He had known it would sharpen his sense of loss to see her; but he had been unprepared for the bright defensive flutter, the silliness which came from self-consciousness and her unacknowledged sense of guilt toward him. She was determined to believe that he was losing nothing: it made her overinsistent, demanding of him in everything the role she had allotted him in advance to set her mind at rest.
The house was a last-minute chaos of clothes, luggage, and half-packed crates. He had expected this but hadn’t guessed at the desolation. He had forgotten too to expect Aunt Olive, which was foolish; for she lived for others, and her status as the family drudge was guiltily recognized by all its members. She was always overthanked and underloved, having something unco’ guid about her which led her always to do a little more than people wanted done. She was really only a cousin of Mrs. Odell’s. When Laurie went upstairs for a bath and a moment’s quiet, he found her packing his room.
He had known he must do this before he went, but had reckoned on finding it still intact. It looked as if it had been ransacked by gangsters. The divan was stripped, the chair uncovered showing its ancient scars, the cupboard open and all its contents strewed on the floor. Aunt Olive sat beside a wooden tea-chest, surrounded by books which she appeared to be dusting. The Oxford Book of French Verse was in her hand, and she was carefully shaking out the pages.
Taking a grip on himself, he thanked her profusely and said that he would finish now, as she must be cold.
“Goodness, I’m never still long enough for that! Now you’re here I can ask you the little things I wasn’t sure about. Now for instance here, all these bits of paper and things I’ve found stuck in books, I thought you’d better see them before I threw them away.”
He looked with horror at the heap beside her knees. Some were merely markers, but some were not. He said, “Oh, just burn them.”
“No, I’d rather you looked first, one never really knows. Now what about this, for instance?”
She held up a bit of cardboard. Next moment he recognized it. It had been cut, not very expertly, from the center of a First Eleven cricket group. The cut had sliced through four out of the five heads in the square. Ralph’s was the one in the middle. The picture had been taken a week before he left.
“Aha!” said Aunt Olive. “You see! Raves, we used to call them, but I’m sure you didn’t use such sissy expressions! Now you must look at everything, or goodness knows what precious trophies might go up in smoke.”
“I will in a minute. Please don’t bother about it.”
“Now don’t forget. I know what you boys are, you mean well, till some other absorbing activity comes along! Now, this.” She plunged into the mouth of the cupboard, and emerged waving a fencing foil.
Laurie relieved her of it. It was strange to feel it lie so easily in the hand, to feel the body remembering its response as though, at the word, it would still obey as lightly as ever.
Hamlet had been the set play for School Certificate, so following custom the form had enacted it in the autumn term. Laurie had played Laertes. He had had, in those days, the kind of looks you would think of casting for Laertes rather than Horatio, for instance. The School Certificate Shakespeare play was an annual joke, but that year people said that at least the fencing bout had something. Treviss had coached it, and Lanyon had strolled in sometimes during practices to watch. Once Treviss had been sick and he had taken the practice himself. Laurie remembered now, how clearly, the sensation of seeing him walk in at the door instead of Treviss, and pull his jacket off. Once he had taken the foil from Hamlet to demonstrate something in the last passage, and there they were, as Laurie had phrased it to himself at the time, facing one another across the cold steel. After a pass or two Lanyon had broken off and said, “Come along, come along, Odell. You’re supposed to know this foil’s poisoned: for the Lord’s sake fence as if you cared whether you get hit or not.” Everyone said that when Lanyon went up to Cambridge he would be sure to fence for the University.
“You see,” said Aunt Olive, “it’s too long for a packing-case and so awkward for a trunk. I was wondering what you’d like to do with it?”
“I can’t imagine. What would you do with it if you were me?”
He saw her neck go pink between the wisps of hair. He knew he would despise himself later, so added unwillingly in a kinder voice, “Perhaps the scouts could use it in some of their shows.”
“Yes, dear.” She fidgeted a little, collecting herself. “That is a good idea. We must ask your father about it when he comes.” She added archly, “Though perhaps we shouldn’t say that until tomorrow.”
After a short interval Laurie said, “I’m so sorry, but I was thinking of taking a bath.” After she had gone clucking out, his first action was to throw off all his clothes, with some furious thought of confronting her if she tried to get in again.
Afterwards he flung the things from the cupboard back to see to later, and went through the papers. There was a note from Charles; notes had been one of his accomplishments. Laurie tore it across, and picked up the photograph again.
Even in the first embarrassed glance, he had been aware of making some discovery about it; and now he saw what it was. It had been taken at a moment when Ralph must have got bored by the preliminaries and started thinking of something else; the shutter had caught a moment of preoccupation, of some serious private thought. Now Laurie realized that in the first instant he had recognized in it not Ralph but Andrew. It wasn’t really like him, but as a poor likeness it would almost have passed, except for the eyes. Once one began to think of it, one realized that the whole structure of the head was very similar, and the hair, though Ralph’s was straighter, grew in much the same way from the brow. Without the picture Laurie would never have thought of it; Ralph had altered, he saw now, more than one supposed.
Staring at the portrait he thought how sometimes, when he looked at Andrew, he had felt glimmerings of a mysterious recognition. He had wondered sometimes, secretly, whether it was possible that they had met in a former life.
It was not till he was brushing his hair that he noticed the black hairpins on the dressing-table. Then he remembered that, since the little house had no spare room, Aunt Olive would be sleeping here tonight, and he on the living-room divan. He, in fact, had invaded her bedroom, not she his; you could say that she had won after all. He could think of nowhere to hide the photograph, so put it in his breast pocket.
There was a number of odd jobs still to be done about the place, and he was thankful for the occupation. Once or twice at odd moments he went into the garden to look for Gyp, but he hadn’t come back. He was an independent dog and often went for miles by himself, ratting and rabbiting, though not so much in the last few years since he had got rheumatic. Laurie thought to himself that when he went looking for digs, the first thing must be to make some arrangements for Gyp. His mother, though kindness itself, wasn’t good with dogs and never trained him at all; and it would be just like Straike, Laurie thought, to expect the poor old thing to learn new rules like a puppy and crack down on him when he was slow and confused. Anyway, just for once, sleeping downstairs tonight one could have him in, even if he did smell a bit. He didn’t fidget, or conduct violent flea-hunts in the small hours. He was so glad to be there, the thought of it seemed to last him all night.