by Helen Harris
‘Whatever’s been going on in here?’ asked Pearl. Automatically, as she crossed the room after Alicia, she bent down to retrieve a fallen cushion and to pat it tenderly back into shape on its chair.
Alicia explained, ‘I’ve moved down here now, with the help of my young visitor. It saves me toiling up and down those stairs.’ She looked Pearl full in the face and she whimpered, ‘Please go upstairs for me and check that everything’s all right, will you? I haven’t been up there since Sunday. I’ve tried, but somehow I can’t seem to manage it at the moment.’
Pearl shrugged and smiled and said, ‘Sure, I’ll go up for you, Mrs Queripel, but I can’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be all right. Houses don’t just fall to bits, you know.’ She loosened Alicia’s hold on her arm and made for the doorway. ‘I’ll just hang my things in the kitchen first.’
Babbling instructions, Alicia hurried after her. ‘Look everywhere,’ she insisted. ‘In all the rooms. And look properly. Don’t just stick your head round the door. Promise?’
Shaking her head in disbelief and chuckling, Pearl made her way to the foot of the stairs. She paused with her hand on the knob of the banisters and she asked, ‘All the rooms? You’re quite sure? Even the room I’m not allowed in?’
Alicia watched Pearl’s big behind swaying up the stairs with her heart in her mouth. She strained to hear the sounds of Pearl’s inspection, the cry of horror that would come as she opened the front bedroom door. But all she heard were the slow creakings of the floorboards and the clicks of the various doors being opened and shut. In no time at all, Pearl was back at the top of the stairs and making her way slowly down, grinning and saying, ‘It’s all as right as rain, Mrs Queripel.’
But she had had a fright. As long as Pearl was in the house, she believed that everything was as right as rain upstairs. Trying not to make it too obvious, she followed Pearl around the house, lingering in her vicinity as Pearl did her chores, gaining reassurances from her robust cheeriness. When it was time for Pearl to go, she offered her tea and even a biscuit to try and tempt her to stay a little longer. But Pearl had her next job to go to. Alicia went with her to the front door, chattering nervously to delay her. ‘How’s your youngest these days?’ she asked. ‘Keeping out of mischief? And your girls? What are they up to? And, I must say, what a pretty blouse you’re wearing.’
But when Pearl had gone, the fear came back. Alicia sat tight in her armchair and told herself that ‘no one ever died of nerves’, which had been Leonard’s favourite phrase whenever she got herself worked up over something. She ate her ‘Meal on Wheels’ for a change, instead of throwing out the contemptible free food, because she felt obscurely that she was going to be in need of sustenance. She got up twice while she was eating to take a look up the stairs, not for any particular reason but just because she felt she ought to. After lunch, she had a lie-down and soon enough her indigestion took her mind off her worry.
Suddenly in the late afternoon, like a shriek of horror, the telephone rang. Alicia imagined she had sat bolt upright on the settee, but the massive jolt had only been her shocked heart giving an extra big beat. She lay for a moment and listened to the ringing. It was such an unfamiliar noise that she listened to it first of all for its own sake, not immediately reacting to the message that someone was trying to contact her. Then she got up and hurried into the hall. The phone was still ringing. She stood in front of it for three more rings before she could bring herself to pick it up.
‘Yes?’
‘Hello, Mrs Queripel. Is that you, Mrs Queripel?’
She couldn’t place the voice. ‘Who is that?’ she demanded sternly.
‘It’s me,’ said the voice indignantly. ‘Alison. I’m ringing to ask how you’re getting on. I was a bit worried leaving you to settle down in your new set-up last Sunday, so I thought I’d give you a ring in mid-week just to check you were OK. How are you?’
‘I’m very well, thank you,’ Alicia answered crisply and immediately regretted that it was then too late to launch into a catalogue of her miseries.
‘Oh, that’s a great relief,’ cried Alison’s piping little voice in the receiver. ‘I was really a bit worried you might have got upset, you know, having to adjust to your new surroundings.’
‘Everything’s as right as rain,’ lied Alicia.
‘Oh, good. Thank goodness for that. Well, listen, I can’t talk for too long now. I’m glad everything’s OK. Look after yourself, won’t you?’
‘You’re coming as usual on Sunday, aren’t you?’ Alicia interrupted, seized by a sudden anxiety.
‘Oh yes, of course, I’m looking forward to it. You promised to tell me your next instalment, remember? I’ll see you then, OK? Bye.’
‘Goodbye,’ said Alicia.
