We All Fall Down

by Rosemary Friedman

  “It’s work like any other,” he finally said. “We are trained to take histories, examine, diagnose and prescribe, as you are trained to buy and sell toys. We are both paid for what we do.”

  “But you are doing something for humanity.”

  “Only because we do our work to humanity.”

  “Sometimes you give your services for nothing?”

  Doctor Gurney shrugged. “It’s a tradition.”

  “You give more than medical advice. You give hope, encouragement, sympathy, understanding.”

  “It’s all part of the same thing.”

  “What made you take up medicine?”

  “Like most boys, although they don’t always admit it, my father. I would probably have been equally happy in industry or the civil service.”

  “What about the doctor-patient relationship?” Arthur asked. “Why do I have confidence in what you tell me and none at all in the advice of Doctor X of Doctor Y?”

  “There’s nothing very mysterious about that. We all give much the same advice. You just like my personality and I get on with yours. It’s like choosing a chauffeur or a gardener or a secretary.”

  “Don’t you worry about your patients in the night, whether what you have done is right? Whether they will live or die?”

  “I do my best and then I go to sleep. I have to be fresh for work the next day.”

  “You feel no sense of vocation, no calling?”

  “None at all. Being a doctor is my job as business is yours, and plumbing the next man’s. I like to do my job well, but that is all. This vocation business is for the cinema, for books, for the general public, if you like. I don’t believe it exists. Perhaps there was a time when it did, but not today when everyone has to scratch a living, quickly, desperately, urgently.”

  Arthur stood up. “I hope you’ll think over my offer,” he said. “I have the feeling that perhaps you need to take advantage of it more than any of us.”

  It was a few weeks later that Doctor Gurney phoned him at his office. “Look,” he said, “our baby, the one who had whooping cough, has remained a little chesty and I’d like to take him away. Is the offer by any chance still open?”

  The Dexters were dining. There were no flowers, the silver had been removed from the sideboard, the drawing-room was already shrouded in dust sheets. Arthur and Victor placidly ate their lamb chops. Vanessa and her mother played with the food on their plates, then laid down their knives and forks.

  “Arthur, are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Vera said. There were desperation and tears in her voice.

  “Mother, for God’s sake not again,” Victor said. “I can’t stand it. Anyway isn’t it a bit late now? All our stuff’s already in Whitecliffs and the flat furnished and what not…”

  “Be quiet, Victor,” Vera said. “I’m talking to your father.”

  Arthur looked up from his chop. “What is it, Vera?”

  Vera clenched her napkin. “You see, you’re so busy with your idiotic, childish ideas you don’t even listen to what I’m saying. For the last time I asked you if you’re absolutely sure about this. Sure that you want to go to that idiotic, dreary place with all those idiotic, dreary people, half of whom I haven’t even met. I suppose you’re ashamed of them or something.”

  “No,” Arthur said. “I just didn’t think there was any point. They are all separate flats. We shan’t be mixed up in any way. Howard, now, Howard Pennington-Dalby, he’s a nice enough chap…”

  “Which one’s Howard?”

  “The barrister…?”

  “Barrister,” Vera said. “Well, if he’s anything like your cousin Henry…”

  “He’s nothing like my cousin Henry,” Arthur said patiently. “My cousin Henry happens to be a crook.”

  “That’s just what I said.” Vera was triumphant. Arthur sighed.

  “And Basil’s harmless enough,” he said. “He writes. Books or something.”

  “Typewriter going all night,” Vera said. “And isn’t there something about his wife?”

  “She’s left him,” Arthur said. “Walked out. I don’t know why.”

  “He’s probably quite unsuitable.” She suddenly thought of something. “What about references?” she said. “Have you taken up references from someone who knows all these peculiar people? I mean anyone who lets a flat to anyone, whether they’re stupid enough to pay the rent themselves or not, usually takes the trouble to find out something about their tenants. I mean it’s only sensible.”

