by Sarah Waters
Len, on the other hand, could not be silent. Getting no fun out of Duncan now, he started to gather up spare bits of wax; Duncan watched him begin to press them all together, moulding and shaping them into what emerged, in another minute, as the figure of a woman. He worked quite cleverly—frowning in concentration, his brow coming down and his lower lip jutting. The figure grew smoother and rounder in his hands. He gave it oversized breasts and hips, and waving hair. He showed it to Duncan first, saying, ‘It’s Mrs Alexander!’ Then he changed his mind. He called down the bench to one of the girls: ‘Winnie! This is you, look!’ He held the figure out and made it walk and wiggle its hips.
Winnie screamed. She was a girl with a deformity of the face, a squashed-in nose and a pinched-up mouth, and a pinched-up nasal voice to match. ‘Look what he’s done!’ she said to her friends. The other girls saw and started laughing.
Len added more wax to the figure, to its breasts and bottom. He made it move more mincingly. ‘Oh, baby! Oh, baby!’ he said, in a silly feminine way. Then, ‘That’s how you go,’ he called to Winnie, ‘when you’re with Mr Champion!’ Mr Champion was the factory foreman, a mild-mannered man whom the girls rather terrorised. ‘That’s how you go. I heard you! And this is what Mr Champion does.’ He held the figure in the crook of his arm and passionately kissed it; finally he put his fingernail to the fork of its legs and pretended to tickle it.
Winnie screamed again. Len went on tickling the little figure, and laughing, until one of the older women told him sharply to stop. His laugh, then, became more of a snigger. He gave Duncan a wink. ‘She wishes it was her, that’s all,’ he said, too low for the woman to catch. He pressed the wax figure back into formlessness and threw it into the scrap-cart.
He was always boasting privately to Duncan about girls. It was all he ever talked about. ‘I could have that Winnie Mason if I wanted to,’ he’d said, more than once. ‘What do you think it would be like, though, kissing her mouth? I think it’d be like kissing a dog’s arse.’ He claimed he often took girls into Holland Park and made love to them there at night. He described it all, with tremendous grimaces and winks. He always talked to Duncan as if he, Len, were the older of the two. He was only sixteen. He had a freckled brown gypsy face, and a pink, plump, satiny mouth. When he smiled, his teeth looked very white and even inside that mouth, against the tan and speckle of his cheek.
Now he sat with his hands behind his head, rocking on the two back legs of his stool. He looked lazily around the Candle Room, going from one thing to another in search of some kind of distraction. After a minute he moved forward as if excited. He called down the bench: ‘Here’s Mrs A, look, coming in. She’s got two blokes with her!’
Still working at the night lights, the women turned their heads to see. They were grateful for any sort of break in the day’s routine. The week before, a pigeon had got into the building and they had gone round the room shrieking, for almost an hour—making the most of the excitement. Now a couple of them actually stood up, to get a better look at the men with Mrs Alexander.
Duncan watched them peer until their curiosity became irresistible. He turned on his stool to look, too. He saw Mrs Alexander heading for the biggest of the candle-making machines, leading a tall, fair-haired man, and one who was shorter and darker. The fair-haired man stood with his back to Duncan, nodding. Every so often he made notes in a little book. The other man had a camera: he wasn’t interested in how the machine worked; he kept moving about, looking for the best shot of it and the man who ran it. He took a picture, and then another. The camera flashed like bombs.
‘Time and Motion,’ said Len authoritatively. ‘I bet they’re Time and—Look out, they’re coming!’
He sat forward again, took up a stub of wax and a length of wick, and started to fit them together with an air of tremendous industry and concentration. The girls all down the bench fell silent, and worked on as nimbly as before. But when they saw the photographer coming, well ahead of Mrs Alexander and the other man, they began to lift their heads, boldly, one by one. The photographer was lighting a cigarette, his camera swinging from his shoulder on its strap.
Winnie called to him, ‘Aren’t you going to take our picture?’
The photographer looked her over. He looked at the girls who sat beside her, one of whom had a burnt face and hands, shiny with scars, another of whom was almost blind. ‘All right,’ he said. He waited for them to draw together and smile, then held up his camera and put his eye to it. But he only pretended to release the shutter. He pressed the button half-way and made a clicking sound with his tongue.
The girls complained. ‘The bulb didn’t flash!’
The photographer said, ‘It flashed all right. It’s a special, invisible one. It’s an X-ray kind. It sees through clothes.’
This was so obviously something he had come up with to flatter plain girls who pestered him to take their picture, Duncan was almost embarrassed. But Winnie herself, and the other girls, all shrieked with laughter. Even the older women laughed. They were still laughing when Mrs Alexander came over with the fair-haired man.
‘Well, ladies,’ she said indulgently, in her well-bred Edwardian voice, ‘what’s all this?’
The girls tittered. ‘Nothing, Mrs Alexander.’ Then the photographer must have winked or made some gesture, because they all burst out laughing again.
Mrs Alexander waited, but could see at last that she wasn’t going to be let in on the joke. She turned her attention, instead, to Duncan. ‘How are you, Duncan?’
Duncan wiped his hands on his apron and got slowly to his feet. He was well known, throughout the factory, as one of Mrs Alexander’s favourites. People would say to one another, in his hearing, ‘Mrs Alexander’s going to leave Duncan all her money! You’d better be nice to Duncan Pearce, he’s going to be your boss one day!’ Sometimes he made the most of it, hamming it up, raising a laugh. But he always felt a sort of pressure when Mrs Alexander singled him out; and he felt that pressure even more today, because she had brought her visitors with her, and was very obviously about to introduce him to them as if he were her ‘star worker’.
She turned her head, looking for the fair-haired man, who was still putting notes in his book about the candle-making machine. She reached, and just touched his arm. ‘May I show you—?’ Along the bench, the girls had stopped tittering and were all looking up, expectant. The man drew nearer and raised his head. ‘Here’s our little night light department,’ Mrs Alexander said to him. ‘Perhaps Duncan could explain the process to you? Duncan, this is—’
The man, however, had stopped in his tracks and was gazing at Duncan as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. He started grinning. ‘Pearce!’ he said, before Mrs Alexander could go on. And then, at Duncan’s blank stare: ‘Don’t you know me?’
Duncan looked properly into his face; and recognised him at last. He was a man named Fraser—Robert Fraser. He had once been Duncan’s cell-mate in prison.
Duncan was too stunned, for a moment, even to speak. He’d felt, in an instant, plunged right back into the world of their old hall: the smells of it, the muddled, echoey sounds of it, the grinding misery and fear and boredom…His face grew chill, then very warm. He was aware of everyone watching, and felt caught out—caught out by Fraser on the one hand, and by Mrs Alexander, and Len and the girls, on the other.
Fraser, however, had started laughing. He looked as though he felt the oddness of the situation just as Duncan did; but he seemed able to pass it off as a tremendous joke. ‘We’ve met before!’ he said, to Mrs Alexander. ‘We knew each other—well’—he caught Duncan’s eye—‘years ago.’
Mrs Alexander looked, Duncan thought, almost put out. Fraser didn’t notice. He was still grinning into Duncan’s face. He held out his hand, quite formally; but with his other hand he grabbed hold of Duncan’s shoulder and playfully shook him. ‘You look exactly the same!’ he said.
‘You don’t,’ managed Duncan at last.
For Fraser had grown up. When
Duncan had last seen him he’d been twenty-two: lean and white and angular, with a rash of spots on his jaw. Now he must be almost twenty-five—a little older than Duncan himself, in other words, but he was as different from Duncan as it was possible to imagine: broad-shouldered, where Duncan was slender; tanned, and madly healthy-looking and fit. He was dressed in corduroy trousers, an open-necked shirt, and a brown tweed jacket with leather patches on the sleeves. He carried a satchel like a hiker’s bag, with the strap across his chest. His fair hair was long—Duncan, of course, had only ever seen him with it cropped—and quite ungreased: every so often, because of the vigour of his gestures, a lock of it would tumble over his brow, and he kept putting up a hand to smooth it back. His hands were as sun-tanned as his face. His nails were cut bluntly, but shone as if polished.
He looked so grown-up and confident, and so at home in his ordinary clothes, that Duncan, on top of everything else, was suddenly shy of him. In his nervousness he almost laughed; and Mrs Alexander, seeing him smile, smiled too.
