Blackground

by Joan Aiken

  “I’m afraid I haven’t the least idea what you are talking about,” he said pettishly.

  “— and all the pages fly about; I’ve been sitting out on the terrace in this lovely warm sun; but the breeze —”

  “I can’t help you.”

  “Or even a pin?” I suggested desperately. “Would you have a pin, perhaps? Or a safety pin?”

  “A pin?” His voice suggested that I spoke an unfamiliar language. “A pin . . . No.” He began to close the door.

  “Oh. Well, I’m sorry to have given you so much trouble.” My sarcasm was wasted. The door clicked shut.

  I looked down the hill. There were perhaps fifteen feet of gentle slope and one step before the next pair of houses, set diagonally on either side of the causeway. Was it, were they, worth the effort? But the day was sunny, the view inspiriting, a large vista, over the roofs of the lower houses to the cove, where the dredger went about its business and workmen clambered and scurried over the growing mole — and the blue, bouncing sea beyond; I went on down.

  At the first house, Number 4, the grey-faced husband — Mr Goadby presumably — opened the door.

  “Mr Goadby? Good morning. I’m your neighbour from up the hill — Cat Conwil — come to ask a favour?”

  No smile; his face seemed set in permanent folds of sadness. But he said, “What can I do for you?” in a flattish Midland accent, with reasonable goodwill.

  “Would you have such a thing as a paperclip in your house?”

  “Nay, lass, I’m afraid not; we’ve no papers, d’ye see, that need clipping.”

  “Or a pin? Perhaps — your wife — ?”

  “My wife is resting joost at present, lass, I’d as leave not disturb her.”

  “Oh well, then, never mind,” I said apologetically, sorry not so much for disturbing them as for the cloud of misery that seemed to fill the house, palpable as the smoke in mine the other night. “Forgive me for bothering you. I — I hope I’ll see you tonight at Miss Pitt’s party.”

  “Oh, ay. I’m not sure if the wife will feel up to it.” But his expression showed just a glimmer of response.

  I hopped across the road to Number 5, the house diagonally opposite. What was the name here? Pool, that was it. “Mrs Pool?” I said to the sharp little face in the doorway. “I’m your neighbour from up the hill — Cat Conwil — how do you do?”

  “How do you do?” she responded with a trace of French accent and a look of what seemed unmixed dislike and suspicion. Hey, pal, what did I ever do to you? I wondered, and then remembered my Rosy carapace. Perhaps she took me for a predatory blonde. This theory was reinforced when over her shoulder came another face: not her husband, plainly, for he was much older, Sophie had said; this was a handsome, insolent-looking character of twenty-five or so, younger than Mrs Pool, who might be my own age. He was very bronzed, as from Southern suns, and rested his chin on her clavicle in a proprietorial way.

  “Hey? Were you in a battle?” he inquired in a fake-American accent as he studied my crutches and bandages.

  Wife and guest walk along the cliff, Sophie had said. Here, evidently, was guest.

  “No, I just fell . . . would you have such a thing as a paperclip in your house that I could borrow, do you think?”

  “No, I am quite certain we haven’t,” she said without even pausing to think about it. “So sorry. Come Tad. We were just going out,” she said to me, walking past.

  “Jeremy might have one,” Tad suggested. He turned his head and bawled, “Hey, Jerome! You got a paperclip?”

  “What?” demanded a bored reluctant voice from the rear of the house.

  “Come here a minute.”

  A boy appeared — a tall, terribly thin boy, about eighteen perhaps. His arms were like sticks.

  “What?” he said again, yawning.

  “You got a paperclip anywhere among your stuff?”

  “No,” snarled Jeremy, and retreated faster than he had come. He had barely glanced at me. “Hurry up, Tad,” called Mrs Pool from yards down the hill.

  “Sorry, mate,” said Tad to me with a conspiratorial wink, and followed her. His accent was — what? Rhodesian perhaps? The vowels, under the phoney American surface, were short and clipped.

  A little discomfited, I turned back up the hill, feeling that my morning was going to waste.

