Winslow got up suddenly, walked to the window, then came back and touched
George on the shoulder with a queerly intimate gesture. “I didn’t know
—definitely—until today. But I’m a bit positive at this
moment…” And after a second pause, standing in front of George, he
stammered unsurely: “I hope I haven’t been so damned tactful that you’re
going to ask me what all this has got to do with you…”
Then George looked up and saw in a flash what it HAD got to
do with
him.
He felt himself growing cold and sick, as if a fist were grasping him by
his insides. Try as one might, he reflected with queer and instant
detachment, the actual blow of such a revelation must be sudden; there was no
way of leading up that could disperse the shock over a period; one second one
did not know, the next second one did know; that was all there was to it, so
that all Winslow’s delicacy had been in a sense wasted. He might just as well
have blurted out the truth right at the beginning.
George knew he must say something to acknowledge that Oxford had managed
to convey with subtlety in an hour what Browdley could have tackled vulgarly
in five minutes. After a long pause, he therefore spoke the slow Browdley
affirmative that, by its tone, could imply resignation as well as
affirmation.
“You mean you DO understand, Boswell?”
“Aye,” George repeated.
“I’m terribly sorry—I could think of no other way than to put it to
you—”
“Of course, man, of course.”
Winslow gripped George’s arm speechlessly, and for several minutes the two
seemed not to know what to say to each other. Presently George mumbled: “Is
that—all—you can tell me—about it? No more details of any
kind? Not that they’d help much, but still—”
“Honestly, Boswell, I’ve told you just about everything I know
myself.”
“I understand… But how about the people on the tour whom she was
supposed to be looking after?”
“Maybe she just left them stranded… It would be crazy and irresponsible
—but no more so than—than—”
“Than anything else. That’s so.”
“I admit the whole thing sounds—must sound to you, in fact—
well, if you were to tell me you simply didn’t believe a word of it,
I’d—”
“Aye, it’s a bit of a facer.”
“But you DO believe it?”
“Reckon I have to, don’t I? After all, you took a good look at that
photograph…”
“Yes, it’s the same. I knew that at once…” Winslow’s voice grew almost
pathetically eager. “And you WILL help me, won’t you—now that you know
how it is? What I had in mind was this—if you agreed— that we go
out there together—quite soon—immediately, in fact —before
there can be any open scandal involving him—you see what I mean?”
“Aye, I see what you mean.”
“And you agree?”
To which George retorted with sudden sharpness: “Why not, for God’s sake?
He may be your son, but she’s my wife too. Don’t you think I’M
interested?”
“Of course. I’m sorry. I’m afraid I—I—”
“Now, now, don’t apologize. Come to that, we’ve neither of us much to
apologize for.”
“I thought we might leave tomorrow—”
“Aye, if we’re going, might as well—”
“Boswell, I can’t tell you how much I—”
“None o’ that, either, man. Let’s get down to some details. I’ll need a
passport.”
And somehow from then on, in spite of what might have been held more
humiliating for George than for Winslow in the situation, it was nevertheless
George who took the leadership, a certain staunch four-squareness in his
make-up easily dominating the other. They both belonged to a world in which
the accomplishment of any suddenly urgent task requires the cancelling or
postponement of other less urgent ones; and now, as they eased themselves
back into chairs, there was nothing left but such routine adjustments.
Winslow pulled out a little black notebook and began crossing off this and
that; George reached for a sheet of paper on his desk and jotted down a few
memoranda. Into the momentary silence there came the distant chiming of the
hour on Browdley church clock, and a newsboy shouting familiarly but
incoherently along Market Street. GOOD news, perhaps, about the international
situation… but it did not seem to matter so much now, so quickly can world
affairs be overshadowed by personal ones in the life of even the most public
man.
Winslow looked up. “You’re optimistic, Boswell? From your own knowledge of
her—do you feel that—that somehow or other you’ll be able to
persuade her to—to—”
George’s face was haggard as he replied: “I wouldn’t call my own knowledge
so very reliable—not after this.”
“Then perhaps you could talk to my son—try to influence
him—”
“Aren’t you the one for that?”
“But a new angle, Boswell—YOUR point of view in the matter— he
may not have realized—”
“All right, all right—no good badgering me.” The first shock had
been succeeded by anger—helpless anger, which Winslow’s concern for his
own son merely exacerbated. “I’m damned if I know what I’ll do—
YET.”
“I’m sorry again.” And the two faced each other, both driven out of
character and somehow aware of it, for it was not like George to be angry,
nor was Winslow accustomed to pleading and apologizing. Presently an odd
smile came over his face. “Badger… BADGER…” he repeated. “It’s a long
time since I heard that word, and you’ll never guess why it makes me
smile.”
“Why?”
“My nickname at school—Badger.”
Then George smiled too, glad of the momentary side-issue. “Because you
looked like one or because you did badger people?”
