11

Niall went round to the front of the theater, and stood inside the foyer. He was much too early, of course. There was still an hour to go before the curtain went up. The commissionaire asked him what he was doing, and asked for his ticket. He had no ticket. Pappy had the tickets. This involved him in an argument and he had to explain that his name was Delaney, which he hated doing, because it seemed like showing off. Once Niall told the man this his whole manner changed. He began to talk about Pappy, he had been an admirer of Pappy for years. He began to talk about Mama.

“There’s never been anyone like her,” he said, “so light on her feet you didn’t know she was moving. They talk about the Russian ballet… not in the same street with her. It’s all a question of class, you know. The whole thing is class.”

He switched from Pappy and Mama to Command Performances. Niall said nothing and let him ramble on. There was a photograph of Maria on the wall opposite. It was not in the least like the person who had gone to pray in St. Martin’s in the Fields, and who had clung to him in the taxi. The girl in the photograph had her head thrown back, she smiled seductively, and her lashes were much too long.

“You’re here to see your sister, of course,” said the commissionaire. “Proud of her I expect, aren’t you?”

“She’s not my sister. She’s no relation,” said Niall suddenly. The man stared at him, nonplussed.

“Well, stepsister, if you like,” said Niall. “We’re all mixed up. It’s rather difficult to explain.”

He wished the man would go away, he did not want to talk to him anymore. A taxi drove up and stopped. A very old lady got out trailing a feather fan. The commissionaire went to help her. They were beginning to arrive…

As he watched the hands travel round the clock and the foyer gradually fill with excited chattering people, a sense of claustrophobia came upon Niall and he felt trapped. They buzzed past him and about him, and he tried to flatten himself against the wall. Thank God nobody knew who he was, and he did not have to talk, but the sense of oppression was with him just the same. He was aware of a feeling of acute dislike, almost of hatred, towards all these unknown men and women who were filing past him to the stalls. They were like the spectators at an arena in ancient Rome. They had all dined well, and now they had come to watch Maria being torn to pieces by lions. Their eyes were avaricious, their hands were claws. All they wanted to do was to draw blood…

It grew hotter and hotter inside the foyer, and his stiff collar pierced the side of his neck, yet his hands and feet were icy; he was hot and cold in all the wrong places.

How appalling if he fainted. How absolutely frightful if his legs crumpled up under him, and he heard the girl who sold the programs say, “There’s a young gentleman taken bad—will someone come and give a hand?”

Ten minutes to eight… The curtain rang up at eight fifteen, Maria said, and her entrance was at eight thirty-five. He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. Christ! That couple over there were staring at him. Did he know them? Were they friends of Pappy’s? Or was it just that they thought the pale-faced boy standing against the wall was going to die?

There was a photographer at the entrance with a flashlight. Every time he clicked the thing there was a fresh buzz of conversation, and a little murmur of laughter.

Suddenly Niall saw Pappy with Celia, in her white fur coat, pushing through the crowd towards him. Someone said, “There’s Delaney,” and people were turning to look at Pappy as they always did, and Pappy was smiling and nodding and waving his hand. He never seemed to be embarrassed. He never seemed to mind. He looked magnificent, towering above everybody else. Celia held Niall’s hand. She stared at him, her large eyes anxious.

“Are you all right?” she said. “You look as if you’re going to be sick.” Pappy came and gripped his shoulder.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go to our seats. What a mob. Hullo, how are you?” and he turned again, claimed by some friend, and then by someone else, and all the while the photographer was clicking in the background.

“You must go in alone with Pappy,” said Niall to Celia. “It’s no use. I can’t face it.”

Celia looked at him blankly.

“You must come,” she said. “Think of Maria. You must come.”

“No,” said Niall. “I’m going out in the street.”

And he pushed his way through the crowd and out into the street and began to walk up the Haymarket to Piccadilly. His shoes were thin and were soon soaked through with the slush, but he did not mind. He would keep walking all the evening, up and down and around the streets because he could not bear to watch the agony of Maria in the arena.

