James Hilton: Collected Novels (41 page)

“You make it sound a long time.”

“It has been a long time.”

“I feel so damned sorry for her, George. My uncle never liked her. Nobody seems to like her much, for that matter—not how she is now. And the chances are my father won’t come back. She thinks he will, but to me it doesn’t seem probable.”

George exclaimed: “By God, though, if she thinks he will, he may. In fact he’d almost better!”

Charles stared for a moment, then slowly smiled. “Yes, I know. She gets her own way as a rule. That’s why, when she learns about Julie and me—”

“You haven’t told her yet?”

“Not yet. Do you think I should?”

George thought a moment, then said: “Aye, might as well get it over.”

“I will then. I’ll write her tomorrow. Your advice has been pretty good so far.”

“You mean you’re happy?”

Charles nodded profoundly.

“That’s good. I can see Julie is too. And don’t feel you ought to be looking after your mother. It’s she who feels she ought to be looking after you…but you’re against that, and so am I.”

“I know. And she doesn’t really need me, she only needs me to need her.”

“That’s not a bad way of putting it.”

“Because she’s got a sort of secret strength to face things—and less fear than anyone I ever met—man or woman. I often used to think when I was sweating it out over Berlin—God, I wish I had guts of iron like hers…It was crazy, sometimes, the things she’d do. We were at a restaurant in Munich once and a crowd of army officers sat down at the next table. They were pretty drunk and high-tempered, started abusing a waiter for something or other. Eventually one of them struck the man, and my mother, who was closer than I was, leaned over and bopped the officer over the head with a Chianti bottle. Suddenly—quietly—without a word—just like that.” Charles swung his arm. “Pure slapstick comedy but for the time and place.”

“What happened?”

“Blood and Chianti all over everything. A riot. Amidst which I managed to get her out by a back door. The restaurant owner was as keen to save his premises as I was to avoid an international incident.”

George laughed. “It wasn’t always so serious. Once she and I were arguing at dinner about something or other quite trivial when she picked up a piece of apple pie and threw it at me. And it happened that you could see in from the street and somebody
had
seen in—and also it was the middle of an election campaign. They called me Apple-Pie George after that for a time.” George laughed louder at the recollection. “I used to think it harmed my chances—maybe it did. But I’m glad to know about all this. I’d forgive her a lot for that.”

“Didn’t you forgive her anyway?”

“Aye, I always found it pretty easy.”

“My father used to say it was easy to forgive her if she was wrong, but if she turned out to be right then you might as well never forgive yourself.”

George said after a long pause: “I don’t want to send you away, but if you’re feeling sleepy…I’ve booked a room for you both at the Greyhound.”

“The Greyhound?”

“Just along the street. More comfortable than here.”

Charles crossed the room and George put his arm round the boy’s shoulder as the two walked back to the kitchen. “Don’t you worry, lad. If I can help her I shall. It won’t all be your job. You can count on me for that.”

“Seems to me I count on you for a lot of things, George.”

George took them over to the Greyhound, said goodnight, and began the short stroll back to his house. But he felt so wakeful he made a detour past the Town Hall, his mind being still full of thoughts, strange thoughts, such as that Charles had actually been under his roof, and that Browdley in moonlight was really a beautiful place. Not only the Town Hall, but the main office of the Browdley Building Society, Joe Hardman’s fish shop, even Ridgeway’s garage on whose doors, as a halcyon reminder, there could still be seen the painting of a very gay peacetime charabanc for hire…all so beautiful…which was absurd, of course; yet even as he admitted it, beauty and a little sadness remained in what he felt. He could not hope for sleep in such a mood; but he could work, there was always that. As he entered his house the hall was bright as bars of silver; he could even read the headline of the
Advertiser,
and a typical one, even after five years of war—“Shall Browdley Have Sunday Cinemas?” So
that
was how his old journalistic rival still looked at the world, he mused, with extra irony because the Sunday cinema question had been debated in Browdley ever since he had campaigned as a young man for his first Council election…and now they were at it again!…No wonder Lord Winslow could remark that England didn’t change! But it did change, for all that, beneath the surface of dead issues regularly flogged to life. George slipped the paper into his pocket as he walked into the open study doorway.

