Down in the City (11 page)

A sleek black-and-silver taxi cruised up one side of the street and down the other. Leo Schmidt was having a poor day—that is, one slightly less successful than yesterday which had been, as usual, a bonanza.

‘There's not enough dough floatin' about,' he complained to his wife at dinner. ‘The country's goin' to the dogs. It's the ruddy government. Now if we was in Russia'—he paused over his steak—‘it'd be different.'

‘How?' his wife asked.

‘For God's sake, don't nag! Just different.'

Stan hailed the cab. He gave his order curtly and settled back on the well-sprung seat to review his meeting with Vi. He bit nervously at a jagged fingernail.

‘I
said
, Mister, do you want a tip for Saturday?'

Catching the sense without hearing the words, Stan glanced up at the driver's mirror. ‘No!'

‘Okay. Okay. Keep your hair on!'

Everything's all right, Stan congratulated himself. She never expected anything for herself. She doesn't hold it against me. No reason why she should. She's a sensible kid. And a lot more. But what about Est? She wouldn't be too keen on it if she knew.

The banal wording of his thought, the understatement, gave him a twinge, and he gazed uneasily out of the window at the dull brick bungalows and small suburban food shops.

Well, she won't know, he decided, so it won't make any diff to her or the way I am about her. She knows things about me I'd never tell Vi in a million years. What's between us—it's different. A man and his wife.

It sounded good and solid.

Yes, but you can't let old friends down. A pal like Vi you can't just dump. Vi. Vi…

Her name went round and round in his brain, leading the way to a suspicion he had been searching for. Now, she hadn't been by herself all this time. Not Vi. He began to wonder who she might have been seeing. Joe, maybe. No. He was pretty well occupied. But someone.

There was a foul taste in his mouth. He screwed down the window and spat.

The taxi dropped him at Jeffries' cracked and peeling gate. While he searched in his pockets for change he gazed dispassionately up and down the barren asphalt road, at the rows of semi-detached single-storied houses of dark red brick. The dim light of day could not pierce the narrow windows of the houses, and electric light glowed feebly at scattered points along the street. As Stan fumbled with the unfamiliar gate catch, a greasy sheet of newspaper whipped from the gutter and clung to his legs: cursing, he freed himself and made his way round to the side door.

In the kitchen, over tea and baked beans, the two men discussed the arrangements for Jeffries' forthcoming trip to Melbourne. The ex-gardener had proved himself as able as any of the boys who travelled for Stan, and in a comparatively short time had been made responsible for organising the manufacture of machine parts in other states.

‘You don't want to hump manure and dig holes all your days,' Stan had said to him at the beginning, not adding, as he might, ‘You know too much. It doesn't suit me to have you working for the Prescotts.' But Jeffries had understood, and both men profited by the new agreement.

In the early afternoon, the business completed, Stan caught a taxi to the Bridge Heights Hotel, where he stayed for the rest of the day, sitting by himself. At last, rousing himself to go home, he hailed another taxi, and, paying his fare grudgingly, stepped from the car with alcoholic carefulness.

Brooding over the luck of a car owner who had in one day paid three cab fares, he said to a passerby, ‘These coves are making a fortune.'

The sound of his voice, the shocked face of the middle-aged woman he had addressed, told him that he was rather drunk, but to prove the scientific truth of his theory that whisky cleared the brain, he ran swiftly, diagonally, up the entrance stairs of Romney Court.

Esther heard him at the door and hurried to let him in. When she saw his face she thought with relief that David, whom she had managed to push out of the flat half an hour earlier, would now be some miles away.

‘Hello, darling. I'm only in for about half an hour,' he sighed. ‘Have to meet the boys again later. Work, work, work.' He attempted a rueful laugh.

‘Oh, must you?' But she didn't protest seriously, knowing that much of his business was done at night.

They went through to the dining room, and Stan blinked owlishly at the lighted candles that burned on the table. His reactions were unusually slow.

‘What-ho!…A celebration?' he hazarded.

‘No, but I thought candles would look cheerful on such a miserable night. It's so bleak outside.'

