The Bazaar and Other Stories (35 page)

¹⁵
elbow crossed the tumbled surface of the bed,
¹⁶
showed
the book dropped face down, tray with the scummy tea dregs, the
mirror clouded with face powder. Leo’s freesias, flopping
¹⁷
out of a
carafe, waxy-sweetened the air. Smoke blurred the room and the
ashtray was full of stumps. “Perhaps,” Mrs. Benger said, “you’d tidy
about a bit?”

 

“You ought to have someone with you.”

 

“No, that fidgets me, really. My woman came in this morning,
and she settled me up. I’ll be all right tomorrow – for a bit, that is.
Did you know, Miss Simonez, that your doctor’s at me to go into
hospital?”

 

“Goodness – an operation?”

 

“Oh well, don’t let’s bother,” said Mrs. Benger with nervy light
ness. She fumbled about the bed for a cigarette, lit one and pushed
the box over to Doris. “You see, I can’t
be
sick,” she said. “It doesn’t
do. People hate to have to stick round and be sorry. Or they don’t
stick round then they feel bad, so they forget. – Look, dear, let’s
have a drink: it’s all in the front room.”

 

“Not for me, thanks ever so much.”

 

“Oh, well . . . I suppose
I’m
better without it, just for today . . .
There wasn’t anything for me down in the rack, was there – no letter
or telephone message or anything. It’s awful having the telephone
down in the hall, isn’t it – makes you feel so cut off when you can’t
go down. I heard the telephone going all afternoon, but if it
was
for
¹⁸
me they never came up and said. It was quite likely Leo; he’ll have
been wondering – I wonder, dear, if you’d just give Leo a ring? Tell
him I’m fine this evening, say I’ll be up tomorrow.”

 

Mrs. Benger scrawled a number on the back of a bill; Doris went
down with it and telephoned. In three minutes she had to come up
again and say there was no answer from Leo’s end.

 

“He probably wouldn’t be there,” said Mrs. Benger quickly. “There
was
no note or anything in the rack?”

 

“I’ll try another ring later.”

 

“No, don’t do that, dear, please.” Mrs. Benger grinned and said
ruefully: “I did give him a fright – one must never do that, you know.
Still, I daresay that
was
him this afternoon, all the time that bell kept
ringing away . . . Don’t
you
ever go sick on a boy friend – oh well,
girls don’t; you wouldn’t. You look ever so strong.”

 

“Yes, I’m strong all right.”

 

Mrs. Benger rolled round on her pillows and eyed Doris with her
kind cavernous monkey eyes. “Is that your boy I see going in and
out?”

 

“Who, Sydney?” said Doris, nonchalant. “Yes, that’s my
fiancé
.”
She went across and began to straighten the dressing table. “All this
powder,” she said, in a slightly bullying tone. “Where can I get a
duster?”

 

“In the front room drawer, somewhere. Oh, so you’re getting
married? Well, I do think that’s nice! You been engaged long?”

 

“Just since yesterday evening, as a matter of fact.”

 

“Oh, that does make me feel bad!” exclaimed Mrs. Benger.
¹⁹
“You
two’d just fixed everything up, then Leo dragged you down here – ”

 

“I was only up there with mother.”

 

Mrs. Benger said, with ever so slight a flicker: “Mother taking it
well?”

 

“Well . . .” said Doris, “you see, I’m all she’s got.”

 

“Well, you can’t help that, can you, my dear.”

 

“Still, it’s hard on mother . . .”

 

“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Benger. “She’ll think twice as much of you
now you’ve got off.”

It was true that Mrs. Simonez started to treat Doris with a kind of
gloomy respect. She was no longer half so free in her comments on
what Doris said and did. All Mrs. Simonez did was to purse up her
lips and suffer. She never did cease to disparage Sydney, but she
disparaged by innuendo, not openly. She even allowed to pass, with
an icy lack of comment, Doris’s popping in at Mrs. Benger’s, below.
To be intimate like this with Mrs. Benger (and there was nothing
between not knowing Mrs. Benger and being, at once, extremely
intimate with her) was, of course, an act of disloyalty. Apropos of
nothing, Mrs. Simonez repeated: “Of course, things are so changed
now: I don’t know what to expect.” Her manner to Sydney showed
an icy correctness.

“What does keep on eating your mother?” he said. “

I
understood
that we’d put everything right.”

 

Soon Doris acquired a small pearl ring – and every Friday, when
they had left the office, she reminded Sydney to buy her flowers.
Those evenings she brought her sheaf home, she almost always
looked in on Mrs. Benger. Mrs. Benger had got up with her face
thinner; she put higher colour under her eyes; her monkey smiles,
her hollow bold looks,
²⁰
her melancholic gaiety all seemed to be
tautened up from within. But Leo had started coming again: his
sports car was once more outside the door. “Why don’t
²¹
you two
come in one evening, Doris,” she said, “and have a drink with us
both?”

 

“Sydney’d like that.”

 

“You bring Sydney along.”

 

So Doris fixed up with Sydney: two evenings later they went
downstairs, about nine, to the Benger flat. Mrs. Benger came to the
door to meet them; Leo sprawled all disjointed across the divan – a
young man who had just had his head pushed off someone’s lap.
²²
Flattening his back hair he got up, with his tom-cat grace. Sydney’s
head turned stiffly above his collar: he took his drink, sat down and
looked round the room. The intimacy between the two women was
a little frozen by the presence of the young men: Mrs. Benger, at
first, moved about with a more conventional smile than Doris had
ever seen on her face, the hem of her brocade house-coat stiffly
brushing the floor. Doris took just a dash of lime in her gin, looked
round and placed herself with a matronly firmness on the arm of
Sydney’s chair. Leo fell back on the divan, put a hand up and pulled
Mrs. Benger down beside him.

 

“Gorgeous carnations,” Leo said to Doris, across a few feet of
room, with his bold smile. She looked down at the shoulder of her
afternoon frock – the fern round the carnations tickled her jaw.

 

“Oh, she is ever so lucky,” said Mrs. Benger, pulling at Leo’s
fingers – his hand was back in her lap.

 

“Doris spots the bouquets,” said Sydney. “Girls know what they
like, don’t they. I only pay up.”

 

Leo grinned as he sprawled there alongside of Mrs. Benger, but
went on looking abstracted and sensual. Leo’s unseeing dark eyes,
fixed on the engaged couple, made Sydney put his arm round Doris’s
waist. Talk warmed up as it got more desultory; peaceful darkness
crept back to Mrs. Benger’s face. “They cheer me up,” she said,
nodding across the hearthrug. “When are you going to get married,
you two?”

 

“August.”

 

“Oh dear – that really is a long time.”

 

“Sydney’s holiday doesn’t come till then. And mother’ll have to fix
up somewhere, you see.”

 

“She’d rather like to come to us,” Sydney said. “But I tell Doris
that that would never do.”

 

“I don’t need telling,” said Doris, “I know perfectly well.”

 

“What’s it feel like, getting married?” Leo said, half waking up.

 

“You’ll know, one day, dear boy,” said Mrs. Benger. Across his
inert body she reached for a cigarette. Sydney, pressing Doris’s
waist, said: “Ah, we all come to it.”

 

From under the crooked tilted lampshades light came at faceheight across the room. Above the ceiling Doris could hear
footsteps – Mrs. Simonez kept walking about with a tireless but
complaining energy that was instinct in every creak of the floor.
“Your mother’s ever so active,” Mrs. Benger said. “I wonder she
doesn’t wear herself out.” Petals fell off a spike of almond blossom as
Mrs. Simonez lunged at the bathroom door.

 

“Mother likes to keep busy when she’s alone.”

 

“I daresay it’s lonely for her up there . . . Maybe I should invite
her down?” said Mrs. Benger. “But I thought we’d be nicer just we
four.”

 

At these words, the final spell fell on the room; the two pairs of
lovers sat and looked at each other. Doris thought of those voices
she used to hear, from down here, when she lay up there, racked,
those evenings when Sydney had said nothing and gone. The recent
opening of her senses (that she used to keep shut, to avoid pain)
made her eye Leo with a curious eye. She had never considered a
man’s beauty before. She looked at the hand he had let drop on his
chest, while the other hand lay on
²³
his lover’s knee. “Yes, he’s awake
really,” said Mrs. Benger. “He’s learnt to talk, really – come over and
talk to him.” She got up and gave Sydney another drink, gave herself
one more, than amiably elbowed Doris off the arm of his chair. “I’d
like Sydney, a bit,” she said. “You go and wake Leo up.” She pulled
a square pouffe alongside of Sydney’s chair, and Sydney took a long
pull at his drink then turned round at her, ready for anything.
Infected by the spirit of friendly looseness, Doris crossed the rug
and sat down there beside Leo.

 

“Oh, hullo Doris,” he said, opening his eyes wider, “you’ve
brought your lovely carnations over here.” He pushed himself a little
up on his elbows and began to talk about that night Polly passed
out. His looks, with their indifferent air of closeness, stole from
under his eyelids into Doris’s eyes, and her heart shook as though
she were being touched.

