PART ONE

 

On the morning of the eleventh of November, 1937, precisely at eleven o’clock, some well-meaning busybody consulted his watch and loudly announced the hour, with the result that all of us in the dining-car felt constrained to put aside drinks and newspapers and spend the two minutes’ silence in rather embarrassed stares at one another or out of the window.  Not that anyone had intended disrespect—merely that in a fast-moving train we knew no rules for correct behaviour and would therefore rather not have behaved at all.  Anyhow, it was during those tense uneasy seconds that I first took notice of the man opposite.  Dark-haired, slim, and austerely good-looking, he was perhaps in his early or middle forties; he wore an air of prosperous distinction that fitted well with his neat but quiet standardized clothes.  I could not guess whether he had originally moved in from a third- or a first-class compartment.  Half a million Englishmen are like that.  Their inconspicuous correctness makes almost a display of concealment.

As he looked out of the window I saw something happen to his eyes— a change from a glance to a gaze and then from a gaze to a glare, a sudden sharpening of focus, as when a person thinks he recognizes someone fleetingly in a crowd.  Meanwhile a lurch of the train spilt coffee on the table between us, providing an excuse for apologies as soon as the two minutes were over; I got in with mine first, but by the time he turned to reply the focus was lost, his look of recognition unsure.  Only the embarrassment remained, and to ease it I made some comment on the moorland scenery, which was indeed sombrely beautiful that morning, for overnight snow lay on the summits, and there was one of them, twin-domed, that seemed to keep pace with the train, moving over the intervening valley like a ghostly camel.  “That’s Mickle,” I said, pointing to it.

Surprisingly he answered:  “Do you know if there’s a lake—quite a small lake—between the peaks?”

Two men at the table across the aisle then intervened with the instant garrulousness of those who overhear a question put to someone else.  They were also, I think, moved by a common desire to talk down an emotional crisis, for the entire dining-car seemed suddenly full of chatter.  One said there WAS such a lake, if you called it a lake, but it was really more of a swamp; and the other said there wasn’t any kind of lake at all, though after heavy rain it might be “a bit soggy” up there, and then the first man agreed that maybe that was so, and presently it turned out that though they were both Derbyshire men, neither had actually climbed Mickle since boyhood.

We listened politely to all this and thanked them, glad to let the matter drop.  Nothing more was said till they left the train at Leicester; then I leaned across the table and said:  “It doesn’t pay to argue with local inhabitants, otherwise I’d have answered your question myself—because I was on top of Mickle yesterday.”

A gleam reappeared in his eyes.  “YOU were?”

“Yes, I’m one of those eccentric people who climb mountains for fun all the year round.”

“So you saw the lake?”

“There wasn’t a lake or a swamp or a sign of either.”

“Ah. . . .”  And the gleam faded.

“You sound disappointed?”

“Well, no—hardly that.  Maybe I was thinking of somewhere else.

I’m afraid I’ve a bad memory.”

“For mountains?”

“For names too.  MICKLE, did you say it was?”  He spoke the word as if he were trying the sound of it.

“That’s the local name.  It isn’t important enough to be on maps.”

He nodded and then, rather deliberately, held up a newspaper throughout a couple of English counties.  The sight of soldiers marching along a Bedfordshire lane gave us our next exchange of remarks—something about Hitler, the European situation, chances of war, and so on.  It led to my asking if he had served in the last war.

“Yes.”

“Then there must be things you wish you HAD forgotten?”

“But I have—even THEM—to some extent.”  He added as if to deflect the subject from himself:  “I imagine you were too young?”

“Too young for the last, but not for the next, the way things are going.”

“Nobody will be either too young or too old for the next.”

Meanwhile men’s voices were uprising further along the car in talk of Ypres and Gallipoli; I called his attention and commented that thousands of other Englishmen were doubtless at that moment reminiscing about their war experiences.  “If you’ve already forgotten yours, you’re probably lucky.”

“I didn’t say I’d forgotten EVERYTHING.”

He then told me a story which I shall summarize as follows:  During the desperate months of trench warfare in France an English staff officer reasoned that if some spy whom the Germans had learned to trust were to give them false details about a big attack, it might have a better chance of success.  The first step was to establish the good faith of such a spy, and this seemed only possible by allowing him, over a considerable period, to supply true information.  Accordingly, during several weeks before the planned offensive, small raiding parties crawled across no-man’s-land at night while German machine-gunners, having been duly tipped off as to time and place, slaughtered them with much precision.  One of these doomed detachments was in charge of a youth who, after enlisting at the beginning of the war, had just begun his first spell in the front line.  Quixotically eager to lead his men to storybook victory, he soon found that his less inspiring task was to accompany a few wounded and dying survivors into a shell-hole so close to the enemy trenches that he could pick up snatches of German conversation.  Knowing the language fairly well, he connected something he heard with something he had previously overheard in his commanding officer’s dugout; so that presently he was able to deduce the whole intrigue of plot and counterplot.  It came to him as an additional shock as he lay there, half drowned in mud, delirious with the pain of a smashed leg, and sick with watching the far greater miseries of his companions.  Before dawn a shell screamed over and burst a few yards away, killing the others and wounding him in the head so that he saw, heard, and could think no more.

“What happened to him afterwards?”

“Oh, he recovered pretty well—except for partial loss of memory. . . .  He’s still alive.  Of course, when you come to think about it logically, the whole thing was as justifiable as any other piece of wartime strategy.  The primary aim is to frustrate the enemy’s knavish tricks.  Anything that does so is the thing to do, even if it seems a bit knavish itself.”

“You say that defensively, as if you had to keep on convincing yourself about it.”

“I wonder if you’re right.”

“I wonder if you’re the survivor who’s still alive?”

He hesitated a moment, then answered with an oblique smile:  “I don’t suppose you’d believe me even if I said no.”  I let it go at that, and after a pause he went on:  “It’s curious to reflect that one’s death was planned by BOTH sides—it gives an extra flavour to the life one managed to sneak away with, as well as a certain irony to the mood in which one wears a decoration.”

“So I should imagine.”

I waited for him to make some further comment but he broke a long silence only to summon the waiter and order a whiskey-and-soda.  “You’ll have one with me?”

“No, thanks.”

“You don’t drink?”

“Not very often in the morning.”

“Neither do I, as a rule.  Matter of fact, I don’t drink much at all.”

I felt that these trivial exchanges were to cover an inner stress of mind he was trying to master.  “Coming back to what you were saying,” I coaxed, eventually, but he interrupted:  “No, let’s NOT come back to it—no use raking over these things.  Besides, everybody’s so bored with the last war and so scared of the next that it’s almost become a social gaffe to bring up the matter at all.”

“Except on one day of the year—which happens to be today.  Then the taboos are lifted.”

“Thanks to the rather theatrical device of the two minutes’ silence?”

“Yes, and ‘thanks’ is right.  Surely we English need some release from the tyranny of the stiff upper lip.”

He smiled into his drink as the waiter set it before him.  “So you think it does no harm—once a year?”

“On the contrary, I think it makes a very healthy purge of our normal—which is to say, our ABNORMAL—national inhibitions.”

Another smile.  “Maybe—if you like psycho-analyst’s jargon.”

“Evidently YOU don’t.”

“Sorry.  If you’re one of them, I apologize.”

“No, I’m just interested in the subject, that’s all.”

“Ever studied it—seriously?”

I said I had, which was true, for I had written several papers on it for the Philosophical Society.  He nodded, then read again for a few score miles.  The train was travelling fast, and when next he looked up it was as if he realized that anything he still had to say must be hurried; we were already streaking past the long rows of suburban back gardens.  He suddenly resumed, with a touch of his earlier eagerness:  “All right then—listen to this—and don’t laugh . . . it may be up your street. . . .  Sometimes I have a feeling of being—if it isn’t too absurd to say such a thing—of being HALF SOMEBODY ELSE.  Some casual little thing—a tune or a scent or a name in a newspaper or a look of something or somebody will remind me, just for a second—and yet I haven’t time to get any grip of what it DOES remind me of—it’s a sort of wisp of memory that can’t be trapped before it fades away. . . .  For instance, when I saw that mountain this morning I felt I’d been there—I almost KNEW I’d been there. . . .  I could see that lake between the summits—why, I’d BATHED in it—there was a slab of rock jutting out like a diving-board—and the day I was there I fell asleep in the shade and woke up in the sun . . . but I suppose I’ve got to believe the whole thing never happened, just because you say there isn’t a lake there at all. . . .  Does all this strike you as the most utter nonsense?”

“By no means.  It’s not an uncommon experience.”

“Oh, it ISN’T?”  He looked slightly dismayed, perhaps robbed of some comfort in finding himself not unique.

“Dunne says it’s due to a half-remembered dream.  You should read his book An Experiment with Time.  He says—this, of course, is condensing his theory very crudely—that dreams DO foretell the future, only by the time they come true, we’ve forgotten them—all except your elusive wisp of memory.”

“So I once dreamed about that mountain?”

“Perhaps.  It’s an interesting theory even if it can’t be proved.

Anyhow, the feeling you have is quite a normal one.”

“I don’t feel that it IS altogether normal, the way I have it.”

“You mean it’s beginning to worry you?”

“Perhaps sometimes—in a way—yes.”  He added with a nervous smile:

“But that’s no reason why I should worry YOU.  I can only plead this one-day-a-year excuse—the purging of the inhibitions, didn’t you call it?  Let’s talk about something else—cricket—the Test Match. . . .  Wonder what will happen to England . . . ?”

“Somehow today that doesn’t sound like cricket talk.”

“I know.  After the silence there ARE overtones . . . but all I really wanted to prove was that I’m not a complete lunatic.”

“Most people have a spot of lunacy in them somewhere.  It’s excusable.”

“Provided they don’t inflict it on strangers.”

“Why not, if you feel you want to?”

“I don’t want to—not consciously.”

“Unconsciously then.  Which makes it worst of all.  Not that in your case it sounds very serious.”

“You don’t think so?  You don’t think these—er—peculiarities of memory—are—er—anything to worry about?”

“Since you ask me, may I be perfectly frank?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t know what your work is, but isn’t it possible you’ve been overdoing things lately—not enough rest—relaxation?”

“I don’t need a psycho-analyst to tell me that.  My doctor does— every time I see him.”

“Then why not take his advice?”

“THIS is why.”  He pulled a small notebook from his vest pocket.  “I happen to be in what is vaguely called public life—which means I’m on a sort of treadmill I can’t get off until it stops—and it won’t stop.”  He turned over the pages.  “Just to show you—a sample day of my existence. . . .  Here, you can read it—it’s typed.”  He added, as I took the book:  “My secretary—very neat.  SHE wouldn’t let me forget anything.”

“But she can’t spell ‘archaeological.’”

“Why does she have to?”  He snatched the book back for scrutiny and I had the feeling he was glad of the excuse to do so and keep it.  “Calderbury Archaeological and Historical Society? . . .  Oh, they’re my constituents—I have to show them round the House—guide-book stuff—an awful bore . . . that’s this afternoon.  This evening I have an Embassy reception; then tomorrow there’s a board meeting, a lunch party, and in the evening I’m guest speaker at a dinner in Cambridge.”

“Doesn’t look as if there’s anything you could cut except possibly tomorrow’s lunch.”

“I expect I’ll do that, anyway—even though it’s at my own house.  There’ll be a crowd of novelists and actors and titled people who’d think me surly because I wouldn’t talk to them half as freely as I’m talking to you now.”

I could believe it.  So far he had made no move towards an exchange of names between us, and I guessed that, on his side, the anonymity had been not only an encouragement to talk, but a temptation to reveal himself almost to the point of self-exhibition.  And there had been a certain impish exhilaration in the way he had allowed me to glance at his engagement book for just those few seconds, as if teasing me with clues to an identity he had neither wish nor intention to disclose.  Men in whom reticence is a part of good form have fantastic ways of occasional escape, and I should have been the last to embarrass an interesting fellow traveller had he not added, as the train began braking into St. Pancras:  “Well, it’s been a pleasant chat.  Some day—who knows?--we might run into each other again.”

Spoken as if he sincerely half meant it, the remark merely emphasized the other half sense in which he did not mean it at all; and this, because I already liked him, irked me to the reply:  “If it’s the Swithin’s Dinner tomorrow night we may as well introduce ourselves now as then, because I’ll be there too.  My name’s Harrison.  I’m on the Reception Committee.”

“Oh, really?”

“And I don’t know what your plans are, but after the show I’d be delighted if you’d come up to my rooms and have some coffee.”

“Thanks,” he muttered with sudden glumness, gathering up his newspapers and brief-case.  Then I suppose he realized it would be pointless, as well as discourteous, to refuse the name which I should inevitably discover so soon.  He saved it for a last unsmiling afterthought as he jumped to the platform.  “My name’s Rainier . . . Charles Rainier.”

 

                    *    *    *    *    *

 

Rainier nodded rather coldly when I met him again the following day.  In his evening clothes and with an impressive array of decorations he looked what he was—a guest of honour about to perform his duties with the touch of apathy that so effectively disguises the British technique of authority.  Not necessarily an aristocratic technique.  I had already looked him up in reference books and found that he was the son of a longish line of manufacturers—no blue blood, no title (I wondered how he had evaded that), a public school of the second rank, Parliamentary membership for a safe Conservative county.  I had also mentioned his name to a few people I knew; the general impression was that he was rich and influential, and that I was lucky to have made such a chance encounter.  He did not, however, belong to the small group of well-known personalities recognizable by the man-in-the-street either in the flesh or in Low cartoons.  On the contrary, he seemed neither to seek nor to attract the popular sort of publicity, nor yet to repel it so markedly as to get in reverse; it was as if he deliberately aimed at being nondescript.  A journalist told me he would be difficult to build up as a newspaper hero because his personality was “centripetal” instead of “centrifugal”; I was not quite certain what this meant, but Who’s Who was less subtle in confiding that his recreations were mountaineering and music.

