by Henry Green
“I don’t hunt myself,” Mr. Middleton gently complained.
“Of course not,” she agreed. “But just going to a cinema suddenly depressed you, you know it did!”
He smiled on the girl.
“You can’t make out I look on that as a duty when I never do so more than an hour each week, at most.”
“Don’t assume everything so,” she protested. “Or am I being an added curse on you? But dear Campbell says we wear ourselves out trying to fill in odd moments.”
“How should I get through my lunch hour, then?” he asked. “Just continue to sit behind the old desk with clenched fists?”
“Well I don’t see how you can pass the time if you can’t eat and only go to the News Film once a week.”
“Actually I walk round looking after all the pretty girls.”
“Oh you don’t!”
“Why not?”
“But it’s . . . it’s . . . it’s wrong!! Mind, I’m not saying people never do, nice people I mean as well, only you’ve no earthly need, have you, you can’t have like this, as you are, if you understand . . .”
“There’s nothing wrong in that, Annabel,” Mr. Middleton complained.
“So you consider I’m just being childish!” she cried out, with a sweet expression of despair. “How then shall I ever explain? No, it’s simply that you’ve no right to feel depressed, the happiest married couple in London and a lovely son, whilst look at me, I’ve absolutely nothing, hopelessly in love with someone years younger than I am who’s still at that beastly St. Olaf’s, me who’ll probably never get married, ever!”
“You’ve still got everything in front of you.”
“What good’s that?” she cried. “It might turn out to be cancer.”
“Oh come,” he said. “Anyway I could have cancer in store for me, too.”
“But you’ve had your whole life,” she muttered.
“Oh well,” he said dryly. “Now let me try and get a waiter to carry on with our meal.”
“You’re bored,” she accused him, with a pout.
It took some time to attract the man’s attention. Miss Paynton meanwhile looked around the restaurant but did not seem able to hit on anyone she knew. During which, when Arthur Middleton casually began his story, she did not at first appear to listen.
“My office never opens Saturdays,” he said. “When I rise up out of bed I go to buy the weekly Reviews, get some cigarettes for myself, change a library book and so on. Now you’re familiar, of course, with the Arcade, aren’t you? Three weeks ago I was just passing through when I saw a girl in a red coat coming, her eyes so hard on me they made me raise mine to hers. She really was rather pretty. Dark. Well I looked away, you know how things are—I thought she imagined she must have met me somewhere which I was fairly sure she hadn’t, though I couldn’t be quite certain—but when I took a second glance, by which time she was much closer, I saw she was still gazing full at me with a wonderful shy expression on her, but no smile if you follow what I mean. And then, when we came level, and I took a third look, she turned her face right away so I could see only the line of the jaw.”
“And what was that like?” Miss Paynton demanded.
“Really rather terrific,” he replied.
“Well, there you are then.”
“If your suggestion is, she just wanted me to see the angle of her chin, then I can’t agree. No I think she must have been watching in the reflection of a shop window.”
Annabel laughed. “And did you speak to her?” she asked.
“That comes later,” he explained. “So we passed each other like I told you,” he went on, “and I got the various bits and pieces I’d gone out to get. But when I was going back to my house I passed by the Arcade once more, purely in case, And d’you know, there she still was, or anyway it was her again!”
“Well naturally.”
“Why, you don’t hang around like that yourself, Annabel?”
“I might.”
“Is that the case? Anyway I wasn’t so sure by this time I’d never seen the woman previously. I should have explained she had her back to me on this second trip but I recognized her, or thought I could, by the colour of the coat she had on and by a sort of droop to the shoulders I spotted when I’d seen the girl from in front; I can’t explain, I don’t know, it was submissive and patient, rather wonderful on the whole, attractive—and as I was walking the faster, in the end I went by. I didn’t like to turn my head but when I got to the street and had to go left I just looked round and there she was, standing at the greengrocer’s, staring at me out of her huge eyes with all her heart!”
“And was she, all the time, this woman you’d already seen?”
“No, she can’t have been, because I didn’t spot her again till the Monday when I was waiting for my bus at the bottom of the Arcade. She came through and went across the road into the photographer’s opposite—you know the Polyphoto people.”
“But what is it makes you think she can’t have been the other woman?”
“Oh, if it had been Mary she’d never have gone into a Polyphoto. Besides this girl was in the selfsame coat.”
“But I believe you said you didn’t know at all well this Mary you took her for.”
“No more I do.”
“Then how can you be so sure it wasn’t the person it might have been?”
“I can’t say. But I am,” he replied.
At this point their next course was brought them in a procession. They stayed silent until the waiters had departed.
“I hardly thought you were that kind,” Miss Paynton said at last in a wondering voice.
“But I never spoke to her once,” he objected.
“Somehow, though of course I don’t know you at all well, I wouldn’t have expected it,” she murmured and did not look him in the eye. “Who could ever imagine you might turn out to be the sort to go chasing.”
“Now Annabel,” he protested “I wasn’t.” He seemed amused. “She was the one who did all,” he defended himself.
