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By Root 1069 0

his life at “Two Acres” was hardly surprising, but of course disappointing. Paul looked closely at George whenever he appeared, from sailor-suited six-year-old to boatered Cambridge man, and with less and less doubt that whatever warmth this cold fish had felt had been directed at other young men. He asked Daphne if she would let him reproduce two photos of the house and garden, and she said she didn’t see why not, but she fidgeted until she was sure that Wilfrid had returned the album to its hiding-place. When they were all sitting down again, Paul cleared his throat and looked at her more narrowly than before, and with a greater cumulative sense that it didn’t matter how he looked at her, she wasn’t going to see him. He said airily, “There’s one thing—,” just as Daphne, with a little chuckle, almost grinning, as if at some great mutual satisfaction, said, “Well! I’m sorry to say that I’ve promised to be at my friend Caroline’s by four o’clock, so alas we’ll have to bring the meeting to a conclusion, with a vote of thanks to Wilfrid Valance for the refreshments!”

Paul’s face reddened and stiffened, but he wasn’t going to be outdone. He made a thing of nodding regretfully at his watch. “Well, if I’m to catch the 5:10,” he said.

“Oh, well, there you are, perfect,” said Daphne smoothly.

It wasn’t clear if Wilfrid would want to drive him again; Paul was ready to phone for a Cathedral. He stood up, and started putting the tape-recorder and his papers into his briefcase with as little discomfiture as possible, in fact with a few delaying and normalizing remarks. “I’m so grateful to you,” he said.

“Well, I don’t suppose I’ve been much help to you,” she said.

“You’ve been very kind!” said Paul, in a full embrace of untruth. He took out his copy of The Short Gallery: “I wonder—would you sign this for me?”—it was the copy he had had for review. He hoped she was no longer up to reading the pencilled marginalia, even if she thought to look.

“What’s that …?”

“Oh, Paul wants you to sign your book for him, Mummy,” said Wilfrid, clearly pleased by the request.

“Oh, well, if you like”—and after a scrabble for a biro and with an awkward squint at the title page, Daphne wrote something, in her large loping hand—Paul didn’t look but it took him back in a complex moment to the night she had written down her address for him at Paddington, and then much further to the morning at Foxleigh long before when he’d seen her make out a cheque with a comic precautionary air of not knowing what she was doing. There was something about her writing, with its big squareish loops and above-normal scale, that seemed to show her to him as a girl, something unguarded and almost unaltered by time, the same swelling Ds and crook-like ps she would have signed in letters to Cecil Valance before the First World War, and that now she was signing for him. She closed the book and handed it back; then stood up too, with the uncertain look of having come through something without too much harm. He clipped his briefcase shut.

“Well! I’ll be in touch,” he said. He wasn’t at all sure he would ever see her again. “And as I say, I’ll let you know about the book-launch, whenever it happens. You have to be there!” She was completely impassive at this, and Paul moved forward with a quick amiable gasp and touched her upper arm—she hadn’t seen it coming: it was only after he’d planted the first kiss and was already committed to the second that her resistance showed, a little bewildered grunt and recoil, as if from the sheer scale of his misunderstanding.

FIVE

The Old Companions

No one remembers you at all.

—Mick Imlah, “In Memoriam Alfred Lord Tennyson”

1

THE WOMAN SITTING next to him said, “I don’t know if Julian’s coming, do you?”

“I don’t, I’m afraid …,” said Rob.

“I believe they were great friends. I’m not sure I’d recognize him now.” She craned round. Her black hat had an inch of veil at the front, and a mauve silk flower over her right ear. No wedding-ring, but several other fine old rings, heirlooms perhaps, on other fingers. Her clothes