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by Henry Green

  Wrought up into a sort of cunning, he waited for a break in the fat fellow’s conversation. When this came he said so calmly that he was surprised,

  “What time d’you lunch, James?”

  “Look, old boy, there’s one or two things I must do in the village first. You make your own way down to my place. In the meantime,” he went on, in the same voice, “it’s over here, follow me.” Charley began to drag after, unsuspecting. But he could not go fast, with the result that he was far behind when James halted to doff his hat at an object. “See you later,” James called, as he made off. Charley hobbled along. Then, behind the cypress where James had uncovered himself, there lay before his eyes more sharp letters, cut in marble beyond a bunch of live roses tied in string, and it became plain that this was where they had laid her, for the letters spelled Rose. So Charley bowed his head, and felt, somehow, as if this was the first time that he had denied her by forgetting, denied one whom, he knew for sure, he was to deny again, then once more yet, yes thrice.

  Rose’s parents, Mr and Mrs Grant, were still at Redham, one of London’s outer suburbs. They had known, and liked, Charley as a possible husband to their only child some time before she was married to James. Mrs Grant, in particular, had had a soft spot for him because of his great brown eyes. So, when old man Grant heard that Charley was back, he phoned up to ask him over for the evening.

  He met Charley in their front garden.

  “You’ll find a wee bit of a difference in the wife,” he said, once the first greetings were over. “It’s merciful in a way perhaps, but I wouldn’t know. You see she doesn’t remember so very well as a rule, nowadays. What it may be is that nature protects us by drawing a curtain, blacks certain things out. Rose’s going as she did was a terrible shock to her naturally. So I thought I’d better warn you to carry on as though you didn’t notice. Just in case.”

  “Of course,” Charley said. It was a blue and pink late Saturday afternoon. Once more he felt how grand it was to be back.

  “Although this does bring you to wonder,” Mr Grant was saying. “Nature’s cruel, there’s no getting away from her laws. She won’t let up on the weak, I mean. When the doctor went into it with me, his idea about Amy was it might be nature’s way to protect her by letting her forget. I didn’t say much. You can’t argue with them, Charley boy.”

  “You’re right there,” Charley said.

  “Yes, I expect you’ll have found that over your leg. But you can set your mind at rest, no one would tell if they hadn’t been told.” He nodded his white, old head, up and down. “Isn’t it a glorious evening? Where was I now? Yes, well, I took leave to doubt that doctor. Nature’s cruel I said to myself, you can’t expect mercy in that quarter. So d’you know what? I’ll tell you. I thought maybe it wasn’t the best thing for Amy to forget Rose.”

  Charley coughed.

  “Well, once you begin to lose the picture of this or the other in your mind’s eye, it’s hard to determine where things’ll stop,” Mr Grant continued. “I knew a man once, in the ordinary run of business, who started to misremember in that fashion. Wasn’t long before he’d lost all his connections. Even came to it they had to shut him away. Because when all’s said and done you can’t go on like it, can you? So I tried talking to Amy about Rose.”

  Charley wondered how he could get out. He looked around him. But he knew he was back now, all right.

  “No,” Mr Grant continued, “nothing I could say was any use. And then I went into things. You see my firm has put me on a pension, now I’m retired, and once the housework is done, which doesn’t amount to a great deal, there’s not such a lot to do but think. Well, we’re not so old as all that, thank you, Amy and me. I mean there’s a few years usefulness in us yet, what with the work I do unpaid on the H.R.O.N., and Amy who’s still fit enough to go down to the A.R.B.S., and put in a few hours each week. So I said, ‘Gerald,’ I said, ‘you’ve got to get a move on. It mayn’t be the best thing, not by a long chalk, for her to forget her own daughter.’ Mind you, Charley, she doesn’t even know her grandson now. And, as a woman begins to age, the toddlers play a great part, Charley boy, or they should do, that’s only human nature after all. So to cut a long story short, I made up my mind I’d call on Charley Summers. Not that we wouldn’t have been glad to see you, any day. After what you’ve been through. You mustn’t misunderstand me, please. But just to find whether she would …” and his voice trailed off as, turning his back, he began to move towards the house. Charley sullenly followed. “So don’t be surprised if you notice a big change,” Mr Grant ended over his shoulder, in so loud a voice that Charley was afraid.

