The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh Page A

him from borrowing any of the texts of his courtship from Robert Burns.
    They waited their turn and presently sat side by side on the double throne. “Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,” whispered Aimée. Her face appeared deliciously at the little window. They kissed, then gravely descended and passed through waiting couples without a glance.
    “What is a ‘canty day,’ Dennis?”
    “I’ve never troubled to ask. Something like Hogmanay, I expect.”
    “What is that?”
    “People being sick on the pavement in Glasgow.”
    “Oh.”
    “Do you know how the poem ends? ‘Now we maun totter down, John, But hand in hand we’ll go, And
sleep together
at the foot, John Anderson, my jo.’ ”
    “Dennis, why is all the poetry you know so coarse? And you talking of being a pastor.”
    “Non-sectarian; but I incline to the Anabaptists in these matters. Anyway, everything is ethical to engaged couples.”
    After a pause Aimée said: “I shall have to write and tell Mr. Joyboy and the—and someone else.”
    She wrote that night. Her letters were delivered by the morning post.
    Mr. Slump said: “Send her our usual letter of congratulation and advice.”
    “But, Mr. Slump, she’s marrying the wrong one.”
    “Don’t mention that side of it.”
    Five miles away Aimée uncovered the first corpse of the morning. It came from Mr. Joyboy bearing an expression of such bottomless woe that her heart was wrung.

Eight
    M r. Slump was late and crapulous.
    “Another letter from la belle Thanatogendos,” said Mr. Slump. “I thought we’d had the last of that dame.”
    Dear Guru Brahmin,
    Three weeks ago I wrote you that everything was all right and I had made up my mind and felt happy but I am still unhappy, unhappier in a way than I was before. Sometimes my British friend is sweet to me and writes poetry but often he wants unethical things and is so cynical when I say no we must wait. I begin to doubt we shall ever make a real American home. He says he is going to be a pastor. Well as I told you I am progressive and therefore have no religion but I do not think religion is a thing to be cynical about because it makes some people veryhappy and all cannot be progressive at this stage of Evolution. He has not become a pastor yet he says he has something to do first which he has promised a man but he doesn’t say what it is and sometimes I wonder is it something wrong he is so secretive.
    Then there is my own career. I was offered a Big Chance to improve my position and now no more is said of that. The head of the department is the gentleman I told you of who helps his mother in the housework, and since I plighted my troth with my British friend and wrote to tell him he never speaks to me even as much as he speaks professionally to the other girls of the department. And the place where we work is meant to be Happy that is one of the first rules and everyone looks to this gentleman for an Example and he is very unhappy, unlike what the place stands for. Sometimes he even looks mean and that was the last thing he ever looked before. All my fiancé does is to make unkind jokes about his name. I am worried too about the interest he shows in my work. I mean I think it quite right a man should show interest in a girl’s work but he shows too much. I mean there are certain technical matters in every business I suppose which people do not like to have talked about outside the office and it is just those matters he is always asking about…
    “That’s how women always are,” said Mr. Slump. “It just breaks their hearts to let any man go.”
    There was often a missive waiting for Aimée on her work-table. When they had parted sourly the night before Dennis transcribed a poem before going to bed and delivered it at the mortuary on his way to work. These missives in his fine script had to fill the place of the missing smiles; the Loved Ones on their trolleys were now as woebegone and reproachful as the master.
    That morning Aimée