A Sentence of Life

by Julian Gloag

  He clung to the wire. He’d thought it was she who needed protection; he’d thought that he was invulnerable, that she could not touch him, that he was beyond wounds. He summoned his last scatterings of strength. “You … I didn’t know such frustration was—”

  “Frustration? Yes, I was frustrated alright.” She stopped, and the wings of her nostrils became whitely transparent. “I was frustrated for a long time. But I found a cure.”

  “A cure …”

  “A cure. A man. Don’t you want to know his name?” There was something vulpine in the way she looked at him.

  “No.” He closed his eyes. “No, I don’t.”

  “You wouldn’t. You always try to avoid anything unpleasant. Well, I’m not going to let you avoid this. It was Tom, Tom Short.”

  He couldn’t breathe. Suddenly there was no breath, only a furious churning where his lungs should have been. “Tom …”

  “Yes, Tom. Would you like me to tell you how he makes love? He’s a man, darling. A wonderful lover.”

  He opened his eyes, but the blood thumping in his head made him dizzy. He tried to push through the grille at her and he heard words which must be coming from his own mouth but which he did not understand.

  “Stop it!’ she whispered. “You’re making an exhibition of yourself!”

  He could feel her breath on his face through the wire.

  “And don’t call me a whore,” he heard. “I never let Tom make love to me for money. It was desire, Jordan, sexual desire. Lust. Passion. Something you’ll never know anything about.”

  “I’ll …”

  “What? What will you do? Kill him, is that what you were going to say? Kill Tom? My dear Jordan, you couldn’t kill a fly except by accident. That’s why the thought of you killing that little June is preposterous. You may be able to convince the police. You’re quite smooth when you want to be, I’ll admit that. But to anyone who knows you … I doubt if you even touched her. If you made love, all I can say is it can’t have been much fun for her.”

  “Willy …”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t plead now, Jordan.”

  “You … this isn’t going to make me change my mind. Whatever—”

  “I don’t care what you do with your piffling little mind. You can confess to murdering the Archbishop of Canterbury for all I care.” She reached for her handbag, which rested on the ledge in front of her.

  “Wait a minute.” There was something vital he had to know. He fumbled desperately. “Do you want to marry him?” No, that wasn’t it

  “I’ll cross my own bridges, no thanks to you.”

  “How—how long?”

  “My affair with Tom? Five or six years.” She watched him coolly.

  “Georgia?” he managed.

  “I’m afraid I really couldn’t say.”

  He was ill, fearfully ill—far worse than the pox, the pleurisy, the choking lungs. The rampant fever sped like fire across the dry, dead grass, delving into and burning up every corner of his quiet, certain calm.

  38

  Five or six years ago. Six, five, four—four years ago. Four years ago and six months.

  They wouldn’t leave him alone.

  “I’ve brought Norah to back me up, old boy.” Tom hunched his shoulders in his overcoat.

  “Now, Jordan, you must come over to us. We can’t let you mope here all by yourself.”

  “Cold as a mortuary in here.”

  “That’s very sweet of you, er, Norah.” He always found it hard to remember her name. “But the hospital might ring any moment.”

  “I’ve taken care of all that. I asked them to ring us if they couldn’t get you here. You’ll feel much better with one of Tom’s whiskeys inside you.”

  “Nothing much that isn’t the better for a stiff drink, Jordan.”

  “Tom’s right. They say it may be hours yet. They’ll ring the minute anything happens, and Tom will drive you straight over.”

  “So you can get as plastered as you want.”

  “And we are nearer to the hospital. Come and doze in front of our fire. You must be exhausted, poor thing, after—”

  The phone rang, and Jordan picked it up on the ring.

  It was Willy’s mother.

  “No news yet, Celia.”

  “Poor thing. I expect it’s the narrow hips—just like me. I sometimes think that’s our only resemblance. Do you think I should come down? I’d like to come down. But she’d hate having Mother hovering around, wouldn’t she?”

  “You don’t hover, Celia, you glide. But they’ve got everything well under control.”

