His father would arrive, lay down his evening paper on the table and begin to change his boots.
“So you’re back all right, Roland?” That would be his only reference to his son’s holidays before he plunged into a commentary on the state of the bus service, the country and the restaurant where he had lunched.
“Coming for a walk, Roland?” That would be his next indication that he was conscious of his son’s presence, and on the receipt of an affirmation he would trudge upstairs, to reappear ten minutes later in a light gray suit.
“Ready, my son?” And they would walk along the High Street till they reached the corner of Upper College Road. There Mr. Whately would pause. “Well, Roland, shall we go in and see April?” And in reality the question would be an assertion. They would have to go into the Curtises’; it would be terrible. He would feel like Judas Iscariot at the Last Supper. He would be received by Mrs. Curtis as a future son-in-law. April would smile on him as her betrothed. Whatever he did or said he could not, in her eyes, be anything but perfidious, disloyal, treacherous. He would be unable to make clear to her the inevitable nature of what had happened.
The red roofs and stucco fronts of Donnington had by now receded into the distance; the bus was already clattering down the main street of Lower Hammerton. The lights in the shop windows had just been kindled and lent a touch of wistful poetry to the spectacle of the crowded pavements, black with the dark coats of men returning from their offices, with here and there a splash of gayety from the dress of some harassed woman hurrying to complete her shopping before her husband’s return.
“In three more minutes we shall be at the Town Hall,” Roland told himself. “In two minutes from then I shall have reached the corner of Hammerton Villas; 105 is the third house down on the left-hand side. In six minutes, at the outside, I shall be there!”
And it turned out exactly as he had predicted. He found his mother in the drawing-room, turning the handle of the sewing-machine. She smiled as he opened the door and, as he bent his head to kiss her, expressed the hope that he had enjoyed himself. Three minutes later his father arrived.
“A most interesting murder case to-day, my dear; there’s a full account of it in The Globe. It appears that the fellow was engaged to one girl, but was really in love with the mother of the girl he murdered, and he murdered the girl because she seemed to suspect—no, that’s not it. It was the girl he was engaged to who suspected; but at any rate you’ll find it all in The Globe—a most interesting case.” And he opened the paper at the center page and handed it to his wife. As he did so his arm brushed against Roland, and the forcible reminder of his son’s existence inspired him to express the hope that the cricket at Hogstead had reached the high expectations that had been entertained regarding it. This duty accomplished, he proceeded to describe in detail the lunch he had selected at the Spanish café.
“There was a choice of three things: you could either have hors d’œuvre or a soup, and then there was either omelette or fish or spaghetti, with veal or chicken or mutton to follow, and, of course, cheese to finish up with. Well, I didn’t think the spaghetti at that place was very good, so I was left with a choice of either an omelette or fish.”
While he was stating and explaining his choice Mr. Whately had found time to divest his feet of his boots. “Well, and what about a walk, Roland?”