Brief Encounter

by Alec Waugh

  ‘That’s more or less how it worked out.’

  ‘Did you have any matrimonial ideas?’

  He shook his head. ‘She made that very clear from the very start. She told me about her marriage and her husband. He was not much older than she was. They had been in love all right when they married. They were suitable for one another. They were resolved to make their marriage work.’

  ‘But it didn’t work out the way they planned.’

  ‘In a way it did. The marriage has survived, but they didn’t stay in love with one another.’

  ‘What went wrong?’

  ‘You remember that old story of the young married couple who on their honeymoon start putting a small lump of sugar in a jar whenever they made love? At the end of the year the jar was full and they started on a second jar. In the whole of their marriage they never filled that second jar.’

  ‘I’m glad it wasn’t that way with us.’

  ‘Perhaps we were very wise in not having had children right away.’

  ‘Is that what she did?’

  ‘Yes, and somehow after the child was born, they never got around to love making again in the same way.’

  ‘Did they only have that one child?’

  ‘No, they had a second within a year but after that, well that was the end.’

  ‘I don’t quite understand how that could happen.’

  ‘I think I can. As she explained it to me. She saw it from her husband’s point of view. Almost as soon as she was pregnant, she stopped making love, on her doctor’s advice. He couldn’t have been more sympathetic. He was chivalrous and kind and cherished her. “I’ll always be grateful to him,” she said, “for the way he was; but in the course of those months I became a different person for him. I became an invalid. I wasn’t the person he had banged around; stood on her head.” You know the kind of thing I mean.’

  ‘Yes. I know the kind of thing you mean.’

  ‘She never became that again for him.’

  ‘And what did she become for him?’

  ‘A friend, a partner, the mother of his children. She shared his career; they liked each other’s friends. They never quarrelled; they never disagreed. A partnership: that’s what it was.’

  ‘And she explained all that to you right away.’

  ‘Almost right away. After the second night together. Did you ever read Somerset Maugham’s novel The Razor’s Edge?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There’s a scene there where one of the heroines asks a prostitute’s advice. The prostitute says, “Balzac asserts in his Phyzionomie de Marriage that everything depends on the first night. Balzac was wrong. It’s the second night that matters.’”

  ‘So your redhead waited till the second night.’

  ‘Till the end of the second night, or rather two-thirds of the way through the second night. We were smoking a cigarette. We don’t often smoke, you and I, but you remember don’t you that a cigarette after lovemaking can be very good.’

  ‘Yes, I remember.’

  ‘She was very direct about it. “I don’t want you to get false ideas,” she said. “If I really let myself go, and I want to let myself go; if I make it really good for you and that’s what I want to do, make it as good for you as possible, you might get false ideas about me. And that would spoil everything for both of us.” So then she told me how it was between her and her husband. She didn’t take long telling me. She told me simply and directly. I got her point. “That’s fine by me,” I said. “Then we can start right in,” she said and stubbed out her cigarette.’

  Graham had never talked to her like this before. But now in the memory of that afternoon, she wanted to know everything about him. She wanted to be put on her guard against what might lie ahead for her.

  ‘And that’s how it went on all through the tour?’

  ‘All through the tour.’

  ‘And then at the end you said goodbye and went your separate ways.’

  ‘That’s what we didn’t do.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘On the last night, I said it would be ridiculous to say goodbye. Why couldn’t we go on meeting.

  ‘She looked at me very thoughtfully. “That might be very difficult,” she said. “If we say goodbye now we’ll both have very happy memories of one another. If we go on, we may regret it. We may look back to tonight and think why didn’t we have the good sense to leave it there.”

  ‘I said to her, “I can’t bear the thought of losing you.” She smiled. “I’m glad you said that. I hoped you would. I’d have missed it if you hadn’t: but I repeat. It isn’t going to be easy. Have you ever had a love affair with a married woman?”

  ‘ “Not a serious one.”

  as far as my husband is concerned, I might have been a celibate. You can’t see me, can you, as a celibate.”

  ‘I told her that I couldn’t.

  ‘ “Well, that means I know what the problem is. H. G. Wells said in one of his novels that what was needed in a love affair are leisure and convenient premises. How are you fixed that way?”

  ‘I told her what my position was, that I lived in my parents’ home at Shenley, that I worked in an office in Southampton.

  ‘ “That doesn’t sound very promising,” she said.

  ‘She asked if I could get a flat in Southampton. Her house was in a village about twenty miles away from Southampton; in the opposite direction from Shenley. “It would be simple,” she said, “if I lived in London.”

  ‘ “Well, I’m a married woman. And for three years She had all the excuses in the world for going there. But she could motor into Southampton if I had a flat there. Could I get myself one? It wasn’t easy, but I managed it. I persuaded my father that I was too young to bury myself in the country: that I needed to see more of the world, that I needed to have friends who were doing things in different walks of life. I needed to know more about life itself. I put it from the professional point of view. We needed new clients. We were a family business, but a lot of the older clients were dying off. Younger people needed to see me, to know about me; to feel that I was the kind of young man they needed to have handle their affairs, that I was someone who was on the ball. I made out a good case for myself; and it was a good case at that. I did need to move among people who were doing things. And though our business was doing well, we should be needing new clients, a new group of clients soon. And it did in point of fact work out that way.

