Epilogue

All this happened a long time ago, and it seems even longer than it is. Elaine and I didn’t share a wedding with Uncle Miles and Betty as they suggested, because I hadn’t got a job. In the spring of the following year, however, I became a reporter on a Sussex paper, and we decided not to wait any longer. A couple of years later I moved to a national, the Banner, and a year after that our son was born. We gave him Hugh Blakeney as Christian names. Our daughter, born a couple of years later, was named Betty, and Betty Wainwright is her godmother. Soon after that I was made Washington correspondent of the Banner, and I’ve been there ever since. I like the life. Elaine gave up working before Hugh Blakeney was born, and never went back to it.

I come to England four weeks in every year, but find it rather slow and smug. Elaine often comes with me but one year when she didn’t, and when I’d been down to Sussex for lunch with an aspiring politician, I took a wrong road back to London and was surprised to find myself within a few miles of Belting. It seemed natural to turn the car’s bonnet that way.

I nearly passed the drive, because it had been so much changed. There were concrete gates and a sign that said: Experimental Weapons School, Admin. Branch (E). There was a man in uniform on the gate, but a good many trees had been cut down and I was able to see the house. It looked smaller than I had remembered, and it no longer reminded me of a church but seemed to be simply a piece of ugly red Victorian Gothic. I stared at it for a few seconds without feeling anything, and then drove on.

I have never seen Stephen since I left Belting, but I believe that he and Clarissa are now breeding dogs in Dorset. We exchanged Christmas cards for a year or two and then dropped it. Miles is still married to Betty, and I believe they are very happy. We see them rarely, but Miles still writes me chatty letters, which I answer with shorter and less interesting ones. Betty insisted that he must have a job, and bought an advertising business for him, which Miles runs. I have his last letter in front of me now.

The routine is fairly boring, but I do like writing copy. Here is my latest masterpiece, written for Bronk’s steak and kidney pies. Mum is leaning out of the window calling to the children, a Bronk’s pie piping hot on the table behind her. She calls:

 

Jack and Jill and George and Sidney,

Come and get it! Steak and kidney!!

Growing girls and boys all just

Adore its crispy flaky crust.

 

Good, eh? Anyway the client liked it.

Most of my youthful notions have been forgotten, and I doubt if Betty would call me a romantic now – even abroad is not what it was since I’ve been living there so long – but when I read one of Miles’ letters the past comes up vividly. I see again the arrival of the claimant in the courtyard on that July day and am taken back to the world of Belting, to the strippling ream and the daylight lamps in the corridors and the battle of Tel-el-Kebir laid out on the floor of the Pam Moor.