‘I wish they would pull those blasted curtains. There’s draught enough to blow everyone out of the window. Why aren’t you doing your duty dancing?’

  ‘Why aren’t you? What’s wrong this evening? You’re biting everybody’s head off.’

  ‘Liver, I suppose.’

  ‘Sure it isn’t overwork on T. T. Waring?’

  ‘That’s the one bright spot.’

  At that moment an orderly came up and said:

  ‘Can I speak to you for a moment, sir?’

  Hudson went off with him. I explored the refreshments. It was soon after this that Lipfield’s party arrived.

  There were eight of them. First of all Lipfield and Mrs. Lipfield, a big woman with a lot of yellow metallic hair; then a couple I did not know, clearly a husband and wife, who looked like business friends of Lipfield; after them came a girl who might have been their daughter, with a man whose face was familiar, whom I recognised later as Pemberthy, the supposed Sudan district-commissioner who had been at the séance where I had first met Hudson. But it was none of these that was the big surprise. The last pair to come into the room stole the act. They were Hugh Judkins and Roberta Payne.

  There was no reason why they should not be there. It was natural for Lipfield to take a party; Hugh was a friend of Lipfield; Roberta was an acquaintance of Hugh; she was the sort of girl any man might be glad to bring to a dance if she would come. But a Territorial drill-hall was the last place in the world I expected to meet either of them.

  I went over to talk to Hugh. I thought he would be equally surprised to see me. Instead of this his first words were:

  ‘I don’t think anyone has brought a more beautiful partner than myself.’

  ‘Roberta?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hugh, giggling. ‘Not Mrs. Lipfield.’

  He had never shown form like this before. Roberta certainly looked lovely. She kept on glancing round the room as if she were looking for somebody. There could be no doubt now about there being something on between herself and Hugh. He had a hold over her or he would never have been able to persuade her to come with him to such an entertainment. I knew her well enough for that. Unless her real life, her mysterious secret background, was set in functions of this sort. The fact that Judkins & Judkins were publishing her collected articles had no doubt something to do with her presence at the Territorial headquarters.

  ‘Been among the spooks lately?’ said Pemberthy. ‘I hear from Judkins that Mimi guessed right the night you came.’

  ‘About T. T. Waring, you mean?’

  ‘That’s the chap. Anyway, she made me get hold of some of his books by her squeakings. I’m grateful for that. I enjoyed them, I can tell you.’

  Then I heard someone at my elbow say:

  ‘Well, I’m damned!’

  It was Hudson. He had come back and was standing beside me. I looked round at him. He was staring at Roberta. And then all at once the explanation of why Roberta had seemed to search round the room when she arrived was made clear. She wanted to see Hudson because he was in love with her. That was why she had allowed Hugh to bring her to the dance. Roberta saw Hudson gaping at her and waved. He went across and took her hand.

  ‘What about a dance?’ he said.

  Roberta did not answer. She put her arm through his. They went off together.

  ‘I thought you—’ said Hugh.

  She did not hear him. He was left grinning irritably at the place where she had been standing. Lipfield, whose appearance in mess-kit fully justified Hudson’s promise of a spectacle worth any hardship, took my arm.

  ‘I don’t think you know my wife,’ he said. ‘You mustn’t ask her about our sittings. She isn’t interested. When I attend them she goes to the cinema.’

  As it happened, one of the Territorials introduced me to his sister, who (though differently dressed) was strongly reminiscent of Picasso’s Femme à la chemise. The advantages of spending the rest of the evening in her company were evident. It is unnecessary to labour the point. Winefred had said that she did not want to dance any more because she had a headache. Beryl was getting on well with the Colonel. Anyway, she was Hudson’s responsibility. The thought that Hudson had fallen for Roberta went out of my head as soon as it had come into it.

