Two

ARCHIE

July–August 1946

The water was amber-coloured in the sunlight as he stepped into it on the sandy gravel. The bank shelved steeply and he was soon up to his neck in the river. It was clear and wonderfully cool after the burning sun, and it moved unhurriedly past and round him. Bright weed streamed out below, like long green hair being endlessly brushed out. Some of the river was dangerous with currents, but this was a safe place where he had always come to bathe. He swam out and then turned on his back to float and drift gently. In the middle, the water reflected nothing but the sky, a delicate bleached blue, but near the far bank, where the trees overhung it, it was dappled with dark and oily greens. Beyond the trees, the terraces of vines shimmered, trembled in the white light. He turned to swim back to the opposite shore, which was decorated with pale grey rocks set in the stony ground.

He had taken to coming here in the mornings, had borrowed Marcel’s bicycle which he furnished with his knapsack filled with lunch and painting materials. He found a great need to get out of his rooms which, for reasons that he did not fathom, depressed him.

It had been strange, amazing, to find it all there: dusty, ill-kempt, but still with his furniture, his pots and pans, his easel, his paints and books and even some old clothes. We knew you would return, they said. There had been a welcome; the first night and day there he had felt heady with the reunion, had shaken hands, kissed cheeks, consumed quantities of pastis and coffee, asked after the health of children now grown, but then a kind of lethargy descended upon him and he began to feel alone. He had begun to sense that he was regarded as an outsider almost at once – when they were drinking in the café and he had asked what it had been like while he had been away. There had been a short, defensive silence – shrugs. Pierre, who kept the épicerie, seemed about to speak, but his father, who had always ruled the family and made his wife and sons work while he sat on a hard wooden chair outside the shop, grunted and he was silenced.

Early the next morning he had gone to collect his bread from Madame Gigot and she had remarked upon his limp. He had told her how he’d got it, and she had said, ah, yes, the war. The war had been terrible for all. But when he had asked after her family, she had closed up. Yvette, he had pressed, pretty Yvette, she must have made a good marriage by now. It had not been possible, she said. Her eyes, black as sloes, had regarded him without expression. Where was she? She had gone north, to Lyon. It had been necessary, many things had become necessary. She would not be returning. It was better not to speak of her in the village. Then she had sighed, slapped his baguette on the counter and wished him a good holiday. She knew, as everyone in the village seemed to, that he was only there for a short stay.

Then when he had gone to ask Marcel if he could hire a bicycle and asked whether Jean-Jacques, who had worked in the garage and was a cousin of Marcel’s, might know of one, Marcel had said that he was not in the village any more. He had been taken away – they had taken him in 1944 to work in Germany. He had not returned, and nothing was known of him. These were the only two pieces of information he elicited, and he quickly learned not to ask for more. There was a constraint: relationships had changed between people, and between him and them. So he felt lonely, isolated, sensing that the discretion came out of some shame, which in turn bred a passive hostility that he could neither fully understand nor overcome. Agathe, who used to clean his house for him and do his laundry, had died, Marcel’s wife had told him that first evening when he was dining in the little restaurant at the back of the café. She had had something wrong with her insides, had needed an operation, but by the time they had got her to Avignon to the hospital it was too late. He had cleaned up the place a bit, enough to be able to live in it, but then he had found that he did not want to be there, and so he had taken to these long days by the river, bicycling back when the sun had begun to sink.

This feeling of alienation, which he had not at all expected, drove him to think all the time of the people he had left. Of Nancy, with whom he had spent a last miserable evening. She had been stoic. ‘Thanks for telling me,’ she had said. ‘I suppose I sort of knew when you kept putting me off.’ It was useless, unkind even, to say that that had not been the reason: it had seemed useless and not particularly kind to say anything. And yet things had to be said. He had tried to protect her pride, only to find that she had none. ‘Yes, I did hope we’d come to something,’ she had said, rubbing the tears from her eyes, ‘but I do see that it was rather silly of me. You’re far more intelligent and interesting than I am.’

