Jill (22 page)

“Oh!” Whitbread took it and put it unopened into his inside pocket. “I know you won’t take this in the wrong way, Kemp, but do you mind not meddling with my letters? Things get lost like that. I know you meant it as a kindness, but it might have been important, and I should have been late getting it.”

After breakfast he put on his overcoat and strolled nervously out into the town. There had been a sharp frost the night before and lorries that had been out all night had white roofs that sparkled in the sun. The sky was remote and blue: everywhere an atmosphere of briskness prevailed. John watched large trays of loaves and buns being carried into a confectioner’s shop from a van; already shoppers were out and students cycled past with books tumbled carelessly in the basket at their handlebars. Other students wearing gowns hurried past on foot. In the entrance hall of a cinema a woman on her knees was scrubbing the linoleum: she wore an apron of sackcloth and a bucket stood by her side. From the booking office came the sound of money being counted.

He felt like a detective, single-handed, and indeed slightly at a loss to know how to begin. Instinct led him first to the bookshop where he had seen her the day before, but it was practically empty, and he did not stay there long. The difficulty of his task began to oppress him. It might be that she would not come into the town that morning; indeed, she might be only a visitor to the city, and by now be gone; in any case, supposing that she did revisit the shops, the chances that he would happen to see her were extremely slight.

To judge from her appearance, she was fifteen or sixteen years old. And yet was she at school? The time that he had seen her was roughly five o’clock. If she were at a local day school, she could have been home and then come out again, particularly
as she had the bicycle, but surely if she had only wanted to visit a bookshop she could have done that on the way home. Unless, of course, it did not lie in her way. In any case, what about tea?

The main point was that if she were attending school, his searching the town for her during the morning and afternoon was sheerly a waste of time. He drifted along the main street, looking eagerly about him at the faces that passed; at nearly half-past ten he went into the coffee-room of a large store and sat at a corner table. The room was nearly empty, but as eleven o’clock approached parties of people came in and sat smoking and talking, drinking coffee and wasting time. He had never visited this place before, but he had heard it spoken of as the place where the most people could be seen in the shortest possible time, and as the room became fuller and fuller, he saw how true this was. After a time tables were moved together and extra chairs carried in from the luncheon room next door to accommodate larger parties. He saw Christopher Warner come in and Tony Braithwaite and Patrick: later they were joined by Elizabeth and a dark Jewish-looking girl he had never seen before. Tony Braithwaite, he had since learned, played the piano in the University dance band. At every fresh advent he felt a painful twinge of apprehension till he had seen all the faces of the new party. With his fair hair and pale face he looked like a fanatic, but his eyes were not bright enough.

The coffee cost him fourpence and it was a remarkably cheap way of carrying out his search. After three-quarters of an hour, he moved to another similar café, where he sat till a quarter-past twelve. Many different people came and went, but not the one he was looking for. In the interval between his leaving the café and returning to the College for lunch, he visited several bookshops and large emporiums, where he concentrated on the departments that might be expected to interest her—the material counter, the shoe department, the soap and perfume corner. The shop girls regarded him suspiciously, but did not interfere with him.

When lunch-time came, it was not surprising that he felt depressed. He felt physically tired, for one thing, and the amount
of energy and enthusiasm he had expended to so little purpose was disquieting. He had not realized till now that his intense desire to see her was no reason for her to appear to him; he had not realized till now how great even one city was, how impossible it was to observe even the few main streets adequately. And the crowds of people made his search seem no less urgent, but less significant.

Yet he could not rest. In the afternoon he made his way round the straggling, peaceful area of North Oxford, crossing the parks, where the faint cries of hockey players were carried hither and thither on the wind, along the river walk and through into the respectable tree-lined roads that intersected and curved into each other. It was odd that no sooner had he chosen a place where she would, in his opinion, probably be found, the place seemed empty and a search of it useless. Before he turned any corner he looked behind him lest she should appear too late for him to see her. To the casual observer it looked as if he thought he was being pursued.

