New World in the Morning
A Novel
Stephen Benatar
For John and Pauline Lucas.
1
My assistant had gone to lunch so I myself was serving. It was a Saturday but there was only one customer. She had been browsing for maybe twenty minutes and I had been watching her for maybe nineteen. At last she brought a fruit bowl to the counter.
“Nine pounds fifty,” I said, smiling, peeling off the sticker. She looked as good close to as from a distance.
“This place is rightly named,” she said.
“Thank you. To be honest I wasn’t sure. I’ve sometimes wondered if it weren’t a bit twee.” Treasure Island, scoring a narrow victory over Now Voyager, which might have been still more challengeable.
“Then you’re its proprietor?”
“You look surprised.”
She hesitated. “I somehow expect the owners of shops like this to be dusty old gentlemen.”
“Why?”
“Because as a child I was always enchanted by junk shops and it seemed that the men who owned them…” She broke off. “But perhaps that wasn’t tactful?”
“What?”
“Junk shops.”
“Why not? What else could you call them?”
“Oh. Many things. A cornucopia. An Aladdin’s cave.” She spread her hands. “A treasure island.”
“A junk shop.”
“Right.”
We laughed.
“And of course,” she said, “one man’s junk is another man’s joy.”
“Unquestionably.”
“Surprising, perhaps, I didn’t go in for it myself, this line of business. As I say, I spent so much time…and so much pocket money… We lived in Camden Town. It was a good area for junk shops.”
“And dusty old gentlemen.”
“Yes.”
“Plus an interesting place to grow up generally? Regent’s Park and the Zoo. Theatres, cinemas, museums.” I added museums mainly to impress her.
She nodded. “How long have you lived here?”
“My whole life.”
“This must also have been a good place to grow up in. Country and sea. Enviable to spend your childhood by the sea.”
“The grass invariably being greener?”
“Well, maybe. But for instance…are you a swimmer? I mean, a proper swimmer?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you might be.” She sounded wistful.
“Are you a dancer?”
That was a crazy thing to say. But she seemed to release me from my inhibitions.
“A dancer? Why?”
“I don’t know exactly. Something to do with the way you move. The kind of aura you give out. The clothes you’re wearing.”
“Are these the clothes that dancers nowadays wear in Deal?” In fact it was merely a cream silk blouse and a black skirt, very simple and well cut, undoubtedly expensive. Her beads, her low-heeled shoes, her shoulder bag; they too were black. The effect of colour came almost entirely from her hair, lustrous and shoulder-length and tawny, and from her eyes which were a strikingly beautiful green.
“That isn’t fair,” I said. “Sometimes it’s very difficult to pin down an impression. Was I nowhere close?”
“You were exceedingly close.”
“Really?”
“I’m an interior decorator.”
“Ah, yes. Of course. I can see how exceedingly close.”
She smiled. “My mother saw The Red Shoes before I was born and because she enjoyed it so much named me after Moira Shearer. Coincidentally, as well, my colouring was similar.”
I gravely nodded my approval. I said: “I always wanted life to imitate the movies. Are you successful?”
“I do the work I like, at any rate. The same as you. And yes. Without false modesty I would say I was successful.” She handed me a ten-pound note. By now I’d wrapped the bowl in tissue.
“Aren’t you going to haggle? People often do.”
“Not on this occasion,” she said. “The first time I go anywhere I always behave beautifully.”
I experienced an absurdly quixotic impulse to return the ten pounds and to make her a present of the thing. I really did feel tempted—and afterwards wished I had done it. But, anyhow, I knocked off one-pound-fifty.
“That’s very kind,” she said. “It’s a gift for the friend I’m staying with. She’s going to be delighted.”
“Then you’re only on a visit?”
“Yes. But haven’t I picked the right weekend?” She glanced behind her through the window.
I agreed that she had.
“Especially as I hope it’s going to be the first of many. I’ve been seriously thinking of taking one of those small houses in Silver Street.”
“Oh, excellent.”
“Thank you. I find it a fascinating quarter, down there by the front. Easy to believe it was the thriving haunt of smugglers.”
“‘Five and twenty ponies trotting through the dark—brandy for the parson, baccy for the clerk…’” I laughed. “Never anyone like Kipling.”
“No,” she said.
It was friendly rather than committed.
“He also,” I added, “wrote my all-time favourite piece of poetry.”
“Did he? I remember how the camel got his hump and how the—”
“If,” I said.
“Your all-time favourite? We did that at school. Not much of it has stuck. Oh, yes! ‘You’ll be a man, my son.’”
Again, I didn’t mind the hint of mockery. “If pressed, I reckon I could still recite the bulk of it.”
“Perhaps next time you’ll give me a performance?”
“I’ll start rehearsing.”
“Well, it’s been good to meet you, Mr…?”
“Groves. Sam Groves.”
“I’m Moira Sheffield.” If the bowl hadn’t been cradled in her right arm, I felt we might have shaken hands. “I think I must’ve rediscovered my natural habitat! I told Liz I’d be away ten minutes!”
