“Show Mr. Simmons what you got for your Christmas,” said Mrs. Harrison. “They’re all over the floor with their things,” she said apologetically to Mark. “Santa was good to you this year, wasn’t he?” she asked the children. “We give them their presents before Christmas Day,” she told Mark almost apologetically, “they are so determined.”
“Yes,” said the little girl with the most entrancing shy sidelong glance at Mark who was holding the lager in his hand and sipping from it.
“What a fine nice place,” he was thinking. The bubbles in the lager revolved like miniature snow. Harrison who was sitting opposite him said:
“I work in a baker’s shop myself. Perhaps my mother told you.”
“Yes and you’re always moaning about it,” said his wife goodnaturedly. She looked very young, almost schoolgirlish. “He says that he wants to do something scientific. Engineering or something like that. But he’s too late now. Sure he is. He’s always been good with his hands though.”
“Not all that good,” said Harrison. “But I can repair watches and radios. It’s watching people that does it. You pick it up as you watch them. Bit by bit.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any course you could get,” said Mark dreamily. “I mean people go to night school, don’t they? Though I must say that I don’t know as much about that as I ought to.”
“I sent away for a correspondence course once but it was no good. You need to have your Highers. I was quite good at Technical and History when I was in school but I couldn’t do English.” He threw up his hands in dismay. “I only got twenty once.”
“He wasn’t interested, that’s what it was,” said his wife. Mark thought she looked a bright lively girl whose attention however remained with her children through the conversation.
The small boy (who had very fine blond curly hair) came over and leaned on the side of Mark’s chair looking up at him. But Mark didn’t move. “That’s a truck,” said the small boy, “and you can bend it like this.” He showed how the truck could tip out its contents when necessary. He stood there looking at Mark as if waiting for him to say something: the little girl got up slowly from the floor and went out.
“He got so many presents,” said Harrison, “a truck and a tricycle and three games. Show Mr. Simmons the games you got,” he said and the boy dashed off. Mark was thinking of what he had heard once about juvenile delinquents: they didn’t like touching each other, that was why they used knives. The girl came back in, dressed in a long coat and clopping about in shoes many sizes too large and carrying a small basket. She looked a bit like Little Red Riding Hood.
“Are you going shopping?” said her mother.
“Yes,” said the girl shyly.
“And what are you going to buy?”
“A loaf,” she began, “cheese …”
“And?”
“A tin of sardines.”
Her mother swept her up in her arms embracing her fiercely and saying, “You’re a caution, a wee comic.” The little girl put her head round her mother’s embrace and glanced shyly at Mark turning her head away again immediately.
“A wee comic,” said the boy coldly. “I’ve brought my game.”
He opened it out on the floor. It was something to do with weapons, murderers and rooms and it worked by a process of elimination. That is to say, one had to find the murderer on the basis of various facts.
“Let’s try it,” said Harrison. “They bring out so many games I don’t know how half of them work.”
They spread the paraphernalia out on the floor, Mark reading the instructions aloud. There were three sets of cards, one with names of weapons, one with names of characters, and one with numbers or names of rooms. The game was played with dice and was quite difficult to understand.
“We’ll have to find the point of it,” said Mark, quite interested though there was a band of pain all round his head. The children were spreadeagled on the floor looking up at him, the husband and wife ensconced above them in chairs.
“I think,” said Harrison, “you have to find out who the murderer is and what weapon he used and what room the murder was done in.”
“Murderer, murderer,” shouted the little boy and the girl looked at him coldly.
They found another set of cards which they could use for elimination purposes. In the centre of the small table they placed a folder which apparently contained the name of murderer, room and weapon: this packet was sealed.
“Ah, I know now,” said Mark at last. “We have to eliminate till we find the three things.” He felt that he should be able to understand the game instantaneously. Funny, he and Lorna had never played any games. He had once learned chess himself but gave it up because it was too dry. In any case he preferred doing problems rather than playing against an opponent.
The children looked to the game and then back at him and then at the board again.
“The number you throw on the dice takes you to a room,” said Mark, sweating. “We’ll have to have another look at the rule book.” He read the rules out loud, half understanding them as he read. Harrison was looking down at the two children, not saying anything.
“Anyone can shout at any time if he knows the three things. But if he’s wrong he can’t have another shout,” said Mark. “Well,” he added judiciously, “that seems clear enough.”
“You leave the dice just now till Mr. Simmons is ready,” said Harrison, and Mark wondered if the reason why he had brought the game out was to save himself from embarrassed silence. “These games are so complicated now,” he said to Mark. “In my day it was just ludo and cards.”
“I think we’re getting the hang of it,” said Mark, feeling the band of pain tightening and taking the tea which Mrs. Harrison held out. He left the piece of cake on the side of the armchair as he was trying to concentrate on the game.
“Eat your cake,” said Harrison. “We’ll finish the game later.” But Mark concentrated on the game, screwing up his forehead.
“Let’s start from the beginning again,” he said. “Now, the dice. That’s the first thing.” They all waited obediently.
“You first,” he said to the girl. He played the dice for her and moved her piece, representing the suspect.
