by Henry Green
“Middlewitch.”
“Never heard of him,” Mr Phillips said. “You knew her earlier than me,” he pointed out.
“It’s nothing. Just an idea,” Charley replied.
“But to carry on with what I was in the middle of,” Mr Phillips began again, “you know, before Ridley was born, Rose got it into her head we were going to have a daughter.” This gave Charley a shock because he remembered very well how, at the time, she had insisted to him that they would have a son. “They get crazes for things,” Mr Phillips was saying, “in her case it was olives, and, of course, that’s a female name, anyway she was quite settled she’d have a girl.” “You liar” Charley said to himself under his breath, although Rose was gone and he’d got rid of her, didn’t mind any more, or so he’d been thinking. “Well, she made me promise, if anything should happen to her at the birth, that I’d never let those Grants have the kid.”
“She knew about ’em, then?” Charley got out, with difficulty. What had Rose been doing to talk of a daughter, when with him she had been so full of a son?
“Of course I promised,” Mr Phillips said. “What man wouldn’t. It came easy, too, this particular promise. After all having children is what we’re here for,” he said with assurance. “All there is to life, or that’s how it strikes me. But it proves one point, she must have known something was up, at Redham, between her mother and the old man, eh? Stands out a mile she must have. Not a happy home, you know.”
“Certainly is,” Charley agreed, confused, several sentences behind once more.
“Which brings me to what I’ve been getting to,” Mr Phillips said. “Why don’t you marry and settle down?”
This was a bit of a facer.
“Why don’t you marry again, for that matter?” Charley asked, with the air of a man getting himself out of a tight spot.
“Who me?” Mr Phillips demanded. “Once bitten twice shy, old chap. No, that’s got a disobliging sound to it. What I meant was that, with Ridley, I’ve perpetuated myself, d’you get me? So you’ve nothing of the sort in mind?”
“Never,” Charley said, and made it sound final.
“Not even with our friend upstairs you brought along?”
“I told you I work with her in the office.”
“Well it’s been known before, after all? It wouldn’t be the first time. All right, you’re not.” Then he lied. “I only asked because with Rose’s room being the only other one, mine’s right next door, so I thought you might have imagined I was trying some funny business or something.”
“That’s O.K.,” Charley said. “There’s nothing in her direction for me or you, you can bet your life on that.” He was also lying, but in his case with only half a mind to it, he was so taken up with sudden doubts of Rose, doubts which almost redisposed him to love her.
“You ought to marry. A man like you should,” Mr Phillips repeated, well content.
“Why?”
“Because you’re alone, old man.”
“Aren’t you, as well?” Charley asked, still defensive.
“I’ve got Ridley.”
“Of course,” Charley muttered, but saying to himself “You old mutt, if you only knew.”
“No, it’s a duty,” Mr Phillips went on. “Because you’re moping. That’s what’s got you, moping.”
Charley stayed silent. His day to day sense of being injured by everyone, by life itself, rose up and gagged him.
“I say I hope you don’t mind my speaking like this? But I’ve noticed things. You’ve been different, old chap, since you got back.”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
“Very likely,” Mr Phillips admitted, as though granting a favour. “Still, we have to take the world the way we find it. There’s life to live after all. You’ll overlook my saying so, I’m sure, but you’re maladjusted.”
There was a silence.
“Nowaday’s no man’s got a right to lead his own life,” James went on, speaking with a fat man’s conviction. “It’s selfish, that’s what it is, not to marry and not to have the little old comforts marriage brings. With the responsibilities.”
“I’m not fit,” Charley brought out with difficulty, and with a great look of pain. His self pity had at last got the better of him.
“My dear old chap, if you’d rather not discuss it, why of course. In any case, what say we wander upstairs and get a bit of sleep?”
But Charley did not move.
“After those prisoner of war camps,” he began, then stopped.
“Well what about ’em? Pretty rough, what?”
“I can’t,” Charley said, shifting about in his chair.
“Well,” Mr Phillips said with a change of tone, “we have chewed the old rag over, haven’t we? Will you just look at the time? It’s beddy byes now for us, I say.” As he got up to go, the younger man thought, “Why you bloody civilian.”
In his bed he had a short spell of Rose before he began to feel he was back in Germany again.
The next day, the first morning of her visit, it was James called her with a cup of tea and the usual questions about whether she had been all right, slept well, and so on. But the following day, after James had been for hours in bed with her, it was Charley who brought the cup, and who sat down on the edge, looking as usual as if he was sleep-walking.
“Well Dot,” he’d said, with no more than a glance in her direction. But of course, on account of what she had just done with the other man, she’d absolutely shrunk away from him, couldn’t help herself. It made her feel a fool even to think of it after, for he couldn’t have been up to anything, not him, poor fish. So he’d drifted out, almost at once. You could never tell if he noticed.
But the first morning they had an egg for breakfast each, which made up for a good deal.
Then, when Charley was helping to clear away, he’d come on the Phillips daily help in the scullery, Rose’s precious Mrs Gubbins. James left them alone. Later on he asked Charley what had passed.
“‘Imagine seeing you again,’ was what she said,” Charley lied, for the woman, who hardly ever spoke, had come out with, “Imagine seeing you here again.”