When he asked whether he might keep in touch with her, or whether she would prefer him not to, she had said, ‘Not to begin with. I’ve got to get over it, haven’t I? And I know people do.’ Well, he had said, write to him if and when she felt like it. ‘All right.’ They had parted in the street. He had seen her on to her bus – saw her standing on the platform, looking back at him before it moved off, and she began to climb to the top deck.

The next Saturday morning he had gone to Harrods and bought her a kitten. The pet shop there was noisy with the trills and whistles and squawks of captive birds. There were hutches full of smooth, secretive rabbits and smaller cages of mice, hamsters, a white rat, tortoises, and two pens with kittens. A litter of Persians, and one of blue Burmese. He chose one of the blue Burmese, a female – a queen, they said. While they were putting it in a cat basket, he wrote a note. ‘It’s time you had another friend. Love, Archie.’ Then he took it in a taxi to her flat. It protested loudly throughout the journey. He asked the driver to ring the bell and deliver the cat, and made him park a few doors away. He did not want to confound her with his presence, but he wanted to make sure she was in. ‘Don’t say you’re a cab driver,’ he said. ‘Just say you’ve been told to deliver the cat.’ From the back window he saw her open the door, the delivery made, and her look of astonishment and delight. She took the basket, the door shut and the man returned. ‘That went down a bit of all right,’ he had said.

That had been one good thing. She had sent him a postcard saying simply: Thank you so much. She’s simply lovely.’

But other things …

He thought of Villy and her bitterness and wondered whether her hapless dependants – Roly and Lydia and Miss Milliment – would galvanize her into feeling that she had something to live for, or whether her hurt pride and her misery would simply infect them all with despair. Lydia was out of the worst of it – her boarding school would provide her with some other life – but Roly and Miss Milliment were trapped. He remembered Rupert once saying to him that the trouble with Villy was that she had always behaved as though her life was a secret tragedy understood by none. The tragedy, if that’s what it was, was no longer secret. Edward had always done more or less what he wanted, but knowing – because Rupert had told him – that this new woman had one, if not two children by him might have trapped him. What was the moral choice? To stay with Villy and let Diana what’shername fend for herself? To pay his way out of that, if he could afford to? Or to ditch Villy and take on his new responsibilities? He’d still have to pay for Villy, but that might be easier. Whatever he did, whatever he wanted, he must feel guilt. At least Rupert had made a clean break from that affair in France. When Rupe had told him about that, he had felt really sorry for him, for all three of them, because Zoë had Jack’s death to endure – and not just a death, but a suicide, surely harder to bear. He remembered that evening in his flat when Rupert had poured out his unhappiness and all the while he had kept thinking of Zoë and the look of extreme pain that had come and gone on her face when he had told her that Jack had loved her and thanked her for it. It had wrenched his heart: her saying that she expected he would think it very bad of her to fall in love, and then saying that she did not believe that Rupert would ever come back. On the evening with Rupert he had thought of their emotional symmetry and how it would save them both: they had only to tell each other these things that they had separately told him for all to be well. But such a solution proved too simple, and too dangerous for either to attempt it. Of course, he had urged Rupert, but Rupert had said that he could not possibly tell Zoë until he was honestly not in love with Michèle. And he was still in love with her. He could keep away from her, but he could not order his feelings about her.

He’d been drying off on the bank in the steady, burning sun. It was time for a drink and lunch. He fetched the bottle cooling between the two rocks in the river and drew the cork. It was a rosé of the region; light and refreshing. He unpacked his bread and cheese and the peaches. In the old days, he would have been looking at the scene before him as he ate, considering, planning what he would draw. Now he did not look; his mind’s eye was crammed.

Much later last year, at Home Place, he had gone for a walk with Zoë. It had been just before they had moved to London, to live in Hugh’s house, and he had asked her if that was what she wanted. She had said, ‘I think it will be easier – in some ways. Someone else about the place, you know.’

‘Is that easier?’

‘It does seem to be.’

