No More Meadows (10 page)

She powdered her face and said: ‘I must go now. I mustn't be back too late.'

‘I'll see you home,' said the American, getting up with her.

‘Oh no, that's all right. I live rather far out, you see. It's much too far. I can get a bus right here at Marble Arch.' She admired herself for being able to produce so easily the Americanism of
‘right here'. After an hour of his company it came quite naturally.

‘I have a car,' he said, pleased that he had this to offer her. ‘A brother officer lent it to me while he's in Germany. We'll go and collect it, and I'll run you home.'

She did not want him to take her home, because there would be the difficulty of whether or not to ask him to stay to supper, and what her father would say if he did, and whether there would be enough food, and she remembered that Aunt Josephine was making shepherd's pie tonight, which was not one of her most successful dishes.

The American had made up his mind, however, so they walked up to a garage at Marble Arch. The car was a beautiful cream-coloured Buick convertible, such as Christine had never ridden in in her life.

She felt wonderful as she drove out to Barnes with Commander Gaegler with his gold braid and his coloured ribbons, directing him and pointing out items of interest, like the Albert Hall and Olympia.

He did not know that to live on Barnes Common was inconvenient and rather suburban. For all he knew, it might have been the grandest place to live in London, and he was delighted with the gorse-scrubbed open space before the house, and with the house itself, which he called an Interesting Old Place, although to Christine it was only shabbily Victorian.

He seemed also to be quite pleased with all the animals. ‘This is real homey,' he said. He made a noise like tearing silk at the budgerigars and ran his finger-nail along the bars of their cage. The cat that was asleep with its front paws over the fender would not come to him, but Christine's gregarious dog put its head on his lap, and he stroked it while Christine mixed him a martini, mostly gin, because that was how he said he liked it. She mixed it in a glass jug, as Geoffrey had told her she must, although she would not submit to doing this for Geoffrey.

Presently her father came in, and Vinson Gaegler sprang to his feet and was introduced. Christine could see that her father was a little suspicious of him. Who is this Yank? he was thinking. We haven't heard about
him
before. He wandered about the room, not looking directly at the guest, and the American
was very respectful to him. He offered to mix him a drink, which Mr Cope thought was not respectful, but presumptuous.

Christine got them both sitting down and tried to maintain an easy conversation. She knew that her father was worrying about whether the American was going to be asked to stay to supper. Vinson Gaegler gave him a little brisk information about the American Navy, and Mr Cope grunted in response. He used to be like this when Christine was young, and brought new young men to the house. If they dared to come again, he had been capable of greeting them with: ‘Good God, you here again?' He thought that was funny, a joking reference to their persistence after his daughter, but the young men did not think so.

During a lull in the talk, when Christine was wondering what she could say to recover the easy relationship she and the American had had at the Air Force club, a piercing shriek came suddenly from above. It was followed by another, and then a reverberating groan. The house was like Nightmare Abbey in a Gothic tale. Christine and the American had sprung to their feet, but Mr Cope remained seated and said: ‘It's only Geoffrey. The doctor has come to take out his stitches.'

‘It's my cousin,' Christine explained to the startled American. ‘He had a slight accident here on Saturday.' It sounded silly. ‘Christine has had a slight accident' was what her nurse used to say when she hustled her upstairs to change her knickers.

‘That's tough,' he said. ‘I'll be going. I'm sure you wouldn't want me here at a time like this.'

‘No, that's all right. Do sit down and finish your drink. They won't need me up there.' By the time she had seen him off and gone upstairs the operation would be over, and she would have sent the American away for nothing.

Geoffrey continued to fill the house with horrible noises. ‘Good God,' said Mr Cope, getting up, ‘I can't stand this. It's worse than a maternity home.'

The American looked at him, surprised that he should have come out of his monosyllabic grunting to say this. Mr Cope went out of the room, calling to his dog, and they heard the front door bang with her father's slam that sometimes brought a hat down off the stand.

