So I finished my Irish holiday and returned to London with such thoughts about the Winslows as you can imagine. Some months later Jeffrey rang me up at my office, the tone of his voice conveying a certain urgency, but also, I thought, a very welcome quality of decision. He sounded like a man who had finally yet in a sense firmly reached the end of his tether. We lunched at my club, and afterwards he asked if my offer to aid him in finding a job still held.

Not only it did, I told him, but it so happened that a few days before I had mentioned his name to a friend in one of the big oil companies, and the reaction had been distinctly favorable. “Only I didn’t know whether you’d changed your mind, so I hardly cared to approach you about it.”

“I’ll take the job whatever it is,” he said. “Where do I go and when can I start?”

“Look here,” I answered, “I don’t own the company. You’ll have to fix all that yourself—but if you like I can telephone my friend this afternoon and let him know you’re in town. I should imagine, from the way he talked, that it would be something fairly immediate, and he did also tell me where it was—Hong Kong…How does that suit? You speak Cantonese?”

He said he did.

“They’ll probably jump at you then.”

He seemed so relieved that I told him how glad I was to see him in such a different mood from the last time we had talked.

“Yes,” he said. “You can call it that if you like—a different mood.”

I asked him what had happened to make the change, and then he told me something so extraordinary that if I hadn’t known enough about Livia beforehand I should have disbelieved it, or him, or both of them, and even now I’m not a hundred per cent certain. It seemed that after my one-night visit they had had many arguments about his taking another job abroad, Livia becoming more and more obstinate in her insistence that he should stay at Carrigole. It was almost as if she had some obsession about the place—and perhaps, for that matter, she had. Most of her ideas were obsessions, anyhow, just as most of her affections were passions—she did nothing by halves. In such an atmosphere as had developed between them Jeffrey found it impossible to write his book and presently did not even wish to; what he craved was a job, and that too was for him an obsession. Their disagreements had culminated, he said, in an angry scene in which she accused him of pretending to want the job when what he really wanted was to leave her; this he denied emphatically, but in the very act of doing so caught himself wondering if it were half true. And then she staged an astonishing climax. She told him she would never leave him, that she loved him too much, that wherever he went she would follow, and that rather than lose him she would kill anyone who stood in the way of their life together. He took that for melodrama till she added, with a terrifying sort of casualness: “I did that once, you know.”

He thought she meant the five victims at Kemalpan, and though he knew she could be held accountable for their deaths, he thought it was going too far to say that she had actually killed them. But then she always did go too far, and he always tried to drag her back by being severely and irritatingly logical; it was almost a routine. So he said: “Oh come now, don’t put it that way. They might have lost their lives in any event.”

“They?” she echoed. And then it turned out that she hadn’t been thinking of Kemalpan at all. “Then who?” he asked, puzzled but also wryly amused.

“Don’t you remember Anne Westerholme?” she answered.

He told me that when she spoke that name he first had to make an effort to recollect it, but that when he did so he felt himself growing pale and cold with an emotion he would have called fear, except that he had known fear before, and this was nothing like it.

He also told me about Anne Westerholme, and the story took him back almost ten years, to the time when he was adviser to another Sultanate and lived with Livia at a place called Tanjong Palai. It was not such a good job as the one he obtained later, but the district was healthier and they had a pleasant bungalow in the hills, with the usual neighborhood society of tea and rubber planters. One of these, a friend of Jeffrey’s, was bringing out a young governess from England to look after his three small boys, but as they developed scarlet fever while she was en route he had arranged with the Winslows that the girl should stay with them until the end of quarantine. So Anne Westerholme arrived one afternoon at the Winslows’ bungalow, and the next morning she was dead. She had been bitten by a five-foot krait, the most venomous of Malayan snakes, and as it could be surmised that she had opened her bedroom window without fixing the screen there was no hitch in the presumption of accidental death. Thousands die from snakebite every year in that part of the world; it was tragic, but hardly remarkable.

But now, a decade later, Livia had more to say about this, and what she said was quite dreadful. She said that very early in the morning she had entered the girl’s room and seen her asleep with the krait curled up at the foot of the bed. It would have been easy then to kill the snake (she had killed scores) but she simply did not do so. She went back to the kitchen, calmly gave the Chinese houseboy his daily orders, played some Mozart records on the phonograph, and waited for the call that summoned her, along with the servants, too late.

Jeffrey said that when she told him this, sitting over the turf fire at Carrigole late one night, he was so horrified that it did not occur to him at first that he had only her word for the story; but that later, when he did realize that, his feelings of horror hardly diminished. He made her go to bed, he said, and himself spent the night in his downstairs workroom, arranging the manuscript of the book he knew he would never finish—not at Carrigole, anyhow. And in the morning he took the train for Dublin en route for Holyhead and London.

We sat over coffee in the club smoke room discussing the matter throughout most of the afternoon.

“But do you really think she was speaking the truth?” I asked.

“I think she could have been,” he answered, with no kind of reluctance. “But I also think she could have made up the story.”

“But what motive could she possibly have had? A girl fresh from England—how could Livia have had any concern with whether she lived or died?”

“Jealousy,” Jeffrey answered. “She saw in this girl some menace to her own life with me—or so she said when she made the confession.”

“But that’s equally absurd!” I persisted. “How long had you known the girl? A few hours, I suppose…Had you had any chance to…but of course it’s preposterous…and what sort of a girl was she? I suppose you hardly remember—even the name didn’t stay in your mind—”

Jeffrey nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, I’d almost forgotten that, but I do remember her—she had reddish hair and a rather calm face.”

“Not pretty, though?”

“No, but calm…calm.”

“And Livia was with you the whole of the time—”

“Oh yes. The three of us just talked during dinner, that’s all.”

“Well, it’s still absurd,” I repeated. “Even for Livia it’s absurd. How could she possibly imagine there was anything for her to be jealous of?”

He nodded again, but then suddenly moved restlessly in the club armchair. “You know,” he said at length, “I’ll be perfectly frank with you, since you deserve that much for all you’ve done for me lately…It’s true of course that there was nothing between me and that girl. Yet…there almost might have been…eventually. I knew that, in a queer sort of way, while we were just chatting during dinner. Nothing special or exciting or significant or provocative—and yet—and I was aware of it—that girl’s calmness came over to me…and Livy intercepted it, just as later on she intercepted the cable.” He got up, clenching and unclenching his hands. “That’s the really frightening thing about it,” he exclaimed, when he had let me order a second brandy. “Livy knew. She always knew. She doesn’t miss a thing…”

The Mayor of Browdley sat for a long time in silence after Millbay had finished. He was—and he was aware of it—a little out of his depth. This world of rubber planters and Sultans and five-foot kraits was so foreign to him, or seemed so when he tried to get it into extempore focus; how different from that other world of cotton mills and council meetings? And yet, after all, it was the same world, governed by the same passions, the same greeds, the same basic gulf between those who take and those who give. True, there were no snakes in Browdley, but there was diphtheria that could kill (and had killed, hadn’t it?) just as effectively; and there had once been a murder in a street not far from Mill Street, a particularly lurid murder that had made headlines in all the Sunday papers. From Browdley to Kemalpan and Tanjong Palai was only a matter of miles, but from Livia’s mind to his own…how far was that?

Millbay interrupted his musings. “Well, Boswell, you stipulated for my story first. Now what about yours?”

George answered at length: “Aye … but I haven’t one. Nothing to match what you’ve told me, anyhow. I can’t say I’m glad to have heard it, but it’s been good of you to give me so much time.”

“No need to be grateful. I’d rather know how it all strikes you.”

“That’s just it,” George answered. “It does strike me. It strikes me all of a heap.”

“You mean you don’t altogether believe it?”

“I don’t disbelieve it, because I’ve been struck all of a heap before by some of the things Livia did.”

“Oh, you have?”

“Aye…When she left me I was a bit like that for years. But I got over it…”

And that was all. Millbay, though disappointed, was tactful enough not to press him. “Seems to me,” he said later, “that those who want to plan the future with everything neatly laid out in squares and rectangles are going to find the Livias of this world sticking out like a sore thumb.”

“Maybe,” replied George. “But maybe also if the world was planned a bit better there wouldn’t be so many Livias.”

“You evidently accept that as a desirable state.”

“Nay,” said George quickly. “I’ll not say too much against her. We had some good times. And this jealousy you’ve talked about—I never noticed it particularly…”

Millbay smiled. “May I be very personal?”

“Anything you want.”

“It’s perhaps such ancient history that you won’t feel hurt if I suggest it…that perhaps she wasn’t as jealous in your case because she didn’t…love you…as much.”

“Aye, that might have been it.”

It was getting late and George took his leave soon after that. He thanked Millbay again, walked from Smith Square to his hotel in a street behind the Strand, and rather to his surprise slept well and did not dream. The next day was a Saturday and he was busy at a conference. The conference was about nothing more or less momentous than the co-ordination of local authorities in the grouping of road-transport services throughout the northern industrial areas; and George, again to his surprise, found it quite possible to intervene in the discussion and secure for Browdley favorable treatment in the proposed setup. The conference then adjourned till Monday, and with a day to spare George could not think of anything better to do than visit Cambridge. He had never been there before, and thought it would be a good opportunity to compare it with Oxford, which he had visited once, in a mood of envy and adoration, thirty years earlier. So he took the train at Liverpool Street and eventually arrived, after a journey in which wartime and Sunday discomforts were incredibly combined, at a railway station whose form and situation roused in him the most drastic instincts of the rebuilder. He then took a bus into the town, got off at the post office, had a late and rather bad lunch at a restaurant, and entered the nearest of the colleges.

Here at last he felt an authentic thrill that years had scarcely dimmed; for George still worshiped education and could still think nostalgically of never-tasted joys. To be young, to live in one of these old colleges, to have years for nothing but study, and then to emerge into the world’s fray already armored with academic letters after one’s name—this was the kind of past George would like to have had for himself, and the kind of future he would have wanted for his own boy, if his own boy had lived. The multiple disillusionments of the interwar years had not dulled this dream, because it had been a dream only—for George, in Browdley, had never heard about fully trained university men having to cadge jobs as vacuum-cleaner salesmen. So he could pass through the college archway and stare across the quadrangle at sixteenth-century Gothic buildings with the feeling that here, at any rate, was something almost perfect in a far from perfect world.

Civilian sight-seers being rare in wartime, the college porter, scenting a tip, came out of his office to ask George if he would like to be shown over. George said yes, with some enthusiasm, and for the next hour was piloted through various courts, and into a quiet garden containing a famous mulberry tree; he was also shown the rooms in which there had lived, during the most impressionable years of their lives, such varied personages as John Milton and Jan Smuts. George was entranced with all this, and by the time the tour was completed had absorbed much assorted information about the habits of undergraduates in pre-war days. It did not entirely conform to what he had imagined, or even thought desirable. But perhaps after the war things would be a little different in some respects. He soon found that everything the porter was afraid of, he himself most warmly hoped for; and presently he summed the man up as an incurable snob, of a kind almost never met in Browdley. However, all that did not matter in wartime, since the man, from his own statements, was an air-raid warden and doubtless doing his duty like everyone else. George gave him five shillings, which he thought was enough; and the man took it as if he thought it just about enough.

“By the way,” George added, as an afterthought, “have you a list of all of the men in the University—not just this college only?”

He had, and George inspected it. It did not take him more than a moment to find that Winslow was at St. Jude’s. The porter then told him where St. Jude’s was and he walked there across the town.

He did not know whether he really intended to visit Winslow or not, but as he was strolling towards the college entrance he saw a man leaning on two sticks walk out towards the curb and there hesitate, as if uncertain whether to risk crossing. George caught his glance from a distance and immediately changed direction to help him; whereupon the man turned away, evidently deciding not to cross after all. But the whole maneuver puzzled George, so that he approached nevertheless and asked if he could be of any service. The man was a tall young fellow in a rather ill-fitting tweed jacket and gray-flannel trousers, with a hat turned down over his forehead in such a way that, with the further obstruction of dark glasses, the face was hardly to be seen. Yet immediately—from some curious instinct rather than from any arguable recognition—George knew who it was. He had never seen him dressed before, or even standing up before, yet there was not a shadow of doubt as he exclaimed: “Why, Charles…” and took the other’s arm.

