Down in the City (3 page)

Three or four times a week she walked the streets of these blocks, smelt the coffee, the flowers, the rich expensive leather, the cosmetics. She looked through ruby glass in antique shops, and handled heavy satins from abroad. Sometimes when she had looked, she bought—perhaps a print, a piece of china, very often clothes, and she dressed well.

She preferred to be alone, to linger when she chose, to weigh her purchases in silence; but occasionally Marion joined her, and, after he married, Hector's wife, Angela.

Esther was twenty-eight when Hector married, and it was later the same year that her father died. Neither event stirred the deep serenity of the big airy house that was her home. Its furniture gleamed; its vases were filled. On the hottest days its rooms were still cool, and fragrant with garden air.

Incapable of responding to the suddenness of her father's death, though not unfeeling, Esther felt nothing. What her brothers took to be admirable control, Marion more truly interpreted as something for which she was, perhaps, to be pitied, but which nevertheless made her, Marion, turn away in pain and anger.

Soon, however, it seemed that nothing had altered: small changes of routine became established and time went on again. There was a movement of coming together to close the gap. There was even a new feeling of camaraderie, a new lightness, that gave these days an easiness the past had never had.

Remote and unchanging, Esther spent her life in this way until she was thirty-three, when she married Stan Peterson, after having known him for two weeks.

CHAPTER TWO

On a Tuesday night in early summer Esther sat alone by the open French windows in the drawing room. So that she might finish a blouse she was making as a present for Marion, she had persuaded her to take a friend to the ballet in her place, pleading a headache.

Now, while her fingers stitched and her eyes stared at silk, a dozen vague impressions filtered through her mind: the scent of roses, a longing for a cigarette, the look and taste of the lemon soufflé Mrs Ramsay had made for dinner, the line of poplars at the end of the garden. She wondered when David and Clem would be home, noticed that her eyes were stinging a little with strain, and that the room was oppressively quiet. She thought that she must stop to switch on the lights and the wireless. But instead, almost at once, she retreated further into herself, blocked all impressions and continued to sew automatically, unconscious of herself, of time.

Presently, though still in the same trancelike state, she threw down her sewing: it really was too dark to see now. She had gone on too long.

Outside, a sky the pure silvery-blue of approaching moonlight changed as she watched, grew deeper blue, and stars appeared; grew black, and shadows fell across the lawn.

Esther sighed and forced herself to rise: it was with a feeling of stone becoming live that her arms and legs obeyed her, moved across the room, switched on the lights.

A blaring cacophony of mechanical noise burst from the wireless and splintered in the air; it was like being pelted with stones and ice, and was equally conducive to wakefulness. Even as she flew to silence it, Esther was grateful for the effect. For an instant afterwards it was very quiet; no city or suburban noises penetrated this tree-walled citadel: the house was a monument to peace. Then Mrs Ramsay, or the wind, banged a door and it was over. She started back to her sewing.

Halfway across the room she stopped, surprised at the sight of an unfamiliar car swinging up the driveway—a long, heavily nickelled, American car. At the front door, out of range of her vision, it bounced to a stop.

Although this was not a house which encouraged casual visits, the rare uninvited caller usually excited a flurry of interest outweighing the faint disapproval. Now, however, caught alone in the house, Esther frowned with impatience.

There was a slam, a pause, a crunch on the gravel, and then the driver stepped from the path into the room. Esther saw a man of average height, well built, with long straight brown hair and a pale smooth-skinned face. He wore a garish sports jacket, checked trousers, a loud tie.

‘This is the Prescotts' place?'

There was a pause, then Esther said, ‘Yes.'

‘Well, I want you to tell me Jeffries' address. I've lost it. I can't find him. Got to see him.' He gave his order in a voice that made her stare. He repeated, ‘Jeffries. I want his address. He works for you, doesn't he?'

Damned women, he fumed; can't understand a simple question.

