Vital Signs

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Vital Signs Page 16

by John Metcalf


  “Similar, sir?”

  Behind the bar were picture postcards from the regulars, poker-work plaques.

  Old Golfers Never Die—They Only Lose Their Balls.

  Shakespeare’s Dead, Nelson’s Dead, And I Don’t Feel So Good Myself.

  An old woman came in.

  He took the beer back to his table. The two old men had started talking. As he passed them, one was saying, “. . . and they’ve come on wonderful.”

  The other said, “Course, if I hadn’t been bad last week, I’d have planted ‘em out then.”

  “Ah. They do well in frames, mind.”

  Peter moved the curtains aside and looked out for the bus. He’d have plenty of time to change at Allan’s, get out of his suit, and then potter about in the Western Book Shop for an hour before calling Jeanne. Before calling Mrs. Abercrombie. He smiled at the smoke rising from his cigarette. The beer and Scotch were moving inside him.

  “There’s no justice to it,” said one of the old men.

  Peter considered eating a ham sandwich. The bus was nowhere in sight and it always stopped in the Square for seven or eight minutes before making the return journey. He took another mouthful of beer and thought about Mr. Hottle. About Mr. Hottle eating a ham sandwich.

  “Nobody!”—the old man slapped his hand on the table—“Nobody can manage on that. You just can’t do it.”

  The other old man nodded.

  “If I didn’t have my war pension, where would I be? Eh? Eh?”

  The old man who was leading the conversation was wearing a dark blue suit which was frayed at the cuffs and shiny. He leaned forward to speak, his hands one on top of the other on his stick. The skin was loose, big with blue veins. A few strands of hair were plastered across his pate.

  “And you’d think these glasses would be free, wouldn’t you? But I had to pay a pound. A pound!”

  The other man who seemed quieter, nervous, said. “Well, take me now, and my leg. One of the straps broke so I went down the Labour to see about it. They don’t do the straps down the Labour, but you have to go there first, see, for the papers. They mend ‘em up in the Rehabilitation, where I was. And this young fellow said it’d cost ten shillings. Ten shillings, he said. So I said, ‘Now look here, young fellow, I want to see the manager.’”

  “Quite right!” said the forceful man. “Quite right. These young men just don’t understand.”

  “So I said to him, ‘Although I lives with my daughter,’ I said, ‘ten shillings is a big part of my week’s money.’”

  “Exactly,” said the other. “Quite right. I’ve lived carefully all my life—I’m not a spendthrift like some—been a member of the Mutual for, let me see, nigh on fifty-seven year. Shilling a week regular as clockwork. Joined ‘em when I was twenty.”

  The nervous man kept running his tongue over his top lip and making a sticky clicking noise with his mouth.

  “Where did you get that?” said the forceful man suddenly. “Hope you don’t mind me asking?”

  The nervous man reached down with both hands and pulled the braced leg closer under the table. Peter heard the leather creak.

  “The war, that was. The Great War. I was one of the lucky ones. Yes, the Battle of the Somme, that was. Sent home.”

  “And me,” said the other, touching his spectacles. Underneath one lens was a pad of lint.

  “Wipers that was. Remember that? The officers used to call it ‘Epree.’ Wipers was what we called it.”

  “Ah,” said the nervous man.

  “Epree,” said the other. “French, that is.”

  “Parlez-vous?” said the nervous man. “That’s what they used to say. Eh? Parlez-vous.”

  Peter lit a cigarette. The match rasped in the silence. The forceful man’s legs were crossed and the top leg was jiggling up and down. His black boots were highly polished.

  “Do you remember,” said the nervous man, “how they collected all the horses from the farms? For the gun carriages, they were. You don’t see many now. Horses, I mean. You don’t see many horses now.”

