His feelings were one tall question mark. She laughed.
“Well, you needn’t look as if I’d given you a pain in the neck. Perhaps I’d better not, then.”
He laughed awkwardly.
“If I were you I’d get your head down now, as my Phil used to say. I don’t suppose we’ll any of us get much repose this night.” Then she was gone.
Now what could that mean, he asked himself, as he began to unbutton his clothes?
When he had got underneath the blankets, he did not notice whether he was comfortable, or otherwise, but started to listen intently for her coming. He was struck, at once, by the absolute silence, the waiting quiet, as though something dirty was at work which might at any time come out in this darkness, and be green. Then he switched on a light, got off the sofa, and opened the door so, when she did come, that she could get in as quietly. He listened again in the doorway. What was before him of the house was in pitch darkness. He could hear no sound at all. He went back to bed. He switched out the lamp once more. Immediately he shut his eyes and rubbed them, green and red balls slowly revolved, turned pink, then were gone.
But how could she come, he asked himself, with all that dying in bed going on above? When the least movement could be heard throughout the house? He tried the sofa to find if it sounded. He bounced once, then twice, yes thrice, as he lay there. Each time it loudly groaned. There you are, he told himself, what a bloody row. She couldn’t possibly manage, not here. What was that? A creak on the stairs? No, nothing. Besides, it wouldn’t be decent, plumb under old Grant’s bed. But who could tell about a woman? And if she did, would he be all right? He lit the lamp a second time, got himself a cigarette.
The house remained entirely still. Then he caught a sort of mutter in the springs he lay on, next, it was in the air itself, only very distant. Then, much too quick and to his great dread, it had become the vast interrupted hum of planes. They sailed by, as if revving up in hundreds up above him, roar after roar of engine, drone after drone, bound no doubt for the country where he had been imprisoned. It was as though, at a secret signal, every bomber in England, at the call of the queen, had taken off to go hugely hornet swarming, and on barbed wire. He had a horror of hornets. He felt sick. He went to the window, remembered, and rushed back to turn off the light. Shaking then, he watched the cloudless new moon sky, through glass. Each plane had one green and one red light, and that was all he knew while they rumbled over. He felt worse. The moonlit world was Cambridge and Eton blue, as he saw again in his mind the filthy moonlight on Dot’s bed. He smoked a third cigarette. He got cold.
Then, almost as soon as he had slipped back under the blankets, in complete silence because the planes had passed, he fell uneasily asleep, and without another thought of Nance.
It was some time later that he was wakened by something, he did not know what, except that it was dreadful. A shout. Someone ran along to Mr Grant’s room. Nance? And slammed the door. Silence once again. Then it began in earnest. Another shout “Gerald.” It was Mrs Grant calling, so loudly that he could only just recognize her voice. “Gerald.” “Gerald.” And much more urgent, “D’you hear me?” “Oh d’you hear me, do speak.” She was yelling now. “Gerald.” After which the most frightful sobbing. “Gerald darling, Father, where are you?”; then, in a sort of torn bellow, “Father,” then, finally, “Come back,” and the culmination of all this was about to remind Summers of something in France which he knew, as he valued his reason, that he must always shut out. He clapped hands down tight over his ears. He concentrated on not ever remembering. On keeping himself dead empty.
He made himself study the living room. He forced himself to stay clear. And he saw the cat curled up asleep. It didn’t even raise its ears. Then, at the idea that this animal could ignore crude animal cries above, which he had shut out with his wet palms, he nearly let the horror get him, for the feelings he must never have again were summoned once more when he realized the cat, they came rumbling back, as though at a signal, from a moment at night in France. But he won free. He mastered it. And, when he took his streaming hands away, everything was dead quiet.
Finally he heard her coming, at last. There could be no doubt. Instinct made him switch out the lamp. He waited in darkness.
When she got to the door, she turned every light on in this room. He sat up. “He’s gone,” she said, in a great voice. “It’s over.” She stood there proud, grave, and lovely.
“I’ve given her something to make her sleep,” she explained, as she came over in her red dressing-gown. He could not speak. “Here, drink this,” she said, “it’s a drop of whisky.” She did not mention that she had added a sleeping draught, to make him sleep also. In the wide sleeves her arms were like the flesh of peaches.
He took the glass. It was when he saw her as she was looking at that moment, when, finally, she brought him peace, that he knew he really loved her. But he could not tell a word of this.
She left in a few minutes, and did not come back that night. He slept like the dead. Indeed, he snored so loud he shook the springs.
A day or so later, he was hauled up before Corker, who took him through those deliveries of the ten parabolam plants, in great detail. The man seemed to be satisfied because at the end he said, “Yes that’s quite good,” but then he added, “Now, Charley, I want to speak about yourself.”
“Yes sir?”
“I’ve been observing you.”
“Yes sir.”
“What I’ve to say isn’t easy for me, Summers.” To revert thus to Charley’s surname was a sign of trouble. “I think I told you before that in this war the civilians have had some. Why only the other afternoon I was obliged to send one of our typists away, out of the estimating department, for a week’s rest. I can’t remember her name at the moment. Yes I do. Miss Pease, of course. It’s not often I can’t recall a name.” He paused, as if waiting for Charley to confirm this, but the young man, who lacked the self-confidence, missed his opportunity. “But I’ve been observing you,” Mr Mead continued. “It’s not altogether your case taken on its own merits, I’m thinking of the rest of the staff who joined up, and who’ll be coming back to us some day,” he said, leaning backwards in the chair with a judicial expression. Once more he paused, once more Charley did not find it in him to reply.
“With your case,” Mr Mead began again, “I’ve a feeling I’m not getting your best at your work, not all your attention, not all of you, Summers. When everything’s said and done, this is a grand opportunity for you, you know. You’re the first we’ve had returned to the old firm, and I put you in a big position for a man of your experience, which hasn’t been all that large. And what do I find after I’ve watched carefully, for I’ve kept an eye on you, mind? Of course I know there was a bit of bad luck with that girl the Ministry sent. She was no more help to you than a sick headache. In fact, I’ll go this far. She was a disadvantage, Charley, and I give you credit for putting up with her like you did. No, it’s not that is worrying me. It’s yourself, and all the young fellows like you. Have women gotten hold of you, Summers? Is that it?”
“Me sir?” he asked.
“Yes you,” Mr Mead insisted. “You’re the only other person in this room, aren’t you? But I’ll tell you why. I’ve known Rob Jordan all my life, and a year or two back, when we were talking, he got me interested in the Reform of Prisons League. I’ve been to several of their meetings since. It may not be a very pleasant thing to say in mixed company, Summers, but we’re speaking as man to man now. It’s sex is the whole trouble. There you are. Sex.”