Two Weeks to Remember

Charity went along to the kitchen and made the coffee and cut the jam sponge she had made the evening before. She and Sidney usually had a snack supper when they went out together and she felt empty; when he had gone she would make a sandwich. She carried in the tray and pretended not to see his look of displeasure. Presently, she decided silently, she would walk to the corner of the street with him and tell him that she didn’t want to see him again. She was by nature a kind-hearted girl, and careful not to hurt people’s feelings, but she didn’t think that Sidney would be hurt. Offended perhaps, annoyed because he’d have to look for another suitable wife, but not hurt.

She took in the coffee and her aunt poured it, aware that something was wrong but not sure what it was so that she embarked on a pointless conversation about nothing in particular until Sidney put down his cup and announced that he might as well go home.

‘I’ll walk with you to the corner,’ said Charity and fetched her jacket, and Aunt Emily nodded and smiled, under the impression that whatever it was had blown over.

The corner wasn’t far; Charity wasted no time but said at once, ‘Sidney, I’ve been thinking—I’m not really what you want, you know. I think it would be a good idea if we didn’t see each other again.’ She glanced up at his face, lighted by a street lamp. ‘We’ve known each other too long,’ she finished flatly.

‘You are throwing me over?’ His voice was stiff with resentment.

‘Well,’ said Charity reasonably, ‘I’ve never really had you, have I? I mean you’ve never said that you wanted to marry me—nor that you loved me.’

‘There should be no need to state the obvious.’ He was outraged.

‘That’s all very well, but do you love me, Sidney? And do just for once stop being a civil servant and be honest.’

‘I have—did have—a deep regard for you, Charity.’

‘But do you love me?’ she persisted.

‘If by that you mean…’ He paused. ‘No, I don’t think that I do.’ He added coldly, ‘You would have been a most suitable wife.’

They had reached the corner. She said seriously, ‘But that wouldn’t have been enough for me, Sidney. I don’t want to be a suitable wife, I want to be loved just because I’m me and not because I’m suitable. There’s a difference, you know, although I’m not exactly sure what it is.’

Sidney gave a little sneering laugh. ‘If you don’t look out you’ll be too old to find out. Goodbye, Charity.’ He turned on his heel and walked away and after a moment she walked back to her home and went indoors, back to the sitting room to her aunt, who said, ‘Back so soon, my dear? I thought you and Sidney might be going to enjoy a pleasant stroll.’

‘We’re not going to see each other again,’ said Charity clearly. ‘It wouldn’t have worked out. I’m sure he’s a very good man and all that, but I’m not the wife for him—if ever he’d got around to asking me.’

‘My dear Charity,’ began Aunt Emily, and then, ‘What will your father say?’

Charity was peering at herself in the handsome rococo mirror over the fireplace, poking her hair. ‘Nothing much,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I don’t think he liked Sidney very much, did he? And he’s not really interested in me.’

Her aunt looked shocked. ‘Charity! What a thing to say about your father.’

‘Oh, I don’t mean that he doesn’t love me,’ Charity explained. ‘Just that there are other things which interest him more than I do.’

She turned away from the mirror. ‘I expect I shall end up by being a spinster.’

‘There must be a great many suitable young men at that hospital,’ ventured Aunt Emily.

‘Oh, plenty of young men,’ agreed Charity, ‘but they are not suitable. You see, that’s the trouble—they’re young. I’m twenty-six and all the older men I meet are already married.’ She then remembered Professor Wyllie-Lyon, certainly not married but, she felt sure, a dyed-in-the-wool bachelor, content with his lectures and his seminars and his hospital rounds. ‘Almost all,’ she finished.

Her aunt looked so downcast that she bent to kiss her cheek. ‘I’ll get supper shall I? I’m famished and Father will have to eat…’

She enjoyed cooking; that was one of the things Sidney had liked about her, being able to turn out appetising meals for a minimum cost. She set about making a cheese soufflé now and while it was in the oven laid the table in the small dining room, made even smaller by reason of the Regency oval table with its graceful ribbon-back chairs and the elegant sidetable which took up the whole of one wall. It was chilly there; she turned on the gas fire, drew the curtains and put on the white starched cloth her father insisted upon, then arranged the silver which had been in her mother’s family for years and set out the glasses, for he liked his wine, too, even though it was supermarket claret.

The soufflé was ready and it would spoil unless they ate it at once. She urged her aunt to the table and went to fetch her father. He looked up as she went into the small room behind the dining room. ‘Ah, my dear, have you had a good day? I have had a splendid parcel of books…’

She bent to kiss his elderly cheek. ‘You have? That’s nice. There is a soufflé in the oven waiting to be eaten—will you come now?’

He followed her reluctantly, poured the wine, and sat down while she shared out the soufflé. There was a salad, too, and they sat eating it, not talking much for her father’s mind was on his books and Aunt Emily was still brooding over Sidney’s departure. Charity, sitting between them, kept up a cheerful flow of small talk; she loved them both dearly, her elderly aunt and her elderly father. She couldn’t remember them ever being young; her father had married in his late forties and her mother had been twenty years younger than he, killed in a road accident when Charity had been six years old. Aunt Emily had come then to look after them both and, since she was only a year or so younger than her brother, she had already been middle-aged; they had done their best with the small girl, trying to make up for the loss of her mother, and she had grown up into a rather quiet young woman. She had had few friends, for neither her father nor her aunt was sociable and the few young men she had brought home from time to time had been put off by her father’s bland disregard for their existence and her aunt’s insistence on making a third. It wasn’t until she met Sidney and had pointed out that she was getting on towards thirty and quite able to look after herself that they woke up to the fact that she was no longer a child. They had even accepted his presence as a rather vague future son-in-law. And now she had put paid to that in no uncertain manner and, presently, she supposed she might regret it.

