine clung to him with sudden urgency. "I do love you. I love you so dearly. Whatever happens, if you're disappointed in me, if I fail you, in spite of those things, Johnny, remember that I loved you very dearly."
He was silent, staring out at the winking lights of London, holding her tightly against him.
"Chris, I want to ask you something too," he said at last "Just remember that I loved you twice as much."
The musical comedy was as great a blur of colour, light and music as the church had been.
A curious constraint fell between them as they came out of the theatre. They both found they wanted to walk back. They found a roundabout way which took them nearly an hour.
The porter was yawning as at last they turned in through
the swing doors. He grinned as eh dumped their bags in the lift.
Johnny stared with intense concentration at an advertisement for a towel service.
The endless red carpeted corridor was full of stale dry air. The endless doors stared at them like blank faces.
The porter thrust a key into one of the doors and pushed it open. Curiously, Christine. walked into the room.
It was as if part of her leaped forward and then looked back, thinking how ridiculous she looked as she stared at her vision of love about to become reality.
The room was cold and stuffy, as Christine had known it would be. The dressing-table was high and old fashioned with a square mirror and the hotel rules pasted above it. The double bed waited for her and Johnny under a dark green cover.
He looked at her as the porter closed the door.
"We can at least put a shilling in the gas fire," he said. "We can at least be warm."
IN silence Christine snapped open her case.
Johnny felt in his pockets.
She took out the nylon nightdress.
Johnny turned abruptly.
"I haven't got a shilling for the gas," he said. "I'll go and get one. I shan't belong."
Christine didn’t speak. Alone in the impersonal room, she slowly undressed. The blue nightdress was billowy and beautiful. She had saved up for it for weeks because it matched her eyes. But it was cold.
She sat down on the stool in front of the mirror and picked up her hairbrush, the chill air striking to her bone.
She seemed to sit there for a long time. The traffic in the street slowed to an occasional taxi.
Christine stared at her reflection in the glass, at her large blue frightened eyes.
Behind the outline of her bare shoulder, she saw the door open. Johnny came across and stood beside her.
"They didn't like being knocked up so late," he said rapidly, "but I managed to get you some white roses. They've got a little scent."
He put the flowers across her lap and went and dropped a shilling in the meter.
Christine laid her hand on one of the blossoms, watching his deliberately turned back.
Slowly a surge of wonder began to rise in her heart. A long moment of silence hung between them.
"Johnny," she said at last, "are you scared too? "
He thrust his hands into his pockets, not moving from the gas- fire.
" I daren't look at you." His voice was muffled. "You look so lovely. So clean and poised. You deserve someone, someone so much better than"
"Poised? " Christine breathed. "I look poised? "
He turned and faced her. Then he came swiftly across, his hands still in his pockets.
"Don't laugh at me, Chris, darling, will you? Be patient with me. I wish I’d. . "
A sudden shaft of light went through Christine's heart. She felt for his hands, a natural, lovely, impulsive gesture, and drew them round her young warm waist. "Don't wish that," she said softly.
Johnny drew her against him, his hands caressing the smooth skin of her back. Christine pressed her face against his neck and gently he stroked the side of her face, her throat, her ears.
"Oh Johnny, I was so frightened I'd lose you because. I wouldn't know what to do. That you'd find me awkward. Everybody's always found me awkward up to now. I've been so frightened of so many things. Things that haven't happened in the end."
IN gulping whispers, Christine poured out the last miserable secrets of her heart. The fear that something would snatch her miracle of love from her.
And then, that fear dying and the new fear rising to take its place.
The shadowy lurking husband who, with her new knowledge, was but Johnny after all. Slowly her sobbing quietened and there was silence.
He sat holding her for a long time, kissing her bare shoulders, gentle kisses, comforting kisses.
And under his soft touch, the last shadow of fear slid away to reveal a fair garden full of sunshine and peace.
He turned her face to his.
Chris, do you know how I love you? I'll go and hire another room if you want me to. That’s how much I love you. Don't be afraid I'll snatch anything you don't want to give me, darling."
Christine reached up and kissed him gently. It was a kiss of perfect trust and love.
Time seemed to dissolve, the future was but an idle tide lapping against the radiant Now. ........ the end
CHRISTINE awoke with her heart-racing. She sat up, her eyes turning instinctively to the hanger on the wardrobe. With a feeling of incredulous joy she stared at her wedding dress.
She slipped out of bed. The clock in the hall dropped six strokes into the hushed air.
