The Walking Stick (4 page)

‘Are you on duty tonight?’ I said, hoping to head her off the subject.

‘Well, of course, otherwise I should not have been called out. Who’s the young man? Was he bringing you back from Sarah’s?’

‘No, he took me to see a film.’

‘Odd voice. Where did you meet him?’

‘At Sarah’s. He’s an artist.’

‘Oh?’ It was a mistake to have told her that. An interest stirred in her voice. ‘Ask him in for drinks some time.’

‘Yes . . . some time.’

We went up the stairs. ‘You really should have more men friends, Deborah. There’s absolutely no reason why not.’

‘No. No reason at all.’

That night I had my old dream back. I dreamed that I was in a coffin but somehow it wasn’t long enough and my head stuck out through a hole in the end. My hands and arms
and legs were tied and I couldn’t move a muscle. People were looking at me – three or four of the undertakers – and I knew that in a matter of minutes I should be buried and the
earth would be shovelled into my mouth. I tried to protest, to scream, to explain that I wasn’t really dead, that only my body was dead and my head and brain were very much alive. Each time I
tried to speak to the undertakers they turned away.

Then I knew really that it wasn’t just burial they intended but a kind of torture. All the time there was this terrible sound of a great animal breathing: I couldn’t see it but it
was somewhere near; and all the time the men were watching the dials on a kind of clock to see how much pain I could stand. And the pain wasn’t yet there, but I
knew
, I knew it was
going to
start
.

And then one of the undertakers came forward with a long rubber tube and began to push it up my nose, and every now and then he said ‘swallow’ and pushed in a bit more; and then I
had no breath but only pain, no breath to speak, no breath to call out, no breath to exclaim. The weight of burial was on my chest. I was dying, dying; and the pain, the terrible pain, and the
suffocation . . .

I rocked backward and forward as Erica gripped my shoulder and shook me awake.

‘Deborah! You’ll disturb your father!’

No one,
no one
who has not suffered such nightmares can understand the inexpressible bliss of waking to find a familiar bed, a familiar room, movement in one’s limbs, easy
breathing, no burial or intended burial, a stern but familiar motherly hand. And no pain anywhere.

‘Sorry,’ I said, struggling still. ‘Did I wake you?’

‘Yes. You were crying. That awful whimpering sound. It’s only about two o’clock. I must only have just gone off.’

‘Sorry, Erica. So sorry. I’ll be all right now.’

‘Did you get overexcited tonight?’

‘No, not a bit.’

‘I wondered if going out with that young man . . . It’s years since you had one of these turns.’

I struggled up in bed. ‘Don’t call them
turns
. I’m not having fits or anything. They’re just horrible nightmares. I’m all right now.
Sorry
to have got
you out of bed. Really, I’ll be all right. Like me to make you a cup of tea?’

‘No, no,’ said my mother, horrified. ‘That really would end the night. Tannin is as stimulating as caffeine.’

I lay back and stretched luxuriously in the bed. Even my bad leg felt cool and comfortable.

‘Thank you for coming. I was just being buried alive.’

‘
Really
, Deborah. Sometimes I think you glory in it.’

‘No glory, darling,’ I said. ‘But it’s glory to wake.’

I sometimes think that the most threadbare things in the world are yesterday’s smart ideas; and surely one of the most dated of them all is calling one’s parents by
their Christian names. The notion, of course, is that if everyone gets on a matey first-name basis from the start, it helps to abolish the gap between the generations; with resultant reduction in
tensions; but this really is most awful nonsense, because nothing can ever abolish a gap of twenty to thirty years. Far more important is a good imagination on the child’s part and a good
memory on the parent’s; and the second is the most obligatory; because a child can only
try
to imagine what it must be like to be a parent; a parent ought to be able to remember what
it’s like to be a child.

Erica, in spite of all her forward-thinking ideas, didn’t seem to be awfully good at this. Maybe too much clinical experience had rubbed away the sensitive feelers that enable one human
being to apprehend how another is feeling. She was terribly proud of her other two daughters but was always making gaffes about their love life; and her attitude towards me seemed to vary between
trying to thrust me into personal relationships with outsiders and trying to guard me against them.

