Late Call

by Angus Wilson

  “Mrs. Tuffield says you’re leavin’, ma’am. I’m sorry for that, I’m sure.”

  “There’s nothing to discuss about it, thank you, Mr. Tuffield.”

  “Ah, but there is ma’am. If it’s that girl that’s been botherin’ you, that won’t bother you no more. That weren’t only you that complained, I ‘ad my neighbour Snushall laughin’ at me on account of ‘er. I’ve bum basted ‘er proper.”

  “Please, Mr. Tuffield, I don’t want to hear about it. It’s all wrong to beat a child like that. Unfortunately she’s your child and I can do nothing about it.”

  He seemed to her to grin. “That’s right, ma’am,” he said.

  “But I can and do tell you to get out of this room.”

  Something malicious came into his eyes as he looked at the lady. “Till the blood run,” he said, and went out of the parlour, closing the door quietly behind him.

  All that evening Mrs. Longmore debated what she could do. She heard Mr. and Mrs. Tuffield go up to their room. She heard their snoring. Finally, exhausted, she went upstairs herself. Derek in his little cupboard of a room was fast asleep. In the room they shared, Myra in a cot, was turning fretfully. Mrs. Longmore put on her white silk nightgown, unloosed her long black hair and sat brushing it before the little stained dressing-table mirror. Then suddenly she thought of something. She opened one of the trunks she had so painfully packed in the afternoon, and rummaging at the side, pulled out a long lemon-coloured piece of tulle. She had worn it one evening round her head, to the little Tuffield girl’s great wonder. Now, tiptoeing across the corridor, she entered the Tuffield children’s bedroom. She had not somehow expected to find them all sleeping in one large bed with the eldest girl lying on her stomach in the middle. She was moaning still, but it seemed, in her sleep. Mrs. Longmore bent down and placed the chiffon scarf on the hump which she guessed to be the little girl’s feet. She was glad to get out of the stuffy, ill-smelling room. It was little enough she had done, God knew, but it was something.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Leavetaking

  SYLVIA CALVERT hated being the centre of any public show; it made her face hot with blushing and she always felt she wanted to go somewhere. But on an occasion like this when she knew everybody, there was no reason to feel shy. So she had made up her mind to be made a fuss of for once in her life. She had sent Arthur down to his club so that he shouldn’t spoil things for her by monopolising the occasion or giving way to a lot of false sentiment. It’s only the fakes that carry on in public. Not that Sylvia had to restrain any strong emotions herself at leaving Palmeira Court or parting from its residents. She’d left so many other hotels, known too many people in her life to get upset by such things now. Keep your feelings for your own flesh and blood was what she had come more and more to think. And even then the Calverts were not a sloppy family—Arthur’s nonsense these days was just old age. When the boys were going back from leave in the war, she’d never done more than chaff them a bit. She’d say, “Remember me to Hitler when you put him up against the wall.” To Harold who spent his war at a desk! Or, “Think of my pillow slips next time, Len, with that fancy hair cream of yours.” Len was quite struck on his own good looks. And Harold would reply, “A fond farewell, people all,” and Len, “I’ll be back again like a bad penny, Mum.” Only he didn’t come back. So there was more to fuss about in life than leaving the place you’ve worked at.

  Yet this evening was an occasion; and she hadn’t had so many of those in her life. She had put on her black velvet dress and her long ear-rings, and the day before she’d had a perm and a blue rinse. She had thought to sit back and enjoy being the centre of attention for one evening. And now they had chosen old Miss Hutton of all people to deliver the farewell speech. And not only did Miss Hutton spit when she spoke so that little beads of moisture settled on Sylvia’s dress, but she had a marked hump. A hump that thrust whiffs of camphor at Sylvia each time the old girl jerked nervously forward into a new sentence of her speech. Sylvia hadn’t let other people touch her except to shake hands for years—oh, of course, she’d kissed the children and grandchildren when they were kids, but Judy, her youngest grandchild, was already seventeen—yet who knew with these humps whether you could always avoid touch? That and the spit. There was no sense in getting steamed up about it. That was the first rule the doctor had given her—avoid all fuss, relax. So, surprising herself by admiring her own plump white arm as it showed through the slashed black velvet sleeve, she took a sip of gin and it, and then relaxed with a puff of her cigarette. And the doctor’s orders worked too: for exhaling slowly, she so put Miss Hutton off the end of her speech with a cloud of tobacco smoke that she had to smile to herself at the old girl’s startled expression. The smile turned to suppressed laughter and that, giving rise in turn to a rumble in her tummy, made her by association feel comfy and contented as though she had had a rich meal.

