Other People's Worlds

by William Trevor

  ‘No, no, it’s just the man’s name. A pet name they had in the family.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t stand here talking about people’s pet names. In point of fact I can’t stand here talking about anything. This is a particularly busy time of the evening for me.’

  ‘All I’m saying is the old chap you have is Frankie’s uncle, not his father at all. You’ve got a wire crossed there.’

  ‘Please stop repeating that, madam. Francis Tyte is his father’s son, that’s all there is to it. And he is not here at this present moment.’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure? Would you go and look? Would you just mind looking to see?’

  ‘I most certainly would mind. Francis Tyte never visits here. It is absurd to suggest that he is here now.’

  The receiver was replaced. The emptiness of a telephone between calls echoed in Doris’s ear. She replaced the receiver and went to buy herself a drink. She couldn’t understand any of it because it didn’t make sense. Whoever the insistent woman on the phone was she certainly hadn’t got her facts straight. But it did seem strange that she’d been so very emphatic, especially about Frankie not being there.

  The girl was small, Joy had said. They’d been on the street together, walking along talking, and then drinking in a pub. He’d explained about the girl, he hadn’t denied a thing: the girl was just a girl. But the image that slowly assembled itself in Doris’s mind didn’t quite agree. The blue dress and the long black hair were sinister; the laughing, pretty face was full of mockery.

  Doris mulled over the image in the Bricklayer’s Arms and bought half a bottle of vodka just before it closed. In the kitchen of the flat she sat over what remained of it, going through everything again. He’d been the first person she’d thought of when she’d got Joy on to the bed. Joy was his, after all. Any woman would go out and attempt to contact the father.

  She went to have another look at their child, closing one eye because she kept seeing two of her. She woke her up and asked her how she felt. ‘Great,’ Joy said, adding that the stuff she’d taken was a tranquillizer for elephants which Clicky Hines had sold her. ‘Fantastic,’ she said.

  The simple explanation was that the person in the old people’s home must have been one of the elderly inmates who’d happened to be passing when the phone rang. The old woman had picked it up and in a state of senile confusion had simply said the first thing that came into her head. They’d smile over it when she told him. He’d say again that the girl in the blue dress was just an actress, and then he’d listen while she told him about the drug. She’d tell him how one minute poor Joy had been fiddling with a pot of jam and the next in a stupor in front of the TV, how stuff for elephants could have killed her. Afterwards they could discuss everything else, the letter she’d received from the headmaster, the bathroom sweating dirt.

  At half past two she made another journey to the telephone-box outside the Bricklayer’s Arms, and when the voice from the Rembrandt Hotel said there was still no reply from Room 408 the image of the blue dress and the long black hair slowly formed itself again, pushing everything else away.

  ?

  Miss Purchase emerged from her cubbyhole in the hall, where her desk and her filing-cabinet and the telephone were. From the dining-room came the sounds of breakfast and the voices of George and Cyril, the two male nurses, as they raised them to address the hard of hearing. The morning sun livened the stained-glass panels on either side of the hall door. The long row of overcoats was complete, the elephant’s foot contained what sticks were not in use. All was well in the hall, Miss Purchase’s experienced eye informed her, and that at least was something.

  She moved to the open door of the dining-room and surveyed the old people at their different tables, George and Cyril moving among them in their neat white coats. Mrs Tyte, she noticed, was weeping again and she wondered if she shouldn’t mention this to Dr Mary. Dementia could quite easily be setting in.

  ‘If you don’t eat fast enough,’ the old woman’s husband was saying to her as Miss Purchase approached the table the couple shared with four others, ‘you won’t get enough toast.’

  ‘Well then, and how’s this little lot this lovely morning?’ Miss Purchase inquired.

  No one answered except Mrs Dacey, who said she couldn’t manage her prunes.

  ‘If you don’t get the toast into you,’ Mr Tyte warned his wife, ‘you’ll be hungry by eleven. You’ll be moaning in the garden, complaining about the wasps.’

  ‘All right then, Mrs Tyte dear?’

