Love in Our Time by Norman Collins

hadn’t been home again after he had left it nearly ten years before. He had even let it be known pretty widely that he hadn’t got a family. And now this had happened. Mr. Biddle might be sloppy and bulging and unfashionable. But at least he looked well fed; well fed and prosperous and comfortable; there was even an air of undistinguished success about him. Altogether, he looked like a man who had comeout on the right side of life. But Mr. Sneyd was so obviously the other sort. He didn’t look well fed at all. He drooped. He just stood in front of them and sadly proclaimed his unsuccess. Even in his manner, he was a model of self-depreciation and disesteem. He looked sideways rather than forwards, smiled foolishly in a daze of false politeness at a lot of things that were not jokes, and kept shifting from one foot to the other as he spoke.
    â€œVery pleased to meet you, sir,” he said to Mr. Biddle. “I’ve just met your charming daughter.”
    As he shook hands his coat fell open and revealed the crude, copper-coloured watch chain that ran across his waistcoat. It looked very different from the handsome gold one which Mr. Biddle wore.
    Mr. Biddle shook hands and said nothing. He allowed his eyes to run up and down the stranger, and he felt sorry for him. He knew perfectly well that no one looked like that if the Bank manager and the employer were still on his side. Then his gaze fell on the plated watch chain and on the little medal that was hanging from it.
    A moment later Mr. Biddle was standing stiffly to attention gravely saluting Mr. Sneyd.
    â€œGood evening, Brother,” he said. “I’m glad to make your acquaintance.”
    â€œThat’s very kind of you, Brother Commodore,” replied Mr. Sneyd. “Very kind indeed.” He drew his right hand across his forehead—it came away wet and shiny—and sat down.
    â€œDo you mind if I sit,” he asked. “I’m a bit tired. It’s the travelling, you know.”
    Mr. Biddle himself moved up for him.
    â€œWhich is your Ocean, Brother?” he asked.
    â€œTadford,” Mr. Sneyd replied. “What’s your Fleet?”
    â€œEast Finchley.”
    There was a pause. Alice was looking hard at Mr. Sneyd. She was trying to discover whether there was any point of resemblance between the thin, disappointed man on the couch and her own husband. And, as she looked, she saw it. The way the eyebrows met the nose was the same. It needed only a lifetime of anxiety and insecurity to change the young man by the mantelpiece into the old man on the couch.
    Then Gerald spoke and the resemblance was broken.
    â€œHow—how’s the family?” he asked awkwardly.
    â€œThey’re getting along,” Mr. Sneyd replied. “Elsie’s married.”
    â€œWho’s she married?”
    He knew as soon as he asked it that it was a foolish question. He didn’t in the least want to know. He remembered Elsie only as a dollish and affected schoolgirl who had been thrust into his home when Mr. Sneyd, after his wife’s death had committed his indiscretion of marrying a widow. He still thought of her as a precocious creature of twelve with wide, robin’s-egg blue eyes and a lot of crisp, yellow hair.
    â€œHe’s in the Co-op,” Mr. Sneyd told him. “On the retail side.”
    â€œGood,” said Gerald. “I’m glad she’s married.”
    He congratulated himself that it was no worse; from what he could remember of Elsie it wouldn’t have surprised him no matter what she had done. But there were still Lily and young Violet. Young Violet had always been the favourite—she was Gerald’s half-sister; but it was Lily, Mrs. Sneyd’s younger child by her first marriage, who was known to have the brains. She was,Gerald remembered, artistic and delicate. It had been planned that she was going to devote her life to music; she had had lessons twice a week from