She stood watching me go, and I half expected the embarrassment that she would call me back and ask me to stay, and so prolong the inevitable. But she didn’t do it, and I closed the door behind me and made my way slowly down her stairs for the last time. It’s no good looking backwards; one has to go on. It’s no good trying to be happy with the second best. She had said that I was absolutely crazy, but I had known that myself for some considerable time.
Two days after that I got a note from Viola; it enclosed the little pencil sketch of Janet Prentice, cut from her sketch book. It said simply,
My dear Alan,
Here’s your sketch, as a peace offering. I’ve fixed it, but you’d better frame it under glass.
I think you’re mad as a March hare, and I don’t want to see you any more, so please don’t ring up or write and thank for this.
Good luck,
Viola.
London wasn’t much fun after that. I had grown to depend on Viola more than I quite realised for company, and when it all came to an end I didn’t know what to do with myself. I had my work in chambers, of course, and I had the club and motor racing still, but as 1952 progressed I began to take less interest in these things, and to feel that a time was approaching when I should have had England. Reports from home weren’t too good, either; both my father and my mother were beginning to fail in health and to find the work of the station a burden, and a wistfulness was starting to creep in to their letters when they mentioned my plans. I saw Helen from time to time and she was obviously fixed in London with her Laurence, and I began to feel that I should be at home. My search for Janet Prentice seemed to have petered out, and it was only a chance now if I ever heard of her again. In the uncertain climate of the English spring and summer I began to think with longing of the warm settled weather of the Western District in summer, and the drenching sunshine of our property at Tennant Creek.
I had another year of keeping terms and eating dinners to do before I could be called to the Bar, and there was no urgency for me to go home till that had been achieved, but I began to make my plans to go home in the autumn of 1953. I didn’t really want to stay in England for another year, and it may well have been the really big mistake of my life that I did so. But having set myself to one of the learned professions it seemed silly to abandon it when it lay within my grasp, and though I was growing tired of London there was nothing imperative to take me home. I went to Spain for a month in the summer and to Greece, Rhodes, and Cyprus for a couple of months in the winter, garnering all the experience that an Australian likes to take back with him to the Antipodes when he knows it may be many years before he comes to Europe again, if ever.
I achieved my ambition and was called formally to the Bar in September 1953. I had booked a passage home by sea to leave England at the beginning of October, and in the last month I was winding up my affairs in England and saying goodbye to all my friends. I was troubled about Viola Dawson, the best friend I had made in London, and uncertain if I ought to see her to say goodbye to her or whether that would only upset her and so be an unkindness. But she solved the matter, because ten days before I sailed she wrote to me. She said,
Dear Alan,
I hear I’ve got to congratulate you on being called. I’m so glad. And Cynthia tells me that you’re sailing on the 5th. I want to see you before you go, and it’s about Janet Prentice so you’ll probably come.
I shall be dining at Bruno’s, the little restaurant I took you to the first night we met, next Thursday at eight. Will you come and dine with me there? Don’t come to the flat.
Yours,
Viola.
I was waiting for her in the little restaurant when she came, at a table by the wall. She was paler than usual, I thought, not looking very well. She seemed pleased to see me, and I ordered sherry while we discussed what we would eat. I asked her what she had been doing, and she said, working.
“No holiday?” I asked, for it was autumn and the weather was still warm.
She shook her head. “There seems to have been such a lot to do.”
The waiter took our order and went away, and then she turned to me. “I’ve got news for you,” she said. “Janet Prentice.”
“What about her?” I asked.
“She’s living in Seattle, or she was about a year ago.”
“Seattle—in America?”
She nodded. “On the west coast somewhere, isn’t it?” She smiled faintly. “It was Seattle she was going to, when she left Oxford, not Settle. The charwoman got it wrong.”
“What on earth’s she doing there?”
“Didn’t you say that she was going to live with an aunt in Settle?”
“That’s what the charwoman said.”
“She had an uncle who was on the faculty of Stanford University in the United States,” she reminded me. “Is that in Seattle?”
“I think it’s on the west coast somewhere,” I said slowly. “I always thought it was near San Francisco.”
“Anyway, she’s living in Seattle now,” said Viola. “I’ve got her address for you.” She picked up her bag and opened it, and took out a folded slip of paper, and passed it to me across the table. “That’s what you’ve been looking for,” she said quietly.
I opened it, and it read: Miss J. E. Prentice, 8312 37th Ave, N.W., Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. I stared at it for a minute, and then asked, “How did you get hold of this, Viola?”
“Dorothy Fisher got it for me,” she said a little wearily. “The girl I told you about, who stayed on in the Wrens. Second Officer, in the Admiralty. Janet’s been writing in every few months, ever since the Korean war started.”
“Trying to get back into the Wrens?”
She nodded. “She wrote in when the Korean war broke out and there was nothing doing, and she wrote in again about six months later. Then about eighteen months ago she put in an application to rejoin the Wrens through the Naval Attaché in Washington, and that went to the Admiralty, of course. They were getting a bit fed up with her by that time, so they wrote her rather a sharp letter, saying that her application was on the file and would be considered if and when the expansion of the Service justified the re-engagement of ex-naval ratings in her category. They haven’t heard from her again.”
