7

FOR more than a fortnight Cornford saw nothing at all of Miss Hargreaves. It was not a very happy fortnight for me. Not for one moment did I suppose that I had seen the last of her that September morning on Cookham Bridge. Instinctively I knew she would return. Even if I hadn’t known that in myself, I had practical evidence of it. Where did she go in that fortnight? I don’t know; I shall never know. All I knew was that she had left Mrs Beedle’s, retaining her rooms for an indefinite period. Her luggage, her harp, Dr Pepusch–all were left behind. I never went to the house openly to make any inquiries for her; I got the news in a roundabout way–and you can always get news in a roundabout way in Cornford, if you’ve got an efficient spy-system. I used sometimes to scout up Canticle Alley after dark, thinking that perhaps I might see a familiar shadow against the blind of the downstairs sitting-room. But I saw nothing. Once I heard Dr Pepusch croaking away in a minor key; it was a sound that saddened me and filled me with apprehension. I slunk home, wondering how long it would be before she returned with renewed vigour.

Meanwhile, the most sinister development of all stared me day by day in the face. I mean Lessways. The house that had for so long stood empty and neglected was now the scene of tremendous activities. Ironically I used to think how glad I should have been to witness this in more ordinary circumstances, because I loved the place and could not bear to see it fall into decay. And yet–all those gallons of white paint, all those hods of cement, all those ladders–how could I rejoice over them as I should have liked? Gardeners with wheelbarrows, the sweep with his sack of soot, the sanitary experts, glaziers, the telephone men–all these swarmed to Lessways. Still there was no sign of Miss Hargreaves. Hour by hour I expected her to come and criticize the work that was going on, to walk round from room to room, from shrub to herbaceous border, tapping everything with her stick and making innumerable notes in her note-book. It seemed to me wrong that she didn’t come. Often I felt like going over to Lessways myself in order to make certain that all the work was properly carried out.

The only person I ever told about our night on the riverside was Henry, and him I swore to secrecy. If that tale got round Cornford I knew it would be about the end of me.

‘And now,’ I said, ‘I’m through with her. I’m finished. She can do what she damn well likes for all I care.’

Do what she likes. I paused and considered this sentence. Was it wise?

‘What made you go up the river in search of her?’ asked Henry. So then I had to tell him about the swan mystery. I fancied he’d already heard the first part of the tale from Marjorie, but he was nice enough to pretend it was new to him. He seemed, I thought, rather embarrassed by it.

‘Of course,’ I said, ‘there’s no proof I turned her into a swan. I don’t say I did, Henry. I shall probably never know. But it does look funny, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘it does look very funny.’

We were sitting by his fire in the half light, and I noticed he was looking at me rather anxiously, almost nervously. But I was getting used to that from everybody.

Slowly, endlessly, the days passed. I drilled myself to a firm resolution. Never again should I try to explain Miss Hargreaves to anybody; never again make up stories about her. If, in truth, she was subject to my will, my will must never more be exercised. I spent long evenings in my room, supposedly working for my examination in the spring, actually making a lot of notes which later I used in writing this book. Most carefully I wrote down what was supposed to be the truth about my friendship with Miss Hargreaves. How it had started in Blackwell’s shop (in spite of the fact that I had told Marjorie this was a lie, it was pretty generally believed. I am afraid I never tried to deny it). How we had later met at the Albert Hall and had an amusing little adventure together on the Serpentine. I wrote down all the facts so as I shouldn’t again get confused. I learnt the story like a book and almost convinced myself it was true. There was nothing to my discredit in thus commencing a friendship with an old lady. If I kept calm and stuck to it, people would get sick of talking to me about her; slowly she might drift completely out of my life. And, after all, she might never come back, in spite of the work that was going on at Lessways.

But she did come back. And true to her perhaps unenviable–fate she came back accompanied by a distinction that–I had unknowingly bestowed upon her.

October the tenth. I quote from my diary. ‘Furniture at Lessways.’ I don’t think I need add much to that. It was pouring with rain. I watched from my window as the enormous van drew up on the other side of the road; for two hours I watched the men struggling up the wet drive. Grandfather clocks, tallboys, Chippendale chairs, a four-poster bed, crate after crate of crockery, bureaux, Sheraton cabinets, sideboards, pictures innumerable . . .

That night smoke rose from the chimneys.

October the eleventh. I was walking back with Archie Tallents from the Cathedral. It was still miserably wet, but Archie was in his usual gay spirits, humming a tune from a rather absurd anthem we had sung at Matins–all about Aaron’s beard and the ointment that ran down from it to the skirts of his clothing. Comic eighteenth-century stuff. Nares or Weldon.

As we went up the High Street–I on my way to the shop, Archie to his studio–Archie pointed to a magnificent Rolls-Royce waiting outside Truscott’s, the drapery and furnishing store. It was a Rolls-Royce with more than the usual consciousness of pedigree; you almost heard the cogs and plugs (do Rolls-Royces have plugs?) and cylinders chatting to one another about their family trees.

‘My friend the Duchess,’ remarked Archie. ‘I should recognize her crest anywhere.’

As we came nearer, the chauffeur–a smart, tall fellow, very brisk in all his movements–leapt from his seat. I immediately recognized him; he had been supervising the move yesterday afternoon at Lessways. Taking an umbrella, he opened the passenger door and stood waiting, the umbrella held out before him.

I began to feel a little sick.

‘Take off your shirt, Norman,’ said Archie. ‘Lay it on the pavement and I’ll believe you’re a gentleman.’

I felt mesmerized. I made some sort of effort to move away, to cross the road, but there were a lot of people bustling about on the pavement; tweedy women all hot on elevenses, waterproofed women hot on Truscott’s bargain basement. Both Archie and I were held up for a moment.

Slowly Miss Hargreaves emerged from the car. Hideously fascinated, as always, I watched her. She had changed; in a subtle way she had changed very greatly. Her expression was different; the old impish gaiety seemed to have left her. Her clothes were very much quieter; you could not imagine her now wearing a tall hat. Her little head was raised to a higher angle, pushed up, perhaps, by the high neck of her dress. Pausing for a moment, one foot on the running-board, one foot on the pavement, she sniffed fastidiously. Almost instinctively people moved to make way for her. Shivering a little, she drew her cape round her shoulders, adjusted a pair of dark horn spectacles (she no longer used lorgnettes) and addressed the chauffeur.

