Time and Time Again Page 9

  'Charlie, I always wanted to come here to see you.'

  'Then why didn't you suggest it? Or why didn't I--sooner? It's so obvious--and yet wonderful.'

  'I thought perhaps you didn't want me mixed up with your work.'

  'You already are mixed up. I see you on every page of Stubbs and Maitland.'

  She laughed gaily. 'And I see you on every page of Mr. Graybar's dictation.'

  'Forget Mr. Graybar--for two whole days.' He squeezed her arm and thought that possibly in his own room, sometime during her stay, they would enjoy the privacy they had sought till then in streets that happened to be dark or train-compartments that happened to be empty between stations; he knew this Cambridge visit was bound to mark a stage in their relationship.

  He began to point out the colleges. 'That's the first one, Downing-- I mean the first on the way from the station. The next is Emmanuel. . . . They're all separate, and together they make up the University. So you see why you can't say Cambridge College-- there isn't such a thing--if you talk of a college you have to use its own special name--like Downing or Emmanuel.' He had always wanted to explain that to her.

  'How many colleges are there?'

  'Over a dozen, I should think--yes, at least a dozen.'

  'Don't you know exactly?'

  'I don't believe I do, unless I counted them on my fingers. . . . This is Christ's--John Milton's college. We'll look round some of them later. . . . Here's Petty Cury--this narrow street, where your hotel is. I think you'll be comfortable.'

  He had engaged a room, even going so far as to inspect it before approval; it overlooked Petty Cury and might be noisy till late at night, but she wouldn't be using it till then. While she took her bag to it he waited in the glass-roofed lounge. Then she came down, spruced and tidied, and his heart melted to see her against this new background, but at the same time he felt tense, as if the full significance of her visit was only just dawning on him. He also hoped he could sleep better during the coming night; it was a need, like others he was beginning to be aware of, that went deeper than a desire. Suddenly he wondered what on earth had made him ask Tony Weigall and Bill Peters that evening--how much cosier just to have dinner on their own, with no strangers intruding when once Debden had cleared away and said goodnight.

  They crossed the centre of the town to his college, which he was anxious to show her first, as a sample, though it was not the oldest or one of those most visited by sightseers. She was much impressed by the salute the porter gave him as they passed into the First Court, and surprised by the narrow staircase they had to climb and the double doors he had to open to get to his top-floor rooms, and entranced by the rooms themselves--so much larger and grander than she had imagined. He then took her to the Chapel and the Library and the Hall, where he showed her the ancient tables and the Holbein and the piece of wood, shaped like a hand-mirror, that had printed on it the college grace which he had taken his turn to read aloud until, with no particular effort of memory, he had come to know the long Latin paragraph by heart. Then they strolled along the Backs and looked into King's Chapel till it was time to return to his rooms, when it was revealed to her (by the most plausible of circumstances) that seventeenth-century college rooms lacked some of the basic conveniences of the modern house. She was surprised again, but agreeably unshy about such things and therefore amused. Perhaps because of this he decided to conquer his own shyness about something very different, but in its own way just as intimate; he got out some of his paintings. He was always reluctant to do this--too often he had read in the eyes of people looking at other people's paintings neither enthusiasm nor distaste, but merely a desperate struggle to think of something to say that was clever or at least flattering. It was a test, therefore, that he shrank from putting his friends to, because he shrank from putting himself to it. But now with Lily, acting on impulse, he took the risk. He fixed the easel and placed the canvases on it one by one, saying nothing about any of them, while she sat curled in the window seat viewing them equally without word or gesture.

  When she had seen the lot and he had put them away again he poured himself a glass of sherry. She still didn't speak, and he began to approve of her silence in a miserable sort of way. At least she wasn't dealing out insincere and meaningless compliments. Presently she said: 'Charlie, I'm so glad you let me see the pictures. It's no good my trying to tell you what I think of them because I don't know. I liked some better than others. I liked the one of the windy day.'

  'Which one was that?'