  But how dead selfish of the old boy, Charley felt as he stood in the porch of their villa while Mr Grant shouted for his wife. After all, here was a man who had no need for coupons, who couldn’t have to buy anything new. Because surely he had done enough, Charley thought, once more coming back to himself. When all was said and done he had risked his life, lost a leg, spent the best years of his prime in prison behind barbed wire, and, now that he was back, they had a use for him as a guinea pig on Rose’s mother.

  Mr Grant shouted again.

  “I’m coming dear,” she piped in a quiver, and there was Mrs Grant, too neat, scuttling down the stairs. She came straight on, never hesitated, flung her old arms round Charley’s neck, went up on her toes to do it, and sung out “John, John,” twice.

  “No it’s not John, dear, it’s Charley, back from the war,” Mr Grant announced at her towered white head of hair, which she was leaning on Charley’s neck as the young man lightly touched her elbows.

  “They are very cruel to me, John,” she said. From her round cheeks he found that she was crying.

  “Now dear, this is Charley Summers,” Mr Grant repeated.

  “Don’t you worry,” Charley mumbled.

  But she would not have it. She was most natural.

  “John, to think you’re back at last,” she said.

  “There you are,” the husband explained, “she thinks you’re her brother who was killed in seventeen.”

  Charley hardened his heart.

  “Why my little baby brother John,” Mrs Grant exclaimed in rather a happier voice and stood back, laying hands gently on his forearms. She looked yearning into his face. She was much too neat. But for two tear drops under the chin, and a wet run to each from out the corners of her eyes, which were intensely bright, everything was mouse tidy, except it seemed her wits.

  “Now Amy,” her husband begged.

  “But you mustn’t stand here. I don’t know where my mind is, I’m sure,” she went on, preceding him into their parlour. As he sat down he felt she did not seem so sure of him after all. In fact he did not like the way she shaped, complaining as she now was that it must be the war, that ever since the Russians gave up she had felt tired. “This terrible war,” she ended, and screened her eyes with a hand as if he were seated opposite nude.

  “Look dear,” the husband said, “you rest yourself while I go fetch our tea. I shan’t be a minute,” he explained to Charley, who did not want to be alone with her, who opened his mouth to ask him to stay but was too late, as happened so often.

  “So cruel,” Mrs Grant murmured, once they were alone. There was then a silence while she still held a hand on her eyes. Charley asked himself if it was safe for them to be left together, and then for no particular reason remembered that he had forgotten to buy the tie he’d meant to get in the morning.

  “You’re not John, are you?” she said, when he looked up.

  But he did not have to answer because her husband came back just then, wheeling the tea trolley. “Here we are,” this man genially announced. “John always had cream with his,” she said, her eyes on the small, half empty jug of milk, “Oh, but of course, I forgot,” she went on. “You’re not, are you. It’s my memory,” she explained. “Sometimes I get a bit tired.”

  Mr Grant began to pour. “Seems queer,” he said to Charley. “Rose always used to do t
his. D’you remember?” Charley remembered, but he did not say so. “Insisted on it way back in the days when she had her hair in pigtails. Made such a commotion that we had to let her. This is Charley Summers, dear,” he said briskly to his wife. “Surely you recollect him, Amy? Used to come to tea in the old days, – and she wore pale pink bows in the plaits,” he added, his mind turning a corner. There was a pause. When he spoke again his voice was flat. “You know him I’ll be bound,” he said. “It was Rose he used to come down and see, and now here he is to pay a call on her old people.”

  Charley sat silent, kept an eye on his empty cup.

  “Why you aren’t eating,” was what she answered. “I’m sure I get so bewildered sometimes.” The young man glanced at her to find she was offering him cake. “You must excuse us, you know. We live very quietly, oh so quietly.”

  “I hear you do work for the A.R.B.S., Mrs Grant,” he asked.

  “Yes, dear, dear, and what a business that is. Sometimes I think it will be too much for me, Mr … Mr …, so stupid, I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch your name.”

  Charley noticed that she never seemed to address Mr Grant directly.

