by Henry Green
'Funny thing,' Mr Adams said and he had not listened.
'Yes, that's what the doctor said,' Miss Evelyn Henderson was telling Alex, 'and now, between ourselves, she has been vomiting so if what the doctor says is right she ought to be getting better.'
'Well, that's splendid.'
'Yes, but I'm not so sure that doctor knew what he was talking about. Don't go and tell anyone, but she was such a bad colour.'
'Evelyn, my dear,' Alex said, 'don't put your opinion against the doctor's, it's perfectly fatal. If he said what was wrong with her as he did then that's what is the matter, never mind what you or I think. I'm not sure that I agree with you, in any case it's quite likely she had one too many, probably she felt tired and let it get the better of her.'
He mixed himself another drink.
'Now don't you go and get drunk too,' she said. 'I can't have two drunks on my hands.'
He laughed and then, because she had rather annoyed him, he made this suggestion:
'Why don't you let Claire look after her? After all she is her niece.'
'My dear, Claire couldn't look after a sick cat. As it is I don't know what I should have done if it hadn't been for her old nanny and the friend. They have been simply wonderful. Of course it was they who put me on the track of it and I didn't have a chance of taking that doctor aside, but I don't think they are satisfied either.'
'What do you mean?'
'No, I should not have said that. I think you are quite right that I should take what the doctor said,' she said to close the subject.
'Well,' said Alex, 'I have been doing my bit too. A most extraordinary individual blew in here a short time back and I took him for the hotel detective. I thought he was trying to nose out something about this Miss Fellowes. So I buckled to and began plying him with drinks and the others have been chaffing me about it.'
'I think you were quite right, perfectly right. It would be dreadful if there was a scandal. Now I must go back. I don't mean a scandal, that's not the right word, a fuss. Now I must go back in there. You go and talk to Angela, she's sitting all alone,' and with that Miss Henderson went off.
Upstairs Max and Julia had finished their tea and, in an interval of silence, she had gone over to the window and was looking down on that crowd below. As he came over to join her she said well anyway, those police over there would protect their luggage, as they were drawn up in front of the Registration Hall. And as she watched she saw this crowd was in some way different. It could not be larger as there was no room, but in one section under her window it seemed to be swaying like branches rock in a light wind and, paying greater attention, she seemed to hear a continuous murmur coming from it. When she noticed heads everywhere turned towards that section just below she flung her window up. Max said: 'Don't go and let all that in,' and she heard them chanting beneath: 'WE WANT TRAINS, WE WANT TRAINS.' Also that raw air came in, harsh with fog and from somewhere a smell of cooking, there was a shriek from somewhere in the crowd, it was all on a vast scale and not far above her was that vault of glass which was blue now instead of green, now that she was closer to it. She had forgotten what it was to be outside, what it smelled and felt like, and she had not realized what this crowd was, just seeing it through glass. It went on chanting WE WANT TRAINS, WE WANT TRAINS from that one section which surged to and fro and again that same woman shrieked, two or three men were shouting against the chant but she could not distinguish words. She thought how strange it was when hundreds of people turned their heads all in one direction, their faces so much lighter than their dark hats, lozenges, lozenges, lozenges.
The management had shut the steel doors down because when once before another fog had come as thick as this hundreds and hundreds of the crowd, unable to get home by train or bus, had pushed into this hotel and quietly clamoured for rooms, beds, meals, and more and more had pressed quietly, peaceably in until, although they had been most well behaved, by weight of numbers they had smashed everything, furniture, lounges, reception offices, the two bars, doors. Fifty-two had been injured and compensated and one of them was a little Tommy Tucker, now in a school for cripples, only fourteen years of age, and to be supported all his life at the railway company's expense by order of a High Court Judge.
'It's terrifying,' Julia said, 'I didn't know there were so many people in the world.'
'Do shut the window, Julia.'
'But why? Max, there's a poor woman down there where that end of the crowd's swaying. Did you hear her call? Couldn't you do something about it?'
He leaned out of the window.
'Couldn't get down there I'm afraid, doors are shut,' he said.
At that she closed this window and said he was quite right and that it was silly of her to suggest it. 'After all,' she said, 'one must not hear too many cries for help in this world. If my uncle answered every begging letter he received he would have nothing left in no time.' It was extraordinary how quiet their room became once that window was shut. 'What do you do with your appeals and things?' He answered that everything was in the hands of his secretary. He decided with his accountants, who managed his affairs for him, what he would set aside for charities during the year and then he told his secretary which ones he wanted to support and his accountants had to approve the actual amount before it was paid. He explained this rather disjointedly and gave her to understand that it was his secretary who really decided everything for him.
'And your accountants, or whatever you call them, decide how much it is to be?'
'That's right.'
'Then do you actually spend less than you receive?'
'I don't know.'
'But you must know.'
'No, I don't. You see my accountants report to my trustees.'
