by Henry Green
She was a good-hearted girl.
Miss Nancy Whitmore sent her note to Charley’s business address, which Middlewitch had given her. By the same post there was a line for Charley from Phillips, who was the sort of man who forgave freely, for old times’ sake. In his letter he asked Charley down over the August holiday, and said for him to bring a girl, though he added, as a wry joke, not the Miss Whitmore he had been taken to visit that once.
Phillips’ letter was marked personal. Dot did not open it. But there was nothing of the kind on Nancy’s envelope. Because of this, she read what Nancy had written. It looked to her like he must really be after this girl. She put it away in the middle of the day’s mail. She was most curious.
As soon as Charley had washed himself and settled down to go through the correspondence, she watched to see how he took it when he came on Nancy’s note. But to her amazement all he did was to laugh, out loud, triumphantly. He thought Rose must be disguising her hand.
Then, when he came to Phillips’ letter, and read the invitation, he was so cynically amused to find the husband specially asking him not to bring the wife, that, because he felt particularly bright this morning, he said to his assistant,
“What are you doing over the holiday, Dot?”
“Me? Why nothing, as per usual, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Care to come along to an old friend of mine in Essex?”
She was astounded. She took it absolutely seriously. She was so surprised she could have kicked herself, after, for what she said next.
“Well, this is a bit sudden, isn’t it?” she brought out. He was embarrassed, because he saw she meant to accept.
“It’s a lovely place, right in the village. Very old,” he said, ashamed of himself. But he could not draw back, not now.
“Well I shall have to think this one out, I mean shan’t I?” she mumbled. He could see her mind was made up. And he said, “Why not?” to himself. After all, life owed him something now. Then his phone rang, and they became submerged in work. He forgot Miss Pitter.
When he got back to his place that night, he had still forgotten her. He could think of nothing but his own girl disguising her hand. He went to the suitcase under the bed, and took out those five letters he had had before the war from Rose, which he kept in a big envelope. His hands terribly trembled. The letters were undated, in no particular order. What he wanted to find was one fit for the handwriting expert to compare with Miss Whitmore’s screed.
“Darling Stinker,” he read. “If you weren’t such a stinking darling you’d go down to Redham for me and see the old dears. I didn’t half get a moan from dad yesterday in our letter box. You know what I am about letter writing. My hubby says they can’t ever have sent me to school so probably if I did write they couldn’t read anyway. So be a dear old Stinker and go down and tell them how you saw their little Rose blooming over Whitsun. Got to rush now. From your Mrs Siddons.”
These letters put him in agony, they made him love her so. And he knew he could not send that one, it was too intimate. He started on the next.
“Dear Stinker. I must say I think it’s a bit lop-sided your simply making up your mind you’d forget when I asked you especially to get me those mules we saw in the advert. Don’t be a meanie darling. From Rose.”
He knew he couldn’t part with this one either. No stranger must ever see it.
“Stinker darling. I’m writing this lain in bed. Old mother Gubbins just got me my breaky. I sniff for my Stinker but there’s not a trace. I bet you wish you were here you old smoothie. Jim won’t be home now till the end of the week. Are you mortified in your silly old office? And don’t you wish you were here with Your Rose.”
His eyes filled with tears. These letters were sacred. After a little time he began on the next.
“My dear. Of course now I’ve got someone else to consider – I mean while I’m bearing baby, I’ve got to be careful I don’t do too much haven’t I, coming up to London and all that well you wouldn’t wish for me to have a turn in front of all the crowd at the cricket would you. So you’ll just have to be a patient old Stinker. No seriously the doctor says I’ll have to watch myself and not get overtired and to put my feet up when I’ve half a chance. He’s such a sweet old bear of a man. So not just yet Charley Barley. The next few weeks he says are the tricky ones. Keep your chin up. Your Red Rose.”
They were too outspoken, he told himself. Because anyone could tell from this one that Ridley was his own child. Then he read the last.
“Dear Stinker. I must say I do think you might have sent on those things. If you could see me every hour watching for the postman, dear, I expect you’d do something about it now. But it’s out of sight out of mind with you darling. So do be quick. Your –” and she must have forgotten to sign.
There was not one of them he could let go. He put the lot back in the suitcase. Then he had an idea. He found his nail scissors, got the letters again, and began, without thinking, to cut those sentences out which he thought would not give him away. He worked fast, laying each snippet on a sheet of newspaper to which he proposed to paste the bits like a telegram. And this was the message from Rose that he scissored, almost at random, out of their love letters:
“Dear / go down to Redham for me and / tell them how you saw / those mules / coming up to London. / So be a dear / and go down / From Rose.”
He felt he had been exceedingly clever, till, all at once, he realized he had destroyed, cut into ribbons, every letter he had ever had from Rose. Then he despaired, blaming himself. But he could think of no other way to get an expert opinion. And he knew Nance was really Rose. And, after all, that had killed her letters.
So, for the evening, he mourned the fact that Rose’s treachery had destroyed the last there was left to him, the letters which, for all the months and years in Germany, had been what he was most afraid to find mislaid, or lost, when he got back.
