‘No one’, she sighed, ‘is going to marry me for my cordon bleu.’
There were plenty of other reasons why she’d be fending off suitors knee-deep in a year or two: a curvy figure, delicate neck, baby skin; the touch-me-not expression, the awakening social courage, the quick compassion. No one was going to care if she couldn’t cook. But she wasn’t secure enough to be told so at that moment.
‘When were you seventeen?’ I asked.
‘The week before last.’
‘You didn’t waste much time passing the driving test.’
‘I’ve been able to drive since I was eight. Peter can, too.’ She finished her eggs and stirred two heaped teaspoonfuls of sugar into her coffee. ‘I was hungry. Funny, that.’
‘It’s a long time since lunch.’
‘A terribly long time...’ She suddenly looked me straight in the face, which she had mostly been avoiding, and with devastating innocence said, ‘I’m so glad you’re alive.’
I turned a hopeless wince into a laugh. ‘I’m so glad Dave Teller is.’
‘Both of you,’ she said. ‘It was the worst thing in my whole life when you didn’t come up.’
A child untouched by tragedy, I thought. A pity the world was such a rough place, would catch her by her pretty neck one day and tear her guts apart. No one ever escaped. To have got to seventeen unlacerated was merely a matter of luck.
When we had finished the coffee she insisted on doing the dishes, but when she hung up the tea towel I saw all her mother’s warnings pour back, and she glanced at me and quickly away, and stood stiffly in the centre of the room, looking nervous and embarrassed.
‘Why don’t you have any pictures on your walls?’ she said jerkily.
I gestured to the trunk in the corner. ‘There are some in there, but I don’t like them very much. Not enough to bother with hanging them up... Do you know it’s after ten? I’d better take you home or the hostel will shut you out.’
‘Oh yes,’ she said in great relief, and then hearing her own voice, added in confusion, ‘I mean... I didn’t know if you would think me very rude, dashing off as soon as we’d finished eating.’
‘Your mother is quite right to tell you to be cautious,’ I said lightly. ‘Little Red Riding Hood couldn’t tell a wolf from her grandmother... and you can never rely on a woodcutter turning up in the nick of time.’
The rigidity dissolved like mist. ‘You do say some extraordinary things,’ she said. ‘As if you could read my mind.’
‘I could,’ I smiled. ‘You’d better put that cardigan on. It will be cold outside.’
‘OK.’ She pulled a dark brown jersey out of her bucket-shaped holdall and put it on. I bent to pick up a clean folded handkerchief which had fallen out with it, and when she was ready, handed it to her.
‘Thanks,’ she said, looking at it casually. ‘That’s the one Peter found in the punt.’
‘In the punt?’
‘Yes, down a crack between two of the cushions. He gave it to me because it was too small for him, he said. Too cissy.’
‘Did he find anything else?’
‘I don’t think so... I mean it isn’t stealing or anything, is it, to keep her handkerchief? I’ll give it to her of course if she comes back, but by the time Peter was sitting in the punt, they had been gone already for ages.’
‘No, it’s not stealing,’ I reassured her, though technically it was doubtful. ‘But may I have a look at it?’
‘Of course.’
She gave it back and I unfolded it: a white square of thin gauzy material. In one corner, a stylized bear in a flat straw hat.
‘Is that out of Walt Disney?’ I asked.
She shook her head and said with surprise at my ignorance, ‘Yogi Bear.’
‘Who is Yogi Bear?’
‘I can’t believe it! Well, he’s a character in a lot of cartoon films. Like Top Cat and Atom Ant and the Flintstones.’
‘I’ve seen the Flintstones,’ I agreed.
‘Like them, then. The same people make Yogi Bear.’
‘Do you mind if I keep it for a day or two?’
‘Of course, if you really want to,’ she said, puzzled. ‘But it surely hasn’t any value.’
Down in the street I said I might as well finish the job and drive her to her hostel.
‘I’m really all right now,’ she protested. ‘You don’t need to come.’
‘Yes I do. Your father said to look after you, and I’m seeing you safe to your door.’
She raised her eyebrows and gave me a comical look, but compliantly went round to the passenger’s seat. I started the car, switched on the lights, and started towards Kensington.
‘Do you always do what Daddy tells you?’ she asked, smiling.
She was feeling much surer of herself, I thought.
‘Yes, when I want to.’
‘That’s a contradiction in terms.’
‘So it is.’
‘Well, what do you actually do? What does anyone do in the Civil Service?’
‘I interview people.’
‘What sort of people?’
‘People who want jobs in Government departments.’
‘Oh!’ She laughed. ‘A sort of Personnel Officer?’
‘Sort of.’
‘It sounds a bit drizz.’
‘The sun shines occasionally.’
‘You’re pretty quick. We only made up drizz yesterday.’
‘A very useful word.’
‘Yes, we thought so, too. Covers a lot of things nicely.’
‘Like wet boyfriends?’
She laughed. ‘Actually, it’s pretty drizz to have a wet boyfriend.’ She pointed. ‘The hostel’s down there, but we have to drive around and find somewhere to park the car all night. One or two squares down here don’t have meters yet.’
The nearest empty space was a good quarter of a mile from the hostel, so I walked her back.
‘You don’t need to...’ she began. ‘Well... don’t say it. Daddy said.’
‘Right,’ I agreed.
She sniffed resignedly and walked beside me out of step, the leather bucket bag swinging and her flat shoes silent on the pavement. At the hostel’s glossy black well-lit front door she came to a stop and hovered on one foot, her half anxious uncertain expression saying clearer than words that she wasn’t sure how to part from me. I wasn’t old enough for uncle terms or young enough for a casual contemporary brush-off. I worked for her father, but wasn’t his servant. Lived alone, looked respectable, asked nothing: I didn’t fit into any of the categories she had yet learnt how to deal with. I put out my hand and smiled.
‘Goodnight, Lynnie.’
Her clasp was brief, warm, relieved.
‘Goodnight...’ There was a pause while she made up her mind to it; and even then it was little more than a breath. ‘... Gene.’
‘I wish you,’ I said, ‘blind traffic wardens and foam rubber bumpers.’
‘Goodnight.’ The chuckle rolled spontaneously in her throat. ‘Goodnight.’ She turned on one toe and jumped the two steps up to the door, then looked over her shoulder and waved as she went inside.
Little Lynnie, I thought, whistling to a passing taxi, little Lynnie, right at the beginning of it. Flying half consciously, half unconsciously, the notice-me flags of the pretty young female; and it was no use pretending that she didn’t make me hungry; that she wasn’t absolutely what I would have liked as an oasis in my too continent life. But if I had learnt anything in thirty-eight years it was who not to go to bed with.
And, more drearily, how not to.
Chapter Four
The Buttress Life Offices on Thirty-Third Street were high on customer appeal on the sixth floor. On the fifth and seventh they tucked the computers and electric typewriters into functional plasterboard cubicles. I sat three inches deep in black leather and considered that of all American craftsmen, I admired their chair designers most: in no other country in the world could one sit on the same seat for several hours without protest from the sacro-iliac.