His car’s headlights seized her from the reluctant darkness. She stood beside the gate. She always stood there. She was never late. He knew that she would be there; but the sudden appearance of her clutched him like a hand.
He drew up. She walked towards the car and disappeared behind it. He sensed an unfamiliarity in her walk — a state of mind reflected in some change of movement.
He leant across and opened the door. She appeared very quietly and murmured a greeting. He made no comment. When she had seated herself he closed the door and started the car.
She pulled her dress below her knees. She lifted his crutches from between them and placed them against the side. She placed her handbag on the seat.
He was conscious of her hands, the movements of her fingers fragrant from the touch of cosmetics.
He turned the car and drove along the street.
‘What is the matter tonight?’ He smiled at her.
‘Nothing,’ she said. Her voice was strained.
‘Of course there is. What is it?’
She did not answer.
‘Come on, Feda. Spill the beans.’
‘I will tell you when we pull up.’
‘Well, come closer till we get there. Give me your hand. There … That’s better. Now look at me and smile.’
She turned and smiled at him. Her eyes flickered from his.
He suddenly bent and rubbed his face against her shoulder, laughing softly.
At a quiet street he turned the car into the shadow of a railway embankment. He switched off the lights. He was breathing faster than usual.
She sat a little away from him, leaning forward slightly. She looked steadily through the windscreen as if awaiting a signal from within that told her there was now available sufficient courage to speak. With an effort she turned her head and looked at him.
He smiled. ‘What is it?’
‘I suppose I had better tell you now,’ she whispered.
‘Come closer,’ he said. ‘That is better.’
He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her to him. She rested against his chest. He could smell her hair. She lifted her face. He pressed his mouth on her parted lips. She rose to him. He clutched her scarcely breathing. She clung to him tense and still.
She suddenly withdrew from him and covering her face with her hands whispered, ‘I can’t tell you. I love you.’ He sat in silence looking straight before him. The light from a street lamp deepened the hollows in the road and filled them with darkness. A grey factory wall reared to the right. The shadow of the high railway embankment enveloped them.
‘Is it so hard?’ he said bitterly, then added, ‘Perhaps I already know.’
She glanced at him, startled.
‘Clynes told me that he saw you and Rollow lying on a rug down at the beach. Is that true?’
It was true. But she slipped into a panic and would have concealed the incident, though it was of Rollow she had wished to speak. She gyrated blindly within, then plunged into an admission, confessing hurriedly without direction.
‘Yes. We took a rug out of the car and lay on the sand. It was too hot in the car.’
He did not look at her. He rested his arms on the steering wheel.
She lowered her head and continued rapidly, having now committed herself, ‘I am going to marry him on Saturday.’
He did not move. His arms were paralysed upon the wheel.
Black, dead water in a wave — so high — so slow … And he striving for thought like one new-born. Black, dead water curving over and above him, falling on him with unbearable weight, yet presenting no resistance to limbs or body. The frozen stillness of factory wall and railway embankment. The sudden hatefulness of the night. The quick terror of knowing there existed ahead of him a thousand more nights, all reminiscent of this, all articulate, breathing from the darkness of their beings the words, T am going to marry him on Saturday
He thought, how calm and disinterested my body is. See how I can move my arm. The muscles work just the same.
She was still talking. Her voice was imperative, demanding to be understood.
‘He has so much money. He gave me thirty pounds for a present.’
Her voice conveyed nothing to him. He was still stumbling among the words, T am going to marry him on Saturday
They had never been said. No! Stop them! Not this! A deprivation that would go on for ever and ever and ever. He had not heard aright. Some strange delirium must have seized him. The voice wasn’t Freda’s voice … Not Freda’s … Someone else, surely.
He heard himself ask a question. ‘Do you love him.’
‘No. I love you.’
But this was impossible. He was cursing and rushing through a darkness. Eternity, he thought. Eternity … No one understands it. It goes on for ever.
He began to tremble.
Don’t think for a little while. Steady, now. Those words would never, never be unsaid. He was alone with the words. They would lie with him in beds during long nights and follow him about by day.
It was no use trying to escape. No use drinking, or kissing girls — no use.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, hearing her sob. ‘You were under no obligation to marry me.’
She turned in a sudden frenzy, and gripped the wings of his coat. Her rigid face, thrust near his, cried out to him before she spoke.
‘Hit me,’ she implored wildly. ‘Go on. Hit me. I want you to. Go on.’
He looked at her curiously, then turned quickly away from her eyes.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Please,’ she entreated, and paused in an intense, expectant immobility, waiting.
He gently disengaged her fingers from their grip on his coat. ‘I could never hit you, my dear.’
Her head slowly drooped and hung between them as if it were an offering for sacrifice. She collapsed into an uncontrollable sobbing. She clung to him, repeating his name.
He concentrated on trying to stop the violent twitching of his flesh.
She pressed her body firmly against him as if his trembling added to her distress, and she wished to stay it.
‘Speak to me,’ she whispered.
‘What is there to say,’ he replied. ‘Tonight we part and there is an end of it. I think we had better go home.’
He moved from her and started the car.
