Love in Our Time (25 page)

But it was not so easy. In the ordinary way he wasn't living so close to the bone that he couldn't put a pound a week aside if he wanted to. But this Dorset plan of
his had upset everything. There wouldn't be anything left over once he was there. The entire fruits of a lifetime would be expended in keeping Miss Wachett in comfort in Finchley and himself in something near it in Seacombe. It was only because he was a man of simple tastes that he could contemplate it. There wasn't going to be any refrigerator, or radiogram, or small car in
his
future home.

Finally because the problem of Mrs. Sneyd seemed insoluble, he lit a pipe and put his cap on and went out for a walk to think things over. He, did a lot of thinking on that walk. He thought of having Mrs. Sneyd down to live with them as one of the family; but in the end the memory of those wide blue eyes and that trusting affectionate nature dissuaded him—he felt too old to stand the strain of them. He thought of having young Violet down alone and relieving Mrs. Sneyd of the burden of having to educate her. But he soon discarded that, too; young Violet was altogether too much like her mother and he knew that, if he had the child, it would be only a matter of months before he had the parent as well. He thought of making one last effort with the Order and writing personally to the Bon Marché. And he thought of dropping Gerald a note to the office and telling him precisely what he thought of him. Indeed, when he got back home again, the latter was the only thing he was really decided on.

The real solution came to him while he was having lunch, dutifully watched from the other end of the table by Miss Wachett. When it struck him, he laid down his spoon and fork and declined the rest of the rice-custard that Miss Wachett had prepared for him. For there was no doubt about the solution this time; it had all the
authentic and least prepossessing marks of duty written large across it.

During the rest of the afternoon he was moody and preoccupied. He went and shut himself up in the office beside the house and pretended to be working. But the quotations for timber and silver sand went unattended. If anyone had looked in at the window they would have seen a plump, elderly man in his shirt sleeves with his feet up on the desk, smoking. It was nearly six o'clock when he sat up and shook himself and began to write a letter.

The letter was addressed to the Dorset Development Association and said that Mr. Biddle did not propose to exercise his option on plot 35a. He was not a sentimental man about his own affairs but he felt a little sad as he did so. Then, to put the whole thing out of his mind, he folded up the Seacombe Estate survey map and dropped it into the waste-paper basket.

The rest was comparatively simple now. It could all be got out of the way in another letter. The letter was to Mrs. Sneyd this time. He said quite frankly that the Order couldn't see their way to accommodate her and he didn't think it was going to be very much good to rely on Gerald. In the circumstances he said that he hoped she would accept the enclosed from himself; the cheque, he added, would continue to come weekly as long as he could manage it. It was for thirty shillings, and there was a weight off his mind as he wrote it. It did as much as ever could be done towards wiping out that fatal evening at St. Martin's. But for the Life-line which he had run out, Mr. Sneyd would still have been there; there would have been a pound a week from the Drapery Trade's Benevolent Fund and a ray of hope in
the future. He couldn't restore the hope but the pound a week was now his affair. The extra ten shillings which he had included was, he explained, in respect of young Violet.

Then, when he had stamped both envelopes, he put his feet up once more and went on drawing slowly at his pipe. A dreamy, far-away look came into his eyes. He was thinking out precisely what he was going to say to that precious son-in-law of his when he saw him.

As for Gerald, he had had a restless, anxious couple of days. The realisation of what he had done by taking Alice away from Dr. da Leppo's kept coming back to him in little waves of terror. There could be no playing about with the future this time; they would just have to meet it. He was actually looking forward to Thursday now: he wanted to get rid of the car quickly before it cost him another penny.

The only trouble was that Rex's partner seemed to think nothing at all of it. So far as he was concerned it was simply another old car that someone wanted him to buy; and he was there to sell cars, not buy them. He tried all Rex's tricks of getting Gerald to buy another and more expensive one as a bargain and then fell to disprising the object in front of him.

“What's the year?” he asked.

Gerald told him.

“Seen a bit of use, hasn't it?” he remarked.

“Runs like a bird,” Gerald replied.

