Thin-Ice Skater

by David Storey

  ‘Which one?’ I ask.

  ‘To a nightingale.’ She raises her hand. ‘Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth …’

  Invention, at least of dialogue, falters: all this she must have sold to Gerry when he first approached the school.

  ‘My brother admires it, too,’ I tell her.

  ‘I’m sure he does.’

  ‘He has referred specifically to its open spaces.’

  ‘I’m sure his appreciation is as warm as mine.’ Mrs Dover resumes her seat behind her desk. Her surprise at my appearance fades. ‘Why,’ she adds. ‘I have your essay on the subject here. “Home Background”.’ She places a pair of spectacles on her nose. ‘“The wooded undulations interspersed with streams and ponds sweep down to the congested hollow of the River Thames”. I’ve given it Alpha Plus. A somewhat bucolic appreciation.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Removing her glasses she adjusts her dress, a voluminous garment buttoned at the neck.

  ‘I was very much taken by your analysis of your family life. I so much admire your sister-in-law. She was and always has been my favourite. I saw Taken to Paradise five times, and I’d see it again, if I could, tomorrow.’ She replaces the essay on the desk. ‘Your brother tells me she stays in the country.’

  ‘In Hertfordshire.’

  ‘Such lovely places there as well. So close,’ she adds, ‘to Hampstead.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How often do you see her?’

  ‘Every month, if I go with my brother, though sometimes,’ I add, ‘I go alone. Particularly if he’s busy. In which case,’ I conclude, ‘every two or three weeks. Over the summer holidays I go most Sundays.’

  ‘What form does her indisposition take?’

  ‘She thinks she’s a female detective.’

  ‘What crime is she seeking to solve?’

  She blinks her pale blue eyes.

  ‘She’s looking for a murderer.’

  ‘I see.’

  Perhaps she does.

  I wait.

  ‘Who has been murdered?’ she asks.

  ‘Someone by the name of Martha Sheringham. Though the corpse, she tells us, is hard to find.’

  ‘Does she know anyone of that name?’ she asks.

  ‘She used to.’

  She nods: a double chin recesses into triple.

  I am, it’s true, enamoured – not of Mrs Dover in her entirety but of certain aspects of her which over the past two years I have, I suspect – self-analysis not my forte – idealised.

  I add, ‘The name of the murderer, on the other hand, varies. Some days she refers to him as Alfred, other days Gerald. She finds it difficult to separate the two.’

  ‘Perhaps two people are involved,’ she says.

  The radiance of her flesh, the grandeur of her smile, the symmetry of her lips …

  ‘You still in here?’ my brother says. Knocking on the door, he opens it. ‘You’ve been up here for hours.’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘I’m going out. I’ve told Mrs Hodges. She’ll have your supper ready by seven. Is that your fucking homework?’

  Having come in he looks down on the pad on which I have just inscribed ‘the symmetry of her lips …’

  ‘An essay on “Home Background”. They assign the subject,’ I tell him, covering it up, ‘when they want to see what you get up to when you’re out of school.’

  Recognising the colour and shape of the paper he says, ‘What are all these memos you leave around the house?’

  ‘House?’

  ‘In the fucking kitchen. The hall. On the stairs. I found one in the fucking john. Numbered. You and fucking numbers.’

  ‘Reminders.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Things I otherwise forget.’

  ‘All it says on some is “Asshole”.’

  ‘School.’

  ‘School?’

  ‘Regression.’

  ‘Regression?’

  ‘Rather than pick a quarrel I write a memo.’

  ‘“Cunt.” That was another. You realise Mrs Hodges could easily find it. Maybe she has and hasn’t said. She may not know what “cunt” is. Hodges will. He was in the army. He could think – I could think – it refers to her. Then we’ll have the fucking hassle of finding another couple.’

  ‘They’ll never leave.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They’re on to a soft number.’

  ‘Who do they refer to? Do you keep a record of all this crap?’

  He’s trying, once more, to look at the pad (I lying in bed, it propped on my knees).

  ‘All I’m asking for is cooperation. If life is too easy we can make it hard.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Any number of ways.’

  He isn’t keen to enumerate.