On the whole I secured a fair amount of information without much real enlightenment; I hoped for more from a second meeting and travelled to Cambridge in a mood of considerable anticipation.  It was the custom of the secretary and committee of the Swithin’s Society to receive guests informally before dining in the College Hall; so we gathered first in the Combination Room, where we made introductions, drank sherry, and exchanged small talk.  It is really hard to know what to say to distinguished people when you first meet them—that is, it is hard to think of talk small enough to be free from presumption.  Rainier, for instance, had lately been in the financial news in connection with a proposed merger of cement companies, a difficult achievement for which negotiations were still proceeding; but it was impossible to say “How is your merger getting on?” as one might say “How are your chrysanthemums?” to a man whom you knew to be an enthusiastic gardener.  Presently, to my relief, some other guests arrived whom I had to attend to, and it was perhaps a quarter of an hour before I saw him edging to me through the crowd.  “Sorry,” he began, “but I’ve got to let you down—awful toothache—where’s the nearest dentist?”  I hustled him out as inconspicuously as possible and at the door of the taxi received his promise to return to the dinner if he felt equal to it.  Then I went back and explained to the company what had happened.  Somehow it did not sound very convincing, and none of us really expected to see him again.  But we did.  An hour later he took the vacant place we had left at the High Table and was just in time to reply to the toast with one of the best after-dinner speeches I had ever heard.  Maybe the escape from physical pain plus the Cambridge atmosphere, with its mingling of time-honoured formality and youthful high spirits, suited a mood in which he began with badinage about toothache and ended with a few graceful compliments to the College and University.  Among other things I remember him recalling that during his undergraduate days he had had an ambition to live at Cambridge all his life, as a don of some sort (laughter), but exactly what sort he hadn’t stayed long enough to decide (laughter), because fate had called him instead to be some sort of business-man politician, but even what sort of THAT he hadn’t yet entirely made up his mind (more laughter). . . .  “So because of this fundamental indecision, I still hope that some day I shall throw off the cares of too many enterprises and seek the tranquillity of a room overlooking a quadrangle and an oak that can be sported against the world.”  (Prolonged laughter in which the speaker joined.)  After he had finished, we all cheered uproariously and then, relaxing, drank and argued and made a night of it in the best Swithin’s tradition; when eventually the affair broke up, it was Rainier himself who asked if my invitation to coffee still held good.

“Why, of course—only I thought maybe after the dentist you’d

feel—“

“My dear boy, don’t ever try to imagine what my feelings are.”

But he smiled in saying it, and I gathered he had forgiven not so much me as himself for having taken part in our train conversation.  A few friends adjourned to my rooms near by, where we sat around and continued discussions informally.  Again he charmed us by his talk, but even more by his easy manners and willingness to laugh and listen; long after most of the good-nights he still lingered chatting, listening, and smoking cigarette after cigarette.  I didn’t know then that he slept badly and liked to stay up late, that he enjoyed young company and jokes and midnight argument, that he had no snobbisms, and that public speaking left him either very dull and listless or very excitable and talkative, according to the audience.  Towards three in the morning, when we found ourselves sole survivors, I suggested more coffee, and at that he sank into an armchair with a sigh of content and put his feet against the mantelpiece as if the place belonged to him—which, in a sense, it did, as to any Swithin’s man since the reign of Elizabeth the Foundress.  “I’ve been in these rooms before—often.  Fellow with the disarming name of Pal had them in my time—‘native of Asia or Africa not of European parentage,’ as the University regulations so tactfully specify.  High-caste Hindoo.  Mathematician—genius in his own line—wonder what he’s doing now?--probably distilling salt out of sea-water or lying down in front of trains or some other blind-alley behaviour.  Used to say he felt algebra emotionally— told me once he couldn’t read through the Binomial Theorem without tears coming into his eyes—the whole concept, he said, was so shatteringly beautiful. . . .  Wish I could have got into his world, somehow or other.  And there are other worlds, too—wish sometimes I could get into any of them—out of my own.”

“What’s so wrong about your own?”

He laughed defensively.  “Now there you’ve got me. . . .  Maybe, as you hinted yesterday, just a matter of overwork.  But it’s true enough that talking to all you young fellows tonight made me feel terribly ancient and envious.”

“Not ENVIOUS, surely?  It’s we who are envious of you—because you’ve made a success of life.  We’re a pretty disillusioned crowd when we stop laughing—we know there won’t be jobs for more than a minority of us unless a war comes to give all of us the kind of job we don’t want.”

He mused over his coffee for a moment and then continued:  “Yes, that’s true—and that’s probably why I feel how different everything is here instead of how much the same—because my Cambridge days WERE different.  The war was just over then, and our side had won, and we all of us thought that winning a great war ought to mean something, either towards making our lives a sort of well-deserved happy-ever-after—a long golden afternoon of declining effort and increasing reward—or else to give us chances to rebuild the world this way or that.  It all depended whether one were tired or eager after the strain.  Most of us were both—tired of the war and everything connected with it, eager to push ahead into something new.  We soon stopped hating the Germans, and just as soon we began to laugh at the idea of anyone caring enough about the horrid past to ask us that famous question on the recruiting posters—‘What did you do in the Great War?’  But even the most cynical of us couldn’t see ahead to a time when the only logical answer to that question would be another one—‘WHICH Great War?’

“There was a room over a fish shop in Petty Cury where some of us met once a week to talk our heads off—we called ourselves the Heretics, but I can’t remember anything said at those meetings half so well as I can remember the smell of fish coming up from the shop below.  And J. M. Keynes was lecturing in the Art School, politely suggesting that Germany mightn’t be able to pay off so many millions in reparations, or was it billions?--in those days one just thought of a number and stuck as many naughts as one fancied after it.  And there were Holland Rose on Napoleon and Pigou on Diminishing Returns, and Bury still explaining the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and one evening Pal and I—sounds sentimental, doesn’t it, Pal and I?--lined up in a queue that stretched half-way round Trinity Great Court to hear a lecture by a fellow named Eddington about some new German fellow named Einstein who had a theory about light bending in the middle—that brought the house down, of course—roars of laughter—just as you heard tonight only more so—good clean undergraduate fun at its best.  And behind us on the wall the portrait of Catholic Mary scowled down on this modern audience that scoffed at science no less than at religion.  Heretics indeed—and laughing heretics!  But my pal Pal didn’t laugh—he was transfixed with a sort of ecstasy about the whole thing.

“I did a good deal of reading on the river, and also at the Orchard at Grantchester—you remember Rupert Brooke’s poem?  Brooke would be fifty today, if he’d lived—think of that. . . .  Still stands the clock at ten to three, but Rupert Brooke is late for tea— confined to his bed with rheumatism or something—that’s what poets get for not dying young.  The woman at the Orchard who served the teas remembered Brooke—she was a grand old chatterbox and once I got to know her she’d talk endlessly about undergraduates and professors past and present—many a yarn, I daresay, that I’ve forgotten since and that nobody else remembered even then. . . .  Trivial talk—just as trivial as the way I’m talking to you now.  Nineteen-twenty, that was—Cambridge full of demobilized old-young men still wearing dyed officers’ overcoats—British warms sent up to Perth and returned chocolate-brown—full of men still apt to go suddenly berserk in the middle of a rag and turn it into a riot, or start whimpering during a thunderstorm—after-effects of shell-shock, you know.  Plenty of us had had that—including myself.”

“As a result of the head injury you mentioned yesterday?”

“I suppose so.”

“You had a pretty bad time?”

“No, I was one of the lucky ones—comparatively, that is.  But when you’re blown up, even if you’re not physically smashed to bits . . .”  He broke off awkwardly.  “I’m sorry.  It isn’t Armistice Day any more.  These confessions are out of place.”

“Not at all.  I’m interested.  It’s so hard for my generation to imagine what it was like.”

“Don’t worry—you’ll learn soon enough.”

“How long was it before you were rescued?”

“Haven’t the faintest idea.  I suppose I was unconscious.”

“But you must have recovered consciousness later?”

“Presumably.  I don’t remember when or where or any of the details.

But I’ve some reason to believe I was taken prisoner.”

“Reason to believe?  That’s a guarded way of putting it.”

“I know—but it happens to be just about all I can say.  You see, I literally don’t remember.  From that moment of being knocked out my memory’s a complete blank till years later when I found myself lying on a park seat in Liverpool.”

“YEARS later?”

“Getting on for three years, but of course I didn’t know that at first.  And it was a wet day, as luck would have it.”  He smiled.  “You don’t find my story very plausible?”

“I might if you’d tell me the whole of it—without gaps.”

“But there ARE gaps—that’s just the trouble.”

“What were you doing in Liverpool?”

“Once again, I haven’t the faintest idea.  I didn’t even know it was Liverpool at first.  The main thing was to know WHO I was— where and when were easy enough to find out later.”

“Do you mean you’d been going by some other name until then?”

“Maybe.  I suppose so.  That’s another of the things I don’t know.  It’s as if . . . well, I’ve sometimes worked it out this way—there were different rooms in my mind, and as soon as the light came on in one it had to go out in the other.”

“Well, what did you do when you realized who you were?”

“What anybody else would do.  I went home.  I felt in my pockets and found I had a small sum in cash, so I bought a new outfit of clothes, took a bath at a hotel, and then went to the railway station.  It was as simple as that, because along with knowing my own name it had come to me without apparent effort that I lived at Stourton, that my father owned the Rainier Steelworks and all the other concerns, that we had a butler named Sheldon, and any other details I cared to recall.  In fact I knew all about myself in a perfectly normal way up to the moment of that shell-burst near Arras in 1917.”

“Your father must have got a very pleasant shock.”

“He was too ill to be allowed it, but the family got one all right.  Of course, since I’d been reported missing in the casualty lists, they’d long since given me up for dead.”

“It’s a very remarkable story.”

“Remarkable’s a well-chosen word.  It doesn’t give you away.”

I thought for a moment; then I said:  “But the Army authorities must have had some record of your coming back to England?”

“None—not under the name of Rainier.”

“But wasn’t there a disc or something you had to wear all the time on active service?”

“There was, but if you’d ever experienced levitation by high explosive you wouldn’t put much faith in a bit of metal tied round your neck.  It’s quite possible there was nothing the Germans could identify me by when they took me prisoner.”

“What makes you think you were ever in Germany at all?”

“Surely if I’d been dragged in by my own men they’d have known who I was?”

“H’m, yes, I suppose so.”

He went on, after a pause:  “I don’t blame you at all if you don’t believe a word of all this.  And it’s just as well you’re the first person I’ve confided in for years—just as well for my reputation as a sober citizen.”  He laughed with self-protective cynicism.  “It’s been a conspiracy of events to make me talk like this—

Armistice Day—our meeting on the train—and then something the dentist said tonight when I came out of his nitrous oxide.”

“The dentist?  What’s he got to do with it?”

“He was making polite conversation while I spat blood.  One of the things he said was, ‘So you were a prisoner in Germany?’ I asked him what gave him that idea, and he answered, ‘Because I notice you have a tooth filled with a substitute metal German dentists were having to use during the latter part of the war’—apparently he’d come across other instances of it.”

We were silent for a moment.  I could hear the first stir of early morning traffic beginning along King’s Parade.  Rainier heard it too, and as at a signal rose to go.  “A strange business, the war.  The English told the Germans exactly where I was, so that the Germans could kill me . . . then the Germans did half kill me, patched me up, and saw that my teeth were properly cared for . . .  after which the English gave me a medal for having displayed what they called ‘conspicuous gallantry in the field.’”  He fingered it on his lapel, adding:  “I wear it at shows like this, along with the Most Noble Order of Something-or-Other which the Greeks gave me for arranging a loan on their currant crop in 1928.”  He began putting on his overcoat, heedless of my assurance that there was no hurry and that I often sat up till dawn myself.  “Please don’t bother to see me out—I’ll take a bath at my hotel and be in time for the first train.”

On his way across the room he paused at my shelves of books and asked what tripos I was taking.

“Economics.  I took the first part of the History last year.”

“Really?  I did the same when I was here.  But where does the psycho-analysis come in?”

“Oh, that’s only a side-line.”

“I see.  Made any plans for when you go down?”

“I’d like to be a journalist.”

He nodded, shaking hands at the door.  “Well, I’ve got a few contacts in Fleet Street.  Write to me when you’re ready for a job—

I might be able to do something for you.”

 

                    *    *    *    *    *

 

Early the following year I took a Ph.D. and began looking around for the post which, it seemed to me then, ought to drop snugly into the lap of any bright young man who had written a two-hundred-page thesis on “The Influence of Voltaire on the English Laissez-Faire Economists.”  Cambridge had deemed this worthy of a doctorate; nobody in Fleet Street, however, held it worth a regular job.  I had a very small private income and could therefore afford to cadge snippets of highbrow reviewing from some of the more illustrious and penurious weeklies, reckoning myself well-paid if the books themselves were expensive and could be sold for more cash to Mr.  Reeves of the Strand; but the newspaper world at that time was full of journalists out of work through amalgamations, and the chance of getting on the staffs of any of the big dailies was not encouraging.  Of course I remembered Rainier’s offer, but apart from my reluctance to bother him, he was abroad—in South America on some financial business.  But by the time he returned I had been disappointed often enough to feel I should take him at his word.  He replied instantly to my note, asking me to lunch the next day.

Thus I made my first trip to Kenmore.  “Near the World’s End pub,” Rainier used to say, and it was the fashion among certain guests to pretend it was at some actual world’s end if not beyond it—the world in this super-sophisticated sense being that part of London within normal taxi range.  I went by bus, which puts you down at the corner of the road with only a hundred yards or so to walk.  I had no idea how notable, not to say notorious, those Kenmore lunches were; indeed, since the invitation had come so promptly, I had beguiled myself with visions of an intimate foursome composed of host and hostess with perhaps a press magnate summoned especially to meet me.  I did not know then that Mrs. Rainier gave lunches for ten or twelve people two or three times a week, enticing every temporary or permanent celebrity to meet other temporary or permanent celebrities at her house, and that these affairs were as frequently joked about as they were infrequently declined.  She functioned, in fact, as a kind of liaison officer between Society and Bohemia, with a Maecenas glance at moneyless but personable young men; and though there is no kind of social service I would less willingly undertake myself, there are few that I respect more when competently performed by someone else.

