Bilgewater (20 page)

“I've lived with you for years,” he said.

I said, “Tell me.”

“What?”

“Why did you? Why didn't you live here and come in on the bus? Why did you live with us?”

There was a very long pause and the wind howled around outside. The paper creatures swung and fluttered overhead.

“My father went off,” he said, “That's all. Nothing so odd. Nothing so unusual. Nothing at all unusual if you'd known my mother. Nothing in the least unusual if you'd known my grandmother.”

“Whatever had your
grandmother
—”

“She lived here too. We all lived here. My father had no money. He was a drunk. He was an actor.”

“An actor? Here? In Teesside?”

“Yes. He was on the pierrots.”

“Whatever are pierrots? I thought they were gnomes.”

“They were actors. On the sands. They used to come every summer and put up a tent with an open front for a stage, and rows of deck-chairs and a canvas wall all round. You paid sixpence to come and see the pierrots—in a chair. If you stood round the canvas you saw them free, except that there was a very old pierrot who used to rush round cuffing people and snarling at them to pay or go away. The chairs were nearly always half-empty but there was always a big crowd round the canvas walls.”

“Why didn't they make the canvas wall higher?”

“No money. They were very old canvas walls anyway. All blotchy and brown and held up with hairy string. The deck-chairs weren't so good either. Neither were the pierrots.”

“What are pierrots?”

“Dramatic pre-Christian symbols. Possibly Ancient Greek. They've died out now I think.”

Looking at the page of beautifully transcribed prose on the table I said, “You're telling me that your father was a dramatic pre-Christian symbol possibly Ancient Greek?”

“Yep. Old as Punch and Judy. Same roots.”

“Terrapin, are you mad? Did you ever
see
your father?”

“Yep. Often. He talked to me. He told me about pierrots and the stage and the drama and the importance, almost the holy importance of the actor in society. He was long and thin like me. When he was made up he had a black and white costume with a pattern of diamond patches—satin and a white ruff round his neck and a little black hat like a Jew and painted eyebrows and two round red circles painted on his cheeks.”

“Did all of them?”

“The pierrots? Yes.”

“What did they do?”

“Sing. And dance. And do comic turns. There were pierrot girls, too, in white ballet skirts and black silk bodices. They sang songs like ‘When I grow too old to dream' and ‘There's a little grey home in the west.' Another pierrot played on an upright piano—with candlesticks sticking out of it, in the background. It wasn't a very good piano—I think the sand had got in it over the years—and when the sea was rough you couldn't hear it very well. And often it was windy, too, and the sand blew everywhere and turned the empty deck-chairs inside out and the audience had to hold on to their hats or put newspapers over their heads. When it rained the audience ran for it and left all the chairs to be gathered and stacked up as fast as possible, and covered with tarpaulins, and the pierrots would stop singing and dancing and go round the back and sit on boxes and drink beer until the rain stopped.”

“Did you see them, ever?”

“Yes. Once. My grandmother wouldn't let me for ages. Well, for ages I didn't know even that my father was one—only that he was some sort of a traveller. I used to get post-cards from him from Torquay and Lytham-St. Anne's and Brighton. I think I thought he was a sailor. Then one day he came home—it was when he was doing his fortnight season on the sands round here—and he said, ‘Come on, you're coming with me today,' and he took me off on to the sands and sat me in the front row and told me not to move. I was about five I think. I sat there and sat there—it wasn't a very nice day and there were puddles of sea under the chairs. Then after ages the piano began and the curtain went up and there were all these black and white people with red circles on their cheeks and all of their feet in black pumps, stepping and pointing. They sang a song called ‘I want to be happy'—very loud, all in a row with their arms round each other's waists. Baritones and contraltos. They were absolutely certain of themselves. I forgot the puddles and the sand stinging my legs and the damp deck chair and I just gazed and gazed. And then very slowly it dawned on me that the most beautiful of the men dancing was my father!”