When she’d gone I likened her departure to the flight of some rare bird whose sleek, exotic plumage had momentarily lit up the shop. But if this were indeed her natural habitat, and she proposed to buy a house here, wasn’t it likely that one of these days she’d come flying back? Next time, she had said. I was always chatting to my customers—one of the nice things about a life in secondhand goods—but I couldn’t recall a single encounter which had given me more pleasure.
2
After a slack lunchtime we grew busy again. Spring had come. None too soon; April nearly over. People seemed readier to spend. Several times I stood in our doorway and was mesmerized by that glittering expanse at the end of the road. I smelt the tang of seaweed. Gulls were soaring and screaming. I thought the houses above the beach would all be looking white and clean, as if anticipating towels and swimwear hanging from their balconies. A woman went by in a summer dress. This seemed premature but I enjoyed looking at her and could readily sympathize with the urge to cast off winter clothing. A lot of passers-by smiled at me, although I believed there wasn’t one of them I knew. I wondered if you ever got this reaction in places where the weather was more settled. Southern California, say? I had frequent dreams of escape to Southern California. California dreaming.
I myself felt happy. It was a sense of well-being which stayed with me all afternoon. Was still there when I arrived home.
As usual, on hearing the gate, Susie ran round from the back, panted and jumped up, wagged her mongrel tail, rolled over and waited to be tickled. Often my response was pretty perfunctory but tonight I squatted down and really fussed her. Asked about her day, told her a bit about my own. And as sometimes happened at such mom
ents her lips parted and she truly appeared to be smiling. We stayed like this for several minutes and I enjoyed the sensation of being close to the moist earth and of smelling its freshness, of being able to squat for so long without strain, of seeing the clean strong line my thighs presented in their newly laundered jeans, of seeing too the way my hands and fingernails looked good against the dog’s white fur; noting how the brown leather of my right-hand loafer, despite the time so often spent in attic and in cellar, still had a satisfying gloss. I enjoyed also my awareness of the bottle of Burgundy and the bunch of yellow roses I’d set beside me on the path.
The front door opened. “I was beginning to think I must’ve been mistaken,” said my wife.
“Hello, sweetheart. No. Just a spot of heavy petting.”
“I can see. D’you want me to go away?”
“What do you say, Susie?”
Following a moment of distraction Susie merely put her head back and went on grinning. Junie said absent-mindedly: “Who loves her master then? I know it isn’t ladylike to inquire but are those roses meant for me?”
“Yes. So long as you’ll come to have your tummy tickled.”
She didn’t do that, precisely, but as she gathered up the flowers and wine she exclaimed over both of them. I rose to my full height, then bent again and kissed her.
“I love you, Junie Moon.”
Briefly she rested her head against my chest. I couldn’t remember now if those five words, for twenty years my catchphrase, were taken from the title of the movie or from some amateur stage revival. Whichever, we hadn’t seen it. But even at sixteen she’d been softly rounded and moon-faced and if she wasn’t quite so dewy-eyed and misty any more, having herself these days two children who weren’t so very far off sixteen, she was still plump and pearly-skinned, with hair which by turning prematurely grey enhanced that opalescent look.
“I love you, Samuel Groves.”
The one endearment triggered off the other. Unfailingly.
After a minute we went inside the house—the three of us—into the living room; I settled in my usual chair and Junie poured us both a drink. This was also a part of the ritual. “How’s it been today?” she asked.
“It’s been good. The sun made such a difference. This morning I finished turning out that house I told you about.”
“Any exciting finds?”
“Yes, quite. One or two nice dresses dating back to the twenties. They’d fall apart, though, if you ever tried to clean them. Some fairly good china. A first edition of The Cruel Sea.”
“What’s that?”
“Novel. They made a film of it. Oh, and a pleasant woman came in at lunchtime. Interior decorator from London. About our own age. Plans to buy a second home here.”
“In what way pleasant?”
“Easy to talk to, I suppose.”
“Married?”
When I shook my head she inquired how I knew.
“No wedding ring.”
“My, my! Aren’t we becoming observant in our old age!”
“She thought I looked young.”
“What made her say that?”
“Oh, she said she expected the owner of a junk shop to be venerable and dusty.”
“The main thing is: was she a good customer?”
Was that the main thing? In any case, not certain why, I upped the profit on her patronage.
“Thirty pounds?” exclaimed Junie. “Not bad. What did she buy?”
“Several things but principally a bowl. Present for the friend she was staying with.”
“Boyfriend?”
“No. Some woman.”
“Perhaps she doesn’t like men?”
I stared at her. This seemed so totally out of character. It was also distinctly irritating. “Why the hell should you think that?”
“I honestly don’t know.” She, too, seemed disconcerted.
“Just because she’s in her mid-thirties, unmarried, and happening to spend a few days with a woman friend of hers…”
“I agree. I wish I hadn’t said it.” She stood up. “I must look at the potatoes.”
And the ironic thing was that it had been far more my own type of remark. I remembered how Junie had recently surprised me by saying, in the company of friends, “Oh, these men! They think if a woman isn’t married by forty she must be either lesbian or ugly! They simply won’t believe she might prefer to lead her own life, not be weighted down by her commitments!”
Until then I hadn’t realized that Women’s Lib had so much as trickled underneath our door. Also, it was the first time I remembered Junie having used the word ‘lesbian’ or even, whilst employing its new meaning, ‘gay’. Mike and Sandra, too, had seemed slightly taken aback. But times were changing and it was inconceivable that even Junie—or Sandra—should remain untouched.
Yet it hadn’t become a problem. Thank God. When we’d arrived back at the house I’d asked Junie if she ever felt weighted down by her commitments. There’d been scarcely any pause. “Oh, darling, I was talking in the abstract! It was only that Mike was sounding so smug, I just couldn’t let it go!”
It had remained a little disconcerting—and I hadn’t much enjoyed our evening anyway, might actually have been teetering on the brink of a depression—but unexpectedly, in the end, it had proved to be all right.
And tonight, in any case, I knew well enough that Moira Sheffield wasn’t gay. I could recall the way she’d looked at me.
Instinctively, my head turned towards a set of shelves. This was taken up mostly by books and a CD player but I stretched across and pulled out our earliest photograph album. I opened it three pages in, found a double spread commemorating my sporting achievements when I’d been eighteen. That was the year I’d left school; the year before we’d married. There were pictures of Sam Groves, bowler, batsman and wicketkeeper; Sam Groves, centre-forward; Sam Groves on the diving board; Sam Groves in the boxing ring—with arm upraised to show he was a champ. In each of them you saw either a grinning or else a grimly determined fair-haired giant; healthy, handsome, unstoppable. Poised to win cups, set records, defeat the world.
It all seemed such a long time back. Another life. Yet tormentingly close as well: practically within feel, within smell, within earshot. In and out of present-tense immediacy. Eighteen years ago. Midway.
And really I hadn’t changed that much. My hair was hardly any thinner; my stomach, thanks to almost daily sit-ups, remained firm. A few laughter lines; light creases on the brow; no apparent middle-age spread. I was a man now, of course, not a stripling. But essentially I hadn’t changed.
I was unaware of Junie’s return until I realized she was standing beside me. I closed the album with a snap.
She smiled. “You look as if I’d caught you out.”
“What nonsense!”
“Would you like another drink?”
She replenished my glass. I said: “But you haven’t told me yet about your day. And where have the children got to? This house sounds suspiciously quiet.”
“Ah. Matt’s still sitting in the garden working on his project. Panic stations: it has to be handed in on Monday—and before assembly—somebody rang to remind him! And Ella decided to spend the night at Jalna. She went off after lunch.”
“And what about their mum?”
“Well, as for me…” I got the impression that she sounded nervous.
“Yes?”
“Well, as for me, I began on the spare bedroom!”
“What!”
She nodded. “I got the wallpaper stripped off, sanded down the woodwork, put undercoat on the door and skirting boards. I didn’t get so far as the window because it was growing late and I had to start the supper.”
“But…?”
“It must’ve been the sunshine or something. I felt like it. You don’t mind, do you? I was hoping you’d be pleased.”
Pleased? I was certainly surprised. The decorating had always been my province; not the choosing but the actual work. I’d been
planning to embark on that particular bedroom the following Tuesday evening.
Yet on the other hand… It wasn’t that I lived for colour schemes and renovation.
“Yes, of course I’m pleased.” I felt there wasn’t enough conviction in my tone. I tried again. “Very pleased! Tell me, though. Whatever happened to Baby June?”
There was a ritualistic answer to that one as well.
“Oh, something rather horrible!”
She laughed.
“You know, I really quite enjoyed myself. Sang lots of songs, thought lots of thoughts, listened to the radio a bit. Was almost sorry when it was time to put on the supper, take a lightning-quick bath, and make myself all fresh and gorgeous for my lord and master.”
My lord and master: it seemed a long time since I’d last heard that.
“Indescribably gorgeous,” I said.
“You know I never contradict!”
“I love you, Junie Moon.”
“I love you, Samson Groves.”
That was a frequent minor variation. Samuel and Samson were fairly interchangeable.
3
Ella not being at supper, Matt was given her share of the wine—which, even when added to his own, still wasn’t much. So naturally, if only as a question of form, he lodged his brief complaint.
Matt was our twelve-year-old, large-boned, darkly blond, favouring myself, whereas Ella, at fifteen, took after Junie. In fact, Matt was so like me at the same age the resemblance could sometimes make me wince; and at such moments I often experienced a sharp longing for my mother—adored, adoring mother—who’d died of cancer a few days before my thirteenth birthday. He had my mother’s brown eyes, along with the freckles which, again, I myself hadn’t inherited.
Now at table he turned on me that soft and trustful look and I knew at once there was something which he wanted.
“Dad?”
“No. Whatever it is, young man…no!”
He grinned. “After supper will you help me with my project?”
I’d forgotten. Before we sat down I had said We’ll see. “Oh, you nuisance! Yes, I suppose so. If I can’t get out of it.”
“Thanks, Pop. You’re a good bloke.”
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