  I turned too fast for prudence, lost my balance, incautiously put weight on the hurt foot, and sat down fast, swearing and sweating. Fortunately there was a lump of rock by the roadside; I was able to lurch to it and use it for a perch.

  Now, I thought, I look a proper fool. And it’s all my own stupid fault. I should have used a clothespeg to clip the pages. But probably there are no clothespegs in the house either. I’ll have to wait here until one of the Greeks comes along.

  The first person to come along was the cat, Arkwright, who greeted me with great goodwill and sat down by me as if this had been a planned assignation. Perhaps it had. I daresay cats can foretell the future.

  After another while, Odd Tom came slippering up the hill in his holey sneakers, with his weathered Adam’s-apple working around double time inside the grimy white rollneck collar. When he saw me he stopped and gave a little chirping croak of dismay and commiseration, which was followed by a long, incomprehensible lecture. He grew excited and waved his hands. I smiled apologetically and spread my hands out.

  “— —?” said Tom. I shook my head.

  “— —? he said again. I made motions of non-comprehension.

  Suddenly impatient, he stooped down by me and took hold of my bandaged foot. I flinched a bit, nervously, but with a cross jerk of his head he intimated that I was to keep still and not mess about.

  The experience of his hands on my ankle came as a total surprise. His grip was firm, yet delicate; everything that his grubby, shabby appearance was not. He felt the joint and seemed to be listening to it, with his head on one side, like a person tuning an instrument; very, very carefully and minutely he moved it about. After a few minutes of this it seemed to me that the pain was not quite so severe.

  “— — — — — — ?” said Tom. About to shake my head helplessly, I suddenly realized that he had said, “How long ago did you do this?”

  “Seven days ago,” I said.

  He nodded, and went back to his manipulation. A couple of the Greeks walked by and nodded as if this were an entirely familiar situation.

  “He soon make it well, you see!” one of them called back over his shoulder.

  After five minutes or so, Tom stood up (he had been kneeling to work on my ankle) passed me my crutches, and gave me an instruction, which I realized meant, “Stand up now, carefully, and try it.”

  I did so. He nodded.

  “Now you can walk up to your house,” he intimated.

  “Using the foot?”

  He shook his head vigorously. “No, no. Use the crutches.”

  With extreme care, I winched myself up the hill, Odd Tom shuffling observantly by my side, sometimes taking my arm in a firm grip if he thought I was at risk.

  “Sit on the front steps,” he ordered, so I sat on the steps and he gave the foot another working-over.

  “It feels better now,” I said. Tom nodded as if this were no news to him.

  “Now go on up the steps.”

  I hoisted myself up.

  “Now wait there.”

  Arkwright shot past us at speed and entered the house as Tom opened the front door. Tom went in and reappeared with a chair, on to which I gratefully subsided. And then he worked over my foot for the third time.

  “Tomorrow — you’ll be walking on it,” he said. “Let it rest for now.”

  His speech was perfectly intelligible really. All it lacked was consonants.

  “Tom, I can’t thank you enough. What can I — ? Let me pay you something.”
>
  “No, no,” he said. “Glass o’ beer if you’ve got one.”

  “Would wine do?”

  “Okay.” He wandered about the terrace inspecting the plants in pots that stood around. From one of the pots he retrieved my brass paperclip and laid it on the kitchen windowsill. I brought him the glass of wine, which he drank.

  “Work on your hand tomorrow, too,” he said. Then he snapped his fingers. Arkwright came briskly out of the house, and the two went off together.

  After a while I hobbled inside, leaving the chair and empty glass on the terrace. Shuna or somebody could bring them in by and by. I felt, all of a sudden, extremely sleepy, and had to lie down for a nap.

  The last thing that came to me before sleeping was a vision of that angry, unhappy young face, antagonistic to the whole world, Jeremy Pool. Thank god, thank god, I thought, Fitz never looked like that.