‘You had better come in with me, Austen. There may be one or two things I shall want to take away.’

‘Very good, your ladyship.’

I realized she was looking at me. Wrinkling her face into a peevish frown as though she were making an effort to remember me, she said in a cold, distant voice: ‘Mr Huntley, is it not? What appalling weather!’

The chauffeur, lipping me superciliously, loomed above her, steering his umbrella over her head. They disappeared into Truscott’s.

‘My God!’ I said to father, rushing into the shop. ‘She’s back!’

‘Never did approve of women playing football.’

‘I’m not talking about football. Miss Hargreaves, I mean; large as life in a Rolls-Royce. She’s come into a title. Chauffeur called her her ladyship. What do you think of it?’

‘Funny things, titles. No law of gravity about them. You can never be certain where or when they’re going to fall. Take my Cousin Terence. He collected stamps. He’d never have found out otherwise that he was descended from Bonnie Prince Charlie. It was like this. We–’

I felt I couldn’t stand father that morning. I went round to Beddow’s to tell Henry the tremendous news. It was some days since I’d seen him.

‘You’ll never guess what’s happened,’ I said.

‘Lady Hargreaves?’

‘Oh, how the devil did you know? What a bore you are!’

‘She’s in the Court news,’ he said. He went to the office and came back with a copy of the Cornford Mercury, which he showed to me. I read:

‘Lady Hargreaves will shortly be in residence at Lessways, the fine old Queen Anne mansion in the London road. We take this opportunity of welcoming her ladyship to Cornford society. Many will be glad to know that Lessways–once the scene of so many distinguished gatherings–will again throw open its doors to the elect. Lady Hargreaves–a keen amateur musician and a poet of distinction–comes of an old Irish family and was, until recently, residing at Oakham.’

‘You were a fool to give her that title,’ said Henry.

I laughed uneasily. ‘Oh, I wasn’t serious about that,’ I said. ‘We were in rather an awkward fix. I told you. I thought Major Wynne would be impressed if I called her Lady Hargreaves.’

‘Well, I hope you’ll enjoy hobnobbing with a countess–or whatever she is.’

‘Do you know, Henry, the old devil looked at me as though I were a tramp. It makes my blood boil.’

‘Hers has boiled blue, old boy. That’s the trouble. Yours hasn’t. Anyway, she might leave you alone now.’

‘I don’t care what she does,’ I said lightly. But I was far from feeling it.

‘I hear she’s been buying up half Truscott’s. Carpets, bedding, curtains. I expect we shall see quite a lot of life at Lessways in a few days.’

‘You can do what you like from now on. I’ve finished with you.’

Bitterly did I remember those idle words, spoken in anger on Cookham Bridge. Not only had I unwittingly raised her rank; I had madly endowed her with autonomy.

Lessways was the seat of government. In a very short while people forgot that the Lady Hargreaves who now flung open her doors to the elect was the Miss Hargreaves who had trespassed upon the sanctity of the Bishop’s Throne; who had worn a pantomime hat; questioned the reputation of the Swan Hotel and, in a score of ways, been the biggest joke of the town since old Canon Featherstonehaugh married Miss Roma Noam, the novelist. (I’ll tell you about that one day.) Miss Hargreaves was no longer a joke. From the moment when the Dean called and left his card at Lessways, Lady Hargreaves’ position as a fixed star in the brilliant little firmament of Cornford was secured. Archdeacon Cutler called. Canon Auty was reputed to be going to call–and this was almost unprecedented, since the old man never left the Close. Years ago he had been a familiar figure in Truslove’s, the barbers, where once a week he had gone to have his beard trimmed; but the opening of a department for ladies in the same establishment had greatly discouraged him: nowadays Mr Truslove himself, every Saturday morning, with scissors, tapers and combs, visited the Close to attend upon what was felt to be the best beard Cornford had known in this century.

Miss Linkinghorne, ever on the scent of Debrett and his offshoots, almost daily lingered by the gates of Lessways. Old Colonel Temperley was another early caller. And there were many more. Not a new visiting-card was printed in those days but it hoped for a day when it might repose upon the silver plate on the Tudor chest in the panelled hall of Lessways.

Let it not be thought that Lady Hargreaves kept herself within the doors of her new home. Oh, no! There was plenty to be done outside and she did it. She attended the chrysanthemum show in the Town Hall and had a terrific argument with old Countess Mumphry about the best method of raising the flowers. ‘No coddling,’ she was heard to say, rather critically. ‘You must never coddle a chrysanthemum, my dear Countess.’ Everybody said that they felt the Countess had spent her entire life misguidedly coddling chrysanthemums.

Towards the end of October the Choral Society gave their usual concert. Lady Hargreaves occupied a prominent position, following Verdi’s Requiem from a splendidly bound full score (full score, mark you) embossed with the letter ‘H’ on the cover. Following this with a red pencil, she sat right below the doctor, whose beat suffered considerably in consequence. I’m not surprised. Even Beecham might have been intimidated.

She was asked to open a Conservative bazaar and she opened it damn well; I wandered in there after she had left and I had the strongest feeling that it was the best-opened bazaar I had ever been to. Not a bit of it was closed, you could see that.

Another matter brought her bang into the middle of Cornford, between the ‘n’ and the ‘f’ as you might say. For some time there had been a controversy waging upon the question of changing the time of closing the Cathedral. The Mayor, who had the impertinence to have a Roman Catholic daughter, had suggested to the Dean and Chapter that, in summer, the Cathedral ought to be kept open until sunset, instead of the usual hour, six-thirty. His idea was that shop people had too little opportunity of visiting the place. The idea was anathema to both Archdeacon Cutler and Canon Auty, particularly as the Mayor had used the expression ‘the people’s Church’. The Dean was for a compromise, but up to date the matter had not been settled. Letters poured into the Mercury, mostly supporting the Mayor. Almost at the same time there was a by-election and the Labour candidate, D. Howlsby-Skitt (who also wrote books on eagles which father sometimes put in the window), polled, according to the Nationalist supporters, a good two thousand more votes than he would have done, because he had used the Cathedral-closing-hour controversy in the course of his platform campaign. He didn’t get in, but he was near the door, so to speak. They were critical days in Cornford, I can tell you. A nearly Roman Catholic mayor combined with a Labour member–I doubt whether the Cathedral could have stood up to it. In the height of the argument, Lady Hargreaves stepped in, writing to the editor of the Mercury a terse, crisp letter in which she poured fine and subtle scorn upon the attitude of trippers who treated the holy building as a super-museum piece. The Cathedral, she maintained, was the property of the Church, not of the ‘people’. (And she wrote that word in inverted commas, too.) Coming down so firmly on the Close side of the fence, she so impressed Canon Auty that he declared for the tenth time to his wife that he would call at Lessways; he even went so far as to quote in a sermon two lines of a sonnet from Constance Lady Hargreaves’ pen which appeared in the Mercury:

‘Out, out bold Beauvais, thrust thy ancient sword

’Mongst those who never Magnify the Lord . . .’

