by James Hilton
“It does, though. He’s been very kind to me. You’ve all been kind.” I caught the tremor in his voice and thought how foolish it would be if we both broke down and wept in the middle of Hampstead Heath for no reason that either of us would mention.
“Oh, don’t keep on saying that, Brad. My father often helps promising young men—he gets a kick out of it. I don’t mean he doesn’t genuinely like you, but I wouldn’t want you to feel so terribly grateful … he enjoys it, just as he enjoyed it while Julian was baiting you the other night.”
“Baiting me?… Julian…?”
“That argument you had—about science and civilization, all that. Julian was trying to break down something you believed in.”
“That’s what your mother seemed to think.”
“Of course a good deal of what he said may be true. It doesn’t pay to be too idealistic. You said just now you weren’t as austere as some people imagined, and that’s a good thing—you used to be too austere. But you needn’t go to the other extreme.”
“Have you any idea what you’re talking about?”
“I think I have. Only you don’t help me to understand you. Perhaps you don’t want me to.”
“It isn’t that. I’m not sure that I properly understand myself.” We walked a few hundred yards, then he took my arm (the first time he had ever done so); he said quietly: “Let’s chuck the argument. Do you mind? I told you the secret—nobody knows yet that I’m not going … till I can wake the professor. I don’t think it’ll bother him much, that’s one thing.”
“The real secret is why you changed your mind.”
“You’re a persistent child.”
“I’m not a child at all, but that would make another argument.”
“Yes, let’s not have one. Not even a small one, from now on. Change the subject—talk of something else—anything else…. It is beautiful here, as you said. I didn’t somehow expect this sort of weather. Everyone in Dakota knows about London fogs, but this bright cold air…. Look at those boys— they’re optimists—they’ve brought sleds … or sledges, isn’t it?”
“Sledges over here. Sleds in America.”
He picked up the topic with grateful artificial enthusiasm. “Lots of words like that, aren’t there? Sidewalk, pavement—but in England pavement’s called roadway. And of course subway and tube. Though that’s not quite right, because there aren’t any real tubes in New York…. But the oddest of all, I think, is thumbtack and drawing pin…. Drawing pin…. Can you beat that?”
I tried to, and we kept it up till we reached the pond at the top of Heath Street. Then, as we were so near, I felt I wanted to go home. There was nothing else I could say, and nothing at all I could do. I asked him not to see me to the house and we separated at the tube station. “Oh, Brad,” I said, as he put coins into the ticket machine, “you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want, but I hope you aren’t going to make a hash of things.”
He gave me an empty look and my arm a final squeeze, then dashed for the elevator … lift, my mind checked, just as emptily, as I walked away.
My father had left for the City, John told me; also that my mother was out shopping and would not be in to lunch. So I lunched alone, then went to the library, listened to the radio (wireless), played phonograph (gramophone) records, then got out my history notes and tried to concentrate on Stubbs’s Select Charters. It wasn’t particularly easy.
My mother came home in time for tea, and I couldn’t help thinking how beautiful she looked, with her face flushed from the cold and her hair a little wind-blown. And there was a quality in her eyes, too elusive to describe, but “trancelike” occurred to me even though I had never seen anyone in a trance; a sort of serene observance which, if there is any difference between the words, must be a less active and more ritual thing than observation. She pulled off her gloves with long slow movements, gossiping meanwhile about her shopping and the special shortcakes she had been able to get at Fortnum and Mason’s, and the trouble Henry had had to avoid skidding on the slippery roads. “It wasn’t really a day for driving—more for taking a walk.”
That was my cue, if I had wanted one, to tell her about my own walk on the Heath with Brad and his change of mind about Vienna. But I wondered also if she had deliberately given me the cue, and that made me decide to say nothing. I just watched her, as she poured tea, and thought how close you can be to someone you love, so close that you dare not go closer lest you break that final shell of separateness that is your own as well as the other’s precious possession. Dusk came into the room; she went over to the fire to poke it into a blaze, and as she did so, carrying the poker and chattering all the time, she looked like a gay sleepwalker, if there ever has been such a person.
Presently she asked me what I thought of Framm.
I said: “He wasn’t a bit funny, as we thought, was he?”
“Darling, nobody is ever funny like that.”
“Did Brad listen to the radio with you?”
“Brad? Why?”
“I saw him come in from the hall just after you.”
“Perhaps he was in the billiard room.” She began to laugh. “I’ll ask him if you like.”
Ask him? I saw the flush on her face deepen as she caught my eye. She added: “I mean—when I see him—or write to him. Or don’t you think I’ll ever see him again?”
I said: “It was all settled he should leave London this evening.”
“I know, but things sometimes happen at the last minute. A most absurd rush, if you ask me. Why couldn’t he have more time? And so close to Christmas…. Maybe he just won’t go—I wouldn’t blame him.”
“Framm’s leaving tonight too, so it seemed a good idea for them to go together.”
“It seemed, it seemed. All so impersonal. People are human … or don’t scientists think so?” She lit a cigarette and offered me her case. Her hand was trembling. “Your father would worry about that.”
