I Don't Want to Know Anyone Too Well

by Norman Levine

  It means a trip to London, Gordon thought. And that was enough to make him get up.

  He dressed and went to the window and pulled back the brown curtain. The diagonal crack in the glass was like a scar. The fields, across the road, muddy and drab. The trees on the border of the field—misshapen by the ivy that was slowly killing them—looked very pretty. He watched a motorcycle accelerate as it went by splashing mud on either side and with a muddy wake. Then he closed the light in their bedroom and went down a narrow passage. By the children’s open door: the smell of urine, the camp bed, the mug of water, the comics and books on top of an overturned orange case. He turned sharply. Down the narrow stairs. At the bottom he opened a door and immediately felt the warm air. It was the one room that was warm. A coal-fire was going in the fireplace. Beside it, in a corner, was a baby’s cot.

  Kate stood by the cot dressed in a jumper, a red sweater, which someone had given them when their own children had grown out of the clothes. She was talking to the baby. “Ah goo lie goo Rachel. Ah goo lie goo.” The baby stood up in the cot, grasping the wooden struts, and gurgled back a couple of vowels. She looked like something caught in a cage.

  “Good morning,” Gordon said cheerfully to the children and went into the kitchen.

  Coral was at the stove. “High keeps changing,” she said. “I don’t know if the hot plate is off or on.”

  “Use the master switch.”

  Then he decided it would be better to show her. “Off,” he said and put the switch up. “On,” he pulled it down.

  “What do you want,” she said. “There’s a bit of cheese—I could make toast.”

  “Fine,” he said and went into the other room. Kate was playing with some pieces of paper and a pencil. The baby was crawling on the floor to the coal bucket. She took pieces of coal and tried to put them in her mouth. Her lips were black. Gordon took the bucket away and put it by the side of the fireplace, behind a chair. The child crawled after it.

  “What post did you have?” she said, bringing in the toast and cheese.

  “A reminder from the electricity.”

  “When are they coming?”

  “Tomorrow.” He tried to appear casual. “I guess I’ll have to go to London.”

  “Where Daddy going?” Kate said quickly.

  “To London—I’ll bring you back something.”

  “A dolly,” the child said excitedly.

  “What will you do?” Coral said.

  “I’ll try the bank first—I’ll find a way.”

  “You know how I hate this place.”

  “I know.”

  And he prepared himself for her to follow with: you can always get away but I’m stuck here . . . My hands are tied . . . I’m the one that’s always left behind. Instead she said, “When you’re up could you look around?”

  “I’ll go and see some real estate people.”

  “Try somewhere near a park.”

  “I’ll try darling.”

  “This isn’t just you saying things to keep me happy? You will do something.”

  “Yes,” he said quietly.

  “We’ve got less than two months.”

  “You know how I work,” he tried to sound convincing. “Leave things until the last week. Then I get something.”

  She didn’t reply. He was nearly there, he thought.

  “You won’t forget.”

  And he was safe now.

  “I’ll do my best darling,” he said and got up. “I’d better shave.”

  There was some hot water left in the kettle. He emptied it into a tin mould that she used to make cakes in, mixed a bit of cold water from the tap, and shaved in front of the mirror, above the dishes.

  He tried to tidy his sideburns and realized that his face looked odd. It was the eyes. The left one set at an angle. He saw it as well in the baby. Around the small mirror was the kitchen window with old spiderwebs. Cuts in the snow skiers made climbing a hill sideways. And for a moment he was back to the pressure the cold made on his forehead. He was in a sleigh sitting behind the swaying rump of a horse held in its tight harness, with Holly. Past white fields with the telegraph poles just protruding. I could tell, she said, when you held my hand to take my coat off. And Jasmine. It snowed all that day in Montreal. After the lecture they went to the Berkeley and drank Brandy Alexanders until it was time to go. The expensive gloom of her parents’ apartment. The thing like a curled bulrush that she took from out her hair. And Lily. How quick it was with her . . . She had her own car. Her father owned an entire small town in Northern Ontario. He wondered what would have happened to his life had he made one of them pregnant.

