man coming. You know what their friends always turn out to be like, he’ll have the sweetest little Adam’s apple & the shiniest bald head! How beastly and ungrateful of me, but it isnt really that—you know—dont you?
“Look darling, I’ve got next Sunday & Monday off for Easter. I shall go home for it, naturally, do come too if you possibly can, or even if you can’t I’ll dash up to London & we’ll have an evening of wild gaiety—(By the way Aunt Marion said to bring you to dinner next time I was up, but I think that might wait?)
“Oh dear. Here comes our ‘Lady Producer’ who feels by rights she should be directing Thorndike & Evans & Ashcroft rather than the likes of little old us—although actually she’s quite sweet, quite long-suffering, we really shouldn’t bait her as we do.
“So masses & masses of love for now & a wholly tremendous kiss from
“Sybella—your very own Sybella, who adores you.”
I returned both letters to my wallet. Your very own Sybella, who adores you … And I switched my thoughts back, abruptly, to the one sentence which I always found particularly encouraging. “But what are these horrible dark hints you’re throwing out about being sent off somewhere— of course I won’t say a word to anyone—I never do when you tell me things…”
Indeed, I had once again found this sentence so highly encouraging that as a result I remained more or less conscious of it during the whole of the time I later spent in the taproom … where I passed an enjoyable couple of hours amongst roughly a dozen welcoming people, including the receptionist, who were grouped convivially about the piano and belting out such songs as ‘Louise’ and ‘Thanks For The Memory’ and ‘See What The Boys In The Back Room Will Have’ and, perhaps a little more surprisingly, ‘Lili Marlene’. However, I warned myself not to set too great a store by it, that long and reassuring sentence—our lives, of course, were full of disappointment.
(Yet I hope I didn’t actually think of it like that! Not simply because of the sentiment’s banality but because I was aware that my own potential disappointment could be as nothing compared to that of others.)
Whatever the reason, though, Sybella plainly hadn’t managed to return home for Easter. But at least, I assumed (and surely some assumptions ought to be permissible), that she had been able to dash up to London for that evening of wild gaiety—and probably much sooner than expected: the Prince of Wales theatre tickets had been for the second house on Thursday 22 nd , the very day after she had written from Wolverhampton. The very day prior to Good Friday. And only two days before her warmly adored and professionally up-and-coming fiancé—who wrote such heavenly letters and was so scandalously extravagant and who might have been going around choosing curtains by now if he hadn’t met Sybella in the middle of a war—only two days before her warmly adored fiancé was either drowned or drowning, or about to be drowned, in a cold and clearly unadoring sea.
9
I didn’t like loose ends. I arrived at the Carlton Grill shortly before two. It wasn’t a good time to have chosen. The obsequious maître d’—smilingly effusive to those who had reservations, or even to those who hadn’t but might still be hoping for a table—was merely irritated by somebody who only wanted to ask questions: namely, about whether a certain booking had been made for a date over two weeks earlier and, if so, whether or not it had actually been taken up. He coolly enquired whether I was a plain-clothes policeman. I said, no, I was simply a private individual attempting to trace the movements of a missing relative. He hardly troubled to hide his exasperation; brusquely dismissed me with a sop—i.e., a reluctant suggestion I should come back after four.
So, from the grandeur of the Carlton Grill, I crossed the Haymarket to a snack bar, where I had a sandwich and some not very
“Look darling, I’ve got next Sunday & Monday off for Easter. I shall go home for it, naturally, do come too if you possibly can, or even if you can’t I’ll dash up to London & we’ll have an evening of wild gaiety—(By the way Aunt Marion said to bring you to dinner next time I was up, but I think that might wait?)
“Oh dear. Here comes our ‘Lady Producer’ who feels by rights she should be directing Thorndike & Evans & Ashcroft rather than the likes of little old us—although actually she’s quite sweet, quite long-suffering, we really shouldn’t bait her as we do.
“So masses & masses of love for now & a wholly tremendous kiss from
“Sybella—your very own Sybella, who adores you.”
I returned both letters to my wallet. Your very own Sybella, who adores you … And I switched my thoughts back, abruptly, to the one sentence which I always found particularly encouraging. “But what are these horrible dark hints you’re throwing out about being sent off somewhere— of course I won’t say a word to anyone—I never do when you tell me things…”
Indeed, I had once again found this sentence so highly encouraging that as a result I remained more or less conscious of it during the whole of the time I later spent in the taproom … where I passed an enjoyable couple of hours amongst roughly a dozen welcoming people, including the receptionist, who were grouped convivially about the piano and belting out such songs as ‘Louise’ and ‘Thanks For The Memory’ and ‘See What The Boys In The Back Room Will Have’ and, perhaps a little more surprisingly, ‘Lili Marlene’. However, I warned myself not to set too great a store by it, that long and reassuring sentence—our lives, of course, were full of disappointment.
(Yet I hope I didn’t actually think of it like that! Not simply because of the sentiment’s banality but because I was aware that my own potential disappointment could be as nothing compared to that of others.)
Whatever the reason, though, Sybella plainly hadn’t managed to return home for Easter. But at least, I assumed (and surely some assumptions ought to be permissible), that she had been able to dash up to London for that evening of wild gaiety—and probably much sooner than expected: the Prince of Wales theatre tickets had been for the second house on Thursday 22 nd , the very day after she had written from Wolverhampton. The very day prior to Good Friday. And only two days before her warmly adored and professionally up-and-coming fiancé—who wrote such heavenly letters and was so scandalously extravagant and who might have been going around choosing curtains by now if he hadn’t met Sybella in the middle of a war—only two days before her warmly adored fiancé was either drowned or drowning, or about to be drowned, in a cold and clearly unadoring sea.
9
I didn’t like loose ends. I arrived at the Carlton Grill shortly before two. It wasn’t a good time to have chosen. The obsequious maître d’—smilingly effusive to those who had reservations, or even to those who hadn’t but might still be hoping for a table—was merely irritated by somebody who only wanted to ask questions: namely, about whether a certain booking had been made for a date over two weeks earlier and, if so, whether or not it had actually been taken up. He coolly enquired whether I was a plain-clothes policeman. I said, no, I was simply a private individual attempting to trace the movements of a missing relative. He hardly troubled to hide his exasperation; brusquely dismissed me with a sop—i.e., a reluctant suggestion I should come back after four.
So, from the grandeur of the Carlton Grill, I crossed the Haymarket to a snack bar, where I had a sandwich and some not very
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