Five hours to go, Christine thought. Surely nothing can possibly happen to snatch it from me now. I can't get run over because I shan't be going out until, it's time. I haven't cut myself. So I can't get poisoned. I saw Johnny last night. He still loved me then.
Christine knelt in front of the dress, passionately grateful to fate, which had given her this opportunity to prove that she could achieve things like other people.
She realized suddenly that she was shivering with cold. The new blue brocade dressing gown, bought to match the new blue nylon nightdress, lay over a chair ready to be packed.
Christine averted her eyes.
She reached for the familiar camel-hair, conscious of the birth-pangs of a new fear beneath the old.
In the secret places of her mind she had conquered her fears only as far as putting on the wedding dress and walking up the aisle of St. Marks towards Johnny.
Beyond the miracle of Johnny wanting to marry her, she had not dared to think.
Her bedroom door opened quietly. Christine swung round. Her mother was standing in the doorway.
"Oh, you're up," Mrs. Bertram said briefly. "You'd better be quick in the bathroom. Susan's coming to see to your hair. What a pity you've never been clever at managing your own. You won't want to keep Susan waiting."
Mrs. Bertram's last remark wasn't a question. It was a command.
Meekly, Christine gathered up her towel, stifling a small mutinous desire to ask if today it might not be her privilege to keep Susan waiting for once.
But even as she went past her mother towards the bathroom, she knew she would never dare.
She knew how fiercely proud of Susan her mother was, of her sister's fortunate marriage, her lovely house, her good solid husband who was even now worth good solid thousands.
Christine knew that in her mother's eyes, Johnny, with only a very junior position in his father's business, cut a very poor figure indeed.
But still, Mrs. Bertram's back plainly indicated as Christine watched her descending the stairs, such an awkward girl is lucky to have got anybody at all.
As she ran the bath water, Christine was miserably aware that she was awkward. She had had it impressed upon her all her life.
How different from Susan, everybody said. Susan was so pretty, so elegant. She had so much confidence.
Susan was never ignored by the waitresses in tea-shops. She never had to bear the rude remarks of a conductor because she hadn't been quick enough getting off a bus.
There weren't such things as embarrassing situations for Susan.
Once more; the bridal nightdress caught Christine's eye as she reentered her bedroom.
The new fear, maturing with hideous speed opened its eyes and smiled at her. A soft evil smile that reminded her of how gracefully Susan would have dealt with the details of her wedding night.
Christine looked at her bed with its plain oak head board.
Many times she had followed the lines of the grain with her finger, finding little faces among the wavy lines. Now she had slept alone for the last time.
Never again would she be able to creep into the comforting solitude of a bed, big enough only for one where no one saw her tears.
The house was beginning to awaken. She heard her father’s ponderous tread along the passage; and the high anxious twitter of Aunt Nell, her mother's sister, as unlike her remote ambitious mother as Christine herself was unlike Susan.
Breakfast for Christine was a blur, coming into focus only when Aunt Nell said archly: "Butterflies in the tummy, Chrissie, dear?" and her mother retorted sharply : "It is time you gave up calling them Susie and Chrissie. They're not children now."
RUNNING back upstairs, Christine wished desperately that as a child she had had someone to comfort her fears,
For a panic-stricken moment, staring at the waiting nightdress, Christine wondered if Aunt Nell held any comfort. Even as the thought trickled through, her mind, she knew it was useless.
Weddings for Aunt Nell ended with the triumphant burst of the wedding march and showers of confetti. A veil was drawn over anything beyond. One did not mention such things. They were strictly for husband and wife in the privacy of their bedroom.
As she slowly drew on the sheer nylons and the lacy slip, Christine kept her eyes on Johnny's face in the photograph. To no one else had she confided so many secrets.
She remembered how they had, even discussed the sort of room they would like for, their honeymoon.
"Warm and quiet," Johnny had said, "where we can talk all night if we want to, with nobody to look pointedly at the clock; drink coffee at three in the morning."
Christine had laughed and added an elegant dressing table with a big round mirror and a bowl of white roses. And the serene secret glow of candlelight.
Looking at the lovely picture afterwards in her heart, Christine had seen only warm comforting love beneath the scent of the roses, only the kisses of a most beloved friend.
The love she had seen in the secret room had been a picture of love only. It, had no relation to the realities of flesh and blood.
Christine wondered if Johnny worried about their wedding night, too. He was gazing at her out of the photograph with his usual friendly grin.
His kind eyes looked into hers as they had done so many times.
It seemed impossible that he could turn into that lurking predatory shadow at her shoulder.
She remembered most vividly the look on the face of the actor who had been playing Edward Barrett in The Barretts of Wimpole Street, a play she had been to see with Susan.