  “I know you’ll forgive me,” Miss Hutton was saying, “if I recall my own retirement. We old people become very egotistical. But on that occasion I said to my girls ‘Always make time your slave, never let it be your master’. And so, dear Mrs. Calvert,” Miss Hutton was ending, “just in case it may seem to you that Time has caught up with you now that you’re retiring, we’ve decided to give you an electric clock. You won’t have to be an early riser any longer for the rest of your life, you’ll be able to ask for a late call. And we shall picture you, defying Time, lying snugly in bed when this clock strikes seven; just turning over and going to sleep again, knowing that you haven’t got to worry about all the troublesome residents of Palmeira Court to whom you’ve been so very kind for so many years. And if when the clock strikes, you do think of us, don’t remember all our little grumbles and grouses; just remember that you brought a lot of comfort to people, many of whom were old and most of whom were lonely.”

  Crooked, grey and forbidding, she sat down, her hands trembling a little from the strain of the forgotten pleasure of public address. Oh Lord! Sylvia thought, that’s put the fat in the fire. She could see Mrs. Streeter stiffen, and Charlie Webster, they were both under sixty and didn’t think of themselves as lonely at all; Commander Anderson was sunk in gloom so that when he gave one of those involuntary groans that his arthritic pains forced from him he seemed to be protesting at Miss Hutton’s exposure of his loneliness; and little Mrs. Tyler, who might soon have to go to an old people’s home because she could no longer care for herself, had shrunk down behind one of the vast leather armchairs as though Miss Hutton’s words might summon the dreaded uniformed attendants to take her away.

  “Thank you very much indeed,” Sylvia said loudly. If it hadn’t been for the need to repair Miss Hutton’s gaffe, she wouldn’t have been able to speak above a whisper. She never could in public; at her wedding breakfast she couldn’t even get “Cheerio” out so as anyone could hear. “I knew my own dial had got a bit battered,” she went on, encouraged by the firm tone of her own voice, “but I didn’t expect to have it replaced quite so soon.” Seeing that some were puzzled by her joke and others disapproved of it, she subsided into a whisper, “But thank you very much all the same.” She buried her nose in her now empty glass.

  Miss Hutton began to explain the gift to her for all the world as though electric clocks had only just come on the market. As if Harold’s house would not have all the latest equipment of every kind! But Sylvia listened quietly, for the old girl didn’t have so much opportunity to hand it down nowadays. Then, as one after another the old dears came up to thank her for being “so thoughtful”, “making just that little difference”, “bothering with an old man”, “always having a jolly word”, she began to feel increasingly embarrassed, and finally impatient, even annoyed. Of course it was nice to know that she’d done her job properly and made them all comfortable, but this personal note .... She almost felt that she was being mocked. After all she’d never done more than her duty. But that was it, people were so insincere, they exaggerated everything. Well, whatever they felt s
he knew for certain that she’d have forgotten most of their names and all their faces within a few weeks. Embarrassed by all the fussing, she found herself studying her nails although she’d only just orange-sticked them, or staring over the shoulders of those who came up to her; anything to avoid looking at them. Old and lonely—well, of course, it was true, but so were most people, one or the other or both. It certainly did no good to talk about it. It wasn’t doing her any good either to get all steamed up. Abruptly, so abruptly that she cut Mrs. Dyer off in full gush of gratitude, Sylvia got up, mumbled a few inaudible words about tomorrow’s tiring journey and walked out of the lounge. Perhaps it was her paste and emerald earrings, her newly-blued hair and her black velvet dress, but she felt quite aloof from them all as she left them. She was no longer the manageress.

  Upstairs in her small private sitting room in dressing gown and slippers she did not feel aloof at all, just weary and disappointed. She ought, of course, to have shown more pleasure, but she was impatient to begin her new life. She was always one to get on with what must be. Also the scene had somehow disappointed. What was it that she had expected when they first spoke of “a presentation”? A picture flashed before her, from long ago—she couldn’t exactly place it. Shy faces, comic ones, well known they were, peering, or rather “peeking” round a door; and one of the figures coming forward very timidly, elbowed on by the others . . . the present—-yes, to present a gift to a tall, fine-looking woman, majestic but not superior. Of course! It was Marie Dressier . . . and the others peeping timidly round the door were a whole lot of film comics, or rather “characters”—Donald Meek and May Robson and Edna May Oliver and Zasu Pitts. A lot of old actors they’d been in that film honouring a famous star on her retirement. Marie Dressier had played the star. Oh well, she wouldn’t have minded being Marie Dressier with her handsome looks and superb figure, and yet with no airs, just an old trouper as they called them. But that was how it should have been this evening—all the old things peeping round the door too shy to come in. Not that she wanted to queen it. Only that it would have been more of an occasion, more like a real presentation. But there you are, they’ve time and money enough on the films to make things real.

  Sylvia was not, in fact, to leave Palmeira Court without people peeking round her sitting-room door. Three of them, to be exact. First—very shyly—Mr. Martineau, retired from the building trade, with his own sitting room at the hotel, indeed with his own large comfortable house if his wife had not recently died, making housekeeping impossible. “Oh, excuse me Mrs. Calvert, I’m sure, I thought the Captain might be here.” Nice old thing he was, but lonely without his wife; you had to keep him at bay. And then it all came out, somewhat timidly, because Mr. Martineau, having put away a nice little pile, didn’t want to appear grasping. “If it wasn’t that I’m afraid the Captain’s forgotten about it and I know you’re off early tomorrow . . . .” Sylvia did not, in fact, blame him for wanting his money back, but when she learned the amount that Arthur had borrowed, she decided to make no immediate promises. Ninety pounds would be a large sum for them in retirement.

  “I’ll speak to Captain Calvert as soon as we’re settled in at my son’s.” She said nothing about future repayment, because she held in horror the making of false promises or the telling of lies.

  The old man had hardly gone, mumbling apologies, when Pat Reynolds breezed in. Sylvia often thought of Pat as the kind of girl . . . well, not that she would have liked to have been herself, she would never have had the brains . . . but the girl that Iris would have been if she had lived. The same quiet good looks —dark hair, creamy skin—and the same easy, jolly, chaffing manner that Iris had shown even as a schoolgirl of fourteen. Pat was already chief staff supervisor with the people that made radio sets out at Arkley, and she couldn’t be much more than thirty. Sylvia only hoped she wasn’t letting all her chances of marriage go by.

  “Hullo, dear Mrs. C. I didn’t come to the Great Occasion. I couldn’t face the Hutton on the soap box. I was definitely anti-the clock anyway. So I brought you this. May you smell nice wherever you go.” She gave Sylvia a bottle of Chanel No. 5. “By the way, not to worry about the twenty pounds. Any old time’ll do. But I do think you could have asked me yourself, not sent the Cap. round instead.”

  Sylvia tried to disguise her surprise, but Pat’s present had softened her so that her emotions were near to the surface. “Oh, it’s too bad of him,” Pat exclaimed. “I’ll give him a piece of my mind when I see him. I like the old boy, but why couldn’t he say he wanted it for himself? Not to worry, Mrs. C, definitely not to worry. Just stop his pocket money from me, that’s all.” She leaned towards Sylvia as she spoke; and Sylvia automatically turned her head away. Straightening up, Pat said, “Well, cheerio Mrs. C. Best of luck,” and was gone.

  To have had her last talk with the only resident she really liked so spoiled brought Sylvia near to tears. And why had she to turn away like that? It would not have hurt her if the girl had kissed her. Yet that, too, was Arthur’s fault, for if Pat had not suddenly pitied her so much, she would never have thought of kissing her. She wasn’t a sloppy sort of a girl at all.

  The culmination of these nasty surprises (not that, knowing Arthur, she could really say she was surprised) came when a few minutes later a knock on the door introduced Mrs. Amherst. Luckily Sylvia’s desk was open, the flap covered with old letters she had been sorting out earlier that evening, so that she immediately sat herself before it, only worrying that her dressing-gown might give her away. She would never do her correspondence in a dressing-gown, but how could the woman know that?