It was like a ribbon which unrolled behind her as she walked away from the telephone, a golden ribbon: the knowledge that a few miles away Alison was thinking of her. It accompanied her to the kitchen, where she made herself a cup of cocoa, and into the scullery; it reached to the settee that night. Her fear did not return. In a trice, the telephone call had changed everything. Her friendship with Alison was no longer limited to Sunday afternoons, she understood. It could extend to any day of the week.
*
I remember how happy I was, living out my last month’s rent in the flat I shared with those girls. I moved a bit of my stuff every time I went to Rob’s, where I spent most nights, so that there should be as little as possible to cart on moving day. I had my cake, as Mrs Q would say, and I was eating it.
Of course, I had some misgivings. I was scared. I worried that Rob, being that much older and that much more sure of himself, might object to some of my habits. I worried that he might go off me once I was there all the time. But, really, I know why I worried. I worried because I felt that such happiness was too good to be mine. Something was bound to go wrong.
Well, on moving day we did break my teapot. Rob came round after breakfast with the car. It was a dreadful February day. We carried down my bits and pieces through slicing sleet and conditions for moving were so terrible that we had to laugh. Laughing, we dropped the box with the teapot.
When we got to the front door of Rob’s flat, even though I had crossed the threshold dozens of times before, I wanted a significant gesture. I wanted Rob to say or do something which would show that this time mattered. He had his arms full, so he asked me to open the door. And I was just about to, having prised the key-ring from the back pocket of his cords, when I realized that I wanted him to do it. Now I know that was desperately silly – I mean, arms full and in the middle of moving – but I suddenly felt strongly that I didn’t want to let myself in matter-of-factly; I wanted to be let in ceremonially by Rob. I held out the keys to him: ‘No, you do it.’
For a moment, Rob looked quite puzzled. Then he mocked, ‘Come over all coy, have you?’
I nodded, giggling.
‘Oh, go on,’ he said impatiently. ‘You can see I’ve got my hands full.’
But instead of putting an end to my whim then, as I should have done, I insisted. ‘No, Rob, really, I’d rather you did.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ he exclaimed.
He dumped my things impatiently on the floor and grabbed the keys. He opened the door roughly and then he turned on me, grinning. ‘OK, if you’re going to be olde worlde about this, let’s be really olde worlde. Get down on the carpet, woman.’
‘Rob! What –?’
‘Get down, get down! If you want a traditional crossing of the threshold, you’re going to have it.’
He made me sit and then lie down on the landing, and as I squealed and protested happily, he took two great handfuls of my hair and pretended to be about to drag me across the threshold by my hair. So I made what I had wanted to be my significant entrance on my bottom, backwards, bumping along as fast as I could to stop Rob from pulling my hair. Inside, we hugged each other. Rob had cooked a welcome lunch and there was a bottle of wine in the fridge.
In all that happiness, there was only one blot really: one stick-limbed fly in the ointment. Andy Ellis had declined to come and lend a hand with moving my things. Like the rest of Rob’s friends, he thought my moving in with Rob was a further regrettable step on Rob’s road to bourgeois respectability.
When I went to see Mrs Queripel last Sunday, Rob came with me to the corner of the street. I was late because we had gone to a Sunday matinée at the cinema. I pointed out her house to him two-thirds of the way down the street, and he pretended to shudder at its grubby little façade. ‘Sooner you than me,’ he said. I looked round when I had walked about half-way there – I don’t know why – and Rob was still standing on the corner watching me, as though he were reluctant to let me go inside.
I suppose the anxiety over my late arrival didn’t do Mrs Q any good. But she was in such a state when I arrived that she could barely speak to me. She yanked me urgently into the living-room and sat me down beside her on the settee, never letting my hand go from her bony grip. Then she confided breathlessly that she had been hearing ‘noises’ from the empty front bedroom overhead. Did I dare go up and see what was amiss? Of course nothing was, and I was a bit peeved when I came down after having a look for her that she wouldn’t believe me. ‘It’s just the pipes,’ I said, ‘or the boards.’ I tried to distract her attention by asking her how she found her new arrangement otherwise. But throughout my visit she sat taut and listening, her suspicious gaze wandering frequently from my face to the ceiling. It was hopeless trying to have a conversation with her. She didn’t tell me the next instalment in the romance of Leonard and Alicia Queripel after all. And it was a pity, because after two or three years of entertaining but not very eventful married bliss, the company had hit financial troubles and there were intriguing storm-clouds on the horizon.
