The Watchers on the Shore

by Stan Barstow

  'Yes, I think those things would be an improvement.'

  'Not that it takes a brilliant mind to think of them.'

  'No, but...'

  He goes off on another tack and starts asking me about myself until, after a few minutes, I have to stop him.

  'You're not interviewing me, are you?'

  He looks a bit taken aback at this straight question.

  'No, it's my job to report on the business.'

  'Well I don't go with it, y'know.'

  'You'll be out of a job before long, though, won't you?'

  'I've got another one.'

  'Oh, well then...'

  'I'm going back into engineering.'

  'You know your own affairs best. But if you'd wanted to talk to somebody at head office I could fix it. And I can make recommendations.'

  'They wouldn't let me keep the shop, would they?'

  .'We usually promote from inside the organization.'

  'And I'd either be working under somebody here or moved to another shop.'

  'There's plenty of chance of promotion.'

  I shake my head. 'No. I had a special relationship with Mr Van Huyten. It's the only reason I came.'

  He seems to have taken a bit of a shine to me, I don't know why. 'Well think about it. You're the kind of man we want. I don't think you'd be just a shop assistant for long.'

  For a second I'm tempted. No upheaval, no moving away, no adapting myself to the drawing board again. And it would suit Ingrid.

  'No, sorry. All my plans are made.'

  'A pity.'He looks at his watch. 'I make it lunchtime. Where do you usually eat?'

  'I have a sandwich round the corner.'

  'Is there a place where they serve lunch?'

  'There's the Dolphin in Bread Street. That's not bad.'

  'Perhaps you'd like to join me. I think the expenses will run to it.'

  'Okay, thanks very much.'

  We get our coats and go out. It's market day and the streets are very busy. We have to wait for a table so we have a pint in the bar before going into the dining-room. I've only ever been in there once before and I look round and locate the table where I sat with Ingrid's father, and remember bits of the conversation ...

  - I get the impression that you feel badly done to and have for some time. As though marriage itself was something that had been imposed on you.

  - I've had a bellyful of being married.

  - So now you're going to chuck it and get out.

  - I haven't said that.

  - I thought you had.

  - I said I could if I wanted to. I said I wasn't going to wait around for any favours and I wasn't going to be pushed into doing any thing I didn't want to do. You can tell Ingrid that from me, and her mother an'all... She doesn't like me, y'know.

  - I know she doesn't. But Ida, and I don't shy away from the idea of you as a son-in-law.

  - Thank you very much.

  Thanks for everything ...

  'Do you use this place much?'Harrap asks me.

  'No, I haven't been in for a year or two now.'

  On the way back we pass the pillar box at the corner of Bread Street and Market Street. I walk by, fingering the two envelopes in my pocket. Then I say wait a minute to Harrap and turn back and slip the letters in. One's to Franklyn, saying I'll take the job, and the other's to Conroy, telling him the same thing and asking him to look out for digs for me. Putting my hand up to the slot, holding the envelopes poised for a second, then letting them drop seals the decision. That's it.

  Ingrid sees me off at the station, something I hadn't thought of. The little ceremony of her riding down on the bus and buying a platform ticket so's she can wait with me till the train comes in makes me feel like a leave-end soldier going away for half a year, when the fact is I plan to be home for the week-end in a fortnight's time.

  'You're sure you've got everything?'

  I look at the big suitcase I borrowed from the Old Man. The handle's bitten into my fingers and the flesh is red and puffy. From the weight of it you'd think the only thing I hadn't brought was the furniture.

  'I'll drop you a line if there's anything I want.'

  'You'll write to me anyway, won't you?'

  'In a day or two, when I know how it's going.'

  'What will you do about your washing?'

  'Send it to the laundry.'

  'You could bring it home and let me do it for you.'

  'I don't see much point in lugging things backwards and forwards every other week-end. When it gets down there it might as well stay.'

  Stay. For good. The visits, the temporary things, will be back here. Has she grasped it yet? Has it sunk in?

  Oh yes, she's got it all right. She's saying good-bye on a deeper level than I am. There's more for her in this than see you in a fortnight. It's the end of something and the beginning of something else that might never be any good. And she's scared to death of it. And holding it in, standing there, moving her feet in the cold, her gloved hands together. She always did look her best in winter, I think; though her heavy coats muffle her neat little body, they don't hide the colour in her cheeks, the soft cleanliness of her hair, and her white teeth with the breath whisping away from them. Nor the length and shape of her legs.

  'You're an attractive little piece, you know. And there's a black man looking you over.'

  The quick lowering of her eyelids and the sideways flick of her eyes is more than a sharp looksee at the West Indian standing a few yards away; it's the way she always takes a compliment. Ingrid hardly ever looks me in the face in times of either personal pleasure or anger. When we make love she'll offer her body and hide her eyes. It might give some people the impression she's sly; but I know it's a deep basic shyness and a lack of confidence in herself that over three years of being married to me have done nothing to cure. And why should it have? The way we started our marriage it would need continuous doting attention like I gave her when I first began taking her out to put her in the position she ought to be in. And it's an act I can't put on. Not that she wouldn't know it was an act anyway. There's too much water gone under our bridge. But at least I'm what she always wanted and I'm what she's got, for what I'm worth.

