PART≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈
≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈ONE

YES, I knew him,” I said, “but it was years ago—in England . . .”

You can make things sound very simple when you are answering questions on oath and there is a girl at a side table scribbling shorthand and giving little shrugs of appeal if the words come too fast. You don’t know what the questioner is trying to get at, and you almost feel that your answers are cross-examining him; you watch for the extra flicker of interest, the sudden sharpness of the next question. And all the time, behind the facts as you truthfully state them, there’s the real truth that you remember slowly, as when you stretch in bed the morning after a long walk and explore the aches. That, of course, isn’t the kind of truth you’ve promised to tell, but it probably shows in your eyes and makes you look as if you were hiding something. Which, in a sense, you are.

“Where did you first meet him?”

“In London. At a party.”

“When was that?”

“Nineteen thirty-six. I remember it because of all the Mrs. Simpson talk that was going on.” (The unsolicited detail, to account for an answer that had been perhaps too prompt.)

“Were you friendly?”

“Off and on—for a time.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean . . . well . . . some weeks I might see him twice or three times, other weeks I wouldn’t see him at all. . . . I didn’t have an affair with him, if that’s what you mean.”

Shock tactics, but it failed; the man across the table referred to his notes and said quietly: “You were seventeen.”

“Eighteen,” I corrected, but he had killed my line. I can’t help it; I act profusely when I’m nervous, and I’m nervous often when I’ve no need to be. It’s the same when I hear a motorcycle overtaking my car along a parkway, even though I know I can’t possibly be guilty of anything; or, perhaps more subtly, because I don’t know I can’t possibly be guilty of anything.

Not that the man across the table looked like anyone to be afraid of. He had sandy hair, blue eyes, a nose that looked small because the chin and the mouth were set so squarely, a pink healthy complexion, rather pudgy hands. I would not have noticed him in the street or a crowd, but if I had had to sit in a dentist’s waiting room and stare at somebody, it might have been at him for choice. He wore a bow tie, dark blue pin-stripe suit, white shirt, and I couldn’t see what kind of shoes under the table. His name (from the letter he had written me, fixing the appointment to see him) was Henry W. Small. It didn’t particularly suit him, except that it was a good name to go unnoticed by.

“Bradley was then twenty-four,” he continued, referring again to his notes. Then he looked up. “What was he doing?”

“Studying at London University. So was I. That’s how we met.”

“You said it was at a party.”

“Yes, a dinner party given by a professor. We were fellow guests.”

“Did you get to know him well at that party?”

“I didn’t speak to him till afterwards and then only a few words. When I met him again at the college I knew him just about enough to say hello to. Then gradually a bit more than that, but not much more. He wasn’t the kind of person you get to know well.”

“Did he have other friends?”

“Very few, I should say.”

“Did you meet any of them?”

“Not often.”

“Did you ever meet anyone called Sanstrom?”

“Sanstrom? . . . No, I don’t think I remember the name.”

“But you’re not certain?”

“Well, it’s nine years ago. I can’t remember the names of everyone who might have been at some college party.”

“You lived a rather social life?”

“Fairly.”

“More of a social life than Bradley, anyhow?”

“Yes.”

“In other words, you knew everybody and he didn’t?”

“Oh no. He knew them, but they were more acquaintances than friends. He wasn’t easy to be friendly with.”

“Would you call him unfriendly then?”

“No, no . . . not that at all. He was just . . . well, shy. There was a sort of barrier you had to break down.”

“Ah, a barrier. And you broke it down?”

“Perhaps partly.”

“So that you became his only real friend?”

“No, I wouldn’t say that either. . . . The fact was, he worked so hard he hadn’t much time for personal contacts of any kind.”

“Where was he living?”

“In furnished rooms.”

“Did you ever visit him there?”

“Once—but only for a few minutes.”

“Would you say—from that one visit—that his style of life fitted with the job he had?”

“Oh sure. He didn’t earn much money and everything about him looked like it.”

“Where were you living then?”

“With my parents. They had a house in Hampstead. They usually went over for the summer.”

“Were Bradley’s rooms also in Hampstead?”

“No. In Belsize Park. Or Chalk Farm. Just a few miles away.”

“What do you mean—Belsize Park or Chalk Farm? Don’t you know which?”

“Belsize Park if you wanted a good address, Chalk Farm if you didn’t care. He didn’t care.”

He looked puzzled, but he made a note of Belsize Park or Chalk Farm. “Now on these occasions when you met him, Miss Waring, what did you usually talk about?”

“Everyday things. Sometimes my work.”

“Did you ever discuss his work?”

“I couldn’t have—it was far out of my range. I was taking history. His stuff was mathematics, physics, and that sort of thing.”

“So he could discuss history although it wasn’t his subject?”

“Anybody can discuss history whether it’s their subject or not. But try talking about mathematics with an expert when you’ve never got beyond quadratic equations.”

“All right. . . . Did you ever discuss America?”

“Sometimes he spoke of his boyhood on a farm. Dakota, I think. Early struggles . . . all that.”

