Earth and High Heaven by Gwethalyn Graham Page B

dressing.”
    â€œLook,” said Erica, falling back in her chair and addressing the waiter, “there’s really no reason why I should choose my own dessert either. Which pastry would you like me to eat?”
    â€œThe one with the strawberries, madame,” said the waiter.
    â€œ Mille-feuilles ,” said René when the tray came round to his side of the table. “And bring the coffee right away, please. How is your pastry?”
    â€œIt’s all right so far. If I should wake up with violent pains in the middle of the night, I’ll telephone you and you can sue the waiter. How’s Madeleine, by the way?”
    â€œI don’t know, I haven’t been home yet. Haven’t you seen her lately?”
    â€œNot since I had dinner with her on Monday night,” said Erica, shoving her chair back a little so that she could cross her legs. “Why? Do you think anything’s likely to go wrong?”
    â€œI don’t know. I only wish Tony were here.” He pushed his plate away from him and said unhappily, as she had heard him say so often during the past six months, “I’ll be glad when it’s all over.”
    â€œYou haven’t told Madeleine what you think about Tony, have you?”
    â€œOf course not,” he said almost angrily. “What do you take me for?”
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    â€œShe knows just as well as I do that the R.C.A.F. wanted him to stay here and instruct, that he was pretty old for a pilot anyhow, and that if he hadn’t kicked up such a fuss he wouldn’t have been sent overseas just when she was starting to have a baby. It’s all in your point of view, Eric,” he said, leaning forward with his elbows on the table. “I’m not so enthusiastic about women doctors and lawyers and politicians as Tony is, but I wouldn’t desert my wife when she was having her first child if I could help it.”
    Erica said nothing. The old loyalty to Tony refused to die; she could not discuss him even with her father.
    â€œIt isn’t just Madeleine,” said René. “It’s his whole outlook on life. The war seems to have knocked him right off his base.”
    No, thought Erica, there never was a base, even before the war. Anthony had spent his whole life, not just those five years at Drake’s, as her father had said, waiting for something exciting to happen. He was clever, and very good-looking, and he had got by all right; you had to know him very well to realize that he had never found himself, and that he had never done anything but mark time.
    Erica had no idea why he had fallen so violently in love with Madeleine de Sevigny; as Charles Drake still observed moodily to his wife and daughter on an average of once a week, Anthony and Madeleine didn’t seem to have much in common. As for Erica, she had finally lost contact with her brother sometime toward the end of 1940. Until the war broke out they had been unusually close, partly because there were only two years between them, while the other war had created a gap of almost five between Miriam and herself.
    She said mildly, in order to get René off the subject, “You never object to your charwoman or your stenographer earning her own living. You only object to women doing jobs you might like to do yourself.”
    â€œOf course,” said René. “Trying to stop other people from doing something they like and you don’t is a characteristic of Protestants, not Catholics. Who ever heard of a Catholic W.C.T.U.?”
    Several of the tables in the little room were already empty, and there were only two people left at the bar, a sailor sitting with his chin in his hands staring fixedly at a bottle of Cointreau and an Air Force officer lounging with his hands in his pockets, apparently waiting for someone. Erica glanced at her watch. It was twenty past two, which gave her another half hour before she would have to leave to