Blasted Things

by Lesley Glaister

  Half the wall done and he stands back to inspect it, heart sinking at the mess. Streaky and uneven, the dark green’s glowering through. Something wrong with the paint? Can’t do a second coat till the first one’s dry and he’s going to need more paint. Never occurred to him one great big drum wouldn’t be enough.

  Maybe, rather than have her come down and catch him at it, he’ll head her off at the pass. The original plan was for her to find him perched up the ladder, brush in hand, look at the freshly painted wall and then at him, all starry-eyed. But rethink, regroup: instead, take her up a cup of tea and forbid – yes, be firm about it, who’s wearing the trousers round here after all? – forbid her from setting foot in the bar till he’s given her the say-so. Then he can get it shipshape.

  By half seven he’s got the first wall done, but there’s paint on the floor and the bench. Back in the kitchen, he gets the kettle on again, looks anxiously at the stairs; ought to get those spills wiped up before they dry and there’s painty footprints on her floor tiles. He fetches a bucket and rags and clears up, then he goes through into the bar to start in there but there’s a creaking from up the stairs . . . Sod it, sod it, goes back to the kettle, not boiled. Don’t come down, Doll, he pleads, don’t come down yet.

  Feet on the stairs, but they’re light and quick and Kenny comes into the kitchen, does a double take and says, ‘Whatever have you got all over you?’ Vince puts his hand to his head – yes, paint in his hair, and all over the old shirt and one knee of his trousers where he knelt.

  ‘Doing a surprise for your mum,’ Vince says. ‘Be a good boy and run upstairs and tell her not to come down yet.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later. Do it now, and there’s thruppence in it for you if you can stop her coming down.’

  ‘Sixpence?’

  Vince gazes at the hard-nosed little toerag. ‘Sixpence then.’

  ‘Promise?’

  Vince nods. ‘Go on.’

  Kenny hurtles back upstairs. The kettle boils and Vince makes a fresh pot, puts a biscuit in the saucer to keep her going. He’ll have to clean himself up a bit or he’ll give the game away. But, oh Christ, there’s the heavy creak of her on the stairs and he cringes at the sound of her voice: ‘Whatever do you mean, don’t come down! Whatever next!’

  She comes into the kitchen, gawping at him. ‘What the hell?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have come down yet, Doll,’ Vince says.

  ‘It’s a surprise, Mum. You’ve ruined it. Do I still get my sixpence, Mr Fortune?’

  ‘Paint?’ Doll says. She comes closer to examine him. ‘All in your eye.’ She peers at the eye that can see nothing. ‘You want to get that cleaned off before it dries.’ She looks him up and down, her face troubled, crumpled, sleep in the corners of her eyes. ‘Is that Dick’s?’ She plucks at the old shirt, shakes her head, looks sorrowful; of all the reactions he thought she’d have, that wasn’t one.

  ‘Do I still get my sixpence?’ Kenny asks again. ‘Not my fault she came down, is it?’

  Vince follows Doll through into the bar. He stands behind her watching the stillness of her back.

  ‘My sixpence?’

  ‘Put a sock in it, Kenny,’ she snaps.

  ‘Just needs another coat, Doll. You wait till it’s finished.’

  She turns to him, face a shade paler than usual, lips chalky. ‘You’d better get on with it then, hadn’t you?’ That’s all she says before she goes back into the kitchen and firmly shuts the door.

  She goes out, as she does of a morning to drop Kenny at school, leaving by the back door without a word. Once he’s heard the door bang he watches her from the window, plodding down the lane to the bus stop in her green coat and hat, Kenny running ahead. He puts down his brush, goes into the kitchen. In the mirror he sees spikes of paint in his hair and a yellow streak right across the lens of the specs and on the eye; underneath the muscles tug and panic, trying to blink the paint away. He locks the door, turns away from the mirror – never looks in the mirror when it’s off – unhooks the specs from behind his ears and sits cradling that part of his face, good eye meeting the cool gaze of the fake. He wets a rag and cleans the lens, but rubbing over the open eye is almost impossible, and in his empty socket the muscles flail, the nerves severed and twitching, healed but raw with the memory of pain – no, not just memory, sensation, like a finger jabbing an eye that isn’t there.

