England's Lane (29 page)

“Oh hello Edie—how nice to see you. Jim, my husband, Mr. Stammer, he's gone to the dentist.”

“Oh I see. Yes well that would explain it, then. Well I can't stop even for a second Mrs. Stammer because I've left the shop, see? Put a notice up in the door. Head Office, though—they really don't like you to do that. Come down hard. I've had a letter from them before about it. So could I just have a window wedge please Mrs. Stammer, and then I'll nip off back. I'm sorry if I'm seeming rude …”

“No no, Edie—quite understand, of course I do. Now then … window wedge. Window wedge. Yes. I do know what you mean. What they are. We've got one in the kitchen. They're made of sort of rubber, aren't they?”

“Green, yes.”

“Green, are they? Ours is brown, fairly sure …”

“The last one I had was green. But yes they do come in brown as well. Think I've had a brown one in the past. I don't really mind what color it is though, Mrs. Stammer. It's just for the back door, you see. For when we get all the milk delivered.”

“Right. I see. So it's a door wedge you're really wanting then, is it Edie? Not a window wedge.”

“Are they different then? I'd no idea. I just always call them window wedges, that's all.”

“Yes. Well I've no idea either, to be perfectly frank. And I have to admit to you, Edie, I'm not at all sure where they're actually, um … kept. I mean—we will have them, obviously. Just a question of where …”

“I think the last time Mr. Stammer got it out of a drawer.”

“Yes, that seems reasonable. Rather a lot of drawers though, aren't there? That's the trouble. Well let's just try a few, shall we …?”

“I'll maybe come back later, will I? I'm just worried about the shop. Oh look—you've dropped your piece of paper, Mrs. Stammer. Here you are.”

“Oh thank you, Edie. Nothing important. Just my little jottings—preparatory list for the Christmas party. Very early days, of course. I was just wondering if the library ceiling isn't rather too high to be able to get the paper chains up. Maybe we don't need them, paper chains. Well they're not in here, window wedges … this is just bath plugs and some sort of springs for something or other …”

“Got to have paper chains …”

“Really? You think they're essential, do you? Not in this one either … fuse wire. This could take rather a while, you know …”

“I'd have thought so, yes. Quite essential, paper chains. Got to have paper chains up, I'd say. Not really proper and Christmassy, is it? If you don't have any paper chains up. Look—I really think I'd better get back, you know. It's not that urgent, or anything. Been using an old phone book for ages—daresay it'll be all right for a little bit longer. I'll call again when … you know, when um …”

“Well if you're really sure, I do think that might be best. I really am so awfully sorry, Edie. I just can't think where to look. Could be anywhere.”

“No no. Well bye, then. Not to worry.”

“Bye, Edie. And I will bear in mind what you said.”

“What? What do you mean, Mrs. Stammer? What did I say?”

“You know. About the paper chains.”

“Oh that. Yes. Yes, I do think we've got to have those. Like I say, wouldn't be Christmas, really—not without paper chains. Well see you again soon, I expect.”

“Oh yes. I was meaning to pop in later on today, actually. I need some more Corn Flakes. Paul, he's just wolfing them down. It's the submarines, you know.”

“I know. They're selling ever so well. Haven't sold so many packets of Corn Flakes since they had blow darts in. Well bye then. Mrs. Stammer.”

“Bye, Edie. Goodbye. And sorry again about the window wedge.”

“Door wedge, yes. No trouble, Mrs. Stammer. Bye bye for now.”

“All right then, Edie. Bye. Goodbye.”

Yes well I just knew it would be like that, didn't I? Feel such a fool. Why doesn't he, Jim … I don't know … label all the drawers, or something? Well because he knows where everything is, obviously Milly: no need to, is there? Oh well. It would certainly appear though that Edie for now still is unsullied by any frothing and embittered effusion from the mouth of Mrs. Goodrich—otherwise I'm sure I would have known it. And while this is quite surprising in itself, her state of happy innocence can not, of course, be expected to endure for very much longer: maybe, when later I go in to buy my Corn Flakes, her expression will be telling indeed. And I'd had no further time at all to gather my remaining thoughts when that blessed little bell was clanking away again and I was closing my eyes and thinking oh no, here we go—what's it going to be this time? Someone wanting a cement mixer, maybe, and here am I not knowing what drawer it's in.

