‘I can’t talk now,’ whispered Penny. ‘Paul’s just come in.’
‘Oh, him,’ said Sarah crossly, and she hung up.
Paul was Penny and Roy’s son. It wasn’t a nice thing to admit, even to herself, but Sarah didn’t like him. She had never taken to him, not even when he was a baby. As a toddler he had been a pest, and he didn’t greatly improve as he grew older. Once he had torn all the heads off the carnations in her front garden – John was furious – and another time he told Roy’s mother that Sarah and John had gone away for the weekend leaving the children all alone in the house. Roy’s mother had actually rung up to check. Only two years ago he had used a pair of wire cutters on Sarah’s bicycle chain. Of course she couldn’t prove it, but she knew it had been him. His parents, if one was unlucky enough to run into him as he morosely entered or left the house, referred to his behaviour as absent-minded, vague. He never answered when spoken to and was quite capable of pushing aside anybody who happened to be in his path. ‘He’s a bit of a dreamer,’ Roy often remarked. Both Sarah and John felt there were other words that might more accurately describe him, such as bloody-minded, self-engrossed and plain rude. Paul was now fourteen, large for his age and half way to growing a moustache. Irritatingly, Sarah’s own son, Jason, admired him intensely, and, to her way of thinking, saw far too much of him. She was afraid that Paul was a bad influence; she knew for a fact that he smoked, and he still told lies. Penny called them ‘fibs’, but then she was his mother. Sarah herself was a stickler for the truth – as far as her children were concerned. ‘Don’t ever lie to me,’ she would say. ‘It’s just not worth it. The truth never harmed anybody.’
It was fortunate that her opinion of Paul had not affected her friendship with Penny, for after twelve years of marriage Sarah had more or less embarked on an affair with Tony Wentworth.
Tony Wentworth was in the wine-importing business. He and Sarah had met at evening classes at the local primary school. Right from the beginning, when they both could tell that it was going to go further than it should, they had agreed not to bring their private lives into the conversation. Naturally, Sarah had slipped up once or twice, such as the time she couldn’t help mentioning that Jason had just passed his cello exam, Grade II.
‘Don’t tell me,’ Tony Wentworth had said. ‘I don’t want to know.’ And quickly Sarah had added that Jason was away at boarding school, in the country somewhere, and had been for years; she implied that she hardly knew him. It was a lie, of course, but then it sounded better, less adulterous, Jason being away from home and out of reach, instead of around the corner at the local comprehensive school and very much part of her life. ‘I don’t want to know about your past,’ Tony Wentworth had said. ‘The past has nothing to do with us.’ It was a frightfully romantic thing to say.
Penny had met him too; she went to a different evening class but she’d seen him in the canteen. She’d spoken to him once and, though she couldn’t remember in what context, she was sure he’d given the impression that he wasn’t married. Talking it over, neither she nor Sarah particularly believed him. Recently, Penny hadn’t been able to look him in the eye, not since she’d known about the affair. Every time she saw him in the corridor she turned bright pink, as though she’d spent most of her life in a convent. Not that it was actually an affair, not in the true sense, not as yet. Sarah telephoned her, sometimes twice a day, to talk about him. Penny didn’t disapprove. She thought John took Sarah far too much for granted, and in a sense listening to the details of Sarah’s love life was almost as much fun as having a love life of one’s own. More fun in fact, because in time Sarah was bound to be caught out and, knowing old John, possibly dragged through the divorce courts, whereas she herself would remain happily married. Well, married at any rate.
‘Have you seen him?’ she would ask, whenever Sarah rang, and Sarah would usually reply that she hadn’t or, if she had, that it was only for a few snatched moments outside Woolworths or the Savings Bank. ‘So it’s not getting very far, is it?’ Penny would say, and Sarah would have to admit that it wasn’t. But then, as she rightly said, they had nowhere to go. Surely she was too old for thrashing about in the back of a car? ‘You could come here,’ Penny often told her – she was quite sure that Sarah would never dream of it – and then Sarah would go on again about what would happen if Tony Wentworth dropped dead of a heart attack while they were in the middle of it. Inwardly, Penny wondered whether Sarah gained some sort of perverse excitement from the thought of lying under a corpse. Or on top of one. After all Tony Wentworth was at least six years younger than Sarah, and looked as fit as a fiddle.
