The Silver Swan

by Benjamin Black

  That was the first time it occurred to her to wonder what exactly "spiritual healing" might be. Up to then it had not mattered; suddenly now it did. She had assumed, when she had speculated about it, which was seldom, that these women brought him their troubles-a marriage on the rocks, problem children, the change of life, nerves-and that he talked to them much as he talked to her, about how they should try to put aside worldly things and concentrate on the spirit, which was the way to God and God's peace, as he was forever declaring in his soft, unsmiling, but amused and kindly way. Rich women had time on their hands and the money to find the means of making it pass. She was sure there was nothing wrong with most of them, that they were just indulging themselves by paying for an hour or two a week in the care of this beautiful, tranquil, exotic man. And thinking this, she realized that she was, of course, jealous. She pictured them together, Dr. Kreutz and the woman in the blue suit, she kneeling on a cushion on the floor, barefoot, with her eyes closed and her head back, and he standing behind her, caressing her temples, the warm pads of his fingertips barely touching the skin and yet making it tingle, as her own skin had tingled on the couple of occasions when he had massaged her like that, speaking to her in his purring voice about the wisdom of the ancient Sufi masters, who a thousand years ago, so he said, had written of things that the world was only now discovering and thinking it was for the first time.

  But why had her jealousy been stirred by seeing the woman with the silver-haired man? It should have been the opposite; she should have been glad to know that the woman was in love with someone else and not with the Doctor. It was confusing.

  She wished she had someone to talk to about all this. She could not mention any of it to Billy-she could just imagine what Billy would say. She had not told him about Dr. Kreutz. He would not understand, and besides, it was her secret.

  12

  LESLIE WHITE HAD GIVEN PHOEBE A PHONE NUMBER WHERE SHE could contact him, which he hoped-sincerely, as he said-that she would do, soon. And, to her surprise, she did. She knew she could expect nothing from him but trouble. But perhaps trouble was precisely what she wanted. When he answered the phone and she said her name he seemed not at all surprised. She supposed it had never crossed his mind that she would not call, that any girl would not call him, the silver-haired Leslie White. He was staying in temporary digs, he told her, "due to a contretemps on the domestic front." He said that his wife had thrown him out of the house, for reasons that he did not specify. She liked his frankness. She supposed it was due to the fact of his being English. No Irishman, she knew, would admit so lightly, so gaily, almost, to having been kicked out of the family home by his wife. When she said this to him he pretended to be surprised and fascinated, as if it were some piece of anthropological lore she had imparted. It was one of the tricks he had, to put on a show of astonished interest at the most mundane of observations-"Gosh, that's amazing!"-and even though she knew it was a trick, still it pleased her. She was taken by his boyishness, or his pretense of it. He had a repertoire of exclamations-gosh, crikey, crumbs-that she supposed he had got from Billy Bunter books or the like, for these words and his way of tossing them about so casually were the stuff of public-school life, and Leslie White, she felt sure, had never seen the inside, or possibly even the outside, of such an institution.

  He took her for tea to the Grafton Café, above the cinema. They had a table by the window looking down on Grafton Street. It was Saturday and the street was busy with shoppers. After the thunderstorms of the previous day the fine weather had returned, and below them the sun was making inky shadows from the awnings above the shops. Leslie wore a light-brown corduroy suit today, and suede shoes, and sported a silver kerchief in his top pocket to match his silver cravat and, of course, his silver hair. "How he admires himself," she thought with faint amusement, "it's almost lovable, his self-love." She was surprised to be here with him. He was, she very well knew, what the nuns at her convent school used to warn against, a "bad companion," and his company was certainly an "occasion of sin." The truth was, she was not sure why she had called him in the first place. She was not in the habit of phoning up men she barely knew; but then, she was not in the habit of phoning men, known or not, and men did not phone her, at least not the kind of man that Leslie White so obviously was.

  She smoked a cigarette and gazed into the street. She could feel him studying her. He asked: "Do you always wear black?"

