37

Evan

His stepfather, in torments as usual at anything resembling a public appearance (and the platform of a country railway station is extremely public if it is the station of where you live), was in consequence talking too loud and too heartily. ‘Well, that’s all right. Your trunk is in the van, I’ve just seen it put in. You’ve got your suitcase, haven’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good! Don’t forget it when you change at Market Beaton. And your sandwiches?’

‘They are in the suitcase.’

‘Hope they’re good ones. Think I heard your mother mention ham. Lucky dog! She doesn’t give me ham. Well, see you again at Easter. Hope you’ll have a good term, and all that. And don’t go catching mumps and measles if you can help it. But I suppose you’re bound to.’ Loyal to the English public-school system, Major Burroughs held as an article of faith the tenet that epidemics are peculiar to the Lent term.

‘I’ve had measles. I had it last summer.’

‘Yes, yes. Of course. So you did. Well, I’m sorry the holidays are over. Wish we’d had better weather, and you could have got out more. Dull work, hanging about indoors, reading, and amusing two small sisters. Very nice of you, to be so kind to Rhoda and Jenny. They appreciate it. So do I.’38

‘I think the train’s starting.’

‘Good Lord, so it is! Well, there we are. Goodbye, Evan, old chap. Sure you’ve got your ticket? Good, good! So long! See you soon.’

Dry-eyed and exhausted after this agonizing farewell, Evan pulled up the window, and then stumbled over the feet of the lady who was the only other traveller in that compartment. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said.

‘You didn’t hurt me.’

He was startled. Though she was plainly not the type of lady who would say ‘Granted,’ he had expected a ‘That’s all right,’ or something of that kind, in keeping with the impersonality of people in railway carriages. It was disquieting to be reminded that the feet he had stumbled over were sentient objects, attached to a being to whom he could cause pain. Her voice was not impersonal, either. It was warm and low-pitched, and seemed directly addressed to reassuring him. So he himself snatched up the conventional phrase, saying, ‘That’s all right.’ Spoken, it declared itself the wrong thing to have said—a pawn, when he should have moved out a knight. Becoming aware of a further threat in that the lady had no illustrated papers, and that he had none either, he began to look out of the window.

The lady at her leisure observed his long eyelashes. Long eyelashes being a beauty she herself regretfully lacked, this was always the first thing she looked for in man or woman. The shade in the eye sockets embellished them as art would have done, but was natural—he was a boy of sixteen, or 39perhaps seventeen, who had outgrown his strength. Other things to admire were his small ears, and the well-shaped hands that grew like brown lilies out of his long narrow wrists. If due care had been expended on him, he would have been handsome. But care had not been expended, and whoever sent him to that haircutter should have been shot.