  Whenever I saw Hudson, whose bright-blue lapels and cuffs made him conspicuous against the white facings of the Territorial uniforms, he was dancing with Roberta. Hugh, never an expert at steering, continually collided with other couples while he partnered Mrs. Lipfield. I saw this without attaching any special significance to it. Only the day after parties events take shape in relation to each other. At the time they do not register. Mrs. Pimley was looking glum; but this was not unusual in a chaperon, especially one with a daughter like Winefred. I danced once with Roberta, who explained that she herself had asked Hugh to bring her because she had never before been anywhere of the sort. It was not until much later in the evening, when the time to go home was approaching, that unusual things began to happen.

  There was a sort of yard, too small to be called a parade-ground, outside the headquarters, where some of the cars were parked round a captured German gun. It was a warm night. I was sitting out with the Femme à la chemise, or rather walking back to the drill-hall after a breath of fresh air. From the opposite direction Hudson came quickly, nearly running into us.

  ‘Oh, good-night,’ he said. ‘I’ve just been saying goodbye to the Pimleys. I think they want to go home now. They are looking for you.’

  ‘All right, good-night.’

  He did not say any more and went off towards his car. Then he must have remembered that he had not answered and shouted:

  ‘Good-night.’

  We went through the door of the building into a dimly-lighted stone-paved hall. A woman was standing here trying to put on a coat. She had somehow twisted the sleeve, so that she could not get her arm into it.

  ‘Hell!’ she said, as we came towards her.

  It was Roberta. I helped her into the garment.

  ‘Just the person I wanted to see,’ she said. ‘Will you be an angel and tell Hugh I suddenly felt dog-tired and had a chance of a lift to my door-step? I knew it was out of Hugh’s way to bring me home, so I’m taking it. Thank him a million times for the party. Or two million. I can afford it. I adored everything. Say I know it is terribly rude of me to leave like this without saying good-bye, but the people were already in the car and I had to take the chance at once.’

  She ran down the steps and waved her hand. A minute later there sounded the peculiar roar Hudson’s car made when he started the engine. The little Picasso looked after Roberta as if she had never before seen anything like her.

  Further inside we found the Pimleys, dressed and ready to set out for home. Mrs. Pimley was fussed.

  ‘Wherever have you been?’ she said. ‘We thought we should have to go home without you.’

  This was evidently not the chief cause of her worry, because she went on:

  ‘Tiger has already said good-night. I don’t think he was feeling very well this evening anyway. I’m sure he overworks.’

  ‘I’ll be with you in a second. I’ve got to give a message to Hugh Judkins.’

  ‘Please be quick,’ she said.

  I found Hugh at the bar. He was engaged in a violent argument with Pemberthy about the moral aspects of psychometry. Lipfield was close by, keeping the ring. Both Hugh and Pemberthy were quite angry by this time.

  ‘Roberta had the offer of a lift to her door. She had to decide quickly as the car was ready to go. She took it, and asked me to thank you two million times for bringing her, and to present her apologies for not being able to say goodbye.’

  ‘What?’ said Hugh. ‘Do you mean to say she has gone?’

  ‘She said she was frightfully sorry not to see you before she went. As it was out of your way to take her home she thought it best to take the chance.’

  ‘But—’

  Hugh was angry.

  ‘And then take the Witch of Endor,’ said Pemberthy. ‘What have you got to say about her?’

  ‘It was really very silly of her,’ said Hugh. ‘I should like to have seen her home.’

  He turned to grapple verbally with Pemberthy. I said good-night to them all and returned to the Pimleys. They had left the building. I found them already sitting in the car. Beryl had a handkerchief rolled up in her hand. She dabbed her nose from time to time and stared out of the window. Winefred, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the fact that she had only danced about three times, was holding up well.

  ‘I hope you enjoyed yourself,’ she said.

  ‘Very much, thank you.’

  The chauffeur lost his way once or twice among the road-junctions and tram-lines. The night was now sultry. Mrs. Pimley was despondent. She did not speak much except to say once:

  ‘Tiger should take a tonic.’