Searching my memory for impressions of that first arrival, I find I cannot put Mrs. Rainier into the picture at all.  She was there, she must have been; but she was so busy making introductions that she could not have given me more than a few words, and those completely unimportant.  I came a little late and found myself ushered into a drawing-room full of initiates, all talking with great gusto, and all—so it seemed to me (quite baselessly, of course)--resentful of intrusion by a stranger who had neither written a banned novel nor flown somewhere and back in an incredibly short time.  I say this because one of the guests HAD written such a novel, and another HAD made such a flight, and it was my fate to be seated between them while they talked either to their outside neighbours or across me to each other.  There was an empty place at the head of the table, and presently I gathered from general conversation that Rainier often arrived late and sometimes not at all, so that he was never on any account waited for.  I had already written off the whole affair as a rather profitless bore when the guests rose, murmured hasty good-byes, and dashed out to waiting cars and taxis.  (Mrs. Rainier’s lunches were always like that—one-fifteen sharp to two-fifteen sharp and not too much to drink, so that you did not kill your afternoon.)  Just as I was following the crowd, a touch on my arm accompanied the whisper:

“Stay a moment if you aren’t in a hurry.”

Mrs. Rainier led me a few paces back along the hall after the

others had gone.  “I didn’t quite catch your name—“

“Harrison.”

“Oh yes. . . .  You’re a friend of Charles’s—it’s too bad he couldn’t get here—he’s so busy nowadays.”

I murmured something vague, polite, and intended to be reassuring.

“It’s a pity people who can fly half-way round the world haven’t any manners,” she went on, and I answered:  “Well, I suppose there are quite a number of people who have manners and couldn’t fly half-way round the world.”

“But having manners is so much more important,” she countered.  “Tell me . . . what . . . er . . . I mean, are you a . . . let me see . . . HARRISON . . .”

I smiled—suddenly and rather incomprehensibly at ease with her.  “You’re trying to recall a Harrison who’s written something, married somebody, or been somewhere,” I said.  “But it’s a waste of time—I’m not THAT Harrison, even if he exists.  I’m just—if I call myself anything—a journalist.”

“Oh . . . then you must come again when we have really LITERARY parties,” she replied, with an eagerness I thought charming though probably insincere.  I promised I would, with equal eagerness, and every intention of avoiding her really LITERARY parties like the plague.  Then I shook hands, left the house, and on the bus back to Fleet Street suddenly realized that it had been a very good lunch from one point of view.  I had never tasted better eggs Mornay.

 

 

The next afternoon Rainier telephoned, profuse in apologies for his absence from the lunch, and though the matter could hardly have been important to him, I thought I detected a note of sincerity.  “I gather you didn’t have a very good time,” he said, and before I could reply went on:  “I’m not keen on the mob, either, but Helen’s a born hostess—almost as good as an American—she can take in twenty new names all in a row and never make a mistake.”

“She didn’t take in mine.  In fact it was pretty clear she didn’t know me from Adam.”

“My fault, I expect.  Must have forgotten to tell her.”

“So a perfect stranger could walk into your house and get a free lunch?”

“They’re doing that all the time—though most of ‘em have invitations. . . .  Look here, if you’re not busy just now, why not come over to the House for tea?”

I said I would, and took the bus again to Chelsea.  But at Kenmore the maid told me that Rainier hadn’t been in since morning and never by any chance took tea at home; and just then, while we were arguing on the doorstep (I insisting I had been invited less than twenty minutes ago), Mrs. Rainier came up behind me and began to laugh.  “He meant the House of Commons,” she said, passing into the hall.  “You’d better let my car take you there.”

Extraordinary how stupid one can be when one would prefer to impress by being knowledgeable.  I knew quite well that the House of Commons, along with the Stock Exchange and Christ Church, Oxford, was called “the House,” yet somehow, when Rainier had used the phrase over the telephone, I could only think of Kenmore.  Most of the way to Westminster in the almost aggressively unostentatious Daimler (so impersonal you could believe it part of an undertaker’s fleet), I cursed my mistake as a poor recommendation for any kind of job.  I had feared Rainier might be waiting for me, and was relieved when, after sending in my name, I had to kill time for half an hour before a policeman led me through devious passages to the Terrace, where Rainier greeted me warmly.  But his appearance was slightly disconcerting; there was a twitch about his mouth and eyes as he spoke, and a general impression of intense nervous energy in desperate need of relaxation.  During tea he talked about his South American trip, assuming far too modestly that I had read nothing about it in the papers.  Presently the division bell rang and only as we hurried across the Smoking Room did he broach the matter I had really come about.  “I inquired from a good many people after I got your letter, Harrison, but there doesn’t seem to be a thing doing in Fleet Street just now.”

“That was my own experience too.”

“So I wondered if you’d care for a secretary’s job until something else turns up?”

I hadn’t really thought about such a thing, and maybe hesitation revealed my disappointment.

He said, patting my arm:  “Well, think it over, anyway.  I’ve had a girl up to now, but she’s due to get married in a few weeks—time enough to show you the ropes . . . that is, of course, if you feel you’d like the job at all. . . .”

 

                    *    *    *    *    *

 

So I became Rainier’s secretary, and Miss Hobbs showed me the ropes.  It had been flattery to call her a girl.  She was thin, red-faced, middle-aged, and so worshipful of Rainier that no husband could hope to get more than a remnant of any emotion she was capable of; indeed, I felt that the chance of marriage was tempting her more because she feared it might be her last than because she was certain she wanted it.  She hinted this much during our first meeting.  “I almost feel I’m deserting HIM,” she said, and the stress on “him” was revealing.  Presently, showing me how she filed his correspondence, she added:  “I’m so relieved he isn’t going to have another LADY secretary.  I’d be afraid of some awful kind of person coming here and—perhaps—INFLUENCING him.”

I said I didn’t imagine Rainier was the type to be influenced by that kind of woman.

“Oh, but you never know what kind of a woman will influence a man.”

We went on inspecting the filing system.  “The main thing is to see he doesn’t forget his appointments.  He doesn’t do much of his correspondence here—he has another secretary at his City office.  So it won’t matter a great deal if you don’t know shorthand and typewriting.”

I said I did know shorthand and typewriting.

“Well, so much the better, of course.  You’ll find him wonderful to work with—at least I always have, though of course we’re more like old friends than employer and secretary.  I call him Charles, you know, when we’re alone together.  And he always calls me Elsie, whether we’re alone or not.  We’ve been together now for nearly fifteen years, so it’s really quite natural, don’t you think?”

During the next few hours she gave me her own version of the entire Rainier ménage.  “Of course the marriage never has been all it should be—I daresay you can imagine that.  Mrs. Rainier isn’t the right kind of wife for a man like Charles.  He’s so tired of all those parties she gives, especially the house-parties at Stourton— that’s their big place in the country, you know . . . they have no children—that’s another thing, because he’d love children, and I don’t know why they don’t have them, maybe there’s a reason.  When you’ve worked with him for a time you’ll feel how restless he is—I do blame her for THAT—she doesn’t give him a proper home—

Kenmore’s just a hotel with different guests every day.  I do believe there’s only one room he feels really comfortable in, and that’s this one—with his poor little secretary slaving away while he smokes—and he shouldn’t smoke either, so he’s been told. . . .  D’you know, he often locks himself in when he wants to work, because the rest of the house is so full of Goyas and Epsteins and what not that people wander in and out of all the rooms as if it were a museum.  Of course there really are priceless things in it— why not?--he gives her the money to spend, and I suppose she has taste—that is if you LIKE a house that’s like a museum.  I sometimes wonder if Charles does.”

After a pause during which I made no comment she turned to the writing-desk.  “Charles gets hundreds of letters from complete strangers—about one thing and another, you know.  If they’re abusive we take no notice—in fact, whatever they are, HE doesn’t bother much about them, but I’ll let you into a secret—something he doesn’t suspect and never will unless you tell him, and I’m sure you won’t—I always write a little note of thanks to anyone who sends a NICE letter . . . of course I write as if he’d dictated it. . . .  I really think a good secretary SHOULD do little things like that on her own, don’t you?”

I said nothing.

“Really, if he were to ask me to stay, I believe I would, marriage or no marriage—I mean, it would be so hard to refuse him anything— but then, he’s too fine and generous to ask—as soon as he knew about it he urged me not to delay my happiness on his account—just as if his own marriage had brought HIM happiness. . . .  Not that Charles would be an easy man to MAKE happy, even if he HAD got the right woman.  But he isn’t happy NOW—that I DO know—there’s always a look in his eyes as if he were searching for something and couldn’t find it.”

For two or three days Miss Hobbs continued to show me the ropes;

Rainier was away in Lancashire.  During this time Mrs. Rainier gave several lunch parties to which I was not invited, though I was in the house at the time and was even privileged to give assistance to a foreign plenipotentiary who spoke little English and had strayed into the study in search of a humbler apartment.  I could better understand after that why Rainier sometimes locked the door.

Then he returned, having wired me to meet his train at Euston.  As soon as we had found a taxi and were driving out of the station he asked me how I’d been getting on, and added, without waiting for an answer:  “I don’t suppose you’ll find it hard to be as good as your predecessor.”

I said I should certainly hope to be.

“Then you’ve already found out a few of the things I’ve been putting up with?”

“Yes, but not why you HAVE put up with them, for so many years.”

“Pure sentiment, plus the fact that I’ve always had a submerged sympathy with crazy people, and Elsie’s crazy enough.  She used to work at Stourton in my father’s time, then she worked for my brother, and when he naturally wanted to get rid of her there was no one fool enough to take her but me.  I made her my social secretary—because in those days I had no social life and it didn’t matter.  But after I married there were social things for her to do and she did them with a peculiar and fascinating idiocy.  D’you know, I’ve found out she writes long letters to people I’ve never heard of and signs my name to them? . . .  And by the way, did she tell you I’m not happy with my wife?”

“Well—er—“

“Don’t believe it.  My wife and I are the best of friends.  I suppose she also hinted it was a marriage of convenience?”

I felt this was incriminating Miss Hobbs too much and was beginning a non-committal answer when he interrupted:  “Well, THAT happens to be true.  I married her because it seemed to me she’d be just the person to turn a tired business man into a thumping success.  She WAS and she DID. . . .  Can you think of a better reason?”

“There’s generally considered to be ONE better reason.”

He switched the subject suddenly, pointing out of the window to a news placard that proclaimed, in letters a foot high:  “Collapse of England.”  At that moment I felt that one thing Miss Hobbs had said about him WAS true—that look in his eyes as if he were searching for something and couldn’t find it.  He began to talk rapidly and nervously, apropos of the placard:  “Odd to think of some foreigner translating without knowing it’s only about cricket . . . it was something you said about that on a train that first made me want to know you better—but really, in a sense, it doesn’t refer to cricket at all, but to how God-damned sure we are of ourselves—you can’t imagine the same phrase in the streets of Paris or Berlin—it would begin panic or riots or something. . . .  Just think of it—

‘Débâcle de la France’ or ‘Untergang Deutschlands.’ . . .  Impossible . . . but here it means nothing because we don’t believe it could ever happen—and that’s not wishful thinking—it’s neither wishing nor thinking, but a kind of inbreathed illusion. . . .  Reminds me of that last plenary session of the London Conference when it was quite clear there was to be no effective disarmament by anybody and we were all hard at work covering up the failure of civilization’s last hope with a mess of smeary platitudes . . .  Lord, how tired I was, listening to strings of words that meant nothing in any language and even less when you had to wait for an interpreter to turn ‘em into two others . . . and all the time the dusty sunlight fell in slabs over the pink bald heads—godheads from the power entrusted to them and gargoyles from the way I hated ‘em . . . and during all that morning, full of the trapped sunlight and the distant drone of traffic past the Cenotaph, there was only one clean eager thing that happened—young Drexel whispering to me during a tepid outburst of applause:  ‘See the old boy in the third row—fifth from the end—Armenia or Irak or some place . . . but did you ever see anybody more like Harry Tate?’ . . . And by Jove, he WAS like Harry Tate, and Drexel and I lived on it for the rest of the session—lived on it and on our own pathetic fancy that foreigners were strange and at best amusing creatures, rather like music-hall comedians or one’s French master at school—tolerable if they happen to be musicians or dancers or ice-cream sellers—but definitely to be snubbed if they venture on the really serious business of governing the world. . . .  Look—there’s another!”  It was a later placard, proclaiming in letters equally large, “England Now Without Hope.”  Rainier laughed.  “Maybe some fussy archaeologist of the twenty-fifth century—a relative of Macaulay’s sketching New Zealander—will dig this up from a rubbish-heap and say it establishes definite proof that we’d all been well warned in advance . . . .  Has my wife got a party tonight?”

“Yes.”

“What sort of a crowd?”

“Mostly sporting and dramatic, I think.”

“Then I’ll dine and sleep at the Club.  Borotra’s the only dramatic sportsman I care about, and he probably won’t come.”

He put his head out of the cab window, giving the change of address, and also telling the man to drive more slowly.  I could see he was nervously excited, and I was beginning to know by now that when he was in such a mood he talked a good deal in an attempt to race his thoughts—an attempt which usually failed, leaving a litter of unfinished sentences, mixed metaphors, and unpolished epigrams, with here and there some phrase worthy of one of his speeches, but flung off so carelessly that if the hearer did not catch it at the time Rainier himself could never recall it afterwards.  I have tried to give an impression of this kind of talk, but even the most faithful reportage would miss a curious excitement of voice and gesture, the orchestration of some inner emotion turbulent under the surface.  Nor, one felt, would such emotion wear out in fatigue, but rather increase to some extinguishing climax as an electric globe burns brighter before the final snapping of the filament.  It was of this I felt suddenly afraid, and he noticed the anxious look I gave him.

“Sorry to be a chatterer like this, Harrison, but it’s after a bout of public speech-making—I always feel I have to use up the words left over, or perhaps the words I couldn’t use. . . .  I suppose you’d call me a rather good speaker?”

I said I certainly should.

“And you’d guess that it comes easily to me?”

“It always sounds like it.”

He laughed.  “That’s what practice can do.  I LOATHE speaking in public—I’m always secretly afraid I’m going to break down or stammer or something.  Stammering especially . . . of course I never do. . . .  By the way, you remember that mountain in Derbyshire I thought I recognized?”

“Yes.”

