Paul loved the pier, because of its memories and its sad gaiety. He had once seen a mad woman walk down Kensington High Street dressed in the moth-eaten finery of the last century. What basement or dim bedsitter she had emerged from he never knew, but walking down the busy London street, for all her insanity, she was sedate and elegant and oblivious to the stares around her. The gown was falling to pieces and through it her underclothes could be seen, as sumptuous and as faded as her costume. The garment trailed behind her in the dirt and the cockade-like hat had become a collapsed heap of coloured material that was both pathetic and dignified. It was in fact her very dignity that had made a great impression on him–the way she walked with a straight back and eyes looking ahead. Curiously he had followed her and had watched her disappear down a mews in the direction of Earl’s Court, proudly erect, her tattered finery trailing behind her. Whenever he set foot on the rusting dignity of the pier he was reminded of her, and there seemed to him to be a great association between the two. Despite the fact that both were a little mad they held their madness proudly, and disposed of the outside world quietly and with elegance.
He supposed now that Meg would leave him. There was surely no other course open to her–no chance of their living together again after last night. Nothing could be done about it. Surprisingly Paul did not for one moment think of leaving Meg himself–he anticipated her doing this and there seemed little reason to do it first. He decided to avoid her for the rest of the day–doubtless she would find him once she had made up her mind. Meanwhile, there was no point in going back to the school until at least eleven and he had an hour or so to kill.
He sat down on one of the hard seats of a baroque shelter and looked at the portion of beach and sea within his vision. The sea mist shrouded the horizon and visibility was reduced to about thirty yards. He seemed enclosed in a little void of his own. Paul stuck his hands in the pockets of his mackintosh, sat hunched up in the shelter and then began to tear off the strips of veneer that criss-crossed the sides of the rickety wooden building. Looking between the wooden planks at his feet he watched the sea, grey-green and swollen, rising and falling about the girders beneath.
Storm had decided not to post his letter to Schulmann–not for a while anyway–not until he had really made up his mind about it all. He put it into a drawer and fanned some papers across the top of it. He had written the letter laboriously and carefully a few days earlier. He hated so much to admit to his own mounting suspicions, but what if he delayed too long? Schulmann was bound to be intolerably complacent if he received it. Yet Storm firmly put that thought aside–it was quite irrelevant and it was merely his own pride that he was thinking about. He felt a sudden sense of injustice as he closed the drawer. He had tried so hard to control the situation, yet it had slipped out of his grasp so quickly that he was stunned by the rapidity of the sudden deterioration. How could he be sure of whom to blame–and how could he propose such a remedy for someone he loved? He walked away from the desk. He would not post Schulmann’s letter yet–until he was convinced that this was not purely a false alarm, however disastrous present events were becoming. He sat down, placing his feet securely on a pile of exercise books, and ran his hands along the cracked leather of the chair. Schulmann–the very last resort. If he invoked his help now it would be final–and this finality appalled him. It was a tremendous decision to take and one that he certainly didn’t want to face. Yet supposing he took no action–what would happen? Would things become worse or any better? Was he doing more harm by delaying now–or was the harm irrevocably and perpetually done? If it was that inevitable, would it make very much difference to delay his decision by a few weeks? Or could it be stemmed now–providing immediate action was taken? Would he ever know this? Schulmann could tell him but he dreaded what he might say.
Oh Christ, he thought, it’s an appalling risk to take–too great a risk. I’m not qualified to take it. What do I know about it? I’m just the kind of person who would delay treatment until it was too late to be effective–and yet what kind of treatment could it be? What could they do? Would it be the same as last time–or would they use the method that he had so disagreed with Schulmann about? If he posted the letter–even now Storm could hear Schulmann’s voice ponderously drawing conclusions.
‘Of course I’d be only too happy for you to have a second opinion, Mr. Langham-Green. I want the very best for my patient, too, you know. So should you wish to further reassure yourself of the facts we both know, then please do so. I would recommend my colleague Stintson, but perhaps you would prefer to act independently?’ And then in a warmer tone: ‘You must realise that this is an illness. Please don’t look on it as something repulsive and horrifying–we must simply intensify the treatment.’
