‘We fear that they must be attributed to the bombs which fell in the neighbourhood from time to time during the war.’
‘These things do not always show themselves at once.’
‘So we thought it wise to have expert advice. Mr. Eversley is very well known in the neighbourhood.’
‘Lord Retborough employs him at the Castle.’
‘We had hoped for his advice, and he came for a preliminary survey, but the actual work will be supervised by his nephew, who, he assures us, is fully competent.’
‘Mr. Stephen Eversley,’ said Miss Cara.
Candida heard herself saying, ‘I think I met him once when I was at school.’ She had no idea why she should have put it like that. The words said themselves, and it did not occur to her that they might be misleading, until she found Miss Olivia enquiring whether the headmistress had been satisfied with his work. She did her best to clear the matter up.
‘Oh, I didn’t mean that he came down to the school. I just met him once in the holidays.’
Miss Olivia looked at her rather coldly.
‘He probably will not remember you.’
It was at this point that Candida should have narrated her adventure on the cliff, and she simply couldn’t do it. Last night’s dream got up and wouldn’t let her. The Miss Benevents looked at her, and she said nothing at all. She just couldn’t think of anything to say.
And then the door opened and Derek came in, wreathed in morning smiles.
‘I’m late again! I don’t suppose it’s any good my saying I’m sorry.’ He kissed Miss Olivia. ‘I make good resolutions every night and break them every morning.’ He kissed Miss Cara. ‘You shouldn’t have such comfortable beds – I just can’t wake up.’
As a topic Stephen Eversley was superseded.
They got off to Retley by ten o’clock, with Derek at the wheel of a good-looking Humber.
‘Pre-war, but she hasn’t done a big mileage and she has always been very carefully looked after. This is her original paint, but she’s just had an overhaul and she goes like a bird. You know, I could have taught you just as well as Fox, but the old dears wouldn’t hear of your practising on her. They let me drive because if they didn’t the car would never go out. And they think you should have lessons from a qualified instructor, so if you don’t mind, I’ll just hand you over to Fox and be off on my own. I should get the jitters if I had to sit behind and watch you doing all the things you’re bound to do to begin with. People who give driving lessons must have nerves of iron. Mine aren’t, and I should only make you nervous. You don’t mind, do you?’
Candida said, ‘Why should I?’ She thought there was a discrepancy between his professed willingness to teach her himself and this advertisement of a lack of nerve. She thought that he had other fish to fry, and that it was none of her business. It did not surprise her when he suggested that it might not be necessary to obtrude the fact that he had not superintended the lesson.
‘You’ll do a lot better if you haven’t got my eyes boring into the back of your neck. But they wouldn’t understand about that, so if you don’t mind – ’
Candida met a laughing glance and found herself laughing too. There was that sense of escape, of having secrets from the elders, which is not always left behind with childhood. If she couldn’t help wondering what he was going to do with himself, she asked no questions.
‘Look here, I’ll meet you at the Primrose Café, just opposite the garage. Half-past eleven, and whoever gets there first can order coffee for two.’
Mr. Fox was a red-headed young man with a lot of cheerful self-confidence. He informed Derek that he could do very well without a passenger in the back seat – chipping in as likely as not and making the learner nervous.
‘And now, Miss Sayle, if you’ll just pay close attention, we’ll start with the dashboard.’
Candida was interested and quick. She got all the gadgets sorted out in a remarkably short time, after which he made her move over and took the wheel until they were out of Retley on an empty road with wide grass verges.
She hadn’t known that it would be so thrilling to feel the wheel under her hands. Power and speed – everything running smoothly – control – it was like having a new sense. It was like having wings. She turned with sparkling eyes, her lips parted to say so, and only Mr. Fox’s large freckled hand on the wheel kept the car on the road. He said in a tone of reproof,
‘Now don’t you go looking round! You keep your eye on the road!’
The lesson went very well. They were out for an hour, and she passed six cars, two lorries, and the Ledbury bus. Mr. Fox dismissed her with words of approbation, and she went across to the Primrose Café feeling a good deal pleased with herself.
The café was twentieth-century Olde Englishe with beams that only just cleared your head and bottle-glass in the windows. This made the interior so dark that it was more than easy to fall down the two steps which separated the front of the premises from the back. Candida, having had a narrow escape, stood still and looked about her to see if there were any more traps. There were a lot of little tables with tops made of yellow tiles, thus saving table-cloths. There was pale yellow china, and a waitress in yellow linen with a mob cap. The place was very nearly empty, but sitting alone at a table in the far corner was a tall man. He had on a tweed jacket, and she couldn’t see his face because he was bending forward over the table and writing in a notebook. All she could see was the top of his head, and because she had dreamed about Stephen Eversley last night and had heard him talked about this morning he reminded her of Stephen. Just the thick light hair, and perhaps the tweed coat. Her eyes were getting accustomed to the bottle-glass dusk. The jacket was brown, and the hair was the colour of sun-dried hay, or it would be if you allowed for the greenish tinge in the light.
She walked slowly towards the table next to the one at which he sat, and just as she came level with him he looked up, and it was Stephen. She thought that it was odd he should be so exactly like the dream. He was, and it puzzled her, because after all they were more than five years older. She stared right into his eyes and said, ‘Stephen!’ in a sort of jerky whisper, and he stared back and said, ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ He was looking up, and she was looking down. Her knees wobbled and she sat down on the nearest chair. She hadn’t thought that he would recognise her – she hadn’t really had time to think at all. Five years was five years, and she was only fifteen when he was Perseus to her Andromeda. She found enough breath to say,
‘But you don’t know who I am.’ And he laughed and said in an everyday careless sort of voice, ‘But of course I do! You’re Candida – Candida Sayle.’
She had a warm, bewildered feeling. It was nice to be recognised, but how did he do it? She was glad of the chair, and she was glad to reach out and hold on to the table. When five years have been suddenly telescoped, it makes you feel giddy.
Stephen said, ‘You look as if you had seen a ghost.’
She shook her head.
‘Oh, no – not me. I knew you were somewhere about. Did you know that I was? Because if you didn’t – ’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Then I can’t see how you recognised me.’
He laughed.
‘But you haven’t changed a bit. No plait, but otherwise just about the same. What are you doing here?’
The giddy feeling was passing off. There are people whom you have to get to know again every time you meet them, and there are people with whom time doesn’t make any difference – if you didn’t see them for twenty years you could begin again just where you left off, in the middle of a sentence if necessary.
Candida began to have this feeling about Stephen. They had only met once, and that was nearly six years ago, but they didn’t feel like strangers. They weren’t doing any of the things that belonged to having met only once before.