To Love a Traitor

Chapter 2-2

Roger spent much of his time reading, those few months after calling on Sir Arthur. He’d hide himself away in his room, sitting on the wide, low sill of his window with a book as he had as a child. When he raised his head from his book, he could look out at the trees in their rich autumn clothing—but now there was no chance of spying a glimpse of Hugh and his friends, swaggering back from the hunt or larking about in the leaves.

Having lost his taste for adventure stories and for histories, Roger found himself turning instead to books of law. It was a fascinating subject to a logical mind—and, well, he needed a profession. Law was something that might be practised anywhere he chose, and the life of a solicitor seemed much more suited to Roger’s tastes than that of a stockbroker.

After a couple of months, a letter came from Sir Arthur. Roger opened it in high excitement but was disappointed to find only a reassurance that “matters were in hand”, whatever that meant, and a not-so-gentle reminder of Sir Arthur’s previous advice to move back to London, couched as an expression of surprise at not having received word yet of Roger’s change of address.

It was enough, however, to shake Roger out of the melancholy slump he’d fallen into, and the next morning he bit the bullet and wrote to the family solicitor enquiring after the possibility of his taking articles at a firm in the capital.

Mr. Venables had always been sympathetic to Roger’s situation. He was a man of strong principles and had confided to Roger at Hugh’s memorial service that, had he been a younger man, his conscience, too, might have been troubled by the thought of conscription. It had been the only comfort he’d received that day. Mabel, poor girl, had been in no state to comfort anyone else. Accordingly, Mr. Venables wrote to Mr. Forrester, a friend from his days at the Bar, who had a firm in London and who, he judged, might be disposed to oblige him in the matter of a bright young man in need of a position.

Mabel was the first to congratulate Roger over his new place at Forrester & Lindley. They’d met at a tea shop in town, Mabel still in her nurse’s uniform, fresh from her shift at the cottage hospital. Outside, darkness had already fallen, and the windows were steamy. It would be a chilly journey home for both of them, but for now they were warm and snug—a little too warm, in fact, for the place was packed with well-wrapped bodies.

“Won’t you mind starting right at the bottom, working under people who aren’t half so well qualified as you?” Mabel asked bluntly on hearing the news.

Roger swallowed his mouthful of scone. “No, I don’t think so. I’m rather looking forward to having the chance to achieve something by my own efforts.”

“Oh, Roger. Everything you’ve done has been as a result of your own efforts. Well, perhaps not the City job,” she allowed. “Do you think you’ll stick this one?”

“I hope so. At least I’m doing this because I want to, not because I didn’t know what else to do. I mean to say, it was kind of Keighley to put in a word for me like that, but I don’t think the City is really the life for me.”

“No—too ruthless. All those financiers trying to get one over on each other. I shouldn’t like it myself—not that I suppose they’d let a woman set one foot in the door unless she was coming to bring their tea.” Mabel tutted at the ridiculous prejudices of the male of the species.

“You’re probably right. Speaking of which…?” Roger gestured to the pot.

“Please.”

He topped up her cup and his own. “Another scone?”

“No, thank you,” she said firmly, before going on in a lower tone. “What I really want is to know what other news you have for me.”

Roger grimaced. “None at all. I’m beginning to think it must all have been coincidence. And sheer bad luck on Hugh’s part. After all, it’s been months. It can’t have taken Sir Arthur all this time to pull out some files.” Her hand was resting on the table, and Roger covered it with his own. “I’m sorry. I’m really starting to think there may be nothing to find out.”

Mabel looked unhappy. “You don’t suppose he thinks I’m just being hysterical, do you?”

“No, of course not. And he certainly wouldn’t think that of me, now would he?” She managed a wan smile. Roger squeezed her hand. “No, you can depend on Sir Arthur. If he hasn’t got back to me with any news, that must mean there is no news to tell. But I will go and see him again when I’m settled in London. I’ve written to him about my new job, just as a courtesy, and will let him know my new address.”

“Will you be starting very soon?”

Roger nodded. “The last week in November.”

“Goodness, that is soon. Where will you live?”

“I’ll get a room in a cheap hotel until I can find something. If I try to stick it at home any longer, I’ll go mad.” Roger stared into his teacup. “I wish I’d never given up my lodgings in London.”

It was Mabel’s turn to provide a comforting squeeze of the hand. “People can be beastly when they’re miserable. And they never did really appreciate you at home—well, apart from Hugh, of course.”

Roger looked up in amazement. “Hugh? He despised me.”

“No.” Her tone was firm, but then it softened. “Maybe when you were boys, yes. But going to war changed him. I think he even understood you, a little, by the time he…” She broke off, looking down at her plate. “You know, I think I would like that last scone, actually. Would you mind buttering it for me?”

Roger set to, thinking rather wistfully that Mabel must truly have been in love with Hugh to be so blind to the derision with which he’d always regarded Roger. By the time the scone was suitably buttered and topped with the last of the strawberry jam, Mabel had got herself together again.