Читать книгу Nothing So Strange - James Hilton - Страница 6

“Yes, I knew him,” I said, “but it was years ago—in England…”

You can make things sound very simple when you are answering questions on oath and there is a girl at a side table scribbling shorthand and giving little shrugs of appeal if the words come too fast. You don’t know what the questioner is trying to get at, and you almost feel that your answers are cross-examining him; you watch for the extra flicker of interest, the sudden sharpness of the next question. And all the time, behind the facts as you truthfully state them, there’s the real truth that you remember slowly, as when you stretch in bed the morning after a long walk and explore the aches. That, of course, isn’t the kind of truth you’ve promised to tell, but it probably shows in your eyes and makes you look as if you were hiding something. Which, in a sense, you are.

“Where did you first meet him?”

“In London. At a party.”

“When was that?”

“Nineteen thirty-six. I remember it because of all the Mrs. Simpson talk that was going on.” (The unsolicited detail, to account for an answer that had been perhaps too prompt.)

“Were you friendly?”

“Off and on—for a time.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean…well…some weeks I might see him twice or three times, other weeks I wouldn’t see him at all…. I didn’t have an affair with him, if that’s what you mean.”

Shock tactics, but it failed; the man across the table referred to his notes and said quietly: “You were seventeen.”

“Eighteen,” I corrected, but he had killed my line. I can’t help it; I act profusely when I’m nervous, and I’m nervous often when I’ve no need to be. It’s the same when I hear a motorcycle overtaking my car along a parkway, even though I know I can’t possibly be guilty of anything; or, perhaps more subtly, because I don’t know I can’t possibly be guilty of anything.

Not that the man across the table looked like anyone to be afraid of. He had sandy hair, blue eyes, a nose that looked small because the chin and the mouth were set so squarely, a pink healthy complexion, rather pudgy hands. I would not have noticed him in the street or a crowd, but if I had had to sit in a dentist’s waiting room and stare at somebody, it might have been at him for choice. He wore a bow tie, dark blue pin-stripe suit, white shirt, and I couldn’t see what kind of shoes under the table. His name (from the letter he had written me, fixing the appointment to see him) was Henry W. Small. It didn’t particularly suit him, except that it was a good name to go unnoticed by.

“Bradley was then twenty-four,” he continued, referring again to his notes. Then he looked up. “What was he doing?”

“Studying at London University. So was I. That’s how we met.”

“You said it was at a party.”

“Yes, a dinner party given by a professor. We were fellow guests.”

“Did you get to know him well at that party?”

“I didn’t speak to him till afterwards and then only a few words. When I met him again at the college I knew him just about enough to say hello to. Then gradually a bit more than that, but not much more. He wasn’t the kind of person you get to know well.”

“Did he have other friends?”

“Very few, I should say.”

“Did you meet any of them?”

“Not often.”

“Did you ever meet anyone called Sanstrom?”

“Sanstrom?… No, I don’t think I remember the name.”

“But you’re not certain?”

“Well, it’s nine years ago. I can’t remember the names of everyone who might have been at some college party.”

“You lived a rather social life?”

“Fairly.”

“More of a social life than Bradley, anyhow?”

“Yes.”

“In other words, you knew everybody and he didn’t?”

“Oh no. He knew them, but they were more acquaintances than friends. He wasn’t easy to be friendly with.”

“Would you call him unfriendly then?”

“No, no…not that at all. He was just…well, shy. There was a sort of barrier you had to break down.”

“Ah, a barrier. And you broke it down?”

“Perhaps partly.”

“So that you became his only real friend?”

“No, I wouldn’t say that either…. The fact was, he worked so hard he hadn’t much time for personal contacts of any kind.”

“Where was he living?”

“In furnished rooms.”

“Did you ever visit him there?”

“Once—but only for a few minutes.”

“Would you say—from that one visit—that his style of life fitted with the job he had?”

“Oh sure. He didn’t earn much money and everything about him looked like it.”

“Where were you living then?”

“With my parents. They had a house in Hampstead. They usually went over for the summer.”

“Were Bradley’s rooms also in Hampstead?”

“No. In Belsize Park. Or Chalk Farm. Just a few miles away.”

“What do you mean—Belsize Park or Chalk Farm? Don’t you know which?”

“Belsize Park if you wanted a good address, Chalk Farm if you didn’t care. He didn’t care.”

He looked puzzled, but he made a note of Belsize Park or Chalk Farm. “Now on these occasions when you met him, Miss Waring, what did you usually talk about?”

“Everyday things. Sometimes my work.”

“Did you ever discuss his work?”

“I couldn’t have—it was far out of my range. I was taking history. His stuff was mathematics, physics, and that sort of thing.”

“So he could discuss history although it wasn’t his subject?”

“Anybody can discuss history whether it’s their subject or not. But try talking about mathematics with an expert when you’ve never got beyond quadratic equations.”

“All right…. Did you ever discuss America?”

“Sometimes he spoke of his boyhood on a farm. Dakota, I think. Early struggles…all that.”

“Politics?”

“Not much. Just news in the paper. The Wally Simpson business, if you call that politics. We didn’t agree about it—I was against the marriage, he was all for it.”

“Did he like living in London?”

“I think so. Most Americans do.”

“You mean you did yourself?”

“Oh yes.”

“Did he ever say whether he preferred England or America…or perhaps some other country?”

“Goodness, no. It wasn’t what he preferred, it was where he could work. London University gave him a research fellowship.”

“And American universities wouldn’t?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they hadn’t any—of the kind he wanted.”

“So he might have had a grudge against them—or perhaps against American life in general?”

“A grudge? That man never had a grudge even when he ought to have had.”

As soon as I said it I regretted the emphasis; I knew it would lead to questions I wouldn’t answer at all. They came.

“What makes you say that?”

“Just that he wasn’t the type for harboring grudges. He lived for his work and nothing else mattered.”

“You don’t think he could ever be actuated by a motive to get even with somebody?”

“I wouldn’t think so.”

“You can’t recall any incident of such a kind?”

“No. Never.”

“In fact you never saw anything wrong with him at all, did you, Miss Waring?”

I caught a faint smile on his face and answered it with a big one of my own. “Of course I did—he was far too tied to his work for any girl to think him faultless.”

“So he didn’t take you out enough?”

I laughed. “No, not nearly enough.” I felt we were establishing the right mood and it would all be plain sailing if I stuck to it.

“Did he have other girl-friends?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about his love life. I never asked him questions about it. And incidentally, Mr. Small, why are you asking all this about him now? How did you find out I ever knew him?”

“Just let me put the questions, Miss Waring.” There was nothing brusque or unkindly in that, just a carefully measured firmness.

“But I don’t see why you shouldn’t tell me. If he’s in any trouble I’d want to help him.”

“Why?” The question shot out at me like the fang of a non-poisonous snake.

“Because—well, because I like him.”

“Still?”

“In a sense. I don’t forget people I’ve once liked, and I did like him. Is that extraordinary of me? Well, as I said, I’d want to help him if…if I could, that is. Maybe I couldn’t. I suppose it depends on the kind of trouble he’s in….”

I stopped, realizing he was just letting me talk. When he could see I didn’t intend to go on, he said: “Why should you expect him to be in any trouble?”

“I didn’t say I expected it. I said if he is.”

“What put such a possibility in your mind?”

“Because you’re questioning me about him as if he’d done something wrong. Or aren’t you? Isn’t this a branch of the F.B.I. or something?”

He took out a cigarette case and pushed it across the table towards me. “Smoke?”

I said no thanks, because I thought my hand might tremble while I held a cigarette for him to light.

He went on: “How long since you had any communication with Bradley?”

“Oh years. Not since before the war. The English war—1939.”

“Nineteen thirty-six being the year you knew him in London?”

“That’s right.” I thought: Now it’s coming; and was inspired to add quickly: “My parents and I returned to America the following year.”

“Did he return to America?”

“Not that I know of.”

“At any rate you didn’t see him in America?”

“No, never.”

“Didn’t he write you any letters?”

“Only a few—for a while. Then we lost touch. I wish you’d give me his present address if you have it.”

“So that you could renew your friendship?”

“Perhaps not that, but I’d write to him—for old time’s sake.”

“And offer your help?”

“Yes—if he needed any.”

He nodded slowly. Then he lit a cigarette for himself and leaned back in the swivel chair. “Tell me, Miss Waring—and please remember I’m not trying to trap you into anything you don’t want to say—all I’d like is a personal opinion, just between ourselves…” He made a finger gesture to the girl taking shorthand. “Miss Sutton, don’t put this down—it’s off the record….”

My father always said that when anyone ever tells you something is off the record you should be doubly on your guard; so I was, instantly, and concentrated on trying not to show it. I smiled, pretending to relax. He went on: “You’re a very loyal person—I can see that. Loyal to friends, just as you’d be loyal to your country. When you first got to know Bradley and found yourself beginning to like him, naturally you’d hope to find in him the same kind of loyalties. Did you?… Or were you ever a little disappointed in some ways?”

“No, I don’t think so. I liked him. When you like people you don’t weigh them up like that. At least I don’t.”

“You never felt there might be things he was keeping from you?”

“We weren’t close enough friends for me even to think about it. He wasn’t a very talkative person, anyway.”

“You mean that if he’d had any secrets he’d probably not have shared them with you?”

“Maybe not. And I might not have shared mine with him. We were neither of us the tell-everything type.”

He looked at me till I thought I was going to blush, so of course I did blush. As if satisfied, he pressed down the clasp of his briefcase and stood up. I saw then that he wore black shoes.

“Well, Miss Waring, I guess that’s about all. Thank you for coming over…. And if by any chance we should need to bother you again…”

“It’s no bother at all to me, but I have an idea something must be bothering you. Can’t you let me in on it?”

“No,” he said, smiling completely for the first time. He had good strong teeth and the smile made rather babyish dimples. I took off ten years from my first guess of his age; perhaps he was thirty-five.

“A secret?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Top-secret?” (They like you to use their jargon.)

“Just a secret.” (Perhaps it wasn’t their jargon.)

“I see.”

I smiled back and walked towards the door. He overtook me, yet somehow without hurry, before I reached it; turning the handle, he put himself with me in the doorway. “Nice of you to come so promptly. I hope you didn’t make a special trip—any time within a few days would have been all right.”

“Oh, I go downtown quite a lot.”

“Your father’s office?”

“Oftener the Village. More in my line than Wall Street.”

“Ah yes, of course. Writers and artists.” He cupped my elbow with his hand. “I’ll have to think over your request for Brad’s address. Might be able to oblige you, though of course we’re not a bureau of missing persons…. Well, thanks again…. Good-by.”

“But he isn’t exactly missing if you know his address, is he?… Good-by, Mr. Small.”

In the elevator going down I thought I had done rather well. Or had I?… Suddenly I realized that he had called him Brad. Was that to test me? But of course I would have admitted readily enough that I used to call him Brad. Nothing significant about that. It was probably their technique—to leave you with a feeling that they know more than you think they know, so that you can chew it all over and work up a fine state of nerves afterwards.

* * * *

I took a taxi uptown and had early dinner alone at the house. There were plenty of friends I could have called up, but I didn’t feel like making a date with anyone, or even going to a movie later on by myself. The weather was probably the last cold spell of the winter; a bitter wind swept in from the north, and ice crackled where there had been any water in the gutters. Even after a couple of cocktails the dining room looked so big and dreary I was glad to have coffee upstairs and turn on all the lights in my personal rooms. It’s a cheerful suite on the fifth floor—bedroom, bathroom, dressing room, and den; I was allotted them as a child, and have never wanted anything bigger, even when the rest of the house was free for me to choose from. The furniture is good solid stuff from either New or Old England; my mother probably bought it at the auctions she liked to frequent. And the heating vents are built in the window sills, so that you lean on them and burn your elbows if you want to look down and see what’s going on in the street. Nothing much, as a rule; those middle sixties between Park and Fifth keep pretty quiet. That evening, as I looked down, I saw the familiar steam curling out of the manholes, and from the look of it as it scurried I knew the temperature had dropped a good deal since I left the downtown office. The low sky held captive the glow of the city; anglewise across Park Avenue I could see the Rockefeller buildings lost in clouds about the thirtieth floor. John came in to pull the blinds; I told him not to bother, I would do it myself later.

“There’s still supposed to be some rule about lights,” he said.

