Adrian Glynde

by Martin Armstrong

  “To memorise it,” she said.

  Then she did know: she wasn’t quite so silly after all, then. “Yes,” he said, still rather haughtily, “I’m getting along.”

  “Then you must be pretty good at it,” she said. “I’ve tried, but I can never manage more than a hymn-tune. But don’t you know those toccatas?”

  “No,” Adrian replied. “I’ve only just got them.”

  “There’s a very fine fugue in the third,” she said. “It’s in C minor.”

  Adrian became interested. Really, she seemed rather nice. She had a small, round face, hair that was almost black, and those lively black eyes. He glanced at her black and white dress and her little black and white hat and approved of them. But just when he had done so, she drove him back into his shell by putting out her hand and actually turning over the pages of the music on his knee. “There!” she said when she had found the place, “that’s it.”

  Adrian glanced at the fugue. It was a good one; at least, the subject was admirable, and he emerged a little from his shell and glanced up at her. “Yes,” he said, “it does look good.” He leaned forward and they began to talk about music.

  She seemed, he was obliged to admit, to know something about it, and soon he was chatting to her quite amicably. He told her he was going to work at the Royal College.

  “I was there for a time,” she said, “but I wasn’t a success. I was one of the many people who aren’t quite good enough. So I gave it up, oh, a long time ago now, when I was about your age.”

  Adrian frowned. Really, what did she know about his age? And what right had she suddenly to turn patronising like that?” I shouldn’t have supposed,” he said, assuming, in his turn, a touch of loftiness, “that it was such a terrible time ago.”

  “Some years, I’m afraid,” she said. “I’m twenty-three, you see, and you, I suppose, must be seventeen.”

  Adrian, abashed by her inadequate guess, smiled a little awkwardly. “No, not quite so young as that,” he said, with an attempt at manly ease. It was some minutes before he had recovered from his annoyance, but before they reached London they were once again on excellent terms.

  When they ran into the dim cavern of Paddington she glanced at the window in surprise. “Are we there already?” she said. Then, as she rose from her seat, she said, regarding him again with those amused black eyes of hers: “Thank you for making the journey go so quickly.”

  Adrian was unprepared. He stood up, awkward and blushing, but before he could think of a polite reply a porter had opened the door.

  “Well, good-bye!” she said to him, nodding pleasantly, and before he could answer she had skipped out on to the platform and disappeared.

  Adrian was somewhat relieved. He had begun to think that he ought to offer to get her a porter or perhaps help her with her luggage. Now he had been freed from these complications, and, handing his bag to a porter, he got out of the train and walked down the platform towards the van.

  XX

  Having rung the front-door bell, Adrian waited with mingled feelings of eagerness and agitation on the doorstep of number twenty-nine Lennox Street. It was a year and a half since he had seen Ronny and, now that the moment of their meeting again had come, he felt horribly shy. It seemed to him that he had become a timid little worm of a schoolboy again. The door opened and a maid admitted him. He was disappointed to hear from her that Mr. Dakyn was out. It was already a quarter to seven, and Adrian had expected that Ronny would be back from the office long since.

  The maid led him upstairs to the sitting-room and left him there. It was a pleasant, airy room with two long windows reaching to the floor. There was a good fire, and the electric lamp shed a warm light from its orange silk shade. Large double doors opened into another room, which, he concluded, was Ronny’s bedroom. He noticed with surprise that the table was set for one only. Could Ronny have forgotten that he was coming? But, in any case, the landlady would have remembered, for Ronny had told him that he had engaged his bedroom for the twenty-third. The absence of Ronny and the single place at the table chilled him a little, and he thought of Ellenger waiting in vain in Victoria Station on that afternoon nearly a year ago when he himself had started for France.

  He stood with his hands in his pockets, his back to the fire, examining the room. On the sideboard opposite him stood a bottle of whiskey, two syphons, a bottle of Italian vermouth. He strolled to one of the windows, drew aside the blind, and looked out into the pallid street. A window in one of the houses opposite was suddenly illuminated, revealing a green-panelled room with red curtains. A maid in white cap and apron flitted busily to and fro, and then came forward to the window, drew the curtains, and shut out the scene.