  “Yes, Mrs. Amherst, what can I do for you?” Pretending to be busy like that was something she could hardly remember in her life before, but she could sense disaster (they say women can foretell these things). She had decided over a year ago, when all the unpleasantness with Arthur happened, that relations between her and Mrs. A should be strictly those of manageress and guest. Sylvia had been the wronged party, and had determined not to have anything out in the open, for being wronged means being an object of contempt.

  Mrs. Amherst’s words scuttled round the room—sweet yet explosive. As though she had let fall a basin of loaf sugar on to the floor, Sylvia thought, and if there was one thing she hated it was sugar, even in tea or coffee. She tried not to look at the little woman’s scrawny, grimacing face with its silly dabs of rouge on the cheeks; and when she realised that the hard, sugary words being poured at her were intended to melt and coat her with false intimacy, she tried resolutely not to hear. Some words, of course, got through—”so appreciated all you’ve done ... so busy we see nothing of you, sometimes felt I’ve not been a favourite . . . natural enough you should have them of course.”

  Sylvia pressed her hands firmly on the desk flap to prevent herself from crying ... on her last day, on her last day. She would have thanked God that she was going, if it weren’t that she couldn’t tell about the future. She drove the woman’s words from her consciousness, but into the vacuum swelled other images and other voices. Arthur’s hand, white and vein-knotted now that he was old, with freckly, yellow patches spreading each year on the loose skin, his hand scrabbling under a tight skirt. The Company’s letter. “Dear Mrs. Calvert, It is with particular regret we have .... Of course all our sixteen hotels, we have no hesitation in saying that the Palmeira Court has under your management . . . and this at a time when the trade of seaside hotels has seriously deteriorated” . . . scrabbling among all that scrag and bone, scrag end of mutton done up lamb . . . “letters from a resident. . . unfortunately only too certainly confirmed by-inquiries among other guests . .. persistent talk, obscene language, sufficient in a visitor to justify giving notice, totally impossible in the husband of the manageress . . . .” She had been up to London to see the Company’s secretary. “We wouldn’t show the letters of complaint to anyone else, Mrs. Calvert. And even so I must insist on absolute secrecy.” . . . “To be perfectly frank I can only excuse some of his habits
in the belief that he must be getting senile, but that doesn’t make it any more pleasant for us ladies, sincerely yours, Lois Amherst.” And finally the Company’s decision—”must insist that he doesn’t enter the public sitting rooms. . . .”

  “I’ve sometimes wondered if I’ve offended you in some way, Mrs. Calvert. I’m afraid perhaps that the Captain’s making a fool of himself about me—it seems silly to talk about it even, but I wondered if you’d taken it a little more seriously than I ever did. I soon put him in his place, you know.” Sylvia’s legs started to shake beneath the desk, soon the trembling would seize her whole body. I’m too fat now to disguise it, she drought, the bitch is bound to notice. I must throw her out of the room, fell her with a blow, anything to get rid of the woman before my body betrays me.

  “You opened your legs out to his hands,” she said, “I saw.” She felt a hot flush spreading up her neck; she knew that if she stood up she would fall. One of her giddy spells. This sort of scene was just what the doctor had warned her against. Her anxiety drove her amazement at what she had said from her mind, but Mrs. Amherst’s appalled expression recalled her.

  When the sugar poured forth again, it cracked and clattered against Sylvia’s plump body like hail. Mrs. Amherst intended to freeze, but her agitation broke her attempted dignity up into an absurd spluttering.

  “Filthy! How could you? Captain indeed! Common cockney! I’ve always said, never touch pitch.” With effort she controlled herself to add demurely, like a small girl giving evidence, “He’s old enough to be my father.”

  It was quite true, Sylvia decided; for all her yellow chicken-skinned neck, she could be no more than fifty. How could he have let himself stroke such a scrawn? She remembered the feel of his hand in tenderness upon her own body in their early married days. And now the same hand had itched after that rubbish. And the woman, too, must have wanted it pretty badly at fifty, to encourage a man of seventy. Realising the contradictory conclusion of her thoughts, Sylvia gave a loud, scornful laugh.