Love in Our Time by Norman Collins Page A

an L.R.A.M.
    â€œHow’s Lily?” he asked jocularly. “Has she got married yet?”
    â€œLily’s in Woolworth’s,” Mr. Sneyd replied. “She’s getting on all right.”
    â€œAnd young Violet?”
    â€œShe’s fine.” Mr. Sneyd spoke with real enthusiasm about her. “She’s a knowing little thing all right.”
    There was another pause—a longer one this time—and it was Alice who broke the silence.
    â€œCan’t I get you something to eat, Mr. Sneyd?” she asked. “You look tired out.”
    Mr. Sneyd started. It was almost as though he was not used to being addressed kindly. But he said he had just eaten. He made a great point of it, as though it were something to be proud of.
    â€œHow’s Mrs. Sneyd?” Gerald asked. He used the name with obvious reluctance, and it was significant that he left this question till last.
    Mr. Sneyd shook his head.
    â€œWe don’t any of us get any younger,” he said.
    The remark made Gerald feel suddenly very sorry for his father. After all, it was Time that had been against Mr. Sneyd all along; his second marriage had been in defiance of it. And being young had been the second Mrs. Sneyd’s one excuse for existence. She had been left a widow at twenty-eight. It was simply her youth that had attracted the lonely and unloved Mr. Sneyd—her youth and what went with it. Seated in the cash desk of the Bon Marché, her piled fair hair displayed over the top of the grille, and her bosom—she alwayswore lacy, rather low-cut dresses—provocatively visible through the plate-glass front, she had made the handling of ordinary petty-cash transactions seem like an enchanted profession. Gerald still remembered her as he had seen her the first time his father had brought her back to the melancholy house in Station Approach. She had always seemed altogether too crudely blooming and high-spirited—she had thrown off her widowhood like a chill—to be on the arm of the already slightly seedy middle-aged man who showed her self-consciously into the faded drawing-room; her elder sister, whose hair was darker and who had no bosom to speak of, had accompanied her for the sake of the proprieties. Gerald’s antagonism to the newcomer had dated from the moment when, looking at the narrow staircase, the new Mrs. Sneyd had said that she preferred Axminster to oilcloth, and Mr. Sneyd had weakly and foolishly assented.
    â€œShe’s with you now?” Gerald asked.
    â€œNo, Mother’s at home.” Mr. Sneyd answered. “It’s young Violet. She’s got one of her chests.”
    Alice interrupted them to suggest that she should make them all some tea. And with Alice’s departure the atmosphere seemed to grow clearer. There was no longer a woman overhearing everything. The three men shook themselves; Mr. Sneyd asked if Alice had any objection to a pipe, and then produced a china bowled affair with a death’s head design on the front and lugubriously lit it. Gerald looked at the pipe with some emotion; he had grown up with that pipe and it was like having a piece of his childhood thrown back at him to see it again.
    â€œYou up here on business or pleasure?” Mr. Biddle inquired.
    It was evident from the question that he did not know the nature of Mr. Sneyd’s business: shop-walkers in provincial emporiums do all their business on the floor. Once past the revolving glass doors of the shop they cease simply and suddenly to exist.
    â€œIt’s my health,” Mr. Sneyd admitted. “I’ve got to go into St. Martin’s.”
    â€œWhat is it, Dad?”
    The fact that his father was ill, hurt him; he began to reproach himself for not having seen him for all those years. It didn’t seem enough that he had written. If Mr. Biddle had not been there and he had been alone with his father he would probably have done something foolish like going across