“That’s all right so far,” said Mark knitting his brows, determined that he would discover how the game worked. Harrison was smoothing his daughter’s hair abstractedly. “And now,” said Mark, “it’s me next.” He moved his piece and handed the dice to Harrison. “Oh, I forgot,” he told the girl, “you have to say who murdered whom and in what room.” They moved her appropriate piece and he moved his own.
So they played till finally Mark said that he’d got the hang of it now and they put the game away. He leaned back in his chair, drained of energy. The boy and the girl went back to playing with their trucks and Harrison said:
“My mother should be coming soon. Do you want to watch TV?”
“If you want to.”
“We’ll leave it just now,” said Mrs. Harrison. There was a companionable silence during which Mark almost fell asleep. He was astonished at how quickly and unquestioningly he had been accepted and thought how different might have been his own behaviour and attitude if a complete stranger had come to his house. Harrison began to talk of a plane that had just crashed. “I’ve got a model of that type,” he said. And he began to tell Mark a great deal about planes. Later he talked about watches and how British Mean Time was set. He seemed to know a great deal about various things, especially technical ones, and Mark could hardly follow him. Somewhere from the deep past memories were emerging of people he used to know rather like Harrison, practical people, but perhaps not so well up in technicalities. It astonished him how much he had lost touch with them. Later they got on to a discussion about time, and again Mark was amazed at Harrison’s perspicacity and when later still they talked about TV he discovered that Harrison’s favourite programme was Monty Python’s Flying Circus, though his wife didn’t like it and considered it
to be unintelligible rubbish.
“Sheila thinks it’s a lot of old rubbish,” said Harrison. “But I think it’s pretty funny. Did you see the one about the bored office worker? He was going to his work and this man was shot and he walked over him without looking, carrying his brolly, you know. And he bought cigarettes from a woman at a kiosk and she was in starkers. But this bloke didn’t notice.” He laughed out loud. “And he came to this bus stop and there was a queue and there was a man with a gun killing everybody, knocking them off, you know. And he was just about to get to him when the bus came and this office worker went on to it. And when he got home his wife said, ‘And what sort of day did you have, dear?’ And he said, ‘Just the usual.’ He had a moustache, this fellow, no, I can’t remember, I thought he had a moustache. And he had this brolly and he hung it up in the hall.” He began to laugh so loudly that he nearly spilt the tea. And all this time Mark couldn’t think of anything to say.
“And what about all these silly cartoons?” said his wife.
“I like them. I think they’re great. Do you like the programme?” he asked Mark.
Mark said, “Very much”, but he found he couldn’t remember a single show in any detail.
“There was a radio programme called ‘I’m sorry I’ll Read That Again’,” he said. “That was very good. I don’t suppose you listen to the radio much.”
“Not much,” said Harrison. “Finish your whisky. We got lots of it this year.”
At this moment a woman appeared at the door and the children ran over to her.
“Just came in for a minute,” she said with a quick glance at Mark. “Don’t get up. My husband is taking me out. We’re going to the White Hart for a drink.”
“Well, well, look at her,” said Harrison. “All in furs. Who left you these?”
“I bought them, cheeky. And how’s Santa been treating you?” she asked the children. They told all the things they had got and she listened with great and generous interest.
“Isn’t that good?” she said. “Make sure you don’t break your neck with the tricycle,” she told the boy. Her furs weren’t really very good and didn’t look expensive and they didn’t suit her very well since she was rather short and she didn’t wear the correct sort of stockings and shoes with them.
“Oh, he won’t break his neck. He’s got it screwed on all right. He got plasticine from the lady opposite. He’s always over there. He’s looking out for himself,” said Harrison.
“Well, make sure that you make a model for me,” said the woman. The child flushed with pleasure and Mark was amazed at how exactly and rightly she spoke, saying naturally the proper thing that the boy wanted to hear, though at the same time she looked, as far as style went, rather vulgar. She took a mirror out of her handbag and studied her face briefly.
“One of these days you won’t see anything in the mirror,” said Harrison, who seemed to have got into the habit of teasing her.
“Listen to him.” She waved him away. “And I’d better be getting back. My husband’s trying to fasten his braces.”
She glanced again briefly at Mark before leaving and he knew that later on she would want to know everything about him and this annoyed him.
No sooner had she gone than a young boy and girl came in, the boy with a bottle of gin which he began to pour out for everyone. The girl wore a short yellow skirt and had a fixed smile on her face which probably came from shyness. The boy was long and lanky and rather silent.
“We’re going to a dance,” the girl explained. “If we ever get there. He’s been stopping at every close on the street for the past hour. We started off at seven and now it’s eight o’clock.”
“Good old Shuffling Dick,” said Harrison. “When did you give up the whisky?”
“Him! He likes gin better.”
“It’s all that dust from the quarry,” said Harrison.
“I started on it after I got merrit,” said the boy ducking away from the girl who was about to hit him playfully.
“Ay, he was proper thin then but he gets fed nowadays. Look at his waist.”
“Porridge, I bet,” said Harrison. “That’s a new one. Porridge and gin. That’s better than Andy Stewart.” The girl passed a glass with some gin to Mark, who sat in his chair not knowing what to say, and envying them their free uncomplicated talk.
“Still working at the quarry?” said Harrison.
“Ay, but not much longer.”
“He’s been saying that for years,” said his wife.
“You’ll get your pension from there, yet,” said Harrison.
“And you’ll get it from the baker’s,” said his wife. “He’s been saying he’s going to move from there for years,” she told the girl. “But he’ll never move. He’s too frightened.”
“Frightened. Listen. If you say that again I’ll tan your backside.” And so the conversation went on. It turned out that the young boy was very interested in weapons and was building up a collection of them. He was very enthusiastic and told Harrison about his collection which included an Iron Cross, a bayonet, and a Luftwaffe badge.
“You’re a proper Nazi,” said Harrison. “I bet you’ve got a whip as well.”
“Not yet,” said the youth’s wife, “but he’s been saying he’s going to get one.”
“You’re like Monty Python,” said Harrison, “beating your wife in the Council house with a Nazi whip.”
Finally the girl got up saying, “Listen, if we’re going to get to that dance we’ll have to move. Come on.” And she dragged him off the sofa. All this time Mark listened, amazed at the apparently unworried life that he was watching. He felt profoundly that he had missed something and sensed himself as in some way inferior to these people, who didn’t seem to work hard and yet lived well, wore reasonably good clothes, drank and ate well. What book had said that their lives were constricted? How far he had come from his own origins! Their lives weren’t as constricted as his. He felt himself stiff in the chair, like a piece of furniture that had been brought in, all angles, while these people moved around him much more freely, spontaneously, without thinking, thought at the same time they could talk about a lot of things. The boy started to talk about the dynamiting in the quarry. “Thank Christ we haven’t had any accidents yet,” he said, “though if Morrison goes on the way he’s going we’ll have one.”
“All right I’m coming,” he said at last, allowing himself to be dragged to the door. The two girls stood talking for a while about restaurants and how many tips waitresses got. Then the boy and the girl left. No sooner had they gone than the mother came in.
“A friend of yours,” said Harrison.
“Yes. The gentleman I met on the train. I’m so glad you could come. Oh, my feet. Is there any whisky left?”
“For your feet?” said her son laughing.
“Of course not.”
“If you didn’t drink so much your feet would be much better. When she had that operation,” he told Mark, “they found her veins were full of whisky.”
“You shut up. I don’t drink anything at all. Except tea and sometimes Ovaltine. It’s just the walking, that’s all. Look.” She got up and executed a neat Highland fling which evoked a burst of cheering and laughter from the others.
“Fighting fit,” she said, sitting down again.
“And who’s fit?” said her son, pouring out some whisky.
“And how are you liking your holiday?” she asked Mark. “The two of us were talking all the way up on the train,” she told her son and daughter-in-law. “It was perishing cold on that train. And the service. I never saw anything like it.”
“I was very interested in what you were saying,” said Mark more stiffly than he intended.
“I was telling this gentleman all about my ailments,” she said. “One thing about that hospital, they were always getting you up when you were just dozing off. But I liked the nurses. They were kind. People can be very kind,” she told Mark. “The neighbours were. There was nothing they wouldn
’t do.”
“That’s because you look so small and helpless,” said her son.
How warm they are, Mark thought. And he wondered if it was all just for his benefit. The son started to tell a story of an old man who lived by himself and went off with a gun every Saturday afternoon. “God knows what he shoots, cows perhaps. But it gives him an interest.”
“Ay, that’s the thing,” said his mother. “Once you lose interest you’ve had it. I had a cousin once who committed suicide. She never said goodnight when she went to bed and when they went to wake her in the morning she wasn’t there. She had drowned herself in a pond. She was only twenty-six.” The daughter-in-law told of a story she had read in the paper about an old woman who had got up in the middle of the night and walked out into the snow carrying a hot water bottle. She was eighty-seven years old.
“You’ve got to watch out for that,” said the son. “Little things. If they don’t take in the milk or something like that. That’s a danger signal.”
“I must be going,” Mark was thinking. “I can’t stay here all night.” He saw the mother looking at him and then turning away quickly. He felt naked and vulnerable and stiff. “I don’t know anything about people,” he said to himself. “I’m like a plague.”
“Your shops aren’t as good as ours,” said the mother to her daughter-in-law. “They’re more expensive and the shop assistants aren’t so friendly. In Glasgow they call you ‘dear’,” she explained to Mark. “Why are your shops so expensive?” she asked her son.
“Freight.”
“What did you find dearer?” said the daughter.
“I thought all the stuff was dearer,” and this led to a long conversation which had to do with bread and curtains.
“Were you buying a diamond bracelet for Sheila?” said Harrison.
“I didn’t have my chauffeur with me,” said the mother in a mock posh accent. “That’s what the queen does, you know. She never carries any money. She’s got this man behind her and he carries her purse full of guineas. She pays for everything in guineas. She orders anything she wants and this tall man puts his hand in this bag full of guineas and pays.”
My Last Duchess Page 7