by Paul Ableman
And I never saw Vanessa again. A few days later I met Kingsley Broderick, a beer-loving, book-loving Jamaican and Peter came back from Wales and the dying summer expired in the bar.
‘So and so’s dead,’ Mike Rea informed me, waving the morning paper in my direction.
And when I got to the station that morning, aware of death, violence, light and love, I gave in my notice.
Who else? Bricks? Other than the infrequent evenings of tortuous application? Edna dancing at the sea-side and Edna with a fellow at the terminus.
‘Watchoo seen? A bleeding ghost?’
Mrs Baillet, sans Mr or M. Baillet, sweetly, efficiently, wordlessly gliding through her carpeted house. With soft excitement turning after one to mention ‘the rent? I mean—there’s no hurry, of course. Oh, it’s all right.’
Mrs Baillet, unapproachable but strangely encountered in apparent meditation by the blue-lacquer vase on the staircase window-sill, in the late dusk, a slim, catatonic shadow, suddenly becoming a bird-bat, flitting with implausible explanation of having been listening to an air from a distant speaker, and other strange items of conduct. No Mr Baillet but a female-child Baillet prancing for a day a fortnight through the orderly and yet not entirely conventional house in Rodney Street.
Edna at the sea-side, sand, cliff, crab and an earlier Edna juicily trampling the black, glistening marsh mud, already up to her knees in the cattle-watering end of the pond.
‘It’s ever so cooool….’
Reed, thinking reed, cliffs out of skeletons, land cupping sea, sea spawning, spawn groping, span growing, impersonal maternal caress of the saline bosom wooing back the escaped mammal. The general, the particular—and finally the unfathomed. A mile from here is a tree, a cow, a powerhouse. Tiny, furry, nipping mammal—a mole! A process, a realm and finally a domain. Who travels on that line, comrade Nature? Were you young, brother? I was young, comrade, and had a delicate toy which scattered seed. A dandelion puff, brother? A fine toy and ten fingers, wise comrade, is this the way up?
‘Can I give it you tomorrow?’
‘Oh, that’s all right—d-don’t worry.’
A dapper, sad, salaried man, name of Jennings, scooping up The Times at eight-seven or eight-eight of a morning and vanishing up to the buses. Same Jennings escorting stately, black-draped, booming matron up the stairs to his room and down the stairs to the front door, looking pained and patient. Normally subdued voice of this Jennings suddenly strained hoarsely (as I pass his door) in two passionate assertions, the first relatively controlled, the second exploding, it seemed, under the pressure of the indignation of years: ‘Rose didn’t look after mother! Damn it, she never looked after anyone—ever!’ And one could imagine Miss Patiently Inflexible, behind the door, a mere unit of Jennings’ restraint from a battered skull and a few columns in the national press, pursing her lips slightly and waiting for adult behaviour to reassert itself.
‘Charley—here Charley! Don’t tell her I said anything?’
‘Beyond the strategic considerations, however——’
‘It was packed—and the décor——’
‘Didn’t you see me beckon, sir?’
‘Not p.’
‘Not another bitter. Do you run to a whisky?’
‘What here? Here where the train whooshes through the cutting? By the bow of the falls? Creep, crag, slog, slush, spectacle——’
‘My husband!’
‘What?’
‘I said, what do you think of our landlady?’
I had, in fact, been thinking of another world, suggested by the crude mural (crinolines, carriages, etc.) on the pub wall. Yesterday, when Homer escorted Miss Austen home from the squire’s ball, tiptoeing so as not to disturb De Quincey, asleep on the first floor landing. Thinking that things were different now with cars and atoms and ripped skies—surely, quite different—and things change—where? Stoop for earth. The pinch is inert. Probe the skull for alchemy.
‘What, Mrs Baillet?’
Aware that disclosure, never far from Otterley’s tongue, was imminent, I allowed my refocussed thoughts to play around the strange, tremulous scene in the half-lit bedroom (bed-sitting-room, normally, but at that hour, with white sheets showing on the divan, the bed reading-light for sole illumination and Mrs Baillet, becomingly unprovocative in her red felt robe, emphatically a bedroom) when, at 10 p.m. a few nights previously I had descended with the rent.
