A Man of Forty (3 page)

“She's in to time,” he said, nodding.

“ Yezzir,“ said the ticket-collector, briefly showing his teeth.

Slightly craning his neck David contrived to see down the length of the platform. He saw people getting out of the train. Adam was not among the first. It'd be quite like that erratic young devil to have missed the train. Not the first time he's done it. The ticket-collector, though without directly looking at them, stood nodding at the passengers as they passed him. David knew the man, for though but recently settled as a permanent resident in this neighbourhood, it had been his and Lydia's week-end resort for ten years.

“Meeting a visitor, sir?” said the ticket-collector, making conversation.

“If he's come,” said David dubiously. “ Quite a crowd tonight.”

“Tickets, please. Ah, it's a favourite, this one.”

“Only decent down train of the day.”

“What about the five fifty-four? That's a
nice
train, that is, the five fifty-four,” the man said, in a warm coaxing tone. “One at a time, lady,
if
you please.”

For no reason the situation seemed odd to David Brome : himself talking with this uniformed figure while the passengers, all sorts and sizes, filed past them. It was like having a friendly chat with a prison warder, or a menagerie-man, or a shepherd of sheep. What curious questing spirits cower in these bundles of haberdashery? All naked underneath. Putty-coloured bipeds with pale pink faces and sedentary rumps. Crying we come and sighing we go : it's all done with wires. Adam, where art thou? Missed the train. What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? Pump, bellows, milling machine, and twelve feet of tubing : with minor accessories. All dressed up and nowhere to go. Just like him to miss the train. David scowled, feeling flat and defeated, sociability quenched, prospect of driving back alone, pattern of the evening spoilt, Lydia's guest-supper waiting and no guest.

“Looks like rain,” said the ticket-collector.

“Good for the garden,” said David. Shall I wait for the next? Or go back?

Clouds massed in the sky. The air was cool and grey with little gusts. David's view embraced the platform and all it contained. Two late stragglers were getting out of the train. One was a man : oldish, not Adam. The other was a female, with a porter in attendance, carrying luggage. They came towards him, and suddenly, but
without sense of shock or change, the colour of his feeling became heavenly blue. She came past him, a young woman, a girl, beautiful. She gave up her ticket and went by, leaving a silence in him. No, he's not here. Where the bright seraphim in burning row. No good waiting.

“When's the next?” he asked moodily.

“Nine-fifty, sir. Slow.”

“An hour and a quarter. I shan't wait,” said David.

But the expectation of meeting Adam Swinford irrationally lingered for a moment, in face of the plain evidence. David went on the platform, as if to make sure that the fellow had not come. Reluctance to go back to an empty evening—for he hated an enforced change of plan—inspired the pretence that Adam was in the train asleep, or too deeply engrossed in thought to observe where he was, or with the lordly unruffled deliberation he sometimes affected was languidly collecting his belongings from the rack before deigning to alight from his carriage, or had gone to the platform lavatory, or was dawdling at the bookstall (which in fact was shut). All wanton hypotheses, and insincere. He watched the train out, then turned away from the void that was left and went back to his car. It was the only stationary car in sight.

The night was growing gusty, little coils of wind rose and fell. In the sky, rain-clouds were gathering, a smoky swarm. As he opened the car door and stooped to get in, David saw out of the tail of his eye that the last passenger, with a porter still in charge of her luggage, was standing near the station entrance. It was easy to guess that she was a visitor waiting to be met by her hosts. David stood undecided for a moment : the notion that presented itself to him made him feel diffident, boyishly self-effacing. Yet, beautiful though the girl was, to offer his services seemed no more than ordinary civility.

Reluctantly, eagerly, he moved towards her. As he came within speaking distance the porter encouraged him with a look of welcome, and said something to the girl, who thereupon turned her eyes towards him.

Being hatless, he could not salute her ceremonially. “ I don't know if…” He tried again, failed to achieve a formula, and then said bluntly : “ Can I give you a lift anywhere?”

The sound of his own voice, a man's voice, deep and unhurried, betraying nothing of his shyness, restored him to himself.

She smiled with cool friendliness. “ You don't remember me. I'm Mary Wilton.”

He remembered a pale, silent, coldly beautiful child. Now—in how many years? Three was it? four was it?—he could still see, or surmise, that child in this young woman : her face had the same startling perfection. But something new there was ...

“I remember perfectly,” he said. But added to himself only : I've never seen you before. I've never seen you smile before.

She looked unbelieving, amused. “ What a fib!”

