Джеймс Хилтон: So Well Remembered

“Well, anyhow, the point is, he hasn’t dropped her, even though he knows the truth and she’s been forced to admit it. He’s behaving, in fact, as if he CAN’T drop her. The last time I talked to him, which was from Paris, I gathered he’d not only forgiven her for the deception, but she’s made him believe a long story about an unhappy past and a husband she ran away from because she couldn’t stand him… and the upshot of it all is, Jeff’s now urging her to get a divorce so that he can marry her himself.”

“What’s HER attitude?”

“I only know through him—and of course he’s so completely prejudiced in her favour that it’s not much to go by. But remember he’s quite a catch, even if it does ruin his career.”

“And it would? Because of the scandal?”

“Possibly… But worst of all, as I see it, is the thing itself—to put himself at the mercy of someone who has such evident power to distort and overthrow his judgment… JUDGMENT… the most valuable attribute a man of his profession can have… because if he still had any of it left, he’d drop her. After all, how could he EXPECT a marriage of that sort to turn out a success?… It’s a sad thing, Boswell, to see a first-class intelligence functioning like a baby’s.”

“Why don’t you go out and talk to him personally as soon as you have the time?”

“Yes, I shall do that—I wired him today about it. But somehow I’m not sure that I can do much on my own—that last telephone talk was simply shattering—the most I could get was a promise that he’d think it over, but he CAN’T think, that’s the trouble—he’s in a world utterly beyond logic and argument—you can’t prove anything to him —he just believes this woman’s a sort of martyr-heroine and her husband’s an impossible brute and—”

“How do you know he isn’t?”

Winslow got up suddenly, walked to the window, then came back and touched George on the shoulder with a queerly intimate gesture. “I didn’t know —definitely—until today. But I’m a bit positive at this moment…” And after a second pause, standing in front of George, he stammered unsurely: “I hope I haven’t been so damned tactful that you’re going to ask me what all this has got to do with you…”

Then George looked up and saw in a flash what it HAD got to do with him.

He felt himself growing cold and sick, as if a fist were grasping him by his insides. Try as one might, he reflected with queer and instant detachment, the actual blow of such a revelation must be sudden; there was no way of leading up that could disperse the shock over a period; one second one did not know, the next second one did know; that was all there was to it, so that all Winslow’s delicacy had been in a sense wasted. He might just as well have blurted out the truth right at the beginning.

George knew he must say something to acknowledge that Oxford had managed to convey with subtlety in an hour what Browdley could have tackled vulgarly in five minutes. After a long pause, he therefore spoke the slow Browdley affirmative that, by its tone, could imply resignation as well as affirmation.

“You mean you DO understand, Boswell?”

“Aye,” George repeated.

“I’m terribly sorry—I could think of no other way than to put it to you—”

“Of course, man, of course.”

Winslow gripped George’s arm speechlessly, and for several minutes the two seemed not to know what to say to each other. Presently George mumbled: “Is that—all—you can tell me—about it? No more details of any kind? Not that they’d help much, but still—”

“Honestly, Boswell, I’ve told you just about everything I know myself.”

“I understand… But how about the people on the tour whom she was supposed to be looking after?”

“Maybe she just left them stranded… It would be crazy and irresponsible —but no more so than—than—”

“Than anything else. That’s so.”

“I admit the whole thing sounds—must sound to you, in fact— well, if you were to tell me you simply didn’t believe a word of it, I’d—”

“Aye, it’s a bit of a facer.”

“But you DO believe it?”

“Reckon I have to, don’t I? After all, you took a good look at that photograph…”

“Yes, it’s the same. I knew that at once…” Winslow’s voice grew almost pathetically eager. “And you WILL help me, won’t you—now that you know how it is? What I had in mind was this—if you agreed— that we go out there together—quite soon—immediately, in fact —before there can be any open scandal involving him—you see what I mean?”

“Aye, I see what you mean.”

“And you agree?”

To which George retorted with sudden sharpness: “Why not, for God’s sake? He may be your son, but she’s my wife too. Don’t you think I’M interested?”

“Of course. I’m sorry. I’m afraid I—I—”

“Now, now, don’t apologize. Come to that, we’ve neither of us much to apologize for.”

“I thought we might leave tomorrow—”

“Aye, if we’re going, might as well—”

“Boswell, I can’t tell you how much I—”

“None o’ that, either, man. Let’s get down to some details. I’ll need a passport.”

And somehow from then on, in spite of what might have been held more humiliating for George than for Winslow in the situation, it was nevertheless George who took the leadership, a certain staunch four-squareness in his make-up easily dominating the other. They both belonged to a world in which the accomplishment of any suddenly urgent task requires the cancelling or postponement of other less urgent ones; and now, as they eased themselves back into chairs, there was nothing left but such routine adjustments. Winslow pulled out a little black notebook and began crossing off this and that; George reached for a sheet of paper on his desk and jotted down a few memoranda. Into the momentary silence there came the distant chiming of the hour on Browdley church clock, and a newsboy shouting familiarly but incoherently along Market Street. GOOD news, perhaps, about the international situation… but it did not seem to matter so much now, so quickly can world affairs be overshadowed by personal ones in the life of even the most public man.

Winslow looked up. “You’re optimistic, Boswell? From your own knowledge of her—do you feel that—that somehow or other you’ll be able to persuade her to—to—”

George’s face was haggard as he replied: “I wouldn’t call my own knowledge so very reliable—not after this.”

“Then perhaps you could talk to my son—try to influence him—”

“Aren’t you the one for that?”

“But a new angle, Boswell—YOUR point of view in the matter— he may not have realized—”

“All right, all right—no good badgering me.” The first shock had been succeeded by anger—helpless anger, which Winslow’s concern for his own son merely exacerbated. “I’m damned if I know what I’ll do— YET.”

“I’m sorry again.” And the two faced each other, both driven out of character and somehow aware of it, for it was not like George to be angry, nor was Winslow accustomed to pleading and apologizing. Presently an odd smile came over his face. “Badger… BADGER…” he repeated. “It’s a long time since I heard that word, and you’ll never guess why it makes me smile.”

“Why?”

“My nickname at school—Badger.”

Then George smiled too, glad of the momentary side-issue. “Because you looked like one or because you did badger people?”

“Both—possibly.”

They once called me Apple-Pie George in Browdley, but it sort of died out.”

“Apple-Pie George?”