“Silly? Rome burning?” she said with a rueful little smile.
“No—sweet,” I said. “Thank you for doing it. A gesture—and a reminder that with all the faults there was so much beauty. You couldn’t have done—or looked—a lovelier thing.”
Her smile lost its ruefulness.
“Thank you, Bill.” She paused. Then she added: “Have I said thank you before? I don’t think I have. If you hadn’t helped me when you did——”
“But for you,” I told her, “I should probably by now be lying maudlin and sozzled in some bar. I have just as much to thank you for. This is no time to be alone.” Then, to change the trend, I added: “And speaking of drink, there’s an excellent amontillado here, and some pretty good things to follow. This is a very well-found apartment.”
I poured out the sherry, and we raised our glasses.
“To health, strength—and luck,” I said.
She nodded. We drank.
“What,” Josella asked as we started on an expensive-tasting paté, “if the owner of all this suddenly comes back?”
“In that case we will explain—and he or she should be only too thankful to have someone here to tell him which bottle is which, and so on—but I don’t think that is very likely to happen.”
“No,” she agreed, considering. “No. I’m afraid that’s not very likely. I wonder——” She looked round the room. Her eyes paused at a fluted white pedestal. “Did you try the radio—I suppose that thing is a radio, isn’t it?”
“It’s a television projector too,” I told her. “But no good. No power.”
“Of course. I forgot. I suppose we’ll go on forgetting things like that for quite a time.”
“But I did try one when I was out,” I said. “A battery affair. Nothing doing. All broadcast bands as silent as the grave.”
“That means it’s like this everywhere?”
“I’m afraid so. There was something pip-pipping away around forty-two meters. Otherwise nothing. I wonder who and where he was, poor chap.”
“It’s—it’s going to be pretty grim, Bill, isn’t it?”
“It’s——No, I’m not going to have my dinner clouded,” I said. “Pleasure before business—and the future is definitely business. Let’s talk about something interesting, like how many love affairs you have had and why somebody hasn’t married you long before this—or has he? You see how little I know. Life story, please.”
“Well,” she said, “I was born about three miles from here. My mother was very annoyed about it at the time.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“You see, she had quite made up her mind that I should be an American. But when the car came to take her to the airport it was just too late. Full of impulses, she was—I think I inherited some of them.”
She prattled on. There was not much remarkable about her early life, but I think she enjoyed herself in summarizing it and forgetting where we were for a while. I enjoyed listening to her babble of the familiar and amusing things that had all vanished from the world outside. We worked lightly through childhood, schooldays, and “coming out”—insofar as the term still meant anything.
“I did nearly get married when I was nineteen,” she admitted, “and aren’t I glad now it didn’t happen. But I didn’t feel like that at the time. I had a frightful row with Daddy, who’d broken the whole thing up because he saw right away that Lionel was a spizzard and——”
“A what?” I interrupted.