‘I know!’ she said. ‘That awful fog a week or two ago. You lent me your torch.’
‘I had the delight of seeing you home,’ he said, falling into step with her.
‘Bobby!’ called Hilda, turning away from him and peering keenly into the rhododendrons. ‘He thinks there are rabbits in there, poor mutt,’ she explained.
‘He is not mistaken,’ said Mr Challis. ‘I myself have seen rabbits in Kenwood.’
‘Bobby, Bobby, come here!’ shouted Hilda, and as Bobby shot obediently out of a thicket she grasped his collar and put on his lead. ‘All the more reason he shouldn’t hunt for them if there are any,’ she said. ‘Well, I’m going home. It’s cold and I want my tea,’ and she nodded kindly at Mr Challis and was evidently preparing to leave him.
‘I will walk with you,’ he said. ‘You look like a painting by Signorelli in that cap.’
‘There we go again,’ said Hilda, aside.
Mr Challis did not speak for a moment, for the scene was beautiful. The grey sky had a few streaks of red breaking its monotony low in the west, and the boughs of the beeches knotted against it in a darker grey had an ethereal look, despite their massiveness, where they silverly reflected the fading day. On every side avenues of glossy rhododendrons wound away into a premature twilight, with here and there a hollybush gleaming out in scarlet berries, and far off, between thickets and trees, were glimpses of cold green hills and the misty city in the valley. A bell was tolling faintly in the distance. Hilda’s beauty, keen and bright as the winter air and the holly-berries, glowed in its scarlet trappings, and the gossamer sheen of youth and health was upon her hair.
Most of Mr Challis’s troubles could have been traced to his thirst for perfection; he was no maker-do with what God provides; he must have perfection and here, for once (he told himself with beating heart), perfection was.
Still he did not speak, but continued to look at Hilda so intently that he stayed her from moving on; she returned his gaze inquiringly, holding back the dog which was eager to be off.
‘Something wrong?’ she asked at last.
He started, and a smile, youthful in its ingenuousness and warmth and almost shy, passed over his face. So he had sometimes used to look twenty-five years ago, before he had become famous.
‘Everything is right,’ he answered impetuously, ‘and you are so beautiful!’ He timidly put out his hand towards her. ‘May I take your arm?’
‘If you like,’ said Hilda, looking at him curiously.
‘Are you quite sure you feel all right?’ she added.
‘Quite,’ he said, drawing her arm within his own, and walking on. ‘It is only (“only,” great heaven!) that I think I have found something I have been looking for all my life.’
Hilda was not unused to this sort of talk, though she usually heard it in a simpler form, and she did not feel so bewildered as might have been expected. Masculine admiration was of course acceptable to her, and provided that boys behaved themselves (and they usually did) she accepted it with pleasure and gave in return her friendship, a kind sympathy and interest, and occasional sweet fresh kisses, that made her the secret dream in many a young man’s heart in many parts of the world.
Mr Challis was not a boy, but he was saying the same sort of things that her boys usually implied, and she felt agreeably flattered, and thought that she and Margaret would have a good laugh over this later on.
‘Let’s see, your name’s Marcus, isn’t it?’ she said as they walked along.
‘How wonderful of you to remember!’
‘How could I forget?’ said Hilda in a tone which Mr Challis was too bemused to identify. ‘And you live quite near me.’
‘Yes – er – yes, I do.’ Mr Challis did hear this sentence clearly, and its implications disconcerted him. He did not want Daphne to know who he was and where he lived. Something precious and new was beginning for him to-day, he thought; something which was to give him back the fresh intensity of his youth; but even the beginnings of this lovely and rare experience were slightly influenced by the secrecy and caution that he had used in his former affairs. He could not help it; he had acquired technique and finesse and tactics in twenty years of amorous-spiritual intrigue, and even Love itself was not strong enough to stifle these disagreeable qualities immediately.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not curious,’ said Hilda, laughing. ‘I shall call you Marcus the Mystery Man.’
‘All men are mysterious,’ he said absently, and thought – I shall be able to work to-night. Is she going to stimulate my imagination, as none of the others ever did, so that I can create more vividly than ever before?
‘My dad isn’t,’ said Hilda promptly, ‘and by the way, we’re having a party this evening. Like to come?’
Mr Challis ventured on a fine, withdrawn smile as he pictured the crowd of dull young people assembled in the ugly little suburban house, playing noisy games and drinking beer.
‘It is very kind of you, Daphne,’ he said gently, ‘but this evening I have to work.’
‘What a shame, on a Sunday,’ said Hilda. ‘But perhaps you want to?’ she added, surprising him. ‘I bet your work’s something intellectual, isn’t it?’ and she went on, without waiting for a reply, ‘It isn’t really a party; my mother sort of keeps open house every Sunday night for any of my friends that like to come in. But we don’t just have pot-luck. Mum hates pot-luck. She says it’s lazy. She makes smashing sandwiches out of recipes in the papers and Dad knows a man who can get sherry and things, and Mum makes a sort of punch. And we have all the best mats and china out. The Service boys like it. Everything’s so rough for them, you see, and they do like to see things nice for a change.’
Mr Challis realized that his picture of her party had been unlike the reality, but this did not make him realize that his imagination belonged to a common-place type, for he was used to thinking of it as belonging to a rare one. Her next remark, however, did surprise him very much.
‘And sometimes we have concerts,’ said Hilda. ‘A lot of my boys are ever so musical and they bring their records along, and play them on my Dad’s gramophone. There’s one – Arthur – he’s a Yorkshire boy, he plays the piano beautifully.
‘Indeed! What does he play?’
‘Bark,’ said Hilda.
Mr Challis could only stare at her.
‘Too much like scales, Dad says it is,’ said Hilda. ‘Of course, we aren’t always highbrow. Sometimes Mum rolls the carpet up in the drawing-room and we dance. It’s smashing, really,’ she ended.
Perhaps Mr Challis’s voice, and something in his manner, and that slight smile which had yet been pronounced enough for her to notice it, had prompted her to give these details. She knew that he was a gentleman, and she suspected that he was wealthy, but that did not excuse his smiling like that at her parties, which were famous among her friends and of which she and her mother were justifiably proud.
She did not organize her friendships, and it had not occurred to her that benefits might accrue to her from Mr Challis’s apparent wealth and superior social position. Unlike the working-girl of fifty years ago, whose desire for luxury and comfort was often the cause of her downfall, Hilda was not tempted by luxury. She had as part of her everyday life the cosmetics, clothes and amusements which fifty years ago had been reserved for ladies or unfortunates, and to which poor chaste girls could never hope to aspire, and there were so many modest and easily obtained pleasures between herself and the mink and diamonds possessed by film stars that her simple desires never mounted thereto. Therefore, wanting nothing material, social or spiritual from Mr Challis, she was able to treat him as a man and a fellow-being, and it was no wonder that he found her attitude unusual and therefore attractive.
I’m sorry for the poor old thing, thought Hilda, as they walked through the wood arm-in-arm, and she chatted to him about her work, interrupting herself every now and then to address a remark to Bobby. I’m sure he’s lonely, and though he’s a bit sniffy there’s not a bit of h
arm in him, you can see that. He’s so open about it.
As they came out into the long quiet lane, bordering the edge of Kenwood, where Coleridge is supposed to have met Keats and conversed with him about mermaids, Mr Challis began to feel increasing uneasiness lest he should be seen and recognized by some of his acquaintances, though it was true that he had not many in the Village and those he did have were not given to walking upon the Heath on dull December afternoons.
‘I cannot persuade you to come into town and have tea with me?’ he said as they walked (at his suggestion) up a lonely road running parallel with the hilly western approach to the Village. Here they might indeed have been miles from London, for the distant city was no longer visible, and the long tree-covered ridge of Kenwood dominated the scene, while the yet-wild meadows of a large private estate lay on one side of the lane and on the other there were the grounds, shaded by ancient beeches, oaks and elms, of large old-fashioned houses which had formerly been country mansions.
‘Sorry, Marcus, but it just can’t be done,’ she answered, glancing at her watch. ‘Nice of you to ask me, but it’s half-past four now and I’ve got to get back and help Mum get things ready. Sure you won’t come back and have a cup with us? It’ll be in the kitchen, so You Have Been Warned.’
‘You adorable child!’ muttered Mr Challis, and stooped quickly towards her cheek. Hilda dodged expertly, with no change of expression, and whistled to Bobby.
‘I – no, thank you, I too must be getting home,’ Mr Challis said, discomfited.
‘How about a cup in that bachelor flat of yours?’ she said in a mischievous voice which he did not like at all. ‘I’m sure you’ve got a marvellous flat in High View, haven’t you?’
High View was a block of modern flats upon the summit of the hill, where an immense cedar tree conspired with the architect’s carytids to bestow, for once, the dignity and beauty lacked by most contemporary blocks of flats.
Mr Challis only smiled in answer; if she thought he lived in High View, so much the better.
‘Then will you come out with me one evening next week?’ he went on, his tall head bent over her fair one in its scarlet cap. ‘Will you dine with me on Tuesday and we will go to the theatre – or perhaps you would prefer a film – afterwards?’
He himself would prefer a film; he was too well-known as a theatre-goer, and none of his acquaintances were likely to go to any film that Hilda would want to see.
‘Well, that’s very nice of you,’ she said in a more formal tone than she had yet used with him, and looking up honestly into his eyes. ‘I’d like to, thanks ever so. You are like somebody out of a book,’ she added.
Mr Challis, who rarely laughed, did so now.
‘Am I? Whose book?’ he said, expecting her to say Marie Corelli or Ethel M. Dell.
‘Well, I don’t read much, but there’s a girl in my office she’s mad on a writer called Ann Duffield; she nearly always writes about foreign places; they’re love stories, really, only not too bad, I’ve read one or two. You’re like one of the men she writes about.’
‘Well, what sort of men does she write about?’ he asked. He had never heard of Ann Duffield.
‘Oh, rather interesting men. You know, a bit different,’ and she gave him a glance in which flattery and mockery were mingled.
Mr Challis accepted it with the delight of a man falling deeper in love every moment, but he did spare a thought for the fact that apparently there existed novelists of whom he had never heard, whose works were read and enjoyed by common little girls. All his other little girls had had smatterings of literary taste and had yearned for him to improve their minds; they had admired the novels of Charles Morgan or quoted by heart the poems of T. S. Eliot, but he was sure that Hilda had never heard of T. S. Eliot. Well, he admitted handsomely, I had never heard of Ann Duffield.
They had by now reached the village. It was nearly dark and a fine rain was falling, and the High Street was almost deserted.
‘You will dine with me on Tuesday?’ he asked, pausing at the top of that little flight of steps between two houses which leads from the Square into the village itself.
‘Yes,’ said Hilda. ‘Where’ll I meet you? Tottenham Court Road Tube Station outside the bookstall at six o’clock?’
‘I will have a taxi waiting outside the main entrance to your place of business at six o’clock,’ said Mr Challis repressively, after a pause: she must learn that it was he who would make the arrangements for their excursions.
‘That suits me,’ she said cheerfully. ‘O.K., good-bye till then, Marcus.’
‘Will you kiss me?’ asked Mr Challis a little diffidently.
Hilda shook her head. ‘We’ll have to see later on,’ she said brightly. ‘Bye-bye,’ and hurried off into the dusk, followed by Bobby.
No sooner was she alone than she regretted the arrangement. Her evenings were precious, and even on rare occasions when she was not going out with a boy or entertaining one at home, she always had stockings to mend or letters to write or old Mutt (otherwise Margaret) to see, and she feared that Marcus’s company for some hours on end might prove dull, and not worth the sacrifice of an evening. If she had not felt sorry for him she would not have said yes; he was sufficiently unlike her usual admirers to make her faintly interested in him, but only faintly, and suppose he got fresh?
Well, I can always slap him down, she thought, and opened the front door, singing:
‘Congratulate me, Ma –
Congratulate me, Pa –
I’m going out to dinner with a Duke!’
‘Go on, you mad thing,’ grumbled her mother proudly, coming out of the kitchen. ‘What’s all that about?’
