Patricia Wentworth - She Came Back

also published as The Traveller Returns

Miss Silver – #09, 1945

The air in the Food Office was cold and stuffy. It would be nice to get out into the fresh air again. It would be nice when this business was over. She hadn’t really been waiting for so long, but she felt an angry impatience. To go through all she had gone through, to come back quite literally from the dead, and to be wasting time standing in a queue for a ration card was, at the very least of it, an anticlimax. She was Anne Jocelyn come back from the dead, and here she was in a queue, waiting for a ration card instead of ringing up Philip.

The people in front of her moved on slowly. She began to think about Philip. Three years was a long time to have been dead. Philip had been a widower for more than three years, and in about half an hour somebody would call him to the telephone and a voice-her voice-would impart the glad tidings that Anne Jocelyn wasn’t dead. It gave her a good deal of pleasure to think about telling Philip that he wasn’t a widower after all.

Suppose he wasn’t there… A curious tingling ran over her from head to foot. It was exactly the feeling she might have had if her next slow step forward had shown her the floor broken away and her foot poised above a descending emptiness. She had a moment of vertigo. Then it passed. Philip would be there. If he had had no news of her, something of his movements, his whereabouts, had been conveyed by careful, circuitous channels to those who had helped her on her way. He had been in Egypt, in Tunisia. He had been wounded and sent home. He was to have an appointment at the War Office as soon as he was able to take it up. He’d be there all right, at Jocelyn’s Holt-sleeping in the tower room, walking up and down the terrace, going round the stables, thinking of all the things he’d be able to do with Anne Jocelyn’s money now that she was dead. Of course he would have to wait until the war was over. But it would take more than a world war to stop Philip planning for Jocelyn’s Holt. Oh, yes, he’d be there.

She moved up one in the queue and went on thinking. Suppose he had married again… Something pricked her sharply. She bit her lip. No-she would have heard, she would have been told, warned… Would she? would she? Her head came up, lips parted, breath quickened. No, she couldn’t reckon on that, she couldn’t reckon on anything. But all the same she didn’t think that Philip would have married again. She shook her head slowly. She didn’t think he would. He had the money, he had the place, and she didn’t think he’d be in too much of a hurry to tie himself up again. After all, it hadn’t gone too well, and once bitten twice shy. A faint smile just touched her lips. She didn’t think Philip was going to react very pleasurably to the idea that he was still a married man.

There were three people in front of her-a very stout woman with a basket full of shopping, a little dowdy creature with a string bag, and a stooping elderly man. The stout woman was explaining at the greatest possible length how she had come to lose her ration card. “And I’m not one to do that in a general way, Miss Marsh, though I suppose there’s nobody that doesn’t lose things sometimes, and I don’t set up to be better than anyone else, but many’s the time my husband’s said, ‘Give it to Mother-she’s as safe as a church.’ So I don’t know what come over me, but put it down somewhere I must of, for when I got home there was Father’s, and Ernie’s and Carrie’s, and my sister-in-law’s that’s on a visit, but as for mine I might never have had one. So I went back and round to all the shops where I’d been, and there wasn’t nobody had seen it…”

The woman behind the counter dived and came up with a book in her hand.

“You dropped it in the High Street,” she said in a resigned voice. “Good afternoon.”

The little dowdy creature moved up. She leaned on the counter and whispered.

Anne stood there, tall, fair, and thin. She looked over the stooped shoulders of the elderly man, shivering a little and drawing her fur coat about her. Her hair hung down over the collar in a rough bob. It had a dull, neglected look, but it was thick, and with a little care it would be bright again. Just now it might have been a light brown burned by the sun, or a much fairer shade dimmed by neglect. She was bare-headed. A long straight lock fell forward on either side, framing a thin oval face, straight nose, pale well-shaped lips, very deep grey eyes, and fine arched brows much darker than the hair.

The coat which she drew close was a very handsome one. The soft dark fur would be flattering when she had got something done to her face and her hair. That was the next thing. She buoyed herself up with the thought. In about ten minutes this ration-card business would be over and she could go and have her hair cut and waved and see what was to be had in the way of facepowder and lipstick. She was perfectly well aware that she was looking a mess, and Philip wasn’t going to see her like that.

Less than ten minutes now… less than five… The little whispering woman had gone, and the elderly man was going.

She moved up into the vacant place and set down her bag on the counter. Like the coat, it was or had been very expensive, but unlike the coat it showed signs of wear. The dark brown leather was rubbed and stained, a piece of the gold initial A had broken off. Anne undid the clasp, took out a ration-book, and pushed it across the counter.

“Can you let me have a new book, please?”

Miss Marsh picked it up, brought a colourless gaze to bear upon it, raised her eyebrows, and said,

“This is a very old book-quite out of date.”

Anne leaned nearer.

“Yes, it is. You see, I’ve just come over from France.”

“ France?”

“Yes. I was caught there when the Germans came. I’ve only just managed to get away. Can you let me have a new book?”

“Well, no-I don’t see how we can-” She gave a fleeting glance at the cover of the book and added, “Lady Jocelyn.”

“But I must have a ration-book.”

“Are you staying here?”

“No-only passing through.”

“Then I don’t see what we can do about it. You’ll have to get your ration-book wherever you’re going to stay-at least-I don’t know-have you got your identity card?”

“Yes-here it is. I was lucky-a friend hid it for me, and some clothes, or I should be in rags, and one would rather not come back from the grave in rags.”

Miss Marsh’s eyes stared. She said nervously,

“I think I had better ask Miss Clutterbuck.” She slipped down from her chair and vanished.

About ten minutes later Anne emerged into the street. She had filled in a form, she had been given an emergency card for a fortnight, and the old identity card to keep until such time as a new one could be issued. She crossed the road and entered a telephone-box.

Mrs. Armitage looked up from the Air Force pullover she was knitting, and immediately dropped a stitch. She was large, fair, and extremely good-natured. She wore aged tweeds and a battered felt hat which was generally over one ear. A spare knitting-needle of a horribly bright pink was thrust into a thick disordered fuzz of hair. Once almost too golden, it was now in a streaky half-way stage which probably went better with the freckled skin, light eyes, and wide genial mouth. The tweeds were, or had been, a regrettable mustard. She would have been the first to admit that they clashed with the room. It would have been quite in character if she had said, “But just think of a room that wouldn’t clash with me!”