Then as he was absently fingering the edges of an uncut page with a transient sense of frustration, his glance wandered along the aisle where he was standing and he received a shock that could not have been greater if a brick had been thrown through the plate-glass shop-window.
He saw Jill.
She stepped out from behind an alcove, working her way slowly along the shelves, moving eventually in his direction. For a moment she bobbed back into the alcove for a second look at an unseen book, but then reappeared, shifting gradually along the cases.
It was not a question of thinking: that girl is something like Jill. There was nothing casual in the resemblance: it was so exact that for a second his mind could not remember who it was, this over-familiar face. And he was too bewildered to think as the realization came upon him.
It was her hair, the colour of dark viscous honey, her serious face, her wild high cheekbones. Little hollows appeared and reappeared under these because, as John saw when he approached, she was whistling very softly. Her winter coat hung open and blue woollen gloves were stuffed into the pockets. Instead of stockings, she wore little socks, and her hands, now that she had taken a book down and was turning the pages—were small, bony and not well-cared-for. As John drew near to her, she glanced up at him and backed a few paces absently to allow him room to pass.
An interval elapsed, during which time John, making no effort to pass, stood staring at her. It was absurd, laughable, unbelievable. Then for a second time she looked up and met his wide eyes with her grey, utterly strange ones. Both of them, both so young-looking, stared at one another.
“I——” John began hurriedly, then paused. “You—er——Haven’t we met before, somewhere?”
She gave a tiny frown and said quickly:
“No, I don’t think so, not as far as I know.”
He did not realize she was nervous, imagining her to be snubbing him curtly. He blushed, flustered.
“Oh, then, I’m sorry.… I thought.…”
She gave a quick half-laugh.
“I’m sure I don’t know you,” she said, and lifted her book to close the argument.
Nobody had noticed the incident. John, still standing there, knew that he had to apologize and move away. Yet it was only on the reflex of his embarrassment that he did so, because it was all so ridiculous, he wanted to make her admit she knew him, to confess he hardly knew what. The sight of her awkward girl’s body afflicted him with a fearful longing, like some call of destiny. He had been ready for anything except non-recognition.
From behind another case he took stock of her again, hastily making sure by shutting his eyes and opening them again, that his impression remained undisturbed. This made his emotion all the keener: from wanting to laugh, he passed naturally into wanting to cry, to sob with a kind of relief. For above his astonishment, his humiliation, a grander feeling surged: that of thankfulness. He felt like a sailing ship running home into the estuary of a river after a long sea-journey.
But she was drifting away. She had slid the book back carelessly on to the shelf and was dragging slowly down the aisle between the shelves, her eyes on the titles of books, but her hands pulling out the blue woollen gloves in preparation to go for good. He lurked behind her. Architecture did not detain her, nor did cookery, nor music. John pushed all other questions aside in his resolution to follow her. She drifted to the door and pulled it open: outside in the November dusk a horse and cart were going by and down the street several shops had lighted windows before closing up. She walked away, doing up her coat and pulling her gloves on, and he followed, fifteen yards behind, trying to interpret every swing of her step. Once he had fallen into line behind her, he felt absolved from all decisions, satisfied by this mere act of devotion.
She walked slowly up the street, not looking back. He quickened his pace till her fawn coat was within ten yards, anxious to reassure himself by the sight of her face that she remained who he thought she was, that it had not all been some fantastic trick of light. But it would be silly to get too close to her. What with eagerness and fear, his heart beat steadily and he found he was sweating under his clothes, as if he were hunting some rare and sensitive animal.
What actually happened had the deliberate tantalizing quality of a dream. She crossed the road to a cycle park which was arranged along one side of a small churchyard, bent to unlock the padlock from the back wheel, slipped the chain and lock into the saddlebag, screwed the flashlight till it came on, and scooted away into the dusk before rising fully into the saddle. He saw her pass the Martyrs’ Memorial, glance quickly about her for converging lines of traffic and pedal away out of sight. She was a hundred yards away in a minute.
He automatically ran after her, pelting as hard as he could go up the north-going road, knocking into people who were walking home after shopping or a day’s work. He ran fully three hundred yards up the road leading out of the town towards Banbury, between the lines of residential houses built in the last century, with gardens and trees overhanging the road, then he slowed down to a walk, brisk and useless. He knew it was useless. But what else could he do? He nourished a hope that she might turn back for some reason or have paid a call at one of these houses, so that he would see the bike waiting outside and be able to wait himself. In any case, he was too excited to go quietly home to sit in his room.
As he walked he turned the matter over in a bewildered mind, illogically, taking first one aspect of it and then hastily rushing to a different standpoint, making no effort to connect the two. Here, then, she was. Disconcertingly, the idea that he had concocted out of the world’s sight had suddenly showed itself as ordinary flesh and blood, as real, calling for real action on his part. What was he going to do?
