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“Right you are,” James said. “I say, Ridley,” he went on, “I left
my handkerchief in our room. You remember which that is, don’t you now? You’d never believe what a bad memory he has,” James said to Summers, like a woman, “there are times I send him for something, and he forgets all about it while he’s on the way. It’s 56. You won’t lose that will you?”

“What, now?” Ridley demanded rude.

“If you wouldn’t mind, old chap. Your dad wants to blow his nose.”

At this Ridley looked full at Summers, so that this man’s heart jumped right up into his neck. Charley dropped his eyes, but not before he had recognized contempt in what he took to be his son’s.

“Oh all right,” the boy said, and slouched off.

“Lord, he reminds me at times of his mother,” James began when the child could not hear. “He’s got just the way she had when she didn’t want to do something. D’you catch it now and again? But you wanted to ask me? What is it?”

“A certain person,” Charley said, distracted.

“Why, my dear good lad,” James said, looking about him. “Where? Not in this lounge, surely?”

“Only ten minutes off,” Charley said.

“Someone we used to know?” James asked, as though suddenly talking of a brothel.

“They’re usually in about now,” Charley said, because he could not explain.

Meantime Miss Whitmore, who would soon be off to her work, was feeding the cat and worrying about her mother. Now that her mum was evacuated, Nance came under the heading of mobile labour, which is to say that, if the Ministry officials got to know she was alone, she could be sent anywhere in England, even be put in uniform and packed off where the Japs might get at her. Of course she had not told the Ministry when her mother went, who had bought her own ticket and agreed not to claim the evacuation money, to save Nance from the consequences.
But, all the same, the girl was worried. Her mum was on her own, having quarrelled some years back with Mr Grant, and if anything should happen there was only herself left. So the girl did not want to be sent away. Besides they were comfortable on what she made each week, and the small bit Mr Grant still contributed every Saturday. And the day before, one of her friends said she’d had a visit from the officials. Oh, they’d been perfectly polite of course, nothing anyone could take exception to, if it wasn’t that they’d more or less forced their way in, as if to search the premises. And they’d explained it was only that the country was so short of mobile women, so they were driven into coming to people’s homes, now their records had been lost in the bombing. Yes, they’d made themselves pleasant, and been perfectly respectful. But then Ellen had her mother, large as life. What would she do herself if they came here? She’d been so nervous all day she’d hardly been able to sleep, waiting for the knock on her door.

She was just saying aloud to the cat, “And what’d become of you, Panzer?” when there was the knock, like a rap right on her heart. Her mouth fell open. She covered it with a hand, as Mrs Grant had done.

Charley had easily been able to persuade James to come along without having to tell him who, or what, he was to find. One of the reasons was that James did not want to lose sight of Summers. At one time he could have thought Charley was seeing too much of Rose, but he now found Charley would be the main link left with the happy days which were fast slipping into the past. Also he considered him affected by his war experiences.

As he rang, Summers got behind so that, when she answered the door, her heart pounding, all she saw was the stranger. She took it very hard.

“So it’s come,” she said, dead white, and made way.

Charley naturally imagined this to be her reaction at being exposed. He could not understand, but he felt desperately
ashamed of his part in bringing them together again. And, as James moved forward, Charley wished once more that he could be unseen.

But of course, the moment Miss Whitmore saw Charley she knew the stranger could not be a Ministry snooper, and she was so relieved that she grew angry.

“So it’s you, is it?” she said.

With acute dread and anxiety Summers slowly raised his eyes to James’ face. He was terribly frightened to see on it the last expression he had expected. So that he was made to feel crazy. For James stood, just watching, polite and lost, though his upper lip trembled.

Then Charley knew he was back in a trap.

“What is it now?” she asked him.

He could not answer.

James thought the best thing was to introduce himself.

“I’m James Phillips,” he said, quite ordinarily.

“Rose’s husband?” she said. It was obvious that she was profoundly shocked. “You?”

“That’s right,” he said, with what seemed to be complete calm. “Why, did you know her?”

There was a pause. Charley listened to his heart thumping.

“I’ll tell you what this is,” she said then, violently, yet as if searching in herself. “It’s not proper, that’s all.”

“What?” Charley said. He could not believe his ears again.

She turned on him. “Bringing this man here,” she shouted, and slammed the door shut, so she could not be heard on the staircase. “Think of it. Him that’s met his wife naked in bed with him, and you bring him along to me. Oh, it’s not proper,” she repeated.

Mr Phillips had gone rather white in his turn. But he kept his temper.

“I don’t see that you’re at all alike,” he said with truth and absolute conviction.

But Charley was beside himself. They must be playing some frightful game, and he blamed it on her. He remembered her bigamy that, as he thought, Mr Grant had spoken of.

“All very well acting the innocent,” he said, trembling all over, “but you’ve been married, haven’t you?”

“You swine,” she yelled, coming up to him. “You keep Phil’s name out of this, d’you hear? He died fighting for you,” she shouted and, bringing her hand up, she slapped his face hard, and it hurt.

“Here, that’s enough of that,” James said, pushing his way between them. But the harm was done. Charley sat down, quick, in the chair over which he had spilt the tea on another occasion, covered his face with his hands, and began uncontrollably trembling. “Died for me?” he kept on repeating.

“He’s been out in it, too,” James said quietly. “He’s just been repatriated.”

She burst into tears.

“What’s a girl to do?” she wailed.

Mr Phillips thought he was the most hurt of them all. Everything considered it was he who had been widowed, who had to look after their son, who could only show the boy microfilms of his mother. And what was this about? The girl was not like his Rose, quite apart from her dark hair. Certainly she did not behave in the least like. But he said gently,

“Well, my word, this is a party I mean to say …”

“Never knew such filth existed,” Charley muttered recovering.

