by Stan Barstow
On the other side, under the standard lamp, a record-player sits on a square table with long-playing records underneath. There are only half a dozen and I pull them out and sit down on the sofa again, looking at the covers as Donna comes in again with a small tray with two cups of coffee, a bowl of sugar and a plate of biscuits.
I hope I'm not being nosey.'
'Be my guest.'
'Thanks.'
She puts the tray down on the hearthrug.
'It's only instant, I'm afraid.'
'That's my usual tipple.'
'Sugar?'
'One please.'
She sugars the coffee and passes me a cup which I balance on the arm of the sofa.
'Biscuit?'
'Er, no, thanks.'
She sips at her coffee and looks at me.
'Does my small record collection reveal any unsuspected quirks of personality, then?'
'No, it just shows you're interested in music.'
Doesn't any record collection?'
'No,' I exchange a look with her. 'I used to work in a record shop.'
'Oh?'
'Yes. There's music and what passes for music.'
She says' Mmm,' and drinks some more coffee while I look at the records. Ella Fitzgerald singing Jerome Kern, Sinatra's Sinatra, Beyond the Fringe, My Fair Lady, soundtrack recording of West Side Story, the Francescatti recording of the Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn Violin Concertos, back to back, the Sibelius Concerto, and the joker in the pack, Rachmaninov's Second Symphony.
I hold that up.
'I don't think I know this.'
'Do you know the piano concertos?'
'Yes.'
Same Rachmaninov, but a bit more of a piece, if you know what I mean. It's lovely. I heard it on the wireless one day and ordered the record. Lovely Russian melancholy.'
'What's the passion for fiddle concertos?'
'I used to take lessons. I was never very good.'
'The good old artistic background again, eh?'
'With pigs.'
'Yeh, mustn't forget the pigs.'
'It's true, though, that the arts - music, books, painting - have always been there, part of my life.'
'You were lucky.'
'Was I?'
'Yes. I had to struggle for what I've got. What little I've got, I should say. Culture's a bit of a dirty word where I come from.'
Oh, it is in a lot of places, you know. It depends an enormous amount on individual families.'
It was the old man I worked for in the record shop who first led me to music. He took me to concerts, and that. "It's like a wonderful voyage of discovery," he used to say, "with magic over every horizon. There's all the music in the world waiting for you to find it." He was right, too. I've had a bloody marvellous time.'
'Do you take your wife to concerts?'
'No ... I don't go much nowadays .. . Who did the picture? Your mother?'
'Yes, it's one of hers. What do you think of it?'
'I don't really know.'
'It usually provokes strong reactions.'
'I suppose I'm indifferent.'
'Can you be indifferent to a painting like that?'
'You'd be surprised what I can be indifferent to. I didn't say I could ignore it.'
I drink my coffee and glance at the time.
'I suppose I ought to be off.'
'It'd perhaps be as well.'
I wonder how I ought to take this. Does she mean because of the letter-writer or what I said earlier?
'Do you think I ought to peep between the curtains and see if there's a figure in slouch hat and raincoat lurking across the street?'
'Do you think it is a man?'
'I don't know. I thought it was women who went in for that kind of thing, but God knows who'd want to get at me.'
'You haven't got some woman scorned in your recent past?'
'I've only been down here ten minutes. Give us a chance!'
She stands up as I get my coat and pull it on.
'I'll tell you what, though. Would you let me take the letter?'
'Sure.' She picks it up out of the hearth where she put it aside and hands it to me.
'I'll have a closer look at them both later. I shall have to do something about finding out who's at the bottom of it. I can't make a move without thinking somebody's watching me.'
'Let's hope they're satisfied and don't bother any more.'
'Yes ... Anyway ..." I look at her, 'it's not going to stop me doing what I want to do.'
She knows that I mean seeing her. She returns my look and says, 'That's up to you.'
But I resist asking when I will see her again, thinking there's always the Mitre and that there's a way in which the letter to her has done me a good turn, letting me see her alone again and giving me a chance to make a small move. The next move will have to wait its turn.
So I think, not knowing that it's nearly on us, giving us just till we reach the door.
There, a quick' Well, so long. Thanks again. I'll see you around' would get me out. But her fingers are on the handle and some happy accident of me standing on the wrong side of her in the narrow hall as she opens the door a couple of inches brings us suddenly very close together and for two important seconds we freeze as her eyes stay on me in a deep, grave look. Then I've pushed the door shut again and my arms are round her and her mouth's under mine, mine saying into her hair as we break:
'Donna ... Oh, Donna, Donna.'
In a moment she holds me off, her look still serious but now with an added element of concern.
'You know, Vic, this can't be good at all for you.'
I shake my head. 'Too late, love.' There's something wild and altogether marvellous exploding inside me.
'It'll get worse before it gets better.'
