“Why not?”
“You know,” I said, “when I was a young man—that is, an even younger man—the thing I wanted more than absolutely anything was a two-seater identical to this. I used to dream about owning one. Sometimes, I mean, really dream.”
“But you still can’t have wanted it enough.”
I shook my head. “Believe me, it wasn’t that. I may have been a dreamer but I had my practical side as well. And a Morgan simply wouldn’t have been the right size for a fam—.” I stopped short; saw her look at me; felt I was about to blush. “For a family outing, each weekend, with my grandparents.”
I couldn’t remember now what I had told her about my grandfather—who had died when I was three—or, indeed, if I had told her anything about him. Neither could she, apparently. She looked back at the car.
“You really are the sweetest person.”
I honestly didn’t wish to hoodwink her; to win her liking under false pretences.
“If I may let you into a little secret,” I said, modestly, “I was only wishing to impress you! I have this awful compulsion to present myself in the best possible light.”
“No. You were all confused. I could see it slipped out unawares. You even went a little red.” She paused, then indicated the Morgan. “Well, have you now feasted your eyes sufficiently?”
“Fraid not. I could never feast my eyes sufficiently. But life is hard. Force me, please, to tear myself away.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why don’t you just take this and then get in?” She was holding out a key ring.
It had never occurred to me to ask what kind of car she had. Apart from Morgans themselves and certain other snappy sports models—and old crocks too, of course—I wasn’t much interested in things like that. Nor was Matt.
She said: “Validation of proverb? Everything comes to him who waits. Synchronicity.”
“This car is yours?”
She nodded. “Though for the moment why not say it’s yours?”
To facilitate my inspection I’d deposited my luggage by a railing. Now I actually picked her up and did a pirouette upon the pavement. It reminded me of last Sunday morning: Hey, why so physical?…He’s acting pretty weird today. I saw her face above me, laughingly responsive, with her red hair swinging and her slim arms wrapped about my shoulders; and she felt weightless—or extremely light. It must have been a full half-minute before, reluctantly, I set her down.
“Gracious!” she said.
“Your own fault, you shouldn’t give me these surprises. You see, it was either that or flinging my ten-gallon hat in the air and swinging my lasso and firing my repeater. Yee-hee-ee-e-e! May I actually drive it?”
She now handed me the key ring. “It’s quite a miracle you didn’t lose it! What if it had flown from my fingers and gone skimming through a grating: your dream of a lifetime?”
“I should’ve sat down and cried.”
“Then it’s a good job I was holding on.”
“My saviour. Will you marry me?”
It was a joke, of course, and she was joking too when she replied, but it gave me an instant of faint queasiness amidst my giddy exultation.
“No. Don’t think so. I’d rather go on liking you.”
“Oh, very well. The right decision! Lets me off the hook.”
Three minutes later I had stowed the luggage—though with some difficulty, there being so little room—and handed her into the passenger seat. I settled myself at the steering wheel but felt in no hurry to start up. I ran my hands over the instrument panel. “If my friends could see me now…!”
“Sammy, get serious. Are they ever looking at any of the right moments? Say yes and you’re deluding yourself.”
“Oh, you know something?” I exclaimed. “We are kindred spirits!”
“I think it’s possible.”
“Yes! I knew it from the very minute you walked into the shop! Almost the very second!” I paused, savouring my intensity of happiness, holding the steering wheel like an eighteen-year-old who’s just obtained his licence and is about to drive his first car out of the showroom: a gift from either the gods or from every kid’s vision of the perfect daddy. “Didn’t you know it, too?”
“Well, let’s simply say, I liked the look of you.”
“Why? Why did you?”
“You looked strong.”
I sat there in a kind of virile silence.
“But at the same time vulnerable.” This was uttered in a tone of near-apology. “An endearingly lost and boyish air. No, not lost, perhaps. Questing. Innocent.”
“Oh, that’s all right. I don’t object to lost.” Now I did at last turn the key and start carefully to manoeuvre my way out. I had to let up a little on the virility bit. “Perhaps you ought to be doing this? How could I live with myself if I were to scrape or damage something?” But she expressed full confidence and soon I felt as much at home behind this steering wheel as I ever did behind my own. More at home maybe: it was my natural, dreamt-of, place: and presently all my instinctive caution had obediently done a bunk. “Thank God it isn’t raining! A Morgan wouldn’t be a Morgan without its roof drawn back. Do you think those clouds look threatening?”
“Yes.”
“They wouldn’t dare, though, would they?”
“In fact, the forecast didn’t sound too bad,” she said.
I glanced back at the sky. “Just listen to her, please!”
Then she did the directing. Her flat was in West Hampstead, in a converted house off Mill Lane, and though she had decided that we ought to go via Camden Town (“Land of the Dusty Old Gentlemen!”) she informed me there were several other ways of getting there.
“Like to Rome?” I asked. “And also heaven?” This struck me as quite apposite.
“Well, I wouldn’t say that all roads lead to West End Green. I don’t know about heaven.”
I braked for a pedestrian-crossing, although no one had as yet reached the kerb.
“That may be one thing we haven’t got in common,” she said.
“What?”
