No—that was how Kennedy himself would have described the incident. As a matter of fact she went with him for the Saturday, as she had often done before, and they were to return in time for supper at Zoe’s flat, where Deb had arranged to stay for what was left of the night, because it was easier just to roll over on to the sofa in the sitting-room, than to worry about busses or trains to South Kensington. She was shedding the fundamental home-instinct that the black hours must necessarily be spent in one’s bedroom with all accompanying accessories of property. Really, once the sacred custom was broken, one could tumble to sleep anywhere; at an inn, or on a divan with two or three other girls, or—in hot weather—out of doors.... Yes, she had grown lax over the geography of her nights. It was easy enough to ’phone Aunt Stella and say: “I’m staying with so-and-so till to-morrow.” “Very well, child—have a good time.” Stella supposed that so-and-so had a spare bedroom, and could lend Deb a nightgown. Gradually Deb trained them not to worry even if she omitted to ’phone her whereabouts; a ’phone was not always handy—“You’ll know I’m all right.”
And all this—for nothing at all. The girl’s behaviour, submitted to the essential interrogation, was as orthodox as her circumstances might be the reverse. That night at Seaview for instance—the sea was entirely a matter of fiction, but Cliffe insisted that such a name must shed a disguise of Philistine respectability over any dwelling. It was not even the dramatically inevitable outcome of a swiftly discovered passion setting them aflame and beyond all reason and remembrance; or else to be explained by a set of automatic coincidences, such as misunderstanding with the rest of the party, or a faulty time-table or a fog. Certainly it was raining rather drearily; and Cliffe declared that the prospect of Zoe and her surrounding aura of Soho waiters and impresarios and macaroni-merchants rendered him faint with boredom ... and they were having rather a jolly talk about something-or-other ... and there was plenty of cold-stuff supper in the larder.... And Deb was in a sort of fancy dress—she had discarded her wet and muddy tweed skirt for a pair of white knickers of Cliffe’s, which, with her own loose red-bordered white serge sailor smock, gave her the look of a trim and dashing principal boy in pantomime. She disliked the bother of resuming her skirt again.
“Oh, well, let’s stop on here,” said Cliffe impatiently. “Why do I pay a high rent if not to be able to talk quietly with a pal now and then, without interruption?”
“Five-and-six a week, isn’t it?” Deb indolently let lapse the question of their imminent return.
“Six-and-six. And cheap at that.”
“I suppose the baby-farm next door reduces the price. They do seem to make more noise than ordinary home-babies.”
Cliffe grinned. “The landlord tried to argue that out as a special convenience ... ‘So handy just to drop it over the wall!’”
“When you first mentioned your country cottage to me, Cliffe, I pictured it with a thatched roof and an orchard and roses round the door.”
“‘Make me love mother more’” he hummed. “Curious psychological effect some vegetation seems to have! But what a hopelessly conventional imagination is yours, Deborah. Is it likely I’d be found dead in one of those old-fashioned traps for sentiment and earwigs? Seaview is a futurist conception of what a country cottage ought to be, in its stark, splendid ugliness.”
Seaview was a yellow-brick workman’s house, standing in a row with five others of the same build ... bare of ornamentation, and with the straight road to High Wycombe directly outside the door.