“Did you—” I said. “Did you—” I was thinking very carefully and feeling very confused. It shows I suppose what a very self-centred life I had had, but the idea of a father step-dancing in black and white satin was so very different from my own—“Did you—
like
it?” (I said it and not him.)

“I—worshipped it,” he said. “It was the most beautiful thing that I had ever seen. When the rain really began to come down and the audience went off—some of them throwing pennies and half-pennies into a bag on a stick that the old pierrot who shooed away the gate-crashers held out—when the music stopped my father jumped down off the stage and came over and took my hand and we walked over to the sea in the sea-fret. He went on singing ‘I want to be happy' and the wind kept blowing the white organdy ruff into his face and he kept prancing and jumping about.”

“It sounds,” I said, “as if he
was
happy.”

“I think it was just the song,” said Terrapin.

 

“‘I want to
BE
happy

But I can't
BE
happy

Till I make you happy

TOO
.'

 

“Actually he had a very tired face under the paint. I do remember that. And I remember how thin the costume was when you were near to it and how cold his hands were. They were blue. He took a brandy bottle out of his pocket and swigged it between the verses.”

“Could you—were you old enough to tell him how you loved it—the pierrots?”

“Not really. I don't think so. He did ask me if I knew who he was and I just said ‘Daddy.' Then he said, ‘I'm Harlequin. I'm called Harlequin and I'm very, very old. Can you say Har-le-quin?' I said Harlequin but I was worried—I don't think I was six—because he'd said he was very old and I said ‘Are you going to die soon then?' and he said ‘Never. Never. Never. Never.' And did some very crazy sort of dancing by the sea. We'd collected a trail of kids by then even in the rain and one or two dogs. There was an old chap with a white beard who used to go round the sands gathering sea-coal in a cart. And there was a boy with two donkeys. They all stood round and watched my father.”

“I'd have died,” I said. I couldn't help it.

“What?”

“Well, weren't you—you know—embarrassed?”

“I was so proud of him,” said Terrapin, “I was so proud of him he might have been God.”

“So what happened?” I said.

“He died.”

“But—”

“Well he did. When I was ten. I hadn't seen him for ages. He died at Blackpool of pneumonia. After going on the evening show as usual. We didn't hear for ages.”

“But what about your mother?”

“Oh she'd died long before. She never lived with him. She was crazy. She'd got T.B., too—you used to die of it in those days. T.B. makes you very wild and very sexy and you go at things ten to the dozen—like Keats. She was a bit of a terror, my mother. They were in those days anyway—it was the fashion. She was the old-style romantic heroine, my mother. Rode to hounds.”

“What?”

“Went hunting. Foxes. On a horse.”

“What—here?”

“Round here. She lived here—in the Hall. Her family always had done since William the Conqueror. She was a crazy, inbred aristocrat with a curling lip. Two curling lips. She loathed my guts.”

“But how on earth—? How in the world did she meet your father?”

“How d'you think? On the sands. Galloping through the wavelets on her chesnut mare.”

“I didn't know there were any foxes on the sands.”

He gave me a look. “She was not hunting at that moment. Not foxes. Just romance. She found it.”

“Your father? At the pierrots?”

“Right.”

“I don't believe it.”

“You didn't see my father. I've told you. He was the most marvellous-looking man on earth. I don't suppose he was a drunk then, either.”

“And they married? Just like that?”

“Just like that. The nearest altar. It was an utter disaster.”

I said, “Oh Terrapin, I'm so sorry.” I had got into bed with him by this time. I don't know at which point of the story I had decided to, but there I was. He was still lying with his nose in the air like a knight on a slab but I got up close to him and put my face into his neck. I was very nice and warm now in the long black dress clothes. He felt—his neck and his hands which I'd got hold of—rather cold. After a while he shook my hands off his and scrabbled around and wrapped us both up in the red blanket and we lay there very still.

He said, “No need to be sorry for me now that my grandmother's dead.”

“Was she awful, too?”

“My father was not awful.”

“I mean was she like your mother?”

