An approaching disturbance — the sound of a hip striking the corner of a laden table, the clash of crockery on a tray abruptly snatched from collision — warned Alec that Bob was on his way to join him. He looked up and saw that, apart from some lateral distortion caused by the movement of the train, the old stooping gait was the same as ever, not in the least scholarly, the tread of someone closing in on bodily enjoyment or the means to buy some.
‘Hallo, Mac,’ Bob said in his curt tone and fake-genteel accent, then at once set about making people move so that he could sit where he wanted, opposite Alec. When he had done this he swept the cloth with the edge of his newspaper and they looked at each other in a way they often did, Bob unconcernedly claiming superior sophistication, Alec on the defensive, ready, if challenged, to stress the importance of integrity. Then both turned blank and grim. Alec found nothing to say; his attention was like a weight too heavy to move from where it had landed, on Bob’s suit. Why was he wearing it? He must have others. Where were they?
‘Well, Mac, words aren’t much use at a time like this, eh?’
‘No. No, they’re not.’
Bob signalled emphatically for more coffee. ‘I’d have thought you’d have gone down there yesterday.’
‘I didn’t like to intrude.’
‘Oh, but surely, I mean Jim would have been glad to have you there, old chap. After all, you’re not exactly a stranger.’
‘I worked it out that he’d sooner have been on his own. I know I would if it had been me.’
‘That’s where you go wrong, Mac, if I may say so. You’re by way of being a reserved type, always have been. I’m not blaming you, heaven knows — you can’t help the way you’re made — but most people aren’t like that, you see. They want their pals round them. I call that a normal human instinct. Tell me, are you still living at that place of yours in Ealing?’
‘You asked me that the last time you saw me in the Lord Nelson. I haven’t moved since then.’
‘It would drive me crackers, quite frankly, being on my own twelve hours of the day. What do you do when you feel like nipping out and having a few?’
‘I haven’t got much cash for nipping out and having a few, so the question doesn’t arise very often.’
‘No, I see.’ Bob seemed not to have noticed the bitterness which Alec had been unable to keep out of his voice. Not noticing things like that was no doubt useful to one who led Bob’s kind of life. After gazing with apparent incredulity at the coffee with which their cups were now being refilled, he went on: ‘What do you do of an evening then? You can’t just—’
‘Oh, I get a bit of bridge now and again, and there are one or two people I drop in on. There’s a colleague of mine in the export department living just ten minutes’ walk away. I usually have some grub with him and his wife Sunday midday and occasionally in the week.’
‘Still go to your concerts?’
‘Not so much now.’
Bob shook his head and drew in his breath. ‘It wouldn’t do for me, I must say.’
‘Well, we’re not all built the same, are we?’
‘No, I like being in company.’
Alec knew how true this was. The advent of the partner’s widow had done nothing to curb Bob’s habit of suddenly appearing in the Lord Nelson, the pub near the Temple both men were apt to use at lunch-time, and plying some woman with large gin-and-frenches while Alec sat up at the bar with his light ale and veal-and-ham pie and salad. Every few minutes the other two would burst out laughing at some trivial phrase, or go off into face-to-face mumbling that sometimes led to more laughter, all eyes and teeth. He never knew how to behave during these interludes.
The train had stopped at a station. Bob glanced out of the window and dropped his voice slightly. ‘I suppose it was another stroke, was it? Jim wasn’t very clear on the phone.’
‘Yes, it was a stroke all right. She died before they could get her to hospital.’
‘Good way to go, I suppose. Better than poor old Harry. He was under drugs for almost a year, you know. It makes you wonder what sort of exit you’ll have when it comes to your turn. Selfish, of course, but natural. Do you ever think about that, Mac? How you’ll go?’
‘Yes.’
‘Still, there’s no use getting morbid. Actually I should think of the two of us you’ll last longest. You thin little wiry chaps take a devil of a lot of killing, in my experience. You’re a bit younger than me anyway, aren’t you?’
‘I was sixty-four in June.’
‘Not six months in it. We don’t live to much of an age in our family. Harry was the same age as me when he snuffed it, and then poor Dora was barely fifty, and now here’s Betty only sixty-seven; well, I say “only”, that’s not really old as things go nowadays, is it? Still, look at it another way and it’s a lot of years. You must have known her since, what, ’thirty-two or — three?’
‘The… I’m not sure of the date, but it was August Bank Holiday, 1929.’
‘Here, that’s pretty good card-index work, Mac. Well I’m blowed. How on earth do you remember it so exactly?’
‘It was the day of the mixed doubles tournament at that tennis club near Balham we all used to belong to.’ Alec began filling his pipe. ‘I got brought in to run the show at the last minute. Until the Friday I didn’t see how there could be a show, and what with the teas to arrange and one thing and another it’ll be a long time before I forget that day, believe me.’
‘Mm. It, er, turned out all right, did it?’
‘Yes, Betty and Jim got into the semi-finals. Nobody knew if they were any good or not, with them just moving into the district. But then they took the first set 6–1, and everyone could see… well, as soon as Betty had made her first couple of shots, really. Her backhand was very strong, unusual in a woman. I didn’t get a chance against them myself, because…’
As clearly as if he had just seen a photograph of it, Alec recalled one moment of that first day. Jim, his bald head gleaming in the sun, was standing up at the net; Betty had stepped forward from the baseline and, with as much control as power, was sending one of her backhand drives not more than an inch or two above the net and squarely between their two opponents, who formed the only blurred patches in the image. Although the farthest away, Betty’s figure was well defined, the dark hair in a loose bob, the sturdy forearms and calves, the straight nose that gave her face such distinction, even the thinning of the lips in concentration and effort. Some details were wrong — Betty’s pleated white skirt belonged not to that afternoon, Alec knew, but was part of a summer dress she had worn on a day trip to Brighton just before the war, and Jim had not been so bald so early. There was nothing to be done about it, though: while a part of his mind fumbled left-handedly to correct it, the picture stayed as it was. Just as well, perhaps, that it had not been given to human beings to visualize things at will.
Long before Alec was finally silent, Bob was glancing fitfully about, extending and shortening his body and neck like someone trying to see over a barrier that constantly varied in height. He was always having to have things: another round of drinks, the right time, a taxi, the menu, the bill, a word with old so-and-so before they settled down. While he twitched a nose rich in broken capillaries, he said inattentively: ‘Of course, you were pretty attached to her, weren’t you, Mac?’