Thin-Ice Skater

by David Storey

  He pours a drink, insists on pouring me one (‘You’ll like this: only sherry. First evening, and that’), handing me the glass as his wife, my half-sister-in-law, comes in.

  She is – ‘James’ is startled – radiant: she glows – her voice, her face, her manner – sitting in the chair opposite me, ‘James’ taking his place, after handing her a glass, on the settee. ‘Here’s to your visit.’ He raises his own glass: we drink. Her eyes meet mine across the width of the hearthrug.

  This, I reflect, is provincial life.

  ‘Gerry,’ James enquires, ‘is busy in New York? Is he often away from home?’ he adds.

  ‘He’s making an effort,’ I tell him, ‘to be at home as often as he can. This trip, he says, is unavoidable. Financing the films he makes is difficult from London. He suggested, on this occasion, I went with him.’

  ‘Weren’t you inclined?’ a measure of relief in Clare’s enquiry.

  ‘Living in hotels I’ve done before. I prefer to be …’ I’m about to add, ‘at home’, but continue, ‘here,’ smiling: the lightness of my voice, the amicability of my expression: somehow the sound of her singing has settled everything. ‘Otherwise he’s anxious to sustain at least the semblance of a home.’

  ‘Gerry has had his difficulties,’ James declares, reconciliation, of a sort, evident in his voice. ‘With Martha, too, of course. And Ian.’

  ‘Ian,’ Clare involuntarily responds.

  ‘And Ian,’ James confirms. He waits to see what effect this might have had, if not on me, on her. ‘Do, by the way,’ he says, ‘call me James. Or Jimmy, if you like. Gerry does. That was my name at home. Though Clare doesn’t like it.’

  ‘Jimmy is such a diminutive,’ she says. ‘And James is such a lovely name,’ she adds. ‘Do call me Clare,’ she concludes, with a laugh.

  Bonded to her in such an immediate (and unexpected) way, I take care to moderate my look, glancing at James and announcing, ‘James – and Clare – sound fine to me.’

  ‘I know he’s anxious to do his best for you,’ James says. ‘We all have our difficulties, but his have been particularly onerous, as you must be aware. Martha must be a great burden. A wife is of great importance to a man.’

  ‘So is a husband to a wife,’ Clare says.

  ‘So he is,’ James says, and smiles.

  Small, even teeth, which may not be his own.

  Another wartime loss.

  ‘I’m sure Richard doesn’t wish to be burdened, too,’ Clare says. ‘Particularly on his first evening.’

  ‘I don’t mind at all,’ I tell her, before James can interrupt – as genially disposed to her, in this instance, as discretion will allow. ‘He often talks of his problems but I don’t think I’m much reassurance.’

  ‘Really? Not even brotherliness?’ Clare replies, something other than enquiry in her voice. The dog has nestled in the chair beside her: her neatly-tapered, manicured hand caresses its head. ‘Friendship,’ she adds, ‘of the most intimate kind. I’m sure you must offer him something.’

  ‘It’s not really “friend’s talk”,’ I tell her. ‘Gerry’s keen to keep Martha away from gossip, local or otherwise, and what he would value most would be talking to another man.’

  ‘There’s always this friend Gavin we hear so much about,’ she says.

  ‘He’s more a working relationship,’ I tell her.

  The bearded creep: I classify the diminutive, balding, dark-eyed, opportunistic Gavin in the same category as Eric: ‘Eric without the uniform,’ I tell Gerry who, unperturbed, invariably rejoins, ‘Gavin is the best, most trustworthy colleague I’ve ever had.’

  The shit.

  ‘The poor, wretched woman,’ James has said. ‘I know what it’s like to be out of your mind. I’ve seen men consumed in that way on several occasions. Possessed or dispossessed, it’s hard to tell.’

  The observation, made almost privately – provocatively – is left hanging in the air.

  ‘Though it could be a relief,’ he suddenly goes on, ‘to discuss these things with members of the family. I gather Gerry has told you something of our past.’

  ‘A little,’ I tell him, and wonder – no doubt as he and Clare do – how much.

