Jack Compton's Luck

Early the following morning Jack was speculating about what, from his limited wardrobe, he ought to wear for the expedition to Wembley when the lodging housemaid came to tell him that he was wanted on the telephone.

It was Will. After a few short enquiries as to what Jack was up to, Will said, ‘I was under the impression that you would be coming home yesterday. Have your plans altered?’

‘Well, that was my original intention, but something came up.’

The something, of course, was Lacey, but Jack felt that he could scarcely ramble on about that on the telephone and, besides, Will might not think it a sufficiently good explanation for his having postponed his return. ‘Is there any particular reason why you want me back?’ he added, because he thought Will sounded harassed.

‘Actually, yes. I could do with you here as soon as possible. I don’t wish to discuss the matter over the phone, but if you could manage to return tomorrow I should be exceedingly grateful.’

‘Oh, I can easily arrange that. I have a final visit to the lawyers this morning. This afternoon I am making up one of Richard Chancellor’s party on a visit to the Wembley Exhibition.’

‘Now, I do envy you that, and Robbie will, too. I feel a cur for asking you to cut your London visit short since you seem to be seeing life a little, but needs must. Give my best regards to Richard. I haven’t seen him since before the war. I hear that he’s done well for himself.’

There was something wistful in Will’s voice. Unlike George, all his hopes for the future had been dashed by the War.

‘I’ll try to find Robbie a souvenir. Give him my love.’

He put the phone back on the wall, wondering what it was that had made Will, who rarely used the telephone, ring him. Well, he would find out soon enough tomorrow. Today, though, was to be devoted to the law and to Wembley.

Fortunately for Jack, and the others, the weather was good that afternoon and the company was better—even Aunt Sue was being civil to him. She had, rather sensibly, decided that to oppose Jack’s interest in Lacey so decisively was merely encouraging her headstrong niece to go on seeing him. If she said nothing, this squib of an affair might burn itself out.

Richard, whose party it nominally was, apologised for not accompanying them—something important had come up, he said, and his cousin George would take over as host.

The British Empire Exhibition was the official name for the jamboree they were attending—George Chancellor’s description of it. ‘It’s the twentieth century’s version of the Great Exhibition of 1851,’ he explained cheerfully to his hearers.

There were, among other exciting things, an Ashanti village, a collection of animals from South Africa, native dancing and something else, not perhaps strictly part of the Empire, but allied to its glory: a replica of Tutankhamen’s tomb, which included a superb gold life-size figure of the boy Pharaoh himself.

Jack and Lacey stood before it in wonderment. Lacey said, ‘It makes me feel humble to think that all those years ago human beings could create something so beautiful. What have we to show which is equally fine?’

‘A motor car,’ suggested Jack, not quite seriously, ‘or an aeroplane? The Pharaohs weren’t up to them.’ But he knew what she meant, and they both appreciated the awe which Howard Carter must have felt when he rolled back the linen shroud which had covered the effigy and, after three thousand years, revealed to himself, and ultimately to the world, one of the glories of the long-dead past.

George Chancellor, and the others of the party, also stood, awed, before the golden and blue marvel. Finally, when they moved away, he murmured, ‘I know the emphasis of this exhibition is really on trade, and as a civil service flunkey I ought to appreciate that, but, to me, this beats everything.’

His hearers nodded. If, for Jack, the emphasis of their expedition was on Lacey, as well as the wonders of the Exhibition itself—for who knew when he might meet her again?—to see Tutankhamen’s effigy was an experience also never to be forgotten. After that the Palace of Industry and even the Burmese pagodas, beautiful though they were, took second place.

Somehow, in the crowds, Lacey and Jack managed to escape from the others, avoiding Aunt Sue’s vigilant eye, and seat themselves not far from where the Battle of Zeebrugge was being re-enacted.

‘I now know what the sentimental novelists mean when they have their hero and heroine say, “Alone at last”,’ remarked Lacey.

‘I second that with some enthusiasm,’ Jack replied, ‘if being lost among such a crowd could be called being alone.’

‘You know what I mean,’ Lacey told him a little severely. ‘I like George and the others, but I feel so confined when I am always one of a large party.’

‘Of course, and I feel the same.’

Jack was busily admiring Lacey’s perfect profile and wishing that he dare kiss her on the cheek. Supposing, however, Aunt Sue popped up from nowhere—whatever would she say? For the first time he envied the anonymous young people who fervently embraced one another while lying on the grass in London’s many parks. Here he was, imprisoned by convention, unable to offer his newly found beloved a chaste kiss while sitting upright!

He could, however, take her hand and stroke it gently. This had the strongest effect on both of them—of which, of course, they could take no advantage.

‘I have to go home tomorrow,’ Jack told her. ‘I can’t imagine when we shall next have a chance to meet.’

