by David Storey
Leonard folded the paper back from the sandwiches and picked up the top one. He bit it, and chewed.
Then he spat it out and stood up. He spat again. Rubbing his sleeve across his mouth he spat again. The men burst out laughing, one of them rolling on the lawn. The sandwich had fallen open by his feet. Pressed into the buttered bread were two pieces of excrement, one bitten off at the corner.
‘What is it, Radcliffe?’ Pilkington said.
The men, laughing helplessly, gazed tearfully up at his figure.
‘God, it’s a pair of Shaw specials.’ They pressed forward to look at the object. Leonard had turned white and his lips, smeared with the sandwich, had coloured a peculiar blue, so intense that the men began to look at him rather than at the broken bread. They quietened, staring up at his frozen figure. Then as Leonard moved towards Shaw Tolson, a few feet away, stood up, grasped him by the shoulders and almost dragged him off the ground.
‘Leave him alone.’
Leonard stared down at Shaw who had turned only now. Then he pulled himself free of Tolson’s grip.
‘Leave the poor bugger alone,’ Tolson said.
‘What’s the matter?’ Shaw gazed round in surprise. The men had stood up. Ewbank had stepped from his car, his glasses pushed up on his forehead and a newspaper folded in his hand. He stood by the open door looking across. His toothpick hung limply from his mouth.
The men stood around Leonard. He seemed scarcely to be breathing. A slight flush tinged his high cheekbones. His eyes were peculiarly clear and transparent, almost as if he were sleeping.
‘Did Shaw do it then?’ he said suddenly and in a strangely reasonable voice.
Tolson didn’t answer.
‘Ah, you want to leave Shaw alone,’ one of the men said.
They began to move back listlessly. Shaw stood up and walked away, glancing back at the two men, then breaking into high, almost soundless laughter. He leaned against the truck, his head resting against his hand.
Tolson watched Shaw a moment then smiled, turning to look at Leonard with an almost apologetic stare. Several of the men started to laugh again and Tolson went back to his food, crouching down by the tent-pole and digging his knife in the grass as he ate. The men returned to their places, sitting down under the rich lining of the tent. One of them kicked the dirtied sandwich away and in doing so caught the remainder with his foot, scattering the small pile across the width of the drive. One piece flew under the truck. He looked at Leonard apologetically and, blushing, sat down again by his own food. Shaw stooped to peer under the truck.
Leonard walked clumsily through the tent, his foot jarring against the laid joists; then he tripped and fell on his hands. He picked himself up and walked on with stiff angular movements. Shaw, bending down by the truck, had burst into hysterical giggling. The men laughed helplessly at him. In the house the young man had reappeared at the french window. He stood wiping his mouth on a napkin, then turned back. Several figures could be dimly seen seated round a table, eating.
Leonard came out on a rocky ridge a few yards in width, the summit of one of the hills overlooking the house. As he crossed the ridge he saw that the house stood just above an even deeper hollow, a broadening valley in which were set small stone cottages almost concealed beneath the canopies of beech trees. A policeman on a bike rode down a steep, sunken lane, rose briefly into sight and disappeared. At the same moment a man came from a side entrance of the house and crunched down the drive. Three dogs ran after him, barking and leaping. He strode below the hill and down towards the village.
Two broad wings were set back from the central front of the house, almost penetrating the steep, rocky flank of the opposite hill. In an upstairs window on the side away from the lawn a young woman was half visible. She was taking off her dress. It swirled round her head, a faint pinkness in the shadow of the room; then she stood watching herself in a mirror. She disappeared, passed two intervening windows and reappeared at a third. She put on a blue and white frock, slipping it over her shoulders, her hands clutching above her. She fastened the neck and sat down, her head and shoulders just visible. Then she let down her hair and brushed it. It fell in a sudden shock, draining over her shoulders. She drew the brush through it with slight backward motions of her head, and fastened it with a ribbon. She came to stare out of the window at the trees which grew in an arc along that side of the house; then with a sudden, almost violent movement, she disappeared.
On the lawn the men lay eating. Tolson was swinging a hammer rhythmically over a stake. When Leonard went down the men looked past him as if they scarcely noticed his return.
He worked on his own, hooking up the walling in one corner of the tent, yet continuously looking round as if searching for something. His head twisted anxiously about, at the narrow drive which coiled into the hollow, and at the thin strands of smoke that drifted upwards from the chimneys. The house was like a heart buried in the flesh of the hills; the pines curved to its quiet pounding. He hadn’t looked at Tolson.
In the french window, laid now as if within a second pane of shadow, the young man watched him working, a newspaper in his hand. Beside him several points of silver glowed on a laden tray. He shook the paper out, stretched out his arms and carefully folded it. The man in the check sports coat came out to watch for a while, standing with his feet astride, the three dogs twining themselves round his legs on thin leads. He lit a cigarette then went away.
The hollow contained the heat: the men were red and sweating, grimed, crashing the long wooden tables onto the battening and levelling them with chocks of wood as the base to the dance floor. They worked silently, periodically breaking off to stoop over a garden tap and fill their mouths with water.
Tolson worked in the centre of the men, guiding the tables into position on the narrow battens and nailing them down with a hammer which he rested in his belt. He worked absorbedly and intently, ordering the men with quick movements of his hands and with brief, violent exclamations. They responded to him alertly. At the one point when he did look up, it was to see Leonard gazing, not at him directly, but at the hammer he held in his fist. A long claw curved back from its narrow head. Tolson held it up, nodding, then prised out a nail between the sharp forks. Leonard smiled as if he recognised the friendly significance of the gesture.
From time to time the young man came to the window, the newspaper held loosely in his hand. He watched for a while, stretched, and then returned to his chair. A thick dust rose in the heavy air from the old, over-used timber as Tolson crawled across the flooring banging in the long nails. It mixed with the sweat and the men turned grey-faced working under the shadow of the tent. When the rough, wooden flooring was completed they pulled flat, square cases from the back of the lorry and, unfastening the clasps, slid out the shining oak panels of the dance floor.
Tolson moved the heavy shapes into position, crouching to the ground so that he could gauge the level of the wood, his head bowed to it; then he slid strips of aluminium into the grooves alongside each panel, binding them together. He worked swiftly and agilely, grooving the hard shapes together, running his hand smoothly over the joints, then springing along the floor to direct the next assembling. Above his crouched figure the canvas billowed in a light breeze, rising and falling in slow waves. The guy-lines tensed, then relaxed in slack loops.
The luminous sheen of the floor slowly spread across the interior of the tent. Tolson worked with a hurried accuracy, self-absorbed, the men responding to every swinging gesture of his arm. The polished wood stretched round him like silk, its ochre gleam reflecting the pink and white muslin lining of the roof. Ewbank, perfectly and blackly mirrored, walked up and down the assembled surface smoking a cheroot, pausing occasionally to watch Tolson’s directions, and pointing his foot to test his weight on each section before him.
By mid-afternoon the floor was nearly laid: a canvas-lidded lake on the lawn filling out to the bursting shrubberies and flower-beds. Tolson worked alone now in the centre of the
electric surface. Leonard had joined the rest of the men to clear up the boxes and hessian bags and the litter of unused materials. Shaw stood by the truck rolling a cigarette and watching the men as they passed him with their loads. He giggled whenever Leonard came near, watching him with a helpless expression, shaking his head and clicking his tongue as Leonard went by. Now that the work was almost done the men began to call and shout at one another more loudly. They looked up at the house quite confidently.
Tolson, alone in the tent, had stopped working. He crouched down to the luminous floor. A girl had come into the tent. Tall and slender, her stiffened blue and white striped frock was reflected like a stain in the polished wood. Her face glowed with the sunny luminosity. The men looked in at her in silence.
A second woman came to the edge of the floor, middle-aged, with grey hair. She watched the girl intently. ‘Do you like it, darling?’ she said.
The girl swung round to her; shadows ran up through her frock to her bare shoulders. ‘Oh, mummy! It’s wonderful … simply wonderful.’
‘What do you think, Steven?’ The mother turned as the young man appeared beside her, his hands in his pockets.
‘It’s splendid,’ he said, testing his foot lightly on the dance floor.
The girl watched her mother and the young man, waiting for them to share her enthusiasm. Then she cried out, ‘Oh, it’s absolutely marvellous! Don’t you think so, Steven?’ She swung round, splaying her skirt, her feet sliding in simple steps across the polished wood.
‘Bleeding hell,’ Pilkington said. He crouched down by the side of the truck to watch. ‘I bet that puts some lead in your pencil, Shaw.’ The old man looked up absent-mindedly from filing his strip of metal.
Tolson hadn’t moved. The girl stopped as she saw his crouched figure. His hands were held over the fine joint of a panel. The colour swayed in her, the blueness shadowed by her sudden stillness. The mother and the young man looked in from the fringes of the tent. The girl and Tolson were alone on the floor.
A strange noise filled the tent; a soft moaning which steadily grew wilder, mounting to a grinding whine. For a moment it seemed that the noise came from the two frozen figures, the beginning of some terrible event. Standing alone at the end of the tent, silhouetted against the bright light, Leonard was gazing in at Tolson. Beyond him, through the trees moved the red legend of one of Ewbank’s lorries. It climbed cautiously up the hill, loaded to a high peak with folding chairs, tearing through the lower branches. As it swayed round the lower edge of the lawn and came to a halt, the men moved towards it.
Ewbank removed his hat and stepped cautiously across the polished floor to the girl’s mother, his face twisted into a smile. Tolson had stood up.
The girl watched the lorry with an angered, half-shocked expression, then glanced at Tolson before looking up at the pink and white muslin, draped in a luminous film from the ridge of the tent. She walked back to her mother and stood listening to Ewbank, her back to the glowing interior. Whenever she glanced up she gazed blankly at the front of the house and its rows of dark windows. Presently she, her mother, and her fiancé went in.
The sun lit up the front of the house piercing the tops of the firs with forked rays so that the ochre stone glowed dully and warmly. The walls of the tent were laced up and the chairs set round the perimeter of the dance floor. The interior was suffused like the inside of a giant bulb, lit up by contrary gleams and reflections. Two gardeners brought in trays of plants and arranged them on rugs round the bases of the three main poles. A large chandelier had been hauled above the dance floor. Beneath it Tolson worked alone, moving cautiously on his bare feet as he tested his weight on the joints of each panel.
One end of the tent was still open. Outside, and standing between the flower-beds, the girl had returned to gaze in at the glowing interior. The men worked round her packing the last of the equipment. Tolson had stopped to stare across at her slight figure. The hammer hung from his hand.
Then he looked round at the tent. A moment later he put the hammer down on the floor and walked slowly across to the girl.
Leonard, watching the movement, saw the girl’s eyes turning slowly to Tolson as she flushed about her brow and cheeks. Tolson stood listening with a frozen grim shyness as the girl spoke; then he turned towards the tent to smile in some slight confusion. The girl looked at his cheek and neck.
A few moments later Leonard realised that, as Tolson spoke to the girl, he was staring in through the shadows of the tent directly at him; it was almost as if he were speaking to him. He saw the girl looking round as if she sensed the presence of some third person, and for a second her eyes rested perplexedly on his before moving on. He turned away to his work. Tolson’s claw hammer was still lying in the gleaming centre of the floor.
He looked up again as a woman’s voice called from the house. The girl glanced up sharply at the windows, with the same angered, half-shocked expression; then the woman’s voice called again. She turned towards Tolson as he stood watching her aloofly, then bent down to a dog that had come rushing out and was jumping round her. The next moment the young man came round the corner of the house.
‘Katherine?’
The girl’s head swung angrily; she glared in at the tent. Then she began to move away with the dog. The young man waited. Tolson hadn’t moved. She glanced back at him, frowning, and with a heavy, upraised gesture of her bare shoulders went towards the house. Tolson walked back into the tent. His hammer had gone. When he looked back the girl and the young man had disappeared round the corner of the house.
