Out of the Blackout

by Robert Barnard

  He had said ‘Good Morning’ and ‘Good Evening’ to Miss Cosgrove two or three times by the end of the first week. He had not wanted to rush into engaging her in conversation. He felt instinctively that the secrecy of the Simmeter family was part of a larger secrecy or wariness that was a birthright of Londoners—an obsessive guarding of their privacy, a blank front to the world’s curiosity. The unfriendliness of Londoners had been part of the received wisdom of Yeasdon, in spite of the manifest openness and forthrightness of most of the kids who had landed on them during the war. Their parents, Yeasdon knew, would be different: you could have the same neighbour in London for thirty years and not swap more than the occasional good-morning with him. Thus, making no distinction between Wimbledon or West Ham, Kensington or Kentish Town, the Yeasdoners confidently pronounced on the mores of the capital, on the strength of their day trips to Oxford Street and a nice play.

  So Simon was a little nervous one evening, when he had been in Miswell Terrace a matter of ten days, when out of the blue he invited Miss Cosgrove in. He was on his way down to fill his kettle from the bathroom tap and when he met Miss Cosgrove coming up the invitation in for coffee seemed to present itself naturally.

  ‘Well, that’s kind of you. Thank you very much,’ she said, after a moment’s hesitation, and clearly surprised. She and Mr Blore, it seemed, had not fraternized. When she came in a few minutes later the kettle was beginning to sing. She looked around the room—at the Constable and Canaletto prints, at the Beatles poster and the embroidered bedspread that his mother had sent him, and said:

  ‘Well, you’ve done what you could. I don’t think anyone could make this room really pleasant.’

  ‘I suspect you’re right. It’s only temporary. I don’t want to commit myself to a flat till I know London better.’

  ‘That’s probably wise. I’ve never gone in for a flat myself because there are other things I prefer to spend my money on, but sometimes I think there are areas I’d prefer to live in. Where do you work?’

  ‘I’m on the scientific staff at the London Zoo.’

  That set Miss Cosgrove going, and got the conversation off to a good start. Miss Cosgrove was not an imaginative soul, and the inherent sadness of the Zoo had never struck her: the London Zoo was her idea of a good day out, she said. She’d taken her mother, five years ago, it must be now, the last time the old lady had managed a day in London. And she’d been back two or three times since. You could spend a whole day there, and still there’d be lots of things left that you wished you’d seen.

  Miss Cosgrove was in her early forties: desperately unstylish, but sensible and straightforward. She had a mother in Sussex somewhere, but she had adapted to London, and dreaded the possibility that some day she might have to go back and look after her mother. She managed a law stationer’s off Holborn, and loved living near the opera. So cheap! she said. In fact, she seemed to be one of those Londoners who relished everything it had to offer. Simon found himself volunteering to show her round the Zoo, when he had got to know it better himself.

  ‘Oh, that is kind of you. I would enjoy that, because you learn so much more when you’re with someone who really knows. I’m a demon for learning things. I suppose it’s some sort of puritan conscience coming out in a funny way. I like to get something out of what I do.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Simon. ‘I suppose I’m the same.’

  ‘After all, when you’ve got all those theatres and galleries and museums within easy reach, you ought to make use of them, oughtn’t you? And evening classes. That’s where I’ve been tonight—one on Italian civilization, because I’m off to Florence in September. I always seem to be going somewhere or studying something. I’d rather spend my money on that than on a bigger flat.’

  ‘You’ve been here a long time?’

  ‘Longer than I care to think. Seventeen years or so. Not that there haven’t been efforts to get me out.’

  ‘Really? Why would Mr Simmeter do that?’

  ‘Because I rented the room unfurnished, so the rent is controlled: they can’t put it up, not by more than a pittance. If I got out they could try various fiddles—doing bogus improvements, and then applying to put it up. It was Mother that tried first. A very forceful lady she used to be. Definitely failing by now, of course. Then the son tried—he’s the same type, but he hasn’t got the same confidence.’

  ‘Do you know them well?’

  ‘Just to hand the rent to—and argue with, if they try anything on.’

  ‘You don’t visit down there?’

  ‘Good Lord, no. Why would I do that? I don’t think the Simmeters have much to offer anybody.’

  She seemed to find the suggestion odd, so Simon hastened to justify his curiosity.

  ‘It’s just that where I come from, in the West Country, it would seem a bit funny—living on top of a family all these years and hardly knowing them.’

  ‘It’s perfectly normal here. Funny—I’d have said you came from the North.’

  Simon bent to get the kettle, to hide a blush.

  ‘I’ve lived in Leeds for five years. You pick up the accent quickly. I expect I’ll talk London soon.’

  ‘There’s no London accent, only different accents from different parts,’ said Miss Cosgrove, in her didactic but rather pleasant way. ‘Remember Professor Higgins in Pygmalion? Round here there’s a tremendous conglomeration of accents—there’s so much of a floating population. There is a basic Islington accent, but it’s a long time before you pick it out. The Simmeters, now: they’re not local.’

  ‘Are they not?’ asked Simon, with that quick blush of embarrassment again. Miss Cosgrove’s openness and directness made him conscious of his own deviousness.

  ‘No—West London somewhere. I couldn’t pin it down. I did a course on London dialects once, but I’ve forgotten most of it. Now Connie—she’s got an overlay of something else. She’s worked somewhere, or tried to lose her accent, or something.’

  ‘Connie?’

  ‘She’s the sister; you may not have met her yet. More presentable than the others, and can affect the genteel when she feels like it. Unmarried, like me. We did get together and have a bit of a chat once—ten or twelve years ago, it must be—but we didn’t really click. You don’t click, with the Simmeters.’

  ‘Is Len unmarried too?’

  ‘Well, he is now. I think he has been married—yes, I remember: we were talking once about how unfair the tax system is to the single person—that’s Len Simmeter’s type of conversation, though it’s perfectly true as well—and he described himself as a widower. Though when people say that, they’re just as often divorced, and don’t want to admit it for some reason. It wouldn’t be surprising if he were, and I’d never blame the wife: he’s not someone most women would fancy.’

  Miss Cosgrove stood up.

  ‘Aren’t we gossiping? Well, that was nice. I’d better get across the way before I start slandering anyone else. I’ve got tickets for Othello tomorrow night, and I really ought to get in a bit of homework.’

  Miss Cosgrove, Simon felt, had earned her conducted tour of the Zoo. The next day, when he saw a faded blonde head turn in the street below the house, he said to himself: ‘There’s Connie.’

  He had kicked himself after Miss Cosgrove left for not asking precisely what Leonard Simmeter did on the railways. It wasn’t the sort of thing you could bring up casually when you met on the stairs. But, as it happened, he found out unexpectedly two days later.

  He was leaving the house, as usual, at about five to nine, and from the front door of No. 23 a young girl came out, and they banged doors together. Twenty, in a red, short skirt, bright as new paint, and glorying in being young in the era of the young. She was the sort of girl you had to smile at, and the smile she gave Simon back was brilliant, open, and frankly interested.

  ‘Hello,’ she said chirpily, with a faint trace of cockney accent, and reminding Simon of a cock-a-hoop London sparrow. ‘Moved next door, have you?’

 
That’s right. About a fortnight ago.’

  ‘Room all right?’

  ‘Not too bad,’ said Simon, as they began walking along Miswell Terrace together. ‘A bit dismal.’

  ‘I know. They mostly are in this area. That’s why they’re cheap, isn’t it? I wouldn’t have expected that you’d get anything very cheery with that creepy lot.’

  ‘The Simmeters? Do you know them?’

  ‘No. Just seen them coming in and out now and again. They look a bit—you know—yukky.’

  ‘Oh, they’re all right. I haven’t seen much of them.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you will. My landlady says they keep themselves to themselves. Mind you, there was all that trouble last year, and that brought him out a bit.’

