WHEN I wrote essays at school I was always told to begin at the beginning and end at the end. I’m not at all sure that this story has an end. As for a beginning–well, in my opinion it really begins–as I began–with my father. Anyway that’s where I’m going to start.
Let me introduce you to him. Cornelius Huntley, rather a speciality of Cornford in every way. He runs a bookshop in the town. If you know the place you’re almost certain to know number 17 Wells Street, the little street branching off from the old market hall in Disraeli Square.
Huntley’s bookshop is as well known as the Cathedral. Most days I work there with father, except when I’m studying music. We sell everything, modern and old, any language you like. Though I say it myself, Cornelius Huntley knows a good deal more about books than you’d imagine from his rather muddled talk.
At this point I think Henry comes in. Henry Beddow is my oldest friend; at school together, and so on. He’s my age, but he’s much more of a lad than I am. Dark hair and eyes, fine teeth, and a swaggering sort of style that could get him into Buckingham Palace. A fine footballer and swimmer. I never was any good at football. I once made a phenomenal effort and scored a goal; unfortunately it was at the wrong end of the field. Rather embarrassing.
The real link between Henry and me is that we both have a pretty fanciful imagination. We like to use it, too. I’ll tell you a story about that, which seems to me to have a bearing on the future, though I don’t want to turn this book into an autobiography.
When we were kids, Henry and I were sent off to Cathedral together on Sunday mornings. Our parents used to go in the evenings. Well, after a bit we got tired of spending this hour and a half in Cathedral on fine summer mornings. One Sunday they were doing the Litany we cut, and spent the time fishing for eels. While we fished we made up the sermon, knowing we should be asked what it was about, as we always were.
‘So long as we’ve got a good text,’ remarked Henry, ‘they won’t bother much about the rest. They always want to know the text.’
I thought. Then suddenly I said, ‘What about “They also serve who only stand and wait”?’
‘Spiffing!’ said Henry.
‘I don’t know where it comes from,’ I said.
‘Say Isaiah,’ suggested Henry. ‘All the bits people remember come from Isaiah.’
Well, apart from father suggesting it was queer to choose a text from Wordsworth, it went down like a lozenge. The queer thing is this. The following Sunday we went to Matins because it was raining and there didn’t seem anything else much to do. Believe me or not, but Canon Mercer–who was rather what they’d call a Modernist–did actually preach a sermon on that text. I don’t know which was the worse shock: hearing our yarn actually come true or realizing we’d credited the Bible with a line of Milton’s.
Later, partly because I wanted to point out that he’d been wrong about Wordsworth, I owned up to father. He said a very queer thing. ‘Always be careful, my boy, what you make up. Life’s more full of things made up on the Spur of the Moment than most people realize. Beware of the Spur of the Moment. It may turn and rend you.’
I often think father’s warning only spurred me on to fresh and more daring inventions. At any rate I got into the habit of making up stories, sometimes inventing people I’d never met or heard of, simply for the fun of doing it. Henry was generally my accomplice; he lacked initiative himself but he was always very good at developing my themes. One occasion I made up an ancestor called Dr Philip Hayes; he was, I said, the fattest organist at Oxford University who wrote anthems and kept does. Later on they did an anthem of his at the Cathedral. Funny thing is, I really can’t remember now whether the old boy is an ancestor of mine or not.
Call me a raging liar if you like, although it’s an actual fact that I’ve never lied in order to get out of things so much as to get into things. Sometimes I think all those books in father’s shop led me astray. Books do lead you on. I mean, look at father. If any man revels in the intoxication of the Spur more than he does, I should like to meet him. I shouldn’t like to say how many times I’ve heard him talking to customers about places he’s never visited, and he’s developed a really amazing flair for finding out first whether they’ve been there. I’ve heard him talking expansively about the West Indies, Mount Everest (not the top; he was careful to halt at about 15,000 feet), Finland, the Amazon and the Eiffel Tower. Actually, he was born in Cornford and never went farther east than London (I think he climbed the Monument), south than the Channel Islands, west than Plymouth. He never went north at all.
That’s father, and I suppose I inherit something from him.
Like me, Henry works in his father’s business, a big garage and motor mechanic in the High Street. He’s learning the business from the bottom, his father being a believer in not missing out any rungs in the ladder, and so on. ‘No royal road to success,’ he’s always saying.
Last August Henry asked me if I’d like to go to Ulster with him. A cousin of his had offered to lend him his house and car for a month.
