Stanley and the Women (24 page)

We came
to Putney Bridge and thought about it, or Harry thought about it, and then we
crossed over and went along the A205 until it became the A305, and not much
later he made me stop while he thought about it again. After another couple of
goes of this and only one wrong turning we reached a yard where a number of
other cars were parked and drove in there.

The
rain had finally packed up, the wind had risen a little if anything, the sun
was shining low down through a hole in a great mass of black cloud and
producing the rather unpleasant effect usual at such times. When we started
walking there was no sign of the river, but it came into view at the first bend
down a long alley. None of the buildings here had probably been touched since
the beginning of the century, by human hands at least, though they had
certainly got a great deal dirtier, slimier, damper, more battered and no doubt
smellier in the meantime. Huge piles of rubbish smeared with oil, tar and soot,
from postcard-sized pieces of creased paper to what could have been ship’s
boilers, went back about as far. I was expecting a trudge through half a mile
of mud at least, but when we made it to the waterside there was gravel and then
a paved strip, and a long college-type structure on the far bank really looked
pretty good after all with the sun on it.

Four
barges were moored in line in front of us, moving about quite a bit, it seemed
to me, also faster than I would have expected, never mind preferred. Ours was
evidently the second along. Harry moved ahead of me across a rope-and-board
gangway, which turned out to be all right but not the sort of thing to make
sure of not missing. I reached the deck successfully and found two lots of
noise going on, a remarkably loud and varied mixture of creakings and groanings
from parts of the structure and, further off, the gabble of a party into its
second half-hour, loud enough for anybody but without the Fleet Street snarl.
Following Harry I ducked through an opening, crossed a narrow platform and,
still not too comfortably, went down a short steepish flight of stairs into
what, but for the lack of windows, looked very much like the sitting room of a
rather well-off house in North London. Clearly the Boxes were living here on
purpose, so to speak, and had had the sense to rip out or plaster over every
possible trace of what had been there before.

When
produced by Harry, the Boxes turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag. He seemed
perfectly sound, the kind of fellow who, one minute flat after the last guest
had gone, would be in an armchair in front of the large TV set in the far
corner, in fact by the look of him I thought he could have done with being
there now. She let you know she was the one behind the party, as if you had
been in any doubt, and behind a lot else as well, like them being on the barge
in the first place. I was given a full and satisfactory explanation of that
part and what it entailed.

‘I
suppose it’s not often as rough as this?’ I asked after a time. The movement
had not eased at all since I came on board, indeed just as I spoke an old boy
near by staggered and clutched at the woman next to him, burning his hand on
her cigarette, but then he was drinking.

‘No no no
no,’ said Mrs Box, frowning and shaking her head, ‘it’s only the turn of the
tide. Either that or the wind blowing against the tide. Happens quite
regularly.’

‘Oh,
well that’s all tight then.’

At that
she screamed, or rather at that point she made the female sound meaning someone
more interesting had appeared, and was away past me without a word or a look. I
wondered whether this was her not giving a toss. I also wondered whether the
general clearance as regards artistry and writing that Harry had given could be
applied to her. She had the look of wondering whether to agree with some of the
things you said, and not listening at all to others, that I had noticed in some
of Susan’s mates.

While I
was wondering I took two glasses of Scotch and water off the white-coated
waiter and made a drink out of them that was somewhere near what I would have
poured myself at home. It lasted me while I made a thorough circuit of the
scene that did me no good beyond what I got out of taking a pee in the very
nice little toilet I found near what could have been the blunt end. The snag
was not exactly that all the women were females, more that they all seemed to
be wives or daughters, bar an aunt or so. And establishing the absence of
anything pursuable or worth pursuing meant the party was a write-off, did it?
Of course not, I could try and get a conversation going. Yes, about cars, golf,
advertising, whisky or the price of onions. Oh, and women. Good God. Sometimes
I wondered how Susan put up with me.

That
last section saw me halfway into another jar. It would be easier if I found
someone I knew, even Harry. Had he gone? No, there he was talking to a tall fat
man who had his back to me but looked somehow familiar. When I got round to his
front I found it was Bert Hutchinson. Yes, Harry and he shared a pub.

