R. Delderfield & R. F. Delderfield (35 page)

He had always respected her for her courage and integrity but now he found himself enjoying her company, partly as a fellow traveller but also as a smart and attractive woman, who had faced her troubles and side-stepped self-pity. Everything about her indicated a cheerful ability to get up and try again, and again after that if need be. She had taken great pains with her appearance, and although he knew she was the same age as himself she could have passed for a woman in her early twenties. She had what he thought of as “the West End look,” and her forthrightness was much at odds with the Julia Darbyshire he had confronted in that shabby little sitting-room above the quad. He could see now how entirely possible it was that an imaginative boy like Blades had persuaded himself that he was madly in love with her. She had charm and high spirits, as well as good looks, but more than enough femininity to captivate an adolescent romantic, especially one isolated in a male community. Algy, he thought, should have had more sense than select her, even as a stop-gap. There was magnetism here, and promise too. It was a wonder there hadn't been a dozen boys mooning after her during her brief spell as Second Form mistress.

He told her the facts of the accident, then how he had succeeded in adjusting to it, partly on account of Grace's survival, partly because of the stimulus and comradeship offered by the staff and boys. He told her how the boys competed to spoil the kid, how Winterbourne was teaching her to paint, and Hoskins to dance. 'It seemed to me I owed it to everybody to make the effort,' he admitted. 'It was like being at the receiving end of trench comradeship, with everyone in the unit reaching back to give you a hand. Does that sound fanciful?'

'Not from you it doesn't. I don't suppose I'm telling you anything you don't know when I say you're so
right
for that place. It wouldn't surprise me, thirty years from now, to hear you had spent your entire life down there, and enjoyed every moment of it, even your feud with Carter.'

Her mention of Carter reminded him of their present rivalry and he was surprised to note how even the remote possibility of him replacing Herries excited
her. 'Why, that's perfectly splendid, P.J.! I can't think of anyone who would make a better job of it and the boys will be rooting for you. Is it likely? I mean, you're very young for the job, aren't you? Or they'll think so, won't they?'

'I'm only a few years younger than Carter,' he said, 'and he's applying. He's down there right now, canvassing like mad if I know him.'

'Oh, they'll never give it to
him
,' she said, so emphatically that he felt encouraged. 'If it isn't you it will be a stranger, someone in his late forties, you see if it isn't. Would you be terribly disappointed?'

'No,' he said, 'as a matter of fact I think I'd be relieved, providing he was the right chap, of course, and didn't play merry hell with Algy's legacy. It's a very special kind of school, Mrs Darbyshire. It's difficult to say why or how, but it
is
, you know. It's got so many of the good things about the old-style public school, a kind of steadiness, continuity, and a touch of genuine idealism, but it also has – how the devil can I put it? – post-war optimism, and a broadening of outlook that's been achieved in all kinds of ways since people got the war into perspective. Put it this way, it's a kind of launching platform for kids moving out into a world that's still doing precisely what you and I have been doing this last year or so.'

'And what's that?' she asked, smiling.

'Licking our wounds, and preparing for another go. That's Algy's doing, of course. He's a bit of a genius really, especially when you consider he was born at a time when they were still hanging people in public and schools like Bamfylde were a cross between a gaol and a four-ale bar! We'll all miss him but we'll survive, given half a chance. Mind you, the setting has something to do with it. It's so… so permanent, so English if you like. But the best of England.'

He broke off, laughing at his own enthusiasm, but she said, 'Go on, P.J.'

'Well, Algy and the surrounding countryside complement one another. There's Exmoor, looking just as it did when your tribe and mine were wearing skins and painting themselves blue, and there's the grab-your-girl-grab-your-cash world outside. And smack in the middle, like an adjudicator, is old Algy, doing a weighing-out act to make sure one doesn't swamp the other.'

'That's a pocket sermon,' she said, 'with the smack of the Welsh about it, but then…' and she stopped, smiling.