“Now you know what you fought for, Charley boy,” Mr Phillips exclaimed. “What a welcome back, eh?” Then he told Dot this woman had been his wife’s treasure and how lucky he was to keep her.
“It’s for Ridley,” he went on. “Kids need a woman’s eye. She’ll see a sign in a kid’s face that a mere man would never even notice. It’s nature. So I feel safe with her looking in every day.”
“He’s a wonderful little chap,” Miss Pitter returned. “I’m sure he’s a credit to you.”
“I was just wondering if you’d think it was wrong to look after him as I do. Trust my own judgement, I mean. But it’s she gives me the confidence.”
“Well, things won’t last that way for ever, I don’t suppose.”
A roar of traffic kept him from hearing this.
“What’s that?” he asked.
She blushed. But she did not give in. She said it again.
“Well, things won’t last that way for ever, will they?”
“How d’you reckon?” James asked.
Miss Pitter actually began to shift from one foot to the other.
“I don’t know what I mean really,” she explained.
“No, go on,” he urged.
“Well a man like you will marry a second time one of these fine days,” she brought out, with some embarrassment.
“And very nicely put,” Mr Phillips rejoined. “But if ever I did, believe me, it would be for the boy’s sake.”
“Here’s your chance, Dot,” Mr Summers interrupted. They had forgotten all about him. He was feeling extraordinarily light-hearted this first morning. “Better than the office,” he added.
She was not in the least put out. She could handle him. And what was to happen had not occurred yet.
“Careful,” she said. “We’re not on the old advice notes now, you know,” she said
.
It was still the first morning, and it continued wet outside. Charley slumped back into a chair, went to sleep all over again with the paper. She’d made another general offer to help in any way, only to be refused. Then, after James had put on their lunch, he came back into the sitting room. He said to her,
“Come over here a moment.”
They stood side by side once more, looking out through other leaded window panes onto the untidy back garden which was two apple trees, a dump of rubbish, and a tumble down shelter, on top of which sandbags had burst to grow ragwort. With the two hedges, it was all green and black and red, particularly a small crop of red apples half hidden, like sins, by the wet leaves, the black branches, and, on the ground, a lush rank grass.
“Rose,” he said, “that’s my wife, who’s dead and gone now, rest her soul, she particularly wanted to have a pergola built just where the air raid shelter is now. Of course the war put paid to that idea. But when I have a minute I’m going to, after we’ve licked those Germans. What’s your opinion? Of course there’s not a great deal of space, but what I’ve got in mind is one of those ones with a triangular sort of roof on brick piers, with seats back to back underneath. What d’you think?”
“Why that would be lovely,” she said.
“What was that? Because you see I’m beginning to realize I value your opinion.”
“I said, why that would be lovely.”
“Yes, and I’d have roses trained up for old times’ sake. You mustn’t judge of it now,” he explained, referring to the desolation. “She was always on at me to clear this mess up. Then, once she was taken, there never seemed to be time.”
“With roses growing all over that would be beautiful as a memorial,” she said.
“She was the best little wife a man ever had,” he replied, completely honest. “But I must go and see to our joint. I notice our friend’s well away,” he said of Charley. “He’s had a bad war, you know.”
“It’s terrible what those poor boys must have been through,” she said.
“What?” he asked, again unable to hear on account of the traffic. She repeated it.
“I’m sure he’s very lucky to have you to watch over his interests at his work,” he rejoined.
“Oh he’s a dear,” she countered, half-heartedly, thinking Mr Phillips was a bit of a dear himself, though of course she had no earthly notion of what was to happen, or that it was to be so soon.
They never saw Ridley except at meals, for which he was most often very late, and through which he sat in a gobbling silence. It seemed he spent all his time with the Gubbins children.
At tea that first day five buzz bombs came over one after the other. They took little notice of the first three, but James and Dot were discussing whether or not they should take cover while the last two roared and rattled past. How different the second morning, bed plus one day, when the same phenomenon occurred at about the same time. Dot squealed the moment she heard the first distant clatter. James immediately hurried her into the wet dark of his broken down shelter outside. There they passionately kissed. On neither of these occasions did Charley move. In fact he was so busy thinking of himself he hardly noticed. Ridley, of course, was away, somewhere on his own.
Charley was more preoccupied that same second afternoon because he had unexpectedly run into Arthur Middlewitch in the village street, where he had gone to buy cigarettes.
“Well bless me, it’s Summers isn’t it?” Mr Middlewitch had exclaimed as they ran across one another, and in exactly the tone he employed when, as civilians, they had first met some months back. “What on earth are you doing here old chap?”
“With Jim Phillips.”
“Down for the August, eh?”
“Aren’t you?” Charley was feeling particularly fit.
“Me? Oh me. I’m staying with old Ernie Mandrew,” Mr Middlewitch replied in a most superior tone, falling into step beside Summers. “You know, when I come to think, it was a pity you never went across with me to meet him, that time I took you to our little luncheon club.” Naturally Summers had not refused to meet the man. Hearing this made him confused. “Because, if you had gone over, I might have been able to bring you back with me this evening for a cocktail,” Middlewitch continued. “Marvellous place he’s got, old man, simply marvellous. Crawling with domestic servants. I don’t know how he does it.”
