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by Henry Green

  “Here’s luck,” Charley said, to speak for the first time.

  “All the best,” Mr Middlewitch replied. He offered a cigarette with his good hand, then went into an elaborate drill to light a match. “I can’t bother with lighters,” this man explained. He put the box up under an armpit, to dab with a match at the millimetre of sand paper that was left exposed. But the barmaid dropped everything she was doing to give him a light. “Thanks Rose,” he said.

  It gave Charley a jolt. He had not been paying attention. He looked, but the girl was fair haired.

  “Well,” Mr Middlewitch said, as he turned this way and that. “And how’s the world been treating you? You know I wish they wouldn’t do what she did. Light matches for one, I mean. But it can be a sight awkwarder at more intimate moments, eh? Lord yes. Mine squeaked the other day, just when I was putting it round her fattest bit. And a bloody sight more awkward for you I shouldn’t wonder. Never fear though, they like it.”

  Mr Summers quacked a laugh.

  “Women are extraordinary,” Middlewitch went on, in a loud voice. “There’s my sister in law, now. So quiet she makes you ask yourself if by any chance she knows what’s what, but then, as they say, still waters run profound. But to get on with what I was saying, I remember the time they were married, and the usual jokes got flying. It’s seven years back now. She sat there as though she had no idea in a million what it was all about. And afterwards the same, mind you. You know how things have a way of cropping up. In the ordinary run, I mean. Well whenever there’s anything the least bit rude, not dirty, mind, but a trifle on the risky side, she sits there like she was miles away. Yet the moment I got back repatriated, and they had a little do in my honour, she was on at me the whole evening. I thought at first she had changed, for with all respect to Ted (that’s my old lady’s other boy), she never seemed to be what I’d call a passionate woman. Now I’ve seen more of her, I’m dead certain she’s just the same as ever. No, it’s women’s curiosity, Summers, there you are. Wanted to know what we did about girls all that time behind the wire. Kept on coming back to it, too. Did I feel embarrassed, and I’m not a man who colours easily! Then Ted, when he saw I was getting a bit hot under the collar, he chipped in as well. Gave me an insight into their married life for the first time, I can tell you. If you follow me, there was something in how they backed each other up, so as to make me speak out.”

  Charley cleared his throat. He had a faint glow from the whisky, was beginning to enjoy himself. He was thinking that, in another quarter of an hour, he would be liberated, free to talk. Because he had something, a sort of block in his stomach, which, in the ordinary way, seemed to stand between him and free speech. He looked at his empty glass. “Have another,” he said.

  “Thanks, I will. Extraordinary meeting you like this,” Mr Middlewitch replied. “No, it’s curiosity,” he went on, “they’re the same as cats, when you scratch with your finger under the newspaper, which have to come and see what you’re about. They’re like this. They know you’ve lived the most unnatural damned life through no fault of your own for years, so want to get under your skin. Because it wasn’t only Yvonne. Practically every girl I know had a go at me. Turned it to very good advantage, too, I did, on more than one occasion, I can tell you.”

  Charley grunted.

  “Perhaps that’s what they intended,” Mr Middlewitch said. “You never can be certain. There’s that about the little ladies, you never know, not even afterwards.”

  “It’s not only the women,” Charley rather surprised himself by bringing out, as he paid for his round of drinks.

  “Oh that other kind, men like that,” Mr Middlewitch announced, “I’ve no time for ’em. Sticking their noses into other people’s private affairs like one of those horrible little dogs, poms they’re called, aren’t they, that go snuffling and yapping at every bit of dirt on the side. But you’re one of the quiet ones, Summers. They must go for those big eyes of yours in a big way, the ladies, I mean. What about a bite to eat now? John has the table ready, they look after me in this little place. Yes,” he said, and it appeared as if he spoke only out of civility, for his voice was entirely free from any note of interest, “I’ll bet you could tell a true story or two on that score. But I know your type,” he said, looking round the dining room for acquaintances, and he waved a hand, “I know your type,” he repeated. “Mum’s the word where you’re concerned,” he said.

