Brief Encounter

by Alec Waugh

‘Your train,’ she said.

  IV

  It rained on the following Wednesday. It was not the kind of morning when Anna would want to sit on a seat in the Cathedral Close. All the same she prepared herself a lunch. It might be too wet for the George and Dragon. She could get a taxi at the station. But she could not from her office. Better make it a good lunch too. She might need cheering up. Why not take some wine too, when she was about it. A half bottle of Chianti, and not she reminded herself to forget the corkscrew.

  When one o’clock came, she was grateful for that half bottle. It was still raining. In such weather she could not have risked going to the George and Dragon. She drew the cork and opened up her package. She was just preparing to enjoy it when there was a ring at the front door.

  Grace called through from her office.

  ‘I’ll answer it. I’m on my way out. I can’t think who it is. Everyone should know that we are closed between one and two.’

  There was a sound of voices in the hall, a masculine voice was raised, a voice that seemed familiar. There seemed to be an altercation.

  ‘But I’ve a luncheon appointment with Mrs. Jesson. I assure you I have.’ The masculine voice insisted.

  The voice held authority, and Grace yielded.

  ‘Someone here for you, Anna,’ she called out.

  She opened the door and there was Dr. Harvey. ‘It’s raining,’ he announced. ‘So I’ve come to take you to the George and Dragon for that cheese salad and a glass of wine, perhaps two glasses.’

  ‘Have you brought your car?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I’m not going out in this. You can take off your coat, sit down and share my lunch with me. You’re soaked.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘There’s no but … If you want my company for lunch you must make do with what I have. I’m sure that that’s what a doctor would prescribe.’

  He stared at her, perplexed; then with a grin conceded. ‘He’s really rather nice,’ she thought, and there would be enough for two—two large tunafish sandwiches, a square of cheese, a packet of biscuits, an apple and a large slice of cake. ‘I’ve only one glass,’ she said, ‘but you can use a tea cup. It’s probably as good as this wine’s worth.’

  He took a sip. ‘I think it’s very good.’

  ‘It’s the kind of wine I’m used to.’

  ‘Did you always drink wine in Italy?’

  ‘Always, even when things were at their worst.’

  ‘What different upbringings we have had.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about your upbringing. How did you come to be a doctor?’

  ‘My father was a doctor, and I had … I don’t think there’s another word for it, ideals; does that sound presumptuous?’

  ‘Not the way you say it. What were the ideals?’

  ‘Preventative medicine.’

  ‘Sanitation? Hygiene, diet, that sort of thing?’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about it.’

  ‘Not much, but I have to know a little for my work here in the bureau.’

  ‘My special pidgeon is environmental pollution.’

  ‘Lead?’

  ‘Dust. Diseases of the lungs. That’s why I work at the clinic. I’ve done a little experimental work. I published a paper last year in the British Medical Journal.’

  ‘What on?’

  ‘Pneu mocconiosis.’

  ‘Whatever’s that?’

  ‘Don’t be alarmed. It’s simpler than it sounds. It’s the slow process of fibrosis of the lung due to inhalation of particles of dust. There are special opportunities of studying it in this area. Because they still mine chalk.’

  She stared at him, wonderingly. He must be quite an important man in his own field. Yet he did not look it. He was basically very modest.

  ‘It’s funny,’ she said, ‘but talking about serious things makes you look much younger.’

  ‘Does it?’

  ‘Almost like a little boy.’

  He blushed. He was really still a child at heart in the way that so many English men are. They were a mass of contradictions; all that starched formality, doing the correct thing, going out into the jungle and not seeing another white man for months, and then looking so innocent at the end of it.

  ‘What made you say that?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know, at least I do.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘No, please go on. You were telling me about the chalk.’

  He stared at her; he was puzzled. ‘The chalk,’ she said. ‘Please go on.’

  ‘Of course. The chalk. It’s not only chalk, you know.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘It’s coal as well. The inhalation of the coal dust; that’s a specific form of the disease. It’s called anthrocosis.’

  ‘It is?’

  ‘And then there’s steel and metal dust.’

  ‘There is?’

  ‘That makes chalicosis.’

  ‘It does?’

  ‘And then there’s stone dust. Silicosis.’