‘Mr Fraser,’ she said, ‘has come to write about you, Duncan.’
But at that, he must have looked startled. Fraser said quickly, ‘I’m putting together a piece on the factory, that’s all, for one of the picture weeklies. That’s what I’m doing just now; things like that. Mrs Alexander has been kind enough to show me around. I had no idea—’
For the first time, his grin faltered. He seemed to realise at last what he was doing at Duncan’s bench; and what Duncan was. ‘I had no idea,’ he finished, ‘of finding you here. How long have you been here?’
‘Duncan’s been with us for almost three years,’ said Mrs Alexander, when Duncan hesitated.
Fraser nodded, taking that in.
‘He’s one of our ablest workers.—Duncan, since you and Mr Fraser are such old friends, why don’t you show him what your job entails? Mr Fraser, perhaps your man could take a photograph?’
Fraser looked round, rather vaguely, and the photographer stepped forward. He moved about, lifting the camera to his eye again, squaring up the shot as, reluctantly, Duncan picked up one of the little stubs of wax and began explaining to Fraser about the wicks, the metal sustainers, the flame-proof cups. He did it badly. When the flash of the camera went he blinked and, for a second, lost the thread of what he was saying. Meanwhile Fraser nodded and smiled, struggling to hear, and gazing with a fixed, preoccupied interest at every new thing that was pointed out to him; once or twice putting back that lock of ungreased hair from before his brow. ‘I see how it goes,’ he said, and, ‘Yes, I’ve got it. Of course.’
It only took a minute to explain. Duncan put the night light he had made on to the shuffling belt in the middle of the bench, and it was carried off to the cart at the end of it. ‘That’s all it is,’ he said.
Mrs Alexander moved forward. She had been hovering, all this time, and had the slightly disappointed air of a parent who’d seen their child making a mess of its lines in the school play. But, ‘There,’ she said, as if in satisfaction. ‘Quite a simple process. And every one of our little night lights, you see, has to be put together by hand. I suppose you couldn’t guess at how many you’ve assembled in your time here, Duncan?’
‘Not really,’ answered Duncan.
‘No…Still, you’re keeping well, I hope? And how’s’—she’d thought of a way to save the situation—‘how’s the collection?’ She turned to Fraser. ‘I expect you know, Mr Fraser, that Duncan is a great collector of antiques?’
Fraser, looking partly self-conscious and partly amused, admitted that he didn’t know this. ‘Oh!’ said Mrs Alexander with great enthusiasm. ‘Oh, but it’s quite a hobby of his! All the handsome things he turns up! I call him the scourge of the dealers. What’s your latest find, Duncan?’
Duncan saw that there was no way out of it. He told her, in a rather stilted way, about the cream-jug he’d shown Viv at Mr Mundy’s earlier that week.
Mrs Alexander widened her eyes. Apart from the fact that her voice was raised to combat the din and clatter of the factory floor, she might have been at a tea-party.
‘Three and six, you say? I shall have to tell my friend Miss Martin. Antique silver’s her great passion; she’ll be mad with envy. You must bring the little jug in, Duncan, and show me. Will you do that?’
‘Yes,’ said Duncan. ‘If you like.’
‘Yes, do.—And how, by the way, is your uncle? Duncan takes great care, Mr Fraser, of his uncle—’
Duncan heard this and gave a twitch, took a step, almost in panic. Mrs Alexander saw the expression on his face and misinterpreted it. ‘There,’ she laughed, patting his shoulder, ‘I’m embarrassing you. I’ll leave you to your night lights.’ She nodded down the bench. ‘Len, how are you? Everything all right, Winnie? Mabel, you’ve spoken to Mr Greening about your chair? Good girl.’ She touched Fraser’s arm again. ‘Would you care to follow me, now, to the Packing Room, Mr Fraser?’
Fraser said he would, in just a moment. ‘I’d like to make a note of something here first,’ he said. He waited for her to move off, then began to scribble something in his book. He came close to Duncan again as he did it, saying, in an apologetic way, ‘I have to go, Pearce, as you can see. But, look here. Here’s my address.’ He ripped the page out and handed it over. ‘You’ll give me a call? Some time this week? Will you?’
