‘Why do you stick with her?’
He might say, Because she’s my wife. Because of you two. Because it’s the right thing to do. Because she needs me. Laura would have accepted none of those answers, so he said, ‘Nowhere else to go.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t talk about me when I’m not in the room.’ Alice came back, blurred in face and voice. ‘Did I miss anything interesting?’
‘We were asking Dad why he stuck with you,’ Jeff said cruelly.
It was going to be a splendid Christmas. What a splendid family, in which something like that could be said, ingested, digested, and excreted by Alice, ‘You heard him - nowhere else to go,’ without rancour.
But Jeff had not done with the evening. At dinner, when Nigel asked him if he would be a prefect next year, he said calmly, bolting great quantities of unchewed food, ‘I shan’t be there next year.’ He did not look at his father, but he was speaking to him.
‘Where will you be?’ Paul asked mildly.
‘Abroad somewhere, I don’t know. I’m leaving at the end of the summer. I’ve told the Beast.’
‘Before you told us?’
‘Well, it’s his concern more than yours. He’ll want to fill my place.’
‘What if I say no?’
‘To saving the money? Why should you?’
Laura said, ‘You won’t get into University without A levels.’
‘I don’t want to. Nothing in that for me. Any more than there is at Burlington. Shocking waste of time and money.’ He reached for the bread, broke off a chunk and chewed it round his small even teeth with his mouth open. The school had done nothing for his table manners.
‘You should have thought of that.’ Paul said, ‘when you made such a fuss about staying when I left. Why did you?’
‘Laura knows.’ Brother and sister exchanged a glance, their faces closed to everyone else.
‘Laura knows - what?’ Alice leaned her wasted breasts across the table, believing that she was articulating very clearly. ‘What does Laura know?’
‘Oh - how I feel about schools. Public schools in particular. The worst criminal folly in British sociological history.’
‘Oh listen here.’ Nigel by some fluke had been at Winchester, and had never got over it. ‘Our public schools - I consider that our public school system . . .’ He spoke ponderously, with a royal We, as he did when he was drunk, starting stories that would never end. ‘All things considered, and when we take the alternatives -when we consider that our experiences - impressions of those years are the most very deep and lasting of our lives. . .’
‘I suppose you think Winchester made you a gentleman.’ Jeff said chattily, and plunged forward like a starving animal to stuff a loaded fork into his mouth.
It was horrible, horrible. When Paul apologized to Laura, exhaustedly finishing in the kitchen long after Nigel had gone to bed, she shrugged her square shoulders and said, ‘Standard family Christmas.’
‘Why did you want to come home then?’ he asked miserably.
‘Because I loved you.’
‘Did love or do love?’
‘Don’t analyse, Daddy. Just get on with the job.’
‘Is that what you do?’
‘Day to day.’
‘That’s the A.A. method. One day at a time.’
‘Good. If it comes out in me, I’ll know.’
‘They were both too unhappy to help each other.
After Christmas, Jeff took off for Bristol to stay with a friend specified only as Someone I know at school.
‘What’s his name?’
‘It wouldn’t mean anything to you.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Bernard Grimbell.’
‘I haven’t heard of him.’
‘I told you.’
He left home wearing a reefer jacket and a pair of fisherman’s boots he had picked up in a shop near the harbour.
‘Aren’t you going to shave?’
‘I thought it might be fun to grow a beard while I’m away. Well - goodbye, you two. Better be going.’
‘Wait a minute and I’ll drive you to the station.’ Paul was dressing. Alice was still in bed.
‘Don’t bother, Dad. There’s plenty of time.’
‘What time’s your train?’ Alice asked.
‘In about an hour. I forget exactly.’
‘Have you got enough money?’
‘I cashed that cheque you gave me.’
‘Let me help you with the fare.’ Paul put his hand in his pocket. ‘It will be quite a lot.’
‘No, it’s all right, really it is. I’m perfectly all right. See you in about a week.’ He sidled himself out of the room and away.
When Paul shut the front door and came back to the bedroom, Alice said, ‘He’s going to hitchhike, isn’t he?’
‘God, I hope not.’
‘I know he is. He’s spent that money I gave him. He owed it.’
‘When you went Christmas shopping,’ Paul asked, ‘did you have any idea what your overdraft was?’
‘It’s yours too, dear. I generously share it with you. Would you rather have separate bank accounts?’
‘We shan’t have any bank accounts, Alice, if it goes on like this.’
‘You mean . . .’ she put on the throbbing voice. ‘You mean it ca-hant go on?’ She tousled her hair forward and looked up through it tragically.
He put on his jacket and went out. He would not play.
He was not on Samaritan duty today, but he went up to the Centre anyway and heard about different Christ-mases from Peter and Ralph and ugly scarred Nancy, who was not an acute Samaritan client any more, but came in regularly, as if it were a club.
Nancy had spent her Christmas in hospital. ‘Accident prone, they call me.’ She had brought a large cake and was cutting it and handing it round among Samaritans and clients. ‘Not the stove this time, no. I’ve given up frying, it’s everything boiled, no wonder my sister stays away. Struck from behind on that same corner I’ve been crossing for years. You should see my legs. That’s why I wasn’t in here over Christmas.’
‘We were worried about you,’ 200 said. ‘Diana went up to your place.’
‘It was company anyway, and we had a nice dinner. The Lady Mayoress came. Did you have a nice time?’ She turned the plate round for Paul to take the largest piece of cake.
‘Very nice. Quiet, with my family.’
‘Treasure your family,’ said Nancy, old at fifty, battered by life and loneliness. ‘That’s where it lies.’
Paul went across the hall to sit with Ralph at the big scarred desk which held the 4000 telephone. He listened to Ralph’s end of conversations with a man who could not find his wife, a girl who was afraid of her father, a Pakistani woman who was being persecuted by the neighbours.
At noon, Ralph went out for a sandwich, and Paul moved into his chair. He sat with his elbows on the desk, his chin heavy in his hands, and watched the mysterious telephone. He was sleeping badly. He was very weary. He did not want to think, or open the newspaper, or read through the log book. He did not want anybody to come in and talk. He did not want the telephone to ring. If he wanted anything, it would have been to take a magical draught and be put away unconscious somewhere by gentle hands until it was all over. The accidents that plagued Nancy usually happened when she felt especially blue. Ambulance men were her flights of angels. Penicillin and bandages and novocaine sprays her rest.
If Paul got an emergency call now, he would not be able to handle it properly. It was not fair to make a promise to people that you would never let them down, and then place by the telephone a dead, empty man with nothing to offer. He felt so numb that he could not even remember how the telephone’s ring was pitched, although he had heard it hundreds of times. He felt stupid, thick-headed in the warm little room, the panelling boxing him away from the world outside where phantom figures wept and fought and wrung their hands. Where Alice was sullenly into the afternoon’s soak. Where Mrs Frost, in the cool cameo in which
he still thought of her, would be clearing up after the directors’ lunch, neat-handed and at peace, her expectations unstirred by any remembrance of Paul Hammond.
The telephone rang. He jerked up his nodding head and picked it up, surprised to hear his normal voice. ‘Samaritans - can I help you?’
‘Oh yes. Oh yes, I think you can. Please help me.’
Instantly the close panelled walls of the study dissolved into life and he could see the woman, gripping her telephone hard, youngish, faded, strained. He saw the house, one in a row, bay-windowed villas, smoke-sick plants in front, washing and broken tricycles behind.
‘I’ll try, Tell me what the trouble is. I’ll try to help.’
‘I’ve not told anyone. I daren’t. If my husband found out, he’d kill me.’
She had bought some things at the door. Children’s clothes. A watch. A transistor radio. ‘And now that doesn’t work and they tell me at the repair shop they never heard of the make, or a battery that would go in it.’
When she began to miss payments, the salesmen’s visits became more frequent. Last week one of them, ‘the one I thought was the nicest’, had said, ‘I’m afraid the next step will have to be a letter to your husband.’
