Джеймс Хилтон - Time And Time Again

After a moment Brunon said: ‘Not bad news, I hope?’

‘Not tragic, anyway… A girl I know got engaged to somebody else.’

Charles was pretending to reread, but actually looking for a miracle to make it all untrue. There was no miracle, and presently Brunon asked: ‘Is it going to bother you much?’

‘I don’t know—quite—yet—but I don’t think so.’

It was true that at the first moment of shock he didn’t know. He hadn’t thought of Lily a great deal, consciously, during the trip. Nor during Christmas at Beeching, nor during previous weeks in Berlin, where he had been fraternising pleasantly with the German language and with the family of Professor Stapff. The separation, so hard to endure at first, had become something he was austerely used to, something he could almost fold to himself for perverse comfort; and the anticipation of seeing her again, which had been all there was to live on during summer and early autumn, had fallen into place along a quiet horizon of the future. But now, with her letter in his hand, the horizon darkened and a sense of loss brought such misery that he could hardly force himself to think, much less to talk rationally to Brunon about any other matter. A snowstorm began that evening, practically marooning them for several days at a small inn. There was nothing to do and because he was utterly wretched Charles told Brunon the opposite of what he felt in the hope that by having to suit his behaviour to it he might achieve some degree of self-discipline.

‘Matter of fact, André, it’s probably just as well.’ Even while he spoke the words he felt a betrayer, though what could he now betray?

‘Were you engaged?’

‘Not exactly. She was sixteen when we first met and that was less than a year ago. Absurdly young. Sweet though. A typist in an office.’

‘Anything wrong with being a typist in an office?’

‘Of course not. I didn’t intend to suggest—’

‘But since you volunteer the information, is it not implied that the match would not be in all ways a suitable one?’

‘I daresay the snobbish view might be that—for what it’s worth. But otherwise—’

‘And in your chosen profession it is worth a great deal. So you are perhaps fortunate to have been given such an easy escape.’

‘You think so?… Oh, hell, let’s have a bottle of wine—I’ll bet the local stuff’s good here.’

‘It is excellent. But tell me, Charles—and then we will not speak of her again unless you wish—I suppose it is because I paint that I like to visualize… was she BEAUTIFUL?’

‘WAS she? You mean, IS she—she’s not dead just because someone else has her… No, not specially beautiful, but… you want a description? Let me see… she has large violet eyes and a wide forehead and dark brown hair, complexion rather pale and a straight nose that seems somehow long because it isn’t big… And there’s a gap between one upper tooth and the next, on the left side—a tiny gap that looks better than if it weren’t there—it shows when she smiles and she smiles a lot because she’s generally happy… And she has small hands and feet—in fact, she’s little altogether—incredibly little—practically no figure to speak of—’

‘But at sixteen, my friend…’

Charles stamped angrily from his chair, then turned the anger against himself and the movement into a stretch and a yawn. He began to laugh in a ribald way. It seemed the final Judas touch, but having accomplished it he felt better able to compose, as he would have to, the necessary letter of congratulation… hoping she and Reg would be happy. He hadn’t much doubt about it.

Decades later, when he began to think he would one day write a book, 1922 was the year at which he decided to start the story of his life, because it was the year in which his career opened with quite a spurt of success. After spending six months in Europe polishing his languages, he did very well in the Foreign Office examination, and when, about the same time, he won the Courtenay Prize for History it seemed possible that he was one of those young men for whom all ways are to be made smooth. His first chief, Sir Lionel Treves, at whose Legation in one of the smaller European capitals he presently became an Attaché, thought highly of him, and Lady Treves liked his looks and was considerably intrigued by his manner. Neither had known him before, so they were unaware of how much he had changed. They thought he was far too quiet, but such a fault promised well in a youth whose appearance and ability were both beyond reproach.

Life at the Legation was tranquil, and the work so simple for a junior staff-member that, except for further language study, Charles was able to give his brain a long and satisfying rest. He had little responsibility, and was amused to discover that after all his abstruse cramming most of the tasks that fell to him (such as deciphering and copying despatches) were not beyond the resources of a reasonably intelligent sixth-former. He spent the mornings in the Chancery, often with long intervals of leisure during which he could read French and German novels; he got to know his colleagues, and the entire atmosphere, with its air of a cheerful enclave whose chance-chosen inmates might as well make the best of each other, reminded him a little of the Brookfield Sanatorium in which, as a boy with some slight ailment, he had found a haven from the rigours of the outside world. Sir Lionel was a comfortable chief and did not count the hours his staff put in provided the job was done. Charles naturally took the menial duties, if that adjective could be applied to any of them; again it was rather like being a new boy at school. He began to make friends, most of them among the resident English —it was surprising how few, or at any rate how slowly, relationships developed with the people of the city. After leaving cards at the other Legations he was asked out to dinners, and found many pleasant acquaintances among his opposite numbers. Most afternoons, though, he spent alone from choice, exploring the city or attending some lecture or concert. After that he would return to the Legation in case anything had been left for him to do; even if so it rarely made him late for dinner. Sometimes there was a rush of business when a bag came in, and once a royal visit threw everybody into a well-controlled commotion that lasted several weeks, but as a rule one could watch the European world through a delightful window on the edge of it —for the country had been neutral during the war and was consequently quite spotless and a little smug.

Charles shared a flat with the Second Secretary, a man named Snowden, who was unmarried; the First Secretary had a Swedish wife who sang Schubert and Hugo Wolf songs exquisitely. There was also a very handsome Military Attaché who drifted in and out of the Chancery with gossip about parties he had been to the night before; so far as Charles could judge, his functions were almost entirely decorative, and most of all at requiem masses whenever it was obligatory for the corps diplomatique to attend them. At these affairs the Military Attaché looked as if he had stepped right out of the pages of Ouida.

(Later in life, when some of Charles’s moments were more arduous, and those who shared them with him pictured whimsically or ironically the kind of heaven they would choose for themselves, Charles would say: ‘Ah, you should have been en poste at—during the twenties—those were the days!’ But once, when he so expressed himself, a very old and distinguished-looking gentleman in a dressing-gown replied, as urbanely as was possible within the confines of an air-raid shelter: ‘My boy, they were only the pale shadow of the life before you were born! Those were the real days—to be a youth of good family sixty years ago, when you could get into the Diplomatic without all this modern fuss about Firsts and degrees —when all you needed was a private income and a father or uncle or somebody in high places to take care of you. It was simply the best club that ever existed—founded by the Congress of Vienna, developed by the wealth and conveniences of the industrial revolution, and not yet affected by all the political and social changes that have finally upset the applecart; a club of charming people living a gay life in every capital from Lisbon to what was then St. Petersburg—a few thousand families supplying the personnel, so that wherever you went you met people who knew the people you knew—a truly international set in a world full of international settings and social counterparts in every country—Ascot and Chantilly, Sandhurst and St. Cyr, Osborne and Ischl, the Quai d’Orsay and the Wilhelmstrasse and the Ballplatz, all the Bristol Hotels and the Compagnie Internationale des Grands Express Européens… The very words are remembered music that even guns and bombs cannot shatter! Ah, what a lovely world if you were born into the golden ranks of the inheritors!’ And then the old man ended startlingly: ‘But I wasn’t, and I hated its guts.’ Charles never saw him again or found out his name.)