He reopened his eyes, and looked genuinely surprised to find me still there. Then he glared at the envelope, and his expression grew peevish.
“Sir Andrew Vincell!” he exclaimed scornfully, “and Vin—vinyl Plastics, Limited! What the devil is that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t you think,” I suggested, “that we must assume that you are a member of the firm, I would say, from appearances, one of its directors?”
“But I told you” He broke off. “What is plastics”? he went on. “It doesn’t suggest anything but modelling clay to me. What on earth would I be doing with modelling clay?”
I hesitated. It looked as if the shock, whatever it was, had had the effect of cutting some fifty years out of his memory. Perhaps, I thought, if we were to talk of a matter which was obviously familiar and important to him it might stir his recollection. I tapped the table top.
“Well, this, for instance, is a plastic,” I told him.
He examined it, and clicked his fingernails on it.
“I’d not call that plastic. It is very hard,” he observed.
I tried to explain: “It was plastic before it hardened. There are lots of different kinds of plastics. This ashtray, the covering on your chair, this pen, my cheque book cover, that woman’s raincoat, her handbag, the handle of her umbrella, dozens of things all round you, even my shirt is a woven plastic.”
He did not reply immediately, but sat looking from one to another of these things with growing attention. At last he turned back to me again. This time his eyes gazed into mine with great intensity. His voice shook slightly as he said once more: “This really is 1958?”
“Certainly it is,” I assured him. “If you don’t believe your own diary, there’s a calendar hanging behind the bar.”
“No horses,” he murmured to himself, “and the trees in the Square grown so tall… a dream is never consistent, not to that extent…” He paused, then, suddenly: “My God” he exclaimed, “my God, if it really is…” He turned to me again, with an eager gleam in his eyes. “Tell me about these plastics,” he demanded urgently.
I am no chemist, and I know no more about them than the next man. However, he was obviously keen, and, as I have said, I thought that a familiar subject might help to revive his memory, so I decided to try. I pointed to the ashtray.
“Well, this is very likely Bakelite, I think. If so, it is one of the earliest of the thermosetting plastics. A man named Baekeland patented it, about 1909, I fancy. Something to go with phenol and formaldehyde.”
“Thermosetting? What’s that?” he enquired.
I did my best with that, and then went on to explain what little I had picked up about molecular chains and arrangements, polymerisation and so on, and some of the characteristics and uses. He did not give me any feeling of trying to teach my grandmother, on the contrary, he listened with concentrated attention, occasionally repeating a word now and then as if to fix it in his mind. This hanging upon my words was quite flattering, but I could not delude myself that they were doing anything to revive his memory.
We must at least, I must have talked for nearly an hour, and all the time he sat earnest and tense, with his hands clenched tightly together. Then I noticed that the effect of the brandy had worn off, and he was again looking far from well.
“I really think I had better see you home,” I told him. “Can you remember where you live?”
“Forty-eight Hart Street,” he said.
“No. I mean where you live now,” I insisted.
But he was not really listening. His face still had the expression of great concentration.
“If only I can remember if only I can remember when I wake up,” he murmured desperately, to himself rather than to me. Then he turned to look at me again.
“What is your name?” he asked.
I told him.
“I’ll remember that, too, if I can,” he assured me, very seriously.
I leaned over and lifted the cover of the diary. His name was on the flyleaf, with an address in Upper Grosvenor Street. I folded the wallet and the diary together, and put them into his hand. He stowed them away in his pocket automatically, and then sat gazing with complete detachment while the porter got us a taxi.
An elderly woman, a housekeeper, I imagine, opened the door of an impressive flat. I suggested that she should ring up Sir Andrew’s doctor, and stayed long enough to explain the situation to him when he arrived.
The following evening I rang up to enquire how he was. A younger woman’s voice answered. She told me that he had slept well after a sedative, woken somewhat tired, but quite himself, with no sign of any lapse of memory. The doctor saw no cause for alarm. She thanked me for taking care of him, and bringing him home, and that was that.
In fact, I had practically forgotten the whole incident until I saw the announcement of his death in the paper, in December.
Mr Fratton made no comment for some moments, then he drew at his cigar, sipped some coffee, and said, not very constructively: “It’s odd.”
“So I thought, I think,” said Mr Aster.
“I mean,” went on Mr Fratton, “I mean, you certainly did him a kindly service, but scarcely, if you will forgive me, a service that one would expect to find valued at six thousand one-pound shares-standing at eighty-three and sixpence, too.”
“Quite,” agreed Mr Aster.
“Odder still,” Mr Fratton went on, “this meeting occurred last summer. But the will containing the bequest was drawn up and signed several years ago.” He again drew thoughtfully on his cigar. “And I cannot see that I am breaking any confidence if I tell you that it superseded an earlier will drawn up twelve years before, and in that will also, the same clause occurred.” He meditated upon his companion.
“I have given it up,” said Mr Aster, “but if you were collecting oddities, you might perhaps like to make a note of this one.” He produced a pocket book, and took from it a cutting. The strip of paper was headed: “Obituary. Sir Andrew Vincell. A Pioneer in Plastics.” Mr. Aster located a passage halfway down the column, and read out: “
“It is curious to note that in his youth Sir Andrew foreshadowed none of his later interests, and was indeed articled at one time to a firm of chartered accountants. At the age of twenty-three, however, in the summer of 1906, he abruptly and quite unexpectedly broke his articles, and began to devote himself to chemistry. Within a few years he had made the first of the important discoveries upon which his great company was subsequently built.”
“H’m,” said Mr Fratton. He looked carefully at Mr Aster. “He was knocked down by a tram in Thanet Street in 1906, you know.”
“Of course. He told me so,” said Mr Aster. Mr Fratton shook his head. “It’s all very queer,” he observed. “Very odd indeed,” agreed Mr. Aster.
How Do I Do?
Frances paused to look into the showcase that was fastened to the wall between the pastry cook’s and the hairdresser’s. It was not a novelty. Passing it a hundred times, she could not fail to be aware of it, or of the open door beside it, but until now it had not really impinged. There had been no reason for it to impinge. Hers was a future that seemed, in its main outlines at least, and in so far as any woman’s is, pretty well charted.
Nor did the carefully worded leaflets behind the glass refer to the future directly. They offered Character Delineation, Scientific Palmistry, Psychological Prognosis, Semasiological Estimates, and other feats just beyond the scope of the Witchcraft Act or the practical interests of the police, but the idea of the future somehow showed through. And now, for the first time, Frances found herself interested for it is not every day that one sends her ring back, and then looks out upon a suddenly futureless world.