All I really wanted to do was live the life I’d worked out for myself. I hoped I hadn’t got a chip on my shoulder about a comparatively minor disablement; I tried to be realistic
about it; for the rest I was busy and content and just wanted to be left in peace.

But no one seemed particularly willing to co-operate in this, except perhaps Douglas, my father, who constitutionally favoured any line which required no effort on his part.

On the next Saturday we all met for supper, Sarah and Arabella, too, and we had hardly got through the grapefruit before Erica was saying she had heard this young man Hartley twice ringing up,
and me telling Minta to tell him I was out.

So then we all had to discuss him and to discuss whether it was a good thing or not that I should choke him off. Everybody studiously avoided mentioning that this must be the first young man
I’d had for about four years; instead they talked about
him
. Sarah didn’t know much, except that she had met him at David Hambro’s, and David Hambro had met him through an
antique dealer and had gone to see an exhibition of his at some East End gallery. She said she’d ask David about him next time they met, and I said, For Heaven’s sake, and she said, But
tactfully, of course, ducky, without mentioning your name. And I said, This family is disgusting; it will leave absolutely nothing alone.

The following week we were pretty busy in Whittington’s, and on the Tuesday I had coffee and a sandwich for lunch and did not slip out until four for a cup of tea. (Whittington’s
office tea is awful.) As I came out into the thundery gloom of Grafton Street a voice said:

‘Do you know that the Kingdom of Heaven is on hand?’

I should have recognized his voice, but just for a moment I hadn’t, and he must have caught the expression on my face.

He said: ‘Who shall abide in thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill? Only Deborah Dainton, who now turneth a cold fish eye on him who waiteth.’

I said: ‘What
are
you doing here? How did you know I should be coming out now?’

‘I didn’t. My flat feet were not flat earlier in the day.’

‘You don’t mean you’ve been here for – since lunchtime?’

‘I came at twelve. But don’t be unduly impressed. It’s no more than I’d do to see Charlton Athletic.’

I felt very peculiar for a second or two, flattered, angry with myself for feeling flattered, angry with him for making me feel angry with myself, very slightly happier than I’d been two
minutes ago, but still wanting no part in any of it. I turned and walked on, and he walked with me, taking the side that my stick wasn’t.

‘I said: ‘You must be— crazy. Don’t you ever work?’

‘Constantly. But look at the day. This light is impossible.’

‘So you . . . But there are other things you could have . . .’

‘Oh, yes. Where are you going? for tea?’

‘Yes.’ Somehow from the beginning the conversation had got off on a different level. ‘Why can’t you—’

‘What?’

I was going to say ‘leave me alone’, but the words did not come.

‘Join you?’ he finished.

‘If you want.’

‘I must have made my wants clear by now.’

We turned into Bond Street, and crossed. There was a café nearly opposite that tried to look Continental, with a sunshade in the open entrance and an artificial palm. We went in there. He
ordered tea and toast. He was always heavier than I remembered him. He sat on the edge of the tubular chair with an air of nonconformity, like a carpenter invited into the parlour during working
hours.

He said: ‘You’re always out when I ring.’

‘Well . . . I often am out. I—’

‘Last time we met, you asked me to look the facts of life in the face, didn’t you? Well, most of the facts of life I know begin with boy meets girl. Clue me up with the special ones
in this case.’

I fumbled in my bag. ‘Well, as you pointed out when we first met, I’m lame.’

‘What’s wrong with you?’

‘I had polio.’

‘So?’

‘So I’ve got a rotten leg. Understand? It’s about an inch shorter than the other. Also the muscles have wasted. It’s as thin as a stick and as much use. Can’t you
see for yourself?’

‘Is that a good reason for hating me?’

I said angrily: ‘Can’t I have likes and dislikes of my own?’

Just then the waitress came with our order and he glowered across the room as if thinking he’d get up and leave. But he stayed on, and with fingers shaking with annoyance I poured the
tea.

He said: ‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-six.’

‘I’m twenty-five. I want to paint you.’

‘Oh, so that’s it . . . And all the time I thought you were attracted by my exquisite charm.’

‘I am, God damn you.’

‘Sugar?’

‘No . . . I reckon you don’t take me seriously at all.’

‘Should I?’

