Stephen Morris (17 page)

He passed the cross-roads at the top of the hill, his lamps lighting the arch of the trees before him. He had driven this road before, once when Wallace had lent him his car, and he had driven Helen to the Wittenham Clumps. They had stopped on this hill to see the bluebells – he was passing the very place – he even imagined he could see the scour on the road where the wheels had skidded as he pulled up suddenly … two years ago. He smiled at himself, and let the car spin down the broad, easy road. At the bottom of this hill was the ‘Hornblower’. It was a good pub, the ‘Hornblower’ – they did you well there. He would like to see the place again, would like to see if, visiting it again, he could not recapture something of the young love that had passed that way, some reminder, some fragrance lingering about the place that would bring him back the image of his girl. He had never visited it with anyone else; it was bound up in his mind with Helen, demurely pouring out tea by a window, open on to a garden, some bright, hot, summer afternoon …

He would look in there – he could not pass it without visiting it again. Perhaps he would sit a little there – perhaps he would find a comfortable chair and a warm fire where he could rest a little, before going on to Oxford.

The car slid softly to the door; he stopped the engine and got out. He would have gone in at once, but something made him turn as he reached the door, made him pause and stare out over the fields beneath the Chilterns. It was spring, he thought. Perhaps in those fields were the bluebells he had seen and picked … when he had been there before. Last year they had been there just the same, he supposed, just as beautiful as they had been before. But they had not been there to pick them.

He turned, and laughed at himself a little sourly. ‘In the spring … ’ He opened the door and went in.

‘Whisky and splash,’ he said cheerfully.

‘Cold tonight, isn’t it?’ said the barmaid.

Morris walked towards the fire and stretched out his hands. ‘It is that,’ he said.

What a good spot this was! One day he would make a list, with the help of Wallace or someone, of pubs that were really worth staying at. The ‘Hornblower’, the ‘Queen Anne’ at Chinden, the ‘Feathers’ at Morting Howell. He took off his coat and settled himself before the fire in an old oak armchair, one of half a dozen around the wide, open fireplace. The fire stood in a brazier, warm and comforting; by his side was an oak table, a great bowl of primroses in the middle.

He sipped his drink and stretched out one hand to the blaze, dreaming.

He looked at his hand, curiously, sleepily. He was not sorry he had done it. It had been the right thing to do … and it was over now. Because he had faced it, it had not lasted so long. God, how quickly he had got on! He had had most amazing luck all through his life;
luck in getting to know his girl, luck in getting in touch with poor old Malcolm, luck in getting on to Rawdon, luck in sticking with the company over the bad times. He had done in nineteen months what he thought would have taken him four years.

There was a stir behind him, and the door opened and shut. Somebody – two people – had come in and were taking off their coats in silence. Morris did not look round. He was tired, sleepy with the warmth, too tired to stir. He must get on to Oxford for dinner. Or, why not stay and dine here, and go on to Oxford afterwards?

Somebody, a man, was coming up behind him to the fire, rubbing his hands to the blaze. Morris stirred a little in his chair and turned to look at the newcomer.

‘Why, Christie,’ he said quietly. ‘I thought you were in the Argentine.’

‘Hullo, Morris,’ said Christie in his slow way. ‘When on earth did you drop in? I am most awfully glad to see you.’

Morris stirred a little further in his chair, produced a pouch of tobacco, and tossed it on the table towards the other. ‘The same stuff,’ he said laconically. ‘You’re quite sure you aren’t still in the Argentine?’

Christie chuckled gravely, picked up the pouch, and began to fill his pipe. A slim, fair girl, whose face seemed vaguely familiar to Morris came and stood beside Christie.

‘My wife,’ said Christie.

Morris got up and shook hands, smiling. ‘I had no idea of this,’ he said apologetically.

The girl laughed cheerfully. ‘It’s recent,’ said Christie, ‘– too recent for gossip. Three days, to be exact.’ He turned to the girl. ‘He lives on gossip, this man.’

