‘Ready?’ asked Miss Vaughan.
And again the typists did not answer, and did not look up at her. Miss Vaughan was not concerned, just as though it were the thing to do. She returned to Mr Blair’s room with the letters, and put them on his desk for signature.
‘I could catch the twelve-thirty post with them, Mr Blair.’
A dragged ‘Yes’ from Mr Blair, and he paused, looked at her, his pen in the air. ‘Miss Vaughan?’
‘Yes, Mr Blair?’
There was a sudden softening of the Blair features, almost as if he was on the point of smiling, but Miss Vaughan seemed concerned only with his eyes. She could not recall her employer ever taking such a long look as this.
‘Yes sir?’ she said.
‘You do not appear to me to like people very much,’ said Mr Blair, and immediately he saw the Vaughan eyes close behind the spectacles.
‘Some people are nice,’ she replied, and opened them again.
Mr Blair resumed signing the letters, and he thought that this was the closest he had ever got to his so efficient secretary. Miss Vaughan listened to the scratching of the pen.
Still scratching, Mr Blair said, laughingly, ‘I know of course that just being a person can be something of a nuisance.’ Miss Vaughan said nothing, and her eye followed the moving pen.
‘There,’ said Mr Blair, and sat up.
She was still quiet in her chair, motionless, waiting again.
Though the question shot right out of the blue, it did not disturb Miss Vaughan.
‘Miss Vaughan?’
‘Yes, Mr Blair?’
‘You are happy here?’ he asked.
‘I am happy here,’ she said, and, knowing her, Mr Blair accepted it as final.
‘I’m glad,’ he said.
She gave him her first smile of the day.
‘If you should change your mind, Miss Vaughan, there is still the spare room at Ty Baen.’
Miss Vaughan said she was quite content, and added, for good measure, ‘Thank you, Mr Blair.’
In a moment she realised that the strict rhythm of Mr Blair’s day was becoming relaxed, since he did not hand her the letters to fold up and finally seal, but now sat back in his chair, and said casually, ‘A friend of mine came to see me the other day, Miss Vaughan, a very respectable woman indeed, some trouble about her brother. She was very worried about him. Some kind of emotional upset.’ He paused, then offered her his usual smile. ‘Apparently her brother has fallen in love with a woman in the town. I said no, since I never deal with the cases of friends.’ And after another short pause, ‘Get these letters away, Miss Vaughan,’ and he handed her the small black briefcase that he had just taken from the bottom drawer of his desk. ‘The bank first, Miss Vaughan, and then the post office.’
She folded the letters, put them in their envelopes, sealed them, and got up. She had not heard a single word of what Mr Blair had been saying, for the captain of the ship that could never sail had been talking into her ear for the past five minutes, so Miss Vaughan was worried again; she had cried in her dream about this unfortunate ship, her more unfortunate captain.
‘Seventeen letters, Miss Vaughan,’ said Mr Blair.
‘Oh - - - yes - - that’s right, Mr Blair. Thank you,’ and left the office, leaving Mr Blair staring at the glass panelled door, long after she had departed.
‘A strange women’ he thought. Excellent at her job, never complains, always punctual, best he’d ever had – but – in personal matters, so remote, sometimes so odd, so withdrawn, so private, and had a momentary vision of Miss Vaughan wearing a large white card round her neck on which was printed in large black letters, DON’T TOUCH. He gave a quiet chuckle, and then got down to his work again.
Miss Vaughan, meanwhile, proceeded towards the bank and the post office, though, and it was unusual for her, she had slackened her pace. The ship’s captain no longer whispered in her ear. It had been replaced by a sudden awesome joy that spread like light throughout her whole body, remembering as she did the words of Mr Blair’s that had been so quiet and casual, so that once again she had the heightened awareness, and final knowledge that the man from Penuel was again behind her, a black funeral, ponderous and slow, his black Homburg stiff on his head, enveloped in his black overcoat. She had felt him outside the office, felt him outside Cartref, in the High Street, and smiled her secret smile. Her awesome joy increased, remembering that not once had she turned her head to look at him, and would not smile at a man that depended on them. But now, just as she came in sight of the bank, she did suddenly stop dead, and turn very slowly round and look back. He was not there. There was nobody there. She increased her pace, and stepped into the bank.
‘Silly man,’ she thought, as she handed in Mr Blair’s income for one whole week.
‘Good morning, Miss Vaughan,’ the clerk said, half smiling, then suddenly grim. ‘Please sit down.’
She sat down, opened her bag, examined herself in the mirror, put it back again, got up, and began pacing the room, whilst the clerk went hurriedly and accurately through the cheques before him. He then made out the receipt and called her.
‘Thank you, Miss Vaughan. Good morning.’
‘Good morning,’ and Miss Vaughan continued her journey to the post office.
She thought of Mr Blair, pressing in his invitation to tea at his home, the offer of a room there. It occasioned no smile, inside or outside.
Having done her business with the post office, Miss Vaughan continued down the High Street, finally turning in at the Blue Bird Cafe for her usual cup of coffee. It was empty, so she rang the little bell at her table, with an idle glance at the cafe’s sentry-box, and then saw the girl come from behind the blue curtains. They knew each other only by sight.
‘Good morning, m’am.’
‘Good morning. Coffee, please.’
The girl served her, vanished behind the curtains and left Miss Vaughan sitting by the window, slowly sipping her coffee. And again the dream was live, and again the captain was there. She thought of this, she thought hard about it. Was the boat still there, flagless, the hatches still off, the holds gaping. Was the anchor still clinging to the bottom of the sea? She put down the cup, she closed her eyes.
‘He was just going to tell me about that anchor when I woke up,’ thought Miss Vaughan. ‘I wonder now, I wonder.’ Never sailing at all, and the poor Captain on the poop, quite alone, poor derelict man, and staring to every point of the compass, and the wind, the wind. Perhaps if the weather changed all would be different, that anchor come up, the sound of it like music in the Captain’s ears, the drag and the pull and the triumph of it breaking dead water, at last. And she was close to the ship now, and close to the man. And with him she slowly raised her head, looked balefully at the sky. ‘Terrible,’ thought Miss Vaughan. ‘Terrible.’ She thought of the crew, hidden, buried away in ship’s holes, silent in the silence, not daring to move, wanting to, looking up, daring themselves not to look up. If the weather changed, if the sky cleared, if the still ship trembled, broke free of the prison. ‘Poor Captain,’ she thought. ‘Poor man.’
She was still alone in the room, hard by the window, looking out, beyond the High Street, beyond the town. The coffee had gone cold. She had forgotten it was there, didn’t see the face of the girl watching through the curtains, the eyes asking, a silence waiting to be broken.
