Compulsory Games

by Robert Aickman

  “So that’s all there is to it?” he enquired.

  “There’s no need to be disagreeable,” said Rosetta, rippling with reasonableness. “I told you from the first. Anything else is entirely in your own imagination.”

  “What about Paul?”

  “I shall divorce him. I have grounds enough. Though you don’t really need grounds nowadays.”

  “What about me?” Robin was improvising blindly; gaining time and extenuating reality; unlikely to achieve.

  “I’m very grateful for all you’ve done and I hope you’ll continue doing it for a few more weeks. Of course I don’t expect you to visit me every day. I said that too. The Gradey children will go between us, if necessary. They are fine kids. I’ve given them all machine guns. Girls don’t like being left out nowadays.”

  “I don’t like being left out much,” said Robin, without one leg to stand on, not one toe.

  The little dog seemed busy as ever, though what the business was no ordinary person could tell. Robin was sure of that.

  “If you’ll sit down for just a moment,” said Rosetta, “I’ll tell you exactly what to do.”

  Of course the very last thing that Robin wished was to go, so he seated himself; naturally upon the bed, leaving the good chair to his hostess.

  Rosetta came at once to the point. “Give up all the wild ideas that buzz round you like wasps. Or like bluebottles. Oh, yes I know. I know all there is to know about men. I can read them through a brick wall. Find a nice, ordinary girl, not too attractive or you’ll be jealous all the time, not too bright or you’ll be anxious all the time, not too rich or you’ll have nothing to strive for, not too original or she’ll upset people. There are plenty of them, and all of them are available to a young postman like you. Those are the terms offered.”

  The terrier had come to a sudden standstill, as if he had been a white gun dog on one of the estates.

  “You don’t live like that,” said Robin from the bed.

  “I don’t live at all,” replied Rosetta. “Haven’t you realised?”

  “Perhaps I have.” Now Robin was staring at her: momentarily still that muggy evening; for seconds rigid as the dog.

  Rosetta smiled. “I am the person every postman meets in the end.”

  “I’m a provisional postman only. I told you that clearly,” remarked Robin, starting once more to relax.

  “Do what I tell you. What else is there for you? Only wasps and bluebottles.”

  “It seems that I have to meet the bills, none the less,” said Robin. He could feel them at this moment in his jacket or tunic pocket.

  “Only till I can repay. And with interest.”

  Robin must have looked in some way sceptical, though it was not with intent.

  “I promise.” Rosetta even leaned towards him. The dog too had recovered mobility, and had begun to lick Rosetta’s ankles.

  Robin made a second supreme effort in the course of that short meeting. “Take off your dress,” he said; hoarsely in the still, worn air.

  “All right,” said Rosetta, quietly but immediately. Her eyes were on his.

  She went to work at once. Robin continued to sit on the bed, affecting calmness, convincing none.

  Rosetta had removed the lovely blueish dress, and it lay there, with the little motley dog now sniffing round it. But she was wearing a dress still; a lovely pinkish dress.

  “Take it off,” said Robin, now almost growling with masculinity.

  Again she went to work, and a second dress lay before him, near the first dress, and with the dog pattering interestedly and indecisively between them. Rosetta now wore a lovely dress that was greenish. She was smiling placidly. She reseated herself in the sound chair. For the first time, Robin noticed her green earrings, long but light.

  “Postman, I’ll write to you always,” said Rosetta. “I promise.”

  He would have to borrow; but from whom could he do so? Only from Nelly that he could think of; who was likely to have ideas of her own. It had to be remembered that rent to Mrs. Gradey would have to be paid too, for as long as Rosetta cared to remain, though Mrs. Gradey might well be among the least of his prospective creditors.

  “Always?” enquired Robin.

  “Always.”

  Now he could stand up. It seemed hardly right merely to shake hands, as when yesterday they had met; and Robin suspected that Rosetta’s kisses were strictly and exclusively epistolary.

  “I’ll not say Goodbye then?”

  “Never say Goodbye.” Rosetta was standing too. The dog was looking up at them, from one to the other, half interested, half apathetic, and with its tongue beginning to hang out.

  •

  Mrs. Gradey was lurking below.

  “Tomorrow then?” she demanded. “With some of it? As much as you can manage? I’m not the Queen of Tara, you know.”

  “You are the queen of my heart,” responded Robin jauntily; “which is far better.”

  LAURA

  ALL OF you, of course, are happily married. Or you are booked to be happily married, and only awaiting the blessing of the preacher or the registrar. Or you were happily married once, years ago. Or, at the very least, you are laying active plans to be happily married. After all, what else can any of us do? Nothing, I assure you.

  I propose to show you the hopelessness of any other idea.

  When I was first with the bank, I must admit I found the life quite hard, and very lonely.

  In the first place, I am not by nature especially good at adding up and all that. I had really to work at it. I doubt whether I should have gone in for banking at all had it not been for my poor mother’s plight, after my father left us and went abroad.

  In the second place, I was always backward at making friends, and especially girl friends. That was true even at school. You may well think I’m a bit different now, but that’s really because of the events I’m about to tell you. I shouldn’t care to tell just anybody, of course.

