Blasted Things

by Lesley Glaister

  She could go out. It was fine enough. Early June, peerlessly blue and sunny, how contrary to stay inside. A new concern was buzzing like a bluebottle on the edge of her attention but she swatted it away, pushed her pencil into the sharpener, revolved its little brass handle, watched the curling peels of paint-fringed wood emerge.

  Out for a walk, perhaps, with Dinah again? Or why not take Edgar herself? The idea appealed. In stouter shoes she’d manage that walk through the trees, the green arch across the road, the sparkling brook. The new lead snapped in the sharpener, damn it. She began again, more carefully this time until the pencil emerged with a perfectly sharpened point.

  There came a tapping at the door and Dinah’s anxious face appeared.

  ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Oh, ma’am, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do.’ Dinah closed the door behind her and stood fidgeting, almost flinching, as she spoke. ‘He’s outside, that Mr Harris is! He came to the door bold as brass and luckily it was me what answered it. I was just getting the pram ready and Mrs Hale’s out the back and—’

  ‘And?’ Clem pressed the pencil point into her fingertip.

  ‘He says he wants to have a word with you. Oh, I’m so sorry, ma’am, bringing this on you.’

  Clem stood and said, in a perfectly level voice, ‘I’m sure it’s not your fault, Dinah. He’s outside, you say?’

  ‘He said to say he’ll wait for you across the road and that you’ll know what it’s about. I could get Mr Hale to see him off, ma’am, but I thought I should let you know first.’

  Clem managed to manufacture a laugh, and even a yawn. ‘I wonder what nonsense this could be?’ She shook her head. ‘Do you know, I think I’ll go out there myself directly and see what it’s all about.’

  ‘Are you sure you should, ma’am? Oh, there’s Eddie.’ And indeed, there came Edgar’s imperious cry.

  ‘You get back to the nursery. And not a word, please, to anyone.’

  ‘But, ma’am?’ Dinah wrung her hands.

  ‘Off you go.’

  Downstairs, Clem donned her hat, jacket and gloves and stepped into the sunshine. No sign of Vincent until she reached the end of the drive. There he stood, across the road, in helmet and goggles, beside his motorcycle. No one else about. It was absolutely still and quiet, as if the morning itself was holding its breath.

  As she crossed the road she hissed, ‘How dare you come here! I can’t be seen talking to you here.’

  ‘Get on the bike then,’ he said.

  A small panting woman pushing a heftier version in a bath chair approached. The longer Clem stood there, the more people would see, would wonder, would gossip. Dinah might come out; she might be watching, might alert the Hales.

  Vincent mounted the motorcycle, jerked his head towards the pillion. ‘Get your leg over then,’ he said, and sniggered.

  She looked round. Could she? There was no real choice so she lifted her leg – difficult in her narrow skirt, it caused the material to rise almost to her knees – and settled herself awkwardly on the saddle. He pushed down with his foot and the whole contraption roared into life. Terrified by the sudden speed, she clung to him, eyes shut as her hat whipped off, hair blowing back from her brow. As they rounded bends they seemed to lean so close to the ground they were sure to tip: was this to be it then? Perhaps she was to perish in an accident with Vincent and it would all come out anyway, the whole sorry, squalid story.

  After a while she dared to open her eyes and watch the green blossom-speckled hedges and verges stream by. The air was cool on her cheeks, the speed, when one became accustomed, almost thrilling.

  The engine stuttered as they slowed and pulled up outside a mean little inn, beside a village green. Vincent climbed off and held out his hand, which she took only for momentary support as she got down and straightened her skirt. Hatless! She ran her fingers through her tangled hair. Her body vibrated with the memory of the engine, her legs weak, unsteady.

  But she pulled herself up straight and addressed him as his class dictated. ‘How dare you come to my house like that?’ she said. ‘How dare you put me in that position?’

  In a leisurely manner, Vincent removed his helmet and goggles, readjusted his glasses in his wing mirror, and said, ‘What you want’s a drink.’

  ‘What if Dinah’s alerted my husband?’ she said, ‘Have you thought of that? They may well have called the police by now.’

  ‘She’s a good little girl is Dinah. Anyway, you came of your own accord, didn’t you?’

