‘Mr Eliot, I found your little letter saying that you wanted to speak to me,’ she whispered.
I asked if she had been out, knowing for certain that she could not have been.
‘As a matter of fact, I haven’t, Mr Eliot,’ she said. ‘To tell you the honest truth, I’ve been getting so worried about the catering that I just can’t sleep until daylight, and so I have been allowing myself a little doze before I have to set about my bit of an evening meal.’
Whatever she had been doing, I believed it was not that. Her expression was confident, impenetrable, wide-awake. ‘Catering’ meant getting my morning tea, and her remark was a first move towards stopping it.
‘I’m sorry to drag you down,’ I said.
‘It’s part of my duty,’ she replied.
‘I thought I ought to tell you at once,’ I said, ‘that I shall have to leave you soon.’
‘I’m very sorry to hear you say that, Mr Eliot.’ She gazed at me with a firm glance, disapproving, almost inimical, but also a little pitying.
‘I shall be sorry to go.’
I said it as a civility: oddly, Mrs Beauchamp compelled civility, it was impossible to suggest to her what I thought of her and her house.
‘I shall be sorry to go,’ I repeated. Then I felt a pang of genuine, ridiculous, irrational regret.
‘No one has to live where they don’t want to, Mr Eliot.’
Her expression showed no diminution of confidence. If I felt a pang of sadness, she had never appeared less sad. Others might find any parting a little death, but not Mrs Beauchamp.
‘If you don’t mind me asking, after the little talks we’ve had when you’ve been lonely and I was trying to cheer you up,’ her tone was soft as ever, perhaps a shade less smooth, ‘but if you don’t mind me asking, I was wondering if you intended to get married again?’
‘I haven’t been thinking of it.’
‘Well then, that’s something, and, without pushing in where I’m not welcome, that’s the wisest thing you’ve said tonight or for many a long night, Mr Eliot. And I hope you’ll remember me if any woman ever gets you in her clutches and you can’t see a glimpse of the open door. Never notice their tears, Mr Eliot.’
After that exhortation, Mrs Beauchamp said briskly: ‘Perhaps we ought to have a little chat about the catering, Mr Eliot, because you’ll be here another two or three weeks, I suppose.’
Most people, on being given notice, served their time out with a good grace, I was thinking: in fact, they were more obliging in that last fortnight than ever before. But Mrs Beauchamp’s was a tough nature. She had decided that making my morning tea was too much for her; the fact that I was leaving soon did not weaken her. In a good-natured whisper she told me that I should get a nice breakfast, much nicer than she had been able to do for me, over in Dolphin Square. She looked at me with a sly, unctuous smile.
‘Well, Mr Eliot, I’m sure you’ll live at better addresses than this, if I may say so. But, though I suppose I’m not the right person to tell you and it doesn’t come too well from me, I just can’t help putting it to you, that a lot of water will have to flow under the bridges, before you find a place where you’ll be as much at home!’
34: Confidential Offer in Reverse
WHEN I decided to take up again with Gilbert Cooke, I knew what I was doing. Or at least I thought I did. I had left open no other line of communication with Margaret; he would have news of her; I had to hear it. Beyond that, my foresight was cut off.
So I telephoned to his new office late on a May afternoon. Was he free that night? His voice was stiff. No, he was not certain. Yes, he could find time for a quick meal. Soon we were walking together across the park; under the petrol-smell of a London summer there was another, mixed from the grass and the wall-flowers, sharpened by the rain. It brought back walking in London as a student, the smell of the park promising and denying, taunting to a young man still chaste.
Massive beside me, his light feet scuffing the ground, Gilbert was saying little: unless I asked a question, his lips were squashed together under the beaky nose. I had forgotten that he was proud. He was not prepared to be dropped and then welcomed back. I had forgotten also that he was subtle and suspicious.
He did not believe that I suddenly wanted him for his own sake. He guessed that I was after something, perhaps he had an inkling of what it was. He was determined not to let me have it.
Yet he could not resist letting me know that he still had his ear to the ground. As we climbed the Duke of York’s Steps he said, out of the blue: ‘How’s the new flat?’
I said — irked that he could still surprise me — all right.
‘Is it going to work?’
‘I think so.’
‘It’ll be all right if the old lady gets better or worse. Because if she gets worse the agents will have to put someone else in. But it’s going to be fatal if she stays moderately ill.’
His information was accurate. Mine was one of four service flats, looked after by a manageress; within the last fortnight, she had gone to bed with a heart-attack.
‘It’s pretty adequate,’ I said, as though apologizing for myself.
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Gilbert.
Like other apolaustic men, he had the knack of making one’s living arrangements sound pitiful. I felt obliged to defend mine.
‘It’s better anyway,’ Gilbert conceded. ‘I grant you that, it’s better.’
Although he had dropped into speaking of my physical comforts with his old concern, he would not volunteer a word about any common friends, anyone I might be interested in, let alone Margaret. The May night, the petrol smell, the aphrodisiac smelclass="underline" as we walked he talked more, but it was putting-off, impersonal talk, deliberately opaque.
As I watched him stretched out in a leather armchair at my club, just as he had been the night he offered to stand down over Margaret, his body was relaxed but his eyes shone, unsoftened, revengeful. There was nothing for me but to be patient. I set myself to speak as easily as when he was working for me. How was he? What was happening to him? What was he planning for his future? He did not mind answering. It gave him a pleasure edged with malice to go on elaborating about his future, knowing that I was getting nowhere near my object. But also, I thought, he was in a difficulty and glad of an opinion. Now that the war was over, he could not settle what to do. Perhaps the Civil Service would keep him; but, if he had the choice, he would prefer to return to Lufkin.
‘The trouble is,’ said Gilbert, ‘I don’t believe for a second he’ll have me.’
‘Why shouldn’t he?’
‘What about the bit of fun-and-games when I slipped one under his ribs?’
‘It was fair enough.’
‘Paul Lufkin has his own idea of what’s fair. Opposing him isn’t included.’
‘I got in his way as much as you did,’ I said, ‘and I’m on definitely good terms with him now.’
‘What’s that in aid of?’ said Gilbert. He added: ‘The old thug will never have me back. I wish to God he would.’
‘Why do you want to go back so much?’
He said something about money, he said that he might be marrying at last. At that moment he was speaking cordially, even intimately, his face flushed in the clubroom half-light; I believed that the mention of marriage was not a blind, I even wondered (he kept all clues from me) who the woman might be.
I said: ‘As I told you a minute ago, I get on well with Paul Lufkin nowadays. Better than I used to, if it comes to that. Will you let me feel out the ground about you?’