Lacey, who had just decided to stroke Jack’s hand for a change, murmured, ‘So soon. Do you realise how short a time we have known one another?’

‘Yes. Odd, isn’t it? I have known some pretty girls for years and have never had the slightest inclination to feel for them what I have begun to feel for you.’

There, it was out. He had said it—and damn the consequences. She, and certainly Aunt Sue, might dub him fortune hunter, but he—and he hoped Lacey—knew that was not true. Had he been a real hunter, roving the plains in the distant long ago, even before Tutankhamen, he would have thrown her over his shoulder and run off with her to some convenient cave!

Which was an impossible dream. They were trapped in the twentieth century in a society which, outwardly at least, imposed the strictest standards on the behaviour of young unmarried people.

‘We could write to one another,’ suggested Lacey, who was feeling a little desperate herself. During their walk around the Exhibition she had discovered that Jack had a fund of knowledge—not academic, unlike her own, but that of a man of intelligence who had read widely. He had spoken of his time in Palestine, and of the problems of the Jews and Arabs there, with sympathy and understanding.

Now she was to lose him to a succession of young men, many of whom were little more intelligent than Bertie Wooster!

‘Would you?’ exclaimed Jack. ‘Would you really?’ He was beginning to believe that Lacey was as entranced by him as he was by her. Of course, nothing could come of it. After all, it was highly unlikely that one of America’s richest heiresses would be allowed to marry poverty-stricken Jack Compton. Aunt Sue’s would not be the only voice raised against it. He was scarcely in the same league as the Amherst heir.

On the other hand, he might as well follow the old Roman motto, Carpe diem, or ‘seize the day’ in plain English, and make hay while the sun shines, as another old saying had it! Such an odd mishmash of ancient advice as he was giving himself made him laugh internally since it was proof positive of the excited state he had been in since he had first seen Lacey dancing the Charleston only one short week ago.

‘Of course. You must give me your address immediately. I can’t be asking you for it in Aunt Sue’s hearing.’ Lacey rummaged in her large handbag and produced a gold propelling pencil and a small notebook, which she opened at the first blank page she found.

‘It’s an easy one to remember,’ Jack told her, writing it down. ‘Compton Place, Sussex, would probably find us, but to be quite safe, I’ll put the long one down.’

He handed the little book back to her. ‘And now we’ve enjoyed the cultural and economic delights of Wembley, how about visiting the Amusement Park and having a go on the Scenic Ride on the roller coaster, or switch-back railway, before we try to find the others?’

‘What could be better?’ exclaimed Lacey enthusiastically. ‘I went on one at Coney Island when I was a little girl. I was frightened to death and screamed all the way down—and up! Promise to hold my hand if I’m frightened again.’

‘Oh, I promise to hold your hand even if you’re not frightened,’ Jack told her gravely.

So they wandered off to the Amusement Park to engage in an activity of which Aunt Sue would undoubtedly deplore! Lacey did scream, but with pleasure, not fear, this time and hung on to Jack after a fashion which made him feel both manly and protective—as well as hopelessly roused.

He took the opportunity to stroke her head gently when she buried it in his chest—which had the effect of rousing him further. He could not stop himself from kissing her neck when she let go of him on one of the less exciting parts of the run—and that did nothing for his composure either.

By the flush on Lacey’s face when she finally sat up and straightened herself, Jack could tell that she had been enjoying his petting of her nearly as much as he had. On the final run in, she murmured to him, ‘Oh, I did like that,’ though whether she was referring to the ride itself or his attentions to her during it he was still not quite sure.

Lacey, however, was quite sure. Oh, she had been stroked and kissed by a man before, but it had never had the powerful affect on her which Jack’s gentle loving had caused. She was experienced enough to know what the shivers of delight which had overcome her during the ride truly meant. They meant that she was ready, nay, needed, more than he had just offered her.

And what did that tell her of her true feelings for him?

She didn’t go quite so far as to say that she wanted to go round again, although had Jack invited her to she would immediately have agreed.

Instead, regretfully, she looked at her watch and exclaimed, ‘We really ought to try to find our party, we’ve almost reached the time when we agreed to return home.’

‘True,’ said Jack, ‘but not before I do this.’ He had already decided that there was safety in numbers and that since he and Lacey were suitably anonymous, lost in a crowd which neither knew nor cared what they did, it would be quite safe to give her a real kiss, not the soft ones he had offered her on their ride. So he saluted her not chastely on the cheek, but nearly chastely on the lips, almost in passing as it were, needing no passionate embrace.

Lacey made no attempt to stop him and it was he who broke away first. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘but I have spent the whole afternoon wanting to do that. If you didn’t like it, I promise not to do it again.’

‘Oh, don’t say that,’ she riposted briskly. ‘I liked it very much. In fact, I wouldn’t object if you did it again—more slowly this time.’

‘In that case,’ said Jack, ‘I will try to oblige you.’