“I’m gutless,” he said to himself. “That will always be my trouble. I’m absolutely and entirely gutless.”

He stood a while in Piccadilly, looking at the flashing lights and the dark canopy of sky above his head and the dirty falling snow, for it began again, pale soft flakes onto the wet pavement. I remember this, he thought. This has happened before. And he was a child standing in the Place de la Concorde, holding Truda’s hand, and the snow was falling just like this, and the taxis swerved and hooted, swerving to right and to left, some making for the bridge across the Seine, the others turning left down the rue Royale. Frozen water gushed from the mouths of the women in the fountain

“Come back,” said Truda to Maria. “Come back.” And Maria was trying to dart across the Place de la Concorde. She looked back laughing, she wore no hat, and the snow was falling on her hair.

This was Piccadilly, though, and the lights ran up and down the London Pavilion. Eros had a little cap of snow. The snow kept falling. Then it started, the tune in Niall’s head. It was nothing to do with Paris or with London. It had nothing to do with lights, or with the Place de la Concorde or with Piccadilly. It just came, born from nothing and from no one, an echo from the unconscious.

“I could get it down if there was a piano,” he thought, “but there isn’t one. Everything’s shut. I can’t go bursting in to the Piccadilly Hotel or somewhere and ask if I can borrow a piano.”

He went on walking up and down the streets, getting colder and colder, and the tune was stronger in his head every moment. His head was bursting with the tune. He had forgotten all about Maria. He was not thinking of Maria anymore. It was not until he found himself in the Haymarket again, opposite the theater, that he remembered the play. He looked at his watch. It was a quarter past ten. The play had been running for two hours. The people standing there in the foyer smoking cigarettes must be waiting about during the second interval. The sick feeling of apprehension came upon him once again. If he went in and stood among them he might hear them say something terrible about Maria. He felt himself drawn irresistibly towards the theater. His laggard feet brought him to the doors. He saw the commissionaire standing just by the entrance. He turned his back, he did not want to be seen. It was too late. The commissionaire had recognized him and came forward.

“Your dad’s been looking for you,” he said. “He’s been looking everywhere. He’s gone back to his seat now. The curtain’s just going up on the third act.”

“How’s it going?” said Niall, his teeth chattering.

“Lovely,” said the commissionaire. “They’re just lapping it up. Why don’t you go in and join your dad?”

“No, it’s all right,” said Niall. “I like it outside.”

He went back again into the street. He could feel the commissionaire staring at him. He went on walking about in the street until five minutes to eleven, when he judged the play would be over. Then at five minutes to the hour he went and stood outside the doors that led direct onto the street. They were flung open, and he could hear the applause in the far distance. He could not judge the sound. It always seemed to him the same from any theater. A steady, breaking sound. A sort of roar. It had always sounded the same for as far back as he could remember. Once it had been for Pappy and Mama. Now, please God, it was for Maria. He wondered if always, throughout his life, there would be some part of him somewhere that listened to applause, and he would be part of it, bound up in it, and yet—as it were—outside, standing in the street the way he was standing now.

The applause died away. Someone must have come forward to make a speech, and then they were clapping again, and then the orchestra started to play “God Save the King.” He waited a moment longer. Then the clattering of footsteps began on the side stairs, and voices and laughter and the dark mass of people came swarming into the street.

“Heavens—it’s snowing again. We shall never find a taxi,” someone said, and a man bumped into him and another woman behind his shoulder, and the cars began moving in a steady stream with people jumping on the running boards, and he could not hear anyone say a word about Maria.

“Yes, I know,” a voice said. “That’s what I thought…” and more voices and more laughter. Niall found himself walking towards the main entrance. The mass of people were standing there waiting for the cars. Two men and a woman stood right on the edge of the pavement.

