His own sleep—a nap before cold supper, work—was as soothed and restorative as a child’s, neither hectic nor drowned. His dream told him that—hardly a dream, a simple sense of walking alone, of seeing through clear eyes an entire world less free than himself, hostages given by all but him.
Yet the moment a hand touched the door of his room, turned the knob to enter, he leapt the two long steps to the opening door and reached for his wet towel hung on the knob. A strong woman’s hand had reached round before him and, gripping the towel, pulled it slowly outwards into the hall. He said “No!”, seized an end and tugged toward himself. The other hand fought for a moment, viciously; then slackened, yielded but not before the door was open on his instant of nakedness, two women’s staring grins. In his panic they both seemed strangers, threats.
But when he was covered, the near woman moved in on him, still laughing, said, “Laid out for love, eh? Then why so shy?” His landlady Bett. But the other was strange, no one he had seen though she laughed like his oldest acquaintance, shared his secrets. When he backed away from Bett, the stranger followed to the center of his room—larger than Bett, younger (maybe forty), handsome, almost grand like a high leather chair, ample, tawny, all surface, hard. Bett spoke first—“We’re going to the laundry. Give us your towel.” She poked his ribs. No word of who the stranger was though he watched only her, her knowing eyes.
Bett had moved behind him so he spoke backwards to her. “I’m using it. You startled me. Step outside and you’re welcome to it. I was sleeping. You startled me.”
The stranger said, “—Frightened you. You’re pale all over.”
Bett said, “You seen more of him than me then. Let’s have a look.” She lunged from behind to strip off his towel.
He laughed for the first time, twisted his shoulders to throw her off and held the towel round him with two clenched hands, easily winning.
But the stranger rushed on him when their gaze had broken and, with only her hands, pressed his wrists to his sides—her hands inhuman, a hot machine.
At once his mouth was brassy with fear; and in one convulsion he threw Bett backwards, freed a hand, hit the stranger hard across the mouth—he felt the silent wet of her inner lips, her brittle teeth.
Bett stayed giggling where he’d flung her—by his cupboard.
The strange woman stood, one hand across her mouth, concealing his stroke, eyes smiling no longer, tight with rage. Then her hand dropped and he saw from her mouth jagging down to her chin a purplish scar, old but burning—as though he had struck her days ago and she’d stood here badly healing in his presence.
The time that followed had the quality of time (pressure, weight)—three seconds, maybe four, in which he was locked with this woman he’d offended, the last two alive, only two ever alive and eternal; he brute, she victim. Time and a sudden silent act which were both his familiar home and his prison. He saw of course his mother’s face, Sara his love’s, in the stranger’s, half-hidden but judging, waiting, two feet away.
They were rescued, freed, by a ripe banana which Bett extended across his shoulder, saying loudly and laughing, “Here Mary, take this home to Ron.”
The woman looked toward the banana, took it, laughed to Bett—“Right!”—weighed it plump on her palm, dandled it three times, then looked back to him—“May I have it please?”
He could not hear at first, still held by her scar—his scar for a moment, made and borne by him—so Bett moved beside him, poked him again. “Let her have it. Sure. Cost you—what?—all of four pence. Her need is greater than thine by far.”
Mary studied it again as though it mattered. “I don’t think I’ve had one since oh before the war. Never got back in the habit of buying them.”
Bett said, “Don’t give us that. You had them all during the war. I know. Lovely young chaps, dances every night—”
Mary asked him again, “May I have it please?”
“Mary who?” he said. “We haven’t met.”
“Blimey O’Reilly!—old Mary,” Bett said. “Mr. Tamplin, you know. You’ve heard me recounting her escapades half the mornings you’re here, remember?”
He remembered and smiled. “My name’s Charles Tamplin.”
Mary said, “I know. Know lots about you.”
“Oh?” he said and pointed to the fruit (intended for his supper), “Yes, take it. Gladly. Glad to be of service.” He grinned—“Put it to good use, I trust.”
“None better,” Bett said. “No needier cause. Her poor Ron’s a candle in August, ain’t he, Mar—”
“Hush,” Mary said. “I make do, don’t I?”
He saw she had said it to him—not leering—but he had no answer, joking or serious; indeed, felt nothing but a mild unease at their being here at all in the midst of his nap, he stranded in a towel.
Bett answered. “You make do, all right. Watch you don’t do somebody in—somebody like yourself.”
Mary said—still to him, “I watch. I watch. You believe, I watch. But I take every chance too. Know every path, above-ground and under. I’m having my life.”
“Have on,” Bett said, “but have it on your own time please, not mine. I’m washing clothes before Buck’s tea—that’s flat.” She passed them both and stood in the door. “Come on, Mary, get yourself out so old Modesty can hand us his fig-leaf.”
“I’m noticing his things,” Mary said and moved deeper inward, stood against his desk, her broad thighs pressed hard into the edge. She quickly looked at the etchings above. Then she looked down and touched his straight rows of work and plans, lightly with her one free hand—manuscripts, note-books, ink-bottles, pens—as though she were blind and they each might be one word of a message, or as though she had grace and were blessing them. She looked back to him—“How on earth do you do it?”
He noticed for the first time her pleasing voice—calm, without Bett’s highs-and-lows and one firm rung up the accent-ladder from Bett’s proud harshness. “Do what?” he said, uneasier still.
“Sit here day in, day out; do your work?”
“Oh because I know my work,” he said. “Know the life I want and am going for it, here.” He pointed to the desk.
So she looked down again and saw his small ivory. “Can I touch it?” she said.
“If you’re careful,” he said.
“Care’s my middle name.”
“—Like Hell,” Bett said from a distance, collecting more wash from the bath, a room away.
But she already held it, with both hands gently, having laid the absurd banana down. “Is it real?” she said.
“Real?” he said—as though the lady, men and baboon moved in her hands and perpetually, in their smiling ring. What answer did she want? What answer did he need to give?
She meant the simplest. “Is it all handmade, I mean?”
“Oh yes,” he said. “It’s ivory. Carved two, maybe three, centuries ago.”
“What’s it say?” she said. She was stroking the text on the baboon’s robe.
“Wish I knew,” he said. “I showed it to a Japanese friend at college but he couldn’t decide. It’s an ancient script. I’ll have to find a scholar. I think it’s a poem—hope so, at least.”
“I’ll tell you,” she said.
He smiled. “You know ancient Japanese?”
“No,” she said, “but I know what all this means”—she held out the dancers, still carefully grasped, and waved her other hand back to the pictures. “Shall I make it a poem? I was good at poems, as a girl, in school.”
“Yes,” he said, sensing dread like a stir in the still, cooling air.
She studied it a moment, glanced again at the pictures, shut her eyes, creased her forehead, raised her chin, lips apart—all the standard signs of creation. Then she lowered her face, eye-level to him, looked at him, moved her lips silently at first, then said “Hold-Me-Not …” and stood another long moment silently, lips moving still.
“That’s your poem?” he said.
“M
aybe not,” she said. “Does it seem like a poem to you? It’s what came to me. A motto then. Say it’s my motto.”
“Mine too,” he said.
“I know,” she said.
“Know what?”
“Know it’s yours. Look at this—” She shook the dancers precariously, waved back at the pictures—“And you, standing there. No one’s touching anyone in any of this. Hands off. No holding.” She had started the sentence calmly, smiling; but the last four words seemed said by her scar—he watched it redden, move like a louder stronger mouth.
He shuddered once, passed it off as a shiver by hugging his shoulders.
“You’re cold,” she said. “Here I’m growling on and you’re catching your death”; and again from the bottom of the stairs, Bett called. Mary set the ivory in its exact place, tapped the banana (now browning and fragrant), said, “Thanks for the offer, Mr. Tamplin—you’re a gentleman—but I’ll take my chances in the cruel world.” She laughed once and quickly moved past him to the door, meaning to say nothing else, it seemed.
But he ducked a little bow, still hugging himself, and said to detain her, “The next time you come, I’ll be better dressed.”
“You’re dressed,” she said—he flushed. “I’ve not even seen you, you’re dressed so thick. Well, my hat’s off to you, sweet love—good luck!” Before the heat eased in his head, she was gone, down the stairs, out the door, Bett mumbling behind her.