Suddenly he knew he was not alone. Someone was standing in front of the window, staring out—as Charles had done earlier—into the garden. The figure turned, offered a profile against the moonlight, was unmistakable…

“
Livia
!”

At the instant of recognition he felt his hands clench with shock for which he must brace mind and heart as well; and he did so, almost as instantly.

“Where is he? He’s been here, George. I know that. I want to see him.”

He answered in a level voice: “They’re not here now, Livia.”

“
They
? Who’re
they
?”

He answered because it was the way he himself thought of them: “Charles and Julie.”

He caught his breath, having spoken the phrase; he would have expected a scene, but for knowing that with Livia one could never expect the expected. All she did was to cross the room and sit on the arm of his armchair, while he drew curtains and switched on the light. He saw then that she looked tired and rather pale, but not uncomposed. Because he wanted to give her time to grasp the situation, he did not speak, but went back to the curtains and pretended to be fixing them with especial care.

“Julie,” she said at last, still quietly. “So that’s her name, Charlie and Julie. How sweet! Where are they?”

“Why did you come here, Livia?” he countered. “What made you think it would help?”

“I don’t want it to help. I mean to stop this nonsense. And I know they
are
here, now you’ve told me she’s with him, because I went to Cambridge first and talked to his servant at the college…I know, it’s no use you denying it. Of course I know. And I know your part in it all. I
always
know.”

“Aye, there’s not much misses you—or ever did. But there’s something extra to tell you this time.” He added, in a kindly voice, with no note of triumph in it: “I told you, Livia, my advice would be to let the boy live his own life. That’s what he’s going to do, and I’ll admit I’m all for it. So whatever you’ve come to stop you’re too late.”

“
I’m
too late?” She stared at him with glazed eyes. “Oh no, no. You’re the one who’s late. You have been all along. And he’s where you put him because of that. You and your kind of people. You talk about letting him live his own life—why
didn’t
you, then, when he had one to live—not just half a one? That’s all he has now because of the mess you’ve made of everything. You said once my father’s victims were all over the town—but yours are all over the world—people like you who went on making speeches…speeches…you were making them before he was born—just as you still are—”

“Livia, you surely haven’t come here just for an argument—”

“I told you what I came here for. I want Charlie. I
want
him. What’s left of him, that is, after your kind have said all their prayers and made all their speeches—”

“I don’t know what you’re driving at, Livia. If you mean that my generation’s largely responsible for the war, then I’ll agree with you. Charles and I once discussed the same point—”

“Oh, you did, did you? Just a nice friendly discussion. And he forgave you, I suppose. Man to man and all that. With his shattered nerves and smashed legs and burned eyes he forgave you—because he too may need to be forgiven someday.”

“Aye, if he just sits back and lets things happen. I told him that. There was a children’s ward next to where he was in the hospital, and I asked if he wasn’t afraid that those kids when they grew up—or his own kids for that matter—”

Her eyes sharpened.

“
His
? He’ll never have any. Maybe he can’t. It’s like that sometimes. I hope so, because that would be the best way to end it. My father, me, him, full stop…”

“Livia, that’s a terrible thing to say.”

“More terrible to mean.”

“I hope you’ll never let him know you do mean it.”

“I shan’t have to. It’ll come to him when we’re in Ireland.”

“Ireland? I doubt he’ll want to go there now so much.”

“He doesn’t know what he wants. He thinks he wants this girl, but that’s absurd. I can make him want what he really wants.”

“Livia…remember I said you were too late.” George paused, then added: “They’re married.”

“
What
?”

“Three days ago in London. He was going to wire you about it tomorrow. Perhaps he ought to have done so before, but you can hardly blame him.”

George then saw something which, despite all Millbay had said, he had tried to believe did not exist. It was a look of implacability so vivid, so pure in a sense, that he recoiled from it less in revulsion than in elemental awareness of what it signified. For he was all against it, as a stream of yielding water is against the rock it will wear down in a million years or so. And suddenly, without bitterness, he saw Livia as a symbol of all that must so be worn down, no matter how hard or long the struggle, no matter how often the victories of greed and despair and intolerance seem to make nonsense of it.

