The Shadow and the Peak

by Richard Mason

  “I’d rather hear more about it. Who were your parents?”

  “My mother was my father’s secretary or something—mainly something, I think. She died when I was born, which gave him rather a bad conscience. He already had a delightful family. At least they looked delightful. I saw him with them in a theatre once by mistake. He had to pretend he hadn’t seen me. He felt awful about that, and the next time we met he gave me a fur coat.”

  He asked who had brought her up.

  “A childless couple in Ealing,” she said. “My father gave them a marvellous allowance, and came to visit me once a month. He was supposed to be an uncle. They told me the truth when I was sixteen. They were afraid I’d die of mortification, but I thought it rather a joke. The next time my father came he gave me a hideous evening bag. I asked if I could change it. He gave me five pounds to do it with. I couldn’t think why everyone wasn’t illegitimate.”

  “You were lucky,” Douglas said.

  “Yes, wasn’t I? My father’s rather nice. He makes ball-bearings or something, and he’s handy on the Stock Exchange. I wanted to act, so he sent me to the R.A.D.A. I was rotten at that. I started living with someone who wasn’t rotten at it, to try and make up, and then he got killed in the war. I nearly got killed, too, messing about in an ambulance. I could never understand why I didn’t. I didn’t know my life was charmed then. Funny, isn’t it?” She shrugged and smiled. “Anyhow, to finish the story, as I wasn’t any use on the stage I had a shot at being a mannequin. Then I met the Frenchman at a party. You know the rest. I met Louis in Paris, and let the Frenchman down. I’m rotten about letting people down.”

  “You didn’t let Louis down.”

  “I probably would have done, but he thought of it first. There’s nothing like being let down to stop you doing it yourself.”

  “I learnt that from Caroline,” he said.

  “We’re a marvellous couple, aren’t we?” she said. “But I hate people who sit round licking their wounds.”

  “So do I,” he said. “I hate myself when I do it.”

  “I never noticed you did.”

  Later they drove up to Judy’s boarding-house, which was called the Haven Guest House. The little room looked more cheerful now, with all the signs that she was living there again, but the sound of a man snoring still came monotonously through the thin partition.

  “He does that all day,” she said. “He never eats. He gets up at seven in the evening, and puts on a beautiful khaki­ drill suit and his sun helmet and goes out and gets drunk. He comes back at one o’clock, and wakes me by making a noise on the verandah. Then he makes an improper suggestion, and I say no, and he goes to bed and sleeps until seven the next night. He sleeps in his sun helmet. Go and have a look.”

  Douglas went along the verandah and looked through the wire-netting that covered the open window of the next room. The man lay on the bed, naked except for a pair of pants, looking like a huge grey fleshy grub that you might have turned up with a spade. The sun helmet was tilted over his forehead. His whole body swelled up with each snore.

  When Douglas was back in Judy’s room he asked her “Can’t you find somewhere better to live?”

  “Yes—didn’t I tell you? I’ve found a flat. A tiny one—but there’s a fridge. I’m moving on Monday.”

  “You’re really going back to the air-line?”

  “Yes, of course. I suppose my father would send me some money if I asked him—but I’ve never asked since I left the R.A.D.A. I feel I’ve rather let him down since. And taxes are such hell in England now.”

  “I hate you flying again,” Douglas said.

  “But I love it. Honestly, I’d pay to do it if I had any money. I’d pay just to see all the new places. And I haven’t seen Rio yet. They’ve promised to send me there soon.”

  “But you’d come back?”

  “Oh yes, it would only be a trip—I should have to come back.”

  He went out of the room for her to change, and while he was waiting in the hall the landlady came waddling from the back regions to talk to him. She said she liked having Judy at the Haven Guest House—she was a brave girl, and couldn’t he persuade her to stay instead of taking a flat? He said no, he doubted if he could. The woman asked if Judy was leaving on account of the snorer; she greatly regretted the snoring but unfortunately could do nothing about it because it the brother of her husband. If Judy liked she would remove the snorer to a remoter room. Or more easily, in order not to offend family relationships, she would remove Judy to a remoter room—a cooler and more delectable room. He said he was sure it was not on account of the snorer that Judy was leaving. Then Judy called him back and she had drawn her hair up on to the top of her heal and she looked curiously sophisticated and out-of-place in the cheap little room, with the sound of the snorer snoring beneath his sun helmet on the other side of the partition.

  “Do you like it like this, Douglas?”

  “I shall have to get used to you all over again.”

  “Do you like it, though? I’ll put it down again if you don’t.”

  “No, leave it,” he said. “It’s nice for the evening.”

  “Louis made me have it like this all the time. He liked me to look sophisticated. He was that sort—especially when he hadn’t a sou.”

  “Caroline wore hers like that.”

  “Stop licking sores,” she said.

  “You started it.”

  “I wasn’t licking sores.”

  “We’re quarrelling,” he said. “What a good sign. We must be getting to know each other.”

  They had dinner at a Chinese place. The food was poor and wasn’t Chinese at all, and there weren’t even chopsticks to show off with. It was served by a girl of nine who was mixed Negro and Chinese, with probably some Indian thrown in. It was an interesting mixture.

  “I’d be afraid of losing you if that girl was six years older,” Judy said.

  “I was wishing we had a mixture like that at the school.”

  She asked him what had been happening at the school and he told her about Silvia’s latest escapade, and then said, “Anyhow, let’s stop talking shop. You’re the only person I know that I don’t have to talk shop with—except a nice old Jew I met last night.”

  “What did the Jew say?”

  “He said that human behaviour was never based on reason.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No,” he said. “If it was, I shouldn’t be having dinner with you now.”

  She smiled.

  “Do you want me to go home?”

  “No,” he said. “When we’ve finished dinner, I want you to come and dance.”

  They drove over to the Colony Club. The tables were outside, round a palm tree strung with coloured lights. The evening air palpitated with jazz. He led Judy into the crush on the dance floor and held her, and the jazz faded and the crowd disappeared, and Pawley and Mrs. Pawley and the school disappeared, everything disappeared except Judy’s smile and the nearness of her eyes and her hair.

  “You remember the evening I took you round the school?”

  “Yes.”

  “I nearly came up to you again that night. After dinner.”

  “Did you?”

  “I’d have asked you to come down to my bungalow.” She smiled and said nothing. “Would you have come?”

  “I’ve told you how easily things go to my head.”

  “It was a good thing you didn’t come,” he said. “Mrs. Pawley turned up to bring a book.”

  “It might not have been a good thing, anyway.”

  “Don’t you think so?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Her eyes were green and amused, the soft fragrance of her hair mingled with her scent.

  Presently he said, “I can’t stand this. I’m too close to you. Let’s sit down.”

&n
bsp; As they went off the floor a man called from one of the tables, “Hey, Judy, girl!” He was a Jamaican, with a dark olive skin and a boisterous manner.

  “Excuse me,” Judy said. She went over and talked to him. Douglas sat down. Two or three minutes later she rejoined him.

  “That was the man I nearly married.”

  “Don’t you want to dance with him?”

  She shook her head. “I decided I wasn’t any use at having a mission.” She was suddenly looking rather wretched. “I wish I was. He’s a darling when he isn’t showing off. I could have helped him quite a lot.”

  “I expect you could.”

  “But I’m not good enough to do it. I’m a rotten sort of person, Douglas. Why don’t you see it?”

  “You didn’t live with him, did you?”

  She shook her head. “I was rotten to him, though. I let him down.”

  “Because you didn’t marry him?”

  “Because I let him think I might.”

  “It was only for two days,” Douglas said.

  They danced two or three times more. The last time she held him very tight and said:

  “Douglas, send me home.”

  “Take you home,” he said.

  “Drop me home,” she said. “Douglas, darling, I’m rotten. Just drop me.”

  They went out to the station-wagon. Her boarding-house wasn’t far from the Colony Club. He stopped a little way beyond the entrance.

  “Send? Take? Drop?” he said.

  “Douglas, I’ve been leading you on dreadfully.”

  “I didn’t need much leading.”

  “We ought not to have danced.”

  “Drop?” he said.

  “Douglas, I’m not fit,” she said. She was still wretched. “I’m not fit. You can come if you want, but it won’t be any use. This place is no use. Why don’t you forget me altogether?”

  “I’ll be down next week,” he said. “You won’t have flown away by then?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “We could have all day. We could go out on the harbour.”

  “I shan’t feel hurt if you’ve changed your mind,” she said.

  “I shall feel hurt if you’ve changed yours—but I’ll try not to show it.”

  “All right, darling. Good-bye.”

  He sat there feeling tremendously happy, but at the same time there was a weight of lead in him, because a week seemed like an eternity, and he wasn’t sure what to believe: whether Judy wanted to meet him again, whether she had wanted him tonight or not.

  Suddenly an old Negro stuck his head through the open window of the car, close to his own. He had pink gums and decayed teeth.

  “You like an interesting place, Mister?”

  “No,” he said.

  The Negro pushed his head nearer.

  “Listen, Mister, please—”

  “Go to hell,” he said.

  He felt sick all that night. He thought of the snorer calling on Judy, and he thought of the man she had nearly married, and he wondered if it was true that there had been nothing more between them—she was the sort of person who would give herself out of kindness of heart. Then he wondered if it was only out of kindness of heart that she had shown warmth to himself, and he tried to remember her words as they parted, her exact words and her intonation, and one moment they sounded sincere, the next moment they rang with the cracked pitch of an excuse. That night he didn’t sleep much, or at least didn’t seem to.

  The next morning he was in the library when Pawley’s maid came in.

  “There’s a telephone call for you in Mr. Pawley’s bungalow, Mr. Lockwood.”

  He hurried down. It was the first time he had been rung up at the school, and he was certain that it must be Judy ringing to cancel the meeting next week. Fortunately neither Pawley nor his wife was in the study. He picked up the receiver from the desk.

