Stanley and the Women (4 page)

‘I
gather you have
Steve
staying with you,’ she said after a pause, quite
chuffed at getting over all the various difficulties raised by bringing out
this name.

So
nothing really awful had happened in between. ‘Yes, he dropped in to stay for a
couple of days. So it seems. Just turned up on the doorstep. As they do at that
age.

‘Such a
nice boy. Still working at his writing, is he?’

‘Yes, I
think so, yes. Plugging away.’ It would hardly have been fair to say that Steve
had ever plugged away at anything. What kept him going usually was pound-note
jobs with gardeners and handymen and dribs and drabs from me.

‘Tell
me, Stanley, it’s dreadfully stupid of me, but I seem never to have taken in
just what it is that he writes. Is it verse or prose? Essays? Plays, perhaps?’

‘No, it’s
not plays.’

‘How
would you describe it?’

‘Well…’

I tried
to remember anything at all about the few badly typed pages that, in response to
many requests and with a touching mixture of defiance and shyness, Steve had
planked down next to me on the couch one Sunday afternoon the previous winter.
But it was the same now as then, really. I had not been able to come up with a
single word, not just of appreciation, but even referring to one thing or
another about the material. But surely I had managed to tell whether it was in
verse or prose? Hopeless.

‘Of
course, he hasn’t shown me a great deal of it.’ I looked across and met the old
girl’s eye and wished she could find a way of coming a little less far to meet
me — sometimes you would give anything for a spot of boredom. ‘I don’t know
about you but I’m a complete wash-out when I come up against any of this modern
stuff.’

‘Oh, I
do absolutely agree. But what would you have —Susan came in then. ‘Sorry,’ she
said in a half-whisper. I was relieved to see her, as I often was, and it was
easy enough to see that her mother felt something similar, say like after
spending an unpredictable length of time with a small half-tamed wild animal.
When Susan kissed me she gave the top part of my arm the special little squeeze
that meant she was thanking me or apologizing or hoping to cheer me up. I
imagined she was doing a minor bit of all three that time. She took the dry
sherry I poured for her and went and stood with her mother near the
china-cupboard. Seen as a pair like this they could look more alike than I
cared for, and today was one of the days, with them both wearing darkish skirts
and lighter-coloured tops. Lady D would have been in her middle or late sixties
but she had kept her figure, and one way or another her hair was almost as dark
as Susan’s. But then again her eyes were much lighter and she looked less
clever, more nervous and not humorous at all.

I drank
some of my Scotch and said, ‘Any sign of the young master?’

‘Oh,’
said Susan, ‘he —’

She
stopped suddenly because the door was thrown open, also suddenly, so that it
banged into one of her embroidered stools, though not very hard. Even so, the
effect was quite noticeable, especially when nobody came in or could be seen
from inside the room. The three of us stood still and said nothing, not in the
least like people wondering what the hell was going on. Then Steve strolled
round the corner, very casual, I thought, preoccupied but normal enough,
scruffy enough too, having probably spent the night in his clothes.

‘Hallo,
dad,’ he said quietly. ‘Hallo Susan. Hallo … lady.’

‘Good
morning, Steve,’ said my mother-in-law rather like a fellow playing in
Shakespeare.

‘Er…’ he said, and stopped. I could hear him breathing deeply through his mouth. ‘Can
I borrow a book?’

‘Help yourself,
my dear,’ said Susan, spreading a hand. ‘Fiction there … poetry there …
politics, psychology, what you will … Art and so on down there.’

Steve,
who had not followed this closely, turned his head towards the bookshelves. The
other three of us moved into the window-bow so as not to seem to be watching
him looking. We talked about something like the Labour Party or what we might do
for Christmas. After a minute or two he moved away from the books and
apparently started examining a painting on the end wall. It was mostly blue,
but some parts of it were white. As far as I knew he had never taken any
particular interest in pictures and this one had hung there all through his
dozens of visits to the house. He went on examining it. Susan had no idea — if
she had been playing the adverb game ‘normally’ would have been the one she was
doing. Her mother handled it differently, putting all her effort into not
running for her life. I sympathized with her at the same time as wondering what
exactly it was we three had to be so on edge about. Before I had solved it
there was a tearing sound and I saw that Steve was in fact tearing the cover off
a book. I shouted out to him. Having got rid of the cover he tried to tear the
pages across but they were too tough and he put the remains of the book down on
a cushion on the back of a chair. By the time I went over there he had gone.
The book was
Herzog,
by Saul Bellow.

‘I’m
sorry, love,’ I said to Susan. ‘I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing. He must
be off his head. I’ll get you another.’

‘It’s
all right, darling,’ she said, ‘I’d finished with it, it was just hanging about
on the shelves. Lunch in ten minutes,’ she called after me on my way to the
door, sounding as normal as anybody could have managed.

With my
mind on the water-drinking event I checked the kitchen, then briefly the
upstairs in general before catching up with my son in the small bathroom, or
rather lavatory with washbasin, next to his bedroom. As before, there was
plenty of water about — on the mirror behind the basin, into which he was
staring, on his face and hair and clothes and on the floor. He had evidently
not touched the clean towel on the metal rack beside him.

‘What’s
the matter with you?’ I said, trying to sound angry instead of worried. ‘What
do you mean by tearing up a book like that?’

He just
stood there with his hands by his sides and said nothing.

‘These
things cost money, you know.’

‘I’ll
pay for it,’ he said wearily.

‘Like
hell you will.’ Now I was really angry. He was always offering to pay for other
people’s things he had used up or broken or lost, going on every time as though
it was very sweet of him to be so patient with all these small-minded idiots,
and then somehow not having the cash on him until I forked out. ‘Anyhow it’s a
waste, and it might have been a special copy, and it might not be able to be
replaced, and what did you want to go and do it for in the first place? Are you
crazy or something?’