“The same sort of thing happened in Lancashire, only it wasn’t quite so romantic.  Just a house in a row.  I was helping Nixon in the Browdley by-election—we held meetings at street corners, then Nixon dragged me round doing the shake-hands and baby-kissing stuff— that’s the way his father got into the Gladstone Parliaments, so Nixon still does it.  I admit I’m pretty cynical about elections— the very look of the voting results, with two rows of figures adding neatly up to a third one, gives me the same itch as a company balance-sheet, exact to the last penny . . . whose penny?  Was there ever a penny? . . .  My own majority in Lythamshire, for instance—precisely twelve—but who WERE the twelve?  Twelve good men and true, maybe, or twelve drunken illiterates . . . ?  Don’t you sometimes feel how FALSE it all is, and how falsely reassuring— this nineteenth-century gloss of statistical accuracy, as if the flood tide of history could run in rivulets tidy enough for garden irrigation, safe enough for a million taps in suburban bathrooms . . . but when the storm does come, who’ll give a damn if the rows of little figures still add up—who’ll care if the sums are all wrong provided one man knows a right answer?”

“You were talking about a house.”

“Oh yes. . . .  Just an ordinary four-room working-man’s house— tens of thousands like it.  A cold day, and as we stood waiting at the door I could see a great yellow glow of firelight behind the lace curtains of the parlour window.  Nothing extraordinary in that, either, and yet . . . it’s hard to describe the feelings I had, as if that house were waiting for me—a welcome—out of the wintry dusk and into the warm firelight . . . a welcome home.”

His eyes were full of eagerness, and I said, trying to hasten his story before we reached the end of the journey:  “Did the feeling disappear when a stranger answered the door?”

“I’m coming to that. . . .  There were three of us, Nixon, myself, and Ransome, the local party secretary, nice little man.  We knocked and knocked and nobody came.  Then I, saw Ransome fumbling in his pocket.  ‘Can’t think where she is,’ he said, ‘but I expect she’ll be back in a jiffy.’  I realized then that it was HIS house, and that we were being invited in.  He found a key, unlocked the door, and we entered.  No lobby or hall—straight into the warmth and firelight.  There was a kettle steaming on the hob, cups and saucers set out, plates of bread and butter.  Everything spotlessly neat, furniture that shone, a clock ticking loudly somewhere.  It was all so beautiful, this warm small room.  The man kept talking about his wife—how proud she’d been at the thought of having two such men as Nixon and myself to tea in her home—such an honour— she’d never forget it—and how embarrassed she’d be when she came back and found us already there.  ‘I’ll bet she’s gone round the corner for a Dundee cake,’ he laughed.  But as time passed he began to be a bit embarrassed himself, and presently suggested having tea ourselves without waiting for his wife.  So we did—I sat in a rocking-chair by the fireside, and the flames were still leaping up so brightly we didn’t need any other light, even though it was quite dark outside by the time we left.”

“So you never saw his wife at all?”

“No, she didn’t come back in time. . . .  But that room—the feeling I had in it—of comfort, of being WANTED there . . . It’s just another thing of the same kind.  That part of my life—well, you remember what I told you at Cambridge.”

“Why do you worry about it so much?”

“I wouldn’t if it would leave me alone.  But it keeps on teasing me— with clues.  So what can I do?”

“I still say—more rest and less work.”

He patted my arm.  “It’s good to know I can talk to you whenever I’m in this mood.  Watson to my Sherlock, eh?  Or perhaps that’s not much of a compliment?”

“Not to yourself, anyhow.  Watson was at least an HONEST idiot.”

He smiled.  “That must be the Higher Criticism.  Of course you were born too late to feel as I did—Sherlock’s in Baker Street, all’s right with the world.”

“Since we now realize that most things are wrong with the world—“

“I know—that was part of the illusion.  I remember Sheldon taking me on a trip to London when I was six or seven years old . . .  The first place I asked to see was Baker Street, and being a sympathetic fellow he didn’t tell me that the stories were just stories.  We walked gravely along the pavement one afternoon early in the century—a small boy and his father’s butler—looking up at the tall houses with respectful hero worship.  Distant thrones might totter, anarchists might throw bombs, a few lesser breeds might behave provokingly in odd corners of the world, but when all was said and done, there was nothing to fear while the stately Holmes of England, doped and dressing-gowned for action, readied his wits for the final count with Moriarty!  And who the deuce WAS this Moriarty?  Why, just a big-shot crook whom the honest idiot romanticized in order to build up his hero’s reputation!  Nothing but a middle-aged stoop-shouldered Raffles!  And that, mind you, was the worst our fathers’ world could imagine when it talked about Underground Forces and Powers of Evil! . . .  Ah, well, happy days.  You’d better keep the cab to go home in.  Good night!”

 

                    *    *    *    *    *

 

I hadn’t taken Rainier’s problem very seriously till then.  For one thing, loss of memory is normal.  We all forget things, and are equally likely to be reminded of them long after we think they have been forgotten for good.  Often, too, the reminder is faint enough to be no more than a clue which we fail to follow up because the matter does not seem important.  The unusual part of Rainier’s experience was that he DID think it important, so that from something merely puzzling it was already on the way to becoming an obsession.

Some part of his story could doubtless be verified, and I already felt enough curiosity to make the attempt.  I said nothing to him, but the next time the chance occurred I led Miss Hobbs to talk in a general way about her employer’s early life and career.  She was more than willing—except for a continual tendency to drift into later and somewhat disparaging gossip about Mrs. Rainier.  “Wasn’t he in the war?” I began, putting the leading question that anyone might have asked.

“Oh yes.  He got a medal—didn’t you know that?  And the strange

thing was—they thought he was dead.  So it was given post—post—“

“Posthumously.”

“Yes, that’s it.  But you couldn’t blame them, because after the attack he was reported missing and nothing was heard about him till— oh, it was years later, when he suddenly arrived home without any warning.  And then it turned out he’d lost his memory.”

“Seems to me the sort of story for headlines.”

“You mean in the papers?  Oh no, it was kept out—the family didn’t want any publicity.”

“That wouldn’t have been enough reason for most of the journalists I know.”

“Ah, but Sheldon arranged it.”

“Sheldon?”

“He’s the butler at Stourton.  You haven’t been to Stourton yet, have you?”

“No.”

“It’s really a marvellous place.”

“Sheldon sounds a marvellous butler if he knows how to stop journalists from getting a good story and editors from printing it.”

“Well, he IS rather marvellous, and I don’t suppose there’s much he doesn’t know—not about the family, anyhow.  He really rules Stourton—lives there all the year round, even during the winter when the family never go out of town.  I really owe him a good deal—

I was only just a local girl in those days, I used to do bookkeeping and secretarial work at the house, and that brought me into contact with Sheldon constantly.”  She added, rather coyly:

“You know—or perhaps you don’t know—how difficult it can be for a girl employed in a big house if the butler isn’t all he should be.”

I said I could imagine it.

“Sheldon was always a gentleman.  Never a word—or a gesture—that anyone could object to.”

I said nothing.

“And later, when Mr. Charles took over Stourton, Sheldon personally asked him if he could do anything for me, otherwise I don’t suppose I’d be here.”

“I see. . . .  But coming back to the time when Mr. Rainier—OUR Mr. Rainier, I mean—suddenly returned to Stourton.  Were you working there then?”

“Not JUST then.  It was Christmas and as old Mr. Rainier was ill they cancelled the usual parties and gave me a holiday.  It was parties that always kept me busy—writing out invitations and place cards and things.”

“What was Mr. Rainier like when he returned?”

“I didn’t see him till a good while afterwards, but I do know there was a lot of trouble about it, one way and another—Sheldon would never tell us half that went on.”

So there the trail ended; she didn’t know much of what had actually happened; and since then a great many years had passed, old Mr.  Rainier was dead, and probably the same fate had overtaken most of the personnel from whom any elucidating inquiries might have been made at the time.  Perhaps there were traces somewhere, a dossier preserved in forgotten files, memoranda hidden away in official archives; but there seemed small chance of unearthing them, or even of finding if they existed at all.

“Quite a mystery,” I commented.  “Didn’t Mr. Rainier himself ever try to solve it?”

“You mean, did he try to remember things?”

“Well, more than that—didn’t he ever consult anybody—specialists, psycho-analysts, or anyone?”

“You don’t know him, or you wouldn’t ask that.  The last thing he’d ever do is to go to anybody and tell them things about himself.  The only person he ever did talk to was someone he’d known at Cambridge, some professor—Freeman, I think his name was.”

“You mean DR. Freeman—THE Dr. Freeman?”

“Maybe he was a doctor.”

“A tall white-haired man with a stoop?”

“Yes, that was him—he used to visit Charles a good deal before the marriage.  You know him?”

“Slightly.  Why not since the marriage?”

“He didn’t like parties, and I don’t think he liked Mrs. Rainier for beginning all that sort of life for Charles.  She’s very ambitious, you know.  People say she’ll make him Prime Minister before she’s finished.”

I laughed—having heard similar remarks myself, followed as a rule by some ribald comment on her party-giving technique.  Miss Hobbs added:  “Not that she isn’t a good hostess—that I WILL say.”

Since the point was raised, it seemed to me that Mrs. Rainier was TOO good, and that for this reason she might miss the secret English bull’s-eye that can only be hit by guns sighted to a 97 or 98 per cent degree of accuracy.  Anything more than that, even if achievable, is dangerous in England, because English people mistrust perfection, regarding it in manners as the stigma of foreigners, just as they suspect it in teeth to be the product of dentistry.  All this, of course, I did not discuss with Miss Hobbs.

I saw Freeman a few days later.  He had been a rather impressive figure at Cambridge, in my time as well as Rainier’s, but had recently retired to live at Richmond with an unmarried sister.  It was probably a lonely life, and he seemed glad to hear my voice on the telephone and to accept an invitation to dinner.  I had known him fairly well, since he had long been president of the Philosophical Society and I in my last year its vice-president, and though he had written several standard works on psychology he was not psychologist enough to suspect an ulterior motive behind my apparent eagerness to look him up and talk over old times.

We met at Boulestin’s that same evening.

After waiting patiently till the inevitable question as to what I was doing with myself nowadays, I said that I had become Rainier’s secretary.

“Ah, Rainier—yes,” he muttered, as if raking over memories.  And he added, with a thin cackle:  “Well, history won’t repeat itself.”

“How do you mean?”

“He married one of them.”

“You mean MRS. Rainier?  You mean she was his secretary before Miss Hobbs?”

“Oh, the Hobbs woman was with him all the time—a family heirloom.  Must be forty now, if she’s a day.  What did she do at last— retire?”

“She’s leaving to get married.”

“Heavens—I never thought her turn would come.  Who’s the lucky man? . . .  But I can answer that myself—Rainier is, to get rid of her.”

“You know her then?”

“Hardly at all, I’m glad to say.  But she used to write me the most ridiculous notes whenever Rainier made an appointment to see me.  They were supposed to be from him, but I found out quite casually afterwards that she forged his name to ‘em. . . .  ABSURD notes—it interested me, as a psychologist, that she should have thought them appropriate.”

“But to come back to Mrs. Rainier—“

“Oh, she worked in his CITY office, I think.  A different dynasty.

These great magnates have platoons of secretaries.”

“Queer Miss Hobbs never mentioned it.  I should have thought it was something she’d have liked to drive home.”

“On a point of psychology I think you’re wrong.  She’d prefer to conceal the fact that though they were both, so to say, equal at the starting-post, the other woman won.”

“Maybe.  I gather you know Rainier rather well?”

“I used to.  You see, I began with the initial advantage of meeting him anonymously.”

“I’m not quite clear what you mean.”

He expanded over a further glass of brandy.  “Rainier’s a peculiar fellow.  He has a curious fear of his own identity.  He lets you get to know him best when he doesn’t think you know who he is. . . .  It’s an interesting kink, psychologically.  I first met him through Werneth, who was his tutor at St. Swithin’s.  Apparently he told Werneth about—er—well, perhaps I ought not to discuss it, but it was something interesting to me—as a psychologist—but not particularly to Werneth, who was a mere historian.”  Again the cackle.  “Anyhow, Werneth could only get his permission to pass it on to me by promising not to divulge his name, and on hearing what it was all about I was so interested that we actually arranged a meeting—again anonymously—I wasn’t supposed to know who he was. . . .  But I’ll let you into a, secret—Werneth HAD told me, privately, beforehand—unscrupulous fellow, Werneth.  And then one morning several months later I couldn’t find my bicycle outside the college gate after a lecture, but in its place was a similar model with the name ‘Charles Rainier’ on it.  I made his mistake an excuse to call on him—and I must say—after the opening embarrassment—we very soon became friends.”  He added:  “And now, of course, I know what you’re going to ask me, but being less unscrupulous than Werneth I can’t tell you.”

“I don’t think you need, because I already know about Rainier’s—er— peculiarity.  I suppose it WAS that.”

“Suppose you tell me first of all what THAT is.”

“The blank patch in his life that he can’t remember.”

“A rather inexact description.”

“No doubt, and that’s why I’d very much like to hear your own.”

He smiled.  “It was an unusual case—but I’ve heard of several similar ones.  They’re recorded, you know, in technical journals.  Rainier had—if one might so put it—certain threads of recollection about the blank period, though they were so faint as to be almost non-existent at first.  After he left Cambridge we didn’t meet again for ten years—by that time the threads had become a little less faint.  It was my aim, when I came to know Rainier again after the ten-year interval, to sort out those threads, to disentangle them—to expand them, as it were, into a complete corpus of memory.”

“I understand.  But you didn’t succeed.”

“Are you asking me that or telling me?”

“Both, in a way.”

He said, smiling:  “My expectation all along had been that his full memory would eventually return—a little bit here, a little bit there—till finally, like a key turning in a lock, or like the last few pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, the whole thing would slip into position.  But I gather that it hasn’t yet happened?”

“The bits are still being assembled, but nowhere near to completion.”

“Tell me, Harrison, if I may ask the question—why are you taking such a keen interest in this matter?  Hardly within the scope of secretarial duties. . . .  Or IS it?”

“I like him and I hate to see him bothered by it as he still is.

That’s the only reason.”

“A good one.”

“Now YOU tell ME something—have you any theories about the blank patch?”

“Theories?  I can only guess it was a pretty bad time.  He was injured, if I remember rightly, just above the left parietal bone of the . . .”  He went off into a medical survey that conveyed nothing to me.  “It was an injury that would require operative treatment—perhaps a series of operations.  That’s why it’s perhaps a pity that he still bothers, as you say he does.  Even if complete recollection were to return to him now, it would probably be only of pain, unhappiness, boredom.”

“On the other hand, even such memories might be better than an increasing obsession about the loss of them?”

“Possibly.”

We were silent for a time after that.  Presently I said:  “You know he was taken prisoner by the Germans?”

