Джеймс Хилтон - Time And Time Again

She was captivated by the sketch and begged it from him. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said, which was almost the truth. ‘I’ve always liked trying to put what I see on paper. I paint a little, too, when I have time.’ He was deliberately casual about it. He wanted her to ask to see his paintings and was slightly disappointed when she didn’t, though it would have been hard to arrange if she had. Then he realized that such reticence was part of her entire attitude; despite willing gossip about her own and her family’s affairs, she was equally willing not to know the things he did not choose to disclose. Likewise she accepted all his suggestions for places to visit, neither in subservience nor indifference, but from a simple pleasure she took in doing whatever he wanted.

She was small, physically, and all his own preferences were permanently set by it—her height was the right height, the crook of her arm in his had the cosy curve and pressure, beauty to him was in the angle of her upward glance as they walked along. And she was LOVING—in a curious way that warmed the blood yet cooled the fever of it. Many times he waited for her at street corners and on railway platforms and always, at the revelation that it was she and none of the hundreds of others that had passed or were passing, something in his mind clicked into certainty, like a key turning in a lock.

One evening as he was taking her home they met the Superintendent of Parks enjoying his evening stroll along Ladysmith Road. Naturally she made the introductions, and Charles noticed that after the first instant of surprise she showed little nervousness or embarrassment, but was clearly moved by an affection for both of them that made the whole encounter cordial. Mr. Mansfield was plump and slow-moving; the pursuit of horticulture under a municipal employer seemed to have given him a special serenity compounded of having a job he both enjoyed and could not lose. His high-pitched squeaky voice and Cockney accent (much more noticeable than Lily’s) were odd but not inharmonious with his solid frame and deliberate movements.

‘So you’re the chap Lily’s bin seein’ so much of litely?’ He pumped Charles’s hand up and down. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr. Anderson, I’m shore. And ‘ow d’you like our part of the world?’

‘I think it’s very nice,’ said Charles tactfully, ‘especially the trees in all the streets.’

‘I’ll warrant that’s what she put you up to say.’ He was pleased, though. ‘Not that you ain’t right about the trees. Mike all the difference, don’t they?… You know Linstead?’

‘I’m afraid not, sir.’

Mr. Mansfield chuckled as he relit his pipe. ‘You don’t ‘ave to call me ‘sir’. What d’you think I am—a school-teacher? Any’ow, ‘ave Lily bring you round some Sunday for dinner. Can promise you a nice bit of roast beef if you fancy it.’

‘Thank you very much.’

Mr. Mansfield passed on his way with a nod. When he was out of earshot Charles gripped Lily’s arm with extra warmth. ‘Well, aren’t you glad? The best things sometimes happen by accident. Now he’s met me he won’t mind you being out late so often. Or at least I hope he won’t. Nice old boy… Why… Lily… what’s the matter?’

‘You REALLY like him, Charlie? You really DO?’

‘Of course. And remember what he said—you’ve got to ask me to dinner at your house.’

‘On a SUNDAY?’

‘Yes, I can take a Sunday off instead of a Saturday. When shall we fix it?’

‘Any Sunday—if they know in time. You really want to come? You’ll like my mum, too, that’s certain, but I’m not so sure about Bert and Reg.’

‘Who’s Reg?’ At last he had been forced to ask.

‘He’s Bert’s pal. Reg Robinson. He always has dinner with us on Sundays.’

On Sundays in summer Ladysmith Road was rarely at its best. The air was apt to be hot and impregnated with smells from a hundred households in which the ceremonial meal of the week was being prepared, and of this meal, though the ingredients were many and various and wholesome, the predominant smell was usually that of boiling cabbage. Ladysmith Road was far higher in the social scale than would have allowed noisy children to play in the gutter or dance to a hurdy-gurdy; indeed it was higher in the social scale than would have allowed street music on any day of the week; so instead, on Sundays, there was this vast and cabbagy calm, broken only by the murmur of someone’s piano or the distant grind of trams along the High Road. At midday the pubs opened and the Sunday Schools closed, but the nearest pub and Sunday School were round several corners, so that their traffic was straggling and intermittent by the time it reached the laburnums. Nor was there on Sundays any of the movement which, like systole and diastole, drew the inhabitants to and from Linstead station and gave Ladysmith Road, between certain hours on weekdays, the appearance of being actually on the way to somewhere.

Charles’s visit to Number 214 was not an entire success, though he didn’t think it was either his own fault entirely or that of the Mansfields. Their hospitality was friendly and their roast beef excellent. Charles had seen the outside of the house so often that its interior hardly surprised him; if at all, it did so by being cosier and more comfortable than he had expected. On the whole he blamed Reg Robinson for the fact that he failed to get over his initial shyness. He was always inclined to be shy with a group of strangers, at Beeching or Cambridge or anywhere else, but at Ladysmith Road it seemed to stay with him more obstinately because all the time he was afraid the Mansfields were thinking him stuck-up.

Dinner was delayed (he could gather) by some minor mishap in the kitchen, so that they were not at the table till after three o’clock, by which time Reg had fully established himself as the life of the party. He banged the piano with slapdash facility, he sang (in tune but thunderously), he played gramophone records of comic songs he had brought with him, cueing the laughter in which he expected everyone to join. Charles, after deploring a first painful handshake, was ready to admit his good intentions, but soon found even this effort hard to sustain; while Reg, it seemed, saw in Charles the kind of dull fellow whom it was his social duty to wake up at all costs. To assist him he had the natural equipment of a loud voice and a set of verbal clichés and stale witticisms which he unloaded at every chance, evoking shrieks of laughter from Bert and from Lily’s two sisters, Evelyn and Maud. Charles was troubled to notice that Lily also laughed, though perhaps only from politeness; it soon became clear, though, that Reg was much attracted by Lily and was on jocularly affectionate terms with her. ‘Nice bit o’ stuff, ain’t she, Charlie?’ he commented, nudging Charles in the ribs, and Charles could only mumble an affirmative.

After dinner they sat in a small glassed-in annex to the dining-room while Mrs. Mansfield and the girls cleared the table. Beyond the windows was the garden, neat and pretty as might have been expected, with tall hollyhocks affording a token privacy from neighbours on either side. After an ample meal and in a comfortable chair Charles was ready to relax; he could have done so, and by now would almost certainly have lost his shyness, but for Reg. Reg was indefatigable, and his range of facetiousness limitless. It seemed he possessed a motorcycle and had driven to Cambridge on it with Bert. He gave a vivid description of the undergraduates with their caps and gowns; indeed he had a snapshot which he produced there and then for general inspection. ‘You mean the boys have to wear them in the street?’ Maud queried, and when Reg answered: ‘Well, look, stupid, that’s in the street, ain’t it?’—Maud turned to Charles with an incredulous: ‘Do YOU have to, Mr. Anderson?’