He made breakfast for us. Looking out of the window and across a lawn I saw other people having breakfast in their windows.
‘Do you think you’ll go on doing children’s books?’ he said.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
We left the flat. In the lift at the Belsize Park tube station there was a Dale Carnegie poster, MAXIMISE YOUR POTENTIAL, it said, and showed a drawing of a thick-faced man in simplified light and shade. He had a pencil poised in his hand and stood looking down at a graph on his desk. Whether you read the graph from his side of the desk or mine the line on it went down.
At Camden Town George kissed me and got out of the train. I went home to Madame Beetle and the snails.
45
William G.
Tuesday morning. I woke up and groaned. I ached all over, and when I got out of bed I could scarcely walk. If Sandor was going to fling down the gauntlet again I didn’t know whether I had the strength to pick it up.
The bath was clean. The cooker was clean. What had happened to Sandor? He was as regular as clockwork, never overslept. Had I done him a serious injury? For a moment I hoped so, then I hoped not. I knocked on his door. No answer. I knocked again, looked at the threadbare musty carpet where my face had been the other day, heard a train go past beyond the common.
‘Who is it?’ said Sandor’s voice from inside, a little more distant than last time.
‘Me,’ I said. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Come in,’ he said. He was in bed wearing some sort of wild Islamic pyjamas. He had a sticking-plaster across his nose, his face was flushed, his moustache looked dismayed. There were stacks of foreign newspapers, a chessboard with the pieces standing on it in the middle of a game, flowers in an art nouveau vase that incorporated a naked lady. There were framed photographs of men with moustaches, sad-faced women, young Sandor in shorts and a jersey with some school team, a river with a bridge. The wallpaper was old and dark, the furniture was dark, the room had a dark and foreign smell. There was a thermometer in a glass on the bedside table.
‘Are you all right?’ I said. He looked as if he might be wearing a nightcap but wasn’t.
‘I am grotty a little,’ he said. ‘I have 39 degrees temperature, maybe a touch of influenza.’
‘Have you had breakfast?’ I said.
‘I have slightly vertigo,’ he said. ‘I stand up, room goes round, floor is slanty. Not hungry.’
‘I’ll make you some tea and toast,’ I said.
‘Not to bother,’ said Sandor. ‘I get up later.’
‘It’s no bother,’ I said.
‘Very kind of you,’ he said. ‘You are pacific this morning. You don’t make aggression.’
‘I don’t usually make aggression,’ I said. I made the tea and toast, brought it to him.
‘What do you usually have for breakfast?’ I said.
‘Half grapefruit,’ he said. ‘Seaweed, squid, coffee. Very healthy. Top protein.’
I nodded. Cookers simply have to take what comes to them, that’s life.
‘You don’t like foreigners, yes?’ he said. ‘England for the English. You don’t like foreign breakfast on cooker. Not nice, yes?’
‘I don’t dislike foreigners,’ I said. ‘You’ve got the wrong idea completely.’
‘Cobblers,’ said Sandor. ‘You make effort, put fake smile on face, make politeness. You nod hello but you don’t look at foreigner like regular human person. You look at me as if you think I carry in my briefcase nothing but sausages.’
‘What do you carry in your briefcase?’ I said.
‘Sausages and newspapers,’ he said. ‘I read and speak Hungarian, Russian, German, French, English. How many languages do you have?’
‘Only English,’ I said.
‘Wonderful,’ said Sandor. ‘Let the rest of the world learn to talk to you. You don’t waste your time with such foolishness.’
‘Maybe not,’ I said, ‘but I leave the bath and the cooker clean for the next chap, the next human person. I’d better be going now or I’ll be late for work.’
Sandor lay back on his pillow, closed his eyes. ‘Thank you for your visit,’ he said.
46
Neaera H.
When I got back to my flat after leaving George Fairbairn the sky went hard and blue, the sun came out in real postcard style. I didn’t like it. Sunny days have always been more difficult for me than grey ones.