She cleared the plates, put a bowl of fruit on the table and fetched the coffee. Just one adventure, she thought vividly, passing coffee cups; something really exciting before she resigned herself to the quiet years ahead. For they would be that. She was a pretty girl, she knew that without conceit, but living such a sheltered life for years had made her shy; she wished she knew how to attract men, but she had very little idea as to how to set about it. There had been no need with Sidney, he had taken it for granted that she was attracted to him and he had never expected to hear anything else. Her thoughts were interrupted by her aunt’s gentle voice.

‘I thought we might have fish tomorrow. Could you get some, dear? I expect you can pop out during the day…?’

Aunt Emily, never having had a job herself, had her own peculiar ideas about working hours.

Charity agreed at once. She had three-quarters of an hour for her lunch break, and there was a row of shops five minutes’ walk away from Augustine’s. Perhaps she would buy a sandwich and go and sit in the churchyard tucked away between the tatty streets. It was quiet there and, although the plane trees weren’t very exciting, the grass grew between the ancient tombstones and there were birds, too.

The office looked dreary when she got there the next morning; it was a gloomy day with wild clouds scudding across the sky and the threat of rain, so that they had to have the lights on. Miss Hudson, minus the offending tooth and conscious of the gap which showed when she smiled, was disposed to be peevish, a state of affairs not improved by the pile of notes and letters already waiting to be typed.

Charity whipped off her typewriter cover, took the lion’s share of work on to her desk, rolled paper and carbon into her machine and went to put the kettle on. ‘You’ll feel better after a cup of tea,’ she promised and got out their mugs and the milk and sugar.

Miss Hudson sniffed. ‘It’s all very well for you young ones,’ she grumbled, ‘you don’t have any worries.’

Charity didn’t answer. Miss Hudson was within shouting distance of fifty, thin to the point of boniness, with a sharp nose and a sharp tongue and a refined voice. At least I won’t be bony, thought Charity, looking down at her splendid curves and then worming her way into the cupboard to make the tea.

Refreshed, they worked without pause until Miss Hudson looked at her watch. ‘I’m off to the canteen,’ she announced. ‘You’ll be all right, Charity?’

She always asked that; Charity had once or twice been tempted to say that, no, she wouldn’t, and wondered what Miss Hudson would have to say to that. Left alone, she picked up one of Professor Wyllie-Lyon’s reports and began to decipher it. The writing was worse than usual and there was an awful lot of it. She sighed gently. ‘That anyone so clever could find it impossible to write so that anyone could read it!’ she exclaimed to the room around her. ‘And I wonder what that means—something something five times…’

‘Sthenic,’ said Professor Wyllie-Lyon in an apologetic voice.

She turned slowly to look at him standing in the doorway. He was holding another sheaf of papers, watching her and smiling at her a little. ‘It means strong or active. The trouble is,’ he went on, ‘I can read my own writing and tend to forget that no one else can.’

He laid the papers on her desk. ‘These are urgent, if you would be so kind?’

He was at the door again and she hadn’t uttered a word. He was shutting it behind him when he put his head round to ask, ‘I trust you had a pleasant evening, Miss Graham?’

‘No,’ said Charity and began to thump on her typewriter, stifling a sudden urge to tell him all about Sydney. She didn’t look up as the door closed softly behind him.

Miss Hudson came back from her dinner in a better frame of mind. ‘Run along,’ she told Charity. ‘Did anything else come in while I was away?’

‘Another lot from Professor Wyllie-Lyon—urgent.’

Miss Hudson cast her eyes up to the ceiling. ‘That man—nice though he is, and I’m sure I’ve never met anyone in this place with better manners—no wonder the nurses all fall for him. It’s a pity he has to work so hard. I must leave on time, too; the dentist’s going to take an impression…’

‘I’ll stay on if we are not finished,’ offered Charity and thought uneasily of the fish. If she got the fishmonger to put it in a stout plastic bag and she put it on the windowsill and cooked it the moment she got home… Anyway it was quite a chilly day. She got her coat and started off along the passage. Five minutes to the shops, five minutes there, and she would buy a ham roll and eat it in the churchyard; there was a convenient cluster of old tombstones in one corner out of the wind. There would still be time to have a cup of coffee at the café at the end of the row of shops. Reg, the proprietor, made excellent coffee and one could ignore the plastic surroundings.

There was a queue at the fishmongers; she bought cod fillets and because she was a pretty girl with a nice smile the fishmonger wrapped them carefully in a second bag. She stowed the fish into her shopping basket, bought a ham roll and crossed the road to the churchyard.

There was no one else there; there seldom was. Sometimes in the summer she had found a tramp sleeping peacefully on one of the stone slabs, and once or twice someone like herself, intent on peace and quiet for half an hour. She selected an eighteenth-century angel to lean against and began on her roll.

She had scarcely sunk her splendid teeth into it before someone came strolling towards her. Professor Wyllie-Lyon, hands in pockets and just for once no papers that needed typing immediately. She paused, the roll half-way to her open mouth; surely he hadn’t sought her out to do some urgent notes?

It seemed not. He came to a halt in front of her and remarked pleasantly, ‘We seem to share the same desire for peace and quiet, Miss Graham. May I sit for a moment?’

He arranged his great size against the scroll over which the angel was brooding. The family Wodecock: father, mother and a quiverful of children; there were so many of them that the scroll made an excellent support for such a large man. After a moment he said, ‘Fish?’