Wish Her Safe At Home

by Stephen Benatar

  Sylvia looked at me a little oddly. But that didn’t matter. She had certainly stopped crowing and I had certainly been able to find a new topic.

  “I must remember that as a gambit,” she observed, “when I’m next asked out and there happens to be a lull at the dinner table.”

  But I knew she wasn’t asked out very often, whatever she might say, and particularly not to places where you didn’t have your supper served up on a tray in front of the TV.

  “I had no idea you even used words like that,” she said. “Lavatory. Constipation. Piles. I had no idea you realized they existed.”

  I smiled but said nothing. A woman of mystery.

  Indeed, it sometimes did appear to me I had a mildly Rabelaisian streak, which perhaps I ought to keep an eye on. Though on this occasion it could hardly have caused any offence. I thought Sylvia would have felt more vindicated than upset.

  I was right.

  “I can remember,” she said, “when I sat on the lavatory for a full forty minutes. And that was bad enough! One gets all sweaty with frustration.”

  “Oh, Sylvia!” I exclaimed. “No, don’t! Please!”

  “Well, you were the one to bring it up, my dear.” She smiled, a little grimly. “Association of ideas maybe? Come on—you’d better tell me all about your romantic chemist. I realize you’ve been dying to. For a start how old is he?”

  I struggled not to take the huff.

  “Oh? I don’t know. Early thirties?”

  “My God, you are cradle-snatching. And does he sell love potions not on prescription? If so, I think I’d better have one.”

  “No, no. He helps the poor.”

  “What a lot of fun that must be.”

  I was aware of course that she was scoffing but I didn’t mind. Or at least not sufficiently to stop me. It was so lovely to be able to talk about him. I now wondered why—woman of mystery or not—I hadn’t in fact done so last Tuesday with the Allsops.

  “You see, he’s got this idea that because he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth he must always do what he can to help those much less fortunate. He even regards it as a solemn duty. Do you remember by any chance Magnificent Obsession?”

  She nodded—with a queer little twist about her lips. “Both versions,” she answered. “Do you want to say he’s more Robert Taylor or more Rock Hudson?”

  “Oh, neither. He’s himself. Better looking than either of them and with oodles more sex appeal. His eyes are... outstanding. They follow you about the room. They seem to suggest that there’s nothing he can’t understand nor forgive. Above all, he’s a sympathetic listener. I talk to him by the hour. And as a matter of fact if you’d really like to know what he looks like... ”

  “You bet I would! Why, I’m almost wetting my pants, my dear, at the very thought of meeting him!”

  “But you can’t,” I said.

  “What, wet my pants?”

  “You can’t meet him.” Foolishly, it hadn’t even occurred to me she might expect to. “I mean, he’s gone away for the weekend. Gone home.”

  “Home... to his wife and children?”

  “Of course not. Home is always the place where you were born. Home is—”

  “Perhaps he isn’t the marrying kind?”

  Only the emphasis she had laid on the last two words made me understand she wasn’t referring simply to a fear of commitment.

  Oh, yes, indeed. She was very jealous!

  But I pretended not to get her drift. “Home is where your parents are,” I continued just as if she hadn’t interrupted. “Though it’s only his mother nowadays. His father died quite young.”

  “I don’t believe a word of it,” laughed Sylvia. Yet in my relief at having escaped what might have been an awkward situation I was prepared to overlook her wicked innuendos. “Oh, his father may be dead,” she conceded.

  I made no reply.

  “And I suppose you’re one of the poor that this paragon’s been trying to help?”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  She suddenly had a prolonged paroxysm of coughing, her first really bad one of the evening.

  When she finally emerged from it, still watery-eyed and wheezy, she happened to be looking at the fireplace. “What a bloody awful picture!” she remarked suddenly.

  I was dumbfounded.

  “I feel like I’m huddled in the dock,” she said, “and he’s Judge Jeffries and at any moment he’ll be putting on his black cap because I’ve just been convicted of the crime of smoker’s cough. And I honestly don’t know when I last saw anything so gloomy.”

  She paused then adopted a more conversational style.

  “I meant to comment earlier.”

  * * *

  It seemed the final disintegration of our friendship. On my side anyway. And there were three more days to get through. It was going to be even worse than I’d imagined.