“That was eighteen months ago?” I asked.
“About that. I think their letter to her was dated some time in April.”
The waiter came with soup, and I sat silent, thinking rapidly. I could scrap the passage I had booked by sea back to Australia and fly home through the States, but I should have to wangle a few dollars. A little thing like that wasn’t going to stop me. Buy a set of diamond cuff links and sell them in the States, perhaps …
The waiter went away, and Viola said, “I suppose you’ll write to her.”
“I’ll do that,” I said slowly, “but there won’t be time to get an answer before I go. I’m booked to leave in a few days. I think I’ll cancel the sea passage and go back through the States. I’ll be in Seattle in a few days’ time, pretty well as soon as my letter.”
“I thought you’d probably do that,” she said. “Mad as a March hare.”
I didn’t know what I could say to that without hurting her more, and so we sat in silence for a time. The waiter came with the next course and woke me up from the consideration of the detail of my change in plans, of air line bookings, visas, vaccination certificates, travellers’ cheques, and all the other impedimenta to air travel. I became aware that I owed Viola a lot. It must have cost her a great deal to give me what she had.
“I’m very grateful to you for all this, Viola,” I said clumsily. “I don’t think I’d ever have got in touch with her without your help.”
“We were good friends in the war,” she muttered, looking down at her plate. “She’s had a bad spin since, and I’d like her to be happy.”
Instinctively I sheered away from the difficult subject. “Do you think she’d be happy if she got back into the Wrens?”
She
raised her head and stared across the room. “She might. It’s difficult to say. She only knew the Wrens in war time, and it’s very different now.”
“What she wants is a third World War,” I said, half laughing.
“Of course.” She sat silent for a moment, and then she said, “Until we’re dead, we Service people, the world will always be in danger of another war. We had too good a time in the last one. We’ll none of us come out into the open and admit it. It might be better for us if we did. What we do is to put our votes in favour of re-armament and getting tough with Russia, and hope for the best.”
I stared at her. “Is that what you really think?”
She nodded. “You know it as well as I do, if you’re honest with yourself. For our generation, the war years were the best time of our lives, not because they were war years but because we were young. The best years of our lives happened to be war years. Everyone looks back at the time when they were in their early twenties with nostalgia, but when we look back we only see the war. We had a fine time then, and so we think that if a third war came we’d have those happy, carefree years all over again. I don’t suppose we would—some of us might.”
“We’re getting older every year,” I said. “Perhaps more sensible.”
She nodded. “That’s one good thing. Most of us are gradually accumulating other interests—homes, and children, and work we wouldn’t want to leave. It’s only a few people now like—well, like Janet, who’ve had a bad spin since the war, who are so desperately anxious now to see another war come—for themselves.” She sat in thought for a moment. “But for our children—I don’t know. If I had kids, I’d want them to have all I had when I was young.”
“If you had daughters, you’d want them to be boat’s crew Wrens?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’d want them to have that. I’d want them to have all I had when I was young.” She turned to me. “Your father served in the first war, didn’t he?”
I nodded. “He was at Gallipoli, and afterwards in France. He served in the last war, too.”
“Was he shocked and horrified when you and Bill joined up?” she asked relentlessly. “Or was he glad you’d done it, for your own sakes?”
I sat in silence. “I see what you mean,” I said at last. “I never thought of it like that.”
“When you and I are dead, and all the rest of us who served in the last war, in all the countries,” she said, “there’ll be a chance of world peace. Not till then.”
“Get a nice atom bomb dropping down upon Earls Court tonight,” I said. “That ’ld get rid of a good many of us.”
She smiled. “Maybe that’s the answer. But honestly, war’s always been too pleasant for the people in it. For most young people it’s been more attractive as a job than civil life. The vast majority of us never got killed or wounded; we just had a very stimulating and interesting time. If atom bombs can make life thoroughly unpleasant for the people in the Services, in all the countries, then maybe we shall have a chance of peace. If not, we’ll have to wait till something else crops up that will.”
“Actually, in the last war, people in the Services in England had a better time than the ones who stayed at home, working in the factories,” I said.
“Of course they did,” she replied. “That’s the trouble. You’ll never get rid of wars while you go on like that.”
It was better for us to go on talking so rather than to get back to Janet Prentice, and we went on putting the world right throughout our dinner till the coffee came and I lit her cigarette. She drank her coffee quickly. “I must go back soon,” she said. “I’ve got some work to do upon a script before tomorrow morning.”
I knew that she was making an excuse to cut our meeting short. “This ’ll have to be goodbye for the time being,” I said awkwardly. “I don’t know when I’ll be in England again.”
“Not for some years, I suppose,” she said.
I nodded. “I ought to have gone home a year ago. My father and mother are both getting pretty old, and there’s the property to be looked after.”
She said, “Maybe that’s as well, Alan, for both of us.” She ground her half smoked cigarette out into the ash tray and said, without looking up at me, “Are you going to ask her if she’ll marry you?”
“I don’t know,” I protested. “I may be mad as a March hare, but I’m not as mad as all that. Nine years ago, and only for a few hours then. We’ll both have changed. You said that once yourself.”
“You’ll marry her,” she said, “and you’ll be very happy together. And I’ll send you a wedding present, and stand godmother to one of your kids.” She raised her eyes to mine, and they were full of tears. “And now if you don’t mind, Alan, I think I’m going home.”
She got up from the table and went quickly to the door of the little restaurant, and I went with her. In the doorway she turned to me. “Go back and pay the bill,” she said. She put out her hand. “This really is goodbye this time, Alan.”
I took her hand. “I’ve done you nothing but harm, Viola,” I said, “and you’ve done me nothing but good. I’m sorry for everything.”
She held my hand for an instant. “It wouldn’t ever have worked,” she said. “I see that now. You’re what you are and she would always be between us, even if you never see her again. We’re grown-up people; we can part as friends.” She let my hand go. “Good luck in Seattle.”
“Goodbye, Viola,” I said.
She turned away, and I stood in the doorway watching her as she went down the street, irresolute, half minded to go after her and call her back. But presently she turned the corner and was lost to sight, and I went back to pay the bill, sick at heart. Whatever I did with my life seemed to be wrong and make unhappiness for everyone concerned. I tried to kid myself it was because I was a cripple, but I knew that wasn’t true. You can’t evade the consequences of your own actions quite so easily as that.
I went back to my flat in Half Moon Street and sat down to write a letter to Janet Prentice. I slept on it, tore it up, wrote it again, slept on it next night, and wrote it a third time. When I was satisfied and posted it by air mail I had cut it to about one half of the original length. I just reminded her of our meeting in the war and said that while I was in England I had met Viola Dawson, who happened to have her address. As I was flying back to Australia in a week or so it would hardly be out of my way to come to Seattle to see her, and I would give her a ring as soon as I got in.
It took me a fortnight to re-arrange my passage to Australia by air through the United States and to comply with all the formalities, maintaining the old adage—‘If you’ve time to spare, go by air.’ It was not until October the 14th that I finally took off from London airport for New York. I was leaving behind me in England a great deal that I admired and valued, but as I settled down into the Stratocruiser’s seat I was absurdly and unreasonably happy. Of course I was going home after an absence of five years, and that probably accounted for a little part of my elation.
I had one or two friends in New York and I had never been in the United States before, so I went to a hotel and spent three days there, seeing my friends and being entertained and seeing the sights. I couldn’t spare more time than that for the greatest city in the world because I had a date to keep in a smaller one. On the night of the nineteenth I was sitting in a Constellation on my way across the continent to Seattle; we got there in the morning and I checked in at a big hotel on 4th Avenue.
I didn’t want to rush at this, so I had a bath and went down to a light lunch in the coffee shop. Then I went back up to my room and looked for Prentice in the telephone directory. It was there, all right, with the same address, though the name was Mrs. C. W. Prentice. I stared at it in thought for a minute. There had been mention of an aunt that she was going to live with. This would be the widow of her uncle, the one who had been on the faculty of Stanford University. Widow, because if the husband had been alive the telephone would have been in his name.
I put the book down presently and sat down on the edge of the bed, and called the number.
A woman’s voice answered, with a marked American accent. I said, “Can I speak to Miss Prentice?”
“Say, you’ve got the wrong number,” she replied. “Miss Prentice doesn’t live here now.”
A sick disappointment came upon me; I had been counting on success this time. “Can you tell me her number?” I asked. And then, feeling that a little explanation was required I said, “She’s expecting me. I’m on my way from England to Australia, and I stopped here in Seattle to see her.”
I don’t think my explanation impressed the woman very much, because she said, “She left here more than a year back, brother, after the old lady died. We bought the house off her. Did she give you this number?”
“No,” I said. “I looked it up in the book.”
“I’d say that you’d got hold of an old book. Did you say she was expecting you?”
“I wrote to her from England a few days ago to say that I’d be passing through Seattle, and I’d ring her up,” I explained.
“Wait now,” she said. “There’s a letter came the other day for her from England. I meant to give it to the mail-man and I clean forgot. Just stay there while I go get it.” I waited till she came back to the phone. “What did you say your name was?”
“Alan Duncan.”
“That’s correct,” she said. “That’s the name written on the back. Your letter’s right here, Mr. Duncan.”
I asked, “Didn’t she leave a forwarding address with you?”
“A forwarding what?”
I repeated the word.
“Oh, address,” she said. “You certainly are English, Mr. Duncan. No, she didn’t leave that with us. A few things came in after she had gone, and we gave them to the mail-man.”
I thought quickly. There was just a possibility that the woman might know more than I could easily get out of her upon the telephone, or possibly the next-door neighbour might know something that would help me. “It looks as if I’ve missed her,” I said. “I think the best thing I can do is to come out and collect that letter.”