Henry Green - Back

“Oh I’ve been around, here, there, and everywhere, like the scarlet Johnny,” he said. “And by the way, I came across someone who claimed your acquaintance.”

“Go on? What colour was his hair? Ginger?”

“You’re joking,” he objected. “No, it was a chap with me, where they fitted us with our limbs. He was repatriated a bit later than me, as a matter of fact. Charley Summers’ the name.”

“You too,” was all she said, and seemed disgusted. Arthur considered, perhaps this was more serious than he had thought.

“Look Nance,” he said, rushing it, “you and me’s known each other for some little time past. Strictly speaking this is none of my affair. He never told what all this was about. Charley Summers may be a queer card but he’s straight as a die, Nance old girl, straight as a die. And he’s been through a tough, rotten period. I’ve had some in those prison camps. You’d only to go in the guard room and sneeze in front of one of Herr Adolph’s portraits, and it was off to the dark in solitary confinement, right away. They called it inciting the glorious Wehrmacht to revolt. Things may be a bit different, now they see the writing on the wall, but that’s how it was when we were out there. He’s had it Nance, il l’a eu , as our French cousins say. Now, maybe the old lad’s done something to upset you, I wouldn’t know. I couldn’t get anything out of the man myself. But if he did, I shouldn’t take too much notice.”

She sat there.

“Have you finished?” she asked.

“Now what have I said?” he enquired, a bit daunted.

“Did you send that damned lunatic my way?”

“I?” Mr Middlewitch cried. “Not on your life.”

“That’s all right, Art,” she said. “But, you’re a witness to the fact that, since Phil was killed and Mum went off out of these flying bombs, I’ve lived on here very quiet. I’m all right. I don’t need company. Then someone tells this man out of Colney Hatch my address, and the way I am these days I daresn’t open the door for fear it’s him again. It’s my nerves won’t let me. The first time he came he fainted, and the next — oh well, you’ve said it, he’s not normal.”

“This is none of my business, Nance, you needn’t tell me and I respect you for it, but things weren’t easy for us chaps out there. Drop him a line like a good girl.”

“Sakes alive, is that the time?” she cried. “I must be off or I shall be late.” The next day she wrote Charley a note. All it said was, that she did not want to leave things tangled.

She was a good-hearted girl.

Miss Nancy Whitmore sent her note to Charley’s business address, which Middlewitch had given her. By the same post there was a line for Charley from Phillips, who was the sort of man who forgave freely, for old times’ sake. In his letter he asked Charley down over the August holiday, and said for him to bring a girl, though he added, as a wry joke, not the Miss Whitmore he had been taken to visit that once.

Phillips’ letter was marked personal. Dot did not open it. But there was nothing of the kind on Nancy’s envelope. Because of this, she read what Nancy had written. It looked to her like he must really be after this girl. She put it away in the middle of the day’s mail. She was most curious.

As soon as Charley had washed himself and settled down to go through the correspondence, she watched to see how he took it when he came on Nancy’s note. But to her amazement all he did was to laugh, out loud, triumphantly. He thought Rose must be disguising her hand.

Then, when he came to Phillips’ letter, and read the invitation, he was so cynically amused to find the husband specially asking him not to bring the wife, that, because he felt particularly bright this morning, he said to his assistant,

“What are you doing over the holiday, Dot?”

“Me? Why nothing, as per usual, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Care to come along to an old friend of mine in Essex?”

She was astounded. She took it absolutely seriously. She was so surprised she could have kicked herself, after, for what she said next.

“Well, this is a bit sudden, isn’t it?” she brought out. He was embarrassed, because he saw she meant to accept.

“It’s a lovely place, right in the village. Very old,” he said, ashamed of himself. But he could not draw back, not now.

“Well I shall have to think this one out, I mean shan’t I?” she mumbled. He could see her mind was made up. And he said, “Why not?” to himself. After all, life owed him something now. Then his phone rang, and they became submerged in work. He forgot Miss Pitter.

When he got back to his place that night, he had still forgotten her. He could think of nothing but his own girl disguising her hand. He went to the suitcase under the bed, and took out those five letters he had had before the war from Rose, which he kept in a big envelope. His hands terribly trembled. The letters were undated, in no particular order. What he wanted to find was one fit for the handwriting expert to compare with Miss Whitmore’s screed.

“Darling Stinker,” he read. “If you weren’t such a stinking darling you’d go down to Redham for me and see the old dears. I didn’t half get a moan from dad yesterday in our letter box. You know what I am about letter writing. My hubby says they can’t ever have sent me to school so probably if I did write they couldn’t read anyway. So be a dear old Stinker and go down and tell them how you saw their little Rose blooming over Whitsun. Got to rush now. From your Mrs Siddons.”

These letters put him in agony, they made him love her so. And he knew he could not send that one, it was too intimate. He started on the next.

“Dear Stinker. I must say I think it’s a bit lop-sided your simply making up your mind you’d forget when I asked you especially to get me those mules we saw in the advert. Don’t be a meanie darling. From Rose.”

He knew he couldn’t part with this one either. No stranger must ever see it.

“Stinker darling. I’m writing this lain in bed. Old mother Gubbins just got me my breaky. I sniff for my Stinker but there’s not a trace. I bet you wish you were here you old smoothie. Jim won’t be home now till the end of the week. Are you mortified in your silly old office? And don’t you wish you were here with Your Rose.”

His eyes filled with tears. These letters were sacred. After a little time he began on the next.

“My dear. Of course now I’ve got someone else to consider — I mean while I’m bearing baby, I’ve got to be careful I don’t do too much haven’t I, coming up to London and all that well you wouldn’t wish for me to have a turn in front of all the crowd at the cricket would you. So you’ll just have to be a patient old Stinker. No seriously the doctor says I’ll have to watch myself and not get overtired and to put my feet up when I’ve half a chance. He’s such a sweet old bear of a man. So not just yet Charley Barley. The next few weeks he says are the tricky ones. Keep your chin up. Your Red Rose.”

They were too outspoken, he told himself. Because anyone could tell from this one that Ridley was his own child. Then he read the last.

“Dear Stinker. I must say I do think you might have sent on those things. If you could see me every hour watching for the postman, dear, I expect you’d do something about it now. But it’s out of sight out of mind with you darling. So do be quick. Your —” and she must have forgotten to sign.

There was not one of them he could let go. He put the lot back in the suitcase. Then he had an idea. He found his nail scissors, got the letters again, and began, without thinking, to cut those sentences out which he thought would not give him away. He worked fast, laying each snippet on a sheet of newspaper to which he proposed to paste the bits like a telegram. And this was the message from Rose that he scissored, almost at random, out of their love letters: