Henry Green - Back

“Of course,” Charley said, and looked at him unseeing. He’d hardly heard.

“My God, but they’re being a long time with our bunny,” Mr Middlewitch replied. “You’d think they had to take it out of its hutch, kill it, get the skin off, cook the little blighter, and then dish him up, by the time they’re taking.”

“I went down to the graveyard and, damn me if I didn’t run into her husband,” Charley told him.

“That must have been awkward,” Mr Middlewitch agreed. “What happened then? Did you cry with your two heads together over the monument? You speak as if you knew the lad.”

“He’s all right,” Charley said, seemingly a bit daunted. “We had a bite to eat after.” Mr Middlewitch did not notice the reaction.

“And you had a bit of a chat? Compared notes eh?”

“No,” Charley said. He frowned.

“I remember I was in a situation like that once,” Mr Middlewitch explained. “Very awkward too. It was soon after I left school, and I’d got in with a girl about my own age in the same road. Of course there was nothing to it, we were kids, see. But she went down with something or other, I forget, I believe it was meningitis, that can be a terrible thing, and when she died I had to spend most of every evening for weeks on end comforting the mother. Nice bit of stuff the mother was as well, but I was too young in those days to tumble the way the wind lay. Not that I wasn’t well developed for a boy mind you.”

There was no response from Summers.

“No, it’s the opportunities missed that get you down as you grow older,” Middlewitch went on, with the wisdom of his prison camp. “Take this rabbit before us now. If I’d ever known I was to have so much coney, why I’d ’ve never cancelled those steaks I used to in the old days, thinking a heavy meal at this hour did me harm. I went regular to the old George at the corner of Wood Lane, which is blitzed down, because most any day you could get a portion of rabbit there. If I’d known then what I do now. But that’s life.”

As for Charley, he did not care by this time what he was eating. And, when Middlewitch called their waitress for cheese and coffee, Rose was no more than a name to him. All the girls at this place were called alike. He concentrated, greedily, on the widow Mr Grant had mentioned.

“Shall I give her a tinkle?” he asked into the silence that had fallen, in a sighing covey of angels, above their table.

But Mr Middlewitch was bored. “Tell you what,” he said, “I’ll take you over and introduce you to old Ernie. He might do you a bit of good one of these days. What’s that we were saying? Ring her? My dear good lad, do no such thing,” he said. He had forgotten his earlier advice. “Drop in, boy. There you are. Then they can’t say no. Because women are practised on the telephone. Drop in unexpected, that’s my advice, drop in,” he said.

Mrs Frazier sat beside Charley, in front of a roaring fire, in the bed sitting room he hired from her.

“No coal, no nothing,” she remarked. She was about fifty and thin.

He grunted.

“Enjoy this while you have the opportunity,” she said, “take what pleasure and comfort you can, because who is there to tell what may befall. When these new bombs he’s sending over, turn in the air overhead, and come at you, there’s not a sound to be had. One minute sitting in the light, and the next in pitch darkness with the ceiling down, that is if you’re lucky, and haven’t the roof and all on top. But as to our coal, that’s certain. ‘Coal?’ my own merchant said the last time. ‘Coal, Madame? Never heard of it.’ And you don’t catch a sound when they crash, everyone that’s had one, and come out alive, speaks to that.”

He sat vaguely wondering about chances of promotion in the office. Then about his coupons.

“Which is quite different from the last war,” Mrs Frazier continued. “And what a difference, oh my lord how different. Always heard them coming in the last war, and so gave the men time to cast themselves flat. I remember Mr Frazier telling me. But of course in your case you didn’t have long to form a judgement. They took you prisoner within a fortnight of your landing over on the other side, as you informed me. So enjoy this scuttleful while you may,” she ended with relish, “for there’s not another in the cellar. I said to Mary, ‘Let Mr Summers have it, Mary,’ I said, ‘We owe him that for all the poor man’s been through.’ ‘And what about your own fire, Madam?’ ‘Why I’ll sit with Mr Summers, Mary, and see the last fire out we shall have this winter for the gentleman.”’

She said this with an easy mind, who had a ton and a half stowed safe in the other cellar.

She chanced a look at those great brown eyes. He continued to ignore her. But his expression was very pleasant.

“I can’t make up my mind why you don’t go out more often,” she went on. “At the age you are as well, and after what you’ve been in. Find a young lady I mean,” she said.

He gave a happy laugh.

“Laugh?” she asked. “You may laugh but I’m serious.”

He did not take this up.

“Now Mr Middlewitch,” she said, looking into the fire, “that was another kettle of fish, with that man. Why I never had one like it. In the end I was obliged to tell him. Well, I mean to say.”

“Middlewitch?” Charley asked. “Who works in the C.E.G.S.?”

“Oh I couldn’t be certain, I’m sure,” Mrs Frazier answered, but she then gave a description which agreed exactly. “Perhaps you’ve met each other in the way of business?”

“Same man,” Charley said.

“Why I often wonder what’s become of him.”

“Didn’t know I knew him?” Charley enquired.

“Every year you live the world shrinks smaller,” Mrs Frazier replied. “Fancy you knowing Mr Middlewitch. I didn’t intend anything. It’s only that some are different from others. I believe it really was that he thought he’d suit himself best near the Park, in Kensington. Took a fancy to run before breakfast, or suchlike. Whichever way it was, he left here. Paid what was due quite all right. Oh yes, there was nothing of that sort about the gentleman, even if there was a bit too much of the other. You understand I wasn’t altogether sorry to see the back of him. But I wish the gentleman well, oh yes, I wish him quite well. It was a Mr Gerald Grant recommended Mr Middlewitch.”

Charley was so surprised he spoke sharp.

“Elderly? Lives out at Redham?”

“The same,” Mrs Frazier answered. “Now, of course, you do know him. Why, he recommended you. Very lucky you were, too, even if it is me that says so. If you hadn’t had your experiences I shouldn’t wonder but I might have refused.”

“Of course. I forgot,” Charley mumbled.

“I daresay you think it’s a lot of nonsense,” she said, looking at him with open irritation, “but, when you’ve been back a while longer, you’ll find conditions very different to what you remember of when you went off. Decent flatlets are hard to come by these days. There’s not many roofs left in this whole town, for one thing. So, when Mr Grant rang me, I said, ‘It’s not another Mr Middlewitch, is it?’ ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘as different as chalk from cheese.’ Because that man. Well I’m a married woman, I’m as broadminded as most, but that gentleman’s love life defied description.”

“Never knew the two were acquainted,” Charley explained, aghast.

“What is there strange in that?” Mrs Frazier enquired, irritable still. “Once you start on coincidences why there’s no end to those things. I could tell you a story you’d never believe but it’s as true as I’m here,” and she at once began a long tale. He hardly listened.