Джеймс Хилтон - Time And Time Again

‘Good night, my friend.’ Palan pressed Charles’s hand with a boozy but not effeminate tenderness. ‘I have enjoyed talking with you. It is very funny today to be an English gentleman. It is almost as funny as to be an anarchist. Both are out of style… Au ‘voir, M’sieur.’

Charles waited to see him safely through the revolving doors, then continued his own journey to the Crillon. What a day, he summarized, as he mixed himself a drink in his room and made another jotting for the book he was going to write. ‘It is very funny today to be an English gentleman —almost as funny as to be an anarchist.’ Not bad, not bad. He also put down the quotation from Anatole France.

But he lay awake thinking mainly about Gerald. It was a different sort of concern from the one he had had earlier; milder but more persistent, just a small private regret—not that the boy should have preferred Miss Raynor’s company to his (how natural that was), but that he should have chosen not to mention her during the dinner. And evidently, but for the way things had happened, Charles would still have been in ignorance of her existence. It showed how little a son could wish to confide in a father… but then Charles had to add to himself—‘as if I didn’t know that already’. Which brought him back to old thoughts, and the extent to which he had tried (and perhaps failed) to come closer to Gerald than Havelock had to him, and the extent to which his failure (if any) had been an inheritance as lasting as the gold watch that had belonged to the Shah. Well, he had tried at least, and whether he had so far failed or not, he knew he must go on trying. He decided that when he got back to England he would take Gerald on some holiday of their own—the Lake District or North Wales, perhaps; and to clinch the idea in his mind he made the amazing concession: ‘Why, I’ll even watch him play tennis, if that’s what he’d like.’ This, surely, was il gran rifiuto of some kind or other, and having made it, he fell asleep.

When he walked through the hotel lobby the next morning he saw Miss Raynor sitting on a couch reading a newspaper. He was more than surprised; he remembered Palan’s remark about not catching trains and was perturbed. Was it POSSIBLE…? He walked over, greeting her with a smile only.

‘You’re staying here too?’ she exclaimed, showing some surprise and perturbation of her own.

‘Why, yes… but shouldn’t I have said it first?’

‘I know—or rather, I didn’t know—I mean, I didn’t know you were staying here. I just came here because I—I’d booked here weeks ago.’

‘Very sensible—they’re often full up unless you do that.’

He regarded her with kindly shrewdness, as if to say: Are you going to tell me or do I have to ask you? Evidently the latter, for after a pause he continued: ‘I thought you were leaving for Cherbourg last night?’

‘Yes, I—I intended to at first, but—but after I saw Gerald off on his train…’

‘So he left?’ Even unaccented the question seemed clumsy; he added hastily: ‘I daresay I got things muddled… Have you had breakfast?’ And to forestall an answer: ‘Perhaps another cup of coffee?’

‘But aren’t you on your way—’

‘The Conference starts at eleven. I usually walk over for exercise— it’s not far. But this morning I’ll ride.’

They found a corner table in the restaurant. She seemed preoccupied, and while he chattered fluently about Paris and Switzerland and as much about the Conference as she could read in the papers, he too was preoccupied. When the coffee arrived she said abruptly: ‘I’ll have to tell you the truth. I’ve been trying to invent something for the past few minutes but it just won’t work —because I expect you’ll tell Gerald you met me again here.’

‘I daresay I might have, but not unless you wish.’

‘He thinks I’m on my way to America.’

‘So did I.’ Charles smiled encouragingly.

‘I’d like him to go on thinking so.’

Charles waited for her to continue. Being of a professionally suspicious nature he was reflecting how easy it would be (though perhaps unnecessary) to telephone his London flat to find if Gerald had already arrived there.

She went on: ‘I don’t know how I can explain it without seeming either —priggish or—or boastful—or something I hope I’m not.’

‘I don’t think there’s much fear of you seeming that.’

‘So I’d better just tell you the truth? Well… the fact is… Gerald has an idea he’s in love with me.’

He waited again, remembering that this too was what Palan had said.

She went on: ‘I don’t suppose he told you.’

‘No.’

‘Probably he was afraid you’d think it too silly.’

Charles said gently: ‘I hope he wasn’t afraid of that. I never think any kind of love is silly. And I’m not sure what the difference is between being in love and having an idea you are—especially when you’re young.’

‘But seventeen’s perhaps TOO young—for thirty-three.’

‘Thirty-three?’

‘Yes. Quite a problem if we were BOTH in love.’ She flushed a little. ‘And rather embarrassing to have to explain all this to his father.’

‘It needn’t be embarrassing. It could all very easily have happened… But tell me how it did happen.’

‘We met a couple of weeks ago—at Mürren. Of course I liked him immediately—perhaps I encouraged him at first, without intending to. We talked and argued.’

‘What about?’

‘Oh, politics, religion, economics, the state of the world—life in general. He’s at the age for argument, and I can always enjoy one.’

‘So can I—though—for him—perhaps I seem to have passed the age.’ That sounded rather sad, so he went on gallantly: ‘It’s quite possible you know my son better than I do.’

‘Oh no, of course not.’

‘Tell me about him, anyway. What do you think of him?’

‘You really want my opinion?’

‘Very much.’

‘Well, to begin with, he’s first-rate company—clever— serious and yet gay about it—full of enthusiasms and idealisms. He’s less inhibited than most English boys, I should guess. And all-round in his interests—games as well as studies. Dances well, for instance. He asked me to a dance at the hotel.’

‘And to play tennis?’

‘No, I suggested that.’

‘He said you were good.’

‘I wasn’t bad, considering I hadn’t played for years. He’s quite good. We won against some people who were very bad indeed.’

Charles nodded. It was not unlike certain occasions that in his own professional career had ranked as successes. He was thinking of this when she added: ‘That’s really the whole story.’

‘Is it?’ He smiled. ‘Well… so much for l’affaire suisse.’

‘Don’t joke about it.’

‘I’m sorry. You play tennis—I make jokes—each of us, it seems, has a way of dealing with a delicate situation.’

She laughed then, for the first time. ‘But you like making jokes— far more than I like playing tennis.’

‘I should hope so… But seriously, how did the scene change to Paris?’

‘Because I left Switzerland when my stay there was finished—I’ve been in Germany since—so he wanted to meet me here—just once —before I finally go home. I told him there wouldn’t be time, as I was only just passing through, but he said it so happened he’d be in Paris anyway —because he was having dinner with you.’

‘Plausible.’

‘I still tried to put him off, but he said he was sure his dinner with you would end in time to give us an hour or so. He seemed to think you’d want to go to bed early during the Conference.’

‘He just thought of everything, eh?’