“How do you do, Car?” she said.
I just stood there like a stock, for I was clean knocked out of time. She had on some sort of close cap with a black veil that covered her face and went round her neck like a scarf, but the minute she opened her mouth I knew her. It was Anna Lang.
Well, I never liked Anna, and there were reasons why both of us should find it awkward to meet. I hoped she didn’t know as much about the reasons as I did-I couldn’t believe she’d have come here to meet me if she did. I hoped with all my heart she didn’t know that Uncle John had tried to bucket me into marrying her. I wished myself a thousand miles away, and yet, extraordinary as it may seem, one bit of me was pleased to see her. For one thing, when you’ve lived right away from your own people and your own pals for three years, it feels good to meet one of them again-it seems to bridge the gap a bit. And for another thing, I thought perhaps she might talk about Isobel; because, of course, they’re near neighbors, and it isn’t as if Isobel and I had even been engaged or anything like that, so I thought she might just happen to mention her. I didn’t think all these things one after another as I’ve written them, but they were all there in my mind at once.
I stood there, and Anna’s hand dropped down.
“Don’t you know me, Car?”
Her voice is one of the things that annoys me about Anna. It’s what you’d call a beautiful voice if it belonged to an actress spouting high falutin’ blank verse stuff in a stage garden under a stage moon; in the family circle it’s a bit too much of a good thing, and has always made me want to throw something at her.
I said, “Of course I know you. How do you do?” And I’m afraid I didn’t say it very nicely. I don’t know why some people always rub you up, but there it is.
When I said that, she laughed. She has the sort of laugh that is called “mellow” and “liquid” in novels. Personally I hate it. When she had laughed, she said,
“I don’t do very well, and I’m afraid you don’t either. Don’t you think we might have something to say to each other?”
I didn’t honestly feel that I had anything to say to her. I said so-politely of course. I put it that I hadn’t exactly been making history, and that I wasn’t going to bore any one with my horribly dull career.
She laughed again.
“You needn’t be polite. It doesn’t really suit you. I’ve come here because I want to talk to you. Will you give me ten minutes of your time?”
I couldn’t say no to that.
“Well, let’s sit down,” she said. “One can conduct an interview standing, but one can’t talk. I want to talk.”
She stepped over the threshold and sat down on the step that ran the width of the door. I sat down too, in the opposite corner. I watched her unwind the black veil and throw it back. She did this very deliberately. Then she reached up behind her and turned the lantern so that the light shone straight between us and I could see her face and she could see mine. That’s the sort of thing that riles me in Anna-she’s stagey all the time. I suppose she’s made that way. She used to get into a boiling rage when I told her of it-oh, about a hundred years ago when we were children and didn’t mind what we said to each other.
She threw back the veil, and turned the light and looked at me, tilting her chin up a little and half closing her eyes. An artist once told her that she looked like the Blessed Damozel when she did that, and it’s been her stock pose ever since. If you saw her painted like that, you’d say “How beautiful!” -and it would be quite true. But it’s a trick all the same, and a trick ends in putting your back up.
I said, “You’re looking very well, Anna,” and she opened her eyes a little wider and looked mournfully at me. She’s got those big, dark eyes that look as if they are just going to cry.
“Do I?” she said. “You don’t-poor Car!”
I would have liked to say straight out, “For the Lord’s sake, don’t ‘poor Car’ me!” But I expect I looked it, for she said,
“Don’t be angry. Can’t you be friends and talk to me for ten minutes? Ten minutes isn’t much out of three years. It’s three years since we talked, isn’t it?”
“Getting on.”
“What sort of years have they been?”
“Oh, so so.”
She put out her hand as if she were going to touch me.
“Perhaps I know more about them than you think.”
“There’s nothing much to know.”
“Shall I tell you what I know? It’s not very pleasant telling-is it? So I think I’ll leave it alone. It’s been downhill all the way, and now you’ve got to the place where there isn’t another step at all.”
It sounds bald and brutal written down, but she said it in a sweet sad way, and at the end her voice broke into the sort of sigh which had come from the dark corner of the car.
“What did you want to talk to me about?” I said.
“You and me. Do you hate me, Car?”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk nonsense!”
She laughed again, sadly. An ass who wrote poetry told her that her laugh had all the tears and all the music of the world in it. Of course, after that, she made a point of laughing sadly. She’s had a lot of practice, and she does it awfully well.
“Look here, Anna,” I said-and I admit that I was hot-“Look here, did you cart me all the way down from London into the middle of this wood to ask me whether I hated you?”
“Perhaps I did.”
What can you do with a woman like that? I moved as if I was going to get up.
“Car-don’t! I-I do want to talk to you. I-I’ve risked a lot to come and talk to you like this.”
I never heard such rubbish in my life. You’d think she might know it wasn’t any good talking like that to me. Anna and I are the same age, and we’ve known each other for the whole twenty-seven years. That’s what annoys me-she ought to know better. I said so.
“What’s the good of talking like that? What have you brought me down here for?”
“Bobby’s been telling you.”
Bobby… When she said that, I knew where I’d seen the fat man before. Markham -that was his name-Bobby Markham. The Bobby did it, and his bulk. About a fortnight ago I tried for the job of secretary to a man called Arbuthnot Markham who is a partner in a big firm of timber importers. As they do most of their business with South America, and as I happen to have a smattering of Spanish, I thought I might have a chance. I hadn’t. And after I’d seen Arbuthnot Markham I wasn’t so sorry-I didn’t like him. But beggars can’t be choosers.
The fat man was in the outer office when I came through.
He didn’t speak to me, though we’d had a nodding acquaintance some years before. He recognized me all right though-I could see that. It rather rubs it in when the people you didn’t think good enough for you, start thinking you’re not good enough for them. Not that I cared what Bobby Markham did. I didn’t like him any better than I liked his brother. I suppose they were brothers; there was a good deal of likeness, only Arbuthnot was hard where Bobby was soft, and thick-set where Bobby was just fat. I put down Arbuthnot as a bully, and Bobby as a silly ass. Their voices were alike though.
“Oh,” I said, “Bobby’s been telling me?” That was Anna all over-she gave his name away as easily as saying good-morning. “And where do you come in? He talked about a client.”
She tipped up her chin again.
“Oh, I was the client.”
“Look here, Anna,” I said, “what’s all this nonsense? It doesn’t take me in a bit, you know, this spoof offer of five hundred pounds and Mr. Bobby Markham’s talk about a client who has forged a check and wants me to forge another so as to get him out of a hole.”