Brief Encounter Read online

  ‘Poor man.’

  The talk moved quickly, easily.

  ‘What’s on the box tonight?’ asked Anna.

  ‘A Maigret, after the news.’

  ‘You don’t want to miss that, do you?’

  ‘I’ll say not. And you don’t either, do you?’

  ‘I’ll say I wouldn’t.’

  ‘There’s one thing about the box, it gets one away from the table,’ Graham would often say.

  The Maigret story lasted an hour and after that there was a travelogue about the South Pacific. ‘Do you mind if I stay up for this?’ asked Ilse.

  ‘Good Heavens, no.’

  It was quarter to eleven before Graham came through from his dressing room. They were both sleepy. ‘You know those jokes in papers like Playboy about couples who want to make love and watch the TV simultaneously. That’s never likely to be our problem while we’ve got Ilse here.’

  ‘I’ve always wondered,’ she said, ‘which would be the least incongruous position.’

  ‘We ought to experiment one day.’

  ‘Why don’t we go to a motel one night and see.’ They laughed together.

  ‘It’s nice after 17 years of marriage we should be laughing about things like that,’ he said.

  III

  The Citizens’ Advice Bureau occupied the ground floor in the row of Georgian houses which bordered the Cathedral Close. A brass plate on its front door announced its hours as Monday to Friday 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. and Saturdays 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Graham caught every morning a train that reached Southampton at quarter to nine. He liked to have got through the mail by the time his staff arrived at nine o’clock. But he left every evening shortly after five. ‘They can do the tidying up,’ he said.

  Anna on Wednesdays caught a train that reached Winchester at ten past nine. She liked to do her shopping right away. Then in the office she caught up with anything that might have happened during the week. She liked to have her decks cleared by ten o’clock.

  The office was not uncomfortable. What had originally been the dining room had been divided by two small partitions, each furnished with a desk, a telephone; two straight backed chairs and a filing cabinet. Between these two cells was a minute waiting room that contained a gas ring, so that a middle-aged, bustling social worker whom everyone called Grace could busy herself with a continual supply of tea. She came in most days, interviewed occasional clients and acted as General A.D.C. for the manager Lucy Parfitt, a salaried civil servant, who occupied what had been once the drawing room. She had a carpet in her office and over the mantelpiece Antigoni’s portrait of the Queen.

  Anna’s first act on her arrival was to report to Mrs. Parfitt.

  ‘Has a great deal piled up for me?’ she asked.

  ‘Do you call Mrs. Gaines a lot?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘That’s what I thought you’d say and that’s why I suggested that she should come round here first thing, while you’re still fresh.’

  ‘What’s her trouble?’

  ‘Husband trouble; as usual.’

  This will make a good story for them tonight at home thought Anna and then upbraided herself for thinking that. It was a genuine enough trouble for the wretched creature. She had been exposed to as much adversity as she could tackle.

  She was round within twenty minutes.

  A large, ungainly, ramshackle creature, hung about with beads, she had a pasty complexion. She looked as though she ate too much unnourishing food. She kept her hands in her lap, the fingers intertwined.

  ‘Sorry to trouble you again,’ she said, ‘but it’s the same old thing. He didn’t come home on Friday; Friday you know, that’s pay day.’

  She had a toneless expressionless voice. There was no flicker of a whine to it. Simply the statement of a fact.

  ‘Saturday, he didn’t come home,’ she said. ‘Sunday I never saw him. I’ve no food in the house. Nothing.’

  From the waiting room came a sharp high whistle. Grace used one of those kettles that whistle when the water boils.

  ‘Grace,’ Anna called.

  The whistle continued.

  ‘Excuse me, please.’ She went out into the passage and switched off the gas. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘go on. I think I’d better take some notes. You’ve no food in the house, you say.’

  ‘None, nor no money either.’

  ‘He gets paid on Friday. Doesn’t he give you your money then?’

  ‘When ’e ’asn’t drunk it all up first.’

