Victoria at the Falklands

by Jack Tollers

  Chapter Eight

  Messy Stuff

  She was annoyed. It was ludicrous—a perfectly absurd situation, Victoria thought for the umpteenth time. She couldn't quite refrain from thinking that fortunately Peter had not yet arrived, and maybe, who knows, they would be rescued before that. But she was also beginning to get a bit edgy.

  Initially Jimmy had made comforting remarks pointing out that they were in no danger at all and that while the whole thing was rather boring, there was nothing to worry about.

  ‘I'm not afraid, if you want to know,’ Victoria protested. But she kept thinking of Peter and had to admit to herself that she would very much prefer to be set free from that trap before he arrived. It was a preposterous situation and she felt that some frightful cosmic joke was being played on her which she just didn't find funny: the worst part of all, she thought while making faces to the mirror in the lift, was that there was no one to be angry with, no scapegoat, and in a small compartment like that one, you couldn't very well vent your indignation without making a fool of yourself; as things stood, the circumstances were sufficiently ridiculous as they were.

  Eyeing her grimacing face in the mirror, Jimmy laughed.

  ‘We'll be out of here in no time,’ he remarked. ‘At any moment someone will find out that this thing isn't working and will surely give notice to... hmmm... well, the service people.’ He kept to himself his doubts about who the hell was in charge of the elevator's maintenance and the fact that whoever it was, in any case would probably be out that night. He wondered fleetingly how he could possibly have lived in that School for the better part of four years without identifying the people that attended to the lift. Well, he thought, that was only one of his distractions: if only he'd been a bit more attentive, he told himself, he would probably have saved himself a lot of lost time in that place anyway.

  For all her unselfconsciousness, Victoria could not but feel an acute discomfort confined as she was in such reduced circumstances with Peter's best friend. Jimmy looked quite handsome. He was sporting a becoming dinner jacket, his rather long ginger hair carefully combed, his by now well grown moustache which made him look older, and some very elegant silver cuff links, even though the overall effect was somehow spoilt now that he sat in a corner, his arms around his knees, with an impish grin on his face. She apprehensively hoped he wouldn't start any monkeying which would be typical of him, she thought. Just in case and to put him off, she began to powder her face looking into the mirror with deliberate concentration.

  They had met on the lower floor and Jimmy had offered to call for the lift for which she had been grateful, unsure as she felt of going up the stately stairs wearing the rather uncomfortable high heels and long dress she was wearing for the very first time. The lift had only started on its short journey when it suddenly stuck midway and refused to budge notwithstanding Jimmy's all manner of exertions with its buttons. After a bit of shouting and some hammering on the wooden panels he had finally resorted to the red button but the alarm bell didn't seem to be achieving much, ringing against the noisy reception downstairs and the orchestra in full swing on the upper floor. After the first three minutes of sounding the bell continuously he finally resigned himself to their predicament and squatted in his corner while waiting for someone to find out that the lift was out of order and proceed to rescue them. But he showed no sign of being in the least bothered by their plight.

  ‘Rotten luck, isn’t it?’

  He began drumming his fingers against a wooden panel rythmically following ‘Proud Mary’, the hit that seemed to defy fashion and that could be distinctly heard in the lift. Victoria felt an increasing urge to smoke a cigarette despite the fact that she could easily see that the last thing they wanted was to fill the chamber with tobacco smoke. They were prisoners, she thought with compressed lips, and wondered for how long, and thought more and more about getting out, and less and less about anything else.

  There was nothing to do except wait. And talk.

  It began, of course, with small talk, Jimmy enquiring about Peter and Victoria informing him how they had arranged to come separately and meet at the ball.

  Jimmy cracked a first one with a facetious reference to Peter and his ungentlemanly ways seeing that this cavalier hadn't even bothered to collect her lady personally, delegating the task to old Suter instead of handling the transportation of such a treasure himself. Looking at Victoria's face he instantly regretted his irony, deciding that it would be better to steer the conversation to lesser topics.

