by Helen Harris
I must say, it is lovely coming out at the end of the day and it still being light. In the winter, I sometimes felt I was becoming a myopic night-time animal, for I never seemed to see the light of day. Only I can no longer tell from the street whether Rob is in or out. He’s usually out to be honest, these days, now that he’s between projects. He’s planning his research trips for the new play. He’s going to be away a good deal over the next two or three months, researching youth employment on Merseyside and in Scotland.
I told him Mr Charles had taken me out to lunch. He said, ‘Well, I hope you didn’t stint yourself.’ He still sees Mr Charles as just a stereotype of an old-fashioned employer, who exorts loyalty from his little band of staff thanks to a disgracefully exploitative system.
*
Imagine what Eastbourne must be like these days, full of trippers and all sorts. She didn’t for a moment suppose it could have stayed miraculously unchanged all these years. It would have gone downhill, of course, like everywhere else. There would be juke-boxes and one-armed bandits all over the place and doubtless they’d have put up concrete monstrosities on every spare bit of ground. But they couldn’t have done that much to the front, her front. The sea would have seen to that, after all, and the town council surely, which took such pride in appearances.
Ever since Alison had put the idea of going back to Eastbourne into her head, it had been preying on her. Of course, Alison had not actually mentioned Eastbourne. She had said, ‘… into the country or to the seaside’. But once she mentioned the seaside, it was perfectly obvious where they would go. Last Sunday, Alicia had raised the subject of her own accord.
‘You weren’t really serious, were you, about us going off somewhere together on an outing? I worried afterwards maybe I’d disappointed you. But you must see it’s an impossible notion.’
But Alison had become all eager again and insisted that she was absolutely serious, that it was perfectly possible if they waited a bit for the better weather – and had Alicia thought of anywhere that she would like to go?
Alicia didn’t say Eastbourne. She said angrily, ‘But what about my bad foot? And my chest? And who’d keep an eye on the house? You know what this area’s like nowadays.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ cried Alison. ‘The house would be all right for a day. And, anyway, you’re going to the chiropody clinic next week, aren’t you? You promised me.’
So Alicia went, although not without a protest delivered in lieu to the ambulance driver, who arrived to collect her half an hour late.
It was years since she had been out of the neighbourhood and although the hospital wasn’t far away, the drive there felt like a proper journey. Once she was over the indignity of being driven in a vehicle provided by Miss Midgley, and the glazed stupid expressions of her travelling companions, she enjoyed the ride in spite of herself. In fact, it gave her a taste for travelling further afield and in the days following her hospital appointment, she felt unusually restless and cooped up.
It had been especially upsetting of course to end the journey in a hospital, even if it was only the chiropody outpatients clinic. She had felt a sense of medical foreboding, made worse by the choking smell of disinfectant and boiled blankets which caught in her chest and made her cough. Maybe from now on her only journeys would be to hospital? If she didn’t look sharp.
Pearl came to clean the day after her visit to the clinic and Alicia welcomed her with open arms. She had always had a soft spot for Pearl really. She ushered her into the kitchen and made them both a pot of tea. She asked Pearl if she had any travel plans for the summer.
Pearl laughed, a great deep hoot of derision. ‘Travel, Mrs Queripel? That’ll be the day!’
‘Not going anywhere on your hols?’ Alicia insisted. ‘With the children?’
Pearl gave her a funny look. ‘How could I? Have you any idea how much it’d cost to take all of them off somewhere? Anyway, they’re too grown-up to come away with they parents; they go their own ways now.’
‘I’m thinking of getting away,’ said Alicia.
It was rewarding to see Pearl’s lips fall ajar.
‘I rather fancy a day at the seaside,’ she continued.
‘Uh huh?’ said Pearl. She took a big swallow of tea and she didn’t say anything else.
‘I haven’t been anywhere for over fifteen years,’ Alicia said aggressively. ‘I reckon it’s my due.’
‘You’re right,’ Pearl said agreeably.
‘So when the opportunity arose, I said to myself, “Take it.”’