  Sophie Pitt’s party, later that day, proved highly characteristic. She had mixed up a great bowl of punch, which tasted mildly delicious at first, and then later caused your legs to float away from under you. Sophie was quite a drinker herself — she had the drinker’s high colour and absent eye; but she never touched liquor, she had told me, when actually engaged on a part. So at the moment she confined herself to tomato juice and watched with technical interest as the punch undid the reservations of her guests. She had exchanged her usual dirty jeans for a blue-grey kaftan and looked like the Sibyl of Cumae, garlanded in a wreath of cigarette smoke.

  The only food offered at her conversazione consisted of thin crispbread wafers spread with cream cheese, upon which she had carefully dotted fragments of red pepper or small black lumps of caviare, thus turning the biscuits into facsimiles of playing cards. King, Queen, Jack were denoted by strips of red paprika cut into the letters K, Q and J. These edible cards were laid out on a big wooden spindle-dish, like a lazy-susan, in the middle of her circular table, and she herself kept it in motion by, every now and then, giving the central spindle a twirl.

  Then, wandering witchlike among the group of guests, she would suddenly pounce.

  “Cat — reach out your hand and take the nearest biscuit. Oh dear dear, the eight of clubs; hmnn; let’s see; you’d better take another.”

  “The eight of clubs, Sophie, what does that mean?”

  “Someone close to you is angry about something. Take another. That person is very angry. The two of spades — oh, goodness me, you’d better have another drink.”

  “Are things really going against me, Sophie?”

  “Not for long, love, let’s hope.” She gave me her large, vague scrutiny, patted her shoulder, muttering, “I’m quite sure it’s not your fault,” and grabbed the arm of Mr Neighbour — what was his name? Goady, Goadby, that’s it.

  “Mr Goadby — take a biscuit!”

  Mechanically, the grey-faced man did so, and stood clutching it as if he were not certain of its purpose.

  “Very good!” Sophie beamed at him. “The ace of spades! That should mean a long-sought ambition is about to be fulfilled for you!”

  “Ambition? Eh, well —” he looked startled — “I reckon I’m too old to have ambition any more, you know —”

  “Well,” she assured him, “something you really want is going to happen, and very soon. Now, have you met our new neighbour, Lady Fortuneswell — ?”

  “Ay, I have —” he was answering, and then broke off abruptly, staring at me. His biscuit broke off too, and the larger part fell to the floor. “Never mind, it’s only tiles,” Sophie murmured, scooped it up, and moved away to drop it in the sink (the party was drifting back and forth between her front parlour and kitchen, drinks being in the former, food in the latter). Mr Goadby stepped hastily away from me, and I saw him speak to a largish blondish woman in a handsome fur-coat, who directed at me from watery blue eyes a remarkably hostile stare.

  I seem to be picking up enemies faster than friends, I thought, and sighed. Rosy’s persona, wrapped round me like sticky tape, was becoming desperately tiresome. The end of the TV serial could not come too soon so far as I was concerned.

  I saw Zoë Grandison beyond the Goadbys and went over to say hullo to her. She had been talking to the Pools’ guest, who was devouring her with his gaze as a hungry hyena contemplates a bone (Zoë with her immense cloud of dark hair hanging down over pale skintight corduroys would be enough to tempt any hyena, even a vegetarian one) but she detached herself and hurried over to me.

  “Hey, love? What did you do to your poor foot? I was going to suggest we did some walks together.” Zoë is a passionate walker; she told me once that in East Sheen, where she lives, she gets up at five a.m. all through summer, so that she can explore the gardens of her neighbours, on the way to Richmond Park. “I go through them all, hopping over fences; nobody’s about at that hour, do you see? Not even the police. And you can find out such a lot about people, from their gardens.”

  “Oh, I wrenched it in Venice. But it’s getting better fast. Maybe we can walk in a day or two.”

  “I understand there are beautiful paths along the cliffs.”

  “Isn’t it mostly army land? Civilians not allowed?”

  “Oh, I don’t take any notice of that,” she said. “I’ve found some already.” And then, nodding towards the Pools’ guest, who was still casting lecherous looks at her across the room, “What a little tick! How in hell did he ever crawl into this classy environment?”

  “Along with the Pools.”

  “Their resident toad. Well I’m sorry for Mister Pool. Can I come and see your house, Cat?”

