A Game of Hide and Seek (29 page)

‘Yes.'

‘Yes,' thought Harriet, ‘he has disposed of the Old Crowd all right, in his mind, and in hers.'

A hand on her shoulder was Vesey's. She looked up, not startled, and smiled.

‘I'm sorry I was late,' he said.

‘No, I was early.'

‘Not husband and wife,' the man on the seat said, staring vaguely after them as they began to walk away. The girl looked wistful. ‘Even if married people ever did meet one another in a Park,' he added.

‘I had this rehearsal which went on and on,' Vesey said. They walked slowly along the path.

‘You look tired.'

‘Yes, I'm tired. But seeing you winds me up again, like having a drink. Let's have a drink.'

Crossing the road, he held her arm close against his ribs. She had the beautiful sensation of being cherished, felt, as she walked down the street with him, a girlish triumph in his love, as if she said to the passers-by ‘He is the one I always wanted.'

They turned through swing-doors into coolness. Dimpled glass was rosy in the evening sun; a parrot squawked across the empty bar. Harriet sat down at a table and watched Vesey as he brought the drinks. He looked ill, though he had never been robust. His shoes were worn away sharply at the heels, a tuft of thread hung from his coat instead of a button.

To be daring and open in public places now stimulated them. When he came to sit down, he put his hand over hers on the table, engaged her with his glance; and, when he drank, first pledged her.

‘And this evening,' he asked, ‘where are you supposed to be? Obviously not sitting here in a pub in Baker Street with me.'

‘No. A Miss Lazenby . . . I never got to Christian names with her . . . but I knew her when we were in that shop . . . now she works in London, and, although Charles scarcely approves – she has lax morals, he says, and I suppose he's right, though I'm not able to say that of anyone myself . . .'

‘Darling!'

‘Sometimes I see her . . . I was in a way fond of her . . . at least, I followed her adventures with interest . . . they were like a wonderful serial story, you know. I go there to buy gloves and get the latest instalment, and occasionally we lunch together. Oh, rather rarely . . . but this evening the friendship has suddenly blossomed or ripened and we are at the cinema together.'

‘Would that be probable?'

‘I had no other way of catching the last train.'

‘You can't have to account for every hour.'

‘I expect people who aren't to be trusted must be prepared for that.'

She looked briefly at the door as it swung open for someone to come in.

‘I don't like it for you. I wish we were not so cheap. Tell me about Miss Lazenby's adventures.'

‘For one thing they dovetail so beautifully. As she emerges from one, another is always waiting for her. Sometimes she emerges with a fox-cape or one of those dear little fancy wrist-watches that don't work. She certainly does have nice things and it's far better for her in London . . . she meets a much nastier type of man. But she's not young any more . . . I wonder what can happen.'

‘You are always wondering what will happen to people.'

‘It is odd and sad how some girls slip into the habit of not marrying.'

‘You panicked into it too soon,' he said coolly.

‘I know it was wrong, especially to Charles, but how can one know there is anything else to wait for?'

‘At twenty?'

‘And at thirty,' she said quietly. ‘And after that.'

‘You can never forgive me, can you?'

‘And you will never understand about Charles.'

‘I do understand.'

‘There was another girl I worked with . . . a Miss Lovelace . . . a warm-hearted, a tragic person. She hadn't much money . . . we none of us had a halfpenny by Thursday each week. What she had, she spent on clothes. She didn't eat enough, and was lonely. Her adventures didn't dovetail. There were gaps. In one of these gaps, feeling weak and wretched after 'flu, she simply lay down on the floor with her head on a cushion right inside the gas-oven . . .'

‘But, Harriet darling, it is our lovely evening out together,' Vesey protested. ‘Stop remembering such dreadful things!'

‘It wasn't all sad. There were four of us in that shop. I think we loved one another, or were used to one another. One becomes very close to people one works with – in a distinctive, a particular way, don't you think?'

‘Sometimes,' he said guardedly.

