Stanley and the Women (6 page)

I sat
on and the bloke in the fancy jacket talked on. What he was saying must have
been extremely important, because so far he had not had time to notice I had
turned up. After a minute Bert came in carrying a glass with a blue-tinged
liquid in it, perhaps drawn off from the insides of some appliance. I saw now
that his glasses were similarly tinted. He looked over at me round their sides
more than through them.

‘Listen,’
he said, ‘have a … er … Do you want a drink?’

As a
matter of fact I did, but I was not going to have one with him. ‘No thank you,’
I said.

He
thought that could not be right and spoke more loudly. ‘I said do you want a
drink.’
When I refused again he slumped down on a padded corner-seat some distance
off. The little girl, who had followed him into the room, clambered up beside
him in a complicated, drawn-out style and started leaning against him and
rolling about all over him the way some of them do at that age with men in the
family, not sexually quite because they leave your privates alone, but sexually
all the same because you would have to take it like that from anyone else. In
the meantime the kid watched me from under her eyebrows as though I had to be
half out of my mind with jealousy.

After a
bit of this I started to feel restless. I went over to Bert and said, ‘Where
exactly is Steve, do you know?’

He
lifted his arm up slowly to point at the ceiling. Nobody tried to stop me when
I went out of the room. I reckoned to find Steve laid out in one of the
bedrooms and walked up to the top floor, stopping on the way for a pee. The wc
had a fluffy crimson mat round its base and another on its lid in case you
wanted a comfortable sit-down. The place led off a bathroom with pine panels
round the bath and one of Nowell’s classy loofahs, looped at the ends to help
you do your back, on a bright brass hook behind the door.

Steve
was in a bedroom that had large windows, no curtains, bare lemon-yellow walls
and the late-afternoon sunshine streaming straight in, so it was never hard to
see what was going on in the next few minutes. I thought of Susan’s description
when I saw he was not only not asleep but not even in the sort of attitude
sleeping people get into. Apart from the unmade bed he was lying on I noticed
two rather neat piles of sheet-music and a newish bar-billiards table. That set
me wondering, a third of a ton of slate and mahogany lifted all this way, and
how, and why, but I soon dismissed it from my mind when I took another look at
Steve.

‘What
about getting on home?’ I said. ‘There’s nothing for us here.’

He
muttered something I failed to catch, just a few words, rather fast.

‘Sorry,
what did you say?’

‘No, I
was just …’ His voice petered out in a sort of quiet gabble.

I tried
again. ‘Let’s be off. We could take in a beer at the Pheasant.’

‘Possessing
all the relevant information to the most incredible degree,’ he said quickly.

‘What?’
I said, though I had heard well enough.

No
reply. After a pause he suddenly swung his legs round and sat on the edge of
the bed so as to face the main window. Then he raised one hand in what might
have been a waving movement. Obviously there was nothing out there, but I went
and looked to make sure and that was what there was, just a lot of roofs and
down below not a soul in sight, a cat sitting on a wall and that was it. When I
turned back to Steve I thought his face was not quite the same as what I was
used to, not in any way I could have described but enough so that if I had seen
him unexpectedly in the street I might not have recognized him for a second.
Yes, it was something about the way his features related to each other. There
was so much I wanted to ask him, no deep stuff, no more than what he had
actually been doing before he turned up the previous night and what he had in
mind to do, but there seemed to be no way to start. Another pause.

‘Let’s
get going, shall we?’ I said, trying not to sound too jolly. ‘I’ve got the car
outside.’

‘Do you
believe in past lives?’ he asked me, in a rush as before.

‘Eh? I’m
sorry, son, I just don’t understand what you mean.

‘You
know, people living before and then being born again. Do you believe in it?’

‘Oh,
reincarnation. No, I don’t think so. I haven’t really … How do you mean,
anyway?’

‘People
that lived a long time ago — right? — being born again now, in the twentieth
century.’

‘But
they …’ I stopped short — there was no sense in starting on what was wrong
with that. ‘Say I do believe in it, what about it?’

Steve
was staring out of or towards the window. The line of his mouth lengthened
slowly in a thin, tight, horizontal grin, and he began to giggle through his
closed lips in a half-suppressed kind of way, not a habit of his. Nothing much
seemed to be happening to the rest of his face, except perhaps his eyes widened
a bit. After a few moments he stopped, but started again almost straight away,
this time putting his hand over his mouth. Even though it was not a specially
disagreeable sound in itself I had soon had all I needed. I went brisk and
businesslike, looked at my watch and turned to the door.

‘I must
remember to get petrol,’ I said. ‘Would you keep a look out for a place on the
way? I had a full tank on Tuesday, you know. It’s all the low-gear work in
town.’

He
nodded and got to his feet, but then he said, ‘Are they still there, those
people downstairs?’

‘What?
Well, they were when I came up. Why?’

‘What
were they saying?’

‘I don’t
know. Nothing of any consequence, I imagine. Mum was listening to that
white-haired —’

‘What
were they smirking and carrying on about?’

‘They
weren’t carrying on about anything that I could see. They were just —’

‘Why
are you pretending?’ He sounded no more than irritated.

‘Steve,
I honestly —’

‘Don’t
try and tell me you don’t know what I mean.’

I failed
to come up with any answer to that one. For the first time I wondered what the
horrible things had been that Nowell had told me over the phone he had said to
her. She tended to have horrible things said to her more often than most
people, though most people would probably not have counted a few of them. One
lot had consisted of some stuff about his garden that a neighbour had said to
her when he could have been saying how brilliant she had been as the publican’s
wife in the film spin-off of that TV series. I remembered feeling quite
indignant with him at the time.

