The foxes seemed to have preserved some alertness. The bodies of all three were quivering slightly at the end of the rope, and their sharp muzzles appeared responsive to the scents of propagation all around. There was no blood anywhere on them except the pink strips of tail, but there was this inexplicable suffering on their faces …
Lumley’s naked body in the cubicle, mottled red by the cruel strokes of the towel. Thin red welts followed the curve of the ribs and there were angry red patches in the hollow of the flanks above the sharp hip-bones. Memory, grown now exact and intent, as though filling in a familiar mosaic, experienced again minutely the falling to the ground of his own water-heavy swimming trunks as he trod heavily on the wet brown duckboard; the water running green into the runnel below the duckboard; both their bodies patterned by the light through the slatted cubicle doors; the stillness between and around them which thickened into something almost tangible so that reaching towards Lumley was attended by a strange sense of effort and aspiration. Silence thickened round his own limbs as he ran the tips of his fingers gently along the weals that Preedy’s towel had left. That silence – heavy, sacrificial – throbbed now in his memory. There could be no words or sounds between them, because the walls of the cubicles did not reach the ceiling. Everything could be heard, and this lack of privacy gave an urgency and a sort of skill to everything they did as though these gestures in precisely this order had been many times rehearsed, even up to that moment when Moss, braced back against the cold side of the cubicle as though fighting for life, felt that the silence must finally be violated by the sobs bursting inside him, racking his body and contorting his face under the scrutiny of Lumley’s calmly smiling one. It was the first orgasm of his life: anything before, that he had inflicted on himself or endured in dreams, could not be counted. And it was Lumley who had shown him the power for pleasure that dwelt in his body. Lumley, who had culled from this stealthy occasion such dexterity and grace; Lumley, in whose own body the blood was already bleaching, whose smell would before long be sickening the odour of roses …
Moss stared straight before him at the foxes. Once again he tried to understand this paradox, but was stopped as always by the pain of it. The budding sprays of hawthorn were shaken by a light gust from the sea. The foxes swayed on the rope, their paws appeared briefly to scrabble for the ground. The movement intensified the smell of decay that came from them. Numbers of very small black flies were reposing on their bared teeth and gums. Suddenly Moss understood the agony of their faces, the supplication of the forelegs, the absence of wounds. The foxes had been strung up living, strangled in fact. This last hawthorn was a deliberately selected gibbet. Somehow the foxes had become part of Royle’s elaborate ritual of revenge on the brute creation. Moss could not prevent himself from wondering at what stage they had been stripped of their tails. Certainly Royle must have been set on lynching, to have extracted them alive from the traps, and run the risk of bites. They would hang there and stink till they oozed out of the ropes that held them.
He turned and walked fairly briskly back along the hedge towards the apple-trees. He did not pass through the gap again but continued on the outside of the hedge until he came upon a faint track which led up diagonally across the fields above the farm. This path would take him by a roundabout route back to the cottage in time to get the tea ready. As he climbed, with his back to the sea, he began to think about Ronald again. He had never spoken to Ronald about Lumley, never pointed out how similar the two were in manner and appearance, though Ronald of course was a grown man and Lumley had died at fourteen. Ronald was more handsome but they both had the same diffidence, the same gravity of expression, the same fineness of feature and something else which Moss found less easy to define; a kind of aura, really, a sort of luminous quality. That evening in the pub, three years before, Moss had noticed the resemblance immediately, before Ronald had even spoken to him. So that when Ronald did look across and smile and say good evening, it had been in a way as though – without himself knowing it – he had confirmed this connection; and Moss too had been less constrained than he might otherwise have been, thinking of the precedent for friendship established between them all those years before. He would for ever remember how elegant Ronald had looked, out of place in the public bar, in his chocolate brown suit and pink tie, his narrow fastidious face raised aloof. His own clothes never had this distinction, least of all on that