A Girl in Winter (21 page)

“Tell me something more about your family,” she said when they had both finished. “About Jane, for instance.”

“She’s at home,” said Robin briefly, stretching his legs under the table.

“And Jack?”

“Still in India. They’re fairly stuck now.”

“She did go to India, then?”

It was Jane, after all, who had been the mainspring of this meeting.

“Oh yes. She went back there with Jack. They lived there till war broke out. She was going to have this child then, and they thought it better she should come home, all things considered.” He threw these sentences out moodily, as if they reflected discredit on his family.

“But why? India would have been safer, surely.”

“I dare say it would.” He hitched in his seat to get one hand in his trouser-pocket. “But they didn’t think so at the time. It was all very confusing. You see, for one thing, children shouldn’t stay in India after a certain age, and there was no guarantee they’d be able to send her back to England once the war got well started. And some people said it was just the chance for a civil war, if England started getting the worst of it. And then Jack wanted his children to be brought up in England,” he added without irony.

Katherine nodded, her chin on one hand. The
washing-up
could be left till tomorrow.

“He’s still there, then?”

“Yes, he’s trying to get back for a bit. It’s rotten all round.”

“Will they go back?”

“I suppose they’ll have to. Jane doesn’t seem very keen on the idea, though. I don’t think she liked the life out there much.”

“Well, she knew what she was in for, I suppose,” said Katherine, rising. As she glanced in the mirror from force of habit she could see that Robin had made her hair
untidy
, and she began setting it to rights, using her brush from the bedroom. “All the same, I’m sorry.”

“I’m surprised that you should have noticed it in the papers, about the kid.” He got up, and came as if
magnetized
to stand behind her as she attended to her
appearance
, smiling at her reflection in his professional way, yet looking as if he needed sleep. “I should have thought you’d have forgotten Jack’s name.”

She went on brushing. “It was such a funny name.”

He looked over her shoulder, smoking as if being
photographed
. “That looks a very valuable hairbrush.”

“I shall pawn it when I’ve no money.”

He started to put his arms round her again, and she no longer felt tolerant of his behaviour, only somewhat irritated. Had he come all this way simply to mess her about? “Don’t be silly,” she told him. “You’re not drunk any more.”

A dark, wounded look came into his face, like the look of a child that has been refused something it believes its due. She saw that she had hurt him deeply, and it amazed her. Was she supposed to be flattered, that he had
considered
it worth while making a special journey on the
off-chance
of sleeping with her? For he would ask that if she made no protest. Queer, she thought, that he should have turned out like this. Someone must have given him the idea that he fascinated women.

“And the child?” she asked. “What did it die of?”

He had gone to sit down again, moving uneasily as if his pockets were full of unyielding objects.

“Oh——” he tossed his head. “That was a miserable
business. It just wasn’t strong enough. Born with a
defective
heart, the doctor said.”

“How bad for her,” she said with a sigh. “Is she very depressed?”

“She was pretty cut up. I couldn’t get down for the funeral.”

Katherine put her brush back into the alcove, and returned to sit on her stool. “What will she do now?”

As she said this, the gas-fire began to fail and grow blue, and she realized the meter needed another shilling. Robin looked up quickly as the heat on his legs lost its steadiness, and dug his hand painfully into his hip-pocket for money.

“Don’t bother,” she said, rooting in her handbag. But she had no appropriate coins and had to accept the shilling he held out. When she came back from the dismal landing the subject of conversation had passed from their minds.

She looked at her watch and saw it was nine o’clock, stifling a yawn and realizing that her weariness was being reinforced by boredom. Had they ever been at ease with each other? Or had her memory played her false? For there was nothing sympathetic in him. It seemed absurd that she should be obliged to sit and entertain him because they had met by chance when she was young; if she were introduced to him now she would not want to see him again. And this lack of contact was due to more than her temporary insensitivity. If it was only that, he could have amused her and gradually brought her friendliness into play again. But every word he had spoken fell short, leaving her untouched.

