There was no car outside it and so “Les Girls,” as they liked to be known, were not at home, but Eddie had his key and planted his bag and his icy feet on the rug in the hall. He stood.
He heard Alice, the midget maid, creeping up from the kitchen. She gave a chirp of surprise, touching her fingers to her lips, and Eddie remembered he’d slept in his clothes, wet through since Oxford, and was unshaven. He found — with the old terror — that he couldn’t speak.
“Mr. Eddie. Come, come, come,” she said and led him down to her kitchen and gave him tea and porridge which he could not eat. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” she said. “Have you failed your exams?” She had been sitting beneath her calendar of the King and Queen and the photograph of Mr. Churchill in his siren-suit, making more paper spills for the upstairs fireplace. Vegetables were prepared on the draining-board, the kitchen clean, alive and shining. “Oh dear, oh dear. I expect you have heard the news.”
“Yes. I read it in the paper.”
She seemed puzzled, and he remembered that nobody in this house cared a fig about the Ingoldbys.
“I’m meaning their news, Mr. Eddie. Miss Hilda’s and Miss Muriel’s. I don’t know what’s to become of us all now. Or this house. Or you and me, Mr. Eddie. Mind, I’d seen it coming. There’s been talk for years. They think I’m deaf. They never told me a thing, never warned me. I’ve been here nearly twenty years. It was little to expect.”
“They’ve never sacked you, Alice?”
“In a sense, yes, Mr. Eddie.”
The slam of the front door above. The clash of the vestibule glass. The shriek of Hilda spotting the bag in the hail. “He’s back. See? Now for it — Eddie? Where are you?”
“Yes. I’m back.” His head rose up from Alice’s cellar rabbit- hole, and he saw that the eyes of the girls were particularly wild. He thought: They must have won a cup. “Have you been on the course?” Then he saw they were wearing Air Force blue with several stripes. Not golf.
“We have some news for you,” said Muriel. “Better get it over and tell you right off. We’re getting married.”
For a dizzy moment Eddie thought they were marrying each other.
“You’ll easily guess who,” said Hilda, and mentioned two names from among the red faces at the golf club.
“Married!”
He thought: Whatever for? Old women. Over forty. And this great house full of their stuff. And Alice.
“Go and wash, Eddie dear. Then come and have some champagne. It’s been on the cards for years but of course we couldn’t split up and leave you until we’d got you off our hands.”
He looked at their untouchable hands.
“But you mean you’ll be living apart now?”
“Oh, quite near each other. And near Royal St. Andrews. In Scotland. All four of us.”
“Does my father know?”
“We’ve written. He’s known for several years that we — well, we put off our plans. For you. That’s why he’s been so generous to us while you’ve been living here all these years.”
“Living here?”
“Yes. Ever since you were a tiny.”
When he came downstairs again Alice was anxiously laying up the dining-table. The silver and glasses shone. When she saw him she scuttled out of sight.
“What about Alice?”
“Oh, she’s much too old to move in with either of us. Someone else will probably take her. She’s got her Girls’ Friendly Society. And she’s over seventy and pretty well” (Hilda whispered like a whistle) “past it. She ought to retire. So it all fits in.”
“Fits in?”
“Alice retiring. You going out to Alistair as an evacuee. And this tragedy of the Ingoldbys.”
“Yes,” he said. “I know. I saw it in the Times. I’m surprised you did. Or that you even remembered — their name.” (Tears, tears, stop. And, bugger it, my voice is going.)
“Of course we remembered. They used to have you over there. Very kind to help us out. Anyway, someone rang up.”
“Someone? Who? Please, who?”
“I’m afraid I didn’t ask. It was a girl. Quite a young voice. Yes, Isobel. Isobel Ingoldby. That would be a sister? Rather snooty we thought. La-di-da.”
“Did she leave a number?”
“No, no. Very quick she was. Now dear, no brooding. Let’s talk about you. And Singapore.”
“It’s Singapore you’re going to,” said Hilda. “Alistair’ll meet you there. Safest place in the world.”
“Did you pass your exams?” asked Muriel.
“Yes.”
“Jolly good. Something to look forward to after the War. Your tickets are all fixed up and you leave next week.”
“And bottoms up,” said Muriel, with the champagne. “Here’s to all of us.”
“And we have a present for you,” said Hilda. “He said you were to have it when you left school. We’ve kept it for you. It’s your father’s watch.”
TO COLOMBO
After a torrid and joyless Christmas with the brides- and grooms-to-be — gravy and turkey from somewhere and gin galore — Eddie was ready for the voyage to his father. He’d given ten pounds to Alice and promised her a postcard. He would have given wedding presents to Les Girls, but would have had to ask them for the money. He had only the money for the journey to Londonderry to pick up his ship; that and his Post Office Book with fifteen shillings in it and a new cheque book he didn’t know how to use.
The day dawned. The vestibule door slammed behind him and his luggage was in the car, the watch on his wrist.
Both brides had genuinely (they said) intended to see him off from Liverpool — the journey from Bolton was short — and had dressed for it in excellent pre-War mufti of tweed and diamond-pin brooches, uniforms set aside; but at the last minute Hilda was called away by her beau to discuss some marital arrangement, and Muriel drove Eddie to the dock alone. There they got out of the car, she landed him a smacking kiss, said how she envied him a wonderful voyage into the sunshine and out of the War—
“Aunt Muriel—?”
— and how they would miss him, and how she was looking forward to seeing him in Oxford after the War—
“Aunt Muriel, I’m sorry—”
“Yes?”
“It’s just that I have no money.”
“Dear boy, you’re going to have plenty of money. You’ll have all that we are having to give up, now that you’re gone. Your allowance.”
“Yes. But I mean for now. I’ve only about a pound.”
“You won’t need money on board ship.”
“Something might go wrong. We might be stuck half-way.”
“Oh, Eddie — what a fusspot. Alistair’s meeting you.”
“I’m not sure how long—”
“Well, I don’t know. I don’t know that I’ve much with me. Would five pounds—?”
“I think I shall need perhaps a bit more.”
She scratched in her purse and came up with seven pounds, twelve shillings and sixpence.
“There,” she said, “you’ve cleaned me out.”
Then she was gone, dropping from his life unlamented and unloved. He felt shaken and depressed, as if another boy, a sunny, golfing chap, would have done better.
She tooted her horn at the harbour barrier. The clashing and hooting, the crowd at the ferry. He saw her big amiable face as she turned the corner.
The ferry was no trouble. The sea, hatefully grey, was thank God calm. He stood at the rail watching the submarines of the English Navy busy in the Irish Sea practising the sinking of U-Boats. The West coast of England dwindled behind him.