The youth stared at him for a moment before forcing a smile. “I—I didn’t expect you’d recognize me.”

“Don’t say you didn’t want me to!”

“I won’t say it if you’d rather not.” The voice and the tone were ironic. “What are you doing in these parts, anyhow?”

George explained and added heartily: “No need to ask what you’re doing.”

“Isn’t there? At present I’m going to have my hair cut by a barber who most obligingly does it for me privately every third Sunday afternoon. I can’t face that sort of thing when there’s the usual audience.”

George nodded with understanding. “Then I mustn’t keep you. But perhaps afterwards…How about having a meal with me?”

Charles declined with a brusqueness that softened into an only slightly irritated explanation that he hardly ever left the college after dusk. “For one thing there’s the damned blackout.” And then, either shyly or grudgingly (George could not be sure which): “I’m in Room D One in the First Court. Come up tonight after dinner if you like. About eight.”

George had been intending to return to London by the seven-thirty train, but he canceled the arrangement quickly enough to accept without an appearance of hesitation. A later train, however inconvenient, would do all right. He said: “Thanks, I will. And now, since you were wanting to cross the street…”

He helped the boy as far as the opposite curb, then left him after a few conversational commonplaces. George’s sense of timing was never, indeed, so infallible as when he found himself up against that rare phenomenon—someone who didn’t seem particularly glad to see him.

He spent an hour or two in further sight-seeing, then made his way to St. Jude’s after another bad meal. The night was cloudy, and the staircase leading to D One proved hard to find, even by inquiry. To George’s astonishment, after he had knocked, the door was opened by a rather pretty girl in nurse’s uniform who admitted him to a large pleasant room in which Charles, with one arm bared to the shoulder, had evidently been undergoing some sort of treatment which George’s arrival had interrupted. George apologized for being early (though actually he was punctual), but Charles assured him the job was finished and introduced the girl, who joined in unimportant conversation while she packed her equipment. She seemed very charming, friendly, and efficient, and George, whose mind always flew to Browdley on the slightest provocation, wished he had her in the town’s health department. He had also noticed the state of the arm, and Charles, aware of this, felt constrained to cover a certain embarrassment by making light of it. “Still have to be patched up, but I’m sure a lot of fellows would envy me the method.” The girl laughed and made businesslike arrangements for her next visit. She demurred at first as George picked up her bag, but when he insisted she let him carry it down the stairs. Outside the door he said: “It isn’t just that I’m being polite. I’d really like to know how that boy is, and I thought you’d be the one to give me the true facts.”

She replied calmly as they walked across the court and through the gateway into the street: “He’s not well at all—but that’s a usual experience after the sort of crash he had. They seem to improve, and then they get worse again. It’s partly because they expect to recover too soon and too completely—and it doesn’t happen.”

“But it will eventually—in his case?”

“He has a good chance. Physically he’s doing fine. He fractured both ankles, and one of his hands and arms had bad burns—that’s the one I’m working on—the muscle’s damaged. And his face, too—that was burned, but they did a wonderful job with plastic surgery—I’ve seen a photograph of him as he used to be and it’s really remarkable. Of course the shock is really the hardest thing to get over.”

“But he will?”

“I hope so, though he’s pretty bad at times. He has sudden nerve storms—you can’t imagine what they’re like until you’ve seen him…But he should improve gradually.”

“It all sounds serious enough,” George said.

“It is—though I’ve seen many worse. And he has heaps of courage. You know he got a D.F.C.?”

“No?…When was that?”

She mentioned a time earlier than that of George’s visit to the Mulcaster hospital.

He said: “He never told me.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“But isn’t he proud of it?”

She smiled. “He’s just shy about those things, that’s all. Do you know him well?”

“Not very. But I—I like him a great deal.”

“So do I.”

They had reached the pavement where she said she would wait for a bus. George would have liked to go on talking, but the bus came up almost immediately. “And where are you off to now?” he asked, curious as always about the lives and work of others.

“Back to the hospital here. They keep me busy.”

“I’llbet they do,” he answered admiringly. The bus moved away and he walked back to the college room encouraged by a feeling of community with all who worked with such quiet, cheerful skill—the real aristocracy on earth, he reflected, if there ever were such a thing.

Charles had put on his coat and was making sure the curtains were drawn over the windows. George apologized again for having arrived perhaps inopportunely.

“Not at all…Sit down. You’ve had dinner, of course. How about some coffee? I make it here, on my own.”

George agreed and watched Charles as he busied himself with the small but intricate task. It was as if he wanted to show how he could do things—as if embarrassment, aware of itself, could find relief in a kind of exhibitionism. He made excellent coffee, anyhow, and over several cups they fell to discussing the business that had brought George to London, which George explained in as much detail as was interesting to himself until it occurred to him that Charles might not be similarly enthralled. But the boy urged him to continue. “Go ahead. It’s shop talk, but I always enjoy that from anyone who knows what he’s talking about.”

George acknowledged the compliment with a pleased “Aye,” and then, to keep it modest, added: “So long as it’s anything to do with Browdley…Now tell me your gossip.”

“Nothing to tell except a lot of dull stories about hospitals.”

“They moved you about a lot?”

“Yes. Everybody who thought he could do anything had a go at me. Not that I’m complaining. They did rather well, I reckon. And the French johnny who fixed up my nose really improved on the original. I had to spend six weeks in his private nursing home in Leeds.”

“Leeds? As near to Browdley as all that? Why didn’t you let me know? I’d have visited you.”

Charles looked embarrassed. “Well, you stopped writing, so I thought you’d got a bit bored with that sort of thing. I wouldn’t blame you.”

“I stopped writing?”

And then, of course, the matter was explored; it appeared that George’s last two letters had never reached Charles; it was all as trivial as that. (They did arrive, eventually, after a series of fantastic reforwardings.) George exclaimed, laughing because his relief was so much greater than he could have believed: “And I thought it was you who didn’t want to write!”

Just then the air-raid siren went off, effectively changing the subject. “There’s a shelter in the next court,” Charles said, “if you’d like to go there.”

“What do you generally do?”

“It’s only happened two or three times before, but I’ve always stayed here. I don’t think it’s a very good shelter anyway.”

George said staying where they were was all right with him, so they went on talking. Now that the contretemps of the letters had been cleared up, the mood came on them both for subsidiary confessions; Charles, for instance, admitted that when he had caught sight of George outside the college that afternoon he had deliberately looked the other way. “It was partly because I thought perhaps you really didn’t want to see me—not now that you know I know who you are. There’s also a bit of a phobia I have about my new face. It gives me the most conflicting impulses—for instance, in your case, because you never saw my old face, I didn’t mind so much, yet because I also didn’t think you’d recognize me I was glad to think you wouldn’t realize I was avoiding you…Or is all that too complicated?”

“Aye—and so are most human impulses, if you get down to analyzing ’em.”

“I’m glad you think so. I’ve had a good deal of time to analyze myself lately—perhaps too much—and on the whole I prefer flying…I suppose you know I’ll never be able to do that again?”

George had all along thought so, but deemed it best to appear surprised. Charles went on: “The doctors simply hooted when I mentioned it. Asked me whether I wasn’t satisfied with the way they’d fixed me up for a life of strictly civilian usefulness.”

“And aren’t you?”

“I guess I’ve got to be. I’m damned lucky compared with thousands. The fact is, though, I really wanted to fly again…As long as I could be useful that way I was satisfied. But now that I have to wonder how I can be useful, I’m not satisfied.”

“What’s wrong with just being here?”

“Probably quite a lot. And that’s what makes the big difference. There never was much wrong with the R.A.F., and even if there had been it was none of my business. My job was to fly.”

“And now your job’s to get ready for some other job that’ll be just as useful in its way by then.”

“I’d like to believe that. I’d like to think the things I’m being lectured about have the slightest connection with anything that matters. The Statute of Mortmain, for example—or the Amphictyonic Council.”

“The Amphictyonic Council certainly has—because it was a sort of League of Nations, wasn’t it?”

Charles gasped. “Good God! Now how the hell did you know that?”

“Because I once studied history for a university examination same as you’re doing now.”

“You did? You mean you…” The first gunfire could be heard in the far distance; it seemed to cause a break in the youth’s astonishment, giving him the chance to reflect, perhaps, that it was not very polite to be so astonished. He stammered: “It’s just that I didn’t realize you were—well, what I mean is…”

George let him flounder with a certain grim joy. “Aye, I get what you mean,” he said at length. “You thought education wasn’t much in my line, I daresay. But you’re wrong there. I had great ambitions when I was a lad, and to get a university degree was one of ’em. But it didn’t come off—and perhaps it doesn’t matter so much when I look back on it now. I’ve done other things.”

“That’s what my father used to say. His ambition was always to be an ambassador in one of the important capitals, but things didn’t work out that way. In fact they worked out damned badly…You know he’s probably dead?”

George said gently: “Not probably. I don’t think anyone knows enough to say that.”

“I wish they did. I wish it was a certainty. I can’t bear to think of him being—”

George caught the note of hysteria and checked it by putting out his cup for more coffee. “Come now…I know it could be bad, but maybe it’s not as bad as that…Isn’t it possible to get word from him? Doesn’t anybody have an idea where he is?”

The whole room began to shake as if a train were rumbling deeply underground. A flake of plaster fell from the ceiling with almost dainty nonchalance. Charles answered: “My mother thinks he’s in Japan. I don’t know what evidence she has—if any. She’s—she’s a little strange—in some ways. She’s been writing to all kinds of people in the Government—making rather extraordinary suggestions for rescuing him. Quite extraordinary. I’m terribly sorry for her.” His voice trembled.

The underground train noise began again. George took his refilled cup of coffee. “Thanks,” he said. And then: “I’m sorry too, lad.”

Charles lit a cigarette. “Air-raid warden in Browdley, aren’t you?”

George nodded.

“Ever had a raid?”

“Not so far, thank goodness. But I know what they’re like. I was at Mulcaster in one of the worst.”

“I was in a few too.”

“So I understand.”

“Oh, I don’t mean those. I mean as one of the underdogs. A few hours after my mother landed there was a bad one on the docks there…She wasn’t scared. I was, though.” He smiled. “Not that I wouldn’t rather be here than in a shelter. It’s a bit of a bother for me to get down steps, and I hate strangers staring at my funny face.”

“It’s not funny to me.”

“That’s because you never saw it before. The really funny thing is that you should ever have seen it at all…Just coincidence, wasn’t it, that you noticed my name on the list at that hospital?”

“Aye—but when you come to think of it, there’s a lot of coincidence in the world.”

“That’s so…Boy meets Girl—always the perfect coincidence. My father meeting my mother…You meeting my mother. Where was it? In Browdley?”

George nodded.

“My father met her first in Vienna.”

“Aye.”

“You knew that?”

George nodded. After a pause he asked: “By the way…did you…did you tell her you’d met me?”

“Yes.”

“Did she mind?”

“She seemed a bit surprised, that’s all.” An explosion came, nearer than any before. Charles began to laugh.

George said: “Steady, lad.”

“Oh, I’m all right. I was just laughing at something she said about you when I happened to mention you were Mayor of Browdley. She said you were like a lion when you talked at public meetings, and behind that you were rather like a friendly old dog that nobody need be afraid of, but behind everything, else you had the secret strength of the dove.”

“The what?”

Charles repeated the phrase, after which they both laughed together. “Well, it’s the first time I ever heard of it,” George said. “And I still don’t know whether she meant that doves are strong or that I’m weak…Maybe she didn’t know herself when she said it.”

“Maybe. My father once said she said things not because they meant anything but to find out if they did mean anything.”

George made no comment.