Christine sat down and told the American the story of
Geoffrey, and how they had come home late without a key and tried to break into the house. Gaegler did not say much, and she wondered if he was shocked at such goings-on. He did not look the kind of man who would get drunk and cut his head open bungling an easy climb. But you never knew with people. They nearly all got drunk at some time or other and did something ridiculous. Look at Geoffrey.

The American was beginning to make the motions of thinking it was time to go, when Aunt Josephine came in with her head, for some reason, bound up in an old scarf, and a triangular tear in her cooking apron where she always bumped against the corner of the kitchen dresser.

‘That Geoffrey,' she said in despair. ‘If I ever saw anything like him my name is Artemus Jones. Talk about a cry-baby! You never heard such a noise as he made about a few stitches coming out.'

‘We heard,' said Christine. ‘Aunt Jo, this is Commander Gaegler of the American Navy.'

‘An American!' cried Aunt Josephine in delight. ‘Well, I am glad to meet you. Is it
the
American?' she asked Christine.

Her niece blushed and made a face at her, which she thought Vinson Gaegler saw. He moved quickly about with his springy step, offering Aunt Josephine cigarettes and chairs, but she was too restless to sit down. She tramped about the room, giving out ejaculations about the frightfulness of Geoffrey and the stupidity of the doctor, who said he must stay a few more days. The American turned his head to watch her with his unwinking tortoiseshell eyes, and Christine wished she knew what he was thinking.

‘You've been drinking,' said Aunt Josephine, picking up an empty glass.

‘Have one,' said Christine.

‘Certainly I will. Heaven knows I need it.' She flopped into a chair and ran her big hand over her face, pushing the scarf askew on her head.

The American offered her a cigarette. ‘No, thank you. I – Oh, but a Lucky Strike! The only kind I like. I haven't had one since my canteen days. Christine, you are clever to bring somebody home with American cigarettes.'

At the bow-fronted cupboard, Christine prayed that Aunt Josephine would not forget herself so far as to say something about nylons.

‘Let me help you.' Vinson Gaegler came and took over the drinks from Christine as naturally as if he had been in the house many times.

When he had finished she saw that he had made a drink for himself and her as well. She did not want one, but she took it, to let him prove to her that there was nothing in the world like an American martini. Why did every man always think he alone knew how to make a martini?

His visit had been a little sticky up to now, but with Aunt Josephine in the room it became a success. She liked him and he liked her. He did not seem to think her odd, as some of Christine's friends did. Aunt Josephine was at her oddest when she had had a drink. She became dogmatic now, and started to hold forth about the Atlantic Charter, and the American sat on the edge of a chair opposite her with his knees together, and treated her as if she were the only person in the world.

Christine felt
de trop.
She hid her drink behind a vase and wondered whether anyone would notice if she picked up the evening paper.

Mr Cope came back and asked if the all clear had sounded. He was not too pleased to find the American still there, but he was hungry, and at the risk of having to invite him to the meal, he asked his sister: ‘What about supper? It's long past time.'

‘So it is,' she answered without getting up.

‘No wonder your dishes are always either burned dry or half cooked,' said Mr Cope, ‘since they never get to the table at the right time.'

Christine hoped they were not going to argue in front of the American. He would not understand.

‘Shepherd's pie can wait for hours,' Aunt Josephine said. ‘But why don't you go and get it out yourself, if you're so famished, though how you can be after the lunch you ate –'

‘I don't want to burn my hands, thank you. I can never find a cloth in that disorderly kitchen of yours.'

‘Why is it, Captain,' Aunt Josephine asked Commander
Gaegler mistily, ‘that men can't stand to touch as hot things as women can?'

‘I wouldn't know,' he said seriously. ‘Could it be it's something to do with the pigmentation of the skin?'

‘How clever you are!' said Aunt Josephine embarrassingly. ‘Christine, I wish you would always bring home clever people like this. It does me good.' The American looked more than ever like James Stewart in a coy situation.

