The Collected Stories

They walked together slowly, on the cinder-track that ran around the tennis courts and the school’s single hockey pitch. She was wearing her summer uniform, a green-and-blue dress, short white socks. Abrahamson wore flannel shorts and the elaborate school blazer.

‘Other people would have noticed, Abrahamson.’

He shook his head. Other people weren’t so interested in things like that, he said. And other people weren’t so familiar with her family.

‘It isn’t a likeness or anything, Cecilia. Not a strong resemblance, nothing startling. It’s only a hint, Cecilia, an inkling you could call it.’

‘I wish you hadn’t told me.’

‘You wanted me to.’

‘Yes, I know.’

They had reached the end of the cinder-track. They turned and walked back towards the school buildings in silence. Girls were playing tennis. ‘Love, forty,’ called the elderly English master, No-teeth Carroll he was known as.

‘I’ve looked and looked,’ Cecilia said. ‘I spend hours in the bathroom.’

‘Even if I hadn’t read about the development of the features I think I’d have stumbled on it for myself. “Now, what on earth is it about that girl?” I kept saying to myself. “Why’s her face so interesting all of a sudden?” ’

‘I think you’re imagining it.’

‘Well, maybe I am.’

They watched the tennis-players. He wasn’t someone who made mistakes, or made things up; he wasn’t like that at all. She wished she had her father’s freckles, just a couple, anywhere, on her forehead or her nose. ‘Deuce,’ No-teeth Carroll called. ‘No, it’s definitely deuce,’ he insisted, but an argument continued. The poor old fellow was on a term’s notice, Abrahamson said.

They walked on. She’d heard it too, she agreed, about the term’s notice. Pity, because he wasn’t bad, the way he let you do anything you liked provided you were quiet.

‘Would you buy one of my cakes today?’ Abrahamson asked.

‘Please don’t tell anyone, Abrahamson.’

‘You could buy them every day, you know. I never eat them myself.’

A little time went by. On the 15th of June Cecilia became thirteen. A great fuss was made of the occasion, as was usual in the family whenever there was a birthday. Ronan gave her A Tale of Two Cities, her mother a dress which she had made herself, with rosebuds on it, and her half-brothers gave her a red bangle. There was chicken for her birthday lunch, with roast potatoes and peas, and then lemon meringue pie. All of them were favourites of hers.

‘Happy birthday, darling,’ Ronan whispered, finding a special moment to say it when everyone else was occupied. She knew he was fond of her, she knew that he enjoyed their Sunday mornings in the workshops. She liked him too. She’d never thought of not liking him.

‘Really happy birthday,’ he said and it was then, as he smiled and turned away, that something occurred to her which she hadn’t thought of before, and which Abrahamson clearly hadn’t thought of either: when you’d lived for most of your life in a house with the man whom your mother had married you could easily pick up some of his ways. You could pick them up without knowing it, like catching a cold, his smile or some other hint of himself. You might laugh the way he did, or say things with his voice. You’d never guess you were doing it.

‘Oh, of course,’ Abrahamson obligingly agreed when she put it to him. ‘Of course, Cecilia.’

‘But wouldn’t that be it then? I mean, mightn’t that account –’

‘Indeed it might.’

His busy, unassuming eyes looked up into hers and then at the distant figure of No-teeth Carroll, who was standing dismally by the long-jump pit.

‘Indeed,’ Abrahamson said again.

‘I’m certain that’s it. I mean, I still can’t see anything myself in my looks –’

‘Oh, there’s definitely something.’ He interrupted sharply, his tone suggesting that it was illogical and ridiculous to question what had already been agreed upon. ‘It’s very interesting, what you’re saying about growing like someone you live with and quite like. It’s perfectly possible, just as the other is perfectly possible. If you asked your mother, Cecilia, she probably wouldn’t know what’s what any more than anyone else does. On account of the circumstances.’

He was bored by the subject. He had acceded to her request about not telling anyone. It was best to let the subject go.

‘Chocolate and strawberry today,’ he said, smiling again as he passed over the two small cakes.

There was another rendezvous in Fitzgerald’s Oyster Bar. Cecilia wore her new rosebud dress and her red bangle. On her birthday a ten-shilling note had arrived from her father, which she now thanked him for.

‘When I was thirteen myself,’ he said, pulling the cellophane from a packet of Sweet Afton, ‘I didn’t know whether I was coming or going.’

Cecilia kept her head averted. At least the light wasn’t strong. There was a certain amount of stained glass in the windows and only weak bulbs burned in the globe-topped brass lamps that were set at intervals along the mahogany bar. She tried not to smile in case the inkling in her face had something to do with that.

‘Well, I see your man’s going up in front of the stewards,’ Tom the waiter remarked. ‘Sure, isn’t it time they laid down the law on that fellow?’

‘Oh, a terrible chancer that fellow, Tom.’