With his own gentler implacability he stared at hers till the transfiguration disappeared.

She said at length: “So…you think…you’ve done the trick?”

“It’s no trick, Livia.”

“Last-minute victory, then? Narrow majority? And a hearty vote of thanks to Mister Mayor…?” But she was her masked self again, so that the stress on the prefix was only ironic. She went on: “Perhaps you still don’t know what I’m driving at? You never did—and you’re afraid Charlie might if he got the chance. You’re afraid he might see things my way. So’s Howard. He wants him to have lands and a title and riches—”

“Aye, I know, and I agree with you there. They’d be just a burden to him, and that’s why—”

“That’s why you’d rather give him
your
kind of burden. Speeches—promises—the same old never-again stuff. But you shan’t, George—I can stop that, even now. And as for the little schemer he’s been duped by, does she think
her
influence is going to count?”

“Nay, Livia, not hers. Nor mine, nor his uncle’s, nor yours. Let him get on his feet, build up his own ideas, see things with his own eyes when he has the strength to see clearly—that’s all I’m aiming for. He’ll influence me as much as I will him—I’m not so sure of my own opinions that I’d try to ram them down somebody’s throat. I’ll take his—if he can convince me. Or we can keep our own. It doesn’t matter. I know you look at things differently—”

“So does the man from Mars, maybe.”

That stumped him; he blinked bewilderedly till she continued: “If he could see the world today he’d think it was in charge of raving lunatics and the asylums were for sane people who’d gone there for safety. So if anybody thinks I’m a little out of my mind—Howard does, I know—”

“Livia,
I
don’t. But I do think—for the time being—you’re not able to help the boy as he most needs helping…Later, perhaps…”

“Too late—and already you talk of
later…
” She suddenly got up and began walking towards the door. “I can see this is wasting more time. I’d better start on my way back. The five-ten, isn’t it? I remember. Can I have a cup of tea first?”

“Why…of course, I’m only sorry you…” But then he stopped; he didn’t know what he was only sorry about, except that she had come.

She said, from the hall as she crossed it to the kitchen: “No pressing invitation to stay a few days, then?”

“Nay, Livia, and you know why. I’m anxious that Charlie shouldn’t have any shocks.” He had called the boy Charlie because she had and it seemed almost something shared and sharable at last between them, something that warmed his voice as he added: “Give him a chance, Livia. Leave him alone a bit. God knows that’s a hard thing to say, but I mean it.”

She said after a pause: “Do you hate me, George?”

He shook his head. “I never did and I never could. I’m not much use at hating folks, to be frank. But I can fight ’em when I have to…and I’d have to now, if you made me.”

“And you think you’d win?”

“I’m not so sure, but I’m not sure I’d lose, either. That’s why I say give him a chance. Give us all a chance this time.”

In the kitchen she prepared tea herself, not letting him do so, as if she were certain nothing had been changed (and practically nothing had). She began to cry a little while she moved about. George watched her unhappily, puzzled not so much by her behavior as by his own, for he found himself less moved by her tears than by her simple act of tightening a tap that had been leaking into the sink for days. Nobody could do things so deftly, quickly, tidily, uncontrovertibly. She had probably got her own way with Japs pretty much as she did with taps, George reflected whimsically; and then again he was touched by her next remark, clairvoyant in that old familiar blinding way of hers: “You think I’m acting, don’t you, George? And you think that means I’m not sincere?…You don’t understand that sometimes I mean things so much I
have
to act?…You don’t understand that, because you
never
mean things so much…Oh George, you don’t know how terrible it is to be alive in this world!”

“Perhaps I do, Livia, perhaps I don’t feel it the way you do, but I know it, and I also know this—there’s not only terror—there’s hope—and love—”

“But they’re the most terrible of all—”

“Nay, nay, not how I see things.”

“But do you see
anything
? Anything to match love and hate? I love my son and I hate that girl—I’d kill her if I got the chance…”