  Mrs Tyte nodded, turning her head away. She didn’t want Miss Purchase to see her tears. There was a photograph somewhere, taken in the back garden of Number 14 when he was eight, thin-legged in a new flannel suit, his Sunday best as they used to call it. She well remembered the day, Henry standing there with the camera, telling him not to move a muscle.

  Miss Purchase was smiling down at her, teeth evenly displayed between her thin lips. She did her best to smile back. She’d been thinking about a photograph, she explained: he’d looked like a waif because the suit was too big for him.

  ‘Oh, I’d love to see that some time, dear.’

  ‘Gone up in a bonfire, all those photos did,’ Mr Tyte said. ‘No good keeping rubbish.’

  ‘I wish you hadn’t, Henry. I said at the time –’

  ‘No good keeping rubbish, you said.’

  ‘I didn’t mean the snapshots.’

  He crunched his toast. If she hadn’t meant the snapshots she should have said so. No good mentioning snapshots twenty-five years later; biggest bonfire ever it had been.

  ‘Never mind,’ Miss Purchase said. ‘Oh, and just a little thing, Mr Tyte. I’d particularly ask you not to leave the TV Times on the floor of the television lounge. It’s an unhygienic habit in the first place, and then someone could quite easily have a fall. The paper of the TV Times is particularly slippery, as no doubt you’ve noticed.’

  Before she passed on to the next table she nodded firmly at the old man to show she meant it. The Tytes had become a bit of a nuisance, what with all this weeping about the son not visiting, and peculiar telephone calls, and the old chap’s vindictiveness. She’d mention the vindictiveness to Dr Mary as well, no reason to suppose it wasn’t a sign of dementia just like the weeping was.

  ‘Telephone, Miss Purchase,’ Cyril called across the dining-room to her.

  ‘Yes?’ she said a moment later in her cubbyhole. ‘Miss Purchase here.’

  ‘Good morning,’ the voice which had been a nuisance the night before replied. ‘I’m inquiring after Mr Tyte.’

  ‘Yes, what about him?’

  ‘I’m just wondering how he is this morning.’

  ‘There’s nothing whatsoever the matter with Mr Tyte. I explained to you last night, madam.’

  ‘We had our wires crossed last night-’

  ‘I cannot help you, madam, and I must ask you to desist from bothering us like this.’

  ‘It’s just that I thought I was maybe talking to one of the inmates. The thing is there’s an old Mr Tyte there who’s in a bit of trouble with his water-works –’

  ‘I keep telling you there’s nothing the matter with the man’s water-works. You appear to have been told a pack of lies.’

  Miss Purchase replaced the receiver with a sharp little snap. It was scandalous that people telephoned with nonsense like this, any hour of the day or night, no consideration for anyone. Only yesterday morning Mrs Perigo’s daughter had delayed her for more than half an hour with some story about her mother being allergic to cornflour.

  ‘Two pounds ten the suit was,’ Mrs Tyte said in the diningroom, and her husband coughed, not wishing to hear her.

  Expertly he flicked a pat of butter on to the parquet floor. Best of all, of course, if the Purchase woman herself went down, cracking her funny-bone or something.

  Joy dawdled on her way to school. She felt perfectly normal. She’d eaten two plates of cornflakes and four slices of bread and blackcurrant jam for br
eakfast, and what she was thinking now was that she didn’t want to put in an appearance at Tite Street Comprehensive. She didn’t mind taking a drug, any more than she minded starting fires. But the latest craze Clicky Hines had come up with was tattooing, which everyone said hurt.

  She gazed into shop windows, wishing her mother wouldn’t always leave the cornflakes packet open so that the cornflakes became limp. She wished her mother wouldn’t hide her bottles of booze all over the place. She wished she was on the way to the Bovril factory, earning money instead of having to spend it on drugs and tattoos. She’d have to save in order to get a tattoo. For weeks she wouldn’t be able to call in at the Rialto or the Chik ’n’ Chips.

