It May Never Happen Page 8

  A Miss Croft I had never seen in my life before because I had never seen her outside the office. As surprised as I was, she blushed like a country rose, she smiled, she beckoned to me. Her awkwardness had gone, mine went too. Our eyes, our tongues were excited. I sat down at her table.

  “Don’t have the fish. It’s awful,” she said. “Dry.”

  “I won’t have the poached egg, either,” I said.

  These two sentences seemed brilliant to us. A beautiful waitress, much more beautiful than Miss Croft, came up and looked at us sulkily. And the sneer on the waitress’s face made us feel we were even more brilliant. We were escaped prisoners.

  The new thing about Miss Croft was that she had put her hair up. Before it had hung, tied in a schoolgirlish black bow, on her shoulders Now her head was lighter, like a flower which had long been sheathed by its leaves; and her body was lighter too. She parted her lips when she spoke instead of mumbling; the sisterly, sermonizing line had gone from her brows and she looked arch when she caught me looking at the two small hills in her white blouse and even leaned forward to tempt and confuse me more. For my part, I made one or two brilliant remarks about the people in the restaurant, remarks which made her say, “Oh, you are!”

  “I’m coming to sit on your side of the table,” I said, very encouraged, for I had the insane idea of putting my arm round her waist; but a waitress dropped a tray and I think Miss Croft did not hear me, for she began to talk very quickly about the only subject that really interested us: our daily bread, the air we breathed, the latest instalment of the inner story of Belton and Phillimore.

  “Where did you take those chairs this morning?” she asked me. I parried this. I was not sure whether I was supposed to say.

  “To Naseley, wasn’t it?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Phillimore has gone to Somerset,” she said, “to get money. Dadda says there’s something going on.” I ought to have said that when she wanted to give authority to anything she said she always quoted her father. She called him Dadda.

  “Dadda says ‘You wait—there’s another man.’” She said this in the voice a woman uses when she says “There is another woman.”

  “I don’t believe it,” I said, not because I did not believe it, but because I did not like the idea of Miss Croft having a father.

  “Mr. Belton and Mr. Naseley are on the ’phone to each other every day. When he says he’s going out to a customer, he’s going to see this Naseley. He knows I know. I can read faces.”

  She said this not in the moralizing, maternal way she had had a year before, but with a new feminine recklessness. She was tasting the new feminine delight in saying anything that came into her head; and as she said this she leaned forward, touching the back of her hair and looking over the faces of the people in the restaurant, so that she could give me another chance of looking at her throat and her neck and have the pleasure of catching me do so.

  “I can,” she said, catching me. I coloured. And then she went on to soothe the wound:

  “Why are you so vain?” she said. Then quickly changed to: “I said to Mr. Phillimore, when he left to catch the train, ‘I can read faces, Mr. Phillimore’. He looked at me. You should have seen the look he gave. Really I’m sorry for that man. He said to me, ‘Can you’. Just that, nothing more,” she said, her small eyes brightening. She closed her handbag and said firmly:

  “Dadda says Naseley and Belton will buy him out if he doesn’t get that money from his mother.” And she got up to go.

  Two days later Phillimore returned from Somerset. It was clear, after he came out of my uncle’s office, that there was a change in him. He had always been anxious to chatter with me, but for a while he said nothing to me. He nodded, stared, paused: there was that hissing intake of breath and then he said nothing. I became familiar.

  “Coming out to lunch,” I called to him forgetting to call him “sir”. He looked at me coldly.

  “No, Vincent,” he said, “go to your beautiful waitress alone.” And the next day

  “Not to-day, Vernon,” he said, “but beware of the auburn glory at the Dyers and Cleaners.”

  And his Adam’s apple came up offensively over the top of his collar.

  He said these things before Miss Croft, who laughed at me. “Vincent is so susceptible,” she said. She looked with yearning at Mr. Phillimore. Always Mr. Phillimore had made the advances to everyone; now when Miss Croft seemed to be lifting herself on a dish towards him, he was taken aback. He hesitated, open-mouthed. He looked around him, like a man surrounded by plots and enemies and worked his way back to the door.

