And Now Good-bye

by James Hilton

  Under the dome in the lounge of that rather amazing establishment they took coffee and sandwiches and smoked cigarettes. A certain recklessness was on him, not diminished by the realisation that it was approaching an hour when all good parsons are in bed. The colourful scene alternately attracted and repelled; it pulsated with crude, animal vitality, and the saxophones droning in the distance expressed that vitality to perfection, within the limits of their own peculiar technique. It was all something that he rather disliked, yet it drew him nearer in mind and sympathy to the girl at his side; he looked at her as she sat there, so calm and close to him, and he thought: But for you I should be fantastically unhappy in this place, but with you it’s rather exhilarating; you make its vitality stand out; you’re like a prism, through which I’m managing to see all kinds of different, magical things…And then, in a way that had never happened before, he reflected: Browdley—Browdley—Browdley to-morrow…

  “I hope we shall meet again sometime,” he said, transmuting his thought a little.

  “Yes, I do, too,” she answered, and they exchanged a glance that lasted only a fraction of a second, and then went on talking, about music and pictures and books and all kinds of side-topics that thrust themselves unwanted yet unshirked into the conversation; it was midnight before they decided that they really must go. As they passed through the crowded lobby and into the street, he said: “Let me see now—where is it you said you were staying?”

  “South Kensington. It’s a studio in a sort of mews. The people who have it are rather amusing—the man’s an actor and the woman paints—very badly, I’m afraid—but they’ve both been awfully nice to me. They’re friends of Isaac’s, and when he wrote to them about me they asked me to stay with them as long as I was in London.”

  Crowds were jostling down the tube entrances.

  “I suppose the tube’s your best way,” he said, “but there seems a tremendous rush. Would you rather try for a bus? It’s not so quick, but usually pleasanter.”

  “I’ve got a return ticket from Charing Cross. That’s only a few minutes’ walk away.”

  So they set off down the Haymarket and across Trafalgar Square; six-and-a- half hours, he reflected, since he had met her there outside the post office; but the interval was hardly reckonable in time. Down Northumberland Avenue to the river the wind swept past them in cold gusts; little pools in the gutters were already frozen hard. They crossed the tramlines to look at the river, rolling by like coils of black snakes; the railway bridge soared above them, glittering with red and green signal-lights. A moving brilliance zoomed across and sent a cascade of silver-blue sparks into the darkness below. “How beautiful that is,” she exclaimed, watching the train disappear over the south side.

  “That’s the bridge they’re always talking of pulling down because they say it’s ugly and spoils what’s supposed to be one of the finest views in the world.”

  “I think it’s much more beautiful than a good many views of that sort.”

  “Yes. It represents the best of its period just as the architecture of my chapel represents the worst. The Victorians only achieved beauty when they aimed at utility.”

  “I know. I always think the best things in Browdley to show visitors are the cotton-mills. They’re so downright ugly you can stand them—they’re almost beautiful because of that. Anyhow, they’re not depressing, and they don’t put on airs, like the Town Hall and the Technical School.”

  They walked over the road to the station entrance and he was full of the feeling that there were unnumbered things he wanted to say to her and that as soon as she was gone they would all come tumbling upon him. But when they reached the booking-hall they found there were no more trains. They might get a bus, someone suggested, in the Strand, so they hurried back along Northumberland Avenue to Trafalgar Square and puzzled themselves over several vehicles, all quite full, that were bound for places neither of them had ever heard of. At length he said: “Well, we can walk a little way, unless you’re tired, and get one as it overtakes us. I daresay there’ll be room in them soon.” It sounded rather vague, but she agreed without argument, and they skirted the corner of the square and passed under the Admiralty Arch into the Mall, unaware that omnibuses did not traverse that spacious highway. But it was pleasant enough to stroll at one o’clock in the morning under the leafless trees. At last a turning opened out on the left and she exclaimed: “Oh, let’s go down here, it leads through St. James’s Park to Victoria Station—I know there are always late buses from there. And there’s no hurry so far as I’m concerned; those people I’m with always stay up half the night. Besides, they gave me a key.”

  They entered the park. He was not quite sure how it would help the journey to South Kensington, but he was still in rather the mood of not caring—after all, it was their last chance, they would never meet and talk again. The prospect of that imminent farewell gave him not so much a feeling of sadness as of something cold and rather blank that he must soon encounter and become used to. He wondered, then, for the first time, if they would correspond. On the whole, he thought better not; there could be no particular point in it, since they would probably never renew the acquaintance. But he did say, with a fervour that rather astonished him: “When you’re in Vienna I don’t suppose you’ll think a great deal about Browdley—no reason, of course, why you should—but I do want you to feel that—in any emergency—you have a friend there. Remember now. At any time—years hence, perhaps—a letter to me will not be wasted. I mean, I shall always want to help you, if it should ever happen that I can. And I daresay I shall always be in Browdley, so you’ll know where to write.”

  She said: “It’s very kind of you, and I do thank you. I shall like to feel that. I wish there’d been more time for us to get to know each other. It’s absurd, really—dashing away like this to the opposite ends of the earth. They are rather opposite ends, aren’t they?”