“Oh yes.  But German or English—all hospitals are unhappy places, especially for a man who can’t tell anyone who he is.  I imagine the Germans treated him namelessly or by error under someone else’s name, and eventually returned him to England under the same condition.  Then there would be other hospitals in England, full of experiences nobody would wish to remember.  There were a great many shell-shock and loss-of-memory cases that took years—some of them are still taking years, God help them.  The whole thing happened so long ago I don’t see how we can ever expect to know all the details.  Tell me YOUR theory, if you have one.”

“That’s the trouble, I haven’t.”

“The real trouble, of course, is Mrs. Rainier.”

Curious, the way people sooner or later led the talk to her.  Freeman, reticent at first about a former friend, saw no reason now to conceal his opinion of a former friend’s wife.  “She’s an unusual sort of woman, Harrison.”

“Well, he’s not so usual, either.”

“They get on well together?  Is that your impression?”

I answered guardedly:  “I think she makes a good politician’s wife.”

“And I suppose, by the same token, you think he makes a good politician?”

“He has some of the attributes.  Clever speaker and a good way with people.”

“When he’s in the mood.  He isn’t always. . . .  Did you ever hear about the Bridgelow Antiquarian Dinner?”

I shook my head.

“It was—oh, several years ago.  He was supposed to be helping the candidate, and during the campaign we asked him to our annual beano— strictly non-party—just a semi-learned society, with the accent on the semi.  I was president at the time, and Rainier was next to me at the table.  Half-way through his speech, which began pretty well, there was a bit of a disturbance caused by old General Wych-Furlough fumbling in late and apologizing—his car had broken down or something.  He talked rather loudly, like most deaf people, and of course it WAS annoying to a speaker, but the whole incident was over in a minute, most people would have passed it off.  Rainier, however, seemed to freeze up suddenly, couldn’t conceal the way he felt about it, finished his speech almost immediately and left the table rather sooner than he decently could.  I went out with him for a moment, told him frankly I thought his behaviour had been rather childish—surely age and infirmity entitled people to some latitude—it wasn’t as if there’d been any intentional discourtesy.  He said then, in a rather panicky way:  ‘It wasn’t that—it was something in the fellow himself—something chemical, maybe, in the way we react to each other.’  I thought his explanation even more peculiar than his behaviour.”

I checked myself from commenting, and Freeman, noticing it, said:

“Go on—what was it you were going to ask?”

“I was just wondering—is it possible he had one of those submerged memories—of having met the General before?”

“I thought of that later on, but it didn’t seem likely they could ever have met.  He didn’t even know the General’s name.  And if they HAD met before, I still can’t think of any reason for antagonism—the old boy was just a fussy, simple-minded, stupid fellow with a distinguished military career and a repertoire of exceptionally dull stories about hunting.”

“Was Mrs. Rainier at the dinner?”

“No, she wouldn’t come to anything I was president of—that’s very certain.”  He added, as if glad to get back to the subject:

“A strange woman.  I’m not sure I altogether trust her—and that isn’t because I don’t particularly like her.  It’s something deeper.  She always seems to me to be hiding something.  I suppose it’s part of my job to have these psychic feelings about people. . . .  You know about her famous parties?”

“Who doesn’t?  I’ve sampled them.”

“Mind you, let’s be fair.  She’s not a snob in the ordinary sense—

I mean about birth or money.  Of course it would be too ridiculous if she were—since she began with neither herself.  But what exactly IS it that she goes for?  Brains?  Celebrity?  Notoriety?  I went to Kenmore once, and I must admit she plays the game loathsomely well.  But all this relentless celebrity-hunting and party-giving doesn’t make a home—and I’m damned if I know what it DOES make.”

“Some people say it’s made Rainier’s career.”

“I’ve heard that too—from people who don’t like him.  The people who don’t like HER will tell you her methods have actually held him back.  Still, I don’t deny she’s a good mate for a man of affairs.  The real point is whether Rainier’s life ought to be cluttered up with business and politics at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Simply that I’ve always considered him—abstractly—one of the rare spirits of our time, so that success of the kind he has attained and may yet attain becomes a detestable self-betrayal.”

“So you think the marriage was a mistake?”

“Not at all, if he felt he had to have that sort of life.”

“What other sort of life COULD he have had?”

“Out of my province to say.  I’m talking about the QUALITY of the man, not his opportunities.  I suppose it wasn’t his fault his father left him a small industrial empire to look after—steelworks and newspapers and interlocking holding companies and what not—all more or less bankrupt, though people didn’t know it at the time.  Even the seat in Parliament was a sort of family inheritance he had to take over.”

“Like Miss Hobbs?”

“Yes, like HER—just as idiotic but not so loyal.  He only scraped in by twelve votes last time. . . .  But since you mention the Hobbs woman, let me assure you she’s a modernistic jewel compared with the old butler they keep at Stourton . . . Sheldon, I think his name is.”

“You don’t like him either?”

Freeman shrugged.  “It isn’t that I mind his eccentric impertinences—Scottish servants are like that and one takes it from them—even Queen Victoria had to.  What makes me really uncomfortable is the same feeling I have about Mrs. Rainier—that he’s hiding something.”

“Maybe they’re hiding something together?”

His smile was of another kind and did not answer mine.  “You haven’t been to Stourton yet, have you?  It’s an amazing hiding-place for anything they’ve got to hide.”

 

 

Miss Hobbs left during the week that followed and I settled down to the task of becoming her successor.  It was not quite as simple as she had led me to believe.  Rainier’s interests were manifold; besides holding directorships of important companies he was a member of many societies and organizations—all this, of course, on top of his political work.  I had plenty to do, and he expected it done quickly and efficiently.  We had little chance to talk on other than business matters, and for the time he seemed to have dropped completely the preoccupation that had begun to interest me.  One thing happened that I had not after Freeman’s remarks anticipated: Mrs. Rainier invited me to another of her lunch parties.  This time it was really LITERARY, as she had promised (Maurice Baring, Charles Morgan, Louis Bromfield, Henry Bernstein, Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, H. G. Wells, and a pale young man whose name I have forgotten who wrote highbrow detective novels whose names I have also forgotten), and despite initial misgivings I found the whole affair quite pleasant.  Once more there was the empty chair for Rainier, if he should turn up, but he failed to, and nobody seemed surprised.  Again also Mrs. Rainier asked me to stay a moment after the others had gone, but now the request was less remarkable, since I had work in the same house.  “Can you spare time to look at my garden?” she said, leading me to the back of the hall where the French windows were open.

We sauntered across the lawn to a door in the high surrounding wall; unlocking it, she watched my face as I showed surprise, for within was a second garden, not much bigger than a large room, but so enclosed by trees and carpeted with flowers that one could hardly have believed it to exist in the middle of a London borough.  “It’s a secret,” she confided.  “I only show it to close friends— or to those who I hope are going to be.”

I murmured something polite that might equally have referred to her last remark or to the garden itself.

“You see,” she went on, “I never cared for Miss Hobbs.  I don’t think Charles did, either, but he was too kind to get rid of her.  If she told you things against me, and I’m sure she did, just suspend judgment till you know me better.”

I went on saying polite things.

“You and Charles first met on a train, didn’t you?”  She stooped to a vase.  “One of those chance meetings—I’ve had them myself—when you tell all your secrets to a perfect stranger because you’re certain you’ll never meet him again. . . .  Something like that?”

I said guardedly:  “I don’t know about secrets, but we certainly found it easy to talk.”

“And you like your work here?”

“Very much.”

“I’m glad.  It will be wonderful if you can really help Charles— apart from just office work.  He needs the right sort of companionship sometimes—he has difficult moods, you know.  Or perhaps you don’t know—YET.  Anyhow, the thing to do is not to take him too seriously when he has them.”  I waited for her to continue, knowing that she too was waiting for me; even if I were willing to suspend judgment I was also, like Freeman, unwilling to trust her completely.  She suddenly smiled.  “Well, now you know MY secret.  Keep it for me.”  And she added, leading me back through the doorway:  “THIS, I mean.  It used to be the place where the gardener threw all the rubbish.  I planned it myself—I do most of the work here still.  Charles never looks in—hasn’t time.  Hasn’t time for my lunches either—not that I mind that so much, but I do wish—sometimes—I’d find him sitting here—quietly—alone—like men you sometimes see outside their cottages in the country—at peace.  He never is, you know.”

I felt she would like to tell me something if I already knew enough to make it advisable, but she wasn’t certain I did know, so she hesitated.  I asked her why she thought he was never at peace.

“For one thing, he’s so terribly overworked.”

“Yes, I know, but apart from that?”

“Oh, well, it’s hard for anyone to feel at peace these days.  Don’t you think so?”

“What about the men you sometimes see outside their cottages in the country?”

She smiled, suddenly on the defensive, sure now that I didn’t know as much as she had half suspected, and for that reason anxious not to give me any further opening.  “They’re probably not really at peace at all—just too old and tired to worry about things any more.”  As we entered the house the social manner closed about her like the fall of a curtain.  “Now that we’re becoming friends you must come to Stourton for week-ends as soon as we open it up.  There’s a REAL secret garden there—I mean one that everybody knows about.”

 

                    *    *    *    *    *

 

I hadn’t expected Stourton to be quite so overwhelming.  We drove there a few weeks later in four Daimlers—“like a high-speed funeral,” said Rainier, who was in a macabre mood altogether; three of them packed with luggage and servants from Kenmore, the first one containing ourselves and an elegant young man named Woburn, who was coming to catalogue the Stourton library.  Most guests would arrive the following day—perhaps twenty-odd: politicians, peers, actors, novelists, crack tennis-players, celebrities of all kinds.  It was a warm morning and as we drove through Reading and Newbury the sun broke through the haze and kindled the full splendour of an English summer, with its ever-changing greens under a dappled sky.

Presently we turned off the main road and curved for a mile between high hedges; then suddenly, in a distant fold of the downs, a vision in cream-coloured stone broke through heavy parkland trees.  Woburn, who had not seen it before, joined me in a little gasp of admiration.  “You were intended to do that,” said Rainier.  “In fact the architect and road-builder conspired about it two hundred years ago.  My brother Julian, who fancied himself as a phrase-maker, once called it ‘a stucco prima donna making a stage entrance.’  Now, you see, it goes out of sight.”  Intervening upland obscured the house for another mile or so until, at a new turn of the road, it reappeared so much more intimately that one could only give it a nod of respectful recognition.  “But here we are again, and for the rest of the way we simply have to give it all the stars in Baedeker.”  We swooped into the final half-mile stretch that ended in a wide Palladian portico.  “A house like this is like some kinds of women—too expensive even to cast off.  Of course what you really pay for isn’t the thing itself, but the illusion—the sense of ownership, the intangible Great I Am.  Nowadays a bankrupt illusion—the farms don’t pay, the hills that belong to me are just as free for anyone else to roam over, the whole idea of POSSESSING this place is just a legal fiction entitling me to pay bills.  I think it would sooner possess me, if I’d let it. . . .  Hello, Sheldon.”

Sheldon was waiting on the top step to welcome us.  Neither plump nor cadaverous, obsequious nor pompous, he shook the hand that Rainier offered him, bowed to Mrs. Rainier, and gave Woburn and myself a faintly appraising scrutiny until Rainier made the introductions.  Then he said:  “Well, Mr. Harrison, if this is your first visit to Stourton it probably won’t be your last.  Mr.  Rainier keeps his secretaries a long time.”  The remark struck me as rather offhandedly familiar as well as a somewhat gauche reminder of Mrs. Rainier’s former position, but there was a general laugh, from which I gathered that Sheldon enjoyed privileges of this kind, perhaps on account of age.  He was certainly a well-preserved antiquity, with an air of serene yet somehow guarded responsibility; in different clothes he might have looked a cabinet minister, in contradistinction to those cabinet ministers who, even in their own clothes, look like butlers.

By the time I had been shown to my room in the East Wing (Stourton, like every grand house of its period, had to have wings) the sun was almost down over the rim of the hills and the slow magic of a summer twilight was beginning to unfold; through my window the vista of formal gardens and distant skyline was entrancingly beautiful.  I was admiring it as Rainier entered with Woburn, whom he had been showing round the library.  “I hope you don’t object to views,” he said.  “I know it’s the latest artistic fad to consider them rather vulgar.  I put in these large windows myself, against all the advice of architects who said this sort of house shouldn’t have them.  Otherwise, except for a few extra bathrooms, I haven’t touched the place.”

Behind the two of them stood Sheldon, announcing that our baths were ready; Rainier turned then and led us across the corridor into an extraordinary room of Moorish design embellished with fluted columns and Arabic gargoyles and a high domed ceiling.  He watched our faces and seemed to derive a certain satisfaction.  “My father built this,” he explained, “as what he called an extra billiard-room.  He made the bulk of his fortune during the Edwardian era, when the social hallmark was to have a billiard-room, and during the last year of the war, when money was coming in so fast he didn’t know what to do with it, he conceived the idea of an EXTRA billiard-room as a symbol of utter superfluity. . . .  At least, that’s the only theory I can imagine.  I don’t think a single game of billiards was ever played in it, and I turned it into a bathhouse without any feeling of impiety.”  We passed through the room, which was furnished with divans and sun-ray lamps, into a further apartment containing a row of small but quite modern cubicle bathrooms, three of which Sheldon was already preparing for our use.  “There were only four bathrooms in the entire house before I made these,” Rainier continued.  “One was in the servants’ quarters and Sheldon had actually paid for it out of his own pocket.  That gives you some idea of the times, even as late as 1919.”  He added, after a pause and another glance at our faces:

“And of my father too—I know that’s what you’re thinking.  But it wasn’t really niggardliness.  He gave a great deal during his lifetime to the more orthodox charities.  What he mostly suffered from were a few strikingly wrong notions.  One of them was doubtless that servants didn’t need bathrooms.  Another was that he was really an English gentleman.  And another was that the remaining saga of mankind would be largely a matter of tidying up the jungle and making the whole earth a well-administered English colony under a Liberal government.  I think when the war ended he assumed that’s what was going to be done to Germany.”

