by Barrie Shore
‘Nobody comes any more. Nobody cares. The war has killed us.’ Brande drew in his breath in a shuddering gasp and reached out a trembling hand. Barber passed him a handkerchief and closed his eyes as if in pain.
Another silence ensued during which Brande dabbed at his eyes before turning his slow neck and fastening Jack with his blinkless stare.
‘And your little shop,’ he said. ‘Tell me, dear John, does it flourish?’
Jack wasn’t listening, preoccupied now, not with Eva so much as the problem of balancing of teacup, saucer and sandwich without spillage, breakage or dropping of crumbs onto the floor.
‘Jack, dear…’ she said with a sigh, admonishing him.
‘Sorry, yes?’
‘Mr Brande is asking about the shop.’
‘What shop?’
‘Oh, honestly, darling.’ She tinkled with laughter, but there was an edge of exasperation in it. ‘He’s not interested in your opinion about Harrods, or Swan & Edgar.’ And that ‘darling’, how meaningless it was after all, how theatrical, as if she too was playing a part. ‘He wants to know about the shop, your shop. What’s it called again?’
‘Bob’s Books.’
‘Such a silly name, don’t you think?’ she said, flashing a smile at Brande. ‘Sounds like a betting shop.’
‘Or a third-rate accountant.’ Brande’s high-pitched laugh didn’t sound the least bit amused, but the two of them whispered and giggled together like a couple of schoolgirls.
Jack’s earlier euphoria was quite gone. What was he doing in this awful place? This ludicrous apology for theatrical style? With two unpleasant old men who purported to be such friends of Bob’s and yet were so determined to be offensive? And Eva? He looked across at her, elegantly draped on the velvet chaise. And he suddenly saw beside her Mrs Moxon, his mother’s neighbour, sitting fatly with her basket on her knee, as if she had dropped by on her way to market, looking round and about at the overwrought furnishing of the room with a sceptical eye. ‘’Tis all very well,’ she said, ‘these fine ladies from London with their smart hats and fancy ways, but they’re only toying, my lad. Where’s the gravity to them, you tell me that, where’s the substantiality?’
‘Well?’ Brande was petulant now, waiting for an answer.
‘The shop, sorry. Yes, it’s not doing badly, thank you for asking. People still want to read, it seems, in spite of the war, because of it, perhaps.’
‘Do they. How very fortunate for you. Still, I daresay it’s different in the provinces, country folk are satisfied with so very little.’
‘Dear me, dearie me,’ Mrs Moxon gathered up her baskets. ‘Time to go home, my lad, wouldn’t you say?’ And off she rolled in her comfortable way.
Yes, time to go home. Jack tried to get up, still clutching his teacup and plate, and Barber, attentive waiter once again, glided over to assist. He took the tea things and then, to Jack’s astonishment, crossed his eyes, gave a little shake of his head, almost imperceptible, as if to beg his indulgence. Brande hadn’t finished yet.
‘Dear Robert,’ he said, with a lugubrious sigh, ‘one always felt so sorry for him, stuck in a backwater, buried in books when, as we all know, his first, his only love was the theatre. Poor, darling boy, I can see him now, hanging about at the stage door, night after night, begging for work.’
‘What sort of work?’
Was she really interested? Or was Mrs Moxon right, was she just toying? No gravity in her, playing a private game that he didn’t understand?
‘He wanted to be an actor, of course. They always did, those unsuitable boys that Oscar collected. Poor darling Robert didn’t stand a chance with his ghastly deformity. Still, we did our best, didn’t we, Jodie? Wangled him some sort of job backstage. Wardrobe, wasn’t it?’
‘Wigs.’
‘Oh, yes, wigs. Robert had a flair for hair, I remember that now, even Oscar was pleased.’ Brande passed a nostalgic hand over his threadbare head as if to recollect its former glory.
‘Oscar? Who’s Oscar?’
‘Who’s Oscar?’ Brande was outraged. ‘My dear, young woman, there’s only one Oscar. The Importance…’ he proclaimed with an extravagant arm, ‘of Being Earnest.’
‘Oh. Oh, I see.’ She looked up at the portrait on the wall, the soulful young man self-consciously posing with his cane. ‘That’s him, isn’t it? Oscar Wilde.’