Storm sat for a few moments in a dreadful state of indecision and was just about to retrieve the letter from the drawer when there was a knock on the study door. He looked vague and tired as he opened the door, peering almost furtively out at Meg, who stood there–her face determined but her eyes irresolute.
‘Oh–come in–I’m glad it’s you. I’ve been hiding from Angus–he wants to discuss next term’s syllabus with me and I’ve never felt so tired.’ His voice sounded unusually hopeless and he passed his hands across his eyes with an irritable gesture.
She felt sorry for him–certainly he looked very tired, and there were dark circles under his eyes. He sat down heavily behind a desk piled with papers. The room was small, crowded with text-books, and rather stuffy. Miscellaneous objects littered the floor, and the rest of the space was taken up by a huge safe and three clumsy filing cabinets.
‘Look, I’ll come straight to the point, Storm. I’m terribly sorry to do this to you when you’re so tired but I’m going to hand in my notice. Naturally, I’ll stay until you can find a replacement.’ Meg ended with a finality that she had been building up all morning and watched his face intently. She was staggered that there seemed no change of expression–no emotion passed over his features at all. She stumbled on, her eyes fixed on a china dog on the mantelpiece. ‘I’m terribly sorry–I’ve enjoyed working here tremendously, you know I have, but I’ve just got to go–and the sooner the better. You might as well know that I’m leaving Paul too–and–and going away somewhere.’
Still Storm said nothing. His gaze had shifted away from her and he was looking out of the window. Meg wished to God that he would say something but there was complete silence between them for about three minutes. Then he glanced at her quickly and said:
‘Well, of course, I was expecting it, I suppose.’
A sudden feeling of frustration and disappointment overtook her. Had it been so obvious to everyone how she and Paul behaved? Again she felt humiliated and miserable. She supposed that they had all been talking about their failing marriage behind her back–that they had been waiting like vultures for the final dissolution. Well, here it was–it had come–and to hell with them all.
‘Yes, I suppose you were–as there’s no privacy here at all I’m sure everyone else is expecting it too.’
He frowned and then smiled at her. ‘What makes you think they’re interested?’
Meg was deflated by this. It seemed difficult to think of a suitable reply. On consideration they probably weren’t, but whether this was so or not it was the essential lack of privacy that was much more to the point. She looked at Storm, who was lighting his misshapen black pipe. She could never quite understand him–he seemed to her, with his one purpose and one ideal, completely detached and out of touch. Yet–she wondered just how much he did know of what went on in Exeter Court. She would never quite be sure. Useless to try and get near him. He was quite unapproachable.
Storm lit his pipe and cleared his throat, preparatory to speaking hesitantly.
‘Of course, I’m terribly sorry about this, but I was wondering how long you’d go on with him …’
‘I don’t think I could bear to be near him again,’ she replied.
‘Isn’t that a little melodramatic, Meg?
Maybe Paul’s a fool, but surely he’s not that repellent?’
‘Look, I don’t want to talk about it much, Storm. Of course you know I’m very grateful for all your kindness here. I hope you’ll start looking for someone else immediately–I’ll be making other arrangements.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Storm asked bleakly.
‘I don’t know–something will turn up. I’d like the same kind of job, but I expect they’re hard to come by. I may go back to teaching.’ For a dreadful moment Meg thought she was going to cry. The old sensation of tears pricking at the back of her eyes, forcing their way through to the front and down her cheeks had to be checked. ‘Well,’ she got out, ‘that’s it. Nothing more to say then, is there?’ But there was, because the worst happened and tears flooded down her cheeks whilst, to complete her fears, a sob mysteriously refused to be checked and welled up inside her, to break out harshly and crudely, like a belch, making her, so she thought, sound as ridiculous as she appeared.
‘Oh damn,’ she cried and covered her face with her hands.
Then Storm was beside her, his arms round her and his beard rough against her cheek.
