It was funny he had any need to do that, him and Jean having got where they had. For a girl like Jean couldn’t be in your arms like that – and time and again, even if in a queerly wordless and just-for-a-minute way – if she hadn’t made up her mind deep and serious. Yet he didn’t have a feeling he knew quite where he was. And week-ends ended, he supposed, on Monday. Even if they didn’t, he’d given Mark a kind of promise to be back that day. So there was only a few hours now to get it clear in. And he had an instinct that there was still a battle in front of him. He didn’t mind that. Essentially she’d given in, she had, the very instant she’d become physically aware of him – which had been when she’d drawn back her hand like that, streaked with his blood. It had rather scared him, the first time he’d recognised it. But that’s what sex is and love is, he’d thought later. You got to get right down like that to be sure of it. You begin with what pulses and throbs in you. Blood, that is. And afterwards you build as you like.
He’d got no farther than this by the end of breakfast. Whether you could call it getting himself straight he didn’t know. But suddenly he felt that he must find Jean instantly, even if it meant tearing down this whole Cotswold Manor that she kept fading back into the way she did. So he threw down his paper and shoved away his second cup of coffee and went in search of her. And he found her just where he hoped he might – out in Mrs. Prendick’s rose-garden. There were so many roses that he wondered if they were vulgar, like the ones massed in Prendick’s office. They didn’t look vulgar. On almost every petal of every rose, he saw, there was still a drop of dew. You might say it was the right place, and the right hour too, for getting clear with your girl.
‘Phil – did you feel an awful fool?’
She’d asked him this as soon as she’d kissed him and done that quick draw-back again. She’d asked it in a playful sympathising way that yet had he didn’t know what behind it.
‘An awful fool?’ he said. He didn’t see what she was talking about.
‘Over that golf. They were being absolutely bloody. I could see they were.’
‘Oh, that!’ He was laughing and impatient. It was funny that, although he’d been upset at the time, and blushing in the middle of the night, and rather shy of appearing again next morning, it didn’t really trouble him all that – and yet here was Jean making a thing of it. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m the new boy. Whatever I do, for years I’ll be that. People will be laughing at me. Or they’ll be being nice to me. All except them that haven’t a thought but to get at my pocket. And my friends, of course. I got friends. But with the others there’ll be all this laughing and niceness. Don’t think I don’t see it. But I don’t mind. I mean, I shan’t mind. Not if I got you. It won’t mean a thing.’
She was looking past him, as if she was seeing some picture that wasn’t there for him to see. Her hands were on his shoulders, and now they came softly down his arms.
‘Phil,’ she asked, ‘how do you imagine us living? What do you imagine us doing?’
‘Shall I tell you?’ he said – and went on so that she was flushed and laughing. But in a minute she was frowning and standing back a bit.
‘But when we’re not?’ she said. ‘Spare moments do come, after all.’
‘We’ll have to think.’ He grinned at her. ‘I’ve had thoughts of a desert island. But that’s only in off moments, like. We’ll make a tremendous life.’ He looked at her earnestly. ‘You can see it, can’t you?’
‘I can see you,’ she said.
He caught hold of her again at that – since she’d said it that way. Yet it wasn’t quite an answer, so he knew he still had exploring to do if he was going to understand her.
‘Saw me rather sudden, didn’t you?’ he asked.
‘Yes – I did.’ Her blood was speaking in her cheeks, but her eyes were perplexed. ‘At that lunch we had, when I was putting on that dead common turn—’
‘You weren’t doing that,’ he cried out, pained.
‘But of course I was! The beautiful enigmatic girl, alluring and withdrawing, like in a cheap novel.’ She paused. ‘As in a cheap novel,’ she said – and laughed in a way he didn’t get. ‘It was disgusting. I wanted you to propose to me.’
‘I knew that,’ he said.
‘You well might. Of course, I was genuinely attracted by a quarter of a million pounds. There’s almost nobody that wouldn’t be.’