  “Oh, help me!” I implored. “I know that you—being you—will probably forgive her. But I don’t think I shall ever be able to!”

  29

  There were things that night which I remembered.

  (There were things most nights which I remembered.)

  I remembered lying awake on summer evenings, for instance, with music floating in through my open window. It came from the pub across the way.

  The music was so jolly—even when it was something sad like “There was I waiting at the church, waiting at the church.” I pictured everyone standing around the piano and joining in with such gusto.

  I remembered my bedroom.

  It was a small cream-coloured rectangle, almost boxlike, with a boarded-up fireplace and cheap furniture. But it had my precious window, overlooking the side road and the pub (the side road was called Paradise Street and was narrow and slummy; the pub was actually on the corner of Marylebone High Street), and hanging on my walls were the seven pictures which at various times I had culled from magazines. Almost literally I used to inhabit those pictures; I had homes in seven different countries with seven different professions and seven different sets of parents, family and friends—mainly characters out of my favourite books—and a range of pastimes more or less suited to each locale and frequently lending themselves to either interesting or fabulous adventures.

  I remembered the gentle young man in Paradise Street who had a club foot and kept a rabbit in his back yard and who had framed all my pictures for me. Even if he continued to enjoy best the kind of books which I myself did he was still a highly skilled framer.

  I didn’t quite realize it then but he must have charged me well under cost price.

  Paul was knocked down and killed just before I was ten. I never knew what had happened to the rabbit—I was too shy to find out. And I couldn’t have kept it, anyway.

  I was glad I’d bought him a new edition of The Would-Be-Goods two weeks before it happened. E Nesbit was his favourite author and this was the only one of hers he hadn’t got. I was glad that I’d written something soppy on the flyleaf and included lots of kisses.

  Then I remembered how I would frequently sit in front of my mirror—or, rather, lift it down from my chest of drawers and hold it upright on my lap whilst sitting on the bed—and fervently wish that I was beautiful; but how for long periods too I would try to avoid mirrors altogether, like Queen Elizabeth, and live in a blemish-free land of hopeful possibility.

  I remembered how when I was older I used sometimes to dream about Gary Cooper or Gregory Peck or—mostly—a fair-haired young second-feature player whose name I’ve totally forgotten. But in the only film of his I ever saw he spent a lot of his time in a swimsuit or shorts, perhaps because he had such well-shaped legs. When he came to see me in my daydreams, generally as I was just settling down to sleep, he was usually wearing the same swimming trunks that he wore in the film. Occasionally, however, before he ran or dived into the sea he liked to remove them. He said it gave him a greater sense of freedom. I was always waiting for him as he came out of the water.

  But I also reme
mbered something else. What I remembered chiefly that night was the party at which I gave a recitation from Alfred Lord Tennyson.

  That party and its unexpected aftermath.

  * * *

  His very first words to me:

  “Hello—I’m Tony Simpson. I just wanted to say... I thought you did that Lady of Shalott thing awfully well.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes, I thought it was excellent. You know, you’ve almost... sort of... made history at this party?”

  He seemed a bit hesitant though, a little shy, which is perhaps the reason I so quickly felt at home with him.

  Yet he was very young, only nineteen, which could easily explain his occasional nervous glances behind him. Almost as though I were the first girl he had ever paid a serious compliment to and he was needing to cut the adolescent ties which bound him to his friends. I liked that.

  He was perhaps a trifle too thin for my total satisfaction and his nose was perhaps a trifle too beaky but he was otherwise not bad-looking . He had wavy nut-brown hair and a nice sensitive expression. And he was certainly no mean hand with those compliments. “As a matter of fact I think you ought to be an actress.”

  “That’s what I want to be.” The flush of success was still upon me. For the moment such an ambition seemed practically within reach.

  “Not just because you recited that thing so well”—he appeared to be growing more confident every time he spoke—“but because you also remind me a lot of Vivien Leigh.”

  “Really? Do you mean that? But Vivien Leigh is beautiful.”

  “She’s my favourite film star. I’ve now seen Gone with the Wind four times.”

  “I’ve seen it twice.”

  “I would go again tomorrow if it were on.”

  “So would I.”

  There was a pause. I was suddenly terrified he might simply nod and move away.

