Джеймс Хилтон: So Well Remembered

All this took place during another of George’s visits to Cambridge. He had been in London on business, as before—one of those fairly frequent conferences that had often been a nuisance in the past, but which now he looked forward to with an excitement entirely unshared by his colleagues. Nobody had at times been more severe than he in castigating the week-end hiatus in official circles, but now on a Saturday morning in some Whitehall Government office he found himself almost gleeful over slow-moving procedure, actually hoping in his heart for an adjournment till Monday.

This had happened, once more, so he was enjoying the intervening day with a clear conscience. And another item of good fortune was that Charles could now walk short distances, with only one stick, and relish the exercise. Perhaps it was this that made him seem more boyish, even school-boyish on occasions; and for the first time George ceased to be startled when he reflected that Charles was only in his twenty-third year.

But other startling ideas filled the gap, and one of them was unique because it came to George in—of all places—a public-house.

Charles had mentioned this pub as being a rather pleasant place within easy walking distance in the country, and after an evening meal George let him lead the way there. The scene a few hours earlier seemed to have drawn them closer together, though in a way that neither could have expressed or would have wished to talk about; but George, at least, was aware of it and satisfied. It gave an edge to his enjoyment of the full moon over the fields, and the scents of crops and flowers that lay heavy on the warm air. Familiar as he was with the grimmer landscape of the north, he thought he had never known anything so richly serene as those rural outskirts of the university town—a quality enhanced, somehow, by the counterpoint of events overhead. For while they walked the hum and throbbing never ceased, sometimes increasing to a roar as planes in formation flew directly above. The R.A.F. was evidently out in force, heading for the Continent, and George guessed and was a little apprehensive of Charles’s mood as he heard and was perhaps reminded.

For that reason George tried to keep the conversation on trivialities. During the walk they overtook several other pedestrians, which George commented must make a red-letter event in Charles’s post-hospital experience, even though the slower movers were only old bent men plodding along at a mile an hour. Charles drily rejoined that there was a good deal of rheumatism locally, which was a peculiar thing in an otherwise healthy district.

“Maybe not so peculiar,” George countered, getting on to one of his favourite topics. “Give people decent houses, in town or country, and don’t think that roses round the door make up for bad drains and damp walls.”

Charles laughed. “Not bad, George. You might win a parliamentary election yet. Castle Winslow would give you a chance, anyway. It’s a family constituency—with the Winslow influence you’d probably romp home. Unfortunately the old boy who represents it now may hang on for another twenty years.”

George laughed also, and in the same mood. “Pity. But in the meantime there might be a chance for YOU—in Browdley. Then I could demonstrate a bit of MY influence.”

They both went on with the joke till the passage of planes in even greater numbers changed the subject back to an earlier one. “I once tried to write a poem,” Charles said, “about the contrast between those old chaps and the boys upstairs. I thought of it actually while I was flying back from Germany after a raid. You have to think of something then, when your nerves are all on edge. I can’t remember more than one of the verses—I think it went

‘Each with a goal his own—Beginner’s or Ender’s luck—Four hundred miles to Cologne, Two to the Dog and Duck…’

It’s less than two from where we are now, but some of those veterans wouldn’t miss their nightly pint if it were twice that… By the way, though, you don’t drink?”

“No, but I’ll swill lemonade while you have all the beer you want.”

“All I can get, you mean. Don’t be so bloody optimistic.”

Presently they reached the pub and pushed into the already crowded bar, where Charles received a few cordial but quiet greetings from people whom he had presumably met there before. A few air-crews from the near-by station were taking their drinks, and others were having a dart game, but perhaps half the crowd were civilians, mostly old farm labourers with tanned and wrinkled faces. The changing world met here with the less changing earth, tilled throughout the ages by men who had worked heedless amidst clashes of knights in armour, and were now just as heedless up to the very edge of runways and bomb craters. HEEDLESS? But the word failed to express the rueful sagacity, the merry ignorance, that flourished nightly in the bar parlour of the Dog and Duck. Like all genuine English country pubs, it was always a cheerful but rarely a boisterous and never a Bacchanalian place—it was a microcosm of that England in which so many things are not done, including the act of wondering too truculently why they are not. George, even with his small personal knowledge of pubs, recognized at once the same spirit that usually obtained at Council meetings and Whitehall conferences, and thus he felt immediately at home. And in that heart-warming mood, while he leaned over his glass of lemonade and Charles over his tankard, George’s startling idea came to him for the second time, but really startlingly now because, in a fantastic way, he half meant it. “Why DON’T you stand for Browdley at the next election?”

Charles looked puzzled. “You mean—for Parliament?”

“Aye. It’s an idea.”

“No, it’s a joke, George, and not a very good one.”

“Of course there won’t be an election till after the war—so far as one can foresee. But there might be worse things that a chap like you could do when the time comes.”

Charles smiled and drank deep. “And better things, I hope.”

“Listen… When I visited you in that hospital at Mulcaster you said something I hope you remember. You said you blamed my generation for not making a proper peace after the last war. And I asked you then if you weren’t afraid that the kids now in their prams might grow up to blame YOUR generation for the same thing… Well, lad, they will—unless you do something about it.”

“Maybe—but not in politics.”

“How else?”

“I don’t know, George—don’t ask me. I can’t fly any more, or I might drop a few bombs somewhere. But I do know I couldn’t face the political racket. Nobody would ever vote for me, anyway—I’m not the type that goes around kissing babies and promising everything to everybody. I’d say the wrong thing, and probably think it too—because, to be frank, I’ve never seen an election without feeling that the whole machinery of it is a bit ridiculous—”

“And it is. But it’s the machinery we’ve got, and we’d better use it while we’ve got it.”

“Oh, certainly—but leave it to the right man. YOU’RE probably the right man for Browdley—you were born there, and you know the people. I wouldn’t understand them—factory workers and miners—not because I’m a snob, but because I’ve never lived in that sort of a place.”

“They’d understand you, that’s the main thing. They’d understand you because they’re doing a job same as you’ve done a job, and some of them are risking lives and health at it same as you’ve risked yours. You wouldn’t be talking to them except as equals. Besides, it might be years off yet— there’s plenty of time.”

“You really are a most persistent fellow, George. Anyone would think it was something I’d agreed to.”