Knight Without Armour (34 page)

Then Philippa chatted about various causes and enterprises she was
connected with; they ranged from a hospital for crippled children and a
birth- control clinic to Esperanto and Dalcroze eurhythmics. He listened
tolerantly, but shook his head when she offered to show him authentic
photographs of slum children suffering from rickets. “I’ll
willingly subscribe to them,” he said, “but I never care to have
my feelings harrowed after a good dinner.” The girl choked with
laughter. “I don’t blame you,” she said. “I think
they’re horrible photographs, and mother
will
show them to
everybody.” Philippa replied: “I show them because they
are
so horrible—people ought to realise the horrible things that
go on in the world.” He felt suddenly sorry for her then, and said:
“It’s a splendid cause, I’m sure, and I didn’t mean
to make fun. You will let me send you a cheque, won’t you?”

But he soon perceived that his compassion had been unnecessary. She was
tough; she was thick-skinned; she was obviously used to all kinds of gibes.
When she told him that it was her habit to stand at street-corners lecturing
about birth-control, he felt that he need no longer be afraid of hurting her
feelings. He was more sorry, then, for the girl; she was such an ordinary,
straightforward, averagely decent girl.

They took coffee in the drawing-room, and when they were comfortably
smoking, Philippa suddenly said: “My husband isn’t really
dead—my daughter had to tell you that because the maid was there and
that is what we tell
her
. The truth is, he left me.”

“Really?”

Then she launched into a detailed account of the catastrophe of her second
marriage. The man had been a labour organiser, and he had run off with a girl
secretary. He had also speculated with his wife’s money and lost most
of it. It was all a rather pathetic story, taking so long to tell that by the
time it was nearly over he was having to look at his watch and make hints
about a return train. Then followed the usual conventionalities. It had been
a most charming evening, he assured her—delightful to have seen her
again. She urged him to stay the night, but he said he thought he
wouldn’t—all his things at his hotel, and so on. She said she
hoped they would meet again soon. She told him that she ran a little informal
literary circle that met on alternate Wednesdays in her drawing-room.
“We read each other papers, you know—not necessarily on literary
subjects—sometimes we get strangers to talk to us—Mr. Wimpole,
for instance, gave us a most fascinating chat about old English silver last
week. I was wondering, you see, whether you would care to tell us a few of
your experiences in Russia; if you would, I am sure—”

But he replied, smiling and shaking his head: “My dear Philippa,
none of my Russian experiences were nearly so dreadful as the one you are
suggesting.” The girl again laughed. “I’m afraid I’ll
have to refuse—that sort of thing really isn’t in my line at
all.”

It was raining and the girl went to the telephone to ring for a taxi.
While she was away, Philippa contrived a word or two
tęte-ŕ- tęte
; she
said: “You know, Ainsley, I do hope you’ll soon he conning again
and then you must arrange to stay at least for a week-end. I dare-say
’you’ve found it rather odd, meeting me and my daughter together
like this—there have been restraints, I know—lots of things I
haven’t cared to tell you in front of her. And perhaps you
too—what have you been doing, really, since I saw you last? We must
meet again soon and tell each other
everything
.” Hearing the
girl approaching, she added: “Anyway, now that you’re intending
to make a home in England, we shall simply insist on getting to know
you.”

But he was not intending to make a home in England, he reflected a few
moments later, as he sat in the corner of the cab.

In his hotel bedroom that night he felt a slow and rather comfortable
disappointment soaking into him. Subconsciously he knew he had been expectant
over this meeting with Philippa; now he realised, not without relief, that
all such expectancy had vanished. It wasn’t only she who had failed
him, but he who had failed himself. He didn’t want to know anybody in
that eager, confidential way; he had no energy for it; he would rather chat
with a stranger in a train whom he would never sec again. It had been a
mistake to go to Surbiton; perhaps it had been a mistake even to come to
England.

The next morning, after he had talked to the girl in Romano’s Bar-
about some theatres he was intending to visit, she said: “You seem to
go about a lot by yourself. Haven’t you any friends?”

