Sparkling Cyanide - Agatha Christie [24]
After breakfast he took the car over the market town eight miles away. Wouldn’t do to put through a call from the village. He got Rosemary on the phone.
‘Hullo—that you, Rosemary? Don’t write any more letters.’
‘Stephen, darling, how lovely to hear your voice!’
‘Be careful, can anyone overhear you?’
‘Of course not. Oh, angel, I have missed you. Have you missed me?’
‘Yes, of course. But don’t write. It’s much too risky.’
‘Did you like my letter? Did it make you feel I was with you? Darling, I want to be with you every minute. Do you feel that too?’
‘Yes—but not on the phone, old thing.’
‘You’re so ridiculously cautious. What does it matter?’
‘I’m thinking of you, too, Rosemary. I couldn’t bear any trouble to come to you through me.’
‘I don’t care what happens to me. You know that.’
‘Well, I care, sweetheart.’
‘When are you coming back?’
‘Tuesday.’
‘And we’ll meet at the flat, Wednesday.’
‘Yes—er, yes.’
‘Darling, I can hardly bear to wait. Can’t you make some excuse and come up today? Oh, Stephen, you could! Politics or something stupid like that?’
‘I’m afraid it’s out of the question.’
‘I don’t believe you miss me half as much as I miss you.’
‘Nonsense, of course I do.’
When he rang off he felt tired. Why should women insist on being so damned reckless? Rosemary and he must be more careful in future. They’d have to meet less often.
Things after that became difficult. He was busy—very busy. It was quite impossible to give as much time to Rosemary—and the trying thing was she didn’t seem able to understand. He explained but she just wouldn’t listen.
‘Oh, your stupid old politics—as though they were important!’
‘But they are—’
She didn’t realize. She didn’t care. She took no interest in his work, in his ambitions, in his career. All she wanted was to hear him reiterate again and again that he loved her. ‘Just as much as ever? Tell me again that you really love me?’
Surely, he thought, she might take that for granted by this time! She was a lovely creature, lovely—but the trouble was that you couldn’t talk to her.
The trouble was they’d been seeing too much of each other. You couldn’t keep up an affair at fever heat. They must meet less often—slacken off a bit.
But that made her resentful—very resentful. She was always reproaching him now.
‘You don’t love me as you used to do.’
And then he’d have to reassure her, to swear that of course he did. And she would constantly resurrect everything he had ever said to her.
‘Do you remember when you said it would be lovely if we died together? Fell asleep for ever in each other’s arms? Do you remember when you said we’d take a caravan and go off into the desert? Just the stars and the camels—and how we’d forget everything in the world?’
What damned silly things one said when one was in love! They hadn’t seemed fatuous at the time, but to have them hashed up in cold blood! Why couldn’t women let things decently alone? A man didn’t want to be continually reminded what an ass he’d made of himself.
She came out with sudden unreasonable demands. Couldn’t he go abroad to the South of France and she’d meet him there? Or go to Sicily or Corsica—one of those places where you never saw anyone you knew? Stephen said grimly that there was no such place in the world. At the most unlikely spots you always met some dear old school friend that you’d never seen for years.
And then she said something that frightened him.
‘Well, but it wouldn’t really matter, would it?’
He was alert, watchful, suddenly cold within.
‘What do you mean?’
She was smiling up at him, that same enchanting smile that had once made his heart turn over and his bones ache with longing. Now it made him merely impatient.
‘Leopard, darling, I’ve thought sometimes that we’re stupid to go on trying to carry on this hole-and-corner business. It’s not worthy, somehow. Let’s go away together. Let’s stop pretending. George will divorce me and your wife will divorce you and then we can get married.’
Just like that! Disaster! Ruin!