  “I remember,” said the forceful man, “when I was a little fellow—five or six years old I must have been at the time. No, perhaps a little older. Every Sunday my father took me, morning and evening. He was what they call a God-fearing man. Nineteen-thirty he died. A regular churchgoing man he was. Morning and night, regular. Baptist. He said to me,” and he leaned forward to tap the other on the knee, “he said to me, ‘The Land of Canaan. That’s where I’m going when I’m dead, my boy. I shall be with the Lord in Canaan. A land flowing with milk and honey,’ that’s what he said. My father. It was in nineteen-thirty, if I remember it right, when he died.”

  “Ah!” said the other. “That’s it. That’s right. You don’t see many now. For pulling the gun carriages they were.”

  Peter saw the bus pulling into the square. Standing up, he drained the last of the beer. As he went past their table, he nodded and said, “Afternoon!”

  The forceful man stared up at him and did not speak but the nervous man nodded and said, “Goodnight, boy, goodnight.”

  A sharp triangle of sunlight lay across the green Rexine of the front seat of the bus. He sat so that the sunlight fell on his face. The bus was empty. The driver nicked out his cigarette and swung himself up into the cab. The conductor chucked his clipboard and satchel into the rack and rapped on the glass partition with his ring finger. The bus juddered into life and slowly pulled out of Gartree Square, turning down the hill, gathering speed past Briar Street, past Elderberry Avenue, past Honeysuckle Drive, past Blackthorn Street and Hazel Row, and out into the traffic on the main road. Peter rested his head against the vibrating glass feeling mildly drunk.

  * * *

  Peter set his wine glass down on the edge of the table in the hall but it fell off and shattered.

  “Oh, dear!” said Allan.

  “Did I?” said Carol.

  “Did you what?” said Jeanne.

  “Have a handbag with me.”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t think so,” said Peter.

  “Who can say?” said Allan.

  “Peter, leave that alone. You’ll cut yourself,” said Jeanne.

  “Well, thank you very much, Jeanne,” said Allan. “Really enjoyed it.”

  “We’ll walk down with you,” she said.

  They started down the gravelled drive to the front gate. The wind was cold after the stuffiness of the drawing room. The garden was black and mysterious, surrounded by a high black wall of holly trees.

  “Listen to our feet crunching,” said Carol.

  At the gate, they drew together.

  On the other side of the road, the globe of a street lamp among the branches. The wind seemed to splinter the light, blowing it deeper into the layers and rifts of leaves. The tall, wrought-iron gates clanged to and vibrated. Footsteps on the pavement. Their voices calling again,

  “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  Rafts of leaves, layers of leaves, leaves lime green as the wind lifted.

  “What?” said Peter.

  “I said, ‘I’m freezing.’”

  They turned back towards the black bulk of the house. The open front door spilled light into the porch, onto the gravel and the edge of the ornamental lily pond. Something black lay on the gravel. A sports jacket.

  “Is that Allan’s?” said Jeanne.

  “He was wearing a jacket, wasn’t he?”

  “I wonder whose it is?”

  “Somebody’s, I expect,” said Peter.

  She tossed the jacket onto a chair in the hall and pushed the heavy door shut.

  “Boom!” echoed Peter.

  “I think you need some coffee,” she said.

  “No. I feel fine. I feel great.”

  “You know what I need?”


  “What?”

  “Bed.”

  “A truer word,” he said, “was never spoken.”

  “It was nice seeing everybody,” she said, “but I’m glad they’ve gone.”

  She went into the drawing room and started switching off the lights.

  “See the lights are off downstairs in the billiard room, Pete. The bedroom’s upstairs. On your right.”

  As he went into the billiard room, he trod on a cube of French chalk which powdered under his heel. He stood looking at the pool of yellow light and the green baize. Near the far corner pocket, a wine glass stood on the baize shining. In the cue rack, there seemed to be an umbrella. He switched off the light.

  The hall was dark and silent. He stood there for a few moments listening to the tick of the grandfather clock.