  “Absolutely, I should say.”

  “And it’s so lovely here to-night. What’s that building over there with all the lights shining on it?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I really know where I am.”

  “Probably I’m dragging you miles out of your way. I keep forgetting how tired you must be. What time’s your train to- morrow?”

  “There’s one at ten-thirty I might try for.”

  “Mine’s at ten.”

  “I suppose we both ought to hurry up and get some sleep.”

  “I won’t sleep. I’ll be too excited.”

  “About to-morrow?”

  “Yes. And to-day.”

  He felt the very slightest pressure of her arm in his, and the sensation moved him to a curious whimsical tenderness. “Elizabeth,” he said (he had never called her by her name until then)—“to-day has been rather fine, hasn’t it? Finer, for me, probably, than for you. It seems a hundred years since a solitary grey-haired parson stepped out of a train at St. Pancras Station and carried his bag to a second-rate hotel in Bloomsbury. He was tired and worried, partly because he thought he was very ill, and partly because he had to face an embarrassing interview with a certain young lady of whom he had not had, to be candid, the very best reports.”

  He had expected her to be amused, but instead she was silent for a time and then responded, as if with some effort to achieve the same mood: “But you’re not solitary and I don’t think you’re really very grey- haired, either. Besides, even if you were both, the description wouldn’t do, because it suggests someone old and decrepit. You aren’t exactly that, are you, Howat? Is ‘Howat’ what I have to call you? It’s a queer name, isn’t it?”

  “It was my father’s. I think it suits a parson, though he wasn’t one—it has just a slight flavour of pretentiousness. I sometimes wish I had another name. No, no, I don’t—I really don’t care at all. I’m not sure that I know what I’m talking about.”

  “Perhaps that’s why you called yourself solitary.”

  “More likely I was thinking of those old-fashioned bo
ys’ yarns in magazines years ago that used to begin—’One glorious summer’s evening, in the heart of the Canadian Rockies, a solitary horseman might have been seen—’”

  “I don’t think you do know what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course not. I warn you, I shall talk nothing but nonsense till we say good-bye.”

  He felt, indeed, as if a divine yet rather wistful nonsense were closing round him on all sides. The sky was full of stars and there was a new moon, and that shining building, whatever it was, now stood directly ahead, its tall square tower, brilliantly flood-lit, facing them like some fairy goal beyond the trees. The path they were traversing sloped gently down to the suspension bridge over the ornamental water, and there the loveliness of the scene was like a sudden droning in his ears; he stopped, and put his arm round her shoulder as they both gazed down at the water and then across to the spectral buildings in the distance. “There’s the Foreign Office, I think,” she said, and he replied: “Ah yes, yes…” But he was thinking of something else; he was thinking—By God, I believe there is something in me, if it had a chance; I believe what I’m everlastingly seeking for wouldn’t always elude…He felt as if some utmost beauty of the world were calling to him with open arms, while he, for some unfathomable reason, wanted to answer yet could not either speak nor stir.

  When, a few moments later, they entered Bird-cage Walk, Big Ben was chiming the quarter, and it was too late, he guessed, to think of finding an omnibus. He asked for the address where she was staying and summoned the first taxi that carne along. He would accompany her, he planned, say good-bye at her destination, and return to his hotel in the same taxi.

  As they drove off she said: “Don’t go back straight away. Can’t you spare a minute to come up and see the people I’m staying with? I think you’ll probably like them—they’re interesting.”

  “Isn’t it rather late for paying a call?”

  “Oh, they don’t care. They very often stay up most of the night talking to people. And they’ve got a photograph of Isaac—I’d rather like you to see it.”

  “Yes, ’I’d like to myself. All right, I’ll come, but I really mustn’t stay long. Think of my train to-morrow.”

  “And mine. Just now I find them both rather dreadful to think of.”

  “Ah, but you’ll love Vienna.”

  “Have you been there?”

  “No, but I’ve always had a great desire to go. Not that I ever will—it’s too far. The Viennese are supposed to be delightful people.”

  “So long as Viennese landladies don’t object to fiddle practice.”

  “Perhaps some day I shall pay my five-and-ninepence to hear that fiddle.”

  “I should think it very, very improbable.”

  “You don’t know.”

  “In a way I don’t care. As I told you, I’m not especially optimistic about making money and being successful. I’m just doing everything because I must—because I don’t seem to be able to get what I want any other way. It’s a personal thing. I don’t really care a bit about showing off before other people, though I’d be willing enough to do it for a living. I just want to play the fiddle, that’s all.”

  “I think I understand.”

  “I really believe you do, and I’m certain nobody else does.”

  “Except Isaac?”

  “Ah yes, except him.” They both laughed. “You’ll like his face, I think. He’s terribly ugly, so people say, but I never noticed it particularly.”

  “He has understanding, anyhow.”

  “Yes. He knows how it is that so many things don’t matter when once you’re certain what does matter. At his cinema, for instance, he has to play the most awful music from three every afternoon until eleven at night, but he doesn’t mind. He says very often he doesn’t even hear it.”