‘Hallo,
Stanley,’ he said, and added ‘Christ’ when the floor dipped slightly more than
usual and sent him lurching to one side. Again, the drink could have been
helping, but he looked comparatively sober, more so than when I had last seen
him, at least. ‘You know, people can only take so much of this. If it goes on
they’ll be throwing up all over the bloody shop. Well, how have you been?’

‘Not
too bad.’ I was going to move on as soon as I decently could, very soon, in
fact. ‘I haven’t seen Nowell anywhere.’

‘She’s
not here.’ He spoke flatly.

‘Stanley
kindly drove me down,’ said Harry.

Bert
stared at me through his bluish glasses. ‘What have you got?’

‘Apfelsine.
FK 3.’

‘Oh,
you have, have you? They’re very quick, I’m told. What we used to call a quick
motor. Dear oh dear.’

‘Hey,’
I said, remembering, ‘haven’t you got one of the first Jaguars? I saw it
outside your place that time.’

‘Yes. I
have it, I own it, I possess it, and I derive from that fact such satisfaction
as I am able. And that is all there is to be said.’

‘How do
you mean?’

‘How do
I mean? How — I beg your pardon, Harry. This is very boring for you. As a
non-driver. Lucky man. Who doesn’t know what he’s missing. Unlike those who
once upon a time … I’m sorry, I mustn’t go on.

‘No
really, Bert,’ said Harry, who I thought looked a little bit tousled. ‘Do carry
on. It’ll interest Stanley.’

Bert
made a great growling noise and then stayed quiet for so long, looking towards
his feet, that I started thinking he had forgotten all about whatever he had
been going to say. With his head tipped forward like that he gave me a
first-rate opportunity to inspect his scalp and the condition of the strip of
hair he wore stuck down across it. I reckoned it, the strip, had become both
narrower and less dense or luxuriant as the growth area above his left ear
declined, but I would have had trouble remembering when I had last seen it
close to. Finally he spoke.

‘I
suppose in a way I shouldn’t complain,’ he said wisely and like someone
completely above the struggle. ‘My generation received a wonderful gift —well,
earlier generations had had it too, but in a less fully developed form. And the
name of the gift was — motoring. For a few brief years after the second war and
before the advent of the motorway and all the, all the
vile
things it
brought with it,’ he went on, in some danger now of losing his calm, ‘it was
possible to take an evolved automobile on to the roads of Great Britain and… drive, by what way and in what way, er, you could do as you liked. No longer
so. No longer so. I
have
my Jaguar, I
own
my Jagular, fuck,
Jaguar, but I don’t drive it. No sir. Not a chance. It’s all over. Thing of the
past. Ancient history. Now Stanley, you tell me, am I, has the, is that
complete balls? Or what? You be the judge.’

‘No,
no, Bert, you’re absolutely right,’ I said. Well, I did think he had a point of
a sort. ‘All too sadly true.’ Admittedly I could have done without the king-in-exile
approach. ‘Never again.’ But it would have been unkind and perhaps dangerous to
disagree with him. ‘Absolutely right.’

He sent
me a look that was not so much kingly as saintly, as though after that
affirmation of mine he could face the lions with a quiet heart. Then his glance
shifted and he nodded his head emphatically. ‘I knew it. There goes one now.
Told you, didn’t I?’

I
turned round in time to see an elderly man who looked like a retired
ambassador, hand over mouth, making for the corridor that led to the toilet at
an unsteady run that included a glancing collision or two with other guests.
This caused comment.

‘It
could be just the drink,’ said Harry, who for the last couple of minutes had
been looking from Bert to me and back again in amazement at all this emotion he
had had no suspicion of. He looked as if he thought he had missed something
important in life.

Bert
shook his head just as emphatically. ‘Oh no. A fellow that age, he wouldn’t be
taken suddenly like that, the way a youngster might. No, that was motion
sickness and no mistake. Look,’ he said in some excitement as a similar chap,
white-faced and staring-eyed, stumbled over to the foot of the stairs, ‘there’s
another one. No doubt about it. Not that I’m feeling any too clever myself, let
it be said. Ah, bloody good.’