  I wonder what his wife’s like, she thought.

  Once again he was ahead of her in the station waiting room. This time the room was comparatively empty. ‘I’ve ordered you some tea,’ he told her.

  ‘That’ll be nice,’ she said.

  There were some bath buns under a glass bell on the counter.

  ‘Are those bath buns fresh?’ he asked Mrs. Harris.

  ‘Indeed they are sir. Delivered fresh this morning from the bakery. If they were not entirely fresh, sir, I would not serve them. There are few delicacies so cloying to the palate as a stale bath bun.’

  ‘Then I’ll have two,’ he said.

  ‘Two bath buns, sir.’

  ‘Yes, bath buns two.’

  Mrs. Harris put the buns each on a separate plate.

  ‘I’m getting you a bath bun,’ he announced to Anna. ‘You mustn’t disapprove. They’re fresh this morning,’ he reassured her.

  ‘That means they are very fattening.’

  ‘Then let’s starve tomorrow. They’re one of my earliest passions. I’ve never outgrown it. All other foods I can resist. But fresh bath buns, I could live on them for ever.’

  Anna shook her head. ‘No vitamins. Your teeth will fall out.’

  ‘Then we’ll eat oranges.’ They looked at one another. ‘Tell me about your wife,’ she said.

  ‘There’s not much to tell. She’s called Melanie.’

  ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘Small, dark, rather delicate.’

  ‘Strange. I’d have thought that she’d be fair.’

  ‘She’s older than I am.’

  ‘Much older?’

  ‘Six, seven years.’

  ‘I’ve heard that age doesn’t make any difference after the first two years. They say that when an actress has been on the stage three minutes, you don’t know what she looks like, you only know if she can act or not.’

  ‘She’s quite nice to look at.’

  ‘I’m sure she is.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Does she like living in the country?’ Anna asked.

  ‘I’m not sure that she does. She would prefer to live in London. She was rather a Bohemian. She wasn’t exactly a writer, but she moved in a literary set. Her father was a publisher, still is for that matter. Morgate and Hurst. You’ve heard of them I expect.’

  ‘I haven’t as a matter of fact. That’s not my line.’

  ‘They’re quite well known. She reads manuscripts for them. A friend of hers is literary editor of The Globe. Now and again she reviews a book for him.’

  ‘How did you come to meet?’

  ‘The way everyone meets nowadays. At a cocktail party.’

  ‘Have you been married long?’

  ‘Six years.’

  ‘What does she find to do all day?’

  ‘Why do you ask me that?’

  ‘Her position is so different from mine. With two sons I’ve got so much to do.’

  ‘Th
ey go to school, don’t they?’

  ‘That’s only eight months of the year. And they are day boarders. They are home in the evenings.’

  ‘They’ll be going away as boarders soon, I suppose.’

  ‘They are both down for Winchester.’

  ‘That’ll make a difference, won’t it?’

  ‘I suppose it will. At first. But I seem able to adjust to things.’

  ‘Didn’t you find that difficult at first, in England, being an Italian?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was so glad to get away from Italy, from the Italy I was living in, from the place that Naples had become. I was so anxious to fit in in England, to conform, to be what was expected of me. A country solicitor, living in a village can’t afford to be out of the way, different, I’ve learnt. I’ve tried to learn to understand English things.’

  ‘Even cricket?’

  ‘How did you guess that?’

  ‘I play myself.’

  ‘What are you, a batsman or a bowler?’

  ‘So you know the technical terms?’

  ‘My husband captains the village side. I keep the score.’

  ‘Do you really like the game?’

  ‘I think I do. There must be fine points that I miss.’

  ‘It’s so very English. There was a poem about “the beautiful, difficult English game of cricket”.’

  ‘Does my liking it prove I’m becoming English?’

  ‘I don’t think of you as being English, being Italian is one of your great attractions.’

  ‘Attractions?’

  His glance held hers. She found that she was blushing.

  The announcer’s voice sounded over the system. ‘The train now approaching the station is the boat train express.’

  They sat in silence while the train roared through.

  ‘I’m grateful to that train,’ he said. ‘I’d never have met you but for it.’

  She did not reply but a warm glow spread along her veins. ‘It’s funny,’ he said, ‘but I’ve a feeling that I’ve known you all my life.’

