Essential Stories (11 page)

“Oh, you know a hell of a lot, don’t you?” she said. “I don’t say you’re not an interesting man, but you don’t get on with it, do you?”

“How old are you? Twenty-five?” I said.

Her sulking, ironical expression went. She was astonished.

“Good God!” she exclaimed with a smile of sincerity. “Don’t be a damn fool.” Then she frowned. “Or are you being professionally clever?”

“Here,” she said. “I was damn pretty when I was twenty-five. I’m thirty-nine. I’ve still got a good figure.”

“I would have put you at twenty-seven at the most,” I said truthfully.

She walked towards me. I was sitting on the arm-chair and she stood very close. She had never been as close to me before. I had thought her eyes were dark blue but now I saw they were green and grey, with a moist lascivious haze in them and yet dead and clock-like, like a cat’s on a sunless day. And the skin, which had seemed fresh to me, I saw in its truth for the first time. It was clouded and flushed, clouded with that thickened pimpled ruddiness which the skin of heavy drinkers has and which in middle-age becomes bloated and mottled. I felt: this is why she has always stood the length of the room away before.

She saw what was in my mind and she sat down on the chair opposite to me. The eye winked.

“Keep control of yourself,” she said. “I came down here for a rest and now you’ve started coming round.”

“Only in the mornings,” I said.

She laughed. She went to a bookshelf and took down a bottle of whisky and poured out half a tumblerful.

“This is what you’ve done coming in here, early bird,” she said. “Exciting me on an empty stomach. I haven’t touched it for ten days. I had a letter this morning. From my old man.”

“Your father?”

I had always tried to imagine the Colonel. She gave a shout of cheerful laughter and it ended in coughing till tears came to her eyes.

“That’s rich. God, that’s rich. Keen observer of women! No, from my husband, darling. He’s not my husband, damn him, of course, but when you’ve lived with someone for ten years and he pays the rent and keeps you, he is your husband, isn’t he? Or ought to be. Ten years is a long time and his family thought he ought to be married. He thought so too. So he picked up a rich American girl and pushed me down here to take it easy in the country. I’m on the dole like your sailor boy. Well, I said, if he felt that way, he’d better have his head. In six months he’ll tire of the new bitch. So I left him alone. I didn’t want to spoil his fun. Well, now, he writes me, he wants to bring his
fiancée
down because she’s heard so much about me and adores the country . . .”

I was going to say something indignant.

“He’s nice too,” she said casually. “He sells gas-heaters. You’d like him all the same. But blast that bloody woman,” she said raising her cool voice. “She’s turned him into a snob. I’m just his whore now.”

“Don’t look so embarrassed,” she said. “I’m not going to cry.”

“For ten years,” she said, “I read books, I learned French, educated myself, learned to say ‘How d’you do,’ instead of ‘Pleased to meet you,’ and look down my nose at everything in his sort of way. And I let him go about saying my father was in the Army too, but they were such bloody fools they thought he must be a Colonel. They’d never heard of sergeant-majors having children. Even my old man, bless his heart,” she smiled affectionately, “thought or let himself think they did. I was a damn silly little snob.”

“I don’t know him,” I said. “But he doesn’t sound much good to me.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” she said sharply. “Just weak, poor kid, that’s all. You don’t know what it is to be ashamed your mother’s a housemaid. I got over it—but he didn’t, that’s all.”

She paused and the wink gave its signal.

“This is more embarrassing than I thought,” she said.

“I am very sorry,” I said. “Actually I am in favour of snobbery, it is a sign of character. It’s a bad thing to have, but it’s a bad thing not to have had. You can’t help having the diseases of your time.”

“There you go,” she said.

The suffering of others is incredible. When it is obscure it seems like a lie; when it is garish and raw, it is like boasting. It is a challenge to oneself. I got up from my chair and went towards her. I was going to kiss her.

“You are the sentimental type,” she said.

So I didn’t kiss her.

Then we heard someone passing the bungalow and she went to the window. Thompson was going by. The lock of black hair was curling over his sweating forehead and he gave a hesitant staggering look at the bungalow. There was a lump of fear on his face.

“He’d better not know where you’ve been,” she said. She moved her lips to be kissed, but I walked out.

