provincial town. Perhaps they even met from time to time to play a piano and entertain each other in reedy voices with songs from their youth.
I was beginning to paint a sentimental picture of them, when suddenly, to my annoyance, the woman opposite me spoke.
“The fog service is always much worse on Sundays.”
“Yes,” I said, hating her, and opened my eyes, and closed them again.
“Still,” the voice went on, “I’m well wrapped up and I quite enjoyed a day in the country.”
The word “quite” sounded a sad little word, indicating that the speaker had not enjoyed her day in the country as much as she had expected. I sighed.
“Hardly a day to plod round the woods,” I said, since what had to be had to be. “It’s not exactly primrose weather.”
“No,” she said solemnly, “it’s not the right time of year for primroses. I missed Mass, too.”
“You are a Catholic, I suppose.”
“Yes, are you?” she asked eagerly.
I am not a Catholic, but Juliet is, and I know a good deal about the subject. Suddenly, I saw myself engaged in some ghastly Protestant v. Catholic argument, of the kind which invariably leads nowhere at all. This I could not contemplate.
“Yes,” I said, to forestall it.
“And I suppose you
“Oh, yes,” I said, in case she should start giving me a tolerant lecture about overcoming the Weaknesses of the Flesh. I need not have worried.
There was a pause. Then she said:
“I was brought up by the nuns. I would like to have gone to Mass today, but I couldn’t find a church. I remember when I made my first Communion. I wore a white veil and lilies of the valley.”
She seemed to droop. A dreadful feeling of nostalgia, as damp as the fog, emanated from her and I gave a mental groan. I was not in the mood for childhood reminiscences, and I didn’t want to feel sorry for her. There is a glutinous monotony about youthful innocence lost.
I said nothing.
She took a grubby handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose, and looked like a female counterpart of a schoolmaster who had taught me chemistry, and to whom we boys had been very cruel. I hoped, too, that the conversation was at an end, and to help its closure I shut my eyes again.
After a while I half opened them cautiously.
Her own eyes were swimming with tears, and she was wiping them with a grubby handkerchief.
I am a sucker for adult tears, because although they embarrass me they expose the helplessness and childishness which does not lie so very deep in people. She said:
“I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t stop crying.”
“Well, never mind,” I said, which must rank among the top, winning lines for fatuity. She began to sob now.
“I’ve lost a very great friend. Do you believe in life after death, do you think we survive?”
“Of course I believe in it,” I said stoutly.
“I don’t want the obvious answers,” she said, but with no echo of reproof. “I mean, do
“Yes, I do. If one doesn’t believe that, there is no point to life. You might as well put your head in a gas oven,” I added, and regretted the words as soon as I had spoken them.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said flatly.
There is a horrid quiet grimness at suddenly looking at a human soul when it has reached the pit of darkness. You grope around tongue-tied. There’s the wind on the heath, brother, and grief passes in the end, and all the other hackneyed stuff, but you know it won’t do. She sat looking at me like a dog in an anti-vivisection advertisement.
The seconds passed.
“Despair is a terrible thing,” I said. God Almighty, one had to say something.
She began to wipe her eyes again.
“You should try not to give way,” I added hopelessly.
We went through a tunnel, and the lights, for some obscure reason known only to British Railways, promptly went out.
In the damp darkness I could hear muffled sniffs, and small movements like a rabbit in a hutch. When the train rattled its way out of the tunnel the lights came on, and I saw she had struggled out of her mackintosh and taken off her head covering. She wore a man’s collar and tie, and her grizzled hair was cut rather close to her head. She blinked and said:
“Of course, I do realise it’s partly my fault, but it’s terrible when you have two people in love with you.”
I gazed at the fantastic plainness of her face, noting a certain bun-faced honesty, and wished angrily that she had looked evil. She said:
“My friend who died was older than me, and the friend who is living with me is young. The young are hard. They don’t understand. I can’t even cry, except in the toilet.”
“Why won’t she let you cry?”
“She’s an atheist, she doesn’t want me to take up God again. She says it’s weak-minded. She won’t have a lot of mumbo-jumbo, she says. But it’s terribly hard, terribly hard.”
The tears began to drip from her eyes once more, but she did not mop at them. Her body did not move. She just apologised again.
“What about your work?” I muttered. “I suppose you do work?”
“Yes, I work for an Adoption society.”
I sighed with relief, glad of any straw to help me out of a feeling of utter inadequacy, and said:
“Well, there you are-there’s your scope for the future-helping to provide a happy future for-”
But she wouldn’t let me finish.
“I know all that, I was enthusiastic at one time, but some of those people are so cynical. Do you know what one of them said to me last week, rubbing her hands together? ‘Christmas will soon be here,’ she said, ‘they’ll all be having a drink or two too many, and then by September we shall have a good many new babies to place.’ I think it’s disgusting. I mean they’re not replacements, they’re people, small people, anyway,” she concluded awkwardly.
“That’s right,” I said, and glanced at my watch. “We’ll be in at Victoria Station in a few minutes,” I added, but it wasn’t any good.
“She was very good to me, my friend who died. I’d like to see her again. It would be nice to explain.”
“You’ll see her again,” I said dully.
People often think that explanations can change things, can soften the blow of adultery, smooth over the loss of love, pour oil on the surface of life; and the seas will abate, and all will be as it should be. It’s bunk.
“She was much older than me, I told you that. We still went on being friends after. She wasn’t bitter. I’m sure she understood.”
I nodded. There was nothing I could say which was worth saying.
“She said she’d leave me?100 in Premium Bonds. That shows she still cared, don’t you think? Do you think I ought to practise my religion again?”
“It’s something you’ve got to decide for yourself,” I replied, and knew she wanted me to go through the motion of deciding for her.
“I suppose so.” Her voice was grief stricken. “Do you know, her family didn’t even invite me to the funeral. You’d think they’d have had the decency to do that, wouldn’t you? Some people! They said it was because I was a Catholic.”
Her eyes took on an expression of stubborn indignation.
“That was just an excuse. They knew perfectly well I hadn’t been to church for years. What harm would it have done letting me go to church to pay my last respects? Still, I went, just to spite them. What is more I walked the way to the cemetery afterwards, carrying my wreath. I owed it to her. So it was all right in the end, wasn’t it?”