“Politics?”

“Not much. Just news in the paper. The Wally Simpson business, if you call that politics. We didn’t agree about it—I was against the marriage, he was all for it.”

“Did he like living in London?”

“I think so. Most Americans do.”

“You mean you did yourself?”

“Oh yes.”

“Did he ever say whether he preferred England or America . . . or perhaps some other country?”

“Goodness, no. It wasn’t what he preferred, it was where he could work. London University gave him a research fellowship.”

“And American universities wouldn’t?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they hadn’t any—of the kind he wanted.”

“So he might have had a grudge against them—or perhaps against American life in general?”

“A grudge? That man never had a grudge even when he ought to have had.”

As soon as I said it I regretted the emphasis; I knew it would lead to questions I wouldn’t answer at all. They came.

“What makes you say that?”

“Just that he wasn’t the type for harboring grudges. He lived for his work and nothing else mattered.”

“You don’t think he could ever be actuated by a motive to get even with somebody?”

“I wouldn’t think so.”

“You can’t recall any incident of such a kind?”

“No. Never.”

“In fact you never saw anything wrong with him at all, did you, Miss Waring?”

I caught a faint smile on his face and answered it with a big one of my own. “Of course I did—he was far too tied to his work for any girl to think him faultless.”

“So he didn’t take you out enough?”

I laughed. “No, not nearly enough.” I felt we were establishing the right mood and it would all be plain sailing if I stuck to it.

“Did he have other girl-friends?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about his love life. I never asked him questions about it. And incidentally, Mr. Small, why are you asking all this about him now? How did you find out I ever knew him?”

“Just let me put the questions, Miss Waring.” There was nothing brusque or unkindly in that, just a carefully measured firmness.

“But I don’t see why you shouldn’t tell me. If he’s in any trouble I’d want to help him.”

“Why?” The question shot out at me like the fang of a non-poisonous snake.

“Because—well, because I like him.”

“Still?”

“In a sense. I don’t forget people I’ve once liked, and I did like him. Is that extraordinary of me? Well, as I said, I’d want to help him if . . . if I could, that is. Maybe I couldn’t. I suppose it depends on the kind of trouble he’s in. . . .”

I stopped, realizing he was just letting me talk. When he could see I didn’t intend to go on, he said: “Why should you expect him to be in any trouble?”

“I didn’t say I expected it. I said if he is.”

“What put such a possibility in your mind?”

“Because you’re questioning me about him as if he’d done something wrong. Or aren’t you? Isn’t this a branch of the F.B.I. or something?”

He took out a cigarette case and pushed it across the table towards me. “Smoke?”

I said no thanks, because I thought my hand might tremble while I held a cigarette for him to light.

He went on: “How long since you had any communication with Bradley?”

“Oh years. Not since before the war. The English war—1939.”

“Nineteen thirty-six being the year you knew him in London?”

“That’s right.” I thought: Now it’s coming; and was inspired to add quickly: “My parents and I returned to America the following year.”

“Did he return to America?”

“Not that I know of.”

“At any rate you didn’t see him in America?”

“No, never.”

“Didn’t he write you any letters?”

“Only a few—for a while. Then we lost touch. I wish you’d give me his present address if you have it.”

“So that you could renew your friendship?”

“Perhaps not that, but I’d write to him—for old time’s sake.”

“And offer your help?”

“Yes—if he needed any.”

He nodded slowly. Then he lit a cigarette for himself and leaned back in the swivel chair. “Tell me, Miss Waring—and please remember I’m not trying to trap you into anything you don’t want to say—all I’d like is a personal opinion, just between ourselves . . .” He made a finger gesture to the girl taking shorthand. “Miss Sutton, don’t put this down—it’s off the record. . . .”

My father always said that when anyone ever tells you something is off the record you should be doubly on your guard; so I was, instantly, and concentrated on trying not to show it. I smiled, pretending to relax. He went on: “You’re a very loyal person—I can see that. Loyal to friends, just as you’d be loyal to your country. When you first got to know Bradley and found yourself beginning to like him, naturally you’d hope to find in him the same kind of loyalties. Did you? . . . Or were you ever a little disappointed in some ways?”

“No, I don’t think so. I liked him. When you like people you don’t weigh them up like that. At least I don’t.”

“You never felt there might be things he was keeping from you?”

“We weren’t close enough friends for me even to think about it. He wasn’t a very talkative person, anyway.”

“You mean that if he’d had any secrets he’d probably not have shared them with you?”

“Maybe not. And I might not have shared mine with him. We were neither of us the tell-everything type.”

He looked at me till I thought I was going to blush, so of course I did blush. As if satisfied, he pressed down the clasp of his briefcase and stood up. I saw then that he wore black shoes.

“Well, Miss Waring, I guess that’s about all. Thank you for coming over. . . . And if by any chance we should need to bother you again . . .”

“It’s no bother at all to me, but I have an idea something must be bothering you. Can’t you let me in on it?”