‘That’s it,’ said Pearl. She looked into her teacup as if she thought she might perhaps find an explanation inside. ‘So where are you off to, then?’
Alicia said airily, ‘Oh, to the seaside or into the country. Just for a change of scene, you know.’ Then, as if it were a casual afterthought, she added, ‘I thought maybe Eastbourne. Have you ever been there?’
Pearl shook her head.
‘Oh, it’s lovely,’ Alicia told her. ‘Lovely. Or at least, it used to be.’
Pearl said unexpectedly, ‘Sometimes I think about going home on a visit. But it’s just a dream really, you know.’
Alicia brushed this odd remark aside. ‘There’s no saying what they might have done to it, of course. But, once upon a time, it was perfection.’
‘How do you plan to get yourself there?’ asked Pearl.
Alicia gave her a condescending smile. ‘Oh, my young friend will take me,’ she said, as if explaining something perfectly obvious to a simpleton. ‘You know, young Alison.’
‘So when are you thinking of going?’ asked Pearl.
Alicia felt sorry for Pearl, really she did: struggling to make ends meet and to bring a little colour into her life with her outfits and her hats. Alicia saw her off at the end of the morning with a cheery wave. Poor Pearl! She remembered that once, years and years ago, a coloured lady had wanted to stay at the boarding-house, a theatrical lady too, but Alicia had lied to her that it was full. It was October. She and Leonard were rattling around the empty rooms of Regency Villa, listening to the stormy autumn sea on the shingle and their overdraft rising, but she had lied that it was full. She remembered the black lady’s face, grey with cold, looking back at her and repeating without any apparent anger, ‘Full, huh, full?’ She felt an odd sort of queasiness as she turned away from the front window, Pearl in her shimmering blue mac still swaying for a moment on her retina, and it took her a minute or two to realize that it was a pang of conscience.
The idea of Eastbourne preyed on her at night too. Her dreams, which had mainly been nightmares since she moved down to the front room, started to include tantalizing scenes by the sea. She welcomed them, but sometimes they vexed her. She was having lunch with Leonard in Fusciardi’s Coffee Lounge – a nice piece of fish with mashed potatoes and peas – when suddenly the dear old waitress staggered in bringing her the biggest ice-cream in the world for afters and everyone in the restaurant turned round and applauded. Then the ice-cream somehow turned into a wedding cake, but it was all hard and frozen and Alicia found she couldn’t get her dainty silver cake fork into it at all. Another time, she dreamt she was walking along the pier arm-in-arm with, of all people, Harry Levy, on a bright but breezy day when the wind caught her straw boater and blew it ahead of them towards the waves. Harry leapt nimbly forward and lunged after it with a sportsman’s supple twist. He brought it back towards her but instead of handing it to her, he tossed it straight on to her head and cried, ‘Goal!’ and laughed and laughed. Alicia woke from these dreams doubly distressed to find herself high and dry on her settee. She would close her eyes again, desperately straining to get back to sleep, and when she didn’t succeed, she would lie in the evil maroon shadows and wonder miserably if she would ever set eyes on the sea again.
*
The day after Pearl’s visit, Alison gave her one of her surprise evening telephone calls.
‘Rob’s gone away and I’m all on my own here.’
; Alicia exclaimed, ‘Gone away? Wherever to?’
Alison said, ‘I thought I told you. He’s gone up to Scotland to do some research for his new play.’
Alicia was very briefly distracted from the idea of Eastbourne which Alison’s voice had brought smartly back to mind. ‘How long’s he gone for?’
‘A week. He’ll be back next Thursday.’
Alicia tut-tutted. ‘That’s a long time.’
‘He’s got quite a lot of work to do up there. As well as just wandering around, you know, getting the feel of the place.’
‘Doesn’t think twice about leaving you all on your own, does he?’
‘I’m not a baby.’
Alicia drew breath sharply. She said huffily, ‘No one said you were. I just don’t think it’s very nice swanning off like that for a week at a time and leaving you in that flat.’ (She had never seen the flat, of course, but she knew its rooms were big and spooky, that at night you could hear the sharp shots of the central heating system and that there were skylights just made for cat burglars.)