  “Ring for the dessert, Vera,” Arthur said. “I’m sorry but you just don’t understand. I am doing this thing because I know inside me that it’s the thing I have to do, because of Willie. I am going to Whitecliffs because my instinct tells me to. I am taking Howard and Basil and the others because I want to. And because I want to I’ll have nothing to do with reason or with references or with caution or with all the other things I’ve put first for the whole of my life. This time Arthur Dexter is doing what he must, not what he should.”

  Vera waited until the plates were cleared and the soufflé brought in before she opened her mouth to say something. Before she had a chance Arthur said: “Have you taken up references from your Louise person?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Arthur,” Vera said. “I’ve known Louise for years; she’s not just somebody I’ve picked up in a public house.”

  “You’ve known her behind the desk at the hairdresser’s,” Arthur said. “You don’t know what she’s like at home, do you? She may be a drug addict or somebody’s mistress or something…” His imagination could go no further.

  “I’ve told you she lives with her old mother.”

  Arthur leered. “Well perhaps they’re murderers, the pair of them.”

  Vera began to serve the soufflé which was rapidly descending into its dish. “Arthur, I really believe…”

  “I know,” Arthur said, making holes in the tablecloth with the prongs of his fork. “You believe, as you’ve said before, I’ve gone mad. I assure you I haven’t.”

  Arthur looked at his wife feeling sorry for her, particularly as he had something else to say.

  “Vera.”

  “Yes, Arthur.” She sounded tired, deflated.

  “There’s something else about Whitecliffs. I didn’t say anything before because I had to wait until it was all settled.” He decided to run straight on. “I’ve bought a beach café.”

  “You’ll be telling me in a minute you’re going to stand behind the counter serving teas,” Vera said.

  “That’s right.” Arthur ate his soufflé.

  “Arthur, I was joking.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “But, Arthur, you’ve never made a cup of tea in your life!”

  “Then I shall have to learn. There are a great many things I shall have to learn. Seriously, Vera, I saw this place last week when I went to settle things with the agents, and I suddenly thought that it would just complete the picture.”

  “Complete the picture?” Vera looked dazed.

  “Yes,” Arthur leaned across the table enthusiastically. “I thought we could run it between us, and then everyone would feel they were earning their board and lodging. We could share the profits, if any, between us.”

  “But Arthur, I thought the idea was not to work.”

  “You couldn’t call this work. It would be something we’d enjoy doing. Fun.”

  “Washing up other people’s cups and saucers?” Vera said.

  “We can get someone to do that. It’s right on the beach, this place, opposite the Corporation’s café. It’s called ‘Joe’s…”

  “We’d have to change that for a start,” Vera said, then realised she had betrayed herself.

  Arthur smiled inwardly and sensed that he should say no more.

  When Vera and Vanessa had left the table, Vanessa to say goodbye to Cliff, and Vera to finish her packing, Arthur and Victor sat in silence in a haze of smoke.

  “I suppose you think I’m crazy, too,” Arthur
said.

  “No.”

  “I hope it will be all right, Vic. Don’t tell your mother I said so but…”

  Victor stubbed out his cigarette and stood up. “It’ll be all right, Pop. Mihi sic usus est; Tibi, ut opus est facto, face.”

  Arthur raised his eyebrows questioningly.

  “Well, the nearest I can get,” Victor said, “is that you should do what you have to in this world and that everyone else should damn well mind his own business.”

  Six

  At seven o’clock on an August morning Whitecliffs was at its best. The sun, uncertain still whether to make or mar the day for the holiday-makers who lay asleep in the ‘Courts’ that were not courts, the ‘Sea Views’ tucked deep into the town and the ‘Ocean Breezes’ far removed from the shore, peeped playfully out behind a pale rimmed cloud. In ‘Beverley’, ‘Earlsmead’, ‘Lynton Villa’ and ‘The Towers’, fathers and mothers slept the last, slowly surfacing sleep in striped pyjamas and nylon nighties, and sunburned toddlers in sandy beds lay vulnerably, angelically quiet, long lashes on cherubic cheeks, breathing softly, heads between rounded, upraised arms.

