Other People's Worlds

by William Trevor

  It made Francis angrier when he thought how often in his life it had been the same, how things had gone swimmingly in the houses where he found himself, how he’d fitted in and tried to help, and had then been turned upon. Even the night before he had suddenly found the eyes of Julia Ferndale’s mother on him, with suspicion in her wrinkled face.

  ‘Maybe a bread-knife,’ Doris was saying to the child. ‘Was it a bread-knife the throat was cut with, Frankie?’

  He said he didn’t know what kind of a knife it was, and did his best to smile. It was extraordinary to think she’d once been so very pretty, so nice to be seen on a street with. Older than he was of course, by quite a year or so, but still seeming a sweet little shopgirl. The fact that she’d been forlorn about her father’s remarriage had given her a wispy quality. Little girl lost, he’d thought, and had imagined her neat fingers fitting shoes on to women’s feet in her shoe department and her own feet hurrying off to spend her luncheon vouchers. In the time he’d known her she’d begun to look like a skeleton, her hair gone grey, nothing forlorn about her now.

  ‘Funny, putting a body down the toilet,’ the child was musing. ‘You’d think it wouldn’t fit.’

  ‘Yes, funny that,’ Doris said. ‘Dare say toilets were different then.’

  ‘Bigger, were they?’

  ‘Dare say they were, dear.’

  The last time she’d forced him into a sexual encounter with her he’d wanted to commit murder himself. He’d been lying down on the sofa in her sitting-room and she’d suddenly appeared, half naked, in the middle of the night. Leaning forward to seize him, her breasts had loosely dangled, reminded him of freshly plucked chickens. Until that moment he hadn’t realized just how much she rattled his nerves, and although on the point of walking out of her flat for ever he’d managed to keep calm and was afterwards glad he had: there was always the consideration that if he didn’t keep her humoured she could get out a paternity order against him. It was impossible to trust women like that. It had been impossible to trust the dressmaker, and impossible to trust the doctor’s wife, who had always got going with that kind of thing when her husband was conducting his afternoon surgery. There’d be the stream of patients arriving by the side entrance, and her nudging eyes when the doctor rose from the tea table to go and attend to their ailments. The doctor’s wife was a woman with well-covered white thighs beneath her scented underclothes. On each occasion she turned the key in the lock of the tiny room which had been made over to him while he was staying in the house, and she always stood for a moment with her back against the door, her small eyes trying to express the naughtiness she felt, her hair fresh from its electric curlers. ‘No, you must do it, darling,’ she always whispered, making him undo the fastenings of her clothes, although he never wanted to. With the dressmaker, of course, the whole thing had been so repellent it made him furious even to think about it. With Doris there was always an unattractive whining.

  ‘But I thought Constance Kent was this girl on the street,’ she was saying now, looking at him.

  ‘She’s acting the part. Constance Kent was real.’

  ‘I got the wrong end of the stick,’ Joy said, and to pass the time he told them about Constance Kent. He described her and the mystery she trailed, how she’d been different until the moment of her crime, how she’d ended up in a house for the religious in Brighton.

  On the ashtray in front of Doris were several half-smoked cigarettes. Without allowing his distaste to show, he pressed with his thumb one that was still smouldering. She had a forgetful habit of lighting cigarettes between mouthfuls, yet as a girl she’d been far too humble to do anything like that.

  ‘Funny carry-on for a religious, I must say. Funny way to behave.’ She emitted shrill laughter, drinking more wine. ‘I’d love another glass,’ she said, winking at him as if they shared some secret. ‘Run along to the toilet,’ she said to the child. ‘Make yourself comfy.’

  ‘I don’t want the toilet.’

  ‘Dad and I need a private word, dear.’

  Because he didn’t want to have a private word, he watched while the child reluctantly rose and while she knocked over a glass on a table occupied by two American tourists.

  ‘I’m worried about her,’ Doris said. ‘She’s twelve and she can’t read.’