“All right, then, pull them down.” At that stage of the war New York didn’t bother much about the partial blackout, but John’s a stickler about such things. We’ve been real friends from my childhood. My father enticed him from a duke about twenty years ago, since when he’s become naturalized, but he still calls himself English except when English visitors ask him if he is, then he says he’s American or, if further pressed, a Scot.

“Are you going out again, Miss Jane?”

“Not me, I’m off to bed soon with a good book.”

“Not Forever Amber, I hope?” He has a corny humor, unchanged from the time I was young enough to appreciate nothing else.

“No. I take my history straight. Always did, ever since I studied it in London.”

I don’t know what made me bring that up, but I realized it was the second time that day I had mentioned something that I often go months without even thinking about.

He said, as he pulled the blinds and then the curtains: “I’d like to see London again sometime.”

“You probably could, when the war’s over.”

“They say it’s considerably changed.”

“I’ll bet our part hasn’t. Hampstead Heath and round about there.”

“Several bombs fell near the house, I’ve been told,” he said thoughtfully. It was still “the house” to us both. “Can I get you anything?”

“No thanks—I’ll be asleep very soon, I’m terribly tired. Good-night, John.”

After he had gone I stood at the window, pulling aside the blinds just enough to see that it had begun to snow. The two great cities, each with its own flavor, hold you like rival suitors, perversely when you are with the other; and that night, as I watched the pavement whitening, I thought of those other pavements that were called roadways, and the subways tubes, and the whole long list of equivalents Brad and I once compiled as we tramped across Hampstead Heath on a day when other things were in our minds.

* * * *

I first met him at Professor Byfleet’s house in Chelsea, but I didn’t catch his name when we were introduced, or perhaps we weren’t—the English are apt to be slack about that sort of thing, they are civil but not solicitous to strangers, and when you visit one of their houses for the first time it’s hard not to feel you are among a family of initiates, or else a dues-paying but nonvoting member of a very closed-shop union.

This dinner at the Byfleets’ wasn’t anything important, at least by comparison with many we went to; Byfleet was an anthropologist who wanted my father to finance an expedition to New Guinea, so he doubtless thought he’d have us meet his friends. I suppose they’d all been told we were rich Americans, with the blow softened by adding that my mother was English. My father never did finance the expedition, anyhow.

As I said, I don’t remember actually meeting Brad, but when we got to the table I noticed him some way further down on the other side, next to my mother. Now and again I glanced at him, and with a rather odd feeling that I had seen him somewhere before, though I couldn’t be sure; he was good-looking in a restrained way, with dark, deep-sunken eyes, a long straight nose, and a chin that was firm without being aggressive. There was also a mood of gravity over him, tempered by a sort of intermittent nervousness as if he were waiting for a chance to say something, not because he wanted to, or had anything to say, but because he thought everyone must be wondering why up to halfway through dinner he hadn’t spoken a word. I hoped my mother would soon take pity on him, but his other partner moved first, and I could see that the more she tried to draw him out the more he drew himself in. She was one of those voluble unkempt Englishwomen who invade a conversation rather than take part in it, and have a conspiratorial smile for the maid or butler, just to show they’ve been to the house before.

I missed what was happening across the table for a while, for my own neighbor engaged me, a hearty professor of biology who mentioned, apropos of the veal cutlets, that man had only scratched the surface of his possible gastronomic repertoire, that practically the entire insect world was an untapped storehouse of taste novelties, that dried locusts made an excellent sandwich, that there were many edible caterpillars fancied by the Chinese, and that native tribes in the Andean foothills pick lice from each other’s heads and eat them with gusto. He seemed surprised when I wasn’t upset, and after I had accepted another cutlet he confessed that he often opened up like that to jeunes filles whom he found himself next to at dinners, because in the event that they were bores their distress at least made them momentarily entertaining; but he could see I was not a bore, so perhaps I would now talk about something serious. I said I could never talk seriously to any man with one of those bristly little toothbrush mustaches, and was it true that in certain crack regiments of the British Army men were compelled to have them? He answered, Good God, how should he know, better ask our host, who was a recognized authority on totem and taboo. After that we got along fairly well, and presently he paid me what many Englishmen think is the supreme compliment; he said he wouldn’t have guessed I was American.

Suddenly I was relieved to see that my mother, across the table, was talking to her nervous neighbor. I knew then that everything would be all right. She was adept at putting young men, indeed men of any age, at their ease; she didn’t mind if they talked politics or business or art or sport—even if they were intellectual she never tried to match them at it, and if they weren’t she would make them feel a freemasonry existing between her and them in a world, or at a table, of highbrows. Actually she was cleverer than she pretended—not that she was especially modest, but in her bones she felt that men do not like clever women, and what she felt in her bones counted more than anything she could think out with her intelligence. She had had an upper-crust education composed of governess, boarding school, then finishing school abroad, and probably she had forgotten 95 per cent of everything she had ever learned from textbooks; but she had done nothing but travel and meet some of the world’s most interesting people for almost twenty years, and the result was a quick-minded knowledgeableness unspoiled by knowledge. It made her understand politicians rather than politics and diplomats rather than diplomacy. She talked plenty of nonsense, and it was easy to trap her, though not always to prove that she was trapped; and she would go on discussing a book she said she had read but manifestly hadn’t, or she would break up a dull conversation with some fantastic irrelevance for which everyone was secretly grateful.

After dinner I wasn’t anywhere near the nervous man, but when the party broke up it appeared we were scheduled to drop him where he lived, which was in our direction, and because we were also taking two other guests on their way, he sat in front with Henry. We dropped these others first and then he moved inside, but there was hardly time for talk before he began urging us not to drive out of our way, his place was only a short walk from the main road, anywhere near there would do. But my father insisted: “No, no, we’ll take you right up to your door”; so Brad had to direct Henry through a succession of side streets, and eventually gave the stop signal in the middle of a long block of four-story houses with basements. He said good-night and thanked us, bumping his head against the top of the car as he got out.

“North Dakota,” my father said, as we drove away.

“Yes, he told me too,” said my mother. “I’d have known it was somewhere in the Middle West from his accent.”

“Thank goodness for that,” I said, and mentioned the Englishman’s compliment to me.

My father smiled and seemed in an unusually good humor. He wasn’t always, after parties at other people’s houses. He said: “I find my own Kentucky drawl a great help with the English. It makes them think me tough and guileless, whereas in reality I’m neither.”

“And in reality you haven’t even got a Kentucky drawl,” said my mother.

“Haven’t I? How would you know?… Well, coming back to Dakota. I had some talk with him after the ladies left the table. Seems he’s a research lecturer at your college, Jane.”

“Then that’s where I must have seen him before. I had an idea I had.”

“A young man of promise, from all accounts,” my father went on. “Byfleet spoke highly of him.”

My mother commented: “If we’d had any sense we’d have dropped him at the corner as he asked us. He probably didn’t want us to know the sort of place he lives in.”

“Oh nonsense. A boy like that, making ends meet on a few fees and scholarships—nobody expects him to stay at the Ritz. Probably has to count every penny, same as I did when I was his age in New York. It’s good for him, anyway, till he gets on his feet…. Brains, good looks, and a tuxedo—what more does he need?”

“He’s very shy,” my mother said.

“That’ll wear off.”

“So will the tuxedo. It was frayed at the cuffs already.”

My father looked interested. “You noticed that, Christine? I’ll tell you what I noticed—he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, and he was hoping you’d rescue him from that Hathersage woman he was next to, but you didn’t till nearly the coffee stage…. Must read her new novel, though. They say it’s good.”

That was typical of my father; he respects achievement and is always prepared to weigh it against not liking you, so that in practice he likes you if you are successful enough. Julian said that once, and he was successful enough; doubtless therefore in those days my father thought Brad was going to be successful enough. I remember arguing it out with myself as we drove home.

* * * *

I saw Brad the morning after the Byfleet dinner; we ran into each other at the College entrance in Gower Street. I suppose this was really our first meeting; he would have passed me with a nod, but I made him stop. “So you’re here too?” I said.

“Hi, there. Sure I am.”

“That was a good party last night.”

“Er…yes….” Then suddenly, with an odd kind of vehemence: “Though I don’t like big parties.”

“It wasn’t so big. Were you bored?”

“Oh no, not a bit. I’m just no good at them. I don’t know what to say to people.”

“Neither do I. I just chatter when I’m chattered to.”

“I wish I could do that…. Or no, perhaps I don’t. It’s a terrible waste of time.”

“For those who have anything better to do. Do you think you have?”

He looked as if he thought that impertinent. I think now it was.

“Yes,” he answered, smiling.

“That sounds rather arrogant.”

But now he looked upset. He didn’t like being called arrogant.

“No, no, please don’t misunderstand me…. I guess I just tell myself it’s a waste of time because I can’t do it. Especially amongst all the big shots—like last night. I don’t know why I was asked.”

“Why did you go?”

“Professor Byfleet has helped me a lot, I didn’t like to refuse.”

“He probably asked you on account of my father, who’s an American too.”

“I know. He told me. He asked me what my work was, but I was a bit tongue-tied. I’m afraid I made a fool of myself.”

“I don’t think you did. It’s by talking too much that most people do that.”

“Personally I agree with you.” There was no inferiority complex about him, thank goodness. The truculence and the humility were just edges of something else.

“Anyhow,” I said, “he liked you.”

“Did he?” Because he looked so embarrassed I couldn’t think of anything else to say. He fidgeted a moment, then glanced at his wrist watch. “Well, I must be off to my lecture….” His second smile outweighed the abruptness with which he left me standing there.

When I got home that night I told my mother I had seen him again. She said, with a flicker of interest: “Really? I think Harvey had better ask him here sometime—some evening we’re just ourselves.…”

* * * *

But of course there wasn’t often such an evening. My parents both liked company; my mother preferred musicians, artists, society people, and my father balanced this with businessmen, lawyers, politicians. Without much snobbery, he had a very shrewd idea of who was who and who really mattered; and in England he felt that he still mattered himself, not merely because he was rich, but because few English people appreciated the changes in America that had put him out of favor. So also English and foreign politicians listened to his advice, not with any idea of taking it, but as an act of educating themselves in some mythical American viewpoint which they believed he represented, and they were doubtless relieved to find him a generous host and a reliable keeper of secrets. I didn’t have a feeling that I was ever completely close to him, or that, inside his own private world, he had ever got over the death of his only son by a former wife during the First World War.

As I said, he wasn’t much of a snob, and though he had a connoisseur’s appreciation of titles and liked to say “Your Excellency” once or twice and then call the man Bill, he wouldn’t have me presented at Court or “come out” in any accepted social sense. It just happened that when I was sixteen I began having a place at table if there were a dinner party, though at first I would go up to bed soon afterwards; then when I enrolled at the College that seemed to make me adult enough to stay up as long as I liked. Most people, no doubt, took me for older than my age, just as they took my mother for younger if they met her without knowing who she was.

Ever since I was a child we had come over to England for the summer; once we took a house in Grosvenor Street, with real flunkeys, but my mother thought that was a bit too grand, so next time my father chose Hampstead, at the top of the hill as you climb from the tube station, and that suited them both so much that they never looked anywhere else. For many years it had even been the same house, which my father would have bought if the portrait painter who owned it had been willing to sell. There was a studio attic overlooking the Heath, with a huge north window, and from the other upstairs rooms you could see the London lights at night and as far as the Crystal Palace on a clear day.

I used to have a favorite walk—it was along the Spaniards’ Road to Highgate Village, then back downhill and up again through Parliament Hill Fields. I loved it when it was crisp and sunny and windy enough for the little ponds to have waves and for the roads to look like bones picked clean. There’s no place in New York as high as Hampstead Heath and as near to the center of things, except of course the roofs of high buildings, where you look deep down; but from the Heath you look far over, which is different. My father once said you couldn’t climb a mere four hundred feet anywhere else in the world and feel higher.

We had good times at that hilltop house, and when Christmas was over in New York and we were packing for Florida (where my father got out of the land boom in time to keep a fortune), already I was looking forward to April and the ocean crossing. Sometimes we spent Easter in Paris, which was exciting, but I never wanted to stay there long. Then when I was twelve my father thought it was time I gave up governesses and started a proper education, so we tossed up whether it should be over here or over there. Out of compliment to my mother he asked her to flip the coin, intending (so he told me afterwards) to give way if the result disappointed her too much. But it didn’t, and I went to a boarding school in Delaware for three years, spending only a few weeks in London during the summer vacation. After that my father told me to choose a college myself, anywhere I liked.