‘I seen that. About a lot of people, I mean – not you. It’s one of the first things you do see.’ Phil considered. ‘Naturally,’ he added.
‘Yes, naturally. And then you were very nice looking. You were nice in those expensive clothes that looked only so very slightly wrong on you—’
‘That so?’ Phil asked. He was really interested, and rather pleased.
‘And it was clear that everything underneath would be nice too. Body. All the spontaneous impulses. Everything. Or nearly everything – and none of us can have quite everything after all.’
‘You have.’ He was quick with this. But it was entirely what she’d just called a spontaneous impulse.
‘No, I haven’t.’ She looked at him more seriously, he felt, than she’d ever done. ‘I’m a very commonplace person, Phil, and very ordinary things are important to me. But there we were. If you didn’t have everything, you had so much that it seemed almost unfair. There you were – a very wealthy and personable young man – what a foul expression! – who believed he was in love with me. I can almost believe that, in the end, I behaved with some credit.’
‘So you did.’ He was as quick and as spontaneous with this as he’d been before.
‘But it’s not true. I didn’t deserve any credit for not snatching my handsome and ardent millionaire.’ She frowned quickly, as if she found something cheap in the words that had come to her. ‘You see, there was something between us.’
‘That’s right,’ he said easily. ‘Class and that. As I said.’
‘It can’t have been that.’ She was really puzzled. ‘Because it was something quite sharp and—sensuous. Isolating. Like a curtain between us.’
‘And it lifted,’ Phil said, cheerful still. ‘So what that was, was just—well, being a girl. Like a goddess. The haunting one. The moon one. Virginal.’
This time, she looked at him almost comically.
‘Well, I’m that, you know. The kind of books I read—’
‘The highbrow ones?’
‘Yes. They say it’s a sort of curse to carry around. But there it is. So perhaps you’re right.’
Phil felt awkward.
‘Pity I’m not one,’ he said. ‘To match, you might say.’
‘A gentleman Diana?’ Her brow had cleared and she was laughing at him. ‘What rubbish! Everyone knows that leads to a frightful mess.’
‘Isn’t that them books again?’
‘What awfully morbid talk.’ She wasn’t quite happy. ‘I hope you’re right. I don’t feel you are. What are we going to do now?’
‘Tell each other more about each other. What about your family, Jean? You haven’t told me about them. They like this lot?’
‘Uncle Arthur’s friends? Not a bit. Of course my mother’s his sister. But she’s been—well, assimilated.’
‘Ah—more of that.’ He grinned at her. ‘What to?’
‘The Army. The Bar. The Church. My father’s retired as a colonel. He wasn’t a great success.’
He was puzzled.
‘That’s the same sort of people, isn’t it?’
‘Not remotely.’
He remained puzzled, but was also pleased.
‘You mean your lot’s like these friends I have – the Thickthornes?’
‘Not remotely that, either. Something you haven’t met yet. The insulated and unchanging English upper middle class.’
She smiled rather doubtingly. ‘Something that wouldn’t make sense in any other country in the world. But it’s there.’
‘Well, let it be there.’ He was wondering if all this was what you could call rel
evant. ‘I liked my colonel – what I saw of him. He didn’t think too badly of me – I mean, of us. Perhaps it will be like that with me and your dad.’
‘Of course I’m exaggerating about the insulation. Uncle Arthur’s lot, my lot, Lord Braydon’s lot – they do flow in and out a bit. But still.’ She came to a dead halt.
‘But not my lot.’ His confidence was growing. It was because they’d managed all this serious, even if puzzling talk. ‘Where,’ he asked, ‘does that Moore come in?’
Of course he’d touched something there. It was what you might call the unresolved point. Or one of them.
‘That was funk,’ Jean said.
‘Funk?’ He knew she mustn’t be let ride away with it in the past tense like that.