Yet that night he slept very well for once, and did not dream.
It rained all the August holiday. The Phillips’ home in which Charley had last known Rose, was on a main road just off the village street. Convoys of American army trucks shook the old house, the whole day. Often Dot had to yell to make herself heard. The three of them even had difficulty in getting across to the pub opposite, where darts, at times, were shaken off the pig bristle board. From out the darkness of their cabs the nigger drivers could be told only by their white smiles.
As soon as Dot and Charley arrived, James took her up to see the room. She looked brazenly at where she was to sleep. Because, she felt, she knew what she was there for. It was a double bed all right.
“Very nice I’m sure,” she murmured.
“What?” he asked, for, with a noise like thunder, another line of heavy lorries was being driven past. She repeated herself, and moved to the dormer window which looked over the back. It had sounded crude to say that again.
“Where’s Charley’s room?” she then enquired, but he did not hear this either. She felt she could not put that twice, and to cover her embarrassment she traced Dot with a finger on the leaded window. She’d treated herself to a manicure up in town. Its nail was enamelled to the colour of wet flesh.
James laughed. “Oh well you know there’s nothing very special, I’m afraid,” he said. “In fact, I’m very much afraid.” As he stood at her side she could risk a glance. She confirmed that he was staring at her hand. It was lucky, she thought, that she’d had them done over.
“Silly of me,” she said, “but when I come on lovely old windows I always wish I had a diamond to cut my name.”
He laughed once more. She thought he would be O.K., though as yet she had, of course, no idea at all how, or how much.
“We’ll have to see about that,” he replied, but extremely pleasant, nothing to take exception to.
“What?” she exclaimed, yet she had heard. “Scribble right over your beautiful old windows? I’m sure you’d wonder how I’d been brought up. The very idea. Why I wasn’t
serious, I should hope not indeed.”
“Well, make yourself comfortable. I must get old Charley fixed up now,” he said. “Then we’ll have a bite to eat. It’s only cold, but I’ve a little something laid out in the kitchen. See you directly,” and he went.
There was nothing more that night, absolutely nothing. They’d had a nice supper, and weren’t these country people all right for food. Then they’d gone over the way where they bought her a few drinks. They wouldn’t have it when she tried to pay for a round. At last she’d said, “All good things must come to an end,” looking at Charley as she spoke, so much as to cry it out loud. So they came back to the house with her, and she’d slipped upstairs, got into a smashing pyjama suit bought specially the day before, put out the light and, quaking with wonder, she’d lain there. She could hear them talk in the kitchen. And how they’d talked. Then they came up. And she’d wondered some more. Her own worst enemy would not have laughed at her that half hour. Even if it wasn’t the first time, of course. But nothing. She was all ready, pretending to be asleep, spread out like butter on bread. But nothing. She knew it was Charley when he went to the bathroom. For just that minute it was delicious to wait. But what all this added up to, she felt at the time, was that these repatriated men came back very queer from those camps. So in the end she’d gone to sleep alone, unvisited.
The next day they’d done this, that, and the other, all very pleasant to be sure, but nothing in particular. Charley’d never come out of himself, he’d stayed just like he was in the office. The two men were thick together, though. The wife’s name cropped up once or twice. Rose. She thought she could see where the land lay. This visit was a bit of for old times’ sake, she fancied. Oh they’d made themselves very friendly, except to do out her own room they never let her help in any way. But, by the second evening, she’d made up her mind there was nothing to it, nothing whatever. Charley’d had her down to be gooseberry. Then, after another very enjoyable little party over the road, she went up early to get her beauty sleep, because it was a pity to throw away this good country air which was already doing things to her skin, and she was just dropping off when the door did open a crack, someone came in, into her bed even, the sauce, and, believe it, or not, it was that fat James, though everything had been so dark she hadn’t known till after.
That very first evening, when Charley did not come, while she lay in bed as they talked downstairs, she had asked herself if he was being told something which kept him. He was and he wasn’t. To tell the truth, he had forgotten that she existed.
There was a silence this first night after she left for bed until Mr Phillips announced,
“Well here you are again then, Charley.”
“Yes,” Charley Summers replied. They were sitting opposite each other, over cups of tea.
“It seems a long time,” Mr Phillips said. Charley did not reply.
“I’ve put her in Rose’s old room,” Mr Phillips explained. Charley looked at him, but the widower’s face was bland. Then the man went on, “Who is she?”
“Works with me.”
“You London office people get all the fun and games,” Mr Phillips said. “But don’t wake Ridley, will you?”
“Doesn’t he sleep any better than his mother did, then?”
“Yes,” James replied. “She was always complaining about that, wasn’t she?”
“Well I mean,” Charley loyally objected. “It’s rotten if you can’t sleep.” He was surprised to find he could be cold once more, while speaking of her, cold.
“They get more than they realize,” Mr Phillips said.
“No way of telling.”
“There is if you’re stretched out by their side,” Mr Phillips answered cheerfully. “Many’s the time I’ve listened to her snore, when she’s told me the next day she hadn’t slept a wink all night.”
“I didn’t know,” Charley lied, delighted that he could talk easily of Rose. He couldn’t now imagine why he had got himself into such a state about her handwriting. All of a sudden, or so he thought, she was dead to him at last. She was really gone.
“The doctor seemed to think it affected her resistance at the last,” James went on. “I didn’t undeceive him. You see she’d complained of not sleeping ever since I brought her here.”
“I couldn’t drop off when I first got back. It was the quiet.”
“You weren’t having raids out there, not all the time, surely?”
“Sleeping alone,” Charley explained. “After twenty to a room.”
“What did the Army doctors say?” Mr Phillips asked.
“They’re all trick cyclists now,” Charley said. “Best not to undeceive those merchants either.” Then his mind turned to Mrs Grant. “Did the family come down when she lay dying?” he lazily enquired, free as air about Rose.
“Her old mother was too ill and couldn’t be left.”
“I see,” Charley said.
“Or so that old bastard Gerald made out, anyway. I say, my dear lad, I hope I haven’t gone over the line. In-laws and all that.” He felt, entirely without jealousy, as though Charles and he had shared Rose.
“Don’t mind me, Jim. He’s poison.”
“Right then, we know where we stand. That man’s always up to some deadly work. Poor soul, it’s really no wonder she’s as she is today, Mrs Grant, you know.”
“You’re telling me.”
“Well, that’s a real relief, Charley old boy. Because I felt a bit of a worm in front of you, letting fly like that about him.”
Charley looked at Mr Phillips. Everything had changed, yet it was no different. They had sat on so often after Rose had gone to bed, so many years back, saying much the same.
“Lot of water’s passed under the bridge,” Charley commented with a trace of disgust, as though speaking of the sewage system.
“It was terrible when it happened, poor old girl,” Mr Phillips said. “Ridley was the worst part. Must have come as a shock to you, too. One of the first letters you got from home?”
“There it is.”
“Life has a funny way of getting back at us, sometimes.” Phillips spoke as though he’d had one wife after another, each of whom had lived just three months. “But d’you mind if I ask a question? Why did you take me along a few weeks ago to meet a certain person?”
“Then you did notice a resemblance?” Charley asked, showing the embarrassment in his voice.
“Not the slightest,” Mr Phillips replied with confidence. “Was that your reason?”
“Good lord, no,” Mr Summers lied, and became voluble. “It was Mr Grant sent me in the first place. I shan’t ever know what for, some more of his fun and games I suppose. Well, we had a bit of a misunderstanding right off, she and I. I don’t understand now what she thought. But it struck me there couldn’t be any harm in taking you along. Hope you didn’t mind?”
“Of course not. Then when I turned it over in my head afterwards I wondered if you hadn’t mistaken something.”
Charley was alarmed, but he kept pretty calm. He was now ashamed of what he had felt for Rose.
“What d’you mean?” he asked.
“It’s only that there’s nothing to the shape of a face.”
“What are you getting at?” Charley wanted to know, on the defensive because that phrase had particularly made him think of her son.
“Yet when a man marries again, he chooses the same type, or so the women say. While you and Rose were old pals, knew each other long before we ever met.” There was a pause. He did not explain further. “You know, now she’s gone, you’re my link with her, old man,” Jim Phillips said.
They’d had double whiskies for the road before they left the pub. Charley began to wonder if James wasn’t a trifle sozzled. But he kept quiet.
“Look,” Mr Phillips went on, “perhaps you may consider I’m going a bit beyond it, even for between friends, but I’ve had no one I could talk to, all this long while. Anybody would think Ridley must remind me of her, but he doesn’
t, and if ever you’re in my position, as I hope you never will, I dare say you’ll find the same. No, when you took me up to that flat in London, I did wonder at the time if you wanted to see whether I got it too. I mean, if she should remind me, as well as you.”
“I don’t know what you’re driving at?” Charley asked, still on the defensive.
“I’m not getting at anything, or anybody,” Mr Phillips said handsomely. “Forget it. No, I’m speaking for your own good. When she died I took it very bad, living on in the same house as I had to. I’ve given your friend her old room by the way. There wasn’t anywhere else. And I shouldn’t wonder if you didn’t feel it very hard as well, situated like you were when you heard, out there. But what I’m trying to say is, it’s you reminds me of her when I’m with you, there you are. Much more than your other lady friend, or even the boy now. There’s nothing in faces.”
“Then you did think they were like when I took you?”
“Just when I first set eyes on her I might have done, and with that contemptible remark she made after. I was a bit wild with you as a matter of fact, just for the moment. Then when I got back I read the old story I sent on.”
“Which story?” he asked, glad to get off the subject.
“Didn’t you try it? Oh, in one of those magazines my sister used to take when she kept house here, before I married, and I kept ’em up, I don’t know why.”
“I believe I did, now you come to mention this.”
“Which didn’t ring the bell, eh Charley? Well there’s no accounting.”
“I don’t see much in books,” Mr Summers said.
“No more do I,” Phillips agreed. “Marriage is a funny thing. And nothing at all to do with the tripe these screwy authors serve us up with.”
“Did Rose ever know Arthur Middlewitch?” Charley interrupted.
“Arthur who?”