Thin-Ice Skater

by David Storey

  In concert with all this, her scent: invigorating and at the same time soporific: I wonder what my brother – my, as yet, un-reacquainted-with half-brother – makes of this: is he aware of the wife he has let loose on the streets? Does he appreciate what a woman he’s got? Someone, I reflect (glancing across), not unlike a child – conscious, however, of her mystique, performer and audience, it seems, in one.

  She is, meanwhile, pointing, things out: a church (a cathedral), a town hall, a county hall, a court of law, an art gallery (‘we might go there’) – she is, she tells me, driving ‘the long way round’ – a theatre (‘we must definitely go there. I so love the theatre, don’t you?’).

  ‘Not much,’ (dragged there too frequently by Gerry to see a ‘star’ or even, God help us, a ‘character actor’).

  ‘In that case, Richard, I must teach you,’ she says (she has, I’m convinced, a tutorial nature). ‘I’m a friend of the theatre, and enjoy it so much. Also of the art gallery, though I go less frequently there. Are you interested in art?’

  ‘Not much.’

  The truculence (‘honesty’) prompts her to turn her head: she smiles: a galvanising expression: my heart leaps up: I’d love the theatre and visit any number of exhibitions if that smile – and, God help me, that laugh – came with us.

  ‘You mustn’t think of us as country cousins. We do have a life up here,’ she says.

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘What do you like, Richard?’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘By way of living.’

  ‘Being on my own.’

  ‘Not much fun!’ She glances across again.

  ‘The stage I’m going through,’ I tell her.

  ‘We can soon put a stop to that!’

  The galvanic smile and laugh again – deep, antagonistic, challenging.

  We cross a bridge: a surge of dark brown water, fringed by yellow foam: barges moored on one side: a row of buildings, several stories high, dominates the other: mills, warehouses: smoke hangs in the air. The perfume evident in the car is countered by a sombre smell, reality, of a sort, intruding.

  ‘Not a great deal to admire. At first glance. Once you get to know the place, however, there’s a great deal to be said for it. Particularly the people. They are very warm. Unlike so many in London. You, of course, excepted!’

  She knows I know she knows I’m aware she knows how to turn me on: the lapdog expression I assume I must be giving her, anxiety appeased.

  ‘I’ve been so looking forward to you coming.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We were so lacking in contact before. James is so keen to make up with Gerry.’

  ‘So is Gerry with James,’ I tell her.

  A startled glance: not so much reassurance as surprise – prompting (almost) the enquiry, ‘What is Gerry up to?’

  Gerry never has a motive which, at first sight, is apparent: a thin-ice skater is always focused up ahead: the potential of the ice to take his weight, the speed required to get across: the cracks, the sound of, drive him on – those and the perverse ambition to skate on thinness, oblivion destined to overtake him.

  No wonder he has sent me onto ‘safe ice’: he must be having qualms (what about, I can’t be sure: ‘what am I tossing this kid into?’), measuring all this, too, with Martha’s eyes: the blank, unyielding, incomprehending stare (‘nothing there for him, either, poor mutt. Maybe Jimmy will do the trick’ – if not, more nearly, his wife).

  ‘Not a great deal to admire.’ She indicates the view of what, presumably, are the outskirts of the town: semi-detached houses, gardens, a factory, a garage, fields: I like the inconsequentially, however: the sight of all this does me good: nothing here – its one virtue – counts: a common – a stretch of heathland – the road opening out on either side, the glimpse of cooling towers in the distance (a ship, its funnels sinking below the skyline), the road, moments later, lined by hedges, winding uphill, surmounting a crest, the view – a view – of hills, wooded, low down.

  At the foot of a steeper hill, surmounted by a clump of pines, stands a stone house of recent construction, the earth surrounding it – the rudiments of a garden – bare.

  ‘We’ve been here only three months,’ she says. ‘James’s idea. Though it’s too far out of town for me. However, several of our friends are keen and are thinking of moving out as well.’ She waves her arm at the hill, the car circuiting an asphalt area at the front of the house and drawing up at a pillared porch.

  The door is approached by shallow steps.