  He strode towards the pub’s entrance. Hatless, bagless, hair awry, she could look nowhere but the ground as she followed him through the threshold. What kind of woman must she appear?

  He showed her into a mercifully empty room – sawdust on the floor, the fug of last night’s smoke feebly pierced by sunbeams – and went to fetch the drinks. Perching on a rickety chair, she removed her gloves, balled them on her lap, stretched her fingers, stared at the gaps between.

  ‘Lemonade shandy, refreshing on a day like this,’ he said, returning with two glasses. He’d bought himself a pint, a smaller glass for her. He pulled out a chair and seated himself opposite her, running his hand through his sandy hair. A damp lock had fallen between the lens of his specs and the false eye, which made her blink, though naturally he couldn’t feel it. He offered her a cigarette, and as she leaned in for a light the table tipped, spilling a little shandy.

  ‘Mr Fortune.’

  ‘Vince, for Christ’s sake! Not as if we’re strangers!’

  ‘Mr Fortune.’ She cleared her throat and looked at him levelly. ‘You said if I gave you the money, that would be the end of it. So what’s this all about?’ She drew on the cigarette. ‘You do realise this could be construed as blackmail?’

  ‘Just one more little thing,’ he said, smiling rather impudently. She felt nothing about him now, she realised, nothing but impatience. Now that she’d seen behind the mask, touched it and sketched it, the tension was gone. There was nothing more from him that she needed or wanted – save an end to this nonsense.

  ‘I simply cannot get you any more money,’ she said. ‘That’s it. The limit of what I can do for you.’

  He nodded. ‘Understood.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It’s not cash I’m after.’

  Surely he didn’t think she’d go to bed with him again! Really, it was preposterous!

  ‘What then?’ She waited, tapping ash from her cigarette.

  ‘I want you to play a part.’

  She took a sip of the shandy, cool in her parched throat, and swallowed before she raised her eyes to him. ‘A part?’

  He nodded, pushed his hair back from his perspiring brow, and then, as if becoming suddenly aware of it, lifted the hair away from his painted eye. As she listened to him explain what he wanted her to do, her skin crawled with humiliation. Though of course she would not have gone with him again – not now that she was in her right mind – it was humiliating to know that he didn’t want her like that. And what he did want, what he did say, was almost too preposterous to credit. Risible.

  His ‘plan’, as he put it, was for her to visit the Wild Man at a specified time and to ‘make up’, to a ‘certain gent’ in front of a ‘certain lady’. That was it. How killingly funny! Surely he could see how foolish he appeared as, so seriously, he unfolded this plan? It was hard to keep a straight face.

  ‘You don’t have to go getting up to any funny business,’ he went on. ‘All you have to do is flutter your lashes at him, get him to buy you a drink, just make sure the lady in question sees. You could ask him to drive you home. He’s got a nice motor, by the way.’

  She sipped shandy, dabbed her lips with her gloves. ‘Do you mind telling me why?’

  He ground out his cigarette. ‘So, what d’you say?’

  ‘What if I were to say no?’

  Leaning back in his chair, he gazed at the ceiling, mouthing smoke rings. She tore her eyes from the wound on his neck and noticed ho
w dusty her shoes were. She stretched out a foot, rotated the ankle.

  ‘You want an end to this business?’ he said, stubbing out his cigarette, making the wretched table wobble.

  ‘What guarantee,’ she asked, ‘do I have that this would be the end of it?’

  ‘I’m not a bad bloke,’ he said. ‘I know that’s hard to swallow what with . . . well . . .’ He raised an eyebrow and his mouth twitched. He reached out and took her hand and, with absurd sincerity, said, ‘Do this last thing and I give you my word, my word of honour, you’ll not see hide nor hair of me again.’

  ‘Honour!’ She snatched back her hand.

  ‘You have my word.’

  She snorted and shook her head. Her cigarette had gone out. She left it in the ashtray. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I need to give it some consideration. But my more immediate problem is what on earth I’m going to tell Dinah about today.’

  ‘Say what you want.’

  ‘Will you take me home now, please? At least limit the damage.’

  He nodded. ‘So, are you saying yes?’