  Because, in effect, Victoria was gradually losing poise. She felt like taking her high heeled shoes off but checked herself and explained instead that Peter had no car and that they had both thought that meeting at the ball was the best arrangement. As a matter of fact the two of them had indeed thought that he, Jimmy, actually could have offered his services and car for the occasion—and hadn't.

  ‘We are not on the best of terms lately,’ Jimmy explained into the silent censure. He looked at the floor, feeling Victoria's tenseness.

  ‘I know that,’ said Victoria eyeing the red button with a worried look, ‘but offering your car surely would have gone a long way to make amends.’

  Jimmy sighed while detecting the first intimations of sweat in his underarms. She was right, of course. He gave her a quick glance and saw that she was putting away her powder case into her tiny handbag. She shifted it from one hand to the other and firmly crossed her arms in a silent and unmistakable statement.

  ‘Well, the fact is that Peter is really so much taken up by his new destination, what with all the excitement of his new post in Covunco, he just doesn’t seem interested in anything else.’ He shook his head. ‘One hell of a hole, that’ he added disparagingly.

  Victoria remained silent and began to feel a bit dizzy. She well knew that Jimmy had thought Peter's posting as the worse possible for a young officer. But Peter had only shrugged his shoulders at the other's comment. Their friendship was certainly cooling down and Victoria was beginning to suspect a little envy in Jimmy's bad tempered and opinionated views on everything concerning his friend’s professional future.

  She shifted uncomfortably and started to think that by now surely Peter must be out there, looking for her in vain. If only that damned lift would move a couple of feet they could get out of there. Just a few feet she thought again, and they would be free. She made an effort to control her increasing dizziness. No good fainting in these circumstances, she glumly thought.

  Jimmy laughed at this, for, once again, Victoria had voiced her thoughts.

  ‘Can women actually decide when to faint and when not?’ he asked.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she said, without smiling.

  They were silent for a couple of minutes listening to the remote voices and music, but presently Victoria decided that talking would somehow relieve some of her tension.

  With an effort she decided to say something, anything.

  ‘I wish you two­—Peter and you—would stop arguing over this and that...,’ she said, ‘I mean, life is complicated enough without having to get into such’ She sighed, not quite knowing what she wanted to say. ‘Well, you know... I mean, friends for such a long time, and now not even on speaking terms. It’s a bit thick don’t you find?’

  Jimmy got up and pushed the alarm bell again for a full minute. Then he crouched in his corner again with a torrent of abuse against the military in general, and more to the point, against that damned lift. It was getting warm in there and he felt the sweat under his armpits. Then he thought that at any moment an urge to pass water would considerably complicate things. He impatiently brushed the idea aside. He was also beginning to feel self-pity, which perhaps should have served him as a warning.

  ‘Life is a bit like this lift,’ he sighed, ‘you embark expecting it to take you to higher places and suddenly you're stuck and uncomfortable and you soon find yourself deploring the whole idea... Whose idea was it in the first place, eh?’ he asked rhetorically
to the door. ‘And all you want is to get off, and, well, you just can't... You know, stop-the-world-I-wanna-get-off... and you depend on others to rescue you.’ He sighed again. ‘I'm sorry I ever offered you a lift,’ he added with a disarming smile.

  Victoria wasn't sure of the meaning of all this divagation but well knew that there was more to it than met the eye, and was afraid that Jimmy would overstep his limits any moment. She felt new knots in her belly and anxiously thought once again about getting out of there, somehow, soon. However she mustered just enough self control and energy to change the subject—as well as she could.

  ‘Peter has told me that you've been into poetry lately,’ she remarked, biting a nail distractedly.

  Nothing was very clear from recent reports on Jimmy's doings since he had chucked his military career on the basis of what Peter called a few hastily concocted ideas. But she did know that he hadn't taken up a proper job, was not even considering a university degree, was not socialising with his old friends any more but had instead taken up with a new bunch he had picked up at some bar or another. Thomas happened to know one or two of them and disdainfully considered them an assortment of ‘dirty hippies.’ The poetry part had come up in one of Veronica's long pieces of gossip about this or the other. Peter had grunted at this bit of news, dismissing it as unacceptably frivolous. ‘Poetry, of all things. I’d like to see one or two of his pieces. I ask you, Jimmy into poetry!,’ he had commented with half a smile.