“A belief in the hereafter.”
It was plain she’d taken me more seriously than I’d intended. I was about to set her straight when she continued. “That was a further impression I received in the shop: I mean, about your being religious.”
“Why on earth?”
“I’m not sure. Or perhaps it was that evening. Some little thing you must have said…”
“But in fact—”
“And paradoxically that was another part of the attraction you held for me. I envy those who can believe in God: their optimism, their basic serenity. When not crossed with bigotry, of course. Or with hypocrisy.”
We were driving on again but I was hardly aware of it.
“And that’s the trouble, isn’t it, Sammy? It’s so often a case of ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’” She paused. “But you appear to be the real thing. I’d say you’re one of the best commercials on the market.”
I’d reverted to my virile silence; being at a complete loss about what otherwise to do.
Finally I murmured, “Yet haven’t you faced the possibility I could be sailing under false colours?”
Oh but what the heck? Lighten up, Samuel. We were then driving round Trafalgar Square and I gave a familiar wave to Nelson and his lions. “I feel like a king,” I announced. “And I bet everybody’s envying me. You—and the car—and the music…” I sang those final words.
“Do you want some music? You could certainly have some.”
“No. I shall continue to supply my own. ‘If they made me a king I’d still be a slave to you…’”
“King? Well, I don’t know about that. But you’re definitely a nutter. Albeit a nutter with a nice voice.”
“Just one thing missing,” I said.
“What?”
“I ought to be wearing my dinner jacket. Hey! Shall I hop out and get changed? Then they would call me a swell and no mista
ke.”
“And an exhibitionist, no doubt, if you did it on the pavement. But would a swell outweigh a king?”
“A royal swell. A swell royal. Whichever way you look at it…not to be sniffed at…and putting one in a position to do real good and make a difference to the world. And for what more could any man ask?” An idea occurred to me. “Hey! Let’s not wait until tomorrow! Let’s deck ourselves out—resplendently—tonight.”
“Hey!” she said, mockingly. “Okay, then. All right.”
“Don’t laugh at me. Can’t help being happy. Gotta sing, gotta dance!”
“I’m glad. I’m really not laughing at you.”
“All this. It’s funny to think that one day we’re going to die. And no one will remember we were ever here, celebrating the start of a bank holiday, having a good time. And when we’re dead Trafalgar Square will still be every bit as busy and people will still be having a good time. It won’t make one jot of difference. There was a sad old fellow on the train this afternoon.” I didn’t know what had reminded me of him.
“Has anyone ever mentioned you have a mind like a butterfly?”
“Oh, yes, Junie for…Junie for one.”
“And besides. What makes you think everybody’s always having a good time? Sentimental old songster! Who’s Junie?”
“A girl I used to know at school.”
“Girlfriend?”
“Yes.”
“All right. I won’t be inquisitive. Well, whoever she is, she was spot on. Do you still see her?”
“Sometimes.”
“She still lives in Deal?”
“Yes. Married now. With two kids.”
“I see.” She smiled. “And along with your butterfly mind, did she ever mention a marked strain of melancholy which pervades even your happiness?”
“No. She never did mention that.”
“Because I truly don’t think you have to worry too much, not for a day or two, I mean, about your lying there dead while the world goes on without you.”
“But even so. I think everyone should hold it at the back of their minds, that notion of mortality.”
“Not a touch morbid, maybe, such a point of view?”
“I can’t think why. All it does is heighten the pleasure of being alive. Makes you more aware, makes you more grateful.”
“Ah, but there you are, you see. I’ve nobody to feel grateful to.”
“That’s sad,” I said—and for a moment I honestly meant it. What! Was I already so immersed in that role she had assigned me? Surely Ruth Minton didn’t appreciate what a find I was, what a shining addition I made to the Dover and District Players. Even without my attending last Monday’s meeting, that part of the shallow charmer in The Deep Blue Sea should so obviously have been cast in my direction. Perhaps it had been. In absentia. I should know next week.
“Nobody, right now, but you,” she added.
The glow which, naturally, I’d already been experiencing now strengthened and spread. “Me? But why should you feel grateful to me?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe for bringing back a few hey!’s into my stale and staid existence; together with the prospect of some rather awful songs—”
“Madam, they are not awful songs! Beware! If you spurn the song you spurn the singer. ‘If I were a carpenter and you were a lady, would you marry me anyway, would you have my baby…?”
“No, not awful, then. Let’s merely say—a mite dated?”
“But things which are good don’t date, they reflect their time. Besides, it only shows that my tastes are wide-ranging; I like modern songs as well. ‘You feel that you’re on trial—and so you’re in denial—you want to cry and run a mile—but still you lie and still you smile—and smile and smile and smile…’ QED. Ancient and modern.”
She laughed. “Not altogether unsuitable, I suppose, for the proprietor of a junk—. For the proprietor of Treasure Island.”
“Oh dear. Isn’t that where we came in?”
“Yes. Why do some people never learn? But anyway…you know how I feel about junk shops. And their proprietors.”
At any rate I knew how she could give me pleasure. Cause me literally to expand with the pleasure that she gave.
