Down in the City (10 page)

Upstairs, Stan sat with his head in his hands while Esther, on the arm of his chair, watching him, lit two cigarettes and put one between his fingers. Stan dragged at it and, after exhaling, lifted his head. ‘Yap, yap, yap! If she doesn't think she's it!' He closed his eyes with disgust and opened them quickly again to warn: ‘I'm not going down there again. If you want to—okay—that's fine with me. Just leave me out of it.'

Esther got up to pull the curtains across the windows. It was raining hard. She held her cigarette in her left hand while she reached up, smoothly guiding the material as it shut out the cold black glass. She switched on the radiator and the table lamp.

‘If someone knocks at the door tonight, don't answer it.'

She had been at the mantelpiece, tipping ash from her cigarette. Now she turned slowly, amazed by his change of subject, and eyes met, alone, for the first time that night.

‘Why?'

‘Because I say so.'

‘Tell me what's wrong.' She was startled, and her voice, where she meant to be calm, was sharp. ‘Please,' she insisted. ‘If there's anything wrong, Stan, I want to know. Surely—' she stopped abruptly, not wanting to say too much.

Stan sighed heavily and heaved himself about in his chair. ‘Sure, sure.'

She thought: He's going to tell me.

‘But I don't know what you're all excited about. It's only business. You wouldn't understand about it, pet. Everything's okay, if you just do what Stan tells you.'

Her mild resentment went with an inaudible sigh. She sat down. ‘All right.'

‘There's one thing, though—I could do with a drink.' Stan waited, but Esther remained still, so he lumbered into the kitchen himself and raked in the cupboard. Coming back, his glass in his hand, he sat on the floor with his back against her legs.

Automatically, Esther smoothed his hair. The light, soothing pressure of fingers on scalp gave him a momentary sense of peace, but almost at once it flickered out. He was swamped by a dreary, restless despair. He felt old. Time went too fast. Life wasn't funny any more. What was it all about, anyway?

He drained his glass and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘Everything will be all right. You'll feel better soon,' Esther said gently, not caring if he drank too much.

Yeah, like hell, he thought. Much you know.

He caught her hand, laced her fingers through his, studied the skin, pressed the bone. It was a long, fine hand. He dropped it discontentedly.

‘I better get that dough tomorrow,' he said suddenly.

‘What do you mean?'

‘For this cove that's coming.'

Esther looked puzzled, but did not question him and he smiled at her quite tenderly and yawned. ‘Think we ought to turn in now, petty?'

‘Can we?'

‘Sure. Why not? It's late. It's damn chilly, too.'

That was true: although the radiator burned with ugly orange heat, after the Maitlands' heaped-up logs it seemed ineffective and tawdry.

Stan went into the kitchen with his glass, came back and stubbed out his cigarette. Esther lifted her small velvet bag and touched the pile with one finger.

There came three sharp raps on the front door. Esther and Stan stood motionless, jerked to attention.

‘It's okay. Stay there. The light won't show under the door.' An alert, tight smile appeared on his face.

Eyes opened wide, lips parted, Esther listened with all her senses and heard only the pounding of her heart.

Again there were three raps.

Stan turned his smiling, listening face on her, asking her to share his pleasure.

‘Do you know who it is?' she whispered.

‘Course! It's only the cove I told you about. I'll see him tomorrow, when I've got the cash.'

‘But what does he want? Why don't you see him and tell him you'll have it tomorrow?'

‘No need to worry, Est.' Stan's tone was excessively soothing. ‘He'll do a bunk in a minute. Anyway, he's harmless. He's going to give us a bit of a hand.'

‘How?'

‘Oh,' his expression cryptic, maddening, he said, ‘he just knows a man who knows a man…'

CHAPTER ELEVEN

He didn't know how Vi came back into his life: no conscious wish, no intention, had been allowed to reach the surface of his mind, but it happened one day that instead of bypassing the Cross Keys, as he had for months, he went in.

