‘Both, I should say . . . What did you mean by Esperanto? Or didn’t you?’

  ‘My dear Ruth, I am in the habit of choosing my words. I meant that your family, like every other family, has a language of its own, consisting of unintelligible catch-phrases, favourite but not generally known quotations, obscure allusions, and well-tried but not intrinsically humorous, family jokes. For instance, there was a constant reference last Christmas to somebody or something called Bufty.’

  ‘Pufty.’

  ‘I accept the correction, without admitting that it is in itself elucidatory.’

  ‘It was terribly funny. It was when Raymond was four years old. Let me see, I was six, because it was the day before my birthday, so he would be just short of four. We had taken a house by the sea——’

  ‘Yes, dear, and you all shrieked with laughter, and you have been saying “Pufty” to each other ever since. One needs to have lived in the atmosphere of a family joke to appreciate it properly. Bald narration rarely does it justice. That is the point which I was endeavouring to make.’

  ‘The point being that you are bored stiff at Wheatleys?’

  ‘Let us say rendered uncomfortable by the realisation that I am not there on my own merits, but merely as witness to Penelope’s legitimacy; so that when the Vicar’s wife says archly to her “Where’s Daddy?”, you can answer truthfully for her “In the lavatory”.’

  ‘Well! Why didn’t you tell me all this before I fixed it up? We could have gone to your people if you had said so.’

  ‘Nothing would have induced me to say so. You would have found it extremely unpleasant. My mother would have taken you up into her room and shown you countless photographs of myself as a baby, and told you how much, much more beautiful I was than Penelope. Father, unlike yourself, strongly objects to women in slacks, calling constant attention to the place where he particularly disapproves of them. My brother, whom I dislike profoundly, would make love to you and then try to borrow a fiver. My sister and you would loathe each other even more enthusiastically than you and Coral do. It would be an interesting but not a happy Christmas.’

  ‘I don’t loathe Coral, and I’m quite sure she doesn’t loathe me. I’ve always tried to help her. If I had had her in my section, I could have done a lot for her.’

  ‘Leaving the question of Coral’s higher education for the moment, you now see that I am not a family man, my dear, and that I think family parties are a mistake.’

  ‘In other words, you would rather we spent Christmas here—just the three of us?’

  ‘Yes, Ruth. Or, if you and Penelope liked to go to Wheatleys—just the one of us.’

  4

  ‘Then you won’t come, Mark?’

  ‘Darling, I’ve told you, I can’t possibly. You know how I’d love to. Oh, Sally, do try to understand.’

  ‘I understand perfectly. I’m going to St Moritz with the Campbells, they’ve asked me to bring a man with me, I’ve invited you, and you’ve turned me down. It’s all quite simple, and rather humiliating.’

  ‘Darling, don’t be such an idiot. I might have been stuck in an office instead of on my own, and then how could I possibly have come? There’s nothing humiliating about asking a man to go out with you, and then finding that he’s booked up.’

  ‘Obviously if you had been stuck in an office, I should never have thought of you. But you’re perfectly free; and, if you’re going to be a writer, I should have thought that the more experience of every kind you got, the better. And there’s a good deal of difference between asking a man to go to a dance with you—or having two tickets for Wimbledon or something—and choosing him out of everybody else to spend a fortnight in Switzerland with you, practically alone.’

  ‘Oh God, don’t I know? It’s wonderful of you. Don’t I wish like hell that I could come? You talk as if I were doing it on purpose. I’m just as sick about it as you are, only——’

  ‘I’m not in the least sick about it, don’t flatter yourself. There are plenty of other people in the world—Rex would jump at it——’

  ‘Oh lord, not that little twerp?’

  ‘At any rate he isn’t tied to his mother’s apron-strings, as some people are.’

  ‘I’ve told you that this has nothing to do with Mother. It’s Father.’

  ‘Daddy’s little boy.’

  ‘All right, if you care to put it like that. I don’t know that it helps.’

  ‘Sorry, forget it. It’s just that I simply can’t understand you, Mark. You’ve always pretended to be rather keen about me.’

