3
When Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow went back to London at the end of the week Eve and Miriam saw them off at the station. The four went off boldly together down the flight of white stone steps and made their way up into the town.
“Good-bye,” called Miss Meldrum affectionately from the doorway. “I shall send both of you a copy of the photograph.”
“It’s most generous of Miss Meldrum to go to all that expense to give us a pleasant memento,” said Mr. Green in his small ringing voice as they all swung out into the clean bare roadway. Miriam felt as if they were a bit of the photograph walking up the hill, and went freely and confidently along with a sense of being steered and guided by Miss Meldrum. Why had she had the group taken—so odd and bold of her, having the photographer waiting in the garden for them before they had finished breakfast, and then laughing and talking and pushing them all about as if they were her dearest friends. It was whilst they were all out in the garden together, hanging about and being arranged, with the photographer’s voice like the voice of a ventriloquist, knocking them coldly about, that Gerald and Mr. Green had arranged about the evening at the Crystal Palace on the last day of Miriam’s holiday. Miriam had held back from the group, feeling nervous about her hair, there had been no time to go to their rooms, and had forced Eve to do the same. Harriett, with a cheerful shiny face, was sitting on the grass with Gerald in a line with the traveller from Robinson and Cleaver’s, and his thin-voiced sheeny-haired mocking fiancée. They all looked very small and bald. The fiancée kept clearing her throat and rearranging her smart feet and rattling her bangles. The traveller’s heavy waxed moustache was crooked and his slippery blue eyes looked like the eyes of an old man. Next to him were two newly arrived restively sneering young men, one on either side of the saintly-faced florist’s assistant from Wigmore Street, who sat in an easy pose with her skirt draping gracefully over her feet and her long white chin propped on her hands. She looked reproachfully about amongst the laughing and talking and seemed to feel that they were all in church.
Miss Meldrum and Miss Stringer, the two bald Scotch chemists who went out every evening to look for a comet, the pale frowning girl from Plaistow with her mad-eyed cousin whose grey curls bunched in a cherry-coloured velvet band seemed to say “death—death” to Miriam more dreadfully out here amongst the greenery than when she suddenly caught sight of them at table, sat disconnectedly in chairs behind the squatters on the grass. At the last moment she and Eve were obliged to fall in at the back of the group with Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow, and now the four of them were walking in a row up the staring white hill with the evening at the Crystal Palace ahead of them in far-away London. It was quite right. They were being like ‘other people.’ People met and made friends and arranged to meet again. And then things happened. It was quite right and ordinary and safe and warm. Of course Eve and Mr. Green must meet again. He was evidently quite determined that they should. That was what was carrying them all so confidently up the hill. Perhaps he would in the end turn into another Gerald. When they turned off into the unfamiliar Brighton streets Eve and Mr. Green went on ahead. Walking quickly in step along the narrow pavement amongst the unconcerned Brighton townspeople they looked so small and pitiful.