The Matchmaker (34 page)

She did pause and glance at him; she had the impulse to
exclaim
, “Oh, for goodness’ sake snap out of it!” but the impulse passed, and she only tossed her head and walked on. When he reached the gates he turned and stood gazing after her as she rapidly disappeared into the dusk.

WE NOW HAVE
to invite our readers into a public-house, and no doubt some of them will be glad.

Mr. Waite was not a Regular at The Peal of Bells in Sillingham, but he did look in there once or twice a week to drink a pint or so and exchange cautiously gloomy views with local acquaintances, and he drove his car into the yard there on a fine evening some weeks later. He had passed an extremely trying afternoon in Horsham, arguing with the Egg Board over a matter that fortunately need not be described in detail here; he had been, of course, baffled, and was now tired and depressed. He was also, although he did not know it, in need of sympathetic company.

He arranged the car with his customary niceness, locked it, cast an eye over all its boring doors and windows and things to see that nothing was likely to go wrong with them, and entered the saloon bar.

He caught sight of several other acquaintances, the place was quite crowded, and he nodded to several people and said, “Good evening.” However, he did not feel like talking just yet. He bought himself a pint of mild and, having exchanged a few remarks with the barman, he retired to a seat by the fireplace, which was already banked up with green branches as though summer had come. It was about seven o’clock and bright evening light poured in through the low windows.

He swallowed his first draught of beer and took out his
cigarette
case. He began to feel better, as he leaned back in the wide-armed old wooden chair, worn smooth by the sitting patrons of the past hundred and fifty years, and when Fred Lowe, who owned the big garage and petrol station at the north end of the village, came up to his table, he welcomed him. They got into a satisfying conversation in which the names of the Egg Board and the Ministry of Fuel and Power frequently re-occurred; but, as their tones became more emphatic and their faces more lowering, the words “Ministry” and “Board” were replaced by other, older, simpler names, and Mr. Waite and Mr. Lowe became so interested in their conversation that they did not notice a crash and other confused sounds in the yard outside, followed by feminine laughter as two more customers entered.

Mr. Waite vaguely saw the backs of two handsome fur coats as their owners moved towards the bar, and then he really had to interrupt Fred Lowe again to tell him how the Egg Board had done exactly the same thing to him, only with eggs instead of petrol, and he forgot the new arrivals until, on going up to get two more pints, he heard a woman’s voice say with a nervous laugh, “Hullo, Mr. Waite,” and he turned to see Miss Hardcastle.

Her fur coat was hanging loose on her shoulders in a most untidy way, and she seemed upset. She had just put down two glasses for two more short drinks; and just for an instant (but it was only for an instant, and the suspicion had gone immediately) Mr. Waite did have a suspicion.

“Good evening,” he said gravely. He did not like to see ladies in pubs. His sister Marjorie could laugh if she chose, but nothing could ever make him approve of the sight.

“Two more of the same,” said Miss Hardcastle to the barman, smiling troubledly. Mr. Waite glanced at the corner where her companion waited; he did not want to look but he had to; he knew whom he would see; he knew just how she would look and it was like her to come here, too, unfeminine, frivolous, peculiar creature that she was. And then, after all, it was someone
else
who sat there, blinking out of her furs at the crowded smoky room; someone with a white face and huge eyes.

Miss Hardcastle was beginning to steer her way between the groups, carefully guarding the two little yellow glasses. He felt sorry for her because she seemed worried, and he did not like the look of that friend of hers. Even from a distance, she looked—well, he did not like her.

“I must help you,” he said, coming behind Miss Hardcastle, and reaching over her shoulder for the drinks; and you would have thought he had said something funny by the way she was laughing as she quickly turned her head to thank him, but she looked grateful too, and, he thought, relieved.

He set the glasses down on their table and nodded politely without looking up as he heard Miss Hardcastle murmuring introductions—“I don’t think you know each other—Mr. Waite—Mrs. Peers—” and he turned away at once, only anxious to get back to Fred Lowe and the Egg Board, but as he went he heard Mrs. Peers laugh and caught the word “Christ.”

