by Jack Higgins
‘But why did I behave like that?’ I said. ‘Like some mad rapist on the loose.’
‘A slight exaggeration.’ He started to fill his pipe, a new affectation. ‘You’ve got to learn not to let your frustration get the upper hand. No point going at it like a bull at a gate. Females are like rare china. They need delicate handling. They don’t like being mauled.’
He said a few more things which I can’t recall, and finally gave me a book on how to achieve marital bliss which he assured me I would find most enlightening, and threw me out.
When I got home, I sat in the kitchen with a pot of tea and read the book through, or rather the relevant sections. It was obvious that I had a great deal to learn, particularly about the female of the species and how to switch her on.
When I went up to my room, I sat by the open window, watching the rain lancing through the lamplight, smoking, and thinking decidedly erotic thoughts, which did me no good at all. Sleep was impossible so I did what I always did at such moments, got out my foolscap pads and favourite pen and got down to some hard writing.
I had put away my previous effort, the eighty-thousand-word Hemingway parody, and was now into the second chapter of a novel of life in Occupied Germany as a national serviceman. As always, when the words took control everything faded, even Helen.
But I couldn’t write all the time, and she filled my thoughts to an obsessional degree during the following two days. The desire for her became a kind of constant itch that simply wouldn’t go away.
I was one of the first into the Trocadero when it opened at seven, and waited impatiently at a point on the balcony where I could see everything at the right end of the hall. It was even quieter than Tuesday and there was a curiously muted air to everything. From seven-thirty to eight was a period of living hell, a slow realization that she wasn’t coming. By eight-fifteen I was in a state of abject misery and capable, I think, of leaping over the rail to the floor below.
I went to the counter and got a coffee, and as I turned, she hurried along the balcony towards me, still wearing her coat, her handbag over her shoulder. Her face was flushed and she was slightly breathless, as if she had been running.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t get away any earlier.’ And then, by way of further explanation, ‘My mother can be a little difficult at times.’
I just stood there, staring at her, unable to believe she was really there. ‘I didn’t think you were coming,’ I whispered and then the cup started to rattle in the saucer I was holding.
She moved very close and put an arm around my neck, her face against my shoulder. I could feel her heart beating, or was it mine? It didn’t really matter. I put the cup and saucer down on the table and walked her along to the cloakroom, where I got my trenchcoat and we left.
About a quarter of a mile along a side road near the Trocadero was a small wood beside a stream. Known as Priory Grange, it was run by the city parks department and was a favourite haunt of courting couples.
I kissed her once in the entrance before moving inside, and we followed a path through the dark trees, arms entwined about each other, and finally emerged by a greystone wall at the top of a rise on the edge of a small hill.
The moon was about three-quarters full, the wind stirred the grass gently, perfumed with pine from the trees below. There was a hollow on the other side of some rhododendron bushes that was completely secluded. We paused there to kiss again.
‘Put your coat on the ground,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll sit down.’
I had been holding myself in tightly, but the moment I got down beside her I cracked, pushing her down against the ground, crushing her to me.
‘Gently, darling, gently,’ she said and stroked my face with one hand. ‘There’s no need to be rough. No need at all.’
She looked lovely, her face pale in the moonlight. It could not be happening, any of it. I told myself that as she drew me down. The moment I entered her, the tension of the past few days exploded, Ava all over again.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘What for?’ She kissed me firmly on the mouth. ‘It sometimes happens that way. There’s nothing wrong. You’ll soon learn.’
There was kindness in her voice and genuine concern. I’d heard the phrase wife, mistress and mother. Now, for the first time, I sensed just what lay behind it.
She seemed the most wonderful human being in the whole world to me then as we lay there in the moonlight. After a while, in the middle of one particularly passionate kiss, she rolled over on her back again, taking me with her.
This time it was different, a perfect matching. I murmured foolish, impossible things in her ear between the kisses, and then her hands tightened behind my back and her entire body shook with a suddenness that took me with her.
After a while, she sat up and arranged her clothing, then she put a hand to my face in that inimitable gesture of hers. ‘Perfect.’
I asked her again for a date, but she shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Oliver. It just isn’t possible at the moment. I can manage Tuesday night again at the Trocadero. I’ll try not to be late.’
I had to be content, but then in the state I was in I would have accepted anything, and we went back down through the trees and along the road, our footsteps echoing from the pavement.
I once read somewhere of a theory that each man can expect only a certain measured amount of happiness in this life and no more. If that be true, then God help me, for I must have used up an inordinate amount of my own ration during the period that followed.
Other things were happening to me, of course. Important things. These were, for example, the first two months of my brief career as a schoolteacher, but that time, on looking back, seemed all Helen.
It was an autumnal affair. Sharp, crisp evenings, a hint of woodsmoke in the air, fog crouching at the ends of the streets. Life, for a while, became the Trocadero and Helen, three times a week, for after that first week she started to come on Fridays also. Strange, but she would never go anywhere else, not even to the cinema, and things followed a very definite routine. We usually danced until nine o’clock. This was followed by a couple of hours in the field above Priory Grange wood, then at eleven I would walk her to the tram.