  “Don’t forget to empty the bucket,” Coral called from the other room.

  He took a spade from the shed, walked along the path to the back garden. Halfway down he selected a part of bare earth and began to dig. He emptied the almost full black bucket into the hole he made. Then shovelled the earth back into the hole. It splashed gently. Then the liquid overflowed and stained the earth. He came back into the kitchen. “I’ve emptied the bucket,” he said to Coral. He washed his hands. “Is there anything left?”

  She went to the dresser with the few dishes and from a Peter Rabbit saucer took out a halfpenny and a 3d. stamp. He put the halfpenny in his pocket, then went upstairs, into his room, and put on his one clean white shirt. He took down his trousers hanging from a hook on a hanger in the corner. They were the trousers of his one remaining suit. He saw how frayed the bottoms were. He took the small scissors from his desk and cut some of the hanging threads. He put on the trousers, his tie and jacket, and came down carrying the black winter overcoat that he bought twelve years ago when he was at university. He put it on. Coral brushed him down. The children were crowding around him.

  “You look nice, Daddy,” Kate said.

  “You will look around,” Coral said.

  “Yes,” he said, then smiled to the children.

  “I’ll bring you back something nice.”

  “A dolly?” Kate said.

  “Something to eat.”

  Coral picked up the baby.

  He kissed them all goodbye.

  They went with him to the front gate, and watched him walk along the road away from them. Kate climbed up the wooden gate and said goodbye several times. And they waved to each other.

  From a distance of ten yards, Coral thought, he was still handsome and looked neat and successful. There was the confident manner, the upright walk. He turned and waved back to them. From some thirty yards, she thought, he looked even better. He might have been an executive going off to the office, to work.

  He looked for darkness in the windshield. He could tell quickly by the amount of darkness, the outline (like those outlines they had trained him to look at in a tenth, a twentieth, a fiftieth of a second), whether the driver of the coming car was alone or not. He didn’t bother to put up his hand if there were two.

  II

  From Piccadilly, Gordon walked down Lower Regent Street and into the bank, across the light marble floor, to the short teller with the Italian-sounding name. They shook hands and asked each other questions as if they knew one another well.

  “I’ve just come up for the day,” Gordon said.

  “How is the family?”

  “Fine. And yours?”

  “They’re fine. We went to Connemara for a holiday.” He smiled and took out some photographs. “It was wonderful—the best holiday we had.”

  There were photographs of some children by a pony, by a cottage. And the bank teller in a pair of shorts.

  “May I see the manager?”

  “I’ll see if he is free.”

  He left his cage and out of it looked even smaller but long in the arms.

  He came back smiling. “The manager is busy. But our assistant manager, Mister Henderson, w
ill see you.”

  “Come in, Mister Rideau.”

  The assistant manager, unlike most North Americans, looked much older than his forty-two years. But his “Sit down, Mister Rideau. Cigarette?” had a professional warmth. “Now, what’s the trouble?”

  “I have an electricity bill just over twelve pounds that I must meet tomorrow or else they’ll cut us off. Could the bank let me overdraw fifteen pounds? It will only be for a short time. I’ve got money coming in.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s impossible,” the assistant manager said. “I can’t let you have a pound.” He lowered his voice. “He gave me strict instructions.” And his eyes indicated the frosted glass partition of the other room.

  “But I’ve been with the bank for seven years.”

  “He doesn’t consider you a banking proposition.”

  They were both silent. The assistant manager looked uncomfortable. “Are you a veteran?”

  “Yes,” Gordon said, “I was in the Army,” and remembered a time in Montreal, after taking a girl home to the Town of Mount Royal, he flagged a cab and found he didn’t have enough money to get back. He told this to the driver. “Are you a veteran?” the driver asked.