evening, right at the end of the holiday. How lumpish he had felt and how unlikely it had seemed that such a person as Ronald, even though resembling Lumley so closely, would have anything more than this bare greeting to say to him. But Ronald had actually moved down the bar, started up a conversation, seemed interested in him, really interested, not just polite. Moss had talked more freely than he usually did to strangers or indeed to anyone, and all about himself too, about his holiday at first and then about his clerk’s job in London, the others at work, and above all how much he hated being in an office all day, how he had always liked working with his hands. In the course of that evening, as they stood each other half-pints of beer, he had confided to Ronald his terrible attacks of restlessness which resembled hysteria. He did not know what to do with himself at such times. He had even hinted that one day he would ‘break out’ and thus perhaps revealed to Ronald how closely unhappiness was allied to violent impulses in his nature. To all this Foley had listened with grave courtesy, and made suitable rejoinders. Later, when the conversation turned to business matters, he grew more animated, dwelling on his need for two hundred pounds. With the repetition of this sum his eyes shone. He made his own lack of it seem somehow noble to Moss, who of course, although he did not immediately avow it, had this amount and something over; he had always been the saving sort. So out of casual talk of souvenirs, and holiday spending habits, the amazing proposition emerged, made by Ronald actually, though Moss had helped out by a series of inspired guesses. Once again Moss marvelled at this impulsiveness of Ronald’s in making such a suggestion to a complete stranger. He had seen then how unwary Ronald was. Another person might have taken advantage of him. Walking back alone to his boarding house, Moss had felt, beneath his excitement at the prospect of change, a return of that gratitude as he thought that here perhaps was someone needing protection.
Reaching the crest of the rise Moss paused for a moment to look down, before beginning the slow descent to the cottage. Somewhere among the cliffs or down at the shore Ronald would be walking with Gwendoline. Perhaps he would be speaking to her in that smiling, aloof way of his, or they might be walking along quietly, holding hands. They might be lying down together somewhere … Moss averted his mind from this possibility. He realised suddenly that the whole business of Gwendoline, and the estrangement between Ronald and himself, were simply the results of a failure of sympathy on his own part. He had been too reserved. He should have confided more in Ronald, shared his thoughts and experiences. These foxes, for example. He would tell Ronald about them, describe their appearance. He often saw interesting things but till now he had kept quiet about them, because he was not naturally a talkative person. Talking about himself, particularly, always made him feel uneasy and ashamed. But he would make the effort. He would force himself to do it, and surely after a while it would be easier. At all costs he must show
Ronald that he mattered, that he was included. Everything, he now saw, depended on this. He began the journey down, with sober resolution. As he drew nearer the cottage an optimism bred of his new plan grew in him. He began to whistle ‘Roamin’ in the Gloamin” very loudly and piercingly.
5
Returning from the village Foley and Gwendoline left the road and took a path which would lead them by degrees to the cliffs. This path at one point passed close enough to the cottage to give them a view over the farmyard, at sufficient distance however to prevent their being recognised by anyone looking up from below. As they were passing they noticed a person, made small by distance, who appeared to be examining intently the wall of the cottage.
>
‘It’s Moss,’ said Foley. ‘I’d recognise that beret anywhere. What can he be looking at, do you think?’
By common consent they stopped to see what Moss could be looking at. Royle passed up the farmyard, steadily beating a bullock. The sound of the blows carried up to them quite distinctly.
‘Why do you suppose he is hitting that animal so hard?’ asked Gwendoline.
‘He is always hitting things. He hits doors for not opening.’
‘Country people are so cruel, aren’t they?’
‘Royle is,’ said Foley. ‘Royle, I honestly think, is possessed by a devil.’
They saw Moss draw nearer to the wall and then recoil and begin to make his way down the farmyard in the direction of the sea.
‘He must be going for his walk,’ said Foley. ‘I wonder what there is so interesting about that wall. Look, since Moss has obviously gone for his walk and won’t be back for at least an hour, let’s go down to the house now and I’ll show you round while he’s away.’