On Monday morning, as soon as the children had left for school, Sarah telephoned Penny. ‘Well,’ she said, speaking in a defiant tone of voice, ‘what day will be convenient?’
‘Oh dear,’ Penny said.
‘You did offer,’ Sarah reminded her.
‘I know I did,’ said Penny.
‘Well, then?’
‘I don’t know what I’m doing this week.’
‘Yes, you do. You always go to the hairdresser’s on a Thursday.’
‘So I do,’ said Penny.
‘And Paul has football practice.’
‘So he does,’ said Penny.
‘Then it’d better be Thursday,’ Sarah said severely, as though it was Penny and not she who was asking for the loan of a house for an illicit meeting that might end in tears.
They discussed what time Sarah should come round, and whether it would be better to have another key cut or to use Paul’s key which was always kept under the plant-pot on the front step.
‘Another one cut?’ asked Penny, alarmed. ‘Surely that’s not necessary.’ It was going to be difficult enough sitting under the dryer thinking of Sarah and Tony Wentworth bouncing about in her bed on Thursday afternoon without contemplating it on a regular basis.
‘Paul will go to football?’ asked Sarah. ‘He won’t bunk off?’
‘He only bunks off school,’ said Penny. ‘Never football practice.’
She brought up the subject of Sarah’s own children. Was it at all likely that they would come home early and finding her not there call round at Penny’s house? Sarah said they had their own keys and, besides, Jennifer had ballet on Thursday and Jason his cello lesson.
‘Well, that takes care of that then,’ Penny said, and rather fiercely she slammed down the phone. In the afternoon she rang to find out whether Sarah had had second thoughts. Sarah hadn’t.
On the Tuesday Penny nearly didn’t go to her evening class; she didn’t feel she could face Sarah, let alone Tony Wentworth. She felt she had been cast into the role of a procuress, a madame, though of course she wasn’t going to take money at the door.
During the coffee break Tony Wentworth sat at a table in the far corner of the canteen with the fat girl who taught car maintenance.
‘Have you asked him?’ hissed Penny, shielding her face with her hand and speaking through clenched teeth.
Sarah nodded.
‘And is he coming?’
‘Yes,’ said Sarah. She looked far from happy. Her face was pale and her hair, which was curly, seemed to have lost its bounce.
‘It’s not too late to change your mind,’ whispered Penny. ‘You could say one of the children was ill.’
‘You forget,’ said Sarah, ‘I’m only supposed to have one child, and he’s away at boarding school.’
‘Tell him your husband’s ill then.’
‘I’ve hinted I’m a widow,’ Sarah said, ‘so he’s already dead.’
‘Well, tell him it’s against your religion,’ said Penny, and she began to giggle quite loudly.
‘It’s no use,’ said Sarah, ‘I’ve got to go through with it.’ She looked gloomily down at her foot in its open sandal and jiggled her toes, as though they were gangrenous and amputation was the only answer.
When the bell went at the end of the evening Penny ran into the toilets and hid until she was sure Tony Wentworth had gone. She felt if she bu
mped into him she might make some suggestive remark, some obscene gesture; after all it was her bed he would be using.
She telephoned Sarah on the Wednesday. ‘Sorry I rushed off,’ she said. ‘I remembered I’d promised to help Paul with his French.’
‘I didn’t notice,’ Sarah said. ‘Isn’t it a dreadful day? I hate wet weather.’
‘It’s good for the flowers,’ said Penny.
They fell silent, looking out of their windows at the roses bending under the beneficial rain.
‘How do you know Paul actually goes to his football practice?’ asked Sarah abruptly.
‘How do you know Jason goes to his cello lesson?’ countered Penny.
‘Jason’s not a liar,’ said Sarah and, stung, Penny put down the phone.
During the afternoon Sarah rang to apologise for being so tetchy. ‘You know how it is,’ she said. ‘I’m so on edge.’
‘I don’t know how it is,’ Penny said heatedly. ‘I’m not in your situation.’
‘Am I fat?’ asked Sarah.
‘You mean without clothes?’ said Penny. ‘How should I know?’ And again she hung up without saying good-bye.
