Enchantment

by Monica Dickens

  ‘It’s – well, it’s about poetry.’

  ‘Poetry? Helen Brown? She must have been putting you on. What else did she talk about? Did she talk about her son?’

  ‘No. Should she have?’

  ‘Oh no. No,’ Val said airily.

  In the end, Val gave Helen’s address to Tim. She had no phone, but a neighbour took messages. Tim took the neighbour’s number, but he could not manage this job as a third-party message.

  One evening, he got into his car (it was not ‘Zara’s car’ any more) and drove across the river to the tall, converted Victorian house where Helen lived in the top flat.

  ‘It used to be the servants’ rooms,’ she told Tim, after she had come downstairs to let him in, and he had climbed the four flights behind her, trying not to notice that her thick calves ran down into her feet.

  Helen had two bedrooms and a small living-room with shabby furniture and a big laundry basket of toys in the corner. The boy was away at school. The living-room had been painted by Val and Colin with three blue walls and one white one, which they had said was smart, and Helen agreed. The white wall was marked and smudged. It must be quite a small boy. How could he be at boarding school? Helen and Tim actually got themselves sitting down and talking a bit, but he could see that she was fussed about whether she ought to make tea. Her eyebrows were down. Two parallel vertical lines appeared over her nose and stayed there. Her pale lips were set.

  ‘This is only a flying visit.’ Tim stood up. ‘I just wanted to know – I’ve got a car now, you see, and I thought it would, I was wondering if you – I thought you might like to come for a drive out to the country at the weekend.’

  ‘Oh, I would like to.’ When she smiled, her eyebrows went back into place and the frown lines smoothed out. ‘It’s very nice of you, but I’m afraid I can’t, really, because Julian is here at weekends.’

  ‘Would he like to come too?’ They could drive to Hamilton Park, walk around and look at the ducks and swans while the little chap was in the adventure playground.

  ‘Well, no,’ Helen said, ‘not really.’

  Amazing! She wants to be with me alone.

  ‘Some evening, then? Why not tomorrow? It’s light till seven.’

  ‘All right.’

  Helen came all the way downstairs to let him out, because the other tenants said that visitors could not be trusted to shut the front door securely.

  ‘See you tomorrow, then.’

  She did not smile. She just stood in the doorway with her legs slightly apart and her feet turned in, and looked at him seriously. While he went down the three cracked marble steps and along the path to the gate, she stayed in the doorway. He did not look back to see this, but he did not hear the heavy panelled door shut.

  Pity his car was down the road. She would not see him swing into it. No, not a pity. For another twenty-four hours, she could imagine it as being something grander.

  No offence, Buttercup.

  The radio had long gone, leaving a rectangular hole down which Zara had stuffed her chocolate wrappings. Tim sang on the way home. As he turned in at the gateway, he remembered why it was so necessary to go out with Helen and for her to come to his flat, if she would. He had temporarily forgotten about Brian. The idea of the outing was important for itself.

  He switched off the engine as soon as he felt the little bump of the front tyre that told him it had reached the concrete base of the stairs. Over the gear lever into the other seat and stealthily out of the passenger door, only half open so it would not scrape the house, and shut it silently. It hadn’t locked since Zara had shut her keys inside and one of her friends had jimmied the door with a credit card. Slide under the stairs, leg round the end, and nimbly up to the top. Key in the lock quietly, ease door open.

  Hallo there, Tim good boy. Wuff wuff. Where have you been?

  Out to see my girl friend, so yah boo.

  On the mat was a square envelope from C.P. Games. Tim bowed to it. He went in, shut the door gently, turned on the lights, took off his jacket and pulled the blinds, then went back to pick up the envelope and take out the papers for his next move in Domain of the Undead.

  While he ate cold baked beans out of the tin, he checked his position and saw that Black Monk was up to no good at all, sublimating his urges like mad by poisoning Grue and slaughtering a harmless band of minor priests invented by a player called Cardinal Carcase.

  ‘Using the basic codes,’ the Games Master had written, ‘show how Blch’s followers will react when they meet the gurus and the sightless creatures. If they bargain, what with?’

  ‘The weather-sayers have said,’ Kev added, ‘that flood tides threaten the Drear Lowlands. Forest fires are rife at this season. The mountain passes are still held by the forces of evil. Your next three strategies are crucial.’

  Tim’s head began to be full of ideas, but he did not start to fill out the forms right away, as he usually did, because he would not be able to work on them tomorrow evening. They would have to wait.

  Chapter Five

  The whole thing was a total disaster. It was raining, for one thing, and another was that when Helen came downstairs to open the door, after taking her time, she looked like herself, instead of how Tim wanted her to look.

  She wasn’t even ready. ‘Come up, I won’t be long,’ she said, but Tim muttered, ‘I’ll wait outside,’ and sat in the car with his lip stuck out.

  Helen came out under an umbrella. What had she been doing while he waited? She did not look any better. Her hair was still dry as a digestive biscuit, and she had done nothing to her face. No make-up. Tim had been brought up by Val and Zara to mistrust the naked face. She wore a dark-blue raincoat and broad stubby shoes. Tim would have stayed in the car while she got in, but he had to get out and open the difficult passenger door for her.

  ‘“Easy does it,”’ Helen said when he was back in the car beside her.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘The label.’ She tapped the back of the AA sticker. ‘I didn’t know you were an alcoholic.’ Of course, the drunken sailor husband. She would know about that.

  ‘Good thing I’m not.’ Tim was going to take her for a drink and a sandwich at a pub about twenty miles away that he had visited in his guise of sales rep, king of the road.

  The Stag was crowded. They had to sit jammed at a corner table, with a man and a woman who belonged to a group at another table, and made a lot of noise and commotion about it. Helen did not want ham or beef, and when her cheese sandwich came, she took the tomato out of it. Tim did not know her well enough to take it off her plate and put it in his beef sandwich, which had no tomato.

  She drank a half pint of bitter so slowly that Tim had two pints, out of nervousness. They talked a bit, if only for the benefit of their noisy table mates. Helen spoke about the school kitchen, where the staff had a different job each week: chips and sausages, vegetables and fruit, pots and pans, dishwashing, serving hatch, out among the barbarities of the dining-room. After six weeks, you went back to frying chips.

  Her voice was quiet. It was quite an effort to hear, but when you made the effort, you had to wonder if it was worth it. Tim told her a few things about Webster’s, which she knew, because she had once worked there. Even while he was talking, trying to sound amusing, or at least interesting, Tim’s mind and heart were yearning back twenty miles to his room under the roof where he would spread out his play-by-mail forms on the table and be himself, as Blch.

  Helen finished her beer at last. Was it too soon to leave now? But he heard himself saying, ‘Have the other half.’

  (‘Buy her champagne. Find some excuse to celebrate and bring out the bubbly. It always works.’)

  ‘Should I?’ The parallel lines were ravines in her forehead.

  ‘Oh, definitely, darling,’ said the older man at the table.

  Damn you, keep out of this. But Helen shook her head. She had gathered up her bag into her lap, and looked as if she wanted to go too. Which of them was going to s
ay it?

  Two new arrivals were standing talking to the couple at their table, so Tim was able to say, ‘Perhaps we should be moving along and let these people sit down.’

  ‘No, no, don’t think of it.’

  ‘But really we –’

  ‘Stay where you are.’

  ‘Don’t let us disturb you.’ Helen stood up and went through the tables to the coathooks by the door. The rain had diminished slightly, so Tim could drive a bit faster, although the wipers did not do a very good job. Helen put on her glasses, as though it would be safer if she could see too. Going up a hill, Buttercup flagged, so Tim did a flying change down into second to give her a boost. Or would have done a flying change if the gears had not stuck.

  ‘Damn.’ He pulled on the handbrake as the car began to move more backwards than forwards. Helen said nothing. Most women would be telling you what to do, or jittering because they thought someone was going to roar up the winding hill and hit them from behind.

  At last Tim crunched dear little Buttercup into first gear. He was sweating, and his hand on the gear knob was trembling as he transferred it to the wheel.

