The Complete Short Stories (19 page)

‘What are they saying to
each other?’ she inquired of Richard when a group of them passed by, shouting
some words and laughing at each other through glistening red lips and very
white teeth.

‘They are talking about
their fast MG racing cars.

‘Oh, have they got
racing cars?’

‘No, the racing cars
they are talking about don’t exist. Sometimes they talk about their film
contracts which don’t exist. That’s why they laugh.’

‘Not much of a sense of
humour, have they?’

‘They are of mixed
nationalities, so they have to limit their humour to jokes which everyone can
understand, and so they talk about racing cars which aren’t there.’

Trudy giggled a little,
to show willing. Richard told her he was thirty-five, which she thought
feasible. She volunteered that she was not quite twenty-two. Whereupon Richard
looked at her and looked away, and looked again and took her hand. For, as he
told Gwen afterwards, this remarkable statement was almost an invitation to a
love affair.

Their love affair began
that afternoon, in a boat on the lake, when, barefoot, they had a game of
placing sole to sole, heel to heel. Trudy squealed, and leaned back hard,
pressing her feet against Richard’s.

She squealed at Gwen
when they met in their room later on. ‘I’m having a heavenly time with Richard.
I do so much like an older man.

Gwen sat on her bed and
gave Trudy a look of wonder. Then she said, ‘He’s not much older than you.’

‘I’ve knocked a bit off
my age,’ Trudy said. ‘Do you mind not letting on?’

‘How much have you
knocked off?’

‘Seven years.

‘Very courageous,’ Gwen
said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘That you are brave.’

‘Don’t you think you’re
being a bit nasty?’

‘No. It takes courage to
start again and again. That’s all I mean. Some women would find it boring.’

‘Oh, I’m not an
experienced girl at all,’ Trudy said. ‘Whatever made you think I was
experienced?’

‘It’s true,’ Gwen said, ‘you
show no signs of having profited by experience. Have you ever found it a
successful tactic to remain twenty-two?’

‘I believe you’re
jealous,’ Trudy said. ‘One expects this sort of thing from most older women,
but somehow I didn’t expect it from you.

‘One is always learning,’
Gwen said.

Trudy fingered her
curls. ‘Yes, I have got a lot to learn from life,’ she said, looking out of the
window.

‘God,’ said Gwen, ‘you
haven’t begun to believe that you’re still twenty-two, have you?’

‘Not quite twenty-two is
how I put it to Richard,’ Trudy said, ‘and yes, I do feel it. That’s my point.
I don’t feel a day older.’

The last day of their holidays Richard took
Trudy rowing on the lake, which reflected a grey low sky.

‘It looks like
Windermere today, doesn’t it?’ he said.

Trudy had not seen
Windermere, but she said, yes it did, and gazed at him with shining twenty-two-year-old
eyes.

‘Sometimes this place,’
he said, ‘is very like Yorkshire, but only when the weather’s bad. Or, over on
the mountain side, Wales.’

‘Exactly what I told
Gwen,’ Trudy said. ‘I said Wales, I said, it’s like Wales.’

‘Well, of course, there’s
quite a difference, really. It —’

‘But Gwen simply
squashed the idea. You see, she’s an older woman, and being a schoolmistress —
it’s so much different when a man’s a teacher — being a woman teacher, she
feels she can treat me like a kid. I suppose I must expect it.’

‘Oh well —’

‘How long have you known
Gwen?’

‘Several years,’ he
said. ‘Gwen’s all right, darling. A great friend of my mother, is Gwen. Quite a
member of the family.’

Trudy wanted to move her lodgings in London
but she was prevented from doing so by a desire to be near Gwen, who saw
Richard daily at school, and who knew his mother so well. And therefore Gwen’s experience
of Richard filled in the gaps in his life which were unknown to Trudy and which
intrigued her.

She would fling herself
into Gwen’s room. ‘Gwen, what d’you think? There he was waiting outside the
office and he drove me home, and he’s calling for me at seven, and next
week-end …’

Gwen frequently replied,
‘You are out of breath. Have you got heart trouble?’ — for Gwen’s room was only
on the first floor. And Trudy was furious with Gwen on these occasions for
seeming not to understand that the breathlessness was all part of her only
being twenty-two, and excited by the boyfriend.

‘I think Richard’s so
exciting,’ Trudy said. ‘It’s difficult to believe I’ve only known him a month.’

‘Has he invited you home
to meet his mother?’ Gwen inquired.