  ‘I don’t want you stuck up here all evening. Isn’t there something else you can do? Two hours’ homework is long enough.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I expect you to be asleep when I’m back.’

  ‘What time are you coming?’

  ‘Eleven.’

  He’s lying: the Rolls is in the street: I don’t have to look. He’s going to his flat. He won’t even be back in the morning.

  ‘Aren’t any of your friends coming in this evening?’

  ‘I wanted some time,’ I tell him, ‘to myself.’

  ‘Too much fucking time. This room could do with ventilation.’

  He’s gone: an air of disquiet – impotence, frustration. I watch the rear door of the car – held open by the chauffeur – close behind his back.

  His face gazes up. I wave, not sure, however, if he’s waving too.

  MEMO NINETEEN (19)

  Everybody at Dover’s is happy. The criterion of happiness Mrs Dover subscribes to is the capacity of everyone to smile. The ‘dissidents’, as she refers to them, who are unwilling or unable, she summons to her office – as, for instance, on this occasion when, removing the secretary and the typist from the scene and, now that Gerry is out of the house, transferring it from a school day to a Friday evening (the cleaners, too, have gone), she enquires about my ‘long expression’, adding – referring to her flat at the top of the building – ‘Come up to my room and make a cup of tea. I’ve got backache and I can’t sit in this chair much longer.’

  Mrs Dover is, unfortunately, a heavy smoker: it discolours (disfigures) what otherwise would be her surprisingly delicate hands – small for someone of such gross proportions. She goes to considerable lengths to disguise her bosom, wearing dresses which might be more suitably described as gowns: an encumbrance, a shelf, above which her head is mounted with its disarranged but never dishevelled hair (the pale blue eyes, the tiny mouth, inset with pearl-like teeth, beneath which is suspended, according to her cranial position, what varies between a double and occasionally a treble chin).

  She is kindly, at the same time she is stern, her sternness a consequence of her kindliness. ‘Do not take me for granted,’ her look suggests: an injunction accompanying me as I follow her up the stairs – she turning off the lights as we ascend, as if foreclosing on the possibility of retreat, the two of us, finally, standing at her door, bringing with us, or so it feels, the day’s atmosphere of dust and chalk and perspiration – an atmosphere (and the relative darkness of the landing) dispelled the moment she unlocks her door and switches on a light.

  A smell of perfume comes out to the landing, the brightness of the light inside the comparatively narrow hall blinding my eyes, she turning off one switch and turning on another, announcing (exclaiming), ‘I must get a shade for that lamp! I’ve been meaning to do so for ever so long! One very much needs a man to get things done. Living on one’s own one soon forgets,’ disappearing into a room beyond.

  The furniture in the room in which she has left me is that of a long-established parlour: old, dilapidated, and strewn with cushions, one or two of which have burst.

  ‘The kitchen’s through there. Make one for me,’ she calls, reappearing, mome
nts later. ‘Not found the tea? I take it one for you as well?’ entering the kitchen, located on the opposite side of the room, returning after an interval with a tray, setting it down on a low table beside a couch. ‘You’ll have to show more initiative, Richard, if you’re to make your mark in the way your brother has,’ indicating, with the palm of her hand, I sit beside her. ‘I don’t suppose you do the washing-up, either?’

  ‘I don’t,’ I tell her.

  ‘In which case,’ she says, ‘you can pour it out. No sugar for me. I haven’t had sugar since Mr Dover died.’

  She indicates the walls of the room, decorated, excessively, with framed photographs, the majority of academic groups, youths and adults, in addition to a number of teams depicting one sport or another. On a sideboard stands the framed photograph of a solitary figure, Mr Dover, in mortarboard and gown, evidently taken in his youth.

  ‘Nor have I decorated this place either,’ drawing her cup to her and holding it in its saucer against her chest. ‘Long in need, but I don’t have the incentive. Now Mr Dover’s gone.’

  She offers me a smile, the school’s contribution to the expressiveness of human life. ‘Unlike the school which he’d wish me, as when alive, to keep spick and span.’

  She drinks deeply and sets the cup and saucer down.

  ‘How is your sister-in-law?’ she enquires.