'Then don't your trustees tell you?'
'They made a bit of a stink years ago when they said I'd spent too much. It was then they fixed up this system. They haven't said anything since so I suppose it's all right. Will you have a cocktail or something?'
She refused. She began to feel rather uncomfortable in this closed room. He asked if she would mind his sending for some whisky and telephoned down for it.
'Ask them if there is any chance of there being some trains running soon.' He reported that they said not for another hour or two, although this fog seemed to be lifting along the coast. She wondered what she had better do, whether her best plan was not to ring up her uncle to say they were all stuck in this hotel, whether it would not be safer supposing he found out they had spent hours penned up alone in here. But then, she argued, it was not as if they were not in a party and no one knew she was up here with Max. And if her uncle told her to come back home then she might not catch their train if it did in the end go off rather unexpectedly. How frightfully rich Max must be. No, it would be better if she stayed where she was, she was not going to miss this trip for anything. She had been looking forward to it for weeks. And besides she wondered, she wondered what he was going to do now that he had her all alone. It made the whole trip so much more exciting to begin with a whole three weeks before them to get everything right in.
'Cheer up,' Alex said to Miss Crevy, going up to where she sat alone in that room downstairs, 'don't look so glum, Angela.'
'Do I?' she said, and she put up her hands to rearrange her hair. 'Yes, I suppose I do feel low.' In actual fact she felt so low she could not be angry with him any more, though she did still resent him.
'Are you sure,' he said, 'that you won't have anything to drink?' When she refused he went on that this kind of breakdown in the arrangements was typical of all travelling with Max. 'Have you ever been on a trip with him before?' She said she had, which he was pretty certain was a lie. He went on:
'I remember last year, when we were going to the same place we are going now, there was the most frightful business in Paris because all our sleepers weren't together. He had reserved the whole of one coach and when we all got to the train he found they had put us all over it. He made a great row and for some tim
e he threatened not to take the train. Of course, they said he could do exactly as he liked but that he would have to pay for those sleepers in any case and there weren't any others for four days the trains were so full. Well, you know it didn't matter in the least to us where we were, they were single sleepers anyway, but he wouldn't have it and we all stood there thinking perhaps we would never go after all.'
'It was rather sweet of him.'
'Yes,' said Alex, 'it was.' Alex was anxious to be on good terms with everyone and did not want to remember that Miss Crevy had got on his nerves. 'Yes, in many ways he is too good a host, that was why he was so anxious no one should know about Claire's aunt,' he said, embroidering, 'so that no one should be bothered about anyone else being ill. D'you know,' he said, 'I've been thinking it over and I think you were quite right about Embassy Richard, that he didn't send that notice out himself.'
'All I said was,' Angela said rather wearily, 'he had told my mother that he was not going to the party.'
'That's just it, so I don't think that he could have sent the notice out himself in view of what you have just told me. I quite forget what I said at the time but it's obvious you were right about that and that I was wrong,' he said, ignoring altogether that he had originally agreed with her on this point although he had then rather lost track of his argument. But he was anxious to be friends.
'Oh, don't let's talk about that, Alex. But then what happened about the sleepers, did you go in the end?'
'Good heavens, yes, of course we went. They compromised by putting some of us together. Oh, yes, one always goes but it's a certainty something perfectly appalling crops up like this fog or the business about sleepers or any one of the hundreds of things that turn up when he travels. I'm not saying that one isn't exceedingly comfortable, but it's definitely wearing.'
He thought to himself that she was not posing to be such an expert on travelling with Max after all. Perhaps she had been once to Scotland with him.
'Have you ever been to Barshottie?'
'No,' she said, 'why do you ask?'
Miss Fellowes was better. She was having a perfectly serene dream that she was riding home, on ah evening after hunting, on an antelope between rows of giant cabbages. Earth and sky were inverted, her ceiling was an indeterminate ridge and furrow barely lit by crescent moons in the azure sky she rode on.
In the sitting-room next to where she lay dreaming watched by those two nannies, Claire and Evelyn discussed Angela's looks, which they admired, and her clothes, of which they did not think so much.
'But, darling,' said Claire, 'why do you think Max asked her?'
'Why, for that matter, did he ask us?'
'Oh, but Evelyna, we've all known him for ages.'
'Yes, but surely to goodness he can get to know someone else. I think we're all unfair to him.'
'How do you mean?'
'Well, my dear, of course we're all hoping he'll get engaged to Julia and I don't know if it's because of that but I do think we seem to be getting almost proprietary about him. After all, Claire, he's independent enough now with all these creatures he goes about with at night. He's been most good to me taking me about when I couldn't possibly have afforded to go alone and I can't question who be asks besides.'
'I can't either,' Claire said, 'but I can't help wondering. And anyway,' she said, rising in her own defence, 'I don't think because Robert and I and you are asked that's any reason why we shouldn't discuss him.'