‘Dear Zoë. Are you still grieving about him?’

‘I shall always do that. Not about Jack – but for him.’ Then, seeing that he did not understand her, she said, ‘I mean, I know now that he came back to be sure that I could manage without him, and he was right, I could. I do. But he didn’t lose his life, he gave it, and I grieve that he should have felt he had to do that. He was a very loving person, you see.’ She was silent a moment, and then, and he could hardly hear her, she said: ‘Probably the most loving person I shall ever know.’

He took her arm, and they walked on until he felt he could say, ‘Don’t you think it might be a good thing to tell Rupe about it?’

But she had recoiled from him at once. ‘Archie, no! I couldn’t. He wouldn’t understand! He’d be so hurt. And everything is so … fragile between us. I mean, everything – you know. It’s my fault. I don’t delight him, we don’t get lost together – we seem separately lost to start with—’ and she had stopped, trying not to cry.

He had put an arm round her then, and when she had recovered somewhat, had reiterated as steadily and gently as he could, ‘I still think you should try. I think it might surprise you – not be as you imagine.’

But she had said almost angrily, ‘You don’t understand, Archie! I know you think you do, but you don’t. Everything would be in smithereens.’

He had had to give up. He’d had another go at Rupert, to no avail, and then, hopelessly and thoroughly frustrated, he had left it. It wasn’t his business, he told himself, people could not be made to do even what was sensible and right. But, then, who was he to decide what was either of those things? The trouble about being outside any situation was that you couldn’t see the trees for the wood. Interference, for whatever reason, was simply a vicarious way of living.

At least I didn’t try to interfere about Clary, he thought, as he poured the last of the wine into his glass and found a Gauloise. God! He had wanted to! The more Clary had extolled his virtues, the more paranoid, selfish and manipulative Noël had seemed. And Mrs Forman too. At least there was a Mrs Forman – he was fairly sure Clary’s views on marriage stemmed from them. If Noël had been single, he would probably have trapped Clary as he had trapped his wife. Like a bomber, he seemed to need a serious crew on the ground to keep him operative. He had hated to see Clary so tired, made-up like some twenties film actress and all the fun knocked out of her. And having her writing got at, so that she was losing her way about it. He found it difficult to write, so he made sure that Clary would do the same. If that was true, and he betted it bloody well was, it was unforgivable. But he didn’t feel inclined to forgive that little creep anything. It was just Clary’s luck to come up against someone like that in her first job. She was such a whole-hearted creature, had always been so extreme in her feelings, that once she had decided she loved somebody, she would stick to them through any amount of thin. She was nearly twenty-two now – her birthday was this month and this was the first time for her. Of course she must be going to bed with him. The idea filled him with distaste, and something more than that. She had not said she was, but he was sure this was so. Those ghastly weekends she spent with him! She had told him a bit about that. Noël had his parents’ house in Barnet, a small detached house with a derelict garden. It sounded awful: nobody had lived in it since his father had died, but he had kept it just as it had always been – thick now with dust. Clary had said, a bit like Miss Havisham. She had said it was cold there – ‘But we wear our overcoats’ – and everything was rather damp. He had asked what they did, and she had replied that they went for walks and Noël played bits of opera on his gramophone – had he heard of Rosa Ponselle and Martinelli? – and she cooked chops and there was spinach in the garden. Noël read to her until two in the morning. He didn’t want the house cleaned because he didn’t want anyone to come to it. There was no hot water, but there was a gas fire in the sitting room. Clary clearly found it all romantic and exciting. She was, after all, very young – and young for her years, he thought, almost unfortunately so. He tried to remember exactly how he had felt at twenty-two and couldn’t honestly remember. He had been falling in love with Rachel and he had been both happy and very unhappy. He could not wish that for Clary, an unrequited, hopeless love. He remembered how she had laughed when he had made the foolish assumption that she didn’t want to go to France with him for the same reason as Polly. It was a bit much the way she seemed to think he was too old for anyone to be in love with him. That was extreme youth again. Anyone over forty was past it, poor old thing. He had asked how old Noël was – just to see – and she had said he was thirty-eight, but that he was one of those people who simply didn’t age. I see, he had said, before he could stop himself, he doesn’t age, he simply matures. She had looked at him with those amazing eyes in that absurd make-up and said, ‘Archie, don’t be sarcastic, everybody loves you. The whole family. You know that! Of course including me.’