  “I was in the Air Force,” the assistant manager said. He crushed his cigarette in the green-glass ashtray. Then stood up and walked away from his desk. Gordon also got up. The assistant manager put his hands in his trouser pockets.

  “I’m sorry I can’t let you have the money. Take this. Pay it back when you can. Please.”

  “Thanks, I’ll pay it back soon as I can.”

  “There’s no rush.”

  He wondered if the assistant manager was now going to give him a lecture. But they shook hands and said goodbye.

  Outside, walking up the Haymarket, Gordon took the bill out and saw it was a five-pound note. He was delighted. Imagine getting money from an assistant bank manager he had never met. But a moment later it also registered on him that the probable reason he got the money was because the assistant manager had never laid eyes on him before.

  At a small kiosk he bought a pack of tipped Gauloises, a box of matches, an Evening Standard, then walked along Piccadilly to Lyons Corner House. He went into the Wimpy side, found an empty table by the wall, ordered two hamburgers and a black coffee. Around the centre counter, North Americans were staring at other North Americans. It might have been the drugstore back home, except they were on good behaviour.

  III

  The alarm clock woke Mr. and Mrs. Black at seven, even though Mr. Black wasn’t going to work. He went to shave, and used the foam lather of the company whose assistant accountant he was. Then he sat down in the room with the Van Gogh print on the wall, the souvenir ashtray from Clovelly, the silver napkin rings, the photograph of himself in the Home Guard, while Mrs. Black did his porridge and the two pieces of toast in the kitchen.

  “You won’t get excited,” Mrs. Black said as they were having their second cup of tea.

  “No dear.”

  “She could have her old room. The children could sleep in the spare room. And there’s the camp bed.”

  Mr. Black put on the jacket of his dark suit, the homburg hat, the black coat. He was a handsome if stern-looking man with dark, straight hair and a lean face, but there was a strain about it, the result of a lifetime of bronchial trouble.

  “Do you want to take anything for the train?” Mrs. Black said, standing by the glass-enclosed cabinet with her Mary Webb novels and his Lord Jim, James Agate, The Quest for Corvo, the books on accountancy.

  “I have the paper.”

  “I hope it goes all right,” Mrs. Black said at the door.

  “I’ll be back for tea. Goodbye dear.”

  The train went by Eltham, Kidbrooke, Lewisham. Mr. Black turned to the Telegraph’s crossword “_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ is mortal’s chieftest enemy” (Shakespeare). He tried “dying.” But that wasn’t long enough. Neither was “boredom.” “Temptation” was too long . . .

  At Charing Cross he changed to a tube that took him to Victoria, and here he had to wait another ten minutes for a train to Horsham. At Horsham he took a taxi to the cottage. It was 10:20 when he opened the front gate, but he didn’t go to the front door. He went around the side of the cottage, where he surprised Coral hanging up the children’s washing.

  “Hullo,” he said quietly.

  They smiled, then they kissed. And one could see a family resemblance.

  She opened the kitchen door and led him into the warm room where he took off his coat.

  “How is Mummy?”

  “She sends her love.”

  He gave the children some toffee candy.

  “Gordon is in London,” she said. “He had to go up on business.”

  “Daddy is going to bring me a dolly,” Kate said.

  “We haven’t had our milk,” Coral said. “I could make tea without it.”

  Mr. Black sat in the worn red chair. His breathing was audible. “You can’t go on like this,” he said quietly.

  Coral quickly took the children into the next room and closed the door behind them.

  “Why don’t you leave him,” Mr. Black said. “I’ll see that you and the children are looked after. I’ll get you a house—”

  She didn’t reply.

  “He’s no good,” he said. “He’ll only drag you down.”

  “I can’t leave him,” she said.

  “If he wants to go on like this there’s no reason why you and the children—”

  “He’s got no one except me and the children.”

  “I’ll get you a house—” he began, but he knew it had not gone right. This wasn’t the way he had rehearsed it.

  “I think you must hate me,” Coral said.