  ‘Does he often do that?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Drink it up.’

  ‘ ’E never drinks it all up. I do manage.’

  This isn’t getting anywhere, thought Anna. I must get her to the point.

  ‘Forgive me asking you this, but has your husband ever left home before?’

  There was a pause. Mrs. Gaines clearly preferred to tell her story in her own way, in her own time. Anna repeated her question. ‘Has he ever left you like this before?’

  ‘Left. Well, that’s not quite the word I’d use. Been away, yes, ‘e’s been away. Indeed ‘e ’as, but I’d not say left.’

  The door swung open. Grace’s head came round it. ‘Did I hear you call me, Anna?’

  ‘You did. The kettle whistled, so I turned it off.’

  ‘You did, oh, thank you. Would you like a cup. Both of you, of course.’

  ‘That’s just what we would like.’

  ‘Good oh, I’ll be right back.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Anna said.

  ‘No need to be sorry. I can use a cuppa.’ A cup of tea should help the interrogation.

  ‘You were saying that he didn’t exactly leave you but that he went away.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did he stay away for long?’

  ‘No, no, not long. Maybe a night. Maybe Friday night, ’e might stay out if ’e was drinking. ’E might stay, well like a weekend away.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘A whole week once ’e was away.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘A whole, whole week. Took up with a bit from Northampton that came to see the wrestling. Well ‘is Aunt May lives in Northampton. ‘As got connections there; he was bound to go off.’

  ‘And how did you manage during the week?’

  ‘Sold furniture. We lived off that. Then we got more after, on the ‘ire purchase. But we lost that because ‘e drank up all the payments.’

  Anna sighed.

  ‘Perhaps it’s as well you’ve come to us this time. It’s six children you’ve got isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Six with the baby.’

  ‘And you’re twenty-eight, aren’t you?’

  ‘That’s right; about the same age as you.’

  Anna smiled. She was thirty-seven. Women like Mrs. Gaines aged quickly. They could not realize that women who looked the same age as themselves could be nine years older.

  ‘Ah, here’s the tea,’ she said. ‘That will do us both good.’

  Mrs. Gaines took a sip, then looked up, cautiously. ‘I suppose I couldn’t have another lump of sugar, could I?’

  ‘You can have two if you like.’

  ‘Now that’s exactly what I would like. Sweet tooth, I’ve got. That’s me.’

  The tea had as beneficial an effect on her as a pint of beer would have had upon her husband.

  ‘These visits here do me the world of good,’ she said.

  ‘I’m glad of that. And the first thing to do is to get the money settled. We can decide what to do about your husband when we know if he’s coming back.’

  ‘Oh, ’e’ll be back all right.’

  ‘Anyhow you’d better go to the Social Security people. Can you manage to go round this afternoon? You can. That’s fine. I’ll talk to them first and tell them to expect you.’

  Anna had an hour off for lunch. On sunny days she brought her lunch in with her and took it on a seat on the cathedral close. It was sunny today, and she had just
begun to unwrap her parcel when a voice behind her exclaimed, ‘My, but this is a pleasant surprise.’ She turned her head and there was the doctor whom she had met at the station the week before.

  ‘Do you remember me?’ he asked.

  ‘How could I forget?’

  ‘No bad effects from that piece of grit?’

  ‘Do I look as though there were?’

  ‘As a doctor I can’t see any.’

  ‘I couldn’t be more surprised to see you here,’ she said, ‘seeing you on the London train I thought that that must be where you lived.’

  ‘I was on the London train but I wasn’t going through to London. I am a G.P. with a practice outside Basingstoke. I come in once a week to the chest clinic to see any patients of mine who may be there. They’re a sickly lot, my patients.’

  ‘So that explains you.’

  ‘It explains me to you but it doesn’t explain you to me. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Like you, I come in once a week, for a good works session. My husband’s a solicitor in Southampton. We live at Shenley. I come into the Citizens’ Advice Bureau.’