She sat huddled in her corner. He drove in silence. He pulled up in front of her gate, and, leaning over, opened the door for her to alight. She slipped her arm around his neck and drew his face towards her. She looked long and earnestly into his eyes. He kept smiling at her. She raised her mouth and kissed him quickly, then left him.
He was alone.
He drove the car away mechanically, garaged it, and walked to his room.
It looked cheerless and hateful. He undressed savagely, not wishing to think. He hummed a tune. His actions in undressing were exaggerated. He glanced at himself in the wardrobe mirror. Well, he was no different. Statements tomorrow at work. He would probably get them posted tomorrow night. He had better include a letter with Moleworth’s. Ipswich or Ispwhich. It must be a fairly large town.
He stepped into bed.
I mustn’t think of it. Ipswich in Queensland.
Funny, writing that address today. I always thought it was Ispwhich. Reading an odd name quickly, see. Doesn’t it prove how careful we should be to get the correct pronunciation of a word when first we see it.
‘We took a rug out of the car and lay on the sand.’
Christ! Christ! Christ! He raised his clenched hands above the blankets. Cold tremors like scurrying mice ran up his arms. He saw a wet mouth, gigantic in the darkness. It pressed her curved-back neck.
Ispwhich. No. Ipswich. I would sooner it ended in ‘which’. It is softer, somehow. Doesn’t it make you think of witches.
‘I am going to marry him on Saturday.’
This would pass. An hallucination … He clutched the bed clothes. The stars! the moon! Give him wings to leave the ea
rth. No use. There was no escape.
‘We took a rug out of the car and lay on the sand.’
His guts writhed upwards, recoiled. He sprang from his bed and leaned with open mouth across the bedroom chamber.
Rollow! Kiss her. You’d bet he’d kiss her.
He heaved. He vomited. He bound an arm around his belly. Sounds came from his mouth.
Ipswhich in Queensland. Ispwhich. No. Ipswich. Fancy that. Ipswich in Queensland — Queensland — Queensland —
A bout of retching seized him. When the paroxysm stopped, he rose and put on his dressing gown. He went outside and sat on the edge of the verandah, leaning over the gulley trap.
The soft sounds of her passion. Her clinging hands. The black, grotesque, curved silhouette of him.
‘We took a rug …’
He grasped within his hands the rug that they had taken, felt the warm, woolliness of its texture, saw it spread upon the sand, a black square in the soft dark.
He jerked himself erect. With eyes tight closed he moved his shoulders and arms as if striving to escape from a strait-jacket.
He suddenly relaxed. His face became calm. He looked round him like a dog just out of a fit.
He placed his elbows on his knees, rested his face within his curved hands. His lips unconsciously moved in a prayer. He repeated a vague request for comfort, his subconscious mind, dictating the lessons of his childhood, for the moment guiding him, and he felt the presence, as he always felt then, of some enormous physical body that sat in the sky, filling it from horizon to horizon, leaning forward listening.
I am going to marry him on Saturday
I love her. I love her. Imagination, you fool. Not her, you fool. A conception. Be calm. View it dispassionately. You don’t love her. You love your conception of her. You love yourself. You loved her love for you because it hid from you your crutches. Now it is gone and you are left alone with your crutches. And your crutches are large beyond all imagining. Look at them. Face them. You cannot. You shrink. Without a girl’s love to hide them behind they are too much for you. I’ll come again. Like hell, you will. Like hell, you’ll come again. Just listen to this …
‘We took a rug …’
A rug … I have never heard those words before. I have never known the meaning of ‘a rug’. A rug … A rug …
A dry convulsion twisted him. He leaned across the gully trap.
Oh Ipswhich! Ispwhich! Oh! Ipswich in Queensland …
23
‘You are late this morning,’ said Miss Trueman.
‘Yes,’ grinned the accountant. ‘Are you going to give me the strap?’
‘Mr Fulsham came in early. He wants to see you.’
‘Is he in his office now?’ The accountant jerked his head towards the door.
‘Yes.’
‘Give me that list of creditors you typed out yesterday. Did you tick the ones that have threatened to close down on us?’
‘Yes.’
His eyes twinkled. ‘Good work, Captain.’
He took the list and entered Fulsham’s office without knocking.
Fulsham was leaning forward with his forehead resting on his blotting pad. His outflung arms formed two right angles on the table.
The accountant withdrew, closing the door quietly behind him. Fulsham heard him and called out, ‘Come in.’
The accountant entered again.
Fulsham’s face was puffed through want of sleep.
New lines saddened his face. He smiled dejectedly, and said, ‘One gives way sometimes.’
‘Yes,’ said the accountant. ‘A lifetime’s work about to crash … Scores thrown out of a job … It takes facing.’
‘What is the latest report from the firing line? How are our creditors?’
The accountant sat down and referred to the list in his hand.
‘Gerald and Sons are demanding cash and refuse to take any more of our bills. There is one for two hundred pounds odd due on Friday, which we cannot possibly meet. They will cut off our supplies immediately that happens. The New Process Leather Company — Fitten called yesterday.’
‘Who is Fitten?’
