Brief Encounter Read online

  BRIEF ENCOUNTER

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  As the express roared through the station, Anna Jesson felt a stab of pain in her left eye. At six o’clock on a late June evening the platform had been crowded. A young schoolmaster was trying to control a group of some 45 schoolboys and girls between the ages of 10 and 12 years old. Some of the boys were examining a plan of Winchester Cathedral. Others were making paper aeroplanes. A young woman teacher was counting the girls who pestered her with questions. Additional confusion was being caused by two large black Labradors in the charge of a large blonde kennelmaid.

  One of the smallest boys ran forward to throw his aeroplane at the train. Anna, though his safety was no concern of hers, was afraid that he would go too near the edge of the platform and ran forward to pull him back. She was facing the train as it went through, and a piece of grit from it struck her eye.

  It hurt. With her hand to her eye she turned back into the waiting room. It was as crowded as the platform. Small boys were struggling with one another to acquire chips and chocolates before their train came in. A porter was explaining at great length to the manageress how a passenger had insulted him.

  Anna pushed her way to the counter. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Please, do you have any water?’

  The manageress was an old friend of hers. ‘Of course, dear. Plain or mineral?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mrs. Harris. Either. I’ve got something in my eye. It’s rather painful.’

  ‘In that case, plain water I should say. No need to open a bottle specially.’

  A girl who had been tidying the tables came across.

  ‘There was a man I know lost the sight of an eye through getting grit in it. Shall I pull down the lid and have a look?’

  Anna shook her head. ‘No, don’t bother. Thank you, Mrs. Harris, very much.’

  She took the glass.

  ‘Apply it directly to your eye,’ said Mrs. Harris. ‘That’ll wash it out.’

  Anna did not find it easy. Some water splashed on the floor.

  ‘Don’t bother about that,’ said Mrs. Harris. ‘Beryle can mop it up. Any better?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Try blowing your nose and rubbing the other eye,’ suggested Beryle.

  A man who had been seated at a table in the corner rose and came across.

  ‘I wonder if I can help,’ he said. ‘I should be able to, I’m a doctor.’

  ‘You’re very kind.’

  He took her by the arm. There was a firm but gentle-strength about his grip. ‘Turn round to the light,’ he said. ‘Now look up. Yes, now look down. Good, good I see it. Hold still please.’

  He took his handkerchief from his breast pocket. He twisted the corner of it and bent forward.

  ‘There, that didn’t take long, did it?’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You can probably still feel something and you may think that it’s still there. But it isn’t, I can assure you. Look.’ He showed her his handkerchief, with the speck on it.

  ‘So I shan’t lose the sight of my eye,’ she said.

  ‘Not on that account.’

  He looked at her, thoughtfully. ‘You don’t sound English,’ he remarked.

  ‘I’m not. I was born in Naples.’

  ‘Ah, one of those tourists that we hear so much about.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, married to an Englishman; for seventeen years now.’

  ‘But you still feel Italian?’

  Again she shook her head.

  ‘I never go back to Italy. My roots are here. Very firm roots … like a tree. England is a good country for trees; good soil; even exotic foreign trees grow well there.’

  ‘Is that how you see yourself?’

  ‘As how?’

  ‘As foreign and exotic.’

  ‘Scarcely.’

  ‘It’s how you look.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Your black hair. There’s a lustre to it. The way you move and your general air, I can’t find the word for it; yes, I can. Sultry. There’s a sultriness about you.’

  She stared at him, astonished. Over the loudspeaker system the next train, the 18.13 to Waterloo was being announced.

  ‘That’s mine,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to hurry.’