  He went up the wide staircase and turned to the right. He opened a door but it was a linen closet. There were doors all along the landing. Pampas grass in a huge Chinese vase rustled against his sleeve.

  “Jeanne?”

  He opened the next door and found himself in a vast bedroom. A small table lamp by the bedside glowed pink, but Jeanne was not there.

  “Jeanne?” he called. “Jeanne, where are you?”

  “In here.”

  The voice seemed to come out of the wall.

  “Where’s here?”

  “Here!”

  A door he hadn’t noticed opened and Jeanne stuck her head round.

  “It’s a bathroom.”

  “Oh.”

  “There’s one for you on the other side.”

  “A bathroom all for me?”

  “A master bathroom and a mistress bathroom.”

  “Isn’t that nice!” said Peter.

  He went into the small bathroom and closed the door behind him. The back of the door was a full-length mirror. He sat on the lavatory with the lid down and took off his shoes.

  Then he opened the door again and called across the bedroom,

  “Has yours got a lavatory?”

  “Yes.”

  “So’s mine.”

  He switched on a lamp over the washbasin. The spouts of the taps were fashioned in the form of curving, silver dolphins. He turned both taps full on and watched the water gushing from the dolphins’ mouths. He jammed his finger over one so that the water squirted from the side of the mouth. He washed his hands and dried them on a gigantic blue towel.

  He opened the mirrored medicine cabinet and examined the bottles.

  Hearts of Oak Deodorant. Hearts of Oak Cologne.

  The Tablets: To be taken: One Twice Daily. Capt. Compton-Smythe.

  Hearts of Oak After-Shave: An Invigorating Lotion.

  He took off his shirt and sprayed his armpits.

  On the shelf beneath the bottle-shelf was a pair of silver-and-tortoiseshell hairbrushes. He brushed his hair different ways, studying the effects in the mirror.

  A round, flat tin. Dr. Blackly’s Renowned and Efficacious Tooth Powder. There was even a new toothbrush in a little cellophane box. He took it out and dripped water into the tin of tooth powder, stirring it about until he’d mixed a smooth paste.

  “Efficacious,” he said to the right-hand dolphin.

  He dropped his cigarette end, which he’d wedged in a dolphin tail, into the lavatory, and then hounded it with a fierce jet all round the bowl until the paper split and the shreds of tobacco blossomed over the water.

  The bedroom was in darkness. The pile of the carpet was squashy under his feet. He made his way towards the shape of the bed.

  “Where are you?”

  His hands felt over the surface of the bed.

  “You’re inside,” he said. “Come out.”

  “No. It’s cold.”

  “‘Course it isn’t. Come on. Come out.”

  He pulled back the sheets and blankets and lay beside her, scooping his arm under her, pulling her close. He kissed her throat and breasts.

  “I wish they were bigger and not all collapsed,” she said.

  “Silly.”

  “You should have seen them when I was pregnant. Like grapefruit.”

  “Don’t like grapefruit,” he mumbled.

  “Perhaps I should get pregnant again,” she said.

  “Mmm.”

  He pushed the sheets and blankets down further with his feet.

  Afterwards, he hung still above her, breathing hard.

  “Oh, Peter! It was lovely. It was. . . .”

  He gave a sudden grunt and shot one leg out rigid.

  “Oh!” she said. “Don’t go!”

  “Aahh!” screamed Peter, collapsing and rolling off her. “Cramp! Oh, God! My toes are stuck!”

  He clasped his foot with both hands, working it desperately as she laughed; then he fell back on the pillows.

  She snuggled closer and put her arm over his chest. She kissed his chin, his cheek, his mouth, his closed eyes.

  “Warm,” he said.

  “Mmmm,” he sighed.

  She nibbled his ear and whispered, “Go to sleep. Go to sleep, you drunken old wreck.”

  ‘’Mmmm.’’

  He could feel her breath, moist against his neck. He wanted to kiss her goodnight but his head was too heavy to move. The blackness was spinning. The lights, the grey flashes in the darkness, were growing fainter and fainter.

