Henderson wondered what the boy would find to do in Cartersfield, which had none of the attractions of London, none of the endless ways of filling time that a fairly rich young man requires. If only he’d passed his WOSB and made some friends in the Army, had experienced some of the cameraderie of the mess. But he’d failed the board, and then he’d gone down with this curious illness, and after twelve months in and out of hospitals the Army had discharged him. A long sickness like that could change a young man a good deal, might make him even more independent and unco-operative. Henderson hoped not. David was twenty now, though, he should have a pretty good idea of the sort of thing he wanted to do. And he could borrow the car if he found Cartersfield too dull.
‘Has he arrived?’ he said to Mrs Crawley, who seemed to have been lurking in the hall, waiting for him.
‘Yes, Mr Henderson, he’s in your study.’ She seemed rather agitated. They hadn’t had a guest since Isobel died.
‘Good.’
She took his coat and said: ‘They’ll be on their way to France now, I expect.’
‘Who will be? Oh, Mengel and his wife. Yes, yes, they will be. Perhaps they’ll have some fine weather there. It’s really quite nippy today.’
‘I do hope you don’t mind, sir,’ said Mrs Crawley, ‘but I took the liberty of lighting a fire in there for him. You did say it was a bit nippy yourself.’
Henderson looked rather startled. It was an invariable rule that there were no fires after the first of May. ‘Well, I think we may as well make an exception, Mrs Crawley.’
‘Well, I thought so, too,’ she said, relief showing on her grey face in a puckered little smile. She was a short stumpy woman of forty-five or fifty, with a greyness about her that seemed to drip from her wispy hair to her stout sensible shoes.
Henderson glanced at the afternoon post, a few long envelopes in a brass dish on top of the oak chest.
‘They seem to send one nothing but advertisements these days,’ he said. ‘It oughtn’t to be allowed. You’d better take these, Mrs Crawley. Some kind of soap coupons. We might as well save a few pennies where we can.’
She took them and went towards the kitchen, saying: ‘I’ll bring you your tea in just a minute, Mr Henderson.’
To his surprise he found himself trying to think of things to do before he went into the study. He was definitely nervous. How ridiculous, he thought, and went in.
David Mander was lying on the sofa with his feet dangling over the edge, reading a book. He looked up as his uncle came in and said: ‘Hello, Raymond,’ then swung himself into a sitting position, paused, looking coolly but not quite straight at Henderson’s face, then stood up.
‘How very nice to see you, David,’ said the uncle, putting out his hand. He noticed the pallor first, then the thinness. ‘Goodness, you do look as though you’ve been ill. But a spell in the country should fatten you up a bit.’
‘I’m all right,’ said David, smiling. The smile was a little crooked. They stared at each other for a moment, then Raymond went over to the fire and warmed his hands, thinking, I do wish he wouldn’t call me Raymond like that.
‘And how are your mother and father?’
‘They’re very well.’
‘Good. I’m sorry it’s such a miserable day. More like March than May. Well,’ he went on, as the other gave no response, ‘I don’t know what we’re going to find for you to do here, David, but I’m sure there must be something. It’s a very quiet place, Cartersfield.’
‘You mustn’t worry about that,’ said David, his voice sounding courteous, though he looked extraordinarily arrogant, Henderson thought, with his thin features, his straight nose, his rich brown eyes. He was extremely self-assured. ‘I’m pretty well able to look after myself, you know.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you are. But tell me how you feel. Are you quite recovered from that illness now?’
‘Quite,’ said David.
They stood in silence for a while, Henderson conscious of the boy’s eyes judging and appraising, making him uneasy.
‘Did Mrs Crawley show you your room all right?’
‘Yes, thank you. It couldn’t be nicer.’ David sat down again. His eyes went to the book he had been reading, as though he had now finished surveying his uncle and had discovered all he wished to know about him.
‘You’ve got a funny accent, David,’ said Henderson, noticing it for the first time, deciding with relief that it was this that had been bothering him.
