there was nothing in herself to hold her. He did not know, even now, how many men there had been later: perhaps three or four, perhaps half a dozen. He did not know if they had all been from the American camp. It made, in the essentials, little difference after the first.
Matters had stood like this for more than a year when Germany surrendered, and Neil’s training depot became a surplus almost at once. The Head wrote that he was applying for his immediate release; the news brought him, now, nothing but pleasure and relief. He was out of the Army just in time for the start of the spring term.
From the first he had known that things were wrong; but for a length of time he found it hard later to believe in, he had not guessed the cause. The truth was that for three years his frustration had been mounting, to a pitch of inferiority where he found for every doubt and uneasiness an explanation in himself. When colleagues were constrained in his presence, or treated him with an awkward excess of consideration, he thought they were pitying the slowness of his adjustments; as, indeed, in a different sense they were. Even when he made love to Susan he did not guess. She had acquired in this language a vocabulary of clichés and vulgarisms which physically shocked him; but he thought she was trying by nervous improvisation to bridge the gulf of absence. His previous experience of women, which had never been commercial, did nothing to enlighten him. He had missed her very much, which made him uncritical.
It was Sally who, if he had not been armoured in self-distrust, would have been the first to tell him the truth. When he came back, still in uniform, she had looked from him to Susan with a sidelong glance that was almost sly. “Hullo, Sally,” he had said, much shyer with her than with Susan, “Do you remember me?” She considered him and seemed, with unknown reservations, to approve him; but her smile, little more than a baby as she was, had a kind of affected babyishness, an air of playing to the gallery. “Hiya,” she answered. He took it for a childish slurring; as he soon discovered, she was very backward in her speech. She had spent increasing time with the village help, who was the leavings of the call-up; kind by her lights, but little more than a high-grade defective. More disquieting facts emerged one by one. The child’s clothes were unmended and half-washed; “She gets through them so quickly,” Susan irritably explained. Before long he could see the reason for this. “Surely,” he asked, still made uncertain by his own loss of confidence, “a child of her age ought to be house-trained?” Susan said he had better get in touch with life again, and find out what running a house was like. He could not bear to see the child’s dinginess; she had always been so crisp and fresh. When Susan was out (she often was) he washed Sally’s things himself.
After he got back into mufti, Sally changed. She seemed suddenly to re-discover him. In dim memory or uncertain trust, she began to claim him again. When he was at work in his study, she used to slip quietly in, making few demands or none; in her sensitiveness to his concentration, and her patience, she was more like an old dog than a young child. With him she dropped her edgy cuteness and her affected lisp; natural talk was almost like a secret between them. She never spoke of anything that had happened when he was away; her memory was too short perhaps, or perhaps she had the child’s sixth sense of something wrong. Her favourite game was to be hoisted to the top of a bookcase or of the garden wall, then she would say that she was climbing mountains like Daddy; it was always the highest mountain in the world.
With her he had the only complete happiness he had experienced since his return; but, before long, he saw that Susan was as ready as ever to leave her entirely to him. At this age, he saw more risk than ever to the child’s emotional balance. At last he
Matters had stood like this for more than a year when Germany surrendered, and Neil’s training depot became a surplus almost at once. The Head wrote that he was applying for his immediate release; the news brought him, now, nothing but pleasure and relief. He was out of the Army just in time for the start of the spring term.
From the first he had known that things were wrong; but for a length of time he found it hard later to believe in, he had not guessed the cause. The truth was that for three years his frustration had been mounting, to a pitch of inferiority where he found for every doubt and uneasiness an explanation in himself. When colleagues were constrained in his presence, or treated him with an awkward excess of consideration, he thought they were pitying the slowness of his adjustments; as, indeed, in a different sense they were. Even when he made love to Susan he did not guess. She had acquired in this language a vocabulary of clichés and vulgarisms which physically shocked him; but he thought she was trying by nervous improvisation to bridge the gulf of absence. His previous experience of women, which had never been commercial, did nothing to enlighten him. He had missed her very much, which made him uncritical.
It was Sally who, if he had not been armoured in self-distrust, would have been the first to tell him the truth. When he came back, still in uniform, she had looked from him to Susan with a sidelong glance that was almost sly. “Hullo, Sally,” he had said, much shyer with her than with Susan, “Do you remember me?” She considered him and seemed, with unknown reservations, to approve him; but her smile, little more than a baby as she was, had a kind of affected babyishness, an air of playing to the gallery. “Hiya,” she answered. He took it for a childish slurring; as he soon discovered, she was very backward in her speech. She had spent increasing time with the village help, who was the leavings of the call-up; kind by her lights, but little more than a high-grade defective. More disquieting facts emerged one by one. The child’s clothes were unmended and half-washed; “She gets through them so quickly,” Susan irritably explained. Before long he could see the reason for this. “Surely,” he asked, still made uncertain by his own loss of confidence, “a child of her age ought to be house-trained?” Susan said he had better get in touch with life again, and find out what running a house was like. He could not bear to see the child’s dinginess; she had always been so crisp and fresh. When Susan was out (she often was) he washed Sally’s things himself.
After he got back into mufti, Sally changed. She seemed suddenly to re-discover him. In dim memory or uncertain trust, she began to claim him again. When he was at work in his study, she used to slip quietly in, making few demands or none; in her sensitiveness to his concentration, and her patience, she was more like an old dog than a young child. With him she dropped her edgy cuteness and her affected lisp; natural talk was almost like a secret between them. She never spoke of anything that had happened when he was away; her memory was too short perhaps, or perhaps she had the child’s sixth sense of something wrong. Her favourite game was to be hoisted to the top of a bookcase or of the garden wall, then she would say that she was climbing mountains like Daddy; it was always the highest mountain in the world.
With her he had the only complete happiness he had experienced since his return; but, before long, he saw that Susan was as ready as ever to leave her entirely to him. At this age, he saw more risk than ever to the child’s emotional balance. At last he
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