  ‘I’ve got that feeling too.’

  ‘Yet we don’t know a thing about each other.’

  ‘We know all we need to know.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You don’t need telling.’

  Again they looked each other in the eyes.

  ‘I’m English,’ he said, ‘and you’re Italian, but we work on the same wavelengths.’ He paused. ‘We can talk in shorthand.’

  Again, the station announcer’s voice interrupted them. ‘The train now approaching Platform 2 is the 18.13 train for Waterloo, stopping at Basingstoke and and Woking.’

  They stood up facing one another. ‘This has been one of the happiest days of my life,’ he said.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘If it rains next week, I’ll come round in a taxi, so you won’t get drenched on the way to the George and Dragon.’

  She did not answer ‘You must be on your way,’ she said. They did not shake hands.

  V

  It was still raining when Anna turned into the short drive. She drove straight round to the garage, coming into the house by the back door. She unpacked her basket on the kitchen table.

  ‘I didn’t have time to do much shopping,’ she told Ilse. ‘The weather was too bad.’

  ‘You’ve got something for the boys, though.’

  ‘Of course, of course.’ They were not very imaginative gifts; for each a small box of chocolates. She had had too much on her mind to be original.

  ‘Have they been good?’ she asked.

  Ilse shrugged. ‘You know how it is during the holidays. They spend all the term looking forward to them. But then when the holidays come, they haven’t got enough to do. Particularly on a rainy day.’

  ‘Didn’t any of their friends come round?’

  Ilse shook her head.

  ‘Too wet for bicycles, and parents need their cars.’

  ‘I see.’

  The boys were in the play room, playing a game of cards with their father on the floor. It was a new game about the stock exchange. They were absorbed by it.

  ‘I’m a bear, and Alistair’s a bull,’ Dominic announced.

  ‘I’m wondering if I can afford to buy steel,’ said Alistair. ‘Do you think I can, Mummy?’

  ‘You must ask your father.’

  She watched the game for a couple of minutes, pretending to take an interest in it.

  ‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘I need my evening drink. I’ll mix my own. Graham, come in and join me when you’re through.’

  ‘In a second.’ But he was enjoying the game. That was obvious. He would not be joining her for several minutes.

  She hesitated before the sideboard. She was feeling restless. She needed something stronger than campari. She picked up the whisky bottle. It was stoppered with a gauge. She turned it over, it seemed a very meagre measure. She turned back her wrist. Then once again turned it over. Ah, that looked better. She did not weaken it with ice. She scarcely lightened it with soda. She took a long, slow sip. She closed her eyes. She had needed that. She rarely took whisky. When she did it, it worked the trick. Shock troop tactics. She sipped again and sat back in her chair.

  She was not exactly tired, she was not exactly restless. She was not on edge … it was a funny mood. She felt in a daze, yet she felt vibrantly alive … When had she felt like this before. She could not remember. She sipped again; the sensation of well-being deepened.

  ‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’ The sound of Graham’s voice startled her.

  ‘I must have been asleep,’ she said.

  ‘If you were, you’ve been drinking in your sleep.’

  She looked at her glass and laughed. It was half empty. ‘I must have been more tired than I thought,’ she said.

  He stretched out his hand. ‘Let me freshen it.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She noticed that he only turned the bottle over once. ‘Very little soda, please,’ she said. Once again she thought, I needed that.

  ‘Did you have that Mrs. Gaines in today?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll say I did. Her husband’s still not back.’

  ‘That makes him two weeks away, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Longer than he’s ever been away before, except when he’s been away with what Mrs. Gaines calls “some bit”. She doesn’t even know if he’s still in Winchester and she won’t go to where he works and ask for him. Nor will she let me go. She doesn’t want to get him into trouble. Then there’s the problem of the children. I’ve talked to their school. The eldest boy is rather bright I gather.’

  ‘What does she want to happen?’

  ‘She wants him back.’

  ‘Mightn’t she be better off with him out of the way if he drinks up the housekeeping money. If you can fix her up with the benefits to which she is entitled, there’ll be more money coming in from Social Security than ever he brought home.’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘What is the point?’

  ‘Her family’s the point.’

