Джеймс Хилтон - So Well Remembered

So now, by an easy transition, his talk with Charles led back to Browdley again—its industries, homes, people, and future. “You’ll know what I mean tomorrow when you look over the place. The war seems to have solved our chief local problems—bad trade and unemployment—though it’s only a fake solution, we’ll have our troubles again later. But for the time being we’re better off, in some ways, than we used to be—everybody’s got money, the Council has a budget surplus, and as for jobs—why, we’re even short of men to fill ‘em.”

“I suppose there’s a good deal of female employment then?”

George began to laugh. “You mean, DO THE WOMEN WORK? Of course they do… And I’m laughing same as when I read in some of those shiny-paper fashion magazines what a marvellous thing’s happening in England because of the war —the women are actually not idling any more! But the women of Browdley never HAVE idled. They’ve worked in their homes and in factories and in both together ever since the town began. Even when the men had nothing to do, the women had plenty. So don’t you go praising ‘em in your speeches for the novelty of getting their hands soiled!”

“You’re still dreaming, George. I shan’t make any speeches.”

“Aye, I forgot… I was just the same when I was your age—I could talk, but I couldn’t make a speech. And even when I could I hated it at first… But you’re not such a fool as to do anything you hate.”

“Who’s speaking now, George—the lion, the dog, or the dove?”

The remark put them in a mood in which Julie told them to go back to the study and talk while she washed up in the kitchen; she insisted on this with such emphasis that George wondered if she were deliberately contriving a chance for him to talk to Charles alone. He was not sorry to have that chance, anyway. The boy entered the study first and was drawing the curtains aside before George could press the switch. The sudden flood of moonlight criss- crossed the rows of books; it lay on his desk, on the litter of papers and Council reports; full of gleams and shadows, it caught the glass in front of photographs on the mantelpiece.

“Just wondered what sort of view you had, George.”

“Not much, I’m afraid. That’s the wall of the bus garage.”

“But the GARDEN… Come over here!”

George crossed the room, and as he approached the window, which was partly open, the scent of summer flowers came to him as he never remembered it before—geraniums, roses, carnations, stocks, mignonette.

“Aye, it’s nice this time of the year. I’m not much of a gardener myself, but Annie likes it and does a bit now and again… Livia’s garden, we still call it—used to be a piece of waste ground till she took it in hand.”

At the word, uttered like a spell between them, Charles stirred uneasily. “Livia,” he muttered. “My father used to call her Livy… The lost books of Livy, he used to say, what wouldn’t I give to look into them!” He breathed deeply into the scented air. “So she planted the garden and burned your book-covers? Anything else?”

George did not speak.

Charles went on: “My father used to say she made you into a nerve of her own body and let you do the aching instead of her… unless you were ill or a child, and then she took all the aches to herself and rocked you to sleep.” He sat on the arm of a chair, fidgeting nervously with his cigarette-case. “But that wouldn’t suit me. I’m not a child, and I don’t expect always to be ill.”

“You won’t be. You’ll get better.”

“I want to work too.”

“You will.”

“Mind if I smoke?”

“Watch the light if you’re not going to pull the curtains.”

“Good old warden. The moon’s so bright you could turn on all the street lamps.” He suddenly pointed to a photograph on the mantelpiece. “THAT her?”

“Aye.”

“And the baby?”

“He died.”

“She was young then.”

“Aye. Nearly a quarter of a century ago.”

“You make it sound a long time.”

“It has been a long time.”

“I feel so damned sorry for her, George. My uncle never liked her. Nobody seems to like her much, for that matter—not how she is now. And the chances are my father won’t come back. She thinks he will, but to me it doesn’t seem probable.”

George exclaimed: “By God, though, if she thinks he will, he may. In fact he’d almost better!”

Charles stared for a moment, then slowly smiled. “Yes, I know. She gets her own way as a rule. That’s why, when she learns about Julie and me—”

“You haven’t told her yet?”

“Not yet. Do you think I should?”

George thought a moment, then said: “Aye, might as well get it over.”

“I will then. I’ll wire her tomorrow. Your advice has been pretty good so far.”

“You mean you’re happy?”

Charles nodded profoundly.

“That’s good. I can see Julie is too. And don’t feel you ought to be looking after your mother. It’s she who feels she ought to be looking after you… but you’re against that, and so am I.”

“I know. And she doesn’t really need me, she only needs me to need her.”

“That’s not a bad way of putting it.”

“Because she’s got a sort of secret strength to face things—and less fear than anyone I ever met—man or woman. I often used to think when I was sweating it out over Berlin—God, I wish I had guts of iron like hers… It was crazy, sometimes, the things she’d do. We were at a restaurant in Munich once and a crowd of army officers sat down at the next table. They were pretty drunk and high-tempered, started abusing a waiter for something or other. Eventually one of them struck the man, and my mother, who was closer than I was, leaned over and bopped the officer over the head with a Chianti bottle. Suddenly—quietly—without a word— just like that.” Charles swung his arm. “Pure slapstick comedy but for the time and place.”

“What happened?”

“Blood and Chianti all over everything. A riot. Amidst which I managed to get her out by a back door. The restaurant owner was as keen to save his premises as I was to avoid an international incident.”

George laughed. “It wasn’t always so serious. Once she and I were arguing at dinner about something or other quite trivial when she picked up a piece of apple-pie and threw it at me. And it happened that you could see in from the street and somebody HAD seen in—and also it was the middle of an election campaign. They called me ‘Apple-Pie George’ after that for a time.” George laughed louder at the recollection. “I used to think it harmed my chances—maybe it did. But I’m glad to know about all this. I’d forgive her a lot for that.”

“Didn’t you forgive her anyway?”

“Aye, I always found it pretty easy.”

“My father used to say it was easy to forgive her if she was wrong, but if she turned out to be right then you might as well never forgive yourself.”

George said after a long pause: “I don’t want to send you away, but if you’re feeling sleepy… I’ve booked a room for you both at the Greyhound.”

“The Greyhound?”

“Just along the street. More comfortable than here.”

Charles crossed the room and George put his arm round the boy’s shoulder as the two walked back to the kitchen. “Don’t you worry, lad. If I can help her I shall. It won’t all be your job. You can count on me for that.”

“Seems to me I count on you for a lot of things, George.”

George took them over to the Greyhound, said good-night, and began the short stroll back to his house. But he felt so wakeful he made a detour past the Town Hall, his mind being still full of thoughts, strange thoughts, such as that Charles had actually been under his roof, and that Browdley in moonlight was really a beautiful place. Not only the Town Hall, but the main office of the Browdley Building Society, Joe Hardman’s fish-shop, even Ridgeway’s garage on whose doors, as a halcyon reminder, there could still be seen the painting of a very gay peace-time charabanc for hire… all so beautiful… which was absurd, of course; yet even as he admitted it, beauty and a little sadness remained in what he felt. He could not hope for sleep in such a mood; but he could work, there was always that. As he entered his house the hall was bright as bars of silver; he could even read the headline of the Advertiser, and a typical one, even after five years of war— “Shall Browdley Have Sunday Cinemas?” So THAT was how his old journalistic rival still looked at the world, he mused, with extra irony because the Sunday cinema question had been debated in Browdley ever since he had campaigned as a young man for his first Council election… and now they were at it again!… No wonder Lord Winslow could remark that England didn’t change! But it did change, for all that, beneath the surface of dead issues regularly flogged to life. George slipped the paper into his pocket as he walked into the open study doorway.