Henry Green - Loving, Living, Party Going

‘Only crazy for what I haven’t got,’ he said, ‘like any drowning, starving man.’

‘Drowning are you now? I’d have sworn you was like any little schoolboy with his first sweetheart, his pretty honeypot’

‘All right, but it’s natural, isn’t it, same as it is to want a cup of tea.’ He went on that if someone were to come now and offer him half a dollar for this luggage he would accept if it did mean his job, or he would for a cup of tea even. Edwards said now he was back harping on it, ‘your Jew’s harp,’ he went on, straining his fancy, ‘always wanting more than what you have.’

But Thomson’s trouble was sex. He could not hold that kiss she had given him as it might be an apple in his hand to turn over while he made up his mind to bite, he was like any starving creature who wanted one more apple and this made him restless. And this was why, though he did not know it, he went on about his tea. He always had a cup Of tea if his mind ran for too long on girls, that is when he had no girl ready to his hand.

‘It’s not my tea so much,’ he said, expressing this.

‘You want the moon,’ said Edwards.

Meantime Robert Hignam’s man, who had so frightened Julia, was making his way from one grieving mourner to another or, as they sat abandoned, cast away each by his headstone, they were like the dead resurrected in their clothes under this cold veiled light and in an antiseptic air. He dodged about asking any man he saw if he was Miss Julia Wray’s, so much as to say, ‘I be the grave-digger, would I bury you again?’

When he found Thomson he tried to persuade him to hand the luggage over so that he could get it into the hotel because he wanted to be clever and do more than Robert had required. Thomson asked who had sent him and when he heard it was Hignam he said he could not take orders from any but Miss Wray. Edwards said who was he anyway, he might be Arsene Lupin easy, and what did he take them for?

‘Well, as you might say, the orders did come from that young lady.’

‘Tell us,’ said Thomson and Edwards could not understand how he could go on talking with this man who might be anybody, ‘what’s going on in there?’ he said, nodding over to where they were sitting quarrelling up above behind lace curtains,

‘She’s a goner.’

‘Who’s a goner?’

‘Why that young lady’s aunt.’

‘Don’t talk so silly,’ Edwards said.

‘As sure as I’m here,’ he answered.

‘Have you seen her?’

‘Of course I’ve seen her,’ he said, speaking in educated tones again. ‘She was taken bad in the buffet and they had to carry her upstairs.’

‘And what about a doctor?’

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘they’ve had the doctor to her, but he’s no doctor, I’ve not been around all these years without I know about that hotel doctor. He’s killed any number of them,’ he said, ‘when they’ve been carried in,’ and as he talked of death his speech relapsed into some dialect of his own, ‘any bloody number of ‘em,’ he went on, ‘as’ve been took bad on the bloody Continent and ‘ave said well if they were going to be sick they’d be sick in their own native land and so left it too late, appendicitis and all,’ he said.

‘Not bloody likely,’ said Edwards, any talk of death making him swear.

‘It’s the bloody truth.’

‘Well then,’ said Edwards, ‘if anything was to come to her, it’s unpack for you and me, my lad,’ he said to Thomson.

At this a huge wild roar broke from the crowd. They, were beginning to adjust that board indicating times of trains which had stood, all of two hours behind where it had reached when first the fog came down.

‘Wild animals,’ Edwards said.

‘Won’t do her any good,’ said Hignam’s man.

‘Well, that’s a shocking thing,’ Thomson said, ‘if anything were to happen to Miss Fellowes, why my young lady wouldn’t half take on, you know, soft ‘earted.’

‘Death’s a bloody awful thing,’ said Edwards, ‘but it isn’t as easy as all that, it takes time to die. She couldn’t have been well enough to come all that way here if she was going to die this minute. Depend upon it she’s all right, or will be.’

‘Well,’ said Thomson, ‘I reckon if what he says is right it will put paid to this party, they’ll all be off ‘ome and we’ll get no thanks for it.’

Edwards remarked Miss Fellowes had been acting very extraordinary before, very extraordinary, but that did not mean anything except she had come over queer.

‘And shall I take these things?’ this strange man said.

‘Where’s a copper?’

‘Who are you talking to, young feller?’

‘Go on and get off,’ said Edwards, ‘we’ve had enough of you and now you’ve bloody well upset me with your talk. Who’d you think is going to give you his luggage, now get on, go off.’

He went and Thomson said some people did have strange ideas. Now who would imagine he would try to go through all that mob with valuable luggage, just so as Miss Julia could see it was still there, when she hadn’t even said she wanted to. But it did seem this man knew something about them and it was rotten about Miss Fellowes. If she was ill why they’d none of them start, they’d put it off as sure as anything.

Edwards said not to be too sure, she was no relation of theirs, meaning Mr Adey’s and Miss Wray’s. He’d known worse happen without his gentleman turning back.

‘Well, it wouldn’t be right, not to start like that, not with that behind you,’ said Thomson. ‘And if she did die why you’d never be the same, none of them would, not for three days at all events.’

‘And I thought you wanted your tea so bad you’d have given all this away for sixpence.’

‘Oh, that was different,’ said Thomson, meaning his Emily.

‘But then would you go, you,’ he went on, ‘if anything of that kind was to happen?’

‘No, I would not,’ said Edwards, ‘but then they’re different.’

‘It’s all the old same, excuse me,’ Thomson said, ‘death’s death, if you understand me.’

‘Let’s get this straight. No one except that loony said she was going to die, did they?’

‘Well, it’s the same if she was really bad, they’d never go.’

‘Mr Adey would.’

‘And my young lady wouldn’t.’

‘Don’t you be so sure, my lad. I fancy she’d follow him all over, or she’d like to.’

‘I won’t speak about that if you don’t mind,’ said Thomson, ‘I don’t hold with following what anyone’s after or saying this or that about them. What they do is none of my concern. No, I don’t like it,’ he said and probably did not know what he really meant. Anyway they both of them dropped it.

But this was what Claire was talking about with Evelyn. Max was in her bedroom with those two old nannies and they were standing in the corridor outside.

‘What do you think?’ Claire said to her.

‘I know,’ said Evelyn, ‘it’s very worrying isn’t it?’

‘What would you do?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You see what so upsets me is when one of them in there says, and I don’t know which of the old things it was, mine or the other, did you hear it, she said “oh no, dearie, why you couldn’t go now, not with your own aunt lying there.” When she calls me dearie it makes me feel like a street woman. And that when the doctor said it was nothing, or anyway if it wasn’t nothing that it wasn’t serious. Evelyn, my dear, when anyone is as drunk as that they sleep it off, don’t they, I mean they don’t lie there unconscious and after all she has passed out now hasn’t she, that is she lies there breathing in that awful way she’s not asleep is she? I don’t know, if we could get hold of another doctor he might be able to tell us something, but then I don’t want to seem nasty and I hate to say it but supposing he said she was very bad, well then, it would not help her if we went or stayed, would it? Oh, can you tell me why that idiot Robert doesn’t do something?’