“Both—possibly.”
They once called me Apple-Pie George in Browdley, but it sort of died
out.”
“Apple-Pie George?”
“Aye… because somebody threw some apple-pie in my face during an
election. The pie stuck but the name didn’t.” He laughed and Winslow laughed,
and it was as if one of several barriers between them was from then on let
down. “Too bad I haven’t that drop of whisky for you,” George continued. “But
how about changing your mind about another cup of tea?”
“Thanks, I will.”
George went to the door and shouted down the corridor to Annie, then came
back and began to search a time-table on his desk. “If we’re both going to
start in the morning, maybe you’d like to spend the night here?”
“That’s very kind, but I think I’d better go back to London as I planned
and join you there tomorrow.”
“Just as you like. There’s a good train at five-eighteen—that still
gives you an hour, so take it easy.”
Winslow seemed now better able to do this, and until the time of leaving
they both relaxed, arranged further details of their meeting the next day,
and talked quite casually on a variety of subjects—some even verging on
the intellectual, though George was not in the best mood for
appreciation.
Then he took Winslow to the train, and only in the final minutes before
its departure did they refer to the personal matter again. Winslow muttered,
leaning out of a first-class compartment: “I—I must say it, Boswell
—I—I really don’t know how to thank you for—for taking all
this in the way you have…”
“What other way was there to take it?”
“I know, I know… but it’s such an extraordinary situation for you to
have been able to come to terms with.”
“Who says I’ve come to terms with it?”
“Yes, but I mean—when I try to imagine myself in your
place—”
“DON’T.” And there was just the ghost of a smile on George’s face to
soften the harsh finality of the word.
“All right… but I can’t help feeling more hopeful already—thanks
to you. Of course the affair’s still incomprehensible to me in many ways
—for instance, to fathom the kind of person who could do such a
thing… of course you know her, but then I know Jeff, and he’s not a fool
—that’s what makes HIS side of it so hard to understand.”
“Oh, maybe not so hard,” George replied. “It’s probably what you said that
you couldn’t find a name for.”
“Infatuation?”
“If you like.” And then, abruptly and without caring for the awkwardness
of time and place, George began to tell something about Livia that he had
never mentioned to anyone before. Perhaps it was the atmosphere of a railway
station that reminded him, for it had happened (he said) at the end of their
honeymoon when they were to catch a night train from a seaside place back to
London. They had spent the last day pottering about the promenade between
showers, and during one of these, while sheltering, they had got into
conversation with a well-dressed and rather distinguished-looking man of
sixty or so. It was one of those chance acquaintanceships that flourish
amazingly without either background or future prospects; almost immediately
the stranger offered to conduct them through an adjacent art gallery which,
though full of very bad canvases, gave him the chance to talk so
fascinatingly about paintings that they thought he must belong to that world
himself until later he talked with equal fascination about literature, music,
and politics. Within an hour they were all chattering together like old
friends, and as evening approached it seemed perfectly natural to accept the
stranger’s invitation to dine. (He had given them his name and told them he
was French, which had further amazed George because of his completely
accentless English.) The two newly-weds were presently entertained in a
manner to which they were wholly unaccustomed and which they could certainly
not have afforded—George smilingly declined to break his temperance
pledge, but ate two dozen oysters with gusto while Livia drank champagne and
laughed a great deal. After dinner it seemed equally natural that the
stranger should drive them back to their hotel in his car and later take them
on to the railway station. The train was already drawn up at the platform, so
the three of them sat together in an otherwise unoccupied compartment with
half an hour to wait. Suddenly George discovered the hotel-room key in his
pocket and, excusing himself, walked down the platform to the station office
to arrange for its return. He wasn’t away more than ten minutes, and when he
got back the three resumed their conversation until the train’s
departure.
About a year later (George went on), Livia exclaimed suddenly, during a
rather trivial quarrel: “That Frenchman sized you up all right—HE said
I oughtn’t ever to have married you!” More startled than angry, George then
asked for an explanation. She wouldn’t give any at first, but on being
pressed said that during the few minutes he had left her alone in the train
with the stranger, the latter had made her an ardent profession of love and
had actually implored her to run off with him.
When George reached this point in the story he commented rather na vely:
“I suppose that COULD happen, with a Frenchman, even though he’d only set
eyes on her a few hours before.”
“Perhaps in that particular way he was unbalanced.”
“No—or at least there wasn’t much other evidence of it. You see,
having once got interested in the man, I’d found out a few things about him
and followed his career. He’d been married and raised a family long before
his meeting with us, and recently he’s become fairly well known as one of the
financial experts to the Peace Conference. You’d recognize the name if I told
you, but I don’t think that would be quite fair because a few months ago he
and his wife came to London on some official mission, and there were
photographs of them in the papers looking as if they’d both had a lifetime of
happiness.”
“Maybe they had.”
