A Table Near the Band Read online

  He almost decided to leave me then. He said coldly, ‘It’s hardly a question of money. I shall certainly give her a cigarette-case at Christmas, but that’s different.’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ I said quickly. ‘You’re quite right, of course. Absolutely.’

  That soothed him, and he felt that he could take me into his confidence again. For a man who admires himself so much he is curiously eager to be admired by others.

  ‘All the same one had to do something at once. I mean, the poor girl was in tears, and I don’t wonder. So I’ve given her a new bag. Apparently she only had the one, poor kid. She’d actually had to borrow one from her mother! And then losing £20 like that, and quarter-day a long way off, I felt it was the least I could do.’

  ‘It was extremely generous of you,’ I said warmly. ‘And just what she’d want. I suppose you know all about these things. I mean you would know the sort and the colour and all that. I’m afraid I’m no good at bags.’

  ‘That’s right. Well, I had to ask about the colour, of course. She’d naturally want it to be the same colour.’ He gave a little chuckle of self-appreciation. ‘But I did it very tactfully, so that she couldn’t guess anything.’

  ‘I am sure she wouldn’t guess. It will be a tremendous surprise. What colour was it? I should have said black, but I’m afraid I never notice bags very much.’

  He shook his head with a condescending smile.

  ‘No, no, not black. I knew it wasn’t black. Green. As soon as she told me, I remembered. She always carries a green bag.’

  A day or two later (which is how these things happen) I was sitting in the smoking-room of my club when young Hargreaves came in. With a shy smile and an apology he leant over me to ring the bell.

  ‘I’ve just rung it,’ I said. ‘Have one with me instead.’

  He said, ‘Oh, I say!’ and then, ‘I say, that’s very decent of you, I’ll have a sherry, but look here these are mine,’ and as the waitress came in, ‘What’ll you have?’

  I waved him down, and said firmly to the girl, ‘Two large sherries, and put them on my luncheon bill.’ As she went, I said to Hargreaves, ‘I spoke first, you can’t get away from that.’

  ‘Oh well, thanks a lot.’

  Hargreaves is very young; at least he seems so to me. He has only just joined the club, and as I am ten years older and have been a member twelve years longer, I feel a world-weary veteran when I talk to him. Like so many young men these days he passed straight into the Army from school. On demobilisation he went up to Cambridge, cramming what should have been three leisurely years of graduation in life into a hectic twelvemonth struggle for a book-learning degree. Then he was free to earn a living. Luckier than most, he had a family business to go into, with money to come (I get my gossip from the secretary); so we need not feel too sorry for him. But like all these young people he is a curious mixture of experience and innocence. He has seen half the world, met people of all countries in every class of life, had adventures of which, at his age, we knew nothing. Yet in many of his contacts with civilian life he still has the naïveté of a schoolboy.

  We sipped our sherries and talked about the weather. The conversation came to its natural end. He pulled out his cigarette-case and offered me one. I called his attention to the pipe I was smoking. He said ‘Oh, sorry’ and lit one for himself. With this to give him confidence, he began:

  ‘I say, I wish you’d tell me something.’

  ‘If I can.’

  ‘I don’t know London very well, I mean I don’t know the best places to go to, and all that. What would be the best place to get a bag?’

  ‘What sort of bag? Dressing case?’

  ‘No, no, you know, the sort women carry about.’

  ‘Oh, that sort? What Americans call a purse.’

  ‘Extraordinary thing to call it,’ he said, opening his blue eyes wide. ‘Still,’ he added generously, ‘if they call braces suspenders, I suppose it isn’t so extraordinary. Well, anyway, that sort.’

  I gave him the name of the shop at which I had got Marcia’s bag, and mentioned one or two other possible places.

  ‘That’s grand,’ he said, and made a note of them. ‘Thanks very much.’

  ‘They’re expensive, you know, at that sort of shop. I’m assuming that you want a really good one.’

  ‘Oh, I do.’ He hesitated and said, ‘Er—about how much?’

  ‘Ten to fifteen pounds.’