‘No, I’ll tell him.’
She could not. The letter came when he was at work. She hid it, unopened. When the man came again, she was able to give him half the outstanding money.
She paused. Paul waited. ‘It’s all right,’ he said then. ‘Go on, my dear. You can say anything you want. It’s just you and me. What’s your name?’ he asked, to get her talking.
‘Jenny.’
‘I’m Paul.’
‘It’s having no one to tell that kills you. I sit in the room here with my husband and a dozen times in the evening I sort of begin to open my mouth, and I’m going to tell him, but then of course I can’t. He wouldn’t understand.’
‘He might.’
‘Oh no, he couldn’t. No one could. I don’t know why I thought you could.’
‘I’ll try.’
She had taken the money in a shop. A knitwear sale. Throngs of women picking things over. A handbag had been left for a moment on a chair by the counter. In a dream, she had taken out a wallet, and half fainting with fear, gone away in the crowd. ‘There was ten pounds in it. More than half what I owed.’
‘Was there a name in the wallet?’
‘A driving licence, yes. I didn’t look at it. I didn’t want to know. I burned it. I burned the whole wallet. I—’ She gave a short laugh. ‘Funny, I feel better now I’ve told someone, even though. I suppose you’ll have to tell the police.’
‘If you really thought that, you wouldn’t have told me, would you? Look, Jenny, could you come in and see us? I think we ought to talk it over, don’t you, and decide what’s best to be done. Don’t worry, my dear. Everything is going to be all right. We’ll help you.’
‘You won’t tell my husband?’
‘Perhaps we can help you to tell him. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ A whisper. ‘He really isn’t as bad as I’ve made out. He’s very kind really, that’s why I—’
‘Don’t cry, Jenny. Lots of women get themselves into this kind of fix.’
‘Do they really?’
‘Of course. Thanks to those unscrupulous doorstep artists. It can be worked out. Do you think you could come in tomorrow?’
‘Will you be there?’
‘There are plenty of people who would help you, but if you want to see me to save going through the story again, I’ll be here after two.’
‘I’ll come at two.’
‘Good, Jenny. Ask for me. Paul. I’ll watch for you.’
‘God bless you.’
When he first started to work as a Samaritan, Paul tried to take home to Alice something of the distress and sorrow and anxiety that he found. Drinking and quarrelsome, he would not have attempted to tell her anything, but even during dry and amiable phases, she would hear nothing of it. She was jealous of this second life where somehow he was able to be nicer, wiser, more patient. Once in the days when he still joined battle with her, after a bitter fight in which they had said unbearable things to each other, she had said, ‘If I rang 333-4000 and told you about us, you’d be very nice to me.’
He would have liked to spend the afternoon at the Centre, but since it was the holidays, there were extra students about, and when Ralph came back to 4000, a new young Samaritan, Ronnie, came to sit with him to listen and learn.
Paul went away. The sun was out and up. There would be an afternoon glitter on the sea that aped its summer look. He should take Alice somewhere, drive miles along the coast, have dinner, ration her drinks, stay at a hotel, make love. Instead, he turned the car left and headed towards Royal Bridge, negotiating the hopeless traffic of this cumbersome town that had so planlessly multiplied. In the old factory district under the hill, there were still tramlines in some streets, appearing and disappearing like messages from the past as the old square paving stones went under to the macadam, came lumpily up again, to be smothered once more by the black surface, already sundering into potholes.
The dirty district, where the impenetrable windows of wholesale houses still dustily proclaimed beltings and feltings and spring grives, ran itself under the railway and emerged to better things. A Blitz-like demolition awaited the builder, children footballing in the mud, bulldozers stranded below ground level in the puddles of excavation. Mesh fences guarded a dorp of pre-fabs, and then the road straightened its shoulders and headed wide and white for the Butterfields Industrial Estate, flags flying, even the smoke cleansed and hygienic.
Paul walked from the car park across the tailored winter grass and went briskly in past the doorman at the main entrance, as if he had business with Unitech Electronics. ‘Look in again any time.’ Upjohn had said. Well, he was looking in.