  After Charley had asked for beer and had been overruled, his host making the point that, when there was whisky, it was a sin not to drink it, he ventured on a remark.

  “It’s funny your mentioning what you did just now,” Charley said. “I had an experience just the other day.”

  “I know your sort,” Mr Middlewitch replied, hardly listening, still on the look-out round this crowded room for old mugs, or pretty faces.

  “Done nothing about it,” Charley continued. He took a long pull at his whisky and soda, then warned himself he’d be drunk in a minute.

  “Have you met old Ernest Mandrew?” Mr Middlewitch demanded. “He’s a big noise these days.”

  But Charley, like any very silent man, was not to be put off once he had begun.

  “Asked me to come down to see them,” he drawled. “Parents of a girl I used to meet. Wasn’t much of a party. But as I was leaving the old man up and slipped me an address. Just like that. You see I was friends with the daughter, who’s dead now.” Here he paused. Then out it came. “Had a child by her as a matter of fact,” he boasted, denying Rose a second time. “Yet there he was, giving me the address of a widow.” Charley took another gulp, leant back unburdened.

  “A widow?” Mr Middlewitch echoed. “Oh boy. I say, remind me to go across to Ernie Mandrew when we’re through, will you? I’ve got a bit of news will interest him, only I’m so damned forgetful these days. What were we saying?”

  But Charley, for the time at any rate, had had his say. He was staring at the glass he held. His face, it is true, was very sad, but his mind was a concentrated blank. He felt the relief in his stomach.

  Mr Middlewitch glanced at him.

  “Yes,” he said, “we all of us came back to what we didn’t expect. There’s a number of people dropped out in everyone’s lives. I’m not sure, but they do seem a long time over our soup.”

  He tried to catch the waitress several times, while Charley looked about, well satisfied.

  “A widow you said, eh?” Mr Middlewitch began once more. Summers nodded. “Dark or fair?”

  Mr Summers had never considered this.

  “Red,” he replied, from habit.

  “Oh boy, a redhead.”

  “At least I don’t know. Haven’t seen her,” Charley mumbled.

  “Haven’t seen her still?” Mr Middlewitch echoed. “Then you must be getting your oats, right enough. Of course, I grant there’s a lot of it around. That’s only human nature, with the numbers of men there are overseas. But a redhead with freckles, I don’t understand you, man?”

  Charley was not to be drawn. He sat there, smiling.

  “Well, any time you feel like,” Mr Middlewitch continued, “just pass over that address to me. I can’t say I’ve a lot of free time on my hands, but no doubt she could be fitted in, at a pinch. I don’t doubt at all, really.”

  As the waitress brought their soup, he ordered two more whiskies.

  “Steady,” Charley said.

  “Well it all comes out of E.P.T., doesn’t it? Carry on. Don’t stint. Lord knows we’ve done without more than Scotch these last few years. Reminds me of the first girl I saw, when I got off that Swedish boat they sent us home in. You know, the first ordinary girl. She was a wizard blonde.”

  If Charley had not had the whiskies he might have let this pass, but as things were he said, “Ah.”

  “Well, I mean to say,” Mr Middlewitch took him up, sensing a response at last. “After all those years without a taste of it, nothing but men, getting to realize there’s damn all in human nature, don’
t tell me you didn’t find that out, that there’s not a man, when you get down to bedrock, isn’t a twirp through and through, well then, to step off that boat of repatriated maniacs gone a bit crazy for having been released, and then to see a blonde out shopping, or whatever she was about, and free as air, I ask you. There was such a howl went up I thought the dock buildings would blow down.”

  “And her?” Charley asked, becoming talkative.

  “She never turned a curl. I’ve often thought about this since. She was used to it, you see. Very likely she might be the dock superintendent’s daughter, anyway she seemed to have the run of that place. You on to what I’m getting at? All the hundreds of thousands of service men coming and going in a port. Well, I mean, it’s war isn’t it, c’est la guerre. Makes brutes out of women.”

  “Certainly does,” Charley agreed.