“And sometimes her mind seems full of words waiting for other words to set them off like firecrackers.” The distant underground rumbling died away and all was silence. “Sounds as if it might be over…Where d’you think it was? Just tip and run on some little place—they do that, don’t they?” With difficulty the boy got up and walked to the window. “George—do you mind if I call you George?—George, I wish I could be of some use—some real use—in this blasted country…If only I could fly again—but that’s out, and so far I can’t seem to settle to what’s in. I guess millions of us are going to feel like that after the war.” He moved restlessly. “How about a stroll? I can, if I’m careful.”

“Not till the All Clear sounds. Take it easy.”

“All right, all right. I’ll bet you make a good warden. When are you going back to that town of yours?”

“Tomorrow night, I hope.”

“So soon?”

“I’ll have finished my work in London and I’ve got plenty waiting for me at home.”

“They can’t do without you?”

“They could, but they mightn’t want to.”

“I’ll bet you’re a good mayor, too. I’ll bet everything in that town runs like clockwork.”

“Oh, not so bad. I’d match it against any other place in England for being efficiently managed, if that’s what you mean.” George smiled to himself as he thought of the matter, then saw the other’s quizzical, slightly sardonic glance, and wondered if he were being baited. “Look here,” he continued, in some embarrassment. “I’m showing off too much…Aye, and I’d have been down that shelter too, but for showing off. Maybe that’s what kept us both here like a couple of fools.” Charles shook his head, so George added: “Or maybe not in your case.”

“No, George. Oh God, no. If you must have a reason, it’s simply that I don’t give a damn what happens. To me personally, that is. I’m scared, and yet I don’t care. When you’ve seen a lot of your friends killed you can’t think you’ve survived by any special virtue of your own. Then why the hell have you survived? And the next step in argument is why the hell should you go on surviving?”

George said quietly: “I don’t like to hear you talk like that.”

“It’s better than having you think it was bravery—or even bravado…Well, let’s discuss something pleasanter. That town of yours, if you like.”

“Provided it doesn’t bore you.”

“Not at all. I wouldn’t even mind seeing the place sometime.”

“Why don’t you then—sometime?”

It was half an hour before the All Clear sounded, and George was just in time to catch his train.

Of course they began to correspond again, and within a short time it happened that George was called to London for another official conference. This time it did not spread over a week end, and he was far too conscientious to pretend it did; but by routing his return journey, with much extra discomfort, through Cambridge, he was able to spend a whole afternoon with Charles. He was delighted to note an improvement in the boy’s physical condition; he could use his legs more easily, and since he had been recommended to do so for exercise, the two spent part of the time strolling slowly about the Backs, which at that time of the year were at their loveliest.

Less reassuring to George was Charles’s state of mind, which still seemed listless and rather cynical, especially at the outset. He still questioned the value of anything he was doing at Cambridge, and George was too tactful to reply that even if it had no value at all, it was as good a way of passing a difficult time as any other. “But you like it here, don’t you?” George asked, “Or would you rather be at home?”

“I haven’t a home,” Charles answered, so sharply that George did not probe the point. But then the boy smiled. “I’m sorry—you must think I’m very hard to please. Of course Cambridge is all right, and I’ve really nothing to complain of. Everybody’s perfectly charming to me. The dons don’t mind whether I work or not—the whole atmosphere is timeless. It’s a bit frightening at first. And that air of detachment people have here. One of the St. Jude’s dons—a little wizened fellow who’s the greatest living authority on something or other—began talking to me quite casually the other day about the Channing case—took it for granted that I didn’t mind everyone knowing that my grandfather served a long sentence in jail. And of course I don’t mind—why should I? After all, my father didn’t exactly distinguish himself either—ever heard of Kemalpan? Well, I won’t go into that…and damn it all, I don’t care—why should I care?”

“Aye, why should you?” George interrupted. “You haven’t done so badly yourself—so far.”

“So far and no further, though—that’s what it looks like.”

George looked straight into the boy’s eyes. “You were talking about one of the dons here.”

“Oh yes—the one who reminded me that my grandfather was a crook. But he must have studied the trail pretty closely from the way he talked. He said John Channing was quite a pioneer in his way, and that his scheme for reorganizing the cotton industry was very similar to the one sponsored by the Bank of England twenty years later. ‘Unfortunate that your grandfather was tempted to borrow money by printing too many stock certificates. He should have become Governor of the Bank, then he could have printed the money’.” Charles imitated the high-pitched voice of the don. “So utterly detached—it made things rather easy between us afterwards. And then there’s another fellow—a very famous scientist—who remarked pleasantly to a small crowd of us at a tea party—‘The Germans really do have the most God-awful luck—you almost feel sorry for them’—but nobody turned a hair or thought anything of it, because everyone knows he’s working day and night on some poison gas to kill the whole German nation if they start that game themselves.”

George answered: “You put your finger on a point, though, when you said ‘a very famous scientist.’ Anyone not so famous could get into trouble if he talked like that at the Marble Arch to a crowd.”

“Oh, I don’t know. He might be booted out of the Park by a few bus drivers. Probably nothing more…Because the English, after all, are a race of eccentrics. They don’t think it’s odd that people should be odd. And they always bear in mind the possibility that the lunatic view might, after all, be right. That’s what makes them tolerant of their enemies.”

George nodded. “Which is rather wise, because often it’s only from amongst your enemies that you can pick your friends.”

“Has that been your experience, George?”

“Aye—as a minority member on a town council where I’ve had more of my own way, I reckon, than most of the chaps on the other side with all their voting majority. But it’s taken time—and patience.”

“But what happens to the battle, George, if you win over all your enemies to help you fight it?”

“Why, I’ll tell you what happens—the battle’s over, and that’s what everybody’s after, isn’t it?”

“No, not exactly. What everybody wants is victory.”

“And everybody can’t get it. But you can make a lot of folks think they’ve got it. Remember Philip Snowden back in 1929—no, you’d be too young—anyhow, we all cheered like mad because he made France pay an extra million pounds of war debt! Think of it—one whole extra million pounds! The Fighting Yorkshireman! Wouldn’t have been easy to forecast how we’d all feel about the Fighting Frenchman a bit later!”

“Does it prove we shouldn’t have cheered?”

“Maybe not. Perhaps it proves that though it’s hard to get the victory you want, it’s even harder to want the victory you got ten years back.”

“Which is the devil of a way to look at things in the middle of a war.”

“Aye, I can see it might be.”

Charles walked on for a little way, then said thoughtfully: “You know, George, you have a rather Machiavellian mind.”

George laughed. “Twisty, you mean, eh? That’s what my opponents say. But I’ll give you one good tip in politics—keep straight from year to year, and you can twist as much as you find convenient from day to day. And as for the really big fellows—the great men of the world—if they keep straight from century to century, they can do their twisting on a yearly basis. Does that make any sense?”

Charles laughed. “What doesn’t make sense to me is that you didn’t try for Parliament. Or did you—ever?”

“Aye, a few times.”

“And no luck? How was that?”

George answered after a pause: “Hard to say. Perhaps just what you said—no luck.”

But the recollection was now without a pang, or at any rate the pang was smothered in much greater pleasure; for George had made a discovery—that he could talk to Charles as he had never been able to talk to anyone—even Wendover, with whom there had always been the prickly territory of dogma. But the boy, less schooled in dialectic than the priest, nevertheless had a clear, intricate mind—almost too intricate, almost ice-clear; and George argued with him joyfully every foot of the way from St. Jude’s to Queens and then back again, on that lovely May afternoon. All the time a curious happiness was growing in him—something he did not diagnose at first, but when he did, it came in the guise of a guess—that this must be what it felt like to have a grown-up son. During the last half-mile they increased pace, because Charles was in a hurry to get to his rooms. “That’s what your arguments do, George—make me forget the time…And I don’t want to keep Julie waiting.”

“Julie?”

“The…er…the nurse you met. Miss Petersham.”

George didn’t think it could matter much if she did wait for a few minutes, but he said merely: “And a very nice girl, too.”

“You thought so?”

“Aye.” George smiled and added: “We had quite a conversation on the way to her bus. She told me one thing you didn’t let out.”

To George’s immense astonishment Charles flushed deeply and began to stammer: “You mean—about—our—engagement?”

George swallowed hard. “Well, no—as a matter of fact, it was your Distinguished Flying Cross.”

“Oh, that…”

George could see that Charles regretted having given himself away. He held the youth’s arm as they began to climb the staircase. He said: “I’m sorry if they were both things you didn’t want me to know, but now I do know I’d like to offer my congratulations…and double ones.”

“Thanks…Of course there’s no secret about a D.F.C…The other thing is more or less—has to be—because—well, it depends on what sort of a recovery I make. I wouldn’t have her tie herself to an old crock. Or even a young one.”

He had left his room unlocked, and the girl was already there when they entered it. She greeted them both and immediately set about preparing the equipment for massage treatment.

Charles said abruptly: “He knows all about us, Julie.” She looked up, startled—to Charles, then to George, then to Charles again. “Did you tell him?”

“No…it sort of slipped out. But I don’t really mind.” Then Charles laughed and George shook hands with the girl and said how pleased he was. “I was praising you to him even before I knew,” he said. It was a happy moment. “And now I’d better leave if I’m going to catch my train…I’ll see you both again before long, I’m sure.”

He shook hands again, but the girl followed him to the door. “My turn to see you to the bus this time.”

“All right.”

Crossing the court towards the college entrance she said: “I’m glad you know. Charles thinks such a lot of you.”

“He does?”

Something in his voice made her laugh and ask: “Why, are you surprised?”

And George, who was so used to being liked yet could never somehow get over the surprise of having it happen to him again, replied truthfully: “In a way, I am, because it’s hard for a lad of his age to get along with an old chap like me. Yet we do get along.”

“I know. And you’re not old.”

“Older, then.”

“You can be a great help to him anyhow.”

“You too, lass. And far more than I can.”

“Well…he needs all the help we can both give him.”

“He’s getting better, though?”

“Oh yes—physically. It’s in other ways we can help him most.”

“I understand. There’s something he hasn’t got—yet. It’s a sort of reason to be alive. He doesn’t know why he wasn’t killed like so many others—he’s said that to me more than once. Does he talk like that to you?”

“Sometimes,” she answered.

They walked a little way in silence; then, as they reached the curb, she said: “Mr. Boswell, I’m going to be very frank and ask you something—as a friend of his …”

“Yes?”

“Will you…would you help him…even against his mother?”

A bus to the station came along. “The next one will do,” George muttered. And then, as they stepped back from the commotion of passengers getting on and off, he went on muttering: “Help him—against his mother—eh? Why, what’s wrong about his mother?”

She answered: “I only saw her once, when she came to visit him, and of course to her I was only a nurse. And I was only a nurse—then. But I could see that she wasn’t good for Charles. She got on his nerves. She wants to possess him—her whole attitude was like that—and I don’t think she’s the right person, and even if she were, I don’t think he’s the sort of person who ought to be possessed—by anyone. He should be free.” She continued after a pause: “Maybe you’re wondering about my motives in all this. Well, so far as I’m concerned he is free. I love him, that’s true, but I only agreed to the engagement because I thought it would help him—which it did, and still does. But when he’s better he may feel differently. I shan’t try to hold him. He’s too young, anyhow, to decide about a wife…I want him to be free. I don’t want him to be possessed.”

“And you think…his mother…?”

“That’s what she wants. I know it. I think he knows it too, but he can’t easily resist, for the time being—that is, till he’s recovered. She’s so strong.”

“Strong?”

“Yes, but there are two kinds of strong people. There’s the kind that make you feel strong yourself, and there’s the other kind that make you feel weak…She’s that kind. And he’s so sorry for her—naturally, on account of what’s happened. Everybody is—she’s a tragic figure…Which makes another reason. He’s had enough tragedy.”

George could sense the girl’s emotion from the way she suddenly stopped at the word “tragedy” and laughed, as if that were the only thing left to do. She said, after the laugh:

“Well, I’ve told you now. I don’t know what you can do, but you’re a friend of Charles and I took advantage of it. Don’t do anything at all if you’d rather not. I really haven’t any right to ask.”