  She followed him on to the platform. His train was just drawing in. He would be crossing to it by the subway. ‘I shan’t see him again,’ she thought. She closed her eyes, trying to recall him. How old was he? 30, 35, 40? It was hard to tell with Englishmen. They took such a long time growing up; then they remained young so long. He was sturdy, but not tall. He was dressed as was appropriate for a doctor, formally but not stiffly, in a suit not a sportjacket; in a country rather than a town suit; a lightish grey; with a plain coloured light blue shirt and a striped tie, a club tie presumably. What was a doctor doing in Winchester on a Wednesday? Was he married? She supposed he was; at his age. Too young to be a widower. You did not associate a doctor with divorce.

  The station announcer’s voice was raised again. ‘The train now arriving at Platform 1 is the 18.21 for Southampton, stopping at Shenley, Peterborough, Eastleigh.’ Her train.

  As always it was rather empty and she found a corner seat. As she sat down, the London train—his train—drew out. She watched the carriages go by. Ah, but there he was. In a corner seat, too. He waved at her. Had he been looking for her? ‘Your black hair; there’s a lustre to it; the way you move, and your general air … a sultriness about you.’

  II

  Only two other passengers got off at Anna’s station. Shenley was one of those many villages that in these days of cars and buses scarcely warrant an independent station. Every year there was talk of closing it, and every year the final decision was postponed. Anna’s husband, Graham, was a solicitor, who had inherited a family practice in Southampton. He was now at the age of 44 a very solid citizen, tall, robust, broad shouldered with greying hair. Having read law at Oxford, after his two years of national service as a gunner, he had joined his father’s firm.

  His sister, two years his senior married to an officer in the Royal Navy, had a house in Beaulieu to which she had frequently invited him for weekends. She had three children, and through the diplomatic channels that are open to serving officers had enlisted a young Italian girl—an orphan of good family—to live with them as a companion, to teach them Italian and French. It would have been surprising if a romance had not burgeoned between the two young people. Everyone had been delighted. There had been no reason to delay the marriage.

  For five years the young couple with a rented flat in Southampton had led an amusing carefree life; he was a keen athlete; they had gone on cricket tours together; they had been in demand as weekend guests; they had taken trips abroad. They were not short of money. It had been a happy time. Then Graham’s father had decided to retire. His chest could no longer stand an English winter. So Graham had taken over not only the business but house at Shenley. It was then that he and Anna had decided that it was time to start a family. They now had two sons. Alistair aged 11 and Dominic aged 9. The boys went to a local day school. They were entered for Winchester, at a later date. In the meantime a German au pair girl supervised their modern languages.

  Anna loved her home. It was a Queen Anne house, red brick, rectangular, two storied that no previous owner had endeavoured to improve. At one time it had been a
rectory. It had a walled rose garden and a paddock which the village used for its cricket matches. Anna enjoyed her weekly excursions into Winchester where she went every Wednesday to make her good works contribution to the activities of the Citizens’ Advice Bureau, but she was delighted to get back at the day’s end.

  ‘I’m home,’ she called out from the hall.

  ‘We heard you,’ Alistair shouted. ‘We’re in the playroom.’

  In their grandfather’s day, the playroom had been the dining room. But the family now took its meals in what had been the library; the sitting room had become the TV room. It was a shambles. Toys, books, a rocking horse, a miniature billiard table, a divan, all looked as though they had been dumped there at hazard from a van. The floor was covered with linoleum. Travel and railway posters were plastered on the walls. For the moment the billiard table under a wooden cover was accommodating a game of table tennis. Alistair was partnering Ilse, the au pair girl.

  ‘Who’s winning?’ Anna asked

  ‘I am,’ said Dominic. ‘That’s why Alistair’s so cross.’

  ‘I’m only losing because Ilse isn’t any good,’ said Alistair.

  ‘Now, Alistair, you mustn’t be so rude.’

  ‘It’s quite true, Anna,’ Ilse said. ‘It’s a new game for me. I can’t get the hang of it.’

  Anna watched the game. It was quite true. Ilse was not much good. But Dominic would not agree to this.

  ‘She’s not bad really,’ he insisted. ‘It’s just that I’m much better. There 21—15, and my match: good for me. Did you buy me anything in Winchester?’