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘At the tube, where he works. I wasn’t here then, but my landlady told me. He’s got a temper, has your Mr Simmeter. And he’s sort of Deputy Station Master, or whatever the pecking order is, down the road, at the Angel. Anyway, he got on his high horse, started giving someone a real dressing-down—one of the guards or something—and it was downright abuse, and there was practically a strike. There was a stoppage, and it went to arbitration, and he was censured—you know the kind of thing. It got in all the local papers, because of the inconvenience the stoppage caused. He was interviewed—imagine! My landlady said she learned more about the Simmeters that week than she’d learnt in the whole twenty years they’d lived next door.’

  ‘So she doesn’t know them well?’

  ‘Hardly at all. Well—this is me. ’Bye for now.’

  And giving him a smile that said she wouldn’t mind talking to him again if he was interested, she turned into a little hairdresser’s. Simon continued on to the tube.

  That tube station, the Angel, now had an added interest for him, but it was not one it was easy to satisfy. It was hardly a place where one could stand around and gawp—one passed through it on the way to the platforms. There was a dim little hall, with ticket office and ticket machines, with a couple of lifts to your left. There were no signs of offices, and you were not very likely to see a Deputy Station Master on the platforms. The most one could do was go through it more slowly than before, fumble for change by the machines, display interest in a poster. On the way back the possibilities were even more limited. For several days Simon was on the alert without ever catching a glimpse of Len Simmeter. His irregular hours were now explained: he worked on some kind of shift, so there was no calculating times when he might leave in the mornings or come home at nights. Simon was beginning to think that the best thing would be to start leaving for work at the same time as Connie, the sister, when, five days after his chat with his neighbour, he got out of the lift in the evening and saw the back of Len’s head through the grimy glass of the ticket office. He had his overcoat on, and seemed to be giving instructions to the man on duty. Simon dawdled outside, buying a chocolate bar at the kiosk, and as he counted out the money Len Simmeter came out of the station and turned towards home.

  ‘Signing off for the day?’ said Simon, coming up behind him in the sunny evening street. Leonard Simmeter jumped, as perhaps it was in his nature to do.

  ‘Ah—Good evening, Mr Cutheridge! Lovely evening, eh? Really warm and nice. Yes, I’ve just knocked off. So you’ve found me out at my place of work?’

  ‘That’s right. I saw you coming out from behind the scenes. Nice quiet little station, is it?’

  ‘Not bad. Not too bad. I’m used to it now—worked here for years. Used to be in a much busier set-up, but you don’t want that as you start getting older. No, this suits me fine. And what about yourself? Settled in nicely at the Zoo?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. I’m enjoying it, at any rate.’

  ‘That’s good. That’s very satisfactory. Because it’s what I call a good job—satisfying, responsible, with a bit of class. And o’ course, being on the scientific side you’d be one of the bigwigs, wouldn’t you?’

  He was looking at Simon in an ingratiating way, trying to flatter his youthful ego, but not having the subtlety to do it successfully. Simon had rarely seen eyes that spoke more definitely of calculation.

  ‘Not one of the bigwigs by a long chalk, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You shouldn’t sell yourself down,’ urged Len, and added with an uneasy laugh: ‘You’re certainly not one of the shit-shovellers.’

  ‘No—you could say I’m betwixt and between.’

  ‘Like there’d be some sort of Board over you, running the place?’

  ‘That’s right. They keep out of the limelight, but that’s what happens. They’re Establishment men: retired politicians, eminent scientists, civil servants. And business men—rich as Jews, mostly, and they’re very useful because they advise about marketing, investment, promoting the place in one way or another. It’s the Board who are God Almighties at the Zoo. We on the scientific staff cut a pretty poor figure.’

  ‘Ah well—you do get some pretty funny people running things these days.’ Len shot Simon a nervous glance, then clutched the old mac he was carrying over his arm in spite of the warmth of the sun. ‘Still—I can see you’re one young man who’s going to the top. That’s for sure. I can tell.’

  Simon laughed.

  ‘I don’t know that I’m all that interested in getting to the top. So long as I’ve got a job I like, I’m quite happy.’

  ‘You’re too modest. But you’re quite right. That is the main thing in life. And a nice place to live, where you can be nice and cosy.’ They turned in at the gate. ‘You are nice and cosy up there, I hope?’

