Towards the End of the Morning

by Michael Frayn

  They went to the Gates afterwards to have a glass of whisky. It was late; they were both very tired and shaken. And Dyson felt that something ought to be said. But what? They sat in the private bar at the Gates looking down into their glasses, trying to think what it should be. Dyson tried over inside his head: ‘It’s funny to think that only this morning poor old Eddy was talking about Stanley Cunningham’s funeral . . .’ ‘It’s funny to think that only this morning we were trying to persuade poor old Eddy to go off and enjoy himself on a facilities trip to the Persian Gulf . . .’ ‘It’s funny to think that just this afternoon I had the idea of getting poor old Eddy to come over to the Gates and tell me something about himself . . .’ But the funniest thing of all, really, was that until just a few hours ago Eddy had been, and now he was not. That, thought Dyson, really was the funniest thing about death; that’s what really took some getting used to.

  He looked up and caught Bob’s eye.

  ‘God strikes again,’ said Bob thoughtfully.

  Seven

  Tessa got out of the train at Paddington already painfully sensitive to the erotic implications of the city. Between Newbury and Reading a middle-aged man had pressed his knee against hers, and she had had to change compartments, doing her best to look unconcerned about it, as if she often heaved her suitcase down from the rack halfway between stations to try the view farther down the train. In the corridor she had passed compartments full of young men playing cards, who looked up and appraised her face and figure with impersonal interest, and when she found another seat it was in a compartment with three other women travelling up to London on their own, all with suitcases and trim suits and carefully made-up faces. The train hastened through the flat Thames Valley fields and flat western suburbs with single-minded impatience. Tessa felt that everyone aboard, like herself, must be on the way to some metropolitan sexual encounter.

  And Paddington had changed. Whenever she had arrived before, with her mother, or on her way to stay with relatives and school friends, it had been full of innocent bustle presaging lunch at Marshall and Snelgrove’s and tea at Fortnums. Now its innocence had vanished, and it was thronged with worldly-wise urban people intent upon sophisticated urban undertakings. It was half past four. Self-contained men in well-cut dark overcoats strode across the concourse with the air of being on their way from spending the afternoon in small Bayswater hotels with other men’s wives. Girls with white faces and heavily kohled eyes hurried out towards Praed Street, as if hastening to appointments with abortionists in seedy consulting-­rooms behind the Edgware Road. The taxi-drivers waiting on the rank looked knowingly at the racing pages of evening papers folded into quarters, ready to suggest to uncertain fares the addresses of drinking clubs and prostitutes.

  Tessa did not take a taxi. She had been brought up to be thrifty and careful. She did not take taxis if she could walk. She did not throw clothes away if she could mend them, or alter them to make them more fashionable. She did not go up to London to see her lover without first drawing fifteen pounds out of her bank account, and thinking up a convincing story to tell her parents, and packing a good book to read on the train (it was U.S.A. by John dos Passos, and she had read four-and-a-half pages of it before she had been interrupted by her neighbour’s knee), and looking up her lover’s address in the A to Z.

  She walked briskly out of the station, and set off in the direction of Bayswater, stopping every hundred yards or so to put down her dark blue Revelation suitcase (a Christmas present from her parents) and change hands. She did not like to stop and rest her arms for too long. She was afraid that one of the men who hung around the London termini waiting for girls arriving from the provinces would come up and offer to carry the case for her. She would not be taken in, of course; but it might be difficult to refuse politely.

  She hated herself for being impressed and frightened by London, but she was impressed and frightened all the same. The long terraces of stucco’d houses – how self-sufficient and unattainable and urban they seemed! The traffic was somehow specially Londonlike, too. On and on it flowed past her, indifferent to her and her suitcase. Ford Cortinas, Minis, Volks­wagen vans, Rovers – they all looked strange in these grey London streets, navigating with an inscrutable sense of their own direction and destiny. Even the grey, slightly misty afternoon light seemed impersonal and uniquely metropolitan. And the most impressive and frightening and metropolitan thing of all about London was that it was where Bob lived. At the thought of Bob, unpredictable and darkly smiling, her mouth went dry and her stomach felt liquid with impatience and nervousness.

