Джеймс Хилтон - Time And Time Again

In the drawing-room of his sister-in-law’s house Charles would exchange news with Jane when he arrived there for a few days. The style of conversation was the same, but how different the items from those of earlier years. A First Secretary in a foreign capital in peacetime had been in some sort of swim; a minor Foreign Office official visiting his wife and child in an English country town during the phony war was in a backwater almost as stagnant as the war itself. Only family affection could compensate for the tedious train journey; but Charles was always thus compensated.

‘Gerald looks well, Jane—I swear he’s an inch taller than when I saw him last.’

‘Probably. He’s found a new playmate—the Grandison girl who lives at the stone house past the bridge.’

‘Grandison?’

‘They’re a leading family here—own the local picture theatre amongst other things, so Gerald gets in free whenever he wants.’

‘Fine. I’m glad he’s so happy… Grandison, did you say?’

‘I know—you’re thinking of the Grandison who used to be our pet Attaché. I don’t believe he’s any relative.’

‘Wonder what happened to him. I’ll look up the List when I get back… How are Birdie and Tom?’ (Jane’s sister and her husband.)

‘Tom thinks he’ll be sent to India. Birdie’s worrying about it.’

‘Not a bad place to miss the war in.’

‘We’re missing it so far here.’

‘Till it starts.’

‘But for Gerald I’d rather live in London whatever happens.’

‘I get more comfort thinking of you here.’

‘How’s Havelock?’

‘In great shape. He did an amusing thing the other day—he left the flat in the morning and took the first on the right and then the first on the left and so on till the middle of the afternoon. By that time he was somewhere round Muswell Hill—at least that’s what he said. Then he came back by bus.’

‘Why is it so amusing?’

‘Because of the idea of anyone following him—if he still is being followed. They’d probably put some old chap on the job—after all, keeping an eye on a man of eighty wouldn’t seem much—and then he does a seven-mile walk all across London to nowhere! Just struck me as a bit funny… But he probably isn’t being followed.’

‘You think they won’t do any more about the letters?’

‘They haven’t done anything yet.’

‘Except upset your career.’

‘You mean the transfer to the F.O.?’ (He hadn’t told her about his letter of resignation—time enough to worry her if and when it had to be used.) ‘That might have happened anyway.’

‘I don’t think it would in your case—at least not for long. You were so high up on the List and I’m sure they had something good for you.’

‘Perhaps they still have.’

‘Not till this business about the letters blows over.’

‘Well, it will… let’s hope.’

‘Providing he doesn’t send any more.’

‘I think I can guarantee that. Cobb watches him—it’s more feasible, in the small flat. I see him too for a short time most evenings.’

‘As if you hadn’t enough to do nowadays.’

‘He’s often quite good company.’

‘You’re very tolerant, Charles.’

‘Well, I look at it this way—quite apart from his being my father —I sometimes think when he’s at his best—not being too eccentric, that is—suppose we’d met him at some big party—as a stranger… we’d both come home afterwards and talk about him. We’d say, Who WAS that man?—not just his name, but WHO? He’s a WHO… and you can’t say that of everybody.’

‘Not even of everybody you like.’

‘No.’

‘And you CAN say it—sometimes—of people you don’t like.’

Charles accepted the implication, then answered: ‘I don’t blame you, Jane. I daresay you feel that but for him we’d be having a much pleasanter time somewhere else.’ An obscure desire to take her side in the argument made him continue: ‘Yes… think of Vińa del Mar in February—the Cavalhos giving a party at that Chinese restaurant overlooking the sea. Not that I was ever terribly keen on the Cavalhos… or on Chinese food either.’

‘Andy… tell me something, will you?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘What happened at Beeching the night before I had the operation?’

Charles’s face acquired the sudden protective blandness which he was afraid she knew only too well.

‘What happened? Why, nothing… What do you mean?’

‘During dinner.’

