Christine got them both sitting down and tried to maintain an easy conversation. She knew that her father was worrying about whether the American was going to be asked to stay to supper. Vinson Gaegler gave him a little brisk information about the American Navy, and Mr Cope grunted in response. He used to be like this when Christine was young, and brought new young men to the house. If they dared to come again, he had been capable of greeting them with: ‘Good God, you here again?’ He thought that was funny, a joking reference to their persistence after his daughter, but the young men did not think so.
During a lull in the talk, when Christine was wondering what she could say to recover the easy relationship she and the American had had at the Air Force club, a piercing shriek came suddenly from above. It was followed by another, and then a reverberating groan. The house was like Nightmare Abbey in a Gothic tale. Christine and the American had sprung to their feet, but Mr Cope remained seated and said: ‘It’s only Geoffrey. The doctor has come to take out his stitches.’
‘It’s my cousin,’ Christine explained to the startled American. ‘He had a slight accident here on Saturday.’ It sounded silly. ‘Christine has had a slight accident’ was what her nurse used to say when she hustled her upstairs to change her knickers.
‘That’s tough,’ he said. ‘I’ll be going. I’m sure you wouldn’t want me here at a time like this.’
‘No, that’s all right. Do sit down and finish your drink. They won’t need me up there.’ By the time she had seen him off and gone upstairs the operation would be over, and she would have sent the American away for nothing.
Geoffrey continued to fill the house with horrible noises. ‘Good God,’ said Mr Cope, getting up, ‘I can’t stand this. It’s worse than a maternity home.’
The American looked at him, surprised that he should have come out of his monosyllabic grunting to say this. Mr Cope went out of the room, calling to his dog, and they heard the front door bang with her father’s slam that sometimes brought a hat down off the stand.
Christine sat down and told the American the story of Geoffrey, and how they had come home late without a key and tried to break into the house. Gaegler did not say much, and she wondered if he was shocked at such goings-on. He did not look the kind of man who would get drunk and cut his head open bungling an easy climb. But you never knew with people. They nearly all got drunk at some time or other and did something ridiculous. Look at Geoffrey.
The American was beginning to make the motions of thinking it was time to go, when Aunt Josephine came in with her head, for some reason, bound up in an old scarf, and a triangular tear in her cooking apron where she always bumped against the corner of the kitchen dresser.
‘That Geoffrey,’ she said in despair. ‘If I ever saw anything like him my name is Artemus Jones. Talk about a cry-baby! You never heard such a noise as he made about a few stitches coming out.’
‘We heard,’ said Christine. ‘Aunt Jo, this is Commander Gaegler of the American Navy.’
‘An American!’ cried Aunt Josephine in delight. ‘Well, I am glad to meet you. Is it the American?’ she asked Christine.
Her niece blushed and made a face at her, which she thought Vinson Gaegler saw. He moved quickly about with his springy step, offering Aunt Josephine cigarettes and chairs, but she was too restless to sit down. She tramped about the room, giving out ejaculations about the frightfulness of Geoffrey and the stupidity of the doctor, who said he must stay a few more days. The American turned his head to watch her with his unwinking tortoiseshell eyes, and Christine wished she knew what he was thinking.
‘You’ve been drinking,’ said Aunt Josephine, picking up an empty glass.
‘Have one,’ said Christine.
‘Certainly I will. Heaven knows I need it.’ She flopped into a chair and ran her big hand over her face, pushing the scarf askew on her head.
The American offered her a cigarette. ‘No, thank you. I – Oh, but a Lucky Strike! The only kind I like. I haven’t had one since my canteen days. Christine, you are clever to bring somebody home with American cigarettes.’
At the bow-fronted cupboard, Christine prayed that Aunt Josephine would not forget herself so far as to say something about nylons.
‘Let me help you.’ Vinson Gaegler came and took over the drinks from Christine as naturally as if he had been in the house many times.
