“Didn’t you try it? Oh, in one of those magazines my sister used to take when she kept house here, before I married, and I kept ’em up, I don’t know why.”
“I believe I did, now you come to mention this.”
“Which didn’t ring the bell, eh Charley? Well there’s no accounting.”
“I don’t see much in books,” Mr Summers said.
“No more do I,” Phillips agreed. “Marriage is a funny thing. And nothing at all to do with the tripe these screwy authors serve us up with.”
“Did Rose ever know Arthur Middlewitch?” Charley interrupted.
“Arthur who?”
“Middlewitch.”
“Never heard of him,” Mr Phillips said. “You knew her earlier than me,” he pointed out.
“It’s nothing. Just an idea,” Charley replied.
“But to carry on with what I was in the middle of,” Mr Phillips began again, “you know, before Ridley was born, Rose got it into her head we were going to have a daughter.” This gave Charley a shock because he remembered very well how, at the time, she had insisted to him that they would have a son. “They get crazes for things,” Mr Phillips was saying, “in her case it was olives, and, of course, that’s a female name, anyway she was quite settled she’d have a girl.” “You liar” Charley said to himself under his breath, although Rose was gone and he’d got rid of her, didn’t mind any more, or so he’d been thinking. “Well, she made me promise, if anything should happen to her at the birth, that I’d never let those Grants have the kid.”
“She knew about ’em, then?” Charley got out, with difficulty. What had Rose been doing to talk of a daughter, when with him she had been so full of a son?
“Of course I promised,” Mr Phillips said. “What man wouldn’t. It came easy, too, this particular promise. After all having children is what we’re here for,” he said with assurance. “All there is to life, or that’s how it strikes me. But it proves one point, she must have known something was up, at Redham, between her mother and the old man, eh? Stands out a mile she must have. Not a happy home, you know.”
“Certainly is,” Charley agreed, confused, several sentences behind once more.
“Which brings me to what I’ve been getting to,” Mr Phillips said. “Why don’t you marry and settle down?”
This was a bit of a facer.
“Why don’t you marry again, for that matter?” Charley asked, with the air of a man getting himself out of a tight spot.
“Who me?” Mr Phillips demanded. “Once bitten twice shy, old chap. No, that’s got a disobliging sound to it. What I meant was that, with Ridley, I’ve perpetuated myself, d’you get me? So you’ve nothing of the sort in mind?”
“Never,” Charley said, and made it sound final.
“Not even with our friend upstairs you brought along?”
“I told you I work with her in the office.”
“Well it’s been known before, after all? It wouldn’t be the first time. All right, you’re not.” Then he lied. “I only asked because with Rose’s room being the only other one, mine’s right next door, so I thought you might have imagined I was trying some funny business or something.”
“That’s O.K.,” Charley said. “There’s nothing in her direction for me or you, you can bet your life on that.” He was also lying, but in his case with only half a mind to it, he was so taken up with sudden doubts of Rose, doubts which almost redisposed him to love her.
“You ought to marry. A man like you should,” Mr Phillips repeated, well content.
“Why?”
“Because you’re alone, old man.”
“Aren’t you, as well?” Charley asked, still defensive.
“I’ve got Ridley.”
“Of course,” Charley muttered, but saying to himself “You old mutt, if you only knew.”
“No, it’s a duty,” Mr Phillips went on. “Because you’re moping. That’s what’s got you, moping.”
Charley stayed silent. His day to day sense of being injured by everyone, by life itself, rose up and gagged him.
“I say I hope you don’t mind my speaking like this? But I’ve noticed things. You’ve been different, old chap, since you got back.”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
“Very likely,” Mr Phillips admitted, as though granting a favour. “Still, we have to take the world the way we find it. There’s life to live after all. You’ll overlook my saying so, I’m sure, but you’re maladjusted.”
There was a silence.
“Nowaday’s no man’s got a right to lead his own life,” James went on, speaking with a fat man’s conviction. “It’s selfish, that’s what it is, not to marry and not to have the little old comforts marriage brings. With the responsibilities.”
“I’m not fit,” Charley brought out with difficulty, and with a great look of pain. His self pity had at last got the better of him.
“My dear old chap, if you’d rather not discuss it, why of course. In any case, what say we wander upstairs and get a bit of sleep?”
But Charley did not move.
“After those prisoner of war camps,” he began, then stopped.
“Well what about ’em? Pretty rough, what?”
“I can’t,” Charley said, shifting about in his chair.
“Well,” Mr Phillips said with a change of tone, “we have chewed the old rag over, haven’t we? Will you just look at the time? It’s beddy byes now for us, I say.” As he got up to go, the younger man thought, “Why you bloody civilian.”
In his bed he had a short spell of Rose before he began to feel he was back in Germany again.
The next day, the first morning of her visit, it was James called her with a cup of tea and the usual questions about whether she had been all right, slept well, and so on. But the following day, after James had been for hours in bed with her, it was Charley who brought the cup, and who sat down on the edge, looking as usual as if he was sleep-walking.
“Well Dot,” he’d said, with no more than a glance in her direction. But of course, on account of what she had just done with the other man, she’d absolutely shrunk away from him, couldn’t help herself. It made her feel a fool even to think of it after, for he couldn’t have been up to anything, not him, poor fish. So he’d drifted out, almost at once. You could never tell if he noticed.
But the first morning they had an egg for breakfast each, which made up for a good deal.
Then, when Charley was helping to clear away, he’d come on the Phillips daily help in the scullery, Rose’s precious Mrs Gubbins. James left them alone. Later on he asked Charley what had passed.
“‘Imagine seeing you again,’ was what she said,” Charley lied, for the woman, who hardly ever spoke, had come out with, “Imagine seeing you here again.”
“Now you know what you fought for, Charley boy,” Mr Phillips exclaimed. “What a welcome back, eh?” Then he told Dot this woman had been his wife’s treasure and how lucky he was to keep her.
“It’s for Ridley,” he went on. “Kids need a woman’s eye. She’ll see a sign in a kid’s face that a mere man would never even notice. It’s nature. So I feel safe with her looking in every day.”
“He’s a wonderful little chap,” Miss Pitter returned. “I’m sure he’s a credit to you.”
“I was just wondering if you’d think it was wrong to look after him as I do. Trust my own judgement, I mean. But it’s she gives me the confidence.”
“Well, things won’t last that way for ever, I don’t suppose.”
A roar of traffic kept him from hearing this.
“What’s that?” he asked.
She blushed. But she did not give in. She said it again.
“Well, things won’t last that way for ever, will they?”
“How d’you reckon?” James asked.
Miss Pitter actually began to shift from one foot to the other.