by A. L. Barker
“Where is he?”
“Upstairs. What he did, it was awful, wasn’t it?”
Uncle Fred stood up, ham-fisted. “Show him to me.”
“I can’t, he’s not here now, he’s out at this minute.”
Uncle Fred sat down again. He picked up his empty plate and turned it over and looked at the underneath. He had his code of manners, he never asked for more and he always indicated that he had finished by shoving his plate into the middle of the table.
Marise cut him a slice of raspberry tart. “You’ve seen so much blood I suppose it wouldn’t worry you to see mine.”
Uncle Fred bit the slice of tart and red jam leaked over his chin. “I haven’t set eyes on this geezer.”
“He comes in at half-past six. Always the same time, you’ll be able to see him from this window.”
So it was that Ralph, coming home with conscience well saddled, was unaware of eyes watching from behind the curtains. The thought did occur as he went towards the house that he had compounded a felony and was now on the wrong side of the law. He felt a sense of insecurity, as if he had forfeited all civic and moral rights. He was ready to find that he not only had to empty his own dustbin but that it would not be an offence to run him over, there being no more legal objection to it than to running over a cat. Being a criminal made everyone else law-abiding and he was ready to find that he looked as different as chalk from cheese and that everyone could see why. He did not allow for the extenuating circumstance, the best he had acted for – not, anyway, at the moment of going into the house where was all the best for him.
Being here and not at Thorne Farm was sustained rebellion, a mighty piece of self-indulgence. He could have lived at the Farm, as Bertha wanted him to, and worked in Chelmsford, if not equally well, well enough. But he had insisted on living here from Monday to Friday, it was essential to him, he was like a man with an air-hole, he had to have it and he hadn’t really tried to justify it. Now he had compounded a felony to keep things the way they were. This way, he thought as he stood at the door of his flat, this admirable way.
People like Krassner would ask what was admirable about it. He heard Krassner say, “Is this what you want, old boy? Is this what you call living?”
The cat was crouched on the window-sill, elbows out, a lozenge of black in each golden eye. Ralph dropped his hat and briefcase and lit a cigarette. So far as he was concerned this was living and perhaps was comic. Perhaps because he needed to do less than most people and not nearly as much as Krassner to live, it was pathetic. It was nonetheless a precious state of affairs.
He kicked on the gas-fire, lit it, and in his overcoat sat down. It would be hard to justify his liking for this – all right then – this existence. He had few material comforts here and no company. At Thorne he could have both, and more money left in his pocket. But there had never been a question in his mind as to what he wanted, he knew before he knew what he was missing that he could not let himself miss it.
Bertha asked, “What do you do with yourself?” She sounded wistful and he had to be careful what he said. They all lived on the edge if not of a volcano, of a trapdoor. He invariably answered, “I read, listen to the News, take a walk to the local, go to bed early”. Which was true as far as it went, but Bertha used to look at him – and so did Emmeline – as if to say, “Is there nothing else?”
He drew hard on his cigarette and in the dark the lighted end pulsed, the cigarette grew visibly shorter and he took it from between his lips and held it in his fingers. Bertha and Emmeline would never appreciate that what he did only carried what he did not do – expediently, as a cable carries a current. Yes, there was something else which had to be nameless and which he admitted might be the reason for what he had just done. He had just withdrawn two hundred pounds, his wife’s two hundred, and paid it into the firm’s account. And he had about two hours, the time it would take him to get to Thorne, to think of a reason to give her.
She was going to ask questions, one or two a day, for the rest of their lives. She simply did not have enough to think about. He would do better to have an attitude rather than answers. But what attitude?
She would have to trust him – poor woman, she would have to. He could guess how difficult that would be made for her in his absence. She might promise him not to tell Emmeline and might not want to tell her, but she would have to tell someone. There was only Emmeline, there was always Emmeline, he was as good as married to the two of them.
