The Man Whose Dream Came True

by Julian Symons

  ‘Of course. We’ve not met for years.’ He gave a start as he felt pressure applied to his upper arm. Tea spilt into his saucer, some went on to the mushroom coloured carpet. Evelyn mewed with distress.

  ‘Startled you, old man, sorry.’ It was Bradbury’s hand, of course. Then Evelyn had rushed out for a cloth and he was on his knees helping her to wipe the carpet, although really only a few drops had been spilled. Evelyn kept repeating that it was perfectly all right, but her stare at the carpet said the reverse. The tea trolley was wheeled out, he was shown round the neat suburban garden, and then it was time to go.

  Mrs Foster was taking him back. Bradbury accompanied them out to her car.

  ‘It’s been good to see you, but we never got a chance to talk over old times.’ His leg brushed against Tony’s. ‘Have lunch with me one day.’

  ‘I’m going back to town in a day or two. I’ll ring you when I’m free.’

  When they were out of sight of the house Mrs Foster said, ‘Are you pleased to get away? I am. I’d only met Evelyn before, we’re both members of the Women’s Club. He was a bit of a shocker, I thought. But I forgot, you’re a friend of his.’

  ‘Not so much of a friend as all that.’

  ‘Do you know, that’s what I thought.’ She flashed him a smile of what might almost have been called complicity. ‘It’s a pity.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘That you’re going back so soon. Eversley, my husband, needs help badly with his book and you do that kind of thing. Or am I wrong?’

  There was the most curious kind of tension in the car. She did not look at him, she stared ahead at the ribbon of road. Why did some kind of invitation seem to lie behind those innocuous words?

  ‘Not exactly. I told you what I did for the General.’

  ‘Eversley would expect to pay. If you wouldn’t be insulted.’ He wanted to say, I am not sure, I have been much deceived in women, I am afraid of what they may do to me. Instead he said, ‘I really ought to go back to London.’

  ‘It’s up to you. Where shall I drop you?’ When he opened the door to get out she said, ‘Don’t make any mistake. I asked you because I thought you’d get on with Eversley. He’s not the easiest man in the world.’

  ‘I’m flattered.’

  ‘There’s no need to be.’ She shrugged her slim shoulders. ‘If you want to ring you’ll find me in the book.’

  He was walking away when she wound down the car window. ‘Eversley likes to see references. If you’ve got any.’

  References indeed! He tried not to show by the stiffness of his back that this really did insult him.

  Chapter Five

  He rang the following morning from the Seven Seas, with the daily whizzing a vacuum cleaner about under his nose. Her voice sounded cool, almost uninterested, as she asked him to come along at three o’clock. The address was Villa Majorca, Byron Avenue.

  Byron Avenue was on the outskirts of Southbourne. In the bus on the way over he tried to analyse the reason for the excitement he felt. Why had he dressed with more than usual care, in a charcoal suit with a faint stripe, a plain white shirt with button down collar, a discreet blue tie? This was only a temporary job, or no job at all if Foster disliked him. He felt the tingling in his stomach which told him that Mrs Foster found him attractive, yet if Foster suspected this he might not get the job. But as the bus rattled along the sea front and then turned off, away from the hotels into a residential area of wide roads in which red brick or whitewashed houses stood detached in well kept gardens, the sense of approaching some climacteric in his life increased.

  The few houses in Byron Avenue were solidly opulent in the Edwardian manner favoured by builders in seaside resorts soon after the beginning of the century, when Southbourne had been a village and these the residences of rich Londoners. He passed a plot with a ‘For Sale’ notice on it and then came to the Villa Majorca, which was smaller and more modern than most of its neighbours. A gravel drive led up to the front door. On the opposite side of the road were school playing fields. When he rang the bell she answered the door and took him into the drawing-room. She wore a pale dress – he was never to see her in any but pastel colours – which almost matched the grey flint of her eyes.

  The room was quite small and although there were nice things in it the effect was not one of order or elegance. On the mantelpiece he saw some bits of what he recognised as Battersea enamel, a corner cupboard contained some porcelain, perhaps Dresden or Meissen, or perhaps only imitations. There was a piano with photographs on it, there were little tables studded with mother-of-pearl. An incongruous note was struck by African masks, a fur-covered shield and a pair of assegais or spears, grouped in one corner. She saw his glance.

  ‘They’re my husband’s, he spent some time in Africa. You were thinking his taste is different from mine? Quite right.’

  ‘I was thinking that. At that very moment.’ Where was Foster? She answered this unspoken question.

  ‘Eversley had to go up to London, looking up references in some museum. He is so keen about this book.’

  ‘Perhaps I should come back.’

  ‘He wants me to interview you. Eversley is a fool about people. You said you can type. Come and show me.’

  He followed her to a room at the back fitted up as a study, with a big mahogany desk, a swivel chair, a filing cabinet, books behind glass. A window looked on to the garden. There was a typewriter on the desk, paper beside it. He put the paper into the machine, typed a few lines. She nodded.

  ‘Good. You’ll think I’m being very careful, but Eversley’s last secretary typed with two fingers.’

  Back in the sitting-room he produced the letter from Sir Archibald Graveney and another, which he had typed on a different machine at a different time, which purported to be from Chalmsley Baker of Redmers Hall in Cumberland. Both testified to his satisfactory service as a secretary. She touched the one from Baker with her fingertips and asked if he would mind if she followed it up. He made his stock reply.

  ‘Of course, but you won’t get a reply for a week or two. Baker’s yachting on the Riviera, lucky chap. He sent me a card.’ He forestalled what might be her next question. ‘And Sir Archibald died last year. Though I believe his widow’s still at Throgmorton.’

  She made no comment, but went on. ‘You mentioned that you’d been helping a General with his memoirs. Eversley was particularly interested by that.’

  He moved uneasily. The interview was much more business-like than he had expected. Then he smiled. The smile was one that he had practised in the glass, and he considered it devastating. ‘I practically wrote half the book. But there’s something I didn’t tell you. We parted on bad terms, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I couldn’t ask him for a reference?’

  ‘He might explode if you did.’

  ‘So there’s nobody I can write to at the moment.’

  This really was a little bit too much. Anybody would have thought he was applying for a job at the Bank of England. He started to get up from his chair. As he did so she folded the two letters carefully and smiled.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, I really am insulting you.’ He did not contradict her. ‘And I’m being stupid. It’s just that I’m doing it for Eversley. If you’d like to take the job we should both be very pleased.’

  He sat down again and she started to talk about money. She suggested an arrangement that was fair, even generous, for a job that was five days a week, mornings only, from ten o’clock each morning. ‘When can you start? Will tomorrow morning be all right?’

  ‘There’s no need for an interview with your husband?’

  ‘The problem is to keep him occupied. He’s not very strong and doesn’t work. He doesn’t know what to do with his time.’ Her tongue came out and licked her pale lips. There was again a hint of complicity, of a shared secret, in her manner as she showed him to the door.

  A classic situation, he thought on the way back in the bus. Elderly valetudinarian husband, young discon
tented wife playing while husband’s away. Yet this analysis did not satisfy him. There was something forbidding about Mrs Foster, and this was part of the attraction she held for him.

  Chapter Six

  He presented himself at precisely ten o’clock on the following morning, met Foster and began work.

  Foster was far from the elderly valetudinarian of Tony’s imagination. Mrs Foster – Jenny as he thought of her although the name was not appropriate – was about his own age, and Foster was perhaps three or four years older. He was a small man, a head shorter than Tony, of a weak Byronic handsomeness. A single white streak marked his black hair. The three of them sat in the drawing-room for half an hour talking.

  ‘Mr Bain-Truscott really can type,’ she said. ‘I tested him. His fingers fairly flew over the keys. Not like the last one.’

  ‘That’s good. He was not at all satisfactory.’ Foster seemed uncomfortable.

  ‘And he has splendid references.’ Her tongue crept out, touched her lips, went in again. The quick glance she gave him held no visible sign of amusement or irony.

  ‘I leave all that to you.’ Abruptly Foster said, ‘Are you interested in topography?’

  ‘To be frank I don’t know the first thing about it.’ The moment seemed right for his smile. ‘But I can learn.’

  ‘I rely on my wife. She doesn’t often make mistakes.’

  They talked about the weather and about the town and then Jenny said, ‘Perhaps you should start Mr Bain-Truscott off, darling.’

  Foster led him into the study, and took out several large quarto volumes from the glass-fronted case. ‘What I’m trying to do is to reproduce a complete topographical survey of this area, and not only topographical but historical, so that it compares each period shown in the more important maps with every period preceding it. I want to make the comparison fully detailed about every village.’

  ‘That sounds like quite an enterprise.’

  ‘It’s a survey of a kind that has never been attempted before,’ Foster said solemnly. ‘Just now I’m still in the stage of accumulating comparison notes. I’d like them typed up on separate cards and then I shall analyse them in detail.’

  He proceeded to rattle off at considerable speed, so that Tony had to ask him to slow down, a variety of extracts from the volumes in front of him. They went into great detail about population details, boundary changes and physical features of each district. Then Foster showed him the form in which he wanted the notes typed up. While Tony was typing he caught the man looking at him in a way that was hard to define. It was as though he were – what? Afraid of Tony, jealous of him, assessing him as a rival? Something of all these, perhaps, with something else that he could not place.

  At ten minutes to one Jenny put her head round the study door. ‘Have you almost finished, Eversley?’

  ‘For today, yes.’

  ‘You have time for a drink before you go, Mr Bain-Truscott?’

  They drank sherry in the drawing-room from small, beautiful glasses. He asked them to call him Tony because his full name was such a mouthful.

  Foster was drinking his sherry in an abstracted manner, head sunk in his shoulders. When she rather sharply called him to attention he said, of course, Tony by all means. There was no reciprocal suggestion that he should use their Christian names.

  ‘How did it go this morning?’

  ‘Very well.’ Foster gave a weak smile. ‘Mr – Tony is an excellent typist.’

  It was she who showed him out. ‘I’m sorry not to invite you to lunch, but we have only a very light midday meal. In the afternoon Eversley often lies down for an hour. I told you he’s not very strong.’ As she opened the door there was the sidelong cat-like look suggesting that they shared some secret.

  Wednesday morning was a repetition of Tuesday, the dictation, the typing, the glass of sherry. It seemed to Tony that Foster was reading passages from books and he suggested that if they were suitably marked he could save time by copying them without the need for dictation. Foster pulled at his upper lip dubiously.

  ‘Perhaps. I shall have to go up to the British Museum tomorrow, and I shall leave something for copy typing. But for most of this material that wouldn’t do, it wouldn’t do at all. I have to select passages that fit together. I don’t think I could possibly mark them all up in advance.’

  He spoke with concern, almost with agitation, and Tony left it at that. If Foster liked to pay him for wasting time, why should he object? Foster continued on an apologetic note. ‘I’ve had secretaries before who’ve done things their way and got into a terrible muddle. Doing them like this may take longer, but I can make sure everything is in the right order.’

  ‘Yes, of course. How long have you been working on the book?’

  ‘Nearly five years.’

  ‘Since you came back from Africa, I suppose?’

  A pause. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did you live there long?’

  ‘Quite a time.’ He opened another book, started to dictate again.

  Suppose Foster was thirty-five, and he certainly could not be older, had he married Jenny out there or since he returned? And did his money come from Africa? Certainly he must have money, to live here and occupy himself with a project like this. There seemed to him something odd about the marriage, but again he reflected that it was not his business. That afternoon he put a second coat of paint on the chest of drawers, and in the evening told Widgey that he had a job and would pay for his keep. She waved the suggestion aside.

  ‘Don’t want any money, I’ve got enough. What’s the job?’ She listened with a sceptical air when he told her.

  ‘You want to look out for that Mrs Foster. Sounds to me as if she’s got her hooks into you.’

  ‘She’s not like that.’ He rather regretted saying anything.

  ‘He must be pretty wet.’ On this he made no comment. ‘Don’t get mixed up with her the way you did with Violet. Have a cuppa?’

  ‘It would never have done,’ he said as he drank the scalding liquid. ‘You were quite right.’ The thought of Violet’s opulent flesh and of those nights in her room came back to him and he shuddered uncontrollably.

  ‘Sometimes I think you don’t like any women.’

  He was indignant. ‘I like them much better than men.’

  ‘I wonder.’

  ‘I like you. I think you’re the most wonderful woman I’ve ever known.’ He kissed the straggly hair on the top of her head.

  ‘Thanks very much. Just don’t get mixed up with this Foster female, she sounds like poison. I don’t want him coming round with a shotgun.’

  ‘He’s wet, you said so yourself.’

  ‘It’s the wet ones who use guns.’ There was a thunderous noise in the hall. ‘Christ, it’s that man O’Grady. He gets tight every night. Give me a hand.’

  O’Grady was on his knees in the hall, glassy eyed, trying to right a hat-stand he had knocked over. They got him up the stairs and into his room. Widgey managed it all without removing the cigarette that drooped from her mouth. An elderly couple watched their ascent with awe, and asked if Mr O’Grady was ill.

  ‘Drunk.’ They stared after her unbelievingly. She said to Tony, ‘Thanks. Don’t know how I’d have managed.’

  ‘You’d have managed. Are you going to get rid of him?’

  ‘What for? Man’s got a right to drink as long as he doesn’t bother anybody.’

  ‘The other guests won’t like it.’

  The cigarette moved up and down in her mouth as she spoke emphatically. ‘Then they can bloody well lump it. There are too many people around who try to stop other people doing what they want.’ As he was going up to bed she told him again not to get mixed up with Mrs Foster, then started to laugh, her whole body shaking. ‘You see, I’m one of them.’

  On Thursday he got mixed up.

  It began like the other days. She opened the door to him wearing one of her pale dresses, her face colourless above it. She said simply that Eversley had left t
hings to type. There were passages marked in books and he began work on them. Just after eleven she came in, bringing a cup of coffee. As she put it on the desk she leaned over and for a moment her slight body was close to his. There was no scent about it, no warmth. She turned away to the window and her back was towards him, slender and straight. Below the short dark hair her neck was white.

  It was, or so he thought afterwards, the whiteness and vulnerability of this neck and something hopeless yet unyielding in the set of her shoulders that made him rise, move to her and put his arms round her from behind, feeling the bones of the rib cage and the small breasts. She stayed for a moment quite still like some animal unsure of its captor’s intentions, then turned so that she faced him and pressed her mouth to his. The mouth was cool and dry, the body pressed against him felt hard as a board. She said nothing as they separated, but took him by the hand as if they were children and led him upstairs. In the bedroom their bodies were pressed together on one bed while another stayed unused. A dark blue medallion set like an eye in the middle of the counterpane stared at what happened.

  He was amazed by the vehemence with which she made love to him, so that he was a passive rather than a dominant partner in what they did. Yet although he was surprised and in a way shocked by the passion contained in that thin white body, the sensations he experienced were more pleasurable than any he had known. To be used in this way by a woman as the vehicle of her own intense sexual desire fulfilled some emotional need in himself that he had not known to exist. Afterwards, while they lay and smoked, he took in the luxury with which the bedroom was finished, the lacquered furniture, the smoke blue wallpaper, the silky Chinese carpet on which there was a medallion in another tint of blue.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you the answer. Eversley’s no good.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘I doubt it. I mean no good in any way, to me or to himself. He’s stinking rich, that’s why I married him. And he’s got what he wants, he’ll do anything for me. A couple of years ago I said I’d like a fast car. Next week he bought me a Jensen. When I got bored he sold it and lost a thousand pounds on the deal. A year ago he got me a motor launch. I’m bored with that too. Do you like mucking about in boats?’