We must have gone through a reasonably dry spell for, unless memory plays me false, we were not often rained off. We made love constantly, and with increasing expertise on my part for, as the old saying goes, practice makes perfect.
But very quickly she came to mean more to me than simply the physical side of things. She was Helen. The scent of pines in the darkness, the wind through the grass, kindness, concern, love. Yes, she loved me. I was convinced of that and took a childish delight in my new-found ability to give her so much pleasure. And the simple truth was that I loved her as well.
I blossomed, became a completely different person. There was a new assurance, even Jake commented on that. Aunt Alice, noticing my happiness, told me that Jupiter was moving through a very fortunate phase for me.
But others noticed the difference. Girls at the Trocadero. Sometimes I’d have the odd dance or two while waiting for Helen, and the attitude now was completely different. Lots of easy conversation and plenty of mild flirtation. I could have been away with any number of girls because I had changed, by some mysterious alchemy, into a man who had been places and done things.
But everything has to come to an end sometime. A sad fact, but quite inescapable for all that. On the other hand, life does have its compensations and the lesser gods have a habit of allowing us to sample at least the quintessence of a thing, before taking it away from us completely.
As I have said elsewhere, Uncle Herbert seldom left the house, but a bad attack of bronchitis gave him a troublesome cough, something he could not afford, having been gassed at Ypres. Aunt Alice, despite her more eccentric activities, had never weakened in her concern for him, and with the doctor’s blessing took him off to Scarborough in a hire car for some sea air.
I was left a
lone to fend for myself, and didn’t do too badly for there was plenty of choice in the larder, in spite of rationing. I tried some tinned whalemeat one night, a delicacy new on the British market, large quantities having been imported earlier that year to alleviate the meat shortage. The taste of the stuff put me on the side of the whale conservationists for life, and I spent the rest of the week on a diet of beans and chips augmented by school dinners and the odd meal provided by Jake’s mother.
There were other possibilities in having the house to myself and I raised the matter with Helen when I met her at the Trocadero on Tuesday. Quite simply, I suggested that we spent Thursday evening indoors. The possibilities seemed endless and I felt sure she would agree for it was wet that week.
But she wouldn’t hear of it and I accepted with as good a grace as I could muster, for I’d experienced on too many occasions the futility of arguing once she had made up her mind.
On Thursday night it rained, a steady drenching downpour that kept us inside the Trocadero till closing time. When I took her down to the tram stop, we sheltered in a shop doorway as we waited.
As the tram came, she turned to kiss me and said, ‘I’ll be earlier tomorrow, Oliver. Seven o’clock. Wait for me outside, will you?’
She was gone before I could take it further and I crossed to my own tram stop vaguely disturbed, for in all the time I had known her she had always met me inside the Trocadero. But all was revealed, for when I arrived on the following evening, some five minutes late, she was already waiting for me, a small leather vanity bag in one hand.
I kissed her briefly on the cheek. ‘What’s all this then?’
For the first time since I had known her she seemed shy and uncertain of herself. ‘I’m staying the night with you.’
I took a deep breath. ‘You mean the whole night?’
She nodded. ‘Is that all right?’
Which only goes to prove that even the best of women are capable, at times, of asking the most stupid questions imaginable.
She made an excellent supper for us. We sat in the parlour and played Monopoly, and she tried a little Chopin on Aunt Alice’s old square Schiedmayer piano, a relic of Empire if you like, for inside it said in faded gold lettering, Specially made for the climate of India.
Later we went up to the turret room together. I used the bathroom first and was in bed when she came in, which meant that I could savour that most intimate of all experiences, a woman undressing for bed.
I had never seen her naked before. It was a new experience and not just sexual. More than that, much more. Something quite profound that touched the very heart of things. When she came over to the bed, she sat on the edge and ruffled her fingers through my hair. Beyond, in the moonlight, I could see our reflection in the wardrobe mirror and beyond that, in an infinity of mirrors. Some trick of the light, I suppose, yet it gave me an uneasy feeling.
We had breakfast and I saw her to the tram by eight-thirty the following morning, for she had told her mother she was staying the night with a girlfriend after attending somebody’s annual dance in Bradford, and had promised to catch an early train home.
I had never seen her look prettier. She kissed me briefly as the tram rattled down the hill and ground to a halt. The conductor reached for her arm as she stepped on the platform.
‘Tuesday,’ she called as the tram pulled away.
But I was to see her again before that, for early on Sunday evening, Jake came round to look for me. His mother’s brother, a prosperous wool merchant, was staying with them for the weekend and had offered him the loan of his car for the evening, a pre-war Riley saloon.
Jake suggested a drink in the country at a Wharfedale pub he’d often talked about but which I had never visited. I agreed. Time and chance again, I suppose.
It was a pleasant little village by the river, and the pub at that time still retained a lot of its old world charm. It was fairly busy. Mostly locals, but there were at least half-a-dozen cars drawn up outside when we arrived.
I was halfway through my first pint, sitting in the window seat, and Jake had gone to prise some decent cigarettes out of the landlord. I watched idly as a car drew up outside, another pre-war model, but a Bentley for all that.