  Not a word of thanks, not so much as a smile! He’s a good mind to walk out, bags, baggage and all, and good luck to her with finishing off the bloody bar. She’s an ungrateful old cow, that’s what she is; no appreciation for all he does for her, not a scrap. Now the coast’s clear he goes upstairs to her room – she wouldn’t like it but he doesn’t care – picks up a discarded stocking, sniffs it and runs it through his fingers. On the dressing table: Pond’s cold cream, rouge, lipstick, a cheap little bottle of Parma Violets, a drum of Bronnley’s talc, a hairbrush-and-mirror set with embroidery under a foggy film on their backs, tweezers, hair clips, a pot of Vaseline. Each item he fingers, sampling the different smells. In the brush a snarl of bleached hair; he pulls it out. Yes, she can be a right old cow, but still, there’s no getting round it, he’s smitten, good and proper. Even when he doesn’t like her, he still loves her. Her precious L’Heure Bleue’s nearly gone, just a few drops swilling there in the bottom of the bottle. He’ll get her some more of that; his heart rises at the thought – oh, Vince, you shouldn’t have!

  Tired out, what with the early start, he lies down on the unmade bed, keeping his boots hanging off the edge. On the bedside table sits a picture of her hubby, Dick, standing by an aspidistra, dark-eyed, drooping moustache; it does put a man off his stride to have a picture of the dead hubby gawping right at him when he’s on the job. Once they’re married that’ll have to go.

  He gets up quick. Don’t go dropping off now. Marrying her – that’s the ticket, and to do that he’ll have to get a bit more money in his pocket. More work in that direction required. A proper military strategy. But first he’ll pull himself together, have a cup of tea, ride into town for more paint, and by the time Doll’s back he’ll be well into the second coat and then she’ll see what she will see.

  19

  11 La Plata,

  Santa Barbara

  Dear Clementine,

  Thank you for your letter. I’m relieved to learn that you’ve recovered your health and that my grandson thrives. He looks like a fine little chap and I do indeed see a distinct likeness to Dennis.

  Things are much the same here. I continue to work hard at the Infirmary and even harder on the golf course! Joanie is a hospitable soul and we very often entertain, so it is a full and busy life. And yes, thank you, we are both in good health considering our advanced years.

  Now, to answer what I deduce is the main purpose of your rare letter: I’m afraid there’s no question of beginning your allowance early. I do hope you haven’t come under the influence of the dreadful suffragette brigade? You really must follow your husband’s guidance. I should have thought being treated with kid gloves would be rather agreeable. It would be impolitic of me to interfere between husband and wife, and I’m afraid that is my final word on the matter.

  Keep well, dear girl, and do send me further pictures of Edgar. He resides in pride of place on our mantelpiece, rubbing shoulders with Joanie’s charming granddaughter, Ella-May.

  With affectionate wishes always,

  Your Father.

  Mr Fortune tipped his hat as she approached. ‘Would you mind awfully,’ he asked, ‘if we went over there?’ He nodded towards the Crown Hotel.

  Clem glanced at the pub’s façade with a shiver of alarm. A pub! In daylight hours!

  ‘Had a bit of a jolt this morning, you see,’ he went on. ‘Could do with a stiffener.’

  There was a tic in his jaw; she watched the tiny shadow pulsing in and out. Poor fellow. And after all, what harm could it do? So, she followed him across the road into the bar where t
he air was a hot, glittering fug. A pale, unnecessary fire sputtered in a shaft of umber light.

  ‘Take a seat. What’s your poison?’

  Her eyes darted round, heart skittering with the daring of this. If Dennis could see her now! ‘Sherry, please.’

  She spotted a booth at the back and made for it, squeezing into the cramped space. Here she’d be unnoticeable should anyone she or Dennis knew came in, though that was unlikely. All the other customers were men but for one harshly rouged young woman with a purple hat, the ridges of her stays showing through her cheap, skimpy blouse. She was laughing with her husband or – perhaps more likely – not her husband. It was all rather racy and thrilling. And there was the landlady with piled-up black hair and a withered doll’s face, who’d looked twice at Clem as she entered and continued to peer at her as Mr Fortune ordered the drinks.