‘So I’ve been told. People say I sound South African.’
‘But you were never in South Africa, were you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, travelling about like that, I expect your accent has got a bit of everything in it, hasn’t it?’
‘Probably. I never listen to myself, I’m afraid, so I don’t know.’ David picked up the book, tore a piece of paper from a cigarette packet and marked the place, then put the book on a table. He lit a cigarette with a gold lighter and lay back on the sofa, saying: ‘It’s really most kind of you to put up with me.’
‘It’s a great pleasure, David, really a great pleasure. Since Isobel—your aunt—died, it’s been very lonely here at times. It’s a delight to have someone else in the house.’
Mrs Crawley came in with the tea things to break another silence.
‘Oh, Mrs Crawley,’ said Henderson, ‘would you get David an ashtray. There must be some somewhere.’
‘Very good, Mr Henderson.’ She put down the tray and went out. When Raymond turned to ask David whether he took milk or sugar he met the crooked arrogant smile and the eyes full on him. He cleared his throat.
‘Sugar or milk?’
‘Neither, thank you.’
Mrs Crawley came in with an ashtray: a small china dish with a picture of an early automobile in bright colours.
‘This is all I can find,’ she said.
‘That’s fine,’ said Henderson. ‘Well, we’re going to have to fatten him up a bit, Mrs Crawley, aren’t we?’
‘We’ll see what we can do,’ she said, smiling broadly. ‘I expect he likes plenty to eat.’
‘I really don’t eat very much,’ said David. ‘Please don’t put yourself out at all.’
‘It won’t be any trouble, Mr David,’ she said. ‘It’s a pleasure to cook for someone as skinny as you are.’ She went out again.
‘I’m afraid you’ll find us very quiet,’ said Raymond. ‘There is a dance once a week, but it’s very local; not at all the sort of thing you’re used to, I expect.’ He handed him the tea-cup. ‘Just what they call a “hop”. I don’t know who goes, but I don’t expect the Simpsons or the Gilchrists would patronize it.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Well, Simpson’s a stockbroker—he goes up to London every day. They have a girl, Molly, about your age. But she’s not here at the moment. At Art School, I think. Girls don’t seem to stay at home these days the way they did when I was young.’
‘Wasn’t Gilchrist the taxi-man?’
‘Oh no.’ Henderson’s shocked tone made David smile. ‘Not at all. That’s Gilbert, not Gilchrist. The Gilchrists live at Mendleton Hall. I’m not sure exactly what he does—one of those people who go under the anonymity of “company director”, you know. They’re charming people. He reads the lesson. They have a boy at Oxford—Teddy. And Jane must be nineteen now. She was a débutante last year, had a “season”, don’t they call it? Perhaps you met her at some dance.’
‘I was in bed most of last year,’ said David.
‘Yes, so you were. Well, Jane is at home now. She’s a great girl for tennis—she won some kind of championship last August, even with all her parties and things. The county championship for girls, I think. She is an excellent player. Do you play at all?’
‘In most of the places we’ve lived there’s been nothing else to do except play tennis,’ said David.
‘Oh, good.’ Raymond’s eyes lit up, and he sipped his tea with something approaching but not quite gusto. ‘Well, we must
certainly get you two together.’
‘Where is this Mendleton Hall?’
‘It’s about three miles away. It’s a big manor house, you know, with a very long history. They say it may have been here before Cartersfield was, though that’s doubtful. But it was mentioned in Doomsday Book. Of course the Gilchrists only moved there after the war. I believe,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘that Gilchrist made a good deal of money in something like air-raid shelters, but that may not be true. Actually they’re a very old family, very old. And though they don’t live in the town, they do a lot for us. She’s chairman of the Women’s Institute, for instance. And he reads the lesson.’
‘Very helpful,’ said David, tonelessly.
‘There’s a chapel out there at Mendleton where I’m supposed to go and say Evensong once a month. It’s silly, really. The Mendleton people always come in to Cartersfield for Matins, so there’s never a soul there. I usually just sit and read to myself.’
