“I know,” she said, frowning. “Why would you tell me that?”
“You called me Mr. Cantwell.”
“Did I?”
“Yes. Just a moment ago.”
She shook her head and dismissed the idea. “I don’t think I did, Mr. Sadler,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. What were you reading?”
“On the train?”
“Yes, of course,” she said, a note of frustration seeping into her tone as she looked around and stared at the waitress behind the counter, who was placing two scones on two plates for the couple who had moved to the isolated seats and showing no signs whatsoever of bringing our teas.
“White Fang,” I told her. “By Jack London. Have you read it?”
“No,” she replied. “Is he an American author?”
“Yes,” I said. “You know of him, then?”
“I’ve never heard of him,” she said. “I just thought he sounded like one, that’s all.”
“Even with a name like London?” I asked, smiling at her.
“Yes, even with that, Mr. Cantwell.”
“Sadler,” I replied.
“Stop it, can’t you?” she snapped, her face turning cold and angry as she slammed both her hands flat on the table between us. “Don’t go on correcting me. I won’t stand for it.”
I stared at her, unsure what I could say or do to improve this moment; for the life of me, I couldn’t understand where it had gone so wrong. Perhaps on the day that I had put pen to paper and written Dear Miss Bancroft, You don’t know me… but I was a friend of your brother. Or perhaps before that. In France. Or earlier still. That day in Aldershot when I leaned forward in the line and caught Will’s eye. Or he caught mine.
“I’m sorry,” I said, swallowing nervously. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Well, you did. You did offend me. And I don’t like it. Your name is Sadler. Tristan Sadler. You don’t have to keep telling me over and over.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated.
“And don’t keep apologizing, it’s terribly annoying.”
“I’m—” I stopped myself in time.
“Yes, yes,” she said. She drummed her fingers on the table and looked at the half-smoked cigarette again and I knew there was a part of her that was weighing the etiquette of picking it up, rubbing away the charred end and relighting it. My eyes turned to it, too; there was more than half of it left there, and it seemed such a frightful waste. In the trenches, a half-smoked cigarette meant almost as much to us as a night alone in a foxhole with a few hours’ sleep promised. I had lost track of the times that I had used even the smallest amount of tobacco, an amount that any sane person would toss on to the street without a second thought, as a companion for as long as I could make it last.
“What do… what do you like to read, Miss Bancroft?” I said eventually, desperate to salvage the situation. “Novels, I suppose?”
“Why do you say that? Because I’m a woman?”
“Well, yes,” I said. “I mean, I know that many ladies enjoy novels. I enjoy them myself.”
“And yet you’re a man.”
“Indeed.”
“No, I don’t care for novels,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve never really understood them, if I’m honest.”
“In what way?” I asked, confused by how the concept of the novel could be a difficult one to understand. There were some writers, of course, who told their stories in the most convoluted way possible—many of whom seemed to send their unsolicited manuscripts to the Whisby Press, for instance—but there were others, such as Jack London, who offered their readers such a respite from the miserable horror of existence that their books were like gifts from the gods.
“Well, none of the stories ever happened, did they?” asked Miss Bancroft. “I can never quite see the point of someone reading about people who never existed, doing things they never did, in settings they never visited. So Jane Eyre marries her Mr. Rochester at the end. Well, Jane Eyre never existed, nor did Mr. Rochester or the wild woman he kept in the cellar.”
“It was an attic,” I said pedantically.
“Regardless. It’s a lot of nonsense, isn’t it?”
“I think it’s more of an escape than anything else.”
“I don’t need an escape, Mr. Sadler,” she said, stressing my name now to ensure that she got it right. “And if I did I should book myself a passage to somewhere warm and exotic where I might become involved in espionage or a romantic misunderstanding, like the heroines of those precious novels of yours. No, I prefer to read about things that are actually true, things that really happened. I read non-fiction mostly. History books. Politics. Biographies. Things like that.”
“Politics?” I asked, surprised. “You’re interested in politics?”
“Of course I am,” she said. “You think I shouldn’t be? On account of my sex?”
“I don’t know, Miss Bancroft,” I said, exhausted by her belligerence. “I’m just… I’m just talking, that’s all. Be interested in politics if you want to be. It doesn’t matter to me.” I felt that I couldn’t possibly continue with this. Keeping up with her was more than I felt capable of doing. We had been together less than fifteen minutes but I felt that this must be what it would be like to be married to someone, a constant back and forth of bickering, watching out for any stray comment in a conversation that might be corrected, anything to keep gaining the upper hand, the advantage, bringing one closer to taking the game, the set and the whole blasted match without ever ceding a point.
“Of course it matters, Mr. Sadler,” she said after a moment, quieter now, as if she realized that she might have gone too far. “It matters because you and I wouldn’t be here together if it wasn’t for politics, would we?”
I looked at her and hesitated for a moment. “No,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “No, I suppose we wouldn’t.”
“Well, then,” she said, pulling open her bag and reaching again for her cigarette case, which, when she retrieved it, slipped out of her hands and fell to the floor with a tremendous crash, scattering cigarettes around our feet in much the same way as I had dropped the napkins just before her arrival. “Oh, bloody hell!” she cried, startling me. “Look at what I’ve done now.”
In a moment, Jane, our waitress, was beside us, reaching down to help gather them, but it was the wrong move on her part for Miss Bancroft had had quite enough for one day and stared at her so furiously that I thought she might attack her.
“Never mind them, Jane!” she shouted. “I can pick them up. Can we have our tea? Please? Is it too much to ask for two cups of tea?”
The arrival of the tea offered some respite from the intensity of our conversation and allowed us to focus on something trivial for a few minutes, rather than being forced to talk. Marian was clearly in a state of great tension and anxiety. In my selfishness, I had considered little but my own preoccupations before we met, but Will, after all, was her brother. And he was dead.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Sadler,” she said after a long silence, putting her cup down and smiling across at me with a contrite expression; again, I was stuck by how pretty she was. “I can be an awful old hag sometimes, can’t I?”
“There’s nothing to apologize for, Miss Bancroft,” I said. “Of course we’re both… Well, this is not the most comfortable situation.”
“No,” she agreed. “I wonder if it might be easier if we dispensed with some of the formalities? Can I ask you to call me Marian?”
“Of course,” I said, nodding. “And I’m Tristan.”
“A knight of the round table?”
“Not exactly.” I smiled.
“Never mind. Still, I’m glad that’s out of the way. I don’t think I could bear to be called Miss Bancroft for much longer.