  'The third, I think, or the fourth.'

  He knew the one she meant; it was a fenland scene, mainly clouds--a windy day, to be sure (the canvas had been blown down by one of the gusts), but there were no obvious clues like bending trees or drifting smoke. What he had tried to do, but did not think he had succeeded in doing, was to get the wind into his lighting of the sky, into the whole surface texture of the picture. And now she was telling him he had succeeded.

  Never had he felt such a moment of utter and blissful reassurance. He went over to her and put his arm round her in full view of anyone who might be passing across the court, and in a curious way he hoped he might be seen, as the finder of a new truth wants to proclaim it.

  'Lily, my little one--my darling. . . .'

  'Did I say the wrong thing about the pictures? Oh, I'm sorry, Charlie.'

  'Nothing you say is ever the wrong thing. It's I who DO the wrong things. Tonight, for instance, we ought to have been alone.'

  'But you asked some friends of yours, didn't you?'

  'Yes, I did, and I--but no, it's all right, you'll like them. They're good fellows.'

  'Of course I'll like them.'

  The college clock began to strike the hour, followed by other clocks all over the town. The miscellaneous near and distant chiming lasted for some time, many of the clocks being minutes fast or slow, and he told her it would all begin again, for the quarter, after about a ten-minute interval. 'They'll probably keep you awake all night.'

  'I won't mind. I'm so excited to be here. Charlie, d'you know this is the first time I've ever been away from home by myself?'

  'You're not by yourself.'

  'I mean at night . . . without a friend.'

  'What friend? I didn't know you had any other particular friend.'

  'Of course I have. I mean girls. There's Ethel at the office--we always go away on our holidays together. And there's Phyllis Baxter I used to go with at school. You haven't met them because every time you're free I'd much rather be with you.'

  'A good answer.'

  'Don't you believe me?'

  'I do. And it WAS a windy day in that picture. It was indeed.'

  In the mood he was in, torn between exultation and regret, between the wish that they were alone and the hope that his friends would like her, and over it all the tensions that had not been eased by sleep, he could hardly understand himself, much less expect her to understand him.

  'Charlie, what's the matter? You sound so sharp, as if you were nervous about something.'

  It was because he had heard Weigall and Peters coming up the stairs.

  Within a few minutes he was relieved at least on one count. Weigall had draped his long legs from the far end of the couch and Peters was at the nearer end, and in between, laughing and chatting as if she had known them for years, was Lily. It came out that Weigall's family were from Norfolk and that Lily, too, had relatives there; they talked about Norwich and Sandringham and other places they both knew. With Peters, who was a historian, Lily found less in common at first; but soon they discovered a shared interest in films, Peters being something of a highbrow while Lily was just an ordinary regular patron of whatever the Linstead cinema offered. Peters seemed to find her comments both amusing and delightful, and when Debden announced that soup was served Peters insisted on sitting next to Lily although Charles had planned to have Weigall there. But with only four persons at a small table it really didn't much matter how they sat. What did matter, as Charles be
gan to notice it, was that Peters was bringing Lily to a kind of life Charles had never seen in her before. Charles even wondered whether he had ever been jealous before, for the glum and spiritually disabling sensation he felt was new in his experience.

  Lily was telling Peters about a dog they had had at Ladysmith Road when she was a child, and it appeared that Peters also liked dogs and that his family had had one of the same breed. 'There's nothing like a dog,' Peters assured her.

  'Except a cat,' said Lily. 'We have a lovely cat.'

  'But a cat isn't really like a dog,' said Peters.

  Weigall winked at Charles. 'Too intellectual for me--this conversation,' he commented.

  'We have two Airedales at Beeching,' said Charles, suddenly desperate to assert himself.

  Peters laughed. 'You see, Lily, we can't win! TWO Airedales! Think of that . . . and how many horses, cows, housemaids, butlers, grooms, and other domestic pets? I don't suppose Andy knows--he's never bothered to count.'