But it was Jonathan.

Both his step and his eyes were frozen as he momentarily beheld me. I gasped out my delight—though had I not immediately crossed the floor and taken him very firmly by the arm, he would, I am convinced, have turned at once on his heel, and fled.

“Jonathan! Oh Jonathan—I am so pleased to see you!”

“Milly, my dear. Well this is quite a surprise, I must say. Never before have I seen you in surroundings less becoming. So a considerable surprise, as I say. Though naturally a thoroughly pleasant one nonetheless.”

Mm, yes—well not too very pleasant, if I am compelled to be honest. Damn me for coming in here—I very nearly walked on by, and so now wish that I had done so. The thing I am needing, it could so easily have waited until tomorrow. And now I have
confrontation, and I am wholly unprepared. Well—no escape this time. I rather do seem to be caught. So let us just calmly observe then, shall we? Gauge both her attitude and her persona. Possibly my instinct is errant. Maybe all is well. Maybe the enactment of one of these grindingly dull and awful female scenes is not after all an inevitability. For I do remain perfectly contented to continue to sail on an untroubled sea, well of course I do. But if there are to be signs of turbulence, any hint of choppiness, then I think it might be time for the captain to raise anchor and abandon this harbor—cast off, as I do, into yet uncharted waters.

“What are you, um—doing exactly, Milly? Scribbling away there …”

“Won't take a second. I'm just quickly writing a notice. Back in half an hour. I'll put it in the door. I really do have to talk to you, Jonathan.”

“Fearful rush, you know …”

“Won't keep you. We can go in the back.”

“Oh I hardly think that that is … the fumes in here, you know. Unsavory, very. Don't you find? I should have thought that a lady of your very evident refinement …”

“It's better in the back. In the back it's fine. Not nearly so bad. I've put the notice up now, so you've got to. Oh come on, Jonathan—don't be frightened. I shan't bite you. Promise.”

“Gratified to hear it, my dear. But honestly, you know—truly not at all a good moment. The boy in the shop, I don't like to leave him for any length of time.”

“Oh nonsense, Jonathan—Billy's perfectly all right in there and you know it. Just come in to the back, won't you? Come on. People can see through the window.”

“I doubt they can see much. The window has the air of having been constructed not out of glass but of galvanized iron.”

“I know. It's terribly dirty and vile in here. So come into the back, yes?”

Jonathan sighed, and not untheatrically. He had his gold cigarette case in his hand, and he slid from it now a Black Russian. This he lit slowly.

“Very well, dear lady. Lead on, Macduff. But soon, I fear, I must be away.”

I really do not care for this: I do not like its odor. Both literally and figuratively. For it is I who decides when and where we meet. This is always the way with my ladies. And so I am not ready for this—I am disadvantaged. And nor do I at all care to be hustled into the doubtless no less noxious rear to this perfectly rank and disgusting sty.

In the cluttered and dark back room, Milly was eagerly bustling, and really quite energetically—hurling just anywhere rags, papers and unidentifiable pieces of metal and chunks of wood from the one good chair.

“Sorry. Bit of a mess. Never mind. Can I, um—get you anything, Jonathan? Something? Only I don't actually think there is anything here to, um … Haven't got any—you know—Benedictine, or anything. Cigarette smells nice …”

“Fear not—I am replete, my dear. Would you care to smoke? No? Very well. So what, um …?”

And Milly was struck by the unspoken question, simply lingering. For yes—what, um—was it that she wanted to say to him, actually? What, now that it had come to it, could she possibly ask? How could she lend structure to no more than a feeling of profound unsettlement at the memory of the sight of just this man in a room with his wife? It seemed, rather suddenly, quite totally absurd. And then she looked up at him, at his magnificent face. His eyes, so intent—the fine mustache above a perfect mouth … and
those blue curls of smoke seeping through his lips, and mingling with the air. And before she had been wholly aware of the strength of the impulse to do so, she was holding him so terribly tightly. Her arms were thrown about him, and she strained to hug him hard: her eyes were shut as she concentrated devotedly upon the beating of his heart. She whimpered and resisted wildly and then hopelessly when he straight away stepped backward—detached her arms from him with silent determination and held them firmly to her sides.

