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By Root 1028 0

longer where he was, looking up the last three stairs and across the landing towards the spare-room door. Jonah’s a dream—what a way they talked … though it must mean things were going all right, he was doing it all convincingly. He didn’t think Mrs. Sawle would let Cecil take him away, and he certainly didn’t want to leave home. He’d been into Harrow, of course, many times, and Edgware, and once to the Alexandra Palace to hear the organ … He went on up. The landing was dark, with its oak panelling and thick Turkey carpet, but the bedrooms were flung open so as to air and were full of light. He could hear Veronica, the housemaid, in Mr. Hubert’s room, her grunts as she shook and thumped the pillows; she talked to herself, in a pleasant, businesslike mutter, “… there you are … up we go … thank you very much …” Jonah felt he had understood something, they had decided he was ready. He looked forward to straightening the room and taking his time with Cecil’s things, examining the buttons and pockets in more detail. He would never have said it to anyone downstairs, but he thought if he learned valeting it could be a job for him, in a year or two’s time. One day, perhaps, he would let Mr. Cecil, or someone very like him, take him away after all.

Then he pushed open the door, and saw at once he knew nothing, they’d told him nothing about what went on between bedtime and breakfast. It was like stepping into another house. Or else, he felt, as he took two or three short steps into the room, or else this Mr. Cecil Valance was a lunatic; and at this thought he gave a sort of staring giggle. Well, he would have to wait for Veronica. The bed was all over the floor as if a fight had taken place in it. He looked at the shaving-water cold and scummy in the basin, the shaving-brush lying in a wet ring on top of the bookcase. He frowned at the clothes strewn over the floor and across the little armchair with a new and painful feeling that he’d known them in an earlier and happier time, when things were still going convincingly. And the roses were as good as dead—yes, Cecil must have knocked them over and then jammed the stems just anyhow into the vase with no water. Their heads had dropped after a few hours of neglect, and a patch on the patterned rug was dark and damp to the back of the hand. On the dressing-table the scribbled sheets of paper were more what Jonah had expected. “When you were there, and I away,” Jonah read, “But scenting in the Alpine air the roses of an English May.” Then he snatched up the shaving-brush and stared at the oily pool it had made.

Jonah went over to the waste-paper basket, as if routinely tidying a barely occupied room, and took out the handful of bits of paper. He saw one of them was written by George, and felt embarrassed on his behalf that his guest should have made such a mess. It was hard to read … “Veins,” it seemed to say, if that was how you spelt it: “Viens.” The poetry notebook, which Jonah had been told never to touch, still lay within reach, on the bedside table. Later, he thought, he almost certainly would have a look at it.

“I see he’s made himself at home,” said Veronica from the door, and her competent tone cheered Jonah up. “Yes, Cook said he’ll make a mess but he’ll give you ten shillings—could be a guinea if you’re lucky.”

“I expect so,” said Jonah, as though used to such treatment, stuffing the bits of paper awkwardly into his trouser pocket. Then he couldn’t help smiling. “Cook said that?”

Veronica plucked the pillows off the bed. “Well, he’s an aristocrat,” she said, with the air of someone who’d seen a few. “If they make a mess they can pay for it.” She pulled the rucked bottom sheet tight and looked at it with a raised eyebrow and a strange twist of the mouth. “Well, Jonah, look what I see.”

“Oh yes …,” said Jonah.

“Your gentleman’s had a mission.”

“Oh,” said Jonah, with the same look of suppressed confusion.

Veronica glanced at him shrewdly but not unkindly. “You don’t know what that is, do you? A nocturnal mission, they call it. It’s something the young gentlemen are very