The Four-Gated City

‘Your partner?’

His look was very quick now: ‘Yes.’

‘You had asked him to look me over, but you find I’m not lookoverable at the moment, so you’ve radared him that you’d rather he didn’t?’

‘He was going to eat here in any case: why shouldn’t I want him to meet you?’

‘Ah, but why not now?’

Here came the waiter with the card which he held before Martha.

She ordered some pâté and the fish, but Henry said: ‘If you’ll take my advice, the coquille is excellent. Not, of course, that their pâté isn’t.’ Here he offered a small humorous grimace to the grey old waiter, who accepted it.

‘Of course,’ she said, and changed her order.

She asked for a dry sherry. The wine waiter brought a bottle of semi-sweet sherry, because in such places a lady would be expected to drink sweet sherry. Henry was given an Amontillado.

She drank hers. He drank his.

‘Martha, have you heard from your mother?’

Martha noted how this ancient goad to rage now had no effect on her at all: by putting several thousands of miles of sea between her and her mother she was saved? H’mmmm — possibly.

‘No, but I expect I shall.’

‘You said you thought of taking a job?’

‘I had one in a pub down by the docks.’

‘Ever such a lark of course – but not for long surely?’

‘I’ve also been offered the job as a secretary for a firm which hires out lorries.’ In one of the lorries Iris’s cousin worked: the man she had intended for Martha.

He waited. She would not help him.

‘You’d be living near your work?’

Almost she said: ‘Why not?’ But lost interest. What was the use?

Here came the scallop shells filled with lumps of cod covered with a cheese-coloured white sauce. That this was a restaurant where people ate, not to eat well, but to eat conformably she had understood from what she had seen on the plates near her; and she knew that when she tasted the fish it would be rather worse than she had been eating at Joe’s, with Iris and Jimmy.

‘It’s very nice,’ she said hastily; to Henry’s inquiring eyebrows.

‘Delicious,’ he affirmed, so that she could make a note of what was admirable.

She could fault, even as a housewife, a dozen points on this table: the bread rolls were not fresh; the tablecloth only just clean; the parsley on the fish limp; the peppermill was nearly empty; the roses sagged; everything was second-rate. But Henry did not care, he was at home, cosy with his kind.

Claustrophobia filled her like a fever; and she took herself in hand: Be quiet, steady – you’ll be out of it for good when this meal is over.

‘I really do see.’ he prompted, ‘what fun it must be, sl … experimenting, for a time.’

‘Ah, but you see, one has to be brought up in this country to be able to see it as slumming.’

He had coloured.

‘Now, look, Henry – you’re right. I couldn’t for long stay in those jobs – but for exactly the same reason that I couldn’t take yours, that’s what you ought to be able to see. Can’t you really understand that?’

‘Well, frankly, no.’

On the chair by him a folded evening newspaper; and even from where she was, she could see, peering over, that the headlines and editorials were to do with the red, socialist, classless, etc., Britain.

They had finished their fish. Henry had ordered some blanquette of veal for both of them. It wasn’t bad. The wine, however, was very good indeed, marvellous; and Martha was drinking it, although she knew that drinking it might lead to an exchange every word of which she could recite even before it happened. She smiled, offered him scraps of travellers’ tales from the strange land across the river, to which he listened, with the air of a potential traveller choosing possible landscapes for adventure.

At last he said: ‘If it’s a question of your being a restless sort of person, that you’d want to move on after a year or two, I think we do rather expect that from our staff, the war has unsettled people, including me, I’m afraid.’

‘No, it’s not a question of being restless.’

Determined that the tedious exchange, imminent, would not take place, she reached for her wine glass – and knocked it over. The waiter being away, she dabbed at the stain with her napkin. Then the imp took over.

‘I’d like another serviette,’ she said.

Henry called to the waiter with his eyes.

‘If you could bring another napkin,’ he said.

Martha suddenly laughed. He frowned incomprehension.

‘I don’t know why it is,’ he said, ‘but I do know that girls are so much cleverer than men at … picking things up. You could, you know, if you tried. For instance, we had a girl in our office. She was only … her father was under me during the war, a very good type of man … well, she came to us as a typist and inside a year she had picked up … now you really can hardly tell her from … she takes over on the switchboard for instance … for some reason men don’t do it so well, they aren’t so adaptable. But if you listened to how other people talk, you could learn very easily … that sort of thing.’

The gaps in this homily which had been delivered, half with irritation that he was being forced to verbalize his position even partially; half with genuine concern for her future, for which, the Lord knew why, he felt himself responsible, she now filled in, summing them all up.

‘I could learn to pass,’ she said.

He sat back in his chair, his handsome, fair, well-bred face all dark with annoyance.

It was not the slightest use. But the imp had control.

‘Henry, if I told you that this meal we are eating is going to cost you over £5, in spite of the fact you are supposed to be restricting yourself because of the war – and that the people I’ve been with don’t spend that on food in a week – and then ask you to look at that newspaper … oh, I don’t know, what is the use!’

‘Very poor, are they?’ he said quickly.

‘Very. But that isn’t the point.’

He leaned back. ‘Well, aren’t we all, these days?’

‘I should have said not.’

‘You weren’t here during the war,’ he said emotionally. ‘I’ve learned that, after that, there’s nothing to be said.’ ‘You must see, Martha, that it’s going to take time to get this poor old country on its feet again.’ ‘Of course.’