She seemed ready to come to any rapid new and happy conclusion about George. In the course of the morning, he had told her of his wartime night club in Durban, his game-shooting expeditions since. It was clear he had not mentioned Matilda. He had put on weight, Kathleen told me, but he could carry it.
I was curious to see this version of George, but I was leaving for Scotland next day and did not see him till September of that year just before my death.
While I was in Scotland I gathered from Kathleen’s letters that she was seeing George very frequently, finding enjoyable company in him, looking after him. “You’ll be surprised to see how he has developed.” Apparently he would hang ‘round Kathleen in her shop most days. “It makes him feel useful,” as she maternally expressed it. He had an old relative in Kent whom he visited at weekends; this old lady lived a few miles from Kathleen’s aunt, which made it easy for them to travel down together on Saturdays, and go for long country walks.
“You’ll see such a difference in George,” Kathleen said on my return to London in September. I was to meet him that night, a Saturday. Kathleen’s aunt was abroad, the maid on holiday, and I was to keep Kathleen company in the empty house.
George had left London for Kent a few days earlier. “He’s actually helping with the harvest down there!” Kathleen told me lovingly.
Kathleen and I planned to travel down together, but on that Saturday she was unexpectedly delayed in London on some business. It was arranged that I should go ahead of her in the early afternoon to see to the provisions for our party; Kathleen had invited George to dinner at her aunt’s house that night.
“I should be with you by seven,” she said. “Sure you won’t mind the empty house? I hate arriving at empty houses, myself.”
I said no, I liked an empty house.
So I did, when I got there. I had never found the house more likable. It was a large Georgian vicarage in about eight acres, most of the rooms shut and sheeted, there being only one servant. I discovered that I wouldn’t need to go shopping; Kathleen’s aunt had left many and delicate supplies with notes attached to them: “Eat this up please do, see also fridge” and “A treat for three hungry people see also 2 bttles beaune for yr party on back kn table.” It was like a treasure hunt as I followed clue after clue through the cool, silent, domestic quarters.
A house in which there are no people — but with all the signs of tenancy — can be a most tranquil good place. People take up space in a house out of proportion to their size. On my previous visits I had seen the rooms overflowing, as it seemed, with Kathleen, her aunt, and the little fat maidservant; they were always on the move. As I wandered through that part of the house which was in use, opening windows to let in the pale yellow air of September, I was not conscious that I, Needle, was taking up any space at all. I felt I might have been a ghost.
The only thing to be fetched was the milk. I waited till after four when the milking should be done, then set off for the farm which lay across two fields at the back of the orchard. There, when the byreman was handing me the bottle, I saw George.
“Hallo, George,” I said.
“Needle! What are you doing here?” he said.
“Fetching milk,” I said.
“So am I. Well, it’s good to see you, I must say.”
As we paid the farmhand, George said, “I’ll walk back with you part of the way. But I mustn’t stop; my old cousin’s without any milk for her tea. How’s Kathleen?”
“She was kept in London. She’s coming on later, about seven, she expects.”
We had reached the end of the first field. George’s way led to the left and on to the main road.
“We’ll see you tonight, then, George?” I said.
“Yes, and talk about old times.”
“Grand,” I said.
But George got over the stile with me. “Look here,” he said. “I’d like to talk to you, Needle.”
“We’ll talk tonight, George. Better not keep your cousin waiting for the milk.” I found myself speaking to him almost as if he were a child.
“No, I want to talk to you alone. This is a good opportunity.”
We began to cross the second field. I had been hoping to have the house to myself for a couple more hours and I was rather petulant
“See,” he said suddenly, “that haystack.”
“Yes,” I said absently.
“Let’s sit there and talk. I’d like to see you up on a haystack again. I still keep that photo. Remember that time when—”
“I found the needle,” I said very quickly, to get it over.
But I was glad to rest. The stack had been broken up, but we managed to find a nest in it. I buried my bottle of milk in the hay for coolness. George placed his carefully at the foot of the stack.
“My old cousin is terribly vague, poor soul. A bit hazy in her head. She hasn’t the least sense of time. If I tell her that I’ve only been gone ten minutes, she’ll believe it.”
I giggled, and looked at him. His face had grown much larger, his lips full, wide, and with a ripe color that appears strange in a man. His brown eyes were abounding as before with some inarticulate plea.
“So you’re going to marry Skinny after all these years?”
“I really don’t know, George.”
“You played him up properly.”
“It isn’t for you to judge. I have my own reasons for what I do.”
“Don’t get sharp,” he said. “I was only funning.” To prove it, he lifted a tuft of hay and brushed my face with it.
“D’you know,” he said next, “I didn’t think you and Skinny treated me very decently in Rhodesia.”
“Well, we were busy, George. And we were younger then; we had a lot to do and see. After all, we could see you any other time, George.”
“A touch of selfishness,” he said.
“I’ll have to be getting along, George.” I made to get down from the stack.
He pulled me back. “Wait, I’ve got something to tell you.”
“O.K., George, tell me.”
“First promise not to tell Kathleen. She wants it kept a secret, so that she can tell you herself.”
“All right. Promise.”
“I’m going to marry Kathleen.”
“But you’re already married.”
Sometimes I heard news of Matilda from the one Rhodesian family with whom I still kept up. They referred to her as “George’s Dark Lady” and of course they did not know he was married to her. She had apparently made a good thing out of George, they said, for she minced around all tarted up, never did a stroke of work, and was always unsettling the respectable colored girls in the neighborhood. According to accounts, she was a living example of the folly of behaving as George did.
“I married Matilda in the Congo,” George was saying.
“It would still be bigamy,” I said.
He was furious when I used that word bigamy. He lifted a handful of hay as if he would throw it in my face, but controlling himself meanwhile he fanned it at me playfully. “I’m not sure that the Congo marriage was valid,” he continued. “Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, it isn’t.”
“You can’t do a thing like that,” I said.
“I need Kathleen. She’s been decent to me. I think we were always meant for each other, me and Kathleen.”
“I’ll have to be going,” I said.
But he put his knee over my ankles, so that I couldn’t move. I sat still and gazed into space.
He tickled my face with a wisp of hay.
“Smile up, Needle,” he said. “Let’s talk like old times.”
“Well?”
“No one knows about my marriage to Matilda except you and me.”
“And Matilda,” I said.
“She’ll keep still so long as she gets her payments. My uncle left an annuity for the purpose, his lawyers see to it”