Pasmore

by David Storey

  The floor creaked. For a while it seemed that Newsome waited. There was the scraping of a chair, a long silence, the occasional creaking of the table as he leant against it, perhaps looking out at the lighted windows of the tenement at the rear.

  Then the chair was pushed back, the light turned off and, a moment later, a piece of paper was pushed beneath the door.

  Newsome’s steps retreated down the stairs then, after a pause, continued in the street outside. There was the slamming of a car door then the sound of the engine revving as the car was driven away.

  He didn’t pick up the note until the following morning. Newsome had written, ‘I traced your address through the telephone number and dropped round when you didn’t turn up at the studio. I find these days I spend more time waiting there than I do painting. But then, life is nothing if it isn’t surprising. Do give us a ring if you feel like it. I wouldn’t mind having a chat.’

  Shortly after he’d read it the ’phone rang.

  It was Newsome. ‘I wondered if I might catch you,’ he said. ‘We seem to have got mixed up a bit last night.’

  He didn’t answer. The ’phone was silent.

  ‘Did you get my note, then?’ Newsome said.

  ‘How’s Fowler?’ he said.

  ‘Fowler?’

  Perhaps he was in the room with him, déshabillé, a naked paunch protruding over a pair of naked knees.

  ‘I haven’t seen Norman for some time,’ he said. ‘He’s not living here now, you know. He’s taken a flat.’

  ‘With his disablement pension.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Perhaps Newsome had begun to laugh.

  ‘I’ve always assumed he’d been wounded or something.’ He added, ‘Not massacred, that is, by circumstance.’

  ‘Well,’ Newsome said. ‘That I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘How’s your painting going?’ he said. ‘Still on with the red dot?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘more or less. One or two things I’m getting sorted out.’ He added, ‘Come round to the studio and I’ll show you. I don’t know whether you like that sort of thing at all.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

  ‘We can talk about whatever you like.’

  ‘Where’s Fowler live?’ he said.

  ‘I haven’t got his address.’

  ‘I suppose he’s divorced,’ he said. ‘I mean, I’m assuming that from his habit of knocking around with married women.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘I suppose she ran off and left him. I mean, in the circumstances, that would be a reasonable assumption. Maybe I should ring her up. After all, her experience might come in useful.’

  ‘I don’t know the circumstances,’ he said. ‘He has two children.’

  ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘Why should I care?’

  He stood in the middle of the room, holding the telephone to his ear, gazing vacantly before him.

  ‘Are you free today?’ Newsome said. ‘I’ll pop round if you like for a drink.’

  ‘I suppose Marjorie put her up to it. I mean Kay with Fowler. I can just see Marjorie planting the seeds of that particular romance.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Newsome said. ‘I know he’s very much in love.’

  ‘One of those things,’ he said, and laughed.

  ‘Last Sunday,’ Newsome said, ‘we had to go round to see Kay after you left. She was in a pretty terrible condition.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘I can imagine.’

  He laughed again.

  ‘Look, this is a hell of a thing to talk about over the ’phone,’ Newsome said. ‘Why don’t we meet?’

  ‘I don’t think there’s much point,’ he said and, in the middle of Newsome’s answer, rang off.

  He rang Kay early on the Sunday morning, before she had time either to go out or even get up. Her voice was low, and startled.

  ‘I want to make it plain,’ he said. ‘You’d better be there when I arrive. I want no handing over of the children by a third person.’

  He could imagine her by the ’phone, dazed, perhaps uncertain about the voice, her eyes half-closed, her face pale, bloodless, at rising.

  ‘And the other thing,’ he said. ‘You’d better stay while I’m there. It gives the children at least some impression of us together.’

  He was still speaking when she put the ’phone down.

  He stood trembling by the ’phone, staring at the wall.

  A little later he got dressed and set off for his house.

  He ran to the bus stop, sat impatiently by the door while the empty vehicle lumbered up the hill, sprang off and ran along the narrow streets to the square, past Newsome’s cul-de-sac, his feet cracking out in the morning air.

  The sound itself stirred him: his heavy breathing, the heat rising through his body.

  It was Fowler, however, who opened the door.

  He was dressed in a dark overcoat and scarf as if he had himself at that moment just arrived. He examined him steadily over the bridge of his nose. Neither of them seemed quite sure what to say.

  ‘Kay wondered if you wouldn’t mind calling a little later,’ he said. ‘When she’s had time to get things ready.’

  There was about Fowler the same vagueness of manner and expression that he had noticed on their first encounter in Newsome’s kitchen, the remote and faintly disturbed air of someone who was continually finding themselves in two places at once; an effect, perhaps fortuitous, reinforced by the slightly dichotomous focusing of his eyes. He appeared to be listening to a voice speaking from a great distance, an almost mystical air about him, as though his thoughts and gestures were influenced by an authority he alone could hear.