It felt simply like a consolation.

Must get to work. A punt had come in view, or a boat that looked like a punt, with an old man in it fishing. He got out his pad and a piece of charcoal and began to draw. He drew a man fishing in a boat with the poplars behind him – it turned out a dogged, explicit little drawing. He had a go at the vine terraces; their ranks and faintly undulating lines were well known to him. He was looking, but without any spirit. Got to get my hand in, he thought. Just a bit rusty. But drawing required constant practice and it was years now since he had really practised. What that meant was that one fell into all the early traps. Like a beginner one got something wrong and tried to manipulate it into being right and in that process the life went out of whatever it was. The first sight of something that made him want to draw it got lost, he had not the capacity to hang on to it. He had almost forgotten what this felt like – this feeling one’s way into work after a break. He’d been back a week now and he was still struggling. But he also realized that he was only intermittently struggling; he wasn’t trying often or long or hard enough to break through because he only had one more week before he had to go back to England.

By the time he packed up the sun was sinking and parts of the river had become dark. As he bicycled back along the narrow straight road edged by plane trees that arched over it, he decided that he would give up his white-collar work. He could have got out months ago if he’d really wanted, but a combination of indolence and preoccupation with the family had intervened.

When he got back to the silent, empty flat, had climbed the steep stairs, unpacked his knapsack and poured himself a pastis, he thought that perhaps there had been some fear as well. He was no longer good at living alone, or disposed to find some casual female company as occasional solace. He felt aimless and afraid to be so. In spite of the fact that his money was getting low – fifty pounds was all he’d been allowed to bring over, and what he’d left in the bank had simply paid his back rent and taxes – he decided to dine in the restaurant. The prix fixe was not expensive and included a carafe of wine. He took a novel by someone called Arthur Koestler to read while he ate. He’d bought it on the railway station in Paris and had not opened it.

Marcel’s wife brought him his hors d’oeuvres: thin slices of sausage, juicy black olives, tomatoes strewn with basil and rich green oil, and a basket with slices of bread. The food, after England and the war, was delectable.

‘Did you find your telegram, Monsieur?’

‘No?’

‘The boy put it through the door – I saw with my own eyes.’

‘I must have missed it, then.’

He got up and went outside the restaurant to his door. When he opened it he found the little buff envelope that had slid sideways so that it was propped against the wall on the ground.

‘Please ring after six. Trouble, Polly.’

It took him nearly an hour to get through, and then the line was awful. He could hardly hear her.

‘It’s Clary,’ she said. ‘Clary’s in trouble. She’s …’ and then he couldn’t hear what was said.

‘What’s happened to her? Polly? Are you there?’

There was a lot of crackling and then he heard her, very faint. ‘So could you possibly come back, Archie? I can’t think of anyone …’ And then her voice faded away again and he was cut off.

So he didn’t stay his second week. He didn’t even finish his dinner. Madame made him a sandwich while he packed up, shut the flat, and arranged for a taxi to take him to Avignon. There was a night train to Paris and he spent his last francs on a taxi to the Gare du Nord. All the way across on the ferry he tried to imagine what had befallen Clary. She had eloped; Fenella had tried to murder her; she had become suddenly and dangerously ill …

At Newhaven, he took the Pullman: he was tired from sitting up all night and had gone without breakfast. He was served an execrable lunch by the impeccable steward who behaved like an old family retainer.

‘Nice to see you, sir. I hope you had a good holiday,’ he said, as he tenderly placed a plate of brown Windsor soup before Archie. He drank the soup and ate some of the rugged little fillets of plaice that followed, but then he gave up and fell asleep.