  Francis nodded. He had yet to make it clear that he was staying in a hotel, that when this meal was over he did not intend to return to the flat in Fulharn and sleep on the sofa in the sitting-room. He would have to give the name of the hotel correctly because if he didn’t, if he said some place other than the Rembrandt, she would ring up and find he wasn’t there, after which she might easily locate the drill-hall since the child knew the neighbourhood it was in. She began to say something else about being worried, but he smiled and interrupted. He said that the television company had booked rooms for all the actors in the production who did not live in London. He’d felt he had to accept so as not to be a nuisance, although of course he hadn’t wanted to. ‘The Rembrandt Hotel,’ he said, speaking clearly, making certain that she heard.

  Immediately she became distraught. She blinked repeatedly, her lips began to quiver. He examined the alpine scene on one of the walls. He heard her sniffing, and then blowing her nose on a tissue. In the public house he had explained to Susanna Music that the child who’d called out to him from the door had been begging. He’d quite enjoyed being with the pretty little actress, being seen with her in the public house and on the street. But she was too wrapped up in her ambitions to be a sympathetic friend. He’d guessed that quite soon.

  The other nuisance,’ he said, ‘is that an old uncle of mine isn’t at all well.’

  ‘Uncle, Frankie?’

  ‘Uncle Manchester we used to call him.’ He smiled and again spoke clearly. ‘Because he lived, there. Because he lived in Manchester.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had an uncle, Frankie.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to spend a bit of time in the evenings with him. As a matter of fact, I should be getting out there now. When we’ve finished.’

  ‘Where, dear? Where is he?’

  He’d been once to the place where his mother and his father were. He remembered the stained-glass panels of the Garden of Eden on either side of the hall door, the elephant’s foot full of walking-sticks by the stairs.

  ‘Hampton Wick,’ he said. ‘An old folks’ home.’

  ‘So you’re staying in this hotel, Frankie? And now you’re going out to Hampton Wick?’ She spoke slowly, countering a slur that had developed in her speech. Her voice was mournful, her eyes lifeless.

  ‘I’m afraid so, Dorrie.’

  ‘But you’ll be back? I mean, later tonight, Frankie? You’ll come to the flat?’

  ‘I’m afraid it’ll be too late. Hampton Wick’s a long way out.’

  ‘I could slip out and come round to the hotel, dear. Easily I could. After Joy’s gone to sleep. It’s just it would be nice –’

  ‘I know, Dorrie, lovely.’ But he explained that it would be awkward for him to have her arriving in the Rembrandt Hotel in the middle of the night. Hotel managements objected to that kind of thing.

  Joy returned and was told by her mother to stand some distance away because the conversation was private. She began to protest, getting red in the face and whispering, but in the end she obediently hovered by the table at which the American tourists were now eating spaghetti bolognese.

  ‘It’s a real disappointment,’ Doris said. ‘It’s spoilt the surprise you made for us, Frankie.’

  ‘I know, Dorrie. I’m sorry.’

  He lit her cigarette because it was dangling from her lips, bent in the middle like all the cigarettes she smoked. As he did so he noticed that Joy was dipping a finger into the sugar bowl on the Americans’ table, an activity the Americans did not appear to care for.

  ‘She said you were out drinking with a girl, Frankie, but I knew it was all right. Actress out of an ad, I said to myself.’

  ‘The Con
stance Kent girl actually.’

  ‘I thought Constance Kent was –’

  ‘This girl’s acting the part, Dorrie. I explained to you, dear.’

  Her large black handbag, usually hanging on a strap from her shoulder, was on the chair beside her. Francis reached for it in order to find the money to pay the bill. It was full of used tissues, empty cigarette packets and old shopping lists scrawled on bits of paper.

  ‘I love you, Frankie,’ she said, and for a second he was reminded of Julia Ferndale, who had said the same thing that morning at Cheltenham railway station. She’d said it again when he’d telephoned her an hour ago, and he had naturally replied that he loved her also. He had sent a message to her mother, and had asked after Mrs Spanners.

  ‘Hey, sir,’ called out the male American. ‘Will you see to your kid? She’s into our dinner here.’

