‘I know what you mean,’ Paul said, ‘but actually I think the books pages are as good as any.’ What he really wanted to know, but somehow couldn’t ask, was if she’d seen his review of The Short Gallery in the New Statesman, a paper he felt she was unlikely to take. He’d done it as a gesture of friendship, finding all that was best in the book, the tiny criticisms themselves clearly affectionate, the corrections of fact surely useful for any future edition. Whenever he reviewed a book he read all its other reviews as keenly as if he were the author of the book himself. Daphne’s memoir had been covered either by fellow survivors, some loyal, some sneering, or by youngsters with their own points to make; but a more or less open suggestion that she had made a good deal of it up hung over all of them. Paul blushed when he read about errors he had failed to spot, but drew a stubborn assurance of his own niceness from the fact of having been so gentle with her. His was much the best notice she had received. As he wrote it, he imagined her gratitude, phrased it for her in different ways and savoured it, and for weeks after the review appeared – rather cut, unfortunately, but its main drift still plain to see – he waited for her letter, thanking him, recalling their old friendship, and suggesting they meet up again, perhaps for lunch, which he pictured variously at a quiet hotel or in her own house in Blackheath, among the distracting memorabilia of her eighty-two years. In fact the only response had been a letter to the Editor from Sir Dudley Valance, pointing out a trifling error Paul had made in alluding to his novel The Long Gallery, on which Daphne’s title was a pawky in-joke. If even Sir Dudley, who lived abroad, saw the New Statesman, perhaps Daphne did too; or the publisher might have sent it on. Paul thought a certain well-bred reserve might have kept her from writing anything to a reviewer. She was pulling off her gloves. ‘You won’t mind if I have a cigarette?’
‘Not at all,’ said Paul; and when she’d found one in her bag he took the lighter from her and gently held her arm for a second as she leant to the flame. The smoke soured the fetid air almost pleasantly. And at once, with the little shake of her head as she exhaled, her face, even the uptilted gleam of her glasses, seemed restored to how they had been twelve years before. Encouraged, he said, ‘I’m very pleased to see you, because in fact I’m writing something about Cecil… Cecil Valance’ – with a gasp of a laugh, quickly deferential. He didn’t come out with the full scale of his plans. ‘Actually, I was about to write to you, and ask if I could come and see you.’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said, but quite nicely. She blew out smoke as if at something very distant. ‘I wrote a book myself, I don’t know if you saw that. I sort of put it all in there.’
‘Well, yes, of course!’ – he laughed again. ‘I reviewed it, in fact.’
‘Were you horrid?’ she said, with another touch of the droll tone he remembered.
‘No, I loved it. It was a rave.’
‘Some of them were stinkers.’
He paused sympathetically. ‘I just felt it would be very valuable to be able to speak to you – of course I don’t want to be a nuisance. If you like, I’ll just come for an hour when it suits you.’
She frowned and thought. ‘You know, I never pretended to be a wonderful writer, but I have known some very interesting people.’ Her quiet laugh now was slightly grim.
Paul made a vague noise of indignant dismissal of all her critics. ‘Of course I saw your interview in the Tatler, but I thought there might be a bit more to say!’
‘Ah, yes.’ Again she seemed both flattered and wary.
‘I don’t know if you’d prefer the morning or the afternoon.’
‘Mm?’ She didn’t commit herself to a time, or to anything really. ‘Who was that very nice young man at the party – I expect you know him? I can’t remember anyone’s name. He was asking me about Cecil.’ She seemed to take some slightly mischievous pleasure in this.
‘I hope he’s not writing about him!’
‘Well, I’m not at all sure he isn’t.’
‘Oh dear…!’ – Paul felt rattled, but managed to say smoothly, ‘I’m sure since your book came out there’s been a lot more interest in him.’
She took in a deep draught of smoke and then let it out in a sleepy wave up her face. ‘It’s the War, too, of course. People can’t get enough of the War.’
‘Oh, I know,’ said Paul, as if he too thought it rather overdone. In fact he was counting on it heavily.
She peered at him, in the streaking glare and shadow, almost haughtily. ‘I think I do remember you,’ she said. ‘Don’t you play the piano?’
‘Aha!’ said Paul. ‘Yes, I know what you’re thinking of.’
‘You played duets with my daughter.’
He enjoyed this passive imposture, though it was uncomfortable too to be taken for Peter. ‘It was great fun, that evening,’ he said modestly.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Wasn’t it.’
‘They were happy times in Foxleigh, in many ways.’ He spread a warm glaze over the place and time, as if they were much more distant than was the case. ‘Well, they introduced me to your family!’ He thought she saw this as pure flattery. He wanted to ask about Julian, and Jenny, but any questions were darkened by the awful larger question of Corinna and Leslie Keeping. Was it proper to talk about them, or presumptuous and intrusive? The effort of keeping the talk going stalled him for a minute.
‘Ah! Here we are…!’ she said as the cab swung down the long ramp into the station. He saw that for her the moment of escape was also one of obligation. At the setting-down place he jumped out, and stood with his brolly hooked over his forearm and his wallet open in his hand. He only took a taxi about twice a year, but he tipped the driver with the jovial inattention of young men he had seen in the City. Mrs Jacobs had clambered out on the other side, and waited in a ladylike fashion for the business to be done. Paul rejoined her with a happy but submissive smile.
‘Why don’t you give me your address, anyway, and I can write to you.’
‘Yes, that would be fine,’ she said quietly, as though she’d been thinking it over.
‘And then we can take it from there…!’ He had a pad in his briefcase, and he lent it to her, looking away as she wrote her details down. ‘Thank you very much,’ he said, still businesslike.
‘Well, thank you – for rescuing me.’
He stared at her stout, slightly stooped and shabby person, the cheerful glasses under the sad red hat, the clutched bag, and shook his head, as if at a chance meeting of devoted old friends. ‘I just can’t believe it!’ he said.
‘Well, there you are,’ she said, doing her best.
‘See you very soon, I hope’ – and they shook hands. She was getting, what was it?, a Worcester train, from the nearest platform – he hadn’t looked yet at her address. She turned away, went a few determined steps, then looked back with a hesitant and slightly conspiratorial air that he found immediately charming.
She said, ‘Just tell me your name again.’
‘Oh! Paul Bryant…’
She nodded and clenched her hand in the air, as if catching at a moth. ‘Au revoir,’ she said.
2
‘Dear Georgie,’ Paul read, ‘At luncheon today the General was moved to remark that your visit to Corley Court had been reasonably quiet, and pressed a little further said you had “hardly put a foot wrong”. That hardly may give you pause: but she would say no more. Overall, I take her to mean that further visits will not be frowned on. […] I will of course convey her good wishes to you in person, tomorrow afternoon, at 5.27 precisely. Praise the Lord for Bentley Park and Horner’s Van (Homer’s – can’t read? Not the Homer, dare I hope, the writer?). Then Middlesex will be all before us. Your CTV.’ Outside the train window, Middlesex itself was opening and then hiding again in the curves of the line. Paul kept his finger in the Letters of Cecil Valance as he stared into the bright afternoon – low sun over suburban houses, bare trees between playing-fields, now a tunnel. He looked down at Cecil’s face, the prominent dark eyes, wavy dark hair oiled almost flat, the sepia knot of his tie, with a pin behind it, the brass-buttoned epaulettes and wide serge lapels with a regimental badge on each, and the buckled leather strap that cut across his chest like a sash. ‘Edited by G. F. Sawle’ beneath the picture. Then the flickering townscape jumped in again and they were slowing to a station.