  “I don’t hate you,” Mr. Black said. But he was at a loss as to what to say next.

  Kate came into the room, followed by the crawling baby. Kate had a drawing. “This is for you Grandpa.” He took the drawing and gave the child a half-crown. He also gave Coral three one-pound notes. She immediately went next door to the grocery and came back with milk, sugar, and some biscuits. They sat in the warm room and had tea while Mr. Black told her about a cousin who had gone to Rhodesia to run an Outward Bound school. That an uncle had become manager of a bank in Plymouth. And another cousin had gone to Canada as a physical training instructor. It was time, he said, he was leaving. They walked slowly up the road to the Shell garage, where Mr. Black took a taxi. Kate kissed him. So did Coral. “Goodbye Daddy,” she said.

  IV

  For half an hour Gordon sat in the cubicle by the wall of the Wimpy watching other people. Then he went downstairs to the washroom. He turned the hot tap of the sink and began to wash his hands.

  “You can always tell a McGill man. He washes his hands before—”

  Gordon turned to see a grinning boyish face. I don’t know him, he thought. Aloud he said. “Of course. It’s—”

  “Not fair surprising you like this. I’m Hugh Finlay,” the man said still grinning.

  “Hugh Finlay,” Gordon said. They shook hands. “What are you doing over here?”

  “Passing through. I’m on the way south, to France.”

  They were both in their middle thirties, McGill graduates, in London, but there the resemblance stopped abruptly. Hugh Finlay was blond, ruddy, and radiated bodily comfort.

  “I heard you were over here,” Finlay said. “I was going to go to the bank to get your address. You know we’re having a reunion?”

  “No,” Gordon said. “No, I didn’t.”

  “It’s our tenth anniversary.”

  They returned to the cubicle and ordered two coffees.

  “You’ve worn well, Hugh,” Gordon said.

  “The reward for leading a healthy life,” Finlay said. “You married?”

  “Yes. We’ve got two
kids.”

  “Do I know her?”

  “No. She’s an English girl. We live in the country. How about you?”

  “I was engaged to Sally Boston. The Boston Biscuits. They give a quarter of a million each year anonymously. But she was too good. She’s like an angel. If she saw somebody poor, she’d cry.” He took out some coloured snapshots from his jacket pocket. “This is my yacht at Cannes. Here’s a picture of Garbo on it. Here’s some of the girls I had on board last summer. She’s only sixteen. Hard to believe. Do you know any addresses of girls?”

  The pretty West Indian waitress came with the two cups of coffee. Gordon insisted on paying.

  “How about coming to the reunion?” Hugh said suddenly. “Lot of the gang you know will be there.”

  “Do you think it will be all right?”

  “I know it will. I’ll phone Charlie Bishop.”

  While he was gone, Gordon tried to remember Hugh Finlay at McGill . . . but he couldn’t.

  “I talked to Charlie. He said sure, swell. We’ve a couple of hours. How about if we got some fresh air. I’ve a rented car outside.”

  They were driving through Hyde Park when Hugh Finlay said, “I saw a friend of yours last week. Mary Savage. Except she’s not Mary Savage any more, she’s Mary Troy. Remember Jack? You’ll see him at the reunion.”

  “How is Mary?”

  “Exactly the same. She does some kind of social work.”

  “What’s Jack doing?”

  “Selling beans . . . millions of them. They’ve got a place by the river. Fifteen rooms but no kids. I think they’re planning to adopt one.”

  V

  Because her father left her the money, Coral decided to go into London with the children. She washed them and herself, got them dressed, caught a green bus to the station, then a train to Victoria.

  From Victoria she took a bus to Kensington Gardens, and walked through the Gardens. A man was flying a kite, ducks flew over. The children chased the wood pigeons. She liked London. It was the only place she wanted to live. But what chance had they? She decided to try the Town Hall. The receptionist led her into a separate office where a single yellow rose in a thin glass vase stood on the wooden desk. “Mrs. Troy will be here in a minute.”