“I think she’s got a curious sort of fascination, but I wouldn’t call her lovely,” said the woman. “Look, isn’t that the car coming now? Wait for it to draw up. I don’t want to ruin my shoes.”

Silly bitch, thought Niall. Is she talking about Maria? She would be lucky if she had one-twentieth part of Maria’s looks.

They got into the car. They drove away. Maria could be dying in her dressing room for all they cared.

Two men climbed into the next taxi. They were middle-aged, and they looked tired and bored. They said nothing at all. They were probably critics.

“He’s aged rather, don’t you think?” said someone. Niall wondered who. Anyway, it did not matter. It was not Maria who had aged.

Still they came on and on, pouring out of the theater like rats from a sinking ship. And then he found himself clutched by Celia.

“At last,” she said. “Where have you been? We thought you must have found a taxi and gone home. Come on quickly. Pappy’s gone ahead.”

“Where to? What for?”

“Why, round to see Maria, of course. In the dressing room.”

“What happened? Was she all right?”

“What happened? Didn’t you see any of it then?”

“No.”

“Why, it’s wonderful. She’s made a huge success. I knew she would. Pappy’s in tremendous form. Come on.”

Celia was flushed and happy. She dragged at Niall’s sleeve. He followed her along the passages to Maria’s dressing room. But there were too many people. It was always the same. Far too many people.

“I don’t think I’ll come,” said Niall. “I’ll go and wait in the car.”

“Don’t be such a wet blanket,” said Celia. “There’s nothing to worry about now. Everything’s all right, and Maria will be so happy.”

Maria was standing in the doorway, and Pappy was there laughing, and several others. Niall did not know any of them, nor did he want to know them or speak to them. He just wanted to make certain that Maria was all right. She had a curious ragged frock on—of course, he remembered, that was the part in the play—and she was smiling up at the man who was talking to Pappy. Niall recognized him. He was laughing too. Everyone was laughing. Everyone was very pleased. Then Pappy turned to talk to someone else, and the man and Maria looked at each other and laughed. It was the laugh of two people who share a secret. The laugh of two people who stand on the brink of an adventure. The adventure had only just begun. Niall understood that look on Maria’s face, he understood the expression in her eyes. Although he had never seen her look at anyone in that way before, he knew why she did it, and what it meant, and why she was happy.

“She’ll always be like that,” he thought. “I can’t stop her. It’s all mixed up with her acting. I just have to let it happen.”

He looked down at her hand and he saw she was wearing the ring. She was twisting it round her finger as she talked. She did not take it off. She never would take it off, he knew that. She wanted to keep it and hold it, just as she wanted to keep Niall and hold him. We’re both of us young, thought Niall, and there may be years and years ahead of us, but she will always go on wearing that ring and we shall always be together. That man there will be dead and gone and forgotten, but we shall be together. This is just an evening that has to be gone through and endured. And there will be other days and other evenings… If he could find a piano somewhere and sit down and play the tune it would be easier. But there was the party at the Green Park, and more people to be faced, and the business of being polite and dancing. The party would get out of control, as Pappy’s parties always did, and Pappy would start to sing and no one would get to bed before about four in the morning. And at nine he, Niall, had to catch the train back to school, and still there would have been no time to play that tune on any piano.

Suddenly Maria was beside him, touching his hand.

“It’s over,” she said. “Oh, Niall, it’s over.”

The man had gone, but she was still twisting the ring round her finger.

“Part of it’s over,” said Niall, “and part of it’s just begun.”

She knew what he meant at once. Her eyes drifted away from him.

“Don’t say anything,” she said.

Then more people came along the passage, and she was caught up with them and hemmed in, laughing and talking, and Niall went on standing and waiting with his back against the wall wishing he could go away and find a piano, and forget everything but the tune.

They must have sat down about twenty-five to supper at the Green Park. Everyone was very gay and merry, and the supper was good, and the waiters kept opening more and more bottles of champagne.