  Adrian dropped the blind and strolled back to the fire. He inspected the mantelpiece and noticed two pipes and a tin of tobacco. So Ronny smoked a pipe nowadays? The discovery seemed to widen the distance between them. Stuck into the frame of the mirror were two invitation cards for Mr. Ronald Dakyn. He had forgotten that Ronny would know lots of people and be much in demand. Again he felt chilled and again the distance between them widened. An envelope addressed to R. Dakyn Esqre. was propped against an ornament: the dark edge of a photograph protruded beyond it. Adrian moved the envelope and revealed a half-length photograph of a very smart, good-looking young woman. She was seated in profile, with one hand on her hip. Adrian examined her with critical hostility. He disliked her at once. He saw an uncompromising hardness in the perfection of her features—the perfect, narrow, scornful arch of the eyebrows, the fine, straight nose, the thin, self-conscious mouth. He was afraid of her. Was this Ronny’s girl? Was he in love with her? How awful it would be if she came here often and intruded on their evenings. He knew that he would hate her. She had signed her name, he saw now, in the bottom right-hand corner of the photograph—Esmé Ryan.

  He was startled by a knock at the door, and hastily replaced the envelope over the photograph as the door opened and a large, soberly dressed, middle-aged woman came in.

  “Good evening, Mr. Glynde,” she said. “I just came up to see that everything was all right. Mr. Dakyn asked me to say he’s sorry he had to go out to dinner. Have you seen your bedroom, sir? Perhaps you’d like me to show you the way. And the bathroom. Your luggage has been taken up. Mr. Dakyn has his breakfast at half-past eight. You would like yours at the same time, I expect. What time would you like to be called?”

  She led the way slowly upstairs, giving information and asking a variety of practical questions with a leisurely, dignified, pleasantly old-fashioned Cockney accent. Then, telling him that his supper would be brought up at half-past seven, she left him to unpack.

  As he sat at his solitary dinner Adrian felt disillusioned and depressed. All the keenness and energy with which he had started for London that afternoon had gone. He tried to convince himself that it was quite natural for Ronny to be out when he arrived. It might be a longstanding invitation, or he might have been pressed to fill up a gap at the last moment. Ronny would be none the less delighted to see him when he returned. So he argued with himself, but his heart was not persuaded. He knew that if the situation had been reversed, he himself would have been waiting, even if he had been expecting only Phipps or some other friend. He would have felt it to be a slight on his friend to be out when he arrived. Besides, it was a year and a half since they had met. Still, Ronny was Ronny. This was typical of his free and easy ways.

  Argue as he might, Adrian was bitterly disappointed. He had little expected that he was going to spend his first evening in Lennox Street alone. Though he had finished his supper he did not rise from the table: he leaned back in his chair, gazing at the tablecloth and vaguely wondering how he should get through the evening. He had brought books with him, they were already unpacked in his bedroom, but he felt that to go upstairs and choose one would demand more enterprise than he was capable of. Besides, he did not feel inclined to read: he would never succeed in getting into a book this evening. Then he remembered the
volume of Bach in his despatch-case. The case was here in the sittingroom, and he rose from the table, got out the music and, seating himself in the armchair by the fire, began to turn over the pages. He would do what he had begun to do in the train before the girl interrupted him—try to memorise one of the toccatas. He turned to the fugue she had shown him. Yes, she was right, he thought to himself as he looked through it; it was a fine one, a very fine one. But it was too long and too difficult to memorise, and he turned to a simpler and shorter piece.

  For an hour he remained absorbed in the business; then his energy gave out and he closed the book. It was not yet half-past nine: Ronny would not be in for a long time yet. It occurred to him to occupy himself by writing to his grandfather, and he got out his writing materials and began to do so. Writing and dreaming alternately, he got through another hour. He read the letter through, addressed and stamped it, then returned to the chair by the fire and wearily took up the Bach toccatas again. In two minutes he was asleep.