  There was a pause. He looked at her fondly. He was not going to argue. He never did argue. In his opinion if people argued they were quarrelling. In consequence, they never really discussed anything, he and she.

  ‘You take the family for granted,’ she said, ‘because you’ve always had one. You don’t know what it’s like not to have one. We who’ve been without a family know that it’s all important.’

  He smiled. He never interrupted her, never contradicted her: just let her go on talking, then she stopped talking very soon. It’s no good, she thought, I can’t discuss things with him.

  ‘I saw my doctor again today,’ she said.

  At that he did start. ‘Patterson, not anything wrong?’

  There was genuine anxiety in his voice.

  She laughed.

  ‘No, no, not our doctor, my doctor. The man I met in the refreshment room.’

  ‘The one that took the grit out o
f your eye. Of course, yes, I’d forgotten. You are bound to keep seeing him if you catch the same train.’

  ‘We don’t catch the same train. He’s got a practice outside Basingstoke. I can’t remember where. He comes into Winchester to the chest clinic. We travel in opposite directions.’

  ‘You’ve made a friend: someone who takes a piece of grit out of your eye is your friend for life. You can’t ignore him after that. You’re bound to say, “Hullo, how are you. Have a cup of tea.”’

  His eyes were twinkling. It was a way he had, when he was mildly making fun of her Italian inability to appreciate the minute nuances of English social customs. Usually it amused her. But tonight it didn’t.

  ‘Is that what you’d like?’ she asked.

  ‘Is what what I’d like?’

  ‘For us to ask him over, for a meal?’

  He laughed outright.

  ‘Surely that’s going a little far, for a piece of grit. That wasn’t a major surgical operation.’

  ‘But he seemed quite nice. I think you’d like him.’

  ‘I’m sure I would.’

  ‘We could ask him to dinner … him and his wife.’

  ‘But you scarcely know him. I don’t know him at all. His wife doesn’t know either of us. Over here we never ask people to dinner unless we’ve been to school or in the army with them. Or owe them something.’

  ‘We owe Jeremy and Pamela a dinner. It would be fun for them to meet someone new.’

  ‘What about a lunch party?’

  ‘You’re never in to lunch.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘You’re hopeless, Graham.’

  ‘Isn’t that what makes me fun?’

  From the kitchen, Ilse was announcing dinner, ‘Madame est servie.’

  A hundred and thirty-five minutes ago, she thought, I was in that station waiting room. I was talking to a complete stranger as though I had known him all my life, as though I knew him better than people I have known all my life. Though as far as that goes, who have I known all my life? My first 20 years were wiped off like the drawing on a slate. I haven’t been to Italy since I married. Of the friends that I had then do I see one now? Not one. An entirely new life began for me over here. I then spoke English like a foreigner. I now speak it idiomatically, with no more than an Italian accent which the English find attractive. If I went back to Italy, half of them wouldn’t know what I was saying; I’d miss all the new idioms. In Paris they talk about speaking ‘Franglais’. I couldn’t understand ‘Zazi dans le metro’. I’ve made myself English, but I’m not English. All the people that I meet here are strangers to me, at heart. I’m not grumbling. I’ve got used to it. But then I suddenly meet an utter stranger, and I feel that I’ve known him all my life, that there’s nothing I can’t say to him, nothing that I can’t share with him. Eating that bath bun I felt that I was myself. Here at this table, with my husband at the far end of the table, with this German au pair girl on my right, I’m acting a part in a play. I’m the Italian-born wife of an English country solicitor, the mother of two English boys, who are booked for one of the most exclusive schools in the country, on their way to becoming a part of the establishment. I fulfil my duties in the village; though I was brought up as a Roman Catholic, I go to the Anglican church. I supervise church bazaars. I provide teas for the village cricket match. I entertain the right people. I discuss the subjects that are discussed at English dinner tables. I get my political opinions from the Daily Telegraph. I play my role, as Mrs. Graham Jesson, but what has happened to Anna Antonetti the little girl who slid away from her mother’s side, who stood against that wall at the end of the garden, watching the bombs bursting over Naples, frightened at the same time that she was excited, what’s happened to that girl? Vanished. Lost. Suddenly to become herself again in a station waiting room.