Lonely Road (11 page)

She withdrew her hand. “You’ve changed a lot, Malcolm,” she said quietly.

I nodded. “I dare say. It’s probably as well we never married, Marion.”

She had nothing to say to that.

I ground the stub end of my cigarette down upon the tray. “Things change,” I said, “and people. And one gets to think about things differently. It’s been jolly seeing you again, Marion, but now I think I must get back to her.” I smiled. “I paid her ten pounds to come away with me, you see, and I must get my money’s worth.”

She sighed a little, and I left her to her life of freezing clean hotels, her two hygienic children and their nurse, and all the Best People that she knew, and I went back to Sixpence. “This room simply shatters me,” I said, and glanced around me with distaste. “It’s like a ruddy ice-house.”

She rippled softly into laughter. “Oh, you are funny!” she said. “I mean, I’ve been feeling like that, too. It’s terribly grand, isn’t it?”

She had finished lunch while I had been talking to Marion. “Let’s get out of it,” I said.

She stared at me. “Don’t you want any more to eat? You haven’t had half enough, driving all that way.”

I smiled. “Don’t want any more,” I said. “The food would choke me. You want to trifle with lark’s tongues in aspic and talk about Marcel Proust when you lunch here.”

She stared at me. “Who was she?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “That’s why we’re going.” And I sent the waiter for the bill.

We settled down again into the Bentley and went wandering south between the hills to Ludlow, running at an easy speed. All afternoon we ran southwards by the border, through Ludlow to Hereford and down to Ross. Then we cut across to Gloucester and down beside the Cotswolds, till finally we ran into Bristol in good time for tea.

I turned to Sixpence as we drove through the suburbs of the town. “I chose that place for lunch,” I said, “and it turned out to be a dud. You’d better have a shot this time, and choose where we have tea.”

I thought for a moment. “We’ll have to have supper on the road, I think. We’ll be a bit late getting in, and I haven’t told them we should want a meal. Would you like a meat tea and a light supper somewhere?”

She looked up at me doubtfully. “Would you like that? I mean, is that what you have?”

I laughed. “I had my way about lunch. You’ve got to choose where we have tea.”

She laughed with me. “Let’s just walk about a bit and see what the places are like. I mean, fancy asking for an
egg
to your tea in where we had lunch. Wouldn’t it be awful!” And so we slid into the centre of the town among the traffic.

We found a place to park the car and walked out into the streets, looking for our tea. In the end we found a place, a sort of teashop, not too pretentious; she paused outside and looked up at me doubtfully, and said: “Do you think this is nice?” So we went inside and ate a meal of tea and poached eggs and iced cakes. Sixpence finished up with a strawberry ice, but I couldn’t face that; at the end she sighed happily and said: “It is nice here, isn’t it?” I helped her on with her coat, and for that little service she turned to me impulsively and said: “You are kind!”

And then I went and spoilt it all. I don’t know now exactly how it came to happen; some tone or inflexion in my voice, I suppose, that brought her little castle tumbling down. She asked if we had time to walk up the street a little way to look at the shops, and so we strolled on slowly, pausing every now and then. First it was a leather shop that caught her eye, and she paused to admire the bags and dressing-cases in the window. Next it was a window full of evening frocks; that held us for a long time, and I was told that she looked best in green. All the girls said so.

This shop-inspecting expedition, I could see, was going to
cost me money. That put things on a different footing; to me it became a matter of business then, and I began calculating the chances dispassionately. My job was to get her safe to Newton Abbot and hand her over to the police for the identification of the lorry; I had sent a wire to Norman to say that I was bringing her down. While she was in my hands my business was to keep her quiet and amenable; what happened when I had delivered up the goods was no concern of mine. The next move was evidently that I should buy her something and I was quite prepared to play my part. What to buy I neither knew nor cared.

It was in this frame of mind that we came to the jewellers, and we stopped a long time there. First it was a pendant that attracted her, and then a brooch; in my preoccupation I was amused to study her and to notice that her taste was by no means bad. We stayed there so long that I became aware that it was here that I must do my stuff. I don’t suppose there was a thing in that window worth much more than twenty pounds.