The steward waited until they were drawing into Victoria before giving him his bill. ‘Didn’t like to wake you, sir.’

He had debated whether to go home first and telephone from there, but he didn’t. He took a cab straight to Blandford Street. It was just under eighteen hours since he had got the telegram. He rang the bell, waited, rang again, and eventually, she came down to let him in.

‘I thought you were in France!’

‘I was. Let me in, Clary.’

She had been standing, indeterminate in the gloom.

‘Oh – all right.’

She led the way upstairs to her room, which was in its usual state of chaos. The relief he had felt at seeing her, at her being there, ebbed to a different anxiety. She looked dreadful. Her face, devoid of the absurd make-up in which he had last seen her, was puffy and grey with bruising circles under her eyes. She was wearing a ragged, peach-coloured kimono that he recollected Zoë had used to wear. Something to do with Noël, he thought. She would take that very hard.

‘I was in bed, actually,’ she said. Her voice was lifeless and carefully non-committal. All the same, some relief returned.

‘What made you come back?’

‘Poll sent me a telegram. She said you were in trouble.’

‘Did she say what kind?’

‘The line was too bad. I couldn’t hear.’

‘You said a telegram.’

‘Yes, and as a result of it I rang up.’

‘Oh.’

There was a silence. She stood facing him, and he saw that she was trembling.

‘What’s up?’

‘I might as well tell you. It seems that I’m pregnant. Pretty corny of me, isn’t it?’

‘You know that you are?’

‘Yep. I’d been worrying a bit – and I found out for sure last week.’

It was the last thing he had expected.

‘Nobody else knows,’ she said, ‘except Poll.’ After a pause, she added in the same lifeless voice, ‘And Noël, of course. And Fenella.’ She frowned, as though she was trying to hold her face together. ‘Oh, Archie! They’re so angry about it! As though I meant to be! It was just an awful mistake – I really don’t know how it happened at all. I don’t!’ And she collapsed on to the floor hugging her knees and began a painful, dry sobbing.

He knelt beside her and she clung to him. He stroked her head, put his arms round her and let her sob. There were no tears.

‘I can’t even cry properly any more,’ she said. ‘I seem to have used up all the usual ways of doing it.’

‘Darling Clary. Of course it’s not your fault. Of course it isn’t.’ After a bit, he said, ‘Why is Noël so angry?’

‘Because he hates the idea of children. He says it would drive him mad. And she says – Fenella says – that it’s true. He made her promise never to have one and she did, and she says I’ve betrayed them both. I didn’t mean to! It was just an awful accident!’

‘Do you want to have it?’

‘How can I? He would never speak to me again – or see me. I love him and I couldn’t be so selfish and wicked as that.’ A moment later, she said. ‘It’s all over anyway. They told me yesterday – at least she did. He can’t even bear to see me. Oh, Archie, I don’t know what to do! I don’t know how to – how to – have an abortion, and anyway, they cost hundreds of pounds.’

‘If he doesn’t want you to have it, he might ante up for that.’

But she looked at him with speechless denial. Then she said, ‘I thought he loved me. I really believed that. Sorry, Archie, I’ve got to go and be sick.’

While she was gone, he removed books, papers and some clothes from the only easy chair for her return. A sheet of writing paper floated to the floor. He picked it up. ‘My darling Noël,’ he read, and read no more. The line between what was his business and what was not had suddenly become very tenuous. It was his business to help her now. He must not lose his temper in front of her about that bastard: indeed, he hoped that Noël would stick to severing all connection with her, as it might shorten her misery about him. He must be careful to say nothing that would provoke her into defending him.

She came back and he made her sit in the chair, drew up a kitchen stool and sat by her.

‘Better?’

‘I jolly well hope so. That’s the third time today. It usually stops by now.’

‘Do you want a cup of tea or anything?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t particularly want one, but I’d better have a water biscuit. They’re supposed to be a good thing, Polly says. She’s been finding out things like that.’