  “Do I honestly look like her?”

  “Hasn’t anybody ever told you?”

  “No. Nobody.”

  “Well, I think that’s strange. I really do.”

  Another pause.

  “What did you mean when you said I’d sort of made history at this party?”

  “Oh, nothing much.” Again that nervous glance across his shoulder, that search for reassurance from a phalanx of his pals; he didn’t even realize he was doing it. “There’s a kind of catchphrase going around,” he said, less easily again. “I’m sure you must have heard it?”

  “Catchphrase?”

  “Mm. I don’t know why.”

  “What is it?”

  He hesitated. “The curse is come upon me... ”

  “... cried the Lady of Shalott!”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, what fun. You must be right. I do seem, don’t I, to have made a bit of a hit?”

  He immediately sounded happier. “It’s like a password. If you know the password you gain entry into any group.”

  “I must try it!”

  It was fast becoming the loveliest evening of my life. In every way possible. Now I even liked his beaky nose.

  But incredibly it was to grow yet nicer. (Who said that selfish prayers are never answered?)

  “I have a car,” he told me. “Would it be all right if I took you home after the party?” Suddenly so decisive. Suddenly so very much his own man.

  And a little later when Tony had gone off to the little boys’ room I found he hadn’t been exaggerating. Although I wasn’t quite brave enough to employ the password myself I soon heard somebody else doing so. It was a man, though, which for some reason actually made it sound a bit absurd and no doubt accounted for the screams of laughter, both masculine and feminine, which instantly arose to greet it. But the man definitely gained entry to the group and I was delighted to think that it was I who’d given him the key. Well, Lord Tennyson too—to some extent. We clearly made a good team.

  Perhaps Tony Simpson and I would also make a good team. In the car he said, “And maybe it is on somewhere!” I was glad his friends had all been left behind: no more defiant or panicky or jubilant glances over the shoulder. Umbilical cord effectively severed.

  “ Gone with the Wind?” I asked.

  We were marvellously attuned.

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe it is.”

  But I wasn’t taking any chances.

  “As it happens, there’s another film I’d very much like to see. It’s called Young at Heart. Supposed to be excellent. It’s showing at the Astoria in Charing Cross Road.”

  “ Is it?”

  “Last week it was at the Tivoli in the Strand.” I felt that this somehow clinched it.

  “You know, I’d really like to see that.” Oh, God was in his heaven.

  The following morning my mother said:

  “It must have been a fine party—in spite of all the fuss you made beforehand! Aren’t you grateful to me for insisting that you went?” She sounded quite jaundiced.

  “Yes, it was a fine party. How could you tell?”

  “You’ve got a sparkle. You look almost pretty.”

  Praise, indeed!

  “Who is he, then?”

  “A man called Tony Simpson. He’s going to take me to the pictures.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why? Because he wants to, I suppose.”

  “Well, just don’t let him make a fool of you, that’s all.” She poured my cup of tea and pushed across the toast rack.

  “Why should he want to make a fool of me?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Rachel! Don’t pick me up on every word I utter!”

  Young at Heart would have been a special film under any circumstances. It was charming, funny, tender, sad. About an ordinary middle-class American family to which anyone in her right mind would have wanted to belong. Doris Day was one of the daughters, Ethel Barrymore the amused no-nonsense aunt, Gig Young the good-natured newcomer whom the whole family fell in love with; Frank Sinatra, the self-pitying music arranger whom Doris eventually married. Added to all of this there were some first-rate songs.

  It was so enjoyable, in fact, we saw it again the following night. My mother was astonished! And even when—less than a week later—we went out for the third time she still seemed at a loss to understand it.

  And didn’t I relish her amazement! Didn’t I wallow in it! Each date was utterly wonderful—despite that tiny crumb of disappointment I invariably experienced when first I saw him: a feeling which lasted maybe a full minute. But the third time was the best of all, even though the film, The Bridges at Toko-Ri (notwithstanding the presence of Grace Kelly), was much less entertaining and even though, at the very end of the evening...

  Well anyway. In the cinema we held hands for a lot of the time and even when we didn’t our arms were close together on the armrest—it was early summer and we both had on short sleeves. Afterwards he kissed me in the car. It was heaven.