  ‘Sorry about that.’ He glanced at Helen, as they started safely down the other side of the hill. She was looking ahead through her glasses. ‘That’s the only thing about Fiats. Always a bit tricky on the gears.’

  ‘Are they really?’ She believed it.

  ‘Afraid so, but they’re such brilliant little cars, and it only happens once in a blue moon.’

  They were ten miles from home when it happened again. The lights were red at a narrow railway bridge, and they waited in a line of cars. The last car came over towards them. The lights changed. Tim followed the cars ahead up the rise of the bridge in first gear, changed into second – back-into-second-get in there damn you! – and with the terrible grinding shriek of an iron humanoid in agony, the gears jammed. Oh, totally jammed. Nothing like the minor difficulties of meshing that had once been so traumatic, but now seemed like trivia.

  They were stuck on the top of the humpback bridge that was turned at right angles to the road on either side. The cars ahead had gone. The cars behind were eyes of light. Round the corner in front, a line of waiting headlights stared through slanting rain.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Helen asked in a low voice, as if no one must hear.

  ‘We’ve had it.’ Tim got out into the rain. Mist and exhaust vapour rose white and red in the lights behind and before him. The traffic lights changed, and a car came up the narrow bridge from the other side, saw him and stopped. Behind it, someone sat on his horn.

  Men got out and walked up the bridge.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘The gearbox.’

  ‘Stripped the gears, have you?’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ A man kicked Buttercup’s back tyre. ‘I’m in a hurry.’

  ‘Can you help me push it?’ Tim asked.

  They laughed. ‘Jammed in gear? Not unless you lift up the back wheels for us, mate.’

  In the end, that was what they did. By this time, there were about ten cars on both sides. No time to wait for a tow truck. The cars in front backed out of the way. Helen got out of the Fiat and walked away under the umbrella. Four of the men lifted up the rear end of Buttercup, swearing and groaning, and trundled her like a wheelbarrow off the bridge. Someone had to steer and brake, so Tim had to sit in the car like a dummy while everyone else did all the work and said terrible things about him.

  At the foot of the bridge, they pushed the yellow car off the road. Before Tim could thank them, they disappeared back to their cars and drove away. He got out. The traffic lights changed, with a small click from somewhere, from green to red and back to green. Cars waited, looking at him, then drove up and over the bridge. Cars came from the other side, and their headlights swept over him. He moved behind his car. Helen and her umbrella materialized out of the dark curtain of rain and stood beside him.

  ‘Sorry about this.’ He waited for her to start the sour grumbling and hissing complaints.

  She only said, ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘Someone is calling for a tow truck.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He moved away from her, because he wanted to cry. Helen folded her umbrella and got into the car.

  They rode in the cab of the truck that towed Buttercup backwards, her rear end in the air like a tart. From the garage, they rang for a taxi, and waited a long time. Tim did not apologize again. You can’t go on and on saying, ‘I’m sorry,’ especially if the other person does not seem to mind. In the taxi, they sat at opposite ends of the back seat, leaning into the corners.

  Tim had an uncomfortable thought. He cleared his throat and asked Helen, ‘See Val much – my sister Val?’

  ‘No. She did help me when I moved into the flat, that’s all.’

  Good. Tim did not want Valerie to know about this.

  ‘Except just that one night, at the theatre. I suppose she only asked me to be someone for you. Or did she ask you to be someone for me?’

  ‘Both, perhaps,’ Tim said miserably.

  ‘Yes, perhaps.’

  By the time the taxi had dropped Helen and taken Tim home, the fare was enormous. Helen asked him in a quick whisper behind the driver’s back whether he had enough money on him, and when he murmured, ‘I don’t know,’ she took a ten pound note out of her bag and put it into his hand. His hand was sweaty and clammy, had been ever since Buttercup croaked on the bridge. Helen’s fingers felt dry and bloodless, like gloves.

  ‘Ley shaft bent. Two cogs completely jammed, and the teeth ripped. Whatever you did, you did a thorough job.’

  ‘I wasn’t driving,’ Tim lied to the garage on the phone.

  ‘I didn’t say you were. Want us to go ahead and put in a new gearbox?’

  ‘How – what will it cost?’ Whatever it was, it had got to be done for Zara’s car. It was Zara’s car again now.

  The new gearbox was going to cost about four hundred pounds, with labour. Who could he ask?

  Not Brian, for a start. Tim had talked to him a few times since the dreadful episode on the couch, and Brian had been his usual normal self; but a pass was a pass, and you didn’t ask the passer to do you a favour.

  Jack? Easy-going Jack with his jokes and his wide smile which he beamed on Tim if he ran into him on the offices floor at Webster’s, taking invoices up for Mr D. Tim could not ask either of them, because he had only just paid the rest of the overdue rent, which he had borrowed from his mother, to keep Brian at bay.

  So not his mother, for that reason. Also, she had been talking about getting herself a video recorder, but if you gave her the chance, she’d sacrifice that money on Zara’s car instead.

  The garage wanted a down-payment of two hundred pounds before they would start the work. Tim was desperate enough to go round to Valerie and throw himself on her mercy.

  It was like throwing himself off a cliff. No mercy there. When Tim was a child, two years younger than Val, she was the witch of fairy-tales, the wicked stepsister, with her teeth and her nails and her stringy black hair and crowing voice. In a real story, the hero would have confounded her, stabbed her, beaten her into the ground, incinerated her into a puff of smoke. Tim made spells against her, but nothing happened.

  Val got better after she grew up and went to college and got a job of some power and lived with Colin, but she could still revert.

  Without telling her about the disaster of his night out with Helen, Tim asked her for a small loan, just a hundred or so, and really to help Zara, since it was her car and the gearbox would have packed it in anyway. Val stared at Tim over the ironing-board, drew her thin red mouth back into a snarling grimace and said, ‘No.’

  ‘Just – er, just no?’

  ‘I have nothing to add.’ She gazed at him through the thick glasses that protected her eyes and thoughts from your knowledge, like portholes protecting passengers from the sea. She thumped the iron about a bit, and then she sudden
ly put back her head and laughed.

  ‘Don’t look so glum, poor old Tim.’

  ‘Were you joking?’

  ‘I never joke about money. Nor does our Dad Wallace. You’d better go and ask him. You’re his responsibility, not mine.’

  Wallace was in his woodworking shed, feeling it vibrate gently as he turned a paper-knife handle on the lathe. His beloved son appeared in the doorway, looking pale.

  ‘Hullo, stranger,’ Wallace said, as a way of letting Timothy know that his casual visits at long intervals had been noted.

  ‘Sorry I didn’t come last weekend, Dad. I had a lot on.’

  ‘Who said anything about last weekend? We weren’t here anyway. I took m’wife to the coast.’ His son was the champion liar, but Wallace could lie too as necessary. ‘Pass me that gouge would you? No, that’s not a gouge. Up there, look, on the shelf. That’s right, drop it. It only cost ten quid.’

  ‘Talking of the cost of things, Dad …’

  When the boy cleared his throat in that strangled way, it reminded you of those unwholesome programmes Annie loved – always on the BBC, since no one would pay to advertise on them – where the handicapped tried to walk and speak, and would have been better shut away and not embarrassing people.

  ‘Is this a money talk, then?’ Wallace asked, his mouth pursed, his skilled craftsman’s fingers a marvel to see. ‘Money talks.’

  His son stayed mum, biting his lip. Wallace, merciful patriarch, put him out of his misery.

  ‘Since you only ever come here to get a good hot meal or scrounge a bit of cash, I’m assuming, since it is neither lunch nor supper time, that you’re after a loan.’

  ‘That’s right, Dad.’ The worm squirmed.

  ‘You know my motto. Never borrow, never loan.’

  ‘I can pay it back. I get my bonus, end of next month.’

  ‘Ah.’ Wallace stopped the lathe and held the handle up to the light for Tim to admire. Tim was looking at the floor, and pushing shavings about with the side of his foot. ‘So it’s not just five pounds or so we’re talking about.’