  ‘Oh!’ He was more than surprised, he was taken aback. His round pink face became even pinker.

  ‘Of course,’ I said quickly, ‘you can get them much cheaper at some of the big places—well, obviously it depends on the bag.’

  ‘No, it must be a good one, but——’ He gave an awkward little laugh. ‘I mean fifteen pounds is all right by me, but would the girl—I mean, I’ve only just met her, and it isn’t her birthday or anything, so would she feel— I mean it’s quite a present, not like flowers or chocolates or taking her out to lunch. What do you think?’

  ‘I should think she would be delighted,’ I said with some confidence. ‘I shouldn’t worry about that.’

  ‘Oh, good. Then that’s all right. And anyway it is rather special. I mean there’s a special reason for it.’

  It was clear that he wanted me to ask what it was, so I asked him. Besides, I was getting interested suddenly.

  ‘Well, you see, she left her bag in the train, with everything in it, and there’s no news of it, and it’s been a frightful shock for her. Apart from everything else, she’d just cashed a cheque for fifty pounds——’

  ‘I shouldn’t do anything about that.’ I put in quickly.

  ‘Well, I could hardly offer her money,’ he said with a delightful man-of-the-world air. ‘Actually there was something even worse—a gold and platinum cigarette-case with her initials in diamonds—God knows what that cost, but of course it’s the sentimental value which made it so precious to her.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. I wasn’t surprised.

  ‘You see, she was engaged to a man who was killed just after D-day. He was in Commandos, and he was dropped behind the lines with the Maquis, you know——’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘So was I.’

  ‘I say, were you really? I was in the Burma show.’

  ‘So I heard. Sooner you than me.’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t so bad. I should say your job was a much stickier one.’

  ‘I’d lived in Paris for a good many years. I talked French. That was all there was to it. What was this man’s name? I may have come across him.’ But I didn’t think it was very likely.

  ‘She just called him John. I didn’t like to ask his other name.’

  ‘Quite right,’ I said firmly.

  ‘This was his engagement present to her. They were to be married on his first leave, and then—— Pretty bloody.

  ‘And now she has lost all she had left of him.’ He was silent for a little, contemplating life, and then threw his cigarette end into the fire, and said, ‘Well, of course I couldn’t do anything about that, but I thought I could at least replace the bag.’

  ‘A very nice thought, if I may say so; and one which I’m sure she will appreciate. What colour did you think of getting? They’ll help you in the shop with all the rest of it, but you must be able to tell them the colour. Most women have their own special colour.’ Or, of course, colours.

  ‘I know. So, to be quite safe, I’m getting one exactly like the one she lost. Luckily she happened to describe it, it just came out accidentally, but I was on to it like a shot. I mean in my own mind, of course. It was yellow.’

  ‘And a very pretty colour too,’ I said.

  This should have been the end of it, for other people dropped in, and the conversation became general. But he came up to me again, hat in hand, as I sat alone in the lounge after lunch drinking my c
offee.

  ‘Thanks very much for that address,’ he said; and I thought it was nice of him to seek me out as he was leaving the club, to thank me for so little. But apparently he had something else to ask. Very casually, as if he knew the answer and wanted to see if I did, he said:

  ‘I say, I suppose there’s nothing much to choose nowadays between the Berkeley and the Ritz? I mean for dinner.’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘You’ll be perfectly safe at either.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’ He turned to go.

  And then I wondered, a little anxiously, if he would be perfectly safe. He is a thoroughly nice boy, and he is going to meet a thoroughly nice girl one day.

  ‘Just a word of advice, if I may,’ I called after him.

  ‘Of course!’ He came back to me eagerly.

  ‘Get a table near the band if you can.’

  He looked surprised, as well as he might be.

  ‘Why?’ he asked, very naturally.

  ‘It’s safer,’ I said.

  All the same, I still think that she is a delightful girl to take out to lunch.

  The Prettiest Girl in the Room

  The door of her bedroom opened a little way, the tap of knuckles on it a polite afterthought rather than a request for admission.