If it had not been for the brawl with Joe at the Cross Keys, and the fact that he had had more than his quota of drinks for this time of night, he would not have been here. But he was here and he was getting angry. Any of the boys, his pals, would have known how he was feeling, could have guessed how much he had drunk. They would have seen it in his eyes and mouth, in the restless gaze, the derisive curl of his lips, in the key chain rattling furiously in his hand.

Esther knew nothing but astonishment at his behaviour, and then at her own, for, after waiting again, deliberately, she said, ‘I'll see if we have it. Just a moment.'

Her voice was high and unaccented, but in the rise and fall of tone Stan heard security and superiority, polite indifference to his person and his anger, untouchable confidence, and something else—a kind of fastidiousness—which, added to the other labels called up in his mind, made him look at her as she went over to Marion's desk to search among the books and papers. Until then he had seen her as part of the room, and, being a woman, a strange woman, of less interest to him than the furniture, which, he thought, was probably worth a packet.

He despised all women except Vi, and he knew her so well that she hardly counted. Apart from her, women, as being not male, were dirt, and he did not, as a rule, bother to hide this opinion.

But, hazy with drink as he was, he stared at this one with respect as she bent over the desk. Everything he saw confirmed the startling impression that her voice had made. Rather tall—taller than Vi, anyhow—and thin: not a bit like Vi. Real diamonds on her fingers. As she came towards him, holding out a piece of paper, he studied the impersonal grey eyes, the narrow face. She wasn't beautiful—he couldn't say that—but there was a distinction about her that made him want to stare at her, and at the same time feel that he should look away. The key chain was silent in his hand.

Esther had been conscious of his eyes on her, had supposed him to be still antagonistic, and had found the idea almost, she realised with a shock of puzzlement, pleasurable, interesting. Yet when she turned to him she was startled by the change in his expression. The glum, preoccupied mask had gone; Stan was not constrained by any code of good manners to hide what he felt. He made Esther aware that her heart was beating.

‘The address,' she said. ‘I'm glad I was able to find it for you.'

Now why had she said that? He was a queer vulgar man. Why was she glad? Thought and sensation, twin fireflies, flew in sparking, agitated circles.

‘Thanks. Thanks very much,' Stan mumbled, feeling for his wallet.

They stood face to face while he folded the paper with enormous precision, staring at it until it was pushed into a corner of the stamp section, and then at the wallet until it was restored to his pocket.

‘Sorry I barged in on you like this,' he said awkwardly, unused to apologies. ‘It was just that I…' He could not think of an excuse, but Esther told him, by a slight inclination of her head, that there was no need.

By this time his aggression had vanished completely, and in its place a conviction grown that, whisky or no whisky, he had found a woman who was the distillation of all those high qualities that alone, in his aspiring imagination, had seemed the unattainable complement to his own extraordinary nature. She was the mysterious, superior one. Now she moved away, and he rubbed a hand across his mouth in bewilderment.

‘Well, I hope you find him without any trouble,' Esther said, with the curious lack of emphasis that goes with automatic talk. She hesitated, then added, ‘I'm afraid I don't know your name?' It was forced from her, but when it was said she was unrepentant. She must know his name.

‘Of course,' Stan said bitterly, ‘you wouldn't expect a fellow like me to know enough to tell you that when he comes bursting in, yelling his head off at you. Peterson. Stan Peterson.'

‘I assure you—' she began, distracted by the flaring intimacy in his eyes and voice, in her own. She stopped, then said, not looking at him, ‘I mustn't keep you any longer.'

‘It's all right.' He looked at her extended hand, brown, long-fingered, with lacquered nails, which lay along the side of the sofa. ‘I'm in no hurry,' he said, his tone unintentionally smug.

A hot wave of anger rose in her. He had meant to be insulting.

Stan leaned forward and grasped her hand. She sat rigid, more frightened than she had ever been. Someone else's soft human skin was touching hers. The hand that never touched a living thing was clutched in a stranger's human hand. There was a vast singing space in her head: eyes and ears and nose and mouth did not exist. She jerked her hand away and stood up, catching hold of the table to steady herself. The room swayed gently into position; darkness rolled back from the distant pinpoint of light, and she saw pale walls and curtains, deep blue carpet, roses, amber, golden, red. She fixed her eyes on them. Yesterday Marion had looked round the room consideringly, saying, ‘We've almost too many roses in here; don't you think so, Esther? Or can you have too many roses? What do you think?' And she had answered…What had she answered? And what did it matter now?

