But how dead selfish of the old boy, Charley felt as he stood in the porch of their villa while Mr Grant shouted for his wife. After all, here was a man who had no need for coupons, who couldn’t have to buy anything new. Because surely he had done enough, Charley thought, once more coming back to himself. When all was said and done he had risked his life, lost a leg, spent the best years of his prime in prison behind barbed wire, and, now that he was back, they had a use for him as a guinea pig on Rose’s mother.
Mr Grant shouted again.
“I’m coming dear,” she piped in a quiver, and there was Mrs Grant, too neat, scuttling down the stairs. She came straight on, never hesitated, flung her old arms round Charley’s neck, went up on her toes to do it, and sung out “John, John,” twice.
“No it’s not John, dear, it’s Charley, back from the war,” Mr Grant announced at her towered white head of hair, which she was leaning on Charley’s neck as the young man lightly touched her elbows.
“They are very cruel to me, John,” she said. From her round cheeks he found that she was crying.
“Now dear, this is Charley Summers,” Mr Grant repeated.
“Don’t you worry,” Charley mumbled.
But she would not have it. She was most natural.
“John, to think you’re back at last,” she said.
“There you are,” the husband explained, “she thinks you’re her brother who was killed in seventeen.”
Charley hardened his heart.
“Why my little baby brother John,” Mrs Grant exclaimed in rather a happier voice and stood back, laying hands gently on his forearms. She looked yearning into his face. She was much too neat. But for two tear drops under the chin, and a wet run to each from out the corners of her eyes, which were intensely bright, everything was mouse tidy, except it seemed her wits.
“Now Amy,” her husband begged.
“But you mustn’t stand here. I don’t know where my mind is, I’m sure,” she went on, preceding him into their parlour. As he sat down he felt she did not seem so sure of him after all. In fact he did not like the way she shaped, complaining as she now was that it must be the war, that ever since the Russians gave up she had felt tired. “This terrible war,” she ended, and screened her eyes with a hand as if he were seated opposite nude.
“Look dear,” the husband said, “you rest yourself while I go fetch our tea. I shan’t be a minute,” he explained to Charley, who did not want to be alone with her, who opened his mouth to ask him to stay but was too late, as happened so often.
“So cruel,” Mrs Grant murmured, once they were alone. There was then a silence while she still held a hand on her eyes. Charley asked himself if it was safe for them to be left together, and then for no particular reason remembered that he had forgotten to buy the tie he’d meant to get in the morning.
“You’re not John, are you?” she said, when he looked up.
But he did not have to answer because her husband came back just then, wheeling the tea trolley. “Here we are,” this man genially announced. “John always had cream with his,” she said, her eyes on the small, half empty jug of milk, “Oh, but of course, I forgot,” she went on. “You’re not, are you. It’s my memory,” she explained. “Sometimes I get a bit tired.”
Mr Grant began to pour. “Seems queer,” he said to Charley. “Rose always used to do this. D’you remember?” Charley remembered, but he did not say so. “Insisted on it way back in the days when she had her hair in pigtails. Made such a commotion that we had to let her. This is Charley Summers, dear,” he said briskly to his wife. “Surely you recollect him, Amy? Used to come to tea in the old days, — and she wore pale pink bows in the plaits,” he added, his mind turning a corner. There was a pause. When he spoke again his voice was flat. “You know him I’ll be bound,” he said. “It was Rose he used to come down and see, and now here he is to pay a call on her old people.”
Charley sat silent, kept an eye on his empty cup.
“Why you aren’t eating,” was what she answered. “I’m sure I get so bewildered sometimes.” The young man glanced at her to find she was offering him cake. “You must excuse us, you know. We live very quietly, oh so quietly.”
“I hear you do work for the A.R.B.S., Mrs Grant,” he asked.
“Yes, dear, dear, and what a business that is. Sometimes I think it will be too much for me, Mr … Mr …, so stupid, I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch your name.”
Charley noticed that she never seemed to address Mr Grant directly.
“Charley Summers, dear,” Mr Grant said, brisk.
“Of course. Mr Summers. You know we’ve had some terrible Zeppelin raids round about, lately. Some have been in daylight as well, so daring don’t you think Mr …, Mr …” He looked at her. When she saw this she dropped her eyes quick, and put a hand on her mouth as though about to belch.
“She will insist it’s the last war,” Mr Grant explained in a normal voice.
“Of course,” Charley said.
“How’s things over in Germany these days?” Mr Grant enquired, ignoring his wife. “I expect you had a pretty rotten time, eh? What I say is, I can’t see any end to this lot. But I mean, did they treat you badly? What part were you, anyway?”
Charley felt the old man was almost being sharp with him. He supposed it to be irritation at his life partner. But the nausea, which had recently begun to spread in his stomach whenever prison camps were mentioned, drove all else out of his head.
“Rather not speak of it,” he replied, indistinctly.
“I’m sorry, Charley boy. You don’t want to pay any attention to us old folks,” he said. “The plain fact is, we’re past it. You’ll find out as you grow older. You seem to lose grip somehow. Worst of all is, you don’t seem to notice. But the hard part must have been the ladies, eh? Because it’s not natural to be without them, after all. And then not even seeing one. Why, you must have been in a pickle,” he ended with genuine sympathy, unable, it seemed, to realize how odd, or, if you like, how charming this was in him to speak so in front of his sick wife.
“Might I have another cup?” Charley asked Mrs Grant.
“Why, whatever am I about?” Mrs Grant said, bright, as she snatched his saucer. “You mustn’t heed me,” she went on. “I’ve been so forgetful lately. You’d never believe.”
“But you aren’t eating, Charley boy,” Mr Grant told him. “Yes, it must be rotten for a young man in those places. Unnatural. But then there’s a deal in life you don’t understand at the time. You’ll find that out later. Why, sometimes, when I’ve done the housework and seen to Amy here, I just sit where I am, and remember. That’s what she’s missing. Because it’s not all bad what’s happened to you. Not by a long chalk.”