“Maybe it should have been,” said Woburn quietly.  He had done little but smile until then, and I noticed Rainier give him a look of sharpened interest.  Then we went into our respective cubicles, but the walls were only neck-high and conversation rose easily with the steam.  I could hear Rainier and Woburn veering on to a political argument, while in my own cubicle Sheldon, arranging towels, saw me notice the slightly brown colour of the water as it filled the tub.  “Won’t harm you,” he remarked.  “We tell some of our guests it’s due to mineral springs that are good for rheumatism, but as you’re one of the family I’ll let you into a family secret—IT’S JUST THE RUST IN THE PIPES.”

He was going out chuckling when I retorted, quite without secondary meaning:  “I hope all the family secrets are as innocent.”

The chuckle ended sharply as he turned on me a look that evidently reassured him, for his mouth slanted into a slow smile as he resumed his exit.  “I trust you will find them so, Mr. Harrison.”

Meanwhile Rainier had come back to the subject of Stourton, and I heard him saying to Woburn:  “My father bought it after it had bankrupted the Westondales, and the Westondales inherited it from ancestors who had built it out of profits from the African slave trade.  This made my father’s purchase almost appropriate, since my great-great-grandfather made his pile out of the first steam-driven cotton mills in Lancashire.  You may imagine Stourton, therefore, peopled with the ghosts of Negroes and little children.”

 

 

A short while later we dressed and dined in the vast room that would have seated fifty with ease, instead of our four selves.  Mrs. Rainier, I noticed, was particularly gracious to Woburn, whom she probably felt to be shy in surroundings of such unaccustomed grandeur.  There was talk of how he would set about the library-cataloguing job; most of the books, it appeared, had been taken over from the Westondales along with the house.  “My father was not a great reader, but he had a curious knack of reading the right things.  One day he read that some pine forests in Hampshire were supposed to be healthy to live amongst, so he promptly bought several hundred acres of them—on which part of Bournemouth now stands.  Quite an interesting man, my father.  He played the cornet, and he also cried over all Dickens’s deathbed scenes—

Little Nell and Paul Dombey, especially.  He liked to have them read to him, for preference, and his favourite reader was an old governess of mine named Miss Ponsonby, who hated him and used to come out of one of those tearful séances muttering ‘The old humbug!’  But he WASN’T altogether a humbug—at least no more than most of us are.  I’m not quite certain WHAT he was. . . .  Somebody ought to write a really good biography of him some day.  He did have one written just before he died, but it was a commissioned job and made him into a not very convincing plaster saint—and, of course, it would be easy to write the other sort, showing him as a sinister capitalistic villain. . . .  But in between, somewhere, is probably the truth—if anyone thought it worth while to make the search.”

“Why shouldn’t Mr. Woburn try?” asked Mrs. Rainier.

“Not a bad idea, if he wants to.  But let him finish the cataloguing first.  Ever write anything, Woburn?”

“A few stories, Mr. Rainier.  You read one of them—probably you’ve

forgotten it—“

“Ah yes, of course.  The one about the unfortunate Russian?”

Woburn nodded, and the somewhat mysterious reference was not explained.  After coffee Mrs. Rainier said she was tired and would go to bed; Rainier mentioned letters he had to write; so there seemed nothing left for Woburn and me but to pass the evening together, somehow or other.

Sheldon suggested the library, ushering us into the fine sombre room with a touch of evident pride, and obligingly switching on a radio in time for the news summary of a Hitler speech delivered in Berlin earlier that day.  We listened awhile, then Woburn snapped off the machine with a gesture—the meagre residuum of protest to which modern man has been reduced.  “I hope there isn’t a war this year,” he remarked, as one hoping the weather would stay fine.  “You see, as soon as I finish this job I have another with the Kurtzmayers—they have a big collection at Nice and I daresay I shall spend all the autumn there—unless,” he added with a half-smile, “Mr. Hitler’s plans interfere with mine.”  I smiled back with a touch of the uncomfortableness that afflicts me when some facetious travel-film commentator refers to “Mr. and Mrs.  Hippopotamus” and waits for the laugh.  I was thinking of this, and also wondering how a youngster like Woburn (at least ten years my junior) had managed to establish this cataloguing racket amongst the rich and eminent, when he disarmingly told me all about it.  “It was the Rainiers who gave me an introduction to the Kurtzmayers— they’ve been rather good at putting things in my way.”

I asked him how long he had known the Rainiers.

“Only a few months.  And you?”

“About two years.  I met him first—quite by accident—in a train.”

“I met him first in a public library.”

“By accident?”

“No, I had a job there and he came to see me.  Mrs. Rainier sent him.”

“MRS. Rainier?”

“Yes, I met her before him.  It was her idea I should do the Stourton job—that’s why she sent him to see me.”

“I should have thought she’d have asked you to see him.”

“So should I, but it seems he had a queer idea he wanted to see me first without either of us knowing who the other was, so that if he didn’t like me the whole thing could be dropped.”

“I see.”

“Haven’t you ever noticed that for all his glib speech and ease of manner he’s really shy of meeting new people—in a rather odd way?”

I said perhaps I had, and asked him how his own meeting had happened.

“He didn’t have far to come—the library was only just across the river in Lambeth.  Of course I took him for just an ordinary visitor.  He first of all asked at the counter if we had any illustrated books on English villages.  It’s the sort of vague request you fairly often get from people, so I picked a few books off the shelves and left him at a table with them.  Presently he handed them back with a few words of thanks, and out of politeness I then asked if he’d found what he’d been looking for.  He said, well, no, not exactly—he’d just thought the pictures and photographs in some illustrated book might happen to include one of a place he’d once seen but had forgotten the name of.  They hadn’t though, and it didn’t matter.”

“You must have thought it curious.”

“Yes, but the really curious thing was that I’d just written a short story based on a similar idea.  He seemed quite interested when I told him this and we talked on for a while—then finally he stared round rather vaguely and said, ‘I’m supposed to see a man who works here called Woburn.’  I said I was Woburn and he pretended to be surprised and pleased, but somehow I felt he had known all the time, though his pleasure seemed genuine.  He then said his wife had talked about me and thought I might do some cataloguing, and of course he had to say then who he was.  I told him I’d be very glad, and he said that was fine, he’d let me know; then he shook hands hurriedly and left.”

“Did he let you know?”

“Not immediately.  After a few weeks I wrote to him, because I really wanted the job if I could get it—I was only earning three pounds a week.  Of course I’d found out all about him in the interval—about his Fleet Street interests—that’s really why I sent him that short story I’d written, because I thought maybe he’d pass it on to one of his editors.”  Woburn smiled.  “He returned it a few days later, without comment, but said I could begin the cataloguing any time I liked.”

“Tell me about the story.”

“Oh, it was nothing much—just a rather feeble yarn about a Russian soldier returning from the front after the Revolution.”

“What happened to him?”

“Nothing exciting.  He just roamed about the country trying to find where he lived.”

“Had he—had he lost his memory?”

“No, he was just a simple fellow—couldn’t read and write—all he could give was the name of the village and a description of it that might equally have applied to ten thousand other Russian villages.  The government officials wouldn’t bother with him, because he couldn’t fill out the proper forms, so he just had to go on wandering vaguely about trying to find the place.”

“And did he—eventually?”

“He was run over by a train and carried to a neighbouring village where he died without knowing that it actually was the one he’d been looking for . . . of course you might have guessed that.”

“Having read Gogol and Chekhov, I think I might.”

“I know, it was just an imitation.  I haven’t any real originality— only a technique.  I suppose Rainier realized that.  So I’d better stick to the catalogues.”

It seemed to me a courageous, but also a rather desolate thing for a young writer to admit.

“Why not try the biography, if they give you the chance?”

“I might, but I doubt if it would work out.  You can’t be sure they’d really WANT anyone to be impartial.  That’s why it’s an affectation of Rainier’s to run down his ancestors.  A sort of inverted snobbery put on to impress people because the direct kind isn’t fashionable anymore. . . .  Mind you, I like him IMMENSELY.”

“And her?”

“Oh, she’s marvellous, isn’t she?  The way she can remember dozens of names when she introduces people. . . .”  I remembered Rainier had once commented on that too.  But Woburn added:  “Rather a mistake, though, in English life—never to make a mistake.  Like knowing too much—such as the names of all the states in America.  Stamps one as a bit of an outsider.”

“You seem to have sized things up pretty well.”

“Probably because I AM an outsider.”

“So am I.  So are most of the people who come here.  So are half the names in Debrett.  Come to think about it, that’s one healthy symptom of English so-called society—its inside is full of outsiders.”

“I suppose the Rainiers are outsiders—in a sense.”

“Well, they haven’t a title, but that makes no difference.  Owning Stourton’s almost a title in itself.”

“Yes, it’s a wonderful place.  There’s an odd atmosphere here, though, don’t you think?”

“Do YOU think so?”

“You don’t know everything, you don’t know everything—that’s what the place seems to say.”

“Maybe those ghosts of Negroes and little children?”

“They haven’t got any children, have they?”

“No.”

“Did they ever have?”

“I don’t know.  One somehow doesn’t get to know things like that.”

“Do you think they’re happy?”

Before I could attempt an answer we both turned sharply to see Sheldon carrying in a tray with siphon, glasses, and whiskey decanter.  “I thought perhaps you two gentlemen might like to help yourselves, either now or later.”  Without offering to serve us he placed the tray on a table and walked out of the room, pausing at the door to deliver a quizzical good-night.

We returned the salutation and then, as soon as the door closed, looked at each other rather uneasily.  “I didn’t hear him come in,” said Woburn, after a pause.  “He didn’t knock.”

“Good servants don’t—except at bedroom doors.”

“Oh?  I don’t know things like that.  My mother never had a servant.”

“Now who’s being an inverted snob?  My mother had ONE servant, whom we called the skivvy.  That sets us both pretty equal so far as Stourton’s concerned.”

“You probably went to a good school, though.”

I mentioned the name of my school and agreed that it was generally considered fairly good.  “As good as Netherton, which is where Rainier went.  Anyhow, from a social angle, the main thing is the accent—which you and I both seem to have.  Nobody’s going to ask us where we picked it up.”

“I don’t mind if they do.  I was at a board school up to the age of twelve—then I won a scholarship to a suburban grammar school.  I took a London degree last year, working in the evenings.  I never try to conceal the truth.”

“CONCEAL it?  I should think you’d boast about it.”

“I suppose that’s really what I AM doing.  Will you have a drink?”

“Yes, please.”

He began to mix them and presently, while working off a certain embarrassment, added:  “How does that fellow Sheldon strike you?”

I said I thought he was the kind of person one could avoid a decision about by calling him a character.  “Maybe the keeper of the family skeleton,” I added.

“No—because if there were one, Rainier would take a perverse delight in dragging it out of the cupboard for everyone to stare at.”

We laughed and agreed that that might well be so.

It was past eleven before we yawned our way upstairs.  When I reached my room I found it full of cool air and moonlight; in the vagrant play of moving curtain shadows I did not at first see Rainier sitting by the window in an armchair.  He spoke as I approached:  “Don’t let me scare you—I’m only admiring your view.  It’s exactly the same as mine, so that isn’t much of an excuse. . . .

How did you and Woburn get along?”

“Quite well.  I like him.  An intelligent young fellow.”

“Spoken with all the superiority of thirty to twenty?”

“No, I don’t think so.  I DO like him, anyhow.”

“He’s my wife’s protégé.  She wants to see him get on in the world— made me root him out of a municipal library to do this card-indexing job. . . .  Yes, he might go far, as they say, if there’s anywhere far to go these days.”

“That’s the trouble, and he probably realizes it as much as we do.”

“Well, we can’t change the world for him, but it’s nice to have him around—company for Helen, if nothing else.  I like him too, for that matter.  I like most boys of his age—and of your age.  Wish I had an army of ‘em.”

“What would you do with an army of them?”

“Something better, I hope, than have them catalogue books or write biographies of my ancestors.”  He read my thoughts enough to continue:  “I daresay you’re rather surprised at my lack of enthusiasm for the family tree.  That may be because I didn’t have a very satisfactory home life.  When I was a small boy my father was just something distant and booming and Olympian—a bit of a bully in the house, or at least a bit of a Bultitude (if you remember your Vice-Versa)--all of which made it fortunate for the family that he wasn’t much in the home at all.  My mother died when I was ten.”

“But you liked HER?”

“I loved her very dearly.  She was a delicate, soft-voiced, kind-hearted, sunny-minded, but rather helpless woman—but then most women would have been helpless against my father.  HE loved her, I’ve no doubt, in his own possessive way.  Perhaps a less loving and more thoughtful husband would have sent her to a warmer climate during the winters, but my father wasn’t thoughtful—at best his thoughtlessness became comradely, as when he insisted on taking her for brisk walks over the hills on January days.  It was a cherished saying of his that fresh air would blow the cobwebs out of your lungs.  It also blew the life out of my mother’s lungs, for it was after one of those terrible walks, during which she gasped and panted while my father shouted Whitmanesque encouragement, that she called in Sanderstead, our local doctor, who diagnosed t.b.  My father was appalled from that moment and spent a small fortune on all kinds of cures, but it was too late—she died within the year, and my father, I have since felt, promptly did something about her in his mind that corresponded to winding up or writing off or some other operation that happens even in the best financial circles.”

He suddenly stood up and moved to the open window, staring out as if facing something that challenged him.  “Those are the hills where he made her walk.  You can see the line of them against the sky.”  Then he turned abruptly and said he was sure I was tired and would want to go to bed.

I assured him I wasn’t sleepy at all.

“But you came in yawning.”

“Maybe, but I’m wide-awake now.  The breeze is so fresh . . .  You must have hated your father.”

He answered slowly:  “Yes, I suppose I did.  Freud would say so, anyhow.  But of course when I was a boy and even up to my undergraduate days people only admitted the politer emotions.”

“The war changed all that.”

“Yes, indeed, and so many other things too.”

He was silent for a moment; then I went on:  “You once told me about a certain day, sometime after the war ended, when you found yourself on a park seat in Liverpool.”

“When did I tell you that?”  He controlled a momentary alarm, then added with a smile:  “Ah yes, I remember—in your rooms at St.  Swithin’s.  I’m always garrulous after public speeches. . . .  Well, if I told you, you know.  That’s how it was.  And don’t ask me about anything BEFORE the park seat because I can’t answer.”

“But how about AFTER the park seat?”

He seemed relieved.  “AFTER?  Oh I can stand any amount of cross-examination there—I’m on safe ground from about noon on December 27, 1919.”

“I wish you’d begin your story there, then, and bring it up to date.”