When his daughter had marvelled that her mother could have loved him and borne him so many children Edward Barrett had implied that it had been his wife's duty.
A hot gloating look had suffused the actor's face. Christine shrank at the remembrance, her heart cold.
IN an hour Christine would be married. There was no longer any need for the old fear. There was no room for it beside the new.
Suddenly she heard a car enter the drive. That would' be Susan's car.
Her sister came swiftly upstairs and into the room. She looked poised and lovely as usual.
"Ready?" she asked, smiling.
"Nearly," Christine mumbled, fighting wildly with the folds of her wedding dress.
" Silly!" Susan laughed. " You have to undo the hooks first. Now, put it on the right way round, you goose. And for heaven's sake, try to stand up straight. You're not going to be executed."
"Susan," Christine whispered. "Is it easy?"
The lovely face looked down at her in amused bewilderment.
"Is what easy?"
"Being a wife," Christine whispered again. "Not the cooking and sweeping part. Being on your honeymoon."
Susan burst into a peal of laughter. " My dear girl," she cried, "what bee have you in your bonnet this time? You’re not a child, are you?"
Christine felt a flush of shame and frustration sweep over her.
"You're not asking me about birds and bees, are you?" Susan said.
Christine's face was suddenly cold.
"Please don’t bother about it any more, Susan. I wasn't asking you about that. It doesn't matter."
"All right then," Susan replied, smoothing Christine's hair. " Now I'll tell you something. What you really want to know is how to keep him, isn't it? Every man's got a weak spot somewhere. Find that out right away and you're on a winner. A little wifely blackmail can secure astonishing results."
Christine felt a sick sensation rising into her throat.
"I don't think I want to keep him that way," she said.
Susan smiled and, patted her cheek.
"You mean you don’t think you'd be able to, pet."
"You ought to have had a sip of brandy," her father said irritably, as he waited for the two bridesmaids to gather up Christine’s train. "White as a ghost. Susan looked like a queen at her wedding.
Christine laid her hand on her father's arm. She began the long walk towards the distant altar.
THE church revolved before her eyes, a coloured kaleidoscope of flowers, stained glass and craning heads whirling faster and faster until it had turned itself into a cyclone and she was caught in the still windless centre and saw only Johnny's eyes.
Christine fixed her gaze on the kind familiar face. Slowly all other thoughts fell away into unimportance.
The whirl of colour came to rest. She was beside him, facing the holy silence of the altar.
"Dearly beloved," intoned Reverend Blackett, "we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony."
Christine swallowed aware that the moment had come from which there was no going back. She turned her head and looked at Johnny's downcast eyes, a wild, beseeching glance.
She moved her hand against his coat. Instantly she felt his little finger hooked over hers in their own secret hold, a hold, so firm and assured that it bruised her bone.
Once more everything slipped into a blur. There was only the round moving face of the Reverend Blackett and Johnny's finger hooked over hers in the folds of her wedding dress, a finger to which she clung for dear life. .
I am married, Christine thought, her heart blank and drained.
She laid aside the wedding dress, listening curiously to the voices and the clink of glasses downstairs.
The familiar was slipping fast away. The strange unknown beginning to fall like the fading light of the afternoon.
She heard Johnny come up the stairs to fetch her case. He was laughing with Aunt Nell.
"You don't have to knock, dear boy," Aunt Nell was reproving him, "You're married now."
Christine's door remained closed. She heard his soft knock. It was the first time anyone had stopped to knock on her door.
Once more the Edward Barrett of the play rose before her eyes. How strange, Christine thought. Edward Barrett would have said he had the right to enter without permission.
Yet the one with the best right is the only one who has ever knocked. Suddenly she felt a strange, almost hilarious, lightening of her depressed spirits. .
CHRISTINE walked down the stairs beside Johnny, looking at the eyes in the hall, amused teasing eyes, eyes full of curious speculation.
"How lucky it's spring," Aunt Nell whispered as she kissed them.
Johnny burst into a shout of laughter as the car swept into the road. Christine laughed too, still caught in the magic of that lightenmg of her heart. .
Susan had been to Paris for her honeymoon.
When Mrs. Bertram had heard of Christine's and Johnny's choice, she had informed the papers and her friends that they had left for an unknown destination, not impressed by Johnny's assertion that the loneliest place in the world is London.
"Happy, darling?" he asked, as the train drew towards Victoria. Christine nodded.
"Do we have to go straight to the hotel? " she faltered.
Johnny seemed to hesitate for a moment. It seemed to Christine as if he looked almost relieved.