She was real, then, and had a name and address. How was he going to find them out? He looked about him. The gutters were filled with leaves and an absence of traffic allowed a stillness to brood over the front gardens, where there still remained a few Michaelmas daisies and late dahlias. Any one of these houses might be her home: he stared at them enviously, and the lighted front room with sometimes a white table-cloth laid for tea. There was nobody about, except for a maidservant who came out to post a letter, running to a pillar-box with a coat slung over her shoulders. In what crescent or deserted avenue had she at last jumped off her bicycle, opening the wooden gate carefully so as not to let the dog out?
He stopped under a tree, looking this way and that. And if he found her name and address, what then? He would not dare to approach her again after his rudeness that afternoon. All that would remain for him to do would be to discover her real life, to follow her about and not be noticed, to make lists of the clothes she wore and the places she went to, to make her the purpose of his life once more, now that he had just begun sniffing enviously again at the society of Christopher Warner and Elizabeth Dowling. In this quest his loneliness would be an asset: it would be mobility and even charm.
He was awake before daybreak next morning, lying excitedly in bed and looking forward to the day in front of him. As he dressed, he took pains with his appearance, tied his bow and put some oil on his hair. There were kippers for breakfast, a circumstance which Whitbread greatly appreciated, and he showed great skill in dissecting his own portion, talking to John as he chewed.
“It’s a knack, you know,” he said. “I’ve an uncle, now, who can get every bone out of a kipper in a hundred seconds. I’ve timed him, while he did it. And you couldn’t find a single one afterwards, large or small, not after he’d been through it. You just have to know where to look.”
John removed a handful of bones from his mouth.
“There’s the Bursar,” continued Whitbread, as the don entered the Hall by the upper door and sat down at High Table. A wartime regulation caused many of the dons living in College to breakfast communally, and the Bursar availed himself of the provision with almost defiant regularity. “He looks as if he had a thick night. Too much S.C.R. port, I’ll lay.”
“That remi
nds me,” said John hurriedly, “I’ve a note for you. It was in the lodge last night and I wasn’t in to dinner. It’s from the Dean—most likely an invitation to tea. I’m sorry I forgot it.”
“Oh!” Whitbread took it and put it unopened into his inside pocket. “I know you won’t take this in the wrong way, Kemp, but do you mind not meddling with my letters? Things get lost like that. I know you meant it as a kindness, but it might have been important, and I should have been late getting it.”
After breakfast he put on his overcoat and strolled nervously out into the town. There had been a sharp frost the night before and lorries that had been out all night had white roofs that sparkled in the sun. The sky was remote and blue: everywhere an atmosphere of briskness prevailed. John watched large trays of loaves and buns being carried into a confectioner’s shop from a van; already shoppers were out and students cycled past with books tumbled carelessly in the basket at their handlebars. Other students wearing gowns hurried past on foot. In the entrance hall of a cinema a woman on her knees was scrubbing the linoleum: she wore an apron of sackcloth and a bucket stood by her side. From the booking office came the sound of money being counted.
He felt like a detective, single-handed, and indeed slightly at a loss to know how to begin. Instinct led him first to the bookshop where he had seen her the day before, but it was practically empty, and he did not stay there long. The difficulty of his task began to oppress him. It might be that she would not come into the town that morning; indeed, she might be only a visitor to the city, and by now be gone; in any case, supposing that she did revisit the shops, the chances that he would happen to see her were extremely slight.
To judge from her appearance, she was fifteen or sixteen years old. And yet was she at school? The time that he had seen her was roughly five o’clock. If she were at a local day school, she could have been home and then come out again, particularly as she had the bicycle, but surely if she had only wanted to visit a bookshop she could have done that on the way home. Unless, of course, it did not lie in her way. In any case, what about tea?
The main point was that if she were attending school, his searching the town for her during the morning and afternoon was sheerly a waste of time. He drifted along the main street, looking eagerly about him at the faces that passed; at nearly half-past ten he went into the coffee-room of a large store and sat at a corner table. The room was nearly empty, but as eleven o’clock approached parties of people came in and sat smoking and talking, drinking coffee and wasting time. He had never visited this place before, but he had heard it spoken of as the place where the most people could be seen in the shortest possible time, and as the room became fuller and fuller, he saw how true this was. After a time tables were moved together and extra chairs carried in from the luncheon room next door to accommodate larger parties. He saw Christopher Warner come in and Tony Braithwaite and Patrick: later they were joined by Elizabeth and a dark Jewish-looking girl he had never seen before. Tony Braithwaite, he had since learned, played the piano in the University dance band. At every fresh advent he felt a painful twinge of apprehension till he had seen all the faces of the new party. With his fair hair and pale face he looked like a fanatic, but his eyes were not bright enough.
The coffee cost him fourpence and it was a remarkably cheap way of carrying out his search. After three-quarters of an hour, he moved to another similar café, where he sat till a quarter-past twelve. Many different people came and went, but not the one he was looking for. In the interval between his leaving the café and returning to the College for lunch, he visited several bookshops and large emporiums, where he concentrated on the departments that might be expected to interest her—the material counter, the shoe department, the soap and perfume corner. The shop girls regarded him suspiciously, but did not interfere with him.
