Other People's Love Affairs

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Other People's Love Affairs Page 6

by D. Wystan Owen


  at that, the power contained in that willowy frame. When Agnes

  reached for her in the night, her grip was sometimes overwhelm-

  ingly strong.

  “I’m a singer,” May said, when they spoke in the shop. “A jazz

  singer as a matter of fact.”

  Agnes said, “I’m keen on church music, myself.”

  The hail abated and gave way to hard rain, which ran down the

  windows behind them in sheets. Headlamps from cars could be

  seen from the street, washed out, indistinct, like jewels glimpsed in water.

  “Do you believe in God?” Agnes said, and May admitted she

  didn’t. “That’s all right. Sometimes love can take time.”

  They lived together eight years.

  In the darkness, May says, “He’s sure to go under. I don’t know

  how he’s managed this long.”

  There is comfort in speaking aloud.

  “Did Virginia finish her homework tonight? Agnes, do you

  think she takes drugs?”

  Virginia’s Birthday

  53

  In the living room, Virginia lifts her head from the pillow. Like

  a strange, ghostly detail from a dream, she recalls her mother having been in the room. The keys in the lock, the television switched off: these sounds register after the fact. The pills she took are stronger than the previous ones. Jeanene has warned her of that. She

  doesn’t know what is in them; Jeanene doesn’t either. They make

  you feel like you are taking a bath. Whatever the color, that’s the name of the pill: red, blue, yellow, or pink.

  Another sound emerges, more immediate now. It is her moth-

  er’s voice, a murmur from under the door. She is talking to Agnes

  again; knowing that, Virginia feels sorry for her. These months

  they have suffered apart, not able in their grief to comfort each

  other. Fly-by-night is what May called the man Agnes left with.

  Virginia could not recall having seen him. There had been peo-

  ple who came and went through the years, new congregants and

  preachers who guided her spirit. She was the sort of person always searching for something; a holy fool, May sometimes said. But

  nights, when they were alone, she would tenderly braid Virginia’s

  hair. They would laugh at stories of childhood mischief, old jobs

  from which Agnes had got herself sacked. When first she’d come

  to live in their flat May had called her Virginia’s aunt. But Agnes never made any mention of that. Standing over steaming pots in

  the kitchen, she explained the proper way to make curry, or soup,

  having been taught in just the same way as a girl.

  It would not have changed anything, the truth being spoken.

  Things would have been better, in fact. She does not mind that

  her mother is that way. It doesn’t matter at all. She only wishes

  there had been no pretense, that she might have loved Agnes

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  OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE AFFAIRS

  unfettered by lies. Sometimes Fergie Davidson says things about

  it, and about Mr. Chapman as well. At school, people say Fergie

  fancies Virginia. That’s why he hurts her feelings so much. Four

  Eyes he used to call her. Lemonade because her complexion was

  pale. Lately he has begun to say other things, things that make her scalp itch with discomfort: “What’s two and six buy me? Three?

  Have a heart. I’ll starve. You drive a hard bargain, Missy.”

  “There was wickedness here,” Agnes said when she left, and

  Virginia knows that was painful for May. She wouldn’t have been

  in her right mind to say that. It would have been a madness,

  speaking that way.

  She turns over, frightened all of a sudden. The voice from the

  next room continues to drone.

  “How will I manage?” May says in the dark, sleep, like warm

  limbs, bearing her up.

  In the small flat he owns above the Blue Parrot, Walter

  puts on a record and smokes by the window.

  It is true that the nightclub is failing, that it has, in fact, been failing for years, a slow death the inevitability of which has been so total as to have escaped notice till now. Lately, small and simple expenses—renewals of licenses, lights for the stage—have presented an unaccountable burden. He has never been adept with

  the books—in school he always did poorly in maths—but in the

  past they have balanced nearly enough.

  The band, above all, is sinking the place. There is simply no

  audience left for the music. Once, the Blue Parrot was a closely

  held secret: the stiff pours, the singer’s ethereal tone. Touring

  Virginia’s Birthday

  55

  bands would come and play after hours, having sold out the large

  concert hall in the city. Briefly then, emerging from the dark years of war, tourists had flocked to places like Glass. The coastline had boomed with factory work. There had been a black and white

  middle class in those days.

  Now paint peels from the window and door frames; in winter

  the radiator smells of leaked fuel. Piles of records line the walls and the corners: ragtime, big band, bebop, and blues. His phonograph

  is of the old-fashioned kind, its large brass speaker like a bell, or a flower. It is one of many aged things in the flat, Walter being keen on antiques as well. Never, even when there was money to spare,

  did he feel in any need of more space. He spends most of his spare time at the club. Only this morning he was there to wash down

  the floors, to place liquor orders, to tidy the stage. Monday nights are the loneliest time, because he has not seen her all day and won’t see her the next.

  The record pops with each revolution, the needle riding an

  uneven groove. The song is “Do Nothing till You Hear from Me.”