Another bus was approaching along King’s Parade. George answered: “Nay, Julie, we’ve all a right to ask anything when it’s a matter of helping somebody.”

She smiled. “That’s a nice way to look at it…You’d better catch this bus or you’ll be late.”

He nodded. And then at the last minute: “I wonder…do you know who I am?”

She replied, in a rather puzzled voice: “Why yes—you’re the Mayor of Browdley, isn’t that it?”

“Aye,” he answered, with a slow smile. “And I’ll bet you’d never heard of Browdley till Charles told you. That’s how important it makes me.” He gripped her arm. “See you again soon, lass.” And then from the bus platform: “I’ll do what I can. I dunno how, but I will.”

Inside the bus and all the way to Browdley, by various slow-train connections that took all evening and half the night, George still did not know how he would keep his promise, though his determination to do so surged into the familiar dimensions of a crusade.

George might have a Machiavellian mind, as Charles had said, or he might have made a Jesuit, as Wendover had once said; but there were times when he knew that nothing is more effective than the direct approach. So after pondering long on the problem of how to help Charles, he decided that the first step must be to meet Livia himself and judge what help was needed; and to meet Livia the simplest method seemed to write and ask for a meeting.

She returned a characteristic brief note that he could visit her any time he wanted while she was at Castle Winslow.

It was a week before George could arrange to be away from Browdley long enough to make the trip, and once again there was the complicated uncomfortable journey by a series of trains. He was not surprised when no one met him at Castle Winslow station, and as it was fine weather and there were no cabs he walked the three miles from the station to the lodge gates, wearing down by sheer physical fatigue a mounting excitement over the fact that at last, after over twenty years, he was about to see Livia again. It was curious how something had lingered to produce that excitement still. He remembered the months immediately after he had known definitely that she would not return to him—how she had been on his mind night and day, so that he had scarcely been able to work; he remembered how he would wonder whether to avoid the Stoneclough road with all its memories, or to exorcise them deliberately by the self-torture of walking there; and how for weeks he would try the one method and then, in despair, the other. But for years now there had been nothing particular to remember or to try to forget.

At the lodge an old man hoeing potatoes in a patch of garden pointed further along the road when George spoke the name Mrs. Winslow. “She’s at the Dower House—that’s about a mile. Turn left at the signpost and then it’s the first place on the right behind the trees. There’s a lot of kids there—you can’t miss it.”

George walked on, puzzled at the reference to “a lot of kids,” and more so when he came, near enough to hear their shrill cries and screams. At length he glimpsed a rather large rambling house, well set back from the road behind tall poplars. In the space between the road and the building children of all ages from three or four to ten or eleven were romping as in a school playground.

George walked in and the children took no notice of him, but a buxom middle-aged woman who looked like a farmer’s wife changed her direction across the yard as he approached. He gave his name and repeated who it was he wanted to see.

“I don’t know whether she will,” answered the woman, doubtfully. “She won’t see anybody as a rule. You’re not from a newspaper, are you?”

George assured her he wasn’t.

He waited till a moment later the woman beckoned him from a doorway. As she led him through the cool interior she explained the presence of the children. They had been bombed out of their homes in some of the big industrial cities, and this was one of the rehabilitation centers set up by the Government for the recovery of special cases—“like shell shock,” some of them, she said. George knew all about it, for there was a similar center not far from Browdley, which he had visited. “And does Mrs. Winslow help in looking after them?” he asked, eager for some clue to what he might expect.

“Yes, she helps. She’s all right with the children.”

Presently the woman opened a door leading to a kind of veranda in which a few children were lying asleep or strangely awake in open cots. That strangeness was another thing George had seen before—the tense stare, the twitching muscles; these were the worst cases. And beyond them, arranging pots of geraniums along a ledge, was Livia. She wore a large shabby straw hat and a bright-colored dress.

At the instant of recognition he gasped with the sensation of something suddenly switched off inside him, but it was not pain any more; and as always when he had seen her afresh after an absence recognition dissolved into a curious feeling of never having seen her before, but of experiencing some primitive thrill that time had neither enhanced nor made stale; but it was no longer a thrill entirely of pleasure.

“Livia…” he said.

She looked up. “Hello, George.” She gave him an odd sort of smile. She had not changed much in appearance—at least, not as much as he had expected. She went on: “I didn’t think you’d be coming today when you didn’t get here earlier.”

“I walked from the station.”

“Oh, didn’t Howard send the car? I asked him to.”

“Howard?”

“My brother-in-law. He probably didn’t do it deliberately. I mean he did do it deliberately. I mean, he deliberately didn’t send the car. Just because I asked him. He doesn’t like me. None of them do—except these.” As her eyes ranged over the cots something came into her face that made George reflect how beautiful she still was, provided one had ever thought her beautiful at all.

“Well, it didn’t matter. I enjoyed the walk.”

“Come into the garden.”

He followed her. She had been taking cuttings from geraniums, planting them in pots for the veranda, and without a word of apology or excuse she now resumed the task, and with such concentration that George did not feel she was giving him more than a part of her attention. At any rate, there was to be no such dramatic or over-dramatic encounter as he had half expected, and for this at least he was thankful.

He stammered: “I hope you’re well, Livia—after—after all the—the trouble—you’ve had.”

“Oh, I’m all right. Poor Jeff, though. He’s in Japan, only nobody knows where. If only the Government would send me out I’d find him—surely it’s possible by submarine? They could put me ashore on a dark night—like Casement in Ireland. Don’t they do that sometimes? Do you know anyone at the Admiralty you could ask? I told Jeff I would…People thought I was against his work—and so I was—because I could see all this coming. In Hong Kong, I mean. The place stank of what was coming…And then he had to go back into it all like a fool. I’d never have left him no matter where he went, but they took him away. They took him away, George. I wish I was with him still, even in a prison camp. Where you are doesn’t really matter. The earth is all the same.” She began to pick up a handful of soil and sprinkle it into a pot. “I always liked planting things. Then you can let history slip through your fingers—like peasants do. That’s why I want Charlie to give up Cambridge and live on a farm.”

“To give up Cambridge?”

“Yes—what’s the good of it? We argued about it but he didn’t understand. Nobody ever does. They argue and argue but they don’t feel. It’s a little farm off the coast of Galway. I’d like him to settle down there and rest from thinking, arguing, books …all that…dead things that have caused all the upset…”

George watched her with curious intensity. She went on: “You don’t know what the world is all about, George. You never did. All your meetings and speeches—must have been thousands of them…what did they do? Or what did they stop?”

George did not reply. The heedless fever of her voice had not only been hard to keep pace with as a listener, but it had given him an inward tension that left him without power or will to reply. Presently she exclaimed: “Well? Don’t say you agree with me—that would be too amazing!”

He still couldn’t answer.

“Never mind,” she smiled, after another pause. “Tell me about Browdley.”

“Browdley’s all right,” he managed to say, in hardly more than a whisper.

“Not been bombed to bits yet?”

“Thank God, no.”

“Annie still with you?”

“Aye.”

“And Will Spivey?”

“Aye.”

“And there’s still the little garden I made?”

“It’s still there.” He added: “And Stoneclough too.”

She suddenly began to cry, but without any sound. The tears fell into the soil as she went on filling up the pot. “Oh George, what a long time ago. I hope you’ve been happy.”

“You have, haven’t you?”

She nodded.

“I’m glad.”

“Yes…it was a thing to try for, wasn’t it? Love, I mean—not happiness.” She stopped crying as abruptly as she had begun. “Poor Jeff…I wish I knew someone at the Admiralty—Howard knows them all but he won’t help. He doesn’t like me—Howard, I mean—Lord Winslow, that is. He thinks I ruined Jeff’s career. And now he thinks I want to ruin Charlie’s. Ruin…ruin…how can anyone make more than there is? I loved my father and then I loved my husband and now I love my son…anything wrong in all that? Or in these children…these have been ruined too, but not by love. I’ll tell you what I do about them—are you interested?”

George murmured assent and she began to chatter with eager animation. “They’re in need of almost everything when they come here—they have to be clothed, as a rule, as well as fed—I got some of the older ones to help in cooking and serving their own meals, also repairing their own clothes—that is, if they can—and of course we grow most of our own fruits and vegetables, so there’s always plenty of work in the garden. But the worst cases can’t do anything at all for a time—they just scream and cry and there’s nothing helps but when I talk to them, and I do that. I talk nonsense mostly. When bad things are on their minds that’s all they want to hear. Nothing serious. Not even politics.” She smiled. “Charlie told me you were Mayor of Browdley now?”

George said that was so.

“You should have come here wearing your Mayor’s chain. To make the children laugh. Always a good thing to make them laugh.”

George smiled back. “Aye, I might have.”

“You would, I know. You’re very kind. It’s just that you don’t think of things, isn’t it? Or rather you think of too many other things…”

After that she continued to work on the geraniums for a long interval—so long that George began to wonder whether she had forgotten he was there.

But presently, with the air of a duchess at a reception, she turned to him brimming over with graciousness. “It was so nice of you to come. And you’ll come again, won’t you?”

“Do you—do you really want me to—Livia?”

“Of course. Any time. That is, before we go to Ireland…”

“You’re…going to take Charles …to Ireland?”

“Yes, for the vacation. And if I can I shall persuade him not to go back next term—he only likes Cambridge because he’s got himself entangled with a girl there.”

“What?”

“Of course he doesn’t know I know, but it was plain as soon as I saw them together. Poor boy…rather pathetic to watch him pretending she was just a hospital nurse that came to give him massage treatment. Of course I don’t blame him. In his state he’d be an easy victim.”

“You mean…you…you think she’s…that sort of a girl?”

“I don’t care what sort she is, I’m going to put a stop to it.”

“Why?”

“Because I have other plans for my own son. It’s about time we got to know each other—what with all the separations of school, and then the war…and the peace isn’t going to be much better, for most people. Or are you optimistic about it? You probably are—you always were about most things…I won’t shake hands—mine are too dirty. But do come again—before we go…Good-bye…”

“Good-bye, Livia.”

“And you will come again?”

“Aye.” He walked to the door, then hesitated and said: “My advice would be to let that boy live his own life.”

“And marry the first girl he meets? That would be optimism.”

He wasn’t sure whether she meant that such a marriage would be optimism, or whether it would be optimistic of him to suppose that she would ever let Charles do such a thing; and whichever she meant, he wasn’t sure whether she were serious or merely ironic. Anyhow, he knew there was little use in continuing the argument, the more so as she had again resumed the potting of the plants. He said from the door, watching her: “I wish you were as good with grownups as you are with kids, Livia. You’re doing a fine job with these. Their parents’ll bless you for it.”

“Their parents are dead, George. Dead—dead.” Her eyes looked up, but her hands worked on. “Fancy you not knowing that.”

George also felt he ought to have known it—though after all, why? But Livia had always been like that, possessed of some curious power to impose guilt, or at least embarrassment; and so he stood there in the doorway, staring at her till he knew there was nothing else to say. Then he walked off.

The woman who looked like a farmer’s wife accosted him as he was leaving the house. “They telephoned from the Hall, sir,” she said, with new respect in her voice. “His Lordship wished to apologize about the car—it had a puncture on the way to the station. But he’s sent another car to take you back, and he also asked if you’d call and see him on the way.”

“Where would I find him?”

“The chauffeur will take you, sir.”

The Rolls-Royce swung into the last curve of the mile-long drive and pulled up outside the portico of Winslow Hall. It was an imposing structure, in Palladian style; and George’s reflection at any normal time would have been concerned with its possible use as state or municipal property; but this was not a normal time, and to be frank, he did not give Winslow Hall a thought as he entered it. He was thinking of Livia.

Even the library, when he was shown in, did not stir in him more than a glance of casual admiration, though this was the kind of room he had all his life dreamed of—immense, monastic, and book-lined.

“Nice of you to drop in, Boswell,” began Lord Winslow, getting up from an armchair.

