“I didn’t know that,” she said.
As they were walking along her shoe caught in a hole and she said, “Help me out.” He came over and untwisted her shoe free. “Are you all right?” he asked, his face concerned.
“I think so.”
He pulled her up, and as he did so he looked into her eyes, and at that moment without thinking they kissed each other for the first time. It wasn’t a violent kiss, it was a safe secure kiss. She closed her eyes and then after a while opened them. He was looking down at her with eyes open and as he saw her eyes opening he laughed. They both laughed and she drew herself gently away.
They walked along the road hand in hand. As they reached it he suddenly said, “Do you know what? There’s a hotel near here. We’ll go there. It’s quite near and we can walk. We won’t need the bus. It’s quite a large hotel. We’ll be there about five. I’ve got enough money to get us some food.”
“I’ve got five pounds,” she said.
They walked along the grassy verge of the road while the cars whizzed past: for not the first time he wished he had a car, but on the other hand it was good to be walking in the clear, fresh, slightly chill air.
After some time they came to a drive and at the end of it they saw a large building which Tom said was the hotel. There weren’t many people about and they eventually found the bar, which was open though there was no one in attendance. There was an imitation fire which simmered with red flames without heat, and on the walls were crossed dirks and claymores and, set in one wall, small windows glazed in various colours in which red, blue and purple predominated. They sat down on the easy chairs and waited for someone to arrive.
“They have a dance tonight,” said Ann looking at a poster straight ahead of her.
“I see that,” said Tom. He was taking out his wallet to see how much money he had with him.
“It’s all right,” said Ann, “I’ve got enough.”
“No, I’ll pay,” said Tom. He felt suddenly reckless as if he wanted to stay there all night and his mind was perfectly clear after his walk.
Shortly afterwards a girl in a short red kilt served them their drinks. Tom took whisky neat and Ann a shandy.
“Nice place,” he said looking round him. “It’ll get busy later on.”
“I’m sure,” said Ann.
She had taken off her coat and felt slightly cold.
“Tell you what,” said Tom with enthusiasm, “we’ll have dinner here. Why not? I’ve got plenty of money.”
“But dinner won’t be till seven or half past six,” said Ann. “That’s an hour and a half away.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Tom, “we’ll drink till then. We don’t need to drink much but we can drink something. We don’t need to get drunk.”
At that moment two young lads dressed in checked shirts who looked as if they had been skiing came in. They ordered drinks and sat down at an adjacent table.
“I suppose there will be some skiing around here,” said Ann.
“Yes, I think so,” said Tom. One of the boys had startlingly fair, almost white, hair, and the other had black hair. They looked attractive and fresh and young and competent.
Ann smiled at one of them after he had spilt some of his drink on the table and he nodded his head pleasantly and then resumed talking with his friend.
“I’ll go and get a menu,” said Tom.
He walked along a very long corridor and came to the dining room which was at the far end. It was set out with spotlessly white tablecloths, and pictures of deer and blue hills all round the walls. He was given a menu by a stout cheerful woman and he went back.
He found Ann talking to the two boys. She was asking them if it had been cold on the hills and the fair one was describing a fall which he considered comic. Tom went over and bought himself a whisky; Ann still had some of her shandy left. He sat down at the table with his back to the two boys and Ann stopped talking to them. He thought she looked very pretty after her walk. There was a lot of colour in her cheeks and she looked vivacious and happy.
“I’m glad we came,” she said. “I like this place.”
“If you’d like to dance,” he said, “I’ll stay and watch you. I don’t dance, but if you’d like to.”
“We’ll see,” she said happily. He was glad that she was enjoying herself but at the back of his mind was a shadow about the two boys. He wished he could ski or do something interesting or dramatic. He wished there was something they could do together so that they could talk about it, a purpose achieved happily in the fresh air.
A tall man in dark glasses came in and stood by the bar. He was wearing a red anorak and looking around him as he drank his whisky. There was about him an air of confidence and negligence as if he had plenty of money and knew his way around. He talked easily to the barmaid as if he was in the habit of coming there often, though it was clearly an expensive hotel. He talked loudly and mentioned a boat which he apparently owned. He also mentioned something about cheques. Tom hated him on sight. He didn’t like the way in which he spoke out loud as if he assumed that his concerns, his life, were important to other people.
He and Ann drank quietly without saying much. Suddenly Tom said:
“I’ve been thinking about what you said about teaching. I’ll think it over.”
Ann seemed to waken out of a dream:
“Oh, of course I did say that, didn’t I?”
“You did, a few times,” said Tom suddenly angry. He couldn’t understand why he was so angry; perhaps it was something to do with the two boys and the man, perhaps it had to do with feeling slightly out of place in these surroundings where one needed a cheque book or a boat or skis.
“I’m sorry. I was thinking about something else,” said Ann.
“What? What were you thinking of?”
“Oh, nothing in particular.”
“I see.”
“I’ll tell you what it was. I was thinking that I could do a project on hotels. Role playing, you know. Hotels from day to day.”
“That would be nice,” said Tom without enthusiasm.
The place was beginning to fill up. Handsome, rich-looking men with their well-dressed aristocratic girl friends were coming in. They all looked easy and suave as if accustomed to hotels of this quality and seemed to be talking about boats or skis.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Tom, “I left the menu on the bar. I’ll go and get it.” He did so and they studied it together.
“It looks very expensive,” said Ann. “Are you sure you want to have dinner?”
“We came here to have a night out,” said Tom, “and that’s what we’ll do.” But certainly it looked as if dinner would cost them two pounds each.
“I think I’ll have the melon,” said Ann. “I won’t have the soup.”
“And I think I’ll have the soup,” said Tom. “I feel quite cold. Do you feel cold?”
“Not now. I did at first. But not now.”
Tom felt in the mood for showing off, spending all the money he had. “Would you like another shandy?” he said. “I’ll have a whisky.” Before she could reply he went over and bought both, thrusting his way through the crush. After the whisky he felt pleasantly warm and thought he would drink all night. He didn’t care whether all his money gave out or not.
He noticed as he sat down that the fair-haired boy was smiling at Ann though she looked away when he sat down. He didn’t say anything but drank his whisky. Someone at the far end of the room was playing on a guitar the tune of California. After that he played Waly Waly.
“That’s my favourite tune,” said Tom and he began to recite the ballad very quietly in her ear.
O waly waly gin love be bonny
A little time ere it is new
but when ’tis auld it waxeth cauld
and fades awa like the morning dew.
“It’s very beautiful,” said Ann.
“There are many more verses,” said Tom. There was nothing like the ballads. Their bareness and
beauty. He hummed under his breath:
O had I wist before I kist
that love had been sae hard to win
I’d hae locked my hert in a case of gowd
and pinned it wi’ a siller pin.
Suddenly for the first time in his life he was pierced by the most bitter pain he had ever experienced. It was partly seeing Ann sitting so pensively in profile and humming the tune. In some strange manner the two came together and he realised that he loved her and that if he lost her he would be ruined. It was amazingly simple and amazingly frightening. So terrified was he that his hand with the whisky glass shook and went on shaking and he stared down at it in astonishment. The pain in his breast was bitter and bare and bleak like the pain in the ballads and he felt for the first time in his life, as distinct from knowing, exactly what the girl in the ballad had felt, her hopelessness, her desolation. The bar seemed to swing round him in slow motion as if he were drunk but he knew he wasn’t drunk, it was something else, some piercing pain that was wholly irrational and irrevocable.
“I think,” he said aloud, “you’re very pretty.” He wanted to touch her, to stroke her hair, but he didn’t.
“Thank you,” she replied without any hint of coquetry. She felt warm and cosy. She liked hearing people sing, she liked to be among people. Tom got up and bought another whisky. He did not feel at all drunk, merely clear headed and pierced. He felt that he could drink all night and not get drunk.
Eventually they went in for dinner. He felt the room warm and stuffy but he was in a funny mood. He suddenly said, “I’m going to buy a bottle of wine,” though he had never done so in his life before. She looked at him rather disapprovingly as if she didn’t want to see him wasting his money so extravagantly, but she didn’t say anything. In fact he felt rather quarrelsome. He laughed when the waiter obsequiously poured a little wine into his glass for him to taste it and waited for him deferentially to say if it was good enough though he knew nothing about wine. He wondered what the waiter would say if he suddenly said in a loud biblical voice, “This is rotten wine. Take it away. This is sinful wine. This is an offence against the lower classes.” He felt rather giggly. Everything seemed to amuse him, the pictures on the walls, with their silly deer and hills, the French names of the foods.
“Are you going to dance later?” he asked.
“If you like,” she said.
“It’s not me, it’s you,” he said. “I don’t dance. I never learned to dance. I can’t do anything that requires balance.” Again he found this rather funny, himself moving about the world in an unbalanced way, falling over chairs and tables, singing. He nearly burst out laughing but managed to restrain himself. The waiter was looking across at him, a serviette in his hand. Silly little man, he thought. What an extraordinary, absurd life. What servitude. He thought, if one had enough money one could go to the best hotels. But he was nearly broke and he didn’t know when he would get some more. He drank his wine quickly, feeling all the same that it was not a good thing to mix wine and whisky.
“If you want to go after the meal,” she said to him.
“No, we’ll stay,” he insisted. “We’ll see what the dance is like.” Something was singing at the back of his mind purely and insanely. He knew that something strange was happening to him, something irreversible, that he was being mixed like dough, but he persuaded himself that it was simply that he was drunk. Nevertheless he knew that all the contradictions in his life had come together and were laid before him as in a game lying on a table and that they were screaming with pain. He wanted to pour wine over them so that he couldn’t see them any more. He hadn’t often been drunk before. He wanted to make loud jokes which would annoy the waiter, but at the same time he didn’t want to embarrass Ann. She was eating carefully and seriously. She belonged to the real world of people, of banal pictures, and in some way he couldn’t define he himself didn’t. And that was why he was drinking.