  ‘And do you always lunch here?’

  ‘When it’s fine. When it’s wet I go to the George and Dragon for a cheese salad and a glass of wine. Why don’t you share my lunch?’

  ‘It looks very good.’

  ‘It is. Raw ham and peeled pears, with yoghurt as a sweet.’

  ‘That’s very Italian.’

  ‘It should be, shouldn’t it? Why don’t you join me?’

  ‘You’re very kind, but I’m expected back at the canteen for a much less appetizing meal, meat and potatoes, that kind of thing.’

  ‘With suet pudding to finish up with.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be surprised.’

  They laughed together.

  ‘You’d better share my lunch,’ she said.

  He shook his head.

  ‘I can’t. They expect me back. I only just popped out to do some shopping … for a patient.’

  He hesitated.

  He doesn’t want to go back in the least, she thought. What a sense of duty, Englishmen did have. She patted the seat beside her.

  ‘Come on,’ she said.

  But again he shook his head.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I really can’t, but …’ he paused … ‘Maybe I’ll see you later, at the station, in the refreshment room.’

  ‘You make it sound like an assignation.’

  He started. I’ve shocked him, she thought. How easy it is to knock the English off their social perches. I shouldn’t do it. But I can’t resist it. And, after all, I like them for it.

  ‘I didn’t mean to be impertinent,’ he said.

  ‘You weren’t. Don’t bother. I probably shall see you there.’

  She watched him as he walked away. He had a looselimbed easy stride, although he was a stocky man. He was probably an athlete. Englishmen mostly were. ‘I’d like to see him on the cricket field,’ she thought.

  She had several tiresome clients on her books. A precise fussy little man in his early forties took up a great deal of her afternoon. It was his second visit. His neighbour’s dog kept trespassing in his garden. The neighbour would not mend his fence. He could not afford a solicitor, and the police did not seem able to do anything unless they could actually catch the dog in flagrante vilectu and they hadn’t had the time to spare for that kind of thing. She had promised him to look into the matter and see what remedy he had. She had discussed it with Lucy Parfitt. It was a question apparently of the local by-law. The obvious solution was for him to repair the fence himself. But that he insisted was beneath his dignity. He was very pernickety. Why on earth should I have to waste my time on things like this, she thought. She found herself watching the clock. Her train left at 18.21. The station was fifteen minutes’ walk away. She liked to dawdle on her walk. But she needn’t dawdle. If she hurried, she could have half an hour at the station. When did his train leave. She couldn’t remember exactly but it was about ten minutes earlier than hers. Last week it must have been delayed. It had been only drawing out when she got into her carriage. It was on the other platform. He had to go by the subway. No, she decided. I won’t dawdle on the way.

  This week there was no crowd of school children on the platform. Holidays had begun. But there were several American tourists, hung with cameras and guide books. They had devoted the morning to the college, the afternoon to the cathedral. They were being very knowledgeable about the Romans.

  ‘Here I am,’ an English voice called out.

  He was seated at a table by the door. Two of the other seats were occupied.

  ‘I had a fight to keep this seat for you,’ he said. ‘If you hadn’t come within two minutes, I would have had to give it up.’

  ‘Lucky I managed it.’

  ‘Most lucky. What would you like to have?’

  ‘Tea. Since you’re having tea.’

  ‘It would be just as easy to get you a real drink.’

  ‘I don’t want to start on a real drink too soon.’

  ‘I suppose you’ll have a real drink with your husband when you get back.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And that’s what I’ll be doing when I get back.’

  ‘You’re married then.’

  ‘I’m married.’

  ‘Children?’

  ‘No, no children.’

  ‘I don’t know your name.’

  ‘Harvey, Alec Harvey.’

  ‘Mine’s Jesson. Anna. Mrs. Graham Jesson.’

  ‘I’ll get you that cup of tea,’ he said.

  The other two occupants of the table were Americans; female, somewhere in the fifties.

