I was living in a b-house in Ealing. The years were rolling on, or crawling on. Lower Binfield had passed almost out of my memory. I was the usual young city worker who scoots for the 8.15 and intrigues for the other fellow』s job. I was fairly well thought of in the firm and pretty satisfied with life. The post- war success dope had caught me, more or less. You remember the line of talk. Pep, punch, grit, sand. Get et out. There』s plenty of room at the top. You 』t keep a good man down. And the ads in the magazines about the chap that the boss clapped on the shoulder, and the keen-jawed executive who』s pulling down the big dough and attributes his success to so and so』s correspondence course. It』s funny how we all swallowed it, even blokes like me to whom it hadn』t the smallest application. Because I』m her a go- getter nor a down-and-out, and I』m by nature incapable of beiher. But it was the spirit of the time. Get on! Make good! If you see a man down, jump on his guts before he gets up again. Of course this was in the early twenties, when some of the effects of the war had worn off and the slump hadn』t yet arrived to knock the stuffing out of us.
I had an 『A』 subscription at Boots ao half- dances and beloo a local tennis club. You know those tennis clubs in the genteel suburbs—little wooden pavilions and high wire- ing enclosures where young chaps in rather badly cut white flannels prance up and down, shouting 『Fifteen forty!』 and 『Vantage all!』 in voices which are a tolerable imitation of the Upper Crust. I』d learo play tennis, didn』t daoo badly, and got on well with the girls. At nearly thirty I wasn』t a bad-looking chap, with my red fad butter-coloured hair, and in those days it was still a point in your favour to have fought in the war. I hen or at any other time, succeeded in looking like a gentleman, but oher hand you probably wouldn』t have taken me for the son of a small shopkeeper in a try town. I could keep my end up iher mixed society of a place like Ealing, where the office-employee class overlaps with the middling-professional class. It was at the tennis club that I first met Hilda.
At that time Hilda was twenty-four. She was a small, slim, rather timid girl, with dark hair, beautiful movements, and—because of having very large eyes—a distinct resemblao a hare. She was one of those people who never say much, but remain on the edge of any versation that』s going on, and give the impression that they』re listening. If she said anything at all, it was usually 『Oh, yes, I think so too』, agreeing with whoever had spoken last. At tennis she hopped about very gracefully, and didn』t play badly, but somehow had a helpless, childish air. Her surname was Vi.
If you』re married, there』ll have been times when you』ve said to yourself 『Why the hell did I do it?』 and God knows I』ve said it often enough about Hilda. And once again, looking at it across fifteen years, why DID I marry Hilda?
Partly, of course, because she was young and in a way very pretty. Beyond that I only say that because she came of totally different ins from myself it was very difficult for me to get any grasp of what she was really like. I had to marry her first and find out about her afterwards, whereas if I』d married say, Elsie Waters, I』d have known what I was marrying. Hilda beloo a class I only knew by hearsay, the poverty-stri officer class. Feions past her family had been soldiers, sailors, clergymen, Anglo-Indian officials, and that kin