  He heard himself say, like someone speaking from another room, ‘I’d like to come in and talk to Kay myself, if I may,’ and heard this particular voice begin to tremble, the words interspersed with odd gasps and groans, the sounds congealing, caught up in a sudden thickening in his throat.

  ‘If you insist on coming in, I can’t prevent you,’ Fowler said, his head still averted.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You can’t.’

  Perhaps he had been mistaken about the beard: certainly he was clean-shaven now.

  Old scar tissue spread out behind one eye, running back towards his ear.

  As he stepped forward Fowler retreated inside the hall.

  The door to the room at the rear was locked. From behind it came the sound of the children’s voices. They stopped, suddenly, when he knocked.

  ‘Let’s go in here,’ Fowler said, ‘and have a talk.’

  He felt his hand laid upon his shoulder. He began immediately to tremble. His arms began to shake.

  ‘I’ve come to see my children,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ Fowler said. ‘That’s what I’d like to talk about.’ Then he added, ‘I’d better say, straight away, that it was my idea to lock the door.’

  ‘Well, then,’ he said. ‘You’d better unlock it.’

  Yet he had succumbed already to Fowler’s grip and found himself to his amazement being led passively into the room at the front.

  ‘I don’t mind you seeing Kay,’ he said. ‘It’s you coming here that I resent.’

  Fowler waited, thinking about this it seemed for a little while. ‘I don’t come here often,’ he said. Perhaps he was surprised that there was no rejoinder, for he added, ‘I think you must realize. You can still cause Kay a great deal of pain.’

  A certain distress was evident in Fowler’s manner. One of his eyes began to move loosely in his head. ‘I don’t think you’re aware . . .’ he said when the door opened and Kay herself appeared.

  She had been crying. He felt the relief flow through him at once.

  ‘I’ll get
ready,’ she said to Fowler. ‘It won’t take long.’

  A slow look passed between them. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, and took her hand.

  ‘I shouldn’t have asked you to come,’ she said. ‘I’ll be all right.’

  It was as if Pasmore wasn’t there. ‘All I’m objecting to,’ he said, ‘is Fowler coming here. I don’t want him near my children.’

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘Well, then,’ he said. ‘At least that’s clear.’

  ‘But the fact is,’ she said, ‘I do.’

  She turned on him quite swiftly. He wasn’t prepared. It was as if he’d exposed in Fowler something she didn’t wish to see.

  She seemed to leap across the room towards him. Tears streamed down her face. He had never, in their long intimacy, seen this agony before.

  His only impulse now was to console it.

  However, from that one look she had already turned; a moment later, glancing at Fowler, she left the room.

  ‘We’ll go,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll just settle the children.’

  As Fowler followed her out she added, ‘Could you ring for a taxi?’

  He was left on his own.

  He listened to Fowler on the telephone, breaking off, as he waited for the ringing, to talk to the children through the kitchen door.

  He wondered if they knew he had arrived. The next moment he heard them following Kay upstairs, then Fowler’s voice was asking for a cab.

  He took the children out in the van, provided them with chocolate and a small carton of sweets, and began his devastating round of the playgrounds. As he pushed and drove and carried he wept, the children glancing up at him, curious, then looking away, unsure what this might mean.

  The lunch he had to prepare himself, one price at least for his indiscretion. He bought several tins in a delicatessen and heated them in pans; little of it if anything was eaten.

  Nevertheless the place was tidied, the children pacified by the time Kay returned, alone.

  She said nothing, coming in, taking off her coat. He felt relieved by her distress.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘about this morning.’

  She greeted the children, talking to them, marking off his exclusion in tiny gestures.

  ‘You forget,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen Fowler before. At Newsome’s. He came in one day, undressed.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘He told me.’

  ‘I’m sure you can appreciate, then, any apprehension I might feel.’

  ‘He was ill when you saw him. He was recovering from a breakdown.’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been saying all along. He’s unstable.’ He felt elated.

  ‘If you’d just got yourself someone who looked normal,’ he said. ‘But Fowler. He looks as if he’s backed into a bus.’

  She said nothing. She had begun, once again, to talk to the children.

  ‘It’s like a couple of cripples,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  She held the boy on her knee. Her face was white, heavily shadowed.

  ‘You’ve got to let me go,’ she said. ‘I’ve let you go.’

  She glanced up at him. ‘It’s only your vanity that resists.’

  ‘What?’ he said.

  There was so much he might have added. He thought, ‘These are my children, mine. Wherever she goes, whatever she does, she’ll never take that from me.’

  She had begun to get up, setting down the children. She picked up her coat and gloves to put away.

  ‘My mother’s offered to take the children for a while,’ she said. ‘I’m going away.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said.

  She went out to hang up her coat, the children following her and, just as dutifully, following her back. It was like a tribe he’d engendered, nomads.