  He awoke suddenly to hear muffled steps on the stairs. It must be Ronny at last. He sat up, blear-eyed, and glanced at his watch as he did so. It was half-past twelve. Then, to his horror, he heard low voices, stifled giggles. He struggled to his feet as the door opened.

  The first to enter was a girl in a bright green evening dress. Her small face was pale, her hair was black and smooth, and she had long dark brown eyes. After her came another girl, brown haired, in a light blue dress with a black velvet cloak thrown over it. They paused, surprised, at the sight of Adrian, blocking the doorway, and a young man in dress clothes, with shiny black hair, entered behind them and, putting a hand on the shoulder of the green girl, pushed her gently forward. Ronny came last. He too was in dress clothes. The sight of him completed Adrian’s discomfiture. His face was flushed and his eyes shone: he looked, Adrian thought, extremely handsome, but he was changed, greatly changed. He was no longer a youth. In the year and a half since Adrian had seen him he had become a man. He had filled out and the boyish pink of his face was darkened to red. But what changed him most of all was his moustache. Adrian with a sinking of the heart felt that he was in the presence of four strangers.

  But next moment Ronny spoke and the distance between them diminished, for his voice and his way of speaking were almost exactly what they had been at Charminster. “Hallo, Little Man,” he said, shutting the door behind him and going over to Adrian. “I thought you would be in bed by this time.”

  “I dare say I should have been if I hadn’t fallen asleep in this chair,” said Adrian, taking the hand that Ronny held out to him.

  “Well, you’ve changed and no mistake,” said Ronny. “You’re almost twice the size.”

  “So have you,” Adrian replied.

  Ronny turned and introduced the others—a shower of names of which Adrian retained nothing. They all smiled and nodded aloofly and, Adrian thought, a little contemptuously.

  “Ronny thinks you’re double the size,” said the green girl to him, “because he happens to be seeing double at the moment.”

  They all laughed and began to chatter among themselves.

  “What about yourself?” said Ronny to the green girl. “You’ve drunk level all evening, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, my lad,” she replied, as though humouring a saucy boy, “but I have a better head than you.”

  “Then what about a double whisky? Perhaps that’ll help you to see double.”

  “No, thanks. I’m not interested in seeing double. Besides, I know when I’ve had enough.”

  The shiny-haired young man glanced at her quizzically. He had an impertinent, turned-up nose. “How nice that must be for you,” he said. “Then you can always be sure of taking one too many.”

  “Well, come on; have another too many now, my children,” said Ronny, his voice gay, excited and slightly out of control.

  “One more and this the last,” the blue girl quoted with sham theatricality. “But it must be a quick one because I swore to be home by one.”

  “Then a vermouth and soda,” said the green girl. “No more whisky for me.”

  They all had vermouth and sodas, and the chatter broke out afresh. Adrian, who stood silent and a little apart from them, surreptitiously inspected the two girls. Neither, he saw, was the mysterious Esmé Ryan whose photograph was on the mantelpiece. The gay talk rattled on for another ten minutes: then it was unceremoniously interrupted by the blue girl. “Billy! Nancy! I’m going now, at once! After all, we only came because Ronny couldn’t be trusted to come home alone. Come on, Billy, you’ve got to come because you promised to drive me home. And you too, Nancy, or you won’t get a lift.”

  “Well, I must say you know how to break up a party, Gill,” said Ronny.

  “Don’t I?” she replied in her hard, precise voice. “And it’s lucky for you I do. If I didn’t, you’d have us here for breakfast. Good night!”

  She went to the door, ignoring Adrian, and the rest followed her.

  As the door closed behind them Ronny gave a huge yawn, stretching his shoulders and pushing his fists into his eyes. “Lord, how tired I am!” he said, his face flushed and his eyes gleaming in the light. “Well, I suppose it’s bed-time, Little Man. See you at breakfast.” He went to the folding doors that opened into his bedroom. He was so overwhelmed with sleepiness that he had no attention left for Adrian, who had hoped that, late as it was, they would have a little talk. He too was tired, and not only tired, but unhappy and disappointed. Wishing Ronny good night, he went to the other door and made his way up the dark stairs to his own room.