  ‘Nearly ready, old girl?’

  ‘Just on, dear.’

  ‘I’ll go and get the car.’

  ‘Right.’

  The door closed. She had another five minutes. The walk to the garage, trying the self-starter, feeling in the dark for the starting-handle, getting out of the car, winding, getting back into the car, starting, backing, coming to the house, turning, stalling, starting again, warming up the engine for the hill, and then a loud whistle like a siren; she knew it all. Going up the hill he would say, ‘I hope to God the Traills aren’t there,’ and she would say, ‘Oh, they won’t seem so bad after you’ve had a drink or two,’ and he would grunt and be silent until they were turning into the Hewitsons’ lane, and then he would say, ‘Well, we needn’t stay long. Three-quarters of an hour should about see it. Leave at seven-fifteen. All right by you, old girl?’ And she would say, ‘Of course, darling.’ And at eight o’clock she would say, ‘Charles! You really must come away.’ All just as usual.

  Sometimes she wished that he didn’t call her ‘old girl’. She tried to remember if he had always called her so, or only since she had become—well, older. After all, a grandmother, but only just a grandmother, couldn’t complain. She wasn’t complaining. She had nothing to complain about. She had two delightful grown-up sons, both with jobs, and a married daughter with the sweetest baby. And Charles—everybody liked Charles. It was just that the winter seemed so long in the country, and life so short; and now that Charles had retired, they always seemed to be saying and doing the same things together, and had nothing new to tell each other. Inevitable, of course; but every now and then one got the feeling that life oughtn’t to be so inevitable. Not even when you were a grandmother.

  He whistled; she whistled back on her fingers, as he had taught her more than thirty years ago. The war-cry of the Allisons, he had called it. Well, you couldn’t say that a marriage was a failure when two people had gone on whistling to each other in the same way for thirty years. Could you? She took a last look at herself in the glass—oh, well!—and went down.

  ‘I hope to God the Traills aren’t coming,’ said Charles, as they went up the hill. ‘Can’t stand ’em.’

  ‘Never mind, darling, perhaps Betty will be there.’

  Charles cocked an eye at her, and they both laughed. Betty was Mrs Hewitson, and it was supposed that Charles was in love with her. Well, you couldn’t still be having jokes like that with your husband if your marriage was a failure. Could you?

  ‘Mustn’t stay too long.’

  ‘No, darling. Seven-fifteen.’

  Considering that it wasn’t a party, but just a ring-up and a ‘Why don’t you come in on Sunday and have a drink?’ there seemed to be quite a collection of people. Charles kissed Betty, and winked at his wife, and Mary offered her cheek to Tom; and then they walked into the crowd, and said the usual things to the usual faces. Presently Mary found herself on a sofa with a drink in her hand, listening once again to the General. When he told her that he had got a three at the seventh that morning, she said, ‘Oh, but that’s marvellous! It’s hard enough to get a four there’; because with a husband and two growing sons you couldn’t help knowing all about the seventh. When he told her about the political Brains Trust which they were holding in the village next week, she said, ‘How interesting! Oh, I must certainly come to that’; having promised to do so after Charles’ exhaustive account of it the day before. She talked to other people, and other people talked to her, and it was all just as it always was; and now she looked at her watch and it was 7.15 and there was Charles with a full glass in his hand, chattering away to Willy and Wally Clintock, those inseparable brothers who had resisted the designs of all the local match-makers for twenty years or more. Of course he liked going into other people’s houses and getting away from her for a little, only he always made such a fuss about starting. She couldn’t see Mr Traill, but there was Mrs Traill in the wrong clothes again, looking as lonely as usual. She got up, meaning to go across to her, but was stopped by Betty.

  ‘No, don’t get up, dear,’ said Betty, taking her hand and inclining her back to the sofa, ‘sit down and talk to Sir John Danvers-Smith. I’ve been telling him all about you, and he says he’s sure he has met you before. I’ll get you a drink.’