‘Yes.’

We looked at each other like personal enemies. Bond Street roared by without anybody taking the least notice of it.

‘What time d’you get off tonight?’

‘Why?’

‘Never mind. Tell me.’

‘Oh, it’ll be late. Six-thirty or seven.’

‘I’ll wait for you.’

‘You’re wasting your time.’

‘Well, it’s my time, isn’t it?’

I sipped the tea and burned my lip.

‘I live in Rotherhithe,’ he said. ‘D’you know where that is?’

‘Near Tower Bridge?’

‘Fairly. I’ve got a studio near what’s called Cherry Garden Pier. It looks over the river. I’d like to show it to you.’

‘All right,’ I said.

‘You’ll come?’ He looked really astonished, staggered.

‘Yes – to see it – I don’t mind.’

‘When – tonight?’

‘Yes – just to see it. But not – forget this idea of painting me – tonight or any time. That’s out.’

‘OK, OK. I only asked.’

‘Yes, but is that why you wanted me to come to your studio?’ He took a bite of his toast. His teeth I remembered as soon as I saw them again. ‘I wanted it for every reason,
Deborah. You can’t hardly have failed to notice that, can you? But so far I’ve had no encouragement. Damn all. Well . . . this is encouragement—’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Wait. This is encouragement but no more. Message received. I deal but you play the hand. Right? I’ll meet you at six-thirty. The bloody parking meters will be off duty by then.
I’ll be outside the front door or as near as I can get. Agreed?’

‘Agreed.’

He looked at me. ‘You’re not going to nip out of a back entrance while I’m not looking?’

‘Why should I?’

He shrugged. ‘Why should you? No reason, except that maybe you’ve suddenly gone dead easy, and I’m scared of the double cross.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I haven’t gone dead easy.’

In fact, the thought had crossed my mind to do what he suspected; but you can’t sink quite as low. He was waiting for me in that little uncomfortable red car and we drove
south across Westminster Bridge and then took the New Kent Road. ‘Traffic’s always grotty at this time of day,’ he said, his face in uncomfortable, wry planes as he stared at the
car in front, ‘but this way round is better than going straight.’

Up Tower Bridge Road there was a break and he accelerated away. The car was open and the back draught blew my hair over my eyes. I put up my hands to hold it back, but he said: ‘Let it
blow; it looks fabulous.’

We turned right some way before the bridge and came into a lot of new property, council houses, flats and children’s playgrounds, and then dived up an alley with derricks at the end of it.
Another couple of turns, and he stopped in a narrow chasm of a street between two warehouses. ‘If you’ll hop out here I’ll drive the car on the pavement.’

After we’d done this he opened a gate with an open padlock on it and led the way beside the warehouse to a shabby brick wall with an old Victorian-style door up three steps.

‘Up here. I’ll go first. This is it. Mind your head.’

We went into a big long room with a low ceiling at the sides but rising to a high peak, with open rafters. There were two big windows and also a skylight. The room was littered with easels,
cloths, cushions, painting knives, brushes, tubes of paint; it was in an awful mess; the furniture, what you could see of it, was of worn dusty green velvet. The windows looked right over the
river.

‘It was stables at one time,’ he said, taking out a comb and combing his hair. ‘It should have been pulled down with the two cottages that used to be here; but Mr Taylor and Mr
Woodrow, who built the warehouse, didn’t need this bit of space in their set-up, so I clung on. Of course it’s only a stay of execution.’

He was nervous. An odd change.

‘Lovely view,’ I said.

‘Come to this window, you can see Tower Bridge from here.’

The river was lapping at our feet. It was iron grey in the sultry evening, with little grins of sharper light where it was broken by movement or reflection. Twenty steel derricks bent over the
water like birds drinking; tugs and barges passed and glided, smoke rose and eddied; seagulls swooped; it was a different London, one I didn’t know.

‘Swans!’ I said.

‘Yes, they’ve seen us. I often feed ’em about this time. Wait a minute.’

He went through a door and came back with half a loaf of bread. ‘We can get out this way.’

There was a door beside the window and this led out on to a concrete platform only just above the river.

‘At high tide my balcony’s under water, so I don’t keep chairs out here. Don’t fall in!’