I suppose to have been born in England means something, even the way it happened to me. It was in April 1918, when the Germans looked quite likely to win that war. My father had been shuttling back and forth across the Atlantic a good deal in those days; I have never been able to find out quite what he did, except that it was connected with the war and was apt to be so important that he traveled under another name with secret service people watching him. Anyhow, during one of these hush-hush visits he met my mother and during another he married her. He took her to New York, soon after which my grandmother fell ill; my mother then went back to England to stay only a few months, but she postponed returning as she postponed so many things, with the result that she was actually driving to Waterloo Station to catch the boat train for Southampton when she realized she was too late. Thus I became a Cockney, one might say, accidentally; and also, if it meant anything, I had done a good deal of traveling even before I was born.

* * * *

I saw nothing of Brad for some time after the Byfleet dinner; his tracks didn’t cross mine at the College and I didn’t particularly look for him or them. I did, however, meet a man named Mathews who had a laboratory next to his in the Physics Building and shared with him certain amenities. Mathews was amused when I asked if they were friends. He laughed and said: “What’s that word you used? Friends? The fellow doesn’t have time for such nonsense. Works his head off, goes nowhere, cares for nothing but crystals under a microscope or whatever it is. Sometimes I take him in a cup of tea. He says thanks very much, but I don’t do it too often because it makes him feel obligated. Once, by way of returning the favor, he insisted on buying me a lunch at an A.B.C. And I don’t like A.B.C.’s.”

“Does he talk to you?”

“Only about work. I sometimes think he tries out his lectures on me. You might not think it, but he’s a good lecturer. He also writes a few things for the scientific magazines….”

“Doesn’t he have any hobbies…fun?”

“Oh yes. Once a week, on Sundays, he finds some hill to climb.… Very invigorating.”

“You mean Hampstead and Highgate?”

“He wouldn’t call them hills. Nothing less than Dorking to Guildford with a final run up the Hog’s Back. I went with him once. Never again. Eighteen miles at four miles an hour. Not my idea of fun. But then, perhaps it isn’t his either. Perhaps he does it for self-discipline or mortifying the flesh or something. He told me he never let rain stop him.”

I wasn’t surprised at that because I like walking in rain myself. A few days later (and it was raining, by the way) I saw him coming out of the A.B.C. after lunch. He wore no hat or mackintosh and after standing a moment in the shop doorway to put up his coat collar he suddenly sprinted across the road towards the College entrance. Then he saw me and changed course, still at a sprint. He went out of his way to greet me. “Oh, Miss Waring…. I’d been wondering if I should meet you before…before we meet again.”

That didn’t seem to make too much sense, so I just smiled till he went on: “I’m coming to your house next Thursday. Your father invited me—he says there’ll be nobody else there. That shows he did notice what a fool I was at the party.”

“It also shows he doesn’t think any less of you for it.”

“I hope so…but I also hope he doesn’t think I really mind other people. What I mean is, I wouldn’t like him to put himself out for me.”

There wasn’t much I could say. It didn’t seem at all likely that my father would put himself out for such an unimportant person; on the other hand, it was rather rarely that we were ever at home without a crowd. Afterwards I found that it was my mother who had arranged it.

That Thursday evening began rather well, despite the fact that our landlord dropped in to dinner uninvited. Or perhaps partly because of it, for the talk got on the subject of painting, and that led to music and then my mother went to the piano and played Chopin. She was a fairly good amateur pianist and liked to play if there were no notable musicians present; she also sang, the diseuse style—you called her an English Yvette Guilbert if nobody else said it first. That evening I thought she sang rather better than usual and I told her so.

“And what does Mr. Bradley think?” she asked from the piano stool.

It was a silly question because it invited flattery and she might have known he wasn’t the type to have it ready. He just looked uncomfortable and walked over to the piano. “I can sing too,” he said.

My mother jumped up laughing. “Why, of course—that’s wonderful. Take over.”

“No, no—I don’t play the piano. Can you accompany for me?”

“Depends what the song is.”

“I expect you know ‘John Brown’s Body’ or ‘Annie Laurie.’…”

I then felt a bit uncomfortable myself, chiefly because of the painter, who was ultrasophisticated about art and might consider songs like that very naïve; also I thought he’d think Brad had bad manners in putting a stop to my mother’s singing. I don’t really mind if people have bad manners, but I don’t like an American to have them in front of an Englishman, or vice versa for that matter. My mother, of course, carried it off gaily, starting at once into “Annie Laurie,” and somewhat to everyone’s surprise Brad turned out to have a rather good baritone. Halfway through my mother joined with him and made it a duet. They went on after that, singing other songs together, after which Brad asked her to sing some more on her own, so everything was all right. He said good-night about eleven, leaving the rest of us to conduct the post-mortem.

“Well, well,” said my father. “We haven’t had so much music since Cortot came here.” Maybe he meant that to be ironic.

“He wasn’t so shy this time,” said my mother.

The painter asked who Brad was and what he did. My father answered: “A young scientist from one of our prairie states; he’s working at University College where he got a Ph.D. last year.”

I hadn’t known that before.

“Nice voice,” said the painter.

My father smiled. “It’s remarkable for one thing at least, it sings more readily than it talks.”

“On the other hand, Waring, when it does talk it talks sense. While we were visiting your gent’s room after dinner I asked him what he thought of the landscape in the hall—of course he didn’t know it was mine. He said he didn’t understand why a modern painter would ignore the rules of perspective without any of the excuses that Botticelli had, and I thoroughly agreed with him. I’m fed up with that pseudoprimitive stuff I went in for years ago.”

My father said: “I wouldn’t have thought he knew anything about Botticelli.”

“He knows how to sing too,” said my mother. “I mean how to sing—though I don’t suppose he’s ever been taught. His breathing’s exceptionally good.”

“He takes long walks,” I said. “Maybe that helps.”

Anyhow, the whole evening was a success, after all my fears that it wouldn’t be.

* * * *

From then on I’d see him fairly often, but not to say more than a few words to. I sometimes went to the A.B.C. shop where he had his regular lunch of a roll and butter and a glass of milk, we smiled across the crowded room, or he’d stop to say hello if my table was on his way to the cash desk. Twice, I think, I joined him because there was no place elsewhere, but he was just about to leave, so there wasn’t much conversation. And another time the waitress said when she came to take my order: “Dr. Bradley isn’t here yet. It’s only seven past twelve and he never comes in till ten past. We tell the time by him.” She must have thought I was looking for him.

One lunchtime he threaded his way deliberately amongst the tables towards mine. “I’ve been wanting to ask you something,” he began, sitting down. “I’ve been thinking I ought to return your parents’ hospitality. Of course I don’t have a house where I could very well ask them to dinner…”

“Oh, they know that—they wouldn’t expect it—”

“But perhaps a hotel—I wondered if you could tell me any particular place they like.”

My father liked Claridge’s and my mother the Berkeley, either of which would have cost him at least a week’s pay. So I said: “They really don’t care much for dining at hotels at all…. Why don’t you ask them to tea? I know they’d love that.”

“Tea?… That’s an idea. Just afternoon tea—like the English?”

“My mother is English.”

“Tea and crumpets, then.”

“Not crumpets in the middle of June. Just tea.”

“And what hotel?”

“Does it have to be any hotel? Why don’t you make tea in your lab? Mathews does.”

“Mathews? You know him? We might invite him too.” I didn’t know what he meant by “we” till he added: “Would you help?”

“With the tea? Why yes, of course.”

It was fun making preparations. I had never been inside his laboratory before, or even seen what “Dr. Mark Bradley” looked like on his letter box. It was an ugly room on the top story of the Physics Building, with less scientific equipment in it than I had expected and a rather pervasive smell that I didn’t comment on because there was nothing to be said in its favor and doubtless nothing that could be done about it. I tidied the place up a bit, dusted the chairs, and soon had the kettle boiling on a tripod over a Bunsen burner. Mathews came, talked, drank tea, and had to leave for a lecture. My parents had promised to be there by four, and I was a little peeved by their lateness, not because it really mattered but because I could see it was making Brad nervous. He kept pacing up and down and looking out of the window. Suddenly he cried “They’re here!” and rushed out and down the stairs. But when he came back there was only my mother with him. She was full of apologies; she had been shopping and hadn’t noticed the time; and also my father couldn’t come owing to a meeting in the City that had lasted longer than usual. “Of course you shouldn’t have waited for me.” Then she looked appraisingly round the room, sniffing just as I had. “What a jolly little place! How secluded you must be here—almost on the roof! And all those wonderful-looking instruments—you simply must tell me about them.”

There were only a couple of microscopes, a chemical balance, and a Liebig condenser, but he went round with her, exhibiting and explaining, answering in patient detail even the most trivial of her questions, and all without the slightest trace of nervousness or reticence. It looked to me like a miracle, till I remembered that Mathews had said he was a good lecturer.

Then we had tea, and I knew that it was a miracle, because all at once he was actually chatting. She asked him most of the questions I had wanted to ask him, and he answered them all. About his early life in North Dakota, the farm near the Canadian border, droughts, blizzards, hard times, bankruptcy, the death of both his parents before he was out of grade school, and his own career since. She asked him such personal things—had he left a girl in America, did he have enough money? He said there was no girl and he had enough money to live on.

“But not enough to marry on?”

“I don’t want to marry.”

“You might—someday.”

“No.”

“How can you be certain?”

“Because of my work. It takes up so much of my time that it wouldn’t be fair to any woman to marry her.”

“She mightn’t let it take up so much of your time.”

“Then it wouldn’t be fair to my work.”

“Isn’t that rather…inhuman?”

“Not when you feel about your work as I do.”

“You mean as a sort of priesthood—with a vow of celibacy attached?”

He thought a moment. “I don’t know. I hadn’t figured it out quite like that.”

But the oddest thing was yet to come. About six o’clock a boy put his head in at the doorway, grinned cheerfully, and asked if he could go home. “I’ve fed the cats and mice and fixed all the cages, sir.”

Brad said: “You’d better let me take a look first.” He excused himself to us and was gone a few minutes; when he came back my mother was all ready for him. “What’s this about cats and mice and cages? Is that what the smell is?”

He smiled. “I hope it doesn’t bother you. I’m so used to it myself I hardly notice it.”

“But what do you have them for?”

“I don’t have them at all—they belong to the man next door. I keep an eye on them when he’s out. He uses them for his experimental work.”

“You mean—” She flushed a little. “But of course, that’s very interesting. I’d like to see your menagerie. Could I?”

I hoped he would have more sense and I tried to signal danger to both of them, but without effect. I didn’t know him well enough, anyway, to convey signals, and somehow at that moment I didn’t even feel I knew my mother well enough. She had a spellbound look, as if she were eager for disaster. Brad just said: “Sure, if you like, but I warn you, the smell’s worse when you get close.”

We walked down a stone corridor and into another room. It was full of cages, numbered and tagged and placed methodically on platforms round the walls. The cats had had their milk and were sleepily washing themselves; they purred in anticipation and rubbed their heads against the wire when he went near them. My mother looked hypnotized as she followed him from cage to cage. She asked him how the cats were obtained. “I suppose the University buys them from somebody,” he answered. “Most of them are strays—they’re often half-starved when they first come here. We feed them well, of course—they have to be healthy before they’re any use.”

Without reply she suddenly opened the door of one of the cages. A black and white cat squirmed eagerly into her arms and tried to reach up to her chin. She fondled it for a moment, then put it back in the cage. “What a pity I have to,” she whispered.

“You like cats?” he asked.

“I adore them. Do you?”

“Yes. Dogs too.”

It wasn’t a very intelligent end to the conversation but I could see it was the end. My mother was already putting on that glassy look she has when she is saying charming things and thinking of something else at the same time. I’ve often seen it at the tail end of a party. “I think perhaps I ought to be going…. So nice of you to ask me here and tell me everything. We must have you to the house again soon.”

He saw us down to the street, where Henry was waiting. In the car my mother was silent for a while, then she said: “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have poked my nose in.”

When I didn’t answer she added: “I suppose they have to do it.”

“He doesn’t. They weren’t his.”

She was silent again for some time, then asked suddenly: “Do you think you understand him?”

“Not after the way he talked to you today.”

“Why, what was wrong about that?”

“Nothing, only I’d always thought he was reserved and shy.”

“He is.”

“Not with you. He told you more in five minutes than he’d tell me in five years.”

“Wait till you’ve known him five years. You’ll be a better age.”

“So you think that’s why he doesn’t talk to me as he does to you? Because I’m too young?”