“Tyres aren't much good.”

“Had the bearings taken up last year,” Gerald volunteered.

“Why do you want to sell it?”

“Domestic reasons,” said Gerald shortly. “Cutting down expenses.”

The dealer did not seem impressed. “Anything else wrong with it?” he asked.

“Not a thing,” said Gerald. “It's a peach.”

The man got in and slammed the door harder than was necessary.

“Just going to take it round the block,” he said.

As Gerald waited, he felt resentful that Rex should not have troubled to be there himself. It wouldn't have been like that in the old days. He mooched up and down wondering why with all the rest of mankind to choose from he should have been the one selected to be in this particular jam.

Then the dealer drew up again in front of the shop and got out.

“Gears are noisy,” he said.

Gerald ignored the comment.

“What is she worth?” he asked.

The man did not seem anxious to commit himself.

“These open cars are a drug on the market,” he said. “Everyone wants a saloon nowadays.”

“But she must be worth something,” Gerald pointed out.

The man picked his teeth and looked up at the sky.

“Give you twenty-five, quid,” he said at last.

Gerald whistled.

“I've been offered fifty for her,” he said.

“Then you'd better take it,” the dealer answered.

“It must be worth more than twenty-five,” Gerald persisted.

“Not to me.”

“Well, I'm not going to sell,” said Gerald. Apparently
this was going to be his day of humiliation in the motor industry.

The dealer let him get back into the car.

“Give you twenty-seven ten,” he said.

Gerald shook his head.

“I'll take thirty,” he said.

The dealer threw his hands up.

“No go,” he said.

Gerald started the engine and waited for a gap in the traffic. The dealer strolled down to the kerb and stared at the windscreen.

“How long's she licensed?” he asked.

“Till the end of this year,” Gerald told him.

“All right,” said the man at last. “I'll give you thirty. I can use the licence.”

He paid Gerald in notes. Five minutes later Gerald took a last look at the car and walked out of the shop. He felt pleased with himself. Simply by waiting there he had invented an extra five pounds for himself.

And it was the sum of five pounds or thereabouts, stupidly and criminally squandered, that had been galling him all the week.

The journey back from Great Portland Street to Finchley is of the kind that makes the motorist long for his car. Without it, it is a matter of getting a bus to Camden Town, taking the tube to Highgate and standing there at the point where five roads meet, waiting for a tramcar.

As Gerald took his place in the queue and saw the stream of cars go past him up the Archway Road, the depression which had descended on him in Great Portland Street returned. It returned once more, more strongly
than ever, when, half an hour later, he opened his front door and saw from the hat stand that Mr. Biddle was there again.

To-night of all nights he did not feel in the mood for hearing from Mr. Biddle what he should do for Mrs. Sneyd. Besides, he had already made up his mind on that matter. After calculating every penny of expenditure he had decided, not very easily, that he could allow her fifteen shillings a week; and it was no good Mr. Biddle trying to get him to make it a pound or even seventeen and six. He had decided.

But Mr. Biddle wasn't in that kind of mood at all. He had just heard from Alice that she was going to have a baby; and the news had had a considerable and discernible effect on him. He was sitting over by the window, however, filling his pipe and trying to look as though he wasn't in the least concerned.

He felt at that moment as though, ever since Alice had been born, this is what he had been waiting to hear. He was getting old himself and this was the chain of life going on, reaching out another link into the future. He was glad now that he had cancelled that plot; he couldn't have borne to be shut away in Dorset while these tremendous events were taking place in Finchley. Then a sudden pang struck him: it was sad about Mrs. Biddle. She would have given a lot to have been spared to hear this; in a way, this chain of life business meant more even to women than it did to men.

But he didn't let Gerald see that he was moved.

“Just been hearing Allus's bit of news,” he said.

“About the baby, you mean?” asked Gerald stupidly.

“That's it,” said Mr. Biddle. “And I hope you have a lot more.”