'Well?'

'I was only going to say that every time you get enthusiastic about anything, I remember you're a Taffy who has decided to throw in his lot with the English. Do you ever regret doing it?'

'No,' he said, chuckling. 'The English have got their points. An ability to organise is one of 'em that we lack. The truth is I had my faith in the future handed back to me at Bamfylde. The place saved my sanity, so naturally I'm prejudiced.'

She said, with conviction, 'You're one of the sanest people I've ever met, P.J. You'd have steadied up somewhere but I see what you mean, nevertheless. Well, here's hoping those Governors see it too, and give you the chance you deserve. Why don't we drink to that somewhere? I might be the very first to wet the new headmaster's head.'

They went out and she piloted him expertly through crowded side streets to a pub she knew, where they drank three gins and he listened to her for a change.

After leaving Bamfylde, she had gone to Southampton, taking an office job in a solicitor's to be near her husband. After his death she had been lucky enough to land the managerial job at the Old Bond Street teashop. It was an American firm, and paid above average for good executives. The owner, who spent half his time over here, was a genial middle-aged New Jerseyman called Sprockman – 'Hiram Ulysses Sprockman, believe it or not,' she told him, 'and a real sweetie, in a ponderous, teddy-bear way. He takes me out to dinner sometimes, and even asks my advice on buying pictures and Regency furniture. He's a terrific Anglophile, all set on becoming a New England squire when he's tired of making money, but that won't be until he's in his dotage if I'm any judge. Once Arthur's estate was cleared I could afford a flat to myself in Camden Town. It's very handy and I've furnished it myself with pieces my mother-in-law left me.' She paused a moment. 'Look, why not come back and let me cook dinner for you? I'm far better at cooking than teaching.'

'Let me buy you dinner in Soho,' he suggested, but she shook her head. 'Not on your life, P.J. Their menus look appetising but I've seen the inside of some of their kitchens and prefer to poison myself. Are they expecting you back early?'

'No,' he said, excited at the prospect of being entertained by her. 'Grace is sleeping out at her aunt's tonight and I said I'd be late back. I thought about taking in another show. The Aldwych, perhaps.'

'Nothing worth seeing,' she said, 'and I've had a look at most of them. Come back to my place and let me cook you something. Time somebody fussed you a bit. The way your wife did when you'd been fussing over those boys all day. Or is that taking things too much for granted, P.J.?'

'Don't you believe it. I can't think of a better way of rounding off a very pleasant reunion.'

She was better than her word. It was a long time since anyone had pampered him and she prepared a very appetising meal, carrying on a conversation with him through the door of the kitchen while he sat before the fire. She was much more relaxed in a house, reminding him more of Beth coping with the unpredictabilities of the cottage stove, but there was nothing of that kind here. Someone, Julia or her parents-in-law, had excellent taste. All the furniture was antique and well-cared for, each individual piece being the work of an eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century craftsman. There were one or two valuable paintings, among them a Chrome, and a display of Rockingham china in a china cabinet. The neighbourhood outside was rackety but the flat was in a cul-de-sac, backed by a high wall beyond which, she said, was a market, unused at this time of day.

After the meal he helped her wash up and she brought coffee into the big living-room, where he felt so relaxed that he had no inclination to leave and make his way via tube to Charing Cross. Here, on her own ground, she was very easy to talk to and when dusk fell outside, with an accompanying drizzle, she drew the curtains and came and sat beside him on the sofa, kicking off her shoes and shooting her legs towards the fire so that once again he had a sense of renewal, as if they had known one another intimately, had been separated for a long time, and met again under congenial circumstances.

He said, after praising her cooking, 'This is the most enjoyable afternoon and evening I've spent since it fell on me, Julia,' and as he said it he became sharply aware of her nearness and her easy-going approach to him ever since her initial hail encouraged him to take her hand. He would have thought he had outgrown his early shyness with women but he had not, or not entirely. When she turned her head he felt as young and inexperienced as young Blades must have done, and then, as though to explain away his impulsive gesture, he said, 'I haven't touched a woman since it happened… was hardly aware of them again until lately.'