‘What does Poll think about it all?’

‘It’s difficult, because she didn’t like Noël the one time she saw him. I don’t know why, she just didn’t, and I asked her and, of course, she told me. She’s extremely truthful, so she had to say.’

There was a pause, and then she added, ‘It was mutual, actually. Noël thought she was shallow.’

‘You don’t agree with that.’

‘No,’ she said wearily. ‘I sometimes don’t agree with him about things.’

‘Where are your water biscuits?’

‘I think under my bed – I think they must have got there.’

‘Did you have any lunch?’

‘There wasn’t much point. I usually have dinner. That seems to be okay.’

‘You mean you can fancy it and keep it down?’

It was an old family joke. She nearly smiled then. ‘That was one of Dad’s chars, wasn’t it? Dad did seem to have the most remarkable collection of them.’

‘Do you think it might be a good thing to tell him about this?’

‘Not if I can help it. I suppose if I have the baby, he’d have to know – everyone would …’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘you don’t have to think about that now, or make any decision. I think it might be a good idea if you had a little sleep. I can stay upstairs in Poll’s rooms and then I’ll take you out to dinner. Would that suit?’

‘What will you do?’

‘I’ll read, or I might have a short kip myself. Didn’t sleep much on the train.’

She agreed to this, although she said she wasn’t sleepy. ‘But I have got rather a headache.’

He got her some aspirin from the cupboard in the tiny little bathroom and a glass of water. When he returned, she’d got into bed. ‘Goodness! London water tastes so horrible! I’ve only just started noticing it.’

He drew her curtains. ‘I’ll be upstairs if you want me.’

‘Yes, you will. Archie! Did you come back specially for me?’

‘Yup. I’m very much attached to you, you know.’

‘I’m attached to you,’ she responded – more like the old Clary, he thought.

He waited fifteen minutes before going down to look at her: she was deeply asleep.

Away from her, he was able to think more clearly. She had three options: to have the baby and get it adopted, to have it and bring it up herself, or not to have it. It was essential that she should make this decision without his or anyone else’s influence. He knew nothing about abortion except that it was illegal, which must in turn mean that it might be difficult to find somebody who would do it, and even more difficult to check up on them. It occurred to him that Teresa, Louis Kutchinsky’s partner, might know somebody, and she had met Clary once when he had taken her to dinner there about three years ago. He rang them and made a plan to go and see them the following day. If she wanted that, he could pay for it, and he resolved upon telling her so that that would not be an influence, but there was no point in an option that she thought was practically impossible. If she decided to have it, then Rupert would have to be told: he wondered why she had not told him already. But, then, Clary would not have told him, Archie, if Poll hadn’t got him back. What on earth would have happened if Poll hadn’t sent the telegram – if he hadn’t come back? Supposing Teresa didn’t know of anyone, how would he set about finding them? On the other hand, how could Clary have a baby and a job? He was too tired to contemplate these problems. He wrote a note to Polly saying that he was upstairs in her room and that Clary was asleep, and went down to put it on the stairs by the front door. Then he went back to Polly’s room and cast himself upon her divan.

When he woke Polly was putting a tea tray on her table. ‘Thought you might like some.’

‘Thanks. I would.’

‘You did get back fast. I couldn’t hear you properly on the telephone so I wasn’t sure if you’d come.’

‘I hope you didn’t mind me passing out on your bed.’

‘Of course not. You’ve got very brown.’

‘It was hot.’

He sat up and she gave him some tea.

‘It’s pretty awful, isn’t it?’ she said.

‘Yes. Poor Clary. He does sound a perfect swine.’

‘He sounds like he is.’

‘She said you didn’t like him. What’s he actually like?’

He saw her small frowns come and go on her forehead – something that always happened when she was thinking hard.