  Peter stirred in his sleep. A noise, a movement, something. Something wrong. He started up on one elbow and lay in the strained darkness, his heart thudding. The bed seemed to be quivering.

  “Jeanne?”

  He heard her sob, heard the harsh catch of her breath.

  “Jeanne, what is it?”

  He sat up and tried to turn her towards him, pulling at her rigid shoulder.

  “Jeanne! What’s the matter?”

  Leaning over her, he tried to see her face but she turned into the pillow. Her shoulders shook with crying. He worked his arms around her, forcibly turning her, pulling her towards him. Her body was stiff. She pushed her face into his arm. He kissed the line of her jaw, stroking her hair, stroking her hair.

  “Don’t cry. There’s nothing to cry about, Jeanne.”

  “Everything’s all right. You’ll see,” he said.

  He could feel her hot tears on his arm. He bent and nuzzled at her, lifting her face, mumbling up her tears with his lips, kissing her wet eyelids.

  Her sobbing quieted, dying away into shuddering breaths. Her voice muffled, she said, “You’ve got smelling stuff on your armpits.”

  Slowly, the stiffness melted, he felt her legs relaxing against his. She gave a runny sniff and turned her head on his arm. He pulled the blankets up to cover her shoulders.

  “Disgusting nose,” she said.

  Somewhere in the bedroom a clock was ticking. They lay together silently, from time to time her breath still catching.

  “Feeling better?”

  “Yes. I’m all right.”

  “What is it, Jeanne? What’s wrong?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “No, it’s nothing.”

  The breath caught again in her throat.

  “Umm?”

  “I was just being silly. Really. There’s nothing wrong.”

  “You can tell me,” he said.

  “It’s nothing, Peter. Just too much to drink.”

  “You weren’t crying before,” he said.

  She didn’t answer. She tightened her arms around him.

  “Jeanne?”

  “Oh, leave me alone!”

  He sighed and then cleared his throat. Her hair was tickling his lip and he moved his head away. She tightened her arm, her fingers digging into his back. She moved her leg against him. He could feel that she was wet.<
br />
  “Do you want to?”

  Sliding her leg across his, she lay over him. He could just see the paleness of her face above him. Her eyes seemed shut. As the headboard of the bed tipped, tipped against the wall, she was grunting. She stiffened suddenly, slowing, and let her weight down on him. He held her tight, stroked her hair.

  She rolled down beside him and lay on her stomach. She turned her head away on the pillow. Peter lay listening to the tick of the clock, the sounds of her breathing. After a few minutes, he moved his leg carefully, trying not to shake her in the bed.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I’m awake.”

  He stretched and eased his arm free.

  “Are you feeling any better?”

  “Yes. Yes, I’m all right.”

  “How about a cigarette?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ll get them, though. I’ve got to go to the lavatory anyway.”

  She sat up and pulled the blankets aside. Sitting on the edge of the bed, her back to him, she said, “Peter?”

  “Umm?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be silly. There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

  “I feel so stupid.”

  “There’s no reason to.”

  “I’m behaving like a silly bitch,” she said. “It’s been so good tonight and then I had to cry and make a fool of myself and spoil things.”

  “You didn’t spoil anything. Get some cigarettes.”

  “It’s been the nicest present you could have given me,” she said.

  She reached behind her and patted his leg.

  “What do you mean, ‘present’?”

  She switched on the light in the bathroom.

  “Forty-three candles on my cake today,” she said, as she closed the door.

  He lay watching the line of light. The taps were running. He heard the click of the medicine cabinet opening and then she was quiet for a long time.

  The lavatory flushed. Suddenly she started to make herald trumpet noises, fanfares. The door opened and she stood in the light wearing a low-cut blue nightdress and carrying a blue silk robe. The hollows below her sharp collarbones stood out.

  “Ter-TUM!” she said.

 

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