Veil of Darkness

by Gillian White

  ‘There’s a huge notice on your back that shouts out “hurt me”. We must find out why and change it,’ said Bernie.

  At the summons of Mr Derek, Avril gathers her notebook and enters his office with a watery knock. She mustn’t wait for any ‘come in’, that would only madden him further. All those beautiful clothes so carefully chosen by Mother are a total waste of time. Whatever she wears she feels fat and foolish the moment she flops over his threshold.

  Fast and accurate mean little to her now.

  Perhaps it would have been kinder to the students if Avril’s business studies course had employed the odd cantankerous male tutor.

  Wherever the six feet four manager goes he uses a stiff-backed rush, so his legs move faster than the rest of his body, as if he’s riding a penny farthing.

  But Avril will not be defeated. Spurred on by her recent social success Avril tries to befriend Rhoda, one of the few locals employed by the Burleston. But Rhoda with the rook’s nest hair is careless and lazy, taking advantage of Avril’s soft nature whenever she gets the chance, slipping extra work her way, taking an overlong mid-morning break, skipping off early and using the phone for personal calls whenever Miss Pudsey is out. She nicks pens, too, and smokes her menthol cigarettes in the ground-floor guests’ bathrooms. When she throws the stubs down the loo, no matter how often you pull the chain shreds of tobacco come bobbing back up and someone is bound to report it.

  And what if they think it’s Avril?

  ‘It is a tendency with you,’ said Mother on the phone, ‘to rush things, dear. You can’t expect everything to come up roses after only one week.’

  ‘I don’t expect roses, Mother, but I do expect civility and fairness. Is that too much to ask?’ said Avril, with a choke in her voice. ‘Well, is it?’

  ‘No, dear, of course not. But you must bear in mind that Mr Derek is the boss and he shoulders many heavy burdens. It’s not for him to go home and shed the problems of the day by turning on the TV over a bowl of cornflakes like your father. Oh no, a man like that is permanently on the go, tussling with important business problems. Backbiting, Avril, is no answer. Look what happened to the Conservative Party.’

  But I’m efficient and fast, Avril wanted to wail, but I just don’t get given a chance. It’s not easy… there’s hardly any straightforward typing. Instead she said, ‘Some of the guests can be very demanding.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Mother in her best customer-complaints voice. ‘And wouldn’t you be demanding if you were paying those kinds of prices?’ as if she was buying vests from British Home Stores. ‘You must remember, Avril, that you are a small cog in a vast machine, an essential cog, but a small one, dear, and it’s up to you to put your heart into what you are doing so the machine can run smoothly.’

  It is to the desk that the guests come if they have complaints or face complications. Because Rhoda sits with her back to the foyer, she pretends she can’t see them and Avril is left to face the music. ‘I asked for my tea at eight thirty…’

  ‘Can you arrange these connections on Friday week for me and my husband…?’

  ‘No, I never used the telephone, that item should not be on my bill…’

  ‘So why don’t you give cash back?’

  ‘That’s all very well, but where is Nanny? I made it quite clear to her that I would pick Jonathan up here in the foyer after lunch.’

  ‘I had a golf lesson booked with the pro and the man had the cheek to forget.’

  And so on and so forth.

  The cruellest offenders are the Miss Lewises, Peg and Vi, who have been coming to the Burleston for an early summer holiday since their parents used to bring them when they were just knee-high. These two Devon-violet old ladies expect, demand even, superstar attention, and are poisonous if they fail to get it.

  They called her a dozy lump yesterday, and although Avril is used to being tormented because of her build—at school they called her Jumbo, quite an affectionate term, although Avril didn’t see it that way—she believed that when she started work and entered the sensible world of adults she would leave such stigmatizing behind.

  ‘You want to get off that big bottom of yours more often,’ carped Peg Lewis, gathering up her rook-black cardigan and shaking it aggressively when Avril was slow to produce the key.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Avril gaped, undefended and unwilling to absorb such an insult.

  ‘They take anyone these days,’ quipped the equally venomous sister, Vi, as they both tottered off towards the lift muttering under their breaths.