‘Who else? Poor, darling Oscar, such scandal, so tragic. “Posing somdomite”, I ask you. As if Oscar would stoop to anything so low as posing.’
‘You mean you were there?’ said Eva. ‘At his trial?’ She was entranced again, but serious now, genuinely interested. Or so it seemed.
‘Every moment of every day. We lived for Oscar during the whole of that terrible time, didn’t we, Jodie? I can see him now, clutching the dock when the verdict came: he turned quite grey, I really thought he was going to faint. And that odious Queensberry, punching the air like a champion boxer, one positively shudders at the memory.’
‘But how was Mr Pride involved?’
‘He offered himself as a character witness.’
‘I say, how frightfully brave.’
‘Oh, yes, Oscar shed tears of gratitude when he heard. But then Robert adored Oscar, he’d have done anything for him, wouldn’t he Jodie?’
Barber had taken up his position behind Brande’s chair again. ‘I dare say,’ he said, closing his eyes.
‘So what happened then?’
‘Oh, alas and alack, Robert’s father got wind and drummed the poor darling out of town before the last trial even began. He was Bishop of somewhere or other, I believe.’
‘Dean,’ said Barber. ‘Rural. Exeter.’
‘Oh, yes, of course, somewhere unspeakable down in the country.’ Brande picked up an envelope from the table beside him, buff envelope, tied up with green ribbon, sealed with a deeper green wax. ‘Mind you, we had expectations of the country at one time, but it wasn’t to be.’
‘Oh, do shut up, Ollie, darling,’ said Barber. ‘Don’t start on that all over again.’
Brande stamped his foot. A child in a tantrum. ‘I shan’t shut up. Robert and I were the bosomest friends, I’ll say whatever I damn well choose.’ He gazed at the envelope, his eyes filling with tears. ‘And now they’re trying to get rid of us. But I shan’t leave, I shall never leave, they’ll have to carry me out in my coffin first.’ He seemed to shrivel suddenly, to withdraw the wrinkled neck into its carapace. ‘Tell them to go now, I’ve had enough.’
It was almost dark outside, the street lamps flickering into half-hearted life as though the effort of lighting a road half way to oblivion was scarcely worthwhile.
Brande escorted them to the front door at a brisk pace, anxious to be rid of them and then hesitated, gazing at the envelope with a troubled frown.
‘God alone knows what’s in it. Letters, I suspect. Such a fuss and palaver he made, the silly old queen, you’d think he was handing over the crown jewels.’ He shrugged slightly and handed the envelope to Jack. ‘I shouldn’t read them if I were you, it doesn’t do to revisit the past.’
CASTLEBRIDGE
Sunday, 3rd December, 2006
The grandfather clock on the landing ticks slower and slowlier still. Eva clicks her tongue in between the ticks like a rider urging his mount to a trot.
‘Silver Delight,’ says Jack. ‘Remember him? And the betting shop? You actually knew where to find one and what to do when we got there… I was so impressed. Dad, you said. Mum used to send me to fetch him on a Saturday before he spent all his pay. Some hope. So remember what we did? Put a shilling on the nose and in it came at ten to one, and then we sat in the buffet at Waterloo, gloating over our winnings. I wanted you to have the whole lot but you wouldn’t hear of it. I remember you counting it out on the table, five and six each… how serious you were, how meticulous. And those primroses wilt
ing, and how unhappy I was because I thought I was never going to see you again. Especially when you said… what was it you said?’
LONDON
Friday, 14th March, 1947
‘So, this Mr Pride of yours was a bit of a pansy?’
‘A what?’
‘You know,’ Eva widened her eyes in mock horror. ‘A sodomite, like Oscar Wilde.’
‘Heavens, no, Bob wasn’t like that.’
She looked at him, head to one side, disbelieving.
‘Well, yes, I suppose he was, but he didn’t… I mean, he didn’t do anything about it, and he certainly never made an approach to me.’
She kept looking, speculating.
He was horrified by her implication. ‘I’m not a… I’m not one of those; you mustn’t think that.’
‘Good, I’m delighted to hear it. Those two funny old friends of his most certainly are, why else do you think I made up that ridiculous story about our being engaged? To save you from a fate worse than death – darling.’