“You mean your hand trembling?”
“Darling, we really are in two different worlds today. I was cold in the car, I’m still a bit shivery…. No, I meant he’d say I oughtn’t to encourage you to smoke.”
“He lets me have drinks at parties.”
“But you don’t drink much, I’ve noticed. I’m very glad.”
“I don’t smoke much either.”
“I know. You don’t do anything to excess. And you’re truthful and decent and growing up charmingly. Really, I’m very happy about you, Jane.”
“I don’t always tell all the truth.”
“Who does?”
“I’d like to be able to, though.”
“One of these days you’ll fall in love, then we’ll see.”
“See what?”
“Whether you do that to excess … and also if you tell all the truth about it.”
“I wouldn’t want to fall half in love.”
“Wouldn’t you? It’s pleasanter sometimes.”
“Not if you’re in love with someone who’s in love with you.”
“Oh, don’t be too sure. That doesn’t always make it plain sailing. Or plain telling, either.”
John came in with the week-old New York Times that had just arrived. It reminded me to ask if there were any definite plans for her return to America with my father.
“We’ll spend Christmas here anyway. After that I don’t know. New York’s impossible in January and February, it simply means going straight to Florida. Harvey likes Florida, of course.” Calling my father Harvey was a sure sign she was thinking of something else.
She went on: “Oh Jane, darling, don’t bother me for plans. How can one make them so far ahead? Things are all going to pieces, anyhow … in Europe … everywhere…. They’re building up for another war.”
I said, deliberately: “I wonder how that would affect Brad in Vienna.”
“He’s an American, he’d be neutral. Of course I know that wouldn’t stop him from getting into trouble. You might not think it from the shy mann
er he has, but he’s very impulsive.”
“I know that.”
“Such a one-idea’d creature. All or nothing. No compromise … and sometimes so impractical.”
“I know that too.”
“But a very delightful person.” The cat had followed John into the room and was now curling about our legs. “To give somebody a cat, for instance. I’ll never forget John’s face when Brad brought it that afternoon. It broke the ice, though. After that we got to be friends quite fast.”
“The cat and you?”
“No, darling. Are you still in that other world of yours? The cat and I were friends instantly. Some men take a little longer.”
“I was in Ireland.”
“So you were…. I saw quite a lot of him while you were away…. More than when you came back…. I don’t know why. It’s a pity he’s so poor … poor and proud … it’s a frightening combination….” The cat purred loudly into the silence that followed. Then John re-entered and some kind of spell was broken. “Mr. Waring just telephoned to say he wouldn’t be in to dinner, madame, and he might be late, so please not to wait up for him.”
“I certainly shan’t—in fact I’ll have a snack in my room and go to bed early. I need some rest after last night…. What about you, Jane?”
“I’ll be all right. I’ve got work to do, or else I’ll find someone to go to a movie with.”
“You’re not thinking of going to the station to see Brad off?”
“No, of course not—he wouldn’t want me.”
“It isn’t exactly that, but….” She didn’t know how to finish the sentence, and then I sensed, almost with certainty, that she knew of Brad’s change of plan, or at any rate suspected it; and that out of simple affection for me she didn’t want me to hang about Victoria Station in the cold, looking for someone who wouldn’t turn up. At least I think that was her motive. As I said, you get so close, but the very closeness brings you up against the barrier.
* * * * *
The mail always came to the house early; John used to sort it and bring it to the bedrooms. There was a letter for me the next morning with a London postmark and addressed in a writing I didn’t recognize, yet as I tore it open the thought came to me, clairvoyantly if you like, that I had never seen Brad’s writing before.
It said: “My dear Jane—” (and he had never called me that before, either- -in fact I don’t think he had ever called me anything after the first few Miss Warings at the beginning)—“Thank you for coming to see me, and the walk and talk on the Heath. I’m just leaving for the boat train at Victoria to join Hugo Framm—we shall be in Vienna the day after tomorrow. After all, I’ve a right to change my mind as often as I like, and he needn’t know how narrowly I missed the chance of working with him. When I say work, by the way, that’s just what I mean, work. So don’t expect me to write too often, but there’s a warm welcome if ever you come to Vienna, as perhaps you might some day—who knows?— In great haste—Brad.”
I took the letter downstairs but didn’t mention it; not that they would have dreamed of asking to see it, but it might have seemed peculiar if I hadn’t offered to let them.
We never talked much at breakfast; my father would read the papers and sometimes make comments on the news; if he didn’t, or if we had nothing much to say in reply, nobody thought anybody else was surly.
However, this morning he folded the paper at last and put it by his plate with a gesture I knew meant he was going to read something from it; first of all, though, he spread marmalade on a piece of toast and crunched off a big corner. “Well, well,” he said, still crunching, “our friend will be halfway across France by now….”
I looked at my mother.
He went on: “It says here ‘Professor Hugo Framm left for the Continent last night accompanied by his young protégé, Dr. Mark Bradley, who will spend some time in the professor’s Viennese laboratories….’”
