A Stranger with a Bag by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Author:Sylvia Townsend Warner [Sylvia Townsend Warner]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571280117
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2011-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

SWANS ON AN AUTUMN RIVER

AS he quitted the Aer Lingus plane from Liverpool and set foot for the first time in his life on Irish soil, he was already a disappointed man. He had promised himself a second caress of the stewardess’s leg; but when the jostle of alighting passengers had brought him conveniently close to her she was standing pressed into the doorway, stiff as a ramrod, her shy, innocent looks which had been so particularly attractive changed for coldness and reserve. So there was nothing to be done. He put the intended tip back into his pocket and stepped off the plane a disappointed man. At his age, such disappointments are serious. You are only young once. At the time it seems endless, and is gone in a flash; and then for a very long time you are old.

Meanwhile, here he was, Norman Repton, aged sixty-nine, hearty as ever though overweight, attending a congress of sanitary engineers on behalf of the firm of Ingatestone & Murgatroyd. The invitation had not come to him. It had been handed on by Collins, the chairman of the board of management. ‘You go, Norman. If you’ve never eaten a Dublin steak, you don’t know what life is.’ He had accepted, though as making a favour of it. He did not wish to admit to himself that at the thought of going to Ireland a long-outgrown desire had staggered to its feet. When he was young the notion of Ireland was romance to him. Its hills were bluer, its songs were sweeter. He knew ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ by heart. Later on he had tried to enlist in the Black and Tans. But after all, he could not have wanted to go to Ireland so very much, since he had never gone there.

There were some mountains on the skyline. Their shapes were graceful, but they were not particularly blue. Everywhere else was flattish, calm, dull, unexpectedly neat—though, of course, the pigs and the cabins and the red petticoats would have been expurgated from the vicinity of an airport—and composedly autumnal. A cold wind blew steadily from the west. It was not raining. It was not what he had meant.

Harvey Jessop was not what he had meant, either—that walking encyclopedia of facts and figures, a man whose presence would shrivel any sense of adventure. Nevertheless, recognizing his mincing gait and sloping shoulders among the group of passengers, now some way ahead, Norman Repton quickened his steps, caught up with him, hailed him.

‘Hullo, Jessop! Going to the congress, too?’

‘I didn’t know you were coming.’

It was on the tip of his tongue to retort, ‘Fancy there being anything you didn’t know!’ and at another time he would have said it; but now he did not want to alienate Jessop. With Jessop, one at least knew where one was. One couldn’t be disillusioned in him. At Jessop’s side he went through the customs, answered that he was over on a visit, was wished a pleasant stay. On Jessop’s heels he went out through the glass doors.

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