‘Have a heart, Phil.’ He must have spoken in a way that sounded like criticism. ‘Hadn’t I gone out to lunch with a strange man and behaved like a sexy bitch on the make? And hadn’t I at least seemed to make quite sure that I shouldn’t see you again? It was all a kind of red light, telling me I might do something silly any time. And then Dolly came along. He’s been asking me to marry him almost since we both left school. So I panicked and said Yes.’ Suddenly Jean had what he thought of as her wonderful smile. ‘There was no more to it than that.’
‘And then?’ Phil said.
‘And then?’ She seemed surprised. ‘You were brought in on a shutter, Phil – more or less. And this happened.’
‘But—?’
‘Oh that!’ She understood. ‘Don’t worry about that. I’ll settle Dolly.’
There was a moment’s silence. He supposed he was gazing at her in admiration. That hunting goddess, he seemed to remember, had been pretty ruthless once or twice.
‘You going to marry me?’ he asked.
She just hesitated.
‘There hardly seems to be any other solution,’ she said. And she kissed him and ran into the house.
Phil could hardly believe his happiness. He could so little believe it that he had to look for it. He walked about the garden senselessly, doing this. He was trying to get hold of it as something he could put words to. He didn’t know why he wanted to do this, except that he had an instinct to understand things – even, you might say, to measure them. Perhaps this was wrong, since it was a bit like doing sums. He realised that he’d always a little want to do sums. It was part of his nature, and went along with having common sense and keeping a grip on those orders of magnitude. But he’d want always to be with somebody who didn’t do sums – who hadn’t been born that way, or hadn’t been born in the way of it. Which was Jean, of course, when she wasn’t belonging to her uncle’s world. And he walked about in a kind of daze – ever so dimly aware that he was looking for something.
Warmth was seeping down into this rose-garden out of this first-of-June sky – and suddenly the scent of these roses was overpowering. He went away from them and after something else – this as much by instinct as salmon go up the rivers when they’re told to. He found he was in the long riding between the pine trees. He found that he was sitting where he’d sat with Mrs. Prendick – old detached Mrs. Prendick – the day before. And then he remembered another and even older woman. He remembered his auntie, and that he had a letter from her in his pocket. The letter he’d been ashamed of the look of.
He took it out and opened it and read it.
My dear Neveau,
I take very kindly the money sent from Nottingham arrived safe here. I did always say you was a good lad. I went down St Ebbe’s and got one or two things I have always wanted and cash down the only respekable way not as they do now. Send no more money as there are no more things I want. Plese write if pension rites is affeked by money of this sort. Ma Griffin she went out obliging more than she didn’t ought and not telling them chits of girls in that office was near put inside. There been more people inkluding one said he was the vikar and we would put up a prayer for you in temptashion but I said I was chapel and showed him the door qik.
Here has been that Beryl’s old man said she was pregnant so what. Fine day I said she says that the minnit my lad has some brass and I showed him the door qik. But then comes her ma a respekable woman and says so that I know its true. I did always say that girl was soft but will no more her being the fambly now and hoping you will settle well together her and you and are as this leaves me.
Your affek. auntie
B. Tombs (Mrs)
Phil sat with this letter a long time. The smell of the pine trees reminded him again that this was where he had sat with Mrs. Prendick. For a minute he thought he’d try to find her, and talk to her. Then he thought No, it hasn’t anything to do with these people – not with any of them.
He put the letter in his pocket and got up and walked back towards the house. In the rose garden there were the roses again. And suddenly he heard Jean’s voice, almost as if it wasn’t just inside his head, saying, like she had, ‘I’ll settle Dolly.’
When he got to the house he went up to his room and packed.
Chapter Twenty-Three
By the time Phil got out of the train at Oxford he knew this was the largest thing he’d ever had to face and he’d faced it. So it was funny how small things still worried him. There were these suitcases full of the clothes and that that he’d bought in Nottingham. They were too big and heavy to carry without looking silly, and yet he didn’t see himself driving up to his auntie’s in a taxi, with the Griffins and all that crowd of kids shouting at him. First he thought he’d just leave them in the rack and let the train take them on to nowhere. Someone would get them cheap in the end, so it wouldn’t be just waste. But this train from Kingham didn’t go on. It was a local one stopped in Oxford, and he was afraid that they’d come after him shouting Mister that he’d forgotten his bags. Then he remembered how you left things in Left Luggage, so that was all right.