“No,” he said, smiling completely for the first time. He had good strong teeth and the smile made rather babyish dimples. I took off ten years from my first guess of his age; perhaps he was thirty-five.

“A secret?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Top-secret?” (They like you to use their jargon.)

“Just a secret.” (Perhaps it wasn’t their jargon.)

“I see.”

I smiled back and walked towards the door. He overtook me, yet somehow without hurry, before I reached it; turning the handle, he put himself with me in the doorway. “Nice of you to come so promptly. I hope you didn’t make a special trip—any time within a few days would have been all right.”

“Oh, I go downtown quite a lot.”

“Your father’s office?”

“Oftener the Village. More in my line than Wall Street.”

“Ah yes, of course. Writers and artists.” He cupped my elbow with his hand. “I’ll have to think over your request for Brad’s address. Might be able to oblige you, though of course we’re not a bureau of missing persons. . . . Well, thanks again. . . . Good-by.”

“But he isn’t exactly missing if you know his address, is he? . . . Good-by, Mr. Small.”

In the elevator going down I thought I had done rather well. Or had I? . . . Suddenly I realized that he had called him Brad. Was that to test me? But of course I would have admitted readily enough that I used to call him Brad. Nothing significant about that. It was probably their technique—to leave you with a feeling that they know more than you think they know, so that you can chew it all over and work up a fine state of nerves afterwards.

*      *      *

I took a taxi uptown and had early dinner alone at the house. There were plenty of friends I could have called up, but I didn’t feel like making a date with anyone, or even going to a movie later on by myself. The weather was probably the last cold spell of the winter; a bitter wind swept in from the north, and ice crackled where there had been any water in the gutters. Even after a couple of cocktails the dining room looked so big and dreary I was glad to have coffee upstairs and turn on all the lights in my personal rooms. It’s a cheerful suite on the fifth floor—bedroom, bathroom, dressing room, and den; I was allotted them as a child, and have never wanted anything bigger, even when the rest of the house was free for me to choose from. The furniture is good solid stuff from either New or Old England; my mother probably bought it at the auctions she liked to frequent. And the heating vents are built in the window sills, so that you lean on them and burn your elbows if you want to look down and see what’s going on in the street. Nothing much, as a rule; those middle sixties between Park and Fifth keep pretty quiet. That evening, as I looked down, I saw the familiar steam curling out of the manholes, and from the look of it as it scurried I knew the temperature had dropped a good deal since I left the downtown office. The low sky held captive the glow of the city; anglewise across Park Avenue I could see the Rockefeller buildings lost in clouds about the thirtieth floor. John came in to pull the blinds; I told him not to bother, I would do it myself later.

“There’s still supposed to be some rule about lights,” he said.

“All right, then, pull them down.” At that stage of the war New York didn’t bother much about the partial blackout, but John’s a stickler about such things. We’ve been real friends from my childhood. My father enticed him from a duke about twenty years ago, since when he’s become naturalized, but he still calls himself English except when English visitors ask him if he is, then he says he’s American or, if further pressed, a Scot.

“Are you going out again, Miss Jane?”

“Not me, I’m off to bed soon with a good book.”

“Not Forever Amber, I hope?” He has a corny humor, unchanged from the time I was young enough to appreciate nothing else.

“No. I take my history straight. Always did, ever since I studied it in London.”

I don’t know what made me bring that up, but I realized it was the second time that day I had mentioned something that I often go months without even thinking about.

He said, as he pulled the blinds and then the curtains: “I’d like to see London again sometime.”

“You probably could, when the war’s over.”

“They say it’s considerably changed.”

“I’ll bet our part hasn’t. Hampstead Heath and round about there.”

“Several bombs fell near the house, I’ve been told,” he said thoughtfully. It was still “the house” to us both. “Can I get you anything?”

“No thanks—I’ll be asleep very soon, I’m terribly tired. Good-night, John.”

After he had gone I stood at the window, pulling aside the blinds just enough to see that it had begun to snow. The two great cities, each with its own flavor, hold you like rival suitors, perversely when you are with the other; and that night, as I watched the pavement whitening, I thought of those other pavements that were called roadways, and the subways tubes, and the whole long list of equivalents Brad and I once compiled as we tramped across Hampstead Heath on a day when other things were in our minds.

*      *      *

I first met him at Professor Byfleet’s house in Chelsea, but I didn’t catch his name when we were introduced, or perhaps we weren’t—the English are apt to be slack about that sort of thing, they are civil but not solicitous to strangers, and when you visit one of their houses for the first time it’s hard not to feel you are among a family of initiates, or else a dues-paying but nonvoting member of a very closed-shop union.

This dinner at the Byfleets’ wasn’t anything important, at least by comparison with many we went to; Byfleet was an anthropologist who wanted my father to finance an expedition to New Guinea, so he doubtless thought he’d have us meet his friends. I suppose they’d all been told we were rich Americans, with the blow softened by adding that my mother was English. My father never did finance the expedition, anyhow.