‘If you’d rather I came back——’
‘No, no, that’s—that’s all right—er—er—erm——’
Eyes moving rapidly but unmethodically about the room, as if the search for her change-containing handbag, while not in itself specially demanding, had to contend for her attention with some momentous consideration, she stepped quickly back from the door.
‘Come in. I’ll—er—I’ll—erm—find my handbag.’ Then turning swiftly back to me but keeping her sensitive glance from rising above the level of my chest. ‘Come in. You—erm—if you could—the door——’
Watching her narrowly, my side resting lightly against the chest of drawers just within the room, as she glanced, moved, hesitated and rummaged about on ledges and under cushions, I was aware of feeling slightly breathless myself and somehow intensely aware of the ordinary room which, in spite of the conventional propped photo (this one of the fortnightly visitor), the few straggly novels and sentimental accounts of scientifically purposeless expeditions, worn but rather rich and fine amber carpet, and other orthodox appointments, began to seem strange—even mysterious.
‘Yes—I—erm—here it is——’
She returned towards me from the narrow desk, the drawer of which had yielded the bag, holding the article but making no move to open it. The light from the bed reading-lamp fell on one side of her decorously robed form and animated the tumbling, silky locks of brown hair that she nervously thrust back from the temple and also carried her constricting and then again dilating, as she traversed the lamp’s focus, shadow along the wall opposite, suddenly blotting out Degas’ frozen ‘rats de l’opéra’ and then exposing them again. I waited, aware that I had never been in the room before, having previously settled up in the entrance hall and once in the steamy kitchen where she had been boiling clothes.
‘Now you want——?’
Bending forward over the bag which she had settled on the chest of drawers, a few locks of now-disregarded hair falling to partially curtain her face, she disengaged the clasp, and then the fastener of the purse within, and sorted gravely amongst the miscellaneous contents in manipulations suggestive of a search for change.
‘Seven—you want—erm—seven and fourpence—now——’
‘Seven,’ I found myself murmuring, having contracted her inability to concentrate, ‘seven?—no, six—isn’t it? Six and fourpence——’
‘Six and—here’s a half-crown—and—erm—fourpence—fourpence——’
‘Isn’t it? I mean—yes, six——’
In sympathy with the frozen pirouette of the ‘rats’, the room ceased breathing. True, it harboured nothing animate, nothing which, of its own volition, could have expressed time but had curtains been cats and chairs butterflies, life would have deserted them.
‘Yes—six and—thank you——’
‘Six and——’
And finally, with dry throat, having conclusively lost a period of my life (for I could not, and never since have been exactly able to, decide whether a minute or an hour, although common sense, that blundering councillor, suggests it was probably nearer the former span, had passed since she had begun the financial settlement), I received the coins into my unsteady hand.
As she passed me the money, she tossed back her unsettled hair, straightened up and our eyes met. The doubled, limp collar of her felt dressing-gown righted itself and the gap which, as her financial quest had led her into ever more intricate crannies of the handbag, had casually widened to progressively reveal the hollow of a slim throat, the ridge of a collarbone, the flimsy and its
elf unconcealing neck of a sheer, lacy night-gown and so on until, before the last copper had been located, the external garment had so far parted that nothing above the knee had remained concealed by other than almost perfectly diaphanous fabric, closed again and I confronted my modestly-attired landlady handing me the change for the rent.
‘That’s right—isn’t it?’
Our eyes still joined in a look devoid of content, I nodded.
‘Yes—I think so—yes——’
‘Yes—well—erm—yes——’
‘Yes——’
And then, muttering the tenant’s, or a husky version of it, conventional ‘Good night’ to his landlady, I turned and departed, pulling the door clumsily shut behind me. In my room, I sat on my bed, awed, wondering, already bitterly denouncing myself for a naïve fool and then wondering again. What? Had she? Should I? And then again shuddering in poignant desire at the recollection of the episode.
