This was the last night they were to spend together. Over the years Falkman had become less interested in his work at the stock exchange, and the arrival of older and more serious men had resulted in a series of demotions for him. Many of his friends were facing similar problems. Harold Caldwell had been forced to resign his professorship and was now a junior lecturer, taking postgraduate courses to familiarize himself with the great body of new work that had been done in the previous thirty years. Sam Banbury was a waiter at the Swan Hotel.
Marion went to live with her parents, and the Falkmans’ apartment, to which they had moved some years earlier after the house was closed and sold, was let to new tenants. Falkman, whose tastes had become simpler as the years passed, took a room in a hostel for young men, but he and Marion saw each other every evening. He felt increasingly restless, half conscious that his life was moving towards an inescapable focus, and often thought of giving up his job.
Marion remonstrated with him. ‘But you’ll lose everything you’ve worked for, Jamie. All those years.’
Falkman shrugged, chewing on a stem of grass as they lay in the park during one of their lunch hours. Marion was now a salesgirl in a department store.
‘Perhaps, but I resent being demoted. Even Montefiore is leaving. His grandfather has just been appointed chairman.’ He rolled bver and put his head in her lap. ‘It’s so dull in that stuffy office, with all those pious old men. I’m not satisfied with it any longer.’
Marion smiled affectionately at his na•vet and enthusiasm. Falkman was now more handsome than she had ever remembered him, his sun-tanned face almost unlined.
‘It’s been wonderful together, Marion,’ he told her on the eve of their thirtieth anniversary. ‘How lucky we’ve been never to have a child. Do you realize that some people even have three or four? It’s absolutely tragic.’
‘It comes to us all, though, Jamie,’ she reminded him. ‘Some people say it’s a very beautiful and noble experience, having a child.’
All evening he and Marion wandered round the town together, Falkman’s desire for her quickened by her increasing demureness. Since she had gone to live with her parents Marion had become almost too shy to take his hand.
Then he lost her.
Walking through the market in the town centre, they were joined by two of Marion’s friends, Elizabeth and Evelyn Jermyn.
‘There’s Sam Banbury,’ Evelyn pointed out as a firework crackled from a stall on the other side of the market. ‘Playing the fool as usual.’ She and her sister clucked disapprovingly. Tight-mouthed and stern, they wore dark serge coats buttoned to their necks.
Distracted by Sam, Falkman wandered off a few steps, suddenly found that the three girls had walked away. Darting through the crowd, he tried to catch up with them, briefly glimpsed Marion’s red hair.
He fought his way through the stalls, almost knocking over a barrow of vegetables and shouted at Sam Banbury: ‘Sam! Have you seen Marion?’
Banbury pocketed his crackers and helped him to scan the crowd. For an hour they searched. Finally Sam gave up and went home, leaving Falkman to hang about the cobbled square under the dim lights when the market closed, wandering among the tinsel and litter as the stall holders packed up for home.
‘Excuse me, have you seen a girl here? A girl with red hair?’
‘Please, she was here this afternoon.’
‘A girl…’
‘…called…’
Stunned, he realized that he had forgotten her name.
Shortly afterwards, Falkman gave up his job and went to live with his parents. Their small red-brick house was on the opposite side of the town; between the crowded chimney pots he could sometimes see the distant slopes of Mortmere Park. His life now began a less carefree phase, as most of his energy went into helping his mother and looking after his sister Betty. By comparison with his own house his parents’ home was bleak and uncomfortable, altogether alien to everything Falkman had previously known. Although kind and respectable people, his parents’ lives were circumscribed by their lack of success or education. They had no interest in music or the theatre, and Falkman found his mind beginning to dull and coarsen.
His father was openly critical of him for leaving his job, but the hostility between them gradually subsided as he more and more began to dominate Falkman, restricting his freedom and reducing his pocket money, even warning him not to play with certain of his friends. In fact, going to live with his parents had taken Falkman into an entirely new world.
By the time he began to go to school Falkman had completely forgotten\\ his past life, his memories of Marion and the great house where they had lived surrounded by servants altogether obliterated.