As I said, I don’t remember actually meeting Brad, but when we got to the table I noticed him some way further down on the other side, next to my mother. Now and again I glanced at him, and with a rather odd feeling that I had seen him somewhere before, though I couldn’t be sure; he was good-looking in a restrained way, with dark, deep-sunken eyes, a long straight nose, and a chin that was firm without being aggressive. There was also a mood of gravity over him, tempered by a sort of intermittent nervousness as if he were waiting for a chance to say something, not because he wanted to, or had anything to say, but because he thought everyone must be wondering why up to halfway through dinner he hadn’t spoken a word. I hoped my mother would soon take pity on him, but his other partner moved first, and I could see that the more she tried to draw him out the more he drew himself in. She was one of those voluble unkempt Englishwomen who invade a conversation rather than take part in it, and have a conspiratorial smile for the maid or butler, just to show they’ve been to the house before.

I missed what was happening across the table for a while, for my own neighbor engaged me, a hearty professor of biology who mentioned, apropos of the veal cutlets, that man had only scratched the surface of his possible gastronomic repertoire, that practically the entire insect world was an untapped storehouse of taste novelties, that dried locusts made an excellent sandwich, that there were many edible caterpillars fancied by the Chinese, and that native tribes in the Andean foothills pick lice from each other’s heads and eat them with gusto. He seemed surprised when I wasn’t upset, and after I had accepted another cutlet he confessed that he often opened up like that to jeunes filles whom he found himself next to at dinners, because in the event that they were bores their distress at least made them momentarily entertaining; but he could see I was not a bore, so perhaps I would now talk about something serious. I said I could never talk seriously to any man with one of those bristly little toothbrush mustaches, and was it true that in certain crack regiments of the British Army men were compelled to have them? He answered, Good God, how should he know, better ask our host, who was a recognized authority on totem and taboo. After that we got along fairly well, and presently he paid me what many Englishmen think is the supreme compliment; he said he wouldn’t have guessed I was American.

Suddenly I was relieved to see that my mother, across the table, was talking to her nervous neighbor. I knew then that everything would be all right. She was adept at putting young men, indeed men of any age, at their ease; she didn’t mind if they talked politics or business or art or sport—even if they were intellectual she never tried to match them at it, and if they weren’t she would make them feel a freemasonry existing between her and them in a world, or at a table, of highbrows. Actually she was cleverer than she pretended—not that she was especially modest, but in her bones she felt that men do not like clever women, and what she felt in her bones counted more than anything she could think out with her intelligence. She had had an upper-crust education composed of governess, boarding school, then finishing school abroad, and probably she had forgotten 95 per cent of everything she had ever learned from textbooks; but she had done nothing but travel and meet some of the world’s most interesting people for almost twenty years, and the result was a quick-minded knowledgeableness unspoiled by knowledge. It made her understand politicians rather than politics and diplomats rather than diplomacy. She talked plenty of nonsense, and it was easy to trap her, though not always to prove that she was trapped; and she would go on discussing a book she said she had read but manifestly hadn’t, or she would break up a dull conversation with some fantastic irrelevance for which everyone was secretly grateful.

After dinner I wasn’t anywhere near the nervous man, but when the party broke up it appeared we were scheduled to drop him where he lived, which was in our direction, and because we were also taking two other guests on their way, he sat in front with Henry. We dropped these others first and then he moved inside, but there was hardly time for talk before he began urging us not to drive out of our way, his place was only a short walk from the main road, anywhere near there would do. But my father insisted: “No, no, we’ll take you right up to your door”; so Brad had to direct Henry through a succession of side streets, and eventually gave the stop signal in the middle of a long block of four-story houses with basements. He said good-night and thanked us, bumping his head against the top of the car as he got out.

“North Dakota,” my father said, as we drove away.

“Yes, he told me too,” said my mother. “I’d have known it was somewhere in the Middle West from his accent.”

“Thank goodness for that,” I said, and mentioned the Englishman’s compliment to me.

My father smiled and seemed in an unusually good humor. He wasn’t always, after parties at other people’s houses. He said: “I find my own Kentucky drawl a great help with the English. It makes them think me tough and guileless, whereas in reality I’m neither.”

“And in reality you haven’t even got a Kentucky drawl,” said my mother.

“Haven’t I? How would you know? . . . Well, coming back to Dakota. I had some talk with him after the ladies left the table. Seems he’s a research lecturer at your college, Jane.”

“Then that’s where I must have seen him before. I had an idea I had.”

“A young man of promise, from all accounts,” my father went on. “Byfleet spoke highly of him.”

My mother commented: “If we’d had any sense we’d have dropped him at the corner as he asked us. He probably didn’t want us to know the sort of place he lives in.”

“Oh nonsense. A boy like that, making ends meet on a few fees and scholarships—nobody expects him to stay at the Ritz. Probably has to count every penny, same as I did when I was his age in New York. It’s good for him, anyway, till he gets on his feet. . . . Brains, good looks, and a tuxedo—what more does he need?”

“He’s very shy,” my mother said.