Sarah called round at Penny’s house a quarter of an hour later. She was tearful and talked about the picnics she and Penny had gone on in the past, when the children were so little that they’d had to wear sun hats. And did Penny remember that time on Clapham Common when a dog had run up to little Jennifer and little Paul in his romper suit had toddled between her and the doggie, waving his chubby little fists and shouting, ‘Go ’way, bad bow-wow.’
‘I remember the time Paul ate all the chocky bickies,’ Penny said, ‘and you said one of them must own up, that the truth never harmed anybody, and Paul said it was him and your Jennifer went and bit him.’
‘Oh,’ whimpered Sarah, ‘weren’t they little darlings! What lovely days those were.’
Penny poured her out a glass of sherry and told her not to be such a fool. If she didn’t want to go through with it, all she had to do was to say so. She, for one, would be relieved. What if John ever came to hear of it? What if Roy ever found out? Why, he’d probably insist on fumigating the house.
‘Of course I’ll bring my own sheets,’ said Sarah, offended, and Penny gave her another glass of sherry because she was weepy again.
On Thursday morning Sarah telephoned to say that she would come round before lunch. Penny said, no, she wouldn’t, that she didn’t want her there until she herself had gone to the hairdresser’s. The whole thing was somehow so deceitful, so calculating; she couldn’t think how she’d been talked into it in the first place. She must have been mad. Roy didn’t like people using his lawn mower, never mind his bedroom. The key would be under the plant-pot, and would Sarah please vacate the premises by five o’clock at the latest. Then she laughed; she was close to hysteria.
It was strange being in the house without Penny there. And even odder stripping the bed and changing the sheets; Roy’s pyjamas were still under the pillow. Sarah had told Tony Wentworth to come at two o’clock, not a moment earlier and not a moment later. He believed he was coming to her house, and she’d invented a cleaner who left at a quarter to two in order to pick up a child from nursery school and returned on the dot of four o’clock. That way Tony Wentworth wouldn’t run into Penny going out, or stay too long and catch her coming in. If the worst came to the worst, she told herself, she could always pass Penny off as the cleaning lady.
At ten to two Sarah was upstairs at the bedroom window, peering through the net curtains at the dusty little garden and the deserted road beyond the hedge. She had decided she would bring Tony Wentworth straight up the stairs. She didn’t want him to see the living room; there was one of those Spanish dolls on the settee. It was disloyal of her but she wouldn’t like Tony Wentworth to think she was capable of choosing quite such a cheerful carpet.
He was on time and he brought her flowers. She had hoped that he might have thought of bringing a bottle of wine. He was wearing a green sports jacket that she hadn’t seen before.
‘It’s a fair-sized house,’ he remarked, ‘for one person.’
‘I prefer it that way,’ said Sarah. ‘It’s nice living on one’s own. We’ll go straight up, shall we?’ And she led the way as though she’d been doing this sort of thing all her life. Which in a sense she had, only with her husband.
Now that Tony Wentworth was actually in Penny and Roy’s bedroom, standing there with that bunch of chrysanthemums crushed against the lapels of his unfamiliar jacket, Sarah felt let down, tired. She longed to put her feet up and watch television. While she was undressing she thought of all the untruths she would tell if John asked her what sort of a day she’d had. It was wicked to tell lies.
She was lying awkwardly in Tony Wentworth’s arms – they hadn’t done anything yet; his skin didn’t feel right and his feet were icy – when they both heard a scrabbling sound outside the window. It’s a cat clawing at the drainpipe, she thought, and then there was a thump. Looking over Tony Wentworth’s pimply shoulder she watched the window swing inwards and Paul clambering over the sill.
‘Hang on,’ he called out to someone on the path below, ‘I’ll let you in.’ He crossed the room and went out of the door.
Tony Wentworth jumped out of bed and struggling into his trousers hopped in pursuit. ‘Come back,’ he shouted, ‘come back, you rotten crook.’
Sarah sat there for a moment with the covers pulled up to her chin. Paul had seen her of course, or rather he had looked straight at her, as though she was part of the furniture. Surely he couldn’t be that self-obsessed. She went to the window and looked down into the garden. There was a young girl in a mini-skirt staring up at the house. Then Paul ran down the path and out through the gate. The girl followed him to the bend of the road, until one of her shoes came off.