  ‘I didn’t find it difficult to get into one or two different social groups. Cricket was a great help. I played for the Hampshire Hogs. There were the navy people. There was a good town club. You’ll remember that we led a varied and lively social life during those first five years we were together.’

  She asked him about his flat. ‘It was a furnished flat,’ he told her. ‘A one-room flat in one of those new blocks, that have a restaurant, maid service and meals served in rooms. It was on the fifth floor; it had a view over the water. I was very comfortable.’

  ‘And how did the affair work out?’ Anna asked. This was what she was really curious to know. She could imagine quite easily how an affair began, but how did it continue, how did it continue, how did it survive the strain of a long entanglement. What were its particular problems; its particular difficulties; what were its special rewards.

  ‘It went well enough,’ he said, ‘to start with; it was new, it was an adventure. We’d kept in close touch. We talked to each other on the telephone. Whenever she was free, she would come in.’

  ‘And how often was that?’ Anna asked.

  ‘To begin with twice a week, sometimes oftener.’

  ‘At what time of day?’

  ‘At lunchtime when she could.’

  ‘That meant that you had to take long lunches.’

  ‘It did. And that meant rather tricky explanations with my father. I told him how much business was done across a lunch table. That was the modern technique I said. He was very reasonable about it. He didn’t ask too many questions. Lunc
hes were fine, though, on the whole. It was the afternoons that were difficult. And afternoons were a good time too for her. She’d come in to do shopping. She’d have lunch with a woman and then be free at around three o’clock. She could easily explain away that kind of afternoon when she got home. It was useful for her to have the right kind of alibi; so that she could have gossip for her husband when he got back at night. She had no gossip from me, and she had to be careful not to mention anything she had heard from me. If I’d met some first-class cricketer, for example, he was a cricketer and she followed the game, and I would tell her what the man had said about so and so’s captaincy, she would know that her husband would be interested but she couldn’t tell him. He’d ask her how she knew.’

  ‘I can see that,’ said Anna. How easily she had slipped into that mistake about four-handed chess.

  ‘So that while afternoons were the best for her,’ Graham said, ‘they were the worst for me.’

  ‘What about the evenings,’ Anna asked. ‘Couldn’t she manage dinners sometimes?’

  ‘Now and again she could. He was a keen Mason and that kept him out quite often: those were our best times really. He’d stay the night in London. So we hadn’t to be looking at the clock.’

  She could put herself in his position. The problem of the man having an affair with a married woman had never been a problem up till now. She was anxious now to examine all its implications.

  ‘You always had to have meals in your flat, I suppose. You couldn’t go out to restaurants,’ she said.

  He shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t have done for us to be seen out in public. Besides there was the question of time. We had only those couple of hours to be together.’

  Always to have to watch the clock. The feeling that you couldn’t waste a second: feeling that if you didn’t make love right away, you wouldn’t have the time to make love twice. Every meeting must be so like every other one: always the same setting.

  ‘Did you plan out your week in advance?’ she asked.

  ‘We tried to but it wasn’t always possible. She’d suddenly have an excuse for coming into Southampton and she’d call me.’

  ‘At quite short notice sometimes?’

  ‘Once at two hours’ notice.’

  ‘Wasn’t that very awkward sometimes?’

  ‘I’ll say it was. Once she rang up in the morning to say that she would be free that evening after six o’clock. Normally that would have been the best time in the world, but as it happened I was playing in an evening cricket match.’

  ‘Did you put it off?’

  ‘I did, but I hated doing it. You know how I am about that kind of thing.’

  ‘Indeed I do.’

  ‘Did you tell her that?’

  ‘In a kind of way. I told her I didn’t mind missing the game myself but I didn’t like inconveniencing other people.’

  ‘What did she say to that?’

  ‘What I knew she would say. That I had to choose between them and her.’

  ‘Did she sometimes interfere with your work?’

  ‘Now and again.’

  And he put up with it, Anna thought. How different he was from her doctor; who would never let a love affair interfere with his work. The hippocratic oath came first. But perhaps there was a difference between the demands of that oath and the demands of making money.

  ‘Did you argue about things like that?’ she asked.

  ‘Not really. We got on very well. We laughed at the same things. I told her once that I was like one of those kept women in Victorian days whose protector maintained them in a villa in Acacia Road, and in days when there were no telephones, they had to sit there waiting until a busy man managed to escape from his club, his home, his office.’

  ‘What did she say to that?’

  ‘She laughed. We always found things to laugh over.’

  ‘How long did it last?’

  ‘About eighteen months.’

  ‘Why did it end?’

  ‘Because you turned up.’