Bertha would maintain, “Ralph has made the decision, it was right that he should” and Emmeline would say, “He is stubborn, that’s not the same thing as strength of character,” and each time he went to Thorne he would have to repair the erosions. He would have to do that for Bertha’s sake, because doubt in any form made her unhappy. Luckily it was easy to reassure her, it only required his presence. She subsided into that sometimes as if it were a warm bath, at other times she stood up in it as if it were a tin suit and no-one could harm her through it. To make her really happy, to implement her against Emmeline and other sources of misgiving, he should stay with her. Those were the two sides of the coin, her happiness and his.
Ralph washed up his tea-things and the cat’s dish. He had a small ’fridge and looked inside to check his needs. It did not escape him that he was already looking forward to Monday evening when Thorne would be miles away: it did not escape him, it annoyed him. Was there no justice in him? No humanity? It surely was inhuman to want to discount all the caring shown him at Thorne.
Into his briefcase he put the day’s Telegraph and his rolled mackintosh. He put on a corduroy cap which he wore at weekends at Thorne. “Shoo!” he said to the cat in farewell.
In the hall he met Marise who had been to the gate to wave goodbye to Uncle Fred. It was a surprise to both of them, although she had had Ralph in mind. In fact, coming face to face with him on this particular evening was little short of a bombshell. Uncle Fred had disappointed and aggravated her by his attitude. After one glance at Mr Shilling through the window he had stated positively that he was not John Brown.
“I do know your name,” she said, “I haven’t really forgotten. It’s a short one, like Smith or Jones or Green. Isn’t it a colour, isn’t it White?”
She was wishing that Jack and Uncle Fred could see his face. He was thunderstruck, she told Tomelty later.
She didn’t exaggerate, she did have a striking effect on Ralph. She had been far from his thoughts and suddenly seeing her was like having a light brandished in his face. There was more to her than light, there was a flesh-and-bloodedness of purity, such purity, he thought, that it could come second only to cellulose.
Yes, he thought, she had the total absence of congenital harm that fresh flowers had. When he looked at fresh flowers and now that he looked at her he saw no badness to break out or soak through or twist awry.
“My name is Shilling.”
“I ought to remember because your other name’s the same as my husband’s but everyone calls him ‘Jack’.”
“My name’s Ralph.”
Uncle Fred had told Marise, “That’s not him,” and when she asked why not, he got angry, and so did she. Knowing how long it normally took him to make up his mind about anything she was sure he had made it up in advance so as to know better than Jack.
“I suppose I didn’t recognise you because I haven’t seen you wearing a cap before.”
Ralph would have liked to touch her, he often touched flowers, trying to identify their purity and he had a strong temptation to follow the curve of her neck with his finger.
“I’ve only spoken to you once,” she said, “but I watch you coming and going.”
Uncle Fred had shouted – when he was angry he said nothing at the top of his voice – “He didn’t wear a bowler!” So now she was sure and she felt reckless and dangerous to herself.
“I watch you every day.”
“Do you?” Ralph said wonderingly. He was full of amazement. The encounter seemed no less
than a miracle and could not last at the present pace. It was gathering momentum all the time. Already he had gone too far ever to get back to the same place. “Do you? Why?”
“My husband makes me. He makes me watch everybody, he says I think I’m the only one alive.”
“Do you?”
“Yes,” said Marise. “Except for you, I think you’re alive.”
“Indeed I am. It must be the first time,” said Ralph, and Marise, who had been going to remark, “But you shouldn’t be, should you?” gave him a stare of appraisal instead.
Ralph flushed. He hardly knew what he was saying, and yet it mattered acutely. “There is only the one time, isn’t there?” He added, with pleading out of all context, “As far as we know?”
The situation had moved a little out of Marise’s hands but she saw the lovely way it could go. She saw idyllic fear and herself in possession of a monster and was ready at once – she always presumed on the moment, and seeing what might be as good as being, she was often right ahead of time and it was one of the things that upset Tomelty.
