England Made Me Read Free

well, been fond of each other, seen her only a month ago, not to know where she is, whether she’s alive or dead or dying.’
    â€˜Then that other’s the scent?’
    â€˜Yes,’ he said, ‘that other’s the scent.’
    â€˜She’s old, isn’t she?’
    â€˜She’s over forty.’
    â€˜Plenty of money, I suppose?’
    â€˜Oh, she’s rich enough,’ Anthony said. He picked up the second photograph and laughed without much amusement. ‘We’re a pair, aren’t we, you and Krogh and me and Maud.’ She didn’t answer, watching him stoop again to find his passport, noticing how broad he had become since she had seen him last. She remembered the waitresses staring over the dishcloths, the silence which surrounded their talk. It seemed odd to her that he should need to buy a girl. But when he turned, his smile explained everything; he carried it always with him as a leper carried his bell; it was a perpetual warning that he was not to be trusted.
    â€˜Well. Here it is. But will he give me a job?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜I’m not so bright.’
    â€˜You needn’t tell me,’ she said, sounding for the first time the whole depth of her sad affection, ‘what you are.’
    â€˜Kate,’ he said, ‘it sounds silly, but I’m a bit scared.’ He dropped the passport on the bed and sat down. ‘I don’t want any more new faces. I’ve had enough of them.’ She could see them crowding up behind his eyes: the men at the club, the men in liners, the men on polo ponies, the men behind glass doors. ‘Kate,’ he said, ‘you’ll stick to me?’
    â€˜Of course,’ she said. There was nothing easier to promise. She could not rid herself of him. He was more than her brother; he was the ghost that warned her, look what you have escaped; he was all the experience she had missed; he was pain, because she had never felt pain except through him; for the same reason he was fear, despair, disgrace. He was everything except success.
    â€˜If only you could stay with me here.’ ‘Here’ was the twin dials on the gas-meter, the dirty pane, the long-leaved plant, the paper fan in the empty fireplace; ‘here’ was the scented pillow, the familiar photographs, the pawned bags, the empty pockets, home.
    She said: ‘I can’t leave Krogh’s.’
    â€˜He’ll give you a job in London.’
    â€˜No, he wouldn’t. He needs me there.’ And ‘there’ was the glassy cleanliness, the latest fashionable sculpture, the sound-proof floors and dictaphones and pewter ash-trays and Erik in his silent room listening to the reports from Warsaw, Amsterdam, Paris and Berlin.
    â€˜Well, I’ll come. He’s got the brass, hasn’t he?’
    â€˜Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘He’s got the brass.’
    â€˜And there’ll be pickings for yours truly?’
    â€˜Yes, there’ll be pickings.’
    He laughed. He had forgotten already the new faces he feared. He put on his hat and looked in the mirror and adjusted the handkerchief in his breast-pocket. ‘What a pair we are.’ She could have sung with joy, when he pulled her to her feet, because they were a pair again, if she had not been daunted at the sight of him in his suspect smartness, his depraved innocence, hopelessly unprepared in his old school tie.
    â€˜What is that tie?’ she asked. ‘Surely it’s not . . .’
    â€˜No, no,’ he said, flashing the truth at her so unexpectedly that she was caught a victim to the charm she hated. ‘I’ve promoted myself. It’s Harrow.’

2
    The fellows asked me to have another whisky. They all wanted to hear what I’d seen. For weeks before they had scarcely spoken a word to me, said I was lucky not to be turned out of the club, for claiming a military rank, they told me, to which I wasn’t