all Laurence felt up against his grandmother’s frankness. She was never secretive in her talk or manner, but decidedly she refrained from disclosing her secret. All he had gained was the information that the Hogarths planned a trip to Lausanne in the last two weeks of March.
‘The Hogarths go abroad a great deal, Grandmother.’
‘They do like travelling, my, don’t they!’
He got no more out of Louisa. He applied for a fortnight’s leave to start on 15 March.
Helena had been so far emancipated by her son that she saw nothing offensive in suggesting to him, ‘Why not take Caroline with you? She needs a holiday and, poor girl, she can’t afford one. I’ll pay her expenses.’
It was then Laurence was faced with Caroline’s objection, ‘Lausanne in March! Why Lausanne? It will be so bleak.’
But when he said, ‘Haven’t I been your good friend? Do please agree with me this once,’ she agreed.
That was in the middle of February. Two weeks later she disagreed.
‘I’ve been to the Priory to see Father Jerome,’ she began.
‘Jolly good!’ said Laurence. She had observed lately with some amusement that Laurence displayed himself keen to promote all her contacts with religion, the more as he himself continued to profess his merry scepticism. One recent Sunday when she had decided to miss church because of a sore throat, he had shown much concern, in the suggestion of a warm scarf, the providing of a gargle, and transport to and from the church in his new car, to see that she did not evade the obligation. ‘Jolly good!’ said Laurence, when he heard that she had visited the old monk whom he had known since his boyhood.
‘He says,’ Caroline announced, ‘that I ought not to go to Lausanne with you.’
‘But he knows me! Surely he knows we can be trusted together, that it’s simply a companionable holiday. My goodness, it’s done continually by the deadliest proper couples. My goodness, I always thought he was a reasonable broad-minded priest.’
‘He said that in view of our past relationship, we ought not to appear in circumstances which might give rise to scandal.’
‘But there’s no question of sin. Even I know that. I was indoctrinated in the Catholic racket, don’t forget.’
‘No question of sin, but he said it would disedify,’ Caroline said.
‘We needn’t tell anyone we’re going together. And we’re hardly likely to be seen by anyone at all in Lausanne in March.’
‘A furtive trip would be worse than an open one. More disedifying still. I can’t go. Awfully sorry.’
Her withdrawal upset Laurence more than she expected. He had not told her that, as she had guessed, his determination to visit Lausanne in March was in some way connected with his passion to play the sleuth on his grandmother. She had not reckoned with his need for her participation, and the more he argued with her the more she conceived herself well out of the affair. It reminded her too much of the pattern of events preceding the car- smash.
Laurence did not press her very far. He accepted her decision with that strange fear he now had of approaching close enough to Caroline to precipitate a row. It was on this occasion that, suppressing his disappointedness, he asked her amicably, ‘How is your book going?’ and she, her mind brooding elsewhere, answered, ‘I think it is nearing the end.’
‘Really? You were saying only the other day that you still had a lot to write.’
Swiftly she realized her mistake, and so did Laurence. He looked rather helpless, as if enmeshed. She hated to think of herself as a spiritual tyrant, she longed to free him from those complex familiars of her thoughts which were to him so foreign.
‘Naturally, I look forward to the end of the book,’ she said, ‘in a manner of speaking to get some peace.’
‘I meant,’ said Laurence with a burst of irritation, ‘of course, the book that you are writing, not the “book” in which you think you are participating.’
‘I know,’ she said meekly, ‘that is what you meant.’ And to lift the heavy feeling between them she gave him her pretty, civilized smile and said, ‘Do you remember that passage in Proust where he discusses the ambiguous use of the word “book”, and he says —?’
‘To hell with Proust,’ said Laurence.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘I don’t inquire into your fantastic affairs. Leave mine alone. And look,’ she said, ‘we have nothing to say to each other this evening. I’m going home. I’ll walk.’
They were dining in a small restaurant only a few minutes’ walk from Caroline’s flat, and so her ‘I’ll walk’, falling short of its intended direness, tickled Laurence.
‘I find it difficult to keep up with you these days.’ And to pacify her he added, ‘Why do you say that the “book” is nearing the end?’
She was reluctant to answer, but his manner obliged her.
‘Because of incidents which have been happening within our orbit of consciousness, and their sequence. Especially this news about your grandmother’s friend.’
‘Which friend?’ said Laurence.
‘Haven—’t you heard about it? Helena rang me this morning, very excited, and from what I can gather it’s most remarkable —’
‘Which friend?’
‘One of those concerning whom you entertain your daft suspicions. Andrew Hogarth. Apparently he was paralysed, and his father took him off to some little shrine of Our Lady in the French Alps. Well, he was brought back yesterday and he’s actually started to move his paralysed limb. Helena says it’s a miracle. I don’t know about