  “Charley Summers, dear,” Mr Grant said, brisk.

  “Of course. Mr Summers. You know we’ve had some terrible Zeppelin raids round about, lately. Some have been in daylight as well, so daring don’t you think Mr …, Mr …” He looked at her. When she saw this she dropped her eyes quick, and put a hand on her mouth as though about to belch.

  “She will insist it’s the last war,” Mr Grant explained in a normal voice.

  “Of course,” Charley said.

  “How’s things over in Germany these days?” Mr Grant enquired, ignoring his wife. “I expect you had a pretty rotten time, eh? What I say is, I can’t see any end to this lot. But I mean, did they treat you badly? What part were you, anyway?”

  Charley felt the old man was almost being sharp with him. He supposed it to be irritation at his life partner. But the nausea, which had recently begun to spread in his stomach whenever prison camps were mentioned, drove all else out of his head.

  “Rather not speak of it,” he replied, indistinctly.

  “I’m sorry, Charley boy. You don’t want to pay any attention to us old folks,” he said. “The plain fact is, we’re past it. You’ll find out as you grow older. You seem to lose grip somehow. Worst of all is, you don’t seem to notice. But the hard part must have been the ladies, eh? Because it’s not natural to be without them, after all. And then not even seeing one. Why, you must have been in a pickle,” he ended with genuine sympathy, unable, it seemed, to realize how odd, or, if you like, how charming this was in him to speak so in front of his sick wife.

  “Might I have another cup?” Charley asked Mrs Grant.

  “Why, whatever am I about?” Mrs Grant said, bright, as she snatched his saucer. “You mustn’t heed me,” she went on. “I’ve been so forgetful lately. You’d never believe.”

  “But you aren’t eating, Charley boy,” Mr Grant told him. “Yes, it must be rotten for a young man in those places. Unnatural. But then there’s a deal in life you don’t understand at the time. You’ll find that out later. Why, sometimes, when I’ve done the housework and seen to Amy here, I just sit where I am, and remember. That’s what she’s missing. Because it’s not all bad what’s happened to you. Not by a long chalk.”

  “Who are you, then?” Mrs Grant unexpectedly asked.

  “Why he’s Charley Summers, dear,” Mr Grant replied. “You remember him,” he said, with confidence. “He used to come in to see our Rose. Yes, it does feel a long time, eh Charley?” But the young man did not reply.

  “Everything’s initials these days,” the old man said, abruptly changing course. “You can’t even pay the public house a call of an evening any more. Of course you go there just the same, but it’s an anniversary of the Home Guard being stood down that takes you, or the H.R.O.N. having a reunion, and so on, and so forth. I’ll wager it strikes anyone as a bit different to come home to,” he suggested. Charley merely said it did.

  “And how d’you manage with your coupons?” Mr Grant went on, while his wife seemed to recollect herself behind the hand she now held over her eyes, “Do they give you a supply so you can get a stock up?”

  “There you are,” Charley said, thinking about a dressing gown.

  “I suppose it’s what you could term necessary,” Mr Grant commented, “but it’s damnable, boy, in a free country such as we were supposed to be. To think of a man like you, who we should all be grateful for, having to pass through that rigmarole makes you ask yourself what we’re fighting to finish, doesn’t it? I could tell you tales would make you really wonder. Why, down at the B.D.S. offices, there’s a man in charge who, before the outbreak, if I’d gone to him holding a few potato peelings, he’d have eaten them out of my hand right before my face, that same individual is sitting behind a telephone and it’s ivory coloured, who I knew in the old days when he was with Thomsons, a despatch clerk, that’s all he was. Well now, if you should want anything, he’s the man Charley. From a toothbrush right up to a typewriter. And sitting there just to say no. As a matter of fact, with Amy in the state of health she’s in,” and his wife did not flinch, “as things are with her, the doctor gave a prescription for a bit extra of this or that, or whatever it might be, and I had to go down to George Andrews, because that’s the man’s name, to get him to countersign the diet sheet the doctor had made out. You could never imagine the time I had with him.”

  “Is that so?” Charley said.

  “You aren’t John, are you?” Mrs Grant objected, between her fingers. But Mr Grant saw fit to let this pass.