“Perhaps. Darling, don’t be annoyed. And I might be wrong too. I’ve never met scientists before. They must be queer people. The way they can do such things…and yet have ideals. The distant goal—he’s got his eyes fixed on it and he can’t see anything nearer.… And all his hard life and early struggles haven’t taught him anything. He doesn’t realize that even in the scientific world you’ve got to get about and make friends if you want to be a success. He lives like a hermit—anyone can see that. It would do him good to fall in love.”

I laughed. “Mathews says he’s scared of women altogether.”

“Mathews?”

“The man next door to him.”

“Oh yes…the one who…yes, I remember….”

“All the same, though, he wasn’t scared of you.”

She cuddled my arm and answered: “No, darling, it was I who was scared. He’s a peculiar man.”

* * * *

Ever since schooldays I have kept a diary of sorts, mostly the jotting down of engagements, never anything literary or confessional. Brad makes his appearance the first day I saw him; there’s the record: “Dinner Chelsea Professor Byfleet. Gave a lift home to American boy researching at Coll. Shy.” The entry for the day on which my mother came to tea is similarly brief. Just: “Tea in Brad’s lab. Mother. Cat.” And about a week later comes this: “End of College Term. Cat.”

What happened was that I got home from an afternoon walk to find my mother and Brad in the drawing room. They were talking together and my mother was nursing a black and white cat which immediately she thrust into my arms. “Look, Jane! It’s the same one! Brad just brought it—he’s given it to me!”

“It’s lovely,” I said, and I noticed she had called him Brad. So I said: “Hello, Brad.”

“Hello,” he answered.

She went on breathlessly: “And it wasn’t what we thought at all.… Tell her, Brad, unless…” She began to smile. “Unless you think she’s too young to know.”

My mother and I adored each other, but ever since I was about fourteen she had talked to me as if I were her own age, but of me as if I were still about twelve; and when this happened before my face I often got confused and said just what a twelve-year-old would say.

I did then. I said: “I’m not too young to know anything.”

Brad took it seriously. “I should say not. There’s nothing indecent about it.”

“Oh, don’t be silly—I was only joking,” my mother interrupted. “Tell her.”

“It’s nothing much. Apparently you both thought those animals in the room next to my lab were kept for vivisection. Anything but. All they have to do is to reproduce, reproduce, and keep on reproducing. Probably quite pleasant for them. Mathews is doing some new research in Genetics—he breeds a succession of generations to find out how certain characteristics crop up.”

Now that I had the explanation the fact that even jokingly I had been considered too young to know it made me almost feel I was. I said, in a rather asinine way: “Wouldn’t Mathews mind you taking away his cat?”

“He hadn’t begun any records of this animal, so any other would do just as well. He said so. Technically, of course, I’ve stolen the property of the University of London. How about calling the police?”

We all laughed and I handed the cat back to my mother.

“Mind you,” he went on, “don’t think I’m a sentimentalist. There’s a lot of nonsense talked about cruel scientists—I’ve never met any myself. Certainly at the College the men who have to do vivisections occasionally—”

My mother broke in: “You mean that it does go on there? I thought you said—just for breeding—”

“You must have misunderstood me—all I said was that the animals you saw, the ones Mathews keeps—”

“All right, all right, let’s not talk about it any more.”

“But you do believe me when I say that scientists aren’t cruel?”

Brad was like that, as I found so many times afterwards; he could never let well enough alone.

My mother said: “Many people are cruel. Wouldn’t you expect some of them to be scientists?”

“Statistically, yes….”

“Then I’ve won my argument. Have some tea.”

I said good-by to him long before he went because I had to go upstairs and pack; I was leaving for a holiday in Ireland the next morning. I think he stayed till my father came home just before dinner.

* * * *

My mother wrote while I was away, just her usual gossipy letters; one of them mentioned Brad and said he had been up to the house for dinner. “We had more music and sat up talking till late. He’s really beginning to be quite human….”

I was in Ireland over a month and returned to London for the beginning of the autumn term. It was September, and in a few weeks, if they followed their usual plan, my parents would return to America. I wondered what it would feel like to be on my own in London; I was halfway thrilled at the prospect.

I didn’t see Brad for a few days; then suddenly he met me as I was leaving a lecture. We shook hands and he asked about Ireland. “Did you climb any mountains?”

“Not exactly mountains. We hiked about, though. There were plenty of hills.”

“Did you visit Donegal?”

“No. Should I?”

“Someone told me that in the mountains there you get quartzite with a capping of sandstone—obviously the result of denudation.…” He went on, when I didn’t answer: “Geology’s one of the things I wish I knew more about. Do you enjoy walking?”

“Yes, very much.”

“Would you care to take a walk with me next Sunday?”

I said I would and he looked me up and down as if for the first time he were reckoning me physically. “Good legs and good boots are all you need.”

“Shoes,” I corrected. “And I don’t know anything about geology, but I’d like to.”

I thought he might be relieved to feel there was always a topic in reserve.

* * * *

We went to Cambridge by an early train because he had to call at the Cavendish Laboratory there to leave some papers. It was the first time I had been to the university town and I wouldn’t have minded sightseeing, but apparently this was not part of his program; we ignored the colleges and began a brisk walk along the riverbank. After what Mathews had said, I was quite prepared to cover the miles without comment or complaint, but as a great concession, doubtless, we picked up a bus at some outlying village and the bus happened to be going to Ely. The way I’m telling this sounds as if I were having fun at his expense all the time; and so, in a quiet way, I was, because people who are too serious always make me feel ribald inside. Not that he was as serious as I had expected. We didn’t discuss geology once—perhaps because there isn’t much geology between Cambridge and Ely. There were just large expanses of mud everywhere, and especially by the river, for heavy rain had fallen and the sky was full of clouds threatening more. Ely was like a steel engraving, but inside the Cathedral the octagon window had the look of stored-up sunshine from a summer day. I said it would be strange if some of the medieval stained-glass experts had actually discovered how to do this, and he assured me gravely that they couldn’t have, it was scientifically impossible. I then gave him a short lecture on English Perpendicular, to which he listened as if he thought me clever though what I was saying relatively unimportant. “But of course you’re only interested in scientific things,” I ended up.

“No, that’s not true. Your mother played some Mozart to me the other evening—it was the first time I really liked classical music.”

“She loves Mozart.”

“Of course when she was younger she had time and opportunity to cultivate a sense of beauty—that’s hard for the average American.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think it’s Americans who do cultivate things, as a rule.”

“Then she just has them—was born with them, perhaps. Generations of aristocratic background.”

“My mother’s people wouldn’t like you to call them aristocrats. They’re a fairly well-known Yorkshire family—commoners, but we can trace ourselves back for a few centuries without much trouble.”

“She happened to mention a sister—Lady Somebody, I forget the name.”

“That’s nothing. Titles don’t mean aristocracy. All my aunt did was to marry a man who got knighted—that can happen to anyone.”

“You sound rather cynical about it.”

“I’m not. But it’s amusing, sometimes, the way Americans make mistakes. My aunt and uncle were once visiting us in Florida and the local paper called them English blue bloods. They’re no more blue-blooded than you are.”

“Speaking scientifically?”

“No, speaking snobbishly. If you want the snob angle, at least get it right. Of course I don’t mean you, I mean the Florida paper. Personally I don’t think much of titles.”

“Because you come of a family that’s proud of its age rather than rank?”

“I guess you’re right. It’s probably an inverted snobbery. We certainly think we’re superior to a lot of these businessmen baronets.”

“You say ‘we.’ Does that mean you feel yourself more English than American?”

“When I’m talking to you I do. When I’m talking to an Englishman I feel I want to chew gum. It’s the perverse streak in me.”

“Does that mean you feel American when you’re with your mother?”

“Sometimes…. Though she’s not so terribly English. I’ve met Russians and Irish that are more like her. She’s more true to herself than to any nationality. Not that I mean she doesn’t act, sometimes. But when she does, she doesn’t really mind if you see through it. And you can act back. She doesn’t mind that either.”

“I’m afraid I’m not much good at acting.”

“I wasn’t meaning you personally.”

“I’m sorry. I thought—perhaps—well—”

“I was just talking generally. I’m sorry if you—”

“How did we get onto this argument, anyway?”

“I forget.”

He thought for a moment, then said: “We were discussing beauty—the sense of beauty—”

“Were we?”

“Mozart, it started with….”

“Oh yes, you said you were beginning to like classical music.”

“I think I could like it, if I heard more. It’s strange how—if you’re in a certain mood—the awareness of beauty comes over you—”

“It comes over me in any mood. I mean, it can put me in the mood. When we were in the Cathedral just now, for instance…”

“Yes—but it didn’t get me as much as Mozart.”

“Maybe we should have asked the organist to play some Mozart.”

“I’ll ask your mother when I’m next up at the house.”

“Yes, do…. You come up quite often now, don’t you? While I’ve been away… I’m so glad.”

We returned to Cambridge by bus and he called at the Cavendish again to pick up something—“results,” he said, that he had left there in the morning for a check. When he glanced over them later in the train I tried to tell from his face whether everything had been satisfactory, but he looked neither pleased nor displeased—only preoccupied. Presently, as he put the papers away, he said: “Well, that’s that.”

“What is?”

“A month’s work and it turns out to be wrong.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. It’s not an emotional matter.”

“But a whole month! Couldn’t you have found out you were wrong sooner?”

“Perhaps not—though the Cavendish does have better facilities. Might save time in the future if I had access to them more often.”

“Couldn’t you work there?”

He smiled. “You don’t know how lucky I am to be able to work anywhere. You should have known me the last time I went inside a cathedral.”

“Where was that?”

“St. Patrick’s, New York.”

“Are you a Catholic?”

“No. I used to go in for warmth and rest when I was looking for a job. That was in 1931.”

“You’ve come a long way in five years.”

“It’s not how far you come that counts—it’s the direction you take and whether you ever find the right track.”

“Do you think you’ve found it?”

“I think I know where to look for it. And a few wrong answers won’t put me off.”

There was a sort of grittiness in his voice that made me think he was fighting down disappointment over his wasted month. He added almost ferociously: “The trouble is, I don’t know enough. I’m trying to build too high without scaffolding….”

* * * *

After that day at Cambridge I thought I was bound to have crossed some sort of barrier, and that henceforth I could count on seeing him fairly regularly, either at the College or at the house; but in fact a rather long interval elapsed, so that I stopped Mathews once and asked how Brad was. He said he was wearing himself out as usual, or rather more than usual—indeed, he’d given up one of his teaching classes in order to devote more time to his own work.

“Can he afford that?”

“Evidently. Or else he’s making himself afford it.”

“Do you know what work it is?”

“Vaguely. Some sort of mathematics. But you can’t know much about other people’s work nowadays, not when they get past the elementary stage. Even genetics has its mysteries. Why don’t you come and see my mice? I don’t have cats any more—they’re not quick enough on the job. And besides, they’re apt to attract visitors.” He always joked about my mother’s acquisition.

I went up with him. “I wouldn’t disturb him while he’s busy,” he said, as we passed Brad’s door. I hadn’t had any such intention, but the warning made me ask what special reason there was for all the high pressure.

He said he thought something had “happened” at Cambridge. “He goes to the Cavendish there fairly often. He told me after one trip that a physicist was no damned good unless he was also a mathematician, so that’s what he’s doing now, I suppose—in what he calls his spare time…. Come and see these creatures again when you feel like it. Perhaps he won’t be so busy.”

He was, and I didn’t bother him. But one afternoon, inside the College near the Physics Building, I met my mother walking along as if she had far more right to look surprised than I had. She asked if I were going up to see Brad. I replied: “Certainly not. Have you just been to see him?”

“Darling, why ‘certainly not’?”

“Because he hates to be interrupted when he’s at work. It’s a thing I’d never dream of doing…. But I suppose you have seen him?”

“Yes, but not in the way you think. I’ve been to one of his lectures.”

“What?”

“I don’t see any reason against it. He has a beginners’ class—anybody can join who enrolls. I’ve enrolled. It’s interesting. And he explains things so wonderfully. One ought to have something serious in life, oughtn’t one?”

“What does Brad say about it?”

“Brad?…yes…it suits him, doesn’t it?… Or perhaps it’s just that I never did like Mark and I couldn’t go on calling him Mr. Bradley—Dr. Bradley, I mean…. Anyhow, I think the less formal we all are the better. That’s what the trouble is with him—he’s too formal—he doesn’t seem to believe in any pleasure, amusement, relaxation…. But I have an idea I’m beginning to convert him—gradually.”

She looked so adorable as she said it that I laughed. “And he’s managing to convert you a little at the same time, eh?”