  ‘Much the same.’

  ‘Do you see any sign of improvement?’

  ‘If anything, she’s worse.’

  ‘Close the curtains.’ She indicates the windows which overlook the tree-lined road at the front of the building. ‘I’m not one for being on view. Even if some of our neighbours are. The sights one sees occasionally up here. People assume they’re not overlooked,’ adding, ‘I admired your sister-in-law. As I’m sure I’ve told you. I saw Taken to Paradise five times and I’d see it again, if I could, tomorrow. As for Rachel and Each a Stranger, those, too, if I had the chance. Films, as no doubt you’re aware, go out of fashion, but some remain in the mind for years.’ Waving at the curtains, she calls, ‘Tug them harder. I should replace those, too, I’m afraid,’ and when I return to my seat continues – casually, as she might have requested another cup of tea – ‘This isn’t a demand I make of everyone, but I wonder if you’d be dismayed if I asked you to rub my back? I can hardly reach round myself.’

  ‘No,’ I tell her, anticipating little else since the moment I started drafting the memo.

  ‘I have something,’ she says, ‘you might rub on,’ taking my hand and leading me to the door through which she first disappeared and which I discover opens into a bedroom: an uncurtained window looks out to the back of the house. In the centre of one wall is a double bed, facing it a desk and an upholstered chair. A bathroom and a dressing room open off on either side, the doors to both of which are open.

  She groans as she sits on the bed and, bowing her head, releases a hook at the back of her dress. ‘It’s on the desk. I’ve put it out. If you go to the bathroom you’ll find a towel.’

  Returning – the bathroom as cluttered as the sitting room – I find her back is turned towards me, the dress unzipped, her arms drawn out.

  ‘On either side of the spine. I’ll show you the spot.’

  From her shoulders she withdraws the straps of a slip and lowers that, like her dress, to her waist: an expanse of flesh is exposed to the evening light, the window, as I said, uncurtained, the tops of several plane trees visible outside.

  ‘We mustn’t feel immodest. After all,’ she suggests, ‘we’ve known each other so long,’ unhooking the rear of the remaining garment before drawing that, too, down the length of her arms. ‘As I’m sure your sister-in-law will tell you, a woman’s lot is not to be envied. So many things we have to put on.’

  One of her astonishingly delicate hands reaches round to indicate the area where I might apply the ointment.

  ‘There,’ she says, drawing herself upright on the bed.

  She gasps at the first touch, bows her head, exposing the nape of her neck, and adds, ‘I can’t tell you, Richard, how relaxing that feels.’

  Her back, at that first touch, is warm: when she moves to indicate I might apply the liniment lower, the skin, I discover, has a life of its own: its warmth comes to me: the declivities, the protrusions, the hollow of the spine, the swelling of the tendon either side, the shelving of her waist above her hips.

  ‘We’re bouncing,’ she tells me, ‘all over the place. You’ll have to hold my shoulder.’

  Her head sinks further forward: the liniment spreads its whiteness: each gyration of my hand is followed by a moan.

  ‘Good.’

  The scale and composure (the vastness: the depth, the width, the height), the whiteness of the flesh: for a while she doesn’t speak. I place one hand across her shoulder, caressing with the other. Finally she says, ‘Mind you don’t spill on the cover,’ and, drawing a cigarette from a packet by the bed, flicks a lighter, a cloud of smoke rising above her honey-coloured hair. Turning, smiling, she adds, ‘Maybe to get rid of the smell you should wash your hands.’

  When I return from the bathroom she is sitting, a dressing gown around her, on the edge of the bed, her legs swung over the side, stooping to fit her feet inside a pair of slippers.

  ‘I’ll get into something more comfortable,’ she says. ‘Pour yourself another cup of tea.’

  I return to the sitting room and, not having drunk the first cup of tea, empty it in the kitchen and pour another, and am sitting drinking it when, still smoking, smiling, she comes back in.

  MEMO TWENTY (20)

  She doesn’t invite me again for several weeks, scarcely acknowledging me in school. Only, one afternoon, encountering me in the school doorway, she says, abruptly, ‘Come and have some tea. I’ll give you the key. I’ll be up in a minute.’

