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by Henry Green

  Nance was shocked to find him absent. For a moment she wondered if the bird was flown. She discovered she could not blame him if he had gone. Then, hearing a noise in the kitchen, and thinking it might be burglars, poor old dad what a night to choose, she crept up to the door and looked through the crack. It did something to her to see him making himself useful.

  But she did not yet make her presence known. She noiselessly arranged a bed on the furniture. And even that, she found, gave her a warm feeling again, his being so good, out there, with the dirty dishes. She told herself, “My girl, you’re going all sentimental.”

  Nevertheless it was not until she was done that she went out, softly, to the sink. And, once more, he did not hear her coming, in this sickroom hush they now affected throughout the house, before she had kissed him from behind, on the neck. He jumped. She chose to ignore this.

  “You’re not so bad, after all,” she said.

  He put his arms round her and, luckily, was very gentle. He softly kissed the corners of her mouth, first one then the other.

  “Oh Charley, isn’t this terrible?” she asked, through it. His being so quiet, so good, melted her, and curiously urged her thoughts back to Mr Grant. As for Charley, now that she seemed to be appealing, he felt somehow at peace. Again, more by luck than good judgement, he kept silence. He was beyond speech. He just mumbled with his lips at the corners of her mouth. This began to tickle her, and his mouth felt her smile. He kissed harder for it, only noticing those curled lips, at which she immediately drew back. And he did not press after her. He had his old feeling, that he must not be caught a second time.

  She meant to tell about where he was to sleep, but she had an idea this was not quite the moment. So she held him at arm’s length, with rather a martyred expression on her face.

  “You’re really sweet,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” he announced, in a low voice. He was apologising. He always would.

  “What for?” she asked.

  He said nothing.

  “Don’t you worry. You’re all right,” she said. “Look, I’ve made up your bed.” She took his arm to show him. “You’ll drop off in a tick of the clock.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he assured her, as if mesmerised. “I never do much anyway.”

  “Why, how’s that?” she demanded. “And after I’ve been to this trouble, all to make you comfy?”

  “It’s ever since I got back,” he began.

  “Heavens, we can’t have another sick man, not just now, you know,” she said.

  He felt he was losing ground once more.

  “I’ll tell you what,” she offered, as though giving a child the first refusal of a jujube. “I expect I’ll be up and down all night, so I’ll look to see if you want tucking in,” she said.

  His feelings were one tall question mark. She laughed.

  “Well, you needn’t look as if I’d given you a pain in the neck. Perhaps I’d better not, then.”

  He laughed awkwardly.

  “If I were you I’d get your head down now, as my Phil used to say. I don’t suppose we’ll any of us get much repose this night.” Then she was gone.

  Now what could that mean, he asked himself, as he began to unbutton his clothes?

  When he had got underneath the blankets, he did not notice whether he was comfortable, or otherwise, but started to listen intently for her coming. He was struck, at once, by the absolute silence, the waiting quiet, as though something dirty was at work which might at any time come out in this darkness, and be green. Then he switched on a light, got off the sofa, and opened the door so, when she did come, that she could get in as quietly. He listened again in the doorway. What was before him of the house was in pitch darkness. He could hear no sound at all. He went back to bed. He switched out the lamp once more. Immediately he shut his eyes and rubbed them, green and red balls slowly revolved, turned pink, then were gone.

  But how could she come, he asked himself, with all that dying in bed going on above? When the least movement could be heard throughout the house? He tried the sofa to find if it sounded. He bounced once, then twice, yes thrice, as he lay there. Each time it loudly groaned. There you are, he told himself, what a bloody row. She couldn’t possibly manage, not here. What was that? A creak on the stairs? No, nothing. Besides, it wouldn’t be decent, plumb under old Grant’s bed. But who could tell about a woman? And if she did, would he be all right? He lit the lamp a second time, got himself a cigarette.