“We could make merry over a cup of tea to get on with,” Charley suggested, in what was, for him, a burst of sarcasm.
“Well I don’t mind if I do. I’m not one for tea as a rule but they don’t open for another couple of hours yet, anyway.”
So they went into a bun shop.
“You’re looking a lot fitter than when I saw you last, old man,” Mr Middlewitch began, once they had found seats. “I don’t mind saying I was a bit worried about you. I must have been, because I did you a good turn.”
“How’s that?”
“I played the Boy Scout over you, with Nance.”
Mr Summers’ stomach turned inside him. He was surprised. He’d had no idea he could be so excited at the mention of her name.
“Well, a man who’s fair can’t allow two people he respects not to hit it off together, can he?” Mr Middlewitch proceeded, then paused, it may have been from surprise at his using the word respect in regard to Charley.
“Ah” Mr Summers said, to encourage him.
“You mark what I say, you’re all right there, old chap. Gosh, this tea isn’t going down so bad after all. Did you hear those buzz bombs yesterday? The natives weren’t too happy. Laughable, really, the way they flopped down.”
“What comment did she make?” Charley asked, still on about Nance.
“Don’t give it another thought, Charley boy. She’s all for you. Any little misunderstanding there may have been is over and done with now. Why, didn’t she write?”
“Oh yes.”
“Well I’m glad to have been of assistance,” Mr Middlewitch vaguely replied, already looking round the crowded tea room in case there was a pretty face. A silence fell.
“Who’s in your party?” Mr Middlewitch enquired, as it seemed with impatience.
“No one really.”
“You alone then?”
“No, there’s Jim Phillips we’re staying with.”
“Who’s we, anyway?”
“Just a girl. Dorothy Pitter and me.”
“You’re a bit of a dark horse, Summers. Did you bring her down or what?”
“Of course,” Mr Summers replied, almost lively.
“Well then what’s the form, how’s the old romance proceeding, boy? Because you’re not going to tell me you’ve got yourself engaged, or something, have you?”
“Me?” Charley asked.
“No, of course not,” Mr Middlewitch replied. He had adopted an almost bullying attitude, out of boredom perhaps. “It’s not for the likes of you and me to set up a little home, not yet awhile, believe me. That’s the only trouble about where I’m staying. Lots of everything except fluff. Which is why I took myself down here this afternoon, if you want to know. Come on now, what’s she like?”
“There’s nothing doing,” Charley said, flat.
“Come off it,” Mr Middlewitch demanded. “Tell that to the Japs. What, after the greatest war in history, with everyone still at it, and all we’ve been through? Not to speak of these secret weapons.”
Charley laughed.
“You let the grass grow under your feet,” Mr Middlewitch exclaimed. “That’s your trouble, Charley boy. God bless me,” he went on, “Will you just look at the time. I must be off. Well, it’s been jolly running across you like this.” And he hurried out, after a blonde who was on her own. She was extremely small.
But it now seemed to Charley that he had known Dot too long to try and start anything. Also he knew he was right, for he had only to consider how she had edged away when he’d brought her tea that very morning. Though of course you never could tell, you could never tell with
a woman.
He’d never once thought to visit Rose’s grave.
Then, about five o’clock, back at the house, as has already been described, there was the second lot of flying bombs. When James and Dot came back from the shelter Charley noticed nothing. He had at once begun a long complaint about his coupons, and how impossible it was to choose with the few he had.
They were to go back on the morrow, bed plus two day. Phillips and Miss Pitter seemed rather to hurry the evening. They all left the pub earlier than ever, although they’d been having a very pleasant little time. But when Charley got lonely between the sheets he found, as so often, that he could not sleep. He lay there nervously wondering if he should go in to Dot. He told himself that it would mean nothing, after everything was said and done; that is, if it came to nothing, then he was just paying a call, and if it did come to something, well, it would be as much her choice as his own. Because, either way, he wouldn’t be committed. Still, when it came to getting out of bed, he did not seem able to make up his mind.
At last, after a long time, he actually did go. Her door was open, the place empty. Moonlight, coming through a fake Tudor window, lay over her bed with the clothes pushed back like a breaking wave. There were no pillows, for she had taken these with her. And then he heard noises next door in James’ room. They were in the act.
Of course he felt cheated, but he slept well for once.
The next morning, no one brought Miss Pitter tea.
Then, with not a word said, they’d travelled back to London in a very crowded carriage.
When he arrived that afternoon at Mrs Frazier’s, he found a letter from the handwriting expert. It said there was definitely no resemblance between the two scripts, that Miss Whitmore’s note inviting him round and the letter from Rose, which he had cut out of all the love letters she had ever sent him, were written by two different people. Somehow this did not seem important now. It was out of date. Also Dot’s treachery with Phillips was beginning to rankle, unsettling him. So he put Nancy’s invitation in a pocket, and started off to walk in her direction. He had not decided if he would go up, before he surprised himself knocking on the pink door.
She had been in tears.
