And now to more personal matters . . .
Several months later Charles wrote from his flat in Knightsbridge:
My dear Anne,
Thanks for your congratulations. Of course it's just a routine thing they give you more or less automatically when you've been a certain amount of time in the Service. I'm rather surprised the American papers made any mention of it--it was only in small print even over here. No, it doesn't carry a handle, thank goodness. Like my father, who was Sir Havelock for forty years, I'm snobbish enough to feel that a knighthood would put one on a level with many people one wouldn't care about--though of course if I were ever offered it (which isn't, I think, any longer a good bet) I should probably rejoice in secret. Anyhow, the C.M.G. leaves me very happily plain mister--it's really nothing but a small enamel cross hanging on a red and blue ribbon just below the white tie when one wears tails--and nowadays, even in London, there are few such occasions . . .
. . . Gerald has just gone back to school after a fine Christmas we had together in the Lake District, doing some of the easier climbs-- easier for him, that is, with his six-foot reach. He's very well and happy and has got to know a girl of about his own age to whom I can only apply the adjective 'strapping' in revenge for the one which, he reported, she bestowed on me--'spry'. Now how do you like that? Am I spry? Gerald met her halfway up a mountain, or halfway down, whichever way you look at it, but the way he looks at it is that fate engineered the whole thing. Perhaps it did. She's a nice girl, anyhow. . .
. . . and Palan continues to enjoy the favour that so often in this world seems to be granted to the one rather than to the ninety-and- nine. I understand he's already negotiating with Korda for the motion picture rights of his life story . . .
. . . and I have the interesting news, which I hope will please you, that I shall soon be crossing the ocean for a short spell in Washington--nothing uniquely important except to me personally, since there'll be a chance to see you. I shall arrive in New York about the tenth of next month . . .
. . . and now, before I send this off, may I add how much I . . .
* * * * *
When he had sealed and addressed the envelope Charles pottered about for a while, looking for that last little thing he would do before going to bed. He took out his notes for the book, but could think of nothing to add to them; then he pulled aside the curtains and looked down on the cars and buses cruising under the lights of a second post-war London in his lifetime. He felt that so many things had happened before, even though far differently, and the thing to do was perhaps just to sit by the window for a few minutes and remember how.
THE END
James Hilton, Time and Time Again
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