Complete Short Stories (VMC) (23 page)

But Dosie, at the French windows, took no notice. She could feel the sun striking through her thin frock, and she seemed to unfold in the warmth, like a flower. In the borders, lilies stood to attention in the shimmering air, their petals glazed and dusty with pollen. The scent was wonderful.

‘I shall bathe in the pool,’ she said, over her shoulder. The pool – a long rectangle of water thick with plants – was deep and Dosie had never learnt to swim, had always floundered wildly.

Only Ricky Jimpson remonstrated.

‘She can’t swim,’ Auntie said, dismissing her daughter’s nonsense. ‘Does anyone
want
to go on playing?’

Mrs Wilson certainly did not. She had never believed in last desperate flings, throwing good money after bad. In games of chance there was no
certainty but that she would lose; even the law of averages worked against her. What she wanted now was a cup of tea and aspirins, for champagne agreed with her no better than roulette. She felt lost. Her widowhood undermined her and she no longer felt loved.

But who was loved – in this room, for instance? Mrs Wilson often thought that her husband would not have dared to die if he had known she would drift into such company. ‘What
you
need, darling, is a nice, cosy woman friend,’ Fergy had said years ago when she had reacted in bewilderment to his automatic embrace. He had relinquished her at once, in a weary, bored way, and ignored her coldly ever since. His heartless perception frightened her. Despite her acceptance of – even clinging to – their kind of life, and her acquiescence in every madness, every racket, she had not disguised from him that what she wanted was her dull, good husband back and a nice evening with the wireless; perhaps, too, a middle-aged woman friend to go shopping with, to talk about slimming and recipes. Auntie never discussed those things. She was the kind of woman men liked. She amused them with her scatter-brained chatter and innuendo and the fantasy she wove, the stories she told, about herself. When she was with women, she rested. Mrs Wilson could not imagine her feeling unsafe, or panicking when the house emptied. She seemed self-reliant and efficient. She and Dosie sometimes quarrelled, or appeared to be quarrelling, with lots of ‘But,
darling
!’ and ‘
Must
you be such a fool, sweetie?’ Yet only Thomas, the symbol of the post-war world, was really an affront. Him she could not assimilate. He was the grit that nothing turned into a pearl – neither gaiety nor champagne. He remained blank, impervious. He took his life quite seriously, made no jokes about the Army, was silent when his mother said, ‘Oh,
why
go? Catch the last train or wait until morning. In fact, why don’t you desert? Dosie and I could hide you in the attic. It would be the greatest fun. Or be ill. Get some awful soldier’s disease.’

Dosie was blocking the sunlight from the room, and Mrs Wilson suddenly felt goose flesh on her arms and cramp in her legs from sitting on the floor.

Ricky Jimpson put his winnings in his pocket without a glance at them. He sat, bent slightly forward, with one hand pressed to his waist. He smiled brilliantly if he caught anybody’s eye, but his face soon reassembled itself to its look of static melancholy. The smile was an abrupt disorganisation. His eyes rarely followed Dosie. He seemed rather to be listening to her, even when she was silent. He was conscious of her in some other way than visually. His spirit
attended
to her, caught up in pain though he was.

The roulette cloth was folded and put away. The marmoset was busy tearing one of the cushion tassels. Then, to Mrs Wilson’s relief, the door
opened and a maid pushed in a trolley with a jazzy black-and-orange pottery tea-set and some rolled-up bread and butter.

Dosie wandered out across the gravelled path in her stockinged feet. The garden, the golf course beyond it, and all the other wistaria-covered, balconied Edwardian villas at its perimeter seemed to slant and swoon in the heat. Her exasperation weakened and dispersed. She always felt herself leaving other people behind; they lagged after her recklessness. Even in making love, she felt the same isolation – that she was speeding on into a country where no one would pursue her. Each kiss was an act of division. ‘Follow me!’ she willed ‘them’ – a succession of them, all shadowy. They could not follow, or know to what cold distances she withdrew. Her punishment for them was mischief, spite, a little gay cruelty, but nothing drastic. She had no beauty, for there was none to inherit, but she was a bold and noticeable woman.