They had a look at the wall before going in, but saw nothing remarkable about it.
‘Perhaps it was a lizard or something he saw,’ Gwendoline suggested.
‘Ah yes,’ Foley said, ‘that would very probably be it.’ His interest in the wall had waned. He was now full of self-approval at his brilliant opportunism in getting Gwendoline into the house without Moss anywhere about. It had been a masterly stroke and one which required to be followed up with all diligence. The thing to hope for initially, of course, was that she should be stirred up by the atmosphere of maleness in the house. Glancing hastily round as they entered, he had to admit to himself that there was very little specifically masculine about the place at all. Moss seemed to have given it a particularly good going-over, and it was really just like any other well-kept room. And immediately Gwendoline herself confirmed this impression.
‘You’ve done it up very nicely,’ she said, looking round at the apple-green covers on the armchairs, the giltwood sofa, the little arched recesses painted in dove-grey Walpamur and the watercolours in white frames. ‘It isn’t like a bachelor place at all,’ she said.
This was not promising. It even sounded a little like a reproach. Foley wished suddenly that there were a few rugged, manly things scattered about, like oilskins or studded boots.
‘We get along as best we can,’ he said.
‘You get along very well, it seems to me.’
‘Moss did everything,’ said Foley, not quite knowing whether he was bestowing praise or blame. ‘You’ve no idea,’ he continued earnestly, ‘how Moss worked on this place. When we first saw it, it was absolutely filthy. It had been neglected for years. No one had lived in it for a long time. Royle had been using it for storage, and the downstairs part as a hen house.’
As he was speaking Foley drew close to Gwendoline and put his arm over her shoulders, a gesture which he felt to be appropriate, since he was sharing his precious past with her. He definitely felt now that he was only giving Moss his due; this was one of the few subjects that allowed him to be unreservedly enthusiastic about Moss. Besides, he himself was always proud and stirred when he spoke of these pioneering days, the way they had taken this derelict cottage and built up a business by sheer hard work.
‘I would have given up the idea of taking the house,’ he said. ‘It looked so unpromising. But Moss saw the possibilities of the place immediately. It has plenty of rooms, which is what we needed – we couldn’t afford separate premises for work. Moss worked night and day, literally. He is immensely strong, you know. Personally, I’ve never seen anything like the way he worked at this place, scrubbing, plastering, painting. Well, it’s not too much to say that he transformed the place. He –’
‘What were you doing all the time, supervising?’
Gwendoline said this rather sharply. Coming from a girl he was half embracing Foley felt it to be a particularly ungracious remark.
‘I did my part, of course,’ he said.
Gwendoline laughed. ‘Goodness!’ she said. ‘You do get stately when you’re put out, don’t you?’
Angry words rose to Foley’s lips but he suppressed them at once. No sense in ruining everything just out of pique. Besides, he would be even with her in the end, he assured himself. Getting her to bed would pay off all these scores. It occurred to him that in many ways he rather disliked Gwendoline. With an access of sadism he pictured her floppy and moaning and himself heaving her into the right position. The vision set his teeth on edge slightly. ‘I’m not put out at all,’ he said. His arm was still around her and by a gentle pressure he brought her face to him. ‘I just wanted to explain,’ he said softly, ‘how much this place means to us.’ He kissed her and at the same time nudged forward until Gwendoline had her back against the wall. In this position he could exert a steady and continuous pressure over the maximum surface area and have his hands free at the same time: two things always difficult to achieve in conjunction unless you were lying down or had something to stand the girl against. Besides, such a position gave the girl a cornered, irresponsible feeling, and encouraged her to feel she was not participating until she had ceased caring.