“Please, Jonathan …” she heard herself just hoarsely whisper.

“What on earth do you imagine you are doing, Milly? Never before have I seen you like this …”

“Please, Jonathan … here: look. I can clear a space on the floor. We can put all these newspapers down …”

“God Almighty. I think you have taken all leave of your senses. Do you seriously imagine that I … that we should …?!”

“But Jonathan—you don't understand. I
love
you! You see … that's what it is. I
love
you …!”

Milly was aware of his eyes full upon her. She stood there quaking, awaiting whatever was to come. Had not the banging on the shop door—the clamor, the terrible clattering—brought back her shattered mind into a new though confusingly distorted sort of focus, she might indeed have again and with renewed desperation flung herself at Jonathan … or else simply wilted to the floor, and there she would have wept.

“Oh my God!” she exclaimed—and her eyes as she gazed up at him now were quite fearful.

“Where is the door out of here?” asked Jonathan calmly. “The back door—where is it? Can't seem to see …”

“Oh—behind the curtain. No, not there—that way. Yes—you go. Best that you go now.”

She batted aside the old and filthy curtain, wrenched open the door, stood well back as he quickly and without so much as a single word walked right past her, and then, with a sigh, she slid back the bolt. Still she could hear all of this ceaseless rapping coming from beyond the shop—and oh good heavens, just take a look at Cyril: hopping about and twittering in his cage in possibly terror, or else maybe high amusement. And Jim's face, by the time she had patted her hair, smoothed down her frock and got to the door—it was boiling red. She smiled at him very stupidly through the only scrap of dusty glass not obscured by browned and ancient advertisements. His eyes were bulbous, as sometimes, she knew, they can become. She turned the key in the lock and the bell was clanking quite frantically as he roughly barged open the door.

“What the bleeding hell is this then? Ay? Back in bleeding half a bleeding hour! I don't never do that. Why you think I leave you here? Ay? I could've done that, couldn't I? Ay? Put a bloody sign up. But I never. What the bleeding hell you reckon you up to, woman?!”

“Well I do think, Jim, that you might actually show me just a little compassion. It's this ghastly shop. I was quite overcome. Felt so terribly ill. These awful fumes—I thought I was going to faint. I had to go and splash some water on my face. And don't ever, please, call me ‘woman.'”

“It don't take half a bleeding hour to splash some water on your face! Do it? Half hour! Could've gone up the bleeding swimming baths, done hundred sodding lengths in a half a bleeding hour! And I'll call you whatever I bloody well want, see?”

“Oh look, Jim—there's no harm done is there? Hm? You're back—and I'm all right. So it's fine now, isn't it? Oh and Edie—Edie from the Dairies, yes? She's going to come back later for a window wedge. Door wedge. I didn't know where you kept them. Are they different actually, Jim? Window wedges and door wedges?”

“Window wedges is in the drawer by the till there, look …”

“Yes well she said they were in a drawer, but I wasn't to know which drawer, was I?”

“Yeh well window wedges is there. See where I pointing? With the three-pin plugs and the cable connectors, window wedges is. Door wedges—door wedges, they's under the counter with the candles and the washing lines.”

“Right. Jolly good. Well I'll know for next time then, won't I? So they are, then. Different. Door and window wedges.”

“Door wedges, they biggen them up, that's all. Who else come in?”

“No one. It's been awfully quiet. You didn't miss anything. Apart from Edie, like I said. But she will be back—she said so. Look, Jim—I have an awful lot to do upstairs. All right? Still a touch of headache. So if you're quite finished shouting at me, I'll go. And how is it?”

“What you on about now? How is it? What sort of a bleeding question is that then? Bleeding riddle. How what, Christ's sake?”

“Tooth, Jim. Your tooth. Dentist, yes …?”

“Oh. Yeh. That. Good. Yeh. Good. Much, er …”

“Better?”

“Yeh. Better.”

“Doesn't hurt any more, then?”