“Yes. And your father, he’s all right, is he?”
Marian nodded and took another drag of her cigarette, smiling as she did so and then looking away, making it clear that Jane was dismissed and that was an end to that particular conversation.
“I’ll bring the tea,” said the waitress, understanding perfectly and walking away.
“Terribly sad story,” said Marian, leaning towards me once the waitress was out of earshot. “It’s her husband, you see. They’ve only been married a few months. He was repairing some tiles on their roof about six weeks ago and he fell off. Broke his leg. And he’d only just got over a broken arm about a month before that. Brittle bones, I expect. It wasn’t as if he fell a great distance.”
“Her husband?” I asked, surprised. “It sounded to me as if you were talking about a child.”
“Well, he is rather a child,” she said with a shrug. “I don’t care for him much myself, he’s always up to some mischief or other, but Jane is sweet. She used to play with me and—” She stopped herself and her face fell, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she had been about to say. She took a final drag from her tab, then pressed it out, only half smoked, in the ashtray. “That’s enough of that,” she said. “Do you know, I’m rather thinking of giving these things up.”
“Really?” I asked. “Any particular reason?”
“Well, the truth is I don’t enjoy them as much as I used to,” she said. “Also, I can’t imagine it can be all that good for you, can you? Taking all that smoke into your lungs every day. It doesn’t sound very sensible when you think about it.”
“I can’t imagine it does that much harm,” I said. “Everyone smokes.”
“You don’t.”
“I do,” I replied. “I just didn’t feel like it right now.”
She nodded and narrowed her eyes as if she were sizing me up. We didn’t speak for a while and it gave me an opportunity to examine her more closely. She was older than Will and I, about twenty-five I imagined, but there was no wedding ring on her finger so I assumed that she was still unmarried. She didn’t look very much like him; he had been so dark and cheeky-looking, his features always ready to crinkle into a wink and a smile, but she was fairer than him, almost as fair as I was, and she had a clean, blemish-free complexion. She wore her hair in a tidy, efficient way, cut short below the chin line, without an ounce of vanity to the style. She was pretty—handsome, I should say—and wore only a light smear of lipstick that may in fact have been her natural colouring. I imagined that there was many a young man who might lose his head over her. Or have it bitten off.
“So,” she said after a moment. “Where did you stay last night, anyway?”
“Mrs. Cantwell’s boarding house,” I replied.
“Cantwell’s?” she asked, wrinkling up her face now as she considered it, and I almost gasped. There he was! In that expression. “I don’t know them, do I? Where are they?”
“Quite close to the railway station,” I said. “Near the bridge.”
“Oh yes,” she said. “There’s a run of them along there, isn’t there?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“One never really knows the boarding houses in one’s own town, does one?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, I suppose not.”
“When I go to London I stay at a very nice place on Russell Square. An Irishwoman called Jackson runs it. She drinks, of course. Mother’s ruin by the gallon. But she’s polite, her rooms are clean, she stays out of my business and that’s good enough for me. Can’t cook breakfast to save her life but that’s a small price to pay. Do you know Russell Square, Mr. Sadler?”
“Yes,” I said. “I work in Bloomsbury, actually. I used to live in south London. Now I live north of the river.”
“No plans to move to the centre, then?”
“Not at the moment, no. It’s frightfully expensive, you see, and I work at a publishing house.”
“No money in it?”
“No money in it for me,” I said, smiling.
She smiled, too, and looked down at the ashtray, and I thought she might be rather regretting putting her cigarette out, for she seemed anxious to have something to do with her hands. She looked over towards the counter, where there was no sign of the tea or, for that matter, any sign of our waitress. The older man who had been present when I arrived had vanished, too.
“I’m thirsty,” she said. “What’s keeping her, anyway?”
“I’m sure she’ll only be a moment,” I said.
In truth, I was starting to feel rather unsettled and wondered why on earth I had decided to come here in the first place. It was clear that neither of us felt relaxed in the other’s company. I was quiet and offering little to the conversation other than quick responses and shy remarks, while Miss Bancroft—Marian—seemed to be a bundle of nervous energy, shifting from topic to topic without thought or hesitation. I didn’t for a moment believe that this was who she really was; it was simply part of our meeting. She did not feel free to be herself.
“It’s usually very reliable in here,” she said, shaking her head. “I suppose I owe you an apology.”
“Not at all.”
“It’s a good job we didn’t order any food, isn’t it? My goodness, all we asked for were two cups of tea. But you must be starving, Mr. Sadler, are you? Have you eaten? Young men are always ravenous, I find.”
I stared at her, unsure whether she would remember that she had already made that very remark, but she appeared curiously oblivious to it.
“I had some breakfast,” I replied after a moment.
“At your Mrs. Cantwell’s?”
“No, not there. Somewhere else.”
“Oh, really?” she asked, leaning forward, terribly interested now. “Where did you go? Was it somewhere nice?”
“I don’t remember,” I said. “I think—”
“There are a number of good places to eat in Norwich,” she said. “I suppose you think we’re terribly provincial here and can’t provide good food. You London chaps always think that, don’t you?”
“Not at all, Miss Bancroft,” I replied. “In fact—”
“Of course, what you should have done was ask me in advance. If you had let me know that you were coming the night before, why, we might have invited you to dinner.”
“I wouldn’t have liked to put you to any trouble,” I said.
“But it wouldn’t have been any trouble,” she said, sounding almost offended. “For heaven’s sake, it’s just one more person at the table. How much trouble could that be? Didn’t you want to come to dinner, Mr. Sadler? Was that it?”
“Well, I didn’t think about it,” I said, becoming incredibly flustered now. “By the time I reached Norwich, I was tired, that’s all. I just went straight to my boarding house and went to sleep.” I decided not to tell her about the wait for the room or the reasons for that wait; neither did I mention my visit to the public house.
“Of course you were,” she said. “Train journeys can be so tiresome. I like to bring a book to read. Do you read, Mr. Cantwell?”
I stared at her and could feel my mouth opening but no words coming out. It was as if I had been thrown into a situation that I had known would be utterly unbearable but had had no realization of just how bad it would be until now. The irony was that I knew this meeting would be difficult for me but I had never quite considered how terrible it might be for her. But sitting there before me now, Marian Bancroft was a complete bag of nerves and she seemed to be getting worse by the moment.
“Oh my stars, I’ve already asked you that, haven’t I?” she said, bursting into an extraordinary laugh. “You told me that you liked to read.”
“Yes,” I said. “And it’s Sadler, not Cantwell.”