Time and Time Again (29 page)

Charles saw them off and then, sick at heart but in better control of himself than for some time, faced the fact of his own future. Of course he would not need to see Heming Wentworth. There was really nothing the matter with him. Blainey had been right. Just rest--and he had had it. Now he had better get back to work. There were things to do, arrangements to make, matters he had neglected during his--whatever one called it--would BREAKDOWN be the proper word? And the first thing was to see Havelock again. He hadn't done so since the incident in Marlow Terrace. He hadn't felt it possible to do more than keep in touch with Cobb about him. But now he decided the nettle must be grasped, and in the same mood he would stop saying 'the incident in Marlow Terrace', either to himself or to others, when what he really meant was 'Jane's death'.

He had moved out of the flat in Chelsea and had managed to get a room at his club. After dining there alone one evening he made the journey to Kensington and rang the bell of his father's flat as casually as if there had been no interval since his former regular visits. Cobb admitted him, tactfully without surprise, but told him in the hallway that Havelock had not yet fully recovered from the shock of the whole thing; it had taken away the fun he got from air-raids, so that he was still rather moody and cantankerous. Charles found that this was so, except for the cantankerousness, which was rather in himself as he realized that the old man was now all he had left in the Eastern Hemisphere. Havelock did his best to be amiable, but the visit was a short one. 'I'll come back soon,' Charles promised, still casually. He had given no explanations and none had been asked for. In the hallway again, as Cobb helped him on with his coat, Charles remarked: 'Certainly keeps well physically, doesn't he?'

Cobb agreed that he did. 'He's been writing a letter again, sir, but nothing to worry about.'

'Oh? . . . Who is it this time--General Rommel or the Pope?'

'President Roosevelt.'

Charles gave a low whistle. 'You read it of course?'

'Yes, and it seemed all right, so I let it go. I thought it would cheer him up--Sir Havelock, I mean. I don't suppose the President'll ever see it.'

'But what's it about?'

'A statue of Columbus in London. Sir Havelock thinks there ought to be one.'

'Isn't there?'

'Apparently not, sir.'

'Why, no, I can't think of any. Not a bad idea, Cobb, but a little awkward just now, since Columbus was an Italian. Mustn't glorify the ancestors of our enemies, must we? . . . However, I don't think His Majesty's Government, in the circumstances, will consider the suggestion treasonous.'

It eased Charles to find this sort of wry humour in most of his concerns, and he was beginning to be known for it. Some people said he was witty, others that he joked about matters that weren't funny; a few guessed that he was desperately unhappy and had found a way to come to terms with both the desperation and the unhappiness.

* * * * *

Charles did not ask for a longer leave, as some of his friends urged; he said truthfully that he found his work a help, or at least a time-occupier, and even his night duties were useful in solving the problem of sleep. He was well liked and his friends rallied round with as much hospitality as conditions permitted them to offer; but he really did not mind being alone when he was also, as so often happened, exhausted.

One day it fell to him, as a representative of the Foreign Office, to escort a Middle-Eastern potentate and his entourage to an airport whence a military plane would fly them carefully home. Charles had had something to do with his visit to what was usually on such occasions referred to as the war-torn island; it had been a visit staged with psychological shrewdness and not without a likely effect in terms of oil concessions. Accompanying the small party was a British Military Attaché who would travel back with the potentate and keep him happy during the trip. (For what better reason, after all, did one learn those obscure and difficult languages?) The Attaché's name was Venner, and he persisted in calling Charles 'Allenson'; Charles did not correct him. But he found the young fellow congenial company during the short time they had together at the airport. They were granted this respite because their illustrious charge had asked to be left alone for a period of prayer and meditation, and after harassed consultations with airport officials a small room not very suitable for the purpose had been discovered and commandeered. It was the room (so an official said) where incoming suspects were searched for smuggled drugs or diamonds.

Charles, thinking of the last time he had seen anyone off at an airport (his own son and sister-in-law), paced up and down a plywood corridor with the Attaché; thought also of the potentate on his knees a few yards away, after the fashion of his ancestors for a thousand years; thought also of the great engines warming up nearby, ready to carry him to biblical lands in a matter of hours; thought also of the millions of Londoners waiting in their own homes for the probable nightly dose of death and destruction. Truly a moment to take refuge in some deep philosophy, if one had any.

The pilot, fidgeting to be off before a raid could start, approached them with the question, hushed yet matter-of-fact: 'How long d'you think his nibs is going to be in there?'

'Few minutes--five--ten, possibly,' answered the Attaché. 'Not more as a rule.'

The pilot shrugged and went off.

Charles then said: 'I suppose you know his nibs pretty well?'

'Oh yes. I've been with him several years.'

'What sort of a fellow is he?'

'Not bad, as they go. Crafty. Suspicious of his family. Loves practical jokes. Generous when he's in the mood. Extravagant. Greedy. What impressed him most, I think, during his stay here was that in the midst of our own crisis we're building him two beautiful Rolls-Royces with satin-wood panels and solid gold ashtrays. He figures we wouldn't do that if we weren't going to win the war. But of course we wouldn't do that if we didn't need his oil to win the war. So I guess we're craftier in the long run . . . He's a hard bargainer, though.'

'And of course fabulously rich.'

'So rich he's worried stiff. He's secretly afraid that some day somebody will ruin the oil trade by finding a synthetic substitute-- like they did to Chilean nitrates. We planted a rumour once that a scientist had invented something . . . just to explore a weak spot.'

'And what happened?'

'He got rid of half a dozen wives immediately--as an economy measure. Didn't miss them either, so far as I could see.'

Charles said whimsically: 'I suppose you don't when you have so many. . . . But I miss mine--she was killed a few weeks ago in a raid.'

The Attaché was naturally startled and considerably embarrassed. 'Oh . . . er . . . I'm sorry to hear that, Allenson. . . . That's really bad.'

'Yes, it does rather hit one.' And then Charles continued, as he could only have done with someone who had missed his real name and whom he would probably never meet again: 'I was very fond of my wife. She was a damned good sort. She'd be better at this than I am--handling his nibs, I mean. "Man-handler" I called her once and she said it was a compliment. So it was, by God. I wonder why the F.O. never has women to do these jobs--everyone knows how useful a wife can be in an Embassy. . . . Are you married, by any chance?'

The Attaché said he was.

'Well, hang on to her then. Don't let her run into danger.' Having offered this advice without undue emphasis Charles added: 'I'm talking a lot of nonsense, you must forgive me.'

'Oh no, not at all . . .' A small commotion was shaping up towards the end of the corridor. 'I guess he's finished--now we can start, thank goodness. . . . You'll be all right going back into town, Allenson?'

'Oh yes, of course . . . thank you.'

After Charles had performed the ceremonies of the occasion and had heard the plane take off at some distant end of a darkened runway he walked to the government car whose chauffeur was waiting with the same kind of fidgetiness the pilot had had, and for the same reason. 'So far so good, sir,' he said, starting up. 'We live in 'opes.'

In the car Charles felt, not for the first time in his life, that he had made something of a fool of himself. Or rather, of some other fellow named Allenson. He must remember to look up the List tomorrow to see if there was an Allenson anywhere. He hoped he did not exist.

* * * * *

Later in April he spent a weekend in Suffolk at the house of an Under-Secretary who was ill and wanted him to help to draft a reply to Turkey about Moslem Irredentists in Cyprus. Charles took his car, which he now rarely drove, and enjoyed the journey through country previously unknown to him. On the way back on Sunday afternoon he chose to wander off the main roads in the general direction of London, not caring how he would eventually arrive there. The drastic curtailment of private motoring had given these East Anglian byways back to the nineteenth century, and with trees and hedges freshening to green along the twisting lanes, the drive was one of pure enchantment. As he reluctantly covered the miles the thought of London's dark streets and a possible air-raid that night added a tragic beauty to sights and sounds--of children in gay dresses romping through a churchyard, a gnarled old man leaning on the gate of a field, two soldiers on bicycles whistling as if there were not a war in the world.