  Beryl sniffed for a time. Then she seemed to recover herself. No doubt she and Hudson had had differences before and she had decided that his attentions to Roberta were not to be taken too seriously. Winefred went to sleep.

  We crossed back over the river. I was glad that the drive was at an end, and asked to be put down on the far side of the bridge. After thanking them for the party I took a taxi the rest of the way home.

  Hugh had various interviews the following day. There was an American publisher who stayed two hours and a quarter. Later, Mrs. Gulliver-Lawson came in to inspect the revised proofs of her illustrations and took up a great deal of everyone’s time. She was followed by two literary agents and a paper-maker. In fact, it was only after the week-end that there was an opportunity to take the accumulated manuscripts into Hugh’s room. When I did so he was standing with his hands in his pockets, looking out of the window at the Square garden.

  ‘Are any of those any use?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Send them back, then.’

  His manner had changed. All the high spirits shown during the previous weeks had gone. He seemed in the deepest dejection. It was rare for him not to want to glance through even the most unpromising collection of manuscripts.

  ‘I get very sick of these damned manuscripts,’ he said. ‘Really, I sometimes wonder whether I won’t go back to schoolmastering.’

  This was a funny way to talk. Hugh had never said anything like that before, ever since I had known him. All his references to his earlier profession had been distinctly disparaging. He may not have wanted to become a publisher in the first place, but once he had taken it up the profession had appeared to absorb all his interests. Something must be wrong.

  ‘After all, one was being some use doing that,’ he said. ‘At least I suppose one was. Do you ever think of the futility of all these books?’

  ‘If I did it would keep me awake at night.’

  ‘At least one was teaching someone something.’

  ‘It was only a form of abetting the writing of more books.’

  ‘The holidays were good.’

  ‘Why don’t you take a holiday now?’

  ‘I can’t leave till August.’

  ‘Are you still thinking of going on that Scandinavian cruise?’

  Hugh shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘That might be enjoyable,’ he said, ‘if one had just the right person to go with. I don’t know that I should like it much alone.’

  ‘Why not find someone to go with?’

  Hugh looked suspicious.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he said.

  It had not occurred to me that what I had said could be supposed to carry any peculiar meaning.

  ‘There must be lots of people you know who want to go away in August. Why not ask one of them to go with you? That’s all.’

  Hugh thought for a moment.

  ‘I believe you’re right,’ he said.

  ‘Besides, Scandinavia is all the go now.’

  ‘I suppose it is.’ His face brightened a little.

  ‘How did you enjoy the Territorial dance?’

  This plunged him back into his earlier state of gloom. He said:

  ‘I can’t think why I went. I never liked that sort of thing. Now I am too old. Besides, Lipfield and his friends are such fearfully irksome people.’

  ‘How did your argument with Pemberthy end?’

  ‘It wasn’t an argument. I was telling him certain established facts. Unfortunately he was too thick-headed to take them in. He has a typical bureaucrat’s outlook on life.’

  ‘It was funny our all meeting there.’

  ‘Very funny,’ said Hugh.

  He began to glare out of the window again. Rain was falling gently. It looked as if he wanted to be left alone.

  ‘There is nothing special for me to read?’

  ‘No.’

  When I returned to my room I found a letter from Hudson lying on the table. It asked me to come round and see him after dinner that evening; and not to bother to answer if I could not do so. The note had been propped up by the new office-boy on the third volume of Stendhal’s Journal. I found my place and read a page or two of this work. In these tortuous emotions there might be consolation for Hugh. It would be worth suggesting that he should read or re-read the diaries. Hugh sometimes gave the impression that there were imponderable forces bottled up inside him. I remembered the words of the young man who had been my predecessor as a Judkins & Judkins reader and who was now working in documentary films. I had met him at a party given by some rich Left Wing people in Hampstead, to which I had accidentally allowed myself to be taken.

