North Face Read Free

shoes, recalling the worn hide case with the foreign labels, trying unsuccessfully to recall elusive vocal cadences, the precision of vowels. In the presence of Miss Searle an old humiliation, like an irreparable bereavement, returned to haunt her: an occasion when walking back after a party a young resident, tender and sentimental and only a little drunk, had tried to talk to her about Housman. She had thought he said “houseman,” and had replied humourously. He had turned it off with a hurt clumsy joke; the evening’s promise had frosted in bud. A Shropshire Lad, which she had read next day against a return of opportunity that never came, remained with her like a scent with sorrowful associations, having no independent life.
    Miss Fisher was not, in the ordinary social sense, a snob. During a spell of private nursing she had slid bedpans under a representative section of the British upper classes, encountering the usual averages of cheerful pluck and querulous selfishness. Their pre-occupations had often differed from those of her own circles only in scale; they had soon ceased to have any mystery for her. Bound to a routine of uncompromising realism, Miss Fisher craved for strangeness, for otherness, for all that eluded tables of measurement, more deeply than she knew. Hence the spell that intellectuals still worked for her; they had to be very disagreeable before she stopped making allowances for them. Ideally, she liked them unconventional and unpractical, but fairly clean in their persons and with a sense of humour; when she would describe them as Bohemian, her most distinguished term of praise. She had had initial hopes, soon dashed, of Miss Searle.
    Miss Searle put a marker in her Trollope and said, “I do hope your sunburn won’t give you a painful night.” It was impossible to read; she remembered Miss Fisher’s kindness about the cold-tablets; besides, tea would be here at any moment now.
    “It was more the headache, really, thanks. I took some A.P.C. and it’s nearly gone.” Here, Miss Fisher felt obscurely, was an inheritor of the invisible key who let it rust on a nail. She thought, If I’d had her advantages … The tea came in; there was a polite contest of withdrawals from pouring-out; Miss Searle, who hated strong tea, allowed herself to be persuaded. A third cup was on the tray; it stood, a bland blank question-mark, midway between them.
    Miss Fisher, sipping her tea, wished that Miss Searle had thought to stir the pot; she had not liked to suggest it. Conversation faltered and died; she felt that it was her turn to revive it.
    “I wonder what we’ve got coming,” she essayed politely.
    Miss Searle, who perceived at once what was meant but did not feel equal to it, expressed silently a civil interrogation.
    “The new P.G ., I mean.” Miss Fisher remembered Miss Searle’s cold; it was on herself that cheerfulness devolved. “This mysteryman that’s going up into Rookery Nook.”
    “Oh, yes, of course. I’m so sorry. Do have another scone, Mrs Kearsey really manages very well on the rations, don’t you think?”
    “Ta, after you. Well, hope springs eternal, they say, but I expect it’ll be a case of a castle in the air, more senses than one, don’t you?”
    “I’m afraid I don’t quite …?” Would even Rome and Florence, Miss Searle was wondering, make up for the weeks spent in this mental slum?
    “Well, I mean to say, with men in the short supply they are, if they’ve got anything to them they don’t need to go to boarding-houses on their own. Mind you, it was different before the war. I’ve started out once or twice not knowing a soul, and had the time of my life. But not now; not unless you go to these Butlin places, and goodness knows who you might pick up there. I’m afraid I’m too fussy who I go about with.”
    “Yes,” said Miss Searle. “Quite.” But the hot tea and her cold conspired together against her. She snatched at her handkerchief. Miss Fisher put down