  It was a particularly big branch of the bank that I was dropped into; and right at the start. The noise was terrible. All those comptometers and outsize typewriters and so many people talking more and more loudly in order to make themselves heard at all.

  However, one day a chap there asked me to come to a party he said he was giving the following Saturday evening. In those days we worked on Saturday mornings, and I’ve often thought since, that the decline of Britain properly set in when it was stopped. “Bring a bottle of something,” the chap said, and I found choosing the right bottle quite difficult, let alone budgeting for it. The odd thing about it all was that I didn’t know the man in the least. I presumed he was just roping in everyone around, and I was a little worried lest there be no room to breathe at his place when the time came. I am not at my best when packed in too tightly with strangers. I like space around me.

  But, when the time came, it wasn’t too bad, because the man still lived with both his parents, in a detached house with its own garden. It was mid-winter, but when I peeped out from one of the upstairs bedroom windows, I could see a hard tennis court, a bit weeded over, and a disused place for chickens, quite a lot of chickens, and a row of small cypresses, absolutely motionless, and a cluster of tombstones for dead pets of various kinds. Quite a small estate, in fact; particularly by comparison with what I had been used to at home in Leicester. Of course, at the precise moment I saw all that the moon had come out from behind the clouds for a few seconds. I never set eyes upon either of the parents and was too shy to ask what had become of them that evening. I suppose they’d left us all to get on with it, and just as well.

  In any case, from almost the first moment that I entered the big room clutching my bottle, my attention had been riveted upon a girl who was there. I say a girl; but, in fact, she was considerably older than I was, thirty at least, I should suppose. She was very blonde and slender, almost ethereal. She had the greenest eyes I had ever seen— or have ever seen since; and the biggest too. She wore white boots which went right up u
nder her dress. It was not so usual for a girl to wear boots at a party as it is now. If this girl worked in my bank, I had certainly not seen her there.

  We were never introduced, or anything like that, but I simply couldn’t bother about anyone else who was there, male or female. I simply gravitated towards and around her. In the end, she said “Hullo, you look unhappy.”

  I nodded. That was partly because I was so shy and speechless.

  “Come and sit by me,” she said, “and have a drink.”

  The drink was the usual dreadful stuff you get at parties where everyone is mucking in, but three or four glasses, each of something different, gave me more confidence, and in the end I was conversing with the girl quite intelligently. We had all kinds of things in common, like books and films and concerts, which I used to go in for at that time as much as I could; and in no time at all I was in seventh heaven. It was absolutely the first time in my life that I had entered that region, and, as it happens, it was more or less the last time also.

  The rest of them were making more and more noise, until it was exactly like the bank, or like the sort of tavern my father used to look for.

  In the end, my girl said, “Let’s explore.”

  Though it was just what I wanted, I should never have dared to suggest it, as I was still a little afraid of being entirely alone with her. You may begin to see why.

  We went upstairs and entered what I suppose was the parents’ bedroom. There was a big double-bed, and pictures of geese and swans and toadstools, and lots of fluffy decoration round the different pieces of furniture.

  We sat together on the bed, but it was really too high above the floor.

  “I say,” I said, “who are you?”

  “I’m Laura,” she said.

  She did tell me her other name, but I’m keeping that to myself. After all, this is not a police message or anything official. She even told me her address and telephone number, and of course I should have written them down, but I supposed them to be burned on my brain for ever, as one does at that age. She lived in W. something: quite a high number, but not absolutely impossible. Way out beyond Action, I assumed.

  “I’m Andrew,” I said and she smiled at me mysteriously.

  So I put my arm round her shoulders, and should have liked to turn out the light, but I knew the door was unlocked, and did not quite care to go so far as to lock it. She was wearing a thin greeny dress, with a pattern on it like waves. I’d never seen a dress like it, but it’s impossible to describe.

  “Andrew,” she said, looking at me with her enormous eyes. “I do love you.”

  Let me tell you it was the supreme moment of my entire life, though I didn’t realize that at the time.

  But then she cried, “Andrew! I must go and telephone. I’d quite forgotten. You made me forget.”

  “You will come back,” I gasped out. Of course it was dangerous for her to leave the room at all. That was obvious enough.

  Even so, her reply astonished me. “I shall always come back,” was what she said. She pulled up her boots and flitted out.

  It was then that I drew back the curtain and looked out of the window, and saw the rows of tiny tombstones, as I’ve told you.

  Laura didn’t come back; but the rest of the party very much did. They burst into the parents’ bedroom and began to overturn things and throw them about and play all kinds of games. They never even noticed me. In those days I was not very conspicuous.

  I managed to push my way out of the room. Then I waited around. I went into most of the other rooms, though one or two of the doors were locked. I tried to be extra inconspicuous. The party was getting worse and worse, as happens when you have so many more fellows than girls. In the end, it seemed quite certain that Laura must have heard something on the telephone which had made her leave at once. I did not care to ask anyone.

  I was downcast enough on the way home, and it became worse when I realized that I had after all forgotten both Laura’s exact address and her telephone number. However, I knew her name right enough, and I remembered the name of the road she had given me, out there beyond Acton, as I thought.