It was morning and the place was quiet. Joe stood at the end of the dimly lit bar polishing glasses with a dry towel. He lifted his head as the door swung shut. After a moment he said, ‘Hi!' casually, unsurprised. A cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth. He returned to his polishing, but as Stan walked slowly over to him their eyes never parted. Their looks were their conversation. Leaning heavily on the bar, Stan pursed his lips: Joe raised his brows and Stan shook his head.

There was a prolonged boom of thunder and the long mirror backing the bar flared for an instant, reflecting the sheet lightning that hung in the sulphurous sky outside.

‘She's out the back.' Joe jerked his head. He moved to the other end of the bar.

Stan looked in three rooms before he found her. They were private drinking parlours, dark and dismal, with browny varnished walls and linoleum floors; each furnished with a leatherette sofa, four wooden chairs and a table—unprepossessing. But the sight of the familiar squalor, reminding him of the past, struck Stan so keenly that he could no longer hide from himself the urgency of his desire to see her again. As he strode down the corridor to the next room his face was grim. He opened the fourth door and saw her standing at the window looking out at the rain, an empty tray hanging in one hand.

Jolted, he thought: Here she is. What now? He was almost surprised to find that she still existed, that her life had gone on all these months; that Vi, whose face he knew as well as his own, stood at the window staring at the rain.

‘Hiya, captain!' he said, striving for jocularity.

There was a silence deeper than silence in the room—a suspension of life. When, seconds later, she could think and move, Vi was aware that a stronger current of life returned to her than had been halted. Stan had come back. Although she had not turned or looked at him, her body was heavy with the knowledge of his presence. The load of ice at her heart had gone, leaving no trace, making her seem by its complete absence almost deprived, a stranger to the self she had grown to know.

Glancing round at him, her eyes were hard.

‘Still got a voice?' He lounged awkwardly in the doorway, grinning. ‘How've you been?'

‘Oh, fine. Just fine.'

Holding out his cigarette case, Stan came towards her, but she shook her head, took one from a packet she had in her pocket, and lit it herself. She was glad then, to sit down. The first spasm of joy had vanished, and her heart was beating with quick, excited bitterness: a bitterness that had been repressed with stoic determination in the early days of his desertion.

Stan looked around, smoking restlessly. ‘Joe ought to get this place done up. It looks like hell.'

‘You've said that before.'

‘He ought to tear those old fireplaces out.'

‘I'll tell him for you.' After a pause she said in a different voice, ‘I suppose this is where we say, “It's been a long time” and all that. Or isn't that why you've come?'

Stan twisted uncomfortably on his chair. ‘Oh, hell! Don't start anything, Vi—forget it. I'm here now, aren't I?'

She knew all about it: some of the boys told her a few days after it happened. Why keep on about it?

She looked away, and Stan's eyes went surreptitiously over the heavy blonde hair, the firm fine skin of her face, the wide mouth, the full curve of her bust at the top of her low-necked dress.

‘Come on, come on!' he rallied her, thickly. ‘Loosen up, why don't you?'

Vi gave a short laugh. ‘Yeah, I'll loosen up, all right.'

He glared at her belligerently until he saw that he was not secure enough for a show of huffy pride or anger. And he was moved by her closeness: he could not go away. He was tied to her by a thousand strands of memory.

‘I'll get some drinks,' he said, and she looked at him without speaking, so he went to the bar.

Alone, Vi sat motionless. She would take him back. There was no decision to be made. He had come, and it looked as if she could have him again if she wanted him—and she did. She did. Then why this angry pain, this flat despair? They would have been appropriate months ago, not now.

It was simply, she supposed, that this time he had done his worst—touched the limit. His going had not revealed what his return immediately made clear. Not one illusion stood.

And yet, some sad quality of life, necessary to her, depended wholly on his presence, words and actions.

Under the compound shock of loss and gain, she sat staring at the wooden table, waiting for him. There was a cold acceptance of the facts, a final renunciation, then a deliberate and quite genuine lifting of her heart.

Stabbing at the battered tin ashtray with her cigarette, she said to herself: You dope, you silly dope; apparently scornful, in fact approving, meaning: Yes, this is the way. This is the only thing.

She heard his footsteps in the passage and her mascaraed lashes flickered over deep blue eyes. They drank together and then she smiled at him. Stan saw the even white teeth, the old familiar expression, and the tension went from his body. He slumped loosely, relieved, but quickly complacent.