  'He didn't even know how many colleges there are in Cambridge,' said Lily, extending the joke. 'Did you, Charlie? And you never told me they called you Andy, either.'

  Charles was concerned lest she should gain an exaggerated impression of Beeching from Peters' nonsense, but he was also astonished--and perhaps dismayed--that Lily seemed to be impressed so little. It was the 'Andy' she had picked up. 'It's just a nickname I had at school,' he explained, adding rather foolishly: 'From Anderson.'

  'Really?' Weigall gave himself an ironic poise. 'I think we can accept that as a hypothesis.' He intoned in imitation of some professor. 'And as for how many colleges there are, does ANYBODY know?'

  This kind of thing was lost on Lily. 'Well,' she said, 'when I was at school we were told how many counties there are in England.'

  'What a depressing school it must have been!'

  'It was not! It was better-looking than some of these old colleges.'

  Weigall assumed his most languid air. 'BETTER-looking, Lily?'

  'Newer. More modern. I tell you, Linstead's an up-to-date place. You should see some of the parks we have. My dad's the superintendent of them.'

  Peters abruptly seized Lily's hand across the table. 'Lily . . . ignore these other two and listen to me. First, I congratulate you. To have a father who superintends parks is magnificent. My own father, God bless him, is a coal miner. Lived in the same cottage for thirty years--a cottage in a town where there are no parks and consequently no superintendent of parks. My father began work in the pits when he was eleven, and he still works in the pits. But by sheer grit and ability his son, whom you see here in a preliminary stage of intoxication . . . by sheer . . . whatever it was I just said . . . plus, of course, an army grant and a scholarship and sundry other assistances . . . has been admitted to this ancient seat of learning to study, ape, and acquire the manners and customs of his betters . . . while still retaining, Lily--and this is important--that innate sympathy with the working classes that makes him salute you, as he does now, in profound adoration!'

  Charles contrived a smile, but Lily was blushing through the beginnings of tears. 'Oh, go on with you,' she murmured, but she did not withdraw her hand. 'I'm not crying because I believe a word you say--it's the way you make me feel. . . . Charlie, does he often talk like that?'

  Charles would have had to admit that Bill Peters often did, after a few drinks; but there wasn't time to answer at all before Peters raised his glass and demanded a toast. 'To the Labour Party and the working classes, Lily!'

  'Oh, that's a lot of nonsense!' she retorted. 'My dad votes Conservative!'

  She wouldn't drink, but she turned to them all with a rosy smile, finally settling it on Charles. 'Darling, it's such fun being here. . . . I didn't know clever people could be so silly.'

  * * * * *

  The rest of the evening passed for Charles in a fog of sensations, one of which was amazement at the new dimension of personality Lily was revealing. It pleased him up to the point where it began to hurt. He had feared that Weigall and Peters might not like her, or that she might be too nervous to talk to them, and though he was glad he was wrong he was not quite at ease enough to be happy.

  But he was beginning to be sleepy and that was something. The party could not last much longer, for by midnight according to university rules Lily would have to be out of college and Peters back at his lodgings across the town. When half-past eleven struck and Peters did not make a move, it was Lily who picked up the signal. 'Ought I to go, Charlie? You tell me when.'

  Peters said: 'Don't fidget, Andy--she doesn't have to leave till a few minutes to twelve.'

  'But I have to get back here before they shut the gates,' Charles said.

  'You don't have to go at all. I can drop her at the Lion--it's right on my way and I'm in rooms--my landlady never says a thing if I'm a few minutes late.'

  Charles felt himself challenged by some test of fair-mindedness, logic, magnanimity, reasonableness, and other qualities which he admired. He didn't exactly consent to the arrangement, but somehow he let it fix itself without further argument, and about five minutes to twelve Peters left with Lily. She was evidently thrilled that he was wearing a cap and gown and would thus escort her, and it was just Charles's bad luck not to have given her this pleasure himself, for academic costume in the streets was at all times permissible, though not compulsory till after dark.

