Vital Signs

by John Metcalf

  “Jeanne. Can you get sent up for this?”

  “If you’d been caught.”

  “No. Not that. This afternoon. Whatever it is they want you for?”

  “I thought we’d promised to drop that till tomorrow?”

  He stirred the sludge of crushed ice in the bottom of the glass and drained the last drops of the martini.

  The waiter brought the hors d’oeuvres and a bottle of Meursault. Peter tasted the wine and nodded. The waiter filled the glasses. As soon as he had gone, Peter said, “What are you going to do?”

  “Did you really taste that wine?”

  “Yes. No, I didn’t. Stop trying to fob me off.”

  She half-emptied the glass, held the wine in her mouth, and swallowed.

  “Good,” she said. “Very good. It’s a terrible mistake to sip things, I always say.”

  “Jeanne!”

  “Look, Peter! You’re becoming boring. I’m going to call someone in about half an hour and set everything up. And then tomorrow morning, after Jim’s gone to work, we’ll go away for a nice summer holiday.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, be serious!”

  “Why?” she said. “More wine?”

  “You’re in trouble.”

  “Not yet. And I was being serious anyway.”

  “Go where?”

  “Hampshire.”

  The waiter took away the plates and brought fresh wine glasses and the Beaujolais.

  “My father’s got a cottage near the sea. He won’t be there now and I’ve got a key so we can all go down and have a holiday for three weeks before you start work.”

  “Yes, but what about afterwards, Jeanne?”

  She pulled a long face and stared at him.

  “Good God!” she said. “What sort of question’s that? This doesn’t sound like my Peter. Not like the Peter I used to know.”

  “I’m worried, Jeanne. That’s all.”

  “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.”

  “The lilies of the field weren’t wanted by the police.”

  “Oh, dear!” she said. “This is serious. I think this teacher-training lark you’ve been doing’s rotted your mind.”

  “Oh, don’t be daft.”

  “What a horrible change,” she said. “It’s difficult to believe it’s the same person.”

  She smiled at him and shook her head.

  “What about afterwards, indeed! Can this be the Peter who once stole a parrot from the zoo?”

  He smiled and said, “That was two years ago.”

  “A man who steals parrots,” she said, “cannot change his spots.”

  “For madam?” said the waiter.

  “Tournedos Rossini.”

  “And trout for you, sir.”

  “Or the Peter, for example, who was arrested drunk and disorderly in the main fountain in the city centre. Sitting up to his armpits in water? Singing, ‘We Plough the Fields and Scatter’?”

  He smiled as he remembered.

  “Sir?” said the waiter.

  “Fine. Thank you.”

  The waiter filled the glasses. Peter could feel the martini and wine expanding inside him.

  “And do you remember that sergeant?” she said. “When I came down to get you out?”

  Peter laughed out loud.

  “That’s more like it,” said Jeanne. “That’s more like the old Peter.”

  She smiled at him.

  “And last year? When you were repatriated from Calais. And you bummed a ham sandwich from the British consul?”

  “It’s people like you,” said Peter in a plummy voice, “who give England a bad name. Actually, he said, “People of your ilk.” That was the first time I’d heard anyone say that.”

  Jeanne reached out and took his hand.

  “Don’t worry, little one. Don’t ever worry. Because then you’ll have to drink Milk of Magnesia and eat boiled cod.”

  He smiled at her and said, “Shsss!”

  “Oh, am I becoming loud?” she said.

  They ate silently for a few minutes.

  “Where is this cottage?” said Peter.

  “Pennyford. Right up on the cliffs. You’ll like it.”

  He took out his cigarettes. The trout was a curve of fine bones. He pushed the plate to one side as he didn’t want to look at the opaque discs of the trout’s eyes. Brilliant yellow of a lemon slice. He sat back holding the wine glass against his lower lip.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it?” said Jeanne. “I’d really intended staying at Jim’s. For a while. . . .”