‘No — not yet. Oh, do
you think he will?’

‘Yes, I think so. One
day I’m sure he will.’

‘Oh, do you mean it?’
Trudy flung her arms girlishly round Gwen’s impassive neck.

‘When is your father
coming up?’ Gwen said.

‘Not for ages, if at
all. He can’t leave Leicester just now, and he hates London.’

‘You must get him to
come and ask Richard what his intentions are. A young girl like you needs
protection.’

‘Gwen, don’t be silly.’

Often Trudy would
question Gwen about Richard and his mother.

‘Are they well off? Is
she a well-bred woman? What’s the house like? How long have you known Richard?
Why hasn’t he married before? The mother, is she —’

‘Lucy is a marvel in her
way,’ Gwen said.

‘Oh, do you call her
Lucy? You must know her awfully well.’

‘I’m quite,’ said Gwen, ‘a
member of the family in my way. ‘Richard has often told me that. Do you go
there
every
Sunday?’

‘Most Sundays,’ Gwen
said. ‘It is often very amusing, and one sometimes sees a fresh face.

‘Why,’ Trudy said, as
the summer passed and she had already been away for several weekends with
Richard, ‘doesn’t he ask me to meet his mother? If my mother were alive and
living in London I know I would have asked him home to meet her.’

Trudy threw out hints to
Richard. ‘How I wish you could meet my father. You simply must come up to
Leicester in the Christmas holidays and stay with him. He’s rather tied up in
Leicester and never leaves it. He’s an insurance manager. The successful kind.’

‘I can’t very well leave
Mother at Christmas,’ Richard said, ‘but I’d love to meet your father some
other time.’ His tan had worn off, and Trudy thought him more distinguished and
at the same time more unattainable than ever.

‘I think it only right,’
Trudy said in her young way, ‘that one should introduce the man one loves to
one’s parents’ — for it was agreed between them that they were in love.

But still, by the end of
October, Richard had not asked her to meet his mother.

‘Does it matter all that
much?’ Gwen said.

‘Well, it would be a
definite step forward,’ Trudy said. ‘We can’t go on being just friends like
this. I’d like to know where I stand with him. After all, we’re in love and we’re
both free. Do you know, I’m beginning to think he hasn’t any serious intentions
after all. But if he asked me to meet his mother it would be a sort of sign,
wouldn’t it?’

‘It certainly would,’
Gwen said.

‘I don’t even feel I can
ring him up at home until I’ve met his mother. I’d feel shy of talking to her
on the phone. I must meet her. It’s becoming a sort of obsession.’

‘It certainly is,’ Gwen
said. ‘Why don’t you just say to him, “I’d like to meet your mother”?’

‘Well, Gwen, there are
some things a girl can’t say.’

‘No, but a woman can.

‘Are you going on about
my age again? I tell you, Gwen, I feel twenty-two. I think twenty-two. I am
twenty-two so far as Richard’s concerned. I don’t think really you can help me
much. After all, you haven’t been successful with men yourself, have you?’

‘No,’ Gwen said, ‘I
haven’t. I’ve always been on the old side.’

‘That’s just my point.
It doesn’t get you anywhere to feel old and think old. If you want to be
successful with men you have to hang on to your youth.’

‘It wouldn’t be worth it
at the price,’ Gwen said, ‘to judge by the state you’re in.’

Trudy started to cry and
ran to her room, presently returning to ask Gwen questions about Richard’s
mother. She could rarely keep away from Gwen when she was not out with Richard.

‘What’s his mother
really like? Do you think I’d get on with her?’

‘If you wish I’ll take
you to see his mother one Sunday.’

‘No, no,’ Trudy said. ‘It’s
got to come from him if it has any meaning. The invitation must come from
Richard.’

Trudy had almost lost
her confidence, and in fact had come to wonder if Richard was getting tired of
her, since he had less and less time to spare for her, when unexpectedly and
yet so inevitably, in November, he said, ‘You must come and meet my mother.’

‘Oh!’ Trudy said.

‘I should like you to
meet my mother. She’s looking forward to it.’

‘Oh, does she know about
me?’

‘Rather.’

‘Oh!’

‘It’s happened. Everything’s all right,’
Trudy said breathlessly. ‘He has asked you home to meet his mother,’ Gwen said
without looking up from the exercise book she was correcting. ‘It’s important
to me, Gwen.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Gwen said.