  Jimmy grinned at the disdainful way she had pronounced the word “poetry” and immediately recognised Peter's views behind the curtain. And, of course, he smiled thinking how most women tend to express their fiancé’s views as if they had actually thought it out for themselves.

  ‘Yup,’ he grinned again, ‘into poetry, as you say.’ He gave a short laugh, but suddenly adopted a grave demeanour. ‘I don't want to miss Beauty's Funerals.’

  She felt lost. ‘Beauty's what?’

  ‘Yes. Funerals. The whole Western world is going down the drain, but poetry is going faster. On the whole, I don't think that even painting has degraded itself to such an extent... Hmmm. Or, for that matter, cinema, though if that’s art or not is certainly a debatable point. Anyway I intend to be present at the funerals of beauty and, if I have my way, will declaim on that occasion my odes to the death of poetry—poetically, if I can.’

  ‘I don't think I can quite follow you.’

  ‘Well, how about trying to explain it to you in verse?’

  Victoria shifted uncomfortably. The last thing she needed, under the circumstances, was to listen to... but there was no stopping him.

  ‘Very recently I've concocted a sonnet that I shall proceed to recite for the benefit of the whole of my audience of one.’ He stood up and pushed the red button for a full minute while concentrating on his next lines. ‘Listen,’ he said, a raffish grin on his face.

  We're stuck in a lift, Victoria and I

  While people are dancing and singing away,

  ‘Stop it, will you?’ Victoria, pleaded. Her acute discomfort was reaching panic levels.

  Jimmy was so enthused by his bardic display that he didn't quite measure Victoria's alarm.

  Life is a promise that never will pay

  For all your misgivings...

  Suddenly a somewhat muffled cry interrupted his oration, ‘You all right in there?’ someone was yelling behind the waxed wooden panels, ‘Hold on! We'll get you out in no time.’

  A bit ruffled by the interruption, he yelled back that they were all right and with a blink at Victoria unnecessarily added that they were in no hurry to get out.

  The relief was somehow too much for Victoria and she could feel her strained nerves beginning to give way, like a cracked damn to high pressure. She felt so distracted that she couldn't even understand what Jimmy was now saying and she failed to see why he just wouldn't stop talking. She could only think of getting out of there, as fast as possible.

  ‘... maybe I should stay here... maybe I should refuse to come out, and stay here for ever and ever... After all, there are worse fates than being stuck with...’

  The flow of balderdash made her feel dizzy, hot and cold in turns, and Jimmy's voice in the lift took on a nightmarish echo that made her want to scream.

  And then suddenly he shut up, and the lift moved and in no time she was extricated from the cage and carried off by three solicitous cadets who took the dazzled girl out to the big balcony that overlooked the vast college gardens. One of the three was Peter who was fanning the fresh air with a magazine repeatedly asking her if she was all right. Presently she pulled herself together, sat down on the balcony and gratefully drank a glass of water. Eventually she smoked a much needed cigarette and felt the better for it. Jimmy explained offhandedly that they had only been trapped for no more than a quarter of an hour and that they had been perfectly all right. Victoria looked out on the gardens silently assenting. But she was beginning to digest what Jimmy had been driving at in that beastly liftand found that she didn’t like it at all. A whiff of vanity barely made up for the implications of Jimmy’s attitude. And she really thought it rather disloyal of him to Peter. On the other hand, taking advantage of that trap didn’t appeal to her sense of chivalry either.

  Peter was trying to handle his mixed feelings as best he could—partly relieved, partly jealous—and contented himself with holding Victoria's hand in an effort to regain, as it were, possession of his temporarily lost lover. Presently Jimmy and the other two cadets discreetly left them alone and headed for the bar.