When lunch-time came, it was not surprising that he felt depressed. He felt physically tired, for one thing, and the amount of energy and enthusiasm he had expended to so little purpose was disquieting. He had not realized till now that his intense desire to see her was no reason for her to appear to him; he had not realized till now how great even one city was, how impossible it was to observe even the few main streets adequately. And the crowds of people made his search seem no less urgent, but less significant.
Yet he could not rest. In the afternoon he made his way round the straggling, peaceful area of North Oxford, crossing the parks, where the faint cries of hockey players were carried hither and thither on the wind, along the river walk and through into the respectable tree-lined roads that intersected and curved into each other. It was odd that no sooner had he chosen a place where she would, in his opinion, probably be found, the place seemed empty and a search of it useless. Before he turned any corner he looked behind him lest she should appear too late for him to see her. To the casual observer it looked as if he thought he was being pursued.
The sun, a red ball burning frostily, sank lower behind the leafless trees, over the house-tops and gardens as four o’clock came nearer. John walked quickly back to the town by the main road, looking intently at every approaching cyclist, and, on reaching the centre once more, went for tea to a large café. Here, if anywhere, she might appear, he thought, looking round at the little tables with their white tablecloths, the pleasant artificial flowers and cigarette-ash trays and the trio of middle-aged people playing musical comedy selections on a piano, a violin and a ’cello. It was with scenes like this that he was beginning to associate her. And yet she did not come. He ate the toast and jam and cakes and drank his tea and stared restlessly about, but fruitlessly; the trio of musicians paused, sat about for six minutes, then began another selection. In his present mood of impatience, he found the music irritating in the extreme. People came and went. At last, in despair, he called for his bill and paid it, feeling how bitterly he had failed.
Despite his knowledge that he was wasting time and money in a most unprofitable way, he spent the next day in this manner and also the one after that. Quite simply, he could do nothing else. He admitted to himself that it was unlikely that he should ever see her again; he knew, too, that even if he did, he would have no way of finding out her name, no way of making himself known to her. At the thought of their first clumsy encounter he could cry with rage. It had not only been embarrassing, it had also prevented any recurrence of an attempt at friendship. At tea-time on the third day he sat at a glass-topped table in a different tea-room, watching the people eating and the reflection of the vast room in the mirrors on the walls, waiting for the food he had asked for to be brought. When it came, he looked at the tray the waitress carried to see what cakes she had chosen, and some instinct lifted his eyes beyond their immediate object to the far door. Jill stood there. The waitress came to the table, blocking his view and began setting out the things. John, with an inarticulate mutter, tried to crane his neck to see round her, failed, and struggled to his feet. By the time he was up the doorway was empty and a quick look round showed that she had not advanced into the room, but simply retreated into the street as if she had not seen anyone she knew.
“Two and eight, sir,” said the waitress, tearing off the bill.
He paid it, and ran out into the street, leaving his overcoat behind. She could not have gone far, her whole attitude had been casual; her hands in the pockets of her coat, she had looked at the room with complete unconcern, as if it had nothing to do with her. He looked this way and that. There was no trace, no sign. The people formed and re-formed, crossed and altered even as he looked at them; in ten seconds she could easily have been concealed in the shifting street. He fetched his overcoat from the café (there were people sitting at his table) and set out among the dusky traffic, knowing that she must be somewhere near, tantalizingly close, and that if he was quick he would almost certainly find her again.
He did not. After he had searched the immediate streets, he suddenly remembered that obviously she would have gone to another teashop, having found the first one full, or u
nsatisfactory in some other way, and he began entering every one he came to, standing for a moment in the door as she had done and then hurrying out. He visited every one he could think of, even the large café of a cinema, but it was no good. She was not to be found and he gradually lost heart, becoming not so much depressed as angrily disappointed.
It was the wasted chance that annoyed him, for he had come to realize how rare these chances were going to be, if indeed another one occurred.
The next day was a Sunday. Would she, he wondered, go to church? And despite his disappointment and fury, he could not help feeling thankful that at least he knew she existed and that he was following correct tactics if he wanted to see her again. He sat in the Common Room turning over a Sunday newspaper without interest, while Christopher and some second-year students talked loudly in one corner of the room. Patrick was there, too, and after a while demanded that Christopher should pay back the two pounds he owed him.
“Two quid? What is the man talking about?” inquired Christopher, irritably.
“The two quid you owe me.”
“I don’t owe you two quid.”
“Oh, yes, you do,” said Patrick, pulling a little leather pocket book from his waistcoat. He opened it and began to turn the pages.
“You’re a liar.”
“I am not a liar. I lent them you the day before we left London. October the ninth.”
“I don’t remember,” said Christopher obstinately.
“I don’t wonder. You were boozed as hell. Anyway, it’s down here, if you want to see it.”
“I don’t want to see your damned Doomsday Book,” said Christopher rudely, groping in his pockets. “I can’t pay you all of it. Will a quid do?”
Jill Page 17