By way
of reply he turned on the cold tap and started to slosh handfuls of water on to
his face in a tremendous, ridiculous hurry, throwing more of it down his shirt
and trousers and round his feet. He did this in complete silence.

I
waited till I had stopped feeling angry and said, ‘Have you been to see your
mother?’ I tried to make it sound interesting, as though his mother had been a
film.

At once
he dramatically turned off the water and snatched up the towel, and started
drying himself, but you could soon tell he had nothing to say this time either.

‘If
something’s upsetting you I wish you’d tell me about it,’ I said. ‘Or if I’ve
done anything you don’t like. I know it sounds dull but I want to help you.’

It
sounded dull all right. Perhaps that was what Steve was trying to get across by
the way he finished drying his face and neck, peered into the mirror, turning
his head to and fro to catch the light, and then started drying his face and
neck again. Or perhaps he had really not heard. I tried to think how to go on.
At no particular point he said suddenly and in a trembling voice, but just the
same like someone continuing a conversation,

‘I was
hot, that’s all. Haven’t you ever been hot? What’s so peculiar about trying to
get cool? All got to be the same, have we? All like you. Anybody who isn’t is
mad, according to you. Why don’t you come out and say it?’ He was still looking
in the mirror, though not catching my eye in it. ‘You want to get bloody Dr
Wainwright over and certify me, don’t you? Go on, admit it.’

He
turned round and stood in front of me, stood about, in fact, not showing the
least interest in what I might say back to him. But I began telling him he was
wrong and of course I had never even thought of getting him certified, and I
would have gone on to appeal to him to forget the whole thing and come and have
some lunch, only he pushed past me not all that rudely and went off to his
room, still holding the towel. The door slammed.

Susan
was waiting for me just inside our bedroom. I shut the door behind us and we
hugged each other, with her giving a little half-joky shiver. I told her about
the water and the accusation and she listened attentively, arms crossed and
lips pressing together. When I had finished she said, ‘I waited till he was in
the bath and I sneaked into his room and looked in his coat and the chest of
drawers and places, everywhere. No passport, no traveller’s-cheque stuff, no
ticket stubs, nothing. So …’ She jerked her shoulders.

‘So he
hadn’t come from Spain, or not straight from there. No knowing where he was or
how long he’s been, well, whatever he is now.

‘Before
he had his bath he didn’t appear at all so I went up to see how he was getting
on, and he was just lying in bed, not asleep, just lying there. Then about half
an hour ago I was nearly blasted off my chair in the study by Mahler on the
record-player. Not just loud, you know, but absurdly loud. Grotesquely loud.
And then of course when I asked him to turn it down he turned it off.’ She
shook her head a few times.

‘Yeah,’
I said. ‘It must be his sex life. At least it’s all I can think of.’

‘Oh, I
brilliantly rang her flat, having brilliantly but I forget why put its number
in my book, but somebody I thought sounded Swedish said no, Miss Blackburn was
not there.’

‘Didn’t
they say anything else?’ Asking that question was rather dishonest of me,
because actually I only wanted to hear some more of what Susan must have
thought was a Swedish accent. It reminded me strongly of the Italian accent she
had put on the previous evening to tell a story about Toscanini.

‘No, in
fact I never made out whether Mandy wasn’t there just then or on a permanent
basis.’

‘Oh.
Well, I think all we can do is leave him to himself until he snaps out of it.
Sorry about that book, by the way. I couldn’t get him to say why he’d done it.’

‘Never
mind. But actually I would rather like another copy if possible.’

‘No
problem, I’ll send one of the girls out for it this afternoon. You go on down
now and I’ll give it a couple of minutes.’

When I
went into the kitchen Lady D swung round on me with an expression that showed
clear as a bell that she expected a full report on the case of the buggered-up
book. I had used most of that couple of minutes to pour and swallow a stiff Scotch.
I wished now I had brought another one with me, that or a brass knuckleduster.
Hoping her idea might go away if I said nothing, I took my place at the table
opposite Susan, who rolled her eyes slightly.

Fat
chance. ‘And what did
Steve
have to say about destroying that book?’
asked her mother, getting a totally different effect this time from leaning on
poor old Steve’s name.

‘Well,
he made it pretty clear that something had just come over him, he couldn’t say
what. But he was obviously very embarrassed about the whole thing and wished it
hadn’t happened.’ True in parts, I thought.

Lady D
gave a kind of one-syllable laugh that in the standard way left it open whether
she was coming clean about not believing a word or thought she was keeping it
to herself. Mrs Shillibeer helped things along by standing at the cooker doing
a marvellous imitation of somebody not listening to what somebody else was
saying because of being so completely wrapped up in heating and stirring a
saucepan of soup. Susan said,

‘Stanley
thinks he’s had an upset in his love life and I must say I’m inclined to agree.’

‘And
that licenses him to
rend
apart other people’s books?’

I
frowned. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. No, I … wouldn’t say that. In fact I can’t
agree at all. Explains it, perhaps.’

‘Let’s
just hope he’ll sort of unwind,’ said Susan.

‘After
shedding the gigantic burden of responsibility he habitually carries about on
his poor shoulders,’ said Lady D with tremendous faces and head-movements as
she spoke. Previous to that she had sent me the latest of a series of looks
which the chances were she thought I never saw or possibly failed to
understand, burning looks, looks that showed she was wondering what sort of
bloke it could be that had a son who did diabolical things like tearing covers
off books. I stopped trying to think what to say when I noticed that Mrs Shillibeer
had pointed her face at me, opened her mouth and started blinking non-stop to
show she had a message for me.

‘Oh, Mr
Duke,’ she said, or rather called.