Collected Stories

by Beryl Bainbridge

  She never asked if we were going to any Balls. She just hoped. She never asked if I minded her taking my bed. She just assumed. She hid her teeth and her diamond rings under the pillow at night. She put her wig over my statue of a lady patting a dog. Once, a long time ago, Alice, my youngest, had gone in to see her early in the morning. She had tugged at the bedclothes and asked, ‘Are you the cleaning lady?’ I don’t know where she got the idea from. We had never had a cleaning lady, certainly not one that slept on the premises, and my Mum said Alice took after me. During that same visit she offered to buy me a wig. She said I would look a blooming sight better without those rat-tails falling about my ears. I said I couldn’t bear it – what happened if somebody stroked your head and it all slipped sideways? – and she said, you mean men … you’re no better than a prostitute, and I said I never got any money for it. But that was some years past and I treated her better now, more like a parent to a child.

  ‘Anything on the agenda for this evening?’ she asked, sitting down at the table.

  I pretended I hadn’t heard. Instead I said, ‘I’ve got those choccy biccies you like.’

  She said, ‘Goody, goody.’

  Whilst I was pouring the tea the phone rang and I answered it without thinking. It was Eric. He said he was in London for twenty-four hours and he would call round quite soon if I had no objection. I knew my Mum was listening so I couldn’t say no, you can’t, my Mother is here, because she would think it was someone vital and interesting asking me to a Ball and I was putting them off on account of being ashamed of her who had given me birth. So I said, ‘Yes do, thank you.’

  ‘I’ll bring a drop of the you-know-what,’ he said.

  ‘Who was that?’ asked my Mum.

  ‘A friend of Anthea’s.’

  ‘Anthea who?’ She was looking at me hungrily, searching my mouth as if she was deaf and needed to lipread. Just at the edge of her powdered chin was a smear of chocolate.

  ‘Anthea Wilson … you know … down the lane.’

  ‘Anthea Wilson. My word! Her grandmother is still alive, you know … still popping up and down in the lift at the Bon Marché.’

  ‘Is she?’ I said. ‘What about Uncle Teddy?’

  ‘Uncle who?’

  ‘The one with the boating blazer.’

  ‘What boating blazer?’

  ‘You’ve got choccy on your chin.’

  She took out a handkerchief and rubbed her mouth. I stared at her. The light went out of her eyes. ‘There never was an Uncle Teddy,’ she said.

  She never noticed the new curtains or the fact that the floor had been polished. She stared out of the window at the newly planted fox-gloves by the bins and said the weeds were getting out of hand. She didn’t comment on the clean tablecloth. She did spot immediately that the stairs looked bare. She was like a trained athlete when the starting flag begins to dip – she was off in a flash, mouth drooping in disappointment, head a little to one side as she contemplated the naked wood.

  ‘What happened to your stair carpet?’

  ‘I lent it to Edith. I’m getting it back.’

  ‘I see.’ She pulled herself up by the banister rail, a little bundle of fur and false curls, shrunken now the reunion was over, and as always, not up to expectation.

  The man in the trilby hat came at four o’clock. He was awful. He was shaped like a pear drop and his coat wouldn’t fasten and he wore spectacles and woolly gloves. He was holding a big cardboard box in his arms.

  ‘I’ve brought the you-know-what,’ he said. I don’t think he liked me either. He was a bit like my Mum, the way his glance slid away from my face – you could almost see the dream of fair women fading from the dull green glass of his eyes. He was more her age than mine, the same vulnerable generation, quite incapable of disguising disappointment. You’d have thought with all that experience of hunger marches and depression and inhibition, they’d be twice as good at not showing their feelings; but there he stood, face quivering like a neglected baby, eyelids trembling as if to stop tears, just like my Mother over me lending the stair-carpet to Edith. I couldn’t think what Anthea had told him. When we were little she had been the pretty one, sort of Shirley Temple whilst I was sort of Margaret O’Brien. Then later on I thought I got better looking and she went on wearing ankle socks and her high-heeled shoes with her slacks. But that was ten years ago – and standards are different in London. My Mother thinks I look awful, too.

  ‘Oh hallow,’ she cried, perking up as Eric came into the kitchen with his cardboard box. She gave one of her social laughs and tossed her curls about. You could tell Eric was surprised to find a Mother in the house.