‘There’s an old witch who keeps house for him, and of course it’s topping country, mountains and things. What do you say? The bus is a Hillman.’
Of course I said yes. We went.
Lusk, where Cousin Bill lives, is only a street, very wide, like most of those Irish villages, two rows of houses, four shops, a church and a pub–not open on Sundays unless you know the local password. We were really miles from anywhere.
The house lay in a valley with a river quite near and cornfields all round. There were white turkeys, a monkey-puzzle tree and quite a lot of gravel in the garden. Not much furniture in the house; it smelt rather of oil-lamps and dogs. Cousin Bill’s housekeeper had a room in the back somewhere; in bed when we arrived and didn’t seem to know who we were for some time. She was very old, with teeth that strayed about, and a high-pitched, fluty sort of voice. There was no food in the house except mustard-coloured bread, home-made, which tasted sour.
I’m not going to tell you much about the holiday except to say it was a grand month and we enjoyed every bit of it even though it rained much of the time. We went miles in the car, swam in the river, messed about in an old tub of a boat belonging to a farmer; and we spent a good many evenings in the hotel at Dungannon, drinking Irish whiskey and flirting with a cheeky girl Henry rather fell for. We climbed the Mourne Mountains and sang the right song on the top, though we couldn’t remember the words.
For some reason we hardly ever stopped to look at Lusk itself. Henry had dismissed it in a minute, ‘A one-eyed place.’ I must say, it did seem to look at you sideways. But on our last evening we suddenly decided we’d treated it rather unfairly.
For once, instead of using the car, we’d been walking all day. About seven in the evening we turned back into Lusk on our way home. We were just passing the church, an ugly flint building with a savage-looking square tower, when Henry said:
‘I think we ought to look into the church. There might be some brasses worth seeing.’
‘I hate brasses,’ I said, ‘but still, I see your point.’
‘We ought just to see what it’s like.’
‘I can see,’ I said.
‘There might be something interesting inside,’ said Henry obstinately.
The sky had blackened over and it was beginning to rain.
‘We might as well shelter there as anywhere else,’ added Henry. ‘Come on. Don’t look so gloomy.’
‘I hate Lusk,’ I complained. ‘I feel it’s got its knife into us somehow.’
And really, you know, I couldn’t help feeling it was haunted by something, particularly just then, with that great black cloud hanging over it, not one single person in the senselessly wide street, rows of slaty houses, a butcher’s shop with only a chopper in the window, and an immense oak tree bang in the middle of the road, penned in by iron railings as though to prevent it from straying. I couldn’t see what business it had there at all.
Well, before we could say any more, the rain began to pour down, so I ran after Henry up the gravel drive to the west porch.
‘Damn,’ said Henry. ‘Place is locked.’
‘Oh, well,’ I said happily, ‘that settles that.’ I don’t know why, but I was growing more and more reluctant to go into the church. ‘Let’s wait here,’ I suggested, ‘till the rain stops, then go home, take the car to Dungannon and have a last binge at the County Hotel.’
Here Henry’s obstinacy comes in.
‘One of the other doors might be open,’ he said. He darted round the tower and I heard him rattling the handle of the north door. ‘No good,’ he complained when he came back. ‘I reckon they ought to be ashamed of themselves, locking churches.’
‘Why shouldn’t they lock them?’
‘Well, look how inconvenient it is for people wanting to shelter from the rain. Besides, it’s bad for religion, definitely bad.’
Actually, the rain was easing off a bit by now.
‘Come on,’ I said, ‘we’d better get back before another shower.’
‘No,’ said Henry. ‘I don’t see why they should lock us out of this horrible building, I’m damned if I do.’
‘It’s not your church,’ I argued.
‘It’s everybody’s church,’ maintained Henry.
‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s Ireland’s church. It says so on the board.’
‘Well, we’re in Ireland, aren’t we? I’m going to see if I can get the key.’
We were just brewing up to a proper row when a man came round the corner with a broom and a wheelbarrow. He looked disappointed, but perhaps it was only his squint. You felt he craved for admiration; very lonely face it was. He was wearing a green baize apron and he had a grave-digging manner. I mean, he gazed at you obviously relating you to the earth and wondering how you’d fit.
‘Are you the sexton?’ asked Henry.
Yes, he was. Did the gentlemen wish to see the church? There was a pleading quality in his voice. I don’t suppose that once in a century anybody had ever wanted to see anything more of Lusk church than they could see from the street.