No, she answered, he was not converting her—not really. He was only showing her something she had already been aware of in life, or had guessed existed. Physics was a symbol rather than the thing itself. “I’ve often thought I have a rather empty existence—just dinner parties and social engagements and treading the same old beaten path—London, New York, Florida. I’ve never been completely satisfied with it. Even when I was a girl I wanted to be a nurse.” (This was news to me, and it may have been true, but my mother was always capable of reinforcing an argument with some happy improvisation.) “Darling, you at least ought to understand, because you’ve chosen to do something worth while instead of wasting your time as so many girls in your position would. Surely it’s the happy medium we must all strive for. For instance, he ought to waste a little bit of his time, and I’ve quite an ambition to make him do it—I’d love to make him break a rule—just one little rule….”

“Did he break any at the lecture when he saw you?”

“Not him. He’s so different when he’s lecturing. Not a bit nervous—and yet still shy.”

“Did he know you were going to be there?”

“Of course. I enrolled—didn’t I say that? I asked him if he thought it would all be above my head and he said no, it was as elementary as he could make it—he’s not exactly the flatterer, is he?… But never a smile or a look during the lecture—I was just one of his students. And when he finished he picked up his papers and dashed away as if he was afraid of someone chasing him.”

“Perhaps he was.”

“Now darling, are you trying to make fun of me?”

I wondered if I were; it wouldn’t have been surprising, for my mother and I got a good deal of amusement out of each other. But I had a curious feeling that we were both more serious than we sounded, and that the badinage was a familiar dress to cover something rather new in our relationship.

She said, as if it finally clinched the matter: “Well, he’s coming to dinner on October tenth. I did chase him to ask him that. He said he couldn’t make it earlier because he’s working for some examination that finishes on the ninth.”

“But will you still be here? I thought the end of September was when you and Father—”

“We’re staying a few extra weeks this year. We thought it would be nice not to leave you too soon.”

I said I was glad, which was true enough, though of course I knew I’d be perfectly all right on my own.

* * * *

It wasn’t a party on the tenth, but that rare “just ourselves,” with not even a chance visitor after dinner except Julian Spee. Julian was a rising English lawyer; still in his middle forties, he had already taken silk and found a seat in Parliament; there seemed nothing to stop him from whatever he aimed at, which was probably high. He was handsome in a saturnine way, a brilliant talker, unmarried, and an accomplished flirt. He lived in a house not far from ours, facing the Heath, and had formed a habit of dropping by whenever he felt like it, whether we had a party or not. He was sure of his welcome and one knew he was sure. I think he liked my mother more than most women, and she in turn was flattered by his attentions and always willing to give advice about his love affairs. A pleasantly romantic relationship can develop in this way, and it had done, over a period of years. I wasn’t at ease with Julian myself, because I never felt he was quite real, but on the few occasions when he hadn’t treated me as a precocious child I had been aware of his attractiveness. My father, who collected him as he collected all celebrities, once said that in any other country but England you would have taken him for a homosexual, to which my mother replied mischievously: “And in any other country he would have been.” As often it wasn’t very clear what she meant.

My father had got back from Germany that day, tired from the trip and gloomy about affairs over there. He didn’t any longer attend to ordinary business matters, but if something cropped up of a kind in which his personal acquaintance with politicians and diplomats might help, the job was usually passed on to him. I think the Nazis were interfering with some of his “interests”; the State Department hadn’t been able to do much, and because he had once met Hitler during the twenties he’d been called in like a rainmaker after a prolonged drought. But big shots were always apt to disappoint him after a while—Lenin had, and Lloyd George, and Mussolini, and Ramsay MacDonald, and now it was Hitler’s turn. Roosevelt hadn’t yet, but one felt sure he would. My father was too rich to care for money for its own sake (despite the Marazon disclosures that did him so much harm); he knew, as moderately rich men didn’t, how little you could bribe those whose real currency was power, and this in turn made him flatter poor men who became powerful. But of course, because they were powerful, sooner or later they let him know that he had only money. I think now (though I knew nothing much about it then) he must have been having this kind of experience in Germany, and it hadn’t been pleasant.

Fortunately Brad’s mood that night was at the other extreme. With his examination over even he couldn’t help relaxing, the more so under the influence of good food and my mother’s gaiety. Then, somehow or other, when we were in the drawing room afterwards and Julian had joined us, the conversation grew personal and the atmosphere changed. Julian had met Brad before, and they had seemed to like each other well enough, in spite or perhaps because of their obvious oppositeness. But now I sensed a hostility between them which my father was quietly fanning; it was as if he were holding his own unhappy thoughts at bay by encouraging both my mother and Julian to put Brad on the spot. Soon they were in the thick of a discussion of Brad’s ambitions, what he wanted to do in life, his ideal of science as something to be lived for, and so on. All ideals sound naïve when brought out under cross-examination, but my mother had a special knack of creating naïveté in others—something in the way she used wits rather than brains for an argument, certainly not knowledge, which she didn’t have much of about most things. But she was always fluent, and couldn’t endure to wait while others hesitated or pondered, so she would tell them what she thought they were going to reply, and it was often so deceptively simple that the other person would agree in a bemused way and presently find himself defending some vast proposition more suitable for a school debating society than anything between adults. I think this must have happened to Brad that night, for he got to telling us eventually that scientists were actuated by a desire to “save” humanity, and that science, in due course, would do this in spite of other people whose chief concern was worldly success. (Which was probably a dig at Julian.)

“Meaning,” said Julian, “that scientists don’t go for that sort of thing?”

Brad answered that no true scientist could, or if he did, it proved he wasn’t a true scientist. As neat as that!

“But my dear boy—” (Julian always called people “dear,” which sounded more affected than affectionate till you got used to it, and then you realized it was neither, but just a habit)—“my dear boy, if you ignore all worldly success, how do you suppose you’re going to get a chance to prove anything? You can’t sit in a corner all on your own and just be a scientist—it’s not like writing an epic poem or contemplating your navel—you need money for food, equipment that you couldn’t afford, a room to work in that your house doesn’t have, and a job to make it worth somebody’s while to pay you a regular salary!”

“Well, a job’s all right. There’s nothing worldly in that.”

“But unless it’s a good job you’ll wear yourself out marking papers and teaching teen-agers to blow glass! I know, because I remember my own schooldays.”

“There are good jobs.”

“And how do you suppose they are got? College heads aren’t supermen, they don’t know much about science themselves, and because they can only judge a reputation by the look of it, they’re human enough to favor a man who knows how to draw attention to himself. So if he’s smart, that’s exactly what he does. Politics is one way—though dangerous. Social success is safer. And doing stuff on the side that attracts publicity—you Americans know the kind of thing—pseudoscientific articles in your Sunday supplements that aren’t too phony, just phony enough.” (Julian liked to use American slang, which he said was enriching the English language at a period when otherwise a natural impoverishment would have set in. We had another big argument about that once.)

“So you don’t think real distinction counts, Mr. Spee?”

“I didn’t say that. Of course it counts—but it counts a good deal more if you add salesmanship and what your Hollywood people call glamour.”

“Glamour?”

“Certainly…. An interesting new theory, developed by Professor So-and-So in Vienna…it’s like your sparkling new comedy, straight from its phenomenal success on Broadway…even if it only ran three nights…. Vienna is the Broadway of the scientific show business…. I’d strongly recommend a year or two there for you.”

Brad had the same trouble that I had in deciding whether Julian was serious or not, and I could see him wondering about it now.

My father said quietly: “Might not be a bad idea at that.”

Brad was still puzzling over Julian’s epigram. “Show business, eh?” he echoed, in a rather shocked tone. “I hope it isn’t quite so bad.”

“It’s not bad at all, my dear boy, it’s human. We live in an age of headlines, not of hermits.”

“Someday,” said my mother, in her random way, “the hermits may make the headlines.”

“Vienna’s a good place,” said my father. “A very good place indeed.”

It seemed to me that everyone was talking at cross-purposes. “I can’t believe that the true scientist cares much about headlines,” Brad said.

“No?” Julian gave his rather high-pitched feminine laugh. “I could mention the names of at least a dozen who care about them passionately. And they’re big men, not charlatans, don’t make any mistake. They’ll give you some competition if you go after the plums.”

“But I don’t want the plums. I’m not a bit ambitious for things like that—I wouldn’t enjoy the kind of thing some people call success. All I ask is the chance to work usefully at something that seems to me worth while.” He added, as if he had listened to his own words: “And if that sounds priggish I can’t help it—it’s the only way I can express what I mean.”

“Oh, no—not priggish at all,” Julian assured him. “Just an honest mistake you’re making about yourself. Do you mean to tell me you really wouldn’t like to head a research department of your own somewhere, to have no more drudgery, to get yourself recognized as an equal by those whose names in the scientific world you know and respect?… Of course you would…. And as for scientists being worth-whilers and world-savers, let me prick that bubble for you too. I’ve known a good many of them, and in my experience, though some may fool themselves about it, they have one simple and overriding motive above all others… Curiosity.”

“Brad’s motive isn’t that,” my mother interrupted.

“Then by Christ, if you’ll pardon the expression, it had better be, unless he’s a mere moralist hiding behind a rampart of test tubes!” He turned to Brad with his easy confident smile. “Perhaps you are—perhaps you’d really be more at home in a pulpit than a laboratory.”

“No, no, Julian,” my mother interrupted again. “That’s absurd—he’s not a moralist, and why should he hide anywhere? He’s a real scientist—he even defends vivisection!”

It was part of my mother’s charm that her mind flew off at tangents usually capable of changing a subject. This time, however, both Brad and Julian ignored her and the argument went on. “Of course, my dear boy, I’m neither defending nor attacking—I’m just diagnosing what I’ve always felt to be the real germ of the scientific spirit. You probably know much more about it yourself, but my own opinion is, it’s Pandora’s box that lures, not the Holy Grail. And I haven’t yet met a scientist who wouldn’t take a chance of busting up the whole works rather than not find out something. Maybe civilizations have been destroyed like that before. History covers too small a fragment of life on earth for anyone to say it’s unthinkable. After all, we know the Greeks excelled us in several of the arts and perhaps in one of the sciences, that of human government—why not some earlier civilization in engineering or medicine? Anyhow, it’s a beguiling thought—that all the great discoveries have been made and remade over and over again throughout the ages. What do you say, Jane? You’re the historian.”

I said it all sounded very pessimistic and somewhat Spenglerian.

“Personally I find it more agreeable than what the last century called progress.”

“It’s worse than pessimism,” Brad said. “It’s a sort of nihilism.”

“Coo…listen to ’im! Sech lengwidge!” Julian mimicked banteringly.

My father, who had taken little part in the argument and had seemed to be listening in a detached way, now intervened almost irritably. “Nihilism…nihilism…just a word. At various times in my life I’ve been called an economic royalist, a communist, a fascist, and a merchant of death…so don’t let nihilist floor you, Julian.”

“I won’t,” Julian retorted, though he looked as if my father’s sudden support had rather startled him.

Brad was hanging on to the argument. “But at least, Mr. Spee, the peak of each civilization could be higher than the one before?”

“Why should it? We don’t know. Perhaps there’ve been vast cycles of civilizations—some upward in trend, others downward—and these cycles, in turn, may have belonged to even vaster movements. All pure speculation, of course. You can argue about it endlessly, just as—” and he turned deferentially to my father—“just as your Dow-Jones theorists do when stocks drop and they try to figure out whether it’s a real bear market or just a dip in a boom. Wait and see’s the only solution, but if the waiting means a few million years, what can you do? Even Spengler won’t go that far.”

Julian laughed, but as if he had become already uneasy about the argument. He was extremely sensitive to timing and atmosphere, and soon afterwards he made rather abrupt excuses and left us. Brad stayed, and my father rallied himself into an appearance of affability. But I was still at odds with his mood; I couldn’t quite understand it, and his totally unnecessary mention of having once been called a merchant of death was especially strange. It was true, he had been called that, but it wasn’t true that he had been unconcerned about it; on the contrary he had been much hurt at the time and would have prosecuted somebody for libel if his lawyers had let him.

I also noticed that he was refilling his glass rather oftener than usual. “Well, Brad,” he said, switching over to his side. “We certainly had him on a soapbox, didn’t we? I hope you weren’t too impressed.”

Brad laughed. “So long as I don’t have to agree, that’s the main thing. I’d like to think over what he said in terms of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Might be interesting.”