“It’s like a wedding,” thought Niall. “Before long, Pappy will get up and propose the health of the bride. And the bride will be Maria.”

Maria was away down the other end of the table. Once or twice she looked down and waved at Niall, but she was not thinking about him. He danced with Celia once or twice, but nobody else. He did not ask Maria. The band was noisy and the fellow playing the sax thought he was funny, but he was not. You couldn’t hear the chap at the piano. The sax drowned him all the time. The very sight of the piano was an added irritant. Niall wanted to turn everybody out of the room and get to it.

“You look awfully cross. What’s the matter?”

There was a new woman sitting on his right who had not been there before. It was this woman who had spoken. Her face was familiar, the friendly brown eyes, the rather large mouth, and her hair with the square-cut fringe.

“Pappy sent me down to talk to you,” she said. “You don’t remember me. I’m Freada.”

“Why, yes,” he said. “Yes, of course.”

She used to live in Paris, she was a friend of Pappy’s and Mama’s, and she was funny and jolly and kind, and took them all to see the Concours Hippique, he remembered now, years ago. She looked the same. That was the queer thing that happened when you grew up. Pappy’s friends who had seemed once so old and tall and out of reach turned out to be just ordinary people like yourself.

“I haven’t seen any of you for about ten years,” she said. “You were a funny little chap and very shy. I was in front tonight. Maria was so good. What an attractive creature she’s grown into, but so have you all. It makes me feel very old.”

She put out her cigarette and lit another. Niall remembered that too. She was one of those people who were always smoking, and she had a long amber holder. She was nice and kind and much too tall.

“You never did like parties, did you?” she said. “I don’t blame you. But I like seeing my friends. You’ve grown very much like your mother, has anyone told you?”

“No,” said Niall. “Like Mama… How strange, how queer…”

“Pappy tells me you have one more term at school,” she said. “What are you going to do when you leave? Play the piano?”

“No,” he said, “I play very badly. I’m no good.”

“Really,” she said. “You surprise me.”

Maria had got up and was dancing with the man. She was away and out of sight among the other dancers. Niall felt suddenly that Freada who had been so kind years ago at the Concours Hippique was an ally and friend. He remembered how she had bought him a bag of macaroons that day and let him eat the lot, and that when he had wanted to go to the lavatory he had not minded asking her. She had taken it as a matter of course that he would want to go. Queer how you remembered those things through the years.

“I like music more than anything in the world, but I can’t play,” he said, “not properly, not the way I would want to play. I can only play the sort of stuff they’re playing now. I can only think of those sort of tunes. And it’s hell. It’s absolute hell.”

“Why is it hell?” she said.

“Because it’s not what I want,” he said. “There’s a mass of sound in my head and it won’t come out. At least, it does come out and it’s nothing but a damn silly dance tune.”

“I don’t see that it should matter,” said Freada, “not if the tune is a good one.”

“Oh, but it’s such bilge,” he said. “Who wants to write a dance tune?”

“A lot of people would give their eyes to do it,” she said.

“Let them,” said Niall. “They can have all mine.”

She went on smoking through the long holder, and her eyes were kind. Niall felt she understood.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I’ve gone nearly crazy all this evening because of a tune in my head. I want a piano, and I can’t get to one because this party will go on half the night. I can’t go and turn that fellow off the stand over there.”

He laughed. It was such a ridiculous admission. Freada did not seem to think it ridiculous. She accepted it as something quite natural, like wanting to go to the lavatory when he was little, like eating a whole bag of macaroons.

“When did you think of the tune?” she said.

“I was walking round Piccadilly Circus,” he said. “I was too nervous to watch the play because of Maria. And suddenly it came, the tune, you know, because of the snow and those electric signs. It made me think of Paris and the fountains in the Place de la Concorde. Not that the tune has anything to do with it… I don’t know, I can’t explain.”