  “Yes, if I was to tell, you’d never believe,” he said to the young man. “This, that, and the other,” he said.

  “Then who are you, then?” Mrs Grant asked quietly.

  “Now, dear, don’t take on so,” Mr Grant said. “You’ve forgotten, you don’t remember, that’s all it is. Yes,” he continued to Charley, “men I wouldn’t have engaged as office boys when I was in charge of the department, lording it over us now, heads I win, tails you lose.”

  “What are you doing here?” Mrs Grant demanded, looking at Charley between her fingers, and cringing.

  “He’s come to take a cup of tea with us, dear,” the husband said. This time he glared. She did not notice because she never took her eyes off Charley.

  “I don’t like it,” she muttered.

  “I’m very sorry,” Charley Summers said to Mr Grant.

  “Just pay no attention,” this man replied. But it was not to be as easy as all that, for Mrs Grant took control by throwing herself back into the sofa to thrust her head into one of its soft corners, from which she began to shriek, muffled by upholstery.

  “Amy, stop that this minute,” Mr Grant said firm. “You’re not a child after all. It’s just the habits she’s been getting,” he explained to Charles. “It’ll pass in a moment, you’ll see.” Upon which Mrs Grant took her nose out of the arm and the back, and screamed, not very loud. Charley saw his chance.

  “I really must be getting on,” he said.

  Mr Grant was remonstrating, “Now Amy,” as though with an awkward child. He had gone to sit beside his wife, who had hidden her face again, and he was patting a shoulder. Charley thought she moaned something, but he could not be certain. In any case he was on his way. And Mr Grant called to him,

  “But wait for me, Charley boy,” he begged, “I won’t be a minute. Now mother, there. By the road, out of sight. I’ve something I must tell you,” he ended, to Charley’s back. And Charley waited behind a tree, dreading a renewal of those small shrieks and cries. He heard no more however, and, after ten minutes, he saw Mr Grant hurrying down the path.

  He was very sorry, he told Charles, and it had not been much of a welcome back after his experiences abroad, he said. But he knew Charley would not mind, the doctor had decided they ought to try it. Now that they’d made the attempt there w
as nothing to be done. Perhaps rest and quiet would put her right. Charley said he was not to worry. Mr Grant said it was white of him, to which Charley, marvelling at his own falseness, replied that it was the least he could do.

  “Well, matters are like this,” Mr Grant made an end. “I never was one to saddle another with my troubles, but there was just the chance everything might come back to her, in which case she could’ve had a good cry on your shoulder, and you wouldn’t have known the difference. But I’d never have brought you all this way for nothing,” he said. “I’ve a surprise for you. Go to this address,” and he gave Charley a number in a street, “and you’ll find someone who knew Rose. She’s just the age Rose was, maybe a month or two younger. She wants to meet you. She’s a widow.”

  Charley did not even consider it. He thanked Mr Grant, and made off fast for the District Railway.

  When he got out at the other end he followed a strange girl with red hair the best part of three miles, back to what may have been her home, without trying to strike up an acquaintance.

  Another morning, in London, in which he worked, Charley ran across a man by the name of Middlewitch, whom he had met, in July, at the Centre where he had been to have his new leg fitted.

  “Why,” this gentleman said, “it’s Summers, isn’t it, my companion in arms and legs? I’m just off to get me a bite of lunch. D’you know that place across the street? Funny,” he remarked, as he piloted him through the traffic with a chromium plated arm under his black jacket, while Charley dragged the aluminium leg in a pin striped trouser. “Before the old war we’d be going to have a coffee about this time. Now we’ve to dash into some place before all the grub is gone. ‘Les grands mutilés,’ that’s the name the French have for us, and it’s good enough to get to the head of any queue out there. But not in this old country. Not on your life.” He laughed with real pleasure. All this time Charley had not said a word. “Here we are,” Mr Middlewitch explained, diving into a gap before the bar. “What’s yours?” he asked. And, before he could expect an answer, this man was getting hold of John, the head waiter, to keep a table for two, as well as greeting acquaintances in the crowd. In this way he had ordered a couple of double whiskies before enquiring what Charley might like better. Summers hardly ever touched spirits.