We were now driving up Tottenham Court Road. Hundreds of people were milling on either pavement and I could practically have sworn most of them seemed to be having a good time. But it was wrong to suggest I wasn’t a realist. I knew only too well there were bound to be those who were in some way similar to Mavis’s poor mum—not to mention all the dispossessed; the junkies and the alcoholics; the mentally unstable. If I were indeed a royal swell, or a swell royal, the first thing I’d do would be to eradicate homelessness. I’d at least make certain of that.
And while my thoughts were heading off in this direction, Moira was wrong about something else. I wasn’t worried about the world going on without me; simply couldn’t quite believe it, that was all.
But wrong or not she was wonderful. And how could I even say wrong, when these were probably not views she would have stood by under oath? How could I even say wrong when she had provided a racing-green Morgan, a golden, auburn-haired presence and a setting for my own enhanced vitality, which I secretly knew was attracting a good deal of attention? I was well aware I had never welcomed red lights with such a winning air of ruefulness and acceptance. I felt like a film star: a self-effacing, stunningly approachable film star.
“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” I said—to me this wasn’t a non sequitur. “I’m sure they filmed it in the forties. Naturally, my own will be a very long and happy life but at present, I suppose, they’d still refer to it as being short. It started around noon last Saturday. I’m barely a week old. But I think that tomorrow, at twelve, champagne corks should pop, Big Ben strike, cannon go off in Green Park. Something small to notify the masses. To commemorate our meeting; record my radiant—my radical—renaissance.”
“I feel that you expect too much,” she warned. “I’d be thrilled if just Big Ben remembered.”
I affected a sneer. (Hoped my loving public didn’t misinterpret.)
“Like hearing your name on the radio, you mean?”
“Yes. Exactly. Ariadne Scrumpenhouser.”
Had we not been stationary at that moment, I might well have swerved or stalled, if nothing yet more shameful. Pandora and Ariadne within the same half-hour! The very same half-hour!
Could it be coincidence? Something so incredible? There were even those who claimed there wasn’t any such thing as coincidence. I couldn’t think how they managed it but I had certainly heard they tried.
Yet I decided not to comment for the time being. I didn’t want to risk its extraordinariness, risk making it sound nearly commonplace. It was good enough for The X Files but even David Duchovny (to whom recently I’d warmed) would simply have to show a little patience.
I observed instead, hearing my own words as if from a distance, “Yes, you’re right. Of course you are. A tribute from Big Ben would make a fine endorsement. It would also sound impressive in my diary, might be as much worth recording as… well, as driving an open-topped Morgan with a princess by my side. I shall now entitle this journal The Long and Happy Life of Samson Groves. Hemingway will eat his heart out. Or turn in his grave. Whichever comes to him the more naturally. Any views on such a subject, Miss Scrumpenhouser…?”
“The lights have turned to green and we’re being hooted at. If you’re not very careful, Mr Groves, they’ll have changed again and you will not be popular.” Her hand was on my arm and perhaps already she had given me a nudge.
But I was still taken up with the results of my amazement.
“Or,” I continued humbly, “would you do me the honour—the very great honour—of allowing me to call you Ariadne?”
16
Her apartment was splendid…what else would you expect? Yet I could see why at times she’d want to get away from it. I was sure there were advantages to having the upper storey but it was
the lower floor which—although in all likelihood equally cramped—had the use of a garden; or, rather, of a strip of concreted back yard, for the house was a mid-terraced one. However, I suppressed comparisons with our own former rectory in Deal and admired it, Moira’s flat, with all the sincerity which I could muster.
“If you’re not already at the top of your profession you damned well ought to be.”
“Roughly halfway up, I’d say, but getting there.” She looked about her. “It’s deceptive, isn’t it? From the outside you’d never believe there could be all this room.”
“No. No, you wouldn’t.” My sincerity took a nose dive.
She laughed. “You don’t agree, though, do you?”
I faltered. “Am I that hopeless a liar?”
“But thank you for trying. And I can see your point. You in your ten-gallon hat! In Kent you’ve evidently more space to swing that lasso.”
“Yes. Don’t fence me in. Et cetera. You know, sometimes I feel I wouldn’t have minded being a cowboy. To sit tall in the saddle and gallop off into the sunset. The stranger who passes through and leaves things far better than he found them.”
“What an incurable romantic!”
“Yup, ma’am. Sure is a lonely trail.”
Though realistically, I thought, it was possibly a fairly crowded trail: the Shane character irresistibly drawn to pastures new but always hoping he’d be lovingly remembered as someone who had made a difference. The wayfarer. The good Samaritan. Almost the Christ figure. The fellow who had left his mark.
“Trial, maybe, as much as trail,” smiled Moira. “However… Let’s have a look at your granny’s cake.” She was about to wield her kitchen scissors but I stopped her just in time. It didn’t take a moment to unknot the string.
The cake was a beauty. Standing on a silver board and encircled by a wide and frilly band it was decorated with literally scores of Smarties which had bled slightly and looked like the picture on a packet of mixed seeds—except that white icing maybe formed an unexpected base for cottage garden flowers; it produced an impression of snow arriving in the midst of summer.
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