‘Very cheerful,' he said, nodding his head, thinking of Vi and feeling a little sad and indulgent towards Esther. ‘Sorry, pet.' He looked at her sheepishly. ‘I think I had a bit too much at the pub this evening. Sorry.'

His admission somehow had the effect of making her feel safe and protective. And while he sat down and shook his head experimentally, she went to the kitchen, tranquil, humming a tune.

Lowering the gas jets under the vegetables, she served the soup and put the pot in the sink to soak. As she carried the plates in and set them on the table she said, ‘David called in this afternoon. Just to see how I was,' she added when Stan made no comment.

After a long pause he said, ‘Oh,
did
he?' and the weight of hostile insinuation in his voice made her freeze. ‘Checking up on his low-class brother-in-law, was he?'

‘Oh, Stan,' she began hopelessly, and stopped. ‘Here is your soup, pet. Come, have it while it's hot. It will make you feel better.' She looked at him across the room and raised her eyebrows appealingly. ‘I think I'll start. I'm hungry.'

He mocked, ‘Starting without me! Dear, dear! What manners! I thought you knew better than that, my dear Esther. Your poor ignorant husband expects you to show him the right way to do things, and here…'

The candlelight threw shadows on Esther's face as she stared at him, expressionless with apprehension. The light gleamed on the embroidery of her black cashmere sweater, flickered in the creamy depths of the soup she could not eat.

Stan muttered to himself, ‘Me sayin' I'm sorry to her because a man's had a drink on a cold day to get warm.'

‘And what did our friend David have to say for himself, eh?…Eh?'

Esther knelt on the floor beside his chair. ‘Stan, listen. I love you.'

What else? What other words could she say? Encircled by his animosity, a kind of frustrated speechlessness lodged in her chest, she felt the inadequacy of words as a means of breaking through to him. Language was no link between species. ‘Everyone belonging to me likes and admires you for yourself, Stan. I wish you'd believe me. I wish you would.'

The theatrical quality of the scene appalled her, and suddenly she turned away.

Stan had seldom seen Esther cry, and her tears had never gratified him more. They put her in the wrong, made his defection very understandable. At the same time, he complained, ‘So this is the high-and-mighty thing I married!'

After a few minutes he saw that she had stopped crying. The thought filtered through to his muddled senses that she had never looked more splendid. The thin face, the grey eyes, her expression…What was her expression? He gazed at her interestedly, but he could not define it. It was Esther's face and it looked serious, or sad, or something—further than that he would not go. In spite of the tears there was quality there—the real thing. For a moment he was smugly content that he possessed quality, that he had upset quality.

‘What are you trying to do, Stan?'

He waved a supercilious hand. ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.' Something had deflated inside him. Not knowing what else to do, he went into the bathroom and let the cold shower run over his head. Water soaked through his collar, ran down his chest, splashed the shoulders of his coat.

At length he turned off the tap, dried his face and combed his hair. He threw his coat into the hall cupboard and dragged a woollen pullover on top of his damp shirt.

The unfamiliar candles, still burning, caught his eye when he went back to the other room. Esther looked up at him as he stood in the doorway, dumb.

‘Will you have some dinner now?'

He held up his hands and dropped them. ‘Please.'

When they sat down he said, ‘I don't know why I do it. No use saying I'm sorry if I keep on doing it.' He put his elbows on the table, his head in his hands.

She spoke quickly, almost pettishly, remembering her thoughts but not her feeling. ‘You must hate me, Stan, when you want so badly to humiliate me. You can't want to hurt someone you love. Can you?'

‘Oh, God!' Stan groaned, and poured some brandy for her. ‘Drink it!' he said. He watched her for a minute more, opened his mouth to speak but, finding no words, stuffed his hands in his pockets and strode onto the balcony.

The night was black and there was a high wind. His eyes saw the dark outlines of buildings, their windows lighted. He saw the streetlights, solitary beacons, the lights on the harbour bridge. He had seen it all a thousand times before. He thought of Vi and cursed under his breath, impatiently.

‘Est,' he said, going back into the room. ‘It didn't mean anything. I just had a bit too much. I can't even remember what it was all about.'

Neither could Esther catch a sentence, remember a phrase to justify her own outburst, the unrestraint she hated.