‘That’s exactly what we are wanting,’ said Henry.
‘Speak for yourself,’ I muttered, looking gloomily at the dead leaves in the barrow. I felt disconsolate. There was a woebegone air over everything; end-of-holiday feeling.
‘My friend,’ remarked Henry, with disgusting brightness, ‘is very interested in old churches.’
It was amazing how quickly that sexton cheered up, smiling hideously at me as though he had discovered an old friend.
‘You have come,’ he said, ‘to the right place. For this is a very old church, dedicated by the Bishop of Armagh in 1863. Before I was born.’
From somewhere about him, under the apron, he produced a colossal key. Unlocking the door, he threw it open with a flourish of triumph. Inside the porch he almost feverishly dragged apart some heavy red curtains, alive with dust and sooty fleurs-de-lis. Hurling himself on an inner door, he flung out an arm and, like a conjurer producing a rabbit, invited our inspection and admiration.
We went inside.
‘My God!’ I said.
‘Kindly remember where you are, Norman,’ said Henry.
I will say this about Lusk church: it was bad enough to be reasonably funny, which was something.
Squint, before we could turn back, seized our arms and dragged us down the nave, rapturously commenting upon the treasures of which he was guardian.
‘We are very proud of our beautiful pews, very handsome pieces of wood, I will say.’
I touched one and shivered. They were made of fumed oak and they had doors with rusty bolts to them. Very tall they were; you felt there ought to be hay in them. I looked up to the galleries. Apart from the usual cleaner’s brooms and pails the only curiosity was a stack of card-tables piled in one corner. I turned to the chancel, hoping to find something–however slight–that I could praise. But it was worse up there. Seaweed-green altar frontal; dead flowers; lichenous-looking brass candlesticks; pitch-pine organ with a pyramid of dumb pipes soaring over a candle-greased console; ‘Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus’, splashed in chrome Gothic lettering over the choir walls; mural cherubim reminding you of cottonwool chicks from Easter eggs; very stained glass; tattered hymn-books, tattered hassocks–it was a horrible church. But there were, mercifully, two redeeming features: those were the dust-sheets spread over lectern and pulpit. Somehow you felt a little safer with those dust-sheets.
Meanwhile, Squint was rhapsodizing.
‘I beg you to observe the beautiful lettering and decoration on the chancel wall. “I saw the Lord sitting upon a Throne.” You like it?’
He had a habit of hissing like a goose, particularly when he was eager about something.
‘Very pretty indeed,’ I said.
‘Original,’ said Henry.
‘Unusual, in a sense.’
‘Full of feeling.’
‘Filthy,’ I said.
‘The font,’ said Henry hurriedly, glaring at me, ‘is superb.’
‘The choir screen,’ I added, ‘is definitely in a class by itself.’
‘We think,’ said Squint simply, folding his hands and looking modestly at the ground, ‘we think that the whole church is in a class by itself.’
We proceeded step by step up the nave towards the lectern. It grew darker; we could hear the rain pattering on the roof. My spirits sank. There was something so unutterably depressing about the place. The sexton was standing by the draped lectern, one hand on the corner of the sheet, waiting for us to approach so that he might unveil what I knew could only be a fresh horror.
‘Here,’ whispered Henry, ‘this place is awful. Let’s get out quickly.’
‘All very well for you to talk like that,’ I muttered, ‘but you started it. We’ve got to go through with it now.’
Patiently, Squint waited by the lectern. It’s hard to explain the awful sinking feeling that had come over Henry and me. ‘A day we shall never forget,’ I told myself. And as I said it, I thought, ‘Well, you might as well make it really memorable. Get some fun out of this while you’re about it.’
Some fun. Oh, God! If I had only known!
Suddenly the sexton whipped aside the dust-sheet and disclosed the lectern, obviously a favourite of his. We saw an avaricious-looking brass fowl with one eye cocked sideways as though it feared somebody were going to bag the Bible–or perhaps as though it hoped somebody were going to. You couldn’t quite tell; it had an ambiguous expression.
‘Now this,’ said Squint, ‘this most distinctive lectern was presented by members of the congregation in memory of the late Reverend Mr Archer, vicar here for forty years who died in 1925.’ He hissed and glared at us. ‘You will be kind enough to read the inscription. Mr Archer was a good man.’
‘Dear Mr Archer,’ I said.
No more. Said it without thinking much. Didn’t even realize that I had sown the seed.
