So Well Remembered (16 page)

He spoke this thought aloud when (on a bus-top where he found himself next
to her) she admitted having encountered a good deal of coldness and even a
few personal insults at the Library.

“Then how about giving it up?” he asked, suddenly seeing things from her
angle and becoming indignant about them. “Would you be happier?”

“I need the money,” she said simply.

“Aye, but there’d be other jobs in other places—why not try London,
for instance?”

“I’d rather stay here.”

“You mean you LIKE Browdley?”

She shook her head.

“Then why?”

“It’s my home—Stoneclough.”

“Stoneclough? You mean the actual house? It means so much to you? You
still live there?”

“Yes, it’s my home.”

“I should have thought you’d have been glad to leave a place that had such
—er—unhappy associations.”

She shook her head again.

After an awkward pause George continued: “Well, don’t worry. Most people
have short memories.”

“I haven’t.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean THAT… I meant other people—they’ll change their
minds about you if you stick it out.”

(And yet as he said this he was aware of another phenomenon that became
familiar to him later—the ease with which, to her or in her presence,
he said things he did not really mean, or that his own judgment did not
support. For instance, it simply was not true that Browdley people had short
memories—on the contrary, though the Channing crash had taken place a
generation before, it was still remembered with bitterness, and the fact that
the girl had had unpleasant experiences at the Library proved it.)

She said: “Please don’t think I’m complaining about the job. It was you
who asked me what it was like, otherwise I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Well, I’m glad it doesn’t bother you much. If it does, let me know.”

(But that also was absurd. What could he do, even if she did let him know?
Any other job in Browdley would have the same drawbacks, and outside Browdley
he had no influence to find her a job at all.)

She said, smiling: “Thanks. It’s very kind of you… I’m afraid this is my
stop… Good night.”

It was at the corner where the lane to Stoneclough left the main road. He
suddenly realized that and detained her for a few seconds with an astonished:
“But—but—are you going home NOW? How do you get there from
here?”

“I walk.”

“But it’s three miles.”

“I don’t mind. I love walking… Good night.”

After she had gone and the bus had re-started he began to think it over.
Six miles a day on foot oughtn’t to have shocked him (he was a good walker
himself and had often, when he was her age, walked to and from jobs to save
bus fares), but it was strange to realize that till then he had never
wondered how or where the girl did live, travel to her work, and so on. So
she was still at Stoneclough?… Too bad there were no other houses in that
direction, or he might have asked the Transport Committee, of which he was a
member, to start a new bus route.

He met her several times again on that same trip and each time he found
himself more interested. Up to a point they seemed to get along excellently;
she was quick-minded and charmingly friendly, and when she spoke it was with
a sort of grave ardour that made even chatter sound significant; yet beyond
that a shadow seemed to fall between them. After thinking it over with some
deliberation he decided what the shadow was; it must be the fact (doubtless
known to her) that he had publicly attacked her father and family. He was
prepared for some inevitable mention of this sooner or later, and planned to
be completely frank and outspoken. “Now please,” he would say, “let’s not
waste time over that. I said what I meant and I still mean it. But I don’t
expect YOU to see things my way—after all, he was your father, whatever
else he was.”

But she never gave him the cue. One day, however, he met Dick Jordan in
the street again and heard the story of a rather odd incident that had taken
place at the Library.

“I was in my office, George, when I heard a bit of a row going on at the
counter, so I went out to see what it was, and there was old Horncastle
calling the girl names and shouting about her father having ruined him. You
know Bob Horncastle?”

Yes, George knew him. He was a gnarled industrial veteran who had lost
both job and money in the Channing crash and had lived ever since on the
verge of penury, his embitterment becoming a shade nearer lunacy each year.
Browdley knew all about him. He was a hard case, but no harder than some
others.