“When did you say your train went?” she asked at length.

Unintentionally this irritated him. “You aren’t going to throw me out yet, are you?” he retorted, spreading a laugh thinly over the edge of his voice, and uncrossing his legs. “It actually goes at a quarter to midnight. I’ll go if you want me to.”

“Of course not. Would you like some more coffee?”

“Oh, don’t trouble.”

“No trouble.” She had not meant to offend him. “Only there may not be enough milk. All my visitors have come on the same day, you see.”

She stood weighing the coffee-pot in her hand.

“Well, if you’re going to make some, I don’t mind if it’s black,” he said ungraciously, as if cross that things were going the wrong way.

She collected the cups and went out: this time he did not follow her, and she was alone in the tiny, brilliant kitchen. Perhaps black coffee would keep her awake, for it certainly seemed that even if she did not let him do as he pleased with her, he was intending to stick there until it was time for him to go to the station. She caught herself up on this last thought and, watching the kettle boil again, wondered if she were as callous as that sounded. He had every right to expect a friend to welcome him, particularly a friend that owed him hospitality and had not met him for so long. If she could see her conduct from the outside, it might well seem at fault by human standards. But that was just where human standards broke down. What
happened
if she felt no humanity?

She did not think she was at fault; it was not as if she disliked him. What abstract kindliness she could
command
was at his service, but it was no more than she might show to a fellow-traveller in a railway-carriage or on board a steamer. Indeed, that was the strongest bond she felt between them, that they were journeying together, with the snow, the discomfort, the food they shared, the beds that were not warm enough. In this situation she need know nothing more about him: there was a fire, that he paid to keep burning; she had hot coffee she could give him; there was so much laconic mutual help, while
outside
lay the plains, the absence of the moon, the complete enmity of darkness.

She switched the light off and carried in the tray. He had got up again and was standing in front of the fire, as if fearing it might go out again. One hand jingled money in his pockets.

“Who are all these visitors you’re talking about?”

She could tell by his voice that his irritation was very thinly hidden.

“I was only joking. I did have one girl in at lunchtime, who works where I do. I don’t even know her Christian name. But she drank some of the milk.”

“Then I come along and drink the rest.” He gave a laugh, not wholly amused. “You know,” he went on, swinging his weight first on one foot, then on the other, “you’ve changed a bit.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know,” he said, stirring the coffee she gave him. “I can see you in thirty years’ time, with a cat and a parrot——”

He tried to sound bantering, but there was constraint in his voice that meant his words hurt himself as well as her.

“I suppose you just don’t give a curse for anyone,” he ended rather bitterly.

She found it odd, that this was Robin speaking to her. No doubt he had learned to talk in this way at Cambridge. She leant easily on the table.

“Is this because I don’t want you to kiss me?”

“No, it isn’t.” His denial was violent, disturbed: she had let the remark out casually, without realizing such an ordinary truth might offend him. Why, he was years younger than she was: it must be his English upbringing. “It’s because you’re about as friendly as a blasted block of ice.”

He stood there foolishly, looking at the floor.

She thought of telling him that he was mistaken if he expected her to be flattered by his estimate of her, a foreign girl who could be relied on for a bit of fun. But
her resentment was not strong enough. He could say what he liked. No doubt he would end by apologizing.

He stood there in silence till he had finished his coffee. Then he put the cup on the mantelpiece and threw himself petulantly into his chair again, his mouth resting against his hands. Katherine went over and reseated herself on the stool, taking up her box of cigarettes and finding there were only two left. She put one in her mouth, and threw the other into his lap.

In a minute or two he picked it up.

“I’m sorry,” he said, clearing his throat. “I don’t know why I said that.”

She struck a match. “That’s all right. We do seem to have lost touch, rather.”

They lit their cigarettes.