  In 1944 that one was recorded. He recalls an alleyway off Rue

  Gabrielle in Montmartre where, in spring 1945, he drank white

  wine with strangers. Paris, then, was not the jewel of his dreams

  but was ragged and beaten, gripped by a primal and desper-

  ate euphoria that could not disguise the weight of its heart. It

  suited him, wearied as he was himself. He remembers the gypsy

  guitar on a rooftop, the high hat, the slender woman singing

  in French.

  As light falls, he smokes a third cigarette. There was a time

  when he allowed himself to imagine that May might one day live

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  OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE AFFAIRS

  in the flat, that she might like to leave the city behind. In Glass they’d have had a quiet existence: drinks on the boardwalk, books

  on the strand. He imagined her speaking of any old thing, harmo-

  nizing with the buskers they passed, softly, for his and her pleasure alone. It would have raised a few eyebrows, he knew, but in his

  dreams they were safe in their love. That was before Virginia was

  born, when May was still new at the club.

  “A fine place,” she said the night she was here. She stood by

  the window, looking out at the sea. On the boardwalk, the lamps

  had not yet been extinguished; a man passed beneath one, pushing

  a pram. He had invited her up for a drink, a casual thing. “Any

  time, if you’d like.” In the weeks since first she’d sung “Stardust,”

  she had taken to stopping by his office each night. Peering in, she would smile, pause for a chat. Still he can hear the welcome creak of the hinges, the tap on the door that was quickly dispensed with, since, by habit, he left it ajar.

  On the record,
a song ends; another commences. Cootie’s horn

  is like an animal’s cry, like a peacock’s, which is said to be like a man’s.

  At the window, that night, he brought her a highball.

  “Do you like singing here, Miss Valentine? May?”

  He drank, having poured out a measure for himself.

  “You must know what I think about you.”

  Was it she who initiated their touch, or has he only imag-

  ined that since? There was surely something in the nearness of

  her, in her eye, that seemed for all the world like permission.

  When he thinks back, he tries to dwell in that moment, when

  the space around them trembled with promise, that moment

  Virginia’s Birthday

  57

  at the threshold between two different lives, just before she

  smiled and said why didn’t he tell her, just before he felt her lips upon his.

  Tomorrow, having nothing to do at the club, he will buy a

  gift for Virginia’s birthday. It isn’t easy knowing what to give her at this age. Toys won’t do; neither would a ring or a necklace. She has probably grown to be beautiful now and wouldn’t know what

  to make of a gift of that kind from a man who these days is little more than a stranger.

  Her stamp book remains on a shelf in his office, the small

  squares pasted in haphazard rows.

  Perhaps a record. It needn’t be jazz. She might like rhythm

  and blues, rock ’n’ roll, and he smiles, since that would give them something in common.

  Wednesday morning a notice arrives: a check to the

  chamber of commerce has bounced. A telephone call reveals the

  bank’s error, a series of transactions processed out of sequence.

  The situation otherwise isn’t dire, but still there is consternation about it.

  “Things all right, chief?” Alvin asks from the bar. It was he who

  found the notice when he brought in the post.

  Walter only mumbles a bit. He is thinking of the gift he bought

  for Virginia: two records, a secondhand suitcase gramophone.

  “Only fair you should warn us if we ought to be looking.”

  “I’ve told you, Al. It was a clerical error.”

  There will be a cake, as there is every year. He will telephone

  Richter’s soon with the order. They’ll remember when he tells

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  OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE AFFAIRS

  them the birthday has come. Virginia’s favorite: chocolate with

  apricot jam.

  Later, when he knocks at May’s dressing room door, she appears

  in red, stilling the heart in his chest. Her beauty has been undiminished by time, only altered, made more enduring somehow; she

  looks, to him, very much as she sings, exquisite beneath the weight of her life, though he knows she wouldn’t wish to be so in his eyes.

  “I’m a half hour late,” she says. “Not that it matters. Why

  rehearse if nobody comes? And, anyway, I hear we might not get

  paid.”

  “Are you late?” he says. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  She gives him a look and turns back to the room. She leaves

  the door open, so he follows her in.

  “Honest, I hadn’t.”

  In her chair she sets about with her face, seeming pleased to

  have spoken so sharply to him. “What do you need then?”

  “Just to see if we’re on for tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Virginia’s birthday, of course.”

  Last night, Virginia watched Hawaii Five-0 while May cleared the meager remains of their supper. Unblinking, she looked at the

  screen. Agnes would have disapproved of the program; often she

  disapproved of such things. In all the years they were together,

  she never came to the club, saying only that it wasn’t her kind

  of music. Last night she’d have said, “Is your homework done,

  girlie?” and Virginia would have told her the truth. As it was May didn’t manage the question, only asked, “What’s on at school for

  this week?”

  Virginia’s Birthday

  59

  “I don’t know where she’ll be from one minute to the next,” she

  says now. “I hope you haven’t gone to much trouble. It’s kind, but she’s not a little girl anymore. She’s liable not to show up at all.”