She did not say anything for a moment. The waiter put a plate of ice cream in front of her, but she waved it away. Niall was sorry. He could have eaten it himself.

“Do you remember your mother dancing?” she said suddenly.

“Yes, of course,” said Niall.

“Do you remember the dance of the beggar maid in the snow? The lights in the window of a house, and her footsteps in the snow, and the way her hands moved with the falling flakes?” she said.

Niall stared in front of him. Something seemed to click inside his brain. The beggar maid in the snow…

“She tried to reach the light in the window,” he said slowly. “She tried to reach the light, but she was too weak and too tired and the snow kept falling. I’d forgotten all about it. She didn’t do it very often. I think I only saw it about once in my life.”

Freada lit another cigarette and put it in the long holder.

“You thought you’d forgotten. You hadn’t really,” she said. “As a matter of fact, your father wrote the music for the dance of the beggar maid. It was the only thing he ever wrote.”

“My father?”

“Yes. I think that’s why your mother did not dance it often. The whole affair was a mix-up, you know. Nobody really knows what happened. She never talked about it, not even to her friends. But that’s beside the point. The point is that you’re a composer and you don’t realize it, and I don’t care whether it’s a polka or a nursery rhyme that comes out of that head of yours, I’d like to hear you play it on the piano.”

“Why should you be interested? Why should you care?”

“I was a great friend of your mother’s, and I’m devoted to Pappy. And I don’t play too badly myself after all.”

She turned to him and laughed, very much amused, and Niall felt himself go hot under the collar. How frightful. He had forgotten. Of course, she used to play and sing in cabaret; perhaps she still did. He ought to have known about it. The only thing he had remembered was the Concours Hippique and the bag of macaroons.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m awfully sorry.”

“Whatever about? The only thing I’m sorry for is that you have to go back to school tomorrow and I shan’t be able to hear that tune. Can’t you come round to my house in the morning before you go? Number seventeen Foley Street.”

“My train leaves at nine o’clock.”

“And I’m off to Paris in two days’ time. Well, it can’t be helped. When you leave school for good we’ll do something about it. Tell me more about everything. Is old Truda still alive?”

She was so easy to talk to, one of the easiest people he had ever known, and he was really sorry when she got up and said good-bye.

Down at the other end of the table everyone was laughing very much and making a racket. Pappy was getting tight. When Pappy was tight he was funny. He was funny for about an hour, and then the fun turned to tears. At the moment he was still in the middle of the fun. He began to sing, and it was his joke voice, the one he put on when he imitated the hearty ballad-monger type of baritone. He used to make up the words as he went along, and they were always dead right, just the sort of words a hearty baritone would sing. There was always the surging sweep of the rolling deep, and a bit about it being grand to be alive with his comrades five, and the feel of a horse between his thighs. Then, of course, he would let the words run away with him, and they would become more and more vulgar and the people sitting round him who could hear what he sang became more and more hysterical. And he always laughed himself, which was somehow touching, and made it funnier still.

He was sitting at the end of the table now, leaning back in his chair, with his arm round some woman’s shoulders, Niall had no idea who, and as he sang he shook with laughter and the whole room became aware now of what was happening. The waiters paused, grinning, to watch him, and people looked up from the other tables. The dance band went on with its drum and patter, and the dancers continued dancing, but nobody took any notice of them at all.

Then Pappy suddenly stopped being nonsensical and vulgar, and began to sing in his true voice. And it was “Black Eyes,” and he sang the words in Russian. He started very softly, very slowly, the notes coming from deep in his belly, and someone at another table said “Hush,” and the band wavered and stopped, and the dancers paused in their dancing. All sound died away, and the conductor of the band held up his hand and made a signal to his pianist, who softly took up the accompaniment. And the pianist followed Pappy, he took up the theme of “Black Eyes.” Pappy sat quite still, his massive head thrown back, his arm still round the shoulders of the woman beside him, because he felt comfortable that way, she was something to lean against. And from him came the gentle, heart-tearing sound that was his real voice, deep and tender, deeper than anything in the world, so tender and true that it did something to your heart as you listened, and it got you by your throat and you wanted to turn away and cry.