  ‘I needn’t go into it this evening, but estrangement between the two of us is not something I’ve sought,’ James says. ‘It’s been forced on us, I guess, by circumstance. Gerry always was a highflier and took a more frivolous view of the family. Particularly of our father who, in my opinion, was a self-destructive, obtuse old man. He ruined his company, when he might well have saved it. Why, I know several of his former employees even now …’

  He stares at me for several seconds.

  A telephone rings in the hall and Clare gets up, sets down her glass, glances pointedly at me, and passes in a cloud of scent.

  ‘It’s Mrs Jenkins,’ she calls, ‘checking on dinner,’ returning to the room to add, ‘It’ll be ready in one or two minutes. Though I can always keep it hot if you want to talk.’

  Anxiety in both of them, I conclude: no doubt, before my arrival, they have discussed at length the significance of my visit. Much they might wish to enquire about, curiosity aroused by the unusual circumstances surrounding my presence.

  ‘I thought it might be Gerry,’ she goes on. ‘He said he’d call from New York.’

  ‘He’s had hardly time to get there,’ James says.

  ‘It takes,’ she says, ‘as long as that?’

  ‘When did he leave?’ he asks, and adds, ‘On top of which he has people to see.’ To me, he enquires, ‘The two of you get on well, I take it?’

  Less enquiry than declaration.

  ‘Fairly,’ I tell him.

  ‘A big gap in age.’

  He waits for me to concede.

  ‘More like a father, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Not after the description of our father,’ I tell him, at which he laughs, suddenly, immensely, uncontainably pleased: he gazes at me for a while in silence, beaming: his eyes are almost wickedly alight.

  ‘It’s interesting to examine the past,’ he says. ‘At a certain age it’s inevitable. I’m two years older than Gerry and have had a head start, though not in respect of what he may have told you.’

  ‘Mainly about our father and my mother,’ I tell him.

  ‘Would you like,’ he says, ‘another drink?’

  He is on his feet, taking Clare’s glass, then mine, and crosses to the cabinet behind the door.

  ‘Did you know my mother?’ I ask.

  ‘Scarcely at all. I was estranged from the family at the time. It was something in which I didn’t encourage Clare to take an interest.’

  Smiling at me, she raises her glass.

  ‘Better times, Richard,’ she says, and drinks.

  ‘To better times,’ I tell her.

  A short while later we go into dinner. I talk, by request, about Dover’s (Mrs Dover, Mr Dover RIP), my friends: in no time at all we are back with the past – in this instance, the recent past: James’ job – which he unenthusiastically sketches in (‘of no interest, but it keeps me off the street. Keeps us off the street,’ laughing, glancing at Clare).

  She and I sit opposite one another, either side of the table (sufficient to accommodate a dozen), James at the end between us.

  I watch her eyes, her mouth, her neatness – the precision of her lips: her minimal appetite. I watch particularly that part of her with which I have recently come into contact, her hands: neat, delicate, also precise, marvelling that they and I have been absorbed so swiftly into the normality of the house.

  ‘I have a secret, too,’ James says, the meal coming to an end, I unsure what the previous secret might have been. ‘I’ve taken up writing in middle age. Gerry may have told you. I was always reluctant to tell him. I wanted the Audlin name to establish itself without, or, rather, before his intervention. If it all works out I can sell him one of my books.’

  He examines me keenly, something of the expression of a younger man.


  ‘What sort of books?’ I enquire.

  ‘Detective novels!’

  In reaching for my glass I knock it over: the stain spreads slowly across the cloth.

  ‘I’ll clean it!’ Clare is already on her feet: a napkin is dabbed at the liquid. ‘Really,’ she says, ‘it’s of no account. We’re always spilling something.’

  ‘I’ve startled you,’ James says, and laughs, regarding the red stain, however, in a melancholic fashion.

  As if there aren’t enough corpses and culprits in the family already.