‘Even ill-assorted people. When I was married, I felt lonely, and missed them. I asked them to tea once on an early closing day; but it was quite a failure. They were stiff and cautious and polite. They admired everything exhaustively. It was so uncasual. Handing cups to them, I suddenly thought it was a dolls' tea-party. I felt like a little girl playing at keeping house. Miss Lazenby looked round her all the time and didn't swear, which she usually never stops doing. Charles came home before they left . . . in fact, I thought they never would leave . . . for my sake – I suppose he sensed what a failure it all had been – he tried to rally them. But they would scarcely respond. Miss Brimpton, the eldest, gave a refined titter or so, but the others deliberately held off . . . they had strong moral codes about not encroaching on another woman's interests. I knew it could never be the same again, that the next morning they would discuss it all, liven up, become homely, racy, unselfconscious, but that I'd not be there to hear it, or share in it.'

‘If you had stayed there . . . not begun playing house . . . you'd have withered and withered. One day, I'd have walked in for a yard-and-a-half of elastic . . .'

‘It was a gown shop; not a draper's.'

‘. . . I'd have walked in for a gown . . . I never know when a frock becomes a gown . . . I would have leant across the counter . . .'

‘We didn't have counters.'

‘. . . and said “Dear Miss Claridge, will you marry me?” And in your poverty you'd have been glad enough to. Shall I go and grovel to my father? If you will sacrifice Betsy, I will sacrifice my pride. I will even swallow it, which is worse than just throwing it aside, don't you think? More painful. I will give up my brilliant career as an actor, and go to work in an office, starting at the bottom, as sons do – like going up in a lift . . . get out at each floor and take a look round . . . “Hallo, you chaps, nice to see you. Sorry I can't stay” . . . right to the top. A desk in the next room to my father's – not quite so large, and two telephones, instead of three – “Take this file to Mr Vesey.” “Young Mr Vesey,” I think they'll call me. In a few years, my father will retire, knowing the reins are safe in my hands. I shall move into the next room and sign cheques and go to conferences. The secretary will be ringing up for reservations, putting documents into my brief-case. “New York on the phone, Mr Vesey.” Can you imagine this?'

‘No.'

‘I can
imagine
it. My mother might plead for me, though she doesn't cut much ice, which one must do to reach my father's heart. I wonder how has my life been so much worse than
that
sort of life – office-life. Neither seems very estimable to me. If one worked in a coal-mine or a vineyard, it would be different; but my father and I seem much on a par. I did no more harm than he – except to you. Who – except you – is poorer on my account? Many people are poorer on his. In fact, I suppose he earns his living by making them poorer. Whereas I, at least, have made
him
richer, by being cut off without a shilling, I mean. I could sometimes have done with that shilling. It has been on my mind. It proved that he could not even be an unnatural father naturally. “Well, you've had enough warning,” he told me. “No one to blame but yourself,” and so on. I shuffled about, waiting, but he made no offer. I thought perhaps he would send a postal order, but he never did. My mother sent me some loose pound notes in a mauve envelope – seven; a funny number, I thought – and a box of marrons-glacés. “I remember you adore these,” she wrote. I didn't know which she referred to.'

All the time he was talking, he was breaking up dead matches into little bits, arranging and rearranging them. She watched him gravely. When she raised her eyes to his, their seriousness did not match the words which had been spoken.

‘I have nowhere to take you,' he said. ‘There is nowhere for us to go.'

‘Vesey, I think you are ill.'

‘I was born fagged out. But I never have illnesses.'

‘Does that woman give you enough to eat?'

‘More than enough. A glimpse of it is that. Her cooking is a sort of curse she brings down on the food. Only weird incantations and endlessly patient malevolence could wreak such harm. I can scarcely complain, of course. Cynthia and I hardly ever pay our rent . . . we honestly can't afford to. She said we were like fishes sucking at the hull of a ship – a lively piece of imagery, I thought.'

‘Cynthia?'

‘That girl who came to the dance with me.'

‘Oh, yes.'

‘She stays there, too.'

Harriet smiled faintly.

‘Darling?'

‘Yes?'

‘What is wrong?'

‘How could anything be wrong?'

‘I wondered that. Well, let us have another drink.'