  ‘Does your mother know about Fowler?’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked up.

  ‘I wondered.’ Yet he didn’t think it could be true.

  ‘You’d better go,’ she said. ‘I’m tired. I want to get their tea and get them to bed.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ he said.

  Already she had turned away, making preparations for the tea.

  ‘The sea-side’s usually nice at this time of the year. That get-away-with-it-all feeling. Though I suppose with Fowler being artistic he’d prefer a continental holiday. The sun and all that sort of rot.’

  And when she said nothing, but began laying out things on the table, getting out pots and plates and bread and jars of jam he said, shouting, ‘What am I supposed to do? Let you go?’

  She seemed quite calm. The simple mechanism of laying the table had taken her, dreamily, far away.

  ‘I’m not stepping aside, that’s all,’ he said. ‘This house is mine.’

  ‘In that case,’ she said, ‘we’d better leave it.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘And go where?’

  ‘Marjorie’s.’

  ‘Newsome’s!’

  Her back was arched over the table: she was leaning forward slightly, gazing out through the window.

  As if aware of his scrutiny she turned round. He saw she was crying.

  ‘I can’t allow you,’ she said, ‘to go on hurting me like this. If you hound me like this I’ll have to go away.’

  He nodded, saying nothing.

  ‘All this belligerence,’ she said, ‘comes out when I’m on my own. When Norman’s here all you can do is stand and tremble.’

  There was something here that she didn’t like, and he, rather than being discouraged, felt reassured.

  The ’phone began to ring in the hall.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ she said but, as if anticipating such a moment, he had moved quickly to the door. He picked the ’phone up and heard Fowler’s voice say, ‘Hello?’

  ‘I haven’t gone yet,’ he said, ‘you’d better ring back later,’ and put the ’phone down.

  It began, almost immediately, to ring again.

  He watched her answer it. He had once again, as if fulfilling her prediction, begun to tremble.

  He went into the room and sat with the children. They had, in the presence of such a conflict, become a single body, identical in response, almost inert, stupefied. They gazed at him in wonder, their eyes glazed, incredulous, perhaps a little deranged.

  From the hall came Kay’s voice, quiet at first, then weeping. When she came in, however, her eyes were quite dry. She returned to the table and began to cut the bread.

  ‘When we were young,’ he said, ‘we only had jam to choose from, and that on dry bread, and only on one slice.’

  ‘Are you going?’ she said.

  ‘We had one jam tart, on Saturdays. And on Sunday a currant bun.’

  He glanced round at the children.

  In the end he avoided their looks. He got up, pulled on his coat and without adding anything further left the house.

  Once in his room he fell on the floor, crouched there, holding his head, and crying.

  He called out, finally, in disbelief.

  Eleven

  ‘I challenge you to meet me at dawn stop fishing rods at thirty paces stop I must remind you that I am very effective with this weapon stop and can strip a man to the bone stop I demand satisfaction stop you are ruining my life stop is there no justice in this world stop.’

  ‘Do you want to send this?’ the clerk said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I wondered how much it’d cost.’

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘It’ll come to quite a bit.’

  He began to count the words with the tip of his pencil.

  ‘Cur have you no cognizance of the agonies of mind to which you and your cold heartedness condemn me stop.’

 
‘Leave my wife alone homebreaker.’

  ‘Adulterer beware.’

  ‘As someone interested in the welfare of my wife and children I must ask you Fowler to make your intentions clear stop.’

  ‘Fowler the unhappiness you are causing me and my children is more than it befits me to describe stop.’

  ‘Fowler do you believe in the sanctity of marriage stop.’

  ‘Oh God is there no end to your infamy stop.’

  ‘Do you want to send all these?’ the clerk said, looking at the bundle of forms he had made out.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s really the price I want.’

  ‘You’re going to send the cheapest?’

  ‘Not really,’ he said.

  ‘Well, look,’ he said. ‘You choose the one you want and I’ll send it. There are all these other people in the queue behind.’

  In the end, however, he put them in his pocket.

  He walked round the West End for a little while. It had begun to grow dark. Occasionally he stopped at a bar, ordered a drink and, sitting down at a table, took out the empty forms from his other pocket and began to fill them in. He could make little progress.

  ‘Fowler foul Fowler you are ruining my wife.’

  He screwed them up and replaced them in his pocket.

  It was quite late by the time he reached the square.

  For an hour or so he stood by the telephone booth then, when he could detect no sign of life in the house at all, he sat down in the gutter, directly opposite his front door.

  Periodically he got up and walked up and down the pavement in front of the house. He had arrived too late it seemed to see the children’s light go on and off in their room, and too early to see any visitors depart.

  ‘Fowler my house is little more than a hotel stop any invitation to stay the night must not be misconstrued stop the arrangement is purely nominal stop its motives nothing if not commercial stop.’