The two men shook hands. The present Lord Winslow was a revised edition of the former one, but with all qualities a shade nearer the ordinary—thus a little plumper, rather less erudite, more of a dilettante, worldlier, colder beneath the surface.

George declined a drink, but began to take in his surroundings—the ornately carved mantelpiece, a smell of old leather bindings, the huge mullioned window through which a view of rolling parkland was superb.

“First time you’ve been in this part of the country perhaps?” And Winslow began to chatter about local beauty spots, while the butler brought sherry. “Good of you to take such an interest in Charles. He sends me glowing accounts of you.”

“It’s a pleasure to help the boy.”

“That’s how we all feel…” And then a rather awkward pause. “Cigar?”

“No thanks—I don’t smoke.”

Lord Winslow got up and closed a door that had swung open after the butler had not properly closed it. Coming back across the room he said: “So you’ve seen Livia?”

“Aye, I’ve just come from seeing her.”

“She’s a little off her head, as I daresay you must have noticed.”

George, despite his own liking for downright statements, was somewhat shocked by the coolness of the remark.

Winslow went on: “I suppose it’s what she went through in Hong Kong.”

“It might have been.”

“Though to tell you the truth, she was rather—er—unpredictable, even before that. …Of course it’s a problem to know quite what to do. Especially in regard to Charles.”

“Aye, that’s what matters.”

“I’m glad you think so. She’s dead set on taking him to live with her in Ireland, but in my opinion that would be a mistake, even if it were feasible, which it probably isn’t. I doubt if the Government would issue permits.”

“Permits?”

“You see it’s Southern Ireland. Neutral country. They wouldn’t be quite sure what she was up to in a place like that…I heard this in confidence from a chap in the Passport Office. They have everybody tabbed, you know.”

“But I don’t see—”

“Oh, nothing significant—nothing at all, I’m quite certain. She probably mixed with some of the wrong people somewhere—she’s really rather eccentric in her choice of friends. Personally I don’t think it ever meant a thing, though it certainly can’t have helped Jeff…any more than it would help Charles.” Suddenly Winslow rang the bell, and when the butler appeared turned to George with the remark: “I hope you’ll stay to dinner.” George was surprised by this on top of other surprises, and had hardly begun to stammer his regrets when Winslow interpreted them to the butler as an acceptance.

“It’s kind of you,” George said when the man had gone, “but I was thinking of my train. It leaves at six-fifteen.”

“Oh, there’s another one after that.”

“Are you sure? Because I looked it up and—”

“Positive…I’m so glad you’ll stay. I’d like to talk things over with you…I’m sure we both have the boy’s best interests at heart.”

So George found himself dining at Winslow Hall—just himself and Lord Winslow in the enormous paneled room that could have seated fifty with ease. The sunset slanted through the windows as they began the meal, but later, when the butler approached to draw the blackout curtains, Winslow left his seat and beckoned George to share with him a last look at the view. “You see how it is,” he said quietly. “I have no children. All that—and this—may belong to Charles eventually.” They went back to their places at the table. Winslow went on: “Oh yes, I know what you’re going to say—one can’t keep up these great estates any more—all this sort of thing’s done for, outmoded, a feudal anachronism, and so on. That’s the fashionable attitude, I’m aware. But fashionable things are usually wrong—or half wrong. All kinds of Englishmen are busy nowadays explaining to other countries how England has changed, is changing, and will change after the war. No doubt it goes down very well—especially with Americans. But between you and me England may not change as much as some people expect. And the kind of people who talk most about change don’t seem to have changed much themselves—at least not to my somewhat jaundiced scrutiny.”

“Aye,” answered George. “You might be right about that. And there’s certainly one thing about England that won’t change—and hasn’t changed.”

“What’s that?”

“Ninety-five per cent of us are working folks and have been for a thousand years.”

A slight flush came into Winslow’s face. He poured himself an extra brandy. “True, of course—as well as a useful demagogue statistic…It only remains now for you to assure me that it’s the rich what gets the pleasure, it’s the poor what gets the—”

“Nay, I don’t say that. There hasn’t been much pleasure for your brother or your nephew these past few years—rich or not. And there isn’t going to be much for them—or for any of us, maybe—in the years ahead…That’s why I’d like you to think twice about what you want Charles to do when he grows up.” And George, now in a proper stride, became talkative for the first time since his arrival. “I’m very fond of the boy. He’s taught me a bit since I knew him and maybe I’ve taught him a bit too. Don’t saddle him with all this stuff.

When I was a lad the rich had all of what were called advantages, but there’s been a difference lately. It isn’t that there’s going to be a bloody revolution to take all this away, but are these things going to go on being such advantages? That’s what folks are beginning to wonder, and once they start wondering, the bottom’s out of the market. Take the Right School and the Right Accent, for instance. You’ve got the right ones, I’ve got the wrong ones, but suppose someday we all wake up and find the whole thing doesn’t matter?”

“Of course. I’d be all for it. But what if some of your extremist fellows merely reverse the positions and call your accent right and mine wrong—what then?”

George gave a faint grin. “Aye, that would be a pity. But I daresay some of the chaps on your side are pretty good mimics. Our side always produced a few.”

Winslow’s flush deepened. “Maybe it will come to that. Lip-service to Demos could hardly be more literal.”

George had to think that one out. Then he answered: “I don’t know what you mean by Demos. I don’t care for words like that. I don’t like to hear people called ‘the masses’ or ‘the proletariat’ or even ‘the average man.’ Take my own town of Browdley. There’s not an average man in the place—they’re all individuals—different, separate, with their own personal problems same as we all have. And we don’t know any Demos either. We’ve never seen the animal.”

Winslow smiled coolly. “I think we’re straying rather far from the point—if there ever was a point…You obviously think there’s no future in inheriting a title, a place like this, a seat in the House of Lords—and all the responsibilities as well as privileges it entails?”

George answered: “I never like to say what there’s a future in. Sounds too much like a tip on the stock market…It’s what’s in the future that matters more. I can’t forecast that, nor can anybody. But I’ve often thought it’s as if we’re all in a train going somewhere. Some people don’t like traveling, and just grumble about having to. And others think that trains go backwards or that you can push a train by leaning on a door handle. And quite a lot of folks seem to think that miracles can happen to a train. But it really doesn’t matter what you think unless it’s based on what you can see out of the window. The train’s going to get you somewhere, wherever that is—and the one place it certainly won’t be is the place you started from.”

“Sounds very wise, Boswell. But whenever I hear a man enunciating a philosophy, I always ask him how has he handled his own life by its aid? Has he been a success or a failure? Has he been right when other men have been wrong? Has he made many mistakes?…Or is all that too personal?”

“Aye, it’s personal, but I don’t mind answering it. I’ve made plenty of mistakes, and I’ve often been wrong. And I’ve been a failure if you measure by what I once had ambitions about.”

Winslow helped himself to more brandy. “Very honest of you to admit it…and if I might be personal again and suggest a reason—not perhaps the only reason, but a reason…might it not be the same one as in the case of my unfortunate brother?”

George was silent and Winslow went on, after waiting for some answer: “To put it bluntly…Livia.”

George pushed his chair back from the table. “I think we’ve discussed her enough,” he said gruffly. “Perhaps I ought to be thinking of my train.”

“Yes, of course.” Winslow rang the bell again and told the butler: “Mr. Boswell will be catching the nine-forty. Will you telephone the station master?”

“Very good, Your Lordship.”

“Why do you have to worry the stationmaster about me?” George asked. “I can find a seat, or if I can’t, it doesn’t matter.”

Winslow smiled. “My dear chap, if I didn’t telephone, you wouldn’t even find a train. The nine-forty’s fast from Bristol to London unless I have it stopped for you.”

“You mean you can stop an express at that little local station just to pick up one passenger? And in wartime?”

“Certainly—but it isn’t done by favor. It’s a legal right dating back to the time the railway was built a hundred years ago. My great-great-grandfather wouldn’t sell land to the company except on that condition—in perpetuity. Damned thoughtful of him, I must say.”

Soon afterwards Lord Winslow shook hands most cordially with George, and the latter was driven to Castle Winslow station in the Rolls-Royce. The station was normally closed at that time of night, but the stationmaster had opened it for the occasion and personally escorted him along the deserted platform.

“First-class, sir?”

“No, third,” George answered grimly.

After that they conversed till the train came in. The station-master agreed that England was changing, but he also thought he never remembered farmers so prosperous or farmland selling at so high a price.

“How about taxes?” George asked. “I suppose the big estates are pretty hard hit?”

“Oh, they’re all right if they did what Lord Winslow did. He made himself into a company years ago. He’s a smart chap.”

“Aye…Knows how to keep up with the old and play around with the new, is that it?”

But the stationmaster was cautious. “He’s smart,” he repeated. “Travels third like yourself, as often as not…Because the firsts are just as crowded and he don’t see why he should pay extra for nothing. You can’t blame him, can you?”

George agreed that you could not.

But on the way to London the stopping of the express became a symbol—and a very handy one—of the kind of thing he found himself rather passionately against. And it was equally handy as a symbol of the kind of thing he felt Charles would be unlucky to inherit.

The university term was nearly over, and soon Charles would have to decide where to go for the vacation. His mother, he told George, wanted him to spend it with her in Ireland (she had been pulling wires, as only she knew how, to get the necessary permits); but Uncle Howard had asked him to Winslow Hall; and Julie, of course, though she would never suggest it, naturally hoped he would stay in Cambridge, like many other undergraduates in wartime. As for Charles himself, he didn’t exactly know what he wanted to do. He was so damned sorry for his mother and anxious to give her a good time—especially after the nice letter she had written him about George’s visit. So had Uncle Howard. In fact Charles showed George the two letters, and George, reading between the lines, deduced in both writers a desire to enlist him as an ally against the other. He did not, however, worry the boy with this interpretation, but kept it filed, as it were, in that department of his mind where the shrewder things took place.

Of course what Charles would really like best, he admitted, was to stay where he could see Julie, at least for part of the vacation. The only objection was that this, he felt sure, would either bring his mother to Cambridge forthwith (in which case he couldn’t see Julie at all), or else she would guess there was some girl in the case, and make a scene about it.

“What makes you think she’d do that?” George asked.

“Oh, just a few odd hints in letters and so on. And once in an air-raid shelter just after she landed. Some girl was a bit scared, and as I was too, we talked together till the raid was over. Mother of course couldn’t understand it.”

“That you talked—or that you were scared?”

“Both…Anyhow I can’t stand scenes, and I know if she were to learn about Julie she’d make another one.”

“But you can’t keep it a secret indefinitely.”

“I’ll let her know when I know for certain I’m going to get all right. Because, as I told you, I wouldn’t marry at all other-wise.”

“You’ll get all right.”

“That’s what everybody says, but of course saying so is part of the treatment. You can’t really believe them—least of all doctors—in a matter like that.”

“Well, what do you think? Don’t you believe you’re going to get all right?”

“Sometimes I do, sometimes not. So many things change my mind about it. Trivial—ridiculous things…Sometimes I stop in front of a lamppost as if the future of the world depended on which side I walk round. Of course you may say it does depend on that. I mean, if you believe in predestination, every little thing must be charted out in advance, so that if it were possible for even a caterpillar to walk just once on the wrong side of a lamppost, then the whole cosmic blueprint goes to pot. On the other hand, you can say that my hesitation in front of the lamppost was itself predestined, so that—”

“That’s enough,” George interrupted. “You’re much too clever for me. And if that’s what you get from studying philosophy at a university—”

“No, George. That’s what I got from piloting a bomber over Germany. You have to think of something then. Something fearful and logical, like predestination, or else mystic and mathematical, like the square root of minus one.” The boy’s eyes were streaked now with flashes of wildness. “Anyway, how did we get on to all this?”

“I was saying you’re going to get better—and meaning it too. That is, if you tackle the future the right way.”

“I know. And avoid scenes. Scenes don’t help. And when I feel better enough to tell my mother about Julie there’ll be a scene. And then I’ll feel worse again…Sort of a vicious circle, isn’t it?”

George nodded. “All the same, though, I wouldn’t wait too long.”