When he had finished she saw that he had made a drink for himself and her as well. She did not want one, but she took it, to let him prove to her that there was nothing in the world like an American martini. Why did every man always think he alone knew how to make a martini?
His visit had been a little sticky up to now, but with Aunt Josephine in the room it became a success. She liked him and he liked her. He did not seem to think her odd, as some of Christine’s friends did. Aunt Josephine was at her oddest when she had had a drink. She became dogmatic now, and started to hold forth about the Atlantic Charter, and the American sat on the edge of a chair opposite her with his knees together, and treated her as if she were the only person in the world.
Christine felt de trop. She hid her drink behind a vase and wondered whether anyone would notice if she picked up the evening paper.
Mr Cope came back and asked if the all clear had sounded. He was not too pleased to find the American still there, but he was hungry, and at the risk of having to invite him to the meal, he asked his sister: ‘What about supper? It’s long past time.’
‘So it is,’ she answered without getting up.
‘No wonder your dishes are always either burned dry or half cooked,’ said Mr Cope, ‘since they never get to the table at the right time.’
Christine hoped they were not going to argue in front of the American. He would not understand.
‘Shepherd’s pie can wait for hours,’ Aunt Josephine said. ‘But why don’t you go and get it out yourself, if you’re so famished, though how you can be after the lunch you ate –’
‘I don’t want to burn my hands, thank you. I can never find a cloth in that disorderly kitchen of yours.’
‘Why is it, Captain,’ Aunt Josephine asked Commander Gaegler mistily, ‘that men can’t stand to touch as hot things as women can?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ he said seriously. ‘Could it be it’s something to do with the pigmentation of the skin?’
‘How clever you are!’ said Aunt Josephine embarrassingly. ‘Christine, I wish you would always bring home clever people like this. It does me good.’ The American looked more than ever like James Stewart in a coy situation.
‘It’s the gin that’s done you good,’ said Christine shortly, thinking as she said it that she probably ought to be all sweetness, and flutter round her aunt for the American’s benefit.
But did she really care what he thought? He had taken hardly any notice of her since they came home, and he was certainly rather smaller and slighter than a man should be, and it was doubtful whether he had a sense of humour.
It had been exciting being taken by a strange American in uniform to have drinks in an American club, but when you got him home, where you had to be just your family self and could not play at being whatever you wanted you to be, it palled a little.
‘You’ll stay and have supper with us, I hope, Captain?’ Aunt Josephine was saying, while her brother made faces at her behind the American’s back.
‘Thanks a lot,’ he said. ‘I appreciate your offer, but I really should be going. I have a date tonight.’
No, Christine thought, he was not exciting. For all that he had picked her out and come back to the store to see her again, he seemed to have small interest in her as he took his leave in the hall and said: ‘I’ve been so happy to meet you.’ Absurd, then, of Christine to find herself thinking, as she closed the front door: Who has he got a date with? A girl?
At supper, Aunt Josephine and Mr Cope discussed the American ad nauseam, and when Christine went up with Geoffrey’s cheese, he said: ‘I hear you’ve got yourself a new boy friend. C
ongratulations.’
‘I hear you were a brave, brave boy having your stitches taken out,’ she retaliated. ‘Congratulations on that.’
‘I suffered the agonies of the damned,’ he said. ‘No one knows what I endured.’
‘We all do,’ she said. ‘We heard you enduring.’
When she went back to the dining-room, Aunt Josephine said, folding her napkin in a way that creased it more than if she had left it crumpled up: ‘Well, I liked him, Christine dear. He and I got on fine, and I hope you’ll bring him home again.’
‘I thought you were a bit tight,’ said her brother.
‘He did mix the drinks very strong,’ said Aunt Josephine. ‘I like Americans.’
‘I can’t see why they have to wear uniform all the time,’ he grumbled. ‘They have this mania for dressing up. And all those medals. It’s ridiculous. Two months in the potato squad and you’ve got a chestful of ribbons. Fruit juice, they call it.’
