The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories
Page 35
The hotel at Cambridge was not what she had imagined. The entrance adjoined the car park and in the too huge lobby there were arrows pointing to several bars. Then hammering to testify that construction work was in progress. Would it stop at night? She was obsessed with noise and could, she believed, be wakened by an air bubble in her water pipes at night. She followed the porter and was dismayed to find that he lost his way. It was a big ramshackle place with various flights of stairs leading to different quarters. Her bedroom was on the first floor and just outside was a child’s cot and a single mattress standing on its end. The room was everything she dreaded – a single bed with a stained orange coverlet, matching curtains, plastic lampshade, wardrobe with three empty metal hangers that moved slightly as if propelled by some shiver. The one summoning bell brought no response – no buxom girl, no doddery old man, no housekeeper with motherly smile came in answer to the ringing of the green oblong button. In fact there was no way of telling if it was connected, or if in fact a bell had rung somewhere in the bowels of that place and was being ignored with a shrug. ‘Bad place to die’, she thought, and as fervently as she had longed for the surprise and repose of that little room, she now longed to be out of it and safely at home.
She wanted tea. Her stockings were wet. She and Iain had had to walk the last bit of the journey carrying baskets, a record player, a drawing-board and loose bits of lighting flex. He had parked the car outside the town because it was against university rules to own one. On their walk it had begun to drizzle and by now it was raining heavily. Lifting the curtain she looked at the spatters as they crawled down the window-pane and lodged on the frame beneath. The view was of a football field empty except for its goal posts. She would make the best of it.
In the lobby the guests were being served with tea and everything about them suggested not an academic life but a life of commerce. She had to step over bags bursting with shopping, and at first glance every mouth seemed to be allied to a piece of oily chocolate cake. She sat at one empty table waiting for service, and in her restlessness began to eat the bits of damp ribbony lettuce that served as decoration on the plate of sandwiches that the previous occupant had devoured. The waiter strolled across and caught her in this nonsensical theft. She asked him to bring tea quickly as she was dining at seven. He spurned her to her face, he also spurned the entire human race and did both these offices in broken English.
Dinner was in one of the most esteemed of the colleges and they foregathered in a small overheated sitting-room, that was full of furniture and pieces of china. Her host, a professor, had invited a younger professor and two freshmen. They sat and awkwardly sorted each other out, the young men laughing lightly at everything and constantly interjecting their remarks with bits of French as they bantered with each other about their sleeping habits and their taste for sherry or classical music. It was stiff. Her son should have had a different introduction, something much less formal, a bit of gaiety. The conversation centred for a long time on a professor who had the nickname of a woman and who received students in his long Johns and thought nothing of it. Incongruously he was described as a hermit even though he seemed to be receiving students most mornings in his cluttered room. It was stifling hot. To calm herself, Lena thought of the beautiful mist like fine gauze sparkling on the courtyard outside, and above it a sky perfectly pictorial with its new moon and its thrilling stars.
They went down a short flight of stairs and then climbed some other steps to their early dinner. The host had done everything to make it perfect – smoked salmon, grouse, chantilly, different wines for each course and all this printed alongside each person’s nameplace. The old servant was so nervous that he trembled as he stood over her and kept debating with his long hands whether to proffer the entrée dish or the gravy jug. It was touch and go. His master told him for God’s sake to put the jug down. A movement that caused his neck to tremble like that of a half-dead cockerel’s. Yes, ‘It was so’ that students were sent down but they had to be awfully bad or else awfully unlucky and of course it was an awfully amusing thing. ‘I am in a modern English play,’ she thought, the kind of play that portrayed an intelligent man or woman going to seed and making stoical jokes about it. Academic life was not for her. She would rather be a barbarian. She sucked on the word as if it were sherbet. Barbarian.
The grouse was impossible to tackle. Everyone talked too much and tried too eagerly and this all-round determination to be considerate caused them instead to be distracted and noisy. Little bright jets of blood shot up as knives vainly attacked the game. To conceal his embarrassment the young professor said it was too delicious. The host said it was uneatable and if young Freddie’s was delicious to give it to Lena since hers was like a brick. She demurred, said it was lovely, while at the same time resolved that she would eat the sprouts and would drink goblets of wine. A toast was raised to her son and he went scarlet as he heard himself being praised. Looking downwards she saw that the various plates contained a heap of little bones, decked with bits of torn pink flesh, and true to her domestic instinct she said they would make good broth, those leavings. A most tactless slip. Everyone raved over the nice raspberry chantilly and quite huge portions of it rested on the young men’s dessert plates.
Having dined so early she felt it was appropriate to leave early. Earlier, her host had confessed to being tired and yet in his bedroom where she went to fetch her coat, she felt that he wanted to talk, that he was avid to tell some little thing. He simply said that he had never married because he could not stand the idea of a woman saying ‘we’, organizing his thought, his time, his suits of clothing and his money. It was a small functional room with a washstand, an iron bed with a frayed paisley robe laid across it. Staring from the wall was a painting of a wolf with a man’s eyes and she thought this professor is not as mild as he seems. On an impulse she kissed him and he seemed so childishly glad that she then became awkward and tripped over a footstool.