“No. She was all right. Just a misery. You couldn't blame her. Her husband had been killed in the First War—he'd been a scholarly sort of gent and they hadn't had much to say to each other. Then mother got T.B. and married the pierrot and all she'd got left was me.”

“But didn't she love you? Did you remind her of the pierrot or something?”

“I don't think so. I just wasn't exactly attractive.”

I remembered the gargoyle bellowing about Peeping Toms and the figure with the bulging eyes and croaking throat beside the swimming pool. “You may remember,” he said.

I simply surged with love and said, “Oh Terrapin, oh Terrapin. I do so wish she could see you now.”

“Now?” he said, “She wouldn't have thought me very promising now. At the moment. In bed with a girl who's wearing her sable coat.”

“I'm not in bed with you,” I said putting my arms around his neck and feeling tremendously happy that I was. “I mean, not in that sort of way.”

“My grandmother would not have distinguished.”

“When did she die?”

“Last year.”

“It's getting terribly hot,” I said, “in this fur coat.” We got the coat off somehow under the blanket and chucked it out on the floor. “Anyway, why should she have minded?” I said as we wrapped ourselves up again. “I'm not a pierrot.” I was quite enchanted with myself. I had always thought I had very strong views on sexual morality. I found I had nothing of the kind. Perhaps I should have been more carefully Prepared for Confirmation and not just relied on being father's daughter. “I just love you,” I said.

After a bit Terrapin said, “Bilge—you ought to watch out with me. I'm pretty unstable.”

I said, “Shut up.”

“Well, I'm telling you.”

“I'm in love with you.”

He said, “Look. You ought not to be wearing my grandmother's dress.”

“Why not?”

“It gives me the creeps.”

“It's a lovely dress.”

He said, “Take it off.”

I found that I said no.

“Take it off,” he said more urgently.

There was a string hanging down over the bed for the light so that one could switch it off without getting out of bed and groping for the switch by the door. Terrapin who was not by this time lying like a knight on a slab any more—or not like any knight in any Church that I have ever seen—began to feel about in the air above us to get hold of the string to pull it. At the same moment I got into a panic and somehow or other I got my arm which was half-way out of the granny's dress, free, and began to wave it about in the air, too, trying to catch his and stop him. “
TERRAPIN
,” I said, “Don't.” I knew that the light must not go out.

“You fool,” he said catching the string. The light went out. And at the same moment there was a tremendous knocking and thumping on the door of the tower.

I'
ve brought you a sandwich,” called the voice of Mrs. Deering through the door. “Put that light on again. You needn't pretend you're asleep. I saw it go out a second ago round the crack.”

“Go to hell,” said Terrapin.

“Nice way to talk. And me taking the trouble to come all the way up here with me heart.”

“I thought you said it was a sandwich. Don't move,” he said into my ear in the dark, “Don't breathe.”

“Is it locked?” I whispered.

“No.”

“You know what I mean. You know me heart. I'm puffed to death. 'Ere. Let me come in for a sit down. It's stairs does it the doctor says. I feel it on the stairs.”

Terrapin called, “It's all right Mrs. Deering. I'm not hungry. I'm going to sleep. I've been working.”

“Working, Working. Always working—Half Term holidays an' all. Unnatural sort of life. In my day young folks enjoyed theirselves. You ought to be out finding a nice girl.”

“Just leave it, Mrs. Deering.”

“Eh?”

“The sandwich. Just leave it by the door.”

“Ont' doorstep? The rats'd get it.”

“Don't be ridiculous.”

“I'll eat it meself. I like a sandwich.”

“o.k. That's fine. I got some soup.”

“I saw you 'ad. And left t'pan. I saw it when I got in from me Club.”

“Sorry.”

“Come on now Tom, let us in. Let's have a natter. I been to me daughter's. Dint you 'ear t'car? I thought you'd a bin down when you eared t'car.

He said nothing. We were lying side by side now and a good bit apart. The paper people rustled in the dark above our heads.