“But it takes at least two to make a hunt, when everything’s said and done, doesn’t it?” she said. “The hounds and the foxes.”
“In that case no man should ever go out of doors, even,” Mr. Middleton supposed.
“Well yes, perhaps so,” she admitted. “Yet I do still think you were most to blame.”
“For just looking at a strange woman, you mean?”
“When she was obviously trying to pick you up. Wasn’t she?”
“I don’t see it yet, Annabel. She may have spotted something about me which reminded her of someone, or even that she liked!”
“Of course it was the way I met Terry,” Miss Paynton admitted in a dreamy voice.
“How? You just smiled in the street?”
“Yes. I’d gone down with some other people to see someone quite else.”
“Well, where did I go wrong then?”
“Oh but you’re married!”
“Just you wait until you are,” he protested. “Can you see yourself out for a morning’s shopping with your eyes on the flagstones like a young nun? I ask you!”
“Oh I know,” she seemed to agree. “But I’d never, never tell a soul when I did the other.”
“You still hold it’s disloyal to one’s wife or husband as the case may be?”
“Not exactly.”
Mr. Middleton studied the young woman, expressionless.
“What then?” he insisted.
“Well perhaps it makes one liable to be unlucky?” she suggested.
“In which way?” he asked, as if to drag this from her.
“The next thing could be your wife would, or my husband when I’m married.”
“But it’s life, dear,” he said, with some impatience. “Nothing will ever stop people meeting each other’s eyes.”
“Oh don’t I know that!” she muttered. “Sometimes I could just strangle Terry; and at other boys, too, as he does. But, Campbell says, only to menti
on things makes them grow bigger.”
“They grow far more from being kept secret, surely?”
“Oh I don’t think that, I’m sure, at all.”
“Then why say what you do about your Shone?”
“Because I love him,” she replied at once, and immediately added, “but I know I shouldn’t speak it out loud.”
“I can’t see why you mightn’t love him, Annabel. We’re all human, after all.”
“No, I mean about his catching other boy’s eyes,” she said. “I simply ought not to mention that again. I must remember!”
“But it can’t matter if you do with someone my age, Annabel.”
“I expect not. Oh I don’t know. Come on,” she said with a challenge. “Let’s talk of doting. Tell me how you first met Diana.”
“At a Hunt Ball,” he told her, plainly reluctant.
“Well?” she insisted.
“That’s so long ago now.”
“So do go on,” she urged. “It’s become important for me to learn all about first meetings.”
“My parents had a party,” he said. “They were alive then. We all went and I danced with Diana, of course, and the three other girls who were staying. I don’t remember anything especial except, later on, I did notice the four of them had rather got together at a round table in the supper room and it seemed to strike me a bit that they weren’t with any of our party any more, my two brothers I mean or the one other man we’d had down to stay, who was a Rowing Blue called Humphrey Byass. I saw the girls were pretty animated, not talking to the partners they were with at the time. But I don’t think I thought much about it till next day, when the story broke.”
“What’d happened?” Miss Paynton demanded.
“Well, I warned you, all this was quite a while back,” Arthur Middleton explained. “It seems when Byass chose to dance earlier with one of our party, though not with Diana as it happened, he said the hair of her head had the most wonderful natural perfume.”
At this point Mr. Middleton paused as if at some enormity, and gave a bitter, embarrassed bark of a laugh.
“All right then, why not?” Annabel wanted to be told.
“You well may ask,” he replied. “Anyway once we got back to the house about four in the morning and the girls went up to bed—they didn’t; that is to say, while we were having a night-cap down below, they hid themselves in Humphrey Byass’ room, made an apple pie bed, filled his wash basin with water and balanced it on the open door, and so on.”
“Was he cut about when it all fell down on him eventually?”
“Not in the way I expect you mean, yet he was a shy man and came to be considerably hurt. Left next morning, a day too soon.”
“But I mean, how sad and odd!” Miss Paynton exclaimed. “What could be wrong with the poor boy’s saying that?”
“Just the way Diana and I argued. We rather got together over the whole thing the following afternoon as a matter of fact, out shooting.”
“Are you sure he didn’t actually say a good deal more?”
“Not according to Diana. Of course she’d taken no part in the horseplay. Oh, how my wretched brothers were delighted! And the other girls would hardly speak to Diana after! Well, that was the start of Peter.”
“All I can say is, I think your generation’s extraordinary,” Miss Paynton murmured. “Or was,” she added.
“Of course we didn’t have the boy till we’d been married a year, but it does seem strange what comes of things when one looks back,” he said,
“No really!” Annabel protested. “Peter’s sweet. And it’s so undignified for him to have the whole of his having been born into this world, wished on to some old quarrel at a houseparty.”
“You asked for it when you wanted to know how Diana and I first came to look at one another, after all!”
“So matter of fact,” Miss Paynton grumbled.
“Well, did your parents ever tell you about themselves?”
“Now don’t be horrible! Did yours?”
“Come to think of it, never,” he admitted.