  She passed women with blonde hair and ski-caps, walking their dogs, and olive-skinned girls in belted raincoats, carrying portfolios or violin-cases. She knew they were more attractive than her. At every moment she caught sight of some light figure with twinkling knees, slim golden calves, and massed, luxuriant hair. She felt uneasy; she did not fit in here at all. Her raincoat was not belted – her skirt was too long – her brown hair hung down her back with a pale blue kerchief tied over the top of it to keep it clean on the train. It was all hopeless! She felt like a peasant. Well, of course, she could get her hair cut and buy new clothes. But she was the wrong shape altogether. She was tall and big-boned, with strong, thick legs, and big breasts that jounced up and down as she walked. She didn’t know what to do about her breasts. If she strapped them up they stuck out like a shelf, and ached. If she strapped them down to make herself look boyish they just stuck out a foot farther down, and ached. And really her wrong shape was only a symptom. She was the wrong sort of person, that was the basic trouble. She was awkward, and naïve, and thrifty, and ill-read, and genteel. She had a great square face, with a large jaw, and cheeks that were permanently red. She had no right to Bob. She had no right to anyone, in a world so full of slight creatures with delicate bones and neat boyish faces. She wasn’t a girl at all, in any sense that the fashion magazines would recognize. She was just a young female human being, fit only to be somebody’s cousin or aunt.

  It took her much longer to get to Leominster Gardens, where Bob lived, than she had expected. Streets which had looked short on the map seemed endless when one had to walk them with a suitcase. She lost her way; new flats had been built across roads marked in the A to Z, and it was difficult to find anyone who had heard of Leominster Gardens. The light became greyer and smokier. Small corner shops shut as she approached them.

  But when she did find the street, it seemed curiously familiar. Bob had never described it to her; it just seemed right for him. The cream stucco on the houses – the imposing pillared porches with their black-and-white tiled steps; she felt as if she had seen it all before in a dream. Through the ground-floor window of one house she saw a room lined with dusty books. A man with his back to her bent over a large table covered with papers, his silver hair catching the light from an overhead lamp. She knew that if he turned round she would recognize his face. At other windows, she could see tables with folded paper napkins and nickel-plated cruets. They were small private hotels. She knew exactly how the dining-rooms smelt inside, and how they would look at seven o’clock, when the weak lights in their brown parchment shades were turned on, and large, ungainly old men with sticks stumped to their tables.

  As she drew near to number 86, her mouth went dry again, and her heart beat painfully. She stopped and put her case down for a moment to try and collect herself; her hands were trembling uncontrollably from the weight. It was stupid to be like this. It was silly to have come at all if she was going to feel so shaky and helpless. Anyway, Bob probably wouldn’t be home yet. Her plan was really just to find the place, then go away and have tea somewhere while she waited for him.

  She tucked stray wisps of hair back under her kerchief, then picked up her case and walked up the steps on to the porch. ‘Flat 4,’ it said on the board, ‘R. Bell.’ His name! Somehow it was a terrible shock to see it. Her cheeks were blazing red, she knew. The bell-pushes on the board were all empty, so she tried the do
or and it opened. Inside was a hall with a dingy maroon carpet, and a massive veneered dining-table covered with old election pamphlets, soap coupons, and handbills from firms purchasing second-hand jewellery. She tiptoed up the stairs, wondering what she would say to anyone who saw her. One of the stairs cracked sharply beneath her foot; she heard the front door of one of the ground-floor flats open behind her, and as she turned the corner of the staircase she caught a glimpse of a single eye and a draggle of grey hair at the crack.

  There were no windows on the first floor landing, and in the dark it was difficult to make out the numbers on the doors. She crept about, grasping the suitcase, putting her eye very close to each of the two bell-pushes in turn. Absurd anxieties fled across her mind. Had she posted her letter telling Bob she was coming? Had she put a stamp on it? As she hesitated outside Bob’s door she heard a muffled metallic thump from within, as of a saucepan being put down on a gas-stove, then the sound of a tap being turned on. He was in! She quickly rang the bell, not knowing what to think or feel. There was a silence, and then the sound of quick, light steps coming towards the door. He was running! Oh Bob, she thought. Oh Bob!