(Nobody hated visitors to the Cathedral more than Canon Auty. He had once rudely turned out a gang of Colonials who wandered into the south transept just as the choir was lined up for Evensong. Amongst them was a retired bishop of the Windward Isles who, it is said, spent the rest of his windy life disputing in various papers the Canon’s well-known and somewhat un-Anglican views upon the liturgies of the Eastern Church.)

I saw a good deal of Lady Hargreaves. But did she ever vouchsafe to me more than the flicker of a perfectly bred eyelid? The old devil did not. Upon one occasion when I happened to come across her making a sketch of the Norman font, there was not even a flicker. I was always running into her. Popping in and out of the Deanery; exercising Sarah along Meads (Sarah never yapped now, and not a tree did she sniff at); writing verses in unexpected corners of the Cathedral; soaring at thirty-five–never more–up and down the High Street in the Rolls-Royce. I did my best to avoid her. But even if I didn’t see her I was constantly being tormented by the smoke that rose from the chimneys of Lessways. Once, when the wind blew a lot of soot over my music paper, I stood at the window and cursed her, shaking my fist at the house and watching the smoke, knowing I was powerless to do anything. You knew it was expensive smoke, fired from the very best household coal. I watched it in a gloomy reverie as it plumed away into the saffron evening sky and floated serenely round the Cathedral spire.

They were wretched days for me. When you make something, make it well as I had, endow it with a title and send it out into the best society, do you sleep easily in your bed when it spurns you and treats you like dust? Do you? If you do you’re a stronger man than I am.

For some time at least I kept my vow not to have anything more to do with her. Of course, she helped me to keep that vow in a way. But I don’t mind telling you it was torture–pure torture, made the more unbearable because everybody used to ask me why I wasn’t friendly with her any more. Jim was particularly impossible in that way. It was a funny thing. Before, when she’d been merely Miss Hargreaves, mother and Jim had practically accused me of snobbery. Now, when she was Lady Hargreaves, Jim, at any rate, reproached me for not calling upon her.

‘You ought to go and see her,’ she kept saying. ‘After all, she owes her life to you–she told us so herself.’

‘Oh, she’s far too grand for me now,’ I said. ‘I reckon I know where I’m not wanted. She’s too high-up for me, Jim. I’m not in that Close set and never will be.’

‘How stupid you are! She’s probably offended because you haven’t been to see her. It’s your duty to go.’

‘I agree with Norman,’ said mother unexpectedly. ‘I think he’s quite right not to go there. If she wanted to see us she’d come here, but she doesn’t want to. It’s been a very unfortunate friendship for the boy, and the less he has to do with her the better. Personally I should hate to see him making up to her as everybody else does, just because she’s a ladyship.’

‘Thank you, mother,’ I said. I thought it jolly sporting of her.

You’ll want to know what the position was between me and Marjorie. Well, I’m sorry to tell you (or am I sorry?) that she’d quite given me up. She’d started to go round with Pat Howard. No, I can’t honestly say I was sorry. There was a lack of imagination about that girl which had always worried me. She never quite came to life, somehow, though she looked pretty enough. I mean . . . Pat Howard! Greasy hair, padded shoulders, check plus-fours and a stinking little three-wheeler that belched blue smoke at you from an exhaust like a ship’s siren . . . No! Pat Howard no doubt had his points. But I never liked him. I can’t say I’d trust my money to the bank he works in.

And that brings me to the question of Connie’s money. Where had she got it all from? She’d given five thousand for the house alone and a rumour had it that she’d paid Mr Carver, the agent, the entire sum in bank-notes. I knew in a roundabout way, via Pat Howard as a matter of fact, that she had no account at the Metropolitan and I’d never seen her going in or out of any of the other banks in the town. Had I (and this was only one of many such questions which I could never answer) made the bank-notes too? Suppose they turned out to be duds? A nice kettle of fish that would be–my kettle of fish as well as hers, for I hadn’t the slightest doubt she would, in some ingenious way, plunge me directly into it. I should get boiled; not she.

On the other hand, imprisonment would at least mean the end of her in Cornford. It would be nice to visit her in jail and gently point out to her that I was still master of the situation. I toyed with the idea a good deal; perilously I approached a peak. It got possession of me. Whisperings round Cornford: Lady Hargreaves is a common crook: marked coldness from the Close: the Dean is twice out when she calls: discovery–by me–of a printing-press for turning out bank-notes in the vast cellars of Lessways: headline–‘Lay clerk discovers criminal plot in Cathedral City’: the Trial: ten years: visits to Connie in prison: I appeal to the Governor to allow her to play the Chapel organ. Safely locked up I at last have her under strict control. No more high aristocratic jinks.

‘My God!’ I said, ‘I’ll scotch her!’

The plot thickened in my mind, in my room late at nights. She was climbing too damn high. Some rungs, if not all, must be wrenched from her ladder. Get the rumour round, get the tatty trotty tongues of Cornford wagging, and it would be the beginning of the end of her. She was not popular with the townsfolk after the Cathedral-closing incident, and the weather in the Close is as fickle as any April day can offer. I didn’t suppose, of course, that the bank-notes were forged; I never carried the plot so far as trial and imprisonment. But it would be good enough if some such rumour got round.

It’s no good your reading this and condemning me and saying I’m horribly malicious. I had to do something about it. I couldn’t sit back for ever and watch Connie capering in her Cloud-Cuckoo-Land of Deans and Archdeacons. One kind word from her, one smile in her old fashion, one wink of recognition–and I would not have acted as I did.

It was easy enough. I sent an anonymous letter to Mr Carver the house-agent, choosing him because I knew that once a typed letter gets filed in a business house, it’s as good as placarded on the town walls. And I wanted the story to buzz from the town, not from the Close. Nobody believes stories that start in the Close, everybody believes what they hear in the barber’s shop, over the counter of the Happy Union, or what the office boy tells the messenger boy from the bank.

I was very careful about it all. If you’re going to be Anon you’ve got to do it well; otherwise you’ll end up by merely being incognito. I went to town one plain day and spent half a crown in a typewriting office in St Martin’s Lane. This is what I wrote:

‘Sir. This is a warning to you. Do not trust the woman who calls herself “Lady Hargreaves”. Neither her title nor her money are genuine. She is a dangerous member of the I.R.A. If you value Cornford Cathedral, keep an eye on her.’

I signed it ‘Ulsterman’.

How well I remember that afternoon. I was standing in Charing Cross post office with crowds of busy people buzzing about me. The letter had just been dropped into the country box. I stood there, biting my fingers and wondering how I could get it out again. I knew at once that I had done a mad thing. But the whole trouble with me, as you’ll have found out, is that I never realize I’ve done a mad thing until I have done it.

The evening after that I was in the Happy Union, sitting alone in the corner by the fire. The wind was wailing outside, the rain pouring. I was sad. Bitterly I regretted sending that letter, the first and the last anonymous letter of my life. I don’t know whether you’ve ever tried it, but sending anonymous letters gives you a kind of thin, mean feeling inside, as though in trying to hide your own personality, you’d only succeeded in giving birth to a new and detestable one. I’ve always hated that fellow Anon whose poems appear in so many anthologies; now, sneaking into the seclusion of the Happy Union under his name, I hated myself.

The swing-door opened suddenly, and I heard Henry’s voice, talking to somebody with him. I was in the public bar (father and I hate the saloon lounge) and I was expecting Henry to come in. But he didn’t. I heard him go through to the saloon, and then I heard Pat Howard’s voice. I sighed. If Henry went into the saloon with Pat Howard, we might just as well not be friends any more, I thought.

Well, I eavesdropped. Anon would; it’s in character. Anyhow, I couldn’t very well help overhearing what they said which is the typical sort of excuse Anon would make.

‘What’s the matter with Huntley, these days?’ I could hear Pat saying. I guessed they were drinking pink gins.

‘God knows!’ So Henry. And I could hear his shoulders shrugging. ‘He’s miserable to death over this Hargreaves woman.’

‘Most extraordinary yarns are going round. Marjorie thinks he’s quite dotty, you know.’

‘Oh, he’s not dotty,’ said Henry. (I knew Henry felt uncomfortable.) ‘Of course, it’s been a frightful blow to him the–way the Hargreaves has cut him dead.’

‘There always was something a bit odd about Huntley,’ said Pat, ‘even as a kid. Too damned introspective, you know. As for the old man, well, of course, he’s quite mad.’

I got up. I couldn’t stand that. No. That was too much.

I went into the saloon and walked up to the bar. Henry and Pat were the only people there.

Henry went a flaming red when he saw me; and he does go very red, Henry does, right up to the roots of the hair. I felt sorry for him in a way.

‘Look here,’ I said to Pat, ‘you may say what you like about me and we shan’t quarrel. But if you say anything more about my father, Pat Howard, I’ll wipe your nose on the floor.’

‘Oh, I didn’t mean anything,’ he began quickly. ‘Have a drink, old man. I–’

‘Of course Pat didn’t mean anything,’ said Henry. ‘Have something to drink and be nice to us, old boy.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I won’t drink with you. As for you, Henry, I hope that bath will stick in your throat and choke you. You can drown yourself in it–’

‘Here, old boy, don’t go on like this.’

‘I will go on like this.’

But instead of going on like that, I turned suddenly and went out of the bar. In the street I hunched up my coat miserably from the driving rain. I felt suicidal. I’m very fond of old Henry, and it did seem to me that he’d let me down terribly. The whole of the Hargreaves business suddenly mounted up like a cloud over me. I felt I couldn’t breathe.

While I stood there the side door of the Happy Union opened and a man came out, fumbling with the catch of his umbrella. ‘Now,’ I heard him saying, ‘I shall really expect to see you at Mass on Sunday, Mrs Paton. I know it’s very difficult for you, but you must try to come. Good night.’

‘Good night, Father.’

It was Father Toule. I remembered that Mrs Paton, who runs the Happy Union, was a Roman Catholic. For a moment I stood lost in thought, watching him walk up the hill towards the presbytery in Bethany Lane. Then I ran after him.

‘Father Toule!’ I called, a few yards behind him. He turned.

‘Yes? Who is that, please?’

‘It’s me. Norman Huntley. Huntley’s bookshop. You remember–’

‘Of course. How are you, Mr Huntley? And how is your father? Very wintry, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m all right, thank you. At least, I’m not–not really. I awfully want to have a talk with you, that is, if you’ve got time.’

‘Oh? Certainly. Come and have a cup of cocoa with me at the presbytery. Dear me! What a night!’

So it was a night. We struggled against the wind, up to the top of Candole Street, round the corner by the Northgate, and eventually down into Bethany Lane, by the recreation park. It was impossible to talk in the driving wind and rain. Father Toule insisted on my sharing his umbrella, which I thought kind but silly of him, as I only got the drips from it down my neck.

We went into the presbytery and he lit a small gas-stove in the parlour. I had been in once before to bring some books round. It was, I thought, a terribly dreary room, with much the same atmosphere as a dentist’s waiting-room. It was full of sacred pictures and dried flowers, with a lot of blotting-pads and penny pamphlets on the walnut oval table in the middle. It seemed a little more cheerful that evening with the gas-fire alight. Father Toule kept skimming round me, making me comfortable, offering me cigarettes and going in and out of the room to some mysterious kitchen down a dark staircase to see about the cocoa. There was an awful draught from one of the opened windows, but I didn’t like to tell him. After some time the cocoa was ready and I sat with the steaming cup before me, stirring it vigorously and wondering how on earth I was going to say what I wanted to say. It was getting on for ten. Father Toule didn’t try to make me talk; just said a few things about the weather and books. He’s a very small man, quite young, with the most extraordinarily innocent expression and grave blue eyes. He’s got rather a comic little laugh and he tries so hard to make you comfortable that you can’t help feeling uncomfortable.

‘Well’I choked over the boiling cocoa. How much easier it would all have been if he’d offered me sherry! ‘The fact is–’ There was no sugar in the cocoa. I wondered whether to tell him.

‘Yes?’