  ‘I don’t know why we came by train,’ one of them was saying. ‘The head porter at the Coburg assured us that trains were much easier at this time of year. All those traffic jams, he said. But this waiting in waiting rooms is worse. In a coach you know where you are. You get on and you get off when you arrive. Not all this waiting.’

  Dr. Harvey returned with her cup of tea.

  ‘I’ve put two lumps of sugar in the saucer.’

  ‘I don’t take sugar.’

  ‘Very wise of you. Bad for your teeth … sugar.’

  ‘Is that what you tell your patients.’

  ‘That’s what I tell my patients.’

  Their eyes met and they smiled. This was quite awful. But as they both knew it was awful, it was all right.

  The station announcer’s voice resounded through the waiting room. ‘The train approaching this station is the boat train express.’

  ‘That’s the train that put the grit in your eye,’ he said.

  ‘It was silly of me.’

  ‘You were thinking of the boy.’

  ‘But I shouldn’t have faced the train.’

  ‘If you hadn’t faced the train I’d not have met you.’

  The train roared through.

  ‘How would you commit suicide?’ she asked.

  ‘A train’s as good a way as any.’

  ‘Do many of your patients commit suicide?’

  ‘Quite a few.’

  ‘How do they do it.’

  ‘Pills usually.’

  ‘It’s the best way, isn’t it?’

  ‘The least painful way, but you can’t be sure of it.’

  ‘What a fool you must feel when you wake up and find that you’re not dead after all.’

  ‘Do you ever think of committing suicide?’

  ‘Not nowadays.’

  ‘You did when you were young?’

  ‘Quite often.’

  ‘During the war?’

  ‘No. Not then. I was too young. I didn’t mind the war. It was exciting in its way. We used to spend whole nights in an air raid shelter. When my mother was asleep, I would creep out. There was a wall at the end of the garden, a high wall. I’d stand on it and watch the rockets light up Naples. It was like fireworks, only better than fireworks. It was as though stars were
falling to help the bombers. Soon there would be great plumes of fire from the burning buildings rising up to meet the stars … like a magic circus … I was always frightened … frightened to stand there on the wall, but I was excited too.’

  ‘The war wasn’t too bad then for you.’

  ‘Not too bad. I knew it had to end; though I couldn’t think what life would be like without it. I couldn’t remember a time when there hadn’t been a war; but I knew it must end. Wars were things that ended. It was after the war that I thought of suicide.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because peace didn’t end: peace was something that didn’t end. There’d never be another war. Everyone said that with the atomic bomb, if we had another war, we should blow the world apart. Peace was something that went on. That was what I couldn’t face. Life just as it was now, going on and on.’

  ‘Was it all that bad?’

  ‘It was in Naples. Lack of food, lack of everything. Foreign troops and gangsters getting all the best of everything. Nothing for people like ourselves. How could it ever end, that was what I’d ask myself. For the first few years, it wasn’t so bad. Have you ever been to Naples?’

  ‘I haven’t, no.’

  ‘I don’t know what it’s like today. It’s probably been rebuilt and spoilt. But it was unique, it was lovely, when I knew it first. Those steep, narrow streets, and the tall houses with the balconies. They used to stretch strings across and hang the washing on them and they used to lower baskets down from the upper stories to the men and women who were selling food and vegetables in the streets below. How those men and women shouted up to us to buy. Naples was very lighthearted in spite of the black market.

  ‘And we kids ran wild. Scugnizzi was the name for us. We hunted in packs. We were supposed to go to school, we did too, sometimes, some of us, but there was no control, half of us were orphans. Until we were 14 or so we had a fine time. Then I began to realize that it couldn’t go on like that. That I wasn’t headed anywhere, that I’d be grown up soon. That I must do something. That’s when I started to feel desperate. I had three, four bad years. You see …’

  She had quite a lot more to tell him, but once again there came the interruption of the station announcer’s voice: ‘The train approaching Platform 2 is the 18.13 to Basingstoke and Waterloo.’