Whenever I answered the telephone in the hall, I heard a door click open on the next floor and the scuffle of Mrs Beauchamp’s slippers. But I could put up with her detective work, much as I used, before he touched a nerve, to put up with Gilbert Cooke’s.
All this time, since the day when he told Margaret’s sister of the suicide, I had been meeting Gilbert in the office; I talked business with him, even gossiped, but I had not once let fall a word to him about my own concerns. He was the first to notice signs of anyone withdrawing, but this time I was not sure that he knew the reason. I was quite sure, however, that he had discovered the break with Margaret, and that he was expending some effort to observe how I was living now.
Coming into my office one evening in the autumn, he said imperiously and shyly: ‘Doing anything tonight?’
I said no.
‘Let me give you dinner.’
I could not refuse and did not want to, for there was no pretence about the kindness that brimmed from him. As well as being kind, he was also, I recognized once more, sensitive: he did not take me to White’s, since he must have imagined — the last thing I should have mentioned to anyone, to him above all — how I linked our dinner there with the night of Sheila’s death. Instead, he found a restaurant in Soho where he could order me one or two of my favourite dishes, the names of which he had stored away in that monstrous memory. He proceeded to bully me kindly about my new flat.
‘It’s near the Dolphin, isn’t it?’ (He knew the address.) ‘It’s one of those eighteen-fortyish houses, I suppose. Not much good in air-raids, you must move out if they start again,’ he said, jabbing his thumb at me. ‘We can’t let you take unnecessary risks.’
‘What about you?’ I said. His own flat was at the top of a ramshackle Knightsbridge house.
‘It doesn’t matter about me.’
Brushing my interruption aside, he got back to the subject, more interesting to him, of my living arrangements.
‘Have you got a housekeeper?’
I said I supposed that one could call Mrs Beauchamp that.
‘Doesn’t she make you comfortable?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘I don’t know,’ he cried impatiently, ‘why you don’t do something about it!’
‘Don’t worry yourself,’ I said, ‘I genuinely don’t mind.’
‘What is she like?’
I wanted to warn him off, so I smiled at him, and said: ‘To put it mildly, she’s just a bit inquisitive.’
When I had spoken I was sorry, since it suddenly struck me as not impossible that Gilbert would find occasion to have a tête-à-tête with Mrs Beauchamp. For the moment, however, he laughed, high-voiced, irritated with me.
The meal went on agreeably enough. We talked official shop and about the past. I thought again, everything Gilbert said was his own; in his fashion he was a creative man. He was being lavish with the drink, and now there was half a bottle of brandy standing before us on the table. It was a long time since I had drunk so much. I was cheerful, I was content for the evening to stretch out. As I was finishing some inconsequential remark I saw Gilbert leaning over the table towards me, his big shoulders hunched. His eyes hot and obsessive, he said: ‘I can tell you something you’ve been waiting to know.’
‘Never mind,’ I replied, but I was taken off guard.
‘Have you seen Margaret since she got married?’
‘No.’
‘I suppose you wouldn’t!’ He laughed, satisfied, on top. ‘Well, you needn’t get too bothered about her. I think she’ll be all right.’
I wanted to cry out, ‘I don’t intend to listen’, just as I had avoided going near anyone who knew her or even hearing the date of her wedding. The only news I had not been able to escape was that she was married. I wanted to shout in front of Gilbert’s inflamed eyes — ‘I can stand it, if I don’t hear.’ But he went on: Geoffrey Hollis had taken a job at a children’s hospital, they were living at Aylesbury.
‘I think she’ll be all right,’ said Gilbert.
‘Good.’
‘He’s head over heels in love with her, of course.’
‘Good,’ I said again.
‘There is one other thing.’
‘Is there?’ I heard my own voice dull, mechanical, protecting me by thrusting news away.
‘She’s going to have a child.’
As I did not reply, he continued: ‘That will mean a lot to her, won’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Of course,’ said Gilbert, ‘she can’t have started it more than a month or two—’
While he was talking on, I got up and said that I must have an early night. There were no taxis outside, and together we walked up Oxford Street: I was replying to his chat affably if absently: I did not feel inimical; I already knew what I was going to do.
The next morning I sat in my office thinking of how I was going to say it, before I asked Vera Allen to fetch Gilbert in. He slumped down in the easy chair beside my desk, relaxed and companionable.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I want you to transfer to another branch.’
On the instant he was braced, his feet springing on the floor, like a man ready to fight.
‘Why?’
‘Will it do any good to either of us to answer that?’
‘You just mean, that you want to get rid of me, after four years, without any reason, and without any fuss?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I mean that.’
‘I won’t accept it.’
‘You must.’
‘You can’t force me.’
‘I can,’ I replied. I added: ‘If necessary, I shall.’ I was speaking so that he would believe me. Then I added in a different tone: ‘But I shan’t have to.’
‘Why do you think you can get away with it?’
‘Because I need you to go to make things easier for me.’
‘Good God,’ cried Gilbert, his eyes angry and puzzled, ‘I don’t think I deserve that.’
‘I’ve got great affection for you, you know that,’ I said. ‘You’ve been very good to me in all kinds of ways, and I shan’t forget it. But just now there are parts of my life I don’t want to be reminded of—’
‘Well?’
‘While you’re about, you can’t help reminding me of them.’
‘How do you mean, I can’t help it?’
‘You can see.’
Hotly, angrily, without self-pity or excuse, Gilbert said: ‘It’s my nature. You know how it is.’
I knew better than he thought; for in my youth I had been as tempted as most men by the petty treachery, the piece of malice warm on the tongue at a friend’s expense, the kind of personal imperialism, such as he had shown the night before, in which one imposes oneself upon another. Even more I had been fascinated by the same quicksands in other men. As to many of us when young, the labile, the shifting, the ambivalent, the Lebedevs and the Fyodor Karamazovs, had given me an intimation of the depth and wonder of life. But as I grew up I began to find it not only unmagical, but also something like boring, both in others and myself. At the age when I got rid of Gilbert Cooke I found it hard to imagine the excitement and attention with which, in my young manhood, I had explored the transformation-scene temperament of an early friend. As I got near forty, my tastes in character had changed, I could not give that attention again. If I had still been able to, I could have taken Gilbert as an intimate friend.
29: First Interview of George Passant
WHEN I told Rose that I wished to transfer Gilbert Cooke, I had an awkward time.
‘Of course, I have only a nodding acquaintance with your dashing activities, my dear Lewis,’ said Rose, meaning that he read each paper word by word, ‘but I should have thought the present arrangement was working reasonably well.’