“What beats me,” my father said, “is the way that fellow knows other people’s business…. Yours…and mine…the Dow-Jones theory…how does he get that way?”

“Probably most of what he knows is on the surface,” Brad answered, entirely without malice.

It was late and he looked at his watch. I think we were all a little tired. Just before he left my father called me to the library. “Henry can drive him back,” he said. “Why don’t you go with him for the ride?”

I was surprised at the suggestion and wondered if he thought there was anything emotional between Brad and me—that would have been too ridiculous.

“He’d probably rather take the tube,” I said.

“No, let Henry bring the car round.”

“He’d hate to think he’d been keeping Henry up. He’s fussy about those things.”

“Then get a taxi and you can come back in it.”

“He doesn’t have taxis—he can’t afford them and he wouldn’t like me to pay.”

My father’s irritation showed through again. “Well, for once he can—because I want you to tell him something. Tell him I wasn’t joking, even if Julian was, about the idea of him going abroad. I’ve been thinking for some time it might not be a bad thing. Tell him that.”

“Why don’t you tell him?”

“I did, but I don’t think he heard me. I’m sorry Julian talked of it so flippantly—it’s really what Brad ought to do. He’s probably got all he can out of this London job by now…. So tell him, will you? There’s a bunch of physicists in Vienna, if he could get fixed up with the right connections. I might be able to help him in that.”

“You might?”

“Yes. I have—er—contacts there.”

“In Vienna?”

“Yes.”

“But what about the Cavendish at Cambridge? Isn’t that as good?”

“Cambridge isn’t the only place where they’re doing interesting things in his line. The Continent would give him a different angle…”

“You mean the glamour?”

“No, no…or anyhow, that’s not the word for it. I wish Julian hadn’t butted in with his witticisms…. Well, you talk things over with Brad. Ask him how he’d like to spend some time working with Hugo Framm.”

“Hugo Framm?”

“He’ll know who Framm is. Ask him. Ask him.”

The telephone then rang; I took it, as I often did; it was New York. Those business calls were generally very dull as well as private, so I handed him the receiver and edged away towards the hall doorway across the room.

And then I saw Brad. His back was towards me, and in front of him, almost hidden, was my mother. The lights in the hall were subdued, and all I could see of her distinctly was the knuckle of her right hand as she held his sleeve. She had been talking to him earnestly and I caught what was evidently a final remark: “…and you mustn’t take any notice, Brad…. I’d hate you to be influenced at all….” Only that, whispered very eagerly.

He said nothing in reply, then suddenly, glancing round his shoulder with a little side movement of her head, she saw me, I think, though she pretended not to. I stepped back into the room. Presently my father finished his call.

“Well, as I was saying, Jane, see how he feels about it.”

I answered: “Yes, but not tonight. I’ll talk to him at the College tomorrow. I know he’d rather go home by tube.”

* * * *

I could have met him at lunch the next day and been sure of not interrupting his work, but I went straight to the lab about eleven-thirty, committing the unforgivable sin, if it were one, with a certain gusto. After all, he couldn’t already be working for another examination—or could he? Anyhow, I caught him (so far as I could judge) doing that rare thing, nothing. But he looked preoccupied and not really surprised enough; he asked me to sit down, but I said it wouldn’t take me long to deliver a message. Then I told him what my father had said about Vienna and Hugo Framm. His whole manner changed. He seemed bewildered at first, then slowly and increasingly pleased. He went to a shelf of books and showed me everything he could find that had anything to do with Framm, who was apparently a scientific star of magnitude. There was a paragraph about him in a recent issue of Discovery, and an article by him in a German magazine. Altogether I began to think it rather wonderful that Brad should have a chance to work with such a man. “But I don’t see why he should even consider me,” he kept saying. “There’s nothing I’ve done yet that could possibly impress him.”

“But my father knows him, Brad.”

“Of course I realize your father has influence, but in a question of pure science…”

“Perhaps it isn’t a question of pure science. Perhaps Framm’s a bit human. Perhaps he takes notice of what his friends say about people. My father’s opinion of you might be high enough for someone to want to have you.”

“But is he such a close friend of your father?”

“I never heard his name mentioned before, but that doesn’t mean anything. My father knows so many people everywhere. He meets them once and then they’re on his list of—well, I suppose you could call them distant friends.”

“Very remarkable.”

“My father is remarkable.”

“So’s your mother—in a different way.”

“Oh, she’s a darling.”

“I’d guess she’s a good bit younger.”

“Than my father?… Twenty years.”

“As much as that?”

“Your surprise doesn’t flatter her. Or perhaps it flatters him.”

He thought that out. I added: “I don’t think years matter much, anyway—especially as you grow older.”

“That’s true. It’s when you’re younger that the difference counts.”

I wondered if he was thinking of the difference between his age and mine. Then he went on: “Not that I feel she’s any older than I am.”

“She is, though. Nearly twice as old.”

“Oh no, that can’t be. I’m twenty-four.”

“And she’s thirty-eight.”

“Well, that’s not twice….”

“I said nearly twice.”

“You also said years don’t matter much.”

“And you said they did, when people are younger.”

“I think we’re getting tied up in this argument. Let’s have some lunch.”

That was a novelty, and a further one when we didn’t go to an A.B.C., but to an Italian place near the Tottenham Court Road. We had minestrone and chicken cacciatora, meanwhile talking about Framm; or rather, he did most of the talking—I could see him building up a vision and I hoped he wouldn’t expect too much. After all, my father’s influence had its limits. But apparently it was only an already existing vision in a new form—a sort of frozen white-hot passion for whatever it was that couldn’t be satisfactorily explained to a first-year history student. I let him rhapsodize all the way back to the College.

There was grand opera at Covent Garden that evening and someone had lent my parents a box. We went to dine at Boulestin’s first. I don’t care for opera and all afternoon as I thought of it I grew more and more out of humor. Then when I got home I found my mother still lingering over tea. “I asked Brad to come,” she greeted me, “but I don’t suppose he will.” She overdid the casualness and as soon as I looked at her she began to look at me in what I think she thought was the same way.

“I shouldn’t imagine so,” I answered. “He was here only last night and it’s quite a trip for a cup of tea.”

“You like him, don’t you, Jane?”

“Yes. He’d be rather hard to dislike.”

“I shall miss the lectures when he goes to Vienna.”

“If he goes. Or is it settled yet?”

“I think your father’s written to somebody. I hope it works out all right…. I can’t help wondering if he really wants to go there. He always talked to me about the Cavendish.”

“To me too, but at present I think he’s quite set on Vienna—on account of this man Framm.”

“I wish I’d had a chance to help him more—not as Framm can, of course, but that’s not all the help he needs. I’d like to have made him—well, a bit more at home with life. More…sophisticated…easy-mannered…”

“Worldly?”

“Oh no, no, Jane, not that. He’s naïve, but I love it and I hated the way Julian talked the other night. I don’t know what possessed him—he seemed to be trying to break down every ideal the boy had…. No, let him keep his ideals—he doesn’t even have to be a worldly success if he doesn’t want—but he ought to learn to get some fun out of life, that’s my point. Worldly success has nothing to do with having fun.”

“It has just a bit, Mother.”

“Oh, just a little bit, perhaps—one must have some money. But not too much. I could be perfectly happy on a thousand a year. Pounds, I mean.”

“So could a great many English people who have to live on a fraction of that.”

“Well, say five hundred…provided of course I had other things to make life worth living.”

“What other things?”

“Darling, don’t cross-examine me…. All I know is that Brad needs to learn what happiness there can be in life, and he ought to stop being such a hermit. But I’m all against him giving up his ideals, whatever Julian says.”

“It seems to me I’m the only person who’s satisfied with him as he is.”

“Are you, darling? Entirely satisfied?”

She gazed at me measuredly, as if the question needed a careful answer. But there wasn’t time, for at that moment Brad arrived. He looked nervous, and almost as shy as when I had first seen him. He said he hadn’t thought he’d be able to come, but at the very last he’d managed it. He was sorry he was so late and hoped he hadn’t kept her waiting.

“Did you come up by tube?” I asked.

“No. I took a taxi.”

“I’ll send for some fresh tea,” my mother said, and rang the bell, but nobody came; the servants were preparing for their evening out and hadn’t expected to serve any more. I said I’d go to the kitchen and see about it, which I did, and then went upstairs to change.

* * * *

Looking back now, I can see so much more than then. Even when you are supposed to be adult for your age, it’s hard to think of grownups as in the same world; you only want to feel you can be in theirs, and you just hope any mistake won’t be noticed. And yet you are aware of things often more acutely than ever afterwards, your mind has antennae roaming into the unknown; you can even walk into it with eyes peering, but the step that isn’t there always brings you up with a shock and a jolt.

I had that shock about Brad, though I couldn’t put any sufficient reason for it into words. When a man, after working three times harder than he should, slows down to twice as hard, there doesn’t seem much for any of his friends to worry about. Nor when the same man spends a wet Sunday afternoon listening to a charming woman play Chopin, instead of drenching himself to the skin on Box Hill.

Brad gave notice to the College authorities and they were very reasonable about it. They waived the full term they could have held him for, and said he could leave whenever he wanted. And my parents postponed again their return to New York—still presumably on my account.

Meanwhile my mother kept on attending his lectures, at which he never (she said) gave her a look or a smile; but he did break a few of his other rules, whether it was she who tempted him or not. He began going to piano recitals, theaters, movies, and private views—sometimes alone with her, sometimes with my father or me also. There was nothing to stir gossip, much less scandal, in our fairly sophisticated circle; Julian Spee had escorted her similarly when he was less busy. She had often been in the throes of some fad or other, and perhaps my father figured that Brad was just an unusually masculine successor to Dalcroze Eurhythmics, Japanese flower arrangement, or the English Speaking Union. And it was sometimes my father himself who would make the date; he would say—“Oh, by the way, Christine, I’ve got a card for Marincourt’s new exhibition—it’s next Tuesday at the Wigmore Galleries. I shan’t have time to go myself, but you might take Brad and show him what passes for art nowadays….” But when he had issued these invitations he had an odd look of only half pleasure whether they were accepted or not.

That diary of mine jots down all the times Brad came to the house to dine. On Wednesdays it was, most often, and as the weeks passed it came to be every Wednesday, and always quite informally, without special invitation, with few or no other guests, and with plenty of music afterwards. He learned to sing “Schlafe Mein Prinzchen, Schlaf Ein,” which suited his voice very well.

Then all at once he let go his work. With anyone else I wouldn’t have been surprised, since he was leaving the College so soon and there couldn’t have been much to finish up before the end of term. But he did it with such abandon, and idleness didn’t fit in with his personality. I used to see him wandering up and down Gower Street as if he had nowhere else to go; even Mathews made a comment. Probably the waitress at the A.B.C. did also, for he took to dropping in for coffee at unexpected times, and often lunched at better places. All of which adds up to nothing at all except an idea that grew in my mind and was never put into words.

One morning towards the end of November my father announced that the great Hugo Framm was on his way to London to receive some degree or deliver some lecture, I forget which. “We’d better give a dinner for him. Good idea for Brad to meet him first at our house.”

My mother agreed it would be a good idea, but she lacked her usual enthusiasm for party planning. “Give me a list of people to ask,” was all she said.

“Brad can help you. He’ll know a few professors and you can mix them up with anyone else you like.” And he added, thoughtfully: “I don’t think it has to be champagne.”

“Oh God,” exclaimed my mother, “let’s have champagne even if it is only professors.”

They tiffed about it in front of me in a way which was not only new in my experience, but out of character for both of them—my father being the last man to act the parsimonious host, and my mother not normally caring what wines were drunk.

* * * *

I didn’t see Brad again till the party. If my mother saw him she didn’t tell me, not that it would have been a secret, but somehow we didn’t talk about Brad much, and perhaps for that reason we talked a great deal about Hugo Framm. My mother was no respecter of celebrities, and we shared the same sense of humor, ribald and vagrant and often rather rude. Between us we built up a huge joke about Professor Framm that made us both afraid we might laugh indecently when the man actually took shape before our eyes. We first said he would be fat and pompous, with a thick German accent and a mustache that would get in the way of the soup; then we changed the picture because it seemed too much the conventional Punch-cartoon-type of German professor; we finally decided on a tall thin man more like Sherlock Holmes, with the most exquisite manner and an Oxford accent. He would kiss my mother’s hand and look up at her at the same time, which made her say she wouldn’t shoot till she saw the whites of his eyes. I said he’d probably engage in some scientific argument and shoot somebody else, or at least demand a duel on Hampstead Heath. “Now that’s enough,” she laughed. “We’ll never dare to meet him if we keep on….” We didn’t bother to ask my father what the man was really like, and I suppose I could have found a photograph of him somewhere if I’d wanted.