‘He hasn’t gone “swanning off”,’ said Alison. ‘It’s work. Anyway, I don’t mind.’
‘Don’t you?’ said Alicia. ‘Well, I think you should. What are you doing with yourself in the evenings?’
Alison said, ‘Sewing. Catching up with correspondence. Doing a bit of extra work for my boss.’
‘That’s not a way to spend the evenings at your age,’ said Alicia. ‘Isn’t there someone who could take you out on the town? What does your Robert get up to?’
Alison giggled. ‘Propping up the hotel bar, I expect. No, I’m sure he’s got contacts, people to see.’
‘What kind of people?’ asked Alicia.
‘Oh, for the play, you know, sources. People who can tell him about things.’
‘And keep him company, I shouldn’t doubt.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! What exactly are you trying to suggest?’
‘I’m not trying to suggest anything,’ Alicia answered primly. ‘I just hope he’s keeping himself out of mischief, that’s all.’
That night, again, she dreamt something she would much rather not have. Like all the other seaside dreams, it started harmlessly enough. It seemed to be a tea-dance in one of the smart sea-front hotels. All the dining-room tables and chairs had been pushed back to create the dance floor and there was mood music from a four-piece band. But she and Leonard were the only pair on the dance floor. They were twirling wearily round and round, all by themselves, like a clockwork couple on a musical box, and they couldn’t stop because the musicians wouldn’t stop playing. It was almost frightening; the tune they were playing didn’t have a beginning and an end like an ordinary dance tune. It just went on and on and on, repeating itself, and she knew that she and Leonard were trapped on the dance floor, doomed to carry on twirling until they dropped. She started to look around for help; maybe someone at one of the tables could stop the band? It was then she noticed, taking her eyes off Leonard’s unflinching face, that the tables were all empty too. She began to panic. Far away in a distant corner – for the ballroom had become enormously big – Harry Levy was sitting alone watching them. He had set up a telescope on the tablecloth, one of those seaside telescopes you put money into to admire the view, and he was looking at them through it, strumming his fingers in time to the music and grinning. Grinning! Alicia was too proud to call out to him. She held her head high and grimly she went on twirling. Swivelling to and fro, Harry’s telescope followed them. He had a pile of gold coins on the table cloth beside it, chocolate pennies in gold foil, and he could go on feeding his telescope as long as he pleased. Alicia looked the other way. She danced-two-three, danced-two-three and she pretended that she hadn’t noticed Harry. She could feel the beginnings of a stitch. Her feet were killing her. But she clung on to Leonard for dear life. She gazed up at him and she pretended that she had never seen hide or hair of Harry Levy.
*
It did feel distinctly odd in the flat with Rob gone, and I realized at one point that I had never spent a night there on my own before. Maybe that was why I felt such a stranger there all of a sudden. It was rather spooky and I stayed as late as I could at the museum the whole week he was away.
One night, I was still at my desk when Mr Charles came out to go home. He stopped in the doorway of my cubbyhole and mimed astonishment.
‘Alison! Whatever are you doing here at this hour?’
‘Oh,’ I said vaguely. ‘Oh, I had something I wanted to finish off.’
Mr Charles shook his head incredulously. ‘This won’t do at all.’ He took his big watch out of his pocket and held his head back straight and stiff to squint at it, the way long-sighted people do. ‘It’s getting on for eight, do you realize? Time all right-thinking people were long on their way.’
‘Gosh,’ I said lamely. ‘Is it?’
I hoped faintly that he might jovially ask me what I was up to after work, so that I could answer, ‘Nothing,’ a bit sorrowfully and he could respond, ‘Well then, why not come and have a quick drink with me?’
But Mr Charles would never dream of prying into my private life. He slipped his watch back into his trouser pocket and hesitated in the doorway. ‘Really, I should call it a day, if I were you,’ he insisted gently.
I stood up promptly. Perhaps, I thought boldly, he’s not only discreet but shy? I gave him a presumptuous helping hand. ‘Come, Mr Charles,’ I protested teasingly, ‘I know perfectly well you’re only going home to carry on working in comfort.’