  The door opened.

  ‘Oh, Bob!’ she said helplessly.

  ‘Come on in, darling,’ said the sharp little woman who was holding the door, screwing up her eyes shrewdly against the cigarette-smoke she was blowing out in order to speak. ‘I’m just making the great man’s supper. We can have a little heart-to-heart while we wait for him.’

  ‘Throw all those bedclothes off the chair and sit down, darling,’ said Mrs Mounce, peeling potatoes at the sink.

  ‘I’m all right, thank you,’ said Tessa, standing with her hands behind her back, pretending she was examining Bob’s pictures.

  ‘Lovey, he may not be back till eleven! Go on, sit down. I was airing his sheets, you see, darling. They never get aired properly if I don’t do it myself. Go and pour yourself a drink, love – you look whacked. Do you know where it is? It’s over on the bookcase.’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘I’ll make us some tea, then.’

  Poor kid, thought Mrs Mounce, she really did look whacked. For a moment after she’d come in her face had gone all stiff, as if she was trying not to cry. Bob was a stinker. He could have been at home to meet her.

  ‘He could have been here,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t have killed him to be here for once.’

  ‘I expect he’s busy.’

  ‘I expect he’s boozing.’

  Tessa looked disapproving.

  ‘Do you cook and clean for Mr Bell?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, yes, darling!’ said Mrs Mounce, turning her head upwards and sideways, so the smoke from the cigarette in the corner of her mouth missed her eyes. ‘I’m just the skivvy round here! Cook the din-dins, put the cat out, clear up the junk on the great man’s desk, and hope my lord throws me a kind word from time to time. That’s me, sweetheart!’

  And when he came in at eleven o’clock breathing beer and curry fumes, try to fight off his hot little hands. Oh, she knew what was going through his head all right, and how careful she had to be not to say or do anything he might misinterpret. And now she was expected to entertain his lady-friends until such time as he chose to remember they were there! Well, she knew who this lady-friend was, anyway. This was the famous Tessa, who wrote Bob twelve-page letters which he left lying around open on top of his desk. This was the famous lady-friend who went round wearing Bob’s letters down her blouse. Frankly, she looked as if she’d got a few bundles of twelve-page letters stuffed up her woolly even now. Either that or she’d got two woollies on. Honestly, people talked about the kids today as though they were all Dior models, but they still had spots and puppy-fat just like kids always had, and always would have. Poor kid, she looked so pathetic sitting there on the edge of the chair, all stiff and upright like some tragedy queen, thinking Woe is me, my precious Bob has fallen into the hands of this designing woman. Well, making his room fit to live in was just possibly a better way to go about it than writing him twelve-page letters, as dearest Tessa might in time come to realize.

  ‘The water’s almost boiling,’ she said. ‘Incidentally, I know what you’re thinking, and I’m not.’

  Tessa’s face went red all over, from neck to temples.

  ‘I wasn’t . . .’ she said, ‘I didn’t . . .’

  ‘I’m just a good fairy, darling. That’s all. I live downstairs, you see. I just pop up from time to time to see if Bob’s all right.’

  ‘Well, of course . . . that’s very kind of you.’

  ‘Just keeping him in good condition for you, darling.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Poor kid – she was out of her depth.

  ‘Did you manage to get anything to eat on the way?’

  ‘I had a sandwich at Taunton.’

  ‘Sweetest! You must be famished! We’ll get Bob’s old birthday cake out! Though I must admit, I only have a bite at lunchtime myself. I have to think of my figure.’

  ‘Your figure’s very pretty,’ said Tessa politely.

  ‘Do you think so?’ said Mrs Mounce. She swivelled round on her heel, and struck a pose with her left hip thrown sideways, and her cigarette hand extended in a rather classical way. She could have been a model, people always said so. She could have been a dancer if she’d taken lessons.

  ‘Like a model,’ said Tessa. ‘Perhaps you are one?’