  The diesel slides into the platform and stops. I pick up the case. The weight of it tugs at my tired shoulder muscles.

  'This is it, then.'

  'Yes, good-bye. You will write, won't you?'

  'Yes, soon as I can.'

  I give her a quick kiss and catch the shine of tears under her eyelids as I pull back. I can't suppress the irritation.

  'Oh, for Pete's sake, Ingrid. I'll see you in a fortnight.'

  'You'd better get on.'

  I move,to the train and turn again once I'm inside the door. She's already walking away, striding briskly along the platform to the gate.

  'Well, what the hell!'

  But I can read unhappiness all over her back and when I go into the carriage and find a seat I've got agitation, restlessness and frustration leaping about inside me. Shovelling coal, digging a ditch, smashing windows. There's any number of things I'd rather do than sit for hours in a train. But something violent.

  6

  Conroy's pad is in a tall narrow house up a street off the London Road, near the railway. Mrs Witherspoon, his landlady, is a small, nodding, bird-like woman who fixes you with her bright little eyes and never seems to hear a word you say, though her head nods and nods as though she's taking all in and hearing the gospels for the first time. Very putting off, because you find yourself raising your voice until you're all but shouting at her and her head nods faster and faster as though to say yes, yes, yes, I can hear you, you don't have to shout, and you wonder if it wouldn't be possible if you ever got really mad with her and told her off for her to nod herself right into a convulsion or something. Conroy tells me not to mind as there's not much I'll need to talk to her about, and if ever I want anything seeing to, the best thing is to do what he does - leave a note (a memo, Albert calls it)
on the kitchen table. ('Conroy, Room Four, to Mrs Witherspoon, c.c. Sanitary Inspector, Longford Borough Corporation, Subject upstairs lavatory. The above-mentioned installation is now in such a condition that it showers the puller of the chain with water rather than flushing away the waste matter in the bowl. I can only conclude that it constitutes a danger to health in this house and I should be obliged if you would kindly arrange to have it rectified.') It's Sunday when I go down there and Albert's arranged to pick me up at the station. 'Tell me what time your train arrives King's X,'his letter said,'and I'll calculate what time you'll reach here.'And only two minutes after I've come out of the station building and I'm stamping about the forecourt trying to keep my feet warm the little red Morris comes round the corner and pulls to a halt in front of me. He winds the window down, grinning at me.

  'How's that for service?'

  'Perfect, Albert.'

  He gets out and hoists my case into the boot himself, exclaiming at the weight of it. 'Jesus, what you got in here, Kilnsey Crag?'

  'That's what I've been wondering. I think Ingrid must have slipped a few bricks in when I wasn't looking.'

  He gives me one of his quick looks.'Everything all right on the home front, is it?'

  This is a bit direct and I wonder what I've said to give myself away to that extent. The crack about the bricks and the little outburst in the pub when I came down for my interview are no more than the kind of things lots of husbands come out with: lines in the battle-of-the-sexes routine they subscribe to all the time. And Conroy, as I recall it, can't know the exact circumstances in which I married Ingrid. Neither could Jimmy be sure because I'd left Whittaker's by that time and the evidence went when Ingrid fell downstairs and brought on her miscarriage.

  I shrug it off. 'Not bad. Ingrid's mother's not well and that complicates things a bit for her. I expect it'll work itself out, though.'

  Conroy just grunts as we get into the car and starts telling me more about him getting me fixed up in his digs for the time being. Maybe I'm too sensitive and reading more into his remark than he meant. But it'll bear watching and I shall have to remember that he's got a bust-up marriage somewhere in his past and he'll be sharp on the signs of strife.

  Mrs Witherspoon nods her way through the introductions then nods me upstairs and into what's to be my room; a pretty cheerless hole to be sure, but what boarding-house room isn't when you've been used to home comforts all your life? A few books, a gramophone, perhaps; maybe even a picture: they'll make a difference. One feature I do like is a narrow french window which appears to open on to a little iron-railed balcony overlooking the railway; but when I go over and try the handle Mrs Witherspoon tells me she had it screwed up in 1942 after a maiden lady living in the room fell three floors into the backyard.

  'Saturday night, it was. She was all right then as far as I know; but on Sunday morning I found her, all crumpled in her nightdress.'

  'What a nasty thing to happen.'

  'Oh yes, indeed, Mr Brown. Very nasty indeed. It upset me for a long time, I can tell you. Not a nice thing to find when you get up on a Sunday morning. Not a nice thing at all.'(Nod, nod, nod.)

  I hold my neck rigid till the muscles start to ache to stop myself from joining in and making her think I'm sending her up.

  'Was it accidental, then?'

  'Oh yes, yes. Accidental death. Or was it misadventure? She would have the window open wide, summer and winter alike, no matter what the weather. I think she walked in her sleep.'(Nod, nod, nod, with a step nearer to me and a conspiratorial look as though the bird in question had been a junkie and stupid with drugs before she fell.)