Jean sat staring down at her little glass and slowly twisting it about, and now and then lifting her eyes, as she listened, to those eyes opposite that were like huge dim jewels. She remembered them when they had been clear and full of light, for this was Nancy Burnett, now Nancy Peers, with whom she and Alda had been at school, and when one’s chief memories are of someone wearing a gym tunic with amused disdainful elegance, and when one still sees their cheeks and lips as geranium-red, it is difficult to replace that memory by grey massaged flesh, and dyed hair, and spots.

Some days ago, she and Alda had walked up to the school to meet the children, and had been hailed by a hoarse sweet voice from an enormous car standing outside the gates. There had been mutual recognition; amusement that Alda had written to Mrs. Peers without knowing who she was, and some exchange of news (Mrs. Peers’s contribution consisting of the remarks, “Yes, I’ve taken it for six months, it’s lousy,” and “
No
, ducky,
it
’s the other one I’m married to now, not Clive, and I’ve had that, too”). Since then the family at the cottage had seen a great deal of the family at Hampton House; which consisted of Mrs. Peers, some servants, and the pale, self-willed, pretty Eglantine, whom her mother called Egg. (“Eglantine was Robert’s touching idea.”) They gathered that Robert had followed Clive and was Eglantine’s father. The present encumbrance was Mrs. Peers’s third husband; she had been married at seventeen. It was, as Jean observed, another world.

Every morning the car, containing Eglantine, stopped at the crossroads to pick up Jenny and Louise, sometimes driven by a chauffeur and sometimes by Mrs. Peers herself. It also took the children home in the afternoons, and in the lengthening evenings Alda and Jean would be interrupted at their gardening by a figure in fur coat and black sweater who sat down on the roller announcing, “You’re coming into Brighton with me for a drink.” Then, because the children could not be left, one of them would stay behind, and one would go in with Nancy, because they used to be at school with her and because they were sorry for her.

All the same, it was a bore. The smoke in the bars of the expensive hotels stung Alda’s eyes, and she felt out of place in her shabby clothes amongst the black suits and the jewelled clips, and she grew tired of listening to the curt sentences and the blasphemy and the oaths; she grew confused, as the evening wore on, between the men that Nancy talked about, and as the bill for the drinks piled up, Nancy became confused too. Alda’s head ached, she never really wanted more than two drinks, her mind wandered away to the children and she wanted to talk about them instead, and she felt that Nancy both despised and envied herself. Nancy soon preferred Jean’s company to Alda’s, and Alda settled down again to her gardening, and knitting, and listening-in.

Jean now accompanied Nancy into Brighton and sometimes to London, and although she liked the excursions even less than
Alda
did, she could not get out of going. She never could think of an excuse, for her clothes were right, she had a stronger head, and she was a better listener. But she told Alda philosophically that at least her sufferings would not last long. “Don’t you remember,” she said, “how she used to take people up at school and give them a marvellous time and then suddenly get bored and drop them completely? That’s what she’ll do to us.”

“Roll on the day, say I.”

“Me too. Poor old Nancy,” she ended, as if all her complaints had been only leading up to that remark.

This evening she was a little frightened. They had been at Hove all the afternoon, drinking in a flat belonging to one of Nancy’s casuals, and now Jean was thinking about the drive home.

Her head had been aching violently when they came out from the stuffy flat; into the wide, quiet, evening streets of Hove, where the last sunlight was shining high up in the air along the balustrades of massive houses soaring against the luminous blue. There was no one about, and a cool wind wandered down the Palladian avenues. Nancy had had words with her casual and come away in a black mood.

She drove superbly, but that was not what one wanted in someone driving a car: one wanted them to be sober. So far there had been risks but no disaster, but now Nancy had started drinking again.

Jean glanced at Mr. Waite. His usual disapproving manner and his help with the glasses had been very welcome, like a stodgy but familiar face seen in a nightmare and as for disapproving, how right he was! Drink was all very nice when you were cheerful but when you were miserable it was dreadful.