Her ease with him made shyness impossible. He laughed, saying : “ You're Dr. Hinksey's niece.”

“Granddaughter,” she answered.

“Of course. Well, Dr. Hinksey's granddaughter,” said David blandly, “ can I give you a lift?” He became aware of the watchful, half-smirking porter, and was constrained to add : “ I'm David Brome.”

“They must have forgotten me,” she said. “ They're like that in my family.”

David made a sign to the porter to put the trunk into his car. “ I suppose they won't turn up after we've gone?” What doubt, what premonition, made him say that? “ But if they do, that's their lookout, isn't it?” he said, laughing nervously.

He opened the car door for her, and took his place at the wheel. The car began moving. She sat at ease, quite unselfconscious, and unconscious, it almost seemed, of him. She broke silence at length only to murmur a hope that she wasn't taking him out of his way. Fortunately she was, he answered. He stole a half-glance at her profile, and the trumpets sounded, the morning stars sang together. Immortal spirit conjured out of clay. He grinned at himself. Don't be silly. It's all done with wires.

“You're younger than you used to be,” he remarked.

“Odd,” she said, with cool humour.

“Where have you been all this time? Must be four years since I saw you last.”

“Saw me first, too.”

“ What?”

“We've only met once before,” she explained. “ You came to see my grandfather, and I was around.”

“Yes. You're not the same now, though. You've grown younger,” he said, labouring his point. I'm being tedious, he thought; and to mitigate the fault he hurriedly said : “ I haven't seen much of your grandfather lately, though we're permanent neighbours now. In a way. Only eight or nine miles between us.” Receiving no answer he added, with an air of finality : “ In short, I live here.”

She said : “ Do you?” and smiled faintly, acknowledging the information. Her friendliness seemed curiously negative, asking and giving nothing, and taking admiration for granted. If a man were seriously interested in her, he thought, this detachment would be maddening. But as things are it doesn't matter a damn. I'm not going to think seriously of a girl of—what? Twenty-one or twenty-two she must be. Nor, for that matter, any other girl either. I've done with all that. Learnt my lesson. She sees me as a middle-aged man—almost. I must remember that. To David, who felt precisely no age at all, this thought was astonishing : only by an imaginative effort could he achieve it, this seeing of himself through the eyes of a young girl.

The road to Radnage Hollow, where old Hinksey lived, with his dogs and his horses and his comparatively young wife, became narrow and winding so soon as the outskirts of the little town were left behind. David switched on both headlamps, and with the change this made in the world his momentary agitation subsided. The sensation of being a luminous body tunnelling through darkness, the rush of the road towards him, the dark enamelled green of grass-verge and hurrying hedge, gave a dream quality to the outer world. He felt himself to be enclosed in a timeless travelling moment. Mary Wilton, after a silence he had made no further attempt to break, picked up his disregarded question and answered it, telling him she was just back from America, and had left her mother there.

“My mother is marrying again,” she said. “ I left her to it.”

She spoke coolly, lightly, as though of a trifle. He wondered what she really felt about it. Tragic? Jealous? Disappointed? Or just nothing? Impossible to tell. Was it a mask or a face she wore? Inconveniently lovely, whichever it was. But that, said
David Brome, is no concern of mine. Nor shall be, world without end.

Miss Camshaw, on her way through the workroom, came slowly to a pause at Lily Elver's table. She accepted the convention that it was unwise to risk her authority by being too friendly with the girls, and she knew it to be still more unwise, even dangerous, to have favourites among them. But now that the firm had waxed prosperous, so that she was no longer required to be part-time supervisor as well as designer, occasions of official contact with the girls were rare, and she held herself excused from a too rigid regard for discipline. As an artist she could afford to stand a little aloof from such things; for though she was now retained on the staff, at a comfortable salary, the freelance's bias towards complete independence was still strong in her.

Stopping at Lily's table, she stood for a second or two waiting for the girl's attention. But Lily, fully conscious of the shadow that had fallen across her work, had her own reasons for not looking up. She was fully conscious indeed, even painfully so, of the tall slim figure, the sensitive hands, the searching eyes; but she was feverishly trying to decide, in the seconds that remained to her, how much Miss Camshaw knew, or had guessed, and holding at bay the unreasoning fear that perhaps she knew everything. Nor was her fear entirely self-regarding; for Miss Camshaw, though she carried her forty-five years with an almost military assurance, had proved herself to be a woman very vulnerable in her feelings.

In a low voice, harsh with an agitation she could not quite suppress, Miss Camshaw said : “ What happened last night, Lily?”