‘I think you'd better go,' she said. ‘I'm expecting guests at any moment.'

‘Yes. All right. I'm going,' he said abruptly, staring at the averted head, the clenched knuckles. He knew if it had not been for the whisky he would never have touched her. ‘Just now, it was just…I wasn't trying…' He was appalled and elated by his meekness and his daring, unable to control either. Transparently sincere, he said, ‘I wasn't trying anything smart with you.' She looked at him. ‘Not with you,' he repeated, and Esther's heart beat fiercely.

The air seemed to stand still around them. The ticking of the small silver clock was loud and slow in the silence.

She gave a short deprecating laugh in an effort to find normality. ‘I'm sure Jeffries will be surprised to hear of the amount of trouble you've taken to find him tonight.' She began to move towards the windows, but he stopped her with a question.

‘What's your name?'

She paused, inclined to silence for a second, then said, with an air of humouring him, ‘Prescott. As you must know, since you found your way here and know that Jeffries is our gardener.'

‘No.
Your
name.'

Resentfully she stopped again, looked back at him. They seemed to stare at each other through a wall of water; in every movement of muscle, every tone of voice, they might have been under the sea, isolated, yet linked, slow moving, hollow sounding, strangely coloured.

‘Esther,' she said, her eyes held by his, and in that moment they were joined. There could be no doubting the emotion, no honest thought that it might not be shared. Each knew, and knew the other knew, and yet, knowing, could not believe.

‘And now, good night.'

‘There's more to it than that.'

‘I don't know what you mean.'

‘You know all right. This isn't finished yet.'

Esther twisted a glittering ring on her finger. Her hands were trembling. ‘This is really very tiresome,' she said.

‘You've got to give me the chance to talk to you. I've got to see you again,' he urged, and she capitulated: ‘Very well.'

‘Tomorrow night, at the corner down there? Seven-fifteen?'

‘Yes.' She could have screamed at him to make him go, but her voice was flat.

‘All right, then; I'll see you there.'

In spite of his success, he felt unsure of himself, without confidence. He found himself wanting to plead, to make her promise, to touch her again, but she stood, tolerating him, looking at him now as if he were the merest stranger, and a tiresome one, as she had said. He was dismissed, and somehow he got himself away from her and into the car.

She heard the engine start up. The long yellow beam of the headlights soaked her and wheeled crazily across the garden before it turned and vanished through the gates. There was just time for her to have moved back from the windows before David's black Jaguar slid to the door. She switched on more lights, and when her brothers came in she was sewing, her hand steady and swift.

Clem and David stood side by side smiling affectionately down at her.

‘Hello,' David said. ‘Have you had a good day?'

‘Idle, but pleasant,' Esther smiled. ‘Hairdresser in the morning, that's all. I managed to send Marion off with Frieda, tonight. And you? Have you had dinner? We told Mrs Ramsay you wouldn't be in.'

‘We had some at George's Bar. We finished earlier than we had expected. One of the directors—Charters—couldn't come, so that holds up the business for another week.'

David took off his heavy glasses, and holding them to the light, found and removed a speck that had been irritating him. He had a lined, scholar's face and a strong-looking body. He was dark, like Esther. Looking older than his forty-three years, he appeared to be what he was—sound, kind, unimaginative.

Clem flapped an evening paper against his leg and said to Esther: ‘What would you like to do? What about a film? I haven't put the car away.'

‘I don't think so, Clem. I want to finish this if I can.' She held up the creamy material. ‘Why don't you two have a game of chess? You haven't played for weeks. I'll get some coffee for you.'

‘Good idea! All right with you, David?'

‘Yes.' David went upstairs carrying his briefcase.