Of course, why else? He meant nothing to her. She would entertain her friends with the story of the country bumpkin she came across on her day off and then she’d forget him.
‘How waspish they were, I wonder why?’
‘I don’t know. Barber wasn’t so bad, I rather liked him.’
‘Yes, but Brande was horrid.’
The envelope was on the table between them. She picked it up and read the inscription. ‘For John William Carter, in Fond Memory of our Tragic Friend, Robert Emmanuel Pride. Tragic, why tragic? Oh, the foot, I suppose.’ She turned the envelope over and picked at the seal with her thumbnail. Battered thumb, blood red nail.
‘I wonder what’s in it? I’m dying to know.’
‘Letters, I suppose, that’s what Barber said.’
‘Aren’t you going to you open it?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Why not? It’s addressed to you.’
‘I know, but they’re not really mine, they’re Bob’s.’
‘But he’s dead.’
‘Yes, but I think I agree with Barber, it doesn’t do to revisit the past.’
‘But what if they’re letters from Oscar Wilde? Letters to Bob. Love letters.’
He didn’t care. All he cared about was this extraordinary woman, to whom he was no longer engaged and never would be; this woman who toyed with him; this woman he knew he would love for the rest of his life. And that he was never going to see her again.
The Castlebridge Express steamed and wheezed.
She stood on the platform, head bent, picking at the primroses.
He leaned out of the window. ‘Look at me.’
She wouldn’t. One of the primroses fell from its stalk into her hand.
‘Look at me.’
Still she wouldn’t. ‘Why should I?’
‘Because I want to remember you. I know this has been just a game for you, but I’ll never forget you as long as I live.
She looked at him at last. And then she did an extraordinary thing: licked the primrose from the palm of her hand, put it into her mouth, savoured it, swallowed, and smiled. ‘Write to me.’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘But you must.’ She walked with the train as it shunted off.
‘Why?’
‘Well, I mean hell’s bells, you’ve got to tell me what’s in that blasted envelope.’
‘Where? Where shall I write?’
She started to run as the train gathered speed. ‘The shop,’ she shouted. ‘Write to the shop.’
He watched her waving at end of platform until she disappeared into a cloud of steam and it seemed as if she had never been.
CASTLEBRIDGE
Sunday, 3rd December, 2006
Jack has fallen into a half sleep in which a giant turtle with unblinking eyes is waltzing the room in the arms of a decrepit old actor dressed as Tarzan in a leopard skin cloth.
‘A handbag?’ the turtle declaims, in thespian tones.
‘No, not a handbag.’ Tarzan twirls his partner in a neat pirouette. ‘A somdomite, darling.’
‘Oh, one of those.’ The turtle sheds a crocodile tear. ‘How too, too heartrendingly sad.’
The grandfather clock interrupts with its reminding clunk. Jack wakes with a start, spilling his mug of cold tea down the front of his pyjamas.
‘Oh, blast it all.’ He wipes his pyjamas with the sleeve of his dressing gown. ‘I wonder what happened to that envelope. I never opened it, I know that, but I’m sure I didn’t throw it away. Can you remember, old chap?’
She smiles, I might. She smiles, I might not.
‘I might look for it later. No harm in opening it now after all this time, I’m sure Bob wouldn’t mind. And…’
And the front doorbell rings downstairs.
The carers have arrived.
Jack is offended by the carers. By their easy laughter and inconsequent chat; by their habit of calling Eva their darling and love, hi-jacked endearments that are now lost to him. He’s irritated by their raising of voices as if Eva is a child; by the casual way that they handle her; the rolling and stripping, strapping and hoisting, the lifting of breasts and changing of pads. He is nauseated by their coy references to front bottoms, back passages, pee-pees and poos; by their obsession with bladders, bedsores and bowels; above all, by their absurd exhortation: ‘Are you going to go to the toilet for me?’ A physiological impossibility that, in its preposterous imagining, drives him to the brink of despair.
Margaret Last had come as a stopgap ten years ago after Jack had fallen and hurt his knee, a casual arrangement that wasn’t intended to last. He no longer remembers how she came to be part of his life or who introduced them, except that she is great-granddaughter to Mrs Moxon, his mother’s neighbour from Temperance Terrace. Neighbour, not friend: Jack’s mother, despite her devotion to the teachings of Christ, drew the line at the notion of loving anyone as herself, and had never encouraged acquaintance to step beyond the bounds that decency required.