The snails grazed slowly on the sides of Madame Beetle’s tank, the little china bathing beauty turned her back on them, Madame Beetle stayed under the filter sponge. Everything seemed stupid. I walked about from room to room, took books from shelves and put them back, dug up old letters and read lines here and there.
The place seemed suddenly intolerably full of things. The cupboards were bursting with clothes and shoes I’d never wear again, the drawers were full of rubbish, the files choked with defunct correspondence.
I began to thin out my belongings, tied up clothes in bundles, stacked old newspapers, filled carrier bags with what had filled the drawers. Then I felt exhausted, had some lunch, drank coffee, smoked.
I didn’t want to be in my flat for the rest of the day. I put some paper in a file envelope and went to the British Museum. I sat on a wooden bench on the porch. Pigeons and tourists were active all round, the sunlight seemed tolerable there. I held the envelope on my lap, feeling the weight and thickness of the blank paper inside. I closed my eyes, thought of all the years of Gillian Vole, Delia Swallow and the other animals and birds I’d written about and drawn. They led such cosy cheerful lives, that lot. I’d written them but there no longer seemed a place in their world for me.
With my eyes closed I could still see the sunlight. For a moment I saw ocean, sharp and real, the heaving of the open sea, the sunlight dancing in a million dazzling points. The turtles would be swimming, swimming. It had been a good thing to do and not a foolish one. Thinking about the turtles I could feel the action of their swimming, the muscle contractions that drove the flippers through the green water. All they had was themselves but they would keep going until they found what was in them to find. In them was the place they were swimming to, and at the end of their swimming it would loom up out of the sea, real, solid, no illusion. They could be stopped of course, they might be killed by sharks or fishermen but they would die on the way to where they wanted to be. I’d never know if they’d got there or not, for me they would always be swimming.
I was in my ocean, this was the only ocean there was for me, the dry streets of London and my square without a fountain. No one could make me freer by putting me somewhere else. I had as much as the turtles: myself. At least I too could die on the way to where I wanted to be. Gillian Vole! Not enough, not nearly enough.
I took paper out of the envelope, took a pen out of my bag. What was there to write? Anything, everything:
Madame Water-Beetle lived in a plastic shipwreck in a tank by the window. In the same tank lived seven red snails. The snails did the snail work and she did the beetle work.
The perversity of the human mind! I folded the sheet in half, put a fresh one on top of the stack, sat there with it blank for a long time. I wished I had somewhere to go besides my flat. Somewhere bright and empty with uncluttered shadows, somewhere not crusted with years of me. Like George’s place.
47
William G.
Sandor stopped in bed Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and for those three days I found the bath and cooker clean every morning. If he used the cooker at odd times when I was out there was no evidence of it. Maybe Mrs Inchcliff was looking after him. And of course he wasn’t buying fresh supplies of squid and seaweed while he was laid up. Maybe he was cooking things that left no trace. I wasn’t quite interested enough to visit him again.
Friday he was up and about again. The bath was almost clean, only a hair or two. The cooker was just that tiny bit mucky but without the usual smell. Well, I couldn’t make a career of it really. The two fights had been suffici
ent satisfaction, or almost. I could fight Sandor every day and maybe even win now and again by foul means if not fair but I had no way of forcing him to clean the bath and the cooker.
At the shop Harriet and I were polite to each other. It had come to that. Instead of brushing against each other and touching as often as possible we now avoided contact like thieves wary of a burglar alarm. With no prospect of getting her clothes off again I found the thought of her naked charms vivid in my mind from time to time but I didn’t want to be half of the ‘We’ who did this and that and were invited here and there. I didn’t want to be expected anywhere as a regular thing. I didn’t fancy any more early music either, and there were still two recitals left in the series we’d subscribed to. I’d give her the tickets, she could find someone else to go with easily enough.