‘It's the gin that's done you good,' said Christine shortly, thinking as she said it that she probably ought to be all sweetness, and flutter round her aunt for the American's benefit.

But did she really care what he thought? He had taken hardly any notice of her since they came home, and he was certainly rather smaller and slighter than a man should be, and it was doubtful whether he had a sense of humour.

It had been exciting being taken by a strange American in uniform to have drinks in an American club, but when you got him home, where you had to be just your family self and could not play at being whatever you wanted you to be, it palled a little.

‘You'll stay and have supper with us, I hope, Captain?' Aunt Josephine was saying, while her brother made faces at her behind the American's back.

‘Thanks a lot,' he said. ‘I appreciate your offer, but I really should be going. I have a date tonight.'

No, Christine thought, he was not exciting. For all that he had picked her out and come back to the store to see her again, he seemed to have small interest in her as he took his leave in the hall and said: ‘I've been so happy to meet you.' Absurd, then, of Christine to find herself thinking, as she closed the front door: Who has he got a date with? A girl?

At supper, Aunt Josephine and Mr Cope discussed the American
ad nauseam,
and when Christine went up with Geoffrey's cheese, he said: ‘I hear you've got yourself a new boy friend. Congratulations.'

‘I hear you were a brave, brave boy having your stitches taken out,' she retaliated. ‘Congratulations on that.'

‘I suffered the agonies of the damned,' he said. ‘No one knows what I endured.'

‘We all do,' she said. ‘We heard you enduring.'

When she went back to the dining-room, Aunt Josephine said, folding her napkin in a way that creased it more than if she had left it crumpled up: ‘Well, I liked him, Christine dear. He and I got on fine, and I hope you'll bring him home again.'

‘I thought you were a bit tight,' said her brother.

‘He did mix the drinks very strong,' said Aunt Josephine. ‘I
like
Americans.'

‘I can't see why they have to wear uniform all the time,' he grumbled. ‘They have this mania for dressing up. And all those medals. It's ridiculous. Two months in the potato squad and you've got a chestful of ribbons. Fruit juice, they call it.'

‘Fruit salad,' said Christine. ‘Well, anyway, don't worry. I don't suppose I shall see him again.'

He rang her up on Saturday evening to ask her if she would drive out to the country with him on Sunday. He seemed to take it for granted that she was free, and because she had not expected to hear from him again, she was surprised into saying Yes at once.

‘Fine,' he said. ‘I'll call for you around eleven-thirty. I have to go to Mass first.' Catholics always made a point of telling you they were going to Mass, or had just been to Mass, as if no one else ever went to church.

‘Eleven-thirty then,' he said. ‘Good-bye now.' His telephone manner was clipped and utilitarian, as if he were more accustomed to using the telephone for business than for conversation. Except that he said, after they had said good-bye: ‘Just a moment. Tell me something. Why did your aunt ask: “Is it
the
American?”'

‘I can't imagine. Did she?' Christine tried to sound cool.

‘Well, skip it. I just thought–'

‘Good-bye,' said Christine. ‘I'll see you tomorrow.'

So he had thought she had liked him well enough to be enthusiastic about him at home, did he? Christine did not think she was going to like him if he was going to be conceited.

When he arrived on Sunday, however, you could not help liking him, for he had brought, rather shyly, a large box of food
for them from the Navy commissary. They took the box into the kitchen and unpacked it on the table among Aunt Josephine's preparations for Yorkshire pudding. There was a ham, and tins of bacon and sausages and butter, and chocolate, and packets of Lucky Strike for Aunt Josephine. It was really very kind of him. He watched their delight as they unpacked, like a Red Cross worker bringing bread to starving war victims. He was pleased with himself for giving so much pleasure. He had brought a box of cigars for Mr Cope, and Christine slipped away into the study to warn her father not to say he did not smoke them.

As she came out there was a violent banging on the front door. She opened it, and Clement and Jeanette fell into the hall.

‘There's a super American car outside the gate! It's huge! Absolutely super! Come out quick, you must see it!'