  ‘More modest than the one you’re used to,’ she adds.

  ‘Not at all,’ I tell her. ‘Ours is semi-detached.’

  ‘Several times the price of this one.’

  ‘I’ve really,’ I tell her, ‘no idea.’

  The car stops. She is getting out: a glimpse of the inside of her leg, then, in a cloud of scent, she’s gone, the boot released from inside the vehicle. A moment later she is tugging out the case, I rushing round to take it from her. I’m aware of the slightness of her figure at the same moment as I am of her remarkable strength – or, if not strength, tenacity – grasping her arm and then, involuntarily, her waist as I wrest it from her.

  ‘No, really,’ I’m telling her, at which she laughs.

  ‘I can see you’re as determined as Gerry,’ she says, leading the way to the door, opening it, calling, ‘We’re back!’ no response, however, coming from the hallway or from the rooms on either side, or from the staircase mounting overhead. The barking of a dog comes from the rear of the house – not, I have to confess, a sound I welcome. ‘It looks as though Mrs Jenkins has slipped out. She may have gone to the village. She was preparing supper. And getting your room ready. Though I’d already seen to that.’

  She has gone through to what, evidently, is the kitchen at the rear and, scarcely commensurate with the sound it is making, an animal little larger than a cat comes out. Its friendly intentions and scuffling on the polished wooden floor are evidenced, I presume, by the agitation of its tail. ‘This is Snuffy. He’s not ours. We’re looking after him for one or two days,’ stooping, stroking the diminutive head, the front of her coat, having been unbuttoned, opening. A suit of jacket and skirt is revealed inside, a blouse visible within the collar of the jacket. ‘We can go in there,’ the dog, living up to its name, slavering and snuffling over my shoes, the door she’s indicated opening into a room of a not inconsiderable size: heavily, if not lavishly furnished, its windowed interior is further illuminated by a large coal fire: a settee of considerable proportions stands directly before it, armchairs, of similar proportions, on either side. A corresponding room across the hall is furnished, I see, through its partly opened door, with a dining-table of similarly ambitious proportions: ‘entertaining’ is the word that springs to mind, I experience a first hint of disappointment.

  My suitcase, for some reason, is still in my hand (a suggestion, I assume, I am about to go, though what I might have been anticipating I’ve no idea: something older, more decrepit, more abandoned, even: less explicit, less defined). The place smells of novelty, the atmosphere that of a scarcely-lived-in hotel: only the dog lends a touch – a tenuous touch (apart from her) – of animation. Clare, the remarkable woman who appears to shrink – at least, to diminish against the excesses of the furniture and the pristine walls and ceiling. Through two windows the car and driveway are visible and, through a window in the adjacent wall, which is also occupied by the fireplace, the as-yet-to-be completed garden: partially outlined paths and rudimentary flowerbeds, schematically set out with plants: a lawn has only recently been laid out, the divisions between the sods still visible. ‘We’ve been trying to hurry it along since we knew you were coming. Why not come up and look at your room?’

  She alone, I reflect, is the saving grace, following her to the stairs, ignoring the dog. Her coat abandoned in the hall, I scrutinise her waist, her hips, her calves: where the stairs divide in opposite directions she glances back and, recognising my res
ponse, extends her hand: I immediately feel the warmth of her fingers. ‘It must make you nervous, but there’s no need to be,’ she says.

  A room looks out to the back of the house: a bed – a double bed – a desk, a chair, an easy chair, a television set, a radio and a record player: more equipment than in my room at home. The interior, like the rest of the house, smells of paint.

  Through the window a view of the pine-crowned hill overlooking the house: a herd of cattle, in single file, has been released and threads its way across it.

  A door opens into a bathroom. I set the suitcase down.

  I can’t, for that instant, recall the reason I’ve come, and look to her for an answer.

  This she must have recognised: there she is, a house designed to go mad in, and she as lively as a bird: a pretty, persuasive, pertinacious presence, smiling at my unease.

  ‘You are, I hope, going to like it, Richard?’

  Much effort has been deployed, she standing beside me, still holding my hand.