  ‘What!’ She was utterly astonished. She had known, she had guessed that he had had love affairs in the past. She had not felt inquisitive about them; they were one thing, she was another. But she had presumed that he was heartwhole when he had met her. She had never guessed that he was continuing a serious love affair right up to the moment he had met her.

  ‘Do you know what you could do now?’ she said.

  ‘What could I do now?’

  ‘You could knock me over with a feather.’

  He laughed. ‘You’re not upset?’

  ‘Of course not. Only …’ she paused. ‘I wonder what I should have thought if somebody had said, “You’re up against rather serious competition, that young man, the brother of your boss, who has just asked you out to dinner, has been conducting for the last year and a half an apparently satisfactory affair with a married woman.” What, by the way, did you think the first time that you took me out to dinner, what was at the back of your mind?’

  ‘Does a man ever know what’s at the back of his mind the first time that he takes a girl out to dinner?’

  ‘Did you wonder if I was fair game?’

  ‘Good heavens, no.’

  ‘Why not. You must very often when you took a young woman out, have wondered if she was fair game.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Why not with me?’

  ‘With you, well meeting you at my sister’s house, your being a foreigner over here, it gave me a sense of responsibility.’

  ‘Do you mean a sense of chivalry?’

  ‘Perhaps I do.’

  ‘I wonder if you realize quite how nice you are.’

  They were practically the same words that her doctor had used to her. Her heart warmed towards him. She felt very close.

  ‘At the end of that first dinner, what were you thinking then?’

  ‘That I would very much like to make love to you.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘That I couldn’t do that unless I married you.’

  ‘And what did you think after that?’

  ‘That I had better try and persuade you to think in the same way about me.’

  ‘You’d been seeing me for about two months before you gave me any hint of this. Were you seeing your redhead all this time?’

  ‘For the first five weeks.’

  ‘What happened then.’

  ‘She went on a cruise.’

  ‘Alone? Weren’t you jealous of her going on a cruise alone?’

  ‘I don’t think so, no.’

  ‘Did you mention that other cruise?’

  ‘No, but we were both thinking of it when we said goodbye. It was the first cruise she had taken since that Yugoslavian cruise. I wondered if there had been anyone in her life when she went on it.’

  ‘There probably was, wasn’t there.’

  ‘I should think so. I wondered if she was tired of that other one. If she had gone on that cruise in order to get rid of him. I wondered if she wasn’t going on this cruise to get rid of me. Eighteen months was a long time after all; she was happy in her home, with her husband, with her children. She needed an extra spice to life. She got that out of her affairs.’

  ‘Did you think that because you yourself were getting a little tired of the situation?’

  ‘Tired, that’s a big word. I enjoyed our times together: they were the high spots in the week. But it was all headed nowhere. It couldn’t lead to anything, and then, well, suddenly there was you.’

  ‘I’m glad of that. I’m glad that there was me.’

  ‘And such a you. There couldn’t be anybody else but you.’

  ‘And me, that meant marriage.’

  ‘But of course.’

  She smiled. Of course. For him it might be of course, but not necessarily for her. Suppose that he had looked on her as fair game, would she have needed all that much persuasion?

  It was a long time ago. She was 20 and she was a virgin: tired of being one: but she had not wanted t
o break out in Naples, where everyone would have known, and with an Italian who would probably have despised her, putting her into a lower bracket. It would have been different abroad and with an Englishman. He would not have despised her. He would have been grateful for his luck. He would have been proud of her. And of himself. Any Englishman could get an English girl in these permissive days, but an Italian girl, that was a feather in one’s cap. She had come to England with the very definite resolve to get this problem of hers settled, to get it all worked out of her system: when she had seen her boss’ brother, she had thought ‘I guess this is the answer’. She would not have needed much persuading to go up for a weekend in London, for a series of weekends in London, but her boss’ brother had been a chivalrous English gentleman who would not take advantage of his country’s guest. And it was a great piece of luck for her that he had been just that. She had now a position in the neighbourhood, a home, two fine children, a husband she was proud of, a husband whom in the truest sense of the word, she loved. Yes, yes, it all had been a great piece of luck for her, that Graham had been that kind of man.

  And here was Graham looking at her now with that fond, devoted, worldly wise look of his, so sure of himself, and of his world, and how the men who moved in it behaved and should behave.

  ‘So you had no qualms,’ she said, ‘about breaking it off with her.’

  ‘No, I can’t say I did.’

  ‘How did you break it off?’

  ‘There was a note waiting for her when she got back saying, “I am going to be married. Please wish me luck.’”

  ‘How did she answer it?’

  ‘She didn’t answer it.’

  ‘And you’ve never seen her since?’

  ‘Yes, once.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Not so very long as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Where was it—in Southampton?’

  ‘No, oddly enough in London. When I went up for that old Fernhurstian dinner and stayed the night. We held it at the Hyde Park Hotel. She was coming out just as I was going in. We passed in the hall.’

  ‘Was she alone?’

  ‘No, she was with a man.’

  ‘Did you speak to her?’