  ‘I can see,’ he said, ‘that it’s not convenient at the moment. I’ll call back later.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll call again, will you?’ she trilled. He put down on the table his box full of the you-know-what. He said he would return at nine o’clock when things were settled and I was more myself.

  ‘He seemed rather nice,’ said my Mother. She felt inside the carton with inquisitive fingers. ‘What’s he returning for?’

  ‘It’s business,’ I told her. ‘Something to do with Anthea.’

  She was lifting out a bottle of whisky. ‘Is he a traveller,’ she asked, ‘for Johnny Walker?’

  ‘I think he’s Anthea’s accountant.’

  There were three bottles of whisky, three of gin, and what my Mum called the equipment – dry gingers and bitter lemon.

  ‘Rum sort of accountant,’ she said, ‘bringing all drink.’

  ‘What’s he mean about me being more myself?’ I worried. ‘I’m me now.’

  ‘He probably meant when things were tidier,’ she reasoned, but she was smiling as if the evening promised well for us all. It made me very sad. Sad that Eric on the agenda gave her cause for excitement, sad for Eric that I hadn’t been what he expected, and resentful at both of them for being dependent on me.

  ‘Things,’ I cried, ‘are very tidy. And I’m not asking Edith for the stair carpet back just for that silly old turd in a trilby hat.’ I don’t think she knew what the word meant. She said he had raised his hat to her when he came in. In the end I went round to see Edith and told her to pop in about nine for a drink.

  ‘It’s desperate,’ I said. ‘This awful man thinks there’s going to be an orgy.’ Edith offered to phone Lily. She said Lily was jolly useful at that sort of thing.

  My Mother got dressed up at about eight o’clock. Not exactly a cocktail gown, but practically – off the shoulder brocade and shoes to match. She played several rounds of gin rummy with the children. She couldn’t bear to lose at cards. She added up her score triumphantly and squirmed on her chair with satisfaction, writing down the total with her gold pencil with the tassel. ‘I’ve won, I’ve won,’ she cried, radiant with laughter. The children said nothing.

  I put on a clean jumper and really tried with my hair, back combing it and spraying it to stay in place. ‘Do make yourself presentable,’ said my Mother when I had finished.

  Edith behaved beautifully to her. Gentle and complimentary – almost flirtatious – fingering her earrings and saying how pretty they were and admiring the winkle-picker shoes. ‘You look younger than ever,’ she cried, and my Mum never mentioned the missing stair carpet. They both wanted to start on the drink at once but I wouldn’t let them. I went to the pub and bought a half bottle of whisky to keep them cheerful. They thought I was mad not touching Eric’s cardboard box.

  ‘If he wants to bloody well waste your time coming here, he ought to provide the booze,’ said Edith, looking at me with contempt. My Mother never noticed if other people swore.

  ‘I don’t want to be beholden to the bloody man,’ I protested.

  ‘Wash your mouth out,’ said my Mum.

  I couldn’t sit still, I was so bothered about what Eric expected. I kept thinking of him in his woolly gloves sitting opposite Anthea on the train up to Scotland. She’d probably told him she had an arty friend in London who was divorced and ve
ry friendly and who loved a drop of the you-know-what. It was all based on her knowledge of me when I was fourteen, when she and I had gone to the cinema to see Stewart Granger in Caravan and I had got off with a soldier from Harrington Barracks. ‘Rita Moody,’ Anthea had whined, corkscrew ringlets quivering with agitation, ‘just you dare go off with that soldier.’ And I said it was none of her business and she’d followed me to the Park and seen me go into the bowls pavilion with the soldier and a bottle of sparkling Vimto. She confessed she had listened to the noises we made – she even wrote it down in her diary and put my name in it. I never spoke to her again until we were grown up.

  When Eric came he was smelling of after-shave and he had changed his tie.

  ‘Good God,’ said Edith. ‘So you’re Eric.’

  He was terribly nonplussed at seeing the two women at the table. He huffed up and down the kitchen with his feet splayed out and he gave them a whole bottle of whisky to add to the half-bottle, and some of the ‘equipment’. My Mum kept digging Edith in the ribs, and Edith kept rolling her eyes.