  ‘Dinner – supper – whatever you call it, has already been prepared.’ She indicates the room as something I might, with a little encouragement, soon get used to. ‘James will be home and we’ll have it together. We thought an evening in, for your first. In the meantime, is there anything I can get you? Why don’t we have some tea?’

  I am reluctant to release her hand, she, I suspect, reluctant to release mine also.

  ‘I had some on the train.’

  ‘I can show you round the rest of the house,’ she adds.

  ‘I’d prefer to stay up here.’

  ‘There’s so much I’d like to ask you.’

  Still we stand, fingers intertwined.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Your interests. What you’d like to do. What we should do to facilitate your studies. We don’t want you to fall behind. All manner of things! Just to get to know you! Are you interested, for instance, in following Gerry into films?’

  ‘No.’

  The promptness of my response closes the subject down.

  ‘Gerry tells us,’ she says, ‘you often write.’

  ‘Write?’

  ‘You’re always making notes.’ She laughs, a trilling declamatory sound, faintly instructive, starting briskly and ending abruptly. ‘Perhaps you will with us.’

  The strangeness of our standing there, absorbing one another: I scarcely know her, yet fusion, of a peculiar nature, is underway.

  ‘Why don’t we go downstairs and sit? I,’ she tells me, ‘would like some tea.’

  Releasing our hands we descend to the kitchen: from there – fully if not ideally equipped and looking out to a terrace at the back of the house (and that strangely-crested hill) – we return to the room at the front.

  Only once in the kitchen, as if to renew contact, has she drawn me to her – to indicate a ‘gazebo’ being built where the pasture on the hill comes down to the garden, the division marked by a recently planted hedge.

  Now we sit apart, she on the settee, a coffee table before her, on which she has arranged her tea (a cup for me, should I change my mind, I having carried the tray in for her), I in one of the easy chairs at an angle to her.

  There is something dispossessed, I conclude, in my nature, subliminal in London, more explicit here. There is only one way of our being together: she is describing her and my half-brother’s life in the town, and all I am conscious of is the way her skirt rides over her knee, of the suspension of one leg across the other, of the delicacy of the foot, the high-heeled shoe, loosely attached, dangling in the air (an invitation, almost, to remove it).

  I watch her lips, her hands, her eyes, her hair, oblivious of all but the tone of what she says: meetings are analysed, people described, projects taken up, explained, dismissed: I am enclosed by intrigue, plotting, defamation.

  Conviviality, humour, charm – and something little short of triviality.

  My remoteness is a challenge.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she finally asks.

  She pats the settee beneath one hand, replacing her tea on the table.

  ‘You’re such a long way away over there,’ she adds.

  With the same casualness as, at the station, she took my arm, she takes my hand as I sit.

  ‘I want you to feel at home,’ she concludes, enclosing my hand in both of hers.

  I am enclosed, too, by that cloud of scent, absorbed by the lines at the corners of her mouth, by the way she simultaneously smiles and frowns: the endless digressions from a narrative which takes her back, continually, to, ‘Where was I? Oh, yes! This will fascinate you, coming from London,’ resuming a previously abandoned account.

  I also observe, close to, the line of her thigh: the way her skirt moves as she talks, her leg swinging freely, indispensable, so it seems, to her speech.

  Examine, too, her fingers, clenched around mine: the petal-shaped nails, lacquered, and each, curiously, with a character of its own: the thumb (curled back), the forefinger, which, to stress a point, occasionally stiffens – and examine where our fingers actually touch: the colour, the lightness, the warmth against mine.

  ‘I feel we’ve been here hours,’ she suddenly exclaims, glancing at a watch. ‘I shall have to switch on dinner. Normally I’d have asked Mrs Jenkins to stay, but I thought, on your first evening, we might be alone. James will be back almost any time now. The odd thing is,’ she adds, examining my hand held in hers, ‘I feel we’ve known each other for ages. I feel so at home, my dear, with you!’ reaching across to kiss my cheek, I, as she withdraws, kissing hers.

  Moments later she is taking the tray, refusing my offer to help, and is saying, ‘I’m going to change. Maybe you should take a shower. I’m sure you must be sticky after the train,’ calling from the hall, ‘All I can say is I’m so glad you’re here.’