  “Yes, do. Come to breakfast tomorrow.”

  “Love to! Shall I get you another of these knockout drops?”

  I shook my head, and she wandered away to refill her own glass.

  “Do you know what the two of spades signifies in Sophie’s book?” I asked Miss Morgan, who was conducting a lively business-chat with a tall spare grey-haired man: “You’ve got to get the fall, you see, the best drainage system in the world isn’t going to work unless you’ve got the fall —”

  She broke off, beamed at me comfortingly, and said, “I don’t suppose you’ve met Llewellyn yet, have you? Llewellyn, this is Cat, Lady Fortuneswell — The two of spades, my love — I’m not quite sure. I think it might mean that you are innocently under a cloud —”

  “Oh, well; just so long as I’m innocent —”

  “Can I get you another drink?” said Lewellyn Pool.

  “Goodness, no, thank you, my legs will only just hold me up as it is.”

  He got drinks for himself and Miss Morgan who, I suspected, could drink anybody here under the table, and we talked about the geology of Dorset. In digging out the foundations of Glifonis, he told me, a few fossils had been unearthed, not so many as there were farther along the coast, but enough for the Department of the Environment to suggest holding up the whole project until a Commission of Inquiry could decide if it would be worth excavating the area, geologically.

  “My goodness!” I could imagine Ty’s rage at such a check to his plans. “So what happened?”

  “Oh, they decided it wasn’t worth it. Maybe some palm was lightly greased? They couldn’t spare the cash or time, it was quietly shelved. But there are fossils — if you go looking on the shore beyond where they are building the mole.” He glanced up apologetically at my crutches and said, “Well, not an activity I can recommend to you, just at present —”

  Olga, who had drifted up during this conversation, listened with blazing eyes.

  “Fossils! But how wonderful! I adore fossils! What kind?”

  “Ammonites. Can I refill your drink?” said Mr Pool politely.

  He did so, then removed himself; I received the impression that he wasn’t wild about Olga.

  “Poor sad man,” she murmured, glancing after him. “His son is on heroin, did you know? And the wife having it of
f with that dreadful dummy from voodooland —

  Taking few pains to disguise my disapproval of these artless revelations within earshot of the persons concerned, I asked how her work at the Dorchester theatre was proceeding. To my surprise, she gave me a malicious grin; a really nasty grin. From her look, I thought she must have imbibed a good many glasses of Sophie’s brew. “Oh, it goes not too badly; today, I had quite a good day’s work. And you, my darling — ?” Like the Bolter, she pronounced it dullink— “how are you making out, down here in your solitude? Quite a change, no, from lying in the lap of luxury in Venice?”

  “I think you sit in the lap of luxury, rather than lie in it?”

  Irrelevantly, I had a sudden heartwarming recollection of Masha, teaching me, at age five or so, to core an apple, saying with exquisite tact, “I think you’d find, if you hold the apple like this, and the corer like this, it might be easier . . .”

  The affectionate smile with which I recalled this incident apparently infuriated Olga beyond all bounds, for, to my utter astonishment and dismay, she suddenly burst into a whispered, hissing diatribe, cataloguing all my odious attributes: “think yourself so superior to everybody else”, “never lift a finger to help others” and my past sins: “wrecked my marriage, just from the pure love of meddling. Do you know how old my children are now, my daughters? Sixteen and seventeen! And they have hardly spent three nights with me since — since — since then! They don’t wish to see me! Two superior English young ladies! I am not enough out of the top drawer for them! They are too busy for me — going to that grand finishing school, getting ready to be presented — why should they bother with tiresome foreign old Olga?”

  She thrust her sallow face furiously into mine.

  “I’m sorry, Olga,” I said stupidly. “I didn’t realize you felt like that. Blamed me so much. But, then — it seemed to me — at that time —”

  “Oh, what do we know, when we are in the thick of a passion? But you were then my friend—you should have advised me better. Sometimes,” she said ferociously, “sometimes I am almost sure that it was you who told Cal Pendennis that I was planning to leave him! For who else could it have been?”