‘No, sir.’
He waited, quite still but not now quite easy; he was too intelligent for that. And something subtle had happened to the mask; the young man – not even the young man-of-the-world – was looking through it very intently indeed. Tom got up from his chair and turned a shoulder on him, to be rid of the probing glance, but it followed him thoughtfully to the window.
‘I take it sir, I’m not allowed to ask why? Why I might have been there?’ The voice had changed, too, frankly abandoning the schoolboy monotone, and far too intent now to be bothered with the experimental graces of sophistication that were its natural sequel.
‘Let’s say, not encouraged. But if you’ve told me the truth, then in any case it doesn’t matter, does it? All right, thanks, Mallindine, that’s all.’
He kept his head turned away from the boy, watching the dubious sunlight of noon scintillating from the thread of river below the bridge. He waited for the door to open and close again. Miles had turned to move away, but nothing further happened.
After a moment the new voice asked, with deliberation and dignity: ‘May I ask one thing that does matter?’ No ‘sir’ this time, Tom noted; this was suddenly on a different level altogether.
‘If you must.’
‘Has anything happened to Annet?’
It hit him so hard that the shock showed, even from this oblique view. He felt the blood scald his cheeks, and knew it must be seen, and felt all too surely that it was not misunderstood. This boy was dangerous, he used words like explosives, only half-realising the force of the charge he put into them. Has anything happened to Annet! My God, if only we knew! But the simpler implication was what he wanted answered, and surely he was owed that, at least. Even if he was the partner of her defection, lying like a trooper by pre-arrangement, and sworn to persist in his lies, that appeal for reassurance might well be genuine enough, and deserved an answer.
‘I hope not,’ said Tom with careful mildness. ‘I certainly left her fit and well when I came out this morning.’
He had his face more or less under control by then, the blush had subsided, and he would not be surprised into renewing it. He turned and gave Miles a quizzical and knowing look, calculated to suggest benevolently that his preoccupation with Annet, in the light of history, was wholly understandable, but in this case inappropriate, not to say naïve. But the minute he met the levelled golden-brown eyes that were so like Eve’s, he knew that if anyone was involuntarily giving anything away in this encounter, it wasn’t Miles. He knew what he was saying, and he’d thought before he said it. Fobbing him off with an amused look and an indulgent smile wouldn’t do. Shutting the door he’d just gone to the trouble to open wasn’t going to do anyone any good.
Tom came back to his table, and sat down glumly on a corner of it. ‘You may as well go on,’ he said. ‘What made you ask that?’ Even that fell short of the degree of candour the occasion demanded. He amended it quite simply to: ‘How did you know?’ If he was the lover, he had good reason to know, but no very compelling reason to show that he knew; and if he wasn’t – well, they were all a bit uncanny round here, so he’d said, cheerfully including himself. Maybe Eve was a witch, and had handed on her powers to him for want of a daughter.
‘My mother had a telephone call on Thursday evening,’ said Miles with admirable directness. ‘From Mrs Beck.’
There couldn’t have been much communication between those two ladies during the last few months, no wonder Eve’s thumbs had pricked.
‘She made some excuse about asking when the Gramophone Club was starting its winter programme. But then she worked the conversation round to me, and fished to know what I was doing over the week-end. My mother told me, when I came back last night. I didn’t think there was anything in it, actually, until you began asking – related questions. Oh, you didn’t give anything away,’ he said quickly, forestalling all observations on that point. His head came up rather arrogantly, the wide-open eyes dared Tom to stand on privilege now. ‘My mother can connect, you know. But so can others. And I don’t suppose our house was the only one she ’phoned – if it’s like that.’
We ought to have known, thought Tom. In a small place where everyone knows everyone else’s business, where half the women compare notes as a matter of course, we ought to have known it would leak out. How could she hope to go telephoning around the whole village and half Comerbourne, without starting someone on a hot trail?
‘No,’ he said flatly, ‘I’m afraid it wasn’t.’
‘She wouldn’t realise,’ said Miles generously. He might not have occult powers, but he had a pair of eyes that could see through Tom Kenyon, apparently, as through a plate-glass window. ‘My mother had good reason to look under the mat – if you see what I mean. But some of ’em don’t need a reason, they do it for love. And my mother doesn’t talk. But plenty of them do.’
How had they arrived at this reversal? The kid was warning him, kindly, regretfully, like an elder, of the possible unpleasantness to come; warning him as though he knew very well how deeply it could and did concern him, and how much he stood to get hurt. Without a word said on that aspect of the matter, they had become rivals, meeting upon equal terms, and equally sorry for each other.
It was high time to close this interview, before somebody put a foot wrong and brought the house down over them both. They had to go on confronting each other in class for the best part of a year yet, they couldn’t afford any irretrievable gaffes.
‘Too many,’ he agreed wryly. ‘But gossip without any foundation won’t get them far. And I take it that you and I can include each other among the non-talkers, Mallindine.’
‘Yes, sir, naturally.’
‘Sir’ had come back, prompt on his cue. This boy really wanted watching, he was a little too quick in the uptake, if anything.
‘If there’s anything you want to ask me, do it now. But I don’t guarantee to answer.’
‘There’s nothing, sir. If—’ He did waver there, the elegantly-held head turned aside for a moment, the eyes came back to Tom’s face doubtfully and hopefully. ‘—if Annet’s all right?’
‘Yes, perfectly all right.’ He had nearly said: ‘Of course!’, which would have been a pretence at once unworthy and unwise in dealing with this very sharp and dangerous intelligence. He dropped the attitude in time, but a faint, rueful smile tugged at Miles’s lips for an instant, as if he had seen it hovering and watched it snatched hastily away. The young man was back in charge, and formidably competent.
‘Thank you, sir. Then that’s all.’ For me it is, said the straight eyes, challenging and pitying; how about you?’
‘Right, then, off you go. And I shouldn’t worry.’
‘Wouldn’t you?’ said the flicker of a smile again, less haughtily. Either Tom was beginning to see all sorts of shades of meaning that weren’t there, or that last, long, thoughtful, level stare before the door closed had said, as plainly as in words: ‘Come off it! You know as well as I do there was another fellow in the case – nothing for you, nothing for me. Now tell me that doesn’t hurt!’
He knew, as well as he knew his own name, that if he questioned Dominic Felse on the subject of the weekend in Wales, Dominic would go straight to Miles and report the entire conversation word for word; and yet it seemed to him that he had very little choice in the matter. Since he’d begun this probably useless enquiry, he couldn’t very well leave an important witness out of it. He might be primed already, he might lie for his friend; but that was a hazard that applied to all witnesses, surely. And for some reason Tom felt sure that Miles would not yet have unburdened himself about that morning interview, he took time, when it was available, to think things out, and he had himself been considerably disturbed. He might not keep it quiet, but he wouldn’t run to confide it until he knew what he wanted to say.