  On the shore, in a grey haze of undisturbed beauty, the sand stretched smoothly out to the curly edges of the foam. The pedaloes, blue, yellow and orange, lay in near rows on the promenade where the boatman had tidied them the night before, and the stacks of corporation deck-chairs waited demurely beneath their green canvas shrouds. Black rocks and green seaweed-slimed rocks bounded the bay on either side, and circling above them the gulls called into the early stillness. The wooden beach huts were curtained and shuttered, and along the wide stretch of concrete from cliff to cliff the litter bins stood empty.

  The two beach cafés were locked, bolted and barred; the Corporation one with which we are not much concerned, and, coyly continental, ‘Le Casse-Croûte’ (formerly ‘Joe’s’) known and referred to locally as ‘Cass”, ‘Cass’ Caff’ or simply the ‘Caff’, which was not at all the original idea.

  Superior, on the deserted promenade, ‘Le Casse-Croûte’ averted its face from its municipal rival and waited patiently, silently for opening time. Only its notices, painted boldly, artistically, red on grey, spoke. ‘Candy Floss’, they said, ‘6d’; ‘Iced Frutie – 6d’; ‘Sandwiches Freshly Made To Order’: ‘Trays For The Beach’. In the ‘garden’ – a concrete yard bounded by a low wall – the small tables, pink and green, stood bubbled with sea mist and early morning dew, and their chairs painted to match lurched towards them for support. At the end of the garden the store-room, padlocked, safeguarded in sleep its treasure-trove of tins piled high into the rafters; lemon puffs, iced gems, orange finger wafers, small rich tea, rugby wafers, ice-cream cones. Later and throughout the long day ‘Le Casse-Croûte’ would welcome all; small barefooted children, whose noses reached only to the counter, men in cloth caps or panama hats, ladies wearing not enough bathing costume. Later the stills would hiss and the cash registers ping, the washing-up tumble in the sink at the back, and the sparrows peck the ground for crumbs in the garden. The day, for ‘Le Casse-Croûte’ had not yet begun. It waited shutter-eyed for the young lady with the keys. The young lady was still asleep. She was not in her own bed and she was not alone.

  It was the coy tactics of the sun that woke her. One moment the room was only palely lit, and the next the sun, winking through the opening in the glazed chintz curtains, drowned it in light. On, off, on, off, like the beacon at a zebra crossing. Its persistence pierced the last light vapour of sleep, and Honey lifted her half-inch soot-black lashes from the pale blue eyes they veiled and examined the ceiling. Although it was extremely early, and at the best of times Honey was not unduly perceptive, she realised that the roof beneath which she had passed the night was unfamiliar. The sun continued its Morse message half a dozen times more, right on Honey’s face, before she glanced at the source of warmth beside her. It was Basil, of course. Even in sleep he had the three small frown lines between his eyebrows. He was brown as a fisherman and naked. Sitting up, Honey looked round the room. Three sheets of blank, white paper and a blue carbon flopped out of the typewriter and on to the dressing-table, whose top was a sea of paper; sheets and sheets of paper loose and in packets, scribbled on, typed on and blank. Here and there on the sea, like fishes, blue and red, swam threepenny notebooks ruled ‘feint’ ‘memo’ and ‘cash’. The mess slopped over on to the floor; the wastepaper basket was full. Honey wondered where she had put her clothes; it was the first time she had slept with an author.

  Basil opened his eyes; then shut them again; then opened them and stared at Honey who sat like a silky, golden statue bathed in sunlight.

  “My God!” he said.

  Honey turned to him and her long black hair swung over her shoulders as she did so.

  “What time is it?” she said, “I have to open up this morning.”

  Basil said nothing but shut his eyes, not against the sun, which streamed now more constantly through the curtains, but to exclude Honey, playing desperately the childish game in which he would open his eyes again in a few moments to find Honey gone and himself to have been dreaming. When he looked again Honey was waiting patiently, and she was not a dream.

  “I have to open up,” she said equably, “what’s the time?”