“Not in London,” he replied. “A few people the other
side of the world—mostly Chinamen. That’s all.” He liked to
see her eyebrows arch in astonishment.

“I say! Fancy being friends with Chinamen! But you must know
somebody
in London, if you used to live here?”

“A few business acquaintances, but I don’t count them. Oh, and
two people in Surbiton. I went to see them last night, but I don’t
suppose I shall go again.”

“Why not? Weren’t they nice to you?”

“Oh yes. Rather nicer, perhaps, than I was to them.”

“Then why—”

He laughed. “Never mind. I hardly know myself. But you can fill me
up another glass of sherry and have one with me.”

“Righto, and thanks, though mine’s a gin, if you don’t
mind…Well, here’s luck to you, anyway.”

Once he toyed with the idea of asking her out to some theatre or music-
hall, but he decided, on reflection and without any sort of snobbishness,
that the perfection of their relationship depended on the counter
between.

He staved in London over a week, and on the whole he enjoyed himself. He
dined at his publisher’s town house and met there a man on the staff of
The Times
who promptly commissioned from him a series of articles on
the future of the rubber industry. It gratified and perhaps slightly
surprised him to realise that his book had become, in its own field,
something of a classic.

He also vent to theatres, cinemas, exhibitions; he walked in the parks; he
listened to the open-air speakers near the Marble Arch; he lunched and dined
in any hotel or restaurant that chanced to catch his eye; he sat in the
Embankment gardens and pencilled drafts of his
Times
articles; he had
casual and agreeable chats with policemen and bus-conductors. Philippa wrote
to him, inviting him to Surbiton for any week-end he liked and he wrote back
thanking her, but fearing that his arrangements would so soon be taking him
temporarily out of London that he could not settle anything just yet. He
enclosed, however, five guineas for her slum children, and hoped she would
forgive him.

Then one morning he went to Harley Street to be examined and overhauled by
a specialist. He went quite calmly and came away equally so. It was about
noon, and he took a taxi back to the hotel, where he found a letter awaiting
him—one he had been expecting. After reading it through he said to the
bureau-clerk: “I shall be leaving to-morrow.” Then he stepped out
into the sunshine and walked across the Strand to Romano’s Bar. The
dark-haired girl placed his sherry before him with a smile. “Here
again,” she said. “You’re becoming one of our
regulars.”

“Not for long, I’m afraid,” he answered.
“I’m off to-morrow.”

“Where?”

“Ireland.”

“Business?”

“In a way, yes.”

“Going for long?”

“Don’t know, really.”

“It’s queer, seems to me, the way you don’t know anybody
and don’t seem to know even things about yourself. Fact is, I’m
beginning to think you must be a queer one altogether.”

He laughed. “I had a queer sort of adventure this morning, anyway.
Went to a doctor and was told I ought to give up smoking and drinking, go to
bed early every night, and avoid all excitements. What would you do, now, if
your doctor told you that about yourself?”

“I don’t suppose I’d take any notice of it.”

“Quite right, and I don’t suppose
I
shall
either.”

“Go on!” she laughed. “You don’t look ill! I
don’t believe you went to any doctor at all—you’re just
having me on!”

“Honestly, I’m not. It’s as true as those Chinese
friends of mine.”

He joked with her for a little longer and then went to lunch at
Simpson’s. Afterwards he returned to the hotel, wrote a few letters,
and began to pack his bags in readiness for the morrow. Then he went out for
a stroll; he walked up to Covent Garden Market, where there were always
interesting scenes, and then westward towards Charing Cross Road, where he
liked to look at the bookshops. But he felt himself becoming very tired long
before he reached this goal, so he turned into the familiar Maiden Lane for a
drink and a rest at Rule’s. But it wanted a quarter of an hour to
opening time, he discovered, when he reached the closed door, and as his
tiredness increased, he entered the little Catholic church almost opposite
and sat down amidst the cool and grateful dusk.