"Only to dump our bags in the hall," he said at last, nodding towards a taxi. "We're going to that musical you wanted to see."
Christine looked up at him in the darkness of the taxi.
"That was ages ago. Did you actually remember my saying I wanted to see it?"
He drew her against his shoulder and put a row of light kisses along her forehead.
"I remember every little thing you've ever said. And a lot of things you haven't said as well."
Christine clung to him with sudden urgency. "I do love you. I love you so dearly. Whatever happens, if you're disappointed in me, if I fail you, in spite of those things, Johnny, remember that I loved you very dearly."
He was silent, staring out at the winking lights of London, holding her tightly against him.
"Chris, I want to ask you something too," he said at last "Just remember that I loved you twice as much."
The musical comedy was as great a blur of colour, light and music as the church had been.
A curious constraint fell between them as they came out of the theatre. They both found they wanted to walk back. They found a roundabout way which took them nearly an hour.
The porter was yawning as at last they turned in through
the swing doors. He grinned as eh dumped their bags in the lift.
Johnny stared with intense concentration at an advertisement for a towel service.
The endless red carpeted corridor was full of stale dry air. The endless doors stared at them like blank faces.
The porter thrust a key into one of the doors and pushed it open. Curiously, Christine. walked into the room.
It was as if part of her leaped forward and then looked back, thinking how ridiculous she looked as she stared at her vision of love about to become reality.
The room was cold and stuffy, as Christine had known it would be. The dressing-table was high and old fashioned with a square mirror and the hotel rules pasted above it. The double bed waited for her and Johnny under a dark green cover.
He looked at her as the porter closed the door.
"We can at least put a shilling in the gas fire," he said. "We can at least be warm."
IN silence Christine snapped open her case.
Johnny felt in his pockets.
She took out the nylon nightdress.
Johnny turned abruptly.
"I haven't got a shilling for the gas," he said. "I'll go and get one. I shan't belong."
Christine didn’t speak. Alone in the impersonal room, she slowly undressed. The blue nightdress was billowy and beautiful. She had saved up for it for weeks because it matched her eyes. But it was cold.
She sat down on the stool in front of the mirror and picked up her hairbrush, the chill air striking to her bone.
She seemed to sit there for a long time. The traffic in the street slowed to an occasional taxi.
Christine stared at her reflection in the glass, at her large blue frightened eyes.
Behind the outline of her bare shoulder, she saw the door open. Johnny came across and stood beside her.
"They didn't like being knocked up so late," he said rapidly, "but I managed to get you some white roses. They've got a little scent."
He put the flowers across her lap and went and dropped a shilling in the meter.
Christine laid her hand on one of the blossoms, watching his deliberately turned back.
Slowly a surge of wonder began to rise in her heart. A long moment of silence hung between them.
"Johnny," she said at last, "are you scared too? "
He thrust his hands into his pockets, not moving from the gas- fire.
" I daren't look at you." His voice was muffled. "You look so lovely. So clean and poised. You deserve someone, someone so much better than"
"Poised? " Christine breathed. "I look poised? "
He turned and faced her. Then he came swiftly across, his hands still in his pockets.
"Don't laugh at me, Chris, darling, will you? Be patient with me. I wish I’d. . "
A sudden shaft of light went through Christine's heart. She felt for his hands, a natural, lovely, impulsive gesture, and drew them round her young warm waist. "Don't wish that," she said softly.
Johnny drew her against him, his hands caressing the smooth skin of her back. Christine pressed her face against his neck and gently he stroked the side of her face, her throat, her ears.
"Oh Johnny, I was so frightened I'd lose you because. I wouldn't know what to do. That you'd find me awkward. Everybody's always found me awkward up to now. I've been so frightened of so many things. Things that haven't happened in the end."
IN gulping whispers, Christine poured out the last miserable secrets of her heart. The fear that something would snatch her miracle of love from her.
And then, that fear dying and the new fear rising to take its place.
The shadowy lurking husband who, with her new knowledge, was but Johnny after all. Slowly her sobbing quietened and there was silence.
He sat holding her for a long time, kissing her bare shoulders, gentle kisses, comforting kisses.
And under his soft touch, the last shadow of fear slid away to reveal a fair garden full of sunshine and peace.
He turned her face to his.
Chris, do you know how I love you? I'll go and hire another room if you want me to. That’s how much I love you. Don't be afraid I'll snatch anything you don't want to give me, darling."
Christine reached up and kissed him gently. It was a kiss of perfect trust and love.
Time seemed to dissolve, the future was but an idle tide lapping against the radiant Now. ........ the end
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