  ‘I’ll say you took me to visit an old friend,’ Clem decided, and with utter futility, considering she was about to experience the motorcycle again, smoothed her hair with her fingers. ‘Someone from the war.’ Ada, of course, good old Ada.

  ‘I’ll drop you a note with the date,’ he said.

  ‘I shall want your word that you won’t contact Dinah again.’

  He nodded. ‘As it happens, I’ve got bigger fish to fry.’ And unaccountably he laughed.

  30

  THE SOUND OF breathing woke Clem from a tense and flustered dream – of what? – the threads dissolving in the sound of huffing and puffing. Her eyes opened. There was Dennis, naked but for his socks and suspenders, doing his daily dozen, touching his toes, up and down, labouring away in a miasma of coal tar and Bay Rum. She quelled a surge of irritation. Really! Why did he insist on these performances when he knew perfectly well that she preferred him not to? The dream, what was it? A wire of anxiety tightened in her stomach. And then a twist of the wire as it came back to her: Vincent and his ludicrous scheme.

  She was to await instructions. Instructions!

  At least she’d got away with the outing. Vincent had dropped her off out of sight, and she’d entered the house and chatted to Mrs Hale quite naturally about the glorious day. She attributed the loss of her hat to ‘a stray gust’ – and caught the disbelief in the housekeeper’s eyes, for it had unfortunately been a remarkably windless day – and then turned the talk to domestic matters. Dennis had never even known she’d been out. But she had not yet faced Dinah.

  Dennis noticed that her eyes were open. ‘Happy Birthday!’ he said, pumping his arms, contorting his trunk one way and the other. She sat up, leant back on the pillows, dazed. She’d forgotten! Forgotten her own birthday. She brought a smile to her face as she regarded this man who was her husband. Despite his exercise regime his belly was beginning to dome under its black curly pelt. Eventually he would achieve the seal shape of his father. He took a brush in each hand to sweep his thick mane into wings on his brow, separated by an immaculate parting. Clapping the brushes back together, he splashed Brilliantine into each palm and slicked it through his hair till it shone like patent leather.

  ‘Now, my darling,’ he said. ‘You’ve had an extortionate sum for clothes and so on, but you might still find something else on the breakfast table.’

  ‘Oh, Dennis, you shouldn’t have.’ Her heart turned painfully over.

  ‘Nothing’s too much for my little girl,’ he said. ‘And later on there’s to be another surprise.’

  A jar of alarm. ‘Surprise?’

  ‘Wait and see.’ He wagged a finger. ‘Sorry I can’t be here this evening . . . but I’ll certainly be back to take you to bed.’ He grinned, eyebrows lifting, and bent down to kiss her lingeringly, his skin newly shaved and soft. He stood up, almost frighteningly glossy and gleaming, a healthy, vigorous, righteous man buttoning his white shirt, stepping into trousers, deftly tucking in the shirt-tails.

  ‘Twenty-four,’ she said faintly. ‘How fearfully ancient.’

  ‘You’ll always be a girl to me.’

  Her eyes closed.

  ‘Happy Birthday, madam,’ said Mrs Hale as she put the toast and tea on the table. ‘Can I tempt to you an egg?’

  ‘This is perfectly splendid, thank you,’ Clem said, surveying the table. No cheap envelope beside her plate. But there, propped against a vase of irises, a card and a small beribboned box.

  ‘Do you know anything about a surprise, Mrs Hale?’ she asked.

  The housekeeper smiled, finger to her lips. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, madam!’

  Once Mrs Hale had left the room Clem poured Darjeeling into the pretty yellow cup. Dennis’s breakfast had been cleared away but there was the faint smell of bloater in the air, a spot of coffee on the damask.

  Once he’d gone downstairs this morning, she’d peered out of the window to see if anyone was lurking. But of course there wasn’t; that was absurd. And on her way down, she’d put her head into the nursery where Dinah was changing Edgar’s napkin, and the girl’s manner had seemed perfectly ordinary. Still, it would be necessary to have a word with her today, clear things up. The wire was tightening inside. No call for it though, really. Everything was all right. The tea perfect, neither too weak nor too strong; the sun shining; it was her birthday. Pull yourself together, Clementine.