14
If I have a mental picture of her from those early days - the best days - it's of her laughing. They're the best days because although there's better yet to come it seems to arrive in isolated times that are hedged round with a tension and a sense of oppression that the first weeks don't have - in spite of that anonymous watcher who seems to be always behind us and who drives us out of town to places where we're less likely to be seen. There's fun in life and joy in just being with her in the tunes when she can get away from the theatre. Joy in knowing she wants my company and the certainty that there's a moment soon to come that I've no intention of rushing after, preferring to let it arrive in its own good time and knowing it'll be all the better for the saving.
Sometimes she's laughing at something that's happened at the theatre; sometimes at herself; sometimes at me. It's a good thing to be able to make a person laugh, especially if you love her. There's a streak of the clown in me that comes easily to the top when, as now, I'm happy, in love and, usually, I've had a couple of drinks. But sometimes I find myself feeling a fool, which is different from playing one, and about fifteen years old when all I want to be is the efficient, masterful male.
We're coming back from out of town one Sunday night - the only time Donna can get away for a full evening - when the car gives a sudden lurch and she has to hang on to the wheel to stop us going into the ditch. She slows down and stops.
'Phew, I didn't care much for that, did you?'
'What's happened? A puncture?'
'It felt like it. Better see.'
She gets a torch out of the dashboard compartment and we get out and look at the offside rear wheel.
"That's it, all right. How's your spare?'
'Okay, as far as I know.'
'Let's have it out.'
We get the spare out, along with the tools from the boot, and as I'm knocking the hub cap off to get at the wheel nuts, Donna's fitting the jack in position and starting to crank.
'If you wait a minute I'll do that for you.'
'I'm capable. I've changed wheels before.'
'Aye,' I say straining against the tightness of the nuts, 'I know you're self-sufficient.'
'I didn't say that. I
just meant I can change a wheel.'
You haven't changed this one recently. The nuts are stuck hard.'
They'd be tightened with a power tool when I had the new tyres put on.'
'It feels like it.'
'Can you manage?'
'This one's coming.'
Five minutes later, when the job's done, I'm sweating under my overcoat and I want to pay a call. I go to the wall at the side of the road and look down into the field.
'Where are you going?' Donna asks.
'Over this wall.'
'What for?'
'Don't ask silly questions.'
There's a bank of deep snow under the wall and a dark patch of what looks like firm earth. I jump down on to this and it gives under me. I fall backwards, stopping myself from going full length by putting my hand out. It goes up to the elbow in cold snow. When I climb back I'm sure that things aren't what they ought to be. Donna's back in the car and I open the door and ask her for the torch.
'What's wrong?
'I'm not sure, but I think . ..' I shine the beam on my legs and feet and put my hand in the light.
'It's soot!'
'What?'
'It's soot.'
'Soot? It can't be.'
'It is, y'know. I'm covered in the bloody stuff.'
'You'd better get in.'
'But I can't with this stuff all over me.'
You're not going to walk home, are you?'
'No ... I suppose not.'
I get in and shut the door.
Can you beat it! Of all the spots I have to pick that one. What the hell's it doing there anyway? .. . Donna ...'
She's turned away from me and I can feel her shaking.
'Donna, are you all right?'
She's laughing. She's killing herself over it. She can't speak.
'Would you like me to do it again?'
She shakes her head as the laughter bursts out of her in a sudden whoop. She feels for hankie and wipes her eyes.
'Oh, Vic, you are priceless.'
'You know me, love- owt for a giggle. Head first would make a novelty, wouldn't it?'
This only sets her off more. There's something very infectious about her laughter at any time and I feel the sourness going as the funny side of it strikes me.
'Oh God,' she says after a while. 'If you could have heard yourself- how outraged you sounded.'
'Well, I mean ...'
She starts the engine.
'We'd better get back and clean you up.'
'It's all in my shoes and everything.'
'Shut up,' she says. 'I shan't be able to drive.'
'I suppose I can sneak in without anybody seeing me,' I say as the car moves off.
Darling, you can't go home like that. You must come back with me and get the worst of it off.'
Which doesn't prove all that easy as we find when we get to the flat and Donna attacks my trousers with a brush in the kitchen while I wash my feet in the bathroom. She comes in with the pants over her arm as I'm standing with one foot up in the washbasin.
'I wish I had a camera.'
'I wish I'd a clean pair of socks.'
'Do you want me to wash those through for you?'
'They'll never be dry in time for me to put them on.'
'Your trousers will do for now, but they'll have to go to the cleaners.'
'What the hell do you suppose it was doing there?'
'It was put there for the express purpose of catching Vic Brown, of course.'
I have to laugh.'All right.. .Have you got any talcum powder?*
'In the cabinet.'
