‘You know what I mean, Miss Fanshawe? At Ashleigh Court they say you have an awkward way of walking. And I’ve got no charm: I think that’s why they don’t much like me. But how for God’s sake could any child of Mrs Carruthers have charm?’
‘Please don’t speak of your mother like that –’
‘And yet men fancy her. Awful men arrive at weekends, as keen for sex as the Reverend Edwards is. “Your mother’s a most elegant woman,” a hard-eyed lecher remarked to me last summer, in the Palm Court of a Greek hotel.’
‘Don’t drink too much of that wine. The last time –’
‘ “You’re staggering,” she said the last time. I told her I had flu. She’s beautiful, I dare say, in her thin way. D’you think she’s beautiful?’
‘Yes, she is.’
‘She has men all over the place. Love flows like honey while you make do with waiters on a train.’
‘Oh, don’t be so silly, Carruthers.’
‘She snaps her fingers and people come to comfort her with lust. A woman like that’s never alone. While you –’
‘Will you please stop talking about me!’
‘You have a heart in your breast like anyone else, Miss Fanshawe.’
The waiter, arriving again, coughed. He leaned across the table and placed a warmed plate in front of Miss Fanshawe and a similar one in front of Carruthers. There was a silence while he offered Miss Fanshawe a silver-plated platter with slices of roast beef on it and square pieces of Yorkshire pudding. In the silence she selected what she wanted, a small portion, for her appetite on journeys with Carruthers was never great. Carruthers took the rest. The waiter offered vegetables.
‘Miss Fanshawe ironed that blouse at a quarter to five this morning,’ Carruthers said. ‘She’d have ironed it last night if she hadn’t been so tired.’
‘A taste more carrots, sir?’
‘I don’t like carrots, Mr Atkins.’
‘Peas, sir?’
‘Thank you. She got up from her small bed, Mr Atkins, and her feet were chilly on the linoleum. She shivered, Mr Atkins, as she slipped her night-dress off. She stood there naked, thinking of another person. What became of your predecessor?’
‘I don’t know, sir. I never knew the man at all. All right for you, madam?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘He used to go back to the kitchen, Mr Atkins, and tell the cook that the couple from Ashleigh Court were on the train again. He’d lean against the sink while the cook poked about among his pieces of meat, trying to find us something to eat. Your predecessor would suck at the butt of a cig and occasionally he’d lift a can of beer to his lips. When the cook asked him what the matter was he’d say it was fascinating, a place like Ashleigh Court with boys running about in grey uniforms and an undermatron watching her life go by.’
‘Excuse me, sir.’
The waiter went. Carruthers said:
‘ “She makes her own clothes,” the other waiter told the cook. “She couldn’t give a dinner party the way the young lad’s mother could. She couldn’t chat to this person and that, moving about among décolletée women and outshining every one of them.” Why is she an undermatron at Ashleigh Court Preparatory School for Boys, owned and run by the Reverend T.L. Edwards, known to generations as a pervert?’
Miss Fanshawe, with an effort, laughed. ‘Because she’s qualified for nothing else,’ she lightly said.
‘I think that freckled waiter was sacked because he interfered with the passengers. “Vegetables?” he suggested, and before he could help himself he put the dish of cauliflowers on the table and put his arms around a woman. “All tickets please,” cried the ticket-collector and then he saw the waiter and the woman on the floor. You can’t run a railway company like that.’
‘Carruthers –’
‘Was it something like that, Miss Fanshawe? D’you think?’
‘Of course it wasn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’ve just made it up. The man was a perfectly ordinary waiter on this train.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Of course it is.’
‘I love this train, Miss Fanshawe.’
‘It’s a perfectly ordinary –’
‘Of course it isn’t.’
Carruthers laughed gaily, waiting for the waiter to come back, eating in silence until it was time again for their plates to be cleared away.
‘Trifle, madam?’ the waiter said. ‘Cheese and biscuits?’
‘Just coffee, please.’
‘Sit down, why don’t you, Mr Atkins? Join us for a while.’
‘Ah no, sir, no.’
‘Miss Fanshawe and I don’t have to keep up appearances on your train. D’you understand that? We’ve been keeping up appearances for three long months at Ashleigh Court and it’s time we stopped. Shall I tell you about my mother, Mr Atkins?’
‘Your mother, sir?’
‘Carruthers –’
‘In 1960, when I was three, my father left her for another woman: she found it hard to bear. She had a lover at the time, a Mr Dalacourt, but even so she found it hard to forgive my father for taking himself off.’
‘I see, sir.’
‘It was my father’s intention that I should accompany him to his new life with the other woman, but when it came to the point the other woman decided against that. Why should she be burdened with my mother’s child? she wanted to know: you can see her argument, Mr Atkins.’
‘I must be getting on now, sir.’
‘So my father arranged to pay my mother an annual sum, in return for which she agreed to give me house room. I go with her when she goes on holiday to a smart resort. My father’s a thing of the past. What d’you think of all that, Mr Atkins? Can you visualize Mrs Carruthers at a resort? She’s not at all like Miss Fanshawe.’
‘I’m sure she’s not –’
‘Not at all.’
‘Please let go my sleeve, sir.’
‘We want you to sit down.’
‘It’s not my place, sir, to sit down with the passengers in the dining-car.’
‘We want to ask you if you think it’s fair that Mrs Carruthers should round up all the men she wants while Miss Fanshawe has only the furtive memory of a waiter on a train, a man who came to a sticky end, God knows.’
‘Stop it!’ cried Miss Fanshawe. ‘Stop it! Stop it! Let go his jacket and let him go away –’
‘I have things to do, sir.’
‘He smelt of fried eggs, a smell that still comes back to her at night.’
‘You’re damaging my jacket. I must ask you to release me at once.’
‘Are you married, Mr Atkins?’
‘Carruthers!’ Her face was crimson and her neck blotched with a flushing that Carruthers had seen before. ‘Carruthers, for heaven’s sake behave yourself!’
‘The Reverend Edwards isn’t married, as you might guess, Mr Atkins.’
The waiter tried to pull his sleeve out of Carruthers’ grasp, panting a little from embarrassment and from the effort. ‘Let go my jacket!’ he shouted. ‘Will you let me go!’
Carruthers laughed, but did not release his grasp. There was a sound of ripping as the jacket tore.
‘Miss Fanshawe’ll stitch it for you,’ Carruthers said at once, and added more sharply when the waiter raised a hand to strike him: ‘Don’t do that, please. Don’t threaten a passenger, Mr Atkins.’
‘You’ve ruined this jacket. You bloody little –’
‘Don’t use language in front of the lady.’ He spoke quietly, and to a stranger entering the dining-car at that moment it might have seemed that the waiter was in the wrong, that the torn sleeve of his jacket was the just result of some attempted insolence on his part.
‘You’re mad,’ the waiter shouted at Carruthers, his face red and sweating in his anger. ‘That child’s a raving lunatic,’ he shouted as noisily at Miss Fanshawe.
Carruthers was humming a hymn. ‘Lord, dismiss us,’ he softly sang, ‘with Thy blessing.’
‘Put any expenses on my bill,’ whispered Miss Fanshawe. ‘I’m very sorry.’