He had heard, as he came in from the doorway, the conversation swerve awkwardly. He was acutely conscious of his limp, of the lowness of the divans and poufs which would exhibit his stiff knee when he sat and when he rose. He recognized Sandy’s changed voice which he had heard from the landing: it was the voice of Charles’s friends. Suddenly he imagined Lanyon frisking in and speaking like that. With a trapped feeling he saw Alec coming up carrying a whisky and soda.
“I believe it’s your birthday? Many happy returns.”
“Thank you. Do sit down; try this one.” It was one of the Swedish chairs, with helpful arms. Alec poised himself on the edge of a table and said, “You’re a friend of Ralph’s, I hear.”
“Well, I can’t honestly claim that. He was Head of the School when I was in the fifths, and we’ve never even met since he left. If he remembers me at all it’ll only be because he’s got a good memory for faces; or used to have.”
“Oh, he still has. Is your drink all right?”
“Yes, thanks, fine. I rather feel, really, that I’ve come here under false pretenses.” He was quite sure Alec had subtlety enough to interpret that.
“So far,” said Alec, “you seem to me very lacking in pretenses.” It struck Laurie that he would be formidable in a consulting room someday. “Oh, by the way, I don’t know whether you get a kind of functional deafness during introductions, like me? I never got your name properly; was it—er—Hazell, or—?”
“Christ!” said Laurie, nearly spilling his drink. “No, it wasn’t.”
“I really do apologize. I thought not, but I just wanted to exclude the possibility before Ralph got here. Evidently, from your strong reaction, you were there the term he was expelled?”
Laurie put down his drink and said, in the formal voice of open hostility, “Lanyon left the term he was due to leave. There was nothing else to it, as far as I know.”
“I’m sorry. But Ralph makes so little secret of it; everyone in our own set knows. And I suppose you struck me as not being a mischievous person.”
Laurie felt his anger go cold on him. Under a score of surface differences, and accompanied no doubt by many basic ones, he recognized a speaker of his own language; another solitary still making his own maps, his few certainties gripped with a rather desperate strength. “I didn’t mean to be cagey,” he said. “Lanyon was a very good Head and generally liked, and I suppose that’s what one mostly remembers. Of course you must know much more about him than I do.”
“Don’t apologize,” said Alec, “I liked it.” He had a smile of unexpected decision and charm. “And what is your name, if you’ll forgive my unmannerly persistence?”
“Oh, sorry. It’s Odell. I don’t think he’ll remember me, you know.”
Alec looked up. His dark eyes had a peering, short-sighted look. “Odell?” he said.
“Without the apostrophe, if it matters. Needless to say I got called Spud just the same.”
“Yes,” said Alec. “Yes, I expect so.” His characteristic alertness seemed lost; he stared in silence. “You say you don’t think Ralph will remember you?”
“Well, I suppose he might dimly.” Laurie himself was remembering with sharpening clearness: the green paint in the corridor, the torn books in the basket, the silver pencil. “But I should hardly think so; he had a good deal else to think about, after all.”
“You never knew he brought you back from Dunkirk, then?”
“What?” said Laurie dully. His brain refused to yield him the least response. His memories had been healing; he could recall nothing of that journey with any clearness now.
“You didn’t recognize him?”
“No. I can’t have seen him, even. I think I passed out, you see, most of the way.”
“Yes, of course. Apparently he picked up some kind of impression that you knew him. At least, I remember him saying he wrote to you afterwards; but of course he hadn’t much to go on. Evidently there was some muddle, because the letter came back ‘Died of Wounds.’ And from the state you were in when he saw you, it didn’t seem unlikely, so he left it there.”
“I see. I wondered why you seemed surprised when I told you my name.” The shadows of memory were disconnected and meaningless, like the first markings on a negative in the tank. “Fancy his bothering to write to me. That’s just like him, you know; he made everyone feel he took a personal interest. He was wounded himself, Sandy says?”
“Yes, that was later. He went back two or three more times for another load. His ship got a direct hit in the end, but they picked him up out of the water. Well, he’s late, I hope he’s going to turn up. Excuse me, I’d better see how the drinks are doing.”
He got up. For the first time, Laurie perceived in his movements a kind of reticent, controlled delicacy, like that of a well-bred woman who is usually aware of making, without vulgar emphasis, the right impression. He collected someone’s glass and went over to the table with it, catching Sandy’s eye on the way. They met at the table and went through some business with a siphon, and talked discreetly. Laurie heard nothing except the end of a sentence from Sandy: “… started out long ago. Does it matter?” The rest was drowned by a conversation going on just behind his chair. “So I said to him, well really at that point I couldn’t help saying, ‘Well, if that’s your attitude, I don’t mind telling you I think I’ve treated you very nicely, and when I say that you know what I mean.’ And he did, too. ‘I’ve treated you nicely,’ I said, ‘and in return you’ve done nothing but two-time me, and not even with decent people, but with people whom I consider absolute riff-raff. You know who I mean.’ He knew all right; he looked very silly, I can tell you, when he saw I’d been checking up on him. ‘I think you’ll go a long way,’ I said, ‘before you’ll find anyone who …’ ”
Oh God, Laurie was thinking, where has it got to? He had left his chair and was now searching for his stick. There it was, fallen flat on the floor; and he knew from past failures that he would have to sit down in the chair again in order to retrieve it without looking ridiculous.
“Looking for this, chum?”
“Thanks,” said Laurie. “Yes, I was.”
It was a soldier, whom Laurie had till now scarcely had time to notice, though he had been vaguely aware of him as a somewhat incongruous presence. He now said, “You don’t mind, do you, chum, if I sit here with you and have a word or two?” and, carefully bringing up a pouf before Laurie could answer, settled himself beside him.
Laurie recognized at once the solemn intensity of drink taken; to go away instantly might start a scene. After a little heavy breathing, the soldier addressed him in the flat accent of the Midlands.
“I reckon you got that packet at Dunkirk. Eh?”
“Yes,” said Laurie. “Were you there too?”
“No, I was still doing training. I saw you come in. You got one leg shorter than the other, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t they reckon that’ll get no better, then?”
“Probably not.”
The soldier leaned forward; he smelled of jasmine hair oil and of beer. “Here,” he breathed huskily. “I want to ask you something. You ever been here before?”
“No. Have you?”
“It don’t matter about me. Look, when you come in here, I took a liking to you. That’s what I’m like, always have been, first impressions is what I go by; and when I see you come in limping on that stick, I thought, ‘That lad stopped a packet at Dunkirk and they didn’t ought to have brought him. That’s not right,’ I thought, ‘they never ought to have done it.’ ”