“That’ll wear off.”

“So will the tuxedo. It was frayed at the cuffs already.”

My father looked interested. “You noticed that, Christine? I’ll tell you what I noticed—he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, and he was hoping you’d rescue him from that Hathersage woman he was next to, but you didn’t till nearly the coffee stage. . . . Must read her new novel, though. They say it’s good.”

That was typical of my father; he respects achievement and is always prepared to weigh it against not liking you, so that in practice he likes you if you are successful enough. Julian said that once, and he was successful enough; doubtless therefore in those days my father thought Brad was going to be successful enough. I remember arguing it out with myself as we drove home.

*      *      *

I saw Brad the morning after the Byfleet dinner; we ran into each other at the College entrance in Gower Street. I suppose this was really our first meeting; he would have passed me with a nod, but I made him stop. “So you’re here too?” I said.

“Hi, there. Sure I am.”

“That was a good party last night.”

“Er . . . yes. . . .” Then suddenly, with an odd kind of vehemence: “Though I don’t like big parties.”

“It wasn’t so big. Were you bored?”

“Oh no, not a bit. I’m just no good at them. I don’t know what to say to people.”

“Neither do I. I just chatter when I’m chattered to.”

“I wish I could do that. . . . Or no, perhaps I don’t. It’s a terrible waste of time.”

“For those who have anything better to do. Do you think you have?”

He looked as if he thought that impertinent. I think now it was.

“Yes,” he answered, smiling.

“That sounds rather arrogant.”

But now he looked upset. He didn’t like being called arrogant.

“No, no, please don’t misunderstand me. . . . I guess I just tell myself it’s a waste of time because I can’t do it. Especially amongst all the big shots—like last night. I don’t know why I was asked.”

“Why did you go?”

“Professor Byfleet has helped me a lot, I didn’t like to refuse.”

“He probably asked you on account of my father, who’s an American too.”

“I know. He told me. He asked me what my work was, but I was a bit tongue-tied. I’m afraid I made a fool of myself.”

“I don’t think you did. It’s by talking too much that most people do that.”

“Personally I agree with you.” There was no inferiority complex about him, thank goodness. The truculence and the humility were just edges of something else.

“Anyhow,” I said, “he liked you.”

“Did he?” Because he looked so embarrassed I couldn’t think of anything else to say. He fidgeted a moment, then glanced at his wrist watch. “Well, I must be off to my lecture. . . .” His second smile outweighed the abruptness with which he left me standing there.

When I got home that night I told my mother I had seen him again. She said, with a flicker of interest: “Really? I think Harvey had better ask him here sometime—some evening we’re just ourselves. . . .”

*      *      *

But of course there wasn’t often such an evening. My parents both liked company; my mother preferred musicians, artists, society people, and my father balanced this with businessmen, lawyers, politicians. Without much snobbery, he had a very shrewd idea of who was who and who really mattered; and in England he felt that he still mattered himself, not merely because he was rich, but because few English people appreciated the changes in America that had put him out of favor. So also English and foreign politicians listened to his advice, not with any idea of taking it, but as an act of educating themselves in some mythical American viewpoint which they believed he represented, and they were doubtless relieved to find him a generous host and a reliable keeper of secrets. I didn’t have a feeling that I was ever completely close to him, or that, inside his own private world, he had ever got over the death of his only son by a former wife during the First World War.

As I said, he wasn’t much of a snob, and though he had a connoisseur’s appreciation of titles and liked to say “Your Excellency” once or twice and then call the man Bill, he wouldn’t have me presented at Court or “come out” in any accepted social sense. It just happened that when I was sixteen I began having a place at table if there were a dinner party, though at first I would go up to bed soon afterwards; then when I enrolled at the College that seemed to make me adult enough to stay up as long as I liked. Most people, no doubt, took me for older than my age, just as they took my mother for younger if they met her without knowing who she was.

Ever since I was a child we had come over to England for the summer; once we took a house in Grosvenor Street, with real flunkeys, but my mother thought that was a bit too grand, so next time my father chose Hampstead, at the top of the hill as you climb from the tube station, and that suited them both so much that they never looked anywhere else. For many years it had even been the same house, which my father would have bought if the portrait painter who owned it had been willing to sell. There was a studio attic overlooking the Heath, with a huge north window, and from the other upstairs rooms you could see the London lights at night and as far as the Crystal Palace on a clear day.

I used to have a favorite walk—it was along the Spaniards’ Road to Highgate Village, then back downhill and up again through Parliament Hill Fields. I loved it when it was crisp and sunny and windy enough for the little ponds to have waves and for the roads to look like bones picked clean. There’s no place in New York as high as Hampstead Heath and as near to the center of things, except of course the roofs of high buildings, where you look deep down; but from the Heath you look far over, which is different. My father once said you couldn’t climb a mere four hundred feet anywhere else in the world and feel higher.

