As he fell asleep in the beautiful ice-cold room with his coat and the hearth-rug over the blankets, and watched the moon light the snowy rooftops, he briefly wondered about money. Will my father pay my fees if I refuse to go out to him? Will my scholarship be enough? I might be poor. I’ve never been really poor. Well, hell, so what? And he watched the moon bowling along, lighting the sky for the bombers.
I could live and die here, he thought. They’ll never destroy this. I’ll stay and fight for it.
And with these noble thoughts he slept.
By morning the snow had gone as if it had been dreams and it was raining hard and the pavements soiled and splashy. From the mullioned window could be seen people hurrying, bent forward, miserable and mean along the streets, and it was not the fairy city any more. The bedroom door opened and a lugubrious man called a Scout came carrying hot water in a jug across to a washbowl and asked if he would be taking breakfast early so that his room might be cleaned? For some panic- stricken reason Eddie said, No, he would be leaving before breakfast. “Very good, sir,” said the Scout, eyebrows raised, and Eddie wondered whether to leave him a tip and, if he didn’t, whether it would be remembered next term and held against him. In the end he left a shilling on the dressing-table, took his bag and went head forward into the slushy street. As he butted along against the wet and the umbrellas, bicycles wetting his trousers as they passed him, melancholy struck. Was this place after all a delusion? It was criminally cold. Nobody had said goodbye to him. Hot water in a jug and the W.C. three flights down. Not a word about the date of his return. And he was bloody hungry. He turned into a tea-shop because the steam on its windows promised warmth, but once inside it was cold and crowded and dark, with people sitting in buttoned-up clothes. A long and silent queue stood by the counter, each one holding a ration book in a gloved hand and hoping for an extra cake.
But yet there was a sort of warmth there in the fug and Eddie edged further in to the shop where there were tables and chairs. They were all smoking and reading newspapers or warming their hands on their coffee cups. He sat down at a table where a girl was leaning back in her chair, smoking through a cigarette holder and watching him. Her legs were crossed and one high-heeled shoe was swinging up and down from her big toe.
“Is it all right to sit here?”
He sat, and looked around him to see what was on offer in the way of breakfast.
“I’ve not had breakfast,” he said. “I’m up here for my entrance exams. I suddenly wanted to go home, so I skipped breakfast. Now I’m hungry.”
“Which college?”
“Christ Church.”
“You’d have been given a good free breakfast there. Even in the vacation. Quails’ eggs and flagons of porter I shouldn’t wonder. Small talk about the Christ Church Beagles. It won’t survive the War, you know, Christ Church. Thank God. You don’t look exactly Christ Church. I’ll say that for you.”
“I don’t know a thing about it. I was told to apply. It could have been St. Karl Marx’s College for all I know about it.”
“I’ll bet your father was there.”
“Yes, he was. Actually. I can’t help that.”
She leaned forward to the ashtray, looking at him carefully, and he looked back into bright hazel eyes which were somehow familiar. He remembered the giant who had also been familiar.
I’m over-tired, he thought. Over-excited. “I’ve not seen my father in ten years,” he told the girl. “He’s a very hard-working civil servant. Out East.”
“I’ve not seen mine for years, either,” she said. “He’s still bashing away in India. And I know you, you’re Teddy Feathers.”
The eyes became at once the ten-year-old eyes of his cousin Babs — eyes that he had last seen pouring out tears by the fuchsia bushes in Ma Didds’s garden. The long, tapping finger over the ashtray became little Babs’s fierce claw which could pick out any tune without thought on the chapel harmonium. Just out of sight somewhere was the watchful pink and gold of their six-year-old cousin, Claire.
“Babs?”
“Teddy.”
Eddie ordered them both some milky bottled coffee and a Marie biscuit and Babs lit another cigarette.
“So. You live in Oxford? I’d no idea, Babs.”
“No. I’m up. At Somerville. I’m packing it in, though. It’s no time to be here. I’m volunteering for the Navy. I’ll be gone by next week.”
“Where’s Claire?”
“Oh, I don’t know. She’s married. Straight from school. Didn’t you hear? She’s in East Anglia somewhere among all the airfields. As far away from us as possible. Well, she would be, wouldn’t she?”
“I don’t see why.”
“She was very passive always. And they made sure we were never to meet up again — or they tried to. Wanted us to drop each other dead. So — what’s been happening to you, old Teddy-bear?”
“Did they? Try to stop us?”
“Well, you had some sort of crack-up, so I heard. Began to chatter like a monkey. A Welsh monkey.”
“I never cracked up. Do I stammer now?”
“No. You talk proper. You’ll do for Christ Church.” When she smiled, she dazzled. There were smoker’s lines already etched on her face but sunlight was still behind them.
“I’ve got myself into one hell of a bigger mess now,” Eddie said. “I’ve nobody to tell me the answers. I find I don’t know how to — proceed.”
“Proceed,” she said, and leaning forward stroked his wrist. “I always loved your words. I suppose it was books. Your father sent you so many books at Didds’s.”
“Did he? Nobody told me. What? Were the books from him?”
“You weren’t wanting to hear anything good about your father then. Proceed,” she said. “Maybe you’ll be a lawyer? A Barrister, but it’d be a pity to cover that hair. Proceed—look, you proceed by yourself now. You don’t need Claire or me or Auntie May. Get on with life! You can take decisions,” she said, “if anyone can.”
They both looked down at the insides of their coffee cups.
“You were bloody wonderful,” she said, “that day. Braver than any of us and eight years old.”
“I’ve not made a decision since,” he said. “That must have been my one decisive moment.”
“Where did you go in the holidays all these years? You can’t have been alone?” she asked him.
“School friend. Sort of second family to me.”
“Can’t they help now? And what about your pa’s sensible sisters?”
“They are psychologically deaf,” said he.
“They’re just reacting against your pa,” she said. “Don’t forget they were all Raj Orphans themselves. They say it suits some. They come out fizzing and yelling, ‘I didn’t need parents,’ and waving the red, white and blue. Snooty for life. But we’re all touched, one way or another.”
“I don’t think it suited my father,” said Eddie. “He’s gone entirely barmy.”
“Yep. I heard. You know, my lot and Claire’s are still in India, and I never give them a thought. Not after ten years.”
Eddie realised that since the Ma Didds’ horror he had never given a thought to either Babs or Claire. Not a thought.
“Have you a girlfriend, Eddie?”
“I never meet any girls. I just work. And play games. And read.”
“Come home with me now,” said Babs. “To my digs. There’s no one there.” She put out her cigarette. “We’ll go to bed. We have before.”
Eddie, scarlet, was aware of a drop in the background conversation at the nearby tables. Babs’s voice was beautiful and old-fashioned, a penetrating voice like Royalty, clear and high and unconcerned, and he stumbled out of his chair, withdrawing his hand from beneath hers. “Sorry. Can’t. Getting a train. Might miss it.”