  ‘We’ll just go upstairs,’ I said, ‘and talk a bit of business.’ It was a foolish thing to say but I couldn’t spend the whole evening in the kitchen and not explain that there had been some mistake.

  He did notice the lack of stair carpet. ‘Spot of decorating?’ he said. He thought my living room, once it had been reorganised and decorated, would be very nice. I had spent two years getting my living room as I wanted it, though the ball gowns hanging from the rail obscured the pictures and the photographs. We sat on my green sofa. It was worth an awful lot of money though the springs were lax and he wasn’t doing them any good. We talked about him meeting Anthea on the train.

  ‘Lovely girl,’ he said.

  ‘Look,’ I began, ‘I think there’s been some mistake.’

  ‘I found her very simpatico … if you follow me.’

  ‘Her grandmother,’ I said, ‘is still alive. And her Uncle Teddy.’

  He said, ‘May I make a bold suggestion?’ and I thought how I would write Anthea a very cool letter just as soon as I had a moment. He said if I would turn the light off it would make him feel more peaceful, so I did, because I thought it would be easier to tell him where to get off, if I couldn’t see his face. I had my legs crossed under my long black skirt and a pair of tights and some Greek sandals. I couldn’t really keep the sandals on with stockings, but I tried, and suddenly he caught hold of my ankle.

  ‘May I,’ he said, ‘ask you something personal?’

  ‘There may have been,’ I said, ‘a misunderstanding.’

  ‘I just want to hold your big toe.’

  I didn’t know what to do. ‘I’m not taking my sock off,’ I said weakly. So we sat there in the darkness and he stroked my big toe.

  After a while he confided. ‘I’m very much in favour of going into Europe, though I’m not in favour of a Labour government.’ He sounded very peaceful, almost sleepy.

  ‘I must pop down and see if my Mum is all right,’ I said. She and Edith had almost finished the large bottle of whisky. My Mum looked pretty and gay and unresentful. Had she been alone and without a drink she would have long since created a scene and called me a loose woman.

  ‘Do you know,’ I said, ‘he’s been fiddling with my big toe.’ And we all clutched our stomachs and bellowed with mirth.

  ‘Darling,’ said Edith, ‘it can be very enjoyable … no, don’t laugh’ … and I looked from her to my little Mum and back again and my mouth stretched wide open and for some reason I thought about the chocolate-covered coon man, singing about his silvery moon in the sky, and how once when I was small my Mum had wheeled me on a bicycle when I had been fetched home from school with a stomach ache.

  ‘Do you remember,’ I said, ‘how you held me on that bicycle’ – but she didn’t, she had no recollection. She started saying – ‘what bicycle, what coon, what are you on about?’ – and I went back upstairs to Eric. He wanted to know when they were going home.

  ‘They’re not,’ I said. ‘They live here.’ I sat on a chair on the other side of the room.

  ‘Do you know,’ he said, out of the darkness, ‘I could guarantee that if we lay down anywhere I would not be capable of doing you know what.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘now you mention it, I can guarantee I wouldn’t lie down.’ And we both sat silent, listening to the dresses whispering on the wall.

  ‘Rita … Rita …’ called my Mother. He said he better be going back to his hotel. It had been very nice meeting me.

  ‘I don’t approve of the Common Market,’ I told him, as he went noisily downstairs. ‘And you shouldn’t mess about with people’s feet.’

  He shook hands with my Mother and with Edith. Though she was hostile, you could tell he wished Anthea had given him her address instead of mine. We all watched to see if he would take his cardboard box with him. He moved towards it but Edith looked at him so brutally that he faltered and said he would call for it another time. I wouldn’t go to the door with him. I pretended I felt sick.

  My Mum and Edith talked for hours. Edith fetched a bottle of gin from Eric’s box and they began on that. I couldn’t go to sleep because my Mother had my bed and I was supposed to sleep on the sofa. I didn’t have any extra blankets and I didn’t want her to know how uncomfortable I was when she came to stay. I put on my old fur coat and lay down. She was telling Edith how strange I was. How I’d always been awkward, even as a child.

  ‘That business about the bicycle,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what she’s on about. We never had a bicycle. My husband –’

  ‘– my Dad,’ I said.