  ‘Yes, I think you can start with that assumption fairly safely. If this weren’t the Ritz Bar, I’d illustrate it for you. What publishers call profusely.’

  ‘All right, you’re keen about me. . . . Well, naturally, of course, you’re fond of your people——’

  ‘Not naturally, but I am.’

  ‘Yes, and no doubt you’d have quite a good Christmas with them——’

  ‘Well, we’ll have a family four-ball one morning, I expect, and I like seeing my niece, she’s rather fun, and Father has a new T.V. set—oh, it won’t be so bad.’

  ‘Exactly. You’re not wildly excited at the prospect?’

  ‘I’m certainly not.’

  ‘Would you enjoy coming to Switzerland with me?’

  ‘Ten thousand times more.’

  ‘One might almost say that you would be wildly excited at the prospect?’

  ‘One might. Only wildly is a very tame word.’

  ‘Then why on earth——’

  ‘You’d better have another drink, hadn’t you, darling? This is where we came in.’

  ‘No, go on, I want to understand. You are of age and your own master. You have the choice of two things, neither of them in any way wrong. And you deliberately choose the “not so bad” one instead of the “wildly exciting” one. I can’t make sense of it.’

  ‘Well, try, darling. I’ll put it in words, more or less, of one syllable. My people like having all the family round them at Christmas in the old family home. Silly, sentimental, old-fashioned, mid-Victorian, Christmas-number, anything you care to call it. But they like it. Raymond was away a couple of years in the war, of course, but Ruth was always stationed in England, and I was at school through most of it, so the war didn’t make very much difference. We’ve always been together at Christmas ever since I can remember. I’d far sooner be in Switzerland with you; I’d far sooner be anywhere with you. When you began about Switzerland this evening, I was just wondering if I dare ask you to spend Christmas with us at Wheatleys. Rather apologetically, because we haven’t much to offer you. Well, that’s off. You’re going to Switzerland. But I can’t come with you, because I’ve told them that I’m coming home. They are expecting me, and it will disappoint them terribly, particularly Father, if I don’t come. I’m very fond of them both, and very grateful, because I do think, so far as I’m concerned, that they have been model parents. Well, that’s all. Somebody’s got to be terribly disappointed—me or them. Or as we writers say, I or they. And since I’m doing the choosing, I don’t see how I can possibly avoid choosing myself. That’s all.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You don’t. Not in that voice.’

  ‘You didn’t think of my disappointment, I suppose?’

  ‘You told me not to flatter myself.’

  ‘You needn’t. Give her my love, won’t you?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘This other girl, in the country.’

  ‘Sure you won’t have another drink?’

  ‘No, thanks. I must ring up Rex. I think Rex, don’t you?’

  ‘I think so, from what I’ve seen of him. Nice curly hair, definitely not Daddy’s little boy, and probably in the black market for nylons. Shall we go?’

  5

  ‘Good-bye . . . good-bye.’

  ‘Good-bye.’

  ‘Good-bye, Father.’

  ‘Good-bye, my boy. Come again soon.’

  ‘Good-bye, Penelope, bye-bye, darling.’

  ‘Grannie’s saying good-bye to you, darling, say “Bye-bye, Grannie.” Oh, she said “Gannie”! Did you hear her, Stephen? Yes, darling, that’s who she is—Gannie. Good-bye, Mother, I’ll send you the pattern.’

  ‘Any time, dear. Good-bye. Good-bye.’

  ‘Good-bye. . .’

  ‘Well—that’s over. I think they enjoyed themselves, Helen.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure they did, darling.’

  ‘Mark looked a bit run down, I thought.’

  ‘He hadn’t quite such a good appetite as usual, but I expect it’s just that he’s in love again.’

  ‘Mark? Nonsense. Working too hard, probably, and not getting enough exercise . . . I think they all liked their presents.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure they did. Is that the pen Mark gave you?’

  ‘Yes, one of those patent things. Writes five miles or something. Just what I wanted. Wonder how he knew.’

  ‘Oh, well, I expect he knew somehow. Did you like your pipe?’

  ‘Haven’t tried it yet, but it looks all right. I expect Ray helped her choose it. She was looking very pretty, I thought. Particularly in that blue thing.’

  ‘Coral? Yes, she’s almost too attractive. I hope dear Ray is happy. I wish I could get to know her better. I’m sure she’s a nice girl really.’

  ‘Much more friendly this time, I thought, what I saw of her. Next time you go up to London, why not take her out to lunch, and——’

  ‘Yes, I think I will, Gerald, that’s a good idea. But don’t expect me to go up in a balloon with Stephen, because I just couldn’t manage it.’

  ‘Oh, there’s more to Stephen than you think. For one thing he’s a damned good putter.’

  ‘I daresay, dear. I wouldn’t get to know about it in a balloon.’

  ‘I told you, or didn’t I, that Mark and I beat them 2 and 1. We were playing pretty well—well, we generally do when we play together—but Ray was right off his drive, and if it hadn’t been for Stephen’s short game, particularly his putting—though of course that doesn’t say that he’s easy to live with . . . Ruth was looking as well as ever, I thought. Wonderful health that girl’s got. Mark tells me that they think a lot of Stephen in the Treasury. Ruth will be Lady Rawson one day, you’ll find. How will you like that, Helen?’

  ‘Well, as long as she doesn’t expect Jessie to call her Your Ladyship, I shan’t mind. I’m just going down to the pillar-box, dear. Can I post anything for you?’

  ‘I’ll go, I’ll go. Give me your letters.’

  ‘It’s quite all right, dear, I shall like the little walk.’

  ‘I’ll come with you . . . You know, Helen, much as I like having them all here for Christmas, I must say it’s a great relief when they’ve gone, and we are alone together again.’

  The Three Dreams of Mr. Findlay

  Mr Ernest Findlater, bank manager, 48, married, had two day-dreams of which he was very fond.

  The first was of himself and a beautiful native girl (but not too native) lying side by side on the white sands of a Pacific island. He is wearing a hat of palm-leaves which she has woven for him, she a coral necklace which he has strung for her. Otherwise they are in all their naked beauty, Mr Findlater’s heightened by a lightly sketched-in six months of tree-climbing, hut-building and so forth before the dream begins. Soon they will plunge into the lagoon (‘without hat’, he remembers just in time) and swim lazily side by side through the blue translucent waters. Mr Findlater is now a good swimmer. At first he had thought of saving her from a shark somewhere about here, but he soon saw the folly of this. Not only would sharks be a nuisance in the lagoon, but, since she had given herself to him already, there was really no need for one. Back, still lazily, to the beach, and a deep draught of—kvass? kava?—he must look that up, one wants to get the details right—and luscious guavas, tamarinds and pomegranates. And then—love. Or would it be better the other way round: love first and refreshment afterwards? Well, that would be for Lalage to say. He thought of her as Lalage; Hula-hula, his first choice, presenting itself to him later as either a bird or a dance.

  The second dream was that he came home from the Exminster Conservative Club one afternoon to find a car outside the gate. As he opens the front door, Bridget comes rushing from the kitchen, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘Oh, sir!’ she wails. ‘The mistress! The poor mistress!’ Firm steps are heard overhead, and Dr Manley’s legs are seen coming down the staircase. Arrived in the little hall, Dr Manley puts a kindly hand on Mr Findlater’s shoulder. ‘You must be brave, Findlater,’ he says. ‘Death, the Great Reaper. He cometh to one and all. A sudden stroke. I could do nothing.’

  It might be thought that one of these dreams was a natural sequel to the other, but this was not so. The two dreams were distinct in Mr Findlater’s mind. In the first one Minnie had neither present nor past. Obviously she would have been out of place in person on his island, but he refused to have even the memory of her with him. Just as the dream presupposed six months of rejuvenation to fit his body to lie beside Lalage’s, so it may be said to have derived from that glorious day twenty years ago when he decided not to ask Minnie to marry him; or, asking, was rejected. He and Lalage were alone in the world; they always had been, they always would be.

  Nor must it be thought that Mr Findlater was just a man who hungered for amatory adventures in his real life, and, denied them by a jealous wife, pursued them in dreams. Lalage was no mistress. She stood for all which he had wanted from Minnie, and had never had; sympathy, companionship, appreciation, peace of mind and body, love, happiness, rest. Since Lalage had to be everything which Minnie wasn’t, her body must be beautiful, and she must not be ashamed of it; nor scornful of his. So they lay side by side, happy in each other on their island beach, talking as old friends talk. Lalage’s English was the prettiest thing imaginable (her father, Mr Findlater sometimes thought, had been a shipwrecked Irishman), and just to lie there and listen to her was to listen to celestial music. There were times in his waking life when Lalage’s voice seemed to Mr Findlater her most precious gift of all.

  The second dream was also complete and self-contained. Its realisation, if such were to happen, would not lead Mr Findlater straight to the South Seas, in the hope of meeting an actual Lalage. Its realisation would be happiness enough in itself. To be able to have breakfast in bed on Sunday just because he wanted to have breakfast in bed on Sunday; to do his crossword or his Patience of an evening without having it referred to as his ‘everlasting Patience again’ or his everlasting crossword; to read what he wanted to read without comment on his childish taste for stories of adventure; to sit and dream without a harsh accompaniment of contemporary scandal; to talk to a charming woman at a party without hearing her disparaged all the way home, without being reminded of his own approaching baldness, greyness, deafness and stiffness in the joints, such as would prevent any charming woman from being interested in him except from pity: Mr Findlater could have gone on for ever like this, recounting the benefits which would follow Dr Manley’s delightful announcement that he could do nothing. No need to go to a desert island to look for them. To be free, to be his own master again, was enough.

  Now most people would have said that the realisation of Mr Findlater’s first dream would have needed a miracle, and that his second dream merely assumed a natural, however unlikely, happening. To him it was otherwise. He could believe more easily in the first dream than in the second. Perhaps this was because the first was fantasy, which creates a living world for itself, while the other was so close to reality that only its realisation could bring it into being. All the facts of life, all his experience of the world, told him that the second dream must remain a dream. Whoever else died, Minnie was imperishable . . . .

  And then a third dream began to form itself in Mr Findlater’s mind. It was conceived, though he did not know it at the time, in the lavatory of the Exminster Conservative Club; and it was born on that hot, silent afternoon when he came down the hill into the sunken lane, and saw the empty Buick.

  2

  Mr Findlater was accustomed to lunch at the Club. He was the highly respected manager of the Exminster branch of his Bank; an undistinguished figure of middle height, his lean face clean-shaven and melancholy. He wore, and from his first entry into the Bank had always worn, horn-rimmed spectacles, to enhance his dignity rather than his vision, and he dressed in a short black coat, grey flannel trousers and a bowler hat, thus putting both town and country clients at their ease. He meditated the writing of a history of Exminster, but in spite of the encouragement of his friends and the discouragement of Minnie he had not yet begun it. He found it easier to meditate.

  On this particular day Mr Findlater had been called to the lavatory suddenly after lunch, and, as is customary, had bolted the door on himself. Some defect in the bolt made it difficult to release himself later; indeed, for a little while it seemed that he must subdue his dignity to the needs of the Bank, and shout for help. Wondering if it were possible to escape by the window, he opened the lower half of it and looked out. He discovered to his surprise that there was a drop of nearly thirty feet to the ground; and that the angle of the wall in which the window was set cut him off, not only from the basement windows of the Club, but from all outside observation. If he had happened to have with him a rope thirty feet long, he could have escaped to the Bank without anyone being the wiser. As it was, he renewed his attack on the bolt, deciding this time to take it by surprise. A quick but nonchalant pull, and—‘There you are!’ said Mr Findlater triumphantly. As he hurried out of the Club, he noticed that Rogers, the hall porter, looked up, identified him and crossed his name off the list of members still within. ‘Probably the last,’ thought Mr Findlater. ‘There’ll be nobody now till tea-time. What does Rogers do with himself for the next hour or so?’