Chapter 3 Unwelcome Details #2
“Oh really? Why?”
Jimmy hesitated. “It’s silly. I had asthma. It wasn’t even that bad.”
“So were you…” She stopped, cleared her throat.
“What were you going to say?”
“It’s just… I was remembering that evening you first visited us, when Robbie asked what you did in the war and Honor shut him up.
I thought perhaps you’d been medically exempted and Honor didn’t think it was any of our business.
Which it isn’t. But then I realized you’re probably too young to have fought. What are you, twenty-five?”
He shook his head, smiling. “I’ve got one of those faces.
Hasn’t changed since I was twelve. I’m going to be twenty-nine next month.
” Looking down, he tapped his cigarette ash.
“But you were right. I was exempted on medical grounds when I was eighteen. I was gutted. The worst part was seeing the look in people’s eyes.
You know, they’d see me, a strapping great lad, and wonder why I wasn’t away fighting.
It’s not like being blind or a cripple, something you can see. I looked like a coward, one of those…”
“Conscientious objectors,” said George.
“Yeah, one of those lot.” He wrinkled his nose. “Anyway, enough about me. Tell me about you. How do you know Honor? Do your families know each other?”
George shook her head. “Nothing like that. I just heard about a room that was going begging, from some mutual friends. But I didn’t know Honor before.”
“Seems like you’re good pals now, though.”
“I suppose we are, yes. She’s been a saint, really, in putting up with me.
I’m not the most domestic creature to have about the place!
” George remembered the time, not long after she’d moved in, when she’d arrived home a little the worse for wear, decided to run a bath, and promptly fallen asleep.
Honor, herself asleep in bed, had been woken by water pouring onto her face.
To George’s immense relief, she just laughed it off and didn’t even let her chip in for the cost of repainting the ceiling.
And yet when Mina took a teaspoon of Honor’s black-market sugar without asking, the poor girl was rather forcefully upbraided.
Honor then accepted a farthing in recompense, shocking George, who’d witnessed the whole brouhaha.
People were inconsistent, she thought, impossibly so.
It wasn’t advisable to set too much store by their past behavior.
“What about your parents?” asked Jimmy. “Why don’t you live with them?”
“I left home years ago,” she said simply.
“Daddy and I never really saw eye to eye.” She smiled.
“Do you know, Honor’s is the nicest place I’ve lived, ever since coming to London when I was nineteen.
My goodness, I’ve lived in some funny places.
I once shared a room with a friend above a Maltese restaurant in Chalk Farm.
At night, they would bring in girls, smuggled into the country for nefarious purposes.
You’d hear them sobbing and banging on the walls.
We told the police, but they didn’t pay any attention.
Thought we were silly women who’d overheard a domestic squabble and turned it into some elaborate fantasy.
And eventually I started sleeping through it.
Turns out you can get used to anything. That’s what I’ve learned, anyway. ”
As George told this story, Jimmy grimaced.
He wanted to tell her how well he understood.
You could get used to anything. But that was how you stopped being truly human, wasn’t it?
By closing yourself off to feeling anything at all, by expecting nothing so you couldn’t ever be disappointed.
“Maybe you can,” he said calmly. “But you didn’t ought to.
Don’t be a frog in a pot. That’s the worst thing you can be. ”
It made a horrible sort of sense to George. Perhaps she was a nearly boiling frog. “How do you avoid it, though? We humans are nothing if not adaptable, aren’t we? It’s how we survive. You can’t go leaping away at the first hint of discomfort.”
And sometimes, reflected Jimmy, you’ve got nowhere and no one to leap to. “Why didn’t you and your father get along, then? Did you disappoint him by not marrying some Lord Fauntleroy or other?”
“Something like that. I’ve got two older sisters who did everything right. I’ve always been treated like the runt of the litter. Obviously, he wished I’d been a boy. That might have made up for the fact that I came along when my parents were, shall we say, advanced in years.”
“Doesn’t seem to have done you any harm, though, does it?
Not from where I’m sitting, anyway. I mean, have you looked in the mirror lately?
” He immediately regretted his words, which had sounded so much better in his head.
He’d been doing all right till now. It was the longest conversation he’d ever had with a girl, let alone one who seemed so impossibly worldly.