David laughed. Henderson caught the mockery, and said: ‘I mean I read the service to myself, of course.’ He blushed. ‘It was Thompson-Crowley’s father who built it. There’s a story that he had gout, and refused to let the horses be used on Sundays, and the distance was too far for him to walk, so he made the vicar go out there.’
‘Oh, England,’ said David. He laughed genuinely this time, Henderson thought, not mockingly at all, more with incredulity than amusement. ‘What an extraordinary country.’
‘Well, they were a bit odd in those days, perhaps. The last Thompson-Crowley died in—— Oh, a few years before the war, the last war. And then a lawyer bought the place, but he was killed just before VE-day. He was a nice fellow. Freeman, he was called, Harold Freeman. And then his widow sold the house to the Gilchrists.’
‘You know the neighbourhood as well as an estate agent,’ said David. ‘Is there anywhere to swim?’
Summoned abruptly from Mendleton and its history, Raymond looked confused. ‘There’s no town swimming-pool. They did talk of building one some years ago, but then there was a scare about polio, and they decided against it. But there are some old gravel-pits—places where they’ve dug out the gravel, you know, and then the water’s filled them up. People go and swim there. I haven’t swum myself, to be frank, since I was a boy.’
‘I just wondered,’ said David. ‘You never know your luck. This might turn out to be England’s one summer in fifty when it doesn’t rain every day.’
‘Don’t you like England, David?’ said Raymond, irked by something in his nephew’s tone.
‘It’s all right.’ He looked unblinkingly at Henderson. ‘There are other places.’
‘But it’s your country, David.’
‘I’ve lived here for a total of five years in my entire life,’ said David. ‘That’s a quarter, exactly. I don’t feel very strongly about it one way or the other. Except that no other country’s succeeded in getting me into its army.’
‘But don’t you think of England as your home?’
‘Home?’ The young man, his pallid cheeks stretched thin between jaw and temple, stared at his uncle with amazement, almost with discomposure. ‘I don’t look on anywhere as home.’
‘Well!’
‘But I’m glad about those gravel-pits. They sound as though they might be fun.’
*
At ten-thirty Henderson said: ‘I think I’ll be going to bed, now.’
‘Good night, then, Raymond.’
‘Won’t you be going to bed soon?’
‘Not for a while. I don’t usually go to bed till quite late. Otherwise I don’t sleep.’
‘I should have thought that as a convalescent you should try to get as much sleep as possible.’
‘I get it all right,’ said David. ‘I’ll turn out the lights, Raymond.’ He hardly glanced from his book.
Thoroughly put out, Henderson fidgeted by the door. He didn’t like the idea of someone being up and about while he was in bed; it was wrong somehow. But ten-thirty had been his bed-time for so many years he couldn’t break the habit now.
‘Are you sure you want to stay up?’ he said, almost pleaded.
David looked up from his book with an expression of mild but mocking surprise. ‘Quite sure, thank you. I never go to bed till after midnight.’
‘Good gracious,’ said Henderson. He was shocked. ‘Well, good night.’
He locked all the doors, left a single bulb burning in the hall and another on the landing, and went to bed.
For a time he lay awake, thinking about his nephew. What an odd boy he was, what extraordinary things he said. Not thinking of anywhere as home. Mildred had really brought him up very badly, obviously allowed him to do just as he pleased. And it made that fuss about national service look rather different. He hadn’t realized that the boy felt no sense of patriotism. He was very thin, too, and very pale. Mrs Crawley should see to that, though. Perhaps the young were all like that nowadays, never thinking of anything but their own pleasure. But he was too old to argue with. Or he didn’t seem to understand the basic principles from which one argues in a place like Cartersfield. The simple virtues of the country—would he enjoy them? Well, he could always go back to London whenever he wanted.
He dozed, but kept waking to look at his watch. It was after two when he heard David come upstairs, go to his room, then the bathroom, then back to his room again.
