The Spring Madness of Mr Sermon (18 page)

^{in 1915-"}

^{"You weren't born in 191
s,"
he said gallantly. She smiled and he noticed that she smiled in a slightly mediaeval way so that at last he got an inkling of the reason why they called the Mona Lisa 'The Smiling Woman', something which had always mystified him for years, because she seemed not to be smiling at all.}

^{"Come now, how old?" she asked.}

^{"My dear Miss Boxall," he said, matching her mood, "I'm not such a fool as to go around guessing the ages of ladies!"}

^{"As a matter of fact, you're right," she admitted. "He was killed before I was born but I can still claim him as an uncle surely? He was my father's only brother."}

^{She told him that she was thirty-three and he reminded her cheerfully that he was forty-nine, and the exchange of information increased the feeling of comradeship that had been building ever since he came in from his tramp. He said:}

^{"Look here, Miss Boxall, will you let me ask you a rather impertinent question ? Is this trip of yours anything to do with your age ?"}

^{"Yes, it is," she said simply, "it's now or never!"}

^{"Did that fact touch it off?"}

^{"Yes, I think it did. Why?"}

^{"Because it's really why I made up my mind to make a break, only with me it's a much more last-minute decision. In a way it makes us fellow travellers, don't you think?"}

^{Exactly what kind of a break are you making, Mr. Sermon?"}

^{He considered. For a moment he was on the point of telling her everything, or very nearly everything, and certainly admitting to}

^{Sybil and the children if not to his fugitive status but then, as she waited, he succumbed to a clownish sense of pity for her, or perhaps it was not pity but an absurd idea that she would be disappointed to learn that he had a wife and grown-up children and might even reconsider her decision to share the house with him for the next fortnight. Whatever the reason, he compromised.}

^{"I was very unhappy where I was working," he said, "I quarrelled with the Head and walked out. It was a silly thing to do at my age but I'm not in the least sorry that I did. Already it's given me a new kind of confidence in myself, almost like . . . like being young again, if you see what I mean!"}

^{She gave him a long, thoughtful glance and as he met her eyes he noticed something that he should have noticed two hours ago, when he first sat down at the table. She had obviously dressed for him and gone to some pains to look her best for his return. When he had called on her that morning she had been wearing black slacks, sandals and an old sweater. He had noted her lack of make-up, her pale lips and old-fashioned hair-style. But he had not noted the changes she had made in his absence, the neat, biscuit-coloured two-piece, the matching suede shoes, the small pearl earrings, the touch of mascara, the heavy, reddish hair no longer coiled over the ears but parted in the middle and curled at the ends so that her face seemed less narrow and her forehead less high. She had been more generous with her lipstick and her mouth, which had seemed small and rather prim was appreciably riper. Even her ringer nails had been touched up with a little polish and in place of her ugly string of imitation pearls was a Victorian locket enclosing a small Grecian profile. Suddenly he felt relieved that he had not mentioned Sybil.}

^{"I see what you mean, Mr. Sermon, and if I don't who should ? Forty-nine to a man approximates to about thirty-five in a woman and I think you were perfectly right to try again and I congratulate you. After all, you seem to have made a clean break, whereas mine is likely to be temporary."}

^{"How can you be sure of that? You haven't made it yet!"}

^{"Oh, I know me, I'll come back with my tail between my legs, I always do."}

¹¹⁶

^{"But you've never tried before."}

^{"I've never been on a cruise before, but there are plenty of other ways of breaking a circle. After all, you managed it without Mr. Cook's help."}

^{He leaned forward. Something told him that she had come very close to telling him a good deal more but had suddenly thought better of it.}

^{"What happened ? Was it the stage ?"}

^{"No," she said, smiling again, "it didn't take me long to find out that was a cul-de-sac as far as I was concerned."}

^{"I don't want to sound inquisitive, but honestly, if you'd like to talk it does help sometimes. It's helped me a great deal since I broke the ice."}

^{She got up and reached for the cups. Then, quite suddenly, she sat down again and stretched her legs to the fire.}

^{"I don't know what it is about you, Mr. Sermon, but you'd make a wonderful sob-journalist. I believe you could coax people to tell you anything. Exactly what do you want to know about me?"}

^{"All manner of things," he said cheerfully, "for instance, were you ever in love?"}

^"Twice."

^{"Was it reciprocated?"}

^{"I think so, once."}

^{"What happened?"}

^{"That once? He was killed in Malaya eight years ago."}

^{He noticed that she said this without emotion, as though she had long since come to terms with the loss but it did nothing to enlarge his theory that she was a person who was searching for a personal relationship that would release her from intolerable loneliness. She struck him as a woman who carried her sense of isolation through life as though it was a physical handicap, honourably imposed. She had not grown to accept it without resentment but in a perverse way she was almost proud of it. He said :}

^{In a place like this it should be easy to make friends. You must have several, some of them reasonably intimate."}

^{"You don't make friends after your mid-twenties," she said, "just}

¹¹⁷

^{acquaintances, people you can take or leave and who can do the same with you!"}

^{He realised that this was so for in all the years he had spent at Napier Hall he had not made a single friend, indeed, he was closer to chance acquaintances like Tapper Sugg and this woman than to anyone in the world he had shrugged off a day or so ago.}

^{"How long have you been living here alone?" he asked.}

^{"Since my father died. He was a doctor in the district and I bought this house with most of the money he left. I wasn't trained for anything, so I had to make a living somehow. I could run a house and it seemed to be the best thing to do in the circumstances. That was a few months after Bill died."}

