Джеймс Хилтон - Time And Time Again

They hadn’t, until then. But afterwards those who knew him well enough and liked him sometimes did. Others picked up the nickname without the story of its origin, and thinking of him as Stuffy found stuffiness in some of his behaviour. His minute handwriting helped, and perhaps also a certain fussiness over details that did not, just then, seem to everybody worth the attention he gave them. He could not have explained, and perhaps he did not know, that he clung to the importance of these trivia as to a symbol of what could not be blown to bits or buried under rubble. The verbal correctness of despatches, for instance. He abhorred jargon, the diplomatic as much as any, and would frown on any junior who talked or wrote of ‘implementing a decision’ or ‘activating a policy’, except of course when such idioms were consciously used to disguise or fog a meaning. For certain words his dislike amounted to prejudice—‘rededicate’ was one; ‘underprivileged’ was another. To the surprise of some in his department, he had no objection to ‘okay’. He was not a pedant. Now that the immediate threat of a German invasion seemed to be over, there were often arguments about the value and quality of Churchill’s oratory—that speech, for example, about fighting on the beaches and in the fields and the streets and the hills. How far could it have weighed in the hairline balance that had so recently existed? It was often conceded that further fighting would have been hopeless if ever an enemy had seized the airfields, the railways and roads into London, and the Channel ports, nor was it certain that all this could have been prevented if enough German lives had been staked. Yet the romantic view, the heroic attitude, however false or illogical—what a weapon it had been, and especially in the almost total absence of other weapons! Charles, whose service to his country was at no time romantic, nor did he ever think it was, could share nevertheless the sense of glory that sometimes touched London’s tired morning faces like an extra colour on a painter’s palette that came from no known mixture of other colours. It would have been hard to make a memorandum about this, but it was clearly the stuff that dreams were made of, and English dreams at that. Charles was a great admirer of Churchill and of the fighting-on-the-beaches speech. But of the other famous one, about having nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat, he would only comment: ‘It always WAS good—even when Garibaldi and Lord Byron and John Donne thought so.’

Charles alternated with Jane, as a rule, in visiting Gerald at weekends; it rarely happened that they could go together. But Gerald meanwhile was happy enough with Aunt Birdie and had made friends of his own age in the small Cheshire town. Charles told Jane he sometimes doubted whether the boy really enjoyed his visits or was just polite enough to give him a civil welcome.

‘Of course he likes to see you, Charles. But he’s as shy of you as you are of him.’

‘I don’t mind. My time will come later. What I’m really looking forward to is when he’s about seventeen or eighteen and we can start being companions. Climbing, for instance—I’d like to take him up Scafell.’

‘I’ll be getting on for sixty when Gerald’s eighteen.’

Charles’s vision of Scafell had included only himself and Gerald, but he replied gallantly: ‘Why all the mathematics? People have climbed the Matterhorn at sixty.’

She shook her head. She was in one of the sombre moods that had come rather frequently of late—the strain of the raids, he surmised. He wished she would go back to Cheshire and rest for a few weeks.

Abruptly she came over to his chair and sat on the arm. ‘Charles, do you remember those little islands near Stockholm that we always said were so fascinating though we never found time to land on them?’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, that’s the point. We never found time. And it would only have taken a day.’

‘That’s so. But what made you think of them?’

‘I’ve been thinking of a lot of places lately. For relief, I suppose. You have to think of OTHER things when you’re doing SOME things… Places where we’ve lived, or just visited, or passed in a train or boat, and memory put a red star in the corner like pictures in a gallery that get sold…’

‘That’s a pretty comparison.’

‘… The Danube at Giurgiu, do you remember, and the old man who came on board festooned with green peppers and pomegranates? And St.-Rémy-de-Provence on the night they had the wine festival? And Kandersteg, where you said you’d like to paint, but I wanted to climb, so we climbed… I’m sorry about that now. I should have let you paint more.’

‘We couldn’t climb and paint at the same time, and I always enjoyed climbing.’

‘Charles, if you ever marry again, pick a young girl who doesn’t like climbing, because you’re getting to the age when painting is so much better for your heart.’

Charles laughed, yet was increasingly puzzled by her mood. He said lightly: ‘My heart’s all right, Jane, as you know better than anybody.’

‘That’s pretty too. Reminds me of old times. Compliments and champagne under the chandeliers. Our lives have had so much of that, haven’t they? You remember François Pichel? He once told me you could pay a compliment as well as any Frenchman.’

‘Which was a nice way of paying himself one.’

‘He also liked your paintings. Where are they all now?’

‘Goodness knows. Brunon had a lot, and where’s he? Still at Clermont-Ferrand, I hope—it’s pretty safe there… Some others were at Beeching and when the place was sold they got mixed up with the stuff that went to auction. I have a few here, probably ruined by dust and dampness… Why this sudden interest in them?’

‘Because… oh, Andy, paint some more some time, will you? Would there be anything to paint on one of those islands?’

‘Why, yes, I daresay, but—’

‘Could we ever go there and see?’

‘After the war, of course… But Jane, what’s the matter? You’re not —specially—UPSET about anything, are you?’

As soon as he had spoken it the question seemed absurd. There they were, huddled in a cold room after a makeshift meal, weary from a day of effort and nervous tension, waiting for the night which, if it followed a familiar pattern, would bring them more of the same.

‘I’m all right,’ she answered. At that moment the sirens began, and from then on it was the plain truth; she WAS all right. And though Charles wasn’t, altogether (his stomach never could get used to the sound), it was easier to brace himself for the performance of certain known duties than to prowl wistfully among the memories. ‘No champagne under the chandeliers tonight,’ he said grimly, reaching for his equipment. It was his turn for fire-watching and with a raid in prospect he must start at once.

He often felt that he endured these occasions only by having to go out and do things instead of staying at home to wait for things to happen.

One morning in March there was an ‘incident’ in a street called Marlow Terrace, where bombs had fallen during the night. The usual after-raid work was in progress—digging into ruins to discover if anyone trapped were still alive, and an evacuation of families from nearby houses that had been declared unsafe. The sun shone like a red globe through the dust, the air was warm with a touch of spring, and a canteen served tea to anyone who wanted it —officials, rescue workers, and residents alike. All the routine of behaviour that had by now become so dreadfully normal was operating smoothly, and there was nothing in Marlow Terrace that made it different from scores of other London streets that morning. Suddenly a delayed-action bomb exploded from the front garden of a house where evacuation had just been ordered. It was an enormous explosion heard miles away. The walls of all the adjacent houses caved in and made a mountain of rubble from pavement to pavement. A roaring fire broke out almost immediately from escaping gas. The whole street had been so busy, just before, that survivors were unable to say exactly who had been there and who elsewhere; only a roll-call, undertaken later, gave a list which could be no more than tentative. A few persons were just not seen again, and nothing was ever found of them, or guessed about them unless someone came along to say that so-and-so was missing and might have been or must have been in Marlow Terrace about that time.