‘Well'—he almost rubbed his hands together—‘well, what's the news, kiddo?'

She shook her head at his masculine lack of subtlety and laughed aloud while Stan looked at her, eager to respond, not understanding.

‘My God, you've worn well,' he told her. ‘You're not a bad-looking dame.'

Her mouth curled in appreciation of the compliment. She knew that her looks had not diminished. She had been born to be forty: it was her time. At forty she was more attractive than she had been at twenty, and much hard-earned knowledge had been added to her natural good-humoured charm.

‘What's the news?' Stan asked again, putting his feet up on another chair. ‘I haven't heard anything for weeks.'

A cold silence, hung with a dozen unspoken retorts, fell between them.

Swirling the remainder of her beer in the bottom of the glass, Vi said mechanically, ‘Let's see. What's new?' Her heart thudded dully. When a few scraps of gossip swam like jellyfish into her mind she caught them gratefully. A moment later, transformed into rainbow-coloured aquarium pieces, they sped forth to dazzle Stan.

The morose listening mask of his face lightened gradually as the narration turned into a performance, which, because it was for him, was exceptionally good, even for Vi. They laughed themselves back to silence.

‘Oh dear,' Vi smiled and smoothed her dress.

Stan snorted through his nose. He had forgotten what great company she was. When a man was with her he felt alive.

There was another crash of thunder outside, and a chilly draught swept round them. They turned their heads to the window abstractedly, stared blindly at the grey glass panes.

Less spontaneous now, Vi said, ‘Oh, did you know Nobby and Jock have disappeared? Few weeks ago. They'll turn up again, but Eck says he hopes they stay lost. They put him on to a dead horse and he lost a packet. He found out they were on something else, too.'

‘Huh! Serves the silly cow right!'

‘And old Potty—got a smoke, Stan?—he's in again.'

‘What for this time?'

‘Thanks.' She removed a piece of tobacco from her tongue with a long red fingernail. ‘Same as usual. Poor old Pot—he'll never learn.'

Through the screen of cigarette smoke their eyes made contact, sheered off again like startled birds, and then returned.

Vi drew in a deep breath, let it escape slowly and stubbed out her cigarette. She looked at her watch. It was a small platinum one, a present from Stan. They remembered this, and the occasion of its giving, simultaneously, and both stood up.

‘What about—' Stan began.

‘I'll have to go in a minute…I've got to see what they're doing in the kitchen. We're short-staffed this week.' Her eyes were wide, her mouth drooped pathetically, expectantly. ‘What were you going to say?'

He caught her arms and gave her a hard, lingering kiss, holding her tight until at last, breathless, she pushed him away.

‘Why here and now, of all times and places?'

Silently, he took her again and kissed her with an insistence that made her strain against him and, a moment later, break away.

‘You'll be in tonight.' It was a statement.

‘Yes.'

‘You don't sound very keen. Perhaps you'd like it better if I didn't bother?'

She said shortly, ‘You can please yourself about that. I'm going now.'

Alarmed, he was immediately ingratiating. ‘I was only kidding—you know me.'

‘Yeah. One great clown, aren't you?'

He stood in front of the closed door, feeling masculine and masterful.

‘Come on,' Vi said, ‘let me out.' She was all at once tired and jangled and she wanted to be away from him.

‘Say you're glad to see me,' he wheedled with unnatural jocularity.

Standing close to him she said, with a faint smile, ‘He wants me to tell him.' She gave his arm a little push. ‘Come on, let me out.'

Reluctantly he let her go, and stood for a moment afterwards, listening to the echo of her high-heeled shoes in the bare, beery corridor.

When he went out he raised his hand significantly to Joe like a diplomat who has come home with the treaty signed.

It's on again. We're back together.

In the street it was cold. The light in the sky was still lurid and threatening, for the storm had not broken in force. The wind blew the soft brim of Stan's hat out of shape. Without his car, which was at Cooper's for an overhaul, he felt peculiarly vulnerable, as though, on foot, he might be overtaken and killed by enemies.