‘Fruit salad,’ said Christine. ‘Well, anyway, don’t worry. I don’t suppose I shall see him again.’
He rang her up on Saturday evening to ask her if she would drive out to the country with him on Sunday. He seemed to take it for granted that she was free, and because she had not expected to hear from him again, she was surprised into saying Yes at once.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll call for you around eleven-thirty. I have to go to Mass first.’ Catholics always made a point of telling you they were going to Mass, or had just been to Mass, as if no one else ever went to church.
‘Eleven-thirty then,’ he said. ‘Good-bye now.’ His telephone manner was clipped and utilitarian, as if he were more accustomed to using the telephone for business than for conversation. Except that he said, after they had said good-bye: ‘Just a moment. Tell me something. Why did your aunt ask: “Is it the American?”’
‘I can’t imagine. Did she?’ Christine tried to sound cool.
‘Well, skip it. I just thought–’
‘Good-bye,’ said Christine. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
So he had thought she had liked him well enough to be enthusiastic about him at home, did he? Christine did not think she was going to like him if he was going to be conceited.
When he arrived on Sunday, however, you could not help liking him, for he had brought, rather shyly, a large box of food for them from the Navy commissary. They took the box into the kitchen and unpacked it on the table among Aunt Josephine’s preparations for Yorkshire pudding. There was a ham, and tins of bacon and sausages and butter, and chocolate, and packets of Lucky Strike for Aunt Josephine. It was really very kind of him. He watched their delight as they unpacked, like a Red Cross worker bringing bread to starving war victims. He was pleased with himself for giving so much pleasure. He had brought a box of cigars for Mr Cope, and Christine slipped away into the study to warn her father not to say he did not smoke them.
As she came out there was a violent banging on the front door. She opened it, and Clement and Jeanette fell into the hall.
‘There’s a super American car outside the gate! It’s huge! Absolutely super! Come out quick, you must see it!’
‘I have,’ she smiled, wanting to kiss them, but unable to catch their darting, exciting bodies. ‘I’ve been in it too. It can go more than a hundred miles an hour if it wants, and you don’t have to change gear.’
‘Gosh!’ they breathed, as if they had glimpsed heaven.
‘What’s occurred, Chrissie?’ asked Roger, coming up the path and jerking his head towards the Buick. ‘Got yourself a rich boy friend at last?’
She wished that they could have seen Vinson Gaegler first in uniform. Roger and Sylvia were so critical, and he looked better in uniform than in the overpadded tweed jacket and smooth-textured slacks that he wore today.
The introductions went off quite well. Americans always knew how to make conversation to new people straight away, without standing about awkwardly. The children were already well disposed to him because of the car, and he pretended that he had brought candy just for them, although he could not have known they would be there.
‘Candy means chocolate and sweets,’ said Jeanette, who had an American airman of her own at Farnborough. ‘I know.’ They rushed off to the kitchen, jostling their grandfather as he wandered in from his study.
Having been warned by Christine, he did not say: ‘Good God, you here again?’ but: ‘I have to thank you for the cigars. It was extremely kind of you, Captain er –’
‘Gaegler,’ said the American, not correcting him about the rank.
‘Of course. Excuse me. I’ve been working. Just an absent-minded author. You know what writers are.’
Everyone laughed, as they always did at Mr Cope when he became literary, and the American looked from one to the other wishing to join in the joke, but not understanding.
The children were cross because Christine was going out for the day. ‘Just when we come,’ they said, sucking at bars of chocolate marshmallow and kicking the furniture. ‘And you said you were going to teach us how to bowl a legbreak.’
‘Christine was captain of the eleven at school,’ Sylvia explained to the American, which left him more mystified than before.
She and Roger were also disappointed that Christine was going out to lunch. ‘Got something better to do this Sunday, eh?’ said Roger, when she came back from getting her coat. ‘Well, I don’t blame you when the chap has a car like that. Cuts out the English boy friends a bit, doesn’t it, Miss Cope? Well, so long, you two. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do – and that gives you plenty of scope.’ He winked at Vinson Gaegler, who laughed with him, eager to join in the fun and be one of the family.