He blushed. Mr Charles blushed! ‘Ah, there you’re wrong,’ he exclaimed. ‘On any other night you might well have been right, but tonight, as it happens, I have a dinner engagement.’ He got out his watch again, even though he had only just looked at it, and he added hastily, ‘And I’m running late.’
‘Have a lovely time,’ I said feebly, as he plunged out into the corridor.
Rob rang me from Glasgow that night, or perhaps it was the next. He sounded uncharacteristically low.
‘It’s fucking depressing, what’s happening up here,’ he said. ‘And I miss you.’
I told him cheerily there were three letters for him already and he asked me to read them to him. When I had finished, he asked, ‘And what are you up to? You’re not being unfaithful to me with Mrs Queripel, I hope?’
I went and had lunch with her that Sunday, since we had all day, and as the weather was brightening up I suggested a short walk afterwards. It’s true, her neighbourhood isn’t very nice. You can imagine all sorts of sinister things taking place there after dark. But I thought the airing would do her good. We walked arm-in-arm to the corner shop, Mrs Q leaning on me far more heavily and obviously than she needed to, I think, so as to make it quite clear to the Indian shopkeeper and to everyone we passed on the way that she and I were a pair.
*
‘It was ironic really that we should have had to leave the coast for Leonard’s sake, when he was the one who had been so keen to settle there in the first place. I mean, I could take it or leave it in those days. But we were neither of us getting any younger, I suppose, and Leonard had started to suffer with his joints. He was collecting his pension already, even if I was still in my prime. To tell the truth, we never made a runaway success of the boarding-house. We neither of us had much of a head for figures and Leonard wanting to have everything of the best, with our means, didn’t help. I don’t rightly know where we went wrong, though. I like to think we offered too much for too little. All those cooked breakfasts! Theatrical people have such appetites, you know. Well, we kept our heads above water, but never much more. Then Leonard began to endure agonies with his joints. Osteoarthritis, they said it was. And there were incidents too.’
‘Incidents?’ asked Alison.
‘The doctor advised us to look for a drier spot, a more sheltered climate. He said to me in confidence that if Leonard didn’t move somewhere more agreeable to him, he would be bent double before he reached his three-score years and ten
. Bent double; that fine upright man. Yes, incidents. I suppose you imagine nothing much ever happens in a boarding-house, do you? You’d be surprised. Over the years, I should think we had everything bar murder. Nothing to hush up, mind you, nothing to be ashamed of. But still, enough to put you off a place. In those last years, somehow, troubles seemed to come thick and fast. It was as if everyone who came to stay with us brought their troubles along with them. It got me down, and I think it affected Leonard too, although he would never have let it show. We had quite a few members of the company to stay with us over the years, of course. Naturally, if they were in that part of the world, they came to us. We gave them preferential rates, you see, although of course they came for old time’s sake; the prices weren’t the only reason they came. It brought back mixed memories, revived old disagreements which would have been best forgotten. Clara Willoughby – did I ever mention her? She came. And others, who shall be nameless. And we had our regulars too, not theatre people, who used to come at their own time every year until, willy-nilly, they were more old acquaintances than guests. You couldn’t help getting involved. So, in a way, Dr Scott’s advice was a blessing in disguise; it meant we could sell up without admitting defeat. Leonard was such a proud man. He would never have admitted that things hadn’t worked out for us. Once he had an idea in his head, there was no shifting him. He would have stuck to his guns if it killed him. Leonard Queripel was a man of his word. But Dr Scott let us off the hook. We were leaving on doctor’s orders, you see.’
‘Wasn’t that infuriating sometimes?’ asked Alison, ‘Him always being so convinced he was right?’
Alicia gave her a sharp sideways look. She did often wonder if Alison swallowed everything which she told her. She seemed to, but there was no knowing. Out of the blue, she would ask such unnerving questions sometimes, and usually about Leonard.
‘Not in the least,’ said Alicia. ‘I looked up to him, remember. Where Leonard led, I followed.’