A sudden commotion of door-banging and engine-whistling drowned George’s
reply and caused him to repeat, more loudly: “I shouldn’t wonder.”
“There’s one other thing that occurs to me, Boswell, if you’ll forgive my
mentioning it—”
“Of course.”
“HOW DO YOU KNOW THE INCIDENT REALLY HAPPENED?”
The train began to move and George walked with it for a few seconds,
hastily pondering before he answered: “Aye… I can see what you mean…
Funny—I hadn’t ever thought of THAT. And yet I should have, I know.”
His walk accelerated to a scamper; there was now only time to wave and call
out: “Goodbye… see you tomorrow… Goodbye…”
When the train had left he stood for a moment as if watching it out of
sight, but actually watching nothing, seeing nothing. A porter wheeling a
truck along the platform halted and half turned. “‘Night, George.”
“Good night,” responded George mechanically, then pulled himself together
and walked down the ramp to the station yard.
He felt he must at all costs avoid the main streets where
people would
stop him with congratulations on the success of the day’s events. There was a
footpath skirting the edge of the town that meant an extra half-mile but led
unobtrusively towards the far end of Market Street. Nobody went this way at
night except lovers seeking darkness, and darkness alone obscured the
ugliness of the scene—a cindery waste land between town and countryside
and possessing the amenities of neither; it had long been a dream of his to
beautify the whole area with shrubs and lawns, to provide the youth of
Browdley with a more fitting background for its romance. But Browdley youth
seemed not to care, while those in Browdley who were no longer youthful
objected to the cost. Perhaps for the first time in his adult life George now
traversed the waste land without reflecting ruefully upon its continued
existence; he had far more exacting thoughts to assemble, and in truth he
hardly knew where he was. The day that had begun so well was ending in
trouble whose magnitude he had only just begun to explore, and with every
further step came the deepening of a pain that touched him physically as well
as in every other way, so that he felt sick and ill as he stumbled along. He
was appalled by the realization that Livia still had such power to hurt
him.
Sombrely he reached his house and, as he entered it, suddenly felt ALONE.
Which made him think; for he had been just as alone ever since Livia had left
six months before; and if he had not felt it so much, that proved how
hopefully, in his heart, he had looked upon the separation. She would come
back, he must all along have secretly believed; or at least the bare
possibility had been enough to encourage his ever-ready optimism about the
future. Night after night he had entered his empty house, made himself a cup
of tea, spent a last hour with a book or the evening paper, and gone to bed
with the tolerable feeling that anything could be endured provided it might
not last for ever. There was even a half-ascetic sense in which he had found
tolerable his enforced return to bachelorhood, and there was certainly a
peace of mind that he knew her return would disturb—yet how welcome
that disturbance would be! And how insidiously, behind the logic of his
thoughts, he had counted on it!… He was aware of that now, as he entered
his house and felt the alone-ness all-enveloping. Heavily he climbed the
stairs to his bedroom and began to throw a few necessary articles into a
suitcase. Even that he did with an extra pang, for it reminded him of times
when Livia had packed for him to attend meetings or conferences in other
parts of the country; she was an expert packer as well as very particular
about his clothes. And the first thing she did when he returned was to unpack
and repair the ravages of his own carelessness about such things. There was
that odd streak of practicality in her, running parallel to other streaks; so
that she not only loved classical music but could repair the gramophone when
something went wrong with it. And the garden that Winslow had admired was
further evidence; it had been a dumping-ground for waste paper and old tin
cans before she started work on it. Recent months without her attention had
given the weeds a chance, but still her hand was in everything, and the roses
seemed to have come into special bloom that week as if expecting her return.
In a sort of way she had done for that patch of waste land what George
himself had tried to do for Browdley as a whole (yet would never have
bothered to do for his own back garden); but of course she had done it
without any civic sense, and for the simple reason that the place belonged to
her. George sighed as he thought of that, recognizing motives that were so
strong in her and so absent in him; but with the sigh came a wave of
tolerance, as for someone who does simple natural things that are the world’s
curse, doubtless, but since they cannot be changed, how pointless it is to
try. Yet the world MUST be changed… and so George’s mind ran on, facing an
old dilemma as he snapped the locks on his suitcase. All at once the house,
without Livia in it, became unbearable to him; he knew he would not sleep
that night, and as his train left early in the morning he might as well not
even go to bed; he would take a walk, a long walk that would tire him
physically as well as clarify some of the problems in his mind. He went
downstairs and put on a hat, then passed through the partition-doorway that
separated the house from the printing-office. It was the middle of the week,
the slack time between issues; copy for the next one lay littered on his desk
—mostly local affairs—council meetings, church activities,
births, marriages, and funerals. Occasionally he wrote an editorial about
some national or international event, and the one he had composed that
morning faced him from the copy-desk as unfathomably as if someone else had
written it in another language. It read: