Present Times

by David Storey

  ‘Cathy!’ the figure said.

  ‘This is my father,’ Catherine said.

  From embracing Catherine, the figure turned; from inside the robe an arm appeared: a hand was thrust in Attercliffe’s direction.

  ‘This is Selina’s mother,’ Catherine added.

  ‘No formal introductions here,’ the woman said, and to Attercliffe she added, ‘If we can’t meet here on equal terms I don’t know where we can. I’m Rose.’

  Selina, carrying a basket, called, ‘I shan’t be a minute,’ and went out to the kitchen.

  ‘My father’s name is Frank,’ Catherine said as the woman shook Attercliffe’s hand.

  Testing one of the boxes, the woman sat down. ‘Frank,’ she said, and added, ‘I’ve just dropped by for supper.’

  A pair of reddened knees protruded from the hem of a darkly-patterned skirt: thick calves ran down to rope-soled sandals.

  ‘The smell of cooking’s inviting,’ she said, and added, turning to Attercliffe, ‘What do you do, Frank?’

  ‘My father’s unemployed, Rose,’ Catherine said and, taking a seat on a box next to the mother, added, ‘He used to be a journalist.’

  ‘A journalist.’ The woman flicked back her hair. ‘I used to be one of those.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ Catherine said, and asked, ‘What sort of things did you write?’

  ‘I was a travel-writer, Cathy.’ She said, ‘Mainly in the Dutch East Indies. Where, for my sins, I met the man by whom I had my only child. Enlightenment,’ she smiled, ‘didn’t come in my life, Cathy, as early as it’s come in yours.’

  The daughter returned from the kitchen; she was accompanied by the overcoated and feather-hatted figure who had appeared in the kitchen before.

  ‘How good to see you,’ the mother said, rising. ‘I hope you’re going to share our supper, Gary.’

  ‘Not tonight, Mrs Johnson.’

  Gary allowed himself to be embraced.

  ‘Not tonight,’ he said again.

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow is another day.’ He examined a watch. ‘I shall have to leave.’

  He touched the brim of his hat which, in his embrace, had been dislodged, added, ‘See you soon, Rose,’ and, with a pounding of wooden-heeled shoes, disappeared not down but up the stairs.

  ‘That’s Gary,’ the mother said. ‘A friend of mine from the old days.’

  ‘Gary’s an old chum of Rose’s,’ Catherine said.

  ‘Old! Old! How time passes,’ the mother said. ‘What have we got for supper?’

  ‘It depends what you’ve brought us,’ the daughter said.

  ‘I was hoping to savour some of your cooking,’ the mother said. Smiling at Attercliffe, she announced, ‘These girls have a lot to learn.’

  ‘Let’s get it ready, Catherine,’ the daughter said, and added, ‘Is there anything you’d like to drink?’

  ‘There’s a bottle of wine in the basket,’ the mother said and, as the two girls went out and their voices, speaking simultaneously, came from the kitchen, she asked, ‘You’ll have some supper, too?’

  In order to scrutinise the room more closely, she drew her box to a fresh position.

  Attercliffe said, ‘Aren’t you concerned about them living here?’

  He indicated the collapsing ceiling, the fragmenting walls, the crumbling floorboards, the blankets hanging at the broken windows.

  ‘They’ll soon lick it into shape.’ She smiled. ‘Selly has a knack of making herself at home. It’s how I brought her up.’ She waved her arm. ‘She was born in a tent, with the nearest doctor four hundred miles away, and most of that,’ she went on, ‘was over mountains.’ Glancing at the single beds, the debris-littered floor, the patches of light and shadow thrown up from a lamp in the street outside, she added, ‘It’s good to see young people on their own. It’s what life, after all, is all about. If you’re not fulfilled within yourself you’re not in a position to relate to other people. Today, with all the pressures to conform – far more than there were when you and I were young – it does the heart good to see young people taking their chance.’

  The sound of laughter came from the kitchen followed, a moment later, by the rattling of a pipe on the wall.

  ‘What about the neighbours?’ Attercliffe asked.

  ‘That’s the beauty of the place. Most of the properties round here have been abandoned.’

  ‘I mean next door.’

  Her nostrils flared; her eyes expanded. ‘There isn’t anyone next door.’

  ‘It’s full of youths,’ Attercliffe said.

  ‘You mean the boys?’ She laughed; strong white teeth were revealed between thickly-fashioned lips. ‘Gary keeps an eye on them. In addition to which they’re Selly’s friends. Lots of them I know. Going back to the old days.’

  ‘In the Dutch East Indies.’

  She laughed again. ‘That,’ she said, ‘was a very long time ago. My husband had a job out there. He had to give it up and we came back here, which was when I gave up journalism. I still,’ she went on, ‘write occasional pieces.’ Indicating that Attercliffe might take a seat on the box adjacent to her own, she added, ‘The boys are what living in a place like this is all about.’

  ‘Don’t they get up to trouble?’

  ‘What sort of trouble?’

  ‘Theft. Assault. Attempted murder.’

  ‘They’re full of mischief!’ She drew her sandalled feet together. ‘None of them,’ she continued, ‘means any harm. It’s what the authorities fail to understand and why a place like this is a godsend.’

  ‘Cathy’s friend, Benjie, has been to Borstal.’

  ‘They always exaggerate their misdemeanours. It’s what outsiders,’ she continued, ‘never understand. What appears to be non-conformist behaviour is merely the expression of a nature which a society like ours condemns.’

  ‘Like attacking old-age pensioners.’

  ‘I don’t blame the youngsters, but those,’ she said, ‘of our generation who, when they see a spirit of adventure, try to crush it. What they crush, of course, are the elderly, the infirm, and those incapable of looking after themselves. I blame the authorities entirely. Assaults on the elderly are a consequence of suppressive action.’ She breathed in, expanding the front of what he could see now was a darkly-patterned dress. ‘Here, at least, they can be themselves. It’s a curious phenomenon,’ she went on, ‘that the victims of a repressive society are seen as its culprits, and the culprits are seen as the custodians of justice. It’s the inversion of traditional values,’ she concluded, ‘that lies at the root of violence.’

  ‘I thought,’ Attercliffe said, ‘it was the other way around.’

  ‘Each child is born into this world uncorrupted and in a matter of hours it is subjected to a society whose goals are achieved by a constriction of its spirit. Disciplining our children to suit the technological requirements and not,’ she explained, ‘the other way around.’

  They sat knee to knee in the darkening room while, from beyond the door, came the sound not only of Selina but of Catherine singing: pipes rattled, water gushed, crockery was clattered.

  She added, ‘You’d have thought, after the Victorians, society would have learnt its lesson. Not for as long as I recall have the young been persuaded to accept suppression as a universally recognised goal in life.’

  ‘Supper’s ready!’ came a cry from the room next door.

  Selina’s mother got to her feet.

  As she turned she took Attercliffe’s hand, and they arrived at the door of the adjoining room with both their hands buried in the folds of the mother’s robe.

  Four bowls had been set out on the draining-board beside the sink.

  ‘We never got our drinks!’ the mother cried and, squeezing between her daughter and Catherine, she stooped, sniffed, and called across her shoulder, ‘Just what the doctor ordered!’

  They returned with the bowls to the other room; a candle was lit: wine was poured.

  ‘I’ve just be
en telling Frank,’ Selina’s mother said, ‘of how, when I was young, I would have given so much for a chance like this.’ She glanced at her daughter, then at Catherine and, finally, at Attercliffe himself and, as each of them delved at their chipped bowls with their variegatedly-patterned spoons (Attercliffe’s with its stem twisted like a corkscrew and imprinted with the legend, ‘Stolen from British Rail’), she added, ‘Our true responsibility to our children rests in a place like this. So much awaits to be discovered, so much to be achieved. But not’ – with her own variegatedly-patterned spoon, Selina’s mother gestured round – ‘in the manner prescribed for us by more conventional spirits.’

  23

  ‘I don’t understand how you can be so complacent,’ Sheila said. ‘Living in a ruin!’ She stooped, shielded her face, and cried.

  ‘Mrs Johnson is pleased by their enterprise,’ Attercliffe said.

  ‘That woman is a lunatic.’ She beat the arm of the chair.

  ‘You’re giving way to prejudice,’ Attercliffe said.

  ‘I’m giving way to anxiety about my daughter,’ she said. ‘Your daughter. The one you went to fetch.’

  ‘I went to see how she was,’ he said.

  The room was bare; as much of the furniture as could be moved she’d taken into the hall: the remainder, including the two chairs on which they were sitting, as well as the floor, was covered by sheets.

  A stepladder, on which he had seen her standing when he’d got out of the car in the road, was arranged against one wall: on a ribbed platform, at the top of the ladder, was set a can of paint; a paintbrush was laid across it.

  Sheila wore a smock; paint was flecked across her chest, across her headscarf, and across her shoes – a bespattered pair of plimsolls.

  The backs of her hands, too, and her wrists were flecked with paint: a solitary fleck animated the pallor of her cheek.

  One half of the ceiling and two walls were painted: a pale green, on the two walls, displaced the pale cream which had been their previous colour.

  ‘Unless you wanted me,’ he went on, ‘to bring her back by force.’

  ‘By anything!’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Reason with her.’

  ‘You approved,’ Attercliffe went on, ‘like Selina’s mother, of your daughter’s independence.’

  She brushed her wrist beneath each eye and, aware for the first time that she was visible to the occupants of the houses opposite, straightened, felt in the sleeve of her smock, got out a handkerchief, examined it – chose a clean patch amidst the paint – and blew her nose. ‘I suppose you’d just abandon her.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s abandoned me. She’s abandoned you. She thinks of nothing,’ she added, ‘but her own interests.’

  ‘I’m proud of what she’s done,’ he said.

  The nose was blown again. ‘Ruining her life. Ruining her chances. That child,’ she continued, ‘is only fifteen.’

  ‘She is nearly sixteen. She often tells me.’

  ‘What difference does one year make!’

  ‘You’ve often commended her common sense and stressed the freedom she needs to discover her femininity.’

  ‘This isn’t her femininity, this is her depravity.’ She got up, stiff-backed, from the sheet-covered chair and gazed over a half-sheet of newspaper attached to the lower half of the window: only the top of Attercliffe’s car and the upper storey of the houses opposite were visible and a patch of sky, the scene animated by the flecks of pale-green paint that had dried in diagonal splashes on the unprotected glass. ‘I’ll go and see her,’ she added.

  He said, ‘It won’t do her any good.’

  ‘It’ll do me some good. In addition to which,’ she glanced back, ‘I see through all this feminist crap.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s crap,’ Attercliffe said, ‘with Cathy. Far more, it’s to do with her disturbance at what,’ he went on, ‘goes on between her father and mother. The reason,’ he gestured round, ‘she has found a new home, however decrepit, is her disillusionment with this one.’

  ‘I knew you’d blame me,’ she said, ‘in the end,’ and, coming past him, scrambled up the ladder, retrieved her brush, dipped it into the tin of paint, slashed at the ceiling, and added, ‘I’ll no more accept it from you than I will from her.’

  The ladder creaked; she dipped the paintbrush back in the tin, leaned back, examined the area directly above her head then, brush still in hand, descended the ladder and, with one hand and the back of her wrist, endeavoured to move it to a fresh position.

  Attercliffe got up.

  ‘I need no assistance, thank you.’

  The ladder groaned: Attercliffe caught hold of the tin of paint as its contents cascaded on to her smock, on to her arms, and on to her shoes.

  ‘Damn,’ she said, but added nothing further and when he stooped to pick up the brush she turned, examined her hands, then her smock and, stepping over the pool that had formed at the foot of the ladder, kicked off her shoes and went out to the kitchen.

  He folded the sheet, saw several drops of paint scattered on the carpet and, looking for a fresh sheet, laid it down.

  ‘I am quite capable,’ she said, reappearing, ‘of clearing up. When,’ she added, ‘you’ve wiped your own shoes perhaps you’d leave. I can’t work,’ she went on, ‘with people hovering.’

  He took off his shoes and went out to the hall; she followed him to the kitchen where, having opened the back door, he set his shoes on the step outside, returned to the sink, and asked, ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Mind if I get one?’

  ‘I do mind,’ she said, and added, ‘If you didn’t live like a sponger, and earned a living, we could afford to have someone decorate the house.’