  ‘Fine, just fine. I’ll start getting to know the neighbourhood soon, when I’ve less to do at the job. I think I’ll start going to the opera, when the season starts. And get to know the pubs . . .’

  ‘That’s right. That’s right.’

  Leonard Simmeter stood uneasily in the hall, as if the forms of social intercourse sat uneasily on him, and he could not find the acceptable way to say goodnight. He seemed half to want to dive into the Simmeter fastness, half to want to stay and be friendly.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Simon, jumping in earlier than he had intended, ‘perhaps we could go out for a drink together some night?’

  ‘Perhaps we might,’ said Len Simmeter, his hand on the door into his living quarters. ‘She wouldn’t approve. And I’m not a drinking man normally. But perhaps we might.’

  He turned back towards Simon and fixed him with a cracked, nervous, ingratiating smile.

  ‘I’ve taken quite a shine to you, young man.’

  CHAPTER 7

  When Simon Cutheridge did at length gain admittance to the Simmeters’ domestic fortress, it was not through the medium of Len. There was no follow-up to those parting words, in spite of their rather off-putting friendliness. The routines of the ground floor followed their unchanging pattern: each night three pairs of footsteps were heard as the family put themselves to bed; and in the daytime when Simon was home, fragments of the beginnings or ends of conversations floated up the stairs, before the door to the living quarters was closed. These fragments were almost always unrevealing: ‘No, I won’t forget to buy potatoes’ was one; ‘I’m early tonight, Mother’ was another. True he did once hear a woman’s voice—Connie’s?—say: ‘Well, he’s done it once before, hasn’t he?’ and something spiteful in the voice, and the banged door that followed, made Simon note it down in that exercise book that he had started years before in Yeasdon. But when he took up the book and looked through all the entries he had made since he arrived in Miswell Terrace, he felt that no degree of optimism could suggest that they were likely to be of use. He had the feeling that if the Simmeters had anything of importance to say, anything that might be a clue to the Simmeter mentality, they would make sure they went in and closed the connecting door before they said it.

  Except, perhaps, for the sister—for Connie. About a week after his talk with Len he heard her again. This time the voice was raised, and again it was followed by a banged door. Connie
seemed to make a speciality of exit lines. What she said was: ‘That’s how you’ve always been, Len, and I was a fool to think you might change now.’ The tone was more that of a self-satisfied jeer than of bitterness, and it was clearly the concluding remark in a family row. The words in themselves told him next to nothing, but they persuaded him that Connie might be worth cultivating. There must, surely, be a Simmeter capable of unbuttoning.

  It was ten days after his talk with Len that Simon, early back from work, rang the Simmeters’ bell as he let himself into 25, Miswell Terrace, and stood in the little hall fumbling for his wallet to pay the week’s rent. From the back of the house could be heard the inevitable slow shuffle as old Mrs Simmeter came towards the connecting door and opened it.

  ‘Ah. You’ll be wanting to pay your rent. I thought it might be that, so I brought the book.’

  The old woman shut the door, and heaved herself up the two steps into the hall. Then she sat down on a spindly little chair by the hall table, laboriously placed a piece of carbon paper between the leaves of the receipt book, accepted Simon’s proffered four pound notes and a ten shilling one, and began writing slowly. Her fat breasts heaved as she took wheezy, constricted breaths—breaths that ended in a high whistle, like a kettle about to boil.

  ‘Lovely afternoon again,’ said Simon.

  ‘Is it? Down there you don’t notice the weather. I don’t get out much these days.’

  ‘That’s a pity, on a fine day like this.’

  ‘I dunno. Nowhere to go in Islington that I haven’t been more than enough times. I can just about get to the shops, if Len’s late and can’t go.’

  ‘He’s a good son to you.’

  ‘He lives here. He has to do his bit.’

  ‘And you’ve got your daughter.’

  ‘Hmmm. She lives here, but it’s no good relying on her for much. Well, there you are.’ She handed him the receipt—‘Received from S. Cutheridge the sum of £4.10.0. Signed Flora Simmeter’—and began putting the worn scrap of carbon under the next receipt. Then she stood up.