“I suppose,” he said, “we aren’t really such very great friends. I don’t mean to be rude.”

“I suppose not. We only knew each other by chance.”

“That’s true. Tell me, why did you join that scheme? I always thought it wasn’t your kind of show at all.”

She laughed. “I thought the same about you. I can’t remember why. I thought it would be fun.”

“Oh, I was deadly serious about the language side of it. I read languages at Cambridge. I thought at one time of going into the Diplomatic.”

“Can’t you still?”

He rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know. Everything’s so uncertain.”

“Well, at any rate,” she said, “I enjoyed the holiday I had with you. That was a success.”

“Did you? I had the impression you were no end bored. I’m glad.”

“I always meant to ask you back.”

“Well, you did ask me. But I was ill, wasn’t I?”

“I think you were.”

“And by next year there were war-scares every minute.”

“And we’d stopped writing.”

“Yes, we had.”

Smoke hung under the electric light.

“A pity you didn’t come over,” said Katherine. “I should have liked both you and Jane to have come.”

“Yes, it would have been grand.”

“Perhaps,” she said, “there will be time, after the war.”

“I’m superstitious,” he said. “I’m making no plans. After the war doesn’t exist for me. I just look forward about a week.” But his eyes looked as if he could see years ahead.

“Look, will you write to me?” he said later on. “I’m sorry I was rude just now.”

“Write to you?” she said. Her eyes rested on his worried face. Did he really think, at this outpost of the
conversation
, that there was anything she could give him? “I will if you like.”

“It’d be silly to lose touch. You don’t have to write pages of literary stuff. Just a couple of sides would do. It’s being in the army makes one feel like that, I suppose—being so cut off. It makes a letter seem awfully important.”

He wrote in a small notebook, bound in soft leather, tore off what he had written, and handed it to her. It was a guarded military address.

“I’ll do my best,” she said. “I don’t write much these days.”

“I’d be no end grateful. And you must come to stay again as soon as you can. I’ll ask mother to write to you about it.”

“Jane won’t want any visitors.”

“Jane won’t want anything. She wouldn’t eat if
someone
else didn’t get the meals.”

“Perhaps in the summer!” she said, with a flicker of irony.

“I’m pretty certain to have left England by then. But you must go in any case.”

The irritability had left his voice, the distress remained. He ran his fingers several times through his hair, and sighed once or twice. Their conversation was as barren as a field by the sea’s edge, the grass littered with pebbles until at last the margin is all pebbles, dropping down steeply to where the clear water rises and falls against the stones. She felt very keenly that they were alone at the top of this building, and at this thought her spirits began to revive strangely, meaninglessly, like a rag caught upon a nail that flaps in the wind. She had been pushed so far that day into exhaustion that she had reached the boundary of a completely new land, where a wind seemed to blow and make her flutter like the last leaf on a tree, where all things tossed and shook in a kind of lonely exultance, irrelevantly, simply because they were alive.

And what of him? He sat with a dark face, shoulders hunched, his feet turned inwards. Something oppressed him continually, making him come to her or any woman, disguised by a jaunty philandering. He had lost the
self-possession
he had moved with when a boy, and was given over to the restlessness of his body. That was driving him, and because he could not control it he pretended he enjoyed it, to the extent of telling himself he was having a jolly good time and even if necessary that he loved her, which would not be true. It had driven him to play the gay officer, and in due course would cause him to play the forsaken boy, but it would be unkind to tell him so, because he had to do it and would be happier without the knowledge. But she felt superior to him, for she wanted nothing of him, but when he left her he would do so bitterly.

The silence was too long, and he seemed to feel it,
getting
up and pressing out his cigarette. “I think perhaps I’d better go now,” he said, casting a look round the room. “You’re probably tired out.”

His voice was drab, and he gave his tie a jerk, tightening
it as if to hearten himself. In the light the lines of his face were drawn.

She was moved to feel sorry for him. It seemed a poor end to their meeting.