“But there IS no story—except my life story.”

“That’s what I’d like to hear.”

“How I Made Good?  From Park Seat to Parliament?”

“If you like to call it that.”

He laughed.  “It’s mostly a lot of sordid business details and family squabbles.  You don’t know the family, either.”

“All the same, I wish you’d tell me.  The effort of setting it all out might even help you towards the other memory—if you’re still anxious for it.”

I could see the response to that in his eyes as he entered the light again.

“So you really think memory’s like an athlete—keep it in training— take it for cross-country runs?  H’m, might be something in the idea.  When do we start?”

“Now, if you’re not too sleepy.  I’m not. . . .  Go back to that park seat in Liverpool.”

“But I told you about that once.”

“Tell me again.  And then go on.”

So he began, and as it makes a fairly long story, it goes better in the third person.

 

 

PART TWO

 

He found himself lying on that park seat.  He had opened his eyes to see clouds and drenched trees, and to feel the drops splashing on his face.  After a while his position began to seem more and more odd, so he raised himself to a sitting angle, and was immediately aware of sodden clothes, stiff limbs, a terrific headache, and a man stooping over him.  His first thought was that he must have been drunk the night before, but he soon rejected it, partly because he could not remember the night before at all, partly because he somehow did not think he was the sort of young man to have had that sort of night, but chiefly because of a growing interest in what the man stooping over him was saying.  It was a kind of muttered chorus—“That’s right, mister—take it easy.  Didn’t ‘ardly touch yer—it was the wet roadway, you sort o’ slipped.  Cheer up, mister, no bones broke—you’ll be all right— wouldn’t leave you ‘ere, I wouldn’t, if I didn’t know you’d be all right. . . .”

Presently, suggested by the muttered chorus and supported by the fact that his clothes were not only sopping wet but also muddied and torn, another hypothesis occurred to him—that he had been run down by a car whose driver had brought him into the park and was now leaving him there.

But WHERE?  His brain refused an answer, and when pressed offered a jumble of memories connected only with war—shell-fire for headaches, a smashed leg for stiffness, no-man’s-land for all the mud and rain in the world.

He stood up, feeling dizzy, swayed and almost fell.  The man had gone, was now nowhere to be seen.  Then he noticed he had been lying down on sheets of newspaper.  He stooped to peel one off the seat, hoping it might afford some clue, but the top of the page that would have contained a name and date was an unreadable mush, and the rest was rapidly softening under the heavy rain.  He peered at it, nevertheless, searching for some helpful word or phrase before the final disintegration.  Most of the letterpress seemed to be news about floods and flood damage—rescues from swollen rivers, people stranded in upper floors, rowboats in streets, and so on.

Then suddenly his eyes caught a paragraph headed “Rainier Still in Germany”—one of those mock-cheerful items that tired sub-editors put in to fill an odd corner—something about soaked holiday crowds taking comfort from the thought that somebody somewhere was faring even worse.

Now it is curious how one’s own name, or the name of one’s home, or a word like “cancer,” will sometimes leap out of a page as if it were printed in red ink.  It was like that for the young man as he staggered through the deserted park towards a gate he could see in the distance.  Rainier Still in Germany—Rainier Still in Germany.  It was a challenge, something he had to answer; and the answer came.  “IMPOSSIBLE—I’m HERE, reading a newspaper, and the newspaper’s in English—therefore this can’t be Germany.”

Presently he passed through the park gate into a busy thoroughfare.  A tram came along, mud-splashed to its upper windows and sluicing swathes of water from the rails to the gutters.  It was difficult to see through the spray of mud and rain, but on the side of the tram as it passed by he could just read the inscription—“Liverpool City Corporation.”

He walked along by the high railings till the park came to an end and shops began.  Meanwhile he had been feeling in his pockets, finding money—coins and several treasury notes, amounting in all to over four pounds.  Reaching a newsagent’s shop he went inside and asked for a paper.

“Post or Courier, sir?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

A paper was handed over.  “Looks like you’ve had a fall, sir?  Terribly slippery after all this rain. . . .  Like me to give you a bit of a brush?”

“Er . . . thanks.”

“Why, you’re wet through—if I was you I’d get home and to bed as quick as I could.  Like me to get you a cab?”

“No, that wouldn’t help.  I don’t live here.  But if there’s a

tailor nearabouts—“

“Two doors ahead, sir.  He’ll fix you up.  Say I sent you.”

“Thanks.”

He walked out, glancing at the paper as he did so.  He saw that the date was December 27, 1919.

So now he knew three important things:  Who, Where, and When.

 

 

Two hours later Charles Rainier was in a train to London.  He had had a hot bath and a meal; his clothes did not fit well, but were dry; and after a lightning headache-cure across a chemist’s counter he felt somewhat drowsily relieved.

Beside him were several more newspapers and magazines.  As it was the end of December, some contained résumés of the events of 1919; and these at first he had found very astonishing.  Biggest of all surprises was to find that the war had been over for more than a year and had ended in complete victory for the Allies; this was surprising because his last recollected idea on the subject had been that the Allies were just as likely to lose.  But that dated back to a certain night in 1917 when he lay in a shell-hole near Arras, half delirious with the pain of a smashed leg, watching shell after shell dig other holes round about him, until finally one came that seemed to connect by a long dark throbbing corridor with his headache that morning.

Charles arrived in London towards dusk, in time to catch the last train that would get him to Stourton that night.  The train was late in reaching Fiveoaks, which is the station for Stourton, and three miles away from it, as anyone knows who has ever received a letter on Stourton notepaper.  From Fiveoaks he walked, because all the cabs were taken before he reached the station yard, and also because he hoped the cold air might clear that still-surviving headache.  He was glad they were putting out the lamps as he gave up his ticket at the barrier, so that the collector did not recognize him.

He realized that his return was bound to come as a shock, and he hardly knew what reason he could give anyone for his long and peculiar absence; he hardly knew yet what reason he could give himself.  He was puzzled, too, by an absence of joy in his heart at the prospect of home and familiar faces; more than by any excitement he was possessed by a deep and unutterable numbness of spirit, a numbness so far without pain yet full of the hint of pain withdrawn and waiting.

Presently he turned off the main road.  He remembered that turn, and the curve of the secondary road over the hill to the point where suddenly, in daylight, the visitor caught his first glimpse of the house.  Often, as a boy, he had met such visitors at Fiveoaks, hoping that when they reached that particular point of the drive they would not be so immersed in conversation as to miss the view.

Now when he came to the view there was nothing to see, nothing to hear but an owl hooting, nothing to feel but the raw air blowing from the uplands.

He was glad he had sent no wire to tell them of his arrival.  He had refrained because he felt the shock might be greater that way than if he were to see Sheldon first, and also because he hardly knew how much or how little to say in a wire; but now he perceived another advantage in not having sent any message—it preserved for a few extra minutes the curious half-way comfortableness of being alive only in the first person singular.

Towards midnight he reached the wrought-iron gates of the main entrance; they were closed and locked, of course, but there was a glow in one of the adjacent windows, and as he approached the small square-built lodge a gap in a curtain revealed a lighted Christmas tree.  Odd, because he remembered Parsloe as a tight-fisted bachelor unlikely to spend money on that sort of thing—unless, of course, he had married in the interval; but that was odder still to contemplate—Parsloe married!

It was not Parsloe, however, who opened the door to his persistent ringing, but a half-dressed stranger—middle-aged, suspicious, challenging.

“Well, young man?”

“I’d like to go up to the house, if you’ll let me through.”

“We don’t admit anyone, not without you give your name and business.”

“I know, but you see . . .”  He hesitated, realizing the difficulties ahead—his story, told cold with no corroborations, would sound sheerly incredible.  Eventually he added, rather weakly:  “If Parsloe were here, he’d know me.”

“Maybe he would, but he ain’t here—having been dead these fifteen months.  You’d better be off, sir, dragging people out of bed at this hour.”

The “sir” was some progress anyway; a social acknowledgment that, drunk or sober, honest or fraudulent, at least one had the right accent.

“Perhaps I could see Sheldon, then—“

“You can’t disturb Mr. Sheldon either—especially now.”

“You mean there’s a party?”  (Of course there would be—there were always big parties at Stourton through Christmas and New Year.)

Suddenly the question:  “You wouldn’t be Dr. Astley, by any chance?”

Charles was about to ask who Dr. Astley was when he thought better of it and replied hastily, perhaps too hastily:  “Yes, that’s who I am.”

But the lodge-keeper was still suspicious.  Moving over to a telephone just inside the door, he wound up the instrument, listened, then began muttering something inaudible.  Afterwards he turned to beckon Charles inside.  “Mr. Sheldon says he’d like a word with you first, sir.”

“Certainly.  I’ll be glad of one with him, too.”

Good old Sheldon—taking no chances.  The voice at the other end was impersonally wary.  “Dr. Astley?  Have you come alone?”

No need to say anything but:  “Sheldon, it isn’t Dr. Astley— whoever he is.  It’s Charles—you know, CHARLES.”

“CHARLES?”

“Charles who was . . .  Oh, God, I don’t want to have to go into all that, but remember the Left-Handed Room? . . .  THAT Charles.”

“Mr. Charles?”

“Yes—Yes!”

Long pause.  Then:  “I’ll—I’ll come along—immediately—if—if you’ll wait there—for me.”

“Good—but first of all say something to this fellow—he thinks I’m a fake.  Don’t tell him anything—just say it’s all right.”

He handed the receiver to the lodge-keeper, who took it, listened a moment, then hung up with more puzzlement than satisfaction.  “Well, sir, you’d better wait here, seeing as how Mr. Sheldon says so.”

“Thanks.  And please understand that I don’t blame you in the least.  One can’t be too careful.”

Somewhat mollified, the man brought forward a chair, then accepted a cigarette that Charles proffered.  “Marsh is my name, sir.  If you’re a friend of the family, you’ll know of course there’s no parties this year on account of old Mr. Rainier being ill.”

“ILL?  No, I—er—I didn’t know that.”

“That’s why I thought you might be Dr. Astley.  He’s a London doctor they’re expecting.”

“But what about Sanderstead?”

“Dr. Sanderstead wanted to consult with Dr. Astley, sir.”

“Sounds serious.”

“Yes, sir, I’m afraid so.  Of course he’s an old man, getting to be.  It’s his heart.”

“Where’s the family?”

“They’re all here, sir, except Mrs. Jill and Mr. Julian.”

“Where are they?”

“On their way back from abroad, I think, sir.”

Strange to be edging one’s way into such realizations.  The sick man was his father, and yet, somehow, the springs of his emotion were dried up, could offer nothing in response to the news but an intensification of that feeling of numbness.  He went on smoking thoughtfully.  Really, when he came to think of it, Sheldon was the person he came nearest to any warm desire to see. . . .  Marsh continued after a pause:  “I could get you a nip of something, sir, if you wanted.  It’ll take Mr. Sheldon twenty minutes at least to come down—all the cars are locked up, and it’s a good mile to walk.”

(As if he didn’t know it was a good mile to walk!)  He answered:

“That’s not a bad idea.”

Marsh went to an adjoining room and came back with two stiff drinks.  “Thought you looked a bit pale, sir, that’s why I suggested it.”

“DO I look pale?”

“Just a bit, sir.  Or maybe it’s the light.”

Charles walked over to a near-by mirror and stood for a moment examining himself.  Yes—there was a queer look; one could call it pallor, for want of an exacter word.  Actually, he felt overwhelmingly tired, tired after the long and troubled journey, tired after that knock on the head in the early morning, tired after something else that was difficult—impossible—to analyse.  He sipped the whiskey and relaxed as he felt it warming him.  “By the way, Marsh—it’s some time since I was here last . . . any particular changes?  You told me of one of them just now, for instance—Parsloe dead.  Anything else?”

“You mean among the staff, sir?  I’ve only been here fifteen months.”

“Well, the staff or—oh, anything.”  He hardly liked to ask direct questions.

“There’s been a few changes in the house, sir—maybe you’ll notice.  Mr. Rainier pulled down the old billiard-room and built two new ones.”

“TWO new billiard-rooms?  Good God!”

“Well, one of them isn’t much used.  There’s just a table in it, in

case anyone wants to play.  And of course since Mr. Rainier took

ill—“

“He’s been ill a long time?”

“Six months, sir, just about.  Sort of gradual, it’s been . . .”

And so on; so that when, eventually, the knock came at the door and Marsh opened it, recognition was silent, tight-lipped, almost wordless till they were alone together.  Just “Hello, Sheldon”—and “Good evening!”

Leaving Marsh more puzzled than before, they turned into the darkness of the long curving drive.  Out of earshot Charles stopped a moment, feeling for the other’s hand and shaking it rather clumsily.

“Sorry to be sentimental, Sheldon, but that’s how glad I am to see you.  Matter of fact, it’s too dark to see you, but I’ve a feeling you look exactly the same.”

“I—I can’t quite collect myself yet, Mr. Charles—but—I—I’d like to be the first to—to congratulate you!”

“Thanks—though I don’t know whether congratulation’s quite the word.”

“It’s so—extraordinary—to have you back with us.  I can hardly

believe it—“

“Neither can I, Sheldon, so don’t press me for details.  All I can tell you is that I was in Liverpool this morning—and don’t ask why Liverpool, because I don’t know any more than you.  But I had some money as well as the devil of a headache from having been run down by a car, maybe . . . that’s all the evidence, so help me God.  Before that I can’t remember a thing since—since all sorts of things I don’t WANT to remember—the war—lying between the lines with shells bursting . . . years ago, I realize.  There’s a sort of dark corridor between then and this morning—don’t ask me about that, either.  What you and I’ve got to decide now is how to go about the job of reintroducing me, as it were. . . .  Any ideas?”

“If you’ll give me a little time, Mr. Charles—I’m still rather—“

“I know—bumfoozled is the word old Sarah used to use.”

“Fancy you remembering that.”

“What’s happened to her?”

“She’s still living in the village.  Of course she’s very feeble.”

“Poor old girl. . . .  And too bad about Parsloe—how did that happen?”

“Pneumonia after the flu.  Very sudden.  We had quite an epidemic about a year ago.”

“The new man seems all right.”

“Marsh?  Oh yes.  Used to be one of the gardeners.”

“Don’t remember him. . . .  God, what are we gossiping like this for?”