  “You’re a dear, Jordan. I always said there was more to you than met the eye. She sounded, well, almost brusque when I rang on Thursday. I was afraid she was upset about something. I mean something besides the baby.”

  “Oh that’s just her manner, Celia. She doesn’t really mean it.”

  “Yes yes, I know. Underneath lies a warm and loving heart. But sometimes I ask myself, Jordan, why does it have to lie so very deep? One has to dig and dig—and I can’t manage much more than a trowel these days. So cold. Did I ever tell you I used to call Ned and Willy the Hot and the Cold? Yes, of course I did. All mod cons. Poor Ned. My fault, I’m sure—didn’t change her nappies often enough, I expect. Well, you will ring me at once, won’t you? I do hope it’s a little boy.”

  “Of course, Celia.”

  “Goodbye then. Goodbye goodbye.”

  He turned with a smile to Norah. “I’d like to come then,” he said. “It is a bit gloomy here. I keep thinking I hear the ghostly patter of little footsteps on the stairs.”

  “Ha ha. Throw some things into a bag and we’ll be off, old man.”

  “I’m so glad, Jordan.”

  As he sat drinking a huge whiskey in her drawing room, he concluded, with mild surprise, that she really was glad to have him.

  Tom kept disappearing and then coming back again, usually in time to refill Jordan’s tumbler. He would sit down for a minute or two and then get up and look out of the window or poke the fire.

  “Oh do stop fidgeting, Tom,” Norah said at last. “Why don’t you go and do some work?”

  “Perhaps I will. I do have rather a heavy load. You won’t think me rude, old man? Good. I shall be right on top of the phone, you know, so don’t worry about it. And help yourself from the decanter, eh?”

  When he’d gone, Norah smiled at Jordan. “He’s a dreadful fidgety Phil.”

  “Rather like an expectant father himself.”

  “Yes, isn’t he? It’s his Welsh blood really.”

  “Tom’s Welsh?”

  “He likes to think he is.” She sighed. “He feels it’s an excuse for being temperamental. Although why he needs an excuse I don’t know. I always think a temperament adds a bit of spice, don’t you?”

  “I suppose it does.”

  “We English are so deadly dull. I really get quite bored with myself sometimes.” She laughed lightly.

  He could not reply with any truth, so he poured himself more whiskey.

  “Of course it’s more difficult for us women. To be temperamental, I mean. We’re so brought up to be retiring, it becomes second nature, and then, of course, something comes along when one’s not supposed to be retiring and then one discovers one just doesn’t know how to respond any more. If one ever did. Do you know what I mean?”

  “The sort of vital spark’s missing?” He was becoming hazy with drink.

  “That’s it. It’s all sex, really, isn’t it?”

  “Sex? Well, sex isn’t, er, everything.”

  “Not everything, but a great deal. I’ve never been very good at sex. I always imagined, before I married, it would come naturally. But it didn’t. It’s not so much that one feels one has failed—although of course one has failed—”

  “Norah, heavens, you haven’t failed.” He took a huge swallow of whiskey.

  “Oh yes, I have. But I don’t mind that so much. After all, if one tries, the only
alternative to success is failure. But at least one tried. No, it’s not that. It’s the feeling of being wasted. You know what I mean? One was meant for something, and somehow that something just never materialized. Am I embarrassing you?”

  “No.” And suddenly she wasn’t.

  “I’m so glad. Most men are embarrassed by that sort of thing. I’m a dreadfully silly woman, you know. And that makes it worse. Being silly. If I had brains, maybe I wouldn’t mind so much about not having anything else. I don’t know why I’m talking to you like this.”

  “It doesn’t matter why. Go on talking.”

  “I think I will have a whiskey now. It’s Willy, I expect. Going to have a baby. Babies always make me talk. Perhaps it makes me realise what I’ve missed. Life or something like that. I don’t usually drink, you know. I think if I started I might just go on and on and become one of those poor sad drunks. But it’s alright with you here. I don’t suppose I’ll ever really talk to you again.”

  “Oh yes you will, Norah.”