He walked down from the station. There was a queue for the taxis anyway, for it was the time the Varsity had those rowing races and there were people coming in for them – a lot of them girls dressed like Jean might be dressed. He walked away and he only stopped at King’s, where there were still those Ducatis in the window. It was senseless stopping to stare at them, he didn’t want another flivver, so he went on quicker now and soon he was in New Street. Here was the Primitive Methodists 1843 and there in the distance was Tom Tower, Christ Church. It came into his head queerly that they didn’t seem so far apart as they’d used to. They pretty well nodded to each other the minute you thought of Prendick’s office or of Loose Chippings. That was it.
And here he was. He saw that the lid of the copper was still in the window where he’d stuffed it that night – and it seemed incredible that it had been no time ago. He pushed open the street door and it seemed to catch on something. He thought it must be another piece of damage by the TV people and that he hadn’t noticed it before. But when he pushed harder there was a warning cry from inside, so that he had to get in pretty well by squeezing through a crack. He stared at what had stopped him. At first it looked like a cage – the hanging kind you keep a parrot in – big enough for an ostrich. But it was more elaborate than that, and knocked up out of cheap chrome and brightly coloured plastics. It was so big that if you moved it towards the door you couldn’t use the door, and if you moved it towards the stairs you couldn’t use the stairs.
‘Ain’t it fair lovely, our Phil?’ It was his auntie speaking, and in a doting kind of voice he’d never heard from her.
‘What you keep in it?’ he asked. The thing still bewildered him.
‘It’s a lamp, love. What they call a standard. I always did want one of them. And a nice piece of glass for over the chimbley.’
He looked at the fireplace. Over the mantelpiece there was a new mirror, with flowers and ferns and things etched into the glass all round, and big lozenges of different coloured glass at the four corners. And suddenly he remembered Mrs. Prendick, and how she’d have liked gnomes and pixies among the mushrooms.
‘That’s lo
vely,’ he said gently. ‘Nothing else?’
‘There weren’t anything else I ever wanted, I didn’t.’ She looked at him rather anxiously. ‘And there was nearly three pounds’ change.’
‘You couldn’t have chosen better.’ He was amazed. He’d never had an idea she coveted such things. He could have got them for her on the never-never as easy as easy – him bringing back fourteen nicker a week. He stared at the hideous objects and realised that he’d come home.
‘I can’t light the gas with this thing.’ A familiar voice had spoken in the back kitchen. ‘Haven’t you got a match?’
‘Box is empty.’ This was a familiar voice too. ‘Try giving it a quick jerk, like.’
Phil stared again at his auntie, and then edged between her and her new lamp. He went through the far door. George Pratley was perched on the little table. Peter Sharples was standing by the gas stove with a kettle in his hand. George gave his slow solid smile, and Peter, from under his black fringe, this look he had of quick thinking.
‘Hi’ya, Phil,’ George said rather shyly. ‘Me and Sharples been got acquainted along of you.’
‘And I had your telegram,’ Peter said. He picked up a teapot. ‘Just going to mash,’ he said happily. ‘If I may, Mrs. Tombs?’
‘You don’t mash too badly, you don’t,’ Phil’s auntie said graciously. She looked from one to another of the three young men, and you could see a bold resolution forming in her. There had been, after all, nearly three pounds’ change. ‘I think I’ll just look over to Sidaway’s,’ she said, ‘and get you some pikelets and a plate of fancies.’ And she reached for her purse and tottered out.
‘What’s pikelets?’ George Pratley asked.
‘Crumpets, you’d call them,’ Peter Sharples said with some North Country contempt. He’d put the kettle on the gas, and now he climbed on the table beside George. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘here we are.’
The Man Who Won the Pools Page 21