  ‘Martha,’ I tell him, once the problem on the table has been resolved, ‘is fond of detective novels. Or was. She doesn’t read them now but assumes she’s living one. Sometimes,’ I add, ‘as a victim-to-be, other times as someone looking for clues. Bodies and searches are her principal preoccupation. At least,’ I pause, glancing at Clare, uncertain how far I might go. Almost involuntarily, it would seem, if we were sitting closer, she might have stretched out her hand to mine. ‘She’s endeavouring to solve a mystery the enormity of which she can’t divulge and the elucidation of which absorbs her, seemingly, every second.’

  ‘Mystery?’ James says. ‘What mystery?’

  ‘The philosophical mystery which no one feels is relevant any more,’ I tell him. ‘“What can I know? What might I hope for? What might I do?” More relevant to me is what do I know. What does it mean? Does meaning have worth? Does language make sense?’

  They are gazing at me with mutual apprehension: the telephone rings. Clare, after dismissing it with a wave of her hand, rises with, ‘It might be Gerry,’ and is gone. Moments later her voice announces, ‘We’re having dinner. I’ll ring later,’ and is back in the room, explaining, ‘A friend,’ and then to me, ‘Not Gerry.’

  ‘My own mysteries,’ James says, ‘are more modest, if not mundane. Who killed whom, and when.’ He glances at Clare. ‘More to do with provincial life of a distinctly, if not oppressively, urban nature. No vicarage or village green. Murder in the manager’s office. The effect of work on the human mind. Who wouldn’t care not to kill their boss?’

  He laughs once again, in the same melancholic fashion: maybe he’s aware of how dull this venture sounds, the perversity in persisting in writing ‘mysteries’ part of the purpose in writing them at all.

  ‘Have they been published?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Will they be?’

  ‘I’ve written seven. Apart from rejection slips, I’ve received two letters from publishers expressing an initial interest and suggesting – at least, one of them – I expand the range of my subject. However, apart from writing about the war, about which no one, any longer, has any interest, I don’t have very much choice. Clare enjoys them.’

  She smiles: don’t, her look suggests, discourage him.

  ‘I don’t know why they haven’t been published,’ she tells me. ‘They’re as good as any other. Just because it’s an insurance office. That’s where murders, you’d think, ought to take place.’

  Passion, of a sort, is suggested, displaced or organic, hard to tell.

  ‘I’d like to read one,’ I tell him.

  ‘They’re nothing.’ James dismisses them with a wave of his hand. ‘These things are invariably for older people. Youngsters, nowadays, scarcely read at all.’ He pauses before concluding, ‘I’ll let you look at one.’

  ‘He writes them in office hours,’ Clare says. ‘So in a way he’s paid to write them.’

  She laughs, lightly, engagingly: the same trilling, interrogative sound I associate with the other, younger, Martha: how swiftly she, I reflect, has been forgotten.

  ‘Oh, they know me.’ James is smiling: an ingenuous expression which evokes something, I assume, of the intimacy of their relationship. ‘When I retire, which I hope will be before long, I’ll be able to write them all the time. Apply myself in a way I haven’t been able to do before.’

  The only purpose to, the only justification of, my being here, I conclude, is his wife: what she holds out to me. The warmth and directness she represents reverberate through my mind (oscillate with the force of her physical presence). What happened earlier, however, before James’ arrival, may very well not occur again.

  ‘As it is,’ my half-brother gestures at the room, our meal at an end – served, in its various stages, by Clare, despite my offers to help – ‘most of our recent time has been taken up with this. I thought to move into a new house before I retired. If the worst comes to the worst, after retirement, we can sell it off. By then its value will have increased. This,’ he gestures at the room again, ‘has absorbed us for the past four years. Finding the site. The architect. Getting permission. It’s two years since I completed a piece of fiction. Though I’m glad to say I’ve started something new. Writing prompts you, after all, to the thought of another life. Certainly, in my case, different to the one I have at present.’

  Still Clare watches us, gauging my reaction, a suggestion in her look of ‘don’t disillusion the man’, I recalling the sensation of my hand between hers, a receptivity implied that needn’t stop there: ‘complicity’, her look declares.

