“You obviously haven’t seen Les Tapettes de Trouville,” said Harold, who had caught this prize-winning study of fashionable degeneracy in France at Easter. It was rumoured that the English censor would require so many and such drastic cuts that the film’s running time would be reduced by a little over an hour, but that even then there might well be a profitable public outcry. In its original version it had lasted four hours, most of which was spent less between than on top of the sheets.
“No, I haven’t. Is it sexy?”
“Not sexy, really, no. But they do spend a good deal of the time in bed together with nothing on.”
“How can it not be sexy, then?”
“Oh, it’s an art film, you know. They talk a great deal about life and things.”
“Things must include sex.”
“Oh, God, they’re talking about sex,” said Brenda, coming in with the first course. Harold speculated on her sexual activity with David, and decided that it was probably quite vigorous. David was rather stocky, and stocky men were said to be pretty active. Though it was hard to imagine.
“About what?” said Helen.
“Sex,” they all three said together.
“Oh.” She looked crossly at Harold, and said, “I told you to have only a short one, and now you’re not ready. What a waste.”
“It’s not a waste at all,” said Harold, swallowing half a tumbler. He sat down, trying not to let his eyes water.
“What film is it tonight?” asked Helen, starting on the soup as though she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, which she probably hadn’t.
“It’s one of these new English ones,” said David. “The social realist sort. Lots of smoky roof-tops and trains passing and jazz clubs and things.”
“I’ve seen it, then,” said Harold. “You must mean Look Back in Anger or Room at the Top.”
“No, but the same school. It’s called Frankenstein and the Class System.” David laughed immoderately at his own joke.
“Actually,” said Brenda, “it’s the new Marlon Brando.”
“Oh, God,” said Harold. “Mumble, mumble, mumble, look at me in my dirty T-shirt. I don’t think I can stand that.”
“He’s marvellous,” said Brenda. “Don’t you like him, really?”
“He’s all right, I suppose. But why do we have to go to the cinema at all? Why can’t we stay here and do the washing-up and go to bed early?”
“Good heavens,” said Brenda, “we’ve got to have some fun some time, haven’t we?”
“We could have that by going early to bed. Let’s have an orgy, the four of us. I’ve never had an orgy, have you?”
“Harold,” said Helen, “would you pass your plate, if you’ve finished? If not, please hurry up, as the pilaff will be getting cold.”
“An orgy sounds rather marvellous,” said Brenda. “Don’t you start with a huge banquet, and go out and tickle your throat and then come back for more?”
The two men looked at each other in mock despair.
“It’s not your throat you tickle,” said Harold.
“Harold, don’t be disgusting,” said Helen.
“I haven’t told you about the fire I had this morning yet, have I?”
Harold told them about the fire, tidying up a few details, and leaving out Mr Douglas altogether.
“That girl putting you through to Ambulance,” said Brenda, “that must have driven you nearly mad.”
“It was pretty irritating, but I kept my head.”
Helen looked at him with wide eyes. “Gosh,” she said.
“It was the wiring, of course. It’s very bad indeed in some of these old houses, you know, an absolute menace.”
“I think it’s rather funny, it being the fridge,” said Brenda.
They had eaten well, and in spite of Harold’s dislike of cheap wine—he much preferred to drink whisky or gin than South African Burgundy—he was feeling quite flushed after two bottles and his heroism during the fire.
“Oh, leave the washing-up,” said Brenda. “I’ll do that when we get back.”
That was nice of her, Harold thought, making it clear like that that she would do it, leaving Helen and him to their private vices. She wasn’t as good-looking as Helen, but she certainly seemed less old-fashioned. But then she had David, who might be all right between the sheets, but he was really very dreary when fully clothed and in public rooms, as it were.
After the film they said good-bye to David and went back to the flat. Helen insisted on doing the washing-up with Brenda, which annoyed Harold so much that he didn’t even offer to help, but went and read the newspaper David had left behind. When Helen at last stopped fiddling around in the kitchen, and came into Brenda’s room where Harold was sitting, she said, “You might have helped put things away.”
“There’s only room for two in there.”
“You could have offered.”
“Let’s go to bed.”
“All right. Good night, Brenda.”
“Good night, you lucky pair. Sleep tight.”
I wish I was tight, thought Harold, as they got into bed. But he hadn’t seen Helen for several days, and desire got the better of boredom.
“Good God,” he said afterwards, as they lay in the dark. “You don’t put much into it, do you, Helen?”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t like it, do you?”
“I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t like it.”
“Well, you don’t enjoy it, then.”
She turned over restlessly and said, “Why don’t you go to sleep, sweet?”
“Because I want to know why you don’t enjoy it. Am I an inadequate lover for you?”
“How would I know?” she said, more tartly than usual. “You’re the only one I’ve ever had.”
“Well. Go on.”
“Go on where?”
“Say it. Say, Thank God.”
“Now listen, Harold,” said Helen, sitting up. “I do everything you ask, and then you nag at me. What more do you want? What’s the matter with you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with me. It’s you. You don’t enjoy it. I can tell.”
“If you’re not satisfied——” She stopped, then lay down again and said, “Do let’s go to sleep.”