  There was no-one to complain to. Mr Derek was out of the question and Meryl Pudsey didn’t have the clout.

  She longed for the understanding arms of Kirsty or Bernie.

  When six thirty arrives Avril feels drained. This mixing with people is what finishes her. Any amount of shorthand, typing, menu-drafting, columns, indentations, noticeboard information, photo-copies—four, ten or fifty—she could knock all this off with her eyes closed, no problem. It’s when it comes to people. She often grabs a quick, cold supper and goes straight to bed dreading tomorrow.

  ‘You don’t know you’re born,’ she moans at Bernie. ‘No wonder I have mean, horrid thoughts, sometimes you make me so jealous that I feel sick and then hate myself for my wickedness. The whole thing’s a vicious circle. Why is life so damned unfair? Every day you fend off men who ask you out clubbing or dancing. Why do men always go for the obvious?’

  Bernie drags at her twisted fag. She picks tobacco off a shapely lip. ‘I’ve got the gift of the gab and a face that might have launched ships, I suppose that makes men like me, but never the sort I really want. Why is it never the people I want?’

  Kirsty remembers an article she read saying beautiful children have the advantage of being subconsciously preferred by teachers: beautiful children or just kids with attractive names. Examiners give higher marks to students with names like Victoria or Anastasia, while those with names like Avril or June get stuck at the bottom of the list. No wonder Avril is jealous. Bernie could throw on an old sack, shake her shaggy head and look good, whereas Avril sleeps with rollers in and takes ages to adjust her tights and make sure she’s got no panty line showing.

  And Kirsty isn’t the only one who is ultra-perceptive. ‘I knew you were on the run when I saw you on the train,’ says Bernie, in one of the few conversations when she forgets and stops talking about herself.

  ‘And I thought you were hiding,’ says Avril, flopped on her bed in her dressing gown, resting after a hellish day.

  Bernie leans towards the fly-blown mirror on the chest of drawers in their threadbare room and pulls down one cheek before expertly drawing a black line under her eye.

  ‘Hiding from the law.’ One of Avril’s favourite pursuits is watching Crimewatch on telly and hoping that she might recognize someone, posing herself that heinous problem: would she snitch on a neighbour? Would she even turn in her dad if she suspected him of some terrible crime such as rape or murder? She has sensibly decided she would talk to him first, and give him the choice between going for treatment or facing the full panoply of the law. But what if it was a child he had hurt?

  ‘No. From a man. It’s always a man.’ Bernie attacks her other eye. Perhaps Bernie will show Avril how to apply eyeliner properly.

  So Bernie had guessed.

  ‘It’s probably all in this book of yours,’ says Bernie, filling the room with the pear-drop aroma of cheaply perfumed lacquer. ‘That’s probably why you’re obsessed by it, you identify with the story.’

  Bernie reckons her Irish blood links her to writers and artists. She brags that she went round with them at Dublin University, she drank with them in candlelit cellar bars, she smoked with them in attic digs, she sat with them beside rivers and made music with guitars and harmonicas. Dominic Coates was an artist, she says, an artist at making love. And then the wretched Bernie cries, but even when she cries she looks charming, unlike Avril, bug-eyed and raw-cheeked.

  ‘One day I’m
going to get even, if it’s the last thing I do.’

  Eventually even Avril shared her sad love life with her friends.

  At first Avril lied and told them she went out with Guy Fleming, a boy she’d had a crush on when she was in the fourth year at school. ‘We were thinking about getting married, of course,’ Avril ad libbed, ‘but then I thought eighteen was far too young, that we should both see something of the world before we took a decision like that.’

  ‘So you came down here?’ said Bernie. ‘Jaysus and all the saints, will you look at us.’

  ‘Well, just to get experience. After this season’s over I might try and get a job on a cruise ship.’

  ‘Oh yeah? We’re all the victims of men in one way or the other,’ said Bernie, dragging on the tight black dress she wears to the bar in the evenings. ‘Aren’t we? We’ve all been forced into coming here to escape from something we’re afraid of.’

  ‘Well I certainly haven’t,’ Avril retorted defensively, so relieved that she wasn’t having to get dressed again and go off to work.

  How could Bernie be so shamelessly frank about her humiliation? How could she feel comfortable advertising to the world the way she was spurned, betrayed, made a fool of by a man she worshipped? If that ever happened to Avril she would keep her lips sealed, just as she never told a soul about the note she left in Guy Fleming’s bicycle bag, the note declaring her love and her availability. She left it there just before the end-of-summer-term disco, suspecting that, once again, she would be the only girl in the class there without a boy. Perhaps if Guy Fleming, dark, tanned and athletic, realized she was prepared to open her legs for him, he would make an exception just this once for the sake of an easy lay.

  Well, Mother made it perfectly clear that sex was the main thing boys were after, and that after they’d used you they despised you, thinking you cheap and tarty. Avril would happily be despised for the sake of having a partner at the end-of-term disco.

  Her note read, ‘Dear Guy. I think you are the most attractive boy in the school. Sometimes I watch you at break time and wish I was with you. I would do anything for you, and I mean anything. If you want to see how true this is, meet me at the end-of-term disco. Love from Avril Stott.’

  That night she hardly slept for excitement and tantalizing hope. ‘You’re in an odd mood, Avril,’ said Mother, eagle-eyed. Avril felt a huge sense of fondness, not just for Mother, but for her whole family, even the hapless Graham. She had such energy she changed her own sheets, tidied her room and even her drawers.

  Shame on him.

  They were gathered round the school gates when she arrived the next day, Guy Fleming and his crowd, all smirking and messing about. Dear God, she had never in her worst dreams imagined that Guy would stoop so low as to show her letter to all his friends, surely he understood that her words came straight from the heart, and that to do this was to crucify her.

  Her hope and happiness melted away and lay like boulders in her stomach.

  ‘Hey, Aaaavril,’ they shouted in silly voices, ‘what d’you mean by anything? Come on, fatty, show us what you mean by anything.’

  ‘How about the art room in break?’

  ‘Give you ten p for a feel of yer muff.’

  ‘For a wank.’

  ‘Show us yer titties, jumbo.’

  Then one of them held out a condom and snapped it in front of her eyes.

  Shaking all over she walked on.

  It wasn’t long before the whole class knew.

  Guy Fleming pinned the note on the board.

  She spent the evening of the disco at home watching telly with Mother and Father. She got in the bath that night, eyes red with weeping and wrapped in a dull hopelessness that floated around her with the scummy water. She scrubbed her offending parts with a nail brush until they bled, parts she had been willing to sacrifice, but parts so unworthy that they didn’t even tempt Guy Fleming to be seen with her at the end-of-term disco.

  When finally Avril shared this secret, when she felt she trusted her friends, when she confessed in the dark, in whispers, one night, the three of them laughed till they wept, and Avril’s laugh was the worst of all. She was eventually forced to get out of bed and creep down the dark corridor to the loo, giggling and hiccuping all the way. It was a most wonderful cleansing.

  But Bernadette has no such inhibitions.

  ‘Bernadette Kavanagh, you have no pride, and that is your trouble,’ said Avril.

  But look, life for poor, homesick Avril is taking on a new meaning. The following day, in her lunch break, she starts to input Kirsty’s novel, copying the first few pages from the author’s own hopeless typing, but continuing at a much faster rate once Kirsty starts using the tapes. She has never been so totally absorbed by anything she has read in her life…

  ‘No, you go off, I’ll cover for you,’ Avril tells the shirking Rhoda, heart beating, pulses racing.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Rhoda pauses, peers nosily over her shoulder. ‘What are you doing anyway?’

  Avril doesn’t want to share this new, overwhelming experience. ‘Oh nothing important. Just catching up with some stuff…’

  Such passion. Such drama. Suddenly she is exhilarated, expectant and alive, almost thrusting.

  This author can read Avril’s thoughts. Even ones she never knew she had.

  She is enraged when guests come flapping round with their foolish orders. ‘Sod off, you buggers,’ she wants to shout, totally out of character. It is only when Mr Derek returns that Avril reluctantly exits the disk and changes it. She will stay on this evening to finish the tape, and she hopes that Kirsty will have more, a good, long, juicy chunk for her to read tomorrow, because while she is gripped by this novel everything else in her comfortless world fades into pale insignificance.

  Six

  THE ADORED ONE.

  Bernie’s raison d’être.

  Another character we would rather not meet.

  Son and heir to a fortune made from the manufacture of cardboard boxes, young, dark and handsome Dominic Coates looks down at the naked woman in his bed whose name he cannot remember. Shit. How will he get out of this one? Why do women cling so? They imagine their open legs are church doors, their fannies the rings they desire on their fingers, their grunts and screams of passion the responses they intend to make at the altar. One big mistake last year that almost resulted in disaster and the parents, hung up on ideas of self-discipline, have sent him to Cornwall for the summer… as a lifeguard in St Ives… I ask you.

  ‘We have got some serious complaints to make regarding the falling standards in this hotel.’

  Mr Derek sighs with professional acceptance as he holds open the door of his office to admit the Miss Lewises—again. Why the hell do these two old bitches keep coming here if they’re so bloody pissed off with it? And why stay a month? It’s not as though they enjoy themselves or make use of the facilities: they rarely use the bar or the fridge in their rooms, they never dine à la carte, they pick the same back room every year, the cheapest in the hotel because of its proximity to the lift shaft, and they never tip anyone, ever.

  There have been disturbing reports from the staff that they pee in the sink in their room. Mr Derek would rather not know how that rumour came to be.

  ‘Do come and sit down, ladies.’

  ‘If it’s not one thing it’s another,’ starts Peg Lewis, warming up to her favourite subject: the hopelessness of the staff.

  ‘It is the thin end of the wedge,’ her sister, Vi, joins in with shaky, arthritic enthusiasm.

  Mr Derek wrings his hands. ‘You know how difficult it is these days to find people with the right sort of attitude. We at the Burleston try our best to ensure…’

  ‘Don’t try that smarmy political clap-trap on us,’ snaps Miss Peg testily. ‘What’s the time, dear?’ she asks her sister.

  ‘Nearly nine,’ replies Miss Vi.

  Miss Peg does some quick addition in her head. ‘Well, in that case, if it’s nearly nine we have bee
n sitting in the quiet lounge for over an hour and a half waiting for our after-dinner tea. We told the girl we would be in the lounge. We are always in the lounge after dinner.’

  ‘Perhaps if you had reminded her earlier and not sat waiting for quite so long…’

  Miss Peg smiles triumphantly, the lines on her face stretching tautly like bundles of elastic bands. ‘So it’s our fault.’ She turns to her sister. ‘What did I tell you, Vi? Mr Derek, how many times would you suggest that we order our after-dinner tea? Two, three, four or more?’

  Mr Derek brings a tired hand over a wearied brow. ‘I am sorry. It is quite clear that somebody forgot—’

  ‘And that is not all,’ goes on Miss Peg. ‘Last week we were in the quiet lounge when a member of your cleaning staff came in quite brazenly and started sorting through the books on the shelves in there. Now, I am no snob, Mr Derek, but when you pay huge sums for exclusivity from the masses, you do expect to find it.’

  ‘I will speak to the person concerned,’ says Mr Derek sorrowfully. ‘I can assure you that this will not happen again…’

  ‘Because if every Tom, Dick and Harry came and removed books at whim, the guests’ choice of reading would be reduced severely. What if Vi or I had been in need of some holiday reading? Not that either of us would dream of coming away without our own books; there is something so distasteful about the feel of books leant to all and sundry. Vi and I stopped visiting the local library long ago, as we found so many books torn and stained.’

  ‘Don’t forget that other girl, Peg. The fat one with the attitude problem.’

  ‘Ah yes, I was coming to that, Vi dear. There is somebody new in your reception. A slow, bumbling girl who looks as if she’d be more at home in a cow shed, to be perfectly honest. She has no charm or poise, Mr Derek. Half the time she looks vacant. And the other day, when I chided her for her dilatory attitude, she just stood there gaping like a fish with a hook in its mouth. It is not a good advertisement for your hotel to have a girl like that at the front desk. First impressions are important, and yet she is the first thing you see when you enter the Burleston.’