‘Your folks are swell,’ he told Christine, as he started the engine and turned the car on the sandy road, his thin, knuckly hands grappling the big steering-wheel.
‘I’m glad you liked them,’ she said. ‘I feel bad in a way about going out, because we’re usually together on Sundays. Poor Geoffrey was a bit peeved too, because I’d promised to finish a chess game.’
‘You’re very good to your family,’ he said. It was his first personal comment about her.
‘Not really, but we get along all right.’
‘I like to see a family all together,’ he said, taking a corner on the wrong side. ‘My goodness, will I ever learn to drive on the left? My parents are divorced. It doesn’t help.’
‘I thought you were a Catholic –?’
‘Yes. My father is, but he didn’t think too much of it when it came to going off with a chippy. That broke up the home somewhat. And to tell you the truth, none of us are too close. I think it’s wonderful to be in a family home like yours.’
‘You must come another Sunday and have lunch with us,’ Christine said politely. That was the sort of invitation you could throw out, and not have to abide by if today did not go well.
‘I’d appreciate that very much,’ he said.
They drove down the Portsmouth road. The American wanted to go to a hotel that another officer had recommended. He expected that she would know of it, and she felt that she ought to. It felt odd to be piloted through one’s own country by a foreigner.
When they turned off the main road he knew the way exactly. He had looked it up on a map before he started out, and drawn a little chart for himself. He was evidently a methodical and efficient man. He drove fast but well, and slowed down strictly through towns and villages.
‘You’re the first person I’ve ever driven with who’s stuck to thirty miles an hour in built-up areas,’ Christine said.
‘But that’s the speed limit. I’ve got a book of your traffic laws.’
‘I know, but no one ever does it. If the police do stop you, you can always say you didn’t see the sign. They don’t believe you, but they let you off the first few times.’
He thought that funny. ‘Gee,’ he said, ‘back home the cops are tougher than that. They’ll fine you right on the spot without a trial. You don’t fool with them if yo
u want to keep out of jail.’
He sounded as if he admired that, and he had laughed at the English police, so Christine said: ‘Sounds like the Gestapo to me. I suppose America has to have police like that, to stop them going back to the lawless jungle we discovered.’
‘Now don’t let’s be like that,’ he said, looking straight ahead. ‘We’re supposed to be friends, remember?’
She did not know whether he meant he and she, or England and America. ‘I was only joking,’ she said. ‘I like Americans awfully. I always have.’
‘It’s odd,’ he said. ‘You know it? Plenty of English people say that, yet they can’t be with an American more than a certain length of time without starting to goad him. Same thing happens the other way around. I suppose it’s because we’re each trying to disguise the fact that we admire each other a hell of a lot.’
The hotel was a converted country house, standing by itself in a rolling park that had been partly ploughed up for crops during the war and would never get back to its mellowed pasture again. The formal garden had been maintained, and there was a putting course on the lawn in front of the gravel sweep. The interior was gracious and not too chintzy, attractive to the American, but a little sad to an English person who could imagine it as the private home it could never be again.
He took her straight to the bar, which was in what used to be the gunroom. A few rifles and an old blunderbuss still stood in the racks to make the bar picturesque, and two stags’ heads and an assortment of stuffed game stared frozenly from the walls.
The American ordered drinks quickly. Alcohol seemed very necessary to him, and he did not speak until drinks came. He looked critically at the size of the glass, downed half his drink and then looked round more happily.
‘Chuck was right,’ he said. ‘This is quite a place. All the atmosphere you want. I wonder if the family left these hunting trophies behind when they sold the place.’
‘Oh, that isn’t hunting,’ said Christine, wishing to enlighten rather than correct. ‘Hunting is only what you do with hounds. Foxes and hares and otters, and drag hunts with aniseed. This is shooting.’
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