Джеймс Хилтон - Time And Time Again

Presently footsteps descended the stairs and Mr. Mansfield re-entered. He had changed not only his boots but his clothes, and Charles thought he must also have brushed his hair and given himself a general spruce-up.

‘Well, I wasn’t long, was I?… Dunno ‘ow you feel, but it seems to me —if you ain’t in a ‘urry… always quiet there this time of an evenin’…’

‘Why, yes,’ said Charles. ‘A good idea.’

They talked mostly about gardening as they walked the short distance to the Prince Rupert, and Charles did not press the conversation to any more serious issue. He could bide his time, and he judged that after a drink or so Mr. Mansfield might be more communicative. Charles had learned very little so far, except that Lily’s father had given a promise to his; he felt he must know more about this, where and how it had happened; it was the atmosphere he wanted to explore almost more than the territory.

Then, during that first moment at the bar of the Prince Rupert, something happened that told him so much of everything that all else was merely a filling-in of detail. Charles had been the first to say ‘What’s yours, Mr. Mansfield?’ and Mr. Mansfield had replied: ‘Bitter for me, Charlie.’ There was nobody else in the bar, not even the barmaid; soon, however, a buxom woman who was evidently the landlady came up and greeted Mr. Mansfield as an old and favourite customer. ‘Two bitters,’ said Charles, but before she could serve them Mr. Mansfield cleared his throat to proclaim with great solemnity: ‘Mrs. Webber, I want you to meet Mr. Anderson.’ Mrs. Webber smiled and Charles shook hands with her across the counter. She had the air of being a great lady. Mr. Mansfield continued: ‘This Mr. Anderson’s the son of Sir ‘Avelock Anderson who was with me ‘ere the other evening—you remember Sir ‘Avelock, Mrs. Webber?’

‘My goodness, I should say I do! We were so glad to meet Sir Havelock.’ And then to Charles: ‘What a wonderful man your father is! The stories he told! I really do believe he enjoyed himself here, don’t you, Mr. Mansfield?’

Charles could believe it also. Over their drinks Mr. Mansfield was not in the least unwilling to talk of an event that had evidently added so much to his local prestige. Havelock, it seemed, had in the first place received a letter from Mr. Mansfield. ‘Mind you, it was Reg that wrote it—Reg said your dad ought to know. And then your dad came to see us as soon as ‘e got the letter. We was ‘avin’ supper but ‘e’d ‘ad ‘is so the wife made ‘im a cup of tea and we all talked it over.’

‘ALL?’

‘Well, not Bert and Maud and Evelyn—they was away on their ‘olidays, like I said. But Reg was there.’

‘And Lily?’

‘She come in during the middle of it. She’d just bin round the corner to get some needles.’

‘Some WHAT?’

‘Needles. For the gramophone. Reg brought over a lot of new records and we was all goin’ to ‘ear ‘em after supper.’ Mr. Mansfield took in Charles’s glance and slowly interpreted it. ‘Oh, we was all on good terms by then —we’d ‘ad it out with ‘er. No good ‘angin’ on to trouble, I always says, or it’ll ‘ang on to you… Besides, we couldn’t blame it all on the girl. She didn’t orter ‘ave done what she did, but ‘oos fault was it really?’

Charles shook his head, not in either reluctance or inability to answer the question, but because his mind was boggling at the picture of his father sitting at the table in the living-room at Ladysmith Road, drinking a cup of tea and ‘talking it over’ with the Mansfields and Reg, then Lily entering the domestic circle with a supply of gramophone needles…

Mr. Mansfield took advantage of the silence to catch Mrs. Webber’s eye and signal for two more bitters. He continued: ‘I’ll tell you, Charlie— and once said we won’t say no more—it was YOUR fault, because you wasn’t a gentleman. I thought you was, and I was wrong. I didn’t know ‘OO you was, mind you, but I did think you was a gentleman. That time after we first met in the street I said to Lily when she got ‘ome… Lily, I said, ‘e’s a gentleman. Because I did think you was.’

Charles could only pick up a single point of this indictment. He said weakly: ‘I don’t quite know what you mean when you say you didn’t know WHO I was… Lily introduced us.’

‘Wot I mean is, you never told Lily about your dad bein’ a Sir. It was Reg found that out. You never told nobody.’

Charles agreed that he hadn’t. ‘I didn’t think of it—or maybe when I did I thought it would sound boastful. Anyhow, to get back to what happened, my father came to see you and had a talk with you all, and then… then what?’

‘That’s all. We just talked and I brought ‘im ‘ere and ‘im and me ‘ad another talk, man to man. A real gentleman, your dad is, that I will say.’

‘What did Lily think of him?’

‘She liked ‘im. Who could ‘elp it? Of course ‘e was upset, but then afterwards ‘e got friendly same as if ‘e’d known us all for years.’

‘He was upset?’

‘An’ why shouldn’t ‘e be? ‘E ‘adn’t bin told any more than we ‘ad. ‘E didn’t even know you knew Lily. It was a shock to ‘im, the way it would be to any father. ‘E ‘as ‘is ‘opes on you, Charlie. An’ all the time ‘e thought you was studyin’ at college you was carryin’ on with a gel ‘e never knew about. Natchrally ‘e was upset… Mind you, that was at first, at the ‘ouse. Afterwards when ‘im and me came ‘ere we ‘ad quite a lively time, like Mrs. Webber was sayin’.’

‘Tell me—tell me just this—did you ever, during the talk you had—threaten—or say anything to him—about bringing a charge against me?’

‘A CHARGE?’

Mr. Mansfield’s stare was so bewildered that Charles knew it was the completest possible answer in itself. But he felt driven to continue: ‘A charge in a police court—a charge of…’ But he somehow could not bring himself to speak the word ‘abduction’.

‘Gawd, no, I never said nothin’ about that,’ Mr. Mansfield answered glumly, as if it were a mystery that must remain one or spoil his evening. Charles was devoutly glad that an interruption enabled them both to drop the matter at exactly that moment. For the door of the bar had opened and a voice was shouting: ‘Wotcher, Freddy—and ‘ow’s Freddy?’

Mr. Mansfield swung round, happily diverted. ‘Well, if it ain’t old ‘Arry!… ‘Arry, this is Mr. Anderson—you remember Sir ‘Avelock Anderson ‘oo I came ‘ere with the other night? This is Sir ‘Avelock’s son… Charlie… Mr. Byfield.’

Harry Byfield, an excited little tub of a man with waxed moustaches, gripped Charles’s hand and held it while he bestowed a beam of over-acted recognition. ‘My goodness, and don’t ‘e look like ‘is dad too! Same eyes, same nose… Charlie, what’re you ‘avin’?… Three bitters, Mrs. Webber, and ‘ow’s Mrs. Webber?’

Charles, who had never thought he looked much like his father at all, found this rather disconcerting. But it was a sample of what went on all the evening, with customer after customer. What an audience his father must have had, he reflected, and after so many bitters and in spite of his own personal troubles, he could not help feeling slightly amused.

The bar filled up as the evening progressed, and the very crowding of it enabled Charles occasionally to get Mr. Mansfield alone. Then he put questions that seemed all the more urgent because he had either to shout them at normal speaking range or else whisper them loudly in Mr. Mansfield’s ear. Whenever possible he did the latter. Nobody was listening or trying to, and there could not perhaps have been any place safer for the discussion of utterly private matters.