  “Surely she’ll remember,” he says.

  “I’ll ask her. But I can’t say it’ll help.”

  “I’ve got a present for her. And a cake.”

  “A better gift would be keeping her mother employed.”

  “It was only a clerical error.”

  May can scarcely hide her disgust. Lately she has been this way

  with him, an end to many years of what seemed a détente. It was

  disgust she felt, also, that night in the flat. Something had changed from the moment it ended. In silence, she gathered her things

  from the floor, her earrings and bangles, the comb from her hair.

  She straightened her dress, which, in haste, had not been removed.

  That is something that has stayed in his mind: the dress not having been fully removed. It fills him with shame, remembering that.

  With shame and with yearning as well, for he never saw the bare

  silhouette of her body.

  Now she says: “Only don’t go to more trouble.”

  Nine thirty, the band performs “Love Me or Leave Me.” She

  was right: they didn’t need to rehearse. They scarcely interact

  anymore, except when they are performing onstage: a glance or

  a smile, a holler from Ham, and a chorus is turned around or

  repeated. It makes Walter think of how whole worlds of meaning

  can pass between two people, unspoken, or of the wordless way

  love can be made. The feeling is one of great intimacy: her voice

  mediates the distance between them. And though at bottom a sad-

  ness remains, he isn’t really lonely when he listens to May.

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  OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE AFFAIRS

  “I’m sweet sixteen,” Virginia says in the morning. The

  house is warm and smells of hot breakfast, which makes her think

  about Agnes.

  “That’s right, lady,” May says. She puts a plate of scrambled

  eggs on the table, having woken early to make something special.

  “Will they do anything for you in school?”

  “Sometimes on a girl’s birthday she gets covered in sweets. By

  her friends, like. They put whipped cream in her hair.”

  In her purple dress, May thinks, she looks young; she has not

  yet become interested in appearing grown up. Her shoulders are

  small with sharp bones at the top, a light, copper color that shines in the heat.

  “Who ever would do that? What kind of friend?”

  “Oh, I don’t think they’ll do it to me. It’s for popular girls.

  Dancers and them.”

  Again, May wonders who gives her the pills. Despite her pret-

  tiness, she has long been thought strange. As far back as her nurs-ery school there was concern, the way an insect or a bird might

  distract her attention, or the way she might continue to work on

  a drawing long after other children lost interest.

  “You can come to the club after school if you like,” May says.

  “Mr. Chapman insisted on cake.”

  Virginia nods, pleased but trying not to let on. She likes the

  way the band plays “Happy Birthday.”

  “I understand if you don’t want to come. I think he forgets

  you’re not a kid anymore.”

  “I don’t mi
nd,” Virginia says. She thinks of Mr. Chapman in

  line at the baker’s. “He’s a sad case, isn’t he, Ma?”

  Virginia’s Birthday

  61

  “Yes,” May says, irritated somehow.

  He asked only once, when first she was pregnant. Just two

  words , “Is it . . . ?” to which she said, “No.” And though she could tell he didn’t believe her, she held firm, and he did not press again.

  At the Scat Club, things had been required of her. Mr. Aubrey

  had expected her at least once a week. Mr. Parr at the Hot House

  had called her crude names, refusing to look directly into her eyes.

  She can still see him chewing his long, green cigars: “More slut

  than Saint Valentine, aren’t you, May?”

  Mr. Chapman was different: he wasn’t unpleasant. He’d loved

  her from the first lines of “Stardust,” he said. When, afterward,

  she didn’t return to his office, he said nothing, only started closing the door. It was that that made possible the subsequent years: the knowledge that the child’s father was kind. Still, she didn’t want him any nearer her life. She never did, and does not want him still.

  She can’t help but recoil at the thought of his touch: the thin fingers, sweat beading on the edge of his scalp. That feeling has grown worse without Agnes, worse because she might need him again.

  “Thanks for breakfast,” Virginia says.

  And May is gripped with affection, watching her leave.

  In the Blue Parrot, Walter fills pink balloons. Without

  helium, they make a dull picture, blown by the ceiling fans into

  the corners. Ham arrives early, too, in a black suit and tie. He

  doesn’t own a piano—like the other musicians, he lives in the

  city, his flat too small for even an upright—so he likes to practice sometimes at the club. He waves to Walter as he pulls out the

  bench, plays a few chords and stops, looking around.

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  OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE AFFAIRS

  “Virginia’s birthday?” he asks, and Walter says that it is. Ham

  taps out the traditional song, then plays it as a rollicking New

  Orleans rag. He knows, of course, as everyone does.

  Walter listens as he goes about tidying up. In the dressing

  room, he puts the gin bottle away. He wants Virginia, when she

  arrives, to see her mother’s place of work as clean and respectable.

  She has not been to visit since this day last year and in the interim might have grown discerning that way.

 

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