“Oh. You want Extension five nine,” she told me.
Somebody answered. I said: “I’d like to speak to Mr. Cohn Trafford.”
“I’m sorry,” said the girl. “I can’t find that name in this department,” the voice told me.
Back to the desk. Then a longish pause.
“I’m sorry,” said the girl. “I can’t find that name in our staff list.”
I hung up. So, evidently, I was not employed by E. P. L I thought a moment, and then dialled my Hampstead number. It answered promptly. “Transcendental Belts and Corsets,” it announced brightly. I put down the receiver.
It occurred to me to look myself up in the book. I was there, all right: “Trafford, Cohn W., 54 Hogarth Court, Duchess Gardens, S.W.7. SLOane 67021.” So I tried that. The phone at the other end rang.. and went on ringing…
I came out of the box wondering what to do next. It was an extremely odd feeling to be bereft of orientation, rather as if one had been dropped abruptly into a foreign city without even a hotel room for a base and somehow made worse by the city being foreign only in minor and personal details.
After further reflection I decided that the best protective coloration would come from doing what this Cohn Trafford might reasonably be expected to do. If he had no work to do at E. P. I., he did at least have a home to go to A nice block of fiats, Hogarth Court, springy carpet and illuminated floral arrangement in the hall, that sort of thing, but, at the moment no porter in view, so I went straight to the lift. The place did not look big enough to contain fifty-four flats, so I took a chance on the five meaning the fifth floor, and sure enough I stepped out to find 54 on the door facing me. I took out my bunch of keys, tried the most likely one, and it fitted.
Inside was a small hail. Nothing distinctive white paint, lightly patterned paper, close maroon carpet, occasional table with telephone and a few flowers in a vase, with a nice gilt-framed mirror above, the hard occasional chair, a passage off, lots of doors. I paused.
“Hullo,” I said, experimentally. Then a little louder: “Hullo! Anyone at home?”
Neither voice nor sound responded. I closed the door behind me. What now? Well, well, hang it, I was at Cohn Trafford! I took off my overcoat. Nowhere to put it. Second try revealed the coat closet… Several other coats already in there. Male and female, a woman’s overshoes, too… I added mine.
I decided to get the geography of the place, and see what home was really like…
Well, you won’t want an inventory, but it was a nice flat. Larger than I had thought at first. Well furnished and arranged; not with extravagance, but not with stint, either. It showed taste too; though not my taste but what is taste? Either feeling for period, or refined selection from a fashion. I could feel that this was the latter, but the fashion was strange to me, and therefore lacked attraction…
The kitchen was interesting. A fridge, no washer, single sink, no plate racks, no laminated tops, oldfashioned looking electric cooker, packet of soap powder, no synthetic detergents, curious light panel about three feet square in the ceiling, no mixer The sitting room was airy, chairs comfortable. Nothing splindly. A large radiogram, rather ornate, no F. M. on its scale. Lighting again by ceiling panels, and square things like glass cakeboxes on stands. No television.
I prowled round the whole place. Bedroom feminine, but not fussy. Twin beds. Bathroom tiled, white. Spare bedroom, small double bed. And so on. But it was a room at the end of the passage that interested me most. A sort of study. One wall all bookshelves, some of the books familiar the older ones others not. An easy chair, a lighter chair. In front of the window a broad, leathertopped desk, with a view across the barebranched trees in the Gardens, roofs beyond, plenty of sky. On the desk a covered typewriter, adjustable lamp, several folders with sheets of paper untidily projecting, cigarette box, metal ashtray, clean and empty, and a photograph in a leather frame.
I looked at the photograph carefully. A charming study. She’d be perhaps twenty-four twenty-five? Intelligent, happylooking, somebody one would like to knowbut not anyone I did know…
There was a cupboard on the left of the desk, and, on it, a glassfronted case with eight books on it; the rest was empty. The books were all in bright paper jackets, looking as new. The one on the righthand end was the same that I had seen in Hatchard's that morning Life’s Young Day; all the rest, too, bore the name Cohn Trafford. I sat down in the swivel chair at the desk and pondered them for some moments. Then, with a curious, schizoid feeling I pulled out Life’s Young Day, and opened it.
It was, perhaps, half an hour, or more, later that I caught the sound of a key in the outer door. I decided that, on the whole, it would be better to disclose myself than wait to be discovered. So I opened the door. Along at the end of the passage a figure in three quarter length grey suede coat which showed a tweed skirt beneath was dumping parcels on to the hail table. At the sound of my door she turned her head. It was the original of the photograph, all right; but not in the mood of the photograph. As I approached, she looked at me with an expression of surprise, mixed with other feelings that I could not identify; but certainly it was not an adoring-wife-greets-husband look.
“Oh,” she said “You’re in, what happened?”
“Happened?” I repeated, feeling for a lead.
“Well, I understood you had one of those so important meetings with Dickie at the BBC fixed for this afternoon,” she said, a little curtly I thought.
“Oh. Oh, that, yes. Yes, he had to put it off,” I replied, clumsily.
She stopped still, and inspected me carefully. A little oddly, too, I thought. I stood looking at her, wondering what to do, and wishing I had had the sense to think up some kind of plan for this inevitable meeting instead of wasting my time over Life’s Young Day. I hadn’t even had the sense to find out her name. It was clear that I’d got away wrong somehow the moment I opened my mouth. Besides, there was a quality about her that upset my balance altogether… It hit me in a way I’d not known for years, and more shrewdly than it had then… Somehow, when you are thirty-three you don’t expect these things to happen, well, not to happen quite like that, any more… Not with a great surge in your heart, and everything coming suddenly bright and alive as if she had just switched it all into existence.
So we stood looking at one another; she with a half-frown, I trying to cope with a turmoil of elation and confusion, unable to say a word.
She glanced down, and began to unbutton her coat. She, too, seemed uncertain.
“If” she began. But at that moment the telephone rang.
With an air of welcoming the interruption, she picked up the receiver. In the quiet of the hail I could hear a woman’s voice ask for Cohn.
“Yes,” she said, “he’s here.” And she held the receiver out to me, with a very curious look.
“Hullo,” I said. “Cohn here.”
“Oh, indeed,” replied the voice, “and why, may I ask?”
“Er... I don’t quite... ” I began, but she cut me short.
“Now, look here, Cohn, I’ve already wasted an hour waiting for you, thinking that if you couldn’t come you might at least have had the decency to ring me up and tell me. Now I find you’re just sitting at home. Not quite good enough, Cohn.”
“I urn who is it? Who’s speaking?” was the only temporising move I could think of. I was acutely conscious that the young woman beside me was frozen stock still in the act of taking off her coat.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said the voice, exasperated. “What silly game is this? Who do you think it is?”
“That’s what I’m asking,” I said.
“Oh, don’t be such a clown, Cohn. If it’s because Ottilie’s still there and I bet she is you’re just being stupid. She answered the phone herself, so she knows it’s me.”