Mr. Love and Justice Read Free Page B

are, without disguises; and get away with it. Among adults, Edward noticed, only American servicemen seemed quite naturally to possess this skill.
    Then there was the difficulty of moving in the dark. Of course, when in uniform there’d been the manoeuvre of lurking in shop doorways, or in mews turnings. But the whole point in the Force of a uniform had been that people should see it, and think twice. Now he’d had to learn to embrace the darkness, to become part of it and use it for himself.
    He told some of this in confidence to his girl, but not too much of it because he believed firmly in an ultimate loyalty to the Force so far as its own secrets were concerned; and had learnt, in its hard and testing school, that a secret told to any one is no longer a secret in any real way at all. Also, he was feeling his way in the new job, and still doubtful and insecure.
    ‘But you like it on the whole,’ she said.
    ‘Oh, yes. Who wouldn’t.’
    ‘Well, dearest, I don’t . Oh, don’t get me wrong! I mean, only because I seem to see much less of you.’
    She moved her head slowly and kissed him, which she did quite unfurtively, warmly and decidedly yet in a private, serious, almost holy way (he thought) that no one in the little park could possibly take except to. He felt together with this short, wonderful embrace, the slight scratch of her spectacles, which enchanted him because of memories.
    ‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry the duties make me see you less because, honest, this new job makes me feel quite a bit lonely.’
    ‘Well, naturally,’ she said. ‘Any new job does.’
    ‘Not only that.’ He hesitated how much to admit because he knew a man who betrays his weaknesses, even to the girl he loves, is giving her weapons for the tenderest blackmail. ‘It’s like this,’ he said. ‘The story is all coppers are just civilians like anyone else, living among them, not in barracks like on the Continent, but you and I know that’s just a legend for mugs. We are cut off: we’re not like everyone else. Some civilians fear us and play up to us, some dislike us and keep out of our way but no one – well, very few indeed – accepts us as just ordinary like them. In one sense, dear, we’re like hostile troops occupying an enemy country. And say what you like, at times that makes us lonely.’
    She squeezed his arm, said nothing.
    ‘Now in this job the new one, even more so. Because not only the civvies all mistrust you, but – this is what I’ve discovered – the uniformed men do, too. They’rejealous, I dare say, and a bit scared: I’ve had a few very distant looks from former pals in the past few weeks, I can tell you, and it’s not so very pleasant.’
    ‘But there’s the satisfaction of your job,’ she said, because she knew this was a man’s great love by which, if she respected it, she could hold him all the more.
    ‘Oh, yes … there’s that, of course.’
    The time was now approaching, as both knew, when they must have it out about the conflict of love and duty. After a silence made of gathering clouds, she broached the theme and said, ‘Did they ask you about me at all?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And what did you tell them?’
    Edward was ready, this time, with his answer. He could not, he’d decided, tell her what he’d told the Detective-Sergeant: that she was a copper-hater; for then she’d think that, maligning her to his other dearest love, the Force, he’d secretly wished to detach himself from her altogether. Women were so mistrustful! And when you want irreconcilables you have to lie at some point – there’s really no other possible solution. So this double betrayal of the Force and her was the price he must pay for the higher idea of love. And he’d made up his mind that he’d say to her what he said now, and that was, ‘Darling, I just told them I hadn’t got a girl at all.’
    She looked him full in the eyes and her own shut, a moment, behind her spectacles;