“You mean, before I tell her?”

“Nay, don’t bother your head about that. I mean, before you marry the girl.”

A strained smile came over Charles’s face. “Where’s the hurry?” he asked, with sudden excitement. “What makes you give me that advice?”

George answered: “Because it seems to me there’s another vicious circle knocking around. You say you won’t marry till you know for certain you’re going to get all right, but perhaps marriage is one of the things that would help to make you certain.”

Charles laughed. “I see! Dr. Boswell’s advice to those about to get married—Do! Advice based on his own experience of long, happy, and fruitful wedlock!” After a wilder outburst of hilarity, the laughter drained suddenly from the boy’s face and a scared look took its place. He clutched frantically at George’s arm. “Oh God, I’m sorry—I didn’t mean that…I never thought…I forgot for the moment…George…Oh George, please forgive me…” His voice and body began to shake convulsively.

It was the first time George had seen the kind of thing Julie had told him about, and it shocked him immeasurably. He put his arms round the boy and fought the enemy with a silent, secret strength of his own. There was not much to say. He kept saying: “Steady, lad…it’s all right…all right…”

“George, I didn’t mean…I swear I didn’t mean anything personal—”

“Aye, I know you didn’t. And what if you did, for that matter? To blazes with everything except you getting well again…Quiet down a bit more, lad, and then let’s take a walk…”

All this took place during another of George’s visits to one of those fairly frequent conferences that had often been a nuisance in the past, but which now he looked forward to with an excitement entirely unshared by his colleagues. Nobody had at times been more severe than he in castigating the week-end hiatus in official circles, but now on a Saturday morning in some Whitehall government office he found himself almost gleeful over slow-moving procedure, actually hoping in his heart for an adjournment till Monday.

This had happened, once more, so he was enjoying the intervening day with a clear conscience. And another item of good fortune was that Charles could now walk short distances, with only one stick, and relish the exercise. Perhaps it was this that made him seem more boyish, even school boyish on occasions; and for the first time George ceased to be startled when he reflected that Charles was only in his twenty-second year.

But other startling ideas filled the gap, and one of them was unique because it came to George in—of all places—a public house.

Charles had mentioned this pub as being a rather pleasant place within easy walking distance in the country, and after an evening meal George let him lead the way there. The scene of a few hours earlier seemed to have drawn them closer together, though in a way that neither could have expressed or would have wished to talk about; but George, at least, was aware of it and satisfied. It gave an edge to his enjoyment of the full moon over the fields, and the scents of crops and flowers that lay heavy on the warm air. Familiar as he was with the grimmer landscape of the north, he thought he had never known anything so richly serene as those rural outskirts of the university town—a quality enhanced, somehow, by the counterpoint of events overhead. For while they walked the hum and throbbing never ceased, sometimes increasing to a roar as planes in formation flew directly above. The R.A.F. was evidently out in force, heading for the Continent, and George guessed and was a little apprehensive of Charles’s mood as he heard and was perhaps reminded.

For that reason George tried to keep the conversation on trivialities. During the walk they overtook several other pedestrians, which George commented must make a red-letter event in Charles’s post-hospital experience, even though the slower movers were only old bent men plodding along at a mile an hour. Charles dryly rejoined that there was a good deal of rheumatism locally, which was a peculiar thing in an otherwise healthy district.

“Maybe not so peculiar,” George countered, getting onto one of his favorite topics. “Give people decent houses, in town or country, and don’t think that roses round the door make up for bad drains and damp walls.”

Charles laughed. “Not bad, George. You might win a Parliamentary election yet. Castle Winslow would give you a chance, anyway. It’s a family constituency—with the Winslow influence you’d probably romp home. Unfortunately the old boy who represents it now may hang on for another twenty years.”

George laughed also, and in the same mood. “Pity. But in the meantime there might be a chance for you—in Browdley. Then I could demonstrate a bit of my influence.”

They both went on with the joke till the passage of planes in even greater numbers changed the subject back to an earlier one. “I once tried to write a poem,” Charles said, “about the contrast between those old chaps and the boys upstairs. I thought of it actually while I was flying back from Germany after a raid. You have to think of something then, when your nerves are all on edge. I can’t remember more than one of the verses—I think it went—

Each with a goal his own—

Beginner’s or Ender’s luck—

Four hundred miles to Cologne,

Two to the Dog and Duck….

It’s less than two from where we are now, but some of those veterans wouldn’t miss their nightly pint if it were twice that…By the way, though, you don’t drink?”

“No, but I’ll swill lemonade while you have all the beer you want.”

“All I can get, you mean. Don’t be so bloody optimistic.” Presently they reached the pub and pushed into the already crowded bar, where Charles received a few cordial but quiet greetings from people whom he had presumably met there before. A few air crews from the near-by station were taking their drinks, and others were having a dart game, but perhaps half the crowd were civilians, mostly old farm laborers with tanned and wrinkled faces. The changing world met here with the less changing earth, tilled throughout the ages by men who had worked heedless amidst clashes of knights in armor, and were now just as heedless up to the very edge of runways and bomb craters. Heedless? But the word failed to express the rueful sagacity, the merry ignorance, that flourished nightly in the bar parlor of the Dog and Duck. Like all genuine English country pubs, it was always a cheerful but rarely a boisterous and never a Bacchanalian place—it was a microcosm of that England in which so many things are not done, including the act of wondering too truculently why they are not. George, even with his small personal knowledge of pubs, recognized at once the same spirit that usually obtained at Council meetings and Whitehall conferences, and thus he felt immediately at home. And in that heart-warming mood, while he leaned over his glass of lemonade and Charles over his tankard, George’s startling idea came to him for the second time, but really startlingly now because, in a fantastic way, he half meant it. “Why don’t you stand for Browdley at the next election?”

Charles looked puzzled. “You mean—for Parliament?”

“Aye. It’s an idea.”

“No, it’s a joke, George, and not a very good one.”

“Of course there won’t be an election till after the war—so far as one can foresee. But there might be worse things that a chap like you could do when the time comes.”

Charles smiled and drank deep. “And better things, I hope.”

“Listen…When I visited you in that hospital at Mulcaster you said something I hope you remember. You said you blamed my generation for not making a proper peace after the last war. And I asked you then if you weren’t afraid that the kids now in their prams won’t grow up to blame your generation for the same thing…Well, lad, they will—unless you do something about it.”

“Maybe—but not in politics.”

“How else?”

“I don’t know, George—don’t ask me. I can’t fly any more, or I might drop a few bombs somewhere. But I do know I couldn’t face the political racket. Nobody would ever vote for me, anyway—I’m not the type that goes around kissing babies and promising everything to everybody. I’d say the wrong thing, and probably think it too—because, to be frank, I’ve never seen an election without feeling that the whole machinery of it is a bit ridiculous—”

“And it is. But it’s the machinery we’ve got, and we’d better use it while we’ve got it.”

“Oh certainly—but leave it to the right man. You’re probably the right man for Browdley—you were born there, and you know the people. I wouldn’t understand them—factory workers and miners—not because I’m a snob, but because I’ve never lived in that sort of a place.”

“They’d understand you, that’s the main thing. They’d understand you because they’re doing a job same as you’ve done a job, and some of them are risking lives and health at it same as you’ve risked yours. You wouldn’t be talking to them except as equals. Besides, it might be years off yet—there’s plenty of time.”

“You really are a most persistent fellow, George. Anyone would think it was something I’d agreed to.”

George laughed. “Aye, we’ll not worry about it. Twenty-one’s full young.” And then he laughed again as he added: “Though William Pitt was Prime Minister at twenty-four. You won’t beat that.”

But a dark look came into Charles’s face. “There’s one final reason, George, even if there weren’t any other. You’ve heard me spout my opinions, and you’re taking it for granted I’d think it worth while to convert others to them. But I’m not sure that I would, even if I could. Don’t think me cynical—it’s merely that I’m not sentimental. As I’ve found the world, so far, it’s a pretty lousy place, especially when you get a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes. Most people don’t—and perhaps they’re better off. That’s why I wouldn’t make a good vote-catcher. He has to be such a bloody optimist—like you. Even if he warns of doom he has to promise that if only you’ll elect him he’ll prevent it. Frankly, I don’t kid myself to that extent and I don’t think I’d find it easy to kid Tom, Dick, and Harry.”

“Aye, things are bad enough, I’ll admit that.” George drank the rest of his lemonade in slow gulps. “But as for what goes on behind the scenes, that’s just what gives me hope. Go behind the scenes of everyday life and see the courage and decency most folks have—see the raw material we’ve got to work on, if only those who have the brains for the job can keep faith in it.”

“I know what you’re driving at, George. Just a simple little job of rebuilding the world.”

“Ah now, that is cynical. Of course it’s not simple—was it simple to invent a plane? It’s appallingly difficult and complicated—and that’s where chaps like you come in. It’ll need all your brains and education, but it’ll also need something I’ve got—and that’s a bit of faith in Tom, Dick, and Harry.” George then added softly, administering the gentle shock with which he had wheedled so much of his own way in his time: “Since you once said you’d like to, why don’t you come to Browdley when term ends and have a look at the place?”

“You mean—visit Browdley?”

“Aye, why not? Or were you only joking when you said you’d like to?”

“No, I wasn’t joking—matter of fact I wouldn’t mind coming, only—” He hesitated and then added: “I hate disappointing so many other people.”

“But you can’t please ’em all, no matter what you do. Why not please yourself for a change? And of course you needn’t stay longer than you want…”

George felt very happy as he sat in the London train that night. Thinking back upon the long conversation at the Dog and Duck he could not exactly remember when the idea of taking Charles to Browdley had first occurred to him, but he knew that as soon as it had, there had come to him the feeling of instant rightness. It was like trying a new key in a strange lock and knowing, even before the turn, that somehow it would work. And it had all happened, as so many things happened in George’s life, because he got talking and couldn’t stop. He hadn’t, of course, been really serious about Charles embarking on a political career. It was much too soon to be serious about any kind of career for a youth who was still so far from mental and physical health. But that led straight to the point; for part of the cure lay in being serious about something. And suddenly George saw beyond the merely personal relationship between them; he saw the boy’s problem as that of every boy returned from battle with body, mind, and spirit scarred by experience; and he knew that the problem must be tackled better than the last time, when millions who had faced the realities of war were too embittered, or too apathetic, or (like George himself) too easy-optimistic to face those of peace. But Charles was not optimistic enough; and that, for George, made the task of rehabilitation even more congenial. So if he could interest him in Browdley, why not? And if, in due course, interest should deepen into faith…faith in the things George had faith in …?

George’s heart was already warm to the prospect, but his head cautioned him against that same overoptimism while optimism gave him answer that the boy himself would check that. He’s got a better mind than I have, George reflected humbly; he’ll be good for me, too; he’ll not stand any of my nonsense…And then optimism soared ridiculously as George daydreamed them both as co-workers for Browdley—Mayor and Member—what a team! His eyes filled as he thought of it…highly unlikely, of course, but not quite impossible…and what more need a dream be?

Before taking the train he had mentioned to Julie his plan to have Charles at Browdley. He had only a few moments with the girl because she was going on night duty; they had met by appointment in the market square where she had to change buses. She had told him then, since her arriving bus brought up the subject, that she lived in a suburb of the town and that her father was a schoolmaster there. George rode with her on another bus to the big hospital not far from the railway station, and perhaps because they found a seat on the top deck he was reminded of other bus rides, so many of them, years before, with Livia. And the reminder, of course, emphasized the difference of everything else, for no one in the world, he was sure, could be less like Livia than Julie was…

She was delighted with his idea. “Oh, I’m so glad, Mr. Boswell. It’ll be a real holiday for him.”

“Not much of a holiday resort, Browdley, but I’ll do my best to give him a good time.”

“He’ll be with you, that’s the main thing, because I’ve noticed how good for him you are.”

“You’ll be better, though, one of these days.”

“I hope so.” And then she added: “By the way, I know who you are now. He told me.”