‘Dear Mr Archer.’ Like that. Nothing more. Queer how those three simple words affected the sexton.
‘You,’ he teethed eagerly, ‘were a friend of the late very beloved Reverend Mr Archer?’
I was cautious.
‘By no means,’ I said. ‘But I have heard a lot about him. Haven’t I, Henry?’
‘You bet we have,’ said Henry cheerily. He was always very quick in this way.
‘Oh, but, indeed,’ screamed the sexton in a frenzy of delight, whipping off the dust-sheet from the pulpit — ‘a friend of Mr Archer’s is a friend of Lusk.’
I fondled the tail-feathers of the bird half absently.
‘I wish to emphasize,’ I said, ‘that I never knew Mr Archer personally. But I have a great friend who knew him well in his’–I peered at the brass plate–‘in his Cambridge days,’ I added.
‘Oxford,’ said Henry, annoyingly going off on his own track.
‘I said Cambridge,’ I remarked acidly, ‘and Cambridge I meant.’
The sexton seemed not to hear us. ‘Mr Archer was our best-beloved pastor,’ he said, speaking in a dreamy hiss, through his nose like a Welsh hwyl. ‘There was not a man more respected. He was a darling man, most free with his money. And his daughters — ah! They were the lovely creatures and all!’
‘Let me see,’ I said, biting my lip reminiscently and looking at the roof, ‘there were four, weren’t there?’
‘Three,’ said the sexton.
I frowned. ‘Surely–four?’ It was annoying to be contradicted.
‘Yes, you are right, sir,’ cried the sexton. ‘Four it is–four beautiful creatures. There was Miss Emily, there was Miss Angela, Miss Dorothea, and–and–’ He paused and looked at me suspiciously. ‘There were only three!’ he snapped suddenly.
‘Surely,’ I corrected gently, ‘you are forgetting Miss Seraphica?’
‘Miss Seraphica,’ said Henry gravely, ‘was–alas!–always overlooked.’
‘Consistently overlooked. She died,’ I reminded him, ‘in complete obscurity.’
‘Maybe I forget,’ sighed Squint. ‘My poor memory is not so good as once it was.’
Thanking God for his poor memory, I asked him what had become of Mr Archer’s surviving daughters.
‘Miss Emily,’ he said, ‘teaches in Belfast. Every Christmas she writes to me, the darling lady. Miss Angela married an army gentleman called–called–’
Henry quickly took advantage of the poor memory.
‘Major Road?’ he suggested, ‘M.C.’
‘Possibly,’ said the sexton. ‘And Miss Dorothea went to live in America with an aunt. She was the most beautiful one. Gone!’ He waved his arm mournfully.
‘Baltimore?’ I murmured.
‘That is so,’ said the sexton.
I sighed. ‘Dear, dear! For so long I have looked forward to seeing Mr Archer’s church. And now–here we are! Something very moving about it, isn’t there, Henry?’
Henry touched his eye with his handkerchief and declared that he had never been so moved.
‘If I had been told,’ said the sexton, ‘that two gentlemen would come into this church this evening who knew Mr Archer, I would not have believed it. No, I would not! Holy God no!’
I reminded him again that I had never known Mr Archer personally. But he ignored this and went on to talk about the Communion plate.
‘It is,’ he said, ‘of the very finest beaten gold, studded with onyx, opals and agate. You will please to follow and I will show you. It was Mr Archer’s gift to the church. Holy God, it is beautiful plate!’
We followed him to the vestry, feeling much less depressed. While we examined the plate I spun a few more fancies concerning Mr Archer. He had edited, I suggested, a hymn-book and been fond of fishing. The sexton, after a little encouragement, readily agreed.
About twenty minutes later we came to the west door, still talking enthusiastically of the late vicar. Henry stood a little apart from us, uneasily smothering laughter into a handkerchief. He’s like that, I’m afraid; not completely reliable.
‘And now,’ said Squint, ‘you will please to give me your name so that I may tell Miss Angela when I next write that a friend of her darling reverend father has–’
‘I did not know Mr Archer myself,’ I snapped.
Immediately the sexton’s happy smile vanished and an angry flush came over his face.
‘You did not know Mr Archer,’ he hissed, ‘and, Holy God, there was I showing you the Communion plate!’
‘My friend,’ I explained, ‘she knew him.’
His face brightened. ‘Ah. Your friend! And what is his name?’