  He sat opposite Clem and raised his glass. ‘Cheers!’ His brandy looked mellow in its glass. After a sip of the sticky sherry she wished she’d ordered that instead.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  ‘Beg pardon?’

  ‘You said you’d had a jolt?’

  ‘Oh!’ He waved a hand in the air. ‘Something and nothing. Nothing this won’t put right.’ He lifted his glass and smiled over the rim. As he drank, she watched the movement of his prominent Adam’s apple, noticed again the scar on his throat. Must have been a near miss. There was silence for a moment. Nothing came to her to say. As the alcohol began to leak into her bloodstream, a clammy heat spread through her.

  ‘Well, here we are,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know why they think we need a fire!’ she said, waving her fingers like a fan.

  Without asking, he lit two cigarettes and, with staggering familiarity, put one between her fingers. To cover her confusion, she fumbled in her bag for the holder.

  ‘How’s the nipper?’ he asked.

  She fitted the cigarette, breathed in the cool smoke and exhaled. ‘He’s well, learning words . . . seems quite advanced.’

  ‘Isn’t it just like a mum to think so? And Doctor Everett?’

  Clem focused on the darkly ridged table; sticky, needed a thorough scrub. A grubby establishment, this was. She’d rarely been in a pub before, certainly never a public bar like this. Stained beermats advertised Adnams Ale and the ashtrays were cheap, scorched tin; burn marks all around the table edges. ‘My husband is perfectly well, thank you.’

  She noticed a small, hunched woman enter the bar, brown tweed suit and hat: ah, again, it was Ada! Clem watched her search for someone – husband perhaps? Oh no, she would be a widow, of course – and scuttle out again. She felt a trickle of perspiration down the back of her neck as she watched her cigarette shrivel to ash. This was so awkward, clearly a mistake.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  She didn’t quite like the familiar way he was regarding her. This was all wrong. ‘I do apologise, Mr Fortune,’ she said, ‘but I shall have to go.’ She gathered her gloves and began to rise.

  ‘Finish your drink.’ His voice was rough, but then he cleared his throat and softened it. ‘And Vincent, please. Aren’t we going to be friends?’ He gazed up at her, the tic in his jaw still visible, a sad light in his true eye. ‘Don’t go rushing off again, please, or we’ll end up in the same position as before.’

  She lowered herself down, puzzled by him. Last time there’d been a façade of pomposity – rather heart-breaking in retrospect – but now he seemed more open, even vulnerable. Since he made no move to let her out she couldn’t easily leave in any case, so she stayed – a few minutes would make no difference – watching him sip and smoke, with those long, elegant fingers so like Powell’s. Were they really? She could almost resent him for reminding her of her love. It was hardly his fault, poor chap, that he made her think of Canada – where she should really be, with Powell and Aida, living a different life under a different sky. The thought of all that fresh Canadian air began to make her breathless.

  ‘The same position?’

  ‘Apologies, embarrassment.’

  She fiddled with the cigarette holder: cool, soothing jade.

  ‘And now you’re here . . .’

  ‘Can’t think why!’

  ‘It was your suggestion,’ he reminded her, gently.

  She returned the holder to her bag, preparing once again to leave.

  ‘Look, Clementine,’ he said earnestly, ‘if I may?’

  ‘Mrs Everett,’ she said. Oh, why did she say that? She made herself sound ridiculous, like a stuffed shirt or would it be a stuffed blouse? She took her handkerchief from her bag, dabbed at the perspiration on her upper lip and made herself, for this last time, really examine his face: the mouth wider than Powell’s, the skin coarser, though in truth it was hard to remember. Mr Fortune’s nose was prominent and finely shaped; thank goodness that had escaped entire. It lent him an air of authority that played interestingly against the otherwise rather common cast of his face. Really, he wasn’t a scrap like Powell! Was he? She was forgetting that face, the face of her true love, confusing it.

  Look at him objectively. He can’t help the likeness – if indeed it is a likeness. Is it only a chimera conjured by her own longing? Oh, curious the way the smoky light plays with his skin and with the painted plate of his eye; he really would make a fascinating subject to paint.

  ‘Do you want to talk about your war?’ he suggested.

  She puffed in an imitation of Dennis, benignly exasperated. ‘Best foot forward, don’t you think?’