‘Dinner. Let’s see, I don’t think we had dinner—it was more a sort of supper—very late. Blainey was there—I’d met him at the station…’ He was stalling for time, of course. Since only three persons could have told her anything (Havelock, Blainey and Cobb) he did not think she could possibly know the whole story; but she clearly knew something, and he wanted to find out how much before he gave his own answer. It was a familiar situation in diplomacy, though Jane, being equally familiar with it, unfortunately knew all its tricks. He waited for her to speak while she too waited for him. Presently he said: ‘If you tell me what’s on your mind, I could better try to remember, perhaps…’

‘I just wondered what had happened.’

‘But why should you think anything had happened?’

‘When I saw Blainey weeks afterwards, just before Gerald was born, he asked me how I liked Havelock. I don’t think he would have, in the way he did, unless he’d formed an odd impression himself, and as he’d only seen him that one time at dinner, I wondered what had happened.’

Jane always told the truth, though she did not always tell all the truth, and Charles felt reasonably certain now that she knew nothing definite, but had merely been made shrewdly suspicious by a question that Blainey had put rather na vely. So he answered, with confidence: ‘Oh, I wouldn’t doubt that Blainey got an odd impression—did anyone meeting my father ever get anything else? All I remember is that we talked a lot—nervous tension —on my part, anyhow. Matter of fact Havelock would have kept Blainey up all night if I’d let him—got in one of his reminiscent moods about law cases—you know how he is at those times… I think the tension affected us all.’ Charles had often found that to tell the truth, casually and unimportantly, is a very effective substitute for a lie, with the additional advantage that it never requires retraction afterwards. Having told the truth in this way, he put in a little further probing of his own. ‘A pity surgeons are always so busy. I’d like to see Blainey again. Did he say what HE thought of Havelock?’

‘He said “You’ve got a rum fellow for a father-in-law”.’

‘That all? I’d call it a mild diagnosis… And then what did YOU say?’

‘I said I knew I had.’

Charles laughed. ‘If this damned war ever gets over, let’s ask Blainey to dinner… God, it would be something to live a civilized life again, wouldn’t it? Not that it’s too bad in London—putting on a tin hat once a week and having drinks in pubs. Our friends abroad should see me. I often wonder whether some of the German Secretaries and Attachés we used to meet are doing the same in Berlin… Talk about rum fellows—it’s a rum world altogether…’

Six months later the word ‘rum’ was hardly one that an Englishman would have chosen—with Scandinavia, the Low Countries and France already victims, German armies just across the Channel, and the first air-raids on London beginning. Charles did his duty ON as well as beneath the roofs of Whitehall, and of the many exciting moments that came to him a few were fairly unpleasant.

Early one dark morning, as he was leaving his fire-watching post after the ‘all clear’ sounded, he learned of an emergency summons for extra helpers in a certain street in Notting Hill where a large bomb had fallen. With others, he responded. When he got there he found that several five-storied houses had collapsed into rubble, under which were buried numerous victims, some of whom might still be alive. Rescue squads were already at work, boring and digging and passing out baskets of brick and plaster. Charles took a place in the line, and presently volunteered when a call was made for someone thin enough to crawl beneath a beam towards an elderly man who was pinned down under a mass of debris. Charles reflected as he did so that he wasn’t really so thin; it was the other fellows who just happened to be stouter. He worked for perhaps an hour, scrabbling bricks out of the mess and passing them behind him. He was getting closer to the man, but still not close enough to do anything for him. Not having had experience of this sort of thing before, he kept thinking he was slower than anyone else would have been, and this spurred him to extra exertion. From sounds outside he judged that the raiders had returned and were dropping more heavy stuff in the neighbourhood. The man who was pinned down groaned quietly from time to time; presently the groaning stopped. By the time Charles finally reached him he was dead. There was no point then in continuing to work at that particular place, so Charles withdrew from the hole and went to help somewhere else. This went on till past dawn. He worked in a vacuum of sensation, not feeling any of the expectable emotions—neither fear of the still falling bombs, nor pity for the dead and injured, nor anger or indignation at anybody or anything in particular. His most conscious thought, almost amounting to a worry, was that he wouldn’t be much good for some rather important work at his office later in the day.