“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
“I’m a bit late.”
“We’ll have a drink.”
“Where shall we make for?”
For a brief second, for an inexpressibly curtailed efflux of time, so short that its duration could be appreciated only in recollection, being immediately engulfed at the moment of birth, I was conscious of a sensation I had never before encountered: an awareness that Stringham was perhaps a trifle embarrassed. He took a step forward, and made as if to pat my head, as one who makes much of an animal.
“There, there,” he said. “Good dog. Don’t growl. The fact is I am cutting your date. Cutting it in slow motion before your eyes.”
“Well?”
“It is an absolutely inexcusable thing to do. I’ve been asked to rather a good party at short notice — and have to dine and go to a play first. As the party can hardly fail to be rather fun, I thought you wouldn’t mind.”
“Of course not.”
“An intolerable act, I admit.”
“Not if it’s a good party.”
“I thought the thing to do would be for you to come back and talk while I changed. Then I could drop you wherever you are going to dine.”
“Let’s do that.”
I could pretend to Stringham that I did not mind: within, I was exceedingly annoyed. This was quite unlike him. A rearrangement of plans would now be necessary. His car was parked outside. We drove northward.
“How are things at the old coll.?”
“Le Bas visited me yesterday.”
“Our former housemaster?”
“Braddock alias Thorne.”
“Good heavens, I had forgotten all about that.”
“I wonder if he has?”
“Did you tell him how it happened?”
“No.”
“How extraordinary for him to swim to the surface.”
“He asked about you.”
“No?”
Stringham was not interested.. Le Bas was scarcely a memory. I began to realise that considerable changes had indeed been taking place.
“What is it like in London?”
“I’m rather enjoying myself. You must come and live here soon.”
“I suppose I shall in due course.”
“Can’t you get sent down? No one could stand three years of university life.”
We arrived at the house, and, passing between the pillars of the doorway, collected drinks in the dining-room. Then we went upstairs. The place seemed less gloomy than on my earlier visit. Stringham’s bedroom was a rather comfortless apartment, looking out on to the roofs of another row of large houses. “Who are you dining with?”
“The Bridgnorths.”
“Haven’t I seen pictures of a rather captivating daughter called Lady Peggy Stepney?”
“The last photograph was taken at Newmarket. I’ve been wondering whether it wasn’t time for her to get married and settle down,” said Stringham. “I seem to have been a bachelor an awfully long time.”
“What does Lady Peggy think about it?”
“There are indications that she does not actively dislike me.”
“Why not, then?”
We talked in a desultory way, Stringham walking to and fro, wearing only a stiff shirt, and some black silk socks, while he washed his hands and brushed his hair. I did not know how serious he might be with regard to the Bridgnorths’ daughter. The idea of one of my friends getting married had scarcely occurred to me, even as a possibility. I saw now that such a thing was not absolutely out of the question. From time to time a footman appeared, offering different collars, because Stringham could find none he liked.
“I suppose this must be one of Buster’s,” he said, at last accepting a collar that satisfied him. “I shall sell the rest of mine off cheap to the clergy to wear back-to-front.” He slipped on his tail-coat, pulling at the cuffs of his shirt. “Come on,” he said; “we’ll have another drink on the way out.”
“Where is your dinner-party?”
“Grosvenor Square. Where shall I drop you?”
“Grosvenor Square will do for me.”
“But what will you do?”
“Dine with an uncle of mine.”
“Does he live there?”
“No — but he isn’t expecting me just yet.”
“He was expecting you then?”
“A standing invitation.”
“So I really haven’t left you too high and dry?”
“Not in the least.”
“You are jolly lucky to have relations you can drop in on at any time,’” said Stringham. “My own are much too occupied with their own affairs to care for that.”
“You met Uncle Giles once. He suddenly arrived one night when we were having tea. It was the day of Peter’s ‘unfortunate incident’.”
Stringham laughed. He said: “I remember about Peter, but not about your uncle.”
We reached the car again, and drove for a time in silence. “We’ll meet soon,” Stringham said. “I suppose you are going back to-night — otherwise we might have lunched tomorrow.”
“I’ll be up in a week or two.”
“We will get together then.”
We had reached Grosvenor Square, and he slowed up: “Now where?”
“I’ll climb down here.”
“I expect it will be a really frightful party, and Peggy will have decided not to turn up.” He waved, and I waved, as the car went on to the far side of the square.
The evening was decidedly cool, and rain was halfheartedly falling. I knew now that this parting was one of those final things that happen, recurrently, as time passes: until at last they may be recognised fairly easily as the close of a period. This was the last I should see of Stringham for a long time. The path had suddenly forked. With regret, I accepted the inevitability of circumstance. Human relationships flourish and decay, quickly and silently, so that those concerned scarcely know how brittle, or how inflexible, the ties that bind them have become. Lady Bridgnorth, by her invitation that night, had effortlessly snapped one of the links — for practical purposes the main one — between Stringham and myself; just as the accident in Templer’s car, in a rather different manner, had removed Templer from Stringham’s course. A new epoch was opening: in a sense this night was the final remnant of life at school.
I was glad to have remembered Uncle Giles. It was, I suppose, justification of the family as a social group that, upon such an occasion, my uncle’s company seemed to offer a restorative in the accidental nature of our relationship and the purely formal regard paid by him to the fact that I was his nephew. Finding a telephone box, I looked up the address of the Trouville Restaurant, which turned out to be in Soho. It was fairly early in the evening. Passing slowly through a network of narrow streets, and travelling some distance, I came at last to the Trouville. The outside was not inviting. The restaurant’s façade was boarded up with dull, reddish shutters. At the door hung a table d’hôte menu, slipped into a brass frame that advertised Schweppes’ mineral waters — Blanchailles — Potage Solférino — Sole Bercy — Côtelettes d’Agneau Reform — Glace Néapolitaine — Café. The advertised charge seemed very reasonable. The immense depression of this soiled, claret-coloured exterior certainly seemed to meet the case; for there is always something solemn about change, even when accepted.
Within, the room was narrow, and unnaturally long, with a table each side, one after another, stretching in perspective into shadows that hid the service lift: which was set among palms rising from ornate brass pots. The emptiness, dim light, silence — and, to some extent, the smell — created a faintly ecclesiastical atmosphere; so that the track between the tables might have been an aisle, leading, perhaps, to a hidden choir. Uncle Giles himself, sitting alone at the far end of this place, bent over a book, had the air of a sleepy worshipper, waiting for the next service to begin. He did not look specially pleased to see me, and not at all surprised. “You’re a bit late,” he said. “So I started.” It had not occurred to him that I should do otherwise than come straight up to London, so soon as informed that there was an opportunity to see him again. He put his book face-downwards on the tablecloth. I saw that it was called Some Things That Matter. We discussed the Trust until it was time to catch my train.