Brief Encounter

by Alec Waugh

  ‘It was till you came in,’ had been his answer.

  Squalid, furtive, those were the adjectives that were applied to extra-connubial relations. And that was what most women were afraid of, when they embarked on this kind of escapade. She hadn’t though. She had confidence in him, complete and utter confidence.

  And on the table beside the chesterfield was a half bottle of champagne cooling in a bucket. Beside it was a plateful of cheese biscuits. Half a bottle of champagne. It would take half an hour to drink. Just the length of time for them to get on easily intimate terms with one another. From somewhere there came muted music: it was perfect: everything about it. All was perfect, just as everything was about him.

  He sat beside her on the chesterfield. He eased the cork out of the bottle. It came out with a pop, but there was no effervescence of foam. He poured the wine into the glasses. They were tall, tapered glasses with a closed-in mouth so that the bubbles were retained within the glass. He raised his glass to hers, tinkling it against hers; he looked into her eyes as he raised the glass to his lips. The wine was cold, but it was not frozen.

  ‘That martini and now this champagne,’ she said.

  Each took a long deep sip.

  He took her hand into his: his fingers fondled hers.

  ‘We had no time to talk,’ he said, ‘this morning. We saw two alternatives: that I should stay on here and keep on seeing you or that I should go out to Australia and stop seeing you. But there’s a third possibility.’

  ‘There is?’

  ‘That you should come out with me to Australia.’

  She smiled. She was glad he had said that. She was grateful to him for saying that. It increased her self confidence that he had said it—that he would be ready to run that risk for her.

  ‘I’m not sure that that third possibility is not the best, for both of us.’

  In wooing, winning terms he argued his case with her. She scarcely listened. She was conscious of the fervour in his words. She was conscious of his fondling fingers. She was conscious of the sting of the cool bubbles on her tongue and palate. Soon, very soon now, they would reach the final sip. And then he would lift her to her feet: his arms would be about her, he would be leading her through the doorway beside the fireplace, and soon in a few, few moments she would have been absorbed by, overwhelmed by a sensation deeper than any she had ever known, but of whose nature a week ago, in that hedge, she had had a premonition. And after that what mattered, nothing would matter.

  He would argue out with himself the pros and cons of those two alternatives; to stay on here and continue the pattern that they would set this evening, or he would go to Australia, and they would not meet again. But either way for her the result would be the same. She would have had the experience that 30 years from now would reassure her that her life had not been half lived.

  She lifted her glass to take her final sip. It was at her lips, when from the hall came the sharp ring of a door bell. She looked at him, questioningly. There was a pause. Then came the tap of three firm knocks.

  ‘It’s Stephen,’ he said. ‘I latched the door. Three knocks is his signal; to let me know that it’s him and he wants to be let in.’

  ‘I can’t be found here.’

  ‘Of course you can’t. There’s a way out through the kitchen. I’ll get your coat. The kitchen is beyond the bedroom.’

  He opened the bedroom door. He handed her her coat.

  ‘That’s the kitchen door,’ he said.

  With the coat over her arm, she looked about her. It was a masculine room, but it was not austere. It had a double bed, a compactum wardrobe; a large dressing table with hairbrushes, a clothes brush, and a leather tray for studs and links and collar stiffeners. There were bright chintz window curtains, and a thick pile carpet. A cosy room: the kind of room that a woman could remember tenderly in her old age. She blinked. ‘I must be on my way,’ she thought.

  It was still raining, and the steps of the fire escape were slippery.

  ‘I’ll be lucky to find a taxi in a place like this,’ she thought. She was not lucky. She walked fast: every now and then she broke into a trot. But it was a quarter to seven before she reached the station. She looked at the list of trains. There was not another train to Shenley till the 19.50. An hour to wait. Oh well. She went up the stairs to the refreshment room. There was no one there.

  Mrs. Harris was surprised to see her.

  ‘This is late for you,’ she said. ‘I was just ready to close down.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. Something went wrong. I got kept and I couldn’t find a taxi. I’ve got rather wet. I wonder if I could have a brandy.’

  ‘Indeed. Yes, Madam, a double or a single measure?’

  ‘A single will be enough, to start with.’

  ‘Certainly, please be seated. I will bring it to your table.’

  Mrs. Harris looked untrustfully at the glass as she held it up. ‘It looks very small. It is very small. On a night like this when you’re wet, don’t you think a double measure would be more appropriate.’

  ‘Perhaps it would.’

  ‘I’m sure it would.’

  She set the glass down in front of Anna. ‘You take a good sip of that. Do you a power of good, it will.’

  It was the third special drink that she had had that day. First the dry martini, then the champagne and now the brandy. The first sip sent a shudder along her nerves in the way that the martini had. ‘I’m causing you a lot of trouble, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘They’ll be expecting you at home.’

  ‘Yes, Madam, but my husband will not be discomoded for that.’

  ‘Discomoded,’ what a curious vocabulary Mrs. Harris did employ.

  ‘My being late will merely mean that he will have a longer lesson.’

  ‘What kind of lesson?’