  “I can believe that. Often I don’t hear my own congregation singing a very bad hymn_ tune half a semitone fiat. I suppose I’ve got used to it.”

  “Isn’t that a pity, though, in your case? You’d have hated it at one time, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did hate it, then.”

  “And nowadays you don’t bother?”

  “I try not to. Somehow, though it perhaps sounds foolish to say so, I’m a bit afraid of bothering. It would be so easy for me to bother too much.”

  “You weren’t afraid years ago.”

  “Oh, heavens, no. I was keen enough till—oh, till I realised it wasn’t much use being keen. When I was in my teens and early twenties I used to scribble down tunes nearly every night. My parents died when I was young, and I went to live with a rather fine old dissenting preacher in a small Kentish village. There was a family of seven daughters. I remember some of them used to sing—the usual kind of songs people did sing in those days—and I sometimes tried to teach them things of my own, but it was never much of a success. I’m sure the fault was chiefly mine—they were probably written in impossible keys. It was the youngest girl, by the way, who afterwards became my wife.”

  “Were you very much in love with her?”

  The question, so artless and direct, took him by surprise, so far as anything, in the mood he was in, could have done so; he reflected for a second and then evaded with: “Don’t you think people who marry are usually in love at the time?”

  “At the time? Do you mean only that?”

  He felt her keen, eager mind in sharp contact with his own; it was exciting and a little uncanny, the way she could open up long avenues of speculation, not so much by her questions as by the questions that her questions suggested. He did not know what to say in answer, but the taxi rescued him from the problem by drawing in and halting at the kerbside. He paid the driver and then, as the cab drove away, stared around with a renewed sense of strangeness; there they were, the two of them, marooned at that rather forlorn hour of the morning amidst a waste of empty pavements and tall unlit houses. “This way,” she said, leading him into a narrow side turning that appeared to expand further on into a sort of enclosed yard. “These used to be stables belonging to those big houses, but now they’re mostly garages. My friends are lucky because the garage they live over belongs to a man who spends half the year abroad. They’re really quite comfortable places to live in. This way. I suppose as it’s so late I’d better use the key.”

  She took a Yale key from her bag and unlocked a door that gave directly on to the yard. A dark interior was revealed, and a second later, when she had switched on the light, a small lobby with a flight of stairs ascending to a first floor. “We’ll go up,” she said, “they’re probably in the studio.” She climbed the stairs, with Howat following her. All this seemed to be happening, so far as he was aware, in a curious dream, a dream in which the most fantastic things followed one another with a kind of preposterous reasonableness. At the top of the stairs was a landing with several closed doors; she opened one of them, switched on a light, and gazed around. The room was empty, but it bore signs of having been fairly recently inhabited. Used glasses stood on a Sheraton sideboard, and there was a cabinet gramophone with a record still on the turntable. It was a rather cosily furnished room, in which one window had evidently been enlarged to give a good north light. There were several bookcases, a baby grand piano, and an easel supporting a half finished and not very attractive portrait of a ballet- dancer.

  “They don’t seem here,” she said, and then caught sight of a letter on the mantelpiece addressed, in a very conspicuous scribble, to herself. She tore open the envelope and a few seconds later exclaimed: “They’ve gone away for the week-end—some friends called and invited them suddenly.” She handed Howat the note; it was signed ‘Finola’, and in the course of a few dozen roughly pencilled words conveyed an explanation, an apology, good wishes for the future, a hope that she would be sure to come again when next she was in London, and a command for her to make herself thoroughly comfortable during that last night at the studio. “That’s Finola,” she added, and pointed to a portrait on the wall of a pale thin-li
pped woman with prominent cheek bones and a necklace of large green beads. “She painted that of herself, but it doesn’t flatter. I’m sorry you couldn’t have met her—and her husband. But its really just like them to go rushing off in such a hurry.”

  “I’m sorry, too. I like their room. It’s got a sort of genial untidiness about it.”

  “They’re like that themselves—genial and untidy. I’m very fond of them both, though I’ve only known them for a few days. It’s queer how a room can sometimes make you feel at home, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, this one does, I admit. It’s the casualness of it—everything just comfortably anyhow.”

  “They are casual—the way they just go off at a moment’s notice like this, for instance. Somehow I don’t feel it’s at all impolite of them.”

  “No, it’s almost a charming characteristic. This room makes me wish my own wasn’t so stiff and formal. But I’m afraid that’s in the hands of my sister-in-law. She has the strictest ideas about tidying up. I can just imagine how shocked she’d be by a place like this.”

  “Yes, I know. I met her once. I found her just a bit terrifying.”

  “She’s very good-hearted, of course. I don’t know what my wife would do without her, with all that great house to look after.”

  “Why don’t you move into a smaller house?”

  “I think that’s what I would do if I had my own way.”

  “I’m sure you’d be happier.”

  “Yes…Those enormous houses were part of a different social system altogether. I’d be just as comfortable and certainly much better off living over a garage. After all, what does it matter where you live?”