The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [116]
“I was coming to that,” said Thurston. “Isn’t there somewhere more private where we could go and talk?”
It was a reasonable suggestion. Two page boys sat on a bench beside us, the hall porter watched us curiously from behind his glass screen, two or three members passing through paused by the tape machine to take a closer look at my peculiar visitor. I was tolerably certain that he was not one of the enthusiasts for my work who occasionally beset me, but was either a beggar or a madman or both; at another time I should have sent him away, but that afternoon, with no prospect of other interest, I hesitated. “Be a good scout,” he urged.
There is at my club a nondescript little room of depressing aspect where members give interviews to the press, go through figures with their accountants, and in general transact business which they think would be conspicuous in the more public rooms. I took Thurston there.
“Snug little place,” he said, surveying this dismal place. “O.K. if I smoke?”
“Perfectly.”
“Have one?”
“No thank you.”
He lit a cigarette, drew a deep breath of smoke, gazed at the ceiling and, as though coming to the point, said, “Quite like the old Wimpole.”
My heart sank. “Mr. Thurston,” I said, “you have surely not troubled to come here simply in order to talk to me about your club.”
“No. But you see it’s rather awkward. Don’t exactly know how to begin. I thought I might lead up to it naturally. But I realize that your time’s valuable, Mr. Plant, so I may as well admit right out that I owe you an apology.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. I’m here under false pretences. My name isn’t Thurston.”
“No?”
“No. I’d better tell you who I am, hadn’t I?”
“If you wish to.”
“Well, here goes. I’m Arthur Atwater.” The name was spoken with such an air of bravado, with such confidence of it making a stir, that I felt bewildered. It meant absolutely nothing to me. Where and how should I have heard it? Was this a fellow-writer, a distant cousin, a popular athlete? Atwater? Atwater? I repeated it to myself. No association was suggested. My visitor meanwhile seemed unconscious of how flat his revelation had fallen, and was talking away vehemently:
“Now you see why I couldn’t give my name. It’s awfully decent of you to take it like this. I might have known you were a good scout. I’ve been through Hell I can tell you ever since it happened. I haven’t slept a wink. It’s been terrible. You know how it is when one’s nerve’s gone. I shouldn’t be fit for work now even if they’d kept me on in the job. Not that I care about that. Let them keep their lousy job. I told the manager that to his face. I wasn’t brought up and educated to sell stockings. I ought to have gone abroad long ago. There’s no opportunity in England now, unless you’ve got influence or are willing to suck up to a lot of snobs. You get a fair chance out there in the colonies where one man’s as good as another and no questions asked.”
I can seldom bear to let a misstatement pass uncorrected. “Believe me, Mr. Atwater,” I said. “You have a totally mistaken view of colonial life. You will find people just as discriminating and inquisitive there as they are here.”
“Not where I’m going,” he said. “I’m clearing right out. I’m fed up. This case hanging over me and nothing to do all day except think about the accident. It was an accident too. No one can try and hang the blame on me and get away with it. I was on my proper side of the road and I hooted twice. It wasn’t a Belisha crossing. It was my road. The old man just wouldn’t budge. He saw me coming, looked straight at me, as if he was daring me to drive into him. Well, I thought I’d give him a fright. You know how it is when you’re driving all day. You get fed to the teeth with people making one get out of their way all the time. I like to wake them up now and then when there’s no copper near, and make them jump for it. It seems like an hour now, but it all happened in two seconds. I kept on, waiting for him to skip, and he kept on, strolling across the road as if he