  ‘I may have but you won’t get it unless you’re good. Oh, hullo, Graham.’

  Graham had arrived in search of a tool box that the boys had borrowed.

  ‘Ah, there it is,’ he said, ‘under the sofa as I thought it would be.’

  ‘It’s where we always keep it.’

  ‘You talk as though it was yours.’

  ‘Well isn’t it? We use it more than you do.’

  ‘That’s one way of establishing ownership.’

  ‘It’s the best way, surely. Did you know that Geoffrey Baraclough’s got a wart on his thumb?’

  ‘How could I? No one told me. No one tells me anything. You always keep the really important news for your mother.’

  ‘You mustn’t make fun of it, Dad. Warts are a virus. Anyone could catch Geoffrey’s warts if they shook hands with him. I told him he should wear gloves.’

  ‘And I’m telling you,’ said Anna, ‘that it’s bedtime. You can catch anything if you don’t get a good night’s sleep. Up to bed both of you. And I’ll come up in a quarter of an hour to read you a good-night story.’

  ‘What about those parcels you brought back from Winchester?’

  ‘I’ll bring them up with me. Hurry now, hurry.’

  But before she could tuck them up, Anna had to compose a dispute about the bath. They always had something to quarrel over. This time they were refusing to bathe together. ‘Dominic’s so dirty,’ Alistair was complaining, ‘and he always wets my hair.’ ‘But it’s my turn to take the diver in alone,’ Dominic was insisting. ‘Alistair had it alone last night, didn’t he, Ilse, you know he did.’ ‘Only because you were late back from swimming with Benedict and didn’t need a bath.’ In the end it was Anna who pacified them.

  ‘If you aren’t ready within ten minutes you won’t get your presents,’ they were warned.

  Previous experience warned them that the threat was not a vain one. A quite stern discipline was exercised. Anna watched the clock in the hall below. ‘The ten minutes are up,’ she called. ‘Are they in bed, Ilse?’

  ‘Yes, Anna. Yes.’

  ‘And they’ve said their prayers?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Right; then I’ll be with you.’

  They were very small things that she had brought them back, for Alistair a copy of the new number of The Cricketer which he would merely glance at whereas his father would brood over it for a couple of evenings. While for Dominic she had bought a belt which he had had to have anyhow, but the two parcels made her weekly visit to Winchester an occasion for them. That was the important thing, that on Tuesday when she tucked them up, they would be saying, ‘I wonder what you’ll bring us back tomorrow.’

  ‘And now,’ she said, the gifts bestowed, ‘we’ll go on with Hamlet.’

  She was reading them Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare, half a play a night. They listened entranced. ‘What a play,’ said Alistair. ‘Hardly one person left alive.’

  ‘Tomorrow we’ll have Twelfth Night. That’s a comedy.’

  ‘I prefer tragedies. The more corpses around the better.’

  On Wednesdays Ilse cooked dinner. Usually she and Anna prepared the meal together. Ilse was not much better in the kitchen than she was at table tennis, but Anna looked forward to Wednesdays. It gave her a quiet half hour over a drink with Graham.

  ‘It’ll be Italian tonight,’ she said. ‘A campari, please, with very little soda.’

  She sipped it slowly, appreciatively.

  ‘Had a hard day?’ he asked.

  ‘Tiring. Much as usual. We’re shorthanded with Lucy Parfitt away on holiday. They asked me if I could go two days a week.’

  ‘I hope you said you couldn’t.’

  ‘I did. I mean I said I couldn’t. One day’s enough for me.’

  ‘I’d say it is. Social work sucks you in: it’s like a drug. Have to be on your guard. Anything else?’

  ‘Only a piece of grit got in my eye.’

  ‘Where? How?’

  ‘At Winchester. I was facing the express, rescuing an idiot boy.’

  ‘Did it hurt?’

  ‘Yes, but a nice man in the refreshment room, a doctor, took it out.’