‘Go on–cry,’ he said. ‘Cry–and go on till it stops.’
Lettie was sitting upstairs in the flat, drearily organising the preliminary details of Parents’ Day, which unhappily fell at the end of July, just before the school broke up for the summer holidays. It was an event that she dreaded, for she was not sociable and from the overdressed perspiration of their arrival to the last cress sandwich and teacake of the day, she hated every moment of it. She was writing out the invitations–a formality that Storm insisted on although it was quite unnecessary–another built-in little pedantry that was typical of Storm’s obsessional sociability with the parents of his pupils. He was inevitably endeavouring to gather them around him, and was always unsuccessfully trying to organise study groups, parents’ associations and the like. He was rebuffed, quite often by mere distance that made the far-flung pockets of parenthood impossible to organise as a body, but more so by an attitude that he could never understand. Having left their children with him for the duration of each term the parents seemed irreconcilably detached from their sons–almost relieved to have handed over such difficult children to so great a personal authority.
After a while Lettie stopped writing, stacked the cards in an untidy heap on her desk and leant back relaxing amidst the comfort of the huge armchair. She kicked her shoes off and yawned. Immediately she was shopping, eating, holidaying or doing homework with Mother and Storm. She had only to select a memory from an enormous stockpile, close her eyes and savour its bitter-sweet escapism. Today she chose a favourite. Thirty years ago when they had come to Seahaven, in its grander days, for a holiday. Sequences, snatches of colour, flashes of remote faces–everything slightly out of focus until the time shutter of her memory finally, photographically, gave her definitive impressions of the two-week sand-in-sandwich holiday that she had shared with Storm and Mother. He had immediately become a part of a swarm of sand-caked children and she, as usual, had sat outside watching, listening but never involving herself.
‘I’m the King of the Castle,’ Storm had mocked as they pushed him off a huge sea wall, and down he went tumbling head over heels into the breaking sea–and then Mother was scolding because he was wearing his khaki shorts and she lifted her dress above her knees as she staggered into the shallows after him. His great moon face was covered in water and sand and he was spitting and choking it out and laughing and gazing up at Mother with those serious eyes of his. What a mess he was in–and how angry Mother had been.
And then it was a mixture of picnics, hampers, sand, wet or powdery, the sea that she feared gnawing at the beach, worrying at the pebbles so that they sifted together with a grinding grating sound, midges that were in everything–especially jam sandwiches–sand–sand everywhere–eyes, nose and ears full of it. The salt on her skin, grazing milk-white on the reddened flesh, landladies, haddock, the glimmering varnish of the polished and painted Seahaven esplanade with its neat flowerbeds and trim paving stones, tears, laughter, Storm over all–playing with the others and never noticing her–the smell of rotting seaweed, brine, pierrots, the pier dressed up in a golden brocade of sparkling elegance, real ladies strolling up and down it–with parasols too–Storm bored when they were walking on the hot promenade, Lettie pleased that he was with them–compulsorily–and that she was away from the stinging sand that irritated her so much–a kaleidoscope of burnished memory sent her to sleep quite quickly. She snored gently and a breeze, coming in from the half-open window, sent Storm’s invitation cards fluttering gently to the floor.
Meg continued to cry really hard for about ten minutes. Storm kept his arm round her, making vaguely consoling noises, and rocking her gently in his arms. Throughout her tears Meg was conscious of just the kind of idiot she was making of herself. Storm probably despised her for being such a weakling and she was certainly doing nothing to correct the impression. Why on earth was she crying like this? Gradually the sobs died away, and although she continued to weep she began to talk through it–rapidly and disjointedly.
‘The worst thing was that he said he loved me and everything was all back to normal–and then he said he wanted to adopt Casey and then I knew why he’d told me all these things–just because he wanted something out of me and I’m not going to give it to him, whatever happens.’
Meg paused, gasping for breath–then she continued:
‘Why does he go on like this, Storm–why? You don’t think he’s a queer, do you? I just can’t see why he loved Stephen the way he did and then this boy–I’ve tried to understand it, Storm, I’ve really tried, but each time I think about it I seem to get further and further away from ever finding out.’