  ‘My husband is studying for the certificate of education. My eldest son is teaching him: lessons cannot commence until he himself returns from school. My husband is thirsty for knowledge and will not mind my absence.’

  Certificate of education. That explained her extensive and inaccurate vocabulary.

  The telephone began to ring.

  ‘Yes,’ Mrs. Harris said. ‘This is the refreshment room at Winchester Station. Mrs. Jesson, yes, I know who you mean. Yes, she is here. I will summon her to the telephone. Mrs. Jesson,’ she called to Anna, ‘a gentleman wants to speak to you.’

  Anna crossed to the bar.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’

  The voice at the other end was warm and comforting. ‘Thank God, you are there,’ it said.

  ‘Where else could I be?’

  ‘You might have caught the 18.40.’

  ‘I missed it by three minutes.’

  ‘When is the next one?’

  ‘Not for fifty minutes.’

  ‘Then I’ll be round right away. I’ve got my car.’

  Anna turned to Mrs. Harris. ‘That’s Doctor Harvey.’

  ‘The one that took the grit out of your eye?’

  ‘Exactly. He’s on his way round here. If you don’t mind keeping the room open a little longer.’

  ‘It will be a privilege, Madam.’

  Her doctor was around within three minutes. ‘I can’t apologize enough,’ he said. ‘I am abject, contrite, red-faced.’

  But he did not look any of those things. He just looked angry with himself. She was glad that he was taking it that way. She did not want to see him abject. ‘It’s not your fault,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know whose else it is. But it’s something that would only have happened once in a hundred times. Stephen had caught a cold: a raging cold. He suddenly felt that he couldn’t go back to Oxford. For the condition that he was in, he prescribed himself large quantities of hot whisky and lemon, a hot bath, a handful of aspirins and an early bed. He felt so ill that he quite forgot that there was a possibility of my being there. He couldn’t have been more ashamed of himself, when he discovered.’

  ‘Ashamed?’
r />   ‘Yes, when he saw that ice bucket.’

  She laughed. She had reached a point when there was nothing that she could do but laugh. It was the kind of thing that happened in a bedroom farce.

  ‘I’m glad that we can laugh about it,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ he said, ‘but even so …’ He hesitated.

  ‘We’ve had nothing to eat. You’ll be late for dinner. Mrs. Harris, have you anything beside bath buns to eat?’

  ‘I could provide sultana cake.’

  ‘Sultana cake would be delightful, and I believe what would go best with it is beer, draught beer. Two small tankards.’ The beer was cool without being cold. He took a long, slow swallow.

  ‘It’s the most maddening thing that could have happened, maddening and ridiculous, but at the same time I’m not sure that it wasn’t providential.’

  ‘Providential?’

  ‘It showed us, before it was too late, that this kind of thing was impossible for you.’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘For the kind of woman that you are. I’ve made no pretence of being the kind of man I’m not. As the poet said, “I’ve taken my fun where I’ve found it.” And it has been fun, I won’t pretend that it hasn’t been. And when I met you first I thought of you in terms of that kind of fun. Why not, I thought. We have this affinity for one another. For we have that, haven’t we?’

  ‘Oh yes, we have that, certainly.’

  ‘We are the right ages for one another. We both have settled lives that we’re contented with; anyhow that we thought we were, five weeks ago we were both looking into the future and thinking that we would be quite happy to have it go on in just that way, until the curtain. I am right, aren’t I, in thinking that you felt about your life in much the same way that I was thinking about mine.’

  ‘Yes, you’re quite right.’

  ‘I thought of you in terms of what had been before and then I realized that you were different.’

  ‘In what way different?’

  ‘That’s hard to say. But I felt you were something very special, that you woke in me feelings that were very special; I felt that you were precious, that you must be cherished and respected that you mustn’t be exposed through me to the risks and indignities and dangers to which I had exposed other women; that incident this afternoon was an example of the kind of humiliations which could be inflicted on a married woman in an affair. Do you understand that?’

  She nodded. Yes, she understood. But did he understand the full implications of what he was saying. He claimed to be seeing it from her point of view; that she must not risk this, must not be exposed to that. But was he really thinking of her as much as of himself. He had discovered that she was special for him, that what he could come to feel for her was basically different from what he had felt for those other women, so that for his own sake he could not involve himself in the kind of love affair that Graham had described to her. He was as a doctor, a dedicated man. He had said to her that he was too occupied with his career to fall wholeheartedly in love. How his expression changed when he talked about his work. She had noticed that, at their first meeting. ‘You look like a boy when you talk about your work,’ she had said. ‘You look fifteen years younger.’

  It hadn’t been that way with Graham. He had found that his love affair with that redhead of his had begun to prove a strain, she had become a nuisance and she had let him be a nuisance. But Graham was not a careerist. He had taken love in his stride, and then when he had fallen in love with her, a marriageable young woman, he had concentrated on his marriage, and by putting all his eggs into that one basket had made a success of it. That was how most men were.

  But her doctor was not like that. She respected him for being different. For him this afternoon’s fiasco had been providential, because it had shown him the consequences of an extra-curricular romance.