He felt refreshed after a few minutes and began to walk round the church,
examining the mural tablets; in doing so, without looking where he was going,
he almost collided with a young priest who was also walking round. Apologies
were exchanged, and conversation followed. The priest, it appeared, was not
attached to the church; he was merely a sightseer, like Fothergill himself.
He was from Lancashire, he said, on a business visit to London; when he had
time to spare he liked going into churches—“a sort of
’busman’s holiday,” he added, with a laugh. He was a very
cheerful, friendly person, and Fothergill, who liked casual encounters with
strangers, talked to him for some time in the porch of the church as they
went out. Then it suddenly occurred to both of them that there was no
absolute need to cut short a conversation that had begun so promisingly; they
walked down Bedford Street to the Strand, still talking, and with no very
definite objective. The priest, whose name was Farington, said he was going
to have a meal somewhere and take a night train back to Lancashire;
Fothergill said he was also going to have dinner. Farington then said that he
usually took a snack at Lyon’s Corner House, near Charing Cross;
Fothergill said, all right, that would do for him too. So they dined together
inexpensively and rather uncomfortably, surrounded by marble and gilt and the
blare of a too strident orchestra.

Yet Fothergill enjoyed it. He liked Farington. He liked Farington’s
type of mind—intellectual, sincere, interested in all kinds of matters
outside the scope of religion, worldly to those who saw only the surface,
spiritual to those who guessed deeper. He was emphatically not the kind of
man to insist on rendering to God the things which were Caesar’s.
During the meal Fothergill chanced to mention something about rubber
plantations, and Farington said immediately: “I say, didn’t you
tell me your name was Fothergill? I wonder, now you’re talking about
rubber, whether you’re the Fothergill who used to be at Kuala
Simur?”

“Yes, I am.”

“That’s odd. It means I know quite a lot about
you—Father Richmond and I are great friends—we were at Ware
together.”

“Really? Oh yes, I remember him very well. Where is he
now?”

“Still at Kuala Simur. He had a great opinion of
you—especially after that small-pox epidemic.”

“Oh, that wasn’t much.”

Farington laughed. “It’s too conventional to say that, surely?
I wish you could sec some of Richmond’s letters about you,
anyway—he almost hero-worshipped.”

“I hope not.”

“He did. His great dream, I think, was to convert you some
day.”

“Well, he didn’t come far short of doing so.”

“Oh?”

“We used to argue a good deal about religion and so on—and I
used to joke with him and say I should end by becoming a Catholic. At least,
perhaps he thought I was joking, but all the time, in a sort of way, I meant
it. Then my brother died and all the rubber estates fell to me, and I got
suddenly fed up with everything and sold out. That just happened to be right
at the top of the rubber boom in ’twenty-five, which is why I’m
more or less a rich man now. I sold out to an Anglo-Dutch syndicate, packed
up, and pottered about Europe from then till now. The syndicate,
incidentally, paid me about five times what the place is worth to-
day.”

“That must have been very good for your bank account.”

“Better than for my soul, perhaps, eh? To come back to that, the
rather curious thing is that all the time I was at Kuala Simur I felt a sort
of conversion going on—if you can call it that—I know of course
that nothing really counts until you’re definitely over the line.
Probably if I’d had much more to do with your friend Richmond, whom I
liked exceedingly, he’d have pushed me over.”

“I wish that had happened.”

“Oh well, I pushed myself over a year later, so perhaps it
didn’t matter.”

“So you
are
a Catholic?”

“I was received into the Church in Vienna three years ago. I’m
not sure that I’m entitled to call myself a Catholic now, though.
Slackness, I suppose. All very unsatisfactory from your point of view,
I’m afraid.”

“And from yours too, surely?”

“Well, perhaps—perhaps.”

They talked on for some time, and Fothergill found it strangely and
refreshingly easy to be intimate with the young man. Farington’s train
was due to leave at midnight, and towards nine o’clock Fothergill
suggested that they should adjourn to his hotel for a smoke. They walked
along the crowded Strand to the Cecil and were soon snugly in the lounge.
There and then conversation developed as if all barriers had suddenly been
destroyed. Fothergill said: “You know, Farington, there was one thing I
never told Richmond and that was the whole truth about my life.”

“I know. He used to grumble about that in his letters to me. He said
he was sure you had some mysterious and grisly past which you never breathed
a word about to anybody.”