Then she glanced at Nancy. At that instant Nancy’s eyes swept up to hers with that flash of colour which never failed to startle Jean, and she grinned. She knew how Jean was feeling. At school, she had always enjoyed teasing until it hurt, and Jean was so dim, she asked for it.

“Shall we ask him over?” Jean suggested, too eagerly indicating Mr. Waite. He now sat alone with his half-finished beer, surveying the room as if about to sentence it.

Nancy slowly, dazedly moved her lovely head from side to side.

“Who darling?”

“Mr. Waite. He’s over there. He’s—he’s a friend of Alda’s.”

“Is he good? I mean is he any good darling?”

“I’ll go and get him,” and Jean was getting up when a long hand in a black glove came over the table and the fingers waved her down with an imperious gesture that was miserably familiar. She used to do that in class when you tried to stop her fooling about, thought Jean unhappily. Oh Lord, this
is
beastly.

“Someth’ wrong?” said the sweet hoarse voice, loudly and dangerously.

Jean could feel the eyes of the room suddenly fixed upon them, and although she did not look at him, she knew exactly the shocked, embarrassed expression that the barman had. A lady, Mrs. Peers from Hampton House, drunk in his bar! But contempt and amusement lurked under his look too, and suddenly Jean hated them all—except Mr. Waite. He, at least, was not furtively grinning.

Nancy was standing up.

“Something’s the matter,” she insisted quietly, reasonably, leaning on the table with her slim height stooping over Jean.

Jean stared up at her, trying to think of what to say, what to do, when there was a purposeful stir among the people behind her, and someone crossed the room and stood at her side.

Mr. Waite took her arm and spoke in a low decided tone.

“Mrs. Lucie-Browne asked me if I would see you home, Miss Hardcastle. I have my car outside, and we can be there in ten minutes,” he said.

Nancy sat down so abruptly that her chair rocked, and shook her head.

“’May be outside but can’t use it. I ran into it,” she said, an
enchanting
smile beginning to creep over her face. “I
couldn
’
t
be sorrier. You must let me know wh—wh—wh—you must let me know.”

Mr. Waite became flustered. The smile was so intimate, so almost tender, that for a moment he wondered confusedly if he had met her somewhere before? But his car—the car—what was this about the car?

“Jean
said
it was yours,” said Nancy loudly and indignantly, and flashed the eyes on to Jean. Everybody was staring amusedly.

“I’m afraid it is, but I don’t think it’s much hurt,” said Jean quickly, pulling on her coat. “Come on, let’s go and see,” and she made her way rapidly through the crowd followed by Mr. Waite.

In the yard the air was fresh and silent, with a yellow afterglow lingering in the remote west. The cars stood about on the pale stones like obedient slumbering monsters, bulky and solid and neat; all except Mr. Waite’s, which was knocked sideways with a shocking effect. One mudguard was smashed in. Mr. Waite uttered low cries in which “t’t” (a noise which Jean had supposed occurred only in old numbers of
Punch)
mingled with indignant gasps, and hurried to examine it.

She said: “Thanks awfully for coming to the rescue, Mr. Waite,” but he was too busy to notice. She did not mind, for it was so delightful, such a relief, to be out in the fresh air and away from Nancy. A faint breeze moved the branches of the budding lime trees and fanned her forehead and already her headache felt easier. She leant against one of the other cars and silently watched him for a while; then her gaze wandered across the road to the Linga-Longa Café, whose brilliant lights during these lengthening evenings were always the first to flash out along the village street. Some of the girls there had had the idea of cleaning the windows only that afternoon, and she could see plainly into the interior. A tower of yellow hair caught her eye; it was familiar; yes, it was Sylvia from the farm, sprawling at a table and waving her arms about as she related some tale.
The
girls were flinging their heads back, nudging each other, roaring with laughter. They’re having more fun than Nancy and I do, thought Jean.