The sun, a red ball burning frostily, sank lower behind the leafless trees, over the house-tops and gardens as four o’clock came nearer. John walked quickly back to the town by the main road, looking intently at every approaching cyclist, and, on reaching the centre once more, went for tea to a large café. Here, if anywhere, she might appear, he thought, looking round at the little tables with their white tablecloths, the pleasant artificial flowers and cigarette-ash trays and the trio of middle-aged people playing musical comedy selections on a piano, a violin and a ’cello. It was with scenes like this that he was beginning to associate her. And yet she did not come. He ate the toast and jam and cakes and drank his tea and stared restlessly about, but fruitlessly; the trio of musicians paused, sat about for six minutes, then began another selection. In his present mood of impatience, he found the music irritating in the extreme. People came and went. At last, in despair, he called for his bill and paid it, feeling how bitterly he had failed.

Despite his knowledge that he was wasting time and money in a most unprofitable way, he spent the next day in this manner
and also the one after that. Quite simply, he could do nothing else. He admitted to himself that it was unlikely that he should ever see her again; he knew, too, that even if he did, he would have no way of finding out her name, no way of making himself known to her. At the thought of their first clumsy encounter he could cry with rage. It had not only been embarrassing, it had also prevented any recurrence of an attempt at friendship. At tea-time on the third day he sat at a glass-topped table in a different tea-room, watching the people eating and the reflection of the vast room in the mirrors on the walls, waiting for the food he had asked for to be brought. When it came, he looked at the tray the waitress carried to see what cakes she had chosen, and some instinct lifted his eyes beyond their immediate object to the far door. Jill stood there. The waitress came to the table, blocking his view and began setting out the things. John, with an inarticulate mutter, tried to crane his neck to see round her, failed, and struggled to his feet. By the time he was up the doorway was empty and a quick look round showed that she had not advanced into the room, but simply retreated into the street as if she had not seen anyone she knew.

“Two and eight, sir,” said the waitress, tearing off the bill.

He paid it, and ran out into the street, leaving his overcoat behind. She could not have gone far, her whole attitude had been casual; her hands in the pockets of her coat, she had looked at the room with complete unconcern, as if it had nothing to do with her. He looked this way and that. There was no trace, no sign. The people formed and re-formed, crossed and altered even as he looked at them; in ten seconds she could easily have been concealed in the shifting street. He fetched his overcoat from the café (there were people sitting at his table) and set out among the dusky traffic, knowing that she must be somewhere near, tantalizingly close, and that if he was quick he would almost certainly find her again.

He did not. After he had searched the immediate streets, he suddenly remembered that obviously she would have gone to another teashop, having found the first one full, or unsatisfactory in some other way, and he began entering every one he
came to, standing for a moment in the door as she had done and then hurrying out. He visited every one he could think of, even the large café of a cinema, but it was no good. She was not to be found and he gradually lost heart, becoming not so much depressed as angrily disappointed.

It was the wasted chance that annoyed him, for he had come to realize how rare these chances were going to be, if indeed another one occurred.

The next day was a Sunday. Would she, he wondered, go to church? And despite his disappointment and fury, he could not help feeling thankful that at least he knew she existed and that he was following correct tactics if he wanted to see her again. He sat in the Common Room turning over a Sunday newspaper without interest, while Christopher and some second-year students talked loudly in one corner of the room. Patrick was there, too, and after a while demanded that Christopher should pay back the two pounds he owed him.

“Two quid? What is the man talking about?” inquired Christopher, irritably.

“The two quid you owe me.”

“I don’t owe you two quid.”

“Oh, yes, you do,” said Patrick, pulling a little leather pocket book from his waistcoat. He opened it and began to turn the pages.

“You’re a liar.”

“I am not a liar. I lent them you the day before we left London. October the ninth.”

“I don’t remember,” said Christopher obstinately.

“I don’t wonder. You were boozed as hell. Anyway, it’s down here, if you want to see it.”

“I don’t want to see your damned Doomsday Book,” said Christopher rudely, groping in his pockets. “I can’t pay you all of it. Will a quid do?”

