Джеймс Хилтон - Time And Time Again

‘But you mightn’t earn enough at first, Charlie. Not everybody buys paintings.’

He didn’t know then whether to laugh or cry—the intensely practical na veté of it reminded him of plunging into an ice-cold crystal stream in the sunshine. ‘Look, darling… please understand… there’s no question of you having to find a job, whether my paintings sell or not. As soon as I’m twenty-one I come into some money from my mother’s estate —not much, but enough to live on in France… About three hundred a year…’

‘Three hundred pounds a year without working at all?’

It occurred to him that he had never heard the central issue of modern economics stated so eloquently as by her own incredulity. It made him feel he had something to brazen out. ‘Well, yes… so you see how it is—I can AFFORD my serious hobby—AND you.’ He began to laugh. ‘I’m laughing at myself for ever having worried about the future. Aren’t YOU looking forward to it, Lily? There are beautiful places in France—’

‘And I could come home sometimes, couldn’t I?’

‘Home?’

‘To Linstead. I’d like to see mum and dad now and again.’

‘Of course—as often as you want. France isn’t the South Sea Islands.’

‘That would be fun too. Like that French painter who went there and lived with a native girl.’

‘WHAT?’ He was amazed again. ‘You mean Gauguin? I didn’t know you knew anything about painters…’

‘I read a book about him once. I do read, Charlie—you ought to know that—I was reading when you first saw me. I’m not really so silly—’

He found this utterly adorable. It was, he supposed, the effect of Cambridge—of seeing colleges and libraries, of meeting Weigall and Peters, who had also found her adorable. The whole idea of marrying her and going to France to paint gained on him so fast that he felt an intoxication in being alive; the darkness of the little room glowed into deep colours, the touch of her body next to him was an easing of every strain. She was so small and unshy and gay, and she had another quality, the word for which had been pale in his mind for years—ever since he had first heard it in church as a child; but now it sprang to warmth and meaning. LOVING-KINDNESS. She was loving-kind.

They talked over all the details of the future till dawn showed at the sides of the window curtains. Now and then, in the distance, a lion roared.

A few hours later they began the journey to London, having slept till it was too late for breakfast. As they approached the inner suburbs the sky darkened and rain began, so that the final miles of tramlined roads were slow and slippery. Charles had hoped to keep his word by delivering her at Kingsway in time for the normal office opening, but he was nearly an hour late. She said it didn’t matter—and it would have been absurd, of course, if it had. When he stopped the car at the kerb, and before he could get out, she kissed him quickly and scampered through the rain to the swing- doors with an alacrity that seemed more absent-minded than apprehensive.

He had a cup of tea at a café in Holborn, then drove back to Cambridge with the windshield-wipers marking slow time to his thoughts. It was two o’clock when he reached his rooms. He lay on the couch while Debden prepared a late lunch, but fell asleep and Debden did not wake him. He slept all afternoon and most of the evening and night. He had no more engagements; it was merely a matter of putting in days at the college till term was over and he could leave Cambridge for good. This was hard to realize—that it was his last term and his university career would soon be ended. He had no particular plans for a vacation and was in no present mood to think of any. Presumably he would go to Beeching, at any rate for a while, and he had arranged to meet Lily on his way there across London. That would be on the following Friday—five days hence.

Afterwards when he looked back on that curious interval it seemed to him that most of the hours had been of sleep. For the first time in weeks the clock-chimes did not trouble him, and he would often doze on the couch and wake to find Debden offering some odd-looking meal on a tray. Debden was an understanding fellow and had seen many a reading gentleman overwork himself for an examination and then half collapse in this fashion. ‘Sleep’s the thing, sir. Can’t do you any ‘arm no matter ‘ow much of it you get— and that’s more than you can say of most things in life… There was a man I ‘ad ‘ere once who didn’t sleep a wink for weeks…’ This, thought Charles, was an unlikely story, but he listened quite contentedly to many such excerpts from the lifelong saga.

On Friday morning Charles went to early chapel. He was not a regular attender, but at the beginnings and ends of term he had made it a custom, and this morning, the last one of all, seemed an extra-special occasion. He remembered how emotional he had felt about Cambridge during his first term and that last year of the war, but of course the atmosphere then had been charged with the mystique of youth facing death. Three years later, amidst dubious peace and economic depression, the mood was far different, and Charles, at almost twenty-one, was different with it. He would have liked to let that final chapel service soak into him sentimentally, but he couldn’t relax enough; the thought of meeting Lily for lunch in London made him look at his watch too often.

Crossing the quadrangle afterwards he met Debden outside his staircase. He had tipped him well, and the man’s mood was confidential and extra-curricular, as if Charles had already passed into the saga. ‘Gentleman to see you, sir. Wouldn’t give ‘is name, but said ‘e’d wait. He was the kind I knew it was all right, sir, to let ‘im into your rooms.’

He had never seen Havelock looking so well since the days before Lindsay’s death; that was a first impression. It was not merely that he was in one of the vaulting moods—there was a hint of something else that must have happened to generate such an air of authority. Charles fancied he was seeing his father as had many a judge and jury during those early years of triumph, and the spectacle was notable—even in some ways intimidating.

‘Well… this IS a surprise, father!’

‘Yes, I’m sure it is. How are you, Charles? I’m glad I’ve caught you before you took the train, because I have the car here. I thought we’d travel back together. Nice day for a drive across country. Farrow’s with me.’

Farrow was the chauffeur, which meant that the car would be the big Daimler, which Charles never liked as much as the small open car he drove himself. This detail cast its minor shadow; the larger and darker one was that his father’s unexpected visit meant cancelling the arrangement to meet Lily in London. There was no alternative, though of course he could make a special trip to see her some other day, and soon. The disappointment hit him all the more acutely because their last meeting had left, as it was bound to, so many after-thoughts and after-emotions.

He said, seeking to disguise how he felt: ‘That would be nice… Have you had breakfast? Debden will get you some coffee… and in the meantime I must send a wire.’

‘A wire?’

‘Just to cancel an engagement. I’d planned to meet someone in London, but now that I can’t manage it I must let them know.’

‘I see.’ And then, when Charles had reached the door: ‘Is it, by any chance, a girl?’

Charles flushed and tried to laugh. ‘Supposing it is—what then?’

‘If the girl’s name is Lily Mansfield you needn’t send it.’

Charles recrossed the room, the warmth in his face draining to pallor as he approached his father. ‘What makes you say that?’