He had resented Margaret at first, feeling that his independence and Eva’s dignity were both undermined: that somebody else, a stranger, albeit a woman, should see his wife naked, touch her breasts, wash the most intimate parts of her body. But he got used to her in the end, grew to rely on her. Before Margaret came, he’d been obliged to close the shop for most of the morning in the battle to get Eva up and dressed. With him, she used to shout and scream, to punch and kick – he still has a scar on his forearm where she’d bitten him once and wouldn’t let go. But she took a fancy to Margaret: she carolled and sang and recited incomprehensible jokes and stories that Margaret, astonishingly, seemed to understand. And although Jack knew, with a pang of jealousy, that Eva’s joy was not in him, he was relieved that she seemed to be happy at last and that he could have some time to himself. So when his knee got better, nothing was said, and Margaret became a permanent fixture.
And then she had joined an agency. TenderCare: Personal Care Where You Need It Most, in the Privation of Your Own Home.
‘But why, Margaret? We manage so well, you and I, we’re a splendid team.’
Margaret was not one for beating about unnecessary bushes. ‘I’m talking money, Mr C.’
‘Oh.’ He paid her, of course, but he’d never thought of their association as a business arrangement. Neither, he realised, had he thought of Margaret as a real person with a life of her own, with a feckless husband and children who needed her. She was just Margaret. ‘Oh, I see, I’m sorry.’ His relief was almost pathetic. ‘I can you pay some more.’ He didn’t know how, but he’d manage it somehow, maybe sell some more of the first editions. ‘How much do you need?’
‘You don’t understand, Mr C.’ Margaret was brushing Eva’s hair too hard, with swift, rough strokes, but Eva didn’t protest. She seemed to unde
rstand Margaret’s distress, to comply with it, whereas Jack felt bewildered, even betrayed.
Margaret’s husband had left her. ‘Bunked off, the bastard.’ Margaret brushed savagely. ‘So I’m not talking pin money, Mr C, I’m talking serious wages. I’ve got three kids to support.’
Three kids. Lucky Margaret. ‘Oh, I see. Oh, well, in that case…’
The Agency Manager, a sharp-nosed woman with a mince to her gait, by the name of Miss Pickton, inspected the premises and pronounced them wanting. She professed herself shocked by the domestic arrangements, the struggle to get Eva up and down stairs, and suggested that the storeroom at the back of the shop should be converted into a bed-sitting room with a shower installed in the downstairs lavatory for Eva’s personal use. Jack declined her proposal. He and Eva had slept side by side in the bedroom upstairs throughout their marriage (a misrepresentation of the facts that he chose not to mention or, indeed, to remember) and he was not prepared to change the arrangement. In truth, he was appalled at the suggestion: the shop and storeroom were his domain, his private sanctuary, and he couldn’t face an invasion of Eva.
Miss Pickton had smiled a tight little smile that, despite her claims to tenderness and care, hadn’t an ounce of humanity in it. By way of revenge, she demanded the installation of a lift for the stairs; the provision of a drop-sided cot to prevent Eva’s falling out of bed or attempted escape; the acquisition of a hoist and sling, and a mechanised seat for the bath. She further demanded a supply of white wellington boots, shower caps and disposable aprons for the use of her staff; of surgical gloves and masks to protect them from contamination through possible contact with faeces, urine or infected blood and from the spread of noxious bacteria and deadly viruses, whether airborne, waterborne or lurking in wastepipes.
Jack was incensed by Miss Pickton’s invasion of, as she herself might have put it, his privation, and retaliated by refusing to commit her name to memory, resorting to a series of epithets that amused no one except himself: Miss Picknick, Miss Pockmark, Miss Piddlydedoo.
Miss Pickwit arranged a visit from the District Nurse who assessed Eva’s weekly consumption of incontinence pads and ordered regular supplies of wet wipes, disinfectant, surgical spirit, anti-bacterial hand and body lotions, aseptic dressings and lint bandages for the treatment of bedsores; surgical stockings for the relief of oedema, dermatological creams and sprays to alleviate rashes, eczema and flaking skin, non-toxic mouthwash and anti-dandruff shampoo.