This
was addressed to the waiter who had just approached, or more likely was just a
reflex reaction to the tray of drinks he was carrying. There were quite a few
glasses of Scotch on it, but even so I would not have dared to repeat my
tactics under these conditions if Bert had not poured one into another on the
tray itself. I did the same. Harry took a white wine rather slowly.

‘How
did you get here?’ I asked Bert.

‘Taxi.’
He pointed his head at my drink. ‘Aren’t you afraid of being picked up?’

‘They’ll
get me in the end, I expect. But probably not in the middle of the evening,
like eight o’clock, which is when I intend to be on my way. If that’s all right
with you, Harry.’

‘Super,’
said Harry unenthusiastically. He had put his wine down untasted and there was
sweat on his forehead and under his eyes. ‘Think I’ll … have a pee.’

‘You do
that,’ said Bert, and went on almost before it was safe, ‘Right, let’s bugger
off.’

‘I can’t
leave him, Bert. I brought him here.’

‘You
bet you did. But what of it? It may be a bit off the beaten track here but it
isn’t the middle of the bloody Sahara exactly. Three minutes’ walk and he can
get a taxi. Do the little bastard good. To put his hand in his own pocket for a
change.’

‘I thought
you and he were supposed to be drinking mates.’

‘Christ,’
said Bert, but because the floor had misbehaved
again. ‘It’s getting worse, it’s like the Bay of bloody Biscay. I’m not going
to be able to stand it much longer. What did you say?’

‘He
told me he sometimes saw you in some pub in Notting Hill.’

‘Unfortunately
he does. I grin and bear it. I’m not going to let a little sod like that drive
me out of my pub, am I?’

‘You
were talking to him when I came over.’

‘He was
talking to me. He thinks he’s a buddy of mine. And I don’t seem to know anyone
else here, except you.

‘Who
invited you?’

‘I can’t
remember. It wasn’t Harry. Look, what the bloody hell is this, a bloody
inquisition? You’re like a bloody chick, you are. Actually it is quite
interesting. I found I had this very neatly drawn map and all the details
written out, you see, so of course I assumed it was them, the Boxes or whatever
they’re called, and I’d forgotten who they were. Then when I got here I not
only didn’t recognize them, but they didn’t recognize me. Took some getting
round, that. The missis turned quite stroppy. I had to tell her I was in TV to
quieten her down. A right one, she is. Well, is that enough for you?’

‘Quite
enough, thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m going up top. I’ve got to get some air or I’ll
die.’

‘I’ll
join you. I’ll just get a freshener first.’

Closely
following an elderly woman with an enormous backside under some ribbed grey
material, I climbed to the deck. It was not quite dark, with hundreds of lights
showing on both banks and a few more round me and on the other barges. Out here
on the water it seemed very quiet, or it might have done but for the long
hallooing retches that came from somebody up at the far end. Half a dozen
other figures leant or slumped at various points. I found a secluded spot and
had soon taken in all the air I could handle. Having done so I felt just
slightly worse. The back of my neck prickled and my mouth kept filling with
saliva. There were only three things I could do — leave, lie down or be sick.
The first was the one to go for, but I would have to try at least to find Harry
first.

Outside
the opening that led to the stairway I came across a man of about fifty kicking
the corded step below it and biffing at the sides with the heels of his hands.
He had obviously given the business some thought. ‘I think it’s going to rain
again,’ I said as I approached.

He
looked round and nodded cheerfully while going on bashing away and incidentally
blocking my path. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if you weren’t right, lad,’ he said in an
unreconstructed Northern accent. He had a broad pink face and sandy eyebrows
and wore a towelling jacket with military pockets and drill trousers. ‘Just
working off my feelings, like,’ he went on, then evidently made up his mind
that I deserved some further explanation, because he stopped what he was doing
and turned towards me, panting slightly. He was rather drunker than I had
thought at first.