Suddenly, only a few yards away, but out of sight as she sat, there were feet on the path. The sound of them began quite abruptly, as if someone had just stepped from the grass on to the path only she would have seen anyone crossing the grass… Simultaneously there was the sound of a baritone voice, singing cheerfully, but not loudly to itself. It, too, began quite suddenly; in the middle of a word in fact:
“rybody’s doin” it, doin” it, do”
The voice cut off suddenly. The footsteps, too, came to a dead stop.
Mrs Dolderson’s eyes were open now very wide open. Her thin hands gripped the arms of her chair. She recollected the tune: more than that, she was even certain of the voice after all these years… A silly dream, she told herself… She had been remembering him only a few moments before she closed her eyes… How foolish And yet it was curiously undreamlike… Everything was so sharp and clear, so familiarly reasonable… The arms of the chair quite solid under her fingers…
Another idea leapt into her mind. She had died. That was why it was not like an ordinary dream. Sitting here in the sun, she must have quietly died. The doctor had said it might happen quite unexpectedly… And now it had! She had a swift moment of relief not that she had felt any great fear of death, but there had been that sense of ordeal ahead. Now it was over and with no ordeal. As simple as falling asleep. She felt suddenly happy about it; quite exhilarated… Though it was odd that she still seemed to be tied to her chair.
The gravel crunched under shifting feet. A bewildered voice said: “That’s rum! Dashed queer! What the devil’s happened?”
Mrs Dolderson sat motionless in her chair. There was no doubt whatever about the voice.
A pause. The feet shifted, as if uncertain. Then they came on, but slowly now, hesitantly. They brought a young man into her view. Oh, such a very young man, he looked. She felt a little catch at her heart…
He was dressed in a striped clubblazer, and white flannel trousers. There was a silk scarf round his neck, and, tilted back off his forehead, a straw hat with a coloured band. His hands were in his trousers” pockets, and he carried a tennis-racket under his left arm.
She saw him first in profile, and not quite at his best, for his expression was bewildered, and his mouth slightly open as he stared towards the spinney at one of the pink roofs beyond.
“Arthur,” Mrs Dolderson said gently.
He was startled. The racket slipped, and clattered on the path. He attempted to pick it up, take off his hat, and recovered his composure all at the same time; not very successfully. When he straightened his face was pink, and its expression still confused.
He looked at the old lady in the chair, her knees hidden by a rug, her thin, delicate hands gripping the arms. His gaze went beyond her, into the room. His confusion increased, with a touch of alarm added. His eyes went back to the old lady. She was regarding him intently. He could not recall ever having seen her before, did not know who she could be yet in her eyes there seemed to be something faintly, faintly not unfamiliar.
She dropped her gaze to her right hand. She studied it for a moment as though it puzzled her a little, then she raised her eyes again to his.
“You don’t know me, Arthur?” she asked quietly.
There was a note of sadness in her voice that he took for disappointment, tinged with reproof. He did his best to pull himself together.
“I’m afraid not,” he confessed. “You see I... er... you... er” he stuck, and then went on desperately: “You must be Thelma’s Miss Kilder’s aunt?”
She looked at him steadily for some moments. He did not understand her expression, but then she told him: “No. I am not Thelma’s aunt.”
Again his gaze went into the room behind her. This time he shook his head in bewilderment.
“It’s all different, no, sort of half-different,” he said, in distress. “I say, I can’t have come to the wrong?” He broke off, and turned to look at the garden again. “No, it certainly isn’t that,” he answered himself decisively. “But what... what has happened?”
His amazement was no longer simple; he was looking badly shaken. His bewildered eyes came back to her again.
“Please, I don’t understand how did you know me?” he asked.
His increasing distress troubled her, and made her careful.
“I recognised you, Arthur. We have met before, you know.”
“Have we? I can’t remember… I’m terribly sorry…”
“You’re looking unwell, Arthur. Draw up that chair, and rest a little.”
“Thank you, Mrs... er... Mrs?”
“Dolderson,” she told him.
“Thank you, Mrs. Dolderson,” he said, frowning a little, trying to place the name.
She watched him pull the chair closer. Every movement, every line familiar, even to the lock of fair hair that always fell forward when he stooped. He sat down and remained silent for some moments, staring under a frown, across the garden.
Mrs Dolderson sat still, too. She was scarcely less bewildered than he, though she did not reveal it. Clearly the thought that she was dead had been quite silly. She was just as usual, still in her chair, still aware of the ache in her back, still able to grip the arms of the chair and feel them. Yet it was not a dream everything was too textured, too solid, too real in a way that dream things never were Too sensible, too that was, it would have been had the young man been any other than Arthur Was it just a simple hallucination? A trick of her mind imposing Arthur’s face on an entirely different young man?
She glanced at him. No, that would not do he had answered to Arthur’s name. Indubitably he was Arthur and wearing Arthur’s blazer, too… They did not cut them that way nowadays, and it was years and years since she had seen a young man wearing a straw hat A kind of ghost…? But no, he was quite solid; the chair had creaked as he sat down, his shoes had crunched on the gravel… Besides, whoever heard of a ghost in the form of a thoroughly bewildered young man, and one, moreover, who had recently nicked himself in shaving…?
He cut her thoughts short by turning his head.
“I thought Thelma would be here,” he told her. “She said she’d be here. Please tell me, where is she?”
Like a frightened little boy, she thought. She wanted to comfort him, not to frighten him more. But she could think of nothing to say beyond: “Thelma isn’t far away.”
“I must find her. She’ll be able to tell me what’s happened.” He made to get up.
She laid a hand on his arm, and pressed down gently.
“Wait a minute,” sh told him. “What is it that seems to have happened? What is it that worries you so much?”
“This,” he said, waving a hand to include everything about them. “It’s all different and yet the same, and yet not… I feel as if as if I’d gone a little mad.”
She looked at him steadily, and then shook her head.
“I don’t think you have. Tell me, what is it that’s wrong?”
“I was coming here to play tennis, well, to see Thelma really,” he amended. “Everything was all right then just as usual. I rode up the drive and leant my bike against the big fir tree where the path begins. I started to come along the path, and then, just when I reached the corner of the house, everything went funny…”
“Went funny?” Mrs Dolderson enquired. “What went funny?”