The men loaded the empty floor boxes onto the truck, pulled on their coats and waited, smoking, while Ewbank and Tolson walked round the tent, inspecting the ropes and searching.
‘Have any of you seen a claw hammer?’ Ewbank said when he came back. He looked sharply at the men over his cheroot, his hands in the coat-pockets of his black suit. ‘The one that Tolson had,’ he said, gazing into their faces.
‘It’s probably under the floor,’ Pilkington said. ‘We’ll get it when we take it up.’
Ewbank nodded disbelievingly and went back to the tent. He searched it thoroughly, disappearing for some time behind the walling. But when he emerged it was with several potted plants which he carefully placed in the boot of his car.
The firs, silhouetted at the summit of the hill, were single, hair-like lashes against the red sun. The house had sunk into the rock, melting within a deep, misty shadow that crept slowly upwards from the root of the hollow. The tent glowed now, white and new.
Just before the vehicles drew out Tolson got down from the cab of the lorry and climbed into the back of the truck. Leonard was there with Pilkington and Shaw.
They sat in silence until the engines started. Then Tolson said, ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you. Do you want to come out with us tonight? With Audrey and me, I mean.’
Leonard was crouched to one side, his bag held tightly between his knees. For a while he didn’t answer. He stared at Tolson, almost as if he were a stranger. Then he said in a surprised, half-startled voice, ‘Yes, all right.’
Tolson laughed. ‘Ewbank was really annoyed at losing that hammer,’ he said.
‘He never loses aught that he doesn’t make up,’ Pilkington said.
Shaw, filing his strip of metal, began to laugh quietly, a contained sound so that none of the men looked up.
‘Who was that young girl, then?’ Pilkington asked.
Tolson shrugged. He turned to Leonard again. ‘It’s somebody I want you to meet … tonight, I mean. Somebody who’s asked to meet you.’ He looked at Leonard concernedly. ‘You’ll be able to come, then, will you?’
‘Yes. I’ll come.’
Yet Tolson still seemed unsatisfied. He continued to glance at Leonard suspiciously, then at the bag he clutched so tightly between his knees. Clearly outlined there by the sweat from his hands was the hard shape of the hammer. Its claws had even penetrated the fabric of the bag.
Shaw rubbed briskly at t
he metal, pursing his lips over it to blow gently, then holding it to one eye and gazing along its surface. He glanced up at Tolson, then at Leonard, who was staring out at the retreating crest of the trees. He began to laugh more loudly until suddenly the sound was swamped by Ewbank’s car drawing up behind.
Tolson had turned away, his eyes glazed as though he were moodily excited.
14
The tall, thin figure on the stage was the same man that Leonard had last seen limping away through pools of lamplight from Tolson’s house. Now he was dressed in large trousers that drooped from his waist on a child’s elastic braces. A collarless flannel shirt and a school jacket covered his angular body. Sweat ran in thin streams through the white powder on his face: only his eyes were alive, large and black, and the red thickness of his mouth. He stared round apprehensively waiting for the crowded room to quieten.
Tolson, his bare arms laid on the table, leant past Audrey and said to Leonard, ‘He’ll come down afterwards. You’ll like him. No, I mean that. You will.’ He turned to Audrey, smiling, but she was looking towards the back of the hall where an extremely tall man was shouting, ‘Fifteen. Sixty-two. Thirty-nine.… Twenty.… Number eleven.’
An equally tall man, with a long, dark moustache that curled round his mouth and a vaguely consumptive face, was sitting at a large table under the stage. ‘Yes … yes … yes,’ he said into a microphone held close to one cheek. ‘What was that? What was that?’
‘Eighty! Eighty!’ the winner shouted. He was crimson, holding onto two men beside him. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve won, all right,’ he shouted aside to someone. ‘I’ve won, I tell you.’ He started calling his numbers again.
Apparently satisfied, the secretary took his card, then pushed his long body upwards to reach a battery of switches above his head. The lights dimmed. ‘I’ve told you before,’ he called through the microphone. ‘If you want to talk you can go into the billiard room. The rule in here’s silence for the artists.’