‘What fun to be here alone with you! I’m so glad we came!’
‘And, oh, Gordon, to think we’ve got all day together! And it might so easily have rained. How lucky we are!’
‘Yes. We’ll burn a sacrifice to the immortal gods, presently.’
They were extravagantly happy. As they walked on they fell into absurd enthusiasms over everything they saw: over a jay’s feather that they picked up, blue as lapis lazuli; over a stagnant pool like a jet mirror, with boughs reflected deep down in it; over the fungi that sprouted from the trees like monstrous horizontal ears. They discussed for a long time what would be the best epithet to describe a beech-tree. Both agreed that beeches look more like sentient creatures than other trees. It is because of the smoothness of their bark, probably, and the curious limb-like way in which the boughs sprout from the trunk. Gordon said that the little knobs on the bark were like the nipples of breasts and that the sinuous upper boughs, with their smooth sooty skin, were like the writhing trunks of elephants. They argued about similes and metaphors. From time to time they quarrelled vigorously, according to their custom. Gordon began to tease her by finding ugly similes for everything they passed. He said that the russet foliage of the hornbeams was like the hair of Burne-Jones maidens, and that the smooth tentacles of the ivy that wound about the trees were like the clinging arms of Dickens heroines. Once he insisted upon destroying some mauve toadstools because he said they reminded him of a Rackham illustration and he suspected fairies of dancing round them. Rosemary called him a soulless pig. She waded through a bed of drifted beech leaves that rustled about her, knee-deep, like a weightless red-gold sea.
‘Oh, Gordon, these leaves! Look at them with the sun on them! They’re like gold. They really are like gold.’
‘Fairy gold. You’ll be going all Barrie in another moment. As a matter of fact, if you want an exact simile, they’re just the colour of tomato soup.’
‘Don’t be a pig, Gordon! Listen how they rustle. “Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks in Vallombrosa.”’
‘Or like one of those American breakfast cereals. Tru-weet Breakfast Crisps. “Kiddies clamour for their Breakfast Crisps.”’
‘You are a beast!’
She laughed. They walked on hand in hand, swishing ankle-deep through the leaves and declaiming:
‘Thick as the Breakfast Crisps that strow the plates In Welwyn Garden City!’
It was great fun. Presently they came out of the wooded area. There were plenty of people abroad now, but not many cars if you kept away from the main roads. Sometimes they heard church bells ringing and made detours to avoid the churchgoers. They began to pass through straggling villages on whose outskirts pseudo-Tudor villas stood sniffishly apart, amid their garages, their laurel shrubberies and their raw-looking lawns. And Gordon had some fun railing against the villas and the godless civilisation of which they were part—a civilisation of stockbrokers and their lip-sticked wives, of golf, whisky, ouija-boards and Aberdeen terriers called Jock. So they walked another four miles or so, talking and frequently quarrelling. A few gauzy clouds were drifting across the sky, but there was hardly a breath of wind.
They were growing rather footsore and more and more hungry. Of its own accord the conversation began to turn upon food. Neither of them had a watch, but when they passed through a village they saw that the pubs were open, so that it must be after twelve o’clock. They hesitated outside a rather low-looking pub called the Bird in Hand. Gordon was for going in; privately he reflected that in a pub like that your bread and cheese and beer would cost you a bob at the very most. But Rosemary said that it was a nasty-looking place, which indeed it was, and they went on, hoping to find a pleasanter pub at the other end of the village. They had visions of a cosy bar-parlour, with an oak settle and perhaps a stuffed pike in a glass case on the wall.
But there were no more pubs in the village, and presently they were in open country again, with no houses in sight and not even any signposts. Gordon and Rosemary began to be alarmed. At two the pubs would shut, and then there would be no food to be had, except perhaps a packet of biscuits from some village sweet-shop. At this thought a ravening hunger took possession of them. They toiled exhaustedly up an enormous hill, hoping to find a village on the other side. There was no village, but far below a dark green river wound, with what seemed quite like a large town scattered along its edge and a grey bridge crossing it. They did not even know what river it was—it was the Thames, of course.
‘Thank God!’ said Gordon. ‘There must be plenty of pubs down there. We’d better take the first one we can find.’
‘Yes, do let’s. I’m starving.’
But when they neared the town it seemed strangely quiet. Gordon wondered whether the people were all at church or eating their Sunday dinners, until he realised that the place was quite deserted. It was Crickham-on-Thames, one of those riverside towns which live for the boating season and go into hibernation for the rest of the year. It straggled along the bank for a mile or more, and it consisted entirely of boat-houses and bungalows, all of them shut up and empty. There were no signs of life anywhere. At last, however, they came upon a fat, aloof, red-nosed man, with a ragged moustache, sitting on a camp-stool beside a jar of beer on the towpath. He was fishing with a twenty-foot roach pole, while on the smooth green water two swans circled about his float, trying to steal his bait as often as he pulled it up.
‘Can you tell us where we can get something to eat?’ said Gordon.
That fat man seemed to have been expecting this question and to derive a sort of private pleasure from it. He answered without looking at Gordon.