It was a brooch, a single bar of platinum with an emerald in the middle, that she was admiring at the time. I smiled, thinking it was like giving toys to a child to make it be good. “You can have that, if you like,” I said. “Or any of these other things.”

As soon as I had spoken I knew that I had done it wrong. She stared up at me, wrinkling her brows. “Do you mean you’d give it me?” she demanded.

I didn’t quite know what to say to that. “If you’d like it,” I replied. “Either that or anything else in there that you’d like.”

She stood there staring up at me. “Do you mean I can have anything I like out of that window? Anything I like to ask you for?”

I nodded. “If you’d like anything there.”

There was a silence. She stood looking in at the window without speaking for a minute, and I knew that things had gone most desperately wrong. In an endeavour to retrieve the situation I said awkwardly: “Would you like to go inside and have a look round?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think I want anything now. They’re not very nice.”

I was humbled and amazed. We went on looking at shops in a desultory manner, but all her pleasure in the walk was gone. She seemed listless and depressed, and after a decent interval she suggested that perhaps it was time we got on the road again. So we went back to the car. By that time I knew what was wrong. I had hurt her very deeply by the way in which I had offered her the whole contents of the shop; I could imagine that in her parlance that was not the way a gentleman would give a present to his girl friend. The worst of it was that I could see no way in which to put things right.

We slid out of the town into the suburbs and up the hill upon the Axbridge road. It was a lovely evening on the road, but that didn’t do us any good. Before, she had been chattering to me all the way, pointing out things by the roadside and lighting cigarettes for me, but now she sat quiet by my side and even the automatic lighter failed to amuse. From time to time she said something with forced gaiety, but there was a constraint between us that the swift passing of the miles did nothing to remove.

We went down through Axbridge and across Sedgemoor, through Bridgwater to Taunton. With the coming of the evening we ran into Devonshire and down to Exeter. It was about half-past seven when we passed through that; I took the Dartmouth road. I was in my own country by this time. Chudleigh was my destination for this stage, and twenty minutes later we pulled up at the Running Hart for supper.

Try as I may, I cannot remember much about that meal. I suppose we ate in silence punctuated by little forced remarks; I know that nothing happened which would make the situation any easier. Only one thing I remember. They know me at the Running Hart, and they gave me to wait at table a boy that I know something of, whose uncle is a shipwright in my yard. This boy is a pretty good golfer in his leisure time; he got into the semi-final of the South Devon Championship that year. I think he must have told us about that as he served the
meal, because I cannot think of any other way in which I should have known.

It was nearly dark when we had finished. We had a cup of coffee in the lounge; several times during that I felt that Sixpence wanted to say something, but it didn’t come. At last we went out to the car. I had turned her off the road into the stable yard, and there she was standing on the cobbles by the mounting-block, gleaming a little and enormous in the dusk. Sixpence had followed me, a pace or so behind, but as I opened the door for her to get in she stopped motionless beside the car.

“Mr. Stevenson,” she said, so low that I had to drop my head to catch her words. “Please, I don’t think I want to come on any farther with you. I’m so dreadfully sorry.…”

There was a bat wheeling and darting round the yard against a deep blue sky. I stood there staring absently into the dusk, at the dark shadows in the open stable doors, the tin advertisements of poultry food upon the russet walls, the haystack by the gate. This was the England that I knew; in coming down from Leeds I had come south from a foreign land, and brought with me a foreign girl.

I bent towards her. “It’s exactly as you like,” I said. “You needn’t come with me unless you want to, you know.” That wasn’t true, of course. Now that I had got her so far she would certainly complete her journey to identify the wreck at Newton Abbot, whether with me or with the police.

She hesitated, at a loss for words. “I think I’d better spend the night here,” she said at last, “by myself. And then I’d go up north again by train to-morrow.”

I nodded. “I’m so very sorry this has gone wrong,” I said quietly. “I mean that. If you could tell me what’s the matter—I’d do anything I can to help, you know. Don’t worry if you’d rather not.”