  And now Miss Croft talked of nothing but Mr. Phillimore. She would not leave till he left in the evening. She followed him to the end of the street. She watched his moods. She set her own by them. If he came into the room and went out without speaking—she refused to speak to me or to answer my uncle. If he spoke she would flirt with me, saying:

  “He’s so serious, Mr. Phillimore. What shall we do with him?”

  “Ah, youth!” began Mr. Phillimore. Then he changed his mind and said in a savage way, “I’d know what I’d do with him if I were you, Miss Croft. Look into his eyes.”

  “Oh, don’t, you’ll make him shy.”

  “Innocent!” said Mr. Phillimore. “Innocent eyes! How can you allow him to be innocent?”

  Miss Croft blushed and turned indignantly away; but the indignation was for me. Both Phillimore and I gazed at her waist as she turned her back to us.

  “Go away both of you,” said Miss Croft stamping her foot. We both, to her annoyance, looked with astonishment at her foot and went away.

  “The Croft,” said Phillimore, bitterly to me. “Do you fancy the embraces of the Croft?” In his most withering way “All the indiscriminate vitality of a girl’s secondary school going to waste,” he said. “One almost has a duty … No, Vernon … With your energy, Vernon …”

  It struck me that Mr. Phillimore was a man to avoid. He felt himself betrayed and looked as though, now, blindly, he would betray us all. One morning he arrived at the office a little late. His hat was on the back of his head and he had a spectacle-case in his hand. It had a spring in the lid which made it go “Pop” when he closed it.

  “Pop” said Mr. Phillimore, snapping the spectacle-case at me.

  “Pop,” he said again pointing it at Miss Croft. And then he put it to his forehead and said “Pop. Brains everywhere. ‘The balance of his mind was disturbed.’”

  He smelled of peppermint. I followed him out of the room. He had an attaché case in his hand. He half opened it; it was full of papers.

  “Shall I just empty the lot on the top of the head of the chaste Miss Croft? Wager me I won’t. Go on—wager me.”

  I was alarmed, but luckily Uncle was not there. We could hear his voice in the workshop. It really was remarkable that my Uncle Belton had no idea of what was going on.

  “All right,” I said.

  Gloomily Phillimore picked up the attaché case, held it upside down with a finger on the lid and went back into Miss Croft’s room.

  “Good-bye, Mother” were the strange words which Mr. Phillimore was muttering as he went in. Then he came out with the case still in his hands. “Vernon, the bird—if that is the word—has flown.”

  Poor Miss Croft had gone to cry in the lavatory.

  Phillimore sat down for a little while nodding his head, and slowly his vacant face settled into a terrifying scowl. He went out to the workroom and at last Miss Croft came out. Her little eyes seemed to be full of pins and were pink-lidded with crying.

  “He’s drinking. Mr. Belton knew he would start drinking if he went down to see his mother. He knew it. Where is he? Oh I’m frightened. Don’t let him come near me.”

  I left her biting her lips. I put my arm round her, but she pushed me away.

  “Dadda will make me give my notice when I tell him,” she was sobbing. “He won’t have me insulted.”

  “I didn’t insult
you,” I said.

  “Don’t be a fool,” said Miss Croft.

  In the workshop when I went there I heard the sound of snoring. The packer was nailing up a case, hitting the nails as loudly as he could and giving a huge wink and a nod to the other men. They were nodding at Mr. Phillimore fast asleep on the heap of capok. It was clinging to his trousers like burrs.

  “He’s been boozed up since four o’clock yes’day,” said the foreman. He winked. “He’s a case.”

  Mr. Phillimore left the office when he woke up and went away with the foreman who beckoned to two of his mates to come with them. Miss Croft and I stood on the step watching Mr. Phillimore’s hat, tipped back, wagging in a slowly advancing group of caps. Sometimes he stopped to put a hand on the foreman’s shoulder and make a speech to him. A roar of laughter ended the speech and a man on the outside of the group swivelled round with his hands in his pockets and made a flying kick at a stone. We saw no more of Mr. Phillimore for a week. The people at the boarding-house where he lived telephoned to say he had influenza.

  In the early days of their marriage my Uncle Belton would have called a taxi and raced to Mr. Phillimore’s bedside; but now, bemused by the advance of his infidelities with Mr. Naseley he did nothing. But he did make a speech to me in the train, for the motion of a train and its isolation from the world, encouraged moral reflection in my uncle.

