Grand Days Read Free

and so my surprise at the robustness of the servings.’ He closed the anecdote in laughter, perhaps laughing to safeguard it from any chance of it failing to meet the tests of amusement. ‘There was much discussion.’
    â€˜Much discussion?’
    â€˜You know how it is with food and wine enthusiasts.’
    â€˜I don’t, really, you see we don’t make much of a fuss about food back in Australia. Which is not to say that we shouldn’t care more. In all things.’
    â€˜I’m sure that’s not true — which city do you come from?’
    What wasn’t true? How would he know?
    She realised she was being prickly, and should stop it.
    â€˜Sydney and Melbourne, but before that I came from a small town on the coast of New South Wales, the south coast of New South Wales.’
    And she was, at twenty-six, having her first lunch in a railway dining car, at the first sitting, holding her own with an English gentleman to whom she didn’t object, and she was disregardingthe advice of both Lord Curzon and John Latham by having soup.
    â€˜I am a member of a dining club — the Saintsbury. Vyvyan Holland is a member of the Saintsbury.’
    She observed that this was a conversational move which was not simple, maybe was not wholly kind, had something hiding within it. It was not only that she did not know the name Vyvyan Holland, and it was not that he was perhaps important and she should know — what was, perhaps, unkind was that this Major Westwood had said it with a teasing voice. As the conversation was running, she didn’t have time to detect his secret theme. Was it, again, to give himself altitude, through displaying glamorous, worldly information about himself?
    â€˜Vyvyan with two y s,’ he said, in the same teasing voice.
    â€˜Vyvyan with two y s,’ she repeated, but she didn’t make this a question; she wouldn’t ask for his help. Not yet. As she said the name, she wrote it in her mind’s eye, seeing the word with its two y s.
    To ask, ‘Who is Vyvyan Holland?’ would lead her into the ambush of his tease. He knew that she did not know. She decided then to use the Way of the Silent Void, which she’d devised to overcome such conversational teasing and to hide her disadvantage. In her experience, the Way of the Silent Void usually forced the other person to explain themselves, and deflated the teasing.
    As she allowed a silence to form in the conversation, it appeared to her, though, that he might be a Master of the Silent Void because he, too, looked at her without speaking, his mouth holding a small smile.
    She continued to hold her silence, also bringing a small smile to her mouth. She steered another spoonful of soup to her mouth.
    The silence was long enough and the void wide enough forthem to both hear the clack of the train over the track, and the conversation and laughter of the other diners.
    She thought she heard a church bell somewhere out in the countryside of France.
    She heard another diner say, in English, ‘Buy Ford.’
    At last he spoke, going into the void she had created. She quietly congratulated herself. However it did not release her from the tease or from her ignorance, because he said, ‘In London, our club, the Saintsbury, meets twice yearly — on Shakespeare’s birthday and on the birthday of Professor George Saintsbury. The club is devoted to wine and books.’
    He was years older than she, at least, and from the FO, although as she examined his face, she felt uncertain of his age. He was boyish, but there was an exhaustion which dragged at his face. But he would have his Ways for All Occasions by now. Or maybe some people did not have Ways?
    He was being inexplicable, being a dodger, trying to detour around her void.
    But he was falling into the void, because he spoke again just as she was preparing to throw herself on the mercy of the conversation. This time he seemed to be