‘I know where he learned that,’ said the girl. She turned to Morris. ‘I remember you,’ she said. ‘I often saw you in the “Cadena” in the mornings – with Robert.’

So Christie was also Robert. Morris remembered the look of the girl; he thought she had been a home student.

Presently she disappeared upstairs. Christie took a chair, and lit his pipe. ‘The advantage of regular habits,’ he said reflectively. ‘One always knows where to go for good tobacco. Where are you making for now? Oxford? Better stop and have dinner with us here.’

‘I thought of having dinner here,’ said Morris. ‘I’m going first to Oxford – I don’t know what after that. See what happens in Oxford. Gloucester perhaps.’

There was a pause while Christie filed and docketed this information, then, ‘What are you going to Gloucester for?’ he asked. ‘Got business there?’ It was a crude inquiry. Christie knew as well as anyone. The effort to recall the details of a six-months’-old consternation proved detrimental to his tact.

Morris did not answer the question directly. He took up the old, worn poker, and scraped a little white ash from the bars of the brazier. ‘One moves on,’ he said. ‘You’ve moved on – you’ve gone and got yourself married. Wallace seems to be falling into the arms of one particular divinity. You know pretty well as much about my affairs as I do. Do you suppose I stand still?’

‘And so you’re going to Gloucester,’ said Christie.

‘By heavens, Holmes – this is marvellous!’ Morris leaned forward to the fire and began to talk. He told Christie what he had been doing since he left Oxford, what he had done before he left Oxford. He told his tale straight ahead, almost as if he had been telling it to a child at bed-time, making it up as he went along. Christie listened imperturbably to the end.

‘She doesn’t know you’re coming?’ he said at last.

Morris shook his head.

Christie routed in his pocket for a match, leaned forward, and lit his pipe again. He blew a long cloud of
smoke which, caught by a draught, vanished up the great chimney.

‘Morris,’ he said, looking into the embers. Morris looked up. ‘Morris, I’m afraid she’s married.’

The coals fell together with a tiny crash in the brazier.

‘Oh,’ said Morris softly.

‘I’ll tell you what I know,’ said Christie.

‘I’d like to hear that,’ murmured Morris, very gently. The blood was slowly returning to his heart.

‘I saw it in the
Tatler
, or one of those papers – last autumn. It was a photograph of her as an engaged girl. It was headed – “An autumn wedding” – or something like that; you know the kind of thing. It said she was going to be married next month to Lechlane – you remember Lechlane.’

‘He came into money,’ said Morris. ‘He was a sort of cousin of hers – distant.’

He sat scraping the ash interminably from the brazier. Presently he got up from his chair and stood before the fire, looking down into the coals, one hand on the mantelpiece. Christie, as he watched him, seemed suddenly to see him as he would be in thirty years’ time, the same, but different; a little greyer, a little graver. He moved and stood upright; the illusion vanished. ‘Thanks for telling me that,’ he said. ‘It was good of you. Otherwise I might have made a fool of myself.’ He turned from the fireplace. ‘I must get on. You’ll remember me to your wife?’

He took his coat, the new ulster bought only that morning, and put it on.

‘You won’t stay for dinner?’ asked Christie.

‘I don’t think so, thanks,’ said Morris a little pathetically. ‘I want to get on.’

Christie did not attempt further to detain him. He walked with him to the door.

‘We shall be here for a week longer,’ he said. ‘We’d
be most awfully glad if you’d come in for a night or two – on your way back, if you happen to be passing.’

‘That’s damn good of you,’ said a voice from the darkness, ‘but I don’t suppose I shall. Cheer oh.’

The headlights flicked on; the engine of the little car purred suddenly, and the car slid away up the road. Christie watched it out of sight; three times there was a crescendo of noise, and then a sudden rumble, gradually increasing in note. The red star of the tail-lamp seemed to fly up the lighted road.