  Peter passed her a cigarette. She lighted it from the candle in the middle of the table.

  “Still, I suppose two and a half years is a long time . . .”

  The woman at the next table laughed loudly at something the man had said. Peter looked across at her.

  “What’s the time?” said Jeanne.

  “About eleven thirty.”

  “Well, I’d better make my phone call. I can’t manage any dessert. Just order me a coffee, will you?”

  He leaned back and rolled the wine glass in his palms. The light danced on glasses and gleamed on cutlery. The conversation of the surrounding tables came to him as a muted buzz. The chair was warm and comfortable. He found himself rolling the glass and staring at a nylon calf. A yellow dress. He liked yellow. A froth of black lace on her slip bunching out where the dress pulled up.

  Jeanne sat down again. He turned his head slowly to look at her, and smiled.

  “You’re getting pissed,” she said.

  “No, I’m not. What did you arrange?”

  “Funds, little one. Funds.”

  “How do you mean—funds?”

  “I’m not going to tell you so don’t ask. You’ll find out tomorrow.”

  She tasted the coffee.

  “I feel awful,” she said.

  “Pennyford, eh?” he said.

  “Absolutely bloated.”

  “Can we go fishing there?”

  “Why not?”

  “I like fishing,” he said.

  “Good. Good.”

  The waiter brought the bill.

  “I’ve got to get some air and walk this food down,” she said.

  He finished his coffee and pushed back his chair. He dropped his crumpled napkin on the table and counted out notes onto the sideplate covering the bill.

  “That was a marvellous meal, Jeanne.”

  “Don’t thank me,” she said. “Thank Jim.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was the next two weeks’ housekeeping money.”

  After leaving the restaurant, they strolled down through the old part of town towards the river and the bridge. The night air was still warm. There was no traffic, and in the deserted streets their footsteps rang against the tall, curving façade of the Georgian crescent. Ornamental wrought-iron railings. Worn, hollow, paving stones. Yellow squares of lighted windows.

  “Jeanne?”

  “Umm?”

  “This cottage. How do you know your father won’t be there?”

  “He works in the summer.”

  “What’s he work at?”

  “Did I never tell you about him? He’s a captain.”

  “Of what?”

  “Well, he was the captain of a tramp steamer in the Far East and the China Seas. About 1910, 1915.”

  “And he’s still. . . ?”

  “God, no! The old bugger’s about seventy-five now. He used to be a grocer in Liverpool. A squalid corner shop. Milk, cabbages, bread and tarts, bootlaces, the newspapers with the racing results. I can smell it now. Everything on tick. Most of the time he was selling sweets and pop to all the snotty kids—halfpenny bags of jelly babies. Then my mother looked after th
e shop and he sailed two or three trips as a steward. After she died, he suddenly became a captain. He gets it all out of Kipling and Conrad.”

  “Do you mean he’s. . . ?”

  “Dotty? No. Although he sort of believes it himself now, I think. That’s why he doesn’t like seeing me. He wears white suits and carries a Malacca cane and complains all the time about being cold. Wears a fob chain with shark teeth and cowrie shells on it.”

  She laughed.

  “He’s really very charming.”

  “What does he do?”

  “Lives in hotels in Bournemouth and Eastbourne—places like that—and gets money from rich old ladies. He’s still a handsome man, little white beard, tells them tales of pirates and coolies and typhoons and dusky maidens and being twelve days out of Bangkok with a cargo of burning teak and mutinous lascars running amuck. What the hell are lascars?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Anyway, they get their money’s worth. You’d like him. Everybody does.”

  The lime trees which lined the road leading to the bridge were bright acid green in the patches lit by the yellow globes of the streetlamps. They began to smell the river mud. They paid the toll-man and walked out to the centre span of the bridge. A light breeze was blowing off the water.

  The river, tidal at this reach, was on the ebb. They leaned over an embrasure watching the white turbulence of the tide and listening to the river sounds. Jeanne was tracing her fingertips over the worn stone and staring down into the river’s flow.