  Before the film oh how we had talked! Of all sorts of things, I can’t remember what. After it we had supper and simply went on talking! We agreed on almost everything and although when we spoke about what we most wanted out of life he never actually mentioned children, nor even marriage, and although as yet I couldn’t quite be sure he loved me and had to keep on telling myself it might be a mistake to wear my heart so openly upon my sleeve... still, I thought, it really did seem that he was growing in affection. Indeed, I was almost certain of it. We had to be turned out of the café when they wanted to close; it was just like one of those romantic comedies in which the members of the orchestra are starting to yawn in protest because the starry young lovers don’t even realize that they’re the last couple on the floor.

  And when he reached my home, instead of stopping the car in Marylebone High Street, in front of our drab main door beside MacFisheries, he turned into Paradise Street and drove down to the end, where there was a public recreation garden. Here I often escaped to read—and read to escape. The garden had cherry, laburnum, hawthorn; it had decaying
gravestones, an eighteenth-century mausoleum and the statue of a small street orderly: a boy of about ten who sat looking pensively at his hands, his face a picture of calm acceptance. When I’d been about that age myself I’d often stopped to speak to him—and tried hard to learn from his example. Even as a young woman I continued to smile at him as I passed.

  Tony now pulled up before the locked gate. It was well after midnight and the streets were deserted.

  “I really ought to be going home,” I said unconvincingly. “My mother never turns her light off until I get in.”

  “Oh, just another five minutes won’t make any difference though. If you liked we could get into the back. It might be more comfortable.”

  His voice held that same discomfort, combined now with dryness, almost a brusqueness, which had drawn me to him in the first place. Poor Tony. He sounded such a very long way from casual.

  “Just another five minutes?” I said, then adding brightly, “You sound like Tessie O’Shea! But you mustn’t get me wrong—you don’t look like her, not one bit!” He wouldn’t see that I too was nervous.

  “Yes.”

  I wasn’t sure if it was the time period he was agreeing to or his partial resemblance to Miss O’Shea.

  But before I stepped out of the car I sang:

  “Five minutes more,

  Give me five minutes more,

  Only five minutes more

  In your arms... ”

  We cuddled on the back seat. His hands were everywhere. For the first few minutes I was more than merely nervous, I felt positively scared and could only sit—or lean—a bit inertly. Yet at the same time I was thrilled. I thought, “Rachel Waring, a real live man is doing these things to you! Never again will you be the person you just were! When your feet next touch the pavement you’re going to be a complete woman!” And gradually I relaxed. I told myself this was a moment that could never ever be repeated—and that I really had to savour it. Create a memory. Take a photograph. Most of my apprehension departed and my breath quickened. By the time his tongue was licking one of my breasts, my skin pearly white above my pushed-down bra, I felt quite weak with longing. I heard myself moan and was so happy: such a reflex must absolutely mean that this was the proper thing, it wasn’t just because I’d read it was the right reaction. And I began to writhe (well, so far as I was able to, the car not being a large one) and my hands began to fumble with his clothing, moved caressingly beneath his shirt—what did it matter if his chest was smooth and bony? They then moved along his trousered thighs, even as his own hands fumbled their way under my skirt and kneaded a little, suddenly pulled at, nearly tore, the garment that I wore there. Oh God. It was such bliss. A man’s hands—warm, hard, questing, unpredictable—where a man’s hands had never been before. We didn’t talk, we only moaned—yes, actually the pair of us; it now seemed doubly right. But when I realized that one of those hands was simultaneously trying to get his flies undone I did just say, “Oh, do you think we ought to? Have you any... ?” because in every book I’d ever read in which the young heroine was unmarried she unfailingly became pregnant as the result of a single encounter. Or—no, in fact— did I say it? I wasn’t sure. Perhaps I had only thought of saying it, because I can also remember thinking that a new life resulting out of such a moment would be the most fantastic thing imaginable. I had no wish to be conventional. Besides, a baby must surely mean he’d marry me. I waited—there was a brief hiatus, a giddy moment of suspension—feeling more alive than I had ever felt, tingling with sheer expectancy and love and a sense of culmination. It occurred to me suddenly, with both my hands upon his chest, that I couldn’t picture, wouldn’t want, any chest more beautiful.