When Fergy joined her in the garden, he put his arm across her shoulders and they walked down the path towards the pool. Water-lilies lay picturesquely on the green surface. The oblong of water was bordered by ornamental grasses in which dragonflies glinted. A concrete gnome was fishing at the edge.

They stood looking at the water, lulled by the heat and the beauty of the afternoon. When he slipped his arm closer round her, she felt herself preparing, as of old, for flight. Waywardly, she moved from him. She stripped seeds off a tall grass, viciously, and scattered them on the water. Goldfish rose, then sank away dejectedly.

‘Let us throw in this bloody little dwarf,’ Dosie said, ‘and you can cry for help. They will think I am drowning.’ She began to rock the gnome from side to side. Small brown frogs like crumpled leaves leapt away into the grass.

‘Auntie dotes on the little creature,’ Fergy said. ‘She has a special nickname for him.’

‘So have I.’

Together they lifted the gnome and threw him out towards the centre of the pool.

‘I always loathed the little beast,’ Dosie said.

‘Help!’ Fergy cried. ‘For
God’s
sake, help!’

Dosie watched the house, her face alight, her eyebrows lifted in anticipation. Rings widened and faded on the water.

Ricky Jimpson dashed through the French windows and ran towards the pool, his face whiter than ever, his hand to his side. When he saw them both standing there, he stopped. His look of desperation vanished. He smiled his brilliant, dutiful smile, but, receiving one of his rare glances, Dosie saw in his eyes utter affliction, forlornness.

That evening, Thomas, on his way back to Aldershot, met Syd at the top of the station subway; as per usual arrangement, Syd had said when they parted the day before. Their greeting was brief and they went in silence towards the restaurant, shouldering their way along the crowded platform. In the bar, they ordered two halves of mild-and-bitter and two pieces of pork-pie.

Syd pushed back his greasy beret and scratched his head. Then he broke open the pie to examine the inside – the pink gristle and tough grey jelly.

‘What they been up to this time?’ he asked.

‘The usual capering about. My mother was rather lit up last night and kept doing the Charleston.’

‘Go on!’

‘But I suppose that’s better than the Highland fling,’ Thomas said. ‘Pass the mustard.’

Syd, whose own mother rarely moved more than, very ponderously, from sink to gas stove, was fascinated. ‘Like to’ve seen it,’ he said. ‘From a distance.’

‘What did you do?’ Thomas asked.

‘Went to the Palais Saturday night along with Viv. Never got up till twelve this morning, then went round the local. Bit of a read this afternoon, then went for a stroll along with Viv. You know, up by the allotments. Had a nice lie-down in the long grass. She put her elbow in a cow-pat. Laugh!’ He threw back his head and laughed there and then.

‘Same again,’ Thomas said to the barmaid. ‘Want some more pie, Syd?’

‘No, ta. I had me tea.’

‘I made thirty-four bob,’ Thomas said, tapping his breast pocket.

‘You can make mine a pint then,’ Syd said. But Thomas didn’t say anything. They always drank halves. He looked at Syd and wondered what his mother would say of him. He often wondered that. But she would never have the chance. He looked quite fiercely round the ugly restaurant room, with its chromium tables, ringed and sticky, thick china, glass domes over the museum-pieces of pork pie. The look of the place calmed him, as Syd’s company did – something he could grasp,
his
world.

‘Don’t know how they stick that life, week after week,’ Thomas said. ‘My sister threw a garden ornament in the pond – pretended she’d fallen in herself. A sort of dwarf,’ he added vaguely.

‘What for?’ Syd asked.

‘I think she was fed up,’ Thomas said, trying to understand. But he lived in two irreconcilable worlds.

Syd only said, ‘Rum. Could they fish it out again?’

‘No one tried. We had tea then.’ He gave up trying to explain what he did not comprehend, and finished his beer.