‘Father Toule,’ I said, putting the cocoa on the table and determining to plunge into my story, ‘Father Toule, suppose I told you something fantastic, such as that I’d been swallowed by a whale? If I swore it was the truth, you wouldn’t laugh at me, would you?’

He did laugh. But not at me, which was kind.

‘I expect everybody laughed at poor Jonah, don’t you? And he must have found it hard to put up with. No, Mr Huntley, I’ll try not to laugh. What is the matter?’

‘I’d better get it out at once. I’m terribly worried. I’ve created something. I’ve created a woman. She’s alive now in this town. Her name is–Lady Hargreaves.’

There was a long silence. Not a shadow of a smile crossed his face. It was quite expressionless. Then–‘Would it be better for you to tell me all about it, Mr Huntley?’

I told him everything, right up to the swan affair. The only thing I left out was about our night on the river. I couldn’t bear the idea of that getting round, and even presbyteries have ears.

‘Do you believe me?’ I asked.

‘I believe,’ he said, ‘that you believe you are telling a true story. Nobody could come and make up a story like that.’

‘I could,’ I said.

‘Ah!’ he smiled. ‘Yes. You could. But I don’t think you’d walk up Candole Street all the way to Bethany Lane on a wild night just to pull my leg, would you, Mr Huntley?’

I shook my head. ‘You believe me, then?’

‘I said I believed you believed you were telling a true story. But whether you have the true explanation–ah! That’s another matter.’

‘I’m positive!’ I cried. ‘I feel it in my bones. There can’t be any other explanation, there can’t be. Everything fits in with what I made up from the first.’

‘Well, if you are certain you have–made this woman, Mr Huntley, why do you come to me?’

‘Because–because–Well, I haven’t got proof, have I? And I don’t know what to do about her.’

‘Ah. You haven’t got proof. Then you are not quite certain?’

‘I see. You’re another one who doesn’t believe me,’ I said bitterly. The rain beat against the windows; a calendar was flapping on the wall from a partly opened window.

‘No, no!’ he said quickly. ‘After all, none of us can know what is in the mind of God, can we, and–’

‘That’s it!’ I cried. ‘That’s just it! I felt you’d–there was that saint you were interested in. That’s what made me come to you. The saint who flew.’

‘Oh, you mean St Joseph of Cupertino? Yes. You must not take such stories too seriously. There is very little evidence but do have another cigarette that he actually flew.–– He was supposed to be suspended above the ground. But even that is not known for certain.’

‘Can anything be proved?’ I said. And I remembered father saying that the only thing he certainly knew was that he knew nothing.

‘Supernatural phenomena cannot be proved by natural evidences, Mr Huntley.’

‘But I know I made Miss Hargreaves. I know it, Father. I–’

‘Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I would like to suggest to you that it is no more certain you created Miss Hargreaves than that St Joseph flew about his church. God may, of course, in His own inscrutable way, have used you for the demonstration of a marvel that we cannot at present understand. He may have done that.’

‘That’s it. That’s what I mean.’

‘And there may, of course, be a perfectly natural explanation, overlooked at present.’

‘I don’t want natural explanations!’ I cried.

‘Really, Mr Huntley don’t you?’ He smiled.

‘Suppose,’ I went on, ‘that it turns out beyond doubt that nobody in the world had ever seen or heard of Miss Hargreaves before that day I first spoke her name that she suddenly appeared in the world at that moment? Why then, Father Toule, it means that I must have created her.’

‘No, Mr Huntley. It means that there must be a supernatural explanation.’

‘But that is the only supernatural explanation.’

‘Oh, no! Since we really know nothing of the supernatural, there might be a million supernatural explanations. There is one quite obvious possibility. I merely put it to you. There is precedent for our believing that it is possible to raise a dead body from the grave. But no doubt you have thought of that and dismissed it.’

I was silent. ‘I don’t–like that,’ I said slowly.

‘Ah. You prefer the other? Yes. I can quite understand. I wonder–’ He was silent. ‘I was going to say,’ he suggested, ‘that it might ease your mind a little if you could go to Lusk some time and see if by any chance there is a tombstone in the graveyard which bears this lady’s name or a plate, perhaps, in the church itself. What I am trying to suggest to you is that you might have subconsciously noticed the name on your way into the church and brought it out later, not realizing you had seen it.’

‘But–you don’t mean–that–I raised her from the dead–the cockatoo–everything–no, I–’

‘Oh, please do not let it add to your worries. It is only another possible supernatural explanation. In any case, I feel that a visit to Lusk church might help you to get a clearer perspective of the matter. How very, very interesting it all is! I think you ought to tell this sexton that you were playing a joke on him. Forgive my putting that point of view before you, but it was perhaps rather an unkind thing to do. Unintentional, of course, Mr Huntley.’

‘Do you know, that never once occurred to me.’

‘He, you see, firmly believes in her existence, though he has never seen her. Whether you have created her in the flesh, you have certainly created her in the mind of that one man. You have, in fact, planted in that mind what may be a lie.’

‘Unless–I raised her from the dead.’

‘Yes. But I would not dwell too much upon that. It was perhaps silly of me to lay it before you.’

‘It’s so awful, Father Toule. Not a soul will believe me. And I can’t help feeling I want to tell everybody, make them believe me, do something that’ll compel them to believe me. That swan, for example–’

For the first time that evening he frowned.

‘I would be very, very careful,’ he said, ‘if you really believe you are endowed with some strange supernatural power, then you must walk very carefully indeed. You must learn to be very humble. Say your prayers about it and accept God’s will. I would not try to probe too deeply into the matter. I am very honoured that you should have come to me, Mr Huntley. I shall accept all that you have told me as if it were under the seal of the Confessional–’

‘I don’t mind who you tell,’ I said.

‘I would prefer to tell nobody, Mr Huntley.’

‘You’re awfully kind,’ I mumbled. For some moments I sat there staring into the gas-fire. Father Toule stifled a yawn. I rose hastily.

We went to the door. ‘Come and see me at any time,’ he said.

‘Yes. Thank you. I’ll be quiet about it. Do as you suggest.’

‘I wonder,’ he murmured, ‘whether she has been baptized?’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Never mind. It is a vast problem, Mr Huntley. Too big for our small minds, I fear. I hope, for your own peace, that you discover some perfectly straightforward explanation of the whole mystery.’