  ‘– never had a bicycle. My son never had –’

  ‘– my brother,’ I told her, but she wasn’t listening.

  The room was turning round. I could hear the music. There was Edith with her dark head circling above the tablecloth, and my little Mum, shoulders dipping and her pearls like a string of stars as she flew with outstretched arms, skirts whirling, in a great circle about the ballroom.

  THE MAN FROM WAVERTREE

  Rose had a lodger called Purdy living in the upstairs attic. In the beginning, when he had come to inquire about the vacant accommodation, she had interviewed him in her sitting room. He was a man of taste, she could tell at once. It was the way he looked at the furniture, the wallpaper. His eyes were full of admiration. It was winter and there was a nice fire burning in the grate. She started to tell him the rules of the house; he must keep his crumbs off the floor – she lived in mortal fear of mice – he was not to leave smelly milk bottles on the landing. While she was talking he advanced closer, neck stuck out like a tortoise above his wing collar, till they were standing nose to nose on the rug, squinting at each other. Ho, ho, she thought, this is a right one all right, and on the thought was spun round with two hands low on her hips, and then held with one hand while Purdy beat at her bottom with his flat check cap. Her skirt had begun to smoulder. After he came to live in the house, he said he couldn’t believe his luck, her catching fire like that, and Rose said it was no wonder seeing he had to talk to one so intensely. He explained that he had wax in his ears and relied on lipreading. She did once persuade him to have his ears cleaned out, but he suffered terribly for weeks from all the cups rattling in the Kardomah, and she was forced to buy him earplugs till the wax re-formed. It was the least she could do. They now understood each other, though he had never taken any further liberties with her since that first warm and audacious introduction.

  One evening Purdy asked Rose if she wouldn’t mind answering the telephone on his behalf. He was going to the bagwash. ‘I don’t expect anyone will ring,’ he said. ‘But if you wouldn’t mind taking a few particulars, I’d be grateful.’ He didn’t have a high opinion of her business capabilities, but he couldn’t see what actual harm she could do in the space of an hour.

  ‘I’ll be glad to,’ she said. ‘You run along and attend to your smalls. Leave it to me.’

  She followed him dow
n the hall, inquiring, ‘What will they be ringing about, dear? Anything special?’

  ‘My bike,’ he said. ‘I’m selling my bike. Just give them the address and say I’ll be back in an hour.’

  Rose didn’t like it; she dithered reproachfully on the front step, looking at his motorbike chained to the black railings. ‘Poor little bike,’ she said. ‘How would you like to be sold to strangers?’

  ‘Just say I won’t be long,’ he persisted callously, walking off down Huskinson Street with his washing slung over his back in a pillow slip.

  When he had gone, Rose went upstairs to see if he’d messed the bathroom; he had a habit of spattering the wall above the basin with toothpaste. As she was coming downstairs, the phone rang. It was a gentleman saying he’d seen the advertisement in the Echo and could he know the make of the vehicle in question? No, he couldn’t, she told him. ‘But it’s very nice and it’s got a nice red seat.’ There was a pause. Someone began to knock loudly at the front door.

  ‘How much?’ asked the man on the telephone. He was well spoken – by the sound of him he came from Wavertree. ‘Just a seccy,’ said Rose, ‘I’ve a client clamouring to get in.’

  She ran to the front door and let her next door neighbour into the hall. ‘Hang on,’ she told her. ‘I’m needed on the telephone.’

  She gave her address to the Wavertree gentleman and told him he was very welcome to call. ‘I’m awfully friendly,’ she said, by way of reassuring him. She mentioned he couldn’t miss the house because there was a Union Jack draped upon the balcony, left over from the Festival of Britain. ‘It’s a bit bedraggled but you can’t avoid it.’

  ‘Is it all above board?’ asked the man. He sounded dubious – possibly he didn’t care for the district. Of course it had gone down since the war, but there were still some beautiful houses, and if he was that lah-di-dah, why wasn’t he buying a nice new shiny motor car instead of a worn-out old bike?

  She asked her neighbour if she wanted her hair washed and set, as well as cut. ‘The lot,’ said Mrs Mallison, who was going to a masonic do with her husband on the Saturday.