‘That small, dark, chap with glasses.’
‘Oh, yes! I know.’
‘He has called every day for a week. He has a servile, cringing manner …’
‘I know the man.’
‘He says he has to pay cash for all he gets. Last month I got him to book some stuff ahead — those roans.’
‘Yes.’
‘He now seems to regard it as a most damnable confidence trick.’
Fulsham smiled. ‘Go on.’
‘He told me yesterday he hadn’t enough cash on hand to meet next week’s wages.’
‘That man is worth a hundred thousand pounds if he is worth a penny.’
‘I know that.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘I told him that we were expecting several large amounts at the end of the month, and that I intend letting him have part of the overdue portion as soon as they come in.’
‘He wouldn’t like that arrangement.’
‘He chewed his nails for a while, but had to accept it. All the creditors I visited last week extended our bills. We are at that stage now, where there is no need for us to try and placate them. What we want to aim at is to see that we pay a dividend that will not involve them in too heavy a loss on our debt. They have heard rumours about us going out, but they are not quite sure whether to believe them or not. They feel that if they force us now the crash is certain. But they are hoping we can stave it off’
Fulsham sagged. He clasped his hands and bowed his head upon them.
‘I have been a boot manufacturer for twenty years and have always paid my debts in full. A lot of these men are my friends. It is terrible. I will never be able to look at them again. How can I ever make a fresh start? Who would advance me credit after this?’
He rubbed his closed hand up and down his forehead.
The accountant was sceptical. ‘They will trust you again, all right. The profits they have made out of you over that period are far greater than any small loss that they will incur over us going out. We will pay twelve shillings in the pound.’
‘More than that, surely,’ said Fulsham, raising his head.
‘That is the figure I make it,’ said the accountant. ‘It will be less if we continue any longer. I’ll show you.’
He made out a rough statement of affairs. They studied it together. Fulsham questioned some of the values. He altered several figures.
‘That makes fifteen bob in the pound,’ said Fulsham, finally.
‘The factory will never bring five thousand,’ asserted the accountant.
‘I think it will.’
‘It may if we are fortunate enough to strike a buyer who is looking for a factory of this size.’
‘We must pay fifteen shillings in the pound,’ persisted Fulsham resolutely.
‘Then we should go out now.’
‘No. If we can hang on another month and complete the orders we have on hand it will add to our assets.’
‘Providing we are manufacturing at a profit.’
‘All those latest kid lines are showing us a big profit.’
‘Not by the costings I showed you last week.’
‘They were not accurate.’
The accountant shrugged.
‘It is the gradual drop in our output that has killed us,’ said Fulsham.
‘We should have costed on the basis of a small output.’
‘You have to make a figure that represents the factory’s normal output and cost on that.’
‘And lose in the meantime.’
‘Competition won’t allow us to get another penny more for our shoes.’
‘So Miss Claws says.’
‘Well, she is in a position to know.’
‘Miss Claws is a fool.’
‘What!’ cried Fulsham, staring.
‘Miss Claws has done more to ruin this firm t
han any other factor.’ The accountant sat up and faced him.
‘Rot! You don’t know what you are talking about.’
‘Look, Mr Fulsham. Miss Claws is incompetent. Every one knows it except you. Her management of the shops is the perfect example of mismanagement and stupidity. She orders without judgment. She judges the design from a personal, not from a selling point of view. She very rarely has a check of stock on hand. Our shelves are loaded with dead lines. I have seen her decide on a line, then switch, after the shoes have been cut. The factory despise her, but they are afraid of you and half her mistakes are concealed.’
‘You are a bigger fool than I thought you were, McCormack,’ said Fulsham quietly. ‘Get out.’
The accountant rose, smiling grimly. ‘So we continue the fight for another month: is that it?’
‘Two months, if it means the creditors getting more,’ shouted Fulsham. ‘Three months, if necessary.’
‘That is my sentiment, too,’ replied the accountant. ‘But I still maintain we will pay less by continuing.’
Fulsham pulled the newspaper lying on the table, towards him. It was open at racing results. He did not reply.
The accountant went into the main office. As he passed through the door, a sudden, momentary coldness sped to his heart. He shuddered. Freda …
He spoke on the phone. He said, ‘Hullo,’ and relaxed to wait after a girl’s voice had replied, ‘Coughlan Brothers here. Just a minute. Mr Coughlan wants to speak to you about that quote.’
The receiver was cold against his ear. Through it he could hear the faint tapping of a typewriter. He felt tired and dispirited. He could see Freda, numerous Freda’s, parading before him like mannequins in a fashion parade. Freda in green. Freda in blue. Freda in the red beret. Freda holding flowers. An enormous, shadowy, smiling face of her like a canopy above him: that descended: that breathed just beyond the reach of his mouth … Her mouth, her red mouth, her soft mouth …
‘We won’t keep you a minute. We are working on it now.’
‘All right.’
He saw her in part. A slender hand moving up to pat her hair, a silk-stockinged leg on the step of the car, an ear beneath fair curls, a smooth, curved cheek and the backward slip of smiling lips over wet teeth …
How Beautiful Are Thy Feet Page 22