The sun was lowering by the time he stopped for tea at a café where he was the only customer. He did not hurry, and when he left the streets were already gray. He drove on a half-dozen miles or so, guideless except by a rough sense of convergement and increasing urbanization and by a curious awareness of London ahead like some great breathing animal, downed but not cowed, waiting for more blows and ready to take them. It would be a good night for a raid, though lately there had been a falling-off in the intensity and frequency of them. At one corner he had to stop for traffic long enough to read the name on a lamp-post. Chilford Road. The name stirred a memory; Chilford was the next station beyond Linstead on that railway whose trains ran every hour throughout the night. He felt the impulse of a whim; if the road he was on led through Linstead it would be interesting to have a glimpse of the place; if not, it didn't matter. But after a few minutes memory stirred again; he was passing Linstead station, and how easy, indeed inevitable, to take the turn beyond the secondary school and the Carnegie Library.

It was a night of scudding cloud, but a full moon shone behind, half breaking through in patches of pallor. Wind scoured between the long rows of suburban houses till the pavements looked like bones picked clean. Charles could see gaps in the rows; he knew that the whole district had been heavily bombed. Presently he came to a corner he did not recognize because of an open space littered with rubble and flanked by shored-up sides of houses; but this, he knew, must be the corner of Ladysmith Road. He made the turn and drove slowly along . . . for the first time in twenty years.

He was surprised how faint and gradual was the approach of memory about it. He could not recall, offhand, what the exact number of the house had been--in the teens of the two hundreds, he thought, but had it been 214 or 215 or 216? 215 soon disengaged itself as on the wrong side of the road--no mistake about that. Then it came to him that as one had walked from the street to the front door, the bay window had been on the right-hand side; this threw out 216. So it must be 214. He slowed the car to walking pace and drew immediate partial confirmation from some twinge of inner memory-- the laburnum trees, yes, the laburnum trees, they were budding, they had grown, they nearly touched; Ladysmith Road was at last the leafy avenue that had been dreamed of. But the house itself he would not have known from a hundred others. There was a brass plate on the gate, reading when he came close--'Miss Lydia Chancellor, L.R.A.M.--Pianoforte Lessons'. He wondered if Miss Chancellor were young or middle-aged or old--whether she had moved into 214 after the Mansfields, or had ever heard of them. He began to picture Miss Lydia Chancellor, L.R.A.M., and in no time at all she became a heroine, of whatever age--giving her sedate pianoforte lessons come raid or shine.

And then, while he stopped his car at the kerb, he heard a sound that for all its plausibility in the context of his thoughts, nevertheless startled him like a touch of ice. It was the tinkle of a piano behind the darkened bay window. Miss Chancellor was at work. He heard the fumbling play of the pupil, then a colloquy of muffled voices, then the piano again--the same tune accurately, authoritatively. It was Brahms's Lullaby and Miss Chancellor played it as if she were marching soldiers round a barrack square. Not a note was out of step. Charles listened in fascination, but soon heard footsteps approaching, and with need of some excuse for having stopped, could think of nothing but to half-open the car door and pretend to be tying his shoelace. It was the local policeman on his beat. 'Quiet tonight,' said Charles.

'Yes, sir, we're all right so far.' And then, as if the shoelace were not wholly convincing: 'Looking for somewhere, sir?'

Charles had to find an answer and it came as familiarly as the feel of a switch in a room one thought one had forgotten. 'The Prince Rupert . . . isn't there a pub of that name near here?'

Suspicion vanished; anyone looking for the Prince Rupert clearly had a right to stop his car wherever he liked to tie his shoelace or anything else. 'First on the right, second on the left, sir.'

'Thanks,' said Charles. He closed the door and drove off. . . . And why not to the Prince Rupert, after all?

Two minutes later he was pushing through the swing-doors into a vestibule that had been built to ensure obedience to the blackout regulations. The interior was pleasantly warm, hazy with smoke and shaded lights, companionably buzzing with talk, but not noisy. Charles went to the bar and asked for a bitter. It was rarely his drink, but the word had framed itself for speech before he could think of anything else.

Except for the dimness and the improvised vestibule he did not think the Prince Rupert had changed since his last visit. It had then, he recollected, been recently modernized in a style which some architect had imagined to be 'Old English'; there had been a rash of dark-stained planks laid on plaster, and beams that were not beams; but now, after such a decent interval, the sham had acquired a half-reality of its own. The bar counter, for instance, originally polished to look ancient, had lost its polish and taken on an attractive patina of plain usage.