I’m a bastard, thought Harold, nuzzling himself closely against her, a real bastard. The kindest thing would be to end it all. But I can’t. I’m too lazy. Or else I fundamentally enjoy being dissatisfied. God, what a thought.
Next morning he had a bath while Helen and Brenda gossiped in the kitchen over the remains of breakfast. He looked at himself in the mirror with what he liked to think was critical detachment: fair hair, grey eyes, nondescript. But the crinkle at the corner of his eyes was coming on nicely. He practised it for a moment or two, then squeezed a bump of stomach between finger and thumb, rolling it as though it was a piece of curtain material. He was a little plump, perhaps, but the flesh felt springy and knotty and good, with little nubbles of criss-crossing veins just detectable. Too much spring, perhaps, not enough bumps, but basically all right. Not like his father, who had given up altogether and was beginning to wobble as he walked. But there was a danger, a definite danger: corpulence could almost certainly be inherited, and Harold had much of his father’s physique. To be five feet eight inches and fat was not merely a misfortune: it was a disgrace. Harold didn’t, though, inherit his father’s excessively hairy chest. It was really rather disgusting, Mr Barlow’s chest, the thick black mess spreading all over his shoulders and upper arms, like broken and rotting wheat. Once it had seemed rather admirable to be so hirsute, so distinctly masculine. But one day, when Harold was fifteen and passionately in love with a girl called Anne Killian, he had seen Anne turn white as she stood on the diving-board of the Killians’ swimming-pool. Following her gaze he saw she was staring with horror at Mr Barlow in his bathing-trunks. The romance had never been quite the same after this shock, and Harold had changed his views about body-hair as a result.
&nb
sp; His own chest was all right, though, in fact if there was a criticism to be made of it, it was that it could, perhaps, have done with a little of his father’s protective camouflage. There were three or four long and repulsively pubic-looking hairs around each nipple, but that was all. They looked as if they had stopped off at the two pink and rubbery oases on their way from chin to groin, or vice versa. Harold had cut them off once with a pair of nail-scissors, not because he didn’t want to appear masculine, but because their lack of numbers and excessive length in such an isolated position made him feel ridiculous. But they had only grown again, longer and more idiosyncratic than ever. He gave them a friendly rub, and they responded by curling round his fingers. An example of the very purest Narcissism, he thought.
His body was always rather a problem. Stark naked he really looked rather good, he considered, but one didn’t want to strip in front of everyone, and Helen was very boring about making him wear pyjamas. So only bits and pieces ever showed, and they didn’t do him justice. His legs, for instance, were really very nicely shaped when seen from hip to ankle, but in shorts they lost all proportion. The knees looked weak, the thighs too large, the calves too small. It was the same with his torso. With the eccentric hairs around the nipples of an otherwise nude chest, he felt absurd without a shirt. But remove shirt and trousers, and everything looked splendid: plenty of hair in all the right places then, and a solid chunky body that was definitely pleasing. He had once thought about joining a nudist club to give his body a fair showing. But he had decided against it, somewhat to his own relief. They all seemed to take it so seriously, to judge by those dreadful magazines, and they were all frankly hideous. He couldn’t very well stare at himself all day long. And anyway, you could never tell, the whole thing might prove impossibly embarrassing.
Helen knocked loudly on the door.
Sighing, Harold left the mirror and began to dress. There was quite a lot to do before he went to Buckinghamshire for the week-end. Mrs Fanshaw might be back in Craxton Street by now, wailing over her damaged kitchen. Harold’s own flat had to be put in order.
“I must be off,” he said to Helen. “I shouldn’t really have spent the night here. The house may have caught fire again while I was away. That happens, you know. A second fire a few hours after a first.”
“It would be no loss,” said Helen. “Those houses should be pulled down. It’s time you found somewhere better to live, Harold.”
He ignored what he regarded as deliberate provocation for a moment, then decided to cause alarm and despondency.
“Dennis was offering me a job in America yesterday,” he said casually.
Brenda said, “Oooh, Harold, how exciting.”
“What kind of job?” said Helen.
“A sort of vague—I don’t know—an assignment, you could call it.”
“Hmm,” said Helen. “I should have thought it a pity to leave Fenway’s after the work you’ve put in there.”
“Of course,” said Harold. “But one gets fed up, restless. I’m seriously considering it.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” said Helen. “I’d like to see what your parents would have to say to that.”
But she looked rather shaken. Pleased with himself, Harold kissed her briskly good-bye and went back to Craxton Street.
Four
THERE WERE GUESTS for dinner at the Barlows’, and Harold could not remember their names. One of them, he was almost sure, was called Mrs Crankshaw, but it might be Crowhurst, and the other was Captain Boulding or maybe Bilding or possibly even Burden or Barton. He had never met either of them before, and it soon became clear from his mother’s contrived air of politeness that he almost certainly wouldn’t meet them again. They were newcomers to the village, and claimed to be brother and sister, widower and widow. They had taken the Old Vicarage on a long lease, and complained about the lack of shops in the village and that they had to go four miles to get to the station.
Mrs Barton had invited them, thinking it her duty to be pleasant to new neighbours, but their succession of complaints was visibly annoying her.
“But how can you say that?” she said to Captain Barton or Boulding, who had just made some disparaging remark about the lack of a decent Saloon Bar in either the Royal Oak or the Buckley Arms. “We don’t want coach-loads of people coming here, surely. The whole point about Peterham is that it’s quiet and country and almost untouched.”
“I can’t agree with you,” said the Captain. “I think one needs the modern conveniences, you know. It’s awfully hard to be comfortable without them.”
“Well, I think coach-loads of beer-drinkers would be a most terrible inconvenience, I must say.”
“I don’t like a cess-pit,” said the Captain. “A main sewer man, that’s me. Things are always going wrong with cess-pits. They’re not healthy.”
“I can see you’re not a true countryman, then,” said Harold’s mother. “We’ve never had anything else, and it’s never been the slightest trouble.”
“Wait a moment, Mary,” said Mr Barlow. “We did have that time we had to call in that man from Marlow, you remember.”
“Oh, dear,” said Mrs Crowhurst or whatever, “I do hope we don’t have any trouble. Jack is simply not good at doing things around the house, are you, darling?”
Mrs Barlow winced at the “darling”, but she said, “I dare say plumbing is very simple at sea, isn’t it?”
“Not too difficult. The basic principle is to chuck everything overboard. Saves a lot of time and trouble.”
“I must say I don’t altogether approve of that,” said Mr Barlow. “This pollution business is becoming a real problem, you know, quite ruining the fishing in places.”
“Ah, but that’s not the Navy, you know. That’s a wholly different problem. It’s the factories. I saw a most remarkable sight the other day, somewhere near Slough, I think. There was a little canal thing, it looked like, completely covered with white foam. They say it’s something to do with detergents. That’s the sort of thing that’s ruining the fishing. You can put what you like in the sea, it won’t hurt it.”
“But the bathing,” said Mrs Barlow. “I’m told there are beaches in Lancashire which used to be beautiful, but now they’re simply insanitary.”
“Yes,” said the Captain. “But that’s not the Navy, either, Mrs Barlow. That’s the towns discharging their sewage into the sea. They don’t get it far enough out. Or they don’t take into account the prevailing tide, so the stuff simply gets washed straight ashore! I agree with you, it’s most unpleasant, but it’s not the Navy.”
“Well, something should be done about it.”
“Oh, I agree. I agree absolutely.”
“When did you retire, Captain?” said Mr Barlow.
“Just a year ago. I’ve been looking around for something to do ever since, really. But I thought it would be better to find somewhere to live, first. And then Dolly’s husband died and we decided to go fifty-fifty. I must really set about finding myself a useful and lucrative pastime. The Navy’s a splendid life, you know, and you feel a bit let down when they say time’s up. But you have to make way for the young.”
He looked so smug when he said that that Harold wanted to ask him what he felt about the youth of today, but he managed to stop himself.
“I don’t think the young are worth making way for, myself,” said Mr Barlow. “They don’t seem to have the will. The spirit, that’s what’s missing.”
“You’re not far wrong there,” said the Captain. “When I was doing a couple of years at Dartmouth—oh, just after the war, it was, wasn’t it, Dolly?—I remember we had great difficulty in getting the right type of boy, and even when we got him he wasn’t as good as he should have been. It’s the sense of service that’s lacking, we found. They have everything too easy these days, I suspect. I’m not an illiberal man, and I think the Health Service, for instance, has done a lot of good for some people, but there’s no doubt about it, the welfare state attitude isn’t good for the N
avy.”
“That’s it,” said Mr Barlow, “that’s it exactly. They don’t have any sense of service. No loyalty, that’s what it amounts to.”
“Oh, you’re so right,” said Mrs Crankshaw-Crowhurst, “you couldn’t be more right. Trying to get a decent servant today is like looking for a needle in a haystack. And the amount of money they want, it’s simply disgraceful.”
“I think you’ll find people in the village are very reasonable,” said Mrs Barlow. “They all like to earn a little extra. I have no trouble in getting women in to do the housework. No trouble at all.” She smiled patronizingly.
“It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
“Not in Peterham.”
“Absolutely impossible to get them to work, too.”
“I think you’re exaggerating a little. I think you’ll find the women only too glad to earn a little extra.”
“Like looking for a needle in a haystack,” said Dolly Crawshaw, as Harold suddenly recalled the name. She smiled at Mr Barlow as though asking for help against his wife.
“Men are just as bad,” said the Captain. “We’re trying to get ourselves a gardener—the place is simply overgrown at the moment, you know—but the only people we can find want a fantastic wage. Over seven pounds a week.”
“There’s a minimum, you know,” said Mrs Barlow. “It’s fixed by the government.”
“I don’t care who fixes it, it’s too much.”
“And then,” said Mrs Crawshaw, “they expect you to pay some enormous amount a week in the form of insurance stamps. It’s simply wicked. I don’t know how people like us are supposed to make ends meet.”
“It’s always the wretched middle-classes,” said Mr Barlow. “The rich can have their take-over bids and all the rest of it, but the middle-classes are the ones who pay the taxes.”
As Far as You Can Go Page 6