Whatever
Steve might have been saying earlier he seemed peaceable enough now, and when
he and I went back to the lounge place we might have been any old visiting
father and son looking in to say goodbye. Nowell and the white-haired fellow
were not there, Bert and the child were, sprawled in front of the television
set, or rather he was sprawled while she wriggled about next to him or on him.
A cartoon was showing with the sound turned down so far that you got nothing
more than the occasional faint clatter or scream. After a minute Nowell
reappeared, having seen her chum off as I had sensed.

‘That
was Chris Rabinowitz,’ she explained when we were still only halfway out of a
pretty brief clinch of greeting. The name meant nothing to me, but the grovel
in her voice made me think he must be on the production side rather than just
another actor.

Steve
seemed to take no notice and just said, rather flatly, ‘We’re off now, mum.’

‘Oh,
are you, darling?’

There
was a big hug then, with her very decently forgiving him for the horrible
things. I looked at the television. The cartoon was the sort where as little as
possible moved or changed from one frame to the next so as not to overwork the
artists. Something went wrong with the hug but I missed what it was.

‘Cheers,
Bert,’ said Steve, and started to move away.

‘You
must
come again soon,’ said Nowell to Steve and me, as though the present
once-a-week arrangement was nowhere near good enough.

Immediately
— though I soon saw there was no connection — Steve turned back to her and said
in the same flat way, ‘Is he a Jew, that pal of yours?’

‘Who,
Chris? I don’t know, darling. I suppose he is. Why, what of it?’

‘Do you
get many of them coming round here?’

‘What,
many Jews? Some, probably. But what on earth are you driving at?’

‘They’re
moving in everywhere to their destined positions.’

‘Oh,
come on, Steve, don’t be bleeding ridiculous,’ I said. ‘That’s not your style
at all.’ It certainly was not, in fact he would sometimes call me a Nazi for
making the kind of mildly anti-semitic remarks that came naturally to someone
like me born where and when I was. ‘Or is it the way your pals are talking
these days?’

‘You
don’t understand. This isn’t that old-fashioned shit about Yids in the fucking
golf club. None of you know what’s going on. They’re not ready, see, not even
through the whole country yet, never mind some of the other places. But the map
is there, and it projects, you know, if you can just get on to it. You want to
get your head together.’ He seemed to think that this was an important secret
and well worth knowing for its own sake too. ‘Take warning. When the pattern’s
complete, the prediction of the ages will emerge. Surely you must have seen
something, one of you. Doesn’t the colour of the sky look different after dark?’

This
made Nowell quite cross. She tried a couple of times to interrupt and finally
got in a burst. ‘For goodness’ sake shut up, darling. I can’t bear that sort of
poppycock.’ That might well have been true — the sort of poppycock she could
bear or better, like astrology and ESP and ghosts, was well worked over and
properly laid out. ‘You’ve been reading one of these frightful mad paperbacks
about cosmonauts or flying saucers or something.’

‘No,’
said Steve in an agitated way, shaking his head violently. ‘No.’

‘Of
course you have. Or you’ve been sniffing glue or taking horrible speed. I’ve
got enough troubles of my own without listening to your nonsense hour after
hour.’ So Chris Rabinowitz had not come up with the offer or prospect he had
been supposed to. Without looking at me Nowell went on, ‘Get him out of here,
Stanley, please, and leave me in peace. I’ve had about all I can take.’

Before
I could say anything he shouted, ‘You poor fools! You’re in terrible danger!’
He looked wildly round the room as though he needed a place to take cover.

I tried
to get him to look at me. ‘What danger, Steve? What from?’

‘You
have to trust me, dad.’

‘How do
you mean?’

‘You’ve
got to put your whole trust in me, completely. Swear you’ll trust me whatever
happens.’

‘Of
course I trust you, lad, we all do, but what do you mean, whatever happens?
What’s going to happen? Who —’

‘No,
swear — you have to swear. Mum, you swear first — come and stand over here by
me.’

‘Don’t be
ridiculous, Steve,’ said Nowell, but she said it without any conviction at all.
And incidentally she looked like the way she had looked one time years before,
I remembered, when she had wanted a holiday in Morocco and I had said Majorca
was far enough.

Steve
was shouting again. ‘Will you listen! It’s going to happen any minute now!’

I said,
‘What is? For Christ’s sake, what’s supposed to happen?’

‘I can’t
explain, you have to trust me.

Silence
fell, but from the way Steve looked it was not going to last long. He was
trembling in a jerky way and wincing as though he was cold, and his expression
and even the set of his shoulders showed total bewilderment, though the word
was not strong enough for a feeling that in this case was obviously as painful
as extreme fear. At that point I knew what I had known on his first appearance
the previous night, or rather I was forced to admit it to myself. On the other
hand I was stumped for what to do. It seemed Nowell was not. She put her arm
round his shoulders and talked to him with a loving sort of indignation, taking
his part against the world.

‘You’ve
had about enough, you poor little thing, haven’t you? It really is too bad. You’ve
been under the most terrible pressure. I’m not surprised you’re upset. Anybody
would be. It must have been absolutely awful,’ she said, and more in the same
strain.

In a
minute or so she had him sitting on the couch and not trembling in the same
way. I knew and cared nothing about why she was doing it or what she was saying
to herself about it. Bert had no way of understanding what was happening but
that bothered him not in the least. His offspring was more up with things,
staring while resting her cheek on her shoulder like a kid watching a couple of
sweet little baa-lambs. I went over and asked for a phone.

He
decided not to trust himself to speak, which I thought showed sound judgement.
Kicking over on the carpet his fortunately empty glass he made a last-straw
face and noise and pointed at the ceiling as earlier, then flew into a temper and
shook his head a lot and pointed at the floor. I found what I was looking for
in the next room, which set me wondering rather where Bert thought he was for
the moment.