“Black Eyes,” ranted by singers everywhere, hammered out on a thousand dance bands and little third-rate orchestras, but when Pappy sang it you felt there had never been another song like it. It was the only song that had ever been written.

When he stopped, everyone was crying, and Pappy was crying too—he was really very tight—and then the band went on playing “Black Eyes,” but to quick time so that the people could dance, and Pappy was dancing too, pushing someone round the floor. He had no idea whom he was pushing and it could not matter less, but he kept bumping into everybody and roaring with laughter, and Niall heard someone say, “Delaney is absolutely blind.”

Celia kept her eyes on him all the time. She wore her anxious face. Niall knew she was not enjoying herself a bit. And Maria was nowhere to be seen. Niall looked everywhere, but he could not see her. He went out into the lounge of the hotel to look for her, but he could not find her.

Quite a lot of people had gone already from their party. Perhaps she had left with them. The man had gone. Perhaps the man had taken her home… Niall felt suddenly that he did not want to stay any longer either. He was sick of the party, he hated the party. He was bored stiff with the whole affair. Somebody would see that Celia and Pappy got home all right. He was not going to stop. The party might go dragging on for hours, with Pappy getting tighter and tighter. Niall went and got his coat, and left the hotel and started walking. There were no buses and no tubes. Perhaps he would pick up a taxi. He had exactly two shillings left in his pocket. The taxi could take him part of the way home. The streets were empty and white and still. Fresh snow lay on the pavements. It was late, it was about a quarter to two. He found a taxi at the top of Bond Street, and when the driver asked him what address he did not give the name of the house in St. John’s Wood. He said “Seventeen Foley Street.”

He knew that there was only one thing at the moment that he wanted to do, and that was to forget about the party and to play his tune on the piano to kind Freada who once, years ago, had given him a bag of macaroons.

“If I had drunk some of the champagne I should think I was tight, like Pappy,” he said to himself, “but I didn’t have any. I hate champagne. I feel wide awake, that’s all. Queer and strung-up and wide awake.”

He had not enough money to get all the way to Foley Street, because it would have meant being mean about the tip. The taxi took him part of the way and he walked the rest.

“She’s probably asleep,” he thought. “She won’t hear the bell.”

He could not see any lights, but perhaps there were shutters to the windows. He rang the bell four times, and after the fourth time he heard footsteps coming down the stairs, and someone came and rattled a bolt and chain. The door opened, and Freada stood there. She wore a dressing gown, a sort of red affair, and she had a patchwork quilt round her shoulders. She was still smoking.

“Hullo,” she said, “I thought it was a policeman. Have you come to play me the tune? What a good idea. Come in.”

She was not angry, or even surprised. It was most unusual, and such a relief. Even Pappy, who was an unusual person, would have raised hell if someone had rung his bell at two o’clock in the morning.

“Are you hungry?” she said, as she led the way up the stairs.

“Yes,” said Niall, “as a matter of fact I am. How did you know?”

“Boys are always hungry,” she said.

She switched on a light in a bare untidy drawing room. There were nice pieces of furniture in the room and some good pictures, but it was all in a mess. There were clothes thrown about the place, and a tray on the floor. There was a grand piano in the room. That was the only thing that mattered to Niall.

“Here, have some of this,” she said. She spread him a hunk of bread and butter, and laid two or three sardines on top. She was still wearing the patchwork quilt. Niall began to laugh.

“What’s the matter?” she said.

“You look so funny,” said Niall.

“I always do,” she answered. “Go on, eat up your sardine sandwich.”

The sandwich was very good. When he had finished it he had another. She did not bother about him. She went on pottering about the room, making it more untidy than ever.