  “Why, there’s no question but,” Mr Middlewitch said. “When we were over in Hunland, thinking of home, didn’t you and I imagine summer evenings and roses and all that guff, with a lovely little lump of mischief in the old car of course, but most of the time we were like kids dreaming for the moon, and perhaps for a little accident to happen to them with a girl. And what happened when we did get back? Why, we got stinking tight, old lad, and catted it all up.”

  “That’s right, we did,” Charley agreed again, who had not got drunk particularly.

  “And why?” Mr Middlewitch asked. “Because we found everything different to what we expected.” He pushed his plate of soup away, as though in disgust. Then he laughed. “Though I wouldn’t have been doing that with this grub out there,” he said.

  Charley leant forward, but kept his eyes on the glass. His blood was soaring under the whisky.

  “My girl died while I was out there,” he said, “the one I mentioned. I’ve been down to the place they buried her but everything’s different.”

  “That’s just what I mean. Yes, there you are. That’s it. But, boy, are there compensations, eh? Not but what I fancy you should take a grip on yourself, Summers. We’ve been through it. We know. So I can speak to you as I wouldn’t to my best friend perhaps, just because you don’t know me from Adam, and I don’t know you. You see, I’ve kept in touch with some of the lads from our lot, and one or two have drawn their horns in, gone inside of themselves, if you follow me. Now that’s dangerous. All you’re doing is to perpetuate the conditions you’ve lived under, which weren’t natural. Well, my advice to them and to you is, snap out of it.”

  “Of course,” Charley said, and looked at him unseeing. He’d hardly heard.

  “My God, but they’re being a long time with our bunny,” Mr Middlewitch replied. “You’d think they had to take it out of its hutch, kill it, get the skin off, cook the little blighter, and then dish him up, by the time they’re taking.”

  “I went down to the graveyard and, damn me if I didn’t run into her husband,” Charley told him.

  “That must have been awkward,” Mr Middlewitch agreed. “What happened then? Did you cry with your two heads together over the monument? You speak as if you knew the lad.”

  “He’s all right,” Charley said, seemingly a bit daunted. “We had a bite to eat after.” Mr Middlewitch did not notice the reaction.

  “And you had a bit of a chat? Compared notes eh?”

  “No,” Charley said. He frowned.

  “I remember I was in a situation like that once,” Mr Middlewitch explained. “Very awkward too. It was soon after I left school, and I’d got in with a girl about my own age in the same road. Of course there was nothing to it, we were kids, see. But she went down with something or other, I forget, I believe it was meningitis, that can be a terrible thing, and when she died I had to spend most of every evening for weeks on end comforting the mother. Nice bit of stuff the mother was as well, but I was too young in those days to tumble the way the wind lay. Not that I wasn’t well developed for a boy mind you.”

  There was no response from Summers.

  “No, it’s the opportunities missed that get you down as you grow older,” Middlewitch went on, with the wisdom of his prison camp. “Take this rabbit before us now. If I’d ever known I was to have so much coney, why I’d ’ve never cancelled those steaks I used to in the old days, thinking a heavy meal at this hour did me harm. I went regular to the old George at the corner of Wood Lane, which is blitzed down, because most any day you could get a portion of rabbit there. If I’d known then what I do now. But that’s life.”

  As for Charley, he did not care by this time what he was eating. And, when Middlewitch called their waitress for cheese and coffee, Rose was no more than a name to him. All the girls at this place were called alike. He concentrated, greedily, on the widow Mr Grant had mentioned.

  “Shall I give her a tinkle?” he asked into the silence that had fallen, in a sighing covey of angels, above their table.

  But Mr Middlewitch was bored. “Tell you what,” he said, “I’ll take you over and introduce you to old Ernie. He might do you a bit of good one of these days. What’s that we were saying? Ring her? My dear good lad, do no such thing,” he said. He had forgotten his earlier advice. “Drop in, boy. There you are. Then they can’t say no. Because women are practised on the telephone. Drop in unexpected, that’s my advice, drop in,” he said.