Penny telephoned that evening and complained that Sarah hadn’t tidied up the bedroom. ‘You left your sheets on the bed,’ she said. ‘And where are Roy’s pyjamas?’
‘In the dirty clothes basket in the bathroom,’ said Sarah. She waited.
‘Everything go all right?’ asked Penny. Her voice was perfectly normal.
‘I decided not to go through with it,’ said Sarah. ‘I’ll tell you about it another time. I’ve got something else on my mind. Jason’s not been going to his cello classes. He’s been telling lies.’
‘Oh, dear,’ Penny said, ‘never mind. They all do it. Are you going to let him see Paul tonight? He’s expecting him.’
‘I don’t know how I can stop him,’ said Sarah. ‘It’s bound to get out some time!’
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Penny. ‘Are you all right? You sound terrible. Is it the lies? Is it Tony Wentworth that’s depressed you? Is it the weather?’
‘It’s the truth,’ said Sarah, and she hung up.
The truth, as she now realised, always harmed somebody.
THE MAN WHO BLEW AWAY
From the moment he arrived at Gatwick, Pinkerton began to be bothered by God, or rather by signs and portents of a religious nature. It was unexpected, and quite out of character, and he imagined it had something to do with suppressed guilt.
For instance, he was standing in the queue at the bookstall, waiting to pay for a newspaper, when the man in front of him turned abruptly round and uttered the words ‘Go back’. The man wore a chain round his neck from which dangled a crucifix; it was easy to spot because his shirt was unbuttoned to the waist. And then, later, standing in line ready to check in his baggage, Pinkerton realised that he was encircled by nuns. They were not those counterfeit sisters in short modern skirts but proper nuns clad in black from head to foot, moon faces caught in starched wimples. Pinkerton was not a Catholic – if anything, he was a quarter Jewish, though he often kept that to himself – but he immediately felt unworthy at being in such sanctified company and stood aside, losing his place in the queue. It was then that one of the nuns distinctly said, ‘It’s too late, you have been chosen’, and Pi
nkerton replied, ‘You’re right, you’re absolutely right.’ Then he shivered, because she had spoken in a foreign language and he had answered in one, though he had always been hopeless as a linguist and until that moment had never been vouchsafed the gift of tongues. At least, that is how it struck him at the time.
Thinking it over on the aeroplane, he wondered if there wasn’t a simple explanation. The man with the crucifix had obviously not been urging him to return to Crawley but merely requesting that he should step back a few paces. Perhaps his heels had been trodden on. As for the nun, far from alluding either to life in general or to his life in particular, she had referred only to the passing of the hour. Possibly she had meant that there was no time to go to the Duty Free and buy crème de menthe for the Mother Superior. The business of his sudden comprehension of Dutch or German, or whatever guttural language it had been, was a little more tricky to explain. But then, hadn’t he muddled it up a little and got the words in the wrong order? What she must have said, to a nun behind him, was You were chosen and then added the bit about it being too late, not the other way round. It made far more sense.
He had just decided that he had been the victim of one of those flashes of intuition which women seemed to be afflicted with most of the time, when he happened to glance out of the window. In the fraction of the second before he blinked, he saw a dazzling monster swimming through the blue sky, half fish, half bird, with scales of gold and wings of silver. He turned his head away instantly, and ordered a Scotch and soda. Afterwards he fell asleep and dreamed he was having a liaison, of a dangerous kind, with a woman who had been convent-educated.
At Athens there was some hitch in the operational schedule and he learnt that his flight to Corfu would be delayed for several hours. There was nowhere for him to sit down and the place was crowded. After two hours he gave in and, spreading his newspaper on the floor, sat hunched against a concrete ash-tray. Miserably hot, he was afraid to remove his sports jacket in case his passport was stolen. It would be all up with him if he had to turn to the British Consulate for help. They would very probably telex home and ask Gloria to describe him, and she, believing him to be elsewhere, would almost certainly say that it couldn’t be him; disowned, he would be flung into jail. He had heard about foreign jails. A youngster in the office had been involved in some minor infringement of the traffic regulations in Spain and it had cost his widowed mother three hundred pounds to have him released. It was obviously a racket. To add insult to injury, he had been stabbed in the ankle by a demented Swiss who happened to be sharing his cell.
Collected Stories Page 10