“I’m packing,” she said. “If I spread everything on the floor, I know where I am. Do you want a shirt?”

She threw him a checked shirt from the pile of debris.

“It’s a laborer’s shirt I got in Sardinia, but it’s too small for me,” she said. “That’s the worst of being tall.”

“Look out,” said Niall, “you’re standing on a hat.”

She moved her bare feet and bent to pick up the hat. It was an enormous straw affair, the shape of a cartwheel, with two floating streamers.

“Theatrical Garden Party five years ago,” she said. “I ran a hoopla stall and everybody kept throwing their rings onto my hat. Do you think Maria would like it?”

“She never wears hats.”

“I’ll take it to Paris. It would do upside down instead of a dish for fruit, oranges and things.” She threw the hat onto a heap of clothes.

“I can’t offer you anything to drink,” she said, “unless I make some tea. Want any tea?”

“No, thank you. I’d like some water.”

“You’ll find some in the bedroom jug. Something’s gone wrong with the tap in the kitchen.”

He went into her bedroom, picking his way carefully over the clothes spread on the floor. The jug of water on the washstand was full, and the water was quite cold. There did not appear to be a glass, so he drank straight out of the jug.

“Come and play the tune,” she called from the drawing room.

He went back into the other room, and she was kneeling on the floor with the patchwork quilt still round her shoulders, examining a silver fox cape.

“Riddled with moth,” she said, “but I don’t believe anyone would know unless they got very close. I borrowed it from someone and never gave it back. I wonder who.”

She sat back on her haunches thinking and combing her hair with her cigarette-holder, and eating a piece of bread and butter at the same time. Niall sat down at the piano and began to play. He did not feel nervous at all, he was laughing too much.

The piano felt good. It did what he wanted it to do, and even if he made the most frightful noise he knew it would not matter and that Freada would not mind. He forgot she was in the room once he started to play. He was thinking of the tune, and it was coming right. Yes… that was what he meant. Of course that was what he meant. Oh, it was exciting, it was fun. Nothing mattered but this, this crazy exploring for the right note… Got it. Now again, try it again. Shut your eyes and listen for the sound, but you have to feel it in your feet and your fingertips too, and in the pit of your stomach. That was it. Now he had the whole thing, and it was dance time, it was his old thing of playing against the beat, but the piano alone was no good. You wanted someone with a sax, you wanted someone with a drum.

“You see what I mean,” he said turning round on the stool. “You see what I mean.”

She was not packing. She was still kneeling on the floor.

“Go on,” she said, “don’t stop. Do it again.”

He went on playing, and it came easier and better. It was a damn good piano, better than any piano he had tried before. Freada got up from the floor and came and stood beside him. She hummed the tune in her deep, funny voice, and whistled it, and hummed it again.

“Now play something else,” she said. “What else have you made up? Anything, it doesn’t matter what.”

He remembered bits and pieces of things he had thought of from time to time, but nothing had ever come quite so clearly as the one that had come tonight.

“The trouble is,” he said, “I can’t write them down. I don’t know how it’s done.”

“That’s all right,” she said. “I can arrange all that.”

He stopped playing. He stared up at her.

“Can you really?” he said. “But are they worth the trouble? I mean, they’re nothing to anyone else. I just do it to amuse myself.”

She smiled. She put out her hand and patted him on the head.

“Those days are over, then,” she said. “Because from now on you’re going to spend your life amusing other people. What’s Pappy’s telephone number?”

“What do you want it for?”

“I want to have a talk with him, that’s all.”

“He’ll still be at the party, or if he’s home he’ll be in bed and asleep by now. He was awfully tight when I came away.”

“He’s got to be sober in the morning. Listen, you will have to catch a later train back to school than the one you planned.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ve got to get that tune written down before you leave. If you and I can’t do it between us, there are plenty of people I know who can. It’s too late now. It’s a quarter-past three. Now listen, you’ll never find a taxi at this hour. You can sleep here on the sofa. I’ll put all the clothes on top of you. You can have my patchwork quilt. And we’ll ring up Pappy at eight in the morning.”