  Immediately I reached my digs, I looked Laura up in the communal telephone directory, and found that the page was missing. It was not that it had been torn out, though the other chaps often did that. I examined the binding and it seemed that the particular page had never been there. I slept not one wink that night, between rapture and regret.

  The next morning I discovered that the page appeared to be missing from all copies of the directory. Of course such things are not uncommon with the Post Office as it is, and all the time getting worse. I rang up Information and asked away, and even tried to complain; but you can imagine how far I got. And according to Enquiries, the girl’s surname, which was a fairly unusual one, Armenian or something like that, was not in their lists at all. Of course my name wouldn’t have been either, at the place I was living.

  Yes, I did ask the man whose party it had been. All he had to say was “No idea, I’m afraid. You can’t keep in touch with all the chicks that turn up.”

  “But you must have noticed her white boots?”

  “I’m not funny about boots.”

  •

  In the end, I left the banking floor and was given a more confidential job of toting records from place to place. It was inevitable that I saw more of the world, though I didn’t always like what I saw. On several occasions I even thought of marrying, and the different girls seemed quite keen to have me, but each time I drew back at the last moment. Most men value their freedom of course; but it was really Laura that was the trouble with me. She had transfixed me. I could never get her out of my thoughts, though you may think this odd because I believe it was as much as eight or ten years before I saw or heard or her again.

  I was in Paris, and strolling through the Parc Monceau on business, when, all among the prams and nursemaids, I saw her on a seat. My heart turned over. I was all but sick with the shock.

  At the other end of the seat were three Frenchmen, all very over-weight, but I ignored them and settled myself beside her.

  “Hullo,” she said. “You look unhappy.”

  “I am,” I said. “It’s your fault. You must know that.”

  She smiled in that way which so confused me. “In which case,” she said, “we’ll go and have a drink, and make it up.”

  “You must be cold,” I couldn’t help saying because she was wearing very much the same dress, without all that regard for fashion, and the same sort of boots, and it was a blustery day in Paris, with rain every now and then, and worse undoubtedly to come.

  “I’ve been waiting too,” she said reproachfully.

  She never added much to that.

  We wandered off across the park to a funny little place in a side-street. In that part of Paris, it must have been the staff who mostly went there. On the way, though really it wasn’t far, we passed a ghastly street accident; or perhaps it was something worse. I tried not to look at it, and as she said nothing, of course I didn’t.

  We began mixing our drinks again, in the same unwise way; and talking about all those things we had in common, though naturally we both went to fewer films and concerts and read fewer books than before. But that applies to almost everyone. I realized with a little shiver she might well be forty by now, or at least thirty-eight. I can only say that she did not look it. She looked devastating; in her slightly peculiar way.

  In the end, I began eating as well as drinking, though she would only nibble.

  While I was in the middle of one of those hashed up mock-steaks, the patron came up in his red apron and whispered into Laura’s ear.

  She rose instantly.

  “Excusez-moi,” she said, absent-mindedly, and as if I had been a Frenchman. She pulled herself together and added, “Back in a moment,” smiling her smile. Then, before I could get out a word, she walked quickly out of the café.

  Oh yes, this time I tore right after her, but the patron clutch
ed at me and held me back by brute force. I suppose he was frightened for his bill, but alternatively, it might have been that he knew something I didn’t.

  I was compelled to pay, without even having finished my mock-steak or my coffee. When I was in the street, it was hopeless, even though it was not at all full.

  However, some French lads stared at me, and one of them whistled, and one of them spat, and one of them shouted something out in a voice that was breaking badly.

  I should have liked to duck back into the café, but did not care to after the trouble with the proprietor. Nor could I hang about outside in the cold, being jibed at in a language I did not fully understand:

  I hung around the street-corner for a bit, this time with a different kind of person staring at me, and sometimes looking as if they would call the Agent; but of course it was hopeless. I did not even know which way Laura had turned at the café door.

  All the same, I mooched miserably about in the chilly drizzle for, I daresay, an hour and a half, trying to keep the café entrance under observation; but I knew in my bones that Laura would not return. Not there, anyway. Not then.

  I tried hard to throw the whole business out of my system, but after three days I knew I was not going to succeed. In fact at the end of those three days I doubted whether I should ever succeed. All-embracing might be the expression for Laura; though, in real life, I had hardly embraced her for more than seconds.

  •

  Within only a couple of years after that, I got down at last to proposing marriage; and Cecilia Susan accepted me at once. I am not one of those men who can so easily forget the date of his wedding.

  I was perfectly determined to work at the marriage, as I found everybody saying in America, both sexes saying it, too; and obviously it was only fair that I should. But Laura stood more hopelessly in the light than I had supposed possible.

  I never said a word about her to Cecilia Susan. It would have sounded so utterly unrealistic. Nor were things helped by the fact that our two children—only a year apart, actually—died in an accident at the Nursery School. I am sure you heard about it or read about it at the time. There were questions in Parliament, and a big enquiry, at which we both gave evidence.