It snowed a little the day of the party, just a white film over roofs and lawns; the traffic soon scoured it from the streets. There were about twenty people, and I wondered how Brad would like that, or if he cared any more. He had suggested only a very few of the names. But my mother, or else experience, had certainly done something to him socially; he was still shy, but not awkwardly so, rather now as if he didn’t care whether he were shy or not. On the whole it was a dull crowd, far too many people who were only distinguished enough to be unsure whether others knew they were distinguished at all. The man next to me had explored some buried cities in Honduras, and my other neighbor was shortsighted and thought I was Lady Muriel Spencer, whom he had been talking to over cocktails. Brad was between my mother and the real Muriel; Framm was opposite him between my mother and Baroness Regensburg, who threw a little German at him occasionally. But there was no need; he spoke good English, though with an accent; while as for his appearance, it was nowhere near either my mother’s foolery or mine; and that, perhaps, introduces him best, for he was the kind of man it would have been hard to imagine in advance. I had certainly never met anyone who so obviously looked important; you would have stared at him anywhere, if only on account of his large frame and massive, wide-browed head. In age he might have been anything between forty and sixty; the bushy hair was iron-gray, the eyes were blue and keen, the lips sensitive and also sensual. He gave an impression of physical and mental vigor that dominated without effort, and therefore without offense; and his voice had a matching quality that lured the listener from whomever else he was listening to, yet it wasn’t loud—there were times when you wondered how you had managed to hear it. I think I was not the only person at that dinner party who was fascinated, but I wished there had been something in him to catch my mother’s eye about and smile.

Looking back on that first and only time I ever met Hugo Framm it is tempting to overload the diagnosis; but I do recollect, during dinner, wondering what faults a man like that would have, and deciding they must include vanity (since he had clearly so much to be vain about), and a kind of arrogance, since the continual experience of other people’s admiration would give him either that or shyness, and he certainly wasn’t shy. Yet these were deductions, not observations; and I cannot say that at any time he was either boastful or overbearing. Whether he was talking to my mother, or to the Baroness, or to Brad, or to the whole table, there was a constant radiation of what, for want of any other word, must be called charm; and in the end it was the constancy of this that seemed to me its only possible drawback. If only one could have caught a glimpse of something beneath the charm; one knew it was there, so there was no taint of superficiality, but one was teased, after a time, by the withholding.

After dinner we sat in the drawing room in changing groups. It was not the sort of party for music, but there was a billiard room across the hall where card tables were set up. A bridge four detached themselves from the main party; they weren’t missed and I wasn’t aware of it when they returned. It must have been an unsatisfactory game. My father kept moving from group to group, the considerate host, and during one of these movements he found a chance to whisper in my ear that Brad had decided to accept Framm’s offer.

“You mean he’s only just decided? I thought it was all settled weeks ago.”

“Well, no. Apparently he wasn’t sure till they talked just now.”

“I didn’t see them talking much.”

“It was after you left the table. They had quite a private chat. Framm has to go back to Vienna tomorrow night and if Brad can make arrangements in time they’ll go together.”

“Tomorrow night?” That came as a shock.

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that quick work?”

“He won’t have much to pack—Brad, I mean. Lives in furnished rooms, doesn’t he?”

“I don’t know—I’ve never been there.”

“Well, your mother must have—or else he once told me.”

“Father, do you really think it’s the best thing he can do to go with Professor Framm?”

“Why, don’t you like Framm?”

“I think he’s very charming, but it does seem rather sudden if Brad only made up his mind tonight and he leaves tomorrow. I hope it’s the right thing.”

“It’s a great chance—if he uses it. Of course if he doesn’t use his chances, nothing at all will do him much good…. We shall miss him when he’s gone—your mother will, I know…. By the way, where is she?”

“In the billiard room, I think. There’s some bridge going on.”

But later I noticed that the bridge players were back in the drawing room, and I also couldn’t see Brad anywhere. I was sure people had begun to notice my mother’s absence and I ran upstairs to see if she were feeling ill, but there was no trace of her. I could see my father a little preoccupied behind his façade of suavity, and every now and then Hugo Framm’s voice would somehow make a silence and then quietly fill it. About eleven o’clock John served more champagne and I hoped this was not a sign that the party would continue late, for I was beginning to feel a tension in the atmosphere—or perhaps it was only in my own mind. About a quarter past eleven my mother walked into the room with flushed cheeks and clenched hands. Few actually saw her, but she seemed to look for an audience from the doorway before speaking out as if to gain one. “I hope you’ll forgive me for being terribly discourteous, but I’ve been at the radio—we’ve got one that picks up New York—it’s the only way you can get the latest about the Simpson case over here….”

It was a few days before the story broke officially in England, though the American tabloids and radio were agog with it, and London’s informed society was already gossiping. There had been talk of it at the dinner table, and nobody seemed unwilling to discuss it again. While this was going on I saw Brad enter the room behind her. He edged into the crowd and stood by the bookshelves in an alcove, listening in a detached way and not taking sides in the argument, though I knew he was pro-Simpson. So was my mother—and never more emphatically, or perhaps I should say more naïvely, than then. Others differed and there was a lively exchange of views. Suddenly, amidst the chatter, I heard Framm’s voice again and saw him towering above my mother with his large expansive smile, the charm turned on full.

“I entirely agree with you, Mrs. Waring. There is no reason at all why your King should not marry whomever he wishes. There are many precedents for such marriages. Your Queen Mary’s own grandmother was a mere Hungarian countess—Claudine Rhédey, I think her name was, who married a Duke of Württemberg who was nephew to the Emperor. And there is, of course, the well-known example of Mrs. Fitzherbert’s marriage to the Prince of Wales who later became your George IV. Two other direct descendants of George III were also married morganatically—Prince George to Louisa Fairbrother, an actress, and the Duke of Sussex to a lady called Cecilia Buggin…Buggin…which is not, I have been told, a very nice-sounding name in English….”

We all gaped at this display of erudition, and I couldn’t myself decide whether it proved how thoroughly Framm made himself master of subjects outside his own field, or that he was just a snob. Anyhow, he sounded so authoritative that nobody tackled him from the other side, if there was any other side.

The party broke up soon after that, and Brad left with the rest. I thought it was strange he didn’t stay for a more personal good-by when the others had gone, but my father said he was probably hoping to get a lift into town with Framm. “He hasn’t much time to spare if he’s to catch the evening train tomorrow. It leaves at eight.”

I said: “He might have given me the chance to wish him well.”

“I’m sure he knows you do. Anyhow, you can telephone tomorrow.”

“He’s not on the telephone. It’s another of the things he can’t afford…like taxis.”

* * * *

Rain fell during the night, but the next morning there was blue sky and sunlight. I had breakfast before anyone else, then went out for a walk on the Heath. It was more than sunshine there, it was pure radiance. I followed my usual trail, along the Spaniards’ Road to Highgate and then down the hill. I kept thinking of Brad and Framm and how odd, in several ways, the previous evening had been.

Suddenly, as I was crossing Parliament Hill Fields, I remembered my father’s remark about Brad’s furnished rooms and that my mother “must have” been there; if that were so, or even if it weren’t, the conclusion leaped at me that there was no reason against my calling on him myself. I also remembered the address from that night of the Byfleets’ party when we drove him home and he gave directions to Henry; it was 25 Renshaw Street, off the Camden Road. I found a tram that took me near by. In daylight the street seemed what it mainly was, a slum; but in London appearances can be deceptive; some of those identical houses have declined to different levels, so that they are not always either as bad or as passable as they look. The one Brad lived in had the remains of quality; it was dingy but not dirty; one could have lived in it if one had to. There was a rack of names in the hallway, and the stale smell of cabbage and floor polish that seems to pervade so many London houses whether slums or not. Brad was on the second floor; I climbed to it and tapped on his door. He called “Come in,” as if he had left it ready for someone to open.

It wasn’t such a bad room, especially in the morning sunshine. The windows were tall and there was a marble mantelpiece surmounting a small gas fire. The furniture was shabby and the whole place littered as one might expect when anyone has a day’s notice to pack for abroad. I took in the surroundings first because Brad was in some inner room; he came out fixing his tie. “Well…” he exclaimed. “This is a surprise….”

I said yes, I imagined it was, and I hoped he didn’t mind my having called on him without warning. “I was just taking a walk, it’s such a lovely day, I thought I’d drop in to say good-by properly…there wasn’t a chance last night.”

He laughed. “So many things were happening.”

I laughed also. “I see you’re packing and I know you must be terribly busy…but I did want to wish you plenty of fun and success.”

“That’s nice of you—very nice of you.”

I decided I wouldn’t stay more than ten minutes, but in the meantime I might as well sit down. When I did so he moved over to the mantelpiece, leaning his back against it and looking as if he didn’t know what to say next.

I said: “I’m glad I’ve seen where you live. These old houses do have big rooms, that’s one thing.”

“I changed from the set upstairs a few months ago. These are bigger and there’s a kitchenette. I couldn’t exactly afford the change, but I decided to spend more on luxury. I’m not such an austere devil at heart as some people imagine.”

“I wouldn’t call it luxury.”

“Well, of course, you wouldn’t.”

There was a silence then which both of us, I think, kept up deliberately till it was broken by some rather noisy plumbing in another part of the house. He laughed again. “Do you wonder I didn’t give any dinner parties here? Impossible place, isn’t it?”

“No, I don’t think so. You once said all you wanted was to do useful work. Plenty of useful work has been done in rooms like this.”

“And you think I’ve changed since I said that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the mood you’re in at the thought of leaving.”

He said suddenly: “Let’s take a walk.”

“Now? A walk? But…can you…” I looked round at the unfinished packing.

“You said it was a lovely day.”

“On the Heath, yes, but—”

“Then let’s go there.”

“Are you sure you’ve enough time?”

“Yes.”

“All right then.”

We took a bus up the Hampstead Road, and during the ride he went on talking of his rooms and their amenities so ironically that I began to see less and less point in it. Was he trying to hate the place just to help him over the wrench of departure? I hinted at that, and he answered: “Wait till we start walking and I’ll let you into a secret.”

We got out at Jack Straw’s Castle, then took to the open Heath. “Well?” I asked.

“I’m not going away.”

I had a curious instant of relief that surprised me more than he had; then I was shocked.

“You mean you’re not leaving for Vienna tonight?”

“I’m not leaving for Vienna…at all.”

I asked if that meant that the whole arrangement with Framm was canceled.

“Yes…or will be when he gets to hear of it.”

“You haven’t told him yet?”

“I called him at his hotel and they said he wasn’t to be disturbed until noon. The prima donna.”

“You don’t like him?”

“Oh yes—he’s great. A genius, if ever there was one.”

“But you were packing?”

“Yes…until I changed my mind.”

“When was that?”

“I didn’t look at the clock.”

“You just suddenly changed your mind?”

“I’d been thinking it over most of the night. I didn’t sleep.”

“Oh, Brad, I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry that I’m not going? That doesn’t sound as if I were very popular.”

“You know I don’t mean that… I’m just sorry you’ve had all this worry. You must have been worried if it kept you awake all night.”

“And you’re also sorry I’ve decided to stay here…aren’t you?”

“Brad, it’s no good asking me for an opinion till I know what made you change your mind. Maybe you have a perfectly good reason.”

“And what if I haven’t? Supposing I just don’t want to go? Dammit, I’ve a right to please myself, haven’t I?”

“Of course.”

“And to change my mind as many times as I like?”

“Of course.”

We walked some way without speaking; then I said: “You should know best. Whatever the reason is, I hope you’re right. My father will be disappointed, but that doesn’t matter.”

“It does, though. He’s been very kind to me. You’ve all been kind.” I caught the tremor in his voice and thought how foolish it would be if we both broke down and wept in the middle of Hampstead Heath for no reason that either of us would mention.

“Oh, don’t keep on saying that, Brad. My father often helps promising young men—he gets a kick out of it. I don’t mean he doesn’t genuinely like you, but I wouldn’t want you to feel so terribly grateful…he enjoys it, just as he enjoyed it while Julian was baiting you the other night.”

“Baiting me?… Julian…?”

“That argument you had—about science and civilization, all that. Julian was trying to break down something you believed in.”

“That’s what your mother seemed to think.”