On Tuesday I’d rung Neaera up to tell her what our expenses had been. The van and the petrol had come to £26.56, which made her share £13.28. The crates and the rope were on me. ‘We promised George Fairbairn a report of the expedition,’ I said. ‘Maybe we ought to drop in at the Aquarium one day soon.’
‘I have done,’ she said. ‘But I’m sure he’d like a visit from you as well.’
I went to see him on Saturday. The two small remaining turtles were back in the tank now, they looked like orphans. Well, I thought, take care of yourselves and grow big and maybe one day somebody will take you to Polperro.
‘Anybody say anything yet?’ I asked George.
‘Nobody’s been,’ he said, ‘except the blokes who work with me. Nobody from the Society.’
‘Maybe nothing’ll happen at all,’ I said. ‘Is that possible?’
‘It’s what I expect,’ he said.
Well, I hadn’t done it to make the headlines. Still I would have thought some notice would be taken in this part of the world at least.
He gave me a cup of tea in STAFF ONLY. The lady with the big boobs smiled from her photo by the duty-roster. No champagne today. It occurred to me just then that I could have brought him a thank-you bottle of something but of course I hadn’t. I never miss.
‘How’re you feeling now that you’ve done it?’ he said.
I shrugged. ‘I think the turtles are better off,’ I said, ‘which was after all the object of the exercise.’
‘But?’ he said.
‘You know how it is,’ I said. ‘Launching the turtles didn’t launch me. You can’t do it with turtles.’ Why was I talking to him like a son to a father? He wasn’t older than I or wiser. Just calmer.
‘You can’t do it with turtles,’ he said. ‘But with people you never know straightaway what does what. Maybe launching them did launch you but you don’t know it yet.’
‘How’s Neaera?’ I said. ‘She said she’d been to see you. I haven’t seen her since we got back.’
‘She’s all right,’ he said, and rolled a cigarette. He did it very deftly, it was a nice smooth cigarette.
‘You think it’s launched her?’ I said.
‘Hard to say,’ he said.
We finished our tea and I left. There were friendly feelings on both sides but neither of us urged the other to stay in touch.
48
Neaera H.
I came home from the museum on Tuesday having written nothing but that Madame Beetle paragraph. I looked at the telephone and said, ‘Ring’. It rang but it wasn’t George, it was William phoning to tell me what our expenses had been. Then in a few minutes it rang again and it was George. He invited me out to dinner and I asked him to my place for drinks first.
The flat looked different with that to look forward to. Everything in it, all the clutter on the desk and the drawing-table, all the books and objects took on new character with the prospect of being seen by him.
I bought whisky and gin and flowers. I had a long bubble-bath, washed my hair, put on the Arab dress I look best in and my posh boots. Patchouli too. I’d bought it for the first time only the other day at Forbidden Fruit but it seemed as if it’d always been my scent.
There was a knock on the door about an hour before George was due.
‘Good evening,’ said Webster de Vere. ‘I hope I’m not disturbing you. Were you in full flow at the typewriter?’
‘Like a river in spate,’ I said, certain for no particular reason that he’d listened at the door before knocking.
‘I mustn’t bother you then,’ he said with a good deal of optical activity. Such bright glances! I said nothing, stood at the door without asking him in. He was bothering me. ‘But I thought,’ he said, ‘perhaps you might be persuaded to abandon your muse briefly for a sherry with me. Dreadful, really, we’ve been neighbours all these years and yet we scarcely know each other.’
‘I don’t think it’s dreadful at all,’ I said. ‘A friendly presence scarcely known can be quite nice.’ I hadn’t meant that to be encouraging but it encouraged him.
‘Then you’ll come,’ he said, his eyes absolutely darting rays of light.
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘but I can’t. I’m expecting someone in a little while.’
‘Pity,’ he said, lowering his sparkle. ‘Another time perhaps. How’re the snails?’
‘Cleaning up,’ I said, moving back a little with my hand on the door.