  The house remained entirely still. Then he caught a sort of mutter in the springs he lay on, next, it was in the air itself, only very distant. Then, much too quick and to his great dread, it had become the vast interrupted hum of planes. They sailed by, as if revving up in hundreds up above him, roar after roar of engine, drone after drone, bound no doubt for the country where he had been imprisoned. It was as though, at a secret signal, every bomber in England, at the call of the queen, had taken off to go hugely hornet swarming, and on barbed wire. He had a horror of hornets. He felt sick. He went to the window, remembered, and rushed back to turn off the light. Shaking then, he watched the cloudless new moon sky, through glass. Each plane had one green and one red light, and that was all he knew while they rumbled over. He felt worse. The moonlit world was Cambridge and Eton blue, as he saw again in his mind the filthy moonlight on Dot’s bed. He smoked a third cigarette. He got cold.

  Then, almost as soon as he had slipped back under the blankets, in complete silence because the planes had passed, he fell uneasily asleep, and without another thought of Nance.

  It was some time later that he was wakened by something, he did not know what, except that it was dreadful. A shout. Someone ran along to Mr Grant’s room. Nance? And slammed the door. Silence once again. Then it began in earnest. Another shout “Gerald.” It was Mrs Grant calling, so loudly that he could only just recognize her voice. “Gerald.” “Gerald.” And much more urgent, “D’you hear me?” “Oh d’you hear me, do speak.” She was yelling now. “Gerald.” After which the most frightful sobbing. “Gerald darling, Father, where are you?”; then, in a sort of torn bellow, “Father,” then, finally, “Come back,” and the culmination of all this was about to remind Summers of something in France which he knew, as he valued his reason, that he must always shut out. He clapped hands down tight over his ears. He concentrated on not ever remembering. On keeping himself dead empty.

  He made himself study the living room. He forced himself to stay clear. And he saw the cat curled up asleep. It didn’t even raise its ears. Then, at the idea that this animal could ignore crude animal cries above, which he had shut out with his wet palms, he nearly let the horror get him, for the feelings he must never have again were summoned once more when he realized the cat, they came rumbling back, as though at a signal, from a moment at night in France. But he won free. He mastered it. And, when he took his streaming hands away, everything was dead quiet.

  Finally he heard her coming, at last. There could be no doubt. Instinct made him switch out the lamp. He waited in darkness.

  When she got to the door, she turned every light on in this room. He sat up. “He’s gone,” she said, in a great voice. “It’s over.” She stood there proud, grave, and lovely.

  “I’ve given her something to make her sleep,” she explained, as she came over in her red dressing-gown. He could not speak. “Here, drink this,” she said, “it’s a drop of whisky.” She did not mention that she had added a sleeping draught, to make him sleep also. In the wide sleeves her arms were like the flesh of peaches.

  He took the glass. It was when he saw her as she was looking at that moment, when, finally, she brought him peace, that he knew he really loved her. But he could not tell a word of this.

  She left in a few minutes, and did not come back that night. He slept like the dead. Indeed, he snored so loud he shook the springs.

  A day or so later, he was hauled up before Corker, who took him through those deliveries of the ten parabolam plants, in great detail.
The man seemed to be satisfied because at the end he said, “Yes that’s quite good,” but then he added, “Now, Charley, I want to speak about yourself.”

  “Yes sir?”

  “I’ve been observing you.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “What I’ve to say isn’t easy for me, Summers.” To revert thus to Charley’s surname was a sign of trouble. “I think I told you before that in this war the civilians have had some. Why only the other afternoon I was obliged to send one of our typists away, out of the estimating department, for a week’s rest. I can’t remember her name at the moment. Yes I do. Miss Pease, of course. It’s not often I can’t recall a name.” He paused, as if waiting for Charley to confirm this, but the young man, who lacked the self-confidence, missed his opportunity. “But I’ve been observing you,” Mr Mead continued. “It’s not altogether your case taken on its own merits, I’m thinking of the rest of the staff who joined up, and who’ll be coming back to us some day,” he said, leaning backwards in the chair with a judicial expression. Once more he paused, once more Charley did not find it in him to reply.