“All right then. So treat Peter like a human and not just an accident which came of someone else’s apple pie bed.”
“Here!” he demanded, the edge of anger on his voice. “I don’t need instructions over my own boy. After all Diana and I were absolutely in the right.”
“Now I’m being a real curse on you once more, aren’t I?” she sweetly rejoined. “I’m so sorry! I got excited. Let’s talk about other things, shall we?”
He was silent.
“I apologize. Was rude,” she added in a low voice.
“I didn’t want to start this, you know, Annabel.”
“Of course you never did. It was all me. Let’s get back to Mr. Byass, Arthur. I mean, he simply must have said something else.”
“Diana and I have often gone over it,” Mr. Middleton replied. “I don’t now believe he can have done, even if you do think the others were very strange. Maybe he put his nose down into her hair for a moment while they danced. People weren’t demonstrative in those days.”
“I don’t consider your generation is now.”
“That’s a matter of opinion,” he commented dryly. “But there’s no question the other girls did take grave offence. And to take up your last remark I’ve often felt the incident stopped me afterwards paying those great luscious compliments to women which seem to be all the rage nowadays.” He laughed selfconsciously.
There was a pause which she broke by saying, in the most natural manner,
“If I wished I could be married. Now! Any time I like!”
“Good,” he replied.
“Yes, and to either of two people.”
“Well, that’s splendid Annabel.”
“Oh, but not yet. All the same they both would propose any evening I let them.” She was still speaking in a dreamy, reflective tone of voice.
“You don’t wish them to yet, then?”
“I can’t tell,” she answered. “Perhaps I’m just waiting for something.”
“What?”
“A sign like you two had over Mr. Byass.”
“But Annabel, Diana and I agreed about the others’ behaviour.”
“I bet your wife knew she was going to marry you.”
He cleared his throat. “No Annabel . . .” he began in a warning voice. “I hate false modesty,” she interrupted. “Any woman would be proud.”
“It didn’t come about the way you think in the least,” he protested.
“Don’t try to stop me blurting what I feel.”
“Well thanks,” he said bitterly.
“Or have I said something awful, yet once more?” she cried in what appeared to be scorn. “I just prefer men older. Can I help that? There, now you know my secret.”
“Annabel, then you’ll have to find a widower.”
She gazed at Mr. Middleton, large eyed. “Oh never. They’re too cunning, must be,” she protested. “But that’s what’s the fault with Campbell and Terry, so unformed!”
“You’re going to have a job on your hands then.”
She laughed at his last remark. “Isn’t everything too tragic,” she giggled. “Aren’t I all kinds of a fool! But there it is, and nothing will ever change.”
Soon after this he paid the bill and they left without arranging to meet again.
•
Some days later Annabel rang Peter Middleton and asked him out to lunch. They went to a cheap Indian curry place near where she worked.
“Did your father happen to mention he’d taken me out the other afternoon?” she enquired.
“No,” the boy said in an uninterested voice. “Should he?”
“We ran across one another in the street. I’m afraid I can’t afford anything like the gorgeous meal he provided.”
“But curry’s my favourite,” Peter claimed. “I wish I had it every day. Decent of you to ask me.”
“No, because I do truly enjoy seeing you. It takes me out of myse
lf. And you’ve little idea how few there are I could say that of. Though, d’you know, it could be true about your Father. He’s so terribly handsome, Peter.”
The boy broke into mocking laughter, with his mouth full.
“Look out for the curry,” she warned. “You’ll blow it all over me and the table.”
When he had composed himself he said,
“Well I once ate a green fig looked precisely like Dad’s face.”
She giggled. “Oh dear I suppose you could on the whole say that of him, some days,” she admitted.
The younger Mr. Middleton at this point changed the subject. “I say,” he said “you don’t actually know Terence Shone do you?”
“You’re talking now just like the boy out of a school story book,” she objected. He grinned. “Of course I do. And he’s not, anyway, so exciting a person as perhaps you might think. Come to that, he’s dull as ditch water sometimes. I’m a bit off Terence. But I didn’t ask you out to lunch to discuss private affairs. Let’s go on more about your Father. Look, I’ll tell you about mine if you wish.”
The boy seemed to pay not the slightest attention.
“Are your parents still in love?” she asked.
“My mother and father? God, I suppose so. Are yours?”
“Not a bit. No.”
Peter went on eating.
“They don’t even share a room,” she added.
“D’you mind?” he asked at last.
“Well it makes things rather wearisome at times,” she said. “They have endless rows, going into the same old grouches over and over again. What’s so extraordinary is, they never seem to say anything different. Are yours like that?”
“Well I expect they are Ann, yes. Of course I’m not home much, only in the holidays. They’re pretty average I should say.”
“How long have they been married?”
“Lord, don’t ask me. I wouldn’t know.”
“All in all I’d imagine they were still very much in love,” she suggested.
“I expect so,” he said.
“You won’t tell them I mentioned this, will you?”
“What d’you take me for?” he protested. “I don’t discuss anything with my parents.”