‘A lady,’ I corrected sharply. For one second I paused. Then, ‘Miss Hargreaves,’ I said. ‘Miss Connie Hargreaves,’ I added.
It seemed to me there was a sort of stirring of air in the church, like like what? Rather like someone opening a very old umbrella. I looked round sharply, but couldn’t see anything unusual. A ray of feeble sun had broken through the dark clouds and was shining down on the dust in the galleries. I realized I was trembling. Sweating too. No doubt about it. I was precariously poised on the Spur of the Moment. Father’s ancient warning came back to me. No good now. When you’re on the Spur you can’t go back. I wiped my brow with my handkerchief and smiled at the sexton. I knew I was powerless to move except in one direction.
‘Miss Connie Hargreaves,’ echoed Henry.
‘Miss Connie Hargreaves,’ re-echoed the sexton.
‘Who lives in Rutlandshire,’ I added.
‘And knew Mr Archer many, many years ago,’ said Henry; ‘long before daylight saving and such things.’
‘Childhood friends,’ I continued happily. I could feel I was getting into my stride. ‘They had never once met since those happy far-off days. Many are the stories–many, many are the stories–delightful and otherwise–that Miss Hargreaves has told me about Mr Archer.’
‘And this lady, this Miss Hargreaves, she is still alive?’
‘Ten minutes old, precisely,’ said Henry.
I trod on his toe brutally.
‘The soul of youth,’ I said. ‘She is a poet,’ I added dreamily.
‘She would be an old lady,’ said Squint. ‘Over eighty.’
‘Nearer ninety,’ said Henry.
‘A touch of rheumatoid arthritis,’ I said, ‘but no more than a touch.’
We began to wander out of the church at last.
‘You must give me your friend’s address,’ said the sexton, ‘so that I may tell Miss Angela. The darling lady likes to keep in touch with the Reverend’s old connections.’
I took out my pocket-book and wrote.
‘Henry,’ I said, ‘is it 28 or 29 Dawsington Road, Oakham?’
‘Oh,’ he said easily, ‘she’s too well known to bother about the number. In any case, the name of the house–Sable Lodge–is more than sufficient.’
‘Of course,’ I murmured. I wrote on the paper: ‘Miss Constance Hargreaves, Sable Lodge, Oakham, Rutlandshire,’ and handed it to the sexton.
‘This is a happy day,’ he said as we walked slowly away down the drive.
‘A niece of the Duke of Grosvenor,’ remarked Henry.
‘And writes poetry,’ I emphasized.
‘Oh, bravo, Norman!’ said Henry when we’d finished laughing. ‘I already feel as though I’ve known her all my life.’
I was modest. ‘I can’t take the entire credit for her,’ I said. ‘Your bits helped enormously.’
‘I suppose you agree to her connection with Grosvenor?’
‘Oh, definitely! That was first class. Full marks.’
‘Still, she’s entirely your creation.’
‘Yes. I’m afraid she is,’ I said.
‘Why afraid?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’
A beggarman wandered up the street, playing ‘Over the sea to Skye’ on a melancholy penny whistle. I gave him sixpence and caught Henry’s arm. ‘Let’s get on to Dungannon,’ I said.
The rest of that evening we spent at Dungannon. Miss Hargreaves was the topic of conversation all the time. We found, after several glasses of sherry, that she was a far more widely travelled and more accomplished lady than we had originally supposed.
‘Of course,’ said Henry, ‘she always winters in the South of France.’
‘Wonderful,’ I said, ‘how she takes her cockatoo about. It’s gone with her everywhere.’
‘You mean Hector?’
‘Dr Pepusch,’ I corrected. ‘Hector, you remember, died of psittacosis.’
Henry wrinkled his brow. ‘Dr Pepusch?’
‘M’m,’ I said. ‘Dr Pepusch, you remember–who wrote the Beggar’s Opera – had a parrot who used to sing an air from one of Handel’s operas. Miss Hargreaves named her bird after him. She’s a keen musician.’
‘I should like to know who this dame is you two keep talking about,’ said the girl behind the bar.
‘No dame about her,’ said Henry. ‘This is a niece of the Duke of Grosvenor. So kindly be careful what you say.’
The girl seemed rather impressed.
Henry drained his glass. ‘Horsy?’ he murmured.
‘No. Doggy,’ I said. ‘She keeps a Bedlington; a lady Bedlington by the name of Sarah. Don’t you remember how she forgot herself in one of the Duke’s grandfather clocks?’