She paused again, looking up at him miserably. He shook his head and said nothing. The tears had stopped now and she felt suddenly exhausted. She relaxed against him, her body limp, miserably staring at the china dog.
‘That’s a nice dog,’ she said almost idly.
‘Lettie gave him to me, years ago,’ he said, but Meg felt that he was miles away. Still completely limp against him she wondered if she ought to get up in case he was embarrassed. Meg was just about to move when she felt his body stiffen and for some inexplicable reason stayed where she was. Slowly but definitely Storm lowered his hand and placed it securely round her right breast. She lay quite still, but completely unrelaxed now. Meg didn’t know what to do–she daren’t move yet. Then, but quickly this time, he took his hand away and helped her to her feet. At that moment, the door opened and Lettie came in.
‘I’m leaving you,’ Meg said briskly to Paul at lunch-time, slamming the cutlery down on the cloth. She was determined to state the facts, not to be drawn into an argument and to see as little of him as possible. Paul said nothing but poured himself out a sherry.
‘Do you want a drink?’
‘No–yes, all right.’
He poured her a sherry and set it down on the table in front of her.
The mist had gone and a belated, tired sun had risen over the sea, flooding it with a burnt rose light that caught the colonnades, buttresses and pinnacles of the pier pavilion, turning it into an apricot folly created by a magician.
‘What a wonderful day,’ said Paul.
She said nothing, gazing at the amber-coloured liquid, revolving it slowly until some of it slopped over the top on to the cloth.
‘I don’t want you to go,’ said Paul.
She looked up at him, her eyes fixed on his. ‘Perhaps you don’t, darling, but you do know that there’s absolutely no alternative–you do know that, don’t you?’
She rose and brought in the first course. He watched her go, and then he looked out towards the pale, shimmering sea. They ate the meal in silence and afterwards Paul opened a newspaper and she washed up. There seemed absolutely nothing to say and he would have been embarrassed if their eyes had met.
There was a knock
at the door and Meg answered it. Paul heard her open the door and there was a silence–followed by a sound from Meg that seemed like a sigh.
‘Storm’s here,’ she said flatly and went back to the kitchen. Paul could hear her banging cupboard doors and there was a crash as she dropped something. A rush of familiarity invaded him, coupled with affection–Meg always took it out on inanimate objects.
Storm came clumsily in–he always looked too big for any room and it seemed as if he would knock over small tables and stands. Yet he never did and was remarkably adept at manoeuvring his huge bulk. Paul rose and pushed the cigarette case towards him, but Storm was already tapping at his pipe. He knew the expression on his face–negative yet set–as it always was before he had to perform some unpleasant task, the expression he normally wore when he was about to punish a child.
‘Look, Paul–I don’t want to interfere in your private business–but I’m afraid that in such a closed community as this school, where we are all trying to achieve a high degree of normality, it is very difficult for me not to interfere when things go so badly wrong. Meg came to me this morning and told me that she was going to leave the school and subsequently leave you.’ He delivered the whole speech very quickly and leant back short of breath. Storm appeared to be under the impression that he had just delivered a bombshell.
Paul lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply and blowing the smoke luxuriously out through the nostrils. He was not looking at Storm but was reading, upside down, the morning’s Daily Express. It was difficult to puzzle out all the words from his position and it required concentration. Meanwhile, Storm ran on–his words tumbling over one another in a wild disorder. Paul could still hear Meg crashing in the kitchen.
‘Naturally, I’m terribly upset. I’ve always regarded you as two of my closest friends. We’ve known each other for years, Paul, too long not to understand each other now.’ He gave Paul a hurt look as if he had misbehaved in a childish way. ‘I’ve got to do something that I hate having to do, but I might as well say it quickly and get it over with.’ He paused and then said: ‘I’m afraid that I must ask you to go as well, Paul.’
The Seahorse Page 14