‘If you like,’ said Duncan again.
Fraser grinned at him. ‘Good man. We can talk properly then. I want to know everything you’ve been doing.’ He moved off, as if reluctantly. ‘Everything!’
Duncan lowered his head, to draw out his stool. When he looked up again, Fraser, the photographer, and Mrs Alexander were just going out of the door that took them through to the next building.
The girls started laughing again the moment the door was closed. Winnie called down, in her squashed-up voice: ‘What’s he given you, Duncan? Is it his address? I’ll give you five bob for it!’
‘I’ll give you six!’ said the girl beside her.
She and another girl got up and tried to grab the paper from him. He fought them off, beginning to laugh—relieved that they’d chosen to take the whole thing in this sort of spirit and not another. Len said, about Fraser, ‘See how he browned up to you, Duncan? He’s heard you’re in line for promotion. Where d’you know him from?’
Duncan was still fending off the girls, and didn’t answer. By the time they’d finished teasing him and moved on to something else, the scrap of paper with Fraser’s address on it had got crumpled almost to a ball. He put it into his apron pocket: he put it right at the bottom of the pocket so that it shouldn’t fall out, but for the next hour or so he kept slipping his hand to it, slyly, as if to reassure himself that it was still there. What he really wanted to do was take it out and have a proper look at it; he didn’t want to do that, though, with so many people about. At last he could bear it no longer. When Mr Champion came round, he asked permission to go to the lavatory. He went into one of the stalls, and locked the door; and took the paper from his pocket and smoothed it out.
He felt much more excited doing this than he’d felt when talking to Fraser face to face; he’d been too self-conscious then, but now the fact of Fraser’s having turned up, and having been so friendly—having gone to the trouble of writing down his address, of saying, ‘You’ll give me a call? Will you?’—seemed wonderful. The address was a Fulham one, and not very far away. Duncan looked at it and began to imagine how it would be if he went round there—say, one evening. He pictured himself making the journey. He thought of the particular clothes he’d wear—not the clothes he was wearing now, which smelt of stearine and scent, but a nice pair of trousers he had, and an open-necked shirt, and a smart jacket. He imagined how he’d be with Fraser when Fraser opened his door. ‘Hello, Fraser,’ he’d say, nonchalantly; and Fraser would cry, in amazement and admiration: ‘Pearce! You look like a proper man at last, now you’ve left that wretched factory!’ ‘Oh, the factory,’ Duncan would answer, with a wave of his
hand. ‘I only go there as a favour to Mrs Alexander…’
He went on daydreaming like this for five or ten minutes—playing the same scene over and over, of himself arriving at Fraser’s door; unable, quite, to imagine what would happen once Fraser had asked him in. He went on doing it, even though he had no intention, actually, of ever going to Fraser’s house; even while a part of him was saying, Fraser won’t want to see you really. He gave you his address for politeness’ sake. He’s the sort of person who gets madly pleased over little things, for a minute, and then forgets all about them…
He heard the swing of the wash-room door, and Mr Champion’s voice: ‘All right in there, Duncan?’
‘Yes, Mr Champion!’ he called; and pulled the chain.
He looked again at the paper in his hand. He didn’t know what to do with it now. Finally he tore it into little pieces and added them to the swirling water in the lavatory.
Must you wriggle so, darling?’ Julia was saying.
Helen moved a shoulder. She said fretfully, ‘It’s these taps. This one’s freezing; the other nearly burns your ear off.’
They were lying together in the bath. They did this every Saturday morning; they took it in turns who had the smooth end, and this week it was Julia’s turn. She was lying with her arms stretched out, her head put back, her eyes closed; she had tied up her hair in a handkerchief but a few strands had fallen and, as the water slopped over them, they moulded themselves to her jaw and throat. Frowning, she tucked them back up behind her ear.
Helen moved again, then found an almost comfortable position and grew still, enjoying at last the lovely creep of the warm water into her armpits, her groin—all the creases and sockets of her flesh. She put her hands flat upon the water’s surface, testing its resistance, feeling its skin. ‘Look at our legs all mixed up,’ she said softly.