  When she arrives she enters the bedroom without comment and a few moments later calls, ‘You can make one later if you haven’t by now.’

  She is sitting on the bed in much the same position as she had been before, and, her back and shoulders bare, stubbing out a cigarette, adds, ‘I’ll have to have you come up more often.’

  I hold her waist as I massage her back; as an alternative, I grasp her shoulder, gripping it beside her neck.

  As I manoeuvre the liniment lower I release her shoulder and clasp her side. The weight of her subtended breast encloses my wrist. Sliding my hand upwards, my other busily engaged across her back, I hear Gerry coming up the stairs, followed by his cry, ‘What the fuck are you doing in there? You’re shaking my fucking ceiling!’ the door opening, ‘Maybe a change would be to your good.’

  ‘Change to what?’

  ‘Another school.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Dover’s,’ he says, ‘is too enclosed. Too privileged. In a couple of years you’ll be at university. Maybe you should be branching out. How about the American School?’

  ‘It’s full of fucking Americans,’ I tell him.

  ‘Or one of those Catholic, Jewish schools.’

  ‘Don’t you have to be one or the other?’

  ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘We’ll get you baptised. Believe me,’ he waves his hand, ‘they’ll be glad to have you.’

  ‘Those places are reductive,’ I tell him. ‘At this stage of evolution religion can only be seen as a symptom.’

  ‘Sure.’ A moment later, he adds, ‘What of?’

  ‘Regression.’

  He couches his ear, not convinced of what he’s heard.

  ‘Evolution has evolved beyond that sort of crap,’ I tell him.

  He waits.

  ‘Where do you pick up that sort of stuff?’ he finally asks.

  ‘I work it out,’ I tell him.

  ‘At Dover’s.’

  ‘I’m happy at Dover’s.’

  ‘You are?’

  The thought hasn’t struck him before.

  ‘I don’t like seeing you,’ he says, ‘immersed.’

  ‘Immersed?’

&n
bsp; ‘In just one thing.’

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘One school. Whatever you do in that fucking place.’

  ‘You recommended it,’ I tell him. ‘How many schools did you look at before deciding?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘You told me twelve.’

  ‘I looked at twelve. I looked into two.’

  ‘Fuck the American School. And fuck the Jewish one,’ I tell him. ‘Segregating children before they’re born. What sort of fucking thing is that?’

  ‘Another thing,’ he says. ‘This swearing.’

  ‘I get it from you.’

  ‘I don’t swear,’ he says, ‘inside this house.’

  ‘You swear all the fucking time,’ I tell him.

  ‘Jesus,’ he says, ‘so this is growing up? Give me dying every time.’

  MEMO TWENTY-ONE (21)

  I hang in at Dover’s. Memos are memos: prospective events. Mrs Dover as undefined as no doubt she was to Mr Dover (they had no children, dedicating their lives – they alleged – to the welfare of the children of others).

  I visit my sister-in-law at weekends. Gerry on occasion takes me in his Rolls. By preference, on my own, I travel by Greenline bus: one and a quarter hours north-eastwards out of London, beyond the suburbs, amongst the fields, the interval given over to adjusting my mind to what I’m about to encounter the other end.

  It might have been a stroke of fate, not calculation (of that I can’t be sure) which has made it possible to travel almost literally from door to door by single-decker (I prefer sitting at the front, looking over the driver’s shoulder, or, occasionally, rearward and slightly to one side if there’s no conductor occupying that seat himself): door to door from our home in Hampstead (catching the bus by Whitestone Pond) to Market Whelling. There’s a ten-minute walk the other end down a winding lane to the battlemented gateposts, the metal gates of which are invariably open (a welcome sight) and beyond which the turreted outline of the house itself is visible above a line of distant trees. Farm fields sweep off on either side – a place, in its way, as exclusive as my brother’s life, a strange compatibility between his choice of nuthouse and the way he chooses where we should live: when we come in the Rolls it’s with a feeling we’re the owners of the place (surging up the curving drive, no flunkeys, however, emerging from the door, only nutters, occasionally, like Martha herself).