  “With your case,” Mr Mead began again, “I’ve a feeling I’m not getting your best at your work, not all your attention, not all of you, Summers. When everything’s said and done, this is a grand opportunity for you, you know. You’re the first we’ve had returned to the old firm, and I put you in a big position for a man of your experience, which hasn’t been all that large. And what do I find after I’ve watched carefully, for I’ve kept an eye on you, mind? Of course I know there was a bit of bad luck with that girl the Ministry sent. She was no more help to you than a sick headache. In fact, I’ll go this far. She was a disadvantage, Charley, and I give you credit for putting up with her like you did. No, it’s not that is worrying me. It’s yourself, and all the young fellows like you. Have women gotten hold of you, Summers? Is that it?”

  “Me sir?” he asked.

  “Yes you,” Mr Mead insisted. “You’re the only other person in this room, aren’t you? But I’ll tell you why. I’ve known Rob Jordan all my life, and a year or two back, when we were talking, he got me interested in the Reform of Prisons League. I’ve been to several of their meetings since. It may not be a very pleasant thing to say in mixed company, Summers, but we’re speaking as man to man now. It’s sex is the whole trouble. There you are. Sex.”

  “Sex sir?” Charley echoed.

  “See here, Summers, I’ve a right to expect a bit of co-operation from your quarter, now, haven’t I? It’s no good your telling me you never came across that problem, not in the four years you had behind barbed wire. Dammit man, there’s things we all feel. It’s nature.”

  “You mean girls,” Charles said blankly.

  “What else?” Mr Mead enquired, in a savage voice.

  “My girl died the week I got taken prisoner,” Charley announced. It was a measure of how far he had forgotten Rose that he was able to say this, calm as calm, and, of his old need to cover up, that he did not now mention Nance.

  “Did she?” Mr Mead muttered. He had been flung off balance. “I see. That’s different, then. I’m sorry to hear that, Charley.”

  “Her dad joined her just the other day. I was down there when it happened.” Charley spoke with an extraordinary tone of innocence.

  “What did he die of?”

  “He had a second stroke.”

  Mr Mead was always able to talk medical details for hours. He drew out every little thing Charley knew about Mr Grant’s illness. When he could get no more, and he had said, “It’s got to come to all of us, some day,” a silence fell.

  “Now, my lad, to return to yourself,” he said. “I may have been mistaken where you were concerned. I’ll be perfectly frank and open with you. No one said a word to me, mind, but somehow I got the impression, right or wrong, that there was a little matter of account between that typist of yours we had to get rid of, between the two of you. I realize now I may have been mistaken. But in this life, Charley, and I’ve had a lot of experience, it’s either the one thing, or the other. To put it in a nutshell, after the bad time you’ve had, you want to marry and settle down. Children of one’s own, that’s the thing. And I’ll tell you this. It’s not a promise, because there’s others besides me to consider, but, when you do put up the banns, you just come along, and we’ll see what we can arrange about giving you a rise.”

  Then a ludicrous accident occurred. Charley gulped, quite in the usual fashion, but swallowed the wrong way, so that he choked. He coughed once or twice, and after that held his breath, going red in the face as he did so. It crossed his mind that Mr Mead might believe he was laughing at him, which was precisely what Corker had begun to suspect. Charley’s eyes filled with tears. Mr Mead cleared his own throat. Charley’s eyes began to start out of his head, and, for every millimetre they protruded, Corker’s mounting anger pushed his out an equal distance. At last the younger man grew desperate for lack of air, half rose out of his seat, made as if to bang himself on the back. Upon which Mr Mead tumbled to it, and heartily thumped him.

  When Charley had recovered, Mr Mead said gravely,

  “It can be very serious, that can.”

  He waited for encouragement, but the young man was still gasping.

  “People have died of that,” Mr Mead was beginning, when his telephone rang. He picked up the receiver. He listened. He said “Yes Muriel?” from which Charley was fairly certain that Corker’s goitred wife was on the other end. Again, a savage expression spread over Mr Mead’s face.