Mr Upjohn’s secretary, as cold and blank as her telephone manner, with a bright jungle talisman dangling invitingly between her sharp uninviting breasts, said, ‘I’m sorry, he’s out to lunch.’ She looked at her watch to show it was an odd time for Paul to expect to find him.
‘Give him my regards. Tell him I was passing. I hope we can have that game of golf soon. Paul Hammond.’
‘I’ll tell him.’ She did not write it down.
Like a burglar, like Jenny at the knitwear sale, Paul went round the back of the lift and walked up the stairs on his toes. Mrs Frost was at the stove in the little shining galley, scrambling eggs. When he greeted her, she turned with a smile and put her hand up to her hair, although it was not untidy.
‘I came to see Mr Upjohn, but he wasn’t here. So I thought I’d just—’
‘How nice of you. Wait a minute while I finish these.’
He waited while she spooned the creamy egg on to rounds of toast in a silver dish, and neatly crisscrossed them with strips of anchovy. Paul’s mouth was full of juices for the fluffy yellow egg. He had not wanted breakfast after Jeff pounded off with the turned-over tops of his boots flapping. As she took the pan to the sink, Paul almost asked, ‘Can I scrape it out?’
Good thing he had not. The steward came through the swing door, raised a pair of black matador’s eyebrows at Paul, picked up the dish of savouries and went back to the dining-room.
‘You’re not lunching?’ Mrs Frost was wearing a white woollen dress, its front covered by the long red apron. Her legs were straight, rather undeveloped, but good. Feet small. Back of neck clean under short petals of hair.
‘I don’t always. This is a business lunch.’
‘Is Upjohn in there?’ What if he came out napkin in hand to say, ‘Where’s the mustard?’ or ‘The lunch was splendid’? ‘Are you allowed followers?’
‘No.’ She grinned.
‘I’ll help wash up.’
‘No.’ She sat him down with a cup of coffee. The matador came in and out a few times, bringing out plates and glasses, taking away the coffee tray.
‘That’s it
then,’ he said. ‘That’s their lot. All on diets, the half of them. You’re wasting your talents here.’
‘If you’re in a hurry to go,’ she said, ‘I’ll finish clearing. Walter’s wife is ill,’ she told Paul.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s all right. Thanks, Barbara.’ He hung his white coat on a hook in the steel cupboard, put on the jacket of his dark suit and left, taking a pocketful of cigars.
Paul sat on the stainless steel stool which was cold to be on for more than a few minutes. As Barbara Frost ran hot water into the sink, he said, ‘Tell me about your husband.’
‘He’s dead.’ Paul let out his breath on a sigh. ‘He’s been dead for almost fifteen years. My children were quite small.’
‘Why didn’t you marry again?’ It was easy to ask direct questions. She did not look at him, and her back did not stiffen.
‘No time, I suppose. The boys. And I was working.’
‘Have you had lunch?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Would you like to come and have something to eat when you’ve finished? It’s a lovely day. We could drive along the coast a bit, if you’ve got time.’
Jackie’s mother did not really believe in Christmas, although there was no doubt it was very good for business. It might be an old wives’ tale to suppose that Jesus was born on December 25th, but as the date grew near, the sale of slippers and handbags was marvellous to see. Shoe dyes moved well too, as the ladies got last summer’s whites coloured up to match their party dresses.
Jackie was not allowed to make sales, but as he came through into the front shop with heels for waiting customers, he watched the people turning the revolving stand of slippers, puddling the green Duralon carpet with their umbrellas, and listened to his mother’s selling voice.
‘That’s a.top-quality bag. You’ve only to look at the lining. That’s where you can always tell, the workmanship inside. You see the label? That’s a Dorolee bag.’
‘Oh yes?’ said the customer, as if she had ever heard of Dorolee.
When the sale was made: ‘Thank you, madam. You’ve made a good choice. If your daughter doesn’t appreciate it, you send her right back to me and I will show her the difference between quality merchandise and your run-of-the-mill goods.’
The Listeners Page 17