 

“I lost my head,” he said. “But I had got a nerve, really – con
sidering I’d never seen you before.”

 

“I’d seen your car, often.”

 

“Come a run in it someday. You’re not getting married right off?”

 

“August,” Doris repeated.

 

“Well, that’s lots of time to come a run in my car . . . Listen to
them
,” said Leo. “Hark at Sydney and Polly. What do you and I think
they’re laughing at?”

 

“Some joke, I daresay.”

 

“Let’s us have a joke – let’s think some sort of joke up,” he said,
confidentially slipping hold of her hand. She looked down at the
long brown spatulate fingers reposefully pressing between hers.
There was a pause. “You and I are dumb,” said Leo. “There surely
ought to be something to laugh at?” His eyes wandered thoughtfully
over Doris. “I’m such a slow starter,” he said.

 

She frowned over this, as though he had said something deep.
“Well, we don’t have to keep laughing,” she said. All at once, she
knew she needed a rock – dumb habit made her look over at
Sydney. Now, though, she saw Sydney for the first time.
²⁴
Her
whole being started. There he sat, flushed and twisted, tilting his
drink at Polly – she only saw a stranger whom she did not love.
Why, I couldn’t . . . she thought. Why, how ever could I? . . . What
a shocking thing. Imperiously, she freed her hand from Leo’s as
though he were just a child: her cheeks burned, she got up, holding
her glass. “I’d like a spot more lime and soda,” she said.
²⁵

 

“Goodness,” laughed Mrs. Benger, brushing ash off her housecoat. “Whatever’s Leo been doing to you?”

Sydney saw Doris upstairs as far as the Simonez’ landing. They
stood about a bit by the gas cooker, but she did not ask him to come
in. “It’s late,” she said.

“Oh, right-o.” Sydney looked cautiously down the staircase.
“Phew,” he said in a low voice, “Polly’s a one! She and I got on like
houses. See she colours her toenails? . . . I don’t take to her boy
friend – he’s a gigolo type.”

“You needn’t,” she said, trembling, “have told them I buy my
flowers myself.”

 

“Well, I like that. When I fork out.”

 

“You wouldn’t see . . .” she said. “However . . . Hop off, Sydney;
it’s late.”

 

“Oh, all right, all right, all right – what do I get?”

 

At the top of the stairs, she offered her cold cheek. Then: “Shut
up,” she said. “Get
out
! You’ve been drinking too much.”

 

On these words, Mrs. Simonez, in her Japanese wrapper, opened
and appeared in the flat door. Like a puppy frightened out of the
larder, Sydney made a quick bolt for the stairs.
The Last Bus
T
he moon was full and the heavens themselves were
clear, but a ground mist curdled over the landscape. The two people
waiting at the bus stop on the high ridge looked down on a whitish,
semi-transparent sea, through which contours of the lower down
land, like those of a submerged continent, were just visible. Without
the mist, the view could have been startling – you could see for
miles in any direction; you should have been able to note the islandlike knolls of trees, the lonely and self-sufficient farms and cottages,
the villages that, lightless and battened down, seemed to huddle like
primitive settlements; and, most of all, the lovely erratic pattern of
the downland roads that, hedgeless, surmounted ridges, dipped out
of sight, reappeared, crossed one another and rippled on, each with
a destination that, somehow, you could not doubt.

As it was, all this open country, less than half seen, could be
strongly felt. Its effect on the man and woman waiting for the bus
was, if anything, oppressive. Both had urgent reasons to wish to be
somewhere else by a fixed hour; and their principal feeling was, at
the moment, that of being too far from anywhere. Their total
dependence upon the bus made them nervous. Anxiously they heard
a church clock strike ten, somewhere down there right off in the
mist. Now and then stamping their chilling feet – for this was only
two evenings before Christmas – they stared in the direction from
which the bus should come.

They had been strangers to one another, and had even eyed one
another a shade suspiciously, until they had realised that they were
both waiting for the same bus. Then – partly because it seemed
idiotic that two human beings should ignore one another in this
inhuman silence, partly as an outlet for their nerves – they had
begun to talk: intermittently, stopping to strain their ears. She was a
youngish countrywoman; he, in his dark overcoat with the collar up,
looked urban, a civil servant; his nipped features were spare; now
and then his glasses caught the diffused moonlight. She, laden with
bulging string bags, satchels, parcels (she was carrying country
produce back to town), stood, unaware of their weight and her
numbing fingers, in an attitude at once stocky and statuesque.
Whereas he who had with him nothing but a despatch case kept
nervously shifting his grip on that.