Before I left, I made one last effort to bring her back to the present. To show her that she would not succeed in turning me against Rob, I reminded her proudly that next Friday night she must remember to watch him on the television, and I left my bit of paper with a note of the time and the channel propped on top of the set.
*
Hah, so that was him, the good-for-nothing, the rotter. Well, he was certainly nothing to write home about, and almost bald into the bargain. She bent as close as she could to the television screen to size him up, only then little white names appeared on the screen at the feet of the people in the discussion and she realized that she had got the wrong one. The bald one with metal spectacles, waving his arms about, wasn’t Alison’s boy-friend after all. The boy-friend was a big, untidy-looking character, sitting at the end of the row rather self-consciously and smirking. Alicia squinted at him critically. Fancy appearing on the television in that shirt and jacket, and without a tie too. Alison should have had a word with him beforehand. Mind you, the way Alison dressed, she was hardly one to be giving lessons on grooming. Alicia assessed his face. Under a good head of hair, he had a regular, decent enough sort of face. She supposed he might appeal to some women, but he wasn’t her cup of tea at all. In fact, on closer inspection, he was quite the opposite of Alicia’s masculine ideals. Whereas she liked fine features, his were fleshy; whereas she went for the blond refined, gentlemanly type, he was rather solid and hearty. Still, what could you expect of somebody who treated a girl as he did? Unexpectedly, he laughed, making fun of someone else’s contribution to the discussion. As he flung back his head, his dark curls shook and Alicia was shocked to be reminded of someone else, long ago, someone who had also been quite the opposite of her masculine ideals, someone who had bared equally bold white teeth as he roared with laughter: Harold Levy. She sat straighter in her chair and watched Robert with pursed lips. With all the aplomb of his kind he went on laughing, unembarrassed, a strong savoury laugh which you could feed off like meat.
She was so busy concentrating on what Robert Wright, playwright, looked like that she didn’t straight away notice when he started talking. It was in any case, hard to sort out whose voice belonged to whom in these muddle-headed discussions. But, after a minute or two, she tuned in to ‘… basically a problem of perception. I mean, if the viewing public has preconceived expectations which have been deliberately fed by hype and advance media stereotypes, then it’s going to be well-nigh impossible for any writer to change those perceptions, however alien his product is to their presentation of it.’ Amid the uproar of disagreement and indignation which this declaration produced in the discussion group, Alicia snorted. Well, she saw what he was: a smooth talker. He had doubtless worked his way round young Alison with his tongue. She knew the power of such skills; they could persuade you that night was day, at least until the morning. As for whatever he was trying to say, it was a load of codswallop. ‘Blah, blah, blah, blah,’ Alicia mouthed rudely. ‘I shouldn’t like to think what your plays are like, Mister Wright.’ A funny thought occurred to her. ‘You’d never have caught me acting in one of them.’
As the discussion began to draw its bumbling way to a close, Alison’s friend spoke up once again. Gripping the arms of his chair purposefully, he leaned forward and began to make another forceful point. Alicia watched him with detachment. Having had her fill of scoffing, she felt condescending enough now to be able to enjoy the thrill of knowing – even at one remove – someone on the television, without any need for rivalry or resentment. She considered his impassioned face, full of the force of his argument, and to her amazement something in her responded to him. She was taken aback. Who did he think he was? She glowered at the screen. Despite her triumph of a moment earlier, when she had smiled down on him with serene condescension, she was seized by something very like panic. She knew there was no arguing with angry eyes like that, nor with lofty brows, nor with strong arms which smote the air in passion. She knew there was no reason which could stand up against a spotlight on absolutely black hair, tossing. Only a few moments earlier, she had sat comfortably and even, in one corner of her mind, started to plan her supper. Now she watched the discussion shrink into a mechanical toy group of flailing hands and jerking heads, while their voices tailed away into an electronic signature tune, and her forehead was furrowed with anxiety. She knew what she was up against.
When Alison arrived two days later, the first thing she said to Alicia was, ‘Well? Well? What did you think of him?’
Alicia acted deliberately offhand. ‘Of whom, dear?’
‘Oh dear, you didn’t miss it, did you? Not after I reminded you specially! Of my friend, of course.’
‘No, I didn’t miss it,’ answered Alicia. ‘I sat it out from start to finish.’
‘Well, he did quite well, didn’t you think? I think he made a very good impression.’
‘The one on the end?’ said Alicia. ‘On the left?’
‘That’s right. The one who made all the controversial remarks.’
Alicia smiled a knowing smile and she said nothing.