We had good times at that hilltop house, and when Christmas was over in New York and we were packing for Florida (where my father got out of the land boom in time to keep a fortune), already I was looking forward to April and the ocean crossing. Sometimes we spent Easter in Paris, which was exciting, but I never wanted to stay there long. Then when I was twelve my father thought it was time I gave up governesses and started a proper education, so we tossed up whether it should be over here or over there. Out of compliment to my mother he asked her to flip the coin, intending (so he told me afterwards) to give way if the result disappointed her too much. But it didn’t, and I went to a boarding school in Delaware for three years, spending only a few weeks in London during the summer vacation. After that my father told me to choose a college myself, anywhere I liked.

I suppose to have been born in England means something, even the way it happened to me. It was in April 1918, when the Germans looked quite likely to win that war. My father had been shuttling back and forth across the Atlantic a good deal in those days; I have never been able to find out quite what he did, except that it was connected with the war and was apt to be so important that he traveled under another name with secret service people watching him. Anyhow, during one of these hush-hush visits he met my mother and during another he married her. He took her to New York, soon after which my grandmother fell ill; my mother then went back to England to stay only a few months, but she postponed returning as she postponed so many things, with the result that she was actually driving to Waterloo Station to catch the boat train for Southampton when she realized she was too late. Thus I became a Cockney, one might say, accidentally; and also, if it meant anything, I had done a good deal of traveling even before I was born.

*      *      *

I saw nothing of Brad for some time after the Byfleet dinner; his tracks didn’t cross mine at the College and I didn’t particularly look for him or them. I did, however, meet a man named Mathews who had a laboratory next to his in the Physics Building and shared with him certain amenities. Mathews was amused when I asked if they were friends. He laughed and said: “What’s that word you used? Friends? The fellow doesn’t have time for such nonsense. Works his head off, goes nowhere, cares for nothing but crystals under a microscope or whatever it is. Sometimes I take him in a cup of tea. He says thanks very much, but I don’t do it too often because it makes him feel obligated. Once, by way of returning the favor, he insisted on buying me a lunch at an A.B.C. And I don’t like A.B.C.’s.”

“Does he talk to you?”

“Only about work. I sometimes think he tries out his lectures on me. You might not think it, but he’s a good lecturer. He also writes a few things for the scientific magazines. . . .”

“Doesn’t he have any hobbies . . . fun?”

“Oh yes. Once a week, on Sundays, he finds some hill to climb. . . . Very invigorating.”

“You mean Hampstead and Highgate?”

“He wouldn’t call them hills. Nothing less than Dorking to Guildford with a final run up the Hog’s Back. I went with him once. Never again. Eighteen miles at four miles an hour. Not my idea of fun. But then, perhaps it isn’t his either. Perhaps he does it for self-discipline or mortifying the flesh or something. He told me he never let rain stop him.”

I wasn’t surprised at that because I like walking in rain myself. A few days later (and it was raining, by the way) I saw him coming out of the A.B.C. after lunch. He wore no hat or mackintosh and after standing a moment in the shop doorway to put up his coat collar he suddenly sprinted across the road towards the College entrance. Then he saw me and changed course, still at a sprint. He went out of his way to greet me. “Oh, Miss Waring. . . . I’d been wondering if I should meet you before . . . before we meet again.”

That didn’t seem to make too much sense, so I just smiled till he went on: “I’m coming to your house next Thursday. Your father invited me—he says there’ll be nobody else there. That shows he did notice what a fool I was at the party.”

“It also shows he doesn’t think any less of you for it.”

“I hope so . . . but I also hope he doesn’t think I really mind other people. What I mean is, I wouldn’t like him to put himself out for me.”

There wasn’t much I could say. It didn’t seem at all likely that my father would put himself out for such an unimportant person; on the other hand, it was rather rarely that we were ever at home without a crowd. Afterwards I found that it was my mother who had arranged it.

That Thursday evening began rather well, despite the fact that our landlord dropped in to dinner uninvited. Or perhaps partly because of it, for the talk got on the subject of painting, and that led to music and then my mother went to the piano and played Chopin. She was a fairly good amateur pianist and liked to play if there were no notable musicians present; she also sang, the diseuse style—you called her an English Yvette Guilbert if nobody else said it first. That evening I thought she sang rather better than usual and I told her so.

“And what does Mr. Bradley think?” she asked from the piano stool.

It was a silly question because it invited flattery and she might have known he wasn’t the type to have it ready. He just looked uncomfortable and walked over to the piano. “I can sing too,” he said.

My mother jumped up laughing. “Why, of course—that’s wonderful. Take over.”

“No, no—I don’t play the piano. Can you accompany for me?”

“Depends what the song is.”

“I expect you know ‘John Brown’s Body’ or ‘Annie Laurie.’ . . .”