  “The important thing in life,” Uncle Belton said to me, getting out a toothpick, “is to do the right thing. The Devil is always on the look out for our weaknesses. Two and two make four, you can’t argue with the law of progress. Phillimore can’t argue with it any more than I can or you can, Vincent. I am disappointed in Mr. Phillimore. I said to him, multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision, the servant who buried his talents was made to give to the others. Thou base and foolish servant. I don’t want to influence nobody. I’m just putting the case as God sees it; and when Mr. Naseley said something the other day about the partners in his firm, two brothers who don’t get on—pretty dreadful that, isn’t it, two brothers—I said ‘God is my partner’. Naseley said to me, ‘By God, Belton, you’re right’. I said ‘I’m not right. God is right. He will guide us.’ By the way I shouldn’t mention Mr. Naseley’s name at the office …”

  After a week Mr. Phillimore came back. He was wearing a new suit. He had a flower in his button-hole. He whistled quietly to himself. Phillimore had improved his appearance by clipping his moustache. I do not know what passed between himself and my uncle except that I heard my uncle say, “Pull yourself together, Phillimore.”

  Phillimore’s manner to me was an indication: “How’s the Queen of Clapham, Vernon?” he said. “Dusting and tidying the eternal mantelpiece of her virginity?” Then he put his fingers under my chin and tipped it up. “What a bitch she must be, my poor boy,” he said and walked away.

  Miss Croft kept the door of her room open, hoping to catch sight of him. He came in at last. She was wearing a new, pale blue frock and when she walked she made sudden half turns so that we saw the silk swimming over the full line of her leg, and she frowned when she looked back. Phillimore stopped in the doorway and clicked his tongue loudly.

  “Woman,” he said, giving me a nudge. He looked very vulgar. She put on a puzzled expression which asked Mr. Phillimore to explain. He just rolled his eyes. It was more than vulgar. She sat down quickly and began to type.

  “I’m busy,” she said. “Haven’t you anything better to look at?”

  “N’no. N’no,” said Phillimore, advancing a step and leering.

  “You are being rude, Mr. Phillimore,” she said. He was punctured. His boldness went. He tried to explain. She became angrier. He went.

  “Sometimes,” sighed Miss Croft, “I’m frightened of what that man will do.” And added: “It’s a new dress. Dadda says blue is my colour.”

  Phillimore said to me: “What have I done? What have you done, Vernon? Why is it that you and I are unspeakable in the eyes of that virgin? Because we must, a little while longer, presume she is one. We are innocent. We are children, Vernon. She plays with us. I beg of you, Vernon,” he said, seizing me by the shoulders and looking into my eyes: his own eyes were wild as though a pack of wolves were racing out of them towards me. “I beg of you for the sake of the peace of this office, save us from that torture.”

  I laughed. I laughed and stepped away because I thought he was going to cry and to kiss me: no, chiefly because I thought by all this acting he was laughing at me.

  The hours went slowly. I did the stock books, the invoice books; then in the late afternoon I had to go and help Uncle and Phillimore in the workroom. Phillimore left us. Uncle had taken it into his head to investigate a collection of chair-springs. He hated being helped, but if you were there he obliged you to stand there and watch. I had to wait a long time before I could get step by step away from him, but at last I managed it and got back to his office. The workmen had gone and I sat reading a trade paper. Phillimore was in Miss Croft’s office, sitting in his hat and coat. He too was waiting for my uncle. Miss Croft was not there. She was washing her hands and I saw her, through the open door, pass across the the room and go to get her hat and coat. It was very quiet now the lathes had stopped and the evening cries of children in the street could be heard now the traffic had gone.

  Suddenly I heard Mr. Phillimore’s voice. It was bold and decisive, the voice he had been training for use on our telephone.

  “Duckie,” I heard him say. “Don’t be cross.” No answer.

  “I say don’t be cross.”

  “I’m not cross.”

  “You look it.”

  Miss Croft was picking up her things.

  “I must fly,” she said.

  “Fly, fly,” he said. “My wings are broken. The wings of youth are strong.”