I open the cabinet and look at the bottles and jars. Her things. I think then of her moving about with her record-player, books and picture to wherever the work is, independent, a real person, and I'm suddenly very touched. A great tenderness for her comes over me. When I go into the living-room she's got coffee waiting and a record on the gramophone. We sit together on the sofa.
'You know, this relationship's all the wrong way round,' I tell her.
'Why is that?'
Well, you've got the interesting career, the car and the flat, and you even put the seductive music on the gramophone.'
'Do you find Frank Sinatra seductive?'
'I'd find God Save the Queen seductive if I heard it with you.'
I'm watching a little pulse beat in her throat above the neck of her jumper. I reach out and touch it, then slide my hand round the back of her head and gently pull her nearer. I want her -now. And she knows it. She's not laughing now as she looks at me.
It can't be true. It's not me who's there with her, holding her close, feeling the warm flutter of her breath on my cheek and the sheen of her skin under my hands. No ...
But it's me a few moments later, spent and sagging before I've hardly touched her, who's apologizing wretchedly, 'Oh, Donna, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.' Her fingers are in the hair in the back of my neck, reassuring in their movement. 'Never mind, never mind.'
'It's just not my night, love.'
'It doesn't matter.'
No, perhaps it doesn't. But we've crossed another bridge and I know that things can never be quite the same again.
Part Three
15
The hotel corridor seems endless, twisting and turning past bogs, bathrooms, linen cupboards and doors marked Staff', with the room numbers on plaques which are confusing enough to suggest that the bloke who had put them up didn't start his counting from where I set off; 260 is on the floor below me and, I find eventually, at the very end of the corridor. It occurs to me that I might find a quicker way to it. It doesn't matter now, in the middle of the evening, but I shall feel conspicuous later on. I'm very green at this kind of thing.
At least I know she's here because her name was written three lines above where I signed mine in the register, which stopped me from having to ask for her room number and drawing any more attention to what I'm positive is the general air I'm carrying of being a bloke on what's commonly known as a dirty week-end.
She opens the door to my tap and lets me in. Her hair is all awry as though she's been giving it an intensive brushing but hasn't put it in place yet. She smells warm and sweetly clean under the blue dressing-gown as I give her a hug and a kiss. For a moment we look into each other's eyes and smile with something like quiet glee - like kids who've set up a joke that's just about to come off.
Did you have a good journey?'
'Yes. I missed the tail end of the rush hour.'
'How long have you been here?'
'About an hour and a half.'
'Eager beaver!'
'Mmm.' She tosses her head in a teasing way.
I haven't been here long. Just enough to have a wash and change my shirt.'
'You're ready to go out, then?'
'Yep.'
'I shan't be long now. I thought I'd have a bath while I was waiting for you.'
She's across the room now, picking underclothes out of her case. She puts on her suspender belt and briefs under cover of her open dressing-gown with her back to me. Then, still turned away, she slips the gown off and, like all women seem to do,leans into her bra, giving me a leisurely view of her back and, in the dressing-table mirror, a glimpse of her breasts, the shadows in the room with only the bedside light lit, throwing their spacing into dusky relief. I'm revelling in the mixture of modesty and intimacy in the performance while I'm wondering if she realizes the effect it's having on me, and that it's not the best way to get me out for the next hour or two. When she's pulled her frock down over her head and shaken her hair free she asks me to do her up.
'What good is it having a man around and doing up your own zips?' she says, smiling at me through the mirror as I close the back of the dress from waist to neck. I slide my arms round her from behind and snuggle my cheek against hers.
'Is that all this man's good for?'
'At the moment.'
'You shouldn't do these reverse stripteases if you don't want interfering with.'
<
br /> She laughs. '"Interfered with." I always think that's a marvellous expression.'
'Don't evade the issue.'
She turns to me. 'We are going out, though, aren't we?'
'Yes.'
'I mean, it'll be better later.'
'Yes. We don't want another fiasco.'
'You should forget about that.'
'I can't. It was so bloody humiliating.'
'Nevermind.'
You know, I'm not like that really. I'm actually pretty good, if I do say so myself.'
'Yes, darling, I know. You told me.'
'It's just that I love you so much I can't believe such a bloody marvellous thing can really happen.'
She shushes me with her forefinger lightly on my lips.
'It'll be all right. You'll see.'
She replaces her ringer with her mouth for a second, then moves away and starts to put on her stockings.
Where would you like to eat?'
'Anywhere. You tell me. This is your town.'
'We could go up into Soho.'
'Have you put the car away?'
'Yes, I have, actually. It's in the garage.'
'Well, let's go somewhere within walking distance.'
'There's Earls Court. That's not far and there are one or two decent places there.'
'Okay, Earls Court it is. We'll stroll down, call in the first nice pub we come to for a sneck-lifter -'
She swings round, her mouth open with delighted surprise.