“I should say it would do for the moment,” smiled Patrick, taking the folded note and making another entry in his book. By accident John caught Christopher’s eyes and the latter thrust his hand into his pocket again.

“God, all right, don’t tell me, I owe you something, too. What a bloody life. Here, take that to be going on with.”

He held out two half-crowns with the action of tipping a porter. John blushed sharply.

“That’s all right—if you’re short——”

“Take it.”

“No, it’s quite all right.”

“What the hell d’you mean? Take it. I don’t want you to give me money.”

He accented, or so John fancied, the words “you” and “me”, and flung the two coins down on the open book John had begun to read. John sat silently, red in the face, not touching them.

“When you’ve lived as long as I have, Chris,” said one of the second-year students, “you won’t pay men who don’t want to be paid. Your fine sense of honour will have become dulled. In any case, I was relying on you to stand me a flick this afternoon.”

Laughter released a more general conversation, and, unnoticed, John picked up the five shillings and pocketed it, because, after all, as he ashamedly thought, he was glad to get it, having spent more money in the last few days than he could really afford. Then he got up and left the room, overwhelmingly conscious that Jill and all she represented must be kept hidden away from Christopher, absolutely at a loss to remember why he had ever mentioned her name at all.

This was the afternoon that Whitbread and he had been invited to tea at the Dean’s house, so he idled about in his room, writing a letter to his parents, until it was time to set off. He had arranged to meet Whitbread in the College lodge at four o’clock, and carried the letter with him. The two of them set off along the road in the bright afternoon sunshine, neither wearing hats. Under his overcoat Whitbread had on a black jacket and a pair of striped trousers that made him look like an office-boy.

“Do we pass a postbox?” inquired John, knowing that Whitbread could be relied upon to know such things.

“We can do. You could have posted that in t’lodge.”

“Is there a box there?”

“Yes, of course there is, man. Have you never seen it?”

John confessed he hadn’t. An old man hobbled along the pavement picking up cigarette stubs from the gutter. Whitbread walked along with an air of satisfaction.

“Ay! The Dean only asks scholars to these little do’s. Shows what he thinks of us. It gives you a chance to make a good impression.”

“I don’t know him well,” said John, resenting the intimacy with which Whitbread addressed him.

“He’s O.K. You’ll have to show him you’re not tarred with t’same brush as that fellow Warner—Dean’s had a bit of trouble with him already. I don’t know what he comes up here for. If it’s just drink and women he wants, he might as well stay in London. After all, he doesn’t want a degree—he hasn’t got to earn a living.”

“Not that he’d get one,” said John, with sudden spitefulness, glad when Whitbread laughed and agreed. They walked on, up the Banbury Road, passing young married couples who strolled slowly along, attended by tottering children or pushing perambulators. Wet leaves struck to the dry pavement. The tree trunks had white rings painted on them about three feet from the ground. In the distance a brass band could be heard playing a simple hymn tune and a single aeroplane crawled along the very top of the sky, so high it was practically invisible.

“This way if you want to post that letter,” said Whitbread, turning to cross the road. “It just means we come into the road where he lives by the other end.”

The silence of the afternoon was remarkable, and they reached the pillar-box in an entirely empty avenue.

“That’s the house,” commented Whitbread, nodding towards one fenced house in a row of others. “Not bad for a junior fellow’s screw.”

He opened the gate and stood aside for John to pass through. As he did so, Jill cycled slowly by, with the deliberation of a mirage. One hand rested on the handlebars, the other was in the pocket of her loosely-belted coat; she lounged on the saddle, pedalling negligently, whistling once more. Her hair tumbled in
the wind, the sun tinting it with a bronze shade he had not noticed before.

John was paralysed. The habit she had of appearing just at the moment when he was unable to follow her—as now, when Whitbread had rung the doorbell and was waiting, pulling down the points of his waistcoat and listening for the steps of the maidservant across the hall—this habit seemed part of a dreamlike frustration. He took a step back through the gate, seeing her sailing away like a small boy’s model yacht, irretrievable into the distance.