  While the departing footsteps were echoing down the staircase and across the court to the gateway, Weigall lit another cigarette. He, being of the same college, could stay as long as he liked. 'Good company,' he commented.

  'You think so?'

  'For her age . . . must be very young. You know, Andy, when you first mentioned a girl coming up to see you, I thought she was a friend of the family or something.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Well--er--isn't there some girl that your family hopes you'll marry some day? There generally is, with most families. Some dreadful creature quite often, with huge front teeth and lots of money. Thank God your little Lily isn't like that.'

  'No,' said Charles, 'she isn't like that.'

  Weigall went on: 'She's charming, and she has a bright eager mind that's a joy to make contact with. I think I could ring most of my change on her counter--when she's a little older. What puzzles me is where you could possibly have picked her up?'

  'Why is it such a puzzle?'

  'Because . . . I suppose I somehow didn't think of you as a picker- up--not in that sense.'

  'What sense?'

  'Oh, come now, Andy, have a heart! Don't you want me to talk frankly? I've told you I like her, and that's the truth, but unless she's destined to be your future wife do I have to pretend you were introduced by the vicar of Beeching?'

  Charles said in a clipped staccato voice: 'I met her in a Lyons teashop in London. Her father, as she told you, works for the local council in a suburb. They live in a small house in one of those terribly long streets--not a slum--just dreary and respectable. She's got a Cockney accent, which you heard. Socially I suppose you'd call her lower middle class--'

  'Good God,' Weigall interrupted, 'who cares about class nowadays except smart fellows like Bill Peters? He's a snob in reverse--one of these days he's going to make that miner's cottage business pay off like a bonanza. Whereas you and I, Andy, are stuck in between-- we weren't born at Blenheim or Chatsworth on the one hand, and on the other hand we didn't starve in tenements or pick crusts out of gutters . . . We just come from country homes with bits of land and families that go back a few centuries without having collected any titles or riches on the way . . . Well, that's not quite true in your case, your father has a knighthood, but I gather he earned it, which is bad. . . . I tell you, Andy, in the world I see coming our background--yours and mine--is going to be a pretty fair handicap. We'll be the excluded middle--if you'll pardon a logician's term. So prepare to defend yourself, not Lily. She's all right. She'll sleep well tonight--she hasn't our worries. You look worn out, by the way. Why don't you g
et to bed?'

  'Yes, I think I will. Thanks, Tony.'

  'Thanks for what? I haven't given you any advice. . . . Good night.'

  * * * * *

  But again Charles could not sleep and heard the quarters maddeningly till nearly dawn. Then he got up and crossed the courts to the new bath-house (built as a post-war innovation in collegiate life); a hot bath made him feel better and fresher. He had promised to have breakfast with Lily at the Lion at half-past ten, but after eight, when the college began to come to life, time passed most slowly of all. Debden, who was doubtless curious about Lily, chattered with his usual amiable inquisitiveness as he tidied up the room, venturing to observe that it would be 'a lovely day for taking the young lady on the river'.

  Charles agreed. 'Yes, I might do that.' And so he might. He had not made definite plans, hoping that Lily might care to spend part of the day quietly in his rooms.

  She was a few minutes late coming down to meet him at the Lion, and while he waited in the lounge he wondered about Peters and her the previous night. Had they talked till much later, at the hotel, and was this why she was late? Peters had said his landlady would let him in after midnight without making a fuss . . . Was it possible, then, that . . . but no, it was not only impossible, it was absurd . . . and anyhow, here she was.

  'Charlie, I'm sorry. Been waiting long?'

  'No, I only just got here. Did you sleep well?'

  'Wonderfully. The clocks didn't bother me at all. . . . Oh, what a lovely time I had last night.'

  'You did? I'm glad. I had an idea you'd like Weigall and Peters.'

  'Oh yes, they're nice.'

  'Peters especially. Did he talk to you much on the way?'

  'All the time. He does talk all the time, doesn't he? But of course it was only a few minutes. It's really a small town to walk across.'