3
He hadn't had time to ring when the door opened and there was Henry. An oddly altered Henry. He had always been a neat little man -- his wife had seen to that. Now he was in dirty blue dungarees, and he was unshaven. He walked past Rowe as though he didn't see him and leant over the well of the staircase. "They aren't here," he said.
A middle-aged woman with red eyes who looked like a cook followed him out and said, "It's not time, Henry. It's really not time." For a moment -- so altered was Henry -- Rowe wondered whether the war had done this to Henry's wife too.
Henry suddenly became aware of him -- or half aware of him. He said, "Oh, Arthur. . . good of you to come," as though they'd met yesterday. Then he dived back into his little dark hall and became a shadowy abstracted figure beside a grandfather clock.
"If you'd come in," the woman said, "I don't think they'll be long now."
He followed her in and noticed that she left the door open, as though others were expected; he was getting used now to life taking him up and planting him down without his own volition in surroundings where only he was not at home. On the oak chest -- made, he remembered, to Mrs Wilcox's order by the Tudor Manufacturing Company -- a pair of dungarees was neatly folded with a steel hat on top. He was reminded of prison, where you left your own clothes behind. In the dimness Henry repeated, "Good of you, Arthur," and fled again.
The middle-aged woman said, "Any friend of Henry's is welcome. I am Mrs Wilcox." She seemed to read his astonishment even in the dark, and explained, "Henry's mother." She said, "Come and wait inside. I don't suppose they'll be long. It's so dark here. The blackout, you know. Most of the glass is gone." She led the way into what Rowe remembered was the dining-room. There were glasses laid out as though there was going to be a party. It seemed an odd time of day. . . too late or too early. Henry was there; he gave the effect of having been driven into a corner, of having fled here. On the mantelpiece behind him were four silver cups with the names of teams engraved in double entry under a date: to have drunk out of one of them would have been like drinking out of an account book.
Rowe, looking at the glasses, said, "I didn't mean to intrude," and Henry remarked for the third time, as though it were a phrase he didn't have to use his brain in forming, "Good of you. . ." He seemed to have no memory left of that prison scene on which their friendship had foundered. Mrs Wilcox said, "It's so good the way Henry's old friends are all rallying to him." Then Rowe, who had been on the point of inquiring after Henry's wife, suddenly understood. Death was responsible for the glasses, the unshaven chin, the waiting. . . even for what had puzzled him most of all, the look of youth on Henry's face. People say that sorrow ages, but just as often sorrow makes a man younger -- ridding him of responsibility, giving in its place the lost unanchored look of adolescence.
He said, "I didn't know. I wouldn't have come if I'd known."
Mrs Wilcox said with gloomy pride, "It was in all the papers."
Henry stood in his corner; his teeth chattered while Mrs Wilcox went remorselessly on -- she had had a good cry, her son was hers again. "We are proud of Doris. The whole post is doing her honour. We are going to lay her uniform -- her clean uniform -- on the coffin, and the clergyman is going to read about 'Greater love hath no man'."
"I'm sorry, Henry,"
"She was crazy," Henry said angrily. "She had no right. . . I told her the wall would collapse."
"But we are proud of her, Henry," his mother said, "we are proud of her."
"I should have stopped her," Henry said. "I suppose," his voice went high with rage and grief, "she thought she'd win another of those blasted pots."
"She was playing for England, Henry," Mrs Wilcox said. She turned to Rowe and said, "I think we ought to lay a hockey-stick beside the uniform, but Henry won't have it."
"I'll be off," Rowe said. "I'd never have come if. . ."
"No," Henry said, "you stay. You know how it is. . ." He stopped and looked at Rowe as though he realized him fully for the first time. He said, "I killed my wife too. I could have held her, knocked her down. . ."
"You don't know what you are saying, Henry," his mother said. "What will this gentleman think. . .?"
"This is Arthur Rowe, mother."
"Oh," Mrs Wilcox said, "oh," and at that moment up the street came the slow sad sound of wheels and feet.
"How dare he. . .?" Mrs Wilcox said.
"He's my oldest friend, mother," Henry said. Somebody was coming up the stairs. "Why did you come, Arthur?" Henry said.
"To get you to cash me a cheque."
"The impudence," Mrs Wilcox said.
"I didn't know about this. . ."
"How much, old man?"
"Twenty?"
"I've only got fifteen. You can have that."
"Don't trust him," Mrs Wilcox said.
"Oh, my cheques are good enough. Henry knows that."
"There are banks to go to."
"Not at this time of day, Mrs Wilcox. I'm sorry. It's urgent."
There was a little trumpery Queen Anne desk in the room: it had obviously belonged to Henry's wife. All the furniture had an air of flimsiness; walking between it was like walking, in the old parlour game, blindfold between bottles. Perhaps in her home the hockey-player had reacted from the toughness of the field. Now moving to get at the desk Henry's shoulder caught a silver cup and set it rolling across the carpet. Suddenly in the open door appeared a very fat man in dungarees carrying a white steel helmet. He picked up the cup and said solemnly, "The procession's here, Mrs Wilcox."
Henry dithered by the desk.
"I have the uniform ready," Mrs Wilcox said, "in the hall."
"I couldn't get a Union Jack," the post warden said, "not a big one. And those little ones they stick on ruins didn't somehow look respectful." He was painfully trying to exhibit the bright side of death. "The whole post's turned out, Mr Wilcox," he said, "except those that have to stay on duty. And the A.F.S. -- they've sent a contingent. And there's a rescue party and four salvage men -- and the police band."
"I think that's wonderful," Mrs Wilcox said. "If only Doris could see it all."
"But she can see it, ma'am," the post warden said. "I'm sure of that."
"And afterwards," Mrs Wilcox said, gesturing towards the glasses, "if you'll all come up here. . ."
"There's a good many of us, ma'am. Perhaps we'd better make it just the wardens. The salvage men don't really expect. . ."
"Come along, Henry," Mrs Wilcox said. "We can't keep all these brave kind souls waiting. You must carry the uniform down in your arms. Oh dear, I wish you looked more tidy. Everybody will be watching you."