Adelaide was clever at school, but left at fifteen and became a clerk in an insurance office. She learnt to type and hoped to become somebody’s secretary. The office moved out of London. Adelaide became a shop assistant in a very superior shop and hoped to become a buyer. No one seemed to notice her talents so she left and became a clerk in a post office. She began to feel that if there had ever been a bus she had by now certainly missed it. In a moment of desperation she answered Danby’s cunningly worded advertisement for a resident house keeper. She expected a grand house. By the time she had re covered from her surprise it was too late. She had fallen in love with Danby. In fact she did no housekeeping, since Danby, who had an old-maidish streak in his nature, did all the organizing and catering. Adelaide cleaned and cooked. She was the maid. Danby called her Adelaide the Maid, and invented clerihews about her. He must have invented about fifty. He turned her into a joke as he turned almost everything into a joke, and it hurt her. He once said to her, “You have the surname of a famous tart in a story.” Adelaide replied, “Well, I suppose I am a tart too.”
”All the nicest girls are,” he said, instead of denying it. Adelaide did not ask about her namesake, she did not want to know. She thought bitterly, “I am just the ghost of a famous tart in a story.”
Adelaide’s father died when she was about twelve and her helpless vague mother became entirely dependent on Joseph Boase, the father of Will and Nigel. So did Adelaide. Her own brother was already in Manchester. Joseph’s wife, who had once been an actress, had left him some time ago because he was so bad-tempered and returned to the stage, and the trio of men became an irresistible focus and magnet to the bereaved mother and daughter. In fact the Boase family had long fascinated Adelaide and as a young child the twins, who were only three years older than her, had been much closer to her than her own brother. She was in love with both of them, in those days slightly favouring Nigel. She was a bit in love with her uncle Joseph too, though she was afraid of his bad temper. He was an extremely handsome person with a black moustache and beard who worked in a shipping office and imagined himself a seafaring man.
Her childhood with the twins had been the happiest part of Adelaide’s life and she often felt its most real part. She was a tomboyish child and joined as an equal in all their games, which consisted largely of exploring building sites, climbing scaffolding, making marks in wet cement, escaping from watchmen, and stealing bricks. “May Will and Nigel come to tea?”
”May I go to tea with Will and Nigel?” On Saturdays they played cricket with other children in the Boases’ back garden. But of course they were superior to other children. They were a little secret society. It was their times as a trio that were special. Then when the twins were nineteen they ran away from Uncle Joseph and joined their mother and went on the stage.
Adelaide was working in the insurance office at the time. Their flight was a great shock to her. Although they had passed the brick-stealing stage she still saw a good deal of them. They went to plays and films together and the boys, who had stayed on in the sixth form of their grammar school, were insensibly educating their young cousin. She listened to their talk and read the books they talked about. They seemed scarcely to notice that she was growing up though they spoke teasingly of her prettiness. She was jealous of their girl friends. She was just beginning to think that one day she would marry one of them, she could not quite decide which. Then there was a long interval during which the twins were heard of but not seen. Great things were hoped of their careers. Then Nigel was said to have left the stage and to be working at something or other in Leeds. Will appeared once on television in a small part, but Adelaide was working at the time and could not see him. The actress mother died, allegedly of drink. Adelaide’s mother died, and Adelaide moved into digs. She changed jobs. She had a number of boyfriends, some quite ardent, with whom she could not decide to go to bed. After the twins, they all seemed so undistinguished and insipid and dull. Will was working in repertory in Scot land. Then he suddenly started to write her love letters.
He’s lonely up there, he’s thinking sentimentally of when we were children, it doesn’t really mean anything, Adelaide told herself. But she was very pleased all the same. She replied affectionately, trying at first to be noncommittal, but soon her letters were as romantic as his. They both enjoyed the correspondence and the letters became positive works of art. Adelaide kept carbon copies of hers. Will went on saying that he was coming south but did not come. Uncle Joseph retired from the shipping office and went to live at Portsmouth. Will hinted at a big job coming up in the West End. At last he turned up in London, out of work, moved in on Auntie, and proposed to Adelaide.
Adelaide simply did not know what she felt. She had not seen Will for a long time and he had changed. He was a good-looking chap and getting to look more like Uncle Joseph. He was stouter, he had grown a moustache. He had always been more thick-set than Nigel, and now he looked like a sort of Victorian rugger player. He was big and heavy and rather mechanical in his movements, ruddy in the face, wearing his straight almost black hair neatly cut and rather long. He also seemed to be developing Uncle Joseph’s temper, as Adelaide, who was not able to conceal the fact that she was dithering, soon learnt.
The trouble was that as soon as she saw Will she decided that she wanted Nigel. If only there hadn’t been two of them! She had not seen or heard from Nigel for years and no one knew his whereabouts. But she was haunted now by a vision of a slim dark-haired boy about whom she could not decide whether he was Nigel or whether he was Will as he used to be. She hoped Will would not guess. Will guessed and broke all Auntie’s Meissen parakeets. Nigel turned up in London, working at the Royal Free Hospital. Adelaide told fervent lies to Will and went secretly to see Nigel. It was no good. Nigel was cool, vague, abstracted, not quite unkind. Adelaide was frantic. She answered Danby’s advertisement. She fell in love with Danby. Will felicitously left London to work in a film at East Grinstead. By the time he came back Adelaide was Danby’s mistress.
Adelaide never talked to Danby about Will except in the most casual terms and of course concealed from Will that she had any special interest in Danby. She managed to persuade Will that he had been wrong about her and Nigel, and this was easier to do now since it was true. She no longer had any tender feelings about Nigel, though he still occasioned obscure and unnerving emotions. She could not forgive him for having been so calmly unresponsive to her undignified and unambiguous appeal. He had changed too, and she felt almost a little frightened of him. He seemed to be living in another world. She had most unwisely told Danby that Nigel was a half-trained nurse and now out of work. Danby, who took to Nigel instantly, could not be prevented from summoning him and engaging him. At first she thought that Nigel’s presence in the house would make her life impossible, but she had got used to it, though it still upset and frightened her. There was no reason why Nigel should know what went on behind the closed door of the annex at night, and even if he did speculate she was sure that he would say nothing to Will, with whom he seemed to have broken off all relations. He had never told Will that Adelaide had been to see him.