  ‘Only with your hubby not having been there.’

  Under the table her fingers twisted. Hubby! Oh, the sheer vulgarity of him! The sherry had fogged her brain, that and the last trace of last night’s Veronal. Within the shimmying motes of dust, everything was becoming pleasantly insubstantial, dreamy. The sherry was finished and she was suddenly thirsty. The other woman in the bar was hyenaing with laughter, leaning forward to slap her companion on his arm.

  ‘My husband was no shirker, I can assure you,’ Clem said. Speaking of Dennis with this impertinent man seemed a betrayal.

  Mr Fortune drew on his cigarette, exhaled a long plume of smoke. ‘Not the same though, if one’s not putting one’s own neck on the line, is it?’ Unconsciously perhaps, his hand strayed to his throat. ‘Only those – like you and me – who’ve experienced it can really know.’

  ‘Perhaps, but . . . excuse me.’ She stood, began to squeeze inelegantly past him. A glove dropped to the ground and he stooped to retrieve it – head intimately close to her knees in that dark space.

  ‘Don’t go yet,’ he said, rather pleadingly, as he emerged. ‘One more drink?’

  ‘No, really, I must . . .’ she began, but the thought of a refreshing drink did appeal. And a few more minutes would surely make no difference. ‘Lemonade, then,’ she said. A cool drink and then, in a dignified manner, after giving him the money, she’d take her leave.

  Back at the table, he lit two cigarettes. ‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘Now we’re here, why don’t I talk about my war? Break the ice, so to speak.’

  She shrugged. If he wanted to. What did it matter? ‘I can only stay five minutes.’

  As he spoke, she sipped the cool lemonade, feeling the bubbles detonate in her throat, and watched his face; the real eye animate, narrowing and darkening with memory, the other staring into some distance, beyond anything in this world. Powell gazed out at her as Mr Fortune spoke of his regiment, battles, promotions, his final wounding at the Somme.

  ‘My luck held out till then,’ he said. ‘Beginning to think I had a charmed life, things I survived. Then Jerry gets me in the neck.’ Grimly he smiled, fingers probing the ugly thickened scar. ‘And one in the eye for good measure.’ He tapped the prosthesis.

  I want to see, thought Clem, and the notion clamoured through her, like a ripple through metal sheeting, bringing an electrical taste to her mouth.

  ‘Sounds as if you were very brave,’ she said, as if to a child.

&
nbsp; Mr Fortune shrugged; he looked defeated now, diminished. It was shameful that he should go through all that and survive only to be reduced to begging. She put her hand into her bag for the envelope. Inside were two ten-shilling and three pound notes. ‘It’s not quite as much as you requested,’ she said, as, swiftly, he pocketed it. This morning she’d taken the money from Mrs Hale’s cash box. Absurd, that she, a doctor’s wife, should be reduced to pilfering the housekeeping!

  ‘Consider it a gift,’ she said, wishing the words would spool back into her mouth as his expression changed.

  ‘I’m not a charity case,’ he said curtly as he stood. ‘I will repay in full, with interest, as stated in my letter.’

  She followed him out. ‘Forgive me,’ she said as they parted in the street. How wounded he looked, how dignified, as he turned and walked away.

  From their buckets, the florist’s flowers jeered and snapped at the hem of her skirt. The pavement was damp, must have rained; it felt like hours since she’d stepped inside the Crown. Now she must return to Harri’s for tea and Edgar; the idea that she had a child seemed incongruous, as if that small person existed in another dimension altogether. His little face – no, she could not bring it to mind.

  There was Ada ahead of her. If she spoke to the woman it would mean it was less of a lie; perhaps they could make friends and truly she could visit her? She followed the small stooped body, the threadbare coat. On her arm was a wicker basket and she leaned a little to that side. Catch her up and simply ask her directions to somewhere – where? And fall into conversation. But it seemed impossible to gain on her, and when she turned a corner Clem lost energy, paused to lean on a wall. Was she a little drunk? And look at her all awry and without her gloves! She began to put them on: one was missing. Dropped, of course; she should retrace her steps, perhaps to the Crown. But the thought of entering again . . . No. For heaven’s sake, it was only a glove.