After all, they had left him his chilling towel. He unwound it, spread it on the ledge to dry and dressed for work, no further thought or hope of sleep. But when he was ready and went to the desk, the light from the window was too dim now; so he switched on his lamp, which lit the pictures he had meant to ignore (since Mary’s poem), made the dancers gleam, warm though hard. He surrendered to her lethal discovery, fed on his treasures, now related and bared—no one touched in any of them. The dancers brushed one another’s robes but no flesh met; only the baboon touched himself. The minotaur’s arm withheld its intent (Picasso had said of it to Françoise Gillot, “It’s hard to say what he wants—kill her or wake her”). And Rembrandt’s Christ—he tried for the first time to count the figures: forty-five people (counting hats of the concealed), a camel, ass and dog, all in say sixteen-inchesby-eleven. Not one of them touched. Christ’s hand extended toward a baby, two cripples’ toward Him, a boy’s toward his mother but none succeeded. Not one. Even mothers holding babies were touching only cloth. Space prevailed. Miracle, blessing, forever delayed though they waited in dusk—no light but His—and must always wait.
Early next morning at his table for breakfast, Charles Tamplin asked Bett as she huffed in with food (eggs, bacon, bread marooned in grease), “How old is your Mary?”
“How come?” she said; then stood before him, serious in her cooking smock—“Get your mind off Mary right now, Mr. Tamplin. She’s in dirty trouble. In a mess, she is.”
“My mind isn’t on her. I only asked her age.”
“I don’t know that,” she said. “Younger than me. But a damned sight too old to be mucking about with young chaps, I know.”
He continued chewing through his own mild defense—“Oh she didn’t bother me. I can take a joke. I was only startled, still half-asleep.”
“Not you, fool,” Bett said. “I know you’re safe—Christ, padlocked and all now, ain’t you? How’s it feel?”
“Fine, Bett; feels fine—free air again.” She was dusting now with the hem of her smock. “Then who?” he said.
“Mind your own business,” she said, still dusting.
“Bett, you were the one shoved her into my bedroom on me, strip-naked. I don’t send out engraved invitations to my afternoon naps. Not any more.”
Bett did not beg pardon—the house was hers. She worked on awhile, plumping pillows, moving chairs (he had made his own bed); then began to talk on the move, as to herself—and from the beginning, her accustomed start. “The war must’ve done it. No, long before then she was wild as a cat. She grew up down the road from my Mum’s. Being older, I’d left; was already married, but naturally I heard it all, saw a good slab of it when Mary went after Bill my youngest brother. But Bill had her beat from the start, he did—had more girls tucked away waiting on him than Samson had hairs. Which reminds me of the end of their la-de-da.” Bett stopped and laughed. “Bill had give her the jilt one Saturday night, took some other girl to the dance, I reckon; and Mary dressed herself up and went down on the bus and walked in on them. She didn’t raise Hell then-and-there for a change—found chaps to dance with and danced all night—but next morning, first post, Bill had a letter from her, careful, in ink. It said, ‘Mr. Barnes, you have broke my heart and soon as my lovely new perm wears out, I’m drowning myself in the barge canal!’”
Bett stopped and acknowledged Charles Tamplin’s presence—“Do you get her meaning, about her new perm? She meant Piss off! but she did say it clever, I’ll grant her that. And she kept up a laugh through another year or so of slouching about. Her job (at a butcher’s) was all that kept her from being a proper tramp—her time was limited. Her job and her Dad. Her Dad’s all she ever loved, to this very day, for all her mess. And he caused half of it. He raised her, you see; let her have her way from the time she was twelve, when her mother died; just laughed when she told him her escapades though he’s never known a tenth of the Hell she raised; and now he’s old and can barely see, she don’t even have to bother to lie. Still, she’s good to him; pets him like a china doll—his heart’s bad too. I’ve always said to Buck when he talked Mary down, told me not to see her, ‘Buck, she’s good as gold to her Dad.’ ‘Dad, Hell,’ Buck says. ‘She’s married to Ron and she treats Ron like dirt!’ Buck’s right and all. She always did. Ron’s eat pecks of her dirt right from the start. Her teasing him on unmercifully, in her spare time from others, till she had him worshiping, buying her things arse-over-tip with every farthing from his scrap of a job—lovely sweaters, fur-lined boots, things to protect her (she’d rush stark-naked, arms open, into a storm if its name was Fun). He was older than her by five or six years, so he should have known better; but somehow he got her in the family way—she said it was Ron. Why I’ll never know, if she hated his sight like she says she does, unless it was his baby or unless the other chaps involved had ducked out. Anyhow of all things, she told her Dad; and he went to Ron, blue-faced with rage, to say Ron must marry her. Must! He’d have married her smiling if she’d been stuffed full of a dozen babies, black as pitch.
“Well, married they were and the baby came—a girl, nothing special. But Ron worshiped her too and Mary settled in a bit and minded her duties. That’s when I made pals with her. Her and Ron and the baby lived just down there then, near us; and me knowing her since she was a girl, she came up most afternoons for a chin-wag. I took to her right from the start. Buck hated her. But I like a laugh—Christ, I’ve had a few—and she’d come and put the baby in the corner to sleep and then tell me all of her past escapades—what lengths chaps had gone to even touch her wrist; how she’d drive them up the wall night after night; then, quick, give them a chance and they’d pop like crackers, half-weep with joy! She kept me in laughs for months; I’m still grateful. I’d always shove her off before Buck was home. He could smell if she’d been there but he’s never run me. Then the baby died before anyone had really noticed it—anyone but Ron, as I said. He was crushed. Oh I don’t mean to say Mary laughed at the funeral. Of course she didn’t. Her feelings are keen as a blade to this day—I’d no more mention that child to her than I’d spit in her face. But she healed, don’t you know—quick, her old self again.
“The war had just started—I guess that was it—and everything was soldiers everywhere. Not Yanks—the Yanks didn’t come for years, dirty dogs they was when they got here too—but good English boys, young as pups and scared stiff. Everything was ‘doing your bit for the troops’; and as I’ve never knitted so much as a cap, I did my bit going to dances. Dances every night at the Assembly Rooms. Buck went alon
g at first to help with the food (his shocking hernia kept him out)—keep an eye on me was his main intent. I was safe though, young as I was—oh I love to tease a sweet young chap; I’d get them so het-up they’d glow like grates but teasing was all. I’d dance like a dervish till five-to-eleven, then I’d dash for the last bus. Often I was chased but never caught! So Buck stopped going and I don’t know who brought it up, me or her; but Mary went with me every night from then on—nights when I didn’t go; dancing’s not my life; I’ve had cares to attend to since I was a girl.
“When her and me went, she always came home with me. We’d get off the bus and there would be Ron, waiting to walk her home, the streets being black as pitch of course, blackout and all. It seemed to set her teeth on edge—Ron waiting. She’d give him a look like an open grave, then stump along home without a word, barely ‘Goodnight’ to me. It got worse and worse—her resenting him there till one night she told him off with me looking on, words to make even me shiver, and I tried to leave; but she said, ‘Wait, Bett, wait. Let’s all wait here at the public bus-stop till James Ronald Campbell stiffens into a man.’ Then she went up to him—it was a warm night, September, bright moon; he hadn’t a coat on, only his jacket—and began pawing at him, stroking him up, saying, ‘Now then, Cock, the Army won’t have you. Let’s see if I will. Let’s see if you pass my test, old Cock.’ He stood there and bore it too—as long as I watched. I broke away soon—and didn’t seek her company for weeks after that. We met at the dances and she’d sit by me on the bus coming home; but she knew I was still sick from watching her show and she laid low awhile, where I was concerned—with Ron, too, it seemed. He had given up meeting her at the bus, and she never mentioned him no more than dust, I certainly didn’t. He had my pity but not my respect—not after that night; for a while anyhow. I’d have knocked her flat—Buck would’ve killed me, soft-hearted as he is. What I couldn’t understand was why he stayed—or let her stay, for she got far worse.
Collected Stories of Reynolds Price Page 36