  “You’re a nice man.” She sipped the drink he gave her. “No. And you’ll forget what I’ve said. Why not? I once overheard a man at a party describe someone as ‘eminently forgettable.’ I knew at once he meant me. That’s how I feel, so it must be true, mustn’t it? Not that I’m complaining. Oh dear, people who say that really always are complaining, aren’t they?”

  “Yes. In a way I think they are. But there are times when complaints are definitely in order.”

  “Perhaps. At any moment the phone’s going to ring and I’ll go back to being forgotten. Do you ever feel forgotten?”

  He watched the fire, feeling the heat of it in his cheeks. “No, I don’t think I do. In fact, rather the opposite. I wish sometimes that I were forgotten.”

  “You don’t know how lucky you are. But I expect it’ll be better when you have a baby.”

  Jordan frowned at her. In the dark of the late afternoon she was remote.

  “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

  He stood up and, back to the fire, looked down at her. “No,” he said, “I’m not sure I do.”

  “Oh well, that’s frank. Just silly me. Babbling. It’s the drink, I expect.”

  He was too lazy with whiskey and warmth to pursue it. A little later he fell asleep in front of the fire, to be woken by Tom. “It’s a daughter, old man. You lucky beggar. Mother and child both blooming. Come on, we’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  Georgia had weighed four pounds, ten and a half ounces, and already could curl her hand around a finger. As he touched the minute, damp flesh, he had been moved to an inexpressible joy which had left him thick-tongued and awkward at Willy’s bedside. He had listened to Tom’s hearty garrulity, thinking only how curious it was for her to be lying palely abed and for him to be the healthy one.

  39

  The church bells rang and the sun shone, and he allowed himself to imagine a layer of new snow on the landscape. And for good measure, a robin would sing and the male holly blaze with scarlet as bright as a full-dress tunic.

  Halfway down the lime avenue, by now, would be the little party from the rectory—Mary and Colin and Willy Benton. Cassocked and nervous over his Christmas sermon, Trevor had left earlier. Most of the villagers would be already settled, the pews murmurous and rustling with Sunday best. And Mr. Goff had certainly begun his annual off-key medley of Christmas carols.

  Jordan was propped high with pillows in the bed. “Got to keep you sitting up, young man,” the doctor had said. “You’ll find it easier to breathe.” He had turned to Miss Flanders: “See he doesn’t slide down, Nurse.”

  “Yes, Doctor,” said quiet, deft Miss Flanders, who slipped in and out without fuss or display, taking his temperature, pouring the medicine, changing the covered bowl into which he coughed the matter from his charged lungs, plumping the pillows. As though she were merely a smooth-working extension of his own body, he hardly noticed her.

  But then he was too listless to notice anything very much. Drowsy. He would doze the whole time, he thought, if it had not been for the spasmodic bursts of coughing that came out of nowhere and convulsed him with the violence of an intemperate schoolmaster shaking a stupid boy, and left him weak, wet, and obscurely frightened.

  Miss Flanders wiped his face with a damp flannel, dried him, removed the bowl, and gave him something tasting of peppermint to drink.

  There was a pile of parcels at the bottom of his bed, just within reach of his foot. It was a tremendous and pointless effort to move, though. He would open the bright paper parcels tomorrow, or the next day perhaps. To smile and nod and cluck with pleasure and thanks were far beyond his powers now. But he enjoyed wondering vaguely what he had been given. It was odd how, as one grew larger, presents became smaller. When he was a boy, there had always been one or two big packages. The biggest and best—no, most expensive; the best was always John’s puzzle—from Colin. But gifts from Colin were usually small now—tortoise-shell hairbrushes, a silver hip flask, gold dress studs, binoculars in an initialled leather case: the trappings of luxury, but to Colin’s mind, essential, “Got to have binoculars, young-feller-me-lad. Always come in useful. Bird watching, race meetings, things like that.”

  Bird watching was not one of his hobbies. He thought of bird watchers as retarded adolescents at heart, whose libidinous impulses were secretly stirred by the intense study of our feathered friends because their knowledge of carnality had been fixed at the level of their prep school headmaster’s final life lecture. The only use he had ever found for the binoculars had also partaken of voyeurism. From his rooms in college he had a view of one of the seedier hotels; and he had once briefly focussed upon the uncurtained chamber of an elderly lady exposing emaciated breasts.

