A Town like Alice

Paget, who used to come here sometimes? She's got engaged to be married, to an Australian, out in Queensland."
    "Oh, I am glad," she said. "Such a nice lady, she was."
    "Yes, wasn't she?" I repeated. "Such a nice lady."
    She said, "You didn't eat your breakfast, sir. Was everything all right?"
    "Yes, quite all right, thanks, Mrs Chambers," I said. "I didn't want anything this morning."
    It was cold and raw out in the street, one of those yellow foggy mornings with a reeking chill that makes you cough. I walked on towards the office in a dream, thinking about wallabies and laughing black stockmen, about blue water running over the white coral sands, about Jean Paget and the trouble she had had with her sarong in that hot country where all clothes are a burden. Then there was a fierce, rending squeal right on top of me, and a heavy blow on my right arm so that I staggered and nearly fell, and I was in the middle of Pall Mall with a taxi broadside on across the road beside me. I didn't know where I was for a moment, and then I heard the white-faced driver saying, "For Christ's sake. You can think yourself bloody lucky that you're still alive."
    "I'm sorry," I said. "I wasn't looking where I was going."
    "Stepping out into the road like that," he said angrily. "Ought to have more sense, at your age. Did I hit you?"
    A little crowd was starting to collect. "Only my arm," I said. I moved it, and it worked all right. "It's nothing."
    "Well, that's a bloody miracle," he said. "Look out where you're going to next time." He put his gear in, straightened up his taxi, and drove on; I walked on to the office.
    The girl brought in the letters for me to go through, as usual, but I put them on one side in favour of another letter that I had in my breast pocket. I had a client or two that morning, I suppose; I usually have, and I suppose I gave them some advice, but my mind was twelve thousand miles away. Lester Robinson came in once with some business or other and I said to him, "You remember my Paget girl-the heir to that Macfadden estate? She's got herself engaged to be married to an Australian. He seems to be a very good chap."
    He grunted. "I forget. Does that terminate our trust?"
    "No," I said. "That goes on for some time to come. Till she's thirty-five."
    "Pity," he said. "It's made a lot of work for you, that trust has. It'll be a good thing when it's all wound up."
    "It's been no trouble, really," I said. By the end of the day I think I knew her letter by heart although it was eight quarto pages long, but I took it with me to the club. I had a glass of sherry in the bar and told Moore about her engagement because he knew something about her story, and after dinner we sat down to a couple of rubbers of bridge, Dennison and Strickland and Callaghan, the four of us who play together every evening, and I told them about her.
    I got up from the table at about eleven o'clock, and went into the library for a final cigarette before going back across the park to my flat. The big room was empty but for Wright, who had been in the Malay Police and knew her story. I dropped down into a chair beside him, and remarked, "You know that girl, Jean Paget! I think I've spoken to you about her once or twice before."
    He smiled. "You have."
    "She's got herself engaged to be married," I told him. "To the manager of a cattle station, in Northern Queensland."
    "Indeed?" he said. "What's he like?"
    "I've met him," I replied. "He's a very good chap. She's very much in love with him. I think they're going to be very happy."
    "Is she coming back to England before getting married?" he asked.
    I sat staring at the rows of books upon the wall, the gold embossed carving at the corner of the ceiling. "No," I said. "I don't think she's ever coming back to England, ever again."
    He was silent.
    "It's too far," I said. "I think she'll make her life in Queensland now."
    There was a long pause. "After all, there's no reason why she should come back to England," I said at last. "There's nothing for her to come back for. She's got no ties in this country."
    And then he said a very foolish thing. He meant it well enough, but it was a stupid thing to say. I got up and left him and went home to my dark, empty flat, and I avoided meeting him for some time after that. I was seventy-three years old that autumn, old enough to be her grandfather. I couldn't possibly have been in love with her myself.

Chapter 9
    In the months of November and December that year Jean Paget