“That’s plenty now,” James objected.

“Well it’s right, isn’t it?” Charley Summers asked.

“You’re not yourself, Charley, old man,” Mr Phillips said. “And I’m thinking there’s the little lady we should apologise to,” he added. “My dear, this is the war. Everything’s been a long time. Why only the other day in my paper I read where a doctor man gave as his opinion that we were none of us normal. There you are.”

“I’m not your dear,” she answered. “And I’m not his lost one,
as he seemed to imagine the last time.” She showed, by her look at Charley, who it was she had in mind. This direct reference to Rose, and to Charley’s possible relations with her, was too much for James. Yet he still remained polite.

“Well I’ve got to get back now. I’ve someone waiting for me,” he said. He closed the door gently behind him. And his last words made Miss Whitmore pity herself the more. She began to cry again, this time quietly, and with zest.

Charley felt ten years older, cynical as never before.

“What filth,” he repeated, as though from a great height.

She cried on.

“The end of my life,” Charley said, thinking aloud. “That’s what it is. I’m finished,” dramatising it.

Still she cried.

“Well, I’m off, Rose,” he said. “You’ll not see me again, now.”

He got up to make his way out.

“No, don’t go,” she said.

He waited. She blew her nose vigorously.

“I’ll have this out with you, if it’s the last thing I do,” she began. Apparently she had got over her rage with him.

“What can you say?” he asked, helpless.

“It was what Mr Phillips told me about your having been out there as well,” she began. “Maybe I’ve misjudged you. Were you blown up or what?”

“I was not.”

“All right, a girl can only ask, can’t she? And when she finds a man making a fool of himself, perhaps ruining his whole life, it’s only natural if she wants to put him wise, even when that man is a cracked stick like you. After what you’ve done to me I’d be justified in just showing you the door, now wouldn’t I?”

“What have I done?” Charley asked, injured. He would not look at her, and wore an absurd expression of dignity.

“Bringing Mr Phillips like you did. How d’you suppose it makes a girl feel?”

“Up to some low game, the two of you,” Charley muttered, beginning to get frantic.

“Being the man you are, I didn’t suppose you’d get it. Why, you’re so proud you can’t see out of your own eyes. If it wasn’t for that thought, I doubt if I’d be sitting here trying to get the truth. No, it was a dirty wrong to bring that individual to me, to be reminded of his own son’s mother. It was vile.”

She spoke with dignity, while he thought of her as a dirty double crosser. Actually she was intensely proud of the terrible likeness to her late half sister, and had been ever since she first learned of it. Then he had another idea which flooded all over him, he was so sure it was right.

“You’re in this together,” he shouted.

She burst into tears again. “All right, I’ve tried, haven’t I?” she brought out between sobs and hiccups. “They ought to lock you up. Yes, well then, go now as you said, and I never want to see you more.”

He went. It was not until the room was empty of him that she remembered to be afraid. For she saw he must be a shell shock case, and dangerous.

The whole thing had been so unpleasant for James that he decided to put it out of mind. But the evening he got back from London he picked up one of the literary reviews his wife had liked, and to which he had kept up the subscriptions after marriage while hardly ever reading. And he came on a translation which seemed so close to Charley’s situation that he thought he would forward it, even though he was sore at the man. Accordingly he wrote on the cover “Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest,” signed his initials, drew attention to the story with a cross, and sent the thing to Summers, whom he forgave the moment he had posted the packet.

Meantime Charley had gone sick. He told the office he had ’flu. He kept to his bed. What he thought of himself was, that he was going to lose his reason.

When Mary carried up the thick envelope, he recognized this review as one that used to lie about in the old days, missed what James had written, ignored the date, which was recent, and, uninterestedly, turned over the pages until he came to the cross with which James had marked the place. His heart gave a twist. Just for a moment he thought it must be an old kiss from Rose. Then he asked himself why it could have been sent. Finally he was not even going to look through the thing, he felt too ill, when his eye caught a bit about a girl fainting. So he turned back to the beginning, and went into it, as it is printed here:

“From the Souvenirs of Madame
DE CREQUY
(1710–1800) to her infant grandson Tancrède Raoul de Créquy, Prince de Montlaur.

“I must tell you about Sophie Septimanie de Richelieu who was the only daughter of Marshal de Richelieu and the Princess Elizabeth of Lorraine. She was far more sensible of the honour that was hers from her mother’s side of the family than she was of her father’s ancestors. Indeed she did not always bother to hide this from her father, for which he occasionally gave her a rap over the knuckles.

“Septimanie was indefinably gracious. You could say she held a mirror to all that was the France of old days. She was a mixture of wit, of manners, with a sense of tradition, yet always absolutely herself. She had exquisite ways. She had a kind of full dress elegance but underneath there was all the time a hint of the dreadful death in store for her so soon. She was tall and lithe; she had brown black or grey eyes according to the mood she was in. There have never been eyes like hers to show changes of mood more brilliantly or, for anyone lucky enough to be under their spell, to make a gift of such a magical effect.

“My grandmother thought to marry her to the son of Marshal de Bellisle, the Count de Gisors. This young man was in his day what you are going to be we hope, the best looking, the finest, and the most lovable of them all. But Septimanie’s father did not think a great deal of the family. ‘Really,’ he said to my grandmother with malice, and this is to show you what sort of a man he was, ‘the two young people can always meet after Septimanie has a husband.’ And so it was that, against her will, Septimanie became Madame d’Egmont.