I was glad of the steady sense of the fresh grey air when I got outside. I was angry and depressed. I stood at the window of my house. Thompson came in and was very talkative. He’d been lost, of course. He’d seen people. He’d seen fields. He’d heard trees. He’d seen roads. I hardly listened. I was used to the jerky wobbling voice. I caught the words “legion” and “temptation,” and thought he was quoting from the Bible. Presently I realised he was talking about the British Legion. The postman had asked him to go to a meeting of the British Legion that night. How simple other people’s problems are! Yet “No” Thompson was saying. He was not going to the British Legion. It was temptation.

I ought to have made love to her and kissed her, I was thinking. She was right, I was a prig.

“You go,” I said to Thompson, “if you want to. You’d enjoy it.”

But how disgusting, obvious, stupid, to have made love to her then, I thought.

“Do as you like,” I said.

“I’m best alongside you,” said Thompson.

“You can’t always be by me,” I said. “In a month, perhaps less, as you know, I’ll be leaving here and you’ll have to go.”

“Yes,” he said. “You tol’ me. You been straight. I’ll be straight with you. I won’t go to the Legion.”

We ate our meal and I read.

“In every branch of our spiritual and material civilisation we seem to have reached a turning point,” I read. “This spirit shows itself not only in the actual state of public affairs . . .”

Well, I thought, I can ask her over tonight. I needn’t be a fool twice. I went out for an hour. When I returned Thompson was fighting Temptation hard. If he went to the Legion how would he get back? No, best not. He took the Legion on in its strength. (She is a type, I thought.) At four he was still at it. At five he asked me for his money. (Well, we are all types, I was thinking.) Very shortly he brought the money back and asked me to keep his pension papers. At half-past six I realised this meant that Thompson was losing and the Legion and all its devils winning. (What is a prig, anyway?) He was looking out at the night. Yet, just when I thought he had lost, he had won. There was the familiar sound of the Wild West monologue in the kitchen. It was half-past eight. The Legion was defeated.

I was disappointed in Thompson. Really, not to have had more guts than that! Restlessly I looked out of the window. There was a full moon spinning on the tail of a dying wind. Under the moonlight the fields were like wide-awake faces, the woods like womanish heads of hair upon them. I put on my hat and coat and went out. I was astonished by the circle of stars. They were as distinct as figures on a clock. I took out my watch and compared the small time in my hand with the wide time above. Then I walked on. There was a sour smell at the end of the wood, where, no doubt, a dead rabbit or pigeon was rotting.

I came out of the wood on to the metalled road. Suddenly my heart began to beat quickly as I hurried down the road, but it was a long way round now. I cut across fields. There was a cottage and a family were listening to a dance-band on the wireless. A man was going the rounds of his chickens. There was a wheelbarrow and there were spades and steel bars where a water mill was being built.

Then I crossed the last fields and saw the bungalow. My heart throbbed heavily and I felt all my blood slow down and my limbs grow heavy. It was only when I got to the road that I saw there were no lights in the bungalow. The Colonel’s daughter, the Sergeant’s daughter, had gone to bed early like a child. While I stood I heard men’s voices singing across the fields. It must have gone ten o’clock and people were coming out of the public-house. In all the villages of England, at this hour, loud-voiced groups were breaking up and dispersing into the lanes.

I got to my house and lit a candle. The fire was low. I was exhausted and happy to be in my house among my own things, as if I had got into my own skin again. There was no light in the kitchen. Thompson had gone to bed. I grinned at the thought of the struggles of poor Thompson. I picked up a book and read. I could hear still the sound of that shouting and singing. The beer was sour and flat in this part of the country but it made people sing.

The singing voices came nearer. I put down the book. An argument was going on in the lane. I listened. The argument was nearing the cottage. The words got louder. They were going on at my gate. I heard the gate go and the argument was on my path. Suddenly—there could be no doubt—people were coming to the door. I stood up, I could recognise no voice. Loud singing, stumbling feet, then bang! The door broke open and crashed against the wall. Tottering, drunk, with their arms round each other, Thompson and the Colonel’s daughter nearly fell into the room.

Thompson stared at me with terror.