“Come in and have a cup of tea,” she said to Ralph.
He looked at her in anguish. “I can’t, I have to catch a train.”
*
He got out of the train still smarting at his inadequacy. How long was it since a miracle had happened to him? And he had said, “I can’t”. Was ever a man so dead? He felt deprived and by his own act and when he saw Bertha waiting in the car he heard the old cogs turning. He knew their creaks, he had let himself be lulled by their creaks, he passed his week-ends in a lull.
Not this week-end, he thought, and remembered that he hadn’t decided what to say to Bertha. Instead of using the journey to reach an attitude, he had sat in a daze. The new little creature had gone to his head. Only his feet remained resolute. They had carted him to the station and hoisted him aboard the train, they were the reason, the sole reason, he thought without humour, why he was here.
“There you are, dear,” said Bertha. She always said it with a hint of shyness. She could still be shy with him. “I’m so thankful you’ve arrived safely.” She had a debt of gratitude and paid it. Each time Ralph came she did not thank God or Fate for his arrival, she thanked him for coming – to be sheltered and served and surrendered to. “I fancy the train’s a little late?”
What would she have done if he hadn’t come, would she sit all night waiting, and rejoice in the morning when he did?
Bertha took off the handbrake and put the car into gear as it rolled downhill. She was a bad driver though enormously careful. Emmeline said that a car needed a lot of tractor in it to survive Bertha’s care. As the gears engaged they were both thrown forward and Ralph’s nose stubbed the windscreen.
Bertha said, “I must ask Emmeline to have that looked at.”
The car was Emmeline’s. Very little in Bertha’s world was not directly or indirectly Emmeline’s. Except Ralph, and for him there were incumbent benefits.
“How have you been, dear? You’re always so busy, we can’t help wondering if you make time to eat properly. You looked tired last week and you didn’t want to walk the long way home from church. We noticed. Oh dear, have you a cold?”
Ralph shook his head as he wiped his eyes which were watering from the blow on his nose.
“You don’t really take care of yourself,” Bertha said wistfully. She braked hard at an empty pedestrian crossing. “Emmeline says you’re not sustaining your frame. You have a big frame, Ralph.”
It was possible to get glimpses of the estuary across the fields. Bertha and Ralph, before they married, used to walk to the estuary to watch the ships pass. Neither of them hankered to sail away, they left that to people who had business away or could not settle at home. When the salt wind blew inland Bertha remembered a Cornish town where she stayed as a child – not the sea nor the sands, just the grey street with aprons of spray between the houses. Ralph only remembered when he was off guard.
He wound down the car window and watched the coasters and liners each reduced to a pip of light bowling in and out of Emmeline’s hedges.
“Dr and Mrs Chinn are coming to dinner tomorrow.”
Ralph made an acceptance noise and Bertha said, “We thought you’d be pleased.”
Normally he took his cue, Bertha always gave him one – to be glad, to be sorry, to be indignant, to be amused – and it all went smoothly. Now he saw no just cause for Dr and Mrs Chinn, no reason, not even an excuse.
“It’s for your sake, dear.” Bertha could not make up her mind to emerge at the T-junction. “We thought they’d be company for you.” She waved on the car which waited behind them. “You are pleased, aren’t you?”
Why didn’t he take the cue? Why did he shrug and continue to look out of the window? He knew what his silence would do to Bertha. Her dismay was tangible as she ground the car in bottom gear along the dark lane to Thorne. She signalled desperately with her headlamps at every bend. When at last they stopped outside the house he was about to put his arm round her and tell her that he’d been looking forward to just the three of them together this week-end but he was of course pleased at the prospect of Dr and Mrs Chinn, but before he could move, the door opened wide, golden light trumpeted out and there was Emmeline crying, “Ralph, darling!”
He was never sure which there was in her cry – pleasure, pain, or blame.
*
When people remarked on how the sisters complemented each other, they meant that there would never be room for two Emmelines. Not in the same family nor, thought Ralph, in the same cognisance. It was not likely that he would ever know another Emmeline: if he were obliged to, within the same lifespan, he would be crowded out of himself.
The late Colonel Openshaw had been too late for Ralph, Emmeline was already a widow when he met Bertha. By Emmeline’s account – Bertha said little more than that he was kind – the Colonel was out of Ralph’s class. He had to be, to take Emmeline. She was a challenge which Ralph had never accepted, in fact they all lived together at Thorne on the understanding that he did not.
“Ralph has something on his mind,” she said as they sat at supper. She was finishing the last of three gins with which she had prefaced the meal. Beside her plate was a lighted cigarette.
“We shouldn’t expect him to slip into our life at a moment’s notice,” said Bertha. “It’s a far cry from his.”
At week-ends they often discussed him in his presence as they did out of it for the rest of the week.
“If he feels disjointed it could be the beginning of the end of something,” said Emmeline. “Personally I’ll be glad if it’s the end of his commuting.”
“He knows how we feel about that.” Bertha put the plate of bread at Ralph’s elbow. “The soft pieces are towards you, dear.”
“I have nothing on my mind,” said Ralph, “except the joy of being with you both.”
“His mind is putting out some interesting rays, mostly emotional, though there’s a hard streak too. Our darling’s twisted his envelope out of shape.”
“Don’t tease,” pleaded Bertha. “He must be so tired after his journey.”
“I hardly noticed the journey.”
“No, that’s not a suffering streak,” said Emmeline, “it’s too solid. And I’m not sure about the joy, he has such soft pink joy, has Ralph.”
He smiled. “I think the boot’s on the other foot. You have something on your mind, Emmy.”
She dropped her knife and fork and picked up the cigarette.
“Isn’t the beef to your liking?” Bertha asked anxiously.
Emmeline turned to Ralph. “Do you know of a good water-diviner?”
“What?”
“Divining’s in your line of country – weed-killers and pest control – surely there’s a file on Dowsers in your office?”
“No.”
“Don’t you look for the springs of life as well as the springs of death?”
“What do you want a water-diviner for?”
&nbs
p; “Darling, to divine water.”
“It’s no joke,” Bertha warned in a stage whisper to Ralph and sounded sorry that it wasn’t.
“Hurry up and finish eating and let’s get away from the table.”
Emmeline was not interested in food. She regarded it as fuel and to her a meal was a stoking operation: Ralph, eating Bertha’s excellent Yorkshire pudding amid Emmeline’s fuss and fume, wondered not for the first time if the sisters complemented each other to the extent of each offsetting the other’s qualities with her own defects.
“I want a diviner for this room,” said Emmeline. “And for the room above it, my bedroom. Bertha and I find the atmosphere oppressive in them both. There’s a sense of effort. Don’t you feel it? But you wouldn’t, you’re not here all the time.”
“What effort?” Ralph smiled. “In your bedroom?”
“If there’s a stream immediately under this room we shall know why it’s twice as much effort to lift a finger in here as it is anywhere else in the house.”
Ralph looked at Bertha. She sighed ambiguously and he chose a slice of bread from which the crusts had been trimmed.
“I have no difficulty lifting my fingers.”
“You wouldn’t, over a week-end. It’s a cumulative effect.”
“Of what?”
“If there’s a stream under the house we’re being bombarded with ionising rays. I feel a tug,” said Emmeline, “when I do the smallest thing I feel a tug the other way.”
“Dusting this room makes me hot,” said Bertha.
“Water is a conductor. Living over it is equivalent to continuous treatment with weak radium. We’ve lived here for fifteen years – how much radium can the system take?”
“I should think you’re super-charged,” said Ralph.
Emmeline twisted out her cigarette among the food on her plate.
“It could ultimately be lethal.” Flakes of ash settled on Ralph’s last piece of potato. “I’m not going to die that way.”
The secret of living, or partly-living with her was to be passive. If she was left to her devices they petered out.