Abandoning the lips for a moment, Foley put in a little work on the right ear-lobe and the side of the neck. Returning by way of the pulse in the throat, he found things steadily improving: her mouth was opening under his kisses now; she was even advancing her tongue a little; he met its soft pressure with his own. It was all, he could not help thinking, exactly like knowing where to press a doll to get the squeaking sound. This fancied, doll-like helplessness of Gwendoline roused him more than anything else. Certain physical changes now occurred in himself which inclined him to crouch slightly. He had taken careful note of her dress earlier that afternoon, when they had first met; opening down the front, a hook and four buttons. No trouble at all. Finding she had nothing under it but a brassière inclined him to crouch further. He did not want to lose any time over the tricky little hooks at the back, so he looped his hand up and tucked his fingers into the top of the silk cup, working them in slowly until his straining fingertips touched an alert nipple. He now experienced the frustration of not being able to feel the breast as a whole, take the weight of it in his hand, and wished he had undone the hooks after all. Too late now, though. He was beginning to knead Gwendoline’s nipple between two fingers when she panted suddenly, her stomach heaved against his and the next moment he found himself pushed vigorously back and Gwendoline with a flushed face was doing up her dress again.
‘I’ve told you time and time again,’ said Gwendoline.
‘But that’s exactly what you haven’t done,’ Foley said.
In fact Gwendoline’s refusal to elaborate on this basic position of hers, steadily maintained despite minor concessions during the past two months, was beginning to worry him badly. He had seen himself overcoming all her objections by logic and cajolery, reinforced by a more or less constant tactile persuasion. He was primed for the usual demure, the I’m-keeping-it-for-the-man-I- marry and you-wouldn’t-respect-me-afterwards gambits. But such rebuttals cannot be made in a void. And for him to anticipate any of these points would be a fatal mistake, equivalent to admitting their force. It was an impasse. And the strange thing was that Gwendoline was obviously crying out for it.
‘It doesn’t hurt, you know,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t have to hurt.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose it would hurt.’
‘Well, then?’ demanded Foley.
‘Will you show me round the workrooms now, please,’ Gwendoline said, with a sudden queenly condescension that Foley found intensely irritating. He maintained his urbanity with an effort.
‘Of course,’ he said. There was always the possibility that visiting his bedroom might produce some result, if they could get there before the warmth of the present moment had quite gone.
They looked into the casting-room first, at the ovens against the wall, the gelatine moulds, the muffling of plaster dust everywhere.
‘This is where Moss works,’ Foley explained. ‘Mixing the plaster, keeping up the ovens, that sort of thing. Moss does the actual casting, what you might call the primary process. I do the finishing, upstairs.’
He got her out of there as quickly as possible and up the short steep flight of wooden steps that led to the next floor where the two small rooms were in which Foley himself worked: one for special painting jobs, the other for checking, sizing and packing the finished pixies. Both his and Moss’s bedrooms were on this floor too, but Foley changed his mind at the last moment and led her past his room to the far end of the passage and up another flight of stairs. They were now on the floor immediately below the roof. They went down another, very narrow, passage, which ran along the seaward side of the house. Foley stopped at a bright green door. He turned to Gwendoline a face in which caution battled with a sort of solemn pride. For this, he felt, even the bedroom could wait. ‘In here,’ he said, ‘is my showroom.’ Adding nothing to this, so that the place could make its full impact, he opened the door and ushered Gwendoline in before him.
She gasped, homage pleasing to his ears, but for the moment said nothing. They stood just inside the large room, in a rich ecclesiastical dimness, lit here and there with shifting gleams of gold. Round the walls in diverse attitudes and sizes she made out cherubim, maturer angels and little unfledged putti in dimpled nudity, all dark gold. Brackets had been fixed to the walls and from them, sometimes suspended, sometimes directly attached, they hung in attitudes of blandishment or adoration – it was impossible to say which. Glancing up she saw a golden swarm in the gloom above her, the wires that held them to the roof-beams invisible so that they seemed to be actually in flight. Some, more delicately balanced than the rest, or perhaps in the track of a draught, swung through an unvarying arc and gleamed at regular intervals exactly as if at fixed points in their trajectory light pricked their plump limbs.
The Partnership Page 8