“Stand up, sailor,” said the Colonel’s daughter, clinging to him.

“He was lonely,” she said unsteadily to me. “We’ve been playing gramophone records. Sing,” she said.

Thompson was still staring.

“Don’t look at him. Sing,” she said. Then she gave a low laugh and they fell, bolt upright on the sofa like prim, dishevelled dolls.

A look of wild love of all the world came into Thompson’s eyes and he smiled as I had never seen him smile before. He suddenly opened his twitching mouth and bawled:

“You’ve robbed every tailor, And you’ve skinned every sailor, But you won’t go walking Paradise Street no more.”

“Go on. That’s not all,” the Colonel’s daughter cried and sang, “Go on—something—something, deep and rugged shore.”

She put her arms round his neck and kissed him. He gaped at her with panic and looked at her skirt. It was undone.

He pointed at her leg in consternation. The sight sobered him. He pulled away his arms and rushed out of the room. He did not come back. She looked at me and giggled. Her eyes were warm and shining. She picked leaves off her skirt.

“Where’s he gone? Where’s he gone?” she kept asking.

“He’s gone to bed,” I said.

She started a fit of coughing. It strained her throat. Her eyes were dilated like an animal’s caught in a trap, and she held her hand to her chest.

“I wish,” she cried hysterically, pointing at me in the middle of her coughing, “I wish you could see your bloody face.”

She got up and called out.

“Thompson! Thompson!” And when he did not answer she sang out, “Down by the deep and rugged shore—ore-ore-ore.”

“What’s the idea?” I said.

“I want Thompson,” she said. “He’s the only man up here.”

Then she began to cry. She marched out to his room, but it was locked. She was wandering through the other rooms calling him and then she went out, away up the path. She went calling him all the way down to her bungalow.

In the morning Thompson appeared as usual. He brought the breakfast. He came in for “orders.” Grilled chop, did I think? And what about spotted dick? He seemed no worse. He behaved as though nothing had happened. There was no guilty look in his eyes and no apprehension. He made no apology. Lunch passed, tea-time and the day. I finished my work and went into the kitchen.

“Tell me,” I said, “about last night.”

Thompson was peeling potatoes. He used to do this into a bucket on the floor, as if he were peeling for a whole crew. He put down the clasp-knife and stood up. He looked worried.

“That was a terrible thing,” Thompson said, as if it was something he had read about in the papers.

“Terrible, sir. A young lady like that, sir. To come over here for me, an educated lady like that. Someone oughter teach her a lesson. Coming over and saying she wanted to play some music. I was took clean off my guard.

“It wasn’t right,” said Thompson. “Whichever way you look at it, it wasn’t right. I told her she’d messed me up.”

“I’m not blaming you. I want to know.”

“And she waited till you was out,” Thompson said. “That’s not straight. She may class herself as an educated young lady, but do you know what I reckon she is? I reckon she’s a jane.”

I went down to the bungalow. I was beginning to laugh now. She was in the garden digging. Her sleeves were rolled up and she was sweating over the fork. The beds were thick with leaves and dead plants. I stood there watching her. She looked at me nervously for a moment. “I’m making the garden tidy,” she said. “For Monday. When the bitch comes down.”

She was shy and awkward. I walked on and, looking back, saw her go into the house. It was the last I ever saw of her. When I came back the fork she had been using was stuck in the flower bed where she had left it. She went to London that night and did not return.

“Thank Gawd,” Thompson said.

There was a change in Thompson after this and there was a change in me. Perhaps the change came because the dirty February days were going, the air softer and the year moving. I was leaving soon. Thompson mentioned temptation no more. Now he went out every day. The postman was his friend. They used to go to the pub. He asked for his money. In the public-house the labourers sat around muttering in a language Thompson didn’t understand. He stood them drinks. At his first pint he would start singing. They encouraged him. He stood them more drinks. The postman ordered them for him and then tapped him on the pocket book. They emptied his pockets every night. They despised him and even brought complaints to me about him after they had emptied his pockets.

Thompson came back across the common alone, wild, enthusiastic and moaning with suspicion by turns. The next day he would have a mood. All the countryside for ten miles around knew the sailor. He became famous.