  The card showed a posy of violets; the gift was a fine long string of pearls. She ran them slowly through her fingers. Pearls are made from irritation but so pretty, almost innocent, she thought. Unlike herself. How shoddy she felt as she ran them through her fingers, how undeserving of Dennis’s kindness.

  After breakfast she had Hale drive her to town where she took a solitary walk through the churchyard, lingering near the mossy graves. Oh, the day was hotter even than yesterday, close and muggy. She dawdled in the shade, wandered amongst headstones. Speedwell and daisies spattered the grass between the graves. Stooping, she ran her finger over the lichen-encrusted words on a tilting stone:

  Kind of heart and clear of conscience,

  Beloved by her family and all who knew her.

  Missed on earth, welcomed in Heaven.

  A lovely tribute. But could this lady, who died sixty years ago, this Sophia Smythe, really have been so saintly? Clear of conscience. How light that would feel, and how delightful. A white butterfly rested on the gravestone, where, also, she noticed, crawled a ladybird. Fly away home, your house is on fire, and your children all gone. She poked the glossy little creature with her finger, gently, but it stayed put. An old man, church warden perhaps, hailed and approached her, but she hurried away.

  Still no message when she got home.

  ‘I’ve had the most lovely walk,’ she made sure to say to Mrs Hale, and she’d mention it to Dennis over luncheon. There was no flurry or fluster, nothing to make her heart clamour – so why would it not let up? She took coffee in the dining room and settled there to sketch the irises; took out her colour box to attempt the indigo hue, but once again she could not concentrate. Each ring of the doorbell or the telephone branched electrically through her veins.

  Unannounced, in the afternoon Harri and the twins arrived in a great noisy hoo-ha. Clem went out to the hall where Mrs Hale, bursting with pleasure, was ushering them in.

  ‘Happy Birthday!’ Harri – wearing a ridiculously capacious straw hat – cried. ‘Now, girls . . .’ She lifted her finger like a conductor and the three of them began a noisy and approximate rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ before they were even properly through the door.

  ‘Thank you, children, so very clever,’ Clem said. The muscles in her shoulders dropped a little, the wire slackened. This was the surprise of course: Harri and the children turning up, this was all it was.

  ‘What beautiful singing,’ Clem said to the girls, and, ‘Oh!’ as Harri whipped off her hat to reveal her newl
y bobbed hair.

  ‘Well, you look so ripping, I couldn’t resist,’ Harri said. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘You appear . . .’ Clem hesitated, ‘utterly different.’

  ‘Good different?’

  Harri’s hair had been cut into a fringe, high – and not perfectly evenly – across her brow, and the rest of it stood out round her head like a fierce black helmet, within which her face looked small, her eyes enormous, her complexion rosy and clear. Her head was like a child’s, a page boy’s, affixed to a chunky woman’s torso.

  ‘Well, I think it looks a proper treat, Miss,’ said Mrs Hale.

  ‘Divine,’ said Clem.

  ‘Stan’s sister did it last night.’ Harri twisted to look at herself in the hallstand mirror and giggled. ‘You should have seen the great piles of hair on the carpet! Like shearing a sheep, she said! She did the girls too.’

  The twins’ hair was so fair and wispy it was hard to see the difference, but Clem admired and stroked their heads, kissed their hot red cheeks, and they hurled themselves at her shouting, ‘Auntie Clem, Auntie Clem.’ This simple, animal affection surprised and touched her.

  ‘Where’s Eddie?’

  ‘Napping – Dinah will bring him down directly he’s awake.’

  ‘That child could nap for England,’ said Mrs Hale. ‘Good little chap he is. So like his daddy.’

  ‘Oh Lord, Mrs Hale, that’s the last thing we want!’ Harri said.

  Clem took her arm and they went into the sitting room.

  ‘Oh, what a glorious room this is with the sun shining in,’ Harri exclaimed. ‘I always forget. How simply luxurious to have all this space.’ She stretched out her arms and spun, her grubby dress floating from her shins. ‘You get used to being all cramped up in the cottage. Not that I don’t love it,’ she added quickly. ‘It’s all we need, isn’t it, Clarry?’ Lifting the child, she went to the mantelpiece. ‘Look darling, this is Grandpapa’s best clock. Look at the horses.’ And she whinnied.