He said it with a kind of deliberate, comic heartiness but in a sense he meant it. It was Mr. Biddle's grief that he hadn't been the father of a large family himself. Mrs. Biddle had known it, too; the knowledge had made her long illness all the harder to bear.

“Thanks very much,” said Gerald rather awkwardly. “I reckon one's enough to go on with.”

It was a pity, Alice thought, that in front of her father Gerald always seemed to make just the wrong kind of remark; there was more than the hint of a snub in that one. She covered up the breach, however, by suggesting that she should go and get them something to eat.

As soon as she was gone, Mr. Biddle turned to Gerald. He had been doing some pretty rapid thinking.

“I wanted to say a word about the Tadford lot,” he began.

“How do you mean?” Gerald asked.

For some reason or other he always felt on the defensive when talking to Mr. Biddle.

“It was about making Mrs. Sneyd some kind of allowance,” Mr. Biddle explained.

“Don't you worry about that,” said Gerald. “I've got all that in hand. I've done it.”

“Good Lord!” said Mr. Biddle.

There was a pause.

“Is anything the matter?” Gerald asked.

“Only that I've just done the same myself.”

“That's—that's very decent of you,” said Gerald.

“Not at all,” Mr. Biddle replied. “It was a duty.”

“Some people wouldn't have thought so,” Gerald admitted.

“All the same,” Mr. Biddle continued, “there doesn't seem to be much point in both of us doing it.”

“No, I suppose not,” Gerald agreed.

“Point is,” said Mr. Biddle, “which of us ought to stop.”

Gerald lit a cigarette.

“Perhaps we could share it,” he said. He tried to keep his voice level and indifferent.

“What sort of sum were you thinking of?” Mr. Biddle asked, while Mrs. Sneyd's fate hung in the balance.

Gerald looked down at the toe-caps of his shoes.

“About fifteen bob a week,” he said quietly.

Mr. Biddle didn't register any surprise.

“Then suppose you let me do all of it my way,” he suggested. “Suppose you let me make a little present of it to the baby.”

Gerald paused.

“Thanks—thanks very much,” he said. “If you put it that way, I don't see how I can refuse.”

Mr. Biddle, who sealed everything by a handshake, came forward and clasped Gerald's.

Gerald and Alice sat together talking after Mr. Biddle had left.

“He wanted to,” said Gerald. “So I let him. I never asked for it.”

“I'm glad he offered,” Alice answered. “It shows how pleased he is.”

“Funny, isn't it,” Gerald remarked, “both of us fixing on the same sum?”

“I should have thought he might have done a bit more while he was about it,” Alice said. “Fifteen bob a week seems so awfully little.”

“It's forty pounds a year,” Gerald pointed out. “It's quite a lot when you think that he's going to retire soon.”

But Alice was not impressed.

“Daddy retire,” she said. “He won't do that. He's not the retiring sort.”

Gerald did not reply immediately. He was doing sums on the back of an envelope. Then he looked up.

“If your old man goes on stumping up like that,” he said, “we might be able to pick up a small car again. I heard of one the other day. Dirt cheap, too.”

It was February, and Boleyn Avenue under a late fall of snow had assumed a look of more than historic antiquity. For nearly a week the black and white timberings under the resplendent load of white stuff had resembled something out of a Denham film. But now the snow was all melting and the names of the individual houses, Bryn Mawr, Chatsworth, Waikiki, Two Gables, showed through again on the little wooden gates. The road itself was still an inch or two deep in slush; from its appearance it looked more the sort of thing that might have stretched from Omsk to Nijni-Novgorod than from Friern Barnet to Tally-Ho corner.

Life in the rest of the Tudor village was going on very much as usual, but in Two Gables Gerald was sitting in the drawing-room alone. It was Saturday afternoon and he had just eaten the deathly cold meal of ham and potato salad that the woman had prepared for him. The woman—Mrs. Bunsen, he believed her name was—had been Alice's discovery. She had found her the morning before she herself had gone into the nursing home; and in the result, an unseen figure, who was entrusted with the key, came in every day to do for Gerald. So far as he was concerned, it was like being waited upon by invisible djinns.