But the trouble was, that I didn’t hope that. As I walked home through the rain, pondering over our talk, I knew that I preferred a supernatural explanation. I stood outside Lessways for fully five minutes, thinking that, inside there, going now to her bed perhaps, was the woman that I had created; or, the woman I had–raised from the dead.

A letter was waiting for me on the hall-stand. I snatched it up quickly, immediately recognizing the large, flowery handwriting.

‘Is that you, Norman?’ called mother from the drawing-room. ‘We’ve got those new records of the Mikado; come and hear them.’

‘Not now, mother,’ I said.

I ran upstairs, past father’s room, up to the next floor to my room at the top of the house. It was cold. I switched on the electric heater, drew the blinds, put on my dressing-gown, one that an uncle of Henry’s had brought back from Persia, rather a gay affair, a reassuring sort of garment. Lighting a cigarette, I took off my shoes. I realized to my annoyance that my hands were shaking. ‘Nervous fool!’ I muttered. Then I tore open Connie’s letter. A minute later I sank back into my chair, Anon with the mask off, beaten, reduced to jelly.

This is what the letter said:

‘Lessways.

‘October the 24th.

‘An anonymous letter containing a scandalous libel against Lady Hargreaves has just been put into her hands by Mr Carver, who had intended taking it directly to the police. Lady Hargreaves would like Mr Norman Huntley to know that she is well aware of the identity of the cowardly villain who, from his infamous shelter of anonymity, hurls such calumnies against her. Were it not for the fact that she remembers an occasion in Blackwell’s bookshop in Oxford, she would do nothing to prevent Mr Carver from calling in the assistance of the law. As it is, because of an old courtesy, she has decided not to divulge the truth.

‘Lady Hargreaves is prepared to overlook, even to forget, this most shameful attack upon her integrity. She will defend herself, if necessary, in her own way and in her own time. Let it not be thought, however, that Mr Norman Huntley will escape a second time, should he be led to perpetrate further outrages upon her.’

An overwhelming penitence seized hold of me; the most bitter regrets for what I had so shamefully done. Bleakly I looked into the future. All that Father Toule had said came back to me. I went to bed, but I was haunted by her and could not sleep. The window was open a little and, from the other side of the road, through another open window, I could very faintly hear the playing of a harp. What was the tune? I listened, lost it for a moment as a late bus passed, then caught more of it. It was ‘Over the sea to Skye’. A lovely tune. Were they ghostly fingers that plucked the strings? Were they ghostly strings? Was Father Toule right? Were I to return to Lusk should I find a tomb with the words ‘Constance Hargreaves’ engraved on it in beautiful eighteenth-century lettering? And would she ever rest in peace? Was she, perhaps, haunted now by me as I was by her? Who was the haunter, who the haunted?

If I could undo, if I could only undo what I had done in Lusk church, I moaned to myself, I’d give ten years of my life. Suppose I went back to Lusk, told the sexton it was all a great lie, stood there again by that awful lectern, disclaimed all knowledge of ‘dear Mr Archer’, and, with all the power that my will is capable of, willed her back to her proper place wherever that might be?–

Father’s room is directly below mine. While I lay on my bed I heard his violin. I pricked up my ears. Was it true? Yes. He, also, was playing ‘Over the sea to Skye’. As I had, he must have heard Connie’s harp and, consciously or unconsciously, drifted into the same tune himself. The harp stopped now. When he came to the end of the tune, father stopped. The harp started to play again. This time it was ‘The Wearing of the Green’. Half-way through, father took up the tune; for a few moments harp and violin sounded together, the harp almost lost, just audible.

I got up and went to the window. It was entrancing; otherworldly; I wanted it to go on for ever. Go on, Connie, I said; go on, don’t stop. But she wouldn’t go on. I saw someone coming down the path of Lessways, to the gate, to the road, crossing the road, waiting by a lamp-post, right under father’s window. It was Connie. And, something told me, it was the old Connie, the Connie who had sat in the organ-loft with me and played Handel’s Largo. She was wearing a black coat; no hat. Father was playing ‘Greensleeves’, very slowly and sadly; Connie stood below, her head turned down to the pavement, one hand holding her stick, the other waving gently to the beat of the music. ‘Oh, bravo, bravo!’ I heard her say to herself when father had stopped playing.

I opened the window a little wider and leant out. Surely, I thought, music must for ever reconcile us?

‘Miss Hargreaves–’ I called softly. ‘Miss Hargreaves–’

She did not hear me. I called again, a little louder. This time she looked up sharply. I had no chance to say any more. As quick as lightning, she crossed the road and disappeared up the drive of Lessways. I heard the slamming of the front door, and though the width of the road and the two gardens was between us, I felt as though it had been slammed straight in my face.

It was the next evening, or a day or so after–I can’t remember now and my diary got muddled during those queer days–anyhow, it was very soon after that I sat in the Happy Union with father and had one of the most strange and interesting talks with him in my life. He was the smallest bit drunk, to tell you the truth. He’d lost his match in the skittles championship, and losing a match always makes him drink more than he should. Not that my father is a drunkard; don’t go running away with that idea. Only once or twice have I known him like he was that night; another occasion was when Horace scratched the varnish of his violin.

I came into the bar about half-past nine and found him, for once, sitting alone in my favourite corner, under the framed photograph of all the kings of Europe, taken about 1912 when there were enough kings to make a passable group. Somebody, years ago, had stuck a halfpenny stamp over the Kaiser and it was still there.

There was a grand fire going and not many chaps in the bar.

‘You look glum, Dad,’ I said.

‘Fill up,’ was all he said. I ordered a pint of old and mild. Father looked rather glazedly at the row of empty glasses on the table. ‘Janus lost the three-thirty,’ he said. ‘Backed him both ways, my boy. Had to with a name like that. What did Janus have two ears or two elbows, something; anyway, he doubled himself. Put some rum in that. Talk to me. Tell me everything.’

I took his half-empty beer glass over to the bar and engaged it with a noggin of rum. ‘Talk to me,’ he said again, when I returned.

‘Are you in a serious mood, Dad?’

‘Never more serious in my life, boy.’

‘Well, tell me this. Do you believe you can–raise the dead?’

‘Never tried. Dare say’–he drank–‘you might.’

I drew my chair closer to him. I didn’t want the whole bar to hear. I told him about my talk with Father Toule. For a long time father was silent; he didn’t even drink.

‘A ghost couldn’t play a harp as well as she does,’ he said.

‘Did you know she came over the road and listened to you last night, Dad?’