Why had she never married? It wasn’t that she was ugly. In fact the more he drank the prettier she seemed to become. It wasn’t that she was unsuited to the world. She was certainly more suited to it than he was. She was attractive to men; the boys back in the bar had been smiling at her. They would probably have liked to talk to her. And it wasn’t as if she belonged to him though he didn’t know what he could do without her. She was serene and calm. She never spoke unless she had something to say. He imagined being married to her and saw as if in a flash of nightmare the demonic face of Dixon standing at the window peering in. How could they be together as long as Dixon existed? Wherever they went Dixon would follow them, the eternal laughing enigmatic face devouring him.
“You’d better eat your meat,” she said, “otherwise you’ll get drunk.”
“All right,” he said obediently, “that’s what I’m doing.” He drank some more wine. He hated the dining room and the waiter, servile silly bugger. As long as one had money the world was one’s oyster but without money what would happen to one? And that waiter, he knew, would have summed him up. He would know him to a T, that was part of his training. A servant of the money world, twisted internally by envy but showing a calm dignified external face. His face had the glitter that one would get from a polished silvery pan, meaningless, hard, merciless. A today of the upper classes.
“I’d like to kick that bugger in the teeth,” he said.
“Who?” said Ann looking up in a startled manner.
“That waiter,” he said.
“I think,” she said calmly, “I’d like Peach Melba.” Her calmness was like balm to him. To be so calm always, never to suffer the storms of the mind, to have a perpetual compass … that would be heaven.
“I shall marry her,” he thought, “no matter what happens. It’s the only thing that will save me. If she will marry me,” and he felt happy as if he had solved something though it was only the wine swirling around in his head.
“I think,” he said, “I’ll go to the lavatory.”
“All right,” she said.
He stumbled a little as he left the room under the gaze of the waiter and eventually found the lavatory. He stared down dully as he unzipped his fly, feeling as if he were in a hospital surrounded by white tiles. After he had finished he went to the basin and tried to be sick and while he was doing so a tall man in a bow tie came in and combed his hair peacefully in the mirror. Christ, thought Tom, Dixon again, he follows me everywhere, and he had an almost overwhelming urge to hit the man on the nose. No matter how much he tried to be sick he couldn’t, but he washed his face and the cold water soothed him. He walked back down the corridor seeing ahead of him the head of the stuffed deer and went into the dining room again. He sat down to his sweet.
“Are you all right?” Ann asked him.
“Yes,” he said but he was sweating and he didn’t feel at all well. However, when he took some more wine he felt that if he was going to be drunk, he might as well make a good job of it.
“They usually serve the coffee in the lounge according to the waitress,” said Ann. “You’d better have black coffee.”
“All right,” he said.
Together they went into the lounge and sat in chairs in front of the fire, which was so warm that Tom almost fell asleep.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go away?” she said.
“No,” he said half angrily. “No.”
“All right, if that’s what you want. Do you want an aspirin?”
“No. No thanks.”
He drank the black coffee, when it came, gratefully, and slowly, as if it were a bomb or a mine, unfolded the bill. It came to five pounds odd and he paid it but didn’t leave a tip. He was trying to remember how much money he had, but couldn’t. It was very hot in the room.
“Do you want to go back to the bar?” he said.
“If you like.”
They got up and walked along to the bar and found seats in a crowded part of the room. The folk singer was still playing his guitar and there was a lot of noise.
&n
bsp; “What will you have?” he asked Ann.
“A shandy,” she said, “but I don’t think you should have anything.”
“A shandy and a whisky,” he said to the girl who, as she leaned over, showed the tops of her breasts.
Steadily his head began to fill, as if with whisky. He heard himself now and again singing. He heard himself now and again requesting the guitar player to play certain tunes. The strings of the guitar were like a woman’s hair which the man was stroking. He saw the two boys smiling at Ann. Once he leaned over to Ann and said, “I love you,” and she said, “I love you.” Then surprisingly he found that there was a dance in a room opening off the bar. He was standing at the bar drinking while Ann danced. Now and again she would come up and talk to him but most of the time he saw her dancing gaily and happily. At first it was nice that she should be so happy. He himself stood or swayed by the bar drinking, knowing that he had very little money left. But as he watched he saw that more and more she was dancing with the fairhaired boy and that as she danced she was looking up at him and laughing, and he was filled with a desolating rage. But he remained where he was, the anger simmering in him like whisky while the accordions played, and the dancers swayed in front of him happily, forgetful of themselves, allowing their bodies to speak.
He stumbled out and found himself in the darkness pierced in flashes by the moon. There was a statue or something in front of him. He stood up and clung to it and close up he saw that it had a simpering Greek face. He stared at it for a long time thinking. Shall I go back and shout? Shall I scream? Shall I make a scene? But he didn’t know if he should do that. He was overwhelmed by the hotel’s air of ease and riches and happiness. He felt around in the half darkness not knowing what he was looking for. Did she really love him? Was it possible? He felt a stone in his hand and without thinking began banging it methodically in the face of the Greek statue. It was Dixon he was hitting, it was Dixon and all he stood for, the lying reason, the silly wit, the pretentiousness. He was weeping with frustration as he banged away at the face. “God damn you,” he shouted over and over, but no one heard him. “God damn you to hell.”
Goodbye, Mr Dixon Page 13