  But for her it had not been like that. In her instincts primarily and then as a result of Graham’s confession, she had known what the consequences would be for her, and knowing them had been ready to accept them. She was going into it open eyed; she was prepared to lie and cheat and to run every risk, because she had known that for her this experience was essential. Her doctor had revealed her to herself. By making her herself, by making her her own, he had made her his. There was not any risk that she would not run.

  And that was something that he did not realize, so that here at her side now, he was pleading with her to come away with him to Australia.

  ‘We could make a fine life for ourselves out there. It’s a great country; one of the first countries of the future, Australia and Canada, with their basic Britishness and their independence. The Australians are so welcoming, so friendly.’

  And it was true, of course, that they could make a life for themselves out there, but how much more of a life he could make for himself if he went without rather than with her. We lived in a permissive world and a doctor would get away with arriving in a new country with a woman to whom he was not married; questions would be asked, explanations would have to be supplied: the divorce might take a long while going through. It was always better for a doctor to arrive without strings attached. People would suspect that he had only come out because he had got himself into a mess at home, the modern equivalent of the nineteenth-century convicts.

  How much better for a doctor to arrive alone, making a place for himself in a country that needed his particular capacities: to arrive with a clean sheet. Then in eighteen months or so, news of his divorce would come. By then he would have friends and intimates and associates. There would be certainly some youngish Australian girl to make the perfect wife for him, the perfect associate. Marry into the country of your adoption, marry a local girl: there could be no better visa on a passport. He would start a new life, with a new family. What a chance for him, what an opening.

  If he were to stay in England, an extra curricular romance could give him something, she would see to it that it did give him something, for a time, but it was little compared with what that Australian girl could give him. Herself she loved him enough not to let such a chance go by him.

  ‘We could have such a wonderful time,’ he pleaded. ‘We’re in the prime of life. We could have the best of everything ahead.’

  His eyes were bright, and his voice glowed. The long tension of the day, the intimacy of their lunch together, the excitement that he must have felt during the afternoon as half past five drew nearer, then that first moment in the hallway, the peace and rapture of being in each other’s arms, the mounting exhilaration as they had sat over their champagne, the level of the wine sinking in the bottle, the lifting of the glass for the final sip, and then the shock of that interruption … everything had combined to create a feverish mood in him.

  ‘You must come with me,’ he went on. ‘You must. You must.’

  She did not interrupt him. She let him talk on and on, once again the mandatory voice of the announcer boomed through the station, ‘The train now approaching Platform 1 is the 19.53 for Shenley, Eastleigh and Southampton.’

  They rose, side by side. She was grateful for Mrs. Harris’ presence behind the counter. She was in no mood for a goodbye kiss.

  ‘Next Wednesday, I’ll be there,’ she said.

  XIV

  She woke on the Wednesday morning to the sight of a garden white with mist.

  ‘It’s going to be a scorcher,’ Graham said. She was glad of that. She did not want a repetition of that lunch at the George and Dragon. She wanted to keep that in her memory, solitary, intact and sacred. This morning’s lunch would in all human probability be the last they ever shared. She wanted it to be tranquil, and un-dramatic, a twilit curtain fall. She had ordered some smoked salmon the night before. There was a frigidaire in the office. She would put a half bottle of Chablis there to cool.

  By the time her train reached Winchester the mist had lifted.

  ‘I hope that he won’t make things difficult,’ she thought. The first glance told her that that w
as the last thing he was likely to do today. He was in an ebullient mood. He was hatless, wearing a single breasted dark grey flannel suit and another of his striped club ties. What a number of club ties Englishmen did manage to acquire.

  ‘What’s that you’ve got on today?’ she asked.

  ‘A Stoic tie.’

  ‘Is that very special?’

  ‘We Stoics like to think it is.’

  They laughed together: as always they found it easy to laugh at everything: the most ordinary things they said, somehow seemed funny to each other. ‘And what’s in that exciting basket?’ he was asking.

  ‘Smoked salmon and a camembert.’

  ‘And in the bottle?’

  ‘Chablis.’

  ‘It’s going to be a lunch that we’ll remember.’

  ‘I was hoping so when I got it ready.’

  ‘It will be our last you know.’

  ‘It will?’

  ‘I shan’t be coming to that hospital again.’

  ‘You won’t?’

  ‘I’ve accepted that offer in Australia.’

  ‘That’s very wise of you.’

  ‘I’ll be taking off right away.’

  ‘How right away?’

  ‘Next Tuesday.’

  ‘That certainly is right away.’

  ‘I don’t like dithering over delays. Melanie can clear up everything. Stephen is going to take my practice over.’

  ‘What does she think about it?’

  ‘She accepted it, the way she accepts everything. “I’ll probably share a flat with Isabel,” she said.’

  ‘Who’s Isabel?’

  ‘One of the partners in her father’s business.’

  ‘She didn’t seem surprised.’

  ‘Women rarely are. That’s one of the things I’ve noticed as a doctor; they’re ready for any contingency. They have their exits planned. They’re not taken off their guard.’