  ‘You have to be careful of that kind of thing. I know a man who lost an eye through getting grit in it.’

  From the kitchen, Ilse called, ‘Madame est servie.’

  ‘How quickly our half hour together goes,’ said Anna.

  The dining room was the one room on the ground floor of the house that looked, in spite of the fact that it was no longer primarily a library, very much as it had done in its original owner’s day. It was dark and dignified with booklined shelves running to the ceiling. Over the fireplace was a framed portrait of Graham’s mother. Its curtains of dark blue, silver-shot damask fell to the floor. They ran on thick mahogany ringed-rods. A sheepskin rug stretched before the fireplace on a black pile carpet. There was no sideboard, but the table which had originally carried newspapers and magazines was now set against the wall, and supported two large three-pronged candlesticks, and a large silver bowl. The chairs were solid and Victorian with red leather seats. There was no tablecloth; the walnut was highly polished. It all looked very restful: with its silver, its cut glasses; the decanters of red and white wine in their silver coasters. Paper napkins were the only concession to the servantless conditions of the welfare state.

  Paper napkins and for that matter the meal itself. Ilse had prepared the kind of dinner that she enjoyed herself: sauerkraut, sausages and bacon.

  ‘This is delicious, Ilse, it really is,’ said Anna. ‘I don’t know how you get so much flavour into your sauerkraut. I never can into mine.’

  ‘Ach, that is my national skill. You with your spaghetti, me with my sauerkraut; and lots of mustard, Anna. Do not spare the mustard.’

  Anna chuckled inwardly. She knew that Graham detested sauerkraut, just as she did herself. The fact that he was not enjoying his dinner particularly gave her a secret pleasure. She felt that she was getting her own back on the Germans. She quite liked Ilse but she did not like Germans. When the bombs fell on Naples, her mother used to say, ‘This is the Germans’ fault. They got us into this.’ Her father had been killed in the Western desert. Her mother had blamed the Germans. ‘We’d never have got into this on her own.’ Later her mother had been killed in a German not a British raid, in the last weeks of the war.

  She,
herself, during those bad years after the war, when there had been so little food, had remembered her mother’s hatred of the Germans. They were to blame for everything. It gave her now a sneaking, but solid satisfaction that her husband should get one bad meal a week. It was his turn to be made to suffer. Now he’ll learn what they are like, she’d think.

  And she was glad too that it was by a German, not a Scandinavian that the domestic harmony of their life together was diminished. For it was a nuisance and it was no use pretending that it wasn’t, to have a foreigner at their table every night.

  ‘We’re never alone together nowadays,’ he would complain.

  ‘Do you think I don’t feel that, too?’ she’d say.

  ‘But you’re so patient. You’re so full of Christian charity.’

  If you only knew, she would think, what a malicious unchristian pleasure I am taking in all of this. Now he can appreciate what we Italians had to put up with all these years.

  On her Wednesday evenings she made a point of being exceptionally gracious. She would bring back gossip from her bureau. This time she had in addition the incident of the doctor and her eye. ‘He got it out so quickly, so professionally. If Beryle had gone stabbing around with those clumsy claws of hers, my eyeball would be bruised and the grit would still be there. There was such a pandemonium there too.’ She talked about the schoolboys with their paper aeroplanes: about the schoolgirls with their questions, the kennelmaid with the two labradors, about the indignant porter. She reported it all so vividly that she began to believe that she had survived a dramatic episode.

  ‘And what about the Bureau?’ Ilse asked. ‘Was that neglected wife there again?’

  ‘Mrs. Gaines. I’ll say she was. She brought along her son this time. A boy of ten. Quite a reasonable specimen, though; you’d not believe he could be to look at her.’

  ‘Perhaps she’s got a good-looking husband.’

  ‘If she has, I’m sorry for him.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Twenty-eight, or so she says. But she looks much older.’

  ‘That’s not surprising, is it, after all those children.’

  ‘Six of them, and the last only 6 weeks old.’