‘You won’t get nothing to eat. Not here you won’t,’ he said.
‘But dash it! Do you mean to say there isn’t a pub in the whole place? We’ve walked all the way from Farnham Common.’
The fat man sniffed and seemed to reflect, still keeping his eye on his float.
‘I dessay you might try the Ravenscroft Hotel,’ he said. ‘About half a mile along, that is. I dessay they’d give you something; that is, they would if they was open.’
‘But are they open?’
‘They might be and they might not,’ said the fat man comfortably.
‘And can you tell us what time it is?’ said Rosemary.
‘It’s jest gone ten parse one.’
The two swans followed Gordon and Rosemary a little way along the towpath, evidently expecting to be fed. There did not seem much hope that the Ravenscroft Hotel would be open. The whole place had that desolate fly-blown air of pleasure resorts in the off-season. The woodwork of the bungalows was cracking, the white paint was peeling off, the dusty windows showed bare interiors. Even the slot machines that were dotted along the bank were out of order. There seemed to be another bridge at the other end of the town. Gordon swore heartily.
‘What bloody fools we were not to go into that pub when we had the chance!’
‘Oh, dear! I’m simply starving. Had we better turn back, do you think?’
‘It’s no use, there were no pubs the way we came. We must keep on. I suppose the Ravenscroft Hotel’s on the other side of that bridge. If that’s a main road there’s just a chance it’ll be open. Otherwise we’re sunk.’
They dragged their way as far as the bridge. They were thoroughly footsore now. But behold! here at last was what they wanted, for just beyond the bridge, down a sort of private road, stood a biggish, smartish hotel, its back lawns running down to the river. It was obviously open. Gordon and Rosemary started eagerly towards it, and then paused, daunted.
‘It looks frightfully expensive,’ said Rosemary.
It did look expensive. It was a vulgar pretentious place, all gilt and white paint—one of those hotels which have overcharging and bad service written on every brick. Beside the drive, commanding the road, a snobbish board announced in gilt lettering:
THE RAVENSCROFT HOTEL
Open to Non-residents.
LUNCHEONS — TEAS — DINNERS
DANCE HALL AND TENNIS COURTS
Parties catered for.
Two gleaming two-seater cars were parked in the drive. Gordon quailed. The money in his pocket seemed to shrink to nothing. This was the very opposite to the cosy pub they had been looking for. But he was very hungry. Rosemary tweaked at his arm.
‘It looks a beastly place. I vote we go on.’
‘But we’ve got to get some food. It’s our last chance. We shan’t find another pub.’
‘The food’s always so disgusting in these places. Beastly cold beef that tastes as if it had been saved up from last year. And they charge you the earth for it.’
‘Oh, well, we’ll just order bread and cheese and beer. It always costs about the same.’
‘But they hate you doing that. They’ll try to bully us into having a proper lunch, you’ll see. We must be firm and just say bread and cheese.’
‘All right, we’ll be firm. Come on.’
They went in, resolved to be firm. But there was an expensive smell in the draughty hallway—a smell of chintz, dead flowers, Thames water and the rinsings of wine bottles. It was the characteristic smell of a riverside hotel. Gordon’s heart sank lower. He knew the type of place this was. It was one of those desolate hotels which exist all along the motor roads and are frequented by stockbrokers airing their whores on Sunday afternoons. In such places you are insulted and overcharged almost as a matter of course. Rosemary shrank nearer to him. She too was intimidated. They saw a door marked ‘Saloon’ and pushed it open, thinking it must be the bar. It was not a bar, however, but a large, smart, chilly room with corduroy-upholstered chairs and settees. You could have mistaken it for an ordinary drawing-room except that all the ashtrays advertised White Horse whisky. And round one of the tables the people from the cars outside—two blond, flat-headed, fattish men, over-youthfully dressed, and two disagreeable elegant young women—were sitting, having evidently just finished lunch. A waiter, bending over their table, was serving them with liqueurs.
Gordon and Rosemary had halted in the doorway. The people at the table were already eyeing them with offensive upper-middle-class eyes. Gordon and Rosemary looked tired and dirty, and they knew it. The notion of ordering bread and cheese and beer had almost vanished from their minds. In such a place as this you couldn’t possibly say ‘Bread and cheese and beer’; ‘Lunch’ was the only thing you could say. There was nothing for it but ‘Lunch’ or flight. The waiter was almost openly contemptuous. He had summed them up at a glance as having no money; but also he had divined that it was in their minds to fly and was determined to stop them before they could escape.
‘Sare?’ he demanded, lifting his tray off the table.
Now for it! Say ‘Bread and cheese and beer’, and damn the consequences! Alas! his courage was gone. ‘Lunch’ it would have to be. With a seeming-careless gesture he thrust his hand into his pocket. He was feeling his money to make sure that it was still there. Seven and elevenpence left, he knew. The waiter’s eye followed the movement; Gordon had a hateful feeling that the man could actually see through the cloth and count the money in his pocket. In a tone as lordly as he could make it, he remarked: