The Bachelors (19 page)

Ronald
wrote it down. Matthew said, ‘But don’t go there. She’s a dangerous woman.
She___’

The
telephone rang. ‘Marlene Cooper here,’ said the voice. ‘Ronald, you’ll remember
coming to lunch with me. I’m Tim’s aunt.’ She articulated the vowels as if
addressing a mental defective.

‘Yes,
how are you?’ Ronald said.

‘Listen
carefully,’ she said. ‘You have lost a document, haven’t you?’

‘A
document?’ Ronald said.

‘I’m
sorry if you’re going to take up that attitude,’ she said.

‘Attitude?’
Ronald said.

‘Yes,
because there might be a chance of my helping you.’

‘Helping
me?’

‘Yes,
helping you. I think I might be able to give you the name of the person who
holds the document, and this would save you a lot of embarrassment, if only—’

‘Embarrassment?’

‘It is
not a forgery,’ Marlene said. ‘And if you would come along here and discuss the
matter, I think you would find it to your advantage. Can you manage six o’clock?
It isn’t a forgery, that must be made plain. Patrick Seton must be cleared of
this slander. I will explain everything. Sherry at six o’clock or six-thirty
and stay for supper, Ronald—’

‘Forgery?’
Ronald said.

‘It is
not a forgery,’ Marlene said. ‘On that I insist. And if you will agree simply
to say so to your superiors I can give you the name and address of a certain
young woman.’

‘Thanks,’
Ronald said, ‘but really I don’t like young women.’

‘Can
you manage today, six o’clock?’ Marlene said.

‘I’m
afraid not. I’ve got to see a young woman.’

He said
to Matthew after he had hung up, ‘Tim’s auntie is a woman of few scruples when
she’s after something.’

‘Would
you come across the road for a drink?’ Matthew said. ‘All women under the sun
are unscrupulous if there’s something they want.’

‘She
was prepared to sell me Elsie’s name and address,’ Ronald said. ‘But as I’ve
got it from you for free, I’ll purchase a drink for you.’

‘But
isn’t it a great mistake to be bitter about the female sex!’ Matthew said. ‘We
owe them everything.’

On Sunday afternoon Isobel
Billows stoked up the fire and sent Martin Bowles to fetch in some more coal.
He put the brief he was reading down on the floor beside his chair and went to
do her bidding. As he could not hear the front-door bell from the back of the
house where he was filling the scuttle with coal, he was surprised, on his
return, to find Walter Prett, the art critic, plumply occupying his chair.
Walter had one foot on Martin’s brief.

‘You
are trampling on my brief,’ Martin said, bending to extricate it from under
Walter’s heel. He smoothed out the squashed manilla cover of the file which
held his brief. ‘There’s a hundred and eighty pounds’ worth of business in
here,’ Martin said fretfully.

‘Don’t
be vulgar,’ said Walter.

‘Now,
bachelors,’ said Isobel, ‘don’t quarrel.’

‘I deny
there’s anything particularly vulgar about money,’ Martin said.

‘Did you
put on the kettle as you came through the kitchen?’ Isobel said.

‘No,
you didn’t ask me to,’ said Martin.

‘Well,
go and do it now,’ Walter said.

‘Walter!’
said Isobel, and she pushed the Sunday papers off her lap and got up, setting
her fair hair straight. ‘We’ll have some tea,’ she said and departed.

Walter
said, ‘I wonder if you’d let me have___’

‘No,’
said Martin.

‘Vulgar
little fellow,’ Walter said, tossing his snow-white locks. His dark face turned
a shade more towards purple. He took a cigarette from a packet which was lying
on the arm of his chair. They were Martin’s cigarettes. Martin lifted the
deprived packet and put it in his pocket.

Walter
tore a strip of newspaper and lit his cigarette from the fire.

‘I didn’t
see you here at the party,’ Martin said.

‘Which
party?’

‘Oh,
sorry. I suppose you weren’t invited.’

‘I
believe Isobel
did
mention something,’ Walter said. ‘But I was busy.’

