He merely smiled and, soon after, they got up and rode back to Marlow Stables. As they drove back to London in the jeep, night began to fall and Barbara again rested her head on Stephen's shoulder.
Neither was especially hungry, so before the concert Stephen suggested they go to The Crusting Pipe. It was a pub in the lower level of Covent Garden where two British polo players had taken him the day before for lunch. She liked the cavelike interior with its stone floor covered with sawdust, brick vaulting overhead, and the red checker-clothed wooden tables each with a lighted candle stuck in an old wine bottle and dripping wax down its side.
They said little as they both ate kidney pie and shared a bottle of Burgundy wine. Barbara wished they were both more relaxed during the dinner, but felt that neither of them was sure what to say.
Mostly, they listened to a gramophone playing records. Barbara enjoyed hearing some of her favorites... Frank Sinatra singing the song from Casablanca, "As Time Goes By;" Dinah Shore's so lovely but lonely "I'll Walk Alone;" and Vera Lynn singing everyone's British favorites, "There'll Be Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover" and "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square."
When her favorite song was played, "All the Things You Are," she wanted very much to dance it with Stephen. She wondered, was she afraid to? The words swam around in her head...
You are the promised kiss of springtime
That makes the lonely winter seem long...
Over coffee after dinner, Stephen offered her another cigarette. He put two in his mouth, lit them both, then gave her one.
Barbara smiled, loving the romantic gesture. "Now, Voyager."I love movies, but especially that one."
"I love them, too."
So we also have that in common, she thought, besides liking cigarettes and classical music. And, more importantly, each other. Stephen looked as if he had something else to tell her, and she wondered what it could be.
"Everyone thinks that happened for the first time in a movie, when Paul Henried lit two cigarettes and gave one to Bette Davis. But it wasn't. I remember seeing Tyrone Power do that first, for him and Loretta Young in Second Honeymoon. It was a romantic comedy made five years before Now, Voyager."
Barbara was both amazed and amused that he had known that, because she had not.
"You do know your movies!" she laughed as they both blew smoke over their shoulders.