^{Eight years. She had been about twenty-five then and ever since time had submerged her as it had rolled over him, so that now, again like him, she was moving rapidly to a crisis, baffled and angry at futility and waste.}

^{The reflection increased the sense of comradeship he felt for her and this to an almost physical degree, for he suddenly felt impelled to give it expression, to touch her, to stroke her hair, to kiss her perhaps but there was nothing sensual in the impulse. It would have been simply a gesture from one lonely soul to another, a fainthearted desire to break the wall she had erected around her and show her that contact could be established if only shy people had the will to bypass the rituals of introduction, the interminable exchange of small-talk, the various stages effusion that civilisation imposed upon people of their age and social background.}

^{Perhaps he might have found the courage to do just this, to get up and put his arm around her slim waist and say, without preamble: "Look here, Miss Boxall, I don't know why you've shut yourself away all these years but it certainly isn't to mourn a young man killed in Malaya! There's nothing on a cruise to Istanbul that you can't find right here, so why don't we settle for a few days or weeks of pleasant companionship in comfortable surroundings and have something to look back on with pleasure, say, this time next year?" He might have said this, but he did not for, as though sensing danger, she fluttered and made a grab at the empty coffee cups, saying:}

¹¹⁸

^{"You must be very tired and I'm keeping you! Would you like a hot water bottle? I can easily get one."}

^{The remark was so obviously a parry that he almost laughed, first at her, then at himself.}

^{"No thank you, Miss Boxall, no bottle. What time do you have breakfast?"}

^{"About nine usually, but later if you like."}

^{"I'll probably take a swim. The earlier I get used to it the less I feel the cold. Good night, Miss Boxall, and thank you for making me so comfortable."}

^{"Good night, Mr. Sermon," she said and bent to put the fireguard in the hearth.}

^{Was he mistaken? Did she hesitate for a moment, as though reluctant to bring their evening to an end? He stood up and as he did so administered to himself one of his disciplinary nudges. 'I really must try and stop myself hungering after women in this rakish fashion!' he thought. 'There was Sybil, the barmaid Bella, the girl on the beach and now this perfectly respectable spinster who has gone out of her way to make me feel at home but damn it, she did that out of politeness not with an eye to the main chance!' and he nodded civilly and marched straight upstairs to bed. He was just dropping off to sleep when he heard her mount the stairs and softly close her door. Then a delicious ache of physical exhaustion settled over him like a soft blanket and he drifted away but somewhere beneath his drowsiness he was aware of a faint pinprick of disappointment at finding himself alone again.}

¹¹⁹

^{CHAPTER FOUR}

^Mr.
Sermon

^{Takes Over}

^{in Two Spheres}

^{the
passage of the next few days had a timelessness appropriate to Avalon. Each day spun a pattern and the patterns were very much the same but there was nothing featureless about them like days spent at Napier Hall or, indeed, at any other establishment where Mr. Sermon had lived or worked.}

^{Each morning he rose about eight o'clock and took a swim, remaining in the water less than five minutes but enjoying the virtuous glow the salt water kindled after he had towelled himself on the deserted beach and walked up to the promenade in lively anticipation of Olga Boxall's bacon, eggs and fried tomatoes, served to him the moment he returned home.}

^{He learned to think of The Chalet as home in a way that the detached house in Wyckham Rise had never been. In some ways it was a ridiculously pretentious little building, with its brewer's Tudor appearance and its absurd minstrel gallery, but in other ways it was cosy and relaxing and cheerful with Olga's generous fires and comfortable chairs and excellent cooking. Their relationship improved day by day but although it was cordial and frank, so that they sometimes exchanged a little raillery and told each other a good deal about their respective backgrounds, it never approached the intimacy of that first evening, for it seemed to Mr. Sermon that}

¹²⁰

^{each of them made a conscious effort to prevent this, almost as though they had made a pact not to meddle with the unpredictable but to accept the smaller mercy of easy, humdrum companionship.}

^{One thing rather surprised him. The more he saw of Olga Boxall the younger and the more attractive she seemed to him. She never reappeared as the rather gaunt, slightly edgy woman in black slacks and jumper who had greeted him at the front door that first morning but seemed instead to develop, slowly but unmistakably, into a very feminine creature with a general air of cosiness that went along with her house and comfortable chairs. And often there was rather more to it than that, for her smile and voice had something in common with the lived-in quality of the little sitting-room where they watched television and chatted in the evenings. Her presence, he discovered, was as welcome to him as her shining grate and winking coal fire and this was not only because she was undemanding, and could sustain long silences without the slightest embarrassment, but also because she was his intellectual equal and had read what seemed to him an astonishing amount of biography and had even made a study of several periods of history, the fifteenth century for instance, and the French Revolution. She had very liberal views and an essential tolerance about people that even went so far as to make her champion traditional monsters, like Richard III, or crusty patricians, like the Duke of Wellington.}

^{They were very pleasant evenings for Mr. Sermon when, replete after a good dinner, he could sit in the best armchair, watch a TV feature, drink his coffee and then silence the television in order to discuss the character of Edward IV or Danton, or argue the relative merits of Napoleon's marshals.}

^{Sometimes, during the day, he went for a short hike, nursing his blister and hardening his feet and at least once a day he dropped in to see Tapper and his father and son, drinking cocoa in the littered bakery and listening to Flash Sugg inveigh against the modern trends of The Trade.}