“Of course a good deal of what he said may be true. It doesn’t pay to be too idealistic. You said just now you weren’t as austere as some people imagined, and that’s a good thing—you used to be too austere. But you needn’t go to the other extreme.”

“Have you any idea what you’re talking about?”

“I think I have. Only you don’t help me to understand you. Perhaps you don’t want me to.”

“It isn’t that. I’m not sure that I properly understand myself.” We walked a few hundred yards, then he took my arm (the first time he had ever done so); he said quietly: “Let’s chuck the argument. Do you mind? I told you the secret—nobody knows yet that I’m not going…till I can wake the professor. I don’t think it’ll bother him much, that’s one thing.”

“The real secret is why you changed your mind.”

“You’re a persistent child.”

“I’m not a child at all, but that would make another argument.”

“Yes, let’s not have one. Not even a small one, from now on. Change the subject—talk of something else—anything else…. It is beautiful here, as you said. I didn’t somehow expect this sort of weather. Everyone in Dakota knows about London fogs, but this bright cold air…. Look at those boys—they’re optimists—they’ve brought sleds…or sledges, isn’t it?”

“Sledges over here. Sleds in America.”

He picked up the topic with grateful artificial enthusiasm. “Lots of words like that, aren’t there? Sidewalk, pavement—but in England pavement’s called roadway. And of course subway and tube. Though that’s not quite right, because there aren’t any real tubes in New York…. But the oddest of all, I think, is thumbtack and drawing pin…. Drawing pin.… Can you beat that?”

I tried to, and we kept it up till we reached the pond at the top of Heath Street. Then, as we were so near, I felt I wanted to go home. There was nothing else I could say, and nothing at all I could do. I asked him not to see me to the house and we separated at the tube station. “Oh, Brad,” I said, as he put coins into the ticket machine, “you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want, but I hope you aren’t going to make a hash of things.”

He gave me an empty look and my arm a final squeeze, then dashed for the elevator…lift, my mind checked, just as emptily, as I walked away.

My father had left for the City, John told me; also that my mother was out shopping and would not be in to lunch. So I lunched alone, then went to the library, listened to the radio (wireless), played phonograph (gramophone) records, then got out my history notes and tried to concentrate on Stubbs’s Select Charters. It wasn’t particularly easy.

My mother came home in time for tea, and I couldn’t help thinking how beautiful she looked, with her face flushed from the cold and her hair a little wind-blown. And there was a quality in her eyes, too elusive to describe, but “trancelike” occurred to me even though I had never seen anyone in a trance; a sort of serene observance which, if there is any difference between the words, must be a less active and more ritual thing than observation. She pulled off her gloves with long slow movements, gossiping meanwhile about her shopping and the special shortcakes she had been able to get at Fortnum and Mason’s, and the trouble Henry had had to avoid skidding on the slippery roads. “It wasn’t really a day for driving—more for taking a walk.”

That was my cue, if I had wanted one, to tell her about my own walk on the Heath with Brad and his change of mind about Vienna. But I wondered also if she had deliberately given me the cue, and that made me decide to say nothing. I just watched her, as she poured tea, and thought how close you can be to someone you love, so close that you dare not go closer lest you break that final shell of separateness that is your own as well as the other’s precious possession. Dusk came into the room; she went over to the fire to poke it into a blaze, and as she did so, carrying the poker and chattering all the time, she looked like a gay sleepwalker, if there ever has been such a person.

Presently she asked me what I thought of Framm.

I said: “He wasn’t a bit funny, as we thought, was he?”

“Darling, nobody is ever funny like that.”

“Did Brad listen to the radio with you?”

“Brad? Why?”

“I saw him come in from the hall just after you.”

“Perhaps he was in the billiard room.” She began to laugh. “I’ll ask him if you like.”

Ask him? I saw the flush on her face deepen as she caught my eye. She added: “I mean—when I see him—or write to him. Or don’t you think I’ll ever see him again?”

I said: “It was all settled he should leave London this evening.”

“I know, but things sometimes happen at the last minute. A most absurd rush, if you ask me. Why couldn’t he have more time? And so close to Christmas…. Maybe he just won’t go—I wouldn’t blame him.”

“Framm’s leaving tonight too, so it seemed a good idea for them to go together.”

“It seemed, it seemed. All so impersonal. People are human…or don’t scientists think so?” She lit a cigarette and offered me her case. Her hand was trembling. “Your father would worry about that.”

“You mean your hand trembling?”

“Darling, we really are in two different worlds today. I was cold in the car, I’m still a bit shivery…. No, I meant he’d say I oughtn’t to encourage you to smoke.”

“He lets me have drinks at parties.”

“But you don’t drink much, I’ve noticed. I’m very glad.”

“I don’t smoke much either.”

“I know. You don’t do anything to excess. And you’re truthful and decent and growing up charmingly. Really, I’m very happy about you, Jane.”

“I don’t always tell all the truth.”

“Who does?”

“I’d like to be able to, though.”

“One of these days you’ll fall in love, then we’ll see.”

“See what?”

“Whether you do that to excess…and also if you tell all the truth about it.”

“I wouldn’t want to fall half in love.”

“Wouldn’t you? It’s pleasanter sometimes.”

“Not if you’re in love with someone who’s in love with you.”

“Oh, don’t be too sure. That doesn’t always make it plain sailing. Or plain telling, either.”

John came in with the week-old New York Times that had just arrived. It reminded me to ask if there were any definite plans for her return to America with my father.

“We’ll spend Christmas here anyway. After that I don’t know. New York’s impossible in January and February, it simply means going straight to Florida. Harvey likes Florida, of course.” Calling my father Harvey was a sure sign she was thinking of something else.

She went on: “Oh Jane, darling, don’t bother me for plans. How can one make them so far ahead? Things are all going to pieces, anyhow…in Europe…everywhere…. They’re building up for another war.”

I said, deliberately: “I wonder how that would affect Brad in Vienna.”

“He’s an American, he’d be neutral. Of course I know that wouldn’t stop him from getting into trouble. You might not think it from the shy manner he has, but he’s very impulsive.”

“I know that.”

“Such a one-idea’d creature. All or nothing. No compromise…and sometimes so impractical.”

“I know that too.”

“But a very delightful person.” The cat had followed John into the room and was now curling about our legs. “To give somebody a cat, for instance. I’ll never forget John’s face when Brad brought it that afternoon. It broke the ice, though. After that we got to be friends quite fast.”

“The cat and you?”

“No, darling. Are you still in that other world of yours? The cat and I were friends instantly. Some men take a little longer.”

“I was in Ireland.”

“So you were…. I saw quite a lot of him while you were away.… More than when you came back…. I don’t know why. It’s a pity he’s so poor…poor and proud…it’s a frightening combination.…” The cat purred loudly into the silence that followed. Then John re-entered and some kind of spell was broken. “Mr. Waring just telephoned to say he wouldn’t be in to dinner, madame, and he might be late, so please not to wait up for him.”

“I certainly shan’t—in fact I’ll have a snack in my room and go to bed early. I need some rest after last night…. What about you, Jane?”

“I’ll be all right. I’ve got work to do, or else I’ll find someone to go to a movie with.”

“You’re not thinking of going to the station to see Brad off?”

“No, of course not—he wouldn’t want me.”

“It isn’t exactly that, but…” She didn’t know how to finish the sentence, and then I sensed, almost with certainty, that she knew of Brad’s change of plan, or at any rate suspected it; and that out of simple affection for me she didn’t want me to hang about Victoria Station in the cold, looking for someone who wouldn’t turn up. At least I think that was her motive. As I said, you get so close, but the very closeness brings you up against the barrier.

* * * *

The mail always came to the house early; John used to sort it and bring it to the bedrooms. There was a letter for me the next morning with a London postmark and addressed in a writing I didn’t recognize, yet as I tore it open the thought came to me, clairvoyantly if you like, that I had never seen Brad’s writing before.

It said: “My dear Jane—” (and he had never called me that before, either—in fact I don’t think he had ever called me anything after the first few Miss Warings at the beginning)—“Thank you for coming to see me, and the walk and talk on the Heath. I’m just leaving for the boat train at Victoria to join Hugo Framm—we shall be in Vienna the day after tomorrow. After all, I’ve a right to change my mind as often as I like, and he needn’t know how narrowly I missed the chance of working with him. When I say work, by the way, that’s just what I mean, work. So don’t expect me to write too often, but there’s a warm welcome if ever you come to Vienna, as perhaps you might some day—who knows?—In great haste—Brad.”

I took the letter downstairs but didn’t mention it; not that they would have dreamed of asking to see it, but it might have seemed peculiar if I hadn’t offered to let them.

We never talked much at breakfast; my father would read the papers and sometimes make comments on the news; if he didn’t, or if we had nothing much to say in reply, nobody thought anybody else was surly.

However, this morning he folded the paper at last and put it by his plate with a gesture I knew meant he was going to read something from it; first of all, though, he spread marmalade on a piece of toast and crunched off a big corner. “Well, well,” he said, still crunching, “our friend will be halfway across France by now….”

I looked at my mother.

He went on: “It says here ‘Professor Hugo Framm left for the Continent last night accompanied by his young protégé, Dr. Mark Bradley, who will spend some time in the professor’s Viennese laboratories.…’ ”

My mother put her hand to her face for a moment and when she took it away she had on that glassy smile, as if she were about to say hello to a maharajah.

“I shouldn’t have thought it was important enough to put in the paper,” she said.

“It wouldn’t have been,” replied my father, “but for Framm’s instinct for publicity. This is how it goes on… ‘Asked what would be the subject of their work together, Professor Framm replied: “I don’t know yet, but Dr. Bradley is an excellent chess player, so I shall certainly put him on to something difficult” ’—Newspapers go for things like that. Incidentally, I didn’t know he was a chess player.”

I said: “Neither did I.”

“Nor I,” said my mother.

Then she rang the bell for more coffee.

* * * *

I have tried to tell all this as it looked to me then; which is perhaps the best way when nothing happened afterwards to make completely certain any of the things that were conjectural at the time. Of course, as I grew older, I balanced the probabilities more maturely; for instance, it seems to me now far less unthinkable that my mother was capable of a love affair. When you are young you tend to feel that things like that can only happen in newspaper cases, and that your own family has some special exemption from frailty; then as you live on, you learn, and what you principally learn is a frailty in yourself that makes you include others for sheer companionship. I know now, looking back on it all, that it was the first major “situation” in which I felt myself involved, and that I was so anxious not to blunder that I tiptoed all around it, deliciously thrilled as well as troubled, whereas nowadays I would probably cut in with a few straight questions to somebody.

And yet I am rather sure that the affair, in any downright sense, never came to anything. Perhaps only because Brad left in time. I think they were both in love, but after the first shyness he may have been more breakneck about it than she, partly from inexperience, but chiefly because my mother had a very realistic valuation of what life could offer; she loved comforts and gaiety and society; I don’t believe she would ever have been happy with a poor man in spite of what she said.

I think it possible that after Brad had met Framm at the party and had definitely decided to go to Vienna, she saw him alone and persuaded him against going; that he then asked for some rash showdown, perhaps even suggested her running away with him. Of course she wouldn’t consent to that; what she really wanted was for things to go on as they had been, agreeably and perhaps dangerously, with Brad taking her about everywhere and my father an appeased if not entirely deceived spectator. It wouldn’t have been heroic, but it was the sort of thing my mother could have carried off with virtuosity, if only Brad had been willing. I would guess that he was not. Yet after the argument between them she probably thought he would change his mind (as he actually did, before he changed it back again), and this gave her that trancelike happiness the next day, that confidence that somehow or other she could always hold him where she wanted and on her own terms. I know she was dumbfounded when he left, and for a time quite shattered.

Had I been a little responsible for his second change of plan? Perhaps. I have often thought that the walk and the talk we had on the Heath may have just tipped the scale.

Neither of them ever discussed it with me afterwards, but three years ago, when my mother was dying from the effects of a motor smash in Texas, my father said something under stress of great emotion. It seemed she had been driving too fast, alone and at night, and the police sergeant who had reached the scene of the accident met us at the airport and told us she had given as an excuse that she was hurrying for a doctor to attend her son who was ill. Of course she may have been half out of her mind when she said this, but I also think it possible that she didn’t know how badly she was hurt and was just trying to talk herself out of a traffic summons. It would have been like her.

As we left the hospital when it was all over, my father mumbled: “It was like that with the radio that time. Did you ever try to get America on the set we had in London?… You couldn’t.” I didn’t tell him I had known that all along.

* * * *