  "I don't know. Do I? It's required at the shop, and I suppose I've got into the habit."

  He laughed. "'Habit' is about right."

  She raised an eyebrow. "You think I look like a nun?"

  "I didn't say that, did I?"

  "I haven't much interest in clothes, I'm afraid."

  He smiled to himself as at a private joke.

  "I hope you don't mind my saying," he said, "but you don't really look or sound like a shopgirl, either."

  "Oh? What do I look and sound like?"

  "Hmm. Let me think." He put his head on one side and narrowed his eyes and considered her from brow to foot. She suffered his scrutiny with unruffled calm. She was wearing a black skirt and a black sweater and cardigan; her only adornment was a loop of pearls which had been her mother's, that is, Sarah's. She had no doubt that Leslie White would be interested to know-"Golly, I should say so!"-that the pearls were genuine, and quite valuable. He was still looking her up and down and rubbing a hand judiciously back and forth on the side of his chin. "I would guess you were," he said, "a well-brought-up and very proper young lady."

  "Can't girls who serve in shops be proper?"

  "Not the ones of my acquaintance, darling. Why are you slumming?"

  From anyone else this would have been offensive, and she knew he was trying to provoke; but she could not take him seriously enough to be provoked, or offended, by anything he might say. She turned her head and looked him full in the face and in her turn asked: "Why is your wife so angry at you?"

  He stared for a second and then laughed. "I'm afraid I did give her cause."

  "Was Laura Swan part of the cause?"

  He straightened slowly on the chair, uncoiling his long, skinny frame, and she thought he was about to get up and leave. Instead, he cleared his throat and reached for her cigarette case on the table and opened it and helped himself to a cigarette, which he lit with her lighter. He was frowning. She noted how he held the cigarette affectedly between the second and third fingers of his left hand.

  "You're quite a girl, aren't you?" he said.

  "You mean, quite a shopgirl?"

  He flinched in pretend pain, smiling wryly. "Touché."

  The waitress was hovering. Leslie asked of Phoebe if she wanted anything more but she said no, and leaned down and delved in her handbag in search of her purse.

  "Let me," he said, bringing out his wallet.

  "No!" It had come out too sharply, and made him blink. "No," she said again, more gently, "I'd like to, really. I want to."

  "Well, thank you."

  She passed a coin to the girl and told her she need not bring back the change. They stood up from the table. She was aware of that awkward moment when a decision must be made. If they parted now, she knew she would never see him again, not because she did not want to, not because she was indifferent to him, but in obedience to an unformulated and yet iron-clad convention. She did not look at him but busied herself in putting away her purse. "Would you like," she asked, "to go for a walk with me?"

  THEY STROLLED ALONG ST. STEPHEN'S GREEN. THEY CAUGHT THE FRAgrance from the flower beds inside and, from closer by, the sharp, almost animal scent of privet with the sun strong on it. The tiny leaves of bushes thronging behind the railings were of an intense bottle green, and each leaf looked as if it had been individually and lovingly polished. Sometimes the beauty of things, ordinary things-those unseen flowers, this burnished foliage, the honeyed sunlight on the pavement at her feet-pressed in upon her urgently while at the same time the things themselves seemed to hold back, at one
remove, as if there were an invisible barrier between her and the world. She could see and smell and touch and hear, but somehow she could hardly feel at all.

  Leslie, who must have been brooding on it for some time, said, "Yes, I'm afraid Laura was indeed the trouble, or a largish part of it." He sucked in his breath sharply between his teeth as if he had felt a blast of icy wind. He walked with his hands in his pockets. He had the way of walking of so many tall, thin men, his shoulders drooping back and his pelvis thrust out; she liked this boneless, sinuous gait. "That wasn't her real name, you know," he said, seeming faintly aggrieved and eager to expose a petty piece of fraudulence. "That was just an invention. Deirdre Hunt, she was called."

  "Yes."

  "Oh-you knew?" She nodded. "Yes, of course," he went on, sounding more aggrieved than ever, "and you knew she was married, too, I remember. To a fellow by the name of Billy. Poor chump."