2
I CAN’T say I liked him—gosh, that hardly entered into it—you see, it was terribly difficult to know where you were with him, he was peculiar, it’s perfectly true. He was different. He never tried to pretend he wanted something else, like all the other boys who start just wanting to hold your hand or something, and then think because you’ve let them do that they can start fiddling with your bra as soon as the lights go out and look hurt when you tell them to stop, as though you’ve broken a promise, when all you did was let them hold your hand for a moment. He never asked to hold my hand at all, he just looked at me, and I suppose every girl likes to be looked at like that, not with the usual undressing look that boys start practising even before they know what there is for a dress to cover up, but with a straight question, Will you or won’t you, which sends shivers up and down your spine as you give him a really haughty look back. I didn’t like him for looking at me like that, but it’s very flattering and he was rather attractive, too, apart from being able to send shivers up and down my spine with that sexy look, I mean almost before we were introduced, not staring at me or summing me up or telling me how pretty I looked, just asking me with his eyes and not even considering that I might not know what he meant or not like it.
Of course I did know, exactly, and I dare say any girl would, even if she’d never actually been in bed with a man before, which I had, because it was so obvious and anyway it was so exciting, so you couldn’t miss it possibly, unless you wanted to, and then it was pretty difficult. Not that the boy I’d slept with ever looked at me like that. He would have thought it caddish to look at anyone that way, and he wouldn’t have known how to even if he’d wanted to. He was a Guards officer called Ralph and he didn’t actually call me ‘old girl’, though he would have done if we’d got married which he pretended he wanted to, only they all say that because they know and the girl knows that they’re not allowed to, because of some silly rule, but he was nice, all the same. David wasn’t nice, at least I never thought about him being nice, it wasn’t one of the things you thought when you thought of him. His way of looking at you had nothing to do with being nice at all, and that was exciting, anyway it made a change. And of course I had no intention of letting him do anything of the sort, in fact I pretended I didn’t understand what the look meant, and then I tried acting as though I was very shocked and insulted, and I hardly spoke to him the first time because I thought he needed snubbing, looking at someone like that when he didn’t even know her, though it was exciting. But he simply didn’t pay the remotest attention to what I was doing, he just went on looking at me in the same way, and,
well, you know, even if you don’t know the man very well, it is nice, and I like being whistled at on the street, though Ralph always used to get very angry, though I never turn my head, of course, to see who’s whistling.
When David came over to play tennis for the first time, I’d already decided what to do to put him in his place, so I was watching from my bedroom window when the car drove up, and he parked it and looked around for a minute or two before he came to the door and rang the bell. And I thought to myself—I was really quite angry—if he thinks he can look around like that as though he owns the place he’s got another think coming, that young man, because I really made myself feel angry with him, which suited what I meant to do anyway, which was keep him waiting. And surely enough Mummy came and yelled up the stairs that he was there, and I yelled back that I’d be down in a minute, and then I just sat on my bed and read a book of Giles’ cartoons, and then a few pages of a book by Jack Kramer on how to play really top-class tennis, and by that time I thought he’d be furious, so I went down without even brushing my hair or anything, to show him I didn’t care at all about him. I mean it was obvious to anyone who looked at me that it would have taken exactly a minute to change into my tennis dress and that I hadn’t done anything else in the half-hour or so I’d been upstairs, which is what I meant it to look like. And I breezed into the drawing-room and said: ‘Oh, hello, are you here?’ or something casual like that, and he was sitting reading Country Life or The Tatler, and when he looked up he saw exactly what I wanted him to see, that I didn’t give a damn for him, and that I’d kept him waiting deliberately, and he just said: ‘Oh, hello’, and looked at me with that same question in his eyes, which were very beautiful, actually, very dark brown and big, and he didn’t even have the manners to get up, he just looked at me, and it wasn’t a pleading look, it was just a question demanding the answer ‘Yes’, like in Latin, but I wasn’t going to say ‘Yes’, so we went and played tennis.
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