  ‘I could have been. But you know how it is, with one thing and another. Of course, I have to keep slim for my hubby. He’d go mad if I started putting on weight. I put on five pounds at Torremolinos one year and he went on and on about it. Was I sure I wasn’t pregnant? You know.’

  ‘Well, I wish I looked like you.’

  ‘You’re absolutely lovely as you are, darling.’

  And really, thought Mrs Mounce, she wasn’t such a bad-looking kid. A little of the old black-coffee-and-orange-juice, and a good roll-on, and she really wouldn’t look too awful.

  ‘Are you an undergrad or something, darling?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m at a college of citizenship in Bath.’

  ‘Darling! That sounds terribly brainy.’

  ‘It’s not, really.’

  ‘Do you study economics and all that kind of thing?’

  ‘A bit. We do History of Ideas.’

  ‘Lovely.’

  ‘And we have a course in World Literature. Last term it was Russia. Next term it’s India, China and Japan.’

  ‘How super, darling.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure. One never seems to catch up.’

  ‘I know, sweets – once you start swotting there’s no end to it. That’s what put me off studying, really. Do you do ordinary things like Domestic Science?’

  ‘Well, we do Nutrition. And Contemporary Culture Appreciation, and Social Situation Training.’

  ‘Super.’

  ‘We all think it’s terribly draggy. There’s a terribly draggy lot of people teaching us.’

  Mrs Mounce made the tea.

  ‘I should be helping you,’ said Tessa. ‘How rude of me!’

  ‘All right, sweets. Make the bed – then you can lie down and take the weight off your feet while we talk. But tuck it in properly, darling. Make proper hospital corners, or one of you will be falling out in the middle of the night.’

  Tessa’s face went red all over again. Mrs Mounce watched her with discreet curiosity. She’d never seen such a champion blusher. Kids weren’t getting tougher these days at all – they were getting soppier. Well, she’d learn, she’d learn. She just needed someone to take an interest in her, someone to draw her out and tell her what time of day it was.

  Mrs Mounce kicked off her beaded moccasins, curled up in the armchair with her cup of tea, and began to tell Tessa about her hubby and his job, about Dotty and the work they were having done in the house, and about their friends. Tessa first of all sat down on the edge of the bed, with her knees together, her feet crossed and slightly to one sid
e, her back straight, and her cup and saucer at chest height, as she had learnt in Social Situation Training. By the time she had fetched her second cup of tea, Mrs Mounce was on to their relations with their bank manager, and Tessa kicked off her shoes and tucked her legs up beneath her to be companionable. Her third cup of tea she balanced on her stomach, lying full length on the bed and pointing her stockinged toes into the air, sighting various objects over them with one eye closed. ‘How frightful,’ she murmured from time to time, as Mrs Mounce catalogued another misfortune, another misunderstanding. ‘How absolutely frightful.’

  ‘Because there I was,’ Mrs Mounce ran on, as the blue haze of cigarette smoke thickened in the dusk, ‘honestly, darling, without a stitch on, and this lunatic hammering on the door and shouting he’d wake the whole hotel if I didn’t open up . . . Anyway, I told Dotty, “Dotty darling,” I said, “this terrible possessiveness of yours about the house is definitely something sick, something absolutely psychological.” I mean, I had to be frank with her. “Dotty, precious,” I said, “this is the sort of thing they lock people away in mental asylums for . . .” Well, I went to clinics, I went to specialists, they poked and they peered and they prodded, they took X-rays, they did tests, I don’t know what they didn’t do, and they all said the same thing. “Mrs Mounce,” they said, “there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you.” Well, lovey, I knew there was, you see . . .’

  It was half past eight when the key turned in the lock, and Bob came in. Tessa had turned on the little light on the bedside table, but otherwise the room was in darkness, and for some moments Bob stood by the door, twisting his head backwards and forwards, trying to take the situation in.

  ‘It’s a pity you bothered to come home at all, darling,’ said Mrs Mounce. ‘We were having a very cosy little chat here.’

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Bob. He came over to the bed, holding up his hand to shade his eyes from the bedside light, and peering almost comically close, so that Tessa could smell the whisky on his breath.