‘You really ought to go to the seaside for a few days yourself, Mr Bateman. It’s wonderful! When I woke up this 138morning, and heard the waves—I can’t describe how I felt; but somehow, it did seem so extraordinary.’

Little by little, she got him indoors, and sitting down, and fed. He shivered; and when he spoke, though what he said was ordinary enough, his voice sounded as if it had not been used for a twelvemonth. It looked to her, she said, as if he might have a cold coming on, nothing likelier than that he should have got chilled waiting about for that rat. The pistol was still in his trouser pocket. When she had given him a hot whisky and seen him settled in his bed, she carried off his suit to give it a good brushing.

‘No waves to-morrow, poor Loveday,’ he called through the closing door. A weight fell off her heart: he was not planning any more excursions for her. Whatever it might be that she had been sent out of the way of, whatever the solitary drama whose last act she had interrupted, it was at an end. But, to be on the safe side, she dropped the pistol into a larder crock containing haricot beans. The larder looked as if a hurricane had raged in it. He must have been putting things tidy: but she would leave it so until to-morrow. To-morrow. She sighed, stooping to take off her shoes. At this time yesterday evening she and Lucy Petter were sitting in the ice-cream parlour, and Lucy was saying, ‘Secretary? It strikes me that you’re nothing but an old man’s darling. What future is there in that, my girl? The future—that’s what you should keep your eye on.’ ‘But Mr Bateman is a very distinguished writer, Lucy.’ ‘Distinguished writer? He must be, if that’s all he pays you, and gets away with it.’ Lucy’s diagnosis had frightened 139her. During the journey back she had reasoned fright into prudence, and she entered High Hope quite resolved to tell Mr Bateman that she needed to find another post—a post where she could keep in better practice and use her shorthand. Now all that was out of the question. She could not think of leaving anyone who looked as lonely as he had done, standing in that derelict patch you couldn’t call a garden. She would write to Lucy, telling her that High Hope would continue to be her address, but giving no reason. And before going to bed she would finish that book from the library, and have it done up ready for the postman to take in the morning, so that she could get another.

140

A Kitchen Knife

Rachel and Trevor Gilman had been married for almost three years before they got into a house of their own. Till then, they lived with Trevor’s parents. In post-war conditions this was nothing to wonder at. Nor, since the war had levelled class distinctions as well as dwelling-houses, was there anything very odd in the fact that her husband’s home should remind Rachel of seaside lodging-houses where she had stayed as a child—except that there was no sea.