  She moved closer to him and he put his arm around her. The breeze stirred her hair against his face. Below them, the water was scouring down the central channel, riffling round the piles of the bridge and the tilted buoys, and sweeping out into a smooth curve where the river widened on a bend. The mudbanks were rising slowly, like sheets of pearl in the moonlight. A small lamp underneath the bridge cast a yellow wriggling light on the water. Far away, a train was rumbling through the silence.

  “It’s better than being a grocer,” she said.

  * * *

  Jeanne was tapping a spoon in irritation on the top of the stove.

  “Come on! Come on!” she said to the spice rack.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, shut up, Jeanne!” said Peter. “What’s the hurry?”

  She’d woken him at seven and had been emptying drawers and folding clothes ever since. She’d snapped at Anna, who’d gone out to play in the back garden. Peter felt slightly hung over. She went to the foot of the stairs and shouted, “Jim! Will you hurry up! Your eggs are going to be solid.”

  They heard a faint, “Right ho!” from the second-floor bathroom.

  “Come on!” she said.

  “There’s bloody hours before the train,” said Peter.

  Jim’s footsteps boomed down the basement stairs.

  “Good morning, Jeanne. Good morning, Peter. What an absolutely glorious day!”

  “Morning,” said Peter.

  Jim’s face shone pink from soap and water. He gave off a strong scent of aftershave lotion. He hunched himself in the doorway and swung an imaginary golf club, following the flight of the ball up to the ceiling.

  “Damn nuisance,” he said. “I was really looking forward to brandishing the old clubs today.” As he sat down, he said, “But one’s duty calls one, eh?”

  Jeanne put a plate of bread and butter and the boiled eggs in front of him.

  “Oh, I say,” he said. “Have we no Rice Krispies?”

  “I ran out,” said Jeanne.

  He battered in the crowns of the eggs with a teaspoon and poured a mound of salt onto the plate.

  “Ah, thank you, Jeanne,” he said. “The cup that cheers.”

  She lit a cigarette and leaned against the sink, staring at him as he ate. He frequently patted his lips with a hankie which he always carried tucked in the cuff of his shirt.

  “Absolutely glorious!” he said. “I really am tempted to go AWOL, you know.”

  “You can’t if there’s people waiting for you,” said Peter.

  “Just once, eh?” said Jim. “Spit in the CO’s eye and damn the consequences.”

  “You’re going to be late,” said Jeanne.

  “Talk about the workers,” said Jim. “Very nice, too. Cushy jobs and strong unions. Nine-to-five and goodnight.”

  “It’s ten minutes to nine,” said Jeanne.

  “Downtrodden!” said Jim.” All my eye and Betty Martin, as they say.”

  He poured another cup of tea and drank it standing up.

  “Well, heigh-ho!” he said. “I’m going to have to cut along, I suppose.”

  “When are you going to be back?” said Jeanne.

  “Oh, afternoonish. Din-dins at about six?”

  “Yes, the usual.”

  “Bye,” said Peter.

  A few minutes after he had gone the doorbell rang. Jeanne was in her bedroom lining a huge cabin trunk with fresh newspaper.

  “Peter?” she called. “It’s probably for me.”

  He went upstairs and opened the door, The man said, “Mrs. Carlyle?”

  “Carlyle? No, I’m. . . . Oh! That wouldn’t be Mrs. Jeanne Carlyle, would it?”

  “Ah,” said the man. “That’s the lady.”

  “Jeanne!”

  The man’s eyes swam behind glasses thick as bottle bottoms. Peter had to look away.

  “Nice day,” said the man.

  His jacket was filthy and burst under the armpits. Padding hung out. The pockets were torn and sagged under the weight of spanners, screwdrivers, and pliers. A grey woollen scarf was knotted at his throat like an ascot but did not cover the collarless flannel shirt and the brass stud. His few teeth were yellow stumps.