‘Yes,’ insisted Clark Otterley, ‘Mrs Baillet. What do you think of her?’
‘I think she’s—rather nice,’ I murmured cautiously, although observing Otterley with attention.
‘Do you?’ asked Otterley in his hollow, juicy voice and I waited breathlessly for confirmation of the more exciting of the two possible hypotheses that the incident had suggested (i.e. that Mrs Baillet had been aware of, had even engendered, the provocative behaviour of her dressing-gown). ‘Do you,’ asked Otterley with what I instantly interpreted, knowing the man, though not well at that time, as a suggestive smile. ‘Oh by the way, did you see that article in The Observer?’
Grossly cheated, and yet somehow reluctant to show conspicuous interest, I was compelled, for a quarter of an hour, to consider a novel, or more exactly a critic’s view on a novel, which we had already exhaustively discussed. In this field, Otterley was my junior, my merest apprentice, and rather than strive for language with which to convey, to his admittedly willing and receptive mind, what to me was obvious, I took the almost equally tedious course of allowing him to elaborate his own views and pretending agreement. But this had the virtue, at least, of permitting my mind to rove back once more to that somehow indescribably stirring moment (hour?) in the room of my landlady.
‘—even if the style isn’t very exciting? Do you agree? I mean, surely other things—characterization and—and so forth—are equally important? Don’t you think? I mean, I found it immensely——’
And then Willy Logan deposited the four pint pots of bitter that, having entered the saloon unobserved by us, accompanied by Mary Spender, he must, upon observing us, have bought.
‘Here we are. Well? What is it? Sodding books?’ grated Logan, manipulating the fleshy wing of his pitted nose. ‘You know Mary, of course?’
Like many rogues, Logan used the formalities with unexpected deference as if they provided indispensable criteria by which the effect of otherwise extravagant and obscene discourse could be measured. He now politely presented Mary Spender, a wobbly blonde we both already knew, and then greedily drained a third of his pint of beer. At first he feigned intelligent participation in the discussion and somehow, again like so many rascals who are never observed to do anything but drink, borrow money and pursue girls, he had acquired at least the denatured vocabulary of culture, including the names of the more prominent contemporary figures, whose works it would have challenged the imagination to picture him consulting.
‘Who? Keaton? You don’t read him, do you? I’ll tell you who you want to read——’ and so forth.
But as the beer enfeebled his never very sturdy superego and progressively released the excitement-predatory beast within, he succeeded, not without a preliminary brush with Otterley, a man of some determination at times, in diverting the conversation to sex and relegating us to the status of audience when, with words, he performed an obscenely exhibitionistic dance for gaping Mary. And then others came.
It wasn’t until much later, gurgling with beer, as we strolled somewhat shakily homewards, that I raised again, caution dissolved in alcohol, the matter of our landlady.
‘What were you going to say earlier? About Mrs Baillet?’
‘That Logan’s a bastard.’
An opulent black sedan, with two incongruously youthful men in it, swam to the kerb ahead of us and accompanied, in a noiseless triumph of mechanical restraint, two swishing, exaggeratedly indignant girls who ultimately broke into a run up a side turning, the great car veering out into the traffic stream again and gliding off into the night. In Tony’s Pasta House, the idle, dainty young things span out of coffee and melody their ephemeral dream of romance.
‘Oh, Mrs Baillet?’ Otterley, having mentally disposed of the irritant Logan, reverted of his own accord. ‘What do you think of her?’
‘I think,’ I urged, with slight, wasted impatience, ‘she’s very nice.’
‘Her husband’s an agitator.’
‘A what?’
‘An agitator.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve met him two or three times. Stoney knows him. You know Stoney Cohen?’
We entered Culverton Square and the sound of a party, laughter, music, came from somewhere and we both glanced round to find the source, but could see only the stationary masses of the shrubs and dark façades, nothing festive.
‘What do you mean? Where does he agitate?’
‘The East, Africa, wherever there are subject peoples yearning to breathe free.’
‘Well——’
I couldn’t see what Otterley meant. He should have said, to be in character, and to remain within the orbit of my speculations, a lecher or a pimp or a queer. What had Mrs Baillet, with the subtle tremor of her voice and body, her radiant femininity, to do with it, with the world of power, the world of conviction, the world of fiends and saints, the world of squeezing capitalists and selfless planners or, alternatively, of freedom-worshipping humanists and ruthless machine-men, to the revived and terrifyingly-armed absolutism of our times.
‘An agitator?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well—what do you mean? A Communist? A sort of spy?’
‘Ah, here it is!’
And Otterley planted himself in front of the half-opened door from which a maximal flow of sound indicated that we had located the party. He suggested that we enter, alleging that he was ‘sure to know someone’, but I declined, having drunk as much as I wanted to that evening. Otterley, however, the most mobile of men, lightly detached himself from me and, with a throaty ‘Good night, then’, bounded up the steps towards the gramophone, leaving me to amble home with a phantom who, because I succeeded in shedding him for half an hour of sonorous Yeats before sleep, later reeled agitating, strangely armed with telescope and mace, and in the unlikely territory of a department store, into my dreams.
October of the phantoms, Nicholas or Nicky Baillet, and a little later, bequeathed to me accidentally by Otterley, for a transient (characteristically so, I later discovered) association, the celebrated Jane Paget, tidings of whom had already reached me.
Strange that these two most—what?—rootless, unattached, unreal beings I ever knew should have converged (though only psychically, or perhaps referentially, in the case of Baillet) on Rodney Street that mild October
It was, in fact, several years before I actually set eyes on the agitator, at close quarters that is, for once the taller of two drawling young men, hemmed in against me at a dense party in a balconied room, gave a little start and then bobbed and grimaced so convulsively that his companion, who had been talking about mayonnaise, broke off, pursing his lips slightly and lowering his eyes.
‘There’s Nicky Baillet!’ exclaimed the transported man, before, oblivious of his disapproving companion and with yearning arm outstretched, ploughing off through the throng towards a long, lean, merry face thrust, for the purpose of a quick survey, and with insufficient caution to obviate all chance of being recognized, around the door.
‘The agitator, do you mean?’ I answered mechanic
ally when someone, Peter Oglethorpe possibly, mentioned Nicholas Baillet in a pub one day.
Peter (it must have been, for the shadowy cerebral image of my companion on that occasion cuddles his pint mug in the way Peter did) eyed me blearily.
‘Agitator? My dear chap—who are we talking about?’
‘You said Nicholas Baillet.’
‘Exactly. Nicholas Baillet was a—a sort of a—look, why do you say agitator? I say, do you know him?’
‘No. I thought—— Well, what is he?’
‘He’s a journalist, isn’t he?’
And sure enough, laboured and unromantic pieces on improbable subjects, ‘The Economic Significance of Copra in Micronesia’ or ‘Coco Cola Imperialism’ above his name, found one’s eye occasionally from the columns of dull, expensive little periodicals.
But nothing sharp or definite ever emerged in connection with my former landlady’s husband and the sum impression of fifty passing, sometimes respectful, references was of a daring, big-hearted fellow, too responsive to the fullness of life to confine himself rigidly to the Marxist principles he had effortlessly and appreciatively assimilated in his youth. In the war he had allegedly done something pretty marvellous, although whether with parachute and blade, pistol and platoon, or psychology remained obscure.
And, in truth, the general impression conveyed by the lean, bearded man, somewhat preoccupied by the availability of the next drink, whom I ultimately found myself sitting next to around a pub table did conform to the above specifications. He had obviously travelled widely, felt a warm, instinctive sympathy for the exploited and deprived everywhere, and liked women and drink. I listened appreciatively to his willing reminiscences and it wasn’t for quite a long time before I began to fancy I discerned a certain—a certain lability of emotional response, an absence of objectivity which tended to convey the impression of a world insufficiently differentiated, containing, in fact, it began to seem, only a vast, listless corps of extras and a single actor. And with this, a lack of coherence, on the highest level, began to emerge.