  PU

  XXXI

  Breakfast was already on the table when Adrian came down. The door into Ronny’s bedroom was open and next moment he came in briskly, buttoning his waistcoat. “Well, Little Man,” he said, “how are you? I’ve hardly seen you yet. Last night I was horribly sleepy and a bit tight into the bargain. Let’s have a look at you.”

  He took Adrian by the shoulder and inspected him with bright blue eyes. Adrian shyly dropped his gaze and Ronny laughed. “Still a modest lad, aren’t you?” he said. “But you have grown. You’re as tall as I am, damn you. And where did you get that brown face? In France?”

  They sat down to breakfast and at once began to chatter. This, Adrian felt, was the kind of meeting he had hoped for when he arrived. All was now well: his disappointment and disillusionment of yesterday were forgotten. It seemed to him now that the change which had struck him so forcibly on the previous night had almost disappeared. Except for the small moustache, which he could not quite get accustomed to, Ronny was the same as he had always been.

  “It’s jolly having you here,” said Ronny. “I’ve never been keen on my own society, you know, and I hate having meals alone.”

  “Are you going to be in for supper to-night?” Adrian asked.

  “To-night? Let’s see.” He fished a diary out of his pocket. “To-day’s the …?”

  “Twenty-fourth,” said Adrian.

  “Twenty-fourth. Friday the twenty-fourth. Yes, nothing on to-night. I’ll be back about six, I expect.” He glanced at his watch. “I say, I must be getting a move on.”

  Half an hour after Ronny had gone, Adrian himself went out, and the day was taken up in work at the Royal College, lunch, tea, buying music and one or two concert tickets, and various other matters. It was already dark when he got back to Lennox Street.

  It was a bitterly cold night. Snow threatened, and it was nice to open the sitting-room door and be greeted by a warm flood of light, a crackling fire, a fragrant scent of pipe smoke and Ronny already there sprawling on the sofa, which he had turned round towards the hearth. Adrian dropped into the armchair and Ronny threw aside the book he had been reading. “God, what tripe!” he said. “There seem to be no decent books nowadays. If you weren’t here I should have had to amuse myself with the damned thing all evening.”

  Adrian, lying back in his chair and stretching his feet towards the fire, noticed that the photograph of Esmé Ryan no lo
nger had the envelope in front of it. She sat with her right hand on her hip, looking down at him as if surprised and a little bored by his presence.

  Ronny noted the direction of his gaze and gave a little laugh. “Are you looking at Esmé?” he said. “She’s rather a knock-out, isn’t she?”

  Adrian flushed guiltily. “Yes,” he said in a voice that could not hide his lack of enthusiasm, “she is goodlooking.” He hated her. He would have liked to leap from his chair, snatch up the photograph, and throw it into the fire.

  “Esmé’s a handful,” said Ronny. “There’s not much you can teach her.” It seemed to Adrian that his tone was proprietary. He longed to question Ronny about her, to know if he was in love with her, if, perhaps, they were engaged; but he had not the courage.

  “But most girls are handfuls,” Ronny pursued. “Now Gill Weston, the one in the black cloak you saw last night—you might think she was an ordinary, pleasant sort of creature “(But I didn’t, Adrian said to himself), “but she can be a perfect hell-cat when she likes. And all for nothing. You never know where you have her.” He gave a little mirthful chuckle and added: “She simply loathes Esmé.”

  Adrian felt his yesterday’s unhappiness steal over him again. He hated these girls: he even hated the snubnosed young man who had turned up with the others last night. They were all so superior and self-confident, and they all seemed to regard Ronny as their property. In their presence, and even when Ronny spoke of them, he felt that he was left out in the cold. But most of all he hated Esmé, whom he had not yet seen.

  Their talk turned to Charminster, and soon the maid brought up their supper, and Adrian began to be happy again. He told Ronny of how, nearly a year ago, he had met Ellenger in Victoria Station.

  “Poor old Len,” said Ronny. “Yes, I meant to lunch with him, in fact I actually started. Then I ran into two other men I hadn’t seen for some time, and … well, you know how it happens … I said I would have a quick one with them, and we got talking, and before I knew where I was it was two o’clock.”