How bored I am of being judged by my appearance, George was thinking.
She was even more bored of having to feign gratification.
Every man was under the impression that, while lesser beings may have complimented her beauty, only his opinion carried true weight.
“Ah, but for all you know I’m hideously ugly on the inside. ”
Jimmy widened his eyes, nonplussed. Then he laughed, and so did George.
“My dad didn’t like me much, either,” he said.
“The old bastard’s dead now, and I can’t say I’m sorry.
” He sighed. “Listen to us, proper pair of miseries. Let’s talk about something else.
So you don’t want a husband, or a big house. What do you want?”
“What a question! To be the right amount of free, I suppose. Free enough that I can run my own life, but not so free that no one cares if I’m happy or sad, or where I am at three o’clock in the morning.
” As the words came out, they seemed to describe a considered philosophy rather than an answer she’d pulled out of the air. What she’d said wasn’t untrue, though.
“And you believe that’s possible, do you?
To have your cake and eat it, too?” His tone was gently reproving, but for the most part, he wanted the same thing.
Unless, he thought, if by “run my own life” she meant having no one to look after her, no one to come home to at night.
Sometimes Jimmy felt it was all he wanted, just to come first in another’s thoughts.
“Of course,” she said, exhaling cigarette smoke and frowning. “I must believe it. Otherwise I might as well just throw in the towel.”
Somewhere behind them a glass smashed on the floor, and they both started at the noise. Then Jimmy said, “So do you work on Mrs. Wilson’s magazine, what’s it called…” He knew what it was called.
“Vista.” George gave a quick little chuckle. “Gosh, no. That’s not my bag at all. I can’t even type. I began a secretarial course once, and after two days the teacher said, very kindly, that she would refund my fees as it was clear my talents lay elsewhere.”
“But the magazine is successful, isn’t it? I mean, people read it?”
“It depends on what you mean by successful. Certainly people read it. But it’s not hugely profitable. There are subscribers and advertisers, I gather, but most of that money goes to pay writers.”
“Oh.” He thought about this. “So the writers are well paid, are they?” It didn’t make sense—why would Honor, of all people, carry out work without a financial reward to herself?
“I don’t know the details,” shrugged George. “As I say, it’s not my world at all.”
Jimmy let it drop and suggested they have another.
George thought, Sitting here drinking isn’t going to solve anything.
Still, she said yes, and they talked for nearly another hour.
Eventually it crossed her mind that she ought to call a halt to the proceedings, as Jimmy would happily stay there until chucking-out time.
So she said, “Well, I mustn’t keep you out until the early hours.
Honor will think I’m leading you astray. ”
“Will she indeed,” he said with good-humored skepticism, but he finished his drink and stood up.
At Tregunter Road, George let them in with her latchkey.
Honor was coming down the stairs, looking her most whimsical self in an oversize apple-green sweater.
A purple paisley silk scarf hung unknotted around her neck, along with her usual spectacles chain and several gold necklaces.
Between her fingers was a cigarette holder but no cigarette, as though she’d rushed from the room on hearing the key in the door.
Awkwardness thickened the air.
“Hello, Honor,” said George. “Gosh, that green is heavenly on you.”
Honor smiled vaguely, looked down at her empty cigarette holder, then stared at the two of them. “Where have you young people been on such a cold night?”
George meant to say they happened to meet in the street—no need for Honor to hear anything else.
But she was distracted by Jimmy helping her with her coat as she shrugged it off.
It wasn’t an outrageous gesture. Just slightly off.
And Honor was regarding them, George registered, with something approaching alarm.
Jimmy said, “George was nice enough to have a drink with me. We had a good old chat, didn’t we?
” He hung her fur coat on the rack, smoothing down its damp lapel in the manner of an overly intimate butler.
“How very nice,” said Honor, her face saying the opposite.
They all stood there beneath the electric chandelier for what felt to George like an entire minute. Then Jimmy said, “All right, then, ladies, night night,” and headed off upstairs. Honor took hold of George’s wrist. “Come and have a drink,” she said in an urgent whisper.
“I’ve actually had…” began George. But she let herself be shepherded into the drawing room. Honor closed the door behind them.