  Mrs Frazier sat beside Charley, in front of a roaring fire, in the bed sitting room he hired from her.

  “No coal, no nothing,” she remarked. She was about fifty and thin.

  He grunted.

  “Enjoy this while you have the opportunity,” she said, “take what pleasure and comfort you can, because who is there to tell what may befall. When these new bombs he’s sending over, turn in the air overhead, and come at you, there’s not a sound to be had. One minute sitting in the light, and the next in pitch darkness with the ceiling down, that is if you’re lucky, and haven’t the roof and all on top. But as to our coal, that’s certain. ‘Coal?’ my own merchant said the last time. ‘Coal, Madame? Never heard of it.’ And you don’t catch a sound when they crash, everyone that’s had one, and come out alive, speaks to that.”

  He sat vaguely wondering about chances of promotion in the office. Then about his coupons.

  “Which is quite different from the last war,” Mrs Frazier continued. “And what a difference, oh my lord how different. Always heard them coming in the last war, and so gave the men time to cast themselves flat. I remember Mr Frazier telling me. But of course in your case you didn’t have long to form a judgement. They took you prisoner within a fortnight of your landing over on the other side, as you informed me. So enjoy this scuttleful while you may,” she ended with relish, “for there’s not another in the cellar. I said to Mary, ‘Let Mr Summers have it, Mary,’ I said, ‘We owe him that for all the poor man’s been through.’ ‘And what about your own fire, Madam?’ ‘Why I’ll sit with Mr Summers, Mary, and see the last fire out we shall have this winter for the gentleman.”’

  She said this with an easy mind, who had a ton and a half stowed safe in the other cellar.

  She chanced a look at those great brown eyes. He continued to ignore her. But his expression was very pleasant.

  “I can’t make up my mind why you don’t go out more often,” she went on. “At the age you are as well, and after what you’ve been in. Find a young lady I mean,” she said.

  He gave a happy laugh.

  “Laugh?” she asked. “You may laugh but I’m serious.”

  He did not take this up.

  “Now Mr Middlewitch,” she said, looking into the fire, “that was another kettle of fish, with that man. Why I never had one like it. In the end I was obliged to tell him. Well, I mean to say.”

  “Middlewitch?” Charley asked. “Who works in the C.E.G.S.?”

  “Oh I couldn’t be certain, I’m sure,” Mrs Frazier answered, but she then gave a description which agreed exactly. “Perhaps you’ve met each other in the way of business?”

  “Same man,” Charley said.

 
; “Why I often wonder what’s become of him.”

  “Didn’t know I knew him?” Charley enquired.

  “Every year you live the world shrinks smaller,” Mrs Frazier replied. “Fancy you knowing Mr Middlewitch. I didn’t intend anything. It’s only that some are different from others. I believe it really was that he thought he’d suit himself best near the Park, in Kensington. Took a fancy to run before breakfast, or suchlike. Whichever way it was, he left here. Paid what was due quite all right. Oh yes, there was nothing of that sort about the gentleman, even if there was a bit too much of the other. You understand I wasn’t altogether sorry to see the back of him. But I wish the gentleman well, oh yes, I wish him quite well. It was a Mr Gerald Grant recommended Mr Middlewitch.”

  Charley was so surprised he spoke sharp.

  “Elderly? Lives out at Redham?”

  “The same,” Mrs Frazier answered. “Now, of course, you do know him. Why, he recommended you. Very lucky you were, too, even if it is me that says so. If you hadn’t had your experiences I shouldn’t wonder but I might have refused.”

  “Of course. I forgot,” Charley mumbled.

  “I daresay you think it’s a lot of nonsense,” she said, looking at him with open irritation, “but, when you’ve been back a while longer, you’ll find conditions very different to what you remember of when you went off. Decent flatlets are hard to come by these days. There’s not many roofs left in this whole town, for one thing. So, when Mr Grant rang me, I said, ‘It’s not another Mr Middlewitch, is it?’ ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘as different as chalk from cheese.’ Because that man. Well I’m a married woman, I’m as broadminded as most, but that gentleman’s love life defied description.”