  The room became dim as he went into a light doze. It seemed to him that he was then in another room. A large room with a counter down one side and gloomy depths in the back. A shop of some sort. He looked down at his body and saw that he was naked. He didn’t feel naked. The shop was filled with an amazing assortment of things: a tricycle hanging from the ceiling, a toy fort manned by broken soldiers, a set of fret saws, a blackbird in a cage—he couldn’t make out if it was stuffed or alive. On the counter were displayed his binoculars, his silver hip flask, the leather box that contained his gold studs and, on a special stand of its own, a copy of Death Sentences. He realised with a start that everything in the shop belonged to him—all his suits on a string line, from the green tweed he’d bought last term to a tiny, tattered red soldier coat that he couldn’t remember but knew must have been his. Just then, a man appeared behind the counter. The light was poor and it was difficult to see his face, but it seemed to be the doctor. Jordan shifted in trepidation. The doctor put both hands on the counter and leaned forward slowly. “And how long,” he said in sombre medical tones, “has this been going on?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jordan uneasily.”

  “What don’t you know, dear?” asked Miss Flanders as she set down a cup of beef broth and a piece of toast cut into slender strips on a plate. “I expect you had a dream. I’ve brought you a little lunch.”

  He sipped his soup sleepily and watched Miss Flanders rearrange the fire. The doctor had, in fact, asked him just that question. It was difficult to know. He’d had a cough and a lingering cold all term. In the evening he would get very hot and the headaches would begin. Willy insisted on coming up to his rooms and feeding him with aspirins and hot lemon juice laced with whiskey. She always seemed to be fiddling with the fire or putting the kettle on the gas ring. She could not sit still and, however quiet she might be, her sharp jerky movements distracted him. But he found it more and more difficult to ask her to leave him alone. It had been a relief when term ended and he could come down and away from the clutches of her concern.

  Then a couple of days after he had been consigned to bed and Miss Flanders had been installed, Aunt Mary came to tell him he had a visitor: “A friend from Cambridge.” The only person
he could think of was Frank Wade. But that was impossible because Frank was spending the vacation packing up contraceptives in Harrod’s basement to pay off his debts.

  “Hello, Jordan.”

  “What on earth are you doing here?” He felt a lacerating irritation.

  “I heard you were ill.” She smiled uncomfortably. “I thought I could be of help.” He knew she was rather proud of having taken some advanced course with the Red Cross or something.

  “I’ve already got a nurse,” he said.

  “I know—Miss Flanders. I thought I might be able to give your aunt a helping hand with the house. I mean, having an invalid … How are you, poor darling?”

  Jordan closed his eyes. “Tired,” he said. He wondered who had been so dotty as to summon Willy.

  “Well, I’d better leave you to sleep.” She had touched his hand. “Is there anything I can bring you?”

  “How long are you going to stay?”

  “Well, as long as I’m needed. As long as I can help.”

  “Mary’ll make a housemaid of you if you don’t watch out.”

  She laughed eagerly at his crumb of response. There was silence, and then she said, “Jordan, you don’t mind me being here, do you?”

  He opened his eyes. “Glad to have you aboard,” he said, and almost immediately drifted off to sleep.

  “A splendid girl, that friend of yours,” Trevor had said to him a few days later. “Splendid. I can’t think why you’ve kept her hidden away all this time.” He gave his clergyman’s chuckle.

  “I am a sly boots.” He was peevish with all his visitors. He found everyone very trying, even the doctor. The only exception was Miss Flanders.

  “Ah yes. Very natural, my boy. A most interesting girl. She knows Menaggio quite well. From her description it has hardly changed at all from our day. Mary and I often used to spend our holidays there before …”

  “Before I came on the scene?”

  “Well, yes. Before the war, you know. And you know another thing we discovered? Colin was at school with Sir Reginald Benton, Willy’s father. Amazing, really amazing.”