by MARY HOCKING
‘Did you lie on the floor of the Sistine Chapel?’ she asked.
‘But of course. Didn’t you?’
‘No. I wanted to, but I didn’t. I thought I should look ridiculous.’ And here she was sitting on the floor of the municipal art gallery with a middle-aged man of no great presence, both of them dressed quite formally!
‘You mustn’t worry about what people think,’ Lomax said.
‘It’s too late to stop.’ Usually, she would not have admitted this; but she seemed to have relaxed her mind along with her posture. ‘My life has been one long attempt to convince myself that I don’t care what other people think, while at the same time I am worrying about the sort of impression I make.’
Lomax picked up one of her shoes and studied it. ‘But we are all inconsistent, aren’t we?’ He stroked the side of the shoe gently.
‘Most people have settled for being one kind of person by the time they are my age.’
‘You think so?’ He twirled the shoe round. Now it compelled her attention as well as his. ‘You must have a very small foot.’
‘Size three.’
‘Really? You take a size three?’ He gazed at the shoe and then at Hannah, astonished and amused, as though the discovery that she took size three shoes revealed more of interest than her attempts at self-analysis. ‘Do you find it difficult to get shoes?’
‘Not in sales.’ Hannah put out her hand and fingered the tip of the shoe. ‘It’s difficult at other times, but they always bring the small sizes out in sales.’
‘Why ever do they do that, do you imagine?’ The mysteries of shoe salesmanship now captivated them both and they stared expectantly at the shoe as though it might suddenly move and write words on the air. Hannah’s fingers still rested on the toe of the shoe; she felt a prickling sensation in them which travelled right up her arm.
‘Perhaps the assistants can’t be bothered at other times,’ she suggested, after a longish pause. ‘And then at the sales they find all these size three shoes lying around. Do you think that might belt?’
He considered this, his face intent, almost austere; then he handed the shoe back to her, thrusting it out of the way as though it irritated him.
‘Look, we really have to fix this lunch date!’ He sounded angry.
In between this meeting and the day of their lunch date, Hannah made certain discoveries. For one thing, she realised that there was always going to be Hannah, and there was always going to be Joyce, and she would have to make room for both of them in her life. From this moment, they ceased to worry her and she hardly gave them another thought. But instead of finding herself more at peace, a whole new area of unrest seemed to have been opened up.
A relationship was undoubtedly developing between herself and Lomax, and she was not sure whether this pleased her or not. If only one could say to a person ‘Hold it!’ just as the photographer does when he thinks he has caught the personality of the sitter, how much more straightforward this would make the business of loving! There had been a time, when she first knew Lomax, when she thought she had got the measure of his personality. But now, as he came closer to her, it was apparent that he was a much less predictable person than she had imagined. Hannah was a little afraid of the unpredictable. Although she had rebelled against the suburban image of life, she had not managed to construct anything to take its place, and this failure was reflected in her attitude to men. Her mother had often said, ‘Your father and I have a happy marriage,’ as though this was something that happened at the outset and could never subsequently be altered. Hannah’s own experience tended to indicate that nothing about loving is easy; and she suspected that there was more of conflict than tranquillity in marriage. Nevertheless, she still hankered after the superficial comfort which had seemed to cocoon her parents. She did not think that Lomax would offer that kind of comfort.
Then there was the immediate problem of his motives. Undoubtedly, he was attracted to her. But was that all? Might not this be a convenient blending of inclination with professional interest? She was, after all, secretary to Neil Moray, and there was no doubt that the editor of the Gazette was increasingly concerned with Moray’s affairs.
Her doubts were not put to rest when she discovered that he was taking her to lunch, not, as she had anticipated, at The Greyhound, but at Sustra’s, of all places.
‘I like to think it is my company that has prompted this extravagance,’ she murmured as she studied the menu.
Lomax was nonplussed. It seemed to him quite legitimate to take Hannah Mason to lunch because he was attracted by her, and at the same time gratefully accept any scraps of information which she might let fall about such matters as contributions to Moray’s campaign fund. He had no wish to appear unscrupulous, however, so he said, ‘I assure you, I had no other thought.’
‘Really?’ She turned her attention from the table d’hôte to the à la carte. ‘Then we shan’t need to talk shop at all, shall we?’
Lomax realised it was going to be an expensive meal; she was already talking about smoked salmon on which she seemed to be something of an authority. He moved his chair slightly. The sun was in his eyes. They had a table by the window. It was very hot and there was a fan whirring somewhere near; it stirred Hannah’s hair lightly, but did not seem to make the room any cooler. Outside, the promenade glinted grittily. The sea was a long way out, the crinkled sand looked hot and dry. It was all too fierce for Lomax’s taste. He ordered grapefruit cocktail and a beef salad for himself.
‘I expect you come here often?’ he said to Hannah.
‘No. It smells of money.’ She tilted her chin and looked round the room with the casual unconcern of a duchess tolerantly contemplating the antics of social climbers.
‘But you like good food?’ Lomax asked. Her order had convinced him that she had an excellent appetite. They talked about food until the waiter came with smoked salmon for Hannah and grapefruit cocktail for Lomax. The waiter poured wine in their glasses and departed.
Hannah and Lomax talked about the weather. Lomax said he did not like the heat and Hannah said she could not have too much of it.
‘Even at this hour?’ Lomax hated the white-hot midday sun.
‘At any hour,’ she assured him.
Beyond the window, the promenade was almost deserted; most people were at lunch, but a few stragglers were huddled on the beach, crowded into the scant shade afforded by the breakwaters. There was one person standing by the flag-pole, bare-headed in the full glare of the sun. He was motionless as a lone soldier standing to attention on a vast parade ground. Even Hannah found herself flinching at the thought of how his neck and shoulders must burn. Then she realised that the man was Rodney Cope. He had spent some time in the Near East, so perhaps he didn’t feel the sun like most English people.
‘It would be June all the year round if I had my way,’ she said, turning back to Lomax.
The sun was undoubtedly kind to her; her face was pleasantly brown, peppered with freckles across the bridge of her nose and beneath the eyes. It was not a pretty face, but the eyes were good- humoured and the mouth suggested a generous disposition. A dispassionate observer might also have seen hints of stubbornness that might have warned him that once Hannah and sense parted company, it would be difficult to bring them together again. But Lomax saw her in a glow of sunlight, healthy and with abundant vitality; he thought there was something Amazonian about her and he found this intensely exciting. While she told him about a holiday in Istria, he revised his plans for the afternoon. Lomax was abstemious, and it was unusual for him to drink at lunchtime. As the meal continued, the people at other tables blurred and their chatter was reduced to a murmur unintelligible as the surge of the sea; the atmosphere between himself and Hannah became more intimate.
‘Tell me. . . .’ He hunched forward, looking invitingly at Hannah. She smiled at him; she, too, seemed relaxed by the wine. He thought of all the things he wanted to be told; where had she spent her childhood? did she come from a big
family? why was she content to work as a secretary? why hadn’t she married . . .? So many questions, it was difficult to decide which to ask first. He said, ‘I should like to sleep with you so much. I do hope you don’t mind my saying this. . .’
At this moment, like a great bat diving down, fluttering over empty plates and glasses, the waiter came to ask whether the food had been to their liking, whether they wanted a sweet, cheese, coffee, liqueurs . . . ? His questions were endless. By the time they were alone again, intimacy had been destroyed. Hannah looked flushed; perhaps she didn’t usually drink at lunchtime either, or perhaps she was amused, or annoyed. Lomax mumbled, ‘I hope I haven’t said the wrong thing.’
‘Well, I did ask you not to talk shop.’ She made this allowance graciously enough and then reverted to the subject of the ceilings in the Sistine Chapel.
They parted company at half-past two. On the promenade, it was still bright and shadowless, like an open-air torture chamber. A nerve in Lomax’s temple twanged at every step. His mouth was dry.
‘If I had my way,’ he said to Todd when he entered his office, ‘it would be September all the time, and not a month earlier.’
Todd was too taken up with his own researches to pay attention to Lomax’s condition. He had plans spread out on the table. Through the glass partition, Lomax could see Allinson with an expression of disgust on his plump face. Allinson thought too much time and energy was being expended on this. Lomax, at this moment, was inclined to agree with him.