‘Of course,' Harriet thought, ‘he has the other life, of landladies, and lodgings, learning parts, rehearsing, making up. He goes home late at night. He knows other women.' But she had not wanted to imagine it. They had been alone in the world, surrounded by strangers, anonymous and safe. Blurred voices formed their background; covered their words to one another. No one turned to them, or spoke to them. The incurious crowd had kept their secret.

The streets about the railway-station were deserted. As they passed beneath lamps, their shadows swung round and lengthened before them. Draughts swirled under the dark arches, bits of dirty newspaper lisped along, grit was in the air. In the empty space below the high glassed roof they felt diminutive, a symbolic man and woman, dwarfed, helpless, as in some film about the future.

All the kiosks were shuttered, the symbolic train waited, the clock's hand jerked from minute to minute.

The hour was so late to Harriet and she felt that she had been so long from home, that Miss Lazenby and the cinema seemed the most absurd excuse, devised recklessly. She began to fear her return.

‘Do you wonder what will happen to us?' Vesey asked. ‘Since you wonder so much about other people.'

They were walking down the length of the train.

‘Nothing
can
happen to us. All of the obstacles are insurmountable.'

‘Poverty; Betsy . . .' he began to enumerate.

‘And Charles, too. Apart from Betsy, I could not deal a blow like that. Marriage is an institution. One fails it again and again, but I expect one mustn't begin to question it, or the world falls to pieces . . . Please don't hold my hand, Vesey. There may be people I know on this train . . .'

‘There
are
no people on this train. It is so empty it seems sinister. I don't like having you get on it. There is no knowing where it might not take you. Do you mean,' he said, opening a door, ‘that we are to go on like this, for years and years?'

The compartment smelt stale and was dirty. They sat down, opposite one another, and he leant forward and took her hand again.

‘Those evenings in the loft when we were young, playing hide-and-seek with Joseph and Deirdre . . . I was remembering it all the other night.'

‘Yes.'

‘How we wasted our time! Darling, you're shivering.'

Her smile was stiff over her chattering teeth.

‘I do apologise,' Vesey said, ‘for this cold night and this dirty train. Someone has turned the heater off.'

‘What time is it?'

‘We have two minutes.'

‘Don't get carried away.' She at once flushed at her ambiguous remark.

A fat man wrenched open the door and brushed past them. They resented him so bitterly, thinking of all the rest of the empty train, that they looked steadily away from him, and seemed to congeal a disapproving silence about them.

‘Now anything that hasn't been said, can't be,' she thought.

Vesey was staring at her. Sometimes he nodded to himself, as if he were learning her features by heart, committing her face to his memory. She turned to the window, uneasy under his scrutiny, too conscious of her faults; then, when she could no longer keep her eyes away, looked quickly up and flashed a nervous and meaningless smile at him, her hands twisting in her muff.

He stroked the muff, as if it were a cat on her lap. ‘You're tired,' he said aloud and then whispered, with a sideways glance at the fat man in the corner, ‘You know how to pull the communication-cord?'

Suddenly, the train began to move. She flung open the door with such suddenness that she hurt her shoulder. Both lost their heads. ‘Ah, careful, love!' she cried as he leapt out on the platform.

The train now tore them apart. She saw him lift his arm in farewell, his hand disappeared, and then the windows were blank with darkness.

‘Cutting it a bit fine,' said the man in the corner.

His accent was painfully impressive.

‘Cold in here,' he added; for she was shivering still.

‘We put the heater on,' she said. ‘We!' she thought in a panic, and took up an evening-paper Vesey had pulled from his overcoat pocket.

‘Cigarette?' The man offered a large gold case.

‘No, thank you.'

‘You look tired.'

Surprised, she glanced at him.

‘Been to a show?'

‘No.'

She began to read her paper, making a great business of it, rustling and refolding and really settling to it.

‘London's changed,' he continued. ‘Very quiet round the pubs. I and a friend were in one or two tonight. No one speaks to you. Drinking in pairs, frightened to enlarge a round, so little money about. Not very sociable. Not unless one joins a club and then you pay through the nose. Been to the flicks?'