should be no need to state the obvious.’ He was outraged.
‘That’s all very well, but do you love me, Sidney? And do just for once stop being a civil servant and be honest.’
‘I have—did have—a deep regard for you, Charity.’
‘But do you love me?’ she persisted.
‘If by that you mean…’ He paused. ‘No, I don’t think that I do.’ He added coldly, ‘You would have been a most suitable wife.’
They had reached the corner. She said seriously, ‘But that wouldn’t have been enough for me, Sidney. I don’t want to be a suitable wife, I want to be loved just because I’m me and not because I’m suitable. There’s a difference, you know, although I’m not exactly sure what it is.’
Sidney gave a little sneering laugh. ‘If you don’t look out you’ll be too old to find out. Goodbye, Charity.’ He turned on his heel and walked away and after a moment she walked back to her home and went indoors, back to the sitting room to her aunt, who said, ‘Back so soon, my dear? I thought you and Sidney might be going to enjoy a pleasant stroll.’
‘We’re not going to see each other again,’ said Charity clearly. ‘It wouldn’t have worked out. I’m sure he’s a very good man and all that, but I’m not the wife for him—if ever he’d got around to asking me.’
‘My dear Charity,’ began Aunt Emily, and then, ‘What will your father say?’
Charity was peering at herself in the handsome rococo mirror over the fireplace, poking her hair. ‘Nothing much,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I don’t think he liked Sidney very much, did he? And he’s not really interested in me.’
Her aunt looked shocked. ‘Charity! What a thing to say about your father.’
‘Oh, I don’t mean that he doesn’t love me,’ Charity explained. ‘Just that there are other things which interest him more than I do.’
She turned away from the mirror. ‘I expect I shall end up by being a spinster.’
‘There must be a great many suitable young men at that hospital,’ ventured Aunt Emily.
‘Oh, plenty of young men,’ agreed Charity, ‘but they are not suitable. You see, that’s the trouble—they’re young. I’m twenty-six and all the older men I meet are already married.’ She then remembered Professor Wyllie-Lyon, certainly not married but, she felt sure, a dyed-in-the-wool bachelor, content with his lectures and his seminars and his hospital rounds. ‘Almost all,’ she finished.
Her aunt looked so downcast that she bent to kiss her cheek. ‘I’ll get supper shall I? I’m famished and Father will have to eat…’
She enjoyed cooking; that was one of the things Sidney had liked about her, being able to turn out appetising meals for a minimum cost. She set about making a cheese soufflé now and while it was in the oven laid the table in the small dining room, made even smaller by reason of the Regency oval table with its graceful ribbon-back chairs and the elegant sidetable which took up the whole of one wall. It was chilly there; she turned on the gas fire, drew the curtains and put on the white starched cloth her father insisted upon, then arranged the silver which had been in her mother’s family for years and set out the glasses, for he liked his wine, too, even though it was supermarket claret.
The soufflé was ready and it would spoil unless they ate it at once. She urged her aunt to the table and went to fetch her father. He looked up as she went into the small room behind the dining room. ‘Ah, my dear, have you had a good day? I have had a splendid parcel of books…’
She bent to kiss his elderly cheek. ‘You have? That’s nice. There is a soufflé in the oven waiting to be eaten—will you come now?’
He followed her reluctantly, poured the wine, and sat down while she shared out the soufflé. There was a salad, too, and they sat eating it, not talking much for her father’s mind was on his books and Aunt Emily was still brooding over Sidney’s departure. Charity, sitting between them, kept up a cheerful flow of small talk; she loved them both dearly, her elderly aunt and her elderly father. She couldn’t remember them ever being young; her father had married in his late forties and her mother had been twenty years younger than he, killed in a road accident when Charity had been six years old. Aunt Emily had come then to look after them both and, since she was only a year or so younger than her brother, she had already been middle-aged; they had done their best with the small girl, trying to make up for the loss of her mother, and she had grown up into a rather quiet young woman. She had had few friends, for neither her father nor her aunt was sociable and the few young men she had brought home from time to time had been put off by her father’s bland disregard for their existence and her aunt’s insistence on making a third. It wasn’t until she met Sidney and had pointed out that she was getting on towards thirty and quite able to look after herself that they woke up to the fact that she was no longer a child. They had even accepted his presence as a rather vague future son-in-law. And now she had put paid to that in no uncertain manner and, presently, she supposed she might regret it.
She cleared the plates, put a bowl of fruit on the table and fetched the coffee. Just one adventure, she thought vividly, passing coffee cups; something really exciting before she resigned herself to the quiet years ahead. For they would be that. She was a pretty girl, she knew that without conceit, but living such a sheltered life for years had made her shy; she wished she knew how to attract men, but she had very little idea as to how to set about it. There had been no need with Sidney, he had taken it for granted that she was attracted to him and he had never expected to hear anything else. Her thoughts were interrupted by her aunt’s gentle voice.
‘I thought we might have fish tomorrow. Could you get some, dear? I expect you can pop out during the day…?’
Aunt Emily, never having had a job herself, had her own peculiar ideas about working hours.
Charity agreed at once. She had three-quarters of an hour for her lunch break, and there was a row of shops five minutes’ walk away from Augustine’s. Perhaps she would buy a sandwich and go and sit in the churchyard tucked away between the tatty streets. It was quiet there and, although the plane trees weren’t very exciting, the grass grew between the ancient tombstones and there were birds, too.
The office looked dreary when she got there the next morning; it was a gloomy day with wild clouds scudding across the sky and the threat of rain, so that they had to have the lights on. Miss Hudson, minus the offending tooth and conscious of the gap which showed when she smiled, was disposed to be peevish, a state of affairs not improved by the pile of notes and letters already waiting to be typed.
Charity whipped off her typewriter cover, took the lion’s share of work on to her desk, rolled paper and carbon into her machine and went to put the kettle on. ‘You’ll feel better after a cup of tea,’ she promised and got out their mugs and the milk and sugar.
Miss Hudson sniffed. ‘It’s all very well for you young ones,’ she grumbled, ‘you don’t have any worries.’
Charity didn’t answer. Miss Hudson was within shouting distance of fifty, thin to the point of boniness, with a sharp nose and a sharp tongue and a refined voice. At least I won’t be bony, thought Charity, looking down at her splendid curves and then worming her way into the cupboard to make the tea.
Refreshed, they worked without pause until Miss Hudson looked at her watch. ‘I’m off to the canteen,’ she announced. ‘You’ll be all right,