“The girl was standing there, George, pale and not saying a word and with
that haunted look I told you about, while the old chap poured out a stream of
abuse. When he saw me approaching he stopped, and then the girl said very
quietly—‘I’m sorry, Mr. Horncastle.’ She had to get his name from the
Library card she was holding, and the way she did that—the way she
looked down, I mean, and then looked up again and spoke his name… well, it
was just like a play, especially when she went on—‘But why don’t you
scribble it in the margins of the book, as all the other people do?’ Then she
just walked off and left him to me to calm down. Of course there wasn’t much
I could say—he’s too old, for one thing, and the way he was carrying on
I was afraid he was going to have a heart attack. Finally I got him to go,
and then I went back to my office and nearly had a heart attack myself. That
kind of thing upsets me.”

George was troubled. “I must admit I didn’t think folks would take it out
of the girl so much. And from what you say, Dick, it wasn’t her fault—
she gave no provocation.”

“The bare fact of her being there was provocation enough to Horncastle…
But there’s a sequel. After he’d gone I was curious about the girl’s remark
about people scribbling in the margins of the book… WHAT book? There’s only
one it could have been, and that’s the detailed report of Channing’s trial,
so I thought I’d look to see if it was on the shelves. It was, and sure
enough, the margins were messed up with pencilled comments—including
just about the foulest language I ever heard of—and in different
handwritings too. Looked as if a good many Browdley readers had had a go at
expressing their opinions… Of course it was our own negligence not to have
spotted it earlier—we’re supposed to go through all the books at the
annual stocktaking and rub out anything of that sort, but apparently this
book had been overlooked. So I put it aside and thought I’d do the job myself
as soon as I had time. But then another queer thing happened. Later in the
afternoon the girl came to my office and asked where the book was. Seems
rather as if she kept an eye on it and had already noticed it was gone
—for of course she could check to see it hadn’t been lent out. I told
her I’d taken it and that I intended to have the objectionable remarks
removed, and then she said—and again I thought of somebody in a play
—she said: ‘Oh, please don’t on my account.’ I gave her a bit of a
sharp answer—I said, ‘It’s not on your account at all, young lady, it’s
simply a Library rule.’ And that ended the matter… But I must say, she’s a
queer customer. You’d have thought she’d be glad I was going to do it.
Frankly, I can’t make her out.”

George nodded thoughtfully. “Aye, she’s a problem, I can see that. Maybe I
made a mistake in getting her the job, but it’s done now and can’t be undone.
If I were you, though, I’d try to find her some kind of work where she
doesn’t have to meet folks so much… Isn’t there something?”

“She might tackle the indexing. Yes, that’s not a bad idea, George. I
daresay she’s smart enough.”

“Attractive-looking too, don’t you think?”

Jordan gave George a shrewd glance. “Can’t say. Maybe I’m no judge, or
maybe she’s just not my style. She attracts ATTENTION, if that’s what you
mean, but whether it’s by her looks or a sort of personality, or something
else, I can’t be sure. I know I wouldn’t want her in my office.”

“She’d give you more heart attacks, is that it?” said George,
laughing.

The Librarian joined in the joke, as boisterously as a man may who
actually does have a weak heart as well as a nagging wife.

So it was arranged that the girl should tackle the
indexing, and George
wondered how it had worked out when next he met her, for she certainly seemed
happier and greeted him with a smile whose warmth he felt, for the first
time, was somehow intimate and personal. They chatted—on the bus-top as
usual—without mentioning anything important till she said, apropos of
nothing in particular: “Aren’t you soon taking a university degree?”

“Aye, if I can pass the exam, and that’s a pretty big ‘if’. Who told
you?”

“I heard someone saying something about it at the Library. You see, you
ask for so many books.” She added: “Such DIFFICULT books too… and yet…”
And then she hesitated.

“And yet what?”

“Those ‘ayes’ of yours.”

“My EYES?”

“I mean the ‘ayes’ you say instead of ‘yes’.”

He flushed, and for a moment fought down a humourless impulse to be
offended. Then he laughed. “Aye,” he answered, with slow deliberation. “I
daresay I could drop them if I disliked them enough. But I don’t. And if
anybody else does… well, let ‘em.” And then he suddenly gave himself the
cue that he had waited for in vain from her. “Maybe you feel about your dad
like that. You just don’t care what other people THINK—because it’s
what you yourself FEEL that matters. I don’t blame you. I’ve done my share in
attacking your family in this town—you probably know about that
—and I’m not going to make any apologies or take back a single word.
But I can’t see why that should come between you and me, and for my part it
doesn’t have to.”

He paused to give her a chance to say something, but she said nothing, so
he went on: “Well, thank goodness that’s off my chest. I’ve been looking for
the chance to say it because if you and I are going to get to know each other
well there has to be some sort of understanding about how we both feel about
ancient history. Aye, ancient history, that’s what it is.” He was relieved to
have found the phrase until he saw her face, turned to him with a look so
uninterpretable that it might have been slight amusement or slight horror,
but mixed, in either case, with a preponderance of simple curiosity. She
seemed to be waiting to hear what he would say next, and that, of course, put
him off so that he stopped talking altogether. Just then the bus reached the
corner of the Stoneclough lane, surprising them both, and as she sprang down
the steps with a quick smile and a good-night he had an overmastering urge to
follow her, if only not to leave the conversation poised for days, perhaps,
at such an impossible angle. So he ran after her and overtook her a little
way along the lane. “I don’t need to study tonight,” he said breathlessly
(she knew that he spent most of his evenings with the difficult Library
books). “I can walk part of the way with you—that is, if you don’t
mind…”

“Why, of course not. I don’t mind at all. But on one condition.”

“Yes?”

“Let’s not mention my father again… PLEASE.”

“All right.”

“EVER again? You promise?”

“Why, certainly—if that’s what you wish, but I assure you I DO
understand how you feel—”

“No, no, you don’t—you CAN’T… but you’ve promised, remember that.
From now on. From this minute on.” And over the strained emphasis of her
words there came, like a veil slowly drawn, that curious ‘haunted’ smile.

So he walked with her, puzzled and somewhat discomfited at first, as he
changed the subject to Browdley and its affairs. He did so because, after his
promise, that seemed the easiest way to keep it; and sure enough, he was soon
at ease amidst the torrent of his own plans and ambitions, both personal and
for the town. She made few comments and when they said goodbye at the gates
of Stoneclough he could not forbear the somewhat chastened afterthought: “I
hope that didn’t bore you. Or weren’t you listening?”

She answered, smiling again, but this time differently: “Well, not ALL the
time. But I don’t have to, do I? Can’t I like you without liking the new
gas-works?”

“Aye,” he said, smiling back as he gave her arm a farewell squeeze. “But I
can like you and STILL like the new gas-works. Why not?”

But COULD he? That was to some extent, both then and
afterwards, the
question.

He soon realized that he loved her—probably on the way home after
that first walk to Stoneclough. And immediately, of course, she became the
object of a crusade, for in those days that was the pattern of all George’s
emotions—his passion for education, his eagerness to tear down the
slums of Browdley (already he had a scheme), his secret ambition to become
the town’s member of Parliament—all were for the ultimate benefit of
others as well as to satisfy personal desire. And soon, eclipsing everything
else in intensity, came his desire to marry Livia—that is to say, to
RESCUE her. To rescue her from Stoneclough, from the thraldom of ancient
history; and now, additionally, to rescue her from a situation he had himself
got her into, where she was at the mercy of casual insults from strangers as
well as of her own morbid preoccupation with a book about her father’s trial.
All this, as George had to admit, totalled up to a rather substantial piece
of rescue work, but he had the urge to do it, and his Galahad mood rose as
always to put desire into action. It did not take more than a few weeks to
bring that desire to fever point, especially when the chance of prompt action
was denied. For she refused his first proposal of marriage. She seemed
genuinely bewildered, as if it were the last thing she had ever expected. She
LIKED him, she admitted—oh yes, she liked him a great deal; but as for
marrying—well, she thought she was far too young, and anyhow, she
didn’t think she would ever want to marry anybody. And she was quite happy
where and how she was—at Stoneclough. In fact, to bring the matter to
its apparently crucial issue, she couldn’t and wouldn’t leave
Stoneclough.