‘Everything he is,’ she said slowly, ‘is about himself. He only came here once – for tea. Clary awfully wanted me to meet him. But he didn’t want to come, and he sat sort of slightly sneering if we talked, and otherwise he talked to Clary, mostly about things he wanted her to do for him. He won’t go into shops, for instance, so everything has to be bought for him. He was telling her how to get to some ghastly place in the East End to get him some kind of special socks because his feet are so sensitive and he does so much walking. It was going to take her a whole afternoon. Not one when she was working for him, she was to do it on her free Saturday. Clary keeps on about his having had such a frightful childhood, but it seems to me that he’s never stopped having one. Only now, he’s a completely spoilt child, getting the grown-ups to make it up to him all the time. Fenella, that’s his wife, doesn’t eat meat at all now, because she thinks he needs her meat ration for his energy. His blasted energy! He wears poor Clary out. Apart from what he’s done to her now.’ She looked at him, wrinkling her nose in disgust. ‘The thought of poor Clary having a ghastly miniature Noël is more than I can bear. You must stop her, Archie. Somehow.’

This last thought, he realized, was one that he had been suppressing all the afternoon.

‘That must be her choice,’ he said. ‘Although, if you really feel it would be such a disaster, I suppose there would be no harm in your saying so.’

‘I hoped you would be the person to do that.’ Then she added, ‘You must be right. It must be wrong to try and influence her, or we wouldn’t each be trying to get the other one to do it.’

Poll was different, he thought. She looked, as usual, elegant, wearing a grass-green sleeveless dress and bright blue sandals, with her hair tied back by a ribbon of the same colour. It was not her appearance that had changed, but her manner: she seemed more poised, more assured, and he realized then that she had never treated him as an equal before. It was over two months since he had seen her. She seemed cooler, and at the same time more open. Just as he was beginning to wonder whether she no longer thought she was in love with him, she said, ‘Archie. I feel I ought to tell you. I’ve got over you at last. Oh dear, it sounds rather rude, doesn’t it? But I mean you needn’t worry any more. Naturally, I’m extremely fond of you. But I do realize that the difference in our ages made the whole thing silly.’ She smiled charmingly.

‘There now,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you told me. Did it happen suddenly?’

‘I think it happened extremely slowly, but I noticed it suddenly. But I’m sorry about it. One of the things I discovered is that it must have been pretty awful for you. I thought it was only awful for me.’

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘In a way it was a good thing you started with a nice safe old buffer like me instead of some frightful cad.’

‘You’re not an old buffer! You know, Archie, I honestly think you should get married to someone. It’s what I keep telling Dad. I mean, there must be thousands of middle-aged ladies whose husbands were killed in the war who’d love to marry either of you.’

‘Oh, Poll!’ A queue of middle-aged women in black cardigans, all looking as though marriage was the least he could do for them, shuffled through his mind. ‘You really mustn’t patronize me. It will probably surprise you to know that I, too, have been hopelessly in love so I do know what it feels like, and although I’m over that now, I still have romantic notions of being thoroughly in love before I would think of marrying anyone. And I’m about seven years younger than your father. Not,’ he added, feeling this last to be rather petulant, ‘that that actually makes much difference. I expect your father feels much as I do.’

She had been confounded, had gone a dark pink with tears of chagrin in her eyes, as she apologized again and again. ‘It’s so difficult to see people one has known when one was young as people,’ she had said. ‘Particularly with parents. But you aren’t a parent, Archie, you’ve always been our friend, so there’s no excuse with you. Well,’ she had finished bravely, ‘I hope you find someone who you become terrifically in love with – if that is what you want. And not if you don’t, of course.’

Much later, long after he had got home from the evening with Clary, which, although it had had its ups and downs, he felt on balance had been a good thing, and when he had read his letters, unpacked and had a bath, he wondered briefly whether he ever would find anyone, or whether, in spite of what he had said to Polly, there was a kind of watershed that he had reached after which everything that he had taken for granted that he believed in and wanted was no longer possible. Lying in the dark he was able to acknowledge that he did not want to be alone for the rest of his life and wondered uneasily whether that might in the end make him settle – as he imagined poor Hugh might – for someone who would at least reliably be there.