They did so, and soon he put his arm around her and began, as in her bedroom earlier in the week, to kiss her with unabashed enthusiasm and thoroughness. On the whole she disliked this at first, but after a while she found that she disliked it a good deal less. After half an hour, in which they scarcely spoke, they rose and moved into Thames Lockdon again.

He said he could do with a drink, and she also welcomed the idea. They returned to the brightly lit Lounge of the River Sun. He prevailed upon her to have one of his large whiskies and soda. They sat in their usual corner, and as the place filled up in preparation for the final din and panic of closing-time, they talked with renewed freshness and eagerness.

The Lieutenant did most of the talking, and for the first time furnished some details of his personal background – of his life ‘back home’ and of his ‘folks’. He came from Wilkes Barre in Pennsylvania: his folks were in the catering business, and he was now attached, on the catering side, to a medical unit stationed three or four miles outside Thames Lockdon. They were building a camp out there. Though his folks were in the catering business, his personal ambitions, beliefs, and hopes for the future lay in the way of the laundry business. He descanted upon the laundry business at some length, speaking of the connections he had already established with it, and making it clear that on his return home after the war the laundry business was as eager to embrace him as he was eager to embrace the laundry business.

Though she did not exactly know why, she found his enthusiasm for the laundry business faintly disheartening. Perhaps it was because the cold thoughts set in motion by the laundry business assorted so quaintly with the warm thoughts recently set in motion on the seat in the park – because of the crude contrast, in fact, between kisses in the darkness by the river and washing other people’s clothes in America.

5

He had in all four large whiskies before closing-time, and prevailed upon her to have two. It was not until he had his last whisky in front of him, and she had reason to believe that he was drunk again, that he exploded his next bombshell. The talk had still been running upon himself and his future, and somehow or other the question of his getting married and settling down had arisen, and somehow or other she had asked him who, or what sort of person, he would like to marry.

‘Why – who do you suppose,’ he said, ‘after all that?’

‘All what?’ she said, too stunned to get his meaning, or at any rate to believe that his meaning was what she thought it might be.

‘All that out there,’ he said.

‘Out where?’ she said.

‘Oh – along by the river,’ he said, and he looked at her. She looked quickly away at her glass, and there was a silence. Then he changed the subject, and she volubly assisted him to do so. This was simply too much even to think about at the moment: she must put it away and take it out later, when she was alone.

Soon after this the River Sun closed down and they walked back to the Rosamund Tea Rooms. Outside the front door he embraced and kissed her again, and this lasted for two or three minutes. Then they said good-night and she went up to her room.

The next day was Friday, and she spent a large part of her spare time, in the office in London and in the train going up and down, in puzzling out his meaning. The more she thought about it the less she could recall the exact form the conversation had taken, and the mood in which it had taken place. Had she asked him what sort of person he wanted to marry, or what sort of person he was going to marry. Or had she gone further and asked him who he wanted to marry, or even who he was going to marry? The significance of his reply. ‘Who do you suppose, after all that?’ (or was it ‘What do you suppose, after all that?’) depended, of course, entirely upon the way in which she had framed the question. And then, even if he had, as she certainly had believed he had at the time, as good as said that it was she herself, or that she was the type, that he desired, or hoped, or was determined to marry, what value was to be attached to the statement? Was he drunk at the time, and if he was not drunk was it not all in keeping with his total inconsequence? Or was it a joke – a sort of leg-pull? Or again, had she completely misheard or misunderstood what he had said?

She decided at last that it was probably something between all these things, and she decided to put it out of her mind. But this she was unable to do successfully, and on returning to Thames Lockdon that night she definitely hoped that she would, meet him, and that he would take her out again – that he would, even, give her drinks and dinner, and say something else or further which would in some way clarify the problem. But he did not put in an appearance and did not telephone.

On the next day, Saturday, he came in late to tea, and surreptitiously invited her to have a quick one at the River Sun. They had, he said, to hurry it up because he was going on to meet his friend Lieutenant Lummis at seven o’clock – he did not say where. He proceeded inconsequently but imperturbably to stay with her until twenty minutes past seven, and he then left in such a rush that no appointment was made for a future meeting.

During the next fortnight, without previous arrangement, he invited her two or three times to drink with him at the River Sun, but on only one occasion did he give her dinner afterwards. Then he took her for the same walk by the river as before, this ending up in the same way upon the seat in the park. But on none of these occasions did he explode any further bombshells, or make any attempt to adjust the psychological confusion created by the one he had already thrown.

Finally he had invited her to go to the movies with him on this Saturday afternoon, and she sat beside him in the white darkness looking at the screen without seeing what she was looking at and wondering in what sense she might be permitted to call Lieutenant Pike ‘her’ American.

CHAPTER THREE

1

LOOKING at the clock glowing above the Exit sign to the right of the screen she saw that it was nearly half-past five.

‘Isn’t it time you were going?’ she said.

On meeting her this afternoon he had told her that he had to catch a train into Maidenhead at a quarter to six. There he had an appointment to meet his friend Lummis – they were going, he said, to some sort of joint, Bindles or Spindles or what the hell it ever was. She had told him that he meant Skindles, and had mutely wondered who had introduced Lieutenant Lummis to Skindles, and who else would form part of the company when the two friends got there.