‘In all the time Miss Fanshawe and I have been travelling together there hasn’t been a solitary soul besides ourselves in this dining-car.’
The waiter said it hardly surprised him. You didn’t get many, he agreed, and added, smoothing the tablecloth, that it would just be a minute before the soup was ready.
‘Your predecessor,’ Carruthers said, ‘was a most extraordinary man.’
‘Oh yes, sir?’
‘He had the gift of tongues. He was covered in freckles.’
‘I see, sir.’
‘Miss Fanshawe here had a passion for him.’
The waiter laughed. He lingered for a moment and then, since Carruthers was silent, went away.
‘Now look here, Carruthers,’ Miss Fanshawe began.
‘Don’t you think Mrs Carruthers is the most vulgar woman you’ve ever met?’
‘I wasn’t thinking of your mother. I will not have you talk like this to the waiter. Please now.’
‘She wears a scent called “In Love”, by Norman Hartnell. A woman of fifty, as thin as fuse wire. My God!’
‘Your mother –’
‘My mother doesn’t concern you – oh, I agree. Still you don’t want to deliver me to the female smelling of drink and tobacco smoke. I always brush my teeth in the lavatory, you know. For your sake, Miss Fanshawe.’
‘Please don’t engage the waiter in conversation. And please don’t tell lies about the waiter who was here before. It’s ridiculous the way you go on –’
‘You’re tired, Miss Fanshawe.’
‘I’m always tired at the end of term.’
‘That waiter used to say –’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, stop about that waiter!’
‘I’m sorry.’ He seemed to mean it, but she knew he didn’t. And even when he spoke again, when his voice was softer, she knew that he was still pretending. ‘What shall we talk about?’ he asked, and with a weary cheerfulness she reminded him that she’d wondered what he was going to do in the holidays. He didn’t reply. His head was bent. She knew that he was smiling.
‘I’ll walk beside her,’ he said. ‘In Rimini and Venice. In Zürich maybe. By Lake Lugano. Or the Black Sea. New faces will greet her in an American Bar in Copenhagen. Or near the Spanish Steps – in Babbington’s English Tea-Rooms. Or in Bandol or Cassis, the Ritz, the Hotel Excelsior in old Madrid. What shall we talk about, Miss Fanshawe?’
‘You could tell me more. Last year in Greece –’
‘I remember once we talked about guinea-pigs. I told you how I killed a guinea-pig that Mrs Carruthers gave me. Another time we talked about Rider Minor. D’you remember that?’
‘Yes, but let’s not –’
‘McGullam was unpleasant to Rider Minor in the changing-room. McGullam and Travers went after Rider Minor with a little piece of wood.’
‘You told me, Carruthers.’
He laughed.
‘When I first arrived at Ashleigh Court the only person who spoke to me was Rider Minor. And of course the Sergeant-Major. The Sergeant-Major told me never to take to cigs. He described the lungs of a friend of his.’
‘He was quite right.’
‘Yes, he was. Cigs can give you a nasty disease.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t smoke.’
‘I like your hat.’
‘Soup, madam,’ the waiter murmured. ‘Sir.’
‘Don’t you like Miss Fanshawe’s hat?’ Carruthers smiled, pointing at Miss Fanshawe, and when the waiter said that the hat was very nice Carruthers asked him his name.
Miss Fanshawe dipped a spoon into her soup. The waiter offered her a roll. His name, he said, was Atkins.
‘Are you wondering about us, Mr Atkins?’
‘Sir?’
‘Everyone has a natural curiosity, you know.’
‘I see a lot of people in my work, sir.’
‘Miss Fanshawe’s an undermatron at Ashleigh Court Preparatory School for Boys. They use her disgracefully at the end of term – patching up clothes so that the mothers won’t complain, packing trunks, sorting out laundry. From dawn till midnight Miss Fanshawe’s on the trot. That’s why she’s tired.’
Miss Fanshawe laughed. ‘Take no notice of him,’ she said. She broke her roll and buttered a piece of it. She pointed at wheat ripening in a field. The harvest would be good this year, she said.
‘At the end of each term,’ Carruthers went on, ‘she has to sit with me on this train because we travel in the same direction. I’m out of her authority really, since the term is over. Still, she has to keep an eye.’
The waiter, busy with the wine, said he understood. He raised his eyebrows at Miss Fanshawe and winked, but she did not encourage this, pretending not to notice it.
‘Imagine, Mr Atkins,’ Carruthers said, ‘a country house in the mock Tudor style, with bits built on to it: a rackety old gymn and an art-room, and changing-rooms that smell of perspiration. There are a hundred and three boys at Ashleigh Court, in narrow iron beds with blue rugs on them, which Miss Fanshawe has to see are all kept tidy. She does other things as welclass="underline" she wears a white overall and gives out medicines. She pours out cocoa in the dining-hall and at eleven o’clock every morning she hands each boy four petit beurre biscuits. She isn’t allowed to say Grace. It has to be a master who says Grace: “For what we’re about to receive…” Or the Reverend T. L. Edwards, who owns and runs the place, T.L.E., known to generations as a pervert. He pays boys, actually.’
The waiter, having meticulously removed a covering of red foil from the top of the wine bottle, wiped the cork with a napkin before attempting to draw it. He glanced quickly at Miss Fanshawe to see if he could catch her eye in order to put her at her ease with an understanding gesture, but she appeared to be wholly engaged with her soup.
‘The Reverend Edwards is a law unto himself,’ Carruthers said. ‘Your predecessor was intrigued by him.’
‘Please take no notice of him.’ She tried to sound bracing, looking up suddenly and smiling at the waiter.
‘The headmaster accompanied you on the train, did he, sir?’
‘No, no, no, no. The Reverend Edwards was never on this train in his life. No, it was simply that your predecessor was interested in life at Ashleigh Court. He would stand there happily listening while we told him the details: you could say he was fascinated.’
At this Miss Fanshawe made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a denial.
‘You could pour the Beaune now, Mr Atkins,’ Carruthers suggested.
The waiter did so, pausing for a moment, in doubt as to which of the two he should offer a little of the wine to taste. Carruthers nodded to him, indicating that it should be he. The waiter complied and when Carruthers had given his approval he filled both their glasses and lifted from before them their empty soup-plates.
‘I’ve asked you not to behave like that,’ she said when the waiter had gone.
‘Like what, Miss Fanshawe?’
‘You know, Carruthers.’
‘The waiter and I were having a general conversation. As before, Miss Fanshawe, with the other waiter. Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember my telling him how I took forty of Hornsby’s football cards? And drank the Communion wine in the Reverend’s cupboard?’
‘I don’t believe –’
‘And I’ll tell you another thing. I excused myself into Rider Minor’s gum-boots.’
‘Please leave the waiter alone. Please let’s have no scenes this time, Carruthers.’
‘There weren’t scenes with the other waiter. He enjoyed everything we said to him. You could see him quite clearly trying to visualize Ashleigh Court, and Mrs Carruthers in her awful clothes.’
‘He visualized nothing of the sort. You gave him drink that I had to pay for. He was obliged to listen to your fantasies.’
‘He enjoyed our conversation, Miss Fanshawe. Why is it that people like you and I are so unpopular?’
She didn’t answer, but sighed instead. He would go on and on, she knew; and there was nothing she could do. She always meant not to protest, but when it came to the point she found it hard to sit silent, mile after mile.