My mother put her hand to her face for a moment and when she took it away she had on that glassy smile, as if she were about to say hello to a maharajah.
“I shouldn’t have thought it was important enough to put in the paper,” she said.
“It wouldn’t have been,” replied my father, “but for Framm’s instinct for publicity. This is how it goes on…. ‘Asked what would be the subject of their work together, Professor Framm replied: “I don’t know yet, but Dr. Bradley is an excellent chess player, so I shall certainly put him on to something difficult”’—Newspapers go for things like that. Incidentally, I didn’t know he was a chess player.”
I said: “Neither did I.”
“Nor I,” said my mother.
Then she rang the bell for more coffee.
* * * * *
I have tried to tell all this as it looked to me then; which is perhaps the best way when nothing happened afterwards to make completely certain any of the things that were conjectural at the time. Of course, as I grew older, I balanced the probabilities more maturely; for instance, it seems to me now far less unthinkable that my mother was capable of a love affair. When you are young you tend to feel that things like that can only happen in newspaper cases, and that your own family has some special exemption from frailty; then as you live on, you learn, and what you principally learn is a frailty in yourself that makes you include others for sheer companionship. I know now, looking back on it all, that it was the first major “situation” in which I felt myself involved, and that I was so anxious not to blunder that I tiptoed all around it, deliciously thrilled as well as troubled, whereas nowadays I would probably cut in with a few straight questions to somebody.
And yet I am rather sure that the affair, in any downright sense, never came to anything. Perhaps only because Brad left in time. I think they were both in love, but after the first shyness he may have been more breakneck about it than she, partly from inexperience, but chiefly because my mother had a very realistic valuation of what life could offer; she loved comforts and gaiety and society; I don’t believe she would ever have been happy with a poor man in spite of what she said.
I think it possible that after Brad had met Framm at the party and had definitely decided to go to Vienna, she saw him alone and persuaded him against going; that he then asked for some rash show-down, perhaps even suggested her running away with him. Of course she wouldn’t consent to that; what she really wanted was for things to go on as they had been, agreeably and perhaps dangerously, with Brad taking her about everywhere and my father an appeased if not entirely deceived spectator. It wouldn’t have been heroic, but it was the sort of thing my mother could have carried off with virtuosity, if only Brad had been willing. I would guess that he was not. Yet after the argument between them she probably thought he would change his mind (as he actually did, before he changed it back again), and this gave her that trancelike happiness the next day, that confidence that somehow or other she could always hold him where she wanted and on her own terms. I know she was dumbfounded when he left, and for a time quite shattered.
Had I been a little responsible for his second change of plan? Perhaps. I have often thought that the walk and the talk we had on the Heath may have just tipped the scale.
Neither of them ever discussed it with me afterwards, but three years ago, when my mother was dying from the effects of a motor smash in Texas, my father said something under stress of great emotion. It seemed she had been driving too fast, alone and at night, and the police sergeant who had reached the scene of the accident met us at the airport and told us she had given as an excuse that she was hurrying for a doctor to attend her son who was ill. Of course she may have been half out of her mind when she said this, but I also think it possible that she didn’t know how badly she was hurt and was just trying to talk herself out of a traffic summons. It would have been like her.
As we left the hospital when it was all over, my father mumbled: “It was like that with the radio that time. Did you ever try to get America on the set we had in London?… You couldn’t.” I didn
’t tell him I had known that all along.
* * *
PART TWO
Again I was in the little room on the twenty-fifth floor with Mr. Small. I was much more aware of my surroundings than on the first occasion; I noticed how the desk between me and him had kick marks on the front and cigarette burns on the top, how dirty the windows were, and how last month (and it was already the eighth of July) had not yet been torn off the pictorial calendar.
“Ah, good morning, Miss Waring.” He half rose and bowed; I smiled and sat down as before. He opened his briefcase, riffled through its contents, then found some papers which he laid on the desk. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to bother you again, but something cropped up.”
I said it was all right to me, no bother at all. But as a matter of fact it had been; I was leaving New York that night and had many last-minute things to do. I suppose I could have ignored the letter and pretended afterwards that it didn’t reach me in time, but I had a curiosity to know what Mr. Small still wanted—indeed, it was more than curiosity, there was a touch of apprehension that had grown since my earlier visit.
Perhaps it was imagination that Mr. Small’s manner seemed a little brisker than before, if not actually brusque.
“Miss Waring, according to your statement on March fourteenth, you didn’t see Bradley after the year 1936, when you were both in London?”
“I … I don’t remember saying that.”
“You don’t?”
“Not exactly.”
He picked up a sheaf of papers. “Here it is … verbatim…. Question: ‘How long since you had any communication with Bradley?’—Answer: ‘Oh years. Not since before the war. The English war—1939.’ Question: ‘1936 being the year you knew him in London?’—Answer: ‘That’s right. My parents and I returned to America the following year.’ Question: ‘Did he return to America?’—Answer: ‘Not that I know of.’ Question: ‘At any rate you didn’t see him in America?’— Answer: ‘No. Never….’ Would you like to verify this?” He slid the typewritten sheets across the desk.