'I know just what you mean but we seem to be doing it all the time nowadays. Not with Julia though, she never talks about him now. Has she said anything to you about him lately?'
'No, Julia is most frightfully close about herself,' Claire said. 'She's never so much as breathed a word to me ever, has she to you?'
'No, not a word.'
'Then you mean what I mean, that she doesn't discuss him now because she minds?'
'Well, of course she does. We knew she did months ago.'
'I know, but it is too divine, isn't it?' Claire said and then described how Julia had suddenly said to her about how hopeless Max was, when they were sitting outside together on their luggage.
'Still,' said Evelyn, 'that's just what people do do.'
'What?'
'Talk about their affairs when they are really upset about them.'
'Well, Evelyn my dear, she did sort of let it out to me when we were sitting there as I've just told you.'
'I didn't mean that. What I meant was really having it out. And that she has never done with any of us.'
'Julia's not the same as everyone, that's why she is so sweet.'
'Well, Claire, I think we are all the same about things like that, and she's never really had it out with any of us.'
If Julia had wondered where Max was taking her as they went upstairs together Max, for his part, had wondered where she was taking him. With this difference however, that, if she had done no more than ask herself what room he was taking her to, he had asked himself whether he was going to fall for her. Again, while she had wondered so faintly she hardly knew she had it in her mind or, in other words, had hardly expressed to herself what she was thinking, he was much further from putting his feelings into words, as it was not until he felt sure of anything that he knew what he was thinking of. When he thought, he was only conscious of uneasy feelings and he only knew that he had been what he did not even call thinking when his feelings hurt him. When he was sure then he felt it must at once be put to music, which was his way of saying words.
This is not to say that Max was one of those men with ungovernable actions in that sense in which one speaks of men with ungovernable tempers, always breaking out into rages. He was not so often sure he was in love with anyone that he was always assaulting girls. But when he was sure then he felt he had to do something.
Julia, of course, he had been continually meeting for eighteen months. He had brought her along when they had been abroad before, though he had not seen much of her then, but since that time he had met her again and again at houses where he happened to be staying and when they had been a great deal more together than with the other guests.
'Tell me about your toys,' he said.
'My toys, what do you mean? Oh, you're trying to say my charms. No, I certainly won't if you call them my toys.'
'Your charms,' he said.
'Well, if you swear you won't laugh I might.' She was most anxious to tell him because she naturally wanted to talk about herself.
'I won't laugh,' he said.
'I don't know how I first got them,' she said, for she was not going to tell anyone ever that it was her mother, of course, who had given them to her and who had died when she was two years old. Here she broke off to ask him if he had overheard Robert Hignam telling her about that patch of bamboos they had played round as children. 'He is so silly, as if I should ever forget,' she said. 'We were brought up together.' She went on to say what Robert had never known was that one of her charms, the wooden pistol, had been buried plumb in the middle of the bamboo patch. In consequence, and no one had ever known of it, these bamboos, or probably they had been overgrown artichokes, had taken on a great importance in her mind because of this secret buried in them. And she asked Max if he did not think it often was the case that certain things people remembered about when they were children were important to them only because they were far more important to someone else.
She explained that each time they went through those artichokes pretending they were explorers in jungles, she was excited because she knew she had buried her pistol there and because the others did not know., She felt her excitement had made their game more secret and that it was the secrecy which was what Robert remembered of it. 'So that it was my having hidden the pistol there which made the whole thing for him. He'll never know,' she said.
So her wooden pistol was stained and had rather crumbled away, after she had dug it up, but she had it still, nothing would ever part her from it. The egg she described as being hollow, painted outsid
e with rings of red and yellow, half the size of duck's eggs, and it had inside three little ivory elephants. 'You'll never believe about my egg,' she said, 'and I've never told another soul,' which was a lie. But she did tell him, and it was like this. When she had been no more than four years old she had been out with her nanny for their afternoon's walk. She was carrying a huge golfing umbrella she could not be happy without at that particular time, quartered in red and yellow silk. Her nanny had opened it for her and she was so very small she had had to carry it with both hands to the handle as it spread above her head. Now she also had with her the wooden egg with elephants inside in one of her pockets and as she happened to be walking on a bank a sudden gust of wind had taken hold of her umbrella and, as she had not let go, had carried her for what, at this length of time, she now considered to be great distances, as far as from cliffs into the sea, but what, as it actually happened, had been no more than three or four feet and into a puddle. 'And I said "Nanny, if I hadn't my egg in my pocket I should have been drowned."' Julia could now see herself swaying down 10,000 feet tied to a red and yellow parachute. 'So you see,' she said, 'I can't ever leave it behind now, can I?'
'Yes, I must have looked a sight with my skinny legs,' and as these were now one of her best features she stretched them out under his nose, 'sailing away under my umbrella with the nanny waving so I shouldn't get frightened and let go. I was such a shrimp in those days.'
