Her watch told her that it was nearly seven. Three times already the kettle had boiled for tea. Water that had boiled for too long made a dreadful cup of tea, she told herself, and went down the stairs to the landing where there was a tap which supplied drinking water.
The windows of the huge offices were in darkness. So Joe wasn't working late! It was nearly half-past seven now and still no sign of him.
She went downstairs again, to the hall where telephone messages were left. There wouldn't be a message, she knew this, of course, but an idiotic hope nagged her that perhaps, for once, she may have overlooked a note addressed to her. She had come in so hurriedly, so anxious to start making preparations for Joe's visit that she could not remember if she had stopped to look on the table.
There was nothing there. Only a pile of telephone directories, and a post-card from Brighton that had been waiting for its recipient for weeks.
He could have phoned!
Janey swallowed a lump in her throat as she slowly climbed the stairs again. He could have let her know that he wasn't coming.
All the afternoon she had worked at fever pitch, getting done early, so that she could leave a half-hour before her usual time. The chief clerk had smiled at her, sympathetically, as she asked permission. "Yes, that will be quite all right, as long as you've finished. Have fun!"
It wasn't the first time he had had to break a date, but he always let her know. It was so much worse, this time, because of all the trouble she had gone to, the expense, of getting things ready for him.
She stared at the table, the pretty yellow china she had brought from home, the festive cake, the sandwiches already beginning to curl. Tears started to her eyes and she dashed them away, angrily, with the back of her hand. She stood at the window, looking out, one hand holding back the net curtain. (When Joe came he swept aside the net and, as he said, 'let London come in at the window' rooftops, chimneys, the dark aloof beauty of the night sky, the throbbing mutter of a metropolis slowly and lazily preparing for another day.)
Two girls in a house opposite came down the steps to join two young men on the pavement. They laughed, linked hands, and strolled off towards the river. A man and a girl climbed into a taxi. The girl turned her head to smile and even from a distance one caught the breathless wordless love in the way her mouth curved.
"Everyone has someone" the words went through Janey's mind, and she wondered were they part of a song or words that she had simply thought up for herself?
Well, she had Joe. And Joe had his work, his ambition, his inflexible determination to make a place for himself in his own particular world, a world into which he could take her with him.
SOMETIMES, wistfully, aching with loneliness she whispered. "Let's not wait, Joe. Let's be married. We'll make out, other couples do."
He was half-angry, brusquely impatient when she spoke like this. Other couples. Joe had seen'em! Pinching, scraping, living in furnished rooms, living on dreams that became crumpled with constantly being folded away. This year? Next year?
"We can afford to wait. We'll start our married life with our dreams in our laps and time enough to build up other dreams," he insisted, his young face stern with resolution.
Janey supposed, with a sigh, that he was right. Joe knew what he wanted, for her and for himself. He didn't want any compromise, any so-called romantic nonsense about love on a penny.
He had been brought up one of a large family and had witnessed the constant struggle to make ends meet which had nagged his parents all through their long life together. Oh, yes, they had been happy enough, but they had left youth behind far too early. He would do better than this for Janey. Trust Joe!
"Trust me," he said tenderly.
But tonight was different. This was a special occasion. His birthday. And she had gone to so much trouble to make things festive. The flowers, the cake! It was mean of him not to have come, not to have phoned!
She turned from the window, letting the curtain fall. The room was veiled in dusk. The table looked as if it had been waiting for years.
Picking up a white cardigan she flung it round her shoulders. She couldn't bear to spend the evening alone in the room. She would walk down to the embankment, look at the river, cross the bridge and stroll in the park.
She would do it all very slowly, without measuring time, so that it would be late, bed-time in fact, when she returned.
People strolled in pairs, in some mysterious way enclosed in their own secret worlds, as if the gathering darkness wrapped them in sweet privacy. Outside the Town Hall a little group of people gathered. Light spilled on to the pavement. It was the evening for one of the weekly chamber concerts. Janey paused to read the, programme Tchaikovsky.
She was conscious of a man standing at her side, also scanning the poster. Their eyes met and impulsively they both smiled.
"A heavenly concert!" she exclaimed with enthusiasm.
He had two tickets in his hand and looked down at them a shade ruefully. "It starts in about five minutes. I'll murder my friend for daring to be late!" he said with a half-laugh.
Janey made up her mind. She would go to the concert. It would be better than walking about on her own, and she loved music, especially Tchaikovsky. .
She ran up the steps of the Town Hall and went to the box-office. A few seconds later she was turning away, disappointed. Not a seat left! She stood on the top of the steps, suddenly wrapped in melancholy. Everything was going wrong this evening, absolutely everything.
A voice spoke to her: "I say, forgive me, but I wonder if you'd accept one of my tickets. I don't think my friend will come now." It was the young man again.
Janey looked at him a little hesitantly. He returned her look with sincere frankness. "Please." He held out the ticket, almost tucked it into her hand. "Such a shame to waste it!"
She opened her bag, her cheeks flushed with gratitude.. "Thanks awfully, I must pay you for it!" she said breathlessly.
HE smiled. "No need. It's a complimentary. I have a friend in the orchestra," he explained simply.
It all seemed so natural; giving an unexpected warmth to an evening that had been so disappointing. The rapt audience, the thrilling magic of the music, and the knowledge that she shared with this man, this stranger, a passing companionship that needed no conventional excuses for its existence.
During a pause between movements Janey looked slyly at him. Good looking, in a fair, rather dishevelled manner. Young, touchingly so, with his thin body, his bony wrists, and the attractive shyness in his eyes and voice.
