You may wonder if I immediately asked Elspeth to marry me. Well, no, as a matter of fact, I did not. I had sworn to myself that if everything were all right I would make my act of will. But then, I asked myself, could I say yet that everything was all right? I mean, definitely. One swallow did not make a summer, though I conceded that most people would think it meant they could reasonably look forward to a spell of warm weather.
Elspeth came to stay with me every week-end.
‘I miss you in the middle of the week,’ she said, ‘darling.’
The discussion which followed was about which night of the week was more nearly equidistant from the week-ends.
The weather, in my metaphorical sense, was getting pretty warm; and had my act of will not been hanging over my head all the time, I should have basked in it without restraint. Even as it was, I basked quite a lot.
In our leisure moments, Elspeth and I indulged ourselves in true lovers’ speculation and reflections. ‘Wouldn’t it be dreadful,’ she said one day, ‘if one of us didn’t like it?’
‘Dreadful,’ I said.
Her imagination took a Gothic turn. ‘Wouldn’t it be dreadful,’ she said, ‘if one got married and then found the other person didn’t like it?’
‘Horrible,’ I said impetuously. ‘Appalling!’
And then I came to. Married … Had somebody said something about getting married?
I realized that Elspeth now saw no reason whatever why we should not get married. This exemplified to me one of the characteristics that most markedly differentiated women from men. Confronted with the prospect of being tied, of being trapped for life, women showed neither reluctance nor caution. How different from men! I thought. Or, to be precise, how different from me! Women’s nature seemed to make them ready for the trap. Men had to steel themselves to it. I felt that in my nature the steely element was … well, not very steely.
One evening when Elspeth arrived, she said: ‘I’m sure the hall-porter knows why I come here.’
This seemed probable. He never did much work, but he kept a very efficient eye on everyone who came in and out. I said: ‘Oh.’ We had agreed not to tell our friends – in particular we wanted to tease Harry by keeping it from him – but I did not see that it mattered if the porter knew.
‘He said “Good evening” in a particularly insolent tone.’
I was surprised. He was a tall, lounging fellow, with a full-cheeked, oval face that made me think of a rabbit’s. I had never had any trouble with him.
‘I don’t see what I can do about it,’ I said. ‘I can’t very well tick him off.’
‘No,’ said Elspeth, thoughtfully.
I could, of course, put her in such a position that she did not have to suffer this kind of thing. But could I? Could I?
As the weeks passed I had found that I was getting no nearer to my act of will. Half-way there, I had told myself when I asked Elspeth to put our relationship on a somewhat marital footing. I was certain now that Elspeth was the one for me, and I must say she gave me little basis for arguing that I was not the one for her – on the contrary. So why could I not bring myself to the point of asking her to marry me? As I did not like putting the question to myself, I decided to try putting it to Robert.
I told Robert one dull wintry afternoon when we were coming out of the tea-shop after lunch. I felt it was a crucial occasion in my life, a day I should always remember: the only thing I can remember now, apart from what we said, is that a little way ahead of us on the pavement there was a woman in a red coat exactly the same shade as the pillar-box she was just passing. Robert said: ‘Annette and I thought you probably were.’ He looked at me affectionately. ‘I’m glad. You’ve been looking much better these last few weeks.’
‘Better?’ I said. ‘Was I looking worse before?’
‘A more regular life seems to suit you.’
We walked in silence for a few moments, threading our way between people walking two or three abreast. Robert bought a newspaper. I was reflecting on the favourable effect on me of a regular life. Marriage was a regular life.
‘The question is,’ I said, ‘what to do next?’
‘Are you going to ask her to marry you?’
‘What do you think?’
‘You could do worse, much worse.’ Robert glanced at me. ‘Come to think of it, you have done in the past.’
‘Considering that was on your advice, too,’ I said. ‘I –’
Robert said: ‘I think Elspeth’s a very nice girl. Very suitable.’ He paused. ‘You’re very lucky.’
I laughed. ‘You make it sound as if my deserts were a broken-down hag aged fifty!’
‘I meant you’re lucky in the sense that I’d say I was lucky to have found Annette.’ A tone of strong feeling came into his voice. ‘Someone odd enough to interest you, and equable enough to make you a good wife.’
Actually I did not think Elspeth was at all odd.
We came to Trafalgar Square and waited for the traffic lights to let us cross the road.
‘Are you going to marry her?’ Robert asked, as buses whizzed past the ends of our noses.
‘That’s what I can’t make up my mind about.’
‘Do you want to?’
‘Yes. I suppose I do.’
‘Then why don’t you? I’m sure she’d marry you.’
The lights changed and the buses lined up their radiators across the road. We went in front of them and walked along the south side of the square, dodging the pigeons.
We came to the next road-crossing. Robert said:
‘Of course there’s the possibility that she’ll settle it by marrying you.’
‘She’s much too young and too shy.’
Robert laughed. ‘I shouldn’t rely on that.’
I was shocked by his cynical tone. He did not seem to realize that I was in love with Elspeth. I sincerely did think that – sweet girl! – she was too young and too shy.
This was a crossing without lights: we got safely as far as the island.
Robert said, on a different tack: ‘Well, I suppose you can go on as you are.’
‘Don’t you see, that would mean I’ve fallen into my recurring pattern again?’
‘I do see that.’
There was a lull in the buses and taxis. ‘Come on, jump for it!’ I said. We got to the other pavement. Though we had not discussed our objective, I judged that we must be making for the London Library. We went on walking in silence.
Suddenly, ‘I really will marry her!’ I said loudly.
‘Good,’ said Robert. ‘I hope you will.’
We had to cross another road.
‘I take it you’re going to the London Library?’ said Robert.
