Hester looked confused. “But I don’t want a drink, Harry.”
“No drink, no change. Be a good girl. A sherry before lunch will set you up.” He took hold of her elbow and steered her into The Running Fox.
“Harry, I know you’re short of money. You don’t have to buy me a drink.”
“I want to give you the change from the coffee.”
“But, Harry, there are other ways of changing a pound.”
“I can’t imagine what they are,” he said. “Sit down by that table and I’ll bring the drinks. What do you want? Sherry? Beer?”
“Ginger beer shandy,” she said, and he walked over to the bar. He looked happy and relaxed. He liked having enough money to buy a girl a drink.
In the corner, dark against the dark panelling, a young man was sitting, with a glass of beer and a newspaper in front of him. Hester looked at him idly. He had a dark, strong face that could have been called menacing. He looked like a man to whom the idea of subservience had never occurred. She studied him, thinking not so much of him as of Harry, realising with pain that Harry was soft where this man and others were hard; that Harry had no pride while this man probably had too much; that Harry was weak, unpredictable, and perhaps even dishonest.
When Harry came back with the drinks she turned to him with a loving, protective smile; and accepted the shandy from him as though it had been a gift of orchids.
“I like this pub,” Harry said. “Four hundred years old, and only three landlords in all that time, if the present one hits the average. Take a look at him – do you suppose he’s more than a hundred and thirty-three and a third years old? Your health, Hester!” The last words were spoken with a desperate sincerity that seemed to give the act of drinking a unique importance.
He put down his empty glass, sighing. “I think I’ll get another,” he said. “What about you?”
“I’ve hardly touched this, and I don’t want another.”
“Or you might have high blood pressure at the age of seventy-three. That’s the girl!” Harry said approvingly. “You’re depriving yourself, Hester. The only bad habit you ever give yourself a chance to develop is me.”
He went to the bar, and she looked after him, trying to estimate how bad a habit he could be. She felt she had no illusions about his moral strength. He was as weak as a flower that had been blown down by the wind, she thought, while the instinct of the good gardener rose in her.
“Drink up that shandy, Hester,” he said. “I shall love you even when you’re an old woman with dropsy. Don’t look frightened. It’s not true. You’ll grow old like someone out of Yeats. A few minutes of lovely memories, then a graceful death with epitaphs in every anthology. But you must love me if you want to be sure of getting in the anthologies. Hester, love me and I’ll write you a book of poems all to yourself. And I’ll do breathing exercises before the window every morning. What a life we’ll have.” He began to breathe deeply, then bent down to lift imaginary weights and heave them above his head. The dark young man looked up from his newspaper and the old landlord leant across the bar and gave an amazed, yelping laugh. Harry, as usual, was failing to be inconspicuous.
Hester didn’t notice the others. She had begun to laugh. Harry was the only person who could make her forget the serious problems of life.
“Would you be the ideal husband?” she asked teasingly.
“You would have no pleasure then in reforming me. Would you like to try?”
“I’ll think about it,” she said lightly. She stood up, frightened by the realisation that she was thinking about it very seriously. Life with Harry would have its compensations, and she saw with absolute clarity that if no one helped him his talent would dissolve in easy words and idleness. By asking for her help he was making her responsible for his own irresponsibility. She didn’t want to marry; like a young fish, she needed all the ocean to swim in before she returned to the small pools of the river. Harry was lost, bewildered, drifting. She wanted to lead him out of the darkness.
“Harry, I must go. I must go now. Goodbye.”
She walked out. She had forgotten to ask for the change from the coffee.
THURSDAY (5)
THE young man in the corner watched Hester go, then walked over to Harry.
“Do you mind if I sit down?” he asked.
“No.”
“Will you have a drink with me?”
“Bitter, please.”
The stranger went to the bar and came back with the drinks.
“I thought I heard a note in your voice that suggested you’d been in Australia,” he explained.
“You’re not accusing me of anything? Here’s your health. And Australia’s, to be on the safe side.”
“I should keep on the safe side,” the stranger advised. “You liked Australia?”
“I found it ravishing,” Harry said solemnly. “But I had to leave. It wasn’t the place for my profession.”
“Which is?”
“I’m a poet.”
“I’ll be damned!” the Australian said. He looked intently at Harry, as though he was memorising him for an examination.
“You may photograph me, if you wish,” Harry said modestly.
“Do you make much money out of poetry?” the Australian said, looking now at Harry’s shabby coat, whose cuffs were so unsuitably bound with leather.
“Only decimal points,” Harry said. “Do you make much money out of Australia?”
“In good years, yes. I’m in the farm-machinery business.”
“Have you been buying many combine-harvesters here?” Harry asked, waving his already empty glass at the empty pub. “Or is it culture that brings you to the Cotswolds?”
“I was watching you and your sister,” the stranger said in level tones.
“It must have been with the inward eye,” Harry said. “I haven’t got a sister.”
“The girl who was here with you. I thought I recognised her voice.”
“You’re good at voices, aren’t you?” Harry said approvingly. “But you couldn’t help recognising her voice. She’s an English middle-class girl. They all speak alike. When you’ve heard one of them being Cleopatra or Juliet, you’ve heard the lot. Will you have a drink?”
“Yes.”
Harry went to the bar. When he came back, his round face was screwed up in pleasure.
“It’s a happy circumstance, drinking with strangers in bars,” he explained. “My mind’s moving now like a circular saw. I’m not sure now what I’m cutting. It might be monotony. It might be the branch I’m sitting on.”
The stranger wasn’t easily diverted. “I said I thought I recognised her voice. Does she live at the Tower House?”
“Yes.”
“Who is she?”
“Her name is Hester Wade. She’s the girl I’m going to marry, eventually,” Harry said, making up his mind. Drink was clearing his head.
“Oh. Have you bought your house yet?”
“I hadn’t thought of buying a house. I suppose if someone gave us a house, we’d accept it. We’ll live with her father. He wants to go into the hotel business. He’d be glad to have us as his guests.”
“Is a man called Maurice Reid going to be one of the guests?”
“In a way, I like being pumped,” Harry said. “It makes me feel important, like a spy being interviewed by the secret police. But there’s another side of me, longing to discuss astronomy, or bird-watching. Suppose you tell me, without what you may believe to be elaborate finesse, exactly what you want to know. Roll all your questions up into one ball and tear the answers with rough strife through the iron gates of life.”