Morris was making that car move.

The barmaid touched Christie on the arm. ‘That gentleman hasn’t gone, has he? He hasn’t paid for his whisky!’

Five miles up the road Morris dropped one hand from the wheel and gathered the rug closer round him. He had not stirred since his hand returned from the gear lever; he had been getting colder and colder. Then it struck him that it was silly to sit there getting cold like that. He had quite enough to worry about without double pneumonia.

He buttoned up the collar of his coat and pulled the rug up round his middle. As he tucked it around him, his foot went down hard upon the accelerator; the car leaped fiercely forward. Well, let it! He had been making a fool of himself ever since he left Oxford; let him now make the final folly and finish up in the ditch! He was no good. All these years he had deluded himself – he had had no shadow of grounds for hope. He saw that clearly now.

But that was no reason for blinding through Tetsworth, scaring all the villagers out of their wits. He slowed a little and passed through the village, cheery with its lighted windows.

He pressed on his way, hurriedly, feverishly. There was no object now in his visit to Oxford, no reason to go there, nothing to do when he got there. But he must go somewhere, somewhere where he could find something to interest him, someone to talk to. He shrank from going back to Christie on his honeymoon, though he was the sort of man he wanted. He wanted to find company … somebody to talk to and go about with till he could go back to Southall and face his loneliness again.

He pressed on, and began to run down a long hill in the darkness. There was a turn at the bottom, he remembered, where one passed under a railway bridge; one must not come on that too fast. He peered forward, straining his eyes for the first appearance of it. There it was – he was on it, through it, and out the other side.

On past the road to Thame that struck off by the railway bridge, on over the bridge spanning the river. He was nearly at Oxford – it was not far now. He must have moved over this bit of ground. But one must do something, one must keep moving. Because if one did not keep moving, one would not be able to retain one’s self-control, and that was all one had left.

Then he was at the fork of the road outside Wheatley, and went spinning up the hill to the right under the overhanging trees. Past the little town in the valley beside him, and on towards Headington. He was tired. He did not want to eat, but he would have dinner somewhere; it would do him good. He must look after himself now, must be very, very careful of himself. It was all he had to do.

He entered the long tunnel of Headington Hill and ran down into Oxford, through the outskirts of the town, out on to Cowley Plain and Magdalen Bridge. He drove quietly on up the High.

He was cold, tired and cold. He must have something
to eat somewhere … he would go to the George Grill. And after that, he did not know. He might go round to college and find out if there were any of his old friends about. It was all so unutterably dreary.

He drew up before the George and sat down in the grill to wait for his solitary meal. Beside him a group of undergraduates were dining not wisely but too well, and reading aloud the snappier passages from
The Pink ’Un.
Morris gathered that there had been a regrettable outbreak of lechery in the university, until the authorities had bestirred themselves, and caught a lecher and sent him down. Morris smiled; a dry humour reasserted itself in him; he felt that he could have made a creditable contribution to such an academic discussion. But presently his neighbours finished their meal and drifted away, and Morris was left to himself in the deserted room.

He finished his dinner and strolled out into the street. He must get on the road again, keep moving, tire himself out, so that when the time came, he could sleep quietly. He started up the car, wrapped himself up warmly again, and moved forward. He would just go straight ahead the way the car was pointing, down George Street and out into the country past the stations and on. That was westwards; he might go on tomorrow down to Cornwall for a little. He might make a night of it – he had plenty of petrol. He might get most of the way to Cornwall before dawn. One must keep moving.

He slipped out under the railway bridge and on down the long dull road to Botley. He did not understand this business, and he had nobody that he could consult. If only Malcolm had lived! But there was nobody. He could not understand about Lechlane; he could not imagine Helen, the Helen that he knew, being happy in that marriage. It all wound itself into his philosophy of life, worrying and rankling. Did things always happen
like this? He had always held that the average human being was a pretty good sort – that things mostly worked out all right in the end.