‘I thought you were.’
‘I hadn’t thought of it.’
‘Nor had I. Apart from thinking that’s where you were going.’
‘I’m perfectly willing to go, if you want to.’
‘So am I, if you are.’
‘Let’s go, then!’
We crossed the road and continued on our way.
My will had hardened. I am not pretending it was steely yet, but somehow I felt sure that from this point I was not going to slip back any more.
I felt so sure that I stopped dead in the middle of the pavement, making Robert stop to look at me with the maximum attention, and said to him again:
‘I really will marry her.’
This time his expression was quite different. ‘Good!’ he said, and his large grey eyes shone with pleasure and belief.
As we started to walk on again, he said: ‘We ought to have a drink tonight.’
‘To celebrate my decision?’ I said, grinning.
Robert grinned too, but looked away in order to avoid answering my question. He said: ‘Why don’t you drop into the club late-ish tonight and join me for a drink? I shall be there with Annette’s father and Harold Johnson.’
I recognized this instantly as a real treat for me. Sir Harold Johnson, another high civil servant, had only recently come Robert’s way and had made the greatest of impressions upon him. As I gathered it from Robert, Annette’s father and Sir Harold Johnson were, as far as exercising power in the outward direction went, among the top half-dozen or so men in the Service. As far as having influence in the inward direction, among those top half-dozen or so men themselves, Sir Harold Johnson had the edge over Annette’s father, hands down. The fullness of time was going to bring Sir Harold Johnson to even greater boss-hood.
But this was not all. As far as Robert and I had observed, there was something in the opinion of the general public that senior civil servants, able and admirable though they might be in their jobs, were in their personalities not very exciting. But when it came to the highest bosses of all, public opinion had got it quite wrong. Among the highest of bosses, with Sir Harold Johnson as a case in point, personality could proliferate to a degree that, in the eyes of Robert and me, qualified as grand eccentricity.
To be allowed to meet Sir Harold Johnson was a great treat for me. ‘Why not?’ I said, enthusiastically.
Dutifully following Robert’s instructions I entered our club at half past ten that night. I made my way through its Piazza San Marco, where there were a few cheerful, but comparatively quiescent members, drinking and chatting; from the doorway of the bar, however, came trumpeting, hallooing noises. I went into the bar.
In the semi-darkness I saw about three groups of noisy men. The noisiest, standing beside the bar itself, consisted of Robert, Annette’s father, Sir Harold Johnson and a couple more members of the club. Robert waved to me as I came up. ‘Come and join us, Joe!’ He and Annette’s father and Sir Harold Johnson and the other two men were happily and obviously drunk. They were hallooing with drink – at least Robert and Sir Harold Johnson were.
Robert said, with a don’t-careish effort at formality: ‘I don’t think you’ve met Sir Harold Johnson.’
Sir Harold Johnson shook hands with me. He was a tall, strong man, like an ex-rowing Blue.
As I looked at him for the first time closely, I was reminded of another public misconception about high bosses in the Civil Service, i.e. that they all look as if they have come from Eton and Balliol. Annette’s father did, as a matter of fact. Sir Harold Johnson, I saw, did not. Definitely not. His face, long-jawed with fleshy-lidded bright blue eyes, could not have sprung from one of our oldest families. Though one might have seen its characteristic expression at a racecourse – the expression, with lids momentarily half-dropped and mouth drawn knowingly down at the corners, of a man just about to take a trick – it would not have been inside the Royal Enclosure. I took to him immediately.
Robert had obviously taken to him. Handing me a large glass of port that I had never asked for, Robert looked at him and said to me:
‘You ought to know he’s read all our novels. In fact he’s read practically all novels.’
I looked at Sir Harold Johnson, staggered, and remained standing beside him.
He looked at Robert steadily.
‘Very remarkable, very remarkable,’ said Robert, having some trouble with his r’s.
I drank some of my port.
Robert glanced at everybody else’s glasses and turned to the bar to order some refills.
Sir Harold Johnson now looked steadily at me.
‘I’m not going to talk to you about novels,’ he said. ‘I’ve talked enough about novels this evening.’
I nodded my head.
‘I’m interested in your job,’ he said. He nodded his head in the direction of Robert. ‘You chaps must have a very interesting job. People! Seeing people.’
I began to nod again.
Suddenly his eyelids half-dropped and his mouth drew down at the corners. ‘Seeing them as ectomorphs and mesomorphs!’
Robert’s voice came over my shoulder. ‘It’s all right – he’s picked that up from Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy!’
Sir Harold Johnson was watching me as if he were waiting to see if I knew he had got endomorphs up his sleeve. I said:
‘Yes.’
‘Well?’
Another nod was out of the question. I said: ‘I think there’s something in it.’
His eyes remained steady for a moment, and then a smile seemed to spread slowly round his long jaw. ‘What do you think of this?’ he said, and, looking up in the air, recited:
Let me have men about me who are thin,
Rough-headed men and such as wake o’ nights.
Yond Cassius has a fat and well-fed look.
He thinks too much – such men are dangerous.
Everyone standing round laughed.
Triumphantly Sir Harold Johnson finished his port and handed his glass to Robert for some more. He swayed.
Annette’s father, on whom drink appeared to have had a silencing effect, proposed that we should all sit down. He and the others moved towards some chairs. Sir Harold Johnson stayed waiting for his next drink. Looking down at me, with the cheerful expression of a man who has just taken a trick, he said:
‘Was that quotation up your street?’
I said it was.
He did not move. Robert handed another glass of port to him – and another to me. Sir Harold Johnson went on staring down at me. At last he said:
‘You know what you want to do?’
I shook my head, waiting …
‘Get rid of your inhibitions!’