  She stared at people in cars held up at a set of traffic-lights. If only he could be in the flat, listening and understanding as he did in the Pizzaland. He understood about the Comprehensive and the boredom of the place. He understood about the sex craze, even about the student teacher in the cupboard. She could have said to him about the elephant stuff. She would have thrown it away if he’d said, not caring if 3B took the mick when she told them. He never fussed. When her mother had a drink in he was always quiet and calm; when she was embarrassing, saying he’d called the tune for her heart-strings that day on the bus, he just nodded patiently.

  Joy reached the railings of the school and looked through them. The playground was empty because she was late. In 3B they’d be passing round the tattoo sketches, Niagara Falls in blues and greens, Jesus on the Cross, anchors and hearts and Mrs Thatcher. She turned and walked away.

  In the shoe department the Indian floor supervisor told Doris she was wanted on the telephone. His uncle had taken another turn for the worse, Francis’s voice said, and it would again be necessary to spend the evening by the old man’s bedside.

  ‘Yes,’ Doris said flatly, aware that the floor supervisor was standing in the doorway, politely waiting for her to finish with his telephone. ‘Yes,’ she said again, wanting to say instead that she’d found Joy half dead after an intake of drugs, that she’d had conversations she didn’t understand with a woman in an old people’s home, and had telephoned the Rembrandt Hotel eight times during the night. But the kindly supervisor, as still as a statue in the doorway, inhibited her. She could feel he was worried for her, and could see that his cheerful smile was absent from his face. ‘Thanks for ringing,’ she said in the same flat tones before replacing the receiver. More desperately than ever in her life she felt the need of a miniature or a refreshing glass of Carlsberg or Double Diamond. But the time was only half past ten.

  In Stone St Martin the wedding-cake was iced that morning.

  7

  Doris’s

  When he appeared, he looked just the same. He smiled when he handed his bedroom key to a porter. He stepped out of the hotel, and Doris followed him at a distance. She knew he wouldn’t take a taxi because she’d often noticed he never did. He didn’t even take a bus. He walked quite slowly, not at all in a hurry, and three-quarters of an hour later he turned into a street that was partially demolished. He passed the Rialto Café and she did so too, following him through other streets until he reached the drill-hall and disappeared into it. She returned to the Rialto and asked for a cup of tea, not quite knowing what to do next. She wanted to see the actual girl, to establish for herself what she was up against. But as she drank her tea she realized she couldn’t face that until she’d taken advantage of a couple of drinks.

  She had them in the Turbaned Turk, several streets away, a place she didn’t want to leave. She took her large black handbag from her shoulder and placed it on the bar. The Irish landlord talked about the good weather and the prospects for Ascot, advising her to watch a horse called Brainwave. Before she finally made up her mind to go she said she’d be back, and the Irishman said she’d be more than welcome any time. Some people were nice, she thought, and then she wished that none of it had happened, that after all these years he hadn’t told her a lie about visits to an old persons’ home. She wished she hadn’t had to tell a lie herself, informing the floor supervisor that she wouldn’t be in the shoe department today because of trouble with her stomach.

  But on the way back to the drill-hall she said to herself it was no use wishing; her task was unpleasant and that was that. The one thing she didn’t want to do was to walk into the middle of a rehearsal of the thriller. She didn’t want any embarrassment for him, and what was probably best was to find a window she could look through and size the girl up. But when she arrived at the drill-hall there weren’t any windows that were convenient for her purpose. It was hard to get round to the back of the place because the alleyway which might have led there came to an abrupt end. She stood by some dustbins and lit a cigarette. Then she returned to the Turbaned Turk.

  ‘Unfortunately I’ve been left in the lurch,’ Francis said in the drill-hall, to the actor who played the part of Constance Kent’s father. ‘My best man’s gone and got himself ill. Wretched glandular fever.’

  Preparing the ground for this statement, Francis had listened endlessly to this actor’s talk about the film he hoped to be in, about computers and laser beams. He’d drunk endless cups of tea and coffee with him, and had stood with him in different bars during lunch breaks. He had mentioned his forthcoming wedding several times. ‘Thing is,’ he said now, ‘I need a stand-in.’