  “Don’t,” said Miss Croft.

  “Take me in your strong wings,” said Mr. Phillimore.

  “Oh, don’t,” said Miss Croft.

  Phillimore had got up and they were now both out of my sight.

  “On your strong wings …” he was saying.

  “I must catch my train,” she said.

  “I am wrecked. My life is ruined …”

  “I’ll miss it if I don’t dash,” she said.

  “Dash,” he muttered very loudly. “Yes, dash. Don’t you understand, I love you!” The sounds suggested that Mr. Phillimore had jumped across the room, or was about to do so. A chair fell over. “You say, dash,” I heard him say.

  And then a screech came from Miss Croft. I ran into the room. There was Mr. Phillimore with one foot standing on his hat, holding Miss Croft in his arms and trying to kiss her, and she was pushing away from him not with anger, but with an unnecessarily helpless, sulky expression.

  “I’ll miss my train,” she was saying breathlessly. And then her face settled, she looked him in the eyes, stiffened, opened her mouth in a manner that I thought was inviting, but instead of a kiss, a high, pure, perfectly calculated and piercing scream came out of her. It was a marvel. By the fight in her little eyes I would have said it was a challenge. She waited to see what Mr. Phillimore would do. My uncle came running up the passage and arrived with a plonk like a bouncing ball in the room.

  Phillimore loosened his grip and the girl wriggled away. At the sight of my uncle she broke into tears.

  “I …” gasped Phillimore. “I—I—was—saying—goodbye—to Miss Croft.”

  “Phillimore,” said my uncle.

  “Good-bye,” said Phillimore to me. He did not look at my uncle. “Dash,” he said.

  And before we knew more about it, he had dashed. He dashed from the room and Uncle’s new horn-rimmed glasses fell off.

  “Oh—he’s gone,” said Miss Croft, looking at the empty doorway. We all looked at it. But in a second he was back, a scornful face printed with derision which did not look at Miss Croft or myself but stared at Uncle Belton.

  “I forgot to tell you I’m joining Salters,” he said ironic
ally. And then his self-control went: “That’s what you’ve all done to me.” This time he went for good. Uncle Belton and Miss Croft stepped towards each other instinctively.

  “Oh, Mr. Belton, did you hear?” she said. “How awful.”

  “Mr. Belton,” she said, “the deceit.” She put her hand on my uncle’s coat-sleeve; but he was simply staring. He always stood square shouldered and now his shoulders seemed to spread wider. He was very pale, as pale as a loaf of bread. He still did not speak, but slowly sat down in a chair.

  “The double-crossing swine,” he said.

  It was quite simple, my Uncle Belton explained to me. When he had seen that Mr. Phillimore was not going to keep his promise and bring in more capital, he had had to look elsewhere. It was hard to credit, but Mr. Phillimore thought he had been badly treated—said “I wasn’t open with him”—and all the time he was seeing Salter! “But there is a law of justice in the world,” Uncle said with a smile. “Salter is on the point of bankruptcy.”

  There were no more flowers on the desk now until Miss Croft started bringing them. She devoted herself to my uncle and every day came out with little pieces of news about the wickedness of Mr. Phillimore. I saw him once, it must have been eighteen months later. He was standing on London Bridge looking up at a high building where a man was cleaning windows.

  “I should die,” I heard him say to someone in the crowd. Then he saw me. He bared his teeth as if he were going to spit, but changed his mind. His look suggested that I was the most ridiculous thing on earth, as he turned away.

  POCOCK PASSES

  The cities fall, but what survives? It is the common, patient, indigenous grass. After Mr. Pocock’s death this thought lay in a muddle in Rogers’s mind; if Rogers had a mind. He was enormously fat; a jellyfish which is washed and rocked by sensations and not by thought. The Wilcoxes, the Stockses and Rogerses, the three ordinary, far-back tribes who made the village, alone had history; and this plain corporate history, like the eternal grass, choked out the singular blooms. The death of a Rogers is something. A card is shuffled into another pack and he joins the great phalanx of village Rogerses beyond the grave, formidable in their anonymity. But the death of a stranger like Pocock, who had been in the place only a few months, was like a motor smash. Vivid but trivial, it sank out of village memory to the bottom of time.