‘Like a gigantic spider’s web, isn’t it?’ Todd was full of energy. ‘You can see Heffernan squatting in the centre, spinning out more and more arched roads and terraces.’
The plans were numbered fourteen, they were an older set than those being studied by Moray, but it had been difficult enough to obtain them; Todd had winkled them out of a girl who worked in the printing room at the Town Hall.
‘It didn’t even get to the planning committee,’ he told Lomax. ‘The chairman nearly had a baby when he saw it.’
‘Do you think Moray has seen these?’ Lomax was becoming interested in spite of his throbbing head.
‘He may have done by now, but I doubt if he saw them before the election.’ Todd had been doing a lot of work on this. ‘They only came to the planning department a week before he was elected. The original scheme was for something rather on the lines of the harbour arrangement on the other side of the town.’
‘But that’s a natural development which has taken place over centuries.’
‘We do things quicker nowadays. And being Heffernan, he’d have to improve on Nature, wouldn’t he? His hill is going to be man-made, and it will have to dwarf every natural hill around it.’
Lomax pushed the detailed plans to one side, he was in no condition to go into finer points of detail. In any case, it was the broad outline of the scheme with which he was concerned. He looked at the site plan.
‘What was Moray talking about – a development which would bring new life to the town, solve housing and labour problems? This won’t solve any human problems, it will create them.’
‘It’s likely to spread, too,’ Todd said with relish. He was thinking of the Downs, one of the few unspoilt regions in the South-East, and Heffernan, sitting like a monster in his new creation, his tentacles reaching out to them. ‘Mario has been content with half a mile,’ he said. ‘Heffernan will end up King of the South Downs.’
‘I hope you’ve got that written down somewhere,’ Lomax said drily.
‘Talking of Mario,’ Todd suddenly sounded disgruntled. ‘He wanted to see you. He said perhaps you’d like to dine with him at home.’ He looked disapprovingly at Lomax. Todd liked people to be all of a piece, and it puzzled him that a man of Lomax’s undoubted integrity could accept hospitality from a man like Mario Vicente.
Lomax said, ‘Not tonight, I hope. I don’t think my digestion would stand it.’
‘He said any night this week.’
Lomax nodded his head and turned away; then a thought struck him, and he turned to Todd again. ‘There’s one thing that has occurred to me. Ronald Singleton. He wasn’t very happy about Cope pushing him into the background, as I recall. In fact, he was quite a nuisance, couldn’t stop him talking. Wish I hadn’t tried, now. You might manage to run into him sometime. Buy him a pint; it’s all he’ll need to start him off.’
‘He won’t know much,’ Todd objected. ‘He dropped out of the campaign early on.’
‘If you’re disgruntled about something, you’re never alone,’ Lomax said. ‘I guarantee that by now anyone who has a tale to tell which does Rodney Cope no credit, will have told it to Ronald Singleton.’
Chapter Nine
It had been a bright day, too bright. Now storms were forecast. People on their way from offices looked up at the bruised sky and said, ‘I knew it was too good to last,’ and ‘we’ve had our summer.’
Pauline had been up early. Today she was meeting Rodney Cope. She was no longer lethargic; she sprang out of bed like Jack released from his box. She had a bath and opened the windows. Then she went out and walked round the town, which looked fresh and bright and full of promise. She stopped and had coffee at one of the hotels along the front where you sat on a balcony and watched people coming and going beneath. She felt young again, driven by that sense of urgency which demands that the most must be made of every minute.
The coffee made her feel even more excited. She wanted to talk to the waiter, but other people arrived and demanded his attention. She wanted to talk to someone; not about anything in particular, just to exchange gay, unfettered words. There were no fetters any more. Wasn’t it delightful? She felt delightful herself. She wanted someone else to think ‘You are delightful’, to read the message in their eyes. She had seen it often enough before she married Geoffrey and was expected to become one of the fittings about his expensive house, neither dreary nor delightful, just useful. Geoffrey had grown up in the Utility era, however much money he spent he was utility orientated at heart. Her mind was beginning to get in that old, resentful groove. She poured more coffee; it was black and strong and she felt excited again.