‘She’s a fine woman. I like her. I shouldn’t like to think she was a ghost.’

‘I don’t like to, either. Not a bit. But I’m getting scared, Dad.’ Should I tell him about the anonymous letter and her answer to it? No. Not yet. ‘She may be a fine woman,’ I said, ‘but she’s getting sinister, these days. The way she slammed that door! I can tell you, she’s properly got her knife into me. And it isn’t an ordinary sort of knife, either.’

‘I’m a bit muddled, boy. This is the woman you made up?’

‘Well, do you really believe I made her up? Do you?’

He leant low over the table, looked at me with his impossibly ambiguous eyes, and caught hold of my sleeve with his fingers. ‘Look, Norman, my boy, I believe you. I believe in anything. I don’t believe a damn thing’s impossible.’

For once I knew he was speaking seriously. Whenever father uses the word ‘I’ a good deal, it means he means what he’s saying.

‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Talk, Dad.’

‘When I was a boy I wanted a lizard, pined for a lizard. In South America it was and everybody had lizards, all the boys had lizards, except me. I sat under a yan-tan tree and said, “I’ve got a beautiful new lizard, the best lizard ever hatched from a lizard egg.” There was a pain in my hand; couldn’t make out what it was. Went on saying that about the lizard over and over again. Presently the pain in my hand got worse and I looked at it; a lizard as long as my violin was biting my little finger. Well, there you are. Did I ever tell you about those elephants? I–’

‘Yes. You told me that. But damn it, father! That was just a lizard crawling over the ground in the ordinary way. I mean–’

‘Live lizard.’ He banged his fist on the table. ‘Lizard plague that year and every lizard in the country had been killed by lizard poison except the tame ones the boys had. Tell you this lizard was trained to come to me; tell you I made that reptile. In the Zoo now. I presented him. Got too much for me.’

‘Yes, but–’ I wiped the sweat off my brow; I felt uneasy. ‘That’s got nothing to do with Miss Hargreaves.’

‘Matter of degree,’ he said. He looked at me solemnly and stroked his moustache with the rim of his glass. ‘I could put the whole thing in a nutshell for you. Three words–’

‘Don’t tell me about Tennyson. I shall scream.’

‘Well, damn it!’ Again he thumped the table. ‘It was Lord Tennyson! I remember those words now. Skulking behind a pillar he was and he dropped this bit of paper. Three words on it. I read them.’

‘Well, what the devil were they?’

‘Creative thought creates.’

‘That all?’ It didn’t seem much to me at the moment.

Father glared at me. ‘Enough, isn’t it? There’s the key to the whole mystery and you say “is that all”? That’s not the way to treat your father, my lad; not the way at all.’

‘I’m sorry, Dad.’

‘So you ought to be. I’m trying to help you. I’ve seen what’s going on. I know. She’s no ghost. Creative thought creates. More people in the world than you know started life in that way. Do you realize that millions of people every year are writing letters to Sherlock Holmes? They’re still digging about in the Gray’s Inn Road–’

‘Baker Street–’

‘Well, wherever the devil lived–still digging about trying to find him. He’s got the biggest mail of anyone, barring Santa Claus and a bambino they put out in some church in Italy on Palm Sunday, or is it Ascension? Your Miss Holway’s another. I’m proud of you, my boy. Proud of you!’ He drank and shook his head several times at me.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’m glad somebody’s proud of me, anyway. I don’t like it, Dad; I don’t like it, whichever way you look at it I’d give anything never to have started it. I’m miserable. Everybody’s fed up with me. Even Henry keeps out of my way nowadays. They all think I’m dotty, and they’re sick to death of me talking about her. I’ve never been so miserable. She’s ruining my life.’

‘Of course,’ said father slowly, ‘you were a fool.’

‘How?’

‘My boy, I warned you years ago. I knew you’d got this gift. I’ve got it too. I don’t use it. You can’t go tampering with spiritual things and not expect trouble. Look at that Bitch of Endor.’

‘Miss Hargreaves isn’t like that at all.’

‘H’m.’ He shook his head slowly from side to side and kicked the coals in the fire with his foot. ‘She’s going to be.’

‘Going to be–’ I stared at him and he looked at me very seriously. I got up. I felt hot and heady. ‘My God!’ I said. ‘I must finish this somehow.’

‘Be careful,’ he said. ‘Be damn careful. They turn and bite you, boy. I got so worried I nearly took to opium. It was just about then I married your mother. Keep off drugs, boy, whatever you do.’

‘It makes you feel like trying anything, doesn’t it?’

‘They say Raleigh smoked opium in the Tower. Ever been to the Tower, by the way?’

‘I do wish you’d keep to the point, Dad.’

But father wasn’t interested in the point any more.

‘Extraordinary thing, chopping off all those heads. Took your mother there once, but it was closed for repairs.’

Dreamily his hand curled round the tankard. I could see a story coming.

‘Shall I go to Lusk,’ I said, ‘and do my damnedest?’

‘Of course,’ murmured father, ‘I was never an admirer of Raleigh. Take that cloak affair. Too ostentatious. Then there was Blenheim. Who lost Blenheim? The whole campaign was sheer folly! He had no powder. Take this beer mug: that’s Austerlitz. This vase is Wellington; this ashtray, Nelson. Hey, miss, bring me a pint of eight! Well, you see ? Can’t be done. Tolstoy demonstrates that in–what’s that hellishly long book about peace and war?’

I left him; I knew I should get nothing more out of him that night.

‘Creative thought Creates’, I muttered over and over again to myself. I went to sleep with those words on my mind. At three o’clock I woke in a sweat from a nightmare. I won’t tell you the nightmare because other people’s dreams are always boring and, if it terrified me, I can’t expect it to terrify anyone else. The point is, when I woke out of that ’mare, I found myself muttering three words over and over again. And those words were ‘Destructive thought Destroys’.

Next morning I was in the shop, upstairs, trying to locate a Liddell and Scott for a customer. I heard the door open downstairs, someone coming in. I heard the tapping of a stick. Quickly I went to the head of the stairs and listened.

‘Ah, Mr Huntley. I imagine we have met?’

‘Dare say. Hand me that pawn, will you? There, by your foot.’

‘I am Lady Hargreaves, Mr Huntley.’

‘Oh, yes. Play chess?’

‘Tolerably. But I came to talk of music.’

‘Ah, Music. Yes. H’m. Ah. Music? You like music?’