  Mary acknowledged Sir John with a smile, wondering where they had met, and they sat down together. He was a tall, heavily-built man with a close-cut, black moustache going grey, and a head of greying hair going bald; and though his complexion spoke of easy living, his features were still good—a little like a Roman emperor side-face, she thought. She had noticed as he came up behind Betty that he walked firmly with a complete assurance of solid worth. She thought that he was probably older than Charles, but then he would always look older, whatever their ages. He had that ‘set’ look which Charles had never got. It was difficult to imagine him young and carefree, just as it was difficult to imagine Charles old and important.

  ‘You know,’ she smiled, ‘I’m afraid I don’t remember you, and I think I should if we had met before. Was it a long time ago?’

  ‘Thirty-eight years,’ he said, evidently priding himself on remembering anyone so long. ‘You were just eighteen.’

  It flashed through her mind that he oughtn’t to have disclosed so exact a knowledge of her age, and another flash revealed him to her as the sort of man who got on without consideration of what was in the minds of other people. Anyhow she had never bothered to conceal her age.

  ‘What a memory you have! For there must be very little of that girl left to remember.’

  ‘True. But just something. Whatever else you are, Mrs Allison, you are not—ordinary.’ (Good gracious, she thought, whatever else is he suggesting I might be?) ‘At first I wondered if perhaps I had seen your daughter somewhere——’

  ‘That seems very possible. Or even,’ she added, wondering how he would take it, ‘my granddaughter.’

  He went on as if she had not interrupted him: ‘And so I asked our hostess if she knew what your maiden name was. It was what I had expected.’ He waited for a moment, and then said, almost in reproof, ‘I see that you still have no recollection.’

  ‘I think I must be allowed one or two more questions first, Sir John. We have already decided that it was in this century, and fact not fiction, so I shall now ask, England or abroad?’ She said it with a smile, but it was wasted on him.

  ‘At the Prince’s Gallery in Piccadilly. A subscription dance in aid of the School Mission. Your family had connections with my old school, I gathered. Am I correct?’

  She looked at him. Through thirty-eight
years of war and peace, happiness and unhappiness, adversity and prosperity, thrusting its way through a hundred more familiar faces, a face struggled into life. Now she remembered it all: a girl, an evening, a young man: and then she was looking at Sir John Danvers-Smith again, and he was saying, ‘Our hostess seems to have forgotten that drink she promised. Let me get it for you.’ He moved away from her. She was alone . . . on a chair up against the wall in the Prince’s Gallery.

  It was her second grown-up dance.

  The first one had been on her eighteenth birthday in the Lancaster Gate house. Her hair was up for the first time —oh, the excitement of it! She was surrounded by her friends and her mother’s friends in her own home. Everybody wanted to dance with her. She was the toast of the evening, the belle of the ball. ‘Mary!’ All glasses raised at supper, and ‘God bless you, darling’ from a suddenly emotional mother. Her first real ring from her godmother; an amethyst necklet from her father. All her own favourite waltzes on the printed programme, and the little orchestra playing encores whenever she rushed up and asked them. Oh, all such fun! And everybody said that it was an even better party than the one two years before, when Kathleen came out. And Kathleen had been engaged for three months, so perhaps in eighteen months from now . . . what was it like being engaged?

  It was six years before she knew.

  Derek’s old school was giving a dance to raise money for its mission in Bermondsey. Derek wasn’t noticeably interested in missions, but it was a dance, and an opportunity to display Kathleen to all the fabulous Cheesers and Bills and Tuppys of whom she had heard so much. Derek’s mother got up a party. Wouldn’t it be nice, darling, now that Kathleen’s sister was out, to ask her too? So Mary, longing for another triumphal dance, her hair up, wearing all her jewellery, and in her pretty, white coming-out dress with the blue sash, squeezed—oh, so excited—into one of those new taxis with Kathleen and Derek (holding hands, of course) and was driven to Prince’s. There she was introduced to Derek’s mother, who promptly forgot about her; and in a little while she was sitting on one of the chairs which lined the walls of the gallery, waiting for her first partner.