‘I’m going on Sunday
afternoon,’ Trudy said. ‘Will you be there?’

‘Not till supper time,’
Gwen said. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘He said, “I want you to
meet Mother. I’ve told her all about you. ‘All about you?’

‘That’s what he said,
and it means so much to me, Gwen. So much.’ Gwen said, ‘It’s a beginning.’

‘Oh, it’s the beginning
of everything. I’m sure of that.’ Richard picked her up in his Singer at four
on Sunday. He seemed preoccupied. He did not, as usual, open the car door for
her, but slid into the driver’s seat and waited for her to get in beside him.
She fancied he was perhaps nervous about her meeting his mother for the first
time.

The house on Campion
Hill was delightful. They must be very
comfortable,
Trudy thought. Mrs
Seeton was a tall, stooping woman, well dressed and preserved, with thick
steel-grey hair and large light eyes. ‘I hope you’ll call me Lucy,’ she said. ‘Do
you smoke?’

‘I don’t,’ said Trudy.

‘Helps the nerves,’ said
Mrs Seeton, ‘when one is getting on in life. You don’t need to smoke yet
awhile.’

‘No,’ Trudy said. ‘What
a lovely room, Mrs Seeton.’

‘Lucy,’
said Mrs
Seeton.

‘Lucy,’ Trudy said, very
shyly, and looked at Richard for support. But he was drinking the last of his
tea and looking out of the window as if to see whether the sky had cleared.

‘Richard has to go out
for supper,’ Mrs Seeton said, waving her cigarette holder very prettily. ‘Don’t
forget to watch the time, Richard. But Trudy will stay to supper with me, I
hope.
Trudy and I have a lot to talk about, I’m sure.’ She looked at Trudy and
very faintly, with no more than a butterfly-flick, winked.

Trudy accepted the
invitation with a conspiratorial nod and a slight squirm in her chair. She
looked at Richard to see if he would say where he was going for supper, but he
was gazing up at the top pane of the window, his fingers tapping on the arm of
the shining Old Windsor chair on which he sat.

Richard left at
half-past six, very much more cheerful in his going than he had been in his
coming.

‘Richard gets restless
on a Sunday,’ said his mother.

‘Yes, so I’ve noticed,’
Trudy said, so that there should be no mistake about who had been occupying his
recent Sundays.

‘I dare say now you want
to hear all about Richard,’ said his mother in a secretive whisper, although no
one was in earshot. Mrs Seeton giggled through her nose and raised her
shoulders all the way up her long neck till they almost touched her earrings.

Trudy vaguely copied her
gesture. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘Mrs Seeton.’

‘Lucy. You must call me
Lucy, now, you know. I want you and me to be friends. I want you to feel like a
member of the family. Would you like to see the house?’

She led the way upstairs
and displayed her affluent bedroom, one wall of which was entirely covered by
mirror, so that, for every photograph on her dressing-table of Richard and
Richard’s late father, there were virtually two photographs in the room.

‘This is Richard on his
pony, Lob. He adored Lob. We all adored Lob. Of course, we were in the country
then. This is Richard with Nana. And this is Richard’s father at the outbreak
of war. What did you do in the war, dear?’

‘I was at school,’ Trudy
said, quite truthfully.

‘Oh, then you’re a
teacher, too?’

‘No, I’m a secretary. I
didn’t leave school till after the war.

Mrs Seeton said, looking
at Trudy from two angles, ‘Good gracious me, how deceiving. I thought you were
about Richard’s age, like Gwen. Gwen is such a dear. This is Richard as a
graduate. Why he went into schoolmastering I don’t know. Still, he’s a very
good master. Gwen always says so, quite definitely. Don’t you adore Gwen?’

‘Gwen is a good bit
older than me,’ Trudy said, being still upset on the subject of age.

‘She ought to be here
any moment. She usually comes for supper. Now I’ll show you the other rooms and
Richard’s room.

When they came to
Richard’s room his mother stood on the threshold and, with her finger to her
lips for no apparent reason, swung the door open. Compared with the rest of the
house this was a bleak, untidy, almost schoolboy’s room. Richard’s green pyjama
trousers lay on the floor where he had stepped out of them. This was a sight
familiar to Trudy from her several weekend excursions with Richard, of late
months, to hotels up the Thames valley.

‘So untidy,’ said
Richard’s mother, shaking her head woefully. ‘So untidy. One day, Trudy, dear,
we must have a real chat.’