There were two men in the front seats, two women in the rear, a happy foursome, all good friends to judge by the laughter. Helen was the first one out and stood there waiting for the others, nicely turned out in a light-green dress with matching coat.
The man who took her arm had greying hair and looked fifty. Well-dressed, prosperous. Some sort of businessman perhaps. They passed so close to the open window that I could have reached out to touch them. Close enough for me to see the wedding ring on her left hand. There was a kind of inevitability to it, for there was nowhere to run. I sat there, waiting. The door opened and in they came.
I heard the grey-haired man, presumably her husband, say, ‘And what about you, darling?’
She asked for a sherry and he moved to the bar, and in the same instant she saw me. Her heart may have missed a beat, but certainly she gave no sign, could not afford to, for the other man had given her a cigarette and was now proffering a light.
So many things made sense now. Though what precisely were the circumstances which had forced her out three nights a week to seek whatever it was she needed elsewhere, I would never know. Certainly her husband, if such he was, seemed pleasant enough, and she smiled with real affection when he handed her drink to her.
Jake returned with the cigarettes. I stood up and emptied my glass. ‘Let’s try somewhere else. This is getting too busy.’
He nodded, swallowed the rest of his beer and led the way out. I paused at the door and glanced back, for the last time, for there would be no more Tuesday nights at the Trocadero, I knew that.
For a moment her companions had their heads together, and that mask of hers slipped, a kind of mute appeal on her face, the hand with the wedding ring pushed forward across the table.
I smiled once with all the reassurance that I could muster. I think she understood. I hope so, for I owed her so much. It may have been my imagination, but I fancied a kind of relief on her face as I turned away.
I never set eyes on her again.
4
IMOGENE
A jut with her bum would stir an anchoret.
WILLIAM CONGREVE
IT WAS YEARS BEFORE the term Blackboard Jungle became notorious. When it did, I always felt that I knew exactly what they were talking about having served at Khyber Street.
It was a depressing business from that first Monday morning. A friend of Jake’s, noticing us waiting for a tram at the park gates, gave us a lift into town in his car. He dropped me about a quarter of a mile from the school, but at a point where I had to approach it from a different direction than was to become normal.
I picked my way through an area which had been badly hit by bombing in the war, an undulating brick-field with, here and there, the odd row of houses still standing. Somewhere in the distance there was the sound of the sea breaking on the shore, an impossibility surely. When I reached the edge of the brick-field, the ground dropped steeply into a carpet of narrow streets, terraced houses, the air thick with morning smoke, and the source of that noise became plain. It was the roar from Khyber Street.
The yard, small as it was, was divided by a brick wall topped by wicked rusting spikes. Girls on one side, boys on the other, for rape and worse was expected at an early age. The boys’ yard seemed crammed to bursting point. Certainly I had to use physical force to get to the entrance and the noise was unbelievable. It was more like a mob howling at some palace gate than anything else. An unnerving experience.
Varley, the ginger-haired boy from the day of the interview, and his bovine friend whose name, as I learned later, was Hatch, lounged against the door, kicking out at any smaller fry who came anywhere near. I was prepared for trouble, my loins girded to meet it. However, Varley did everything but touch his forelock, opening the door for me with scrup
ulous politeness.
‘Mornin’, sir!’ he said gruffly. ‘Hope you like it here, sir.’
‘Why, thank you,’ I told him and went inside, considerably moved by this evidence of a sunnier side to his nature. It only went to prove, of course, that most human beings were essentially decent under the skin.
The door to the woodwork room was open and my friend in the brown overall was standing at one of the benches lighting a pipe.
‘You didn’t think better on it?’ he called.
I moved into the room. It was smaller than I had imagined. Ten ancient wooden benches, tools in racks along the walls, brown-painted cupboards and, even here, the statutory blackboard on the wall behind the desk.
‘Oliver Shaw,’ I said and held out my hand.
‘Wally Oldroyd.’ He grinned. ‘Intelligence, wasn’t it? I was in the paratroops myself. Comes in useful round here at times.’
He started to lay tools neatly out on the bench, which I immediately took to be some kind of dismissal. I could not have been more wrong for, as I was to discover, he was one of the kindest men imaginable. A sort of latter-day Fabian trying to come to terms with a world gone mad.
‘I suppose I’d better report in,’ I said.
‘Staffroom’s top of the second stairs,’ he told me as I moved to the door. ‘Brace yourself, lad. It isn’t much. I make my own tea here, break and dinner. You’re welcome anytime you feel like it.’
He obviously didn’t expect a reply, was already busy at one of the cupboards, his back to me, so I went out and climbed the stairs.
The staffroom was unbelievable, a small cubbyhole with a window at one end, at floor level so that it was necessary to bend down to look out of it. There was a gas ring on a table in one corner and a cubicle of hardboard in the other which I discovered, to my astonishment, contained a lavatory.
Carter stood by the window drinking tea with two other men, a cigarette dangling from the centre of his lips. There was something close to relief on his face when I entered. Perhaps he had imagined I might cry off at the last moment. In fact this was very probably the right interpretation for, as I soon discovered, there was a high staff turnover at Khyber Street. Few people with anything about them stayed longer than a year.