  We return to the sitting room, each of us tired – if not exhausted – by the events of the day. Further conversation about the house, the history of its building, the current search for a landscape gardener, the previous one having died.

  ‘That was a shock. No mystery there. Heart.’

  Grief animates Clare’s face, my one impulse to go to her.

  ‘Mortality.’ My half-brother is in a reflective phase. ‘It’s at this stage, Richard, one takes it into account. Looking back, on the one hand, then looking ahead to measure the distance. The house, to that extent, is a relevant statement. I could walk out of it tomorrow and not come back, for all of its significance. Since there’s nowhere of greater significance to walk to, the only relevance I’m aware of, since we built the place, is to stay.’

  He glances at Clare for confirmation: the first dispassionate look I’ve seen him give her.

  ‘What do you say?’ he asks her.

  ‘I’m content with it.’ She doesn’t return his look. ‘Particularly since we went to so much trouble. To me it’s neither good nor bad. I preferred where we were before. Draughty. And a fortune to heat. And more rooms than we knew what to do with,’ glancing at me. ‘An old mill-owner’s house on the edge of town. Stone and, in the basement, very damp.’

  ‘It was cold,’ James concedes. ‘It did have character, however.’

  ‘Which is what I’m saying.’

  Her look, finally, engages his.

  ‘I’m agreeing,’ he says, a sudden intimacy between them.

  Shortly after that it’s decided it’s time to go to bed, Clare, prompted by James (‘Has Richard got everything he wants?’), accompanying me to my room, standing at the door and announcing, ‘If there is anything you’ll let us know.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I tell her, ‘I should kiss you goodnight.’

  Not a suggestion she responds to: nevertheless, crossing the floor I kiss her cheek. ‘Thank you for making me so welcome,’ I tell her.

  ‘Goodnight,’ she says, smiling, and goes, her door – I assume it is their door – closing along the landing.

  Her perfume, the slightness of her figure, her radiant look: it’s as if she’s still in the room.

  For an hour, or longer, I lie back on the bed, falling asleep finally only to be woken almost immediately by Clare, in a nightgown, tugging at my arm.

  Light streams in from the landing.

  ‘It’s Gerry.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘On the phone.’

  In the hall, looking back up the stairs, I see her standing, blurred, in her nightgown, gazing down: I can’t identify the meaning of her expression: inconvenience, irritation, doubt – or excitation.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asks me in my ear.

  ‘Do you know what time it is?’

  ‘Clare says you’ve settled in.’

 
James, no doubt, is awake as well, if not disturbed by the light in the hall.

  ‘They’re a remarkable couple,’ he adds.

  ‘Are they?’

  ‘Don’t you agree?’ He’s drunk, or close to it. ‘I’ve misread them in the past. Not appreciated them for what they are. Did I tell you they had a miscarriage years ago? It brought them together with a shared sense of loss. The opposite of what happened to me when Ian died.’

  ‘How’s work?’

  ‘Work?’

  ‘Business.’

  ‘Fine.’ He waits: expensive, too, this distance. ‘Just as well you didn’t come. All they do over here is talk. The one word for it.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And drink.’

  ‘Some drinking! Too much at stake on this occasion, Rick.’

  There are sounds of voices at the other end. ‘I ought to go. I wanted to know our kid was okay.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Both of you, God dammit. All three. Apologies for not ringing sooner. I’ll call again in a couple of days. Be friendly.’

  ‘Friendly?’

  ‘With Jimmy.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And Clare.’

  ‘And Clare.’

  ‘And me.’

  ‘And you.’

  ‘I want to be friendly. They want to be friendly. None of this fucking highbrow stuff with you. They’re simple, ordinary, straightforward people.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Richard!’

  He waits again.

  ‘They are straightforward people. They live in the fucking provinces.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘This could be a much needed healing of the past.’ He covers the phone the other end, he and the voices abruptly cut off: the sound of mid-Atlantic waves is followed by, ‘Maybe I should go. Good to hear your news, and lots and lots of love.’

  ‘Sure.’