‘Oh, go on,’ said Alison. ‘Tell me what you thought. I don’t mind if it’s not all complimentary.’
Alicia pretended to be very hesitant. ‘Oh dear, I don’t think it’s right you should press me, dear. I mean, I’m from another generation. I see things so differently.’
‘But that’s interesting,’ Alison insisted. ‘Please, I’d love to hear what you thought.’
So, reluctantly, only submitting to pressure, Alicia admitted, ‘I had hoped, for your sake, he’d be a bit more of a gentleman, Alison. I’m afraid I thought he was a trifle rude and pushy.’
‘Oh, he can be,’ Alison laughed. ‘He can be. He was really turning it on for the programme.’
Alicia was confounded. She changed her tack. ‘Turning it on for the programme? You mean, it wasn’t from the heart?’
‘Oh, it was, it was. All that stuff about media bias. But the angry young radical bit; I think he was rather playing that up for effect.’
Alicia shook her head dubiously. ‘I don’t think that’s right. One shouldn’t fake one’s innermost feelings. Not in my book.’<
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Alison looked uncomfortable. ‘But it was for the television,’ she said. ‘You know, dramatic effect. They were all of them role playing.’
Alicia pursed her lips. ‘That’s as maybe.’
‘I mean, honestly Mrs Queripel, Rob’s really the most incredibly open, sincere person.’
‘Oh, I don’t doubt it,’ said Alicia. ‘Goodness, I don’t doubt it.’ And then she said, as kindly, as comfortingly as she knew how, ‘I think it’s time for our cup of tea, don’t you?’
‘Of course, nothing’s ever absolutely perfect, is it? Every rose has its thorns. Anyway, I didn’t falter when Leonard and I hit our first bad patch that winter. I mean, together you can face anything, that’s what I always felt. Together, if you’re truly united, you can take on the world. Those were difficult times for everybody, of course. We weren’t the only ones feeling the pinch. People had less money all round and they weren’t going to splash out what little they had on theatre seats. So we had to try every trick in the book to bring them into the theatres. We stooped to song and dance numbers, we invited in variety acts. Leonard loathed it. He was always one for keeping up standards. Even when we were worn out travelling, Leonard always looked impeccable in his coat and his three-piece suit and his hat. He always had a crease like a knife-blade in his trousers and a fresh flower in his buttonhole. Some of them couldn’t keep up with Leonard’s standards; they didn’t have what it takes. And what was even worse than our money troubles was that, within the company, things started to turn sour. There were two camps, if you like. There were those who stuck by Leonard through thick and thin, the old faithfuls who didn’t like to see things slide, and there were those who thought we ought to move with the times, even if it meant lowering standards. The loudest among them, I think I’ve mentioned him before, was Harry Levy. I ask you, was there ever such ingratitude? Leonard had taken him into the company, given him the plum parts, fostered his career; he had made him. And yet he turned on Leonard in his hour of need and stuck a knife in his back! Oh, there used to be awful arguments all the time and people too upset to go on stage when their cue came. Leonard and Harry would go off for walks together, supposedly to try and settle their differences, and come back not speaking. They were like oil and water; they just couldn’t mix. Of course, I took Leonard’s side in everything. In my eyes, my Leonard could do no wrong. But, as time went by, I had to admit to myself – much as I didn’t want to – that Harry Levy had a point. Other companies which were adapting to the changing times weren’t going to the wall. And once, very daringly, I put it to Leonard that maybe Harry and his friends weren’t all wrong. Maybe we should move with the times. Leonard went up the wall. I think because he kept such a tight rein on himself all the time, always courteous, always a model of good manners, when he did fly off the handle there was no stopping him. My word! I thought I’d never live to hear the end of it. I thought I’d never get out of our lodgings in one piece. He accused me of betraying him, of – well, you don’t want to hear what was spoken in anger, do you? He ranted and raved, and I wept because I knew in my heart of hearts he must be right. It was our first difference. Afterwards, he apologized and he bought me flowers and a brooch. But I don’t think he forgave me for ages for having dared to plead Harry’s cause. Certainly, after that, he hated Harry all the more. I wonder why he didn’t get rid of him. But I suppose he needed Harry by then more than Harry needed him, because at least Harry’s name on the bill brought in the crowds. It didn’t make Leonard like him any better. He used to say Harry had the common touch. He used to say awful things about him, unfair things really, about him not being truly English and not having an Englishman’s honour. I don’t know how it would all have ended if things had been allowed to go on. But not long afterwards, of course, people began to say there would be a war.’