She looked up at me. “I feel so awfully mean telling you,” she muttered, “after all the trouble you’ve taken, and the things you’ve done, and everything. It’s just that I don’t want to go on with it.…”

I smiled at her. “That’s quite all right,” I said. “You don’t
want to worry about that.” I knew that sort of scene by heart; it happens to me every eighteen months.

She raised her eyes and looked me straight in the face. “I’m so dreadfully sorry, and I didn’t mean it to end like this when I came away with you—truly I didn’t. I suppose it’s that I’m not really the sort of girl for this. And you’re not the sort of man, either.”

I was staring into the dim expanses of the field beyond the gate; the bat was still sweeping and circling about the eaves. “Why do you say that?” I asked, without looking at her. “Why do you say I’m not the sort of man?”

She hesitated, and then said: “The way you were talking to the waiter.…”

She came a little closer to me in the dusk. “I’d like you to know,” she said simply, “because you’ve been so kind, and perhaps you won’t think so bad of me. Lots of the girls go away for holidays with gentlemen and just don’t seem to mind, but I never did that. Only once, and I didn’t know about things then; I was seventeen, and I didn’t know. And that was ever so long ago—I’m quite old, you know.” She smiled up at me tremulously. “And then you came, and it was all so different. I’d never had a gentleman quite like you before, although I’ve met lots, you know, coming to dance. And then I couldn’t have my holiday, and I was sort of silly about that, although it doesn’t do to be silly about things, does it? And then you came and asked me to come away with you. And I thought it didn’t matter.…”

It seemed to me that this young woman was labouring under a considerable misapprehension as to the nature of her holiday. I stood there resting one foot upon the running-board of the Bentley and I was silent for a minute, considering the position. At last I said:

“You can go home if you like—you know that—and I’ll fix up a room for you here, and go away. But you’re quite wrong about me.”

She looked up at me. “I don’t understand.”

I dropped my foot down from the running-board and stood
erect. “I’m thirty-nine years old,” I said, “and I must be a damn fool, because although I’ve got plenty of money I’ve never taken a girl away the way you mean. Not even when I’ve had it chucked at my head. You were right when you said I’m not that sort of man, and I don’t take any credit for that, either, because it’s how you happen to be made.”

I paused. “You think that because I offered to buy you anything you wanted from that shop, that I was trying to buy you. Well, I wasn’t, as a matter of fact. I meant you to come down to my place for an ordinary holiday, like I told you.”

She stood there looking up at me. “I don’t understand,” she said again. “I’ve never met anyone like you a bit.…”

I smiled at her. “We aren’t going on our honeymoon,” I said, “although I know it looks a bit like that. I meant it to be just an ordinary holiday for you—sort of staying with friends. Only there’s only me and the servants in the house.”

“You mean you just wanted me to come and keep you company, sort of?” She paused. “Not anything more than that?”

I nodded. “Nothing more than that.”

There was a little silence then, and then she said, half to herself: “Just because you were lonely, like, living all alone.” I hadn’t anything to say to that.

She raised her face to mine. “I’d like to come on with you,” she said simply, “if you’ll let me now. I didn’t know it was like that. You must think me awful, though.…”

It was very dark and shadowy in the yard. It seemed to me that I had slipped back fifteen years, that I was still a boy with all the glamour of a young man’s life in front of me, that I could mould my life to what I chose and make it good.

“My dear,” I said, “I think you’re simply sweet.”

In the dim light her upturned face was like a flower. “You’ve been so kind to me,” she murmured in the dusk. “I don’t know what to say.”

The bat was still wheeling and flickering above our heads against a deep blue sky, the poultry food advertisements had faded into dim shadows on the russet walls, the night was very still. She stood there very close to me, her face upturned to
mine; we were more together then than we had ever been. With a little sigh she came into my arms and rubbed her face against my overcoat.

It was over seven years since I had kissed a girl.

After a little time we came unstuck, and got into the car. I swung her out of the stable yard on to the road, and then we sat quiet for a time in the gloom behind the headlights, very close together, talking in low tones. It is twenty miles from Chudleigh to my house. It seemed like two to me, that night.