‘What beautiful little water-colours those were that she used to paint,’ mused Henry, tipping his glass up and holding it out to the girl to be filled.
‘She is more of a poet than a painter,’ I reminded him. ‘Some of her lyrics–do you remember Wayside Bundle?–bid fair to rival the immortal Ella.’
‘You mean Wheeler W.?’
‘Just so. Another sherry, please, miss.’
‘She has more than a mere taste for music, eh?’
‘Oh, yes! A born musician. It occurs to me, incidentally,’ I added, ‘that it was perhaps a mistake to give the sexton her home address.’
‘Oh? Is she away from home, then?’
‘Undoubtedly. She will just have left for the Three Choirs Festival. She has never been known to miss it.’
‘How stupid of me to forget!’
Henry asked the girl to fetch him an A.A. Guide.
‘Where is the Festival being held this year?’ he asked me.
‘Hereford.’
I turned over the pages of the guide, then snapped it to with an air of finality.
‘I suppose, as usual,’ I remarked, ‘she will be staying at the Manor Court Hotel?’
‘Oh, it’s almost a second home to her,’ he agreed. ‘Any mention made, by the way, of charges for dogs?’
‘M’m. Two-and-six a day.’
‘How many stars?’
‘Five.’
‘Pity. Ought to be six. Cockatoos mentioned?’
‘Not mentioned. But of course she has had a special arrangement with the management for a great many years.’
We were silent for a little while. I think we were impressed with ourselves and each other; but most especially we were impressed by Miss Hargreaves.
‘I suppose,’ I mused, ‘she will go on to Bath as usual?’
‘I see nothing to prevent her,’ said Henry.
Neither did I.
Just as I was drawing the sheets over my head, feeling a bit hazy, Henry–who never can leave a good joke where it is–poked his head round the door.
‘You ought to write to her,’ he said, ‘and tell her we’ve at last seen Mr Archer’s church. She’d be so pleased.’
‘Of course,’ I murmured. ‘I’ll do it to-morrow.’
‘As from 38 London Road, Cornford, Bucks.
September 2nd
‘DEAR MISS HARGREAVES,
‘I’m afraid it is some time since I wrote you, but now that I am on the point of returning from a holiday in Northern Ireland, I feel that I must send you a line from a place so intimately bound up with memories of your old friend Mr Archer. You have told me so much about him that I almost felt, when I stood in Lusk church yesterday, that I had known him myself. The sexton was overjoyed to hear news of you, although he did not actually remember your name.
‘What of you, my dear old friend? I am assuming that, as usual, you will be attending the Choirs Festival and I am therefore addressing this to the Manor Court Hotel at Hereford which I know you always patronize. Do let me hear from you. Will you be going to Bath as usual?
‘Any time you care to come and stay with us at Cornford you will be more than welcome. My mother and father have long hoped to meet you and I need hardly say that this invitation extends also to Sarah and Dr Pepusch. Send me a card any time you feel like coming.
‘With warmest regards,
‘Ever most sincerely,
‘NORMAN HUNTLEY.’
‘You ought to put “My” dear Miss Hargreaves,’ said Henry after he’d read the letter through.
‘Oh, do you think so? I was inclined to think that “my dear old friend” was a bit too familiar.’
‘Too familiar! My dear Norman, nothing could be too familiar for such an old friend.’
‘You agree the regards ought to be warm?’
‘As hot as hell.’
I sealed the letter, and addressed it to the Manor Court Hotel, Hereford. We posted it from Lusk, feeling that it ought to bear the Lusk postmark.
That evening we left Ulster. Just as we sailed out of Belfast and were leaning on the rail looking at the lights of the quay and feeling a bit sad that our holiday in Ireland was over, Henry said to me, ‘I suppose that letter’ll stay in the rack for months. Interesting to go there in a year’s time and see if it’s still there.’
I couldn’t pass this.
‘Why should it still be there?’ I demanded. ‘If Miss Hargreaves hasn’t yet arrived, she will in a day or so.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Henry hurriedly. ‘I was assuming, just for a moment, that there wasn’t such a person. Pure idle fancy, you know.’
‘I call it damned disrespectful,’ I said, ‘and in the worst possible taste. You can only make up for it by coming below and standing me a drink on her behalf.’
We went down and ordered double gins.
‘To Miss Hargreaves!’ said Henry solemnly.
‘Long may she live!’ I cried.
We drank.