“He won’t be awake. He’ll be absolutely livid.”

“At half past eight then. At nine. At ten. Come on, you’re a growing boy and you must get some sleep. Let’s drag the sofa near to the fire and you won’t be cold. Want some more sardines?”

“Yes, please.”

“Eat them up, then, while I make your bed.”

He finished the loaf of bread and the butter and the sardines, and Freada made up the sofa for him, with blankets and quilts and a pile of her old clothes. It looked terribly uncomfortable, but he did not like to tell her so. It might hurt her feelings, and she had been so sweet, and so funny and so kind.

“There,” she said, standing back, her head on one side, surveying her work. “You’ll sleep like a newborn baby in a cot. Do you want some pajamas? I believe there is a pair somewhere. Somebody left them behind once.”

She went into the bedroom and came back with a pair of very patched pajamas.

“Don’t know whose they are,” she said, “but they’ve been here for years. They’re quite clean. Now sleep well, my pet, and forget your tune for a few hours, and I’ll make you some porridge for your breakfast.”

She patted his cheek and kissed him and went out of the drawing room and into her own room. He could hear her humming his tune through the door.

He undressed and put on the pajamas and crawled under the pile of clothes onto the sofa. His feet came up hard on the sofa end. He tucked them up underneath him and sighed, and turned out the lamp. The sofa springs had gone in the middle, and there was something hard touching his spine. He did not mind any of it. The trouble was he did not feel sleepy. He had never felt less sleepy in his life. And the tune was still going around in his head, it would not go away. It was sweet of her to say she would arrange about writing it down, but he still did not see how it could be managed when he had to go back to school in the morning. School… Oh, God, what a waste of time. What a waste of effort. He did not learn a thing. He was in his last term, and as far as learning anything went it might have been his first. There was no one there who cared a twopenny damn whether he lived or died. He wondered if Pappy and Celia had got back home yet, and Maria. Maria would not be wondering where he was even if the others were. Maria had too many other things to think about. So many days and weeks stretched ahead for Maria, all of them exciting, all of them fun. Weeks of fun and adventure for Maria. Weeks of boredom and monotony for him.

He turned on the sofa, pulling the patchwork quilt round his neck. It smelled queer and strange, like amber. Freada must use amber scent. Smells were awfully important. If you liked the way a person smelled, it meant you liked the person. Pappy had said that once, and Pappy was always right.

There was no fire left in the grate, and in spite of all these clothes it was cold on the sofa, cold and cheerless. The only good thing about the sofa was the quilt smelling of amber scent. If only everything in life could be blotted out except the smell of amber scent he would be able to sleep. Then he would be peaceful. Then he would be warm. He was getting colder and colder every moment, and the room was getting darker and stranger and more austere. It was like being in a tomb. It was just like being buried in a tomb with the walling closing in upon him. He flung the clothes aside, all except the patchwork quilt which he held against his face, and the scent of amber was stronger than ever, it was comforting and kind.

He got up from the sofa and felt his way across the dark room to the door. He opened the door and stood in the entrance of her room. He heard her move in the darkness, and turn over in her bed, and she said, “What’s the matter? Can’t you sleep?”

Niall did not know what to say. He did not know why he had got up from the sofa and come and opened the door. If he told her he could not sleep she would get up and give him aspirin. He hated aspirin. They were no earthly use at all.

“Nothing’s the matter,” he said. “It’s just that—it’s awfully lonely in there.”

She did not say anything for a moment. It was as though she was lying there thinking, in the darkness. She did not turn on the light.

Then she said, “Come on in, then. I’ll take care of you.”

And her voice was deep and kind and understanding, just as it had been years ago when she had given him the bag of macaroons.