I then felt a bit uncomfortable myself, chiefly because of the painter, who was ultrasophisticated about art and might consider songs like that very naïve; also I thought he’d think Brad had bad manners in putting a stop to my mother’s singing. I don’t really mind if people have bad manners, but I don’t like an American to have them in front of an Englishman, or vice versa for that matter. My mother, of course, carried it off gaily, starting at once into “Annie Laurie,” and somewhat to everyone’s surprise Brad turned out to have a rather good baritone. Halfway through my mother joined with him and made it a duet. They went on after that, singing other songs together, after which Brad asked her to sing some more on her own, so everything was all right. He said good-night about eleven, leaving the rest of us to conduct the post-mortem.

“Well, well,” said my father. “We haven’t had so much music since Cortot came here.” Maybe he meant that to be ironic.

“He wasn’t so shy this time,” said my mother.

The painter asked who Brad was and what he did. My father answered: “A young scientist from one of our prairie states; he’s working at University College where he got a Ph.D. last year.”

I hadn’t known that before.

“Nice voice,” said the painter.

My father smiled. “It’s remarkable for one thing at least, it sings more readily than it talks.”

“On the other hand, Waring, when it does talk it talks sense. While we were visiting your gent’s room after dinner I asked him what he thought of the landscape in the hall—of course he didn’t know it was mine. He said he didn’t understand why a modern painter would ignore the rules of perspective without any of the excuses that Botticelli had, and I thoroughly agreed with him. I’m fed up with that pseudoprimitive stuff I went in for years ago.”

My father said: “I wouldn’t have thought he knew anything about Botticelli.”

“He knows how to sing too,” said my mother. “I mean how to sing—though I don’t suppose he’s ever been taught. His breathing’s exceptionally good.”

“He takes long walks,” I said. “Maybe that helps.”

Anyhow, the whole evening was a success, after all my fears that it wouldn’t be.

*      *      *

From then on I’d see him fairly often, but not to say more than a few words to. I sometimes went to the A.B.C. shop where he had his regular lunch of a roll and butter and a glass of milk, we smiled across the crowded room, or he’d stop to say hello if my table was on his way to the cash desk. Twice, I think, I joined him because there was no place elsewhere, but he was just about to leave, so there wasn’t much conversation. And another time the waitress said when she came to take my order: “Dr. Bradley isn’t here yet. It’s only seven past twelve and he never comes in till ten past. We tell the time by him.” She must have thought I was looking for him.

One lunchtime he threaded his way deliberately amongst the tables towards mine. “I’ve been wanting to ask you something,” he began, sitting down. “I’ve been thinking I ought to return your parents’ hospitality. Of course I don’t have a house where I could very well ask them to dinner . . .”

“Oh, they know that—they wouldn’t expect it—”

“But perhaps a hotel—I wondered if you could tell me any particular place they like.”

My father liked Claridge’s and my mother the Berkeley, either of which would have cost him at least a week’s pay. So I said: “They really don’t care much for dining at hotels at all. . . . Why don’t you ask them to tea? I know they’d love that.”

“Tea? . . . That’s an idea. Just afternoon tea—like the English?”

“My mother is English.”

“Tea and crumpets, then.”

“Not crumpets in the middle of June. Just tea.”

“And what hotel?”

“Does it have to be any hotel? Why don’t you make tea in your lab? Mathews does.”

“Mathews? You know him? We might invite him too.” I didn’t know what he meant by “we” till he added: “Would you help?”

“With the tea? Why yes, of course.”

It was fun making preparations. I had never been inside his laboratory before, or even seen what “Dr. Mark Bradley” looked like on his letter box. It was an ugly room on the top story of the Physics Building, with less scientific equipment in it than I had expected and a rather pervasive smell that I didn’t comment on because there was nothing to be said in its favor and doubtless nothing that could be done about it. I tidied the place up a bit, dusted the chairs, and soon had the kettle boiling on a tripod over a Bunsen burner. Mathews came, talked, drank tea, and had to leave for a lecture. My parents had promised to be there by four, and I was a little peeved by their lateness, not because it really mattered but because I could see it was making Brad nervous. He kept pacing up and down and looking out of the window. Suddenly he cried “They’re here!” and rushed out and down the stairs. But when he came back there was only my mother with him. She was full of apologies; she had been shopping and hadn’t noticed the time; and also my father couldn’t come owing to a meeting in the City that had lasted longer than usual. “Of course you shouldn’t have waited for me.” Then she looked appraisingly round the room, sniffing just as I had. “What a jolly little place! How secluded you must be here—almost on the roof! And all those wonderful-looking instruments—you simply must tell me about them.”

There were only a couple of microscopes, a chemical balance, and a Liebig condenser, but he went round with her, exhibiting and explaining, answering in patient detail even the most trivial of her questions, and all without the slightest trace of nervousness or reticence. It looked to me like a miracle, till I remembered that Mathews had said he was a good lecturer.

Then we had tea, and I knew that it was a miracle, because all at once he was actually chatting. She asked him most of the questions I had wanted to ask him, and he answered them all. About his early life in North Dakota, the farm near the Canadian border, droughts, blizzards, hard times, bankruptcy, the death of both his parents before he was out of grade school, and his own career since. She asked him such personal things—had he left a girl in America, did he have enough money? He said there was no girl and he had enough money to live on.

