‘Miss Fanshawe here had a passion for him.’
The waiter laughed. He lingered for a moment and then, since Carruthers was silent, went away.
‘Now look here, Carruthers,’ Miss Fanshawe began.
‘Don’t you think Mrs Carruthers is the most vulgar woman you’ve ever met?’
‘I wasn’t thinking of your mother. I will not have you talk like this to the waiter. Please now.’
‘She wears a scent called “In Love”, by Norman Hartnell. A woman of fifty, as thin as fuse wire. My God!’
‘Your mother –’
‘My mother doesn’t concern you – oh, I agree. Still you don’t want to deliver me to the female smelling of drink and tobacco smoke. I always brush my teeth in the lavatory, you know. For your sake, Miss Fanshawe.’
‘Please don’t engage the waiter in conversation. And please don’t tell lies about the waiter who was here before. It’s ridiculous the way you go on –’
‘You’re tired, Miss Fanshawe.’
‘I’m always tired at the end of term.’
‘That waiter used to say –’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, stop about that waiter!’
‘I’m sorry.’ He seemed to mean it, but she knew he didn’t. And even when he spoke again, when his voice was softer, she knew that he was still pretending. ‘What shall we talk about?’ he asked, and with a weary cheerfulness she reminded him that she’d wondered what he was going to do in the holidays. He didn’t reply. His head was bent. She knew that he was smiling.
‘I’ll walk beside her,’ he said. ‘In Rimini and Venice. In Zurich maybe. By Lake Lugano. Or the Black Sea. New faces will greet her in an American Bar in Copenhagen. Or near the Spanish Steps – in Babbington’s English Tea- Rooms. Or in Bandol or Cassis, the Ritz, the Hotel Excelsior in old Madrid. What shall we talk about, Miss Fanshawe?’
‘You could tell me more. Last year in Greece –’
‘I remember once we talked about guinea-pigs. I told you how I killed a guinea-pig that Mrs Carruthers gave me. Another time we talked about Rider Minor. D’you remember that?’
‘Yes, but let’s not –’
‘McGullam was unpleasant to Rider Minor in the changing-room. McGullam and Travers went after Rider Minor with a little piece of wood.’
‘You told me, Carruthers.’
He laughed.
‘When I first arrived at Ashleigh Court the only person who spoke to me was Rider Minor. And of course the Sergeant-Major. The Sergeant-Major told me never to take to cigs. He described the lungs of a friend of his.’
‘He was quite right.’
‘Yes, he was. Cigs can give you a nasty disease.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t smoke.’
‘I like your hat.’
‘Soup, madam,’ the waiter murmured. ‘Sir.’
‘Don’t you like Miss Fanshawe’s hat?’ Carruthers smiled, pointing at Miss Fanshawe, and when the waiter said that the hat was very nice Carruthers asked him his name.
Miss Fanshawe dipped a spoon into her soup. The waiter offered her a roll. His name, he said, was Atkins.
‘Are you wondering about us, Mr Atkins?’
‘Sir?’
‘Everyone has a natural curiosity, you know.’
‘I see a lot of people in my work, sir.’
‘Miss Fanshawe’s an undermatron at Ashleigh Court Preparatory School for Boys. They use her disgracefully at the end of term – patching up clothes so that the mothers won’t complain, packing trunks, sorting out laundry. From dawn till midnight Miss Fanshawe’s on the trot. That’s why she’s tired.’
Miss Fanshawe laughed. ‘Take no notice of him,’ she said. She broke her roll and buttered a piece of it. She pointed at wheat ripening in a field. The harvest would be good this year, she said.
‘At the end of each term,’ Carruthers went on, ‘she has to sit with me on this train because we travel in the same direction. I’m out of her authority really, since the term is over. Still, she has to keep an eye.’
The waiter, busy with the wine, said he understood. He raised his eyebrows at Miss Fanshawe and winked, but she did not encourage this, pretending not to notice it.
‘Imagine, Mr Atkins,’ Carruthers said, ‘a country house in the mock Tudor style, with bits built on to it: a rackety old gymn and an art-room, and changing-rooms that smell of perspiration. There are a hundred and three boys at Ashleigh Court, in narrow iron beds with blue rugs on them, which Miss Fanshawe has to see are all kept tidy. She does other things as well: she wears a white overall and gives out medicines. She pours out cocoa in the dining-hall and at eleven o’clock every morning she hands each boy four