Martin
began reading his brief.

‘Too
busy,’ said Walter, ‘to mix with those common little people that hang round Isobel
at her parties. Pimps and tarts and Jews.’

Martin
read on.

‘Spongers
and soaks. Third-rate lower-middle class …’

Isobel
pushed open the door with her tray.

‘Walter
is describing the people who come to your parties,’ Martin said, ‘Isobel dear.’

‘What
people?’ said Isobel, settling the tray.

‘The
sort of people who were at your cocktail party the other night.’

‘Oh,
Walter,’ Isobel said. ‘My party — I tried to get you on the ‘phone, but you
were always out. And I meant to send you a card but completely forgot, hoping
to get you on the ‘phone, you see—’

‘I
wouldn’t have come,’ Walter shouted. ‘A vulgar third-rate set. Journalists.
British Council lecturers. Schoolmasters. A typical divorcée’s salon.’ And so
saying he rose, lifted the tray of tea-things, smashed it down into the
fireplace, wormed his bulk into the ancient camel-hair coat which he had thrown
on a chair, and left, banging both doors.

‘You
must have upset him,’ Isobel said to Martin.

‘A good
thing too. He only came here to sponge on you. He tried to touch me — you weren’t
five seconds out of the room.’

‘Oh,
what a creature! And he can be so interesting when he likes. It’s my favourite
china…’ She started to cry.

‘Send
him a bill.’

‘Don’t
be silly.’

‘You
must be protected,’ Martin said, with his arm around her, ‘from spongers.’

He was
hoping the fuss would not now make it difficult for him to get away after tea,
for he had promised his old mother to be home for Sunday supper.

‘I am
not a possessive woman,’ his mother always said to him. ‘You are perfectly
free. Just use the house as a lodging and come and go as you please. Or take a
flat, live elsewhere, do anything you like. Don’t think of me, I’ve
had
my
life. I am not a possessive woman.’

‘She is
not a possessive woman,’ he told his friends. ‘My old ma says, “Take a flat if
you like, go and live somewhere else, I don’t want you tied to my
apron-strings.” She isn’t a possessive mother. But,’ Martin told his friends, ‘I’ve
got to stay with her. You can’t let your old widowed mother stew in Kensington
when she’s got arthritis. All her cronies have got arthritis. And she fights
with Carrie, she literally fights with Carrie. Literally, they pull each other’s
hair.’

Carrie
was Martin’s old nurse, now, by courtesy, the housekeeper. When Martin was first
called to the bar, and was short of money, old Carrie would wander off to the
post office and draw out three pounds at a time of her savings; these three
pounds she would privately slip to Martin. Several times Martin told his mother
of this, intending it as a rebuke to her for her meanness. Mrs. Bowles then
wrote a cheque for Martin and, when he was out of the way, went and had a row
with Carrie.

These
latter days Carrie lived with Mrs. Bowles as an equal. Sometimes they
quarrelled and had a real fight, pulling each other’s hair and, with feeble
veined hands, pushing each other’s faces, pushing spectacles awry and knocking
at each other’s jaws with their helpless knuckles. Carrie had left all her life’s
savings to Martin, and she had saved since she was a girl of fourteen. Mrs.
Bowles suspected that Carrie’s fortune now surpassed her own dwindling funds,
and therefore Carrie was a real rival.

‘I’m
not a possessive woman,’ said Mrs. Bowles.

‘You
should of pushed him out the nest long ago, ‘said Carrie. ‘You should take a
lesson off the birds. You got to push them out. When my brother was a boy
thirteen my mother said to him, “There’s five shillings, now go.” That’s
pushing them out the nest. My brother had a good position in a club before he
died.’

‘This is
a different case. A barrister has a struggle. I’m not a possessive woman. Let
him marry, let him go.’

‘You
got to
put
them out,’ Carrie said.

‘Are
you telling me to turn my own son out of doors? ‘said his mother, and her eyes,
which bulged naturally, shone with a bevelled light.

‘Yes,’
said Carrie. ‘It would make a man of him.’

‘Then
why do you give him money?’

‘Me
give him money? — Catch me.’

‘Martin
told me. Last week you gave him money. Twice the week before that. Last month
you—’

‘Well,
you keep him short, don’t you?’

So
Martin could never bring himself to leave Carrie and his mother, even although
he no longer needed Carrie’s little offerings. He lost his hair. He worried
about his old mother if he went away to the country with Isobel for the
week-end. He tried to entertain them and to be a good son. They bored him, but
when they went away from home he missed the boredom, and the feud between them
which sometimes broke into it.

‘Carrie
will have to go away to a home,’ said his old mother, ‘if her arthritis gets
bad.’

‘No,’
said Martin. ‘Carrie stays here.’

‘You’re
after that money of hers. You may be disappointed,’ his mother said. He hated
her fiercely for her continual robbing him of any better motive.

‘I’m
fond of Carrie,’ he said. But now his mother had left him wondering if he
really meant it.

‘Your
mother will be bedridden before long, ‘Carrie said. ‘What’s to happen then?’

‘We’ll
get a daily nurse,’ Martin said. ‘We’ll manage.’

‘They
won’t stop,’ Carrie said. ‘Not with your mother. Look at Millie.’

‘Oh,
nurses are different from maids. Maids always come and go.’

‘Millie
was a good girl. She would of stopped if your mother hadn’t made her life a
misery.’

He took
them both to the country to his mother’s younger sister on occasions. Then he
went shopping for small supplies of groceries, pined for the boredom, and
cooked whatever meals he did not have with Isobel. He missed the two old women
pottering about and blaming each other.

‘I’ve
lost a vest, Carrie.’

‘I
haven’t got your vest.’

‘I have
not said you’ve taken my vest. I think Millie must have taken it.’

‘What
would Millie of wanted with a vest down to her knees?’ said Carrie.

‘It was
a good warm vest,’ said Mrs. Bowles.

‘You’ve
put it away in the wrong place,’ said Carrie, ‘that’s what you’ve done. Look
among the table linen.’

This
was what Martin missed when they went away to the country, and then, even on
his comfortable week-ends with Isobel, he thought of the empty house and the
time when he was due to drive down to fetch them home and plonk them in their
chairs in front of the television.

‘It isn’t
clear.’

‘Be
quiet, Carrie.’

‘I’m
going to turn it up.’

‘Sit
still, Carrie.’

Carrie’s
niece had once offered to take her off their hands.

‘Let
her go,’ said Mrs. Bowles, and in her anger strained a muscle in her shoulder
while heaving Carrie’s trunk from the box-room out on to the landing.

Carrie
surveyed the box. ‘I’ll go when it suits me,’ she said, ‘and it won’t be to my
relations I’ll go. I could make myself a home tomorrow if it suited me.’

Martin
had heaved the trunk back into its old place, for it had left a clear oblong
shape on the dusty floor. Martin brushed his trousers and washed his hands.

‘Fetch
me the liniment for my shoulder,’ said his mother, ‘there’s a good boy.’

He had
bought them the television, and now, comforting Isobel for her broken china,
he was wondering how he could get home in time for supper, as he had promised
them he would.

He
picked up the broken pieces and said, ‘You mustn’t allow Walter Prett into the
house again.’

‘He’s never
done this before,’ she said.

‘Does
he come often?’ Martin stood up in his alarm, with half the sugar basin in his
hand, so that a little shower of sugar fell to the carpet.

‘No,
Martin,’ she said.

He was
suspicious because of the ‘No, Martin,’ instead of merely ‘No.’

‘He’s
disreputable,’ Martin said. ‘A sponger and a drunk.’

‘Yes,
Martin, I know.’

He was
frantic with curiosity. ‘What could any woman see in him?’

‘He can
be interesting when—’

‘When
he’s not drunk.’

‘Well,
he’s got something about him, he’s different from anybody else.’

She got
down and picked up all the china. ‘Pour me a drink,’ she said.