'And now?'

'Now? I'd be a prize-hypocrite if I said I didn't want to kiss you, Julia.'

She said, evenly, 'I'd be a worse hypocrite if I didn't admit I was rather
hoping you would,' and took the initiative by kissing him, gently but assertively, as though she was experimenting, and he was encouraged to take her in his arms and kiss her properly, not as he recalled kissing Beth, on that last occasion he had held her in his arras the night after Winterbourne went missing, but as they had kissed in the earliest days of their association.

He was not disposed to let her go then and there was no occasion to, for she seemed content to stay with her head on his shoulder, looking into the shifting coals. They sat like that for what seemed to him a long time before she said, 'Two years, David. It's a long time, for a man as lively and imaginative as you. Beth was a very affectionate girl, wasn't she?'

'Very,' he told her, 'from the very beginning. It's not that I haven't begun to think of women again, particularly in the last few weeks. Sometimes I had half a mind to go out and look for one. But with me… well, it sounds damnably stuffy, but there has to be a personal relationship of some kind. The fact is, I had very little experience with women before I married and it wasn't wholly on account of the war. Somehow a casual relationship, after Beth died that is, would have seemed… well… too damned clinical for my taste.' He had to laugh at himself then, adding, 'By God, I sound as pious as Skidmore, the parson's son, telling me why he wouldn't make the new boys' bow to Founder's statue in the quad.'

He wondered if she would remember Skidmore but she made no comment and seemed, in fact, to be pondering memories of her own. Presently she said, 'Listen, David, I'm going to take a big risk. Big, because I've got a hell of a lot of respect for you, and I wouldn't care to have you leave here with the wrong impression. If you hadn't said what you said just now it wouldn't have occurred to me but here it is, without a lot of fancy talk. You're very welcome to stay the night if it would help. I wasn't in love with Arthur, not in the way you and your wife were in love. I didn't have time to discover whether or not we would have made a go of it after the war. Frankly I doubt it. I was very young then, and as full of silly ideas about love and marriage as most girls growing up with a war on. When we married, Arthur was very much the extrovert, keen on games, and making a good impression on people who didn't matter. When he did come back he wasn't anything at all. Just a hulk, and that was that, for both of us.'

'And since then?'

'Since then I haven't been Goody Two Shoes. I tried now and again, wanting very much to be a real woman, instead of something and nothing, the way it had to be all that time, but… well, nothing sparked. The few men I met
wanted to use me, and I soon came to the conclusion that I would be using them, and that wasn't me, for roughly the same reasons as you held off.'

'You mean it might be different with me?'

'I know it would be. You don't need me in particular but you need affection even more than I do, and that's saying a hell of a lot. Well, there it is, except that you can say “Thanks very much but…” and walk right out of here, with no hard feelings.'

He noticed then something that touched him deeply. Her voice was very level but the hand clasping his as his arm rested on her shoulder, shook in a way that was painfully familiar to him, the tremor betraying the careful flatness of her voice. He said, kissing her cropped hair, 'I should like to stay very much, Julia. And I wasn't fishing for it, if you can believe that.'

The hand stopped shaking, and she lifted her face to him, laughing like a girl. 'You never went fishing in the whole of your life. You wouldn't know how. Give me five minutes,' and she got up, turned off all but the centre light, and put the guard in front of the fire.

He gave her ten minutes, then went across to the bedroom and knocked. She was sitting up in bed, the pinkish light of the bedside lamp glowed on her white shoulders and neck, throwing a shadow across her full breasts in a way that made him catch his breath. He said, standing looking down at her, 'Why did you get your hair shingled? You had lovely hair. It was one of your best features. The first thing I noticed about you.'