Джеймс Хилтон - So Well Remembered

George did not reply. The heedless fever of her voice had not only been hard to keep pace with as a listener, but it had given him an inward tension that left him without power or will to reply. Presently she exclaimed: “Well? Don’t say you agree with me—that would be too amazing!”

He still couldn’t answer.

“Never mind,” she smiled, after another pause. “Tell me about Browdley.”

“Browdley’s all right,” he managed to say, in hardly more than a whisper.

“Not been bombed to bits yet?”

“Thank God, no.”

“Annie still with you?”

“Aye.”

“And Will Spivey?”

“Aye.”

“And there’s still the little garden I made?”

“It’s still there.” He added: “And Stoneclough too.”

She suddenly began to cry, but without any sound. The tears fell into the soil as she went on filling up the pot. “Oh, George, what a long time ago! I hope you’ve been happy.”

“YOU have, haven’t you?”

She nodded.

“I’m glad.”

“Yes… it was a thing to try for, wasn’t it? Love, I mean—not happiness.” She stopped crying as abruptly as she had begun. “Poor Jeff… I wish I knew someone at the Admiralty—Howard knows them all but he won’t help. He doesn’t like me—Howard, I mean—Lord Winslow, that is. He thinks I ruined Jeff’s career. And now he thinks I want to ruin Charlie’s. Ruin… ruin… how can anyone make more than there is? I loved my father and then I loved my husband and now I love my son… anything wrong in all that? Or in these children… these have been ruined too, but not by love. I’ll tell you what I do about them—are you interested?”

George murmured assent and she began to chatter with eager animation. “They’re in need of almost everything when they come here—they have to be clothed, as a rule, as well as fed—I get some of the older ones to help in cooking and serving their own meals, also repairing their own clothes—that is, if they can—and of course we grow most of our own fruits and vegetables, so there’s always plenty of work in the garden. But the worst cases can’t do anything at all for a time—they just scream and cry and there’s nothing helps but when I talk to them, and I do that. I talk nonsense mostly. When bad things are on their minds that’s all they want to hear. Nothing serious. Not even politics.” She smiled. “Charlie told me you were Mayor of Browdley now?”

George said that was so.

“You should have come here wearing your Mayor’s chain. To make the children laugh. Always a good thing to make them laugh.”

George smiled back. “Aye, I might have.”

“You would, I know. You’re very kind. It’s just that you don’t think of things, isn’t it? Or rather you think of too many other things…”

After that she continued to work on the geraniums for a long interval —so long that George began to wonder whether she had forgotten he was there.

But presently, with the air of a duchess at a reception, she turned to him brimming over with graciousness. “It was so nice of you to come. And you’ll come again, won’t you?”

“Do you—do you really WANT me to—Livia?”

“Of course. Any time. That is, before we go to Ireland…”

“You’re… going to take Charles… to Ireland?”

“Yes, for the vacation. And if I can I shall persuade him not to go back next term—he only likes Cambridge because he’s got himself entangled with a girl there.”

“WHAT?”

“Of course he doesn’t know I know, but it was plain as soon as I saw them together. Poor boy… rather pathetic to watch him pretending she was just a hospital nurse that came to give him massage treatment. Of course I don’t blame HIM. In his state he’d be an easy victim.”

“You mean… you… you think she’s THAT sort of a girl?”

“I don’t care what sort she is, I’m going to put a stop to it.”

“Why?”

“Because I have other plans for my own son. It’s about time we got to know each other—what with all the separations of school, and then the war… and the peace isn’t going to be much better, for most people. Or are you optimistic about it? You probably are—you always were about most things… I won’t shake hands—mine are too dirty. But do come again —before we go… Goodbye…”

“Goodbye, Livia.”

“And you will come again?”

“Aye.” He walked to the door, then hesitated and said: “My advice would be to let that boy live his own life.”

“And marry the first girl he meets? That WOULD be optimism.”

He wasn’t sure whether she meant that such a marriage would be optimism, or whether it would be optimistic of him to suppose that she would ever let Charles do such a thing; and whichever she meant, he wasn’t sure whether she were serious or merely ironic. Anyhow, he knew there was little use in continuing the argument, the more so as she had again resumed the potting of the plants. He said from the door, watching her: “I wish you were as good with grown-ups as you are with kids, Livia. You’re doing a fine job with these. Their parents’ll bless you for it.”

“Their parents are dead, George. Dead—DEAD.” Her eyes looked up, but her hands worked on. “Fancy you not knowing that.”

George also felt he ought to have known it—though after all, why? But Livia had always been like that, possessed of some curious power to impose guilt, or at least embarrassment; and so he stood there in the doorway, staring at her till he knew there was nothing else to say. Then he walked off.

The woman who looked like a farmer’s wife accosted him as he was leaving the house. “They telephoned from the Hall, sir,” she said, with new respect in her voice. “His lordship wished to apologize about the car—it had a puncture on the way to the station. But he’s sent another car to take you back, and he also asked if you’d call and see him on the way.”

“Where would I find him?”

“The chauffeur will take you, sir.”

The Rolls-Royce swung into the last curve of the mile-long drive and pulled up outside the portico of Winslow Hall. It was an imposing structure, in Palladian style; and George’s reflection at any normal time would have been concerned with its possible use as state or municipal property; but this was not a normal time, and to be frank, he did not give Winslow Hall a thought as he entered it. He was thinking of Livia.

Even the library, when he was shown in, did not stir in him more than a glance of casual admiration, though this was the kind of room he had all his life dreamed of—immense, monastic, and book- lined.

“Nice of you to drop in, Boswell,” began Lord Winslow, getting up from an armchair.

The two men shook hands. The present Lord Winslow was a revised edition of the former one, but with all qualities a shade nearer the ordinary— thus a little plumper, rather less erudite, more of a dilettante, worldlier, colder beneath the surface.

George declined a drink, but began to take in his surroundings—the ornately carved mantelpiece, a smell of old leather bindings, the huge mullioned window through which a view of rolling parkland was superb.

“First time you’ve been in this part of the country perhaps?” And Winslow began to chatter about local beauty spots, while the butler brought sherry. “Good of you to take such an interest in Charles. He sends me glowing accounts of you.”

“It’s a pleasure to help the boy.”

“That’s how we all feel…” And then a rather awkward pause. “Cigar?”

“No, thanks—I don’t smoke.”

Lord Winslow got up and closed a door that had swung open after the butler had not properly closed it. Coming back across the room he said: “So you’ve seen Livia?”