‘I could not say I like music, Mr Huntley. Music is air to me. Without it, I could not live.’

‘H’m. I feel just the same about food, so we’ve something in common. Oh, damn! I’m checking the wrong king again!’

‘The harp is my instrument.’

‘Oh? You’re the harper? Yes, I remember. Or do you call yourself a harpie? Fine! Heard you last night.’

‘And I heard you, Mr Huntley. Allow me to congratulate you on your playing. I am no mean judge.’

‘Thanks. Take a seat if you can find one. People generally use books. There’s the Britannica. You gave a recital in Bath, didn’t you. Or was it Wales?’

‘I have hardly reached the standard of a public recital, my dear Mr Huntley.’

‘Private one, perhaps?’

‘That is precisely what I have come to see you about. I am thinking of giving a small musical party at Lessways. I should very much like you to play the violin.’

I could hardly believe my ears. After that letter to me–and everything. Music, then, had reconciled us. Was I glad? I didn’t know.

‘Good idea,’ said father. ‘We can do the Bach double D minor. You’d better practise it.’

‘But I play the harp.’

‘Oh, the harp. H’m. Yes.’

‘I had in mind a group of solos from you, Mr Huntley–to include a little composition of my own which I think you would interpret well. A Canzona inspired by a willow-wren.’

‘Queer birds. I remember one once that had hiccups. Yes–certainly. I’ll play my tune on the G string. Norman can accompany. Squeen, order a new G at once, you devil! Funny, Lady Harton, Squeen plays the fiddle too. Think it’d be the flute, wouldn’t you?’

‘Oh? Why?’

‘All that looking sideways. Suits Squeen more.’

‘Well, then, I shall play some harp solos. As for the accompaniments to your pieces, including my Canzona, I will be responsible for those myself.’

‘Oh, no!’ said father promptly. ‘Norman must play. Hi, Norman!’ He called out. ‘You there? Come down. Lady Harton wants you to play for her concert. We’re doing my tune. Where are you?’

I sat tight and didn’t answer. I suppose it was eavesdropping, but what I always say is, if eaves are worth dropping you’re a fool if you don’t pick them up.

‘Unreliable fellow, my son,’ said father. ‘Never know where he is. Still, he’s a good musician. That’ll be all right. I’ll settle him for you.’

There was a pause. I heard father murmur ‘check’. Then:

‘Mr Huntley,’ she said, ‘let me be quite frank with you. I do not wish your son to play.’

‘Oh? Why? Thought you and he were as thick as thieves?’ ‘By no means! It is all a most painful subject. I had not wished to refer to it. But you compel me to.’

‘Go on. I’m listening. Check.’

‘As you know, Mr Huntley, your son had the good fortune to save my life. He was–I dislike saying it–grossly incompetent; I have no doubt I should have been out of hospital weeks earlier had he sent immediately for a skilled nurse. Still, it was kindly meant; we must not deny that. But a life saved, Mr Huntley, does not become the property of the saver! Oh, no!’

‘Certainly not,’ agreed father. ‘Quite right.’

‘I am very much afraid your son’s head was turned. Not content with pestering me in hospital, he actually invited me to stay at your house. Most foolishly, I accepted. I am a poet, as you no doubt know, Mr Huntley, and believing as I do that the seed of poesy cannot bear fruit in one soil alone, I have always endeavoured to vary my range of experience.’

‘Of course, you get the best fruit by sticking to the same soil. What fee are you offering, by the way?’

Ignoring this, she continued, her voice rising passionately.

‘I come to Cornford. What do I find? What do I find? A welcome? By no means! A succession of insults? Precisely. Not from you! Oh, no! Or Mrs Huntley. I have no doubt we could all have been good friends or, at any rate, friends. But your son’s–’ Her voice broke in an angry sob. ‘I will not speak of it. I have no desire to speak ill of him.’

‘Let’s talk about something else,’ said father, which must have been very disappointing for her.

But she went on. ‘One goes far afield for one’s inspirations, Mr Huntley. The true fount rarely springs from the hearth. The waters of Lethe, I should suppose, run more freely in the Thames than in a teacup.’

‘Have you seen our new teapot, by the way? It’s a new sort.’

‘Yet even there he sees fit to intrude, interrupting me with a crude call just as I am about to enter upon the fourth stanza of a poem that I was actually foolish enough to give to him. What has since happened I cannot talk about. It is too painful. It is, indeed, pitiful that a young and intelligent man should sink so low as he has. I hope I have said enough to make it quite clear to you that, with the best will in the world, it would be difficult for me to invite him to my home. I hope you understand, by the way, that I am inviting you to play in a professional capacity?’

There was a long pause.

Then: ‘What were you saying?’ asked father. ‘Oh–your concert. Oh, yes. When is it?’

‘A week to-day–if that allows you sufficient time. Perhaps you would care to call in this evening, when I will––– show you my Canzona and we can go through it. Come in to coffee at nine.’

‘All right. I’ll arrange a programme with Norman. You’ll like my tune. What fee did you say?’

‘Oh, I do not offer fees, Mr Huntley. If you will send in your account after the recital, I will see that it is dealt with.’

‘All right. I’ll send in Norman’s bill too.’

(‘Bravo, father!’ I muttered to myself.)

‘Mr Huntley,’ said Lady Hargreaves coldly, ‘have I not made the position clear regarding your son?’

‘Oh, well, we’ll see about that later. You’d better let me have a copy of this Peacock Canon you keep talking about Norman and I can go through it. By the way, do you want a nice clean set of Beaumont and Fletcher, unbowdlerized? Go well in your shelves. I’ll read you a bit. It’s spicy stuff and–’

‘Good afternoon, Mr Huntley. Good afternoon. I shall expect you at nine.’

The door closed; she had gone. I went downstairs.

‘That was good of you, Dad,’ I said. ‘But I’m damned if I’ll play for the old bitch.’

‘Oh. There you are. Did you find that Beardsley Morte d’Arthur?’

‘You don’t believe what she said about me, do you?’

‘Who? Oh, Lady Hurley. What did she say? I didn’t quite catch it all. We’re to go in for tea to-night at nine. Pity. I’ve got a skittle appointment.’

‘She doesn’t want me. Can’t you listen?’

‘We must get up a good programme,’ said father. ‘Might manage that Delius sonata. And I’ll play that thing of Svendsen’s. Old-fashioned, but I like it.’