‘Better get a move on,’ Syd said, using as few consonants as possible.

‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Thomas looked at the clock.

‘The old familiar faces.’

‘You’re right,’ Thomas agreed contentedly.

Long, long ago, during the Spanish Civil War, Fernando came to live with us for a short time. Nowadays, refugees are part of the world’s landscape, but he was much less a refugee than an ambassador. He had come to England with other children from the bombed cities of Spain. They lived in a camp near our home, and were always about the country lanes – graceful, swarthy children. Young as they were, fear had come closer to them than to us, and they seemed like our futures walking towards us. Fernando was the one my husband and I knew most intimately. Because of his nervous habits, which shock had caused, the other children teased him; and the camp doctor asked us if we would take him into our home until he recovered. I knew nothing about him except what the doctor told me – that his father, a schoolmaster, was in hiding, his mother in prison, and his one brother, grown-up, had been killed by the Fascists. Nine years old, forlorn, speaking no word of English, he had achieved a jaunty gaiety to cover up his naturally clinging disposition. I imagined him a ‘spoilt’ child (though kindness could no more spoil him than evil had) – much petted, the baby of the family, born to his mother in her middle age.

Although he found himself among strangers in a strange country, he gave no measuring glances, showed no surprise or hesitancy; he walked into our house purposefully, carrying in a paper bag some girls’ underwear he had been given, a cherished Fair Isle jersey, and a handful of glass marbles. Pride was in each step he took.

Neither my husband nor I can speak Spanish, but the dictionary on the dinner table was unnecessary. Fernando reached for what he needed. He pushed back his chair and went round the table, spearing with his fork whatever took his fancy. Never over everyday things did we feel lack of language a barrier; only over subtler things, emotional nuances or matters of reassurance.

He was a robust child with beautiful ways of walking and moving. His dark cheeks were always suffused with rose, an unusual warmth in such a dusky skin. His black hair was curly and untidy, but on formal occasions he combed it under the bath tap in a great rush of cold water.
His appearance was then quite changed. The long damp fringe level above his eyes gave him a sinister look.

Along with the girls’ underwear, he had been given a pair of heavy boots. It was summer, but he would not discard these for the sandals we gave him.

He was never timid or ingratiating, as, in his strange position, he might have been. Only once was he disobedient. I found him striking a box of matches, one by one. Because he always dropped the matches as soon as they flared, he had been told not to touch them. This time, he had used up the whole box. He threw down the last match as I arrived, and smiled. ‘Is quite all right,’ he said in one breath. It was his first English phrase. He did not know the meaning but took it to be reassuring, as it was what I said when he dropped a plate, or, once, when he wet his bed. For his pidgin English we must have been to blame, as he knew no word when he first came to us. He began to talk like a stage Chinaman. ‘Plenty bad,’ he explained when he was discovered stoning the sign of the Cyclists’ Touring Club, which, with its whirling arrangement of legs, he took to be the Fascist swastika.

He sometimes had a male swagger, hands in pockets, his trousers tight across his buttocks. He would whistle, shrug his shoulders, behave in a precociously cheeky manner to me. He had, especially, a startlingly adult wink, with his finger to the side of his nose. Slowly, laden with meaning, his lid would drop. He would do this in company, across a room at me, suggesting a dubious complicity. I wondered if he had watched his grown-up brother in his conquering days, as he had later watched him killed.

His male arrogance was mingled with a strong maternal tenderness. He loved to push our baby in the pram along the lanes, the blond baby sitting up smiling at him as Fernando strode along singing the songs of Republican Spain. For he never forgot that he was Spanish. He accepted our life with grace and courtesy, but he did not become English. He admired the best we had to offer – the Fair Isle jersey, the boots, our babies, the English countryside – but he was always the proud and formal Catalan. He was for the Republic, against the Fascists, politically conscious, loyal. He also spat as he passed the church; in his country the
iglesia
had often concealed machine-guns. He even cleaned his mouth at the sight of the Baptist Chapel.