  “I know I oughtn’t to have ‘phoned, ought I?” Judy said. “Are there people there?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Oh, darling,” she said. “I was so bloody ashamed about last night. I don’t know what you thought. Don’t you hate me? You don’t honestly want to meet me again next week, do you?” He made his answer quite clear, and she said, “Honestly! I didn’t know. I didn’t know if you were just being kind to me because of all I told you, the illegitimacy and suicide and all that.”

  He was laughing as he put down the receiver, and when he stepped outside the bungalow all Jamaica was quivering with laughter in the sun.

  Chapter Nine

  The service in the library on Sunday morning was supposed to begin at eleven, and by five-past eleven the Minister still hadn’t turned up. Pawley looked at his watch.

  “All right, Lockwood. You’d better go down and see what’s happened.”

  Everybody already knew what had happened, because it happened about once in every three Sundays. The Minister’s ancient Austin Seven, despite the divine nature of its mission, had again been defeated by the steep gradient of the road. Its capricious behaviour defied scientific explanation. Morgan had advanced various theories from time to time, based on the co-relation of weather, road condition, and atmospheric pressure, but each had subsequently been disproved. He now admitted himself baffled.

  Douglas set off in the station-wagon with six of the children, who took it in turns to accompany him on these occasions. Three or four miles down the hill they came upon the Minister standing, with the patience of true religion, by the side of his car. The Austin’s radiator was steaming mournfully. They hitched up the rope and towed it slowly back to the Great House. Three-quarters of an hour late, the service began.

  The service was voluntary, because in the matter of religion Pawley still adhered to the principles of the advanced schools in England that he aspired to emulate. On wet days there had always been a good attendance; but on fine days the great out-of-doors offered too many counter-attractions, and there had often been only a scanty audience of girls to reward the Minister’s epic struggles with his Austin. However, the matter had been remedied by an inspiration of Pawley’s. He now invited the children who attended the service to foregather on his verandah afterwards, to partake of bars of chocolate and glasses of lemonade. This had meant deviating slightly from progressive principles concerning bribery; but it had ensured the Minister an audience of at least half a dozen gourmands, and also a glass of lemonade for himself.

  After the service parents would start arriving in cars to take their children out for the day. This was a custom which Douglas deplored. He would have liked to forbid visits except at half-term. The renewed contact, quickly broken again, often created an emotional disturbance in the children. Moreover, the children who were not visited because their parents were unable to afford cars, were placed at a disadvantage and made to feel inferior.

  He also deplored the custom because some of the parents, such as Rosemary’s father, made their visit an occasion to discuss their children with the staff, and expected a weekly report on behaviour and progress. Rosemary’s father was even in the habit of giving his loved one a weekly verbal examination in front of Douglas.

  “Have you learnt to spell government yet, Rosemary?”“What’s the capital of China, Rosemary?” “Rosemary—think, now—what were the dates of Queen Elizabeth?” If Rosemary answered correctly he gave Douglas a jolly wink—he was a jolly sort of man—to express his satisfaction. If she couldn’t answer he told her, “Find out from someone, dear. You won’t remember if I tell you. I’ll ask you again next week.” He then said to Douglas out of Rosemary’s hearing, “She’s a bright girl—but we must keep her up to the mark. Watch her carefully, won’t you? She’s all I’ve got.” He would then take her out to lunch, and undo all the good which the school was doing her. His shadow would hang over her until Tuesday or Wednesday, before she started being herself again
.

  Douglas usually tried to avoid the parents on Sunday, but he liked to meet any he had not met before, to find out what they were like. It made it easier to understand their children; and it was interesting to compare them with preconceived ideas based on the children themselves.

  This Sunday Silvia’s father came up to the school for the first time. Douglas had formed a picture of a hard colonial type with the sensual and brutal face of Mrs. Pawley’s brother. He turned out to be nothing of the sort. He was a small, shrunken man with sad eyes and a pale face, and but for his tropical suit you might have expected to find him, bowler-hatted, catching an electric train to business from a London suburb.

  He had arrived after lunch and taken Silvia for a walk. Afterwards he came to see Douglas. He stayed only five minutes. He looked worried and apologetic about the trouble Silvia was causing.

  “Mr. Pawley tells me you’re being very patient with her,” he said. “I’m awfully grateful to you. I know she’s not giving you an easy time.”

  Douglas said that he thought Silvia had started off with the idea that everyone was hostile and bore her a grudge. He hoped they could eventually show her that this wasn’t true.

  “I don’t know why she ever felt like that,” her father said. “I’ve always been decent to her—all the more decent because her mother died when she was a baby. She’s had a good home. Everything she wanted within reason. I sometimes wonder if I’ve spoilt her.”

  “I doubt if it’s that,” Douglas said. He asked who had brought her up.

  “I had two or three different nurses looking after her before she went to school. They all treated her well, but she never showed them any affection.”

  “Doesn’t she show you any?”

  “I’m afraid she often gives the impression that she hates me.” He shook his head. “I can’t make it out. I’m fond of her, you know.”

  ‘You’ve never thought of re-marrying?”

  “I did once, as a matter of fact. Silvia hated the girl. I hardly dared ask her to the house because of the way Silvia behaved. That was partly why I didn’t go through with it.”