He too, had been waiting for someone, a friend? The girl he loved, perhaps? Oh, didn't she know just how miserable it was, how lonesome, to wait around for someone who didn't turn up?
The music took her thoughts and trailed them in dreamy rhythm through her mind. Joe the way he looked, spoke, held her, promised her. "Be patient, my darling. Trust me!"
Oh, she did trust him! But she wanted not to wait any longer, wanted him to come back to her at nights, to share her life, stop this foolishness of living apart, each of them in separate little rooms!
The boy at her side had taken her hand, was holding it tightly in his., Looking at him she knew that he was unconscious of the action, his eyes shining, lips parted, leaning forward a little as if he were drinking in the liquid notes. She let her hand stay in his until the end of the movement, when he quickly released it, turning to her, flushed, and rather embarrassed.
"I-I forgot. I wasn't thinking!" he stammered.
Janey felt the tears start to her eyes. It was all so sad! Both of them loving and wanting to be with their love, wanting it so badly that it was easy to pretend, to forget, that they sat next to a stranger!
In the interval they went along to the buffet for coffee and biscuits. The music had swept away inhibitions had made it possible, almost a relief, to confide in each other.
"My name is Peter," he said:
"Mine is Jane." (Janey was Joe's name for her.)
He looked at her steadily. "I'm so glad you came to the concert. I wouldn't have come on my own."
She nodded. "I would have come on my own but only because I was lonely, disappointed."
"Tell me."
IT was like telling a story about something that had happened a long time ago. Things seemed so detached: her room, the tea-table, even Joe-Joe! She felt a wave of short-lived anger. How much did Joe care that she was alone, waiting, meekly accepting his last-minute change of plan. "Darling, I'm sorry! Another night."
Then it was Peter's turn. There was Helen, the girl who had not turned up at the concert. She was a violinist, just starting on her career as an orchestra player. "Music is her life. When we are married we shall live with music," he said softly. "I want to be married now, now, now! Helen wants to establish herself before she takes on the responsibility of being a wife. I don't want to wait."
They exchanged glances, and laughed softly, in sympathy.
Finally he said, sighing, "Helen's right of course. I must be patient. She is too sensitive, too talented, to plunge into married life built on mere bubbles. "
He looked thoughtfully into the distance, his eyes clouded. "Romanticism is all very well up to a point, but there's more than mere romance, however beautiful it is, in married life. We don't believe that we can take a blind 'header' into it with our eyes closed, keeping our fingers crossed. We want to feel secure, comfortable, fundamentally sane."
The way Joe felt. The way she, Jane, must think, because the way Peter put it it seemed sensible and worthwhile.
THEY went back to their seats. As he gave her the programme their hands brushed, and a swift electric sensation passed between them. So short a time ago they had not known that the other existed; they had come to the concert strangers. Now--
"If it had not been for Joe I might have fallen in love with him," thought Janey, and the idea was so fragile, without reality, that she felt no disloyalty to Joe.
She felt his hand touch hers again. He whispered, "Jane, thank you for coming. I shall never forget you."
Waiting for Joe. Waiting for Helen. And in between times a brief interlude of romantic tenderness, something that they would carry in memory for the rest of their lives.
Outside in the darkness it was as if they stepped out of a dream into the real world.
"Shall I see you home?" He was polite, a man called Peter whom she had just met.
She shook her head. "No, thank you. I only live a few minutes walk from here." She held out her hand.
"Good night. Thank you for letting me use the spare ticket."
"Good night."
He hurried away and she saw him cross over to a phone kiosk. In a few moments more he would have pressed Button A. "Helen. Is that you, darling? This is Peter."
It was half-past ten when she opened the front door. On the quiet night air, the river breeze blew the rumbling tones of Big Ben over the city. She opened the door of her room, and switched on the light. The tea table was still there, and the flowers, drooping down in sleep. The sandwiches curled back at the edges like petals. The cake, the cake had a good-sized wedge cut out of it. Then she saw Joe. He was slumped in the only armchair, fast asleep.
She paused, then throwing off her cardigan, she went and stood at his side, taking his hand and holding it up to her face. Dear, dear Joe!
He stirred and half-drowsily grinned up at her. "I rang you, darling, but you'd left the office. I had to attend a last-minute meeting, important, you know." His voice was thick, husky with weariness. "Then when I tried to contact you here-they said you were out."
Now wide-awake, he stood up and pulled her into the shelter of his arms.
She said softly, her head on his shoulder, "I waited, Joe. I got tired of waiting, I-I was so disappointed."
Joe looked rueful. "I ate some of the sandwiches and cut a huge slice of cake. I wished myself many happy returns. It wasn't so much fun on my own ! "Resting his chin on top of her head he went on, "It all looked so, so home-y. The flowers and everything. I went round the room touching your things, wishing you were here, loving you so terribly."
There was a pale, strained expression on his face that she had not seen before. "Janey, don't let's wait, Let's start being home-y together, just like this. It will do for a start. I didn't realize how much I needed you until I came here tonight and found the room empty. Do you feel that way too, when you are here alone?"
Memory flooded Janey for a brief moment Peter, his gentleness, the understanding. One day she would tell Joe about Peter and, perhaps, Peter would tell Helen about Jane.
"I waited for you, you didn't come, I was so disappointed. There was a girl, her name was Jane."
There was a boy, his name was Peter.
Joe was saying, "Let's be married Janey, beloved." .... THE END