  The actor whose face had reminded Susanna Music of meat didn’t protest that the suggestion was too bizarre for him. He said his sister-in-law had recently suffered from glandular fever. He added that he was flattered, and put a friendly arm on Francis’s shoulder. Of course he’d fill in.

  On the telephone to Swan House Francis had already reported that his best man had gone down with glandular fever: Brian Donsworth whom he’d spoken so much about, his closest friend at school, now in the textile world. There was the usual pleasure of invention, the careful, lengthy explanation. Julia Ferndale sympathized and sent good wishes for Brian Donsworth’s recovery: glandular fever was a ghastly thing to catch. With no difficulty whatsoever, the matter slid into place, and Francis listened while be was told that Mrs Spanners had changed her mind about the dress she was to wear on the day. She had asked that this information should be relayed to him since they had had so many chats about her clothes. She’d told him that the dress was to be green, with lace at the wrists and neck. In the event she’d gone for one in an off-the-shoulder style, a shade of violet. ‘Tell her it sounds lovely,’ Francis said.

  At the end of the day’s rehearsals Susanna Music was in a hurry because she intended to wash her hair. She walked with the bearded production assistant along the street that was being demolished and parted from him outside the Rialto Café. It was the last day in the drill-hall.

  ‘Excuse me,’ a woman in a maroon mackintosh said a few minutes later, jostling her rather. ‘Excuse me, miss.’

  They were on the pavement outside a tobacconist’s. A boy with a pouch full of evening papers mounted a bicycle and rode away, whistling.

  ‘I’m a friend of Frankie Tyte’s,’ the woman said and then, to Susanna’s surprise, suggested that they should have a drink together. ‘I’ve had you described to me,’ the woman said. ‘I know who you are. Doris the name is, Doris Smith as a matter of fact.’

  They couldn’t have a drink, Susanna pointed out, because there was nowhere open at this time of day, it being only four o’clock. ‘I’ve a couple of miniatures in my bag,’ the woman replied. ‘We could go to a park.’

  But Susanna, still more surprised, declined. Though curious about this woman, she protested that she was in a hurry, mentioning the washing of her hair. The woman gripped her arm and said that what she wished to talk about was extremely urgent. In the end they entered a coffee-bar.

  ‘I’m a friend of Frankie’s,’ Doris said again. ‘Francis Tyte. Put it another way, I have his child.’

  ‘His child?’

  ‘Lay off Frankie, dear. That’s what I want to tell you. You’re going with him, aren’t you?�
��

  ‘No, not at all. We’re in the same television production –’

  ‘I don’t care what you’re in, dear. He has worries enough as it is.’

  The contents of a miniature bottle of vodka were added to the woman’s cup of tea. This meeting between them was a secret, she said; she didn’t want Frankie put about. ‘He’s a married man, remember. No one wants stuff like this coming out.’

  ‘Are you his wife?’

  ‘His wife’s down Folkestone way. She’s delicate with her heart.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘What’s your name, dear?’

  ‘Susanna Music.’

  ‘Frankie’s been married thirteen, fourteen years. All the time I’ve known him, Susie.’

  Susanna nodded. ‘There’s nothing between Francis Tyte and myself. Nothing.’

  ‘I’ve got a few drinks in,’ the woman said. ‘I only meant to have a look at you, if you get what I mean.’ She kept lighting cigarettes and letting them get damp in the tea on her saucer. ‘I caught him out in a lie,’ she said.

  ‘I can assure you neither you nor his wife has anything to worry about where I’m concerned. I hardly know Francis Tyte. I’ll probably never see him again after this présent production.’

  ‘Will you promise me that, dear?’

  ‘Yes, of course I will.’

  ‘Frankie means everything to me, Susie.’

  She worked in a shoe department, the woman said, which she’d phoned today to say she had trouble with her stomach. She’d met him on a bus, she said, in 1966. She went on talking, repeatedly referring to the wife whom she’d referred to already, and of meals in a Pizzaland and how much they meant to her and to the child. She spoke of the birth of the child, and of her labour pains. The child couldn’t read or write her name properly.