She left the hotel and walked along the front. The tide was going out. The sand was littered with sun-worshippers from seven to seventy. But she couldn’t stretch out like them; she must do something. She felt like a character in one of those antique Hollywood musicals who suddenly goes into a dance routine, climbing lamp-posts and banging dustbin lids. She raised her arms above her head and stretched until her fingers scratched the sky. A bronzed young man looked at her and laughed. He understood! Ah, these brief encounters, how much more of pure understanding there was in one of them than the whole of matrimony! ‘I wasn’t meant for marriage,’ she said to herself. ‘I was meant for brief, ecstatic moments. From now on I must make a collection of them, a string of glittering moments for my life.’ She walked to the end of the West promenade and turned; perhaps she would go to the East end now. But she did not want to invade Mario’s territory.
The hands of a clock outside a kiosk pointed to twelve. Martini time! Or was Martini time some other time? It didn’t matter. There was a bar farther down the promenade with tables outside under tangerine parasols with tassels. She made her way there, it looked so gay. She had Cinzano – just in case it wasn’t Martini time – with ice and soda and lemon, not because she liked it but because it went with the day. The sun was climbing steeply now. Noon. High noon. A girl in a bikini strolled by, body smooth as a shelled almond. She felt a little drag of envy.
The light sparking up from the pavement was beginning to try her unprotected eyes; a headache was starting. She fumbled for sun glasses and found she hadn’t brought them. Once she had noticed the sun sparking like that she could think of nothing else. All the nerves around eyes and mouth were becoming taut, the muscles pulled and pinched. She was still very excited and restless, but not enjoying it so much. She did not finish the Cinzano before she moved off in search of food. Not that she was hungry.
She hadn’t had an appetite for many years. But she wanted to be there, where it was all happening. And between twelve-thirty and two in the afternoon, it was all happening in dining places. She went to Sustra’s. The waiter said it was a long time since he had seen her, as though every day she hadn’t come had been a loss in his life. She had scampi. William Lomax was there with the woman who had been at Guiseppe’s that wretched Sunday, a pleasant woman in a lime green dress. There was a gallantry about the woman which Pauline recognised and saluted; she was making a fight of life. The woman and Lomax were having an odd, disjointed sort of conversation, dullish with little scatters of brilliance. Something was happening between them, only a sliver at the moment, but Pauline felt the pricking in her finger tips. She wondered if they knew, or whether she should tell them so that they didn’t waste a lot of time. They weren’t like the girl in the bikini, they didn’t have time to waste. She wished them well, if they could find something, even if it was only a little something, it was better than nothing. The world was a little place. She could feel it closing in around her. The sun was very hot on the glass and there was a metal band closing over the sky.
Lomax and the woman went past her. She’s older than me, Pauline thought. Nice hair, though, thick and springy still. She thought of going after them to tell Lomax that she was seeing Rodney Cope tonight. She didn’t do it, but the impulse to tell Lomax was very strong.
She went back to her room. Her head was hammering. The clothes strewn over the bedroom floor moved as though they had a life of their own and something was rolling about in the bath. The wind was up; the bathroom curtains had blown a talcum powder tin into the bath. The bedroom curtains ballooned out, too. There was plenty of air everywhere. She lay down on the bed. Her nerves were jumping still. It was in her blood, the storm. She hoped it would break soon and lower the pressure. The thought of the evening filled her with apprehension; she smoked endless cigarettes and watched with dismay the day passing out of her grasp. Through the window came the sounds of the town, voices, traffic, car doors slamming; she had a glimpse of trees tossed in the wind and a grey sky with a plume of purple. The afternoon went by in this fashion. Once, she actually dialled Rodney’s office to say she would not meet him; that creep Moray answered and said that Rodney was out. She did not leave a message. Just before the afternoon was quite gone, she went out again, snatching what was left of it. She walked through Gloucester Park and on up to the Downs. The wind came tearing down to meet her. She had to lean against it. There was a distant rumble of thunder, and sheet lightning away over Brighton. She had a moment up there when she wondered whether she should strike out along the South Downs Way and not bother about Rodney. But where would that get her? Hampshire. Better Rodney. She came down again, made tea and had another bath. God, she was clean!