Unfortunately Sir Alfred died a little before my retirement, and Miss Keene went to South Africa to live. I was intimately concerned, of course, with all her currency difficulties: it was I who wrote to the Bank of England for this permit or that and reminded them constantly that I had received no reply to my letters of the 9th ult.[28]; and on her last night in England, before she caught her boat at Southampton, she asked me to dinner. It was a sad occasion without Sir Alfred, who had been a very jovial man, laughing immoderately even at his own jokes. Miss Keene asked me to look after the drinks and I chose an Amontillado, and for dinner Sir Alfreds favourite Chambertin. The house was one of those big Southwood mansions surrounded by rhododendron bushes which dripped that night with the steady slow November rain. There was an oil painting of a fishing boat in a storm after Van de Velde over Sir Alfreds place at the dining-room table, and I expressed the hope that Miss Keenes voyage would be less turbulent.
I have sold the house as it stands with all the furniture, she told me. I shall live with second cousins.
Do you know them well? I asked.
I have never seen them, she said. They are once removed[29]. We have only exchanged letters. The stamps are like foreign stamps. With no portrait of the Queen.[30]
You will have the sun, I encouraged her.
Do you know South Africa?
I have seldom been out of England, I said. Once when I was a young man I went with a school friend to Spain, but my stomach was upset by the shell-fish or perhaps it was the oil.
My father was a very overpowering personality, she said. I never had friends except you, of course, Mr. Pulling.
It is astonishing to me now how nearly I came to proposing marriage that night and yet I refrained. Our interests were different, of course tatting and dahlias have nothing in common, unless perhaps they are both the interests of rather lonely people. Rumours of the great bank merger had already reached me. My retirement was imminent, and I was well aware that the friendships I had made with my other clients would not long survive it. If I had spoken would she have accepted me? it was quite possible. Our ages were suitable, she was approaching forty and I would soon be halfway through the fifth decade, and I knew my mother would have approved. How different everything might have been if I had spoken then. I would never have heard the disturbing story of my birth, for she would have accompanied me to the funeral and my aunt would not have spoken in her presence. I would never have travelled with my aunt. I would have been saved from much, though I suppose I would have missed much too. Miss Keene said, I shall be living near Kofiefontein.
Where is that?
I dont really know. Listen. Its raining cats and dogs.[31]
We got up and moved into the drawing-room for coffee. There was a Venetian scene copied from Canaletto[32] on the wall. All the pictures in the house seemed to represent foreign parts, and she was leaving for Kofiefontein. I would never travel so far, I thought then, and I wished that she was staying here, in Southwood.
It seems a very long way to go, I said.
If there was anything to keep me here Will you take one lump or two?
No sugar, thank you. Was it an invitation for me to speak? I have always asked myself since. I didnt love her, and she certainly didnt love me, but perhaps in a way we could have made a life together. I heard from her a year later; she wrote, Dear Mr. Pulling, I wonder how Southwood is and whether its raining. We are having a beautiful sunny winter. My cousins have a small (!) farm of ten thousand acres and they think nothing of driving seven hundred miles to buy a ram. I am not quite used to things yet and I think often of Southwood. How are the dahlias? I have given up tatting. We lead a very open-air existence.
I replied and gave her what news I could, but I had retired by then and was no longer at the centre of Southwood life. I told her of my mothers failing health and how the dahlias were doing. There was a rather gloomy variety in royal purple called Deuil du Roy Albert which had not been a success. I was not sorry. It was an odd name to give a flower. My Ben Hurs were flourishing.
I had neglected the telephone, feeling so sure that it was a wrong number, but when the ringing persisted, I left my dahlias and went in.
The telephone stood on the filing cabinet where I keep my accounts and all the correspondence which my mothers death caused. I had not received as many letters as I was receiving now since I ceased to be manager: the solicitors letters, letters from the undertaker, from the Inland Revenue[33], the crematorium fees, the doctors bills, National Health forms, even a few letters of condolence. I could almost believe myself a business-man again.
My aunts voice said, You are very slow to answer.
I was busy in the garden.
How was the mowing-machine, by the way?
Very wet, but no irreparable damage.
I have an extraordinary story to fell you, my aunt said. I have been raided by the police.