  Doris didn’t hear this protest, so Francis beckoned to Joy and made a gesture of apology to the Americans. Joy said she’d be late for the ice-skating on the television.

  ‘You’ll phone me up at the shoe department, Frankie? They don’t mind in the office.’

  ‘Of course I’ll keep in touch.’

  On the street outside the Pizzaland she began to talk about a women she’d spoken of during their meal, an Arab woman who’d come into the shoe department that day and ordered three dozen pairs of lace-ups.

  ‘You told us that,’ Joy said.

  ‘I know, dear, only I’m telling you again.’

  She was trying to delay him. In a moment she’d be suggesting a quick drink before he set off on his journey, and then she’d say it was too late for him to go out to Hampton Wick and urge him to telephone instead.

  ‘Poor Joy’s missing her skating.’

  ‘What skating’s that, dear?’

  They were blocking the pavement, but she didn’t notice. A gang of youths pushed roughly by, smelling of beer. ‘We were dare-devil once,’ she suddenly said. ‘London was a carnival, Frankie.’

  Anger clawed at him again. It was degrading having to be in public with a drunken woman and a child who stuck her finger into other people’s sugar. It was degrading having to hang about on a street listening to an incomprehensible conversation about carnivals.

  ‘Be down the flat tomorrow night, Dad? Harry O tomorrow night.’

  Successfully he smiled, not answering the query. His trouble was, he couldn’t help forgiving people. He’d written to the Massmith sisters afterwards, saying bygones could be bygones. He’d written to the doctor’s wife. Whenever he saw the dressmaker lumping her way from shop to shop in Folkestone he offered to help her carry things. The Massmith sisters hadn’t even replied, and later they’d put down the receiver on him. There’d been a horrible document from Kilvert-Dunne’s solicitor, which he’d thrown into the sea. And last night there’d been the suspicion in old Mrs Anstey’s eyes, even though he’d weeded her garden for her. This woman he was standing with now should never have agreed to getting pregnant just because he’d had a whim. If she’d shaken her head there wouldn’t be the fear of a paternity order, or tears in a Pizzaland when he explained that he had to visit a sick relation. The anger began to pound at him, reverberating in his head, affecting his ears in the way it often did.

  ‘I really have to go,’ he said, smiling again at both of them.

  In the television lounge of the Sundown Home Mrs Tyte couldn’t help her tears. Often they didn’t tell you the truth: the reason he didn’t ever come could easily be because he wasn’t well.

  ‘You’re just a little confused,’ Miss Purchase said cheerfully. ‘You’ve got things upside down.’

  ‘Is it ‘flu?’

  ‘No, of course not, dear.’

  ‘Is he in the hall, Miss Purchase?’

  ‘It’s not visitors’ time, dear. We couldn’t have visitors at this hour, now could we?’

  Miss Purchase went away, picking up the TV Times, which someone had thrown on the floor, even though there was a notice which specially requested them not to do so. It was particularly important that the TV Times, with its slippery pages, shouldn’t be left lying on the floor to cause an unnecessary accident.

  Mr Tyte, who was the guilty one, watched Miss Purchase’s irritation with a glow of pleasure. Earlier that day he’d taken a couple of sticks out of the elephant’s foot in the hall and hung them on the hallstand. When next he’d passed the elephant’s foot he’d noticed that they’d been replaced. Later that evening, when the hall was quiet, he hoped to hang up another couple. In the end she would put up a notice, just as she had about taking the Telegraph into the garden. Breaking the rules was all the more enjoyable after a notice had gone up.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he said.

  ‘He’s not coming. He’s caught ‘flu.’

  ‘He hasn’t caught ‘flu. You’ve got yourself into a stupid state again.’ It made him tetchy when she cried. He wished she wouldn’t.

  ‘I thought he was in the hall.’

  ‘It isn’t even a Sunday afternoon. It’s half past nine at night.’

  ‘Would you look in the hall, Henry?’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake don’t be silly.’

  She wiped at her shrunken cheeks with a handkerchief. There was nothing they could do if he had ‘flu; he’d have to stay in bed and they’d just have to wait, hoping it wouldn’t be too long. But she was certain he’d been in the hall.

