Still, Rudy wasn’t quite convinced, and the seven devils who enter in when one has been expelled, began to raise their heads.

‘Shall I sleep in the garage? I shall be quite comfortable there, or in that hut in the garden—’ Tired as he was he had an instinct for the precautions he ought to take.

Angela opened the front door.

‘I shall be bitterly offended,’ she said, ‘if you sleep anywhere but in the house. And so will Jacko. Your bed is aired—everything is laid on. Now what would you like for supper—a mixed grill, an omelette? or what?—An appetiser of course to start with. There are plenty of them,’—she waved towards the sideboard, where the bottles gleamed, whisky, gin, vodka, each with its special appeal, its message of encouragement to the weary human race. ‘Or would you like something else, another sort of cocktail?’

‘I would like you,’ he said, and before she had time to assent or dissent he had clasped her in his arms. Gently she released herself, and bared her bosom to him for the last time.

PAINS AND PLEASURES

There is always room for improvement, but there is not always time for it. Henry Kitson had reached and over-reached the allotted span. In his youth he had been something of a teleologist. An immense and varied field of ambition lay open to him. He would become one with his desires; he would achieve an important and worthwhile aim in which his whole self, all the contents of his personality, such as they were, would be completely and forever expressed.

These aims took different forms. He would climb the Matterhorn (in those days a considerable feat) and, if he had known about it, he would have wanted to climb the North face of the Eiger. He would also play the ‘Moonlight Sonata’ quite perfectly: the last movement would have no terrors for him. Adding to these achievements he would learn to read, and to speak, at least five languages; his Aunt Patsy, his father’s eldest sister, had done so, so why not he? He would reduce his handicap at golf which was 12, to scratch or even to plus something. He would write a book (he couldn’t decide on what subject) that would be a classic, immortal: the name of Henry Kitson would resound down the ages.

And he had other ambitions.

Alas, none of them had materialised, and here he was, in the early seventies, with nothing to show for them. He was comfortably off, with a pension from the firm in the City who had employed him for nearly half a century, and with the money he had saved up—for he had not, mentally, grown old with the years; he was not, and could not be, ‘his age’; he still regarded himself as the impecunious, ambitious young man he was at twenty-five.

Apart from the tendency which often overtakes elderly men to regard himself as penniless, his situation was most fortunate. He had, as general factotum, a retired policeman, who cleaned his cottage, cooked his meals and drove his car. Wilson (‘Bill’ to Henry Kitson) was perfect: he did everything he should, and nothing he shouldn’t. In this he was very different from some of his predecessors, who had done everything they shouldn’t, and nothing that they should.

Coming at the tail-end of this procession of mainly unsatisfactory characters (‘character’ was a word used in the old days, but in a different sense, when a prospective employer was asking for a reference) Bill had, of course, for Henry, an overwhelming advantage. After many years of domestic darkness, Bill was the light. Whenever Henry thought of him he gave (if he could remember to) thanksgiving to Heaven for Bill.

At the same time it was a great temptation, as it always is if the opportunity arises, to flog the willing horse. Bill, like Barkis, was willing; and Henry sometimes asked him to do jobs that he would never have dared to ask of any of Bill’s less amenable forerunners.

With the advent of Bill, ‘a soundless calm’, in Emily Brontë’s words, descended on Henry. Domestic troubles were over; nothing to resent; nothing to fight against; no sense of Sisyphus bearing an unbearable weight uphill. No grievance at all. Had he lived by his grievances, was a question that Henry sometimes asked himself. Had his resistance to them, his instinct to fight back and assert himself and show what he was made of, somehow strengthened his hold on life, and prolonged it?

Now he had nothing to resist. What Bill did with his spare time—if he occupied it, as Henry suspected, at the pub and the betting-shop, was no business of his. As far as he was concerned, Bill could do no wrong.

But just as someone who has always carried a weight on his shoulders, or on his mind or on his heart and who is suddenly relieved of it, feels in himself a void, an incentive to living suddenly taken away, even so Henry, lacking this incentive, found his life empty, almost purposeless.

Gratitude to Bill was his major preoccupation, but how to express it? Bill was by no means indifferent to money—he liked it and he knew more about it than Henry, with a lifetime’s experience of business, did.

Little presents, Bill was not averse to them; but they didn’t represent to Henry even a small part of his indebtedness to Bill. Perhaps a bonus of ten per cent for honesty?

Undoubtedly, Henry Kitson’s retired and retiring life was the happier for Bill’s presence, and for his presents to Bill, but it was also the emptier, now that his grievance had been taken away. Most people need something to live against, and if this objective, positive or negative, is removed, they suffer for it. Henry had friends in the neighbourhood whom he saw as often as he could; but they did not supply him with that extra-personal incentive.

‘Live with one aim, but let that aim be high’—or low—which he had had when X, and Y, and Z were ill-treating him, and whose malfeasances, he felt, must be resisted to the ultimate extent of his emotional if not his personal prowess.

With Bill in charge of his domestic affairs, there was nothing at all to be resisted, nothing to aim at—for Bill was a placid, self-contained character, who had seen a lot of the ups and downs of life, and had little to learn from it which Henry, with the best will in the world, could supply.

So this life stratified itself into a routine, pleasant but nearly featureless. There were, however, two features in his day which had an emotional content and significance, and to which he clung, for they represented what he liked, and what he disliked: as long as he stuck to them and could look forward to or dread them, he knew he was keeping the advance of senility at bay.

One was concerned with Bill. Bill in common with many other men, rich and poor, criminal and honest, liked a drink: and Henry saw to it that Bill’s ‘elevenses’ should be a tot of whisky. With all the variations of vocal expression at his command, he would ask Bill if he would like a drink; and Bill, with all the variations of expression at his command, would say ‘Yes’. From the time when he was called, at 8 o’clock, Henry looked forward to this little episode. At the word ‘drink’ Bill’s dark eyes would glow, like coals that had suddenly been set alight. ‘Good health!’ he would say, before he took his glass into the kitchen. Henry never failed to get pleasure from his simple interchange of amenities, just as he never failed to get pain from the other cardinal event of his day, and unfortunately he had longer to anticipate it. This was to put out his cat, Ginger, at bed time. He was fond of Ginger, but Ginger was old and set in his ways, and did not like being put out. Being a neuter, he did not have the same motive that many cats have for prowling about at night, growling and yowling and keeping everyone within earshot awake. He wanted to be warm and comfortable; and although there was a shed and an outhouse in the garden which he must have known about, he preferred Henry’s fireside, and when Henry opened the garden door to put him out he would streak past through Henry’s legs and sit down in front of the fire, purring loudly and triumphantly.