  “A particularly nice day,” he said.

  “It certainly is,” said Peter.

  The man lifted his greasy cap and scratched his bald head with a pencil. His pate was pallid like lard.

  Jeanne came up the stairs and cried, “Bill!” and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Well now, Mrs. C.,” he said. “Well now.”

  “Bill, I want you to meet Peter Hendricks. Peter, this is Mr. Arkle.”

  Mr. Arkle smiled and nodded in Peter’s direction.

  “Have you got Henry with you?” asked Jeanne.

  “Ill, Henry is,” said Mr. Arkle. “Done his back last week with a Welsh dresser.”

  “Oh, I am sorry,” said Jeanne.

  “Well, Mrs. C. How long we got?”

  “An hour and a half?”

  “Well, we’d better get them lads in,” he said.

  He went to the front door and beckoned. Peter saw a blue furniture van backing up to the front gate.

  “All to go, is it?” said Mr. Arkle.

  “Anything you can use,” said Jeanne.

  A boy of about seventeen wearing jeans and a tartan shirt came in.

  “All right, Mr. Arkle?”

  “Ah.”

  “Fetch Fred in, shall I?”

  “Ah.”

  Mr. Arkle grasped the banisters and started to climb the stairs.

  Peter said to Jeanne, “Do you mean you’re going to sell. . . ?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re just going to. . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “And this is what Mrs. Anderson and Mrs. Beazley. . . ?”

  “And Mrs. Carlyle,” said Jeanne.

  “Good God!” said Peter. “But. . . ?”

  “What?”

  “Won’t the neighbours phone the police or something?”

  “If you saw a furniture van next to your house, would you phone the police?”

  “No, I suppose not, but. . . .”

  “Cheer up,” said Jeanne. “He’s got insurance.”

  As Peter w
alked into the first bedroom on the top floor, Mr. Arkle was bending forward, leaning on the chest of drawers, and massaging the small of his back. He peered round and said, “Ah, it’s a bugger, isn’t it? He claims it’s in the urine but it’s the bones what hurts. Just certain days, mind.”

  He straightened up and arched his back.

  “Still they do say the Lord sends these things to try us.”

  “Perhaps it’s arthritis,” said Peter.

  “Urine!” said Mr. Arkle. “That’s what he’s full of. Nothing but piss and wind. They sends them out these days no more than boys.”

  He took a packet of pink, gummed labels from his coat pocket. He peered around and then, sticking out his tongue, wiped the paper down it. He stuck the label on the headboard of the bed. He chuckled and said, “’Course, I shouldn’t complain. You know what they wanted to do with the wife, don’t you?”

  “No?” said Peter.

  Mr. Arkle stuck a label on the chest of drawers.

  “They wanted to amputate her.”

  He stuck another on the table.

  A boy came in and said, “Start here, Mr. Arkle?”

  He was wearing tight black trousers and a pink, frilly shirt. His hair was long and elaborately combed. His shirt sleeves were rolled up and blue-and-red snakes writhed up his forearms.

  “This here’s Frederick,” said Mr. Arkle. “A member of what they calls the Younger Generation.”

  Frederick got hold of the bed and started to drag it towards the door.

  “You’re going to have to undo the nuts and bolts, aren’t you, Frederick?”

  “Oh, ah,” he said.

  “No training, you see,” said Mr. Arkle.

  Jeanne came up the stairs.

  “All right?” she said.

  “It’s a useful little lot,” said Mr. Arkle.

  The house shook with the traffic up and down the stairs, with the rumble and scrape of dragged furniture.

  Anna came pounding upstairs shouting, “Mummy! Where are you? Mummy!”

  “Hello, young lady,” said Mr. Arkle. “Remember me?”

  “Hello,” said Anna. “We went in a big van.”

  “Ah, you’re a bright one,” said Mr. Arkle.

  “We’re going away on our summer holidays today, poppet,” said Jeanne. “To the seaside.”