“But not enough to marry on?”

“I don’t want to marry.”

“You might—someday.”

“No.”

“How can you be certain?”

“Because of my work. It takes up so much of my time that it wouldn’t be fair to any woman to marry her.”

“She mightn’t let it take up so much of your time.”

“Then it wouldn’t be fair to my work.”

“Isn’t that rather . . . inhuman?”

“Not when you feel about your work as I do.”

“You mean as a sort of priesthood—with a vow of celibacy attached?”

He thought a moment. “I don’t know. I hadn’t figured it out quite like that.”

But the oddest thing was yet to come. About six o’clock a boy put his head in at the doorway, grinned cheerfully, and asked if he could go home. “I’ve fed the cats and mice and fixed all the cages, sir.”

Brad said: “You’d better let me take a look first.” He excused himself to us and was gone a few minutes; when he came back my mother was all ready for him. “What’s this about cats and mice and cages? Is that what the smell is?”

He smiled. “I hope it doesn’t bother you. I’m so used to it myself I hardly notice it.”

“But what do you have them for?”

“I don’t have them at all—they belong to the man next door. I keep an eye on them when he’s out. He uses them for his experimental work.”

“You mean—” She flushed a little. “But of course, that’s very interesting. I’d like to see your menagerie. Could I?”

I hoped he would have more sense and I tried to signal danger to both of them, but without effect. I didn’t know him well enough, anyway, to convey signals, and somehow at that moment I didn’t even feel I knew my mother well enough. She had a spellbound look, as if she were eager for disaster. Brad just said: “Sure, if you like, but I warn you, the smell’s worse when you get close.”

We walked down a stone corridor and into another room. It was full of cages, numbered and tagged and placed methodically on platforms round the walls. The cats had had their milk and were sleepily washing themselves; they purred in anticipation and rubbed their heads against the wire when he went near them. My mother looked hypnotized as she followed him from cage to cage. She asked him how the cats were obtained. “I suppose the University buys them from somebody,” he answered. “Most of them are strays—they’re often half-starved when they first come here. We feed them well, of course—they have to be healthy before they’re any use.”

Without reply she suddenly opened the door of one of the cages. A black and white cat squirmed eagerly into her arms and tried to reach up to her chin. She fondled it for a moment, then put it back in the cage. “What a pity I have to,” she whispered.

“You like cats?” he asked.

“I adore them. Do you?”

“Yes. Dogs too.”

It wasn’t a very intelligent end to the conversation but I could see it was the end. My mother was already putting on that glassy look she has when she is saying charming things and thinking of something else at the same time. I’ve often seen it at the tail end of a party. “I think perhaps I ought to be going. . . . So nice of you to ask me here and tell me everything. We must have you to the house again soon.”

He saw us down to the street, where Henry was waiting. In the car my mother was silent for a while, then she said: “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have poked my nose in.”

When I didn’t answer she added: “I suppose they have to do it.”

“He doesn’t. They weren’t his.”

She was silent again for some time, then asked suddenly: “Do you think you understand him?”

“Not after the way he talked to you today.”

“Why, what was wrong about that?”

“Nothing, only I’d always thought he was reserved and shy.”

“He is.”

“Not with you. He told you more in five minutes than he’d tell me in five years.”

“Wait till you’ve known him five years. You’ll be a better age.”

“So you think that’s why he doesn’t talk to me as he does to you? Because I’m too young?”

“Perhaps. Darling, don’t be annoyed. And I might be wrong too. I’ve never met scientists before. They must be queer people. The way they can do such things . . . and yet have ideals. The distant goal—he’s got his eyes fixed on it and he can’t see anything nearer. . . . And all his hard life and early struggles haven’t taught him anything. He doesn’t realize that even in the scientific world you’ve got to get about and make friends if you want to be a success. He lives like a hermit—anyone can see that. It would do him good to fall in love.”

I laughed. “Mathews says he’s scared of women altogether.”

“Mathews?”

“The man next door to him.”

“Oh yes . . . the one who . . . yes, I remember. . . .”

“All the same, though, he wasn’t scared of you.”

She cuddled my arm and answered: “No, darling, it was I who was scared. He’s a peculiar man.”

*      *      *

Ever since schooldays I have kept a diary of sorts, mostly the jotting down of engagements, never anything literary or confessional. Brad makes his appearance the first day I saw him; there’s the record: “Dinner Chelsea Professor Byfleet. Gave a lift home to American boy researching at Coll. Shy.” The entry for the day on which my mother came to tea is similarly brief. Just: “Tea in Brad’s lab. Mother. Cat.” And about a week later comes this: “End of College Term. Cat.”

What happened was that I got home from an afternoon walk to find my mother and Brad in the drawing room. They were talking together and my mother was nursing a black and white cat which immediately she thrust into my arms. “Look, Jane! It’s the same one! Brad just brought it—he’s given it to me!”

“It’s lovely,” I said, and I noticed she had called him Brad. So I said: “Hello, Brad.”

“Hello,” he answered.