  I remain in my room, unpacking, after I’ve had a shower, conscious, all the while, of her movements in the house – first in a room along the landing, then on the stairs, then at a phone in the hall (the echo of her voice), then, finally, of her activities in the kitchen.

  The landscape, meanwhile, has darkened outside: a car comes up the drive: moments later I hear the front door slam, the dog barking, then a male voice calls, ‘I’m back!’

  An answering response from the rear of the house.

  After a conversation, first in the kitchen, then in the hall, footsteps sound from the stairs, I turning to face the door.

  My half-brother is my half-brother’s brother: stockier, darker, less caesarian (the profile – Gerry’s – of a hawk), this an (imagined) Neroic presence, portly, almost, fuller-faced, the features – and figure – of someone, dark-suited, quietly, soberly, going to seed (scarcely a fit companion for the woman below): nevertheless, to some degree, a brother: the shadows beneath the eyes, the balding crown of the head, the pouching around the mouth, the rotundity of the belly: a conventional, if not self-consciously conventional man, tailored to needs not necessarily – perhaps even antipathetic to – his own. Yet three and a half years in a German prison camp (if I’ve got it right), emerging estranged, transformed, eerily subdued, returning to a life that had gone on adequately without him: eyes, undeniably, like Gerry’s (presumably mine, too: how sharply had Clare glanced at me: the same, undoubtedly, but different): the same thickness of the lashes, the eyebrows, unlike Gerry’s, greying, his hair cropped short and almost white: a sombre, vulgarised, stouter version of his brother, the expression that of someone emerging from a cave: secrets, incommunicable, characterise his look: someone I am half close to: something between us not quite there.

  He shakes my hand, staring, demandingly, into my eyes: an immediate, urgent, unguarded look: ‘Do I know?’ I feel him enquire, though what the knowledge is I’ve no idea.

  Things, I have heard earlier, have been carried across the hall, presumably to the dining room.

  ‘It’s so good to meet you, Richard,’ he says, ‘after all this time. You were only so high the last time I saw you,’ releasing my ha
nd to indicate a minimal height from the floor. ‘I’d have recognised you, however, just the same. You have something of the family’s, certainly Gerry’s look,’ this final observation bringing a flush to his cheeks. ‘How is Martha, by the way?’ an enquiry, curiously, not made by his wife (too preoccupied, conceivably, describing her own affairs).

  ‘The same,’ I tell him, unsure how much he knows. ‘I don’t think she’ll much improve.’

  ‘Always live in hope,’ he says, grasping my hand more firmly before releasing it. ‘Sorry I wasn’t at the station. Got everything you want?’ Glancing round, the sound – an amazing sound – of what I assume to be his wife singing (melodiously, lightly, fluently) in the house below.

  ‘Everything,’ I tell him, and gesture at the room. ‘It’s good.’

  ‘Anything else, you’ll let us know. You’re free to come and go as you choose. I’m sure Clare must have told you,’ adding, ‘I’ll just wash up and meet you downstairs.’

  And is gone.

  She examines my gaze as I return to the hall, she passing through once more from the kitchen: she is wearing a dress, cut modestly at the neck and buttoned down the front: her shoes, flat-heeled, make less of a feature of her legs. Her face, presumably freshly made up, is that of a child. ‘Go all right?’ she asks, gesturing upstairs.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘He’s so pleased you’re here. I do hope nothing will spoil it. After all, he is your brother.’

  Her eyes cloud briefly with concern.

  ‘Half.’

  ‘But that’s a lot!’

  I am seated in the sitting room when James (as she persists in calling him) returns, playing with the dog which, evidently, is to be removed tomorrow. He wears a cardigan, slacks and slippers, and evidently, too, has had a shower: he gleams – beams – to some degree a different (pleasanter, more likeable) man, casual, unforced: he strokes the dog, its yapping scarcely a distraction. Maybe this was the original version which went to war – the informal officer (not suited to the job) before the inopportune surrender, something active, nevertheless, forceful, even, going on beneath the surface, yet scarcely showing at all.