“Just what I was thinking, sir, because there ARE more important

things I must tell you about.  I’m afraid you’ll find the house in

a rather disturbed condition—“

“I know.  I realize I couldn’t have turned up at a more awkward

moment—in some ways.  Much rather have come when it’s quiet—

nobody here—“

“You mean the family?”

“Well, yes—bit of a problem, how to let them know.”

“We have to face it, sir.”

“THEY have to face it, you mean.”

“Naturally they’ll be delighted to see you once they get over the— the surprise.”

“The surprise of finding I’m still alive?”

“Well, after such an interval, and with no news—“

“I know.  For God’s sake don’t think I’m blaming anybody.”

“May I say, sir, speaking for myself—“

“I know, I know, and I’m grateful—think it was marvellous the way you kept your head in front of Marsh.  Of course he’ll have to know soon, like everybody else, but I was glad you postponed the—er— the sensation.  Funny . . . when I wanted to say something over the telephone that would make you know I was genuine and yet wouldn’t mean a thing to him, the only thing I could think of was the Left-Handed Room—remember how we used to call it that because the door opened the other way?”

“You remember those days very clearly, sir.”

“So clearly it’s like—like head-lamps along a road on a dark night.  TOO clearly, that is—everything a bit out of focus.  It’ll all come right, I daresay.”

“I hope so, sir.”

“Well, let’s not talk about it. . . .  We’ve got this other problem to settle, and my suggestion is what we always used to say when we were kids—leave it to Sheldon.”

“I was about to suggest that too.”

“Well, go ahead—any way you like.  And in the meantime if you’ll find me a bedroom that’s a bit off the map I’ll get a good night’s sleep before making my bow at the breakfast table.”

“I’m afraid—er—Mr. Rainier doesn’t come down to breakfast nowadays.”

“I know, Marsh said he was ill.  I’m sorry.  You’d better go easy when you tell him—the shock, I mean.”  He caught Sheldon’s glance and interpreted it.  “Don’t worry about me, Sheldon—I know you’re thinking I’m not behaving according to formula, but I can’t help it—

I’m too dead tired to face any reunions tonight.”

After a pause Sheldon answered:  “I doubt if there IS any formula for what you must be feeling, Mr. Charles.  I could give you a bed in my own apartments if that would suit.”

“Excellent. . . .  Thank heaven something’s settled. . . .  Been having decent weather here lately?”

“Fairly, sir, for the time of the year.  I noticed the barometer’s rising.”

“Good.  It was raining in Liverpool this morning.”

 

 

He slept a heavy troubled sleep, full of dreams he could not clarify, but which left him vaguely restless, unsatisfied.  December sunlight waked him by pouring on to his bed; he stared round, wondering where he was, then remembering.  But he could not recognize the room—somewhere in the servants’ wing, he supposed, and he confirmed this by leaning up to the window.  The central block of Stourton faced him grandly across the courtyard—there was the terrace, the big curving windows of the dining-room, the East Wing with its corner turret.  The spectacle found and fitted into a groove of his mind—somehow like seeing a well-known place and deciding it was reasonably like its picture postcards. . . .  He was still musing when Sheldon came in with a tray.

“Good morning, Mr. Charles.  I brought you some tea.”

“Thanks.”

“The barometer’s still rising.  Did you sleep well?”

“Pretty well.  What time is it?”

“Eight o’clock.  The family usually begin to come down about nine, but perhaps this morning—we stayed up rather late, you see . . .  on the other hand, they may be anxious. . . .”

“I understand.  You can’t ever be certain how people will react, can you?”

“No, sir.”

“You should have brought an extra cup for yourself.  Sit down and tell me all about it.  What time did YOU go to bed?  You look fagged out.”

“To tell you the truth, I haven’t been to bed at all.  There were so many things to do—I had to talk to Dr. Sanderstead—and then your clothes—you’d hardly wish to wear them again, I think.”

“No?”

“I took the liberty of borrowing a suit from Mr. Chetwynd—“

“Look here, never mind about all that—let’s have first things first.  You told them all?”

“Not your father, sir—but I told the others.”

“How did they take it?”

“They were naturally surprised—in fact they could hardly believe me at first.”

“And then?”

“Well, I suppose they DID believe me—eventually.  They expect to see you at breakfast.”

“Good . . . but you say you haven’t yet told my father?”

“That was why I went to see Dr. Sanderstead—to ask his advice.”

“Ah yes, of course.  You always think of the sensible things, Sheldon.”

“He was rather troubled about the danger of giving the old gentleman a shock—he says he’d like to have a talk with you about it first.”

“All right, if he says so.”

“I also took the liberty of telephoning to Mr. Truslove.”

“Truslove?”

“It seemed to me that—er—he ought to be informed also, as soon as possible.”

“Well, maybe that’s sensible too, though it hadn’t occured to me. . . .  How about a bath?”

“Already waiting for you—if you’ll follow me.”

“What about the servants, if I meet any of them?”

“They don’t know yet, except Wilson and Lucas—I shall call the others together during the morning and tell them.  And Mr. Truslove will be here for lunch—along with Dr. Sanderstead and Dr. Astley from London.”

By that time they were at the door of the bathroom.  “Quite elegant, Sheldon—new since I was here, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“From which I gather the family income remains—er—not so bad?”

A wrinkled smile.  “Like the barometer, sir—still rising. . . .”

He bathed, smoked a cigarette, and put on the clothes Sheldon had laid out for him.  Brown tweeds—Chet had always favoured them, and they fitted pretty well—as children he and Chet could generally wear each other’s suits.  And a Netherton tie—trust Sheldon to think of details.  NETHERTON; and a whole cloud of memories assailed him suddenly: strapping on cricket pads in front of the pavilion; strawberries and cream in the tuckshop; the sunlight slanting into the chapel during Sunday services; hot cocoa steaming over the study gas-ring in wintertime; the smell of mud and human bodies in a Rugby scrum. . . .  Netherton.  And then Cambridge.  And then the cadet school.  And then France.  And then . . . the full stop. . . .  He controlled himself, leading his thoughts back from the barrier, gently insinuating them into the immediate future.  He found he could best do this by adopting a note of sardonic self-urging: come along—trousers, waistcoat, tie, shoes, coat—button up for the great family reunion.  “All aboard for the Skylark”—which set him recollecting holidays with his mother as a small boy—never with his father; his father had always been too busy.  They used to rent a house at Brighton, in Regency Square, taking servants with them—Miss Ponsonby and a maid named Florrie, and every morning they would walk along the front not quite as far as Portslade, turning back so inevitably that Portslade became for him a sort of mysterious place beyond human access—until, one afternoon while his mother was having a nap, he escaped from the house and reached Portslade a dauntless but somewhat disappointed explorer.

“I hope the clothes will do for the time being, Mr. Charles.”

“Fine—just a bit loose in front.  Chet must be putting on weight.”

“I’ll have a talk with Mr. Masters sometime today.  He has your old measurements, but it might be safer to have him visit you again.”

“Much safer, I’m sure.  You think I’ve changed a lot, Sheldon?”

“Not in appearance, sir.  You look very fit.”

“And yet there IS a difference?”

“In your manner, perhaps.  But that’s natural.  It’s a nervous strain one can well understand after all you’ve been through.”

“I’d understand it better if I knew what I HAVE been through.  But never mind that.  Time for breakfast.”

He walked across the courtyard, entering the house from the terrace.  No one had yet appeared; the usual new-lit fire was burning, the usual blue flames distilling a whiff of methylated spirit from under the copper dishes.  The Morning Post and Times on the little table.  A cat on the hearthrug—a new cat, who looked up indifferently and then resumed a comprehensive toilet.  Wilson was standing by the dishes, trying hard to behave as if the return of a long-lost son were one of the ordinary events of an English household.

“Good morning, Mr. Charles.”

“Morning, Wilson.”

“What can I get you, sir?  Some kedgeree—or ham and eggs—kipper—

kidneys—“

“Suppose I have a look.”

He eased a little of his embarrassment by the act of serving himself.  He knew Wilson must be staring at him all the time.  As he carried his plate back to the table he said:  “Well, it’s good to be back.”  It was a remark without meaning—a tribute to a convention that did not perfectly fit, like Chetwynd’s clothes, but would do for the time being.

“Yes, indeed, sir.  Very glad to see you again.”

“Thanks.”  And he opened The Times, the dry and crinkly pages engaging another memory.  “You still warm the paper in front of the fire, Wilson?”

“Yes, sir.  I always had to when Mr. Rainier used to come down— it’s got to be a sort of habit, I suppose.”

“Queer how one always associates big things with little things.  I get the whole picture of my childhood from the smell of toasted printer’s ink.”

“Yes, sir.”

He ate his ham and eggs, scanning the inside news page.  Trouble in Europe—the usual Balkan mix-up.  Trouble in Ireland, and that was usual too—British officers assassinated.  Not much of a paper after the holiday—never was.  The usual chatty leader about Christmas, full of Latin quotations and schoolmasterly facetiousness—dear old Times.  A long letter from somebody advocating simplified spelling—

God, were they still at that?  Now that the war was over, it seemed both reassuring and somehow disappointing that England had picked up so many old threads and was weaving them into the same pattern.

Then Chetwynd, eldest of the brothers, began the procession.

“Hello, old chap, how are you?”

(What a thing to say!  But still, what else?)

(Miss Ponsonby, his old governess, had once adjured him:  When people say “How are you?” the correct answer is “How are YOU?”  If you tell them how you are, you show yourself a person of inferior breeding. . . .  “But suppose, Miss Ponsonby,” he had once asked, “you really WANT to know how somebody else is, mustn’t they ever tell you?”)

However, he answered:  “Hello, Chet.  How are YOU?”

“Want you to meet my wife, Lydia. . . .  Lydia . . . this is Charlie.”

An oversized good-looking woman with small, rather hostile eyes.

And then Julia, plumper than when he had seen her last, but still the same leathery scarecrow—red-complexioned, full of stiff outdoor heartiness.

“Hel-LO, Charles!  Sheldon told us ALL about it, and it’s just too

wonderful.  I can’t TELL you how—“

But then, as he kissed her, the fire went out like a damp match and they neither of them knew what to say to each other.  He and Chet almost collided in their eagerness to serve her with food; Chet beat him to it; he slipped back into his chair.

“Kidneys, Julia?”

“Only scrambled eggs, please, Chet.”

“Not even a little piece of bacon?”

“No, really, Chet.”

“Any news of Father this morning?”

“I saw one of the nurses as I came down—she said he’d had a fairly good night and was about the same.”

“Oh, good. . . .  Quite sure about the bacon, Julia?”

“Quite sure.”

“Charles, what about you while I’m here?  You don’t seem to have much on your plate.”

“Nothing more for me, thanks.”

“Well, must be my turn then, and I don’t mind admitting I’m hungry.  Thrilling events always take me that way. . . .  Too bad Father’s ill—we’d have had a party or something to celebrate.”

“I’m sorry he’s ill, but not for that reason, I assure you.”

“No?  Well . . .”  Chet came to the table with his plate, having deliberately delayed at the sideboard till he heard the voices of others approaching.  Now he looked up as if in surprise.  “Morning, George. . . .  Morning, Bridget. . . .”

George, a nervous smile on his plump moustached face; Bridget, the youngest of the family, sweet and shy, always ready to smile if you looked at her or she thought you were likely to look at her.  George’s wife Vera, and Julia’s husband . . . an introduction necessary here—“Charles, this is Dick Fontwell”—“Ahdedoo, ahdedoo”—a tall, long-nosed fellow who threw all his embarrassment into a fierce handshake.

Breakfast at Stourton was a hard meal at the best of times, only mitigated by ramparts of newspapers and unwritten permission to be as morose as one wished.  But this morning they all felt that such normal behaviour must be reversed—everybody had to talk and go on talking.  Charles guessed that they were all feeling as uncomfortable as he, with the additional drawback of having had less sleep.  During the interchange of meaningless remarks about the weather, the news in the paper, Christmas, and so on, he meditated a little speech which he presently made to them when Wilson had left to bring in more coffee.

He began, clearing his throat to secure an audience:  “Er . . . I really do feel I owe you all sorts of explanations, but the fact is, this whole business of coming back here is in many ways as big a mystery to me as it must be to you—I suppose loss of memory’s like that—but what I DO want to tell you is that in spite of all the mystery I’m a perfectly normal person so far as everyday things are concerned—I’m not ill, you don’t have to be afraid of me or treat me with any special consideration. . . .  So just carry on here as usual—I’m anxious not to cause any additional upset at a moment when we’re all of us bound to be upset anyhow.”

He hoped that was a helpful thing to have said, but for a moment after he had finished speaking he caught some of their eyes and wondered if it had been wise to say anything at all.  Then Bridget leaned over and touched his hand.

“That’s all right, Charles.”

Chet called out huskily from the far end of the table:  “Quite

understand, old chap.  We’re all more pleased than we can say, God

bless.  Of course with the old man being ill we can’t exactly kill

the fatted calf, but—but—“

“I’ll consider it killed,” he interrupted, just as Wilson arrived with more coffee.  They all smiled or laughed, and the situation seemed eased.

Dr. Sanderstead had been expected for lunch, but he arrived a good deal earlier, along with Dr. Astley.  Sanderstead was a wordy, elderly, fairly efficient general practitioner who could still make a good living out of his private patients, leaving a more efficient junior partner to take care of the rest.  He had been the Stourton doctor ever since the family were children.  Accompanied by the London heart specialist, whose herringbone tweeds for a country visit were almost too formally informal, he spent over an hour in the sickroom, after which Astley left and gave him a chance to talk to Charles alone.

They shook hands gravely, then at the doctor’s suggestion began

walking in the garden.  Five minutes were occupied by a see-saw

of congratulations, expressions of pleasure, thanks, and

acknowledgments.  Charles became more and more silent as these

proceeded, eventually leading to a blank pause which Sanderstead

broke by exclaiming:  “Don’t be afraid I’m going to ask you

questions—none of my business, anyhow.  Sheldon told me all that

you told him—it’s a very peculiar case, and I know very little

about such things.  There are some who claim to, and if you wished

to consult—“

“At the moment, no.”

“Well, I don’t blame you—get settled down first, not a bad idea.

All the same, though, if ever you want—“

“That’s very kind of you, but I’d rather you tell me something about my father.”

“I was coming to that.  I’m afraid he’s quite ill.”