A Friend from England Read Free

have been happier working, he would have felt ashamed to carry on as before, thinking it somehow in keeping to be superannuated now that fate had removed him from the category of those who need to be seen to earn their money. Dorrie had probably changed less: her life was not much different from how it had been in earlier days, a reverent addiction to fine housekeeping. Yet they seemed to depend on each other more now that they were always together than they had when long periods of time had kept them apart. ‘Where are you going, dear?’ one would say to the other as a move was made towards the door of whatever room they were sitting in. And, ‘Where’s your mother?’ Oscar would say to Heather, if Dorrie happened to be absent for more than a minute. The end of their respective siestas would be marked by deep sighs, as if, once reclaimed by the business of ordinary life, they could say goodbye to free will.
    The atmosphere in their house was marked by a perpetual Sabbath calm, yet as I only ever visited at weekends I suppose this was entirely appropriate. I had occasion to visit them rather frequently because I had recently come into a small legacy that was hedged around with obscure legal problems, something to do with imprecise wording in the will, on which Oscar seized with an element of his old professionalism. Actually, I believe a solicitor could have cleared thematter up without much difficulty, but I sensed that Oscar welcomed the opportunity to investigate, to make telephone calls in the small garden room designated as his office, and to treat me once more as a ward who needed his advice. At one period I went there nearly every weekend, and once my business was settled the habit was formed: it was even decreed that Heather could pick me up in her car and bring me to Wimbledon as well as taking me home afterwards, rather as if I were a small child going out to tea with her friend’s parents. Probably they thus hoped to seal the alliance between Heather and myself, although we had nothing in common beyond an attachment to Oscar and Dorrie. Heather was apparently more mature than I was, but I had reason to doubt the reality of this apparent maturity; in any event, Dorrie seemed to think that I was the more sensible of the two, which was not the case. She would summon me into the kitchen, on the pretext of wrapping up cakes for both of us to take home, and ask, ‘How do you think she’s looking?’, while in the drawing-room Heather would be discoursing on some form of illness with every appearance of adult commitment. We would all sit down and drink a glass of sherry before Heather and I left: although their sherry was of the highest quality, and the glasses fragile and of a pleasing shape, this ritual was accompanied by an involuntary wince on the part of Oscar and Dorrie. They hated anything sour or sharp, but they confessed to liking the smell of the sherry, which somehow added itself to the vanilla of the cakes and the cigar smoke and the closed-in warmth and Dorrie’s flowery scent. It felt sophisticated to them, and although their standard of comfort was very high they went on adding to it conscientiously, in the same way as they habitually added to Heather’s birthright, so that the car, on our return journey, would be packed with parcels, the fruits of a week’s shopping on Dorrie’s part, for although shelooked as if she never left the house, she now recognized the more exclusive department stores as her natural habitat and embarked on a shopping expedition once or twice a week, no doubt with the same expression of resignation that she wore at home.
    Once admitted to the family circle, I found myself falling into the same docility as that which characterized Oscar and Dorrie and Heather: it was pleasing to me to be thus returned to childhood, although I was quite aware that Dorrie looked to me, as a true adult, to induct Heather into the finer mysteries of life. I suppose she thought I might make