  "Why Laura Swan?"

  "The name, you mean? Oh, it was just silliness. I told her she looked like a Laura, God knows why-even Lauras don't look like a Laura-and she decided that's what she'd be."

  "And Swan?"

  He made a sound that might have been a giggle. "She said I looked like a swan. Something to do with my hair, I don't know what."

  "Ah," she said, "I see: the Silver Swan."

  "As I say, the most awful silliness." They came to the corner and crossed over into Harcourt Street. "I still blush to think of it."

  They were at the steps of the house, and she stopped. He looked at her inquiringly. "I live here," she said.

  He put on a crestfallen look. "Well, that wasn't much of a walk."

  She hastened on so as not to lose her nerve. "Will you come in?" He has a wife who has kicked him out, she told herself, in some wonderment, and a mistress who killed herself, and I am inviting him to step into my life. She pointed upwards. "My flat is there." But which of us is the spider, and which the fly?

  They had climbed the stairs and she was shutting the door behind them when he put an arm around her waist and drew her against him and kissed her. She felt the breath from his nostrils feathery on her cheek. She thought, We must both smell of Passing Cloud. He was at once diffident and insistent; he held her so lightly that his arm might have been a delicately balanced spring that would release her at the slightest pressure of resistance, but that yet was made of steel. His way of kissing her was dreamy, almost absentminded. She thought he might be humming at the back of his throat. The embrace lasted no more than a second or two and then he turned from her with a sort of sweep, like a dancer whirling languidly away to indulge in a figure or two on his own. He strolled ahead of her into the flat, definitely humming now, and stopped in the middle of the living room and looked about. "This is nice," he said. "A trifle spartan, but nice." He turned and smiled at her, throwing back his head. The kiss might not have happened at all-had she imagined it?

  She offered him a drink. She had a bottle of gin somewhere, she said, but there was no tonic, or ice-"haven't got a fridge." He said gin on its own would be fine. She stood a moment, looking at the floor-something was wobbling in the pit of her stomach-then turned and marched herself into the kitchen. Alone there, she touched her fingers gingerly to her lips. She could hear her heart, a dull thud-thud, thud-thud, like the sound of some dolt clomping along a muddy footpath in big wet boots. Foolish, she was being so foolish! The gin was at the back of the cupboard high on the wall; she had to stand on a chair to reach it and thought she might fall off, she felt so giddy. She could hear him in the living room, singing softly to himself.

  Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think…

  She took down two tumblers and polished them with a tea towel. "What if he did it?" she whispered aloud to herself. "What if he pushed her?" Her insides had stopped wobbling and burned now with a sullen, low fire. Shakily she poured two accidentally mighty measures of gin and carried the glasses into the living room.

  He was standing at the sideboard, bent forward with his hands in his trouser pockets, peering at the photograph in its tortoiseshell frame of Mal and Sarah on their wedding day. "Your mum and dad?" he asked. She nodded. She set down his glass on the sideboard beside the photo and walked away from him and stood by the window, looking out at the street and seeing nothing. She heard him take up the glass and drink, then gasp. "Crikey," he said, "it's strong when it comes straight like this, isn't it?"

  He moved, and in a second was standing beside her. How silently he moved, how softly. In the street the Saturday quiet was strung between the houses like a gauze net. He was again singing very low under his breath. "Enjoy yourself, while you're still in the pink…" He sniffed. "I'm guessing," he said, "that they're no longer with us. Your pater and mater."

  "Sarah is dead. Mal is alive." She spoke without emphasis.

  "Sarah and Mal. Mal and Sarah. Funny, isn't it, how two names can sound right together, I mean natural, like a formula, when really they're just… names. Romeo and Juliet. Fortnum and Mason. Mutt and Jeff." He hardly paused. "Do you miss her?"

  "Do I miss who?"

  "Sarah. Your Mum."

  "Do you miss Laura Swan?"