Out on the street they lingered, admiring the courtyard, the stone archways, and the beautiful formidable entrance. The town itself was just shops, and shut cafés, with cars whizzing up and down as on any high street. At the hotel she bade Iain good night and knew that the hour had come when they were parting more or less for ever. They made light of it and said they would cruise Cambridge on the morrow.
As she approached her bedroom she began to remonstrate with herself, began to laugh. The music she heard was surely phantom music because after all she had been insistent about securing a quiet room. But as she proceeded down the corridor the sound increased in volume and pitch and she wondered if anxiety could play such a thorough trick. When she put the key in her own door and entered, the furnishings were shaking from the implosion of the noise and she looked instinctively for men in white coats with hair oil, which was her outdated version of the members of a dance band. Yes, a dance was in progress. The metal hangers which she had forborne to use were almost doing a jig. The hotel telephonist could do nothing, was not even sympathetic.
She took her key and went down the stairs, then crossed the street to the college where her son was. The porter directed her and seemed to sense her dismay because he kept repeating the instructions, kept saying, ‘If you walk down now, towards the rectangular buildings, and take the first turning on the left you will find your son will be the fifth staircase along, and you will find him there.’ Walking along she thought only of the sleep that would ‘knit up the ravelled’ day and hoped that in one of those buildings a bed awaited her, a bed, an eiderdown and total silence.
Coming towards her was a young man wearing a motorcyclist’s leather jacket that was too small for him. Something about the way he walked reminded her of restless youths that she had seen in an American film, of gangs who went out at night to have fights with other gangs, and inventing as a reason for murder their virility or their honour. This boy reminded her of that group. She wondered who he would be, thought that probably he had put on the jacket to give himself an image, w
as looking for friends. Four or five hundred young men were now installed in that college and she thought of the friendships that would ensue, of the indifferent meals they would all eat, the gowns they would buy, the loves and hatreds that would flourish as they became involved. She was glad not to be one of them. Just before the figure came level with her she realized that it was Iain and that obviously he was going in search of adventure. She lost heart then and could not tell him of her plan to find a bed in his house. She joked, pretended not to know him, walked past with her hips out and then in an affected voice said, ‘Haven’t we met somewhere.’ Then she asked him if he was enjoying it and he said yes, but he always said yes at an awkward moment. They walked towards the gates and he said that his name was painted at the foot of the landing, his and three other names and how he had a little kitchen with a fridge and that there was a note informing him of a maid who would be at his service on Monday. How she wanted to be that maid. They said good night again, this time a little more gamely since there was a mutual suspicion that they might meet a third time.
In the lobby some people had come out from the dance and a drunken woman was holding up a broken silver shoe asking if the heel could be mended. The dance would go on till two. Lena felt like crying. The manager asked if she would like another hotel and she said yes then ran to her room and packed things quickly, viciously. In the lobby yet again she felt herself to be conspicuous, what with half her belongings falling out of the bag and a look of madness. In the taxi she thought of warm milk laced with whisky. Vain thought. The porter in the new hotel was fast asleep and stirred himself only when the black Dalmatian dog bared his teeth at her legs which she quickly shielded with her suede bag. She had to pay there and then, and had to write the cheque by balancing the book against the wall as the counter space was taken up with various advertisement cards. Home, home, her heart begged. The last train for London had left an hour ago. She followed the porter down the corridor and herself let out a shriek when he admitted her to a room in which a shocked woman sat up in a bed-jacket screaming. In fact the two women’s screams coincided.
‘Sorry about that, Madam.’ He had made a mistake. He made a similar mistake three times over, leaving some occupants of that wing in a state of anger and commotion. At last he conducted her to an empty room, that was weirdly identical to the one she had just vacated. He said not to open the window in case of burglary.
Such nights are not remarkable for their sound sleeping, but this one had extra impediments. The single bed was so narrow that each time she tried to turn over she had to stop herself from falling on to the floor. The tap let out involuntary groans and now and then the Dalmatian gave a watchdog’s moan. She put her black cardigan over the telephone to blot out its faint luminous glow. She was fighting for sleep. She took two large two-toned capsules that were filled with barbiturate. Her son at that same hour had climbed up by means of scaffolding to the roof of Christ’s College and with his friend was debating whether to pee on it or not, and make a statement that might result in their being rusticated. Up there they had brought the wine, the roast fillets of pork and the cheeses that she had given him for his first night’s picnic. She could feel the sleeping pills starting to work as she put her hand out to assist herself in turning over. Nevertheless she tumbled, fell and conked her head on the bedside locker. It made her wide awake. The last sure little route to sleep was closed. It was a question of waiting till morning, so she dressed and then grappling with anger paced the room.
A hand-printed sign above the mirror caught her attention. It said, ‘In the hours of darkness, if a client has an urgent need will he or she please ring and wait because due to security the night porter may be prowling the building and not find himself adjacent to the switchboard.’ She took it down, re-read it with amazement, then wrote, ‘You must be joking’, and signed her name in full. Then she sank into the gaping armchair and waited stoutly for morning.
* * *
B. S. JOHNSON
* * *
A FEW SELECTED SENTENCES
Someone has to keep the records…
The Cacao is a fruite little lesse then Almonds, yet more fat, the which being roasted hath no ill taste. The chief use of this Cacao is in a drinke which they call Chocholate, whereof they make great accompt in that Country, foolishly, and without reason; for it is loathsome to such as are not acquainted with it, having a skum or froth that is very unpleasant to taste, if they be not very well conceited thereof. Yet it is a drinke very much esteemed among the Indians, wherewith they feast Noble men as they passe through their Country.
What are hands for, if not to hide the eyes?
Le Soixante-neuf est Interdit dans les Couloirs.
Eight years’ penal servitude.
As a lorry driven by Croxley left the scene, the sound of a hunting horn was heard. Was it a warning? The police found the body of a stag in the bracken, still warm. Later, police came across Croxley, Ryman and Straker standing by the lorry at the place where the stag had been. Croxley said he was birdwatching, Ryman said his hobby was photography, and Straker, who was carrying a crossbow, said: ‘I am interested in all forms of medieval weaponry.’ In the lorry police found a quiver full of arrows, a pair of binoculars, two pairs of Sherwood Green tights, and five sheath knives. A broken arrowshaft corresponded to an arrowhead embedded in the dead stag. All three men said they were committee members of Bowmen for Britain, had been out seeking small vermin, and had been on a public footpath. Straker said: ‘I saw a squirrel and fired at it but the stag which I did not know was there ran into it.’
A child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.
I love anecdotes. I fancy mankind may come in time to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation and connection and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.
The man had long white hands which he clasped tightly behind his back when not using them to eat several helpings of jellied eels. Most customers looked thoughtful.
One year, suspended.
All afternoon the girl threatened to jump. She said her husband had become converted to a religious sect which forbade her the use of her television. When she had wished to listen to the Queen’s Xmas broadcast she had had to go into the bathroom. It was her radio. Because she used makeup her husband likened her to Jezebel, the painted woman of the Scriptures. It was accepted that he was sincere. As soon as they brought a priest to talk to her, she jumped.
Permission to laugh?
Have you heard what Cynon sang?
Beware of drunkards –
Drink unlocks the human heart.
The father appealed for witnesses to his son’s death to come forward, not expecting to be overwhelmed by numbers. What had happened as far as they knew was that on Furse Bend he had crossed the inner edge on to the central reserve and in the resulting spill (which was not particularly dangerous in itself) the point of the clutch lever had entered his brain by way of the base of his skull. The father wished to know how designers of safety helmets had not taken this possibility into account. His colleagues said he should have had a ball on it.
But I am trying to be benign.
A rusty charlatan stated dogmatically that a discussion was an argument in which no one was particularly interested. He was reminded that every good deed is followed by the punishment of God. But, he insisted, one must have a proper regard for the ordinary.
The continuous process of recognizing that what is possible is not achievable.
A man taking pictures of a man taking pictures: there must be something in that.
At a wedding reception everyone was drunk, including the children. Indeed, one of the children became so affected as to seem ill, and it was considered advisable to take him to a hospital to have him seen to, stomach-pumped if necessary. They chose the receptor who seemed least drunk to drive the child, quickly. On the way the car was stopped by a policeman on a horse, who invited the driver to puff breath into a p
lastic bag. Crystals in the tube attached to this bag turned a certain colour which convinced the policeman that the driver was under the influence of alcohol and he informed him that he would be charged with an offence. ‘Oh no,’ said the driver, ‘Your bags must be faulty. Perhaps indeed you have a batch of faulty bags. Why don’t we test them by trying one out on this innocent child?’
A bard’s land shall be free. He shall have a horse when he follows the king and a gold ring from the queen and the harp he shall never part with.
Do I want that to be the truth?
The Vice-Chancellor was killed when inspecting the progress of the building of Senate House. A technician was pushing a loaded wheelbarrow across a plank spanning a liftshaft. He saved himself, but the wheelbarrow was lost. The Vice-Chancellor was standing at the bottom of the liftshaft. Accommodate that mess.
Most of the time they look for things to want, schoolfriends.
Miceal and I would play snooker. He would generally win. His was always the same remark when he sank the green or the brown which would put him beyond being caught unless he gave away an unlikely number of penalty points: ‘Now you haven’t got enough balls. You’ll have to put your own up.’ I cannot say I laughed more than the first and second times, despite tradition. And ‘No points for hard luck’ was another saying of his that stuck.
– Who was there?
– The usual mess, of course. Baldies, hairies, collapsed faces, fallen women, who would you think?