‘The old boy I picked up in the tube – I met him on the rustic bridge at midnight again this afternoon (sounds a bit mixed), and he’s asked me out to dinner next Tuesday. Dinner, mark you. Anybody ’phone?’
‘Jack and Arthur. They’re coming, and Pat.’
‘Oh, good. I’ll change and be right down to give you a hand.’
‘Hilda, who is this old boy? What’s he like?’
‘Oh, he isn’t really old – about fifty, I should think.’
‘A man is in his prime at fifty,’ said her father, passing through the hall carrying a festive bottle in each hand. ‘I shall be fifty next birthday.’
Neither of his womenfolk took any notice.
‘And rather cultured and all that sort of thing. He’s always telling me I look like old Italian pictures.’
‘I don’t like the sound of it,’ Mrs Wilson called up the stairs as she went into the dining-room to set out the embroidered mats.
Hilda, from the bathroom, gave a shriek of laughter.
‘Mum! If you could see him! Nothing is further from his thoughts!’
‘Hilda, I don’t like you to talk like that.’
‘Sorry, ducks. But he’s all right, really he is.’
‘What’s his name?’ called Mr Wilson from the kitchen. ‘Where does he live?’
‘Marcus. High View, I think.’
‘Marcus what?’
‘I don’t know. Mr Marcus. Mum, is there a cup of tea?’
‘Yes, a lovely hot one left. Hurry on down and have it before you start on the sandwiches.
‘Did Mutt ’phone up?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Oh, nothing. She said she might, that’s all. She is an old misery lately; I never see anything of her. I wanted to tell her about Marcus. Doesn’t matter.’
13
Margaret and Hilda were so busy in the week before Christmas, which was the one following upon the incidents just described, that they had no opportunity to meet, and although they exchanged cards and presents and a telephone conversation, they did not see one another until New Year’s Eve, when the Wilsons gave a party to which the Steggleses were invited.
Margaret’s family had spent a quiet Christmas, for her brother had been unable to get leave and they had as yet no friends in London except Mrs Piper, who was busy
with her own family’s Christmas plans, while Mr Steggles’s journalist friend, Dick Fletcher, was working over most of the holiday.
Margaret had lunched with Zita at the Corner House as arranged, but Zita was in a hurry to meet her latest boy friend, with whom she was to spend her afternoon off, and amid the noise of chattering foreign voices in the Old Vienna Café they had almost to shout to make one another hear, and Margaret for her part said nothing but commonplaces, listening to Zita’s shrieked account of her latest conquest with a fixed smile and a frequently repeated nod which did not, she felt, much advance their friendship.
She had made for Zita a little purse of bright felt, and was rather satisfied with her work, but late on Christmas Eve there arrived for herself an enormous handbag of black, green and yellow tie-silk, made with professional exaggeration and finish by Zita, and this made her dissatisfied with her own small offering.
‘Oo!’ exclaimed Hilda, fixing her eyes upon the bag as she greeted Margaret in the hall of the Wilsons’ house on New Year’s Eve. ‘I say! Who did you knock down for that?’
‘That refugee at Westwood made it for me, for Christmas. You know, Zita Mandelbaum. I told you about her on the ’phone.’
‘It didn’t register, I was so rushed that night. Isn’t it swell, though?’ examining the yellow lining.
‘Mother says it’ll show every mark.’
‘She would. Oh – excuse me –’ and she ran to the door to greet some new arrivals. ‘Go on up and leave your things on my bed, will you, Mutt?’ she said over her shoulder, ‘Hullo, Shirley, hullo, Pat!’
Margaret went upstairs; her mother had already left her fur coat and her scarf on Mr and Mrs Wilson’s bed and was standing uncertainly on the landing, peering inquisitively about her.
‘Do hurry up,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t like to go down alone.’
The little house was decorated with scarlet, green, yellow and pink paper chains, saved by Mr Wilson from several Christmases ago, and mistletoe hung above the lights in the hall, while holly was arranged above the heavy golden picture-frames and sprays of polished laurel were grouped above the mirrors. The air was warm and smelt wholesomely of hot soup and coffee and cigarette smoke, and from downstairs came the cheerful murmur of voices and bursts of laughter, causing Mrs Steggles to frown.
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