“He did. That’s fine. Now we none of us have any secrets from one another.”

And suddenly again the same impulse he had had with Charles made him add: “Why don’t you marry him soon?”

She seemed startled by a word rather than by the question. “Soon?…You mean—before he—before he gets better?”

“Aye, why not? Don’t you want to?”

“I’d love to, but…in a way it would be taking an advantage. So many men in hospitals fall in love with their nurses—think they’ve fallen in love, anyhow. It often makes part of the cure, so the nurses don’t mind. But a sensible nurse doesn’t take it too seriously, even if she falls in love herself. That’s why I don’t consider our engagement as binding—not on Charles, anyway. When he gets better he may prefer someone else.”

“And if he prefers someone else he may not get better. If I were you I’d take that seriously.”

“You mean…”

“Aye, but think it over first. You’re pretty right and reasonable about most things, I’d say.”

That was all they had time for, but he was left with a comfortable reassurance that to be right and reasonable was not always to be prim and cold; and this, for him personally, was like a pat on the back from the Almighty.

So he enjoyed his thoughts during the journey back to Browdley.

A couple of weeks later, as he left a Council meeting, the Town Hall porter handed him a wire that read: HAVE JUST

TAKEN YOUR ADVICE. HONEYMOON AT SCARBOROUGH. THEN MAY WE BOTH ACCEPT YOUR INVITATION TO THE MAYOR’S NEST? JULIE AND CHARLES,

George stood for a few seconds in the Town Hall lobby, holding the wire under the dim lamp; then his face broke suddenly into a wide slow smile that made Tom Roberts grin back with cheerful impudence. “Backed a winner, Mr. Mayor?” he quipped—the joke of that being the Mayor’s well-known antipathy to betting of all kinds.

“Nay, Tom…two winners!” George answered, surprisingly, as he strode down the Town Hall steps into Shawgate.

On his way to Browdley station to meet them, he could not help reflecting what an extraordinary thing it really was that he should be welcoming Livia’s son to his home.

He had spent the evening with Wendover, being far too excited to settle to any solitary work; and towards midnight, for a change and because of the bright moon, he chose the slightly longer route through the wasteland on the fringe of the town, where factories met fields and—less metaphorically—lovers met each other. And he thought of that evening, so many years before, yet so well remembered, when he had passed that way in the other direction, having taken old Lord Winslow to his train after the unforgettable interview. And now it was that man’s grandson and a young wife whom he was meeting—as happily as if he himself were young again and happy about most things.

In fact he was momentarily so excited that when the train drew in and they had all exchanged the first greetings, he was glad that a heavy suitcase provided something immediate and practical to attend to—there being neither cabs nor luggage delivery till next morning. Meanwhile Charles was smiling and assuring George that he didn’t in the least object to a walk on such a night, if it wasn’t too far. “Not far at all,” George answered, chiefly for something to say to the stationmaster as they passed the exit. “Except when I’m hurrying for the nine-five to Mulcaster—eh, Ted?”

They crossed the cobbled station yard and turned into the huddle of streets. A few other walkers passed or overtook them, even so late—men on their way to night-working factories, policemen, air wardens. George pointed out the stationer’s shop in Shawgate that had formerly been his Uncle Joe’s, and which still, after two changes of ownership, displayed the same mixture of leather-bound ledgers, morocco editions of the standard poets, Bibles, cookery books, and the works of Miss Florence Barclay. But as a concession to the day and age, and with that ironic innocence of which the English are so capable because they are unaware of it, a single modern edition occupied pride of place in the very center of the window—Mein Kampf in an unexpurgated translation. George did not point this out, because he saw in it nothing remarkable; but he did draw attention to the Mayor’s office in the Town Hall with its rather florid stained-glass windows that an earlier generation had considered stylish. He kept up a running gossip, also, about Browdley people whom Charles and Julie would probably meet in due course. “The Vicar—he’ll amuse you. He’s writing a book about Roman numerals—has a theory about them—been busy on it for years—he’s eighty-eight, I think…There’s a younger chap of seventy-odd—Catholic priest—Wendover, by name—my best friend—you’ll like him…That’s the new municipal swimming bath—just finished before the war began. Like a fool I said I’d make the first dive when it was opened—used to be quite a swimmer when I was a lad—but I hadn’t done any for years and I made a belly-flop that splashed all the other Councillors and their wives…it was the laugh of the place the day after…Here’s the real business center—the banks. Woolworth’s, Lipton’s. And down that street is where I managed to enter the world—the house isn’t there any more, and that’s another thing I managed.”

Julie said: “You’d make a good guide, Mr. Boswell. Too bad there aren’t any Cook’s tours to places like this.”

“Aye, it is too bad. Some of the London folks ought to come here once in a lifetime. They’d learn more than they would on the French Riviera—and about their own country at that…And don’t you go on calling me Mr. Boswell. Nobody here does.”

Presently Charles remarked: “And you’ve never had a raid?”

“So far, not a solitary bomb. They say you shouldn’t even whisper such a thing—but I’m not superstitious. All I sometimes wish is that I could clear everybody out of the town and organize my own raid. There’s still a few thousand folks living in houses that oughtn’t to exist, and it’ll take me ten years to finish ’em off—the houses, I mean—even when peace comes.”

George was silent again, and for a rather odd reason; at the very utterance of the phrase “when peace comes” he had been swept by a sudden illusion that peace had come, and that Browdley under the moonlit sky was the most peaceful spot, just then, on earth.

“Now you’ll have to let me make you some coffee,” he said, as they turned the corner from Shawgate into Market Street. “Because here we are—this is the old Guardian office—my printing works—this is where I live. You’ve seen most of the sights already—it’s only a small town.”

“And. an honest one too,” Charles commented, as George opened the front door by merely turning the handle. “You live alone?”

“There’s Annie comes in every day to clean up a bit. She’s an old woman now, but she’ll be glad to see you because—” He was on the point of saying “because she knows who you are but he changed it at the last moment to “because she’s got three nephews in the R.A.F.” Which was true.

While George was ushering them inside, somebody passed along the pavement and called out the usual welcome. “’Owdo, George. Back again?”

“Howdo, John. Aye, I’m back.”

It was the fourth or fifth exchange of similar greetings on their way from the station. Charles laughed and commented that George certainly seemed to be well known. George laughed also and said Aye, he wasn’t exactly a stranger in those parts. The triteness of the remarks masked the tension they both felt as they entered the little house. George led the way along the hall and into his study, where he switched on a light after verifying that the curtains were drawn. Usually, on bringing anyone there for the first time, he watched for some sign of amazement at the shelves of books, but now he actually forgot to do so and was recalled from far different thoughts when Charles exclaimed: “Quite a library.”

George then made his familiar boast that it was the best private collection in Browdley. But he added: “Not that I’d say the competition’s been very keen.” And then he heard himself launching into what now seemed just a ruefully amusing anecdote. “You know what your mother did once when I was away? Took off a lot of the paper covers and burned ’em…Thought she was making the place tidy for me…My, I lost my temper—and that’s a thing I don’t often do…Well, how about some coffee? Come in the kitchen—it’s easier…”

George talked about the war and the postwar world; the news in the newspapers was very encouraging, and he found it hard as ever not to be optimistic, though after a lifetime of experience he could keep his optimism under wry control. He still had ambitions, dreams, plans, and hopes; and if a small portion of them came to anything, well, that was as much as a reasonable man could expect, but it was also as little as a patient man would accept. “It’s no good your people asking for the moon,” a testy political opponent had said at the last Council meeting; to which he had replied: “Nay, Tom—it’s the sun they’re asking for—the moon’s what I’ve promised ’em when the war’s over. And if you fellers have any sense ye’ll settle for that as a fair compromise.”

So now, by an easy transition, his talk with Charles led back to Browdley again—its industries, homes, and people. “You’ll know what I mean tomorrow when you look over the place. The war seems to have solved our chief local problems—bad trade and unemployment—though it’s only a fake solution, we’ll have our troubles again later. But for the time being we’re better off, in some ways, than we used to be—everybody’s got money, the Council has a budget surplus, and as for jobs—why we’re even short of men to fill ’em.”

“I suppose there’s a good deal of female employment then?”

George began to laugh. “You mean, do the women work? Of course they do…And I’m laughing same as when I read in some of those shiny-paper fashion magazines what a marvelous thing’s happening in England because of the war—the women are actually not idling any more! But the women of Browdley never have idled. They’ve worked in their homes and in factories and in both together ever since the town began. Even when the men had nothing to do, the women had plenty. So don’t you go praising ’em in your speeches for the novelty of getting their hands soiled!”

“You’re still dreaming, George. I shan’t make any speeches.”

“Aye, I forgot…I was just the same when I was your age—I could talk, but I couldn’t make a speech. And even when I could I hated it at first…But you’re not such a fool as to do anything you hate.”

“Who’s speaking now, George—the lion, the dog, or the dove?”

The remark put them in a mood in which Julie told them to go back to the study and talk while she washed up in the kitchen; she insisted on this with such emphasis that George wondered if she were deliberately contriving a chance for him to talk to Charles alone. He was not sorry to have that chance, anyway. The boy entered the study first and was drawing the curtains aside before George could press the switch. The sudden flood of moonlight crisscrossed the rows of books; it lay on his desk, on the litter of papers and Council reports; full of gleams and shadows, it caught the glass in front of photographs on the mantelpiece.

“Just wondered what sort of view you had, George.”

“Not much, I’m afraid. That’s the wall of the bus garage.”

“But the garden…Come over here!”

George crossed the room, and as he approached the window, which was partly open, the scent of summer flowers came to him as he never remembered it before—geraniums, roses, carnations, stocks, mignonette.

“Aye, it’s nice this time of the year. I’m not much of a gardener myself, but Annie likes it and does a bit now and again…Livia’s garden, we still call it—used to be a piece of waste ground till she took it in hand.”

At the word, uttered like a spell between them, Charles stirred uneasily. “Livia,” he muttered. “My father used to call her Livy…The lost books of Livy, he used to say, what wouldn’t I give to look into them!” He breathed deeply into the scented air. “So she planted the garden and burned your book covers? Anything else?”

George did not speak.

Charles went on: “My father used to say she made you into a nerve of her own body and let you do the aching instead of her…unless you were ill or a child, and then she took all the aches to herself and rocked you to sleep.” He sat on the arm of a chair, fidgeting nervously with his cigarette case. “But that wouldn’t suit me. I’m not a child, and I don’t expect always to be ill.”

“You won’t be. You’ll get better.”

“I want to work, too.”

“You will.”

“Mind if I smoke?”

“Watch the light if you’re not going to pull the curtains.”

“Good old warden. The moon’s so bright you could turn on all the street lamps.” He suddenly pointed to a photograph on the mantelpiece. “That her?”

“Aye.”

“And the baby?”

“He died.”

“She was young then.”

“Aye. Nearly a quarter of a century ago.”

“You make it sound a long time.”

“It has been a long time.”

“I feel so damned sorry for her, George. My uncle never liked her. Nobody seems to like her much, for that matter—not how she is now. And the chances are my father won’t come back. She thinks he will, but to me it doesn’t seem probable.”

George exclaimed: “By God, though, if she thinks he will, he may. In fact he’d almost better!”

Charles stared for a moment, then slowly smiled. “Yes, I know. She gets her own way as a rule. That’s why, when she learns about Julie and me—”

“You haven’t told her yet?”

“Not yet. Do you think I should?”

George thought a moment, then said: “Aye, might as well get it over.”

“I will then. I’ll write her tomorrow. Your advice has been pretty good so far.”

“You mean you’re happy?”

Charles nodded profoundly.

“That’s good. I can see Julie is too. And don’t feel you ought to be looking after your mother. It’s she who feels she ought to be looking after you…but you’re against that, and so am I.”

“I know. And she doesn’t really need me, she only needs me to need her.”

“That’s not a bad way of putting it.”