  She did not know why she had said it, and why so harshly. Was it somehow because he had kissed her? Perhaps it was because he had not kissed her again, or because he was behaving as if he had not kissed her at all. Her head was in a whirl. She was not accustomed to such situations, she did not know what to do, how to behave. Someone should have taught her, someone should have advised her. But who was there? Who, really, had there ever been?

  He was considering her question. For a moment she forgot what it was she had asked him-about Laura Swan, yes. He seemed not at all put out. "I haven't really had time to think about it," he said. "Oh, I mean, I miss her, of course." He took a long drink of his gin and smacked his lips and grimaced. "No doubt any night now I'll wake up shedding buckets of tears, but so far, not a tinkle. Is it shock, do you think?" He was looking at her sidelong, almost merrily, the tip of his hooked nose seeming to quiver.

  "Yes," she said, as drily as she could manage. "It's shock, no doubt."

  He ignored her sarcasm. "That's what I think." He put his glass down on the bench seat under the window and clasped his hands behind his back and turned to her, putting on a face as grave and unctuous as that of a Victorian swain about to request a daughter's hand in marriage, and asked, "Will you go to bed with me?"

  SHE SAT ON THE BENCH SEAT BY THE OPEN WINDOW AGAIN IN THE dragon gown that had belonged to Sarah. The summer evening was at an end and what sunlight remained was a dark-gold glow against the tops of the houses opposite. Before, she had not known what to do, what to think, and now, afterwards, she still did not know. She had been brought to a standstill in midair on her tightrope, and she was unable for the moment to go forward or back. Leslie White's empty gin glass was beside her on the seat; she stared at it, frowning. This was only the second time in her life that a man had thrust himself into her. The first time it had been against her will, in violence, with a knife at her throat. Leslie White had been violent with her too, but in a different way. What had struck her was the seeming helplessness of his need; she might have been nursing at her breast a grotesquely elongated, greedy infant. Was this how it was supposed to be? She had no way of knowing. When it was over he was as he had been before, light and playful in his slightly menacing way, as if nothing at all had happened between them, or nothing of much importance, anyway. For her, everything was changed, changed beyond recognition. She looked out at the evening sky and the light on the faces of the houses as if she had never seen such things before, as if the world had become unrecognizable.

  She took up his glass and put it to her lips, touching the place where his lips had touched.

  What started her out of her reverie was the sudden feeling that someone was watching her. She looked sharply down into the street. There was an old man with a little dog on a lead; a couple strolled past arm in arm; an old tramp was picking through the contents of a
litter bin at the bus stop. Yet she was convinced someone had been there a second ago, standing on the pavement, looking up at her framed in the window. She even thought she had seen him out of the corner of her eye, without seeing him, or without registering him, at least not while he was there, a man in a-in a what? What had he been wearing? She did not know. It had been only the merest presence, the shadow of a shadow. And where had he gone to, if he had ever been there? How had he slipped away so quickly? She told herself she had imagined him, that she was seeing things. The light at dusk played tricks like that, conjuring phantoms. She stood up from the seat, though, and drew the window shut, and went into the bedroom to dress.

  In the days that followed she had the feeling again of being watched, of being followed. It was always unexpected, always vague, yet she could not rid herself of the ever-strengthening conviction that she was the object of someone's intense interest. Once in the shop she thought there was a person outside looking in at her and when she turned to the window seemed to glimpse a figure darting away. However, when she went to the door and looked up and down the street there was no one to be seen, or no one that resembled the figure she thought she had caught looking in at the window. She was walking in the Green one lunchtime when she suddenly had the strong sense that among the people strolling by the flower beds or lying on the grass there was one who was secretly observing her. She stopped by the bandstand where the Army Band was playing and scanned the faces in the audience to see if she could catch an eye covertly fixed on her, but could not. Again she tried to make herself believe she was deluded. Who would be watching her, and why? Then there came the night when she arrived home after being at the pictures and saw the body slumped on the steps outside the house, and her knees went weak and her heart seemed to drop for a second and rise again sick-eningly, as if on the end of an elastic string.