  ‘Mrs Tyte,’ Mrs Uprichard called across the lounge. ‘Here’s your son.’

  Mrs Tyte nodded very slowly. She smiled through the remains of her tears, she knew she’d been right. She’d felt it in her bones that he was coming tonight, half past nine or not, it was never too late. She turned her head and there he was, all in colour. He was sailing out to sea and smiling back at her, smoking the pipe-he’d taken up. It was horrid of Henry to turn his back like that, to get up and go out as soon as their son appeared.

  Near Piccadilly Circus groups of men stood about, outside the all-night cinemas. They were stunted men of Mediterranean appearance, with carefully arranged hair. They offered other men blue films or lesbian exhibitions, or girls, or youths. Sometimes they turned nasty if these offers were rejected. ‘Filth,’ one of them snarled, spitting on to the shoes of a man he’d assumed to be a customer. ‘Poof,’ another added. The girls these stunted men protected, who strolled about the nearby streets, were young, fifteen or sixteen mainly. Some had the walk of provincial girls, new to the city and the game. Their made-up faces were garish in the night-light and as they walked they stared fixedly ahead, afraid to make a sideways glance in case it should be called soliciting. Some bulged with fat. Others were pinched and rickety. West Indians trotted rapidly; older women wearily trudged.

  Francis strolled in Wardour Street, examining the posters in the windows of various film companies. By a row of dustbins a cardboard carton was full of chickens’ feet. A garbage van moved slowly; men in heavy rubber gloves smoked cigarettes as they tossed refuse into the bowels of its machinery. Bottles and tins clattered about; the chickens’ feet disappeared and then the garbage van moved on, followed by a corporation sprinkler, its circular brushes sweeping the litter into the gutters and then spraying water on to it. Sodden and discoloured, the litter was less noticeable than it had been before.

  ‘There’s a garidge we can go to,’ a rough-faced man said, pausing beside Francis. ‘Denham Street. O.K., darling? Tenner O.K., is it?’

  Francis nodded.

  ‘Bloody fuzz everywhere,’ the man complained. ‘Often about, are you?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Fancy I seen you before. Young bloke comes in the toilets Thursday, pissed like a pig. Thought you was him at first.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t like it when a bloke’s pissed. Can’t care for the smell. You’ve had a couple, have you, darling?’

  ‘Not much. A glass or two of wine.’

  ‘No, I’m not saying you’re pissed. No, I can see you hasn’t been on it. Tony the nam
e is.’

  ‘Mine’s Adrian.’

  ‘Nice, that is. You in business, Adrian?’

  ‘Insurance. The Eagle Star.’

  ‘I’m a plasterer, ‘smatter of fact. Don’t mind going with a plasterer, do you, dear?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘If you see the fuzz popping up, Adrian, walk on ahead for a bit. Pity you hasn’t a place, Adrian, pity about that. Where’re you living, Adrian?’

  ‘Bournemouth.’

  ‘Naughty is it?’

  Francis didn’t answer the question because he had no idea if Bournemouth was naughty or not, having only been there once, a footman with the coach in Cinderella. ‘I’m glad we met up,’ he said to the rough-faced man.

  ‘Pity it has to be a garidge.’

  ‘I know.’

  When it was over Francis walked away from the garage with the money the man had given him. Tears oozed from the corners of his eyes, leaving tiny tracks in his make-up, causing his face to seem older. He wished he didn’t always cry.

  Police cars prowled the streets, their occupants glancing sharply at his solitary figure. Two policemen on the beat spoke sharply to him but he insisted he was not a male prostitute. They told him to go home and he promised them he would, but instead he paused in Regent Street. He stood in an arcade, glancing at shop windows full of lightweight suits and overcoats.

  ‘Looking for action, friend?’ a youth with a wire ear-ring in the lobe of one ear inquired. He spoke in an affected voice. In his pale face a moustache sprouted among white-headed pimples, above the unpowdered lipstick that glistened on his lips.