Should she have been indifferent? she wondered. She didn't know. But something in her was outraged. It was not a question of reason. A quarrel crushed life and time, left no person innocent.

‘Why don't you yell at me or something?' Stan demanded, exasperated. He moved round behind her chair and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘I didn't mean anything, Est. I don't know what I'd do…'

His protestations sounded flat and unconvincing even to his own ears. And Esther wondered why anger and abuse should be so richly stimulating, why they should have the seal of genuine feeling, while sorrow and regret have the tasteless quality of watered milk—unsatisfactory alike to those who offer and those who receive.

Without turning, she said, ‘I know.' Then she straightened her finely pleated skirt, and said, ‘I think my hair must be standing on end. I must fix it.'

Through globules and spangles of cold water she saw, as she splashed her face, the frieze of blue-tiled fish swimming round the green-tiled sea of the bathroom wall. Once, in a rare mood of light-heartedness, Stan had christened them.

‘The only pets we've space for,' he had said. ‘Leo and Cleo, Arthur and Martha, Dover and Clover…'

She identified them automatically while she cleaned her face and applied new make-up.

‘I've reheated the soup, Est.' Stan came out of the kitchen as she returned. He gave her arm a squeeze. ‘You look great,' he said heartily, his mouth smiling widely.

‘That's good,' she said. It seemed to answer both declarations. She blew out the candles and carried them, one in each hand, dark red candles trailing frail banners of smoke, to the sideboard. Before sitting down she switched on the wireless and stood looking at the lighted panel as she turned the dial in search of music.

Stan glanced at his watch and thought again of Vi. This carry-on had lasted long enough. It was ten past seven. He could leave in about ten minutes and be with her by half-past. He began scooping up his soup: he swallowed the overdone roast in chunks and said he would give coffee a miss.

After changing his damp shirt he came back to say goodbye. ‘You should see if young Rachel'll go to the pictures with you,' he said. ‘You'd be in good time for the eight o'clock session.'

Walking to the door with him, Esther said she probably would.

‘I'll be pretty late.' Stan shrugged into his overcoat. ‘You'd better not wait up for me, pet. Damn and blast having to go out on a night like this. If they were all worth their salt they could manage things without me there. Haven't got a brain between them.' He kissed her on the cheek and went.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The small swimming pools staked out like oyster beds at various points inside the harbour are not admired by those who have close access to the beaches of the many ocean suburbs. The pools have neither the clear sandy floor nor the rolling breakers of the beaches, and instead of yellow sifted sand, sunbathers must lie on gritty salt-and-pepper shingle. But, since they are frequented, for convenience's sake, by dwellers on the fashionable south side of the harbour, the pools acquire a certain social distinction.

All winter long these fenced-in patches of harbour water and shingle lie forlorn, deserted by all except the few energetic elderly men who exercise and swim regardless of temperature.

But now, although one week might hold a day that looked like summer, and another like winter, it was really spring: a spring heralded in the seasonless land by some lines in a newspaper, and not, as in others, by the slow unfolding of the apple-green umbrella of the trees.

Having read the news and bought her summer clothes, Laura Maitland decided that the time had come to begin her pilgrimages to the pool with Anabel. It was not that Laura liked to swim—she did not. Nor had she any interest in the pleasures of burning fair skin, oiling, peeling, burning, and finally turning a shade darker than she was by nature intended to be. But for Anabel's sake, she had last night decided, it was her duty to be at the right place at the right time. Anabel was friendly. Some of
their
children were bound to be friendly. It stood to reason that, given the assistance of time, luck, and the law of averages, she herself was certain to have an opportunity for conversation: after that she would need no further help from fate.

But, passing the morning, its motives and results, through the astringent test of her own self-knowledge, Laura shook her head. Did she really want, or want Anabel, to be friends with the habitués of the pool? They had been there this morning in a group, looking long and lean and brown, cool and hard-eyed. They were smarter than Americans, prettier than the English. To them a broken fingernail, the first grey hair, was worse than death. It was unlikely, Laura thought, that they believed in death at all. One had money, one was smart, one lived in Sydney, one was immortal and so was one's youth.