That very first evening, when Charley did not come, while she lay in bed as they talked downstairs, she had asked herself if he was being told something which kept him. He was and he wasn’t. To tell the truth, he had forgotten that she existed.
There was a silence this first night after she left for bed until Mr Phillips announced,
“Well here you are again then, Charley.”
“Yes,” Charley Summers replied. They were sitting opposite each other, over cups of tea.
“It seems a long time,” Mr Phillips said. Charley did not reply.
“I’ve put her in Rose’s old room,” Mr Phillips explained. Charley looked at him, but the widower’s face was bland. Then the man went on, “Who is she?”
“Works with me.”
“You London office people get all the fun and games,” Mr Phillips said. “But don’t wake Ridley, will you?”
“Doesn’t he sleep any better than his mother did, then?”
“Yes,” James replied. “She was always complaining about that, wasn’t she?”
“Well I mean,” Charley loyally objected. “It’s rotten if you can’t sleep.” He was surprised to find he could be cold once more, while speaking of her, cold.
“They get more than they realize,” Mr Phillips said.
“No way of telling.”
“There is if you’re stretched out by their side,” Mr Phillips answered cheerfully. “Many’s the time I’ve listened to her snore, when she’s told me the next day she hadn’t slept a wink all night.”
“I didn’t know,” Charley lied, delighted that he could talk easily of Rose. He couldn’t now imagine why he had got himself into such a state about her handwriting. All of a sudden, or so he thought, she was dead to him at last. She was really gone.
“The doctor seemed to think it affected her resistance at the last,” James went on. “I didn’t undeceive him. You see she’d complained of not sleeping ever since I brought her here.”
“I couldn’t drop off when I first got back. It was the quiet.”
“You weren’t having raids out there, not all the time, surely?”
“Sleeping alone,” Charley explained. “After twenty to a room.”
“What did the Army doctors say?” Mr Phillips asked.
“They’re all trick cyclists now,” Charley said. “Best not to undeceive those merchants either.” Then his mind turned to Mrs Grant. “Did the family come down when she lay dying?” he lazily enquired, free as air about Rose.
“Her old mother was too ill and couldn’t be left.”
“I see,” Charley said.
“Or so that old bastard Gerald made out, anyway. I say, my dear lad, I hope I haven’t gone over the line. In-laws and all that.” He felt, entirely without jealousy, as though Charles and he had shared Rose.
“Don’t mind me, Jim. He’s poison.”
“Right then, we know where we stand. That man’s always up to some deadly work. Poor soul, it’s really no wonder she’s as she is today, Mrs Grant, you know.”
“You’re telling me.”
“Well, that’s a real relief, Charley old boy. Because I felt a bit of a worm in front of you, letting fly like that about him.”
Charley looked at Mr Phillips. Everything had changed, yet it was no different. They had sat on so often after Rose had gone to bed, so many years back, saying much the same.
“Lot of water’s passed under the bridge,” Charley commented with a trace of disgust, as though speaking of the sewage system.
“It was terrible when it happened, poor old girl,” Mr Phillips said. “Ridley was the worst part. Must have come as a shock to you, too. One of the first letters you got from home?”
“There it is.”
“Life has a funny way of getting back at us, sometimes.” Phillips spoke as though he’d had one wife after another, each of whom had lived just three months. “But d’you mind if I ask a question? Why did you take me along a few weeks ago to meet a certain person?”
“Then you did notice a resemblance?” Charley asked, showing the embarrassment in his voice.
“Not the slightest,” Mr Phillips replied with confidence. “Was that your reason?”
“Good lord, no,” Mr Summers lied, and became voluble. “It was Mr Grant sent me in the first place. I shan’t ever know what for, some more of his fun and games I suppose. Well, we had a bit of a misunderstanding right off, she and I. I don’t understand now what she thought. But it struck me there couldn’t be any harm in taking you along. Hope you didn’t mind?”
“Of course not. Then when I turned it over in my head afterwards I wondered if you hadn’t mistaken something.”
Charley was alarmed, but he kept pretty calm. He was now ashamed of what he had felt for Rose.
“What d’you mean?” he asked.
“It’s only that there’s nothing to the shape of a face.”
“What are you getting at?” Charley wanted to know, on the defensive because that phrase had particularly made him think of her son.
“Yet when a man marries again, he chooses the same type, or so the women say. While you and Rose were old pals, knew each other long before we ever met.” There was a pause. He did not explain further. “You know, now she’s gone, you’re my link with her, old man,” Jim Phillips said.
They’d had double whiskies for the road before they left the pub. Charley began to wonder if James wasn’t a trifle sozzled. But he kept quiet.
“Look,” Mr Phillips went on, “perhaps you may consider I’m going a bit beyond it, even for between friends, but I’ve had no one I could talk to, all this long while. Anybody would think Ridley must remind me of her, but he doesn’t, and if ever you’re in my position, as I hope you never will, I dare say you’ll find the same. No, when you took me up to that flat in London, I did wonder at the time if you wanted to see whether I got it too. I mean, if she should remind me, as well as you.”
“I don’t know what you’re driving at?” Charley asked, still on the defensive.
“I’m not getting at anything, or anybody,” Mr Phillips said handsomely. “Forget it. No, I’m speaking for your own good. When she died I took it very bad, living on in the same house as I had to. I’ve given your friend her old room by the way. There wasn’t anywhere else. And I shouldn’t wonder if you didn’t feel it very hard as well, situated like you were when you heard, out there. But what I’m trying to say is, it’s you reminds me of her when I’m with you, there you are. Much more than your other lady friend, or even the boy now. There’s nothing in faces.”
“Then you did think they were like when I took you?”
“Just when I first set eyes on her I might have done, and with that contemptible remark she made after. I was a bit wild with you as a matter of fact, just for the moment. Then when I got back I read the old story I sent on.”
“Which story?” he asked, glad to get off the subject.