  ‘Mark my words,’ he had said, ‘we shall see Hugh Judkins’s face under the peak of a Salvation Army cap before we’ve finished. Or else he’ll be tramping Piccadilly holding a banner stating that the Day of Judgment is at hand.’

  Hudson’s discovery that T. T. Waring had lifted material for his own purposes from an earlier book on Ceylon did not unduly surprise or shock me. No one who has had to ‘get up’ some particular subject, and to do this has read all the available books dealing with it, can have failed to notice that a good deal of plagiarism takes place, sometimes inevitably if the same ground has to be covered. But Hudson had been worried by the apparent dishonesty of doing this. I supposed that he wanted a further talk about whether or not he was to mention the matter. When he opened the door of his flat his face was lugubrious. He was taking it more seriously than I had supposed.

  ‘Come in,’ he said.

  The books of military history had been replaced by the entire works of T. T. Waring and several atlases and notebooks, which now littered the table. As I sat down in the arm-chair I noticed that the photograph of Beryl no longer stood on the cupboard. Hudson began at once. He said:

  ‘I wanted to see you to get some things off my chest. I’ve got to tell them to somebody. As you know the rest of the people concerned, you are about the only person who can give me advice.’

  ‘I don’t know about advice.’

  ‘Yes, you can,’ said Hudson. ‘I suppose you know what I want to talk about.’

  ‘T. T. Waring, I suppose.’

  ‘Good lord, no. Do you mean to say you don’t know what has happened?’

  ‘Is it something to do with Roberta?’

  ‘It is something to do with Roberta,’ Hudson said. ‘I suppose there is no reason why you should have guessed. The fact is, I am madly in love with her. We’ve seen a good deal of each other over this T. T. Waring business and—well—I don’t know when it began. The other night something happened that makes it impossible for me to go ahead and marry Beryl.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I won’t say what it was. Perhaps you may guess. Anyway, I can’t and shouldn’t go through with it.’

  ‘Have you told her?’

  ‘I went round there yesterday.’

  ‘How did she take it?’

  ‘Beryl?’ said Hudson, speaking deliberately. ‘I suppose as well as could be expected. Very well, really. She saw pretty early on that it was inevitable. As soon as she realised that, she tried to manage things so that I looked as little of a cad as possible.’

  ‘You mean she broke it off?’

  ‘Actually.’

  If he felt any sentiment in the matter, Hudson showed none. His real life, of course, was lived among the shimmering domes and minarets of T. T. Waring’s Orient, where all the men were brave and all the women, with the possible exception of Roberta, chaste. Hudson had the happy gift of detaching himself absolutely from his immediate past.

  ‘After all,’ he said, ‘this may seem a rotten thing to do. But at least it leaves us both free. It would be a damned sight more rotten to get tied up together under the circumstances.’

  ‘Naturally. If you feel that way.’

  ‘What I wanted to ask you is this: you’ve known Roberta Payne quite a long time, haven’t you?’

  ‘Ages.’

  ‘Do you think she would marry me?’

  ‘Marry you?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It was just rather a surprise your suggesting it.’

  ‘I suppose you don’t think I’m good enough for her. Of course I’m not. I know that.’

  ‘It is not a question of whether you are good enough. It is a question of whether you are rich enough, tough enough, and prepared to resign your commission.’

  ‘You think if she accepted me I should have to send in my papers?’

  It was difficult to express in a few words how silly all this was. There seemed to me not the slightest likelihood that Roberta would for a moment consider becoming Hudson’s wife. On the other hand, she had evidently taken a fancy to him. They might turn out to be admirably suited to each other. The silliness seemed to lie in Hudson’s romantic view of her; but this might be the very factor which would make their marriage a success.

  ‘I don’t think Roberta would care to spend the next ten years of her life in huts on Salisbury Plain and furnished rooms in garrison towns.’

 

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