  Basil, shame and reproach chasing each other through his mind, handed her his watch from the bedside table. He thought of his wife and moaned at the irrevocability of what he had done.

  “What’s the matter?” Honey said, running her fingers through her hair.

  “Everything. My wife.”

  “Your wife’s in London.”

  “That’s the trouble. If she’d been here it would never have happened.”

  Honey shrugged. “You did ask me.”

  “I what?” Now Basil sat up, too.

  “You asked me, last night, to come up here.”

  Reaching for his dressing-gown from the foot of the bed, Basil put it on and went over to the window. He pulled open one curtain and had his hand on the other when Honey said:

  “Well you did. Didn’t you?”

  He pulled back the other curtain slowly and felt the warm sun on his face before he said: “Yes, I did.”

  “Well then.”

  Basil sat on the chair from which he did his typing, and with his arms folded across its back looked at Honey.

  “Honey, do you know why I asked you to come up here last night?”

  “Of course,” she said. She seemed to have remembered hearing somewhere that authors were a little peculiar.

  Basil shook his head. “I don’t believe you do.”

  Honey glanced at the bed. “I should have said it was pretty obvious.”

  “I asked you to come up here so that I could get some material for my novel. I wanted the story of your life. I’ve never known a striptease dancer.”

  Honey swung her legs out of bed, and they were long and golden like the rest of her. “Well you should have said.”

  “I suppose I should. I never thought, though, that you would think I…”

  Honey was getting bored. “Look, don’t worry about it. There’s no damage done.”

  Basil winced. How simple life was to the simple. Honey went into the bathroom and Basil, thinking hard, tried to reconstruct the previous evening. He remembered clearly their walk along the sea-front in the starlight, with the sea banging rhythmically against the shore and drowning, sometimes, with its roar, his words. He was talking about Henry James and his influence on the novel, and Honey had said she was cold and he had given her his jacket; then he was explaining about existentialism, the theory of which he had studied, and Honey said her feet hurt and they had turned back. He knew that he had asked her into the flat, because he had no notebook on him and he wanted to get the exact details of her career, family background and so on, but what wasn’t at all clear was how they had got into the bedroom and into bed. He had vague recollections of a bottle of whisky in which they had made considerable in-roads, the evening
having become chilly, and even hazier memories of Honey’s long arms twining themselves round his neck. As far as he knew he had not made a single note in his notebook, and was doubtful that he had even got as far as unscrewing the cap of his fountain pen. There were in his mind, playing tag with each other, odd sights and sounds, Honey’s low laugh, her hair in his eyes, the warmth and perfume of her skin, but they refused to form a consecutive picture.

  Honey, back from the bathroom, looked for her clothes.

  “In the sitting-room,” Basil said, surprised at his sub-conscious for remembering.

  Honey went to fetch them. Even for mid-August there was very little. A negligible pair of pants, a cotton dress, her shoes. She used his comb and picked up her handbag. She looked fresh as a daisy.

  “See you later.” No one could deny that standing in the early sunlight she was desirable. Basil hoped she would not come any nearer.

  “I shan’t be very late,” he said. “We were cleaned out of toffee-apples yesterday. I shall have to do some more.”

  Honey came over to plant a kiss on his forehead and, as though her lips unlocked a door, Basil remembered with shocked clarity the more important details of the night before.

  “You’ll be late,” he said shakily.

  “I’ll run,” she said.

  The door closed behind her and the room seemed terribly empty.

  If ‘Le Casse-Croûte’ was peculiar in that one of its assistants was by profession a stripper, and its toffee-apple maker an author, it was equally unconventional in the rest of its staff. There was Howard, serious-faced, with paunch starting to come and hair starting to go, more familiar with torts than tarts, and incapable of addressing even small children in other than his weighty courtroom tones. He filled the cornets, threepence and sixpence, with the same gravity with which he prepared advice on evidence, and had one not known the words he uttered to some grubby urchin to be ‘strawberry, vanilla or six-five special?’ one might have imagined him to be asking his ‘Ludship’, with due solemnity, for the custody of the child.