“Because she’s got a sort of secret strength to face things—and less fear than anyone I ever met—man or woman. I often used to think when I was sweating it out over Berlin—God, I wish I had guts of iron like hers…It was crazy, sometimes, the things she’d do. We were at a restaurant in Munich once and a crowd of army officers sat down at the next table. They were pretty drunk and high-tempered, started abusing a waiter for something or other. Eventually one of them struck the man, and my mother, who was closer than I was, leaned over and bopped the officer over the head with a Chianti bottle. Suddenly—quietly—without a word—just like that.” Charles swung his arm. “Pure slapstick comedy but for the time and place.”

“What happened?”

“Blood and Chianti all over everything. A riot. Amidst which I managed to get her out by a back door. The restaurant owner was as keen to save his premises as I was to avoid an international incident.”

George laughed. “It wasn’t always so serious. Once she and I were arguing at dinner about something or other quite trivial when she picked up a piece of apple pie and threw it at me. And it happened that you could see in from the street and somebody had seen in—and also it was the middle of an election campaign. They called me Apple-Pie George after that for a time.” George laughed louder at the recollection. “I used to think it harmed my chances—maybe it did. But I’m glad to know about all this. I’d forgive her a lot for that.”

“Didn’t you forgive her anyway?”

“Aye, I always found it pretty easy.”

“My father used to say it was easy to forgive her if she was wrong, but if she turned out to be right then you might as well never forgive yourself.”

George said after a long pause: “I don’t want to send you away, but if you’re feeling sleepy…I’ve booked a room for you both at the Greyhound.”

“The Greyhound?”

“Just along the street. More comfortable than here.”

Charles crossed the room and George put his arm round the boy’s shoulder as the two walked back to the kitchen. “Don’t you worry, lad. If I can help her I shall. It won’t all be your job. You can count on me for that.”

“Seems to me I count on you for a lot of things, George.”

George took them over to the Greyhound, said goodnight, and began the short stroll back to his house. But he felt so wakeful he made a detour past the Town Hall, his mind being still full of thoughts, strange thoughts, such as that Charles had actually been under his roof, and that Browdley in moonlight was really a beautiful place. Not only the Town Hall, but the main office of the Browdley Building Society, Joe Hardman’s fish shop, even Ridgeway’s garage on whose doors, as a halcyon reminder, there could still be seen the painting of a very gay peacetime charabanc for hire…all so beautiful…which was absurd, of course; yet even as he admitted it, beauty and a little sadness remained in what he felt. He could not hope for sleep in such a mood; but he could work, there was always that. As he entered his house the hall was bright as bars of silver; he could even read the headline of the Advertiser, and a typical one, even after five years of war—“Shall Browdley Have Sunday Cinemas?” So that was how his old journalistic rival still looked at the world, he mused, with extra irony because the Sunday cinema question had been debated in Browdley ever since he had campaigned as a young man for his first Council election…and now they were at it again!…No wonder Lord Winslow could remark that England didn’t change! But it did change, for all that, beneath the surface of dead issues regularly flogged to life. George slipped the paper into his pocket as he walked into the open study doorway.

Suddenly he knew he was not alone. Someone was standing in front of the window, staring out—as Charles had done earlier—into the garden. The figure turned, offered a profile against the moonlight, was unmistakable…

“Livia!”

At the instant of recognition he felt his hands clench with shock for which he must brace mind and heart as well; and he did so, almost as instantly.

“Where is he? He’s been here, George. I know that. I want to see him.”

He answered in a level voice: “They’re not here now, Livia.”

“They? Who’re they?”

He answered because it was the way he himself thought of them: “Charles and Julie.”

He caught his breath, having spoken the phrase; he would have expected a scene, but for knowing that with Livia one could never expect the expected. All she did was to cross the room and sit on the arm of his armchair, while he drew curtains and switched on the light. He saw then that she looked tired and rather pale, but not uncomposed. Because he wanted to give her time to grasp the situation, he did not speak, but went back to the curtains and pretended to be fixing them with especial care.

“Julie,” she said at last, still quietly. “So that’s her name, Charlie and Julie. How sweet! Where are they?”

“Why did you come here, Livia?” he countered. “What made you think it would help?”

“I don’t want it to help. I mean to stop this nonsense. And I know they are here, now you’ve told me she’s with him, because I went to Cambridge first and talked to his servant at the college…I know, it’s no use you denying it. Of course I know. And I know your part in it all. I always know.”

“Aye, there’s not much misses you—or ever did. But there’s something extra to tell you this time.” He added, in a kindly voice, with no note of triumph in it: “I told you, Livia, my advice would be to let the boy live his own life. That’s what he’s going to do, and I’ll admit I’m all for it. So whatever you’ve come to stop you’re too late.”

“I’m too late?” She stared at him with glazed eyes. “Oh no, no. You’re the one who’s late. You have been all along. And he’s where you put him because of that. You and your kind of people. You talk about letting him live his own life—why didn’t you, then, when he had one to live—not just half a one? That’s all he has now because of the mess you’ve made of everything. You said once my father’s victims were all over the town—but yours are all over the world—people like you who went on making speeches…speeches…you were making them before he was born—just as you still are—”

“Livia, you surely haven’t come here just for an argument—”

“I told you what I came here for. I want Charlie. I want him. What’s left of him, that is, after your kind have said all their prayers and made all their speeches—”

“I don’t know what you’re driving at, Livia. If you mean that my generation’s largely responsible for the war, then I’ll agree with you. Charles and I once discussed the same point—”

“Oh, you did, did you? Just a nice friendly discussion. And he forgave you, I suppose. Man to man and all that. With his shattered nerves and smashed legs and burned eyes he forgave you—because he too may need to be forgiven someday.”

“Aye, if he just sits back and lets things happen. I told him that. There was a children’s ward next to where he was in the hospital, and I asked if he wasn’t afraid that those kids when they grew up—or his own kids for that matter—”

Her eyes sharpened.

“His? He’ll never have any. Maybe he can’t. It’s like that sometimes. I hope so, because that would be the best way to end it. My father, me, him, full stop…”

“Livia, that’s a terrible thing to say.”

“More terrible to mean.”

“I hope you’ll never let him know you do mean it.”

“I shan’t have to. It’ll come to him when we’re in Ireland.”

“Ireland? I doubt he’ll want to go there now so much.”

“He doesn’t know what he wants. He thinks he wants this girl, but that’s absurd. I can make him want what he really wants.”

“Livia…remember I said you were too late.” George paused, then added: “They’re married.”

“What?”

“Three days ago in London. He was going to wire you about it tomorrow. Perhaps he ought to have done so before, but you can hardly blame him.”

George then saw something which, despite all Millbay had said, he had tried to believe did not exist. It was a look of implacability so vivid, so pure in a sense, that he recoiled from it less in revulsion than in elemental awareness of what it signified. For he was all against it, as a stream of yielding water is against the rock it will wear down in a million years or so. And suddenly, without bitterness, he saw Livia as a symbol of all that must so be worn down, no matter how hard or long the struggle, no matter how often the victories of greed and despair and intolerance seem to make nonsense of it.

With his own gentler implacability he stared at hers till the transfiguration disappeared.

She said at length: “So…you think…you’ve done the trick?”

“It’s no trick, Livia.”

“Last-minute victory, then? Narrow majority? And a hearty vote of thanks to Mister Mayor…?” But she was her masked self again, so that the stress on the prefix was only ironic. She went on: “Perhaps you still don’t know what I’m driving at? You never did—and you’re afraid Charlie might if he got the chance. You’re afraid he might see things my way. So’s Howard. He wants him to have lands and a title and riches—”

“Aye, I know, and I agree with you there. They’d be just a burden to him, and that’s why—”

“That’s why you’d rather give him your kind of burden. Speeches—promises—the same old never-again stuff. But you shan’t, George—I can stop that, even now. And as for the little schemer he’s been duped by, does she think her influence is going to count?”

“Nay, Livia, not hers. Nor mine, nor his uncle’s, nor yours. Let him get on his feet, build up his own ideas, see things with his own eyes when he has the strength to see clearly—that’s all I’m aiming for. He’ll influence me as much as I will him—I’m not so sure of my own opinions that I’d try to ram them down somebody’s throat. I’ll take his—if he can convince me. Or we can keep our own. It doesn’t matter. I know you look at things differently—”

“So does the man from Mars, maybe.”

That stumped him; he blinked bewilderedly till she continued: “If he could see the world today he’d think it was in charge of raving lunatics and the asylums were for sane people who’d gone there for safety. So if anybody thinks I’m a little out of my mind—Howard does, I know—”

“Livia, I don’t. But I do think—for the time being—you’re not able to help the boy as he most needs helping…Later, perhaps…”

“Too late—and already you talk of later…” She suddenly got up and began walking towards the door. “I can see this is wasting more time. I’d better start on my way back. The five-ten, isn’t it? I remember. Can I have a cup of tea first?”

“Why…of course, I’m only sorry you…” But then he stopped; he didn’t know what he was only sorry about, except that she had come.

She said, from the hall as she crossed it to the kitchen: “No pressing invitation to stay a few days, then?”

“Nay, Livia, and you know why. I’m anxious that Charlie shouldn’t have any shocks.” He had called the boy Charlie because she had and it seemed almost something shared and sharable at last between them, something that warmed his voice as he added: “Give him a chance, Livia. Leave him alone a bit. God knows that’s a hard thing to say, but I mean it.”

She said after a pause: “Do you hate me, George?”

He shook his head. “I never did and I never could. I’m not much use at hating folks, to be frank. But I can fight ’em when I have to…and I’d have to now, if you made me.”

“And you think you’d win?”

“I’m not so sure, but I’m not sure I’d lose, either. That’s why I say give him a chance. Give us all a chance this time.”

In the kitchen she prepared tea herself, not letting him do so, as if she were certain nothing had been changed (and practically nothing had). She began to cry a little while she moved about. George watched her unhappily, puzzled not so much by her behavior as by his own, for he found himself less moved by her tears than by her simple act of tightening a tap that had been leaking into the sink for days. Nobody could do things so deftly, quickly, tidily, uncontrovertibly. She had probably got her own way with Japs pretty much as she did with taps, George reflected whimsically; and then again he was touched by her next remark, clairvoyant in that old familiar blinding way of hers: “You think I’m acting, don’t you, George? And you think that means I’m not sincere?…You don’t understand that sometimes I mean things so much I have to act?…You don’t understand that, because you never mean things so much…Oh George, you don’t know how terrible it is to be alive in this world!”

“Perhaps I do, Livia, perhaps I don’t feel it the way you do, but I know it, and I also know this—there’s not only terror—there’s hope—and love—”

“But they’re the most terrible of all—”

“Nay, nay, not how I see things.”

“But do you see anything? Anything to match love and hate? I love my son and I hate that girl—I’d kill her if I got the chance…”

“You would?”

“That shocks you, doesn’t it?”

“Nay…it doesn’t exactly do that. But it makes me think.”

“And you think it’s awful…yet all the other killing that’s going on—killing without hate—oh, that you can take for granted. Duty. Honor. Jeffrey did too—and with better brains than yours…What do you see, George? In the future, I mean? What chance is there? This humanity you do everything for—what do you see in it?”

George saw the grayness round the edges of the curtains; he looked at his watch, then crossed to the window and let in the summer dawn. Already it was staring the moon out of the sky. It seemed to him that the world, like Livia, was snarled with memories and desires, beauty and blackness and lies and truth and hope and despair; you might as well leave it alone unless you had a driving love for the thankless job of tackling it. But if you had that love, then you could go ahead. George saw the roofs across the street as they took form and substance, and knew that the love in his own heart was more than he could speak or even make a speech about—and least of all to Livia; but the thought of it, and the continual vision of it, had governed all he had ever done that seemed either weak or strong.

“Aye,” he said as he turned back to her. “I’ve often wondered that myself, but it doesn’t make any difference.” He came over and touched her shoulder with a kindliness induced by his own thoughts rather than by any more personal emotion. “Drink up, Livia—we’ll have to hurry if you want to catch the five-ten. And no more arguments, because we’ll not change each other, I reckon, from now till doomsday…”