  ‘I’ll come and do it myself,’ he said.

  ‘No thank you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m quite capable,’ she said, ‘of doing it myself. On top of which I prefer to keep the house free of all intruders.’

  He dried his hands on a towel, wiped off a fleck of paint by his mouth, turned – found her gazing at him (eyes distended, cheeks flushed, forehead pallid, lips tightly flexed) – and said, ‘It could all be amicably arranged if you didn’t feel this need to score off me all the time.’

  ‘Men score off women effortlessly,’ she said, ‘merely by being what they are. I am, as it happens, securing my assets. I’d be foolish to do otherwise. You act in a way that society determines, I act in a way which, to a woman in my predicament, makes sense.’

  Having taken off her smock, she dropped it in a bowl, set it in the sink, turned on the tap, stepped back, then, glancing round, continued, ‘If you’d leave me to get on with my job. You’ve made it plain,’ she turned off the tap, ‘that you’ve no intention of counselling Cathy, in which case I shall have to do it myself.’

  Attercliffe said, ‘You’ll make it worse.’

  ‘I shall insist,’ she said, ‘that she comes back home.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’ll beg her.’

  ‘You’ll throw a fit.’

  ‘I shall throw anything that’s necessary,’ she said, ‘to get my daughter back.’

  She opened the kitchen door to the drive.

  ‘If you want to clean your shoes there’s a rag in the garage.’

  ‘I’d advise against hysterics,’ he said. ‘Cathy sees through it, on top of which it sets her a bad example.’

  ‘Example,’ she said. ‘We’re back to that.’

  ‘She is influenced by you a great deal,’ he said.

  ‘By me?’

  ‘By you especially. Far more than she is by me.’

  Her gaze shifted to an inspection of his shoes and, turning back to the kitchen, she announced, ‘She doesn’t give me much sign.’

  ‘It’s because she is that she doesn’t,’ he said.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘The best thing you can do is to encourage her to go on
with what she’s doing. After all, you left home for a better life and if, in the long run, you came back she may see that as the inevitable course for her.’

  ‘Pickersgill said you were good at manipulation. He said at the very beginning, “Why,” he said, “do you allow Frank to put you in the wrong? Don’t you realise he creates these situations and you’re only responding to what he does? He’s as much a cause of what’s happening as you are, even more so, for a man is always in a better position in these situations, yet you always end up by feeling guilty.”’

  She indicated the door again.

  ‘I shan’t encourage my daughter to stay where she is. I shall insist she comes back home at once.’

  ‘What if she refuses?’

  ‘I shan’t allow that,’ she said, ‘to stand in my way.’

  She closed the door behind him.

  As Attercliffe, a short while later, stood in his stockinged feet wiping his shoes on a rag in the garage, he heard music coming from the house – one of Elise’s or Cathy’s records – and when he returned to the car he saw Sheila through the upper half of the living-room window, back up the ladder, this time in an overall, slapping at the ceiling.

  He sounded his horn as he drove away.

  ‘What I like about the part,’ Felix said, ‘is the way it shows up the man for what he is.’ He got up from his chair – his script rolled in his hand – and, while Towers manoeuvred the actors into fresh positions at the opposite end of the windowless room, he crossed to the coffee alcove, nodded at Ann, glanced across the floor to see if, from this angle, the interior of the alcove could be observed by Towers, took out a bottle – squat and bevelled – unscrewed the top, drank, screwed the top back on, turned, picked up a plastic cup of coffee, recrossed the room, sat, groaned, examined the coffee, set it by his feet, and added, ‘A drunkard.’

  ‘Could you keep it quiet, Felix?’ Towers called, pacing the floor in his stockinged feet.

  ‘People like me are a dying breed. Praised for our artistry on the one hand and condemned for our self-centredness on the other. Yet if you aren’t self-centred how can you hold a company together, direct its actors, take the leading parts and, at the same time as you head the billing, keep an eye on the till? The till – where all enterprises start and where all but a minority of them founder. Subsidised theatre.’ He waved his hand. ‘I don’t think I told you, by the way, on the first occasion that we met, how in a very unfortunate accident I came to kill my wife.’