My word, thought Lily, if I was to tell you that! If I just was to!

“Nothing, Miss Camshaw,” she said quickly.

More gently, but in the same hurried undertone, Miss Camshaw said : “ I looked for you everywhere.”

I know you did, thought Lily. And wasn't it a job giving you the slip! Lily felt a twinge of self-reproach, but defended herself by
asking what was the good of taking a person out and then not letting them have a bit of fun.

“I'm ever so sorry, Miss Camshaw.”

Beginning to be conscious of a stir of curiosity among the other girls, Miss Camshaw said lightly : “ Nonsense, child! What is there to be sorry about? You won't forget our little plan for to-morrow? They say it's the best film he's made.”

“No, Miss Camshaw. It's ever so kind of you.”

Miss Camshaw passed on to her own room, leaving Lily to her thoughts, and to the comments of her next neighbour.

“Quite the lady, aren't you? Hobnobbing with Miss Camshaw!”

“Well,” said Lily, “ if she doesn't put on airs, why should I?”

“Everyone to their taste, I'm sure,” said the commentator. “ She's not a bad old thing, anyhow. Going to the pictures, are you?”

“Sharp ears some people have got, haven't they? Did you ever notice?” said Lily with a sweet bright smile.

She half-wanted to get out of to-morrow evening's engagement. But only half, because after all a film
was
a film, and you could depend on Miss Camshaw to do the thing in style. She wished it were Adam that was taking her, and she wished Adam had asked her where she lived (but perhaps he forgot), and she wished she could believe that she would soon see Adam again. But she had worldly wisdom enough not to take wishing as an index of probability. Besides, you can't have fun like that every day. It wouldn't be the same if you did. And there was something terribly romantic, when you came to think of it, in the sort of ships that pass in the night kind of adventure. Romantic, but a bit sort of sad. Well, but that was why, wasn't it? Dancing with tears in your eyes and all that.
Do you remember my kisses, dear? You it was taught me what bliss is, dear. My wonder man, how ever can
… It was wonderful, really, the way the song-writers described a person's feelings.

Lily hoped Miss Camshaw wouldn't ask any more questions about last night's party, but in this she was disappointed. Before the film Miss Camshaw took her out to tea, and they had a quiet corner to themselves where they could talk freely. Too freely for
Lily's comfort : every remark that reminded her of Adam, however indirectly, made her feel as though the whole story of last night could be read in her eyes.

“Didn't I see you talking to Adam Swinford?” said Miss Camshaw suddenly.

“Which one was that?” answered Lily, wrinkling her brow. “ Such a
lot
of men talked to me last night. I've never
seen
so many people all at once. Well, not at a party, I mean.”

“I hope you remembered what I said, dear?”

“What you said, Miss Camshaw?”

“About being careful with strangers. About people taking advantage.”

“Yes, Miss Camshaw.”

“Lily, I wish you could remember to call me Edith, when we're away from business.”

“I'm ever so sorry,” said Lily.

She meant what she said. She meant, indeed, rather more than she said. She found it impossible to dislike a woman who had gone out of her way to be nice to her; nor could she help being a little sorry for Miss Camshaw. “ We're both alone in the world,” Miss Camshaw had said, “ so perhaps we can cheer each other up a bit.” Lily had not felt equal to retorting that she did not need cheering up, though the idea made her laugh when she thought of it, cheerfulness being her strong suit : she was a girl who liked fun, and seldom lacked for it, despite her orphaned condition. Equally comic was Miss Camshaw's earnest resolve to protect her innocence against the wicked designs of men. As if I couldn't look after myself, thought Lily, at
my
age! Lily's age was twenty-one, no less; she knew a thing or two, as was only to be expected; and among the things she knew was how to tell a young man where he got off—or an old man, either, for that matter, for they were as bad, if not worse. Old-fashioned, that was Miss Camshaw. I reckon I've done the Unhand Me act
and
meant it, with more fellows than she's ever said how d'you do to, said Lily. But Miss Camshaw, it was evident, had a down on men, though she'd never have admitted it. Lily was sorry for her on every count, concluding, since no other conclusion was possible, that years ago, when she was young, some man had treated her badly. Crossed in love, that was it. Jilted. The day before her
wedding-day, very likely. Or perhaps left waiting at the church, like in the comic song Dad used to sing. Yes, that was it : she'd loved but once and loved in vain. Some deceiver. Some married man. There was that much about Adam : pretty certain he wasn't married. There was every other disadvantage : class and that, though that did make it more exciting and like the films : but at least he hadn't a wife to mix things up.