  I make tut-tutting noises with my tongue. 'I think you did the right thing, Mrs Witherspoon.'

  'I'm sure I did, Mr Brown.'

  'I'm sure you did, Mrs Witherspoon.'

  'Yes indeed. I'm sure there are more people who walk in their sleep than is generally realized.'

  'I'm sure. And it'd look very odd if it happened again, wouldn't it?'

  'Well, of course. That's just what I thought.'

  I'm about to tell her that I've been known to indulge in a spot of nocturnal perambulation in times past, but decide this might unsettle her, so I let it. go.

  'The little pane at the top opens for ventilation. I'm sure you'll find that quite sufficient.'

  'I'm sure that will be ample.'

  'They say we're in for a severe winter.'

  'Yes, they do.'

  'I expect you've had snow already.'

  'Only in Scotland, I believe. I come from Yorkshire.'

  'Yes, of course. You'll find it a pleasant change to live here after being cut off every year.'

  'I live in an industrial town, Mrs Witherspoon. It's only the villages and farms on the moors that get cut off.'

  'Oh, how strange. But I should have known. I had a sister who lived in Yorkshire for a time. I visited her once at her house in Manchester.'

  I'm getting a feeling of going quietly out of my mind when Conroy appears in the doorway behind Mrs Witherspoon and leans against the jamb, his head going in perfect time with hers, Ms face blank. I struggle to keep from laughing as she prattles on a bit longer. Then as she turns to go she sees Conroy. His head stops moving in a flash and his face takes on an expression of friendly interest as he looks at her.

  'But here's Mr Conway. He'll see that you make yourself at home.'

  'Yes, I'll show him the ropes, Mrs Witherspoon.'

  He stands aside to let her pass, but she turns in the doorway with another thought.

  'Just one more thing, Mr Brown. I don't allow dogs or children. I hope it won't inconvenience you, but I have to make it a positive rule.'

  She disappears and I collapse on to the bed.

  'For Christ's sake, Albert. Why didn't you warn me?'

  'I thought I'd let you find out for yourself. Did she tell you about the bird who fell out of the window?'

  'Yeh. That's why it's fastened up.'

  Conroy grins. 'She must have fallen out of every upstairs window in the house. If she ever fell at all. I think it was two other fellers.'

  'She is harmless, I suppose?'

  'Old Lady Witherspoon? 'Course she is.'

  'No dogs or kids. Jesus! What is it about me that makes me run into weird old birds, I wonder... Do you remember me going to Hassop's house and meeting his sister?'

  'No, I never knew that.'

  'It was one time when he had the 'flu. Miller sent me up with a note. She was the queerest one of all. Just like something you find locked up in a turret in a horror film.'

  'No wonder he was an odd bod himself.'

  'Yeh, that's what I thought afterwards.'

  'Is he going strong up there, still?'

  'As far as I know.'

  Conroy grunts. 'And the best of British luck to him.'

  'To him and Lady MacHassop.'

  'Anyway, you think you'll manage here for a bit? It's not exactly three star.'

  'I can't afford three star prices.'I shift round on the bed and lie with my hands behind my head. 'I shan't be here all that long. Just till I can get settled down to the job and have a look round. I think a little flat's the thing to go for. There's only the two of us. We can take our time about finding a house then. Look for something nice.'

  And Mr Van Huyten's legacy will come in nicely for a deposit. Very comforting it is to have the promise of a bit of money.

  I let my eyes run over as much of the room as I can see from where I'm lying: the faded green wallpaper, the mushroomy paint on the door and skirting, the curtained-off alcove with a rail for hanging clothes up, a washbasin and a gas fire. The shape of the room is odd, not a square or a rectangle but trapezoidal, with three good strides from door to window along the longest side and a slope in the ceiling over the alcove where the wall butts up to the pitch of the roof. It'll do for me for a while, though it is small and Conroy, by the window, broad-shouldered and burly, seems to shut out most of the light and fill the room with his bulk.r />
  'You couldn't have many friends in for a chat, that's for sure.'

  'No, it's not made for parties.'

  'What's your room like?'

  'A bit bigger than this. Want to look?'

  I say yes, getting up off the bed. He takes me down to the next floor and into a room at the front of the house. Different wallpaper, same paint. Square. Not big, but more room to walk about in than in mine.

  'You can tell somebody lives here, anyway,'I say, standing in the doorway.

  'Yeh, it's due for a clean-up. You can get to be ;an untidy sod when you live on your own.'

  'I didn't mean that, actually. It's comfortable, though, homely ... When did you take up the rich man's game?'I point to the heads of the golf clubs sticking up behind the fireside chair in the corner.

  'What, golf? Come off it, mate. All kinds of people play nowadays. Haven't you seen the colliers on the courses up north?'He takes a club out of the bag, and a ball which he putts across the carpet.

  'I play with Franklyn on Sunday mornings sometimes. He's a lot better than I am, though. My handicap's colossal. I've tried to get Jimmy interested but I can't. What about you? Why not take up a pastime beneficial to mind, body and spirit?'

  'I've got one,'I tell him, grinning. 'Anyway, I wouldn't be any