‘Actually they have tiny wireless transmitters in them,’ he said with an evil smile. ‘So I get to know everything that goes on in your flat.’
‘I’m afraid it must be terribly dull listening for you,’ I said. ‘You must excuse me now.’
‘Till soon,’ he said as I closed the door.
I quickly took the snails out of the tank, put them in a peanut-butter jar full of water and left the jar outside his door.
What could have worked him up to that awful pitch? He’d seen me often enough without getting all excited. But until he fed Madame Beetle he hadn’t seen my flat which perhaps looked as if a good deal of work was being done and a comfortable living being made. Maybe he was tired of young men and old ladies and wanted to settle down. Dreadful of me to think it but I thought it.
‘There’s a jar of snails outside your neighbour’s door,’ said George when he arrived.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘They were in Madame Beetle’s tank for a while but I didn’t like the way they looked at me.’
‘There’ll be more,’ he said, and showed me little patches of eggs on the sides of the tank.
‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’ll get them before they get me.’
He walked about the flat looking at things. I’d only seen him in shirtsleeves before. He was wearing an old tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows, no tie.
‘You look different tonight,’ he said.
‘How?’ I said.
‘Jolly. Full of smiles.’
‘That’s how I feel,’ I said. We both drank gin neat, it was bright and velvety. We smiled at each other over our glasses, time seemed full and easy, available in unlimited amounts. George seemed to carry a clear space about with him that made all things plain and simple where he was. The room lost its tired complexity, became comradely and cheerful. Without going to the window I knew that the evening view of the lamplit square would be as round and juicy as a ripe plum.
We went to the Bistingo on the King’s Road and had steak and drank red wine. The evening seemed very bright. We walked up the Embankment to Westminster afterwards, then over the bridge to the South Bank. We walked about on the different levels up and down the steps and by the river. The plaza by the Royal Festival Hall was like a gigantic stage-set, the night was full of quiet excitement, the river was shining, the music-boats had gemmed windows, the trains across the Hungerford Bridge were freighted with promise.
We had coffee at the National Film Theatre clubroom, then walked back to my place slowly and by devious routes. At two o’clock in the morning we came past the Albert Bridge. Five or six taxis always park there for the night by a little hut that must be a dispatcher’s office. In the first taxi in the rank the driver was sitting in the bac
k seat in the dark playing a muted trumpet. Dixieland. The music floated quietly through the open window, small and lively.
‘What is it?’ I said.
‘Muskrat Ramble,’ said George.
At home we lay in bed smoking, watched the shapes of light on the ceiling, pale abstractions from the street lamps.
Before I fell asleep I saw green water, the white shark-glimmer. I looked at my watch. Half past three. I hope William’s all right, I thought.
49
William G.
Sundays come round so quickly, sometimes there scarcely seems a day between them let alone a week. My mother had at least had the Methodist Church to go to and to stop going to, either way it was a positive action. I had nothing except a strong feeling of dread. Perhaps my mother had had that as well. I remembered it from earliest childhood, the awful Sunday daylight through the coloured glass of the front door, the quiet outside.
Sunday is the day when there you are with the people you live with and that’s it. Or there you are alone. There’d been Sundays when I’d methodically picked up girls at the Victoria & Albert or the British Museum, Sundays drove strangers into each other’s arms. But I simply hadn’t that much enterprise now. I thought of Port Liberty but didn’t fancy the trip to Greenwich. I decided to have a lazy day, maybe Sunday would just take care of itself and not bother me.
Sandor invariably went out on Sundays looking just like the rest of the week except no tie. He even carried his briefcase and I suppose he went somewhere where everybody spoke five languages and read many newspapers and argued about politics all day.
Miss Neap either solved or compounded the weekend problem at least once a month by visiting her mother in Leeds. At other times she maintained a full Sunday cultural schedule and working as she did at a ticket agency was never without something to do. She was an avid museum-goer in the afternoons and favoured music in the evenings, overdressing smartly and appropriately for each part of the day.
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