  “You tell that kid of mine I’ll tear the heart right out of him when I get home,” he shouted, almost at once. “What’s that, Muriel? I don’t care if he is seventeen. What? I can’t correct my own son, can’t I? Look, I don’t care if he is going into the army directly, it’s discipline he wants now, or it’ll be the worse for him later on when he’s enlisted. Muriel. Now Muriel …” and there was a click over the phone, Mrs Mead had rung off. He put the receiver back. He mopped his brow. “Women,” he muttered, “women.”

  “Ought to be getting back,” Charley said, out of a straight face.

  “Don’t mind me,” Mr Mead mumbled at random, floundering in the chair.

  When Charley got to his own room, he rang Nance.

  He often did, these days. Now he no longer had a girl working in his room, he would ask the telephone operator for a free line, and speak to her where she was still staying on at Mrs Grant’s.

  “That you?” he said, “it’s me.”

  “Why Charley,” she answered, “wait just a moment, will you, while I light a cigarette.” He gave her time to get settled. When she said “Now,” he announced,

  “You’d have laughed the other minute.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Corker had me on the mat. Told me I should get married, wife and children, and all the rest.” He paused, his voice had gone anxious.

  “Well?” she encouraged, not taking this up as he would have liked.

  “It was nothing really,” he continued, disappointed, although he had no hopes, “just that his wife happened to ring him, and before I could get out of the room they were at it, hammer and tongs, over young Arthur you know, their eldest.”

  “What’s strange about that, then?” she enquired. “You can’t bring up a family with nothing but good wishes, can you?”

  This made him wonder if he had sufficient to marry on. Then he wanted to tell her how Corker had offered a rise if he took a wife, but he did not dare. He fell silent. Upon which she gently went over yet again their little bits of news at home, that the cat had had its kittens, that Mrs Grant was wonderful, and so on.

  “Well,” she said finally, “I’ve got to see to mother’s dinner. We’ll be expecting you Sunday. Thanks for ringing, dear.”

  He went back comforted to his work.

  When he travelled down next Sunday he noticed a great change in the cat. She was thin as a board, her eyes oily with anxiousness, as she went squawking after the kitt
ens to try to keep her family together, and everlastingly to wash them. All this was going on in the living room, where Nance took him.

  “Aren’t they sweet?” she explained. Indeed, for the rest of the day, he hardly raised his eyes from off them.

  “She’s upstairs resting,” she said of Mrs Grant.

  Again he made no comment.

  “Well, how have you been?” she asked. “Worrying along as usual? Why d’you worry like you do?”

  He stayed silent.

  “Puss never does, do you, darling?” she went on. “And if a mouse was to run right in front of your very whiskers you’d be too busy to pay attention, poor dear, wouldn’t you? You know, I can’t think how she manages. They’re so clean you could have them on your bed, the little loves.” She was fondly smiling.

  He also smiled as he watched.

  “Why do you worry so, Charley?” she demanded. “She doesn’t, do you my sweet puss?” He rather wondered at this statement. “Is it over your work again?” she insisted.

  “I’m O.K.” he assured her. He found, as he had done recently, that he was quietened by having her there, and then the kittens were domestic, like taking your slippers off to a fire. As though she could read his thoughts, she asked,

  “Are you warm enough? The days are turning sharp. Shall we light it?”

  “I’m O.K., honestly,” he said.

  “Are you certain? I never am able to tell where you’re concerned, or perhaps I can, more than you imagine. Because you’re good, you know. Why don’t you think of yourself more often? Come on now. Let’s talk about you for a change. What’s worrying you? Is it to do with your work?”

  “Me?” he asked. “No, everything’s all right.”

  “But you said you’d been up on the carpet before Mr Mead, when you called me over the phone. And I know things weren’t easy a short time back, with that girl they wished on you, and you had to wet nurse. What is it, Charley? Then is it to do with your having been a prisoner, dear?”

  He did glance at her, but she got no idea of what was in his mind.