The noise in the room, a distant fuzziness, was her voice. It spoke of what her mind was full of: Mrs Belhatchet and her son in the garden he had described. Servants collected glasses that were broken and jagged; their hands had blood on them. Couples were found dead beneath trees. The garden was all as ugly as the room she was in now, as dirty and as unpleasant.
And then it was different. In the garden they came at her, Mr Logan of the night-school, Robert in his yellow sportscar, and all the others. The touch of their hands was hard, like metal; she moaned in distress at their nakedness. They laughed because of that, pressing her apart, grunting with the passion of beasts. Through blood she screamed, and the voices of the men said that her tortured face was ecstasy to them. They longed for her cries of pain. They longed to wrap her in the filth of their sweat.
Their voices ceased and she heard the fuzziness again, and then it ceased also.
‘Eh now,’ murmured the desk sergeant soothingly.
‘I can’t help it,’ she said, weeping. ‘I’m frightened of it, and disgusted. I can’t help it; I don’t know why I’m like this.’
‘Just drink your tea and stop quiet, dear,’ the policewoman suggested. ‘Best to stop quiet, dear.’
Eleanor shook her head and for a moment her vision was blurred. She closed her eyes and forgot where she was. She opened them and found that her vision had cleared: she saw that she was in a grimy police station with two ugly people. Tea was spilt over her suit and there were drops of tea on her shoes. Her office boss had given her a drug in orange juice: she had experienced certain dreams and fantasies and had conducted with him a formless conversation. She’d never be able to return to the offices of Sweetawear.
‘He floats away,’ she heard a voice crying out and realized that it was her own. ‘He lies there entranced, floating away from his fear and his disgust. “The truth’s in this room,” he says – when what he means is the opposite. Poor wretched thing!’
She wept and the policewoman went to her and tried to help her, but Eleanor struck at her, shrieking obscenities. ‘Everywhere there’s ugliness,’ she cried. ‘His mother loved him with a perverted passion. He floats away from that.’
Tears fell from her eyes, dripping on to her clothes and on to the floor by her feet. She wanted to be dead, she whispered, to float away for ever from the groping hands. She wanted to be dead, she said again.
They took her to a cell; she went with them quietly. She lay down and slept immediately, and the desk sergeant and the policewoman returned to their duties. ‘Worse than drink,’ the woman said. ‘The filth that comes out of them; worse than a navvy.’
‘She’s hooked, you know,’ the desk sergeant remarked. ‘She’s hooked on that floating business. That floating away.’
The policewoman sighed and nodded. They sounded like two of a kind, she commented: the girl and the chap she’d been with.
‘Kinkies,’ said the desk sergeant. ‘Extraordinary, people getting like that.’
‘Bloody disgraceful,’ said the policewoman.
Going Home
‘Mulligatawny soup,’ Carruthers said in the dining-car. ‘Roast beef, roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, mixed vegetables.’
‘And madam?’ murmured the waiter.
Miss Fanshawe said she’d have the same. The waiter thanked her. Carruthers said:
‘Miss Fanshawe’ll take a medium dry sherry. Pale ale for me, please.’
The waiter paused. He glanced at Miss Fanshawe, shaping his lips.
‘I’m sixteen and a half,’ Carruthers said. ‘Oh, and a bottle of Beaune. 1962.’
It was the highlight of every term and every holiday for Carruthers, coming like a no man’s land between the two: the journey with Miss Fanshawe to their different homes. Not once had she officially complained, either to his mother or to the school. She wouldn’t do that; it wasn’t in Miss Fanshawe to complain officially. And as for him, he couldn’t help himself.
‘Always Beaune on a train,’ he said now, ‘because of all the burgundies it travels happiest.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ the waiter said.
‘Thank you, old chap.’
The waiter went, moving swiftly in the empty dining-car. The train slowed and then gathered speed again. The fields it passed through were bright with sunshine; the water of a stream glittered in the distance.
‘You shouldn’t lie about your age,’ Miss Fanshawe reproved, smiling to show she hadn’t been upset by the lie. But lies like that, she explained, could get a waiter into trouble.
Carruthers, a sharp-faced boy of thirteen, laughed a familiar harsh laugh. He said he didn’t like the waiter, a remark that Miss Fanshawe ignored.
‘What weather!’ she remarked instead. ‘Just look at those weeping willows!’ She hadn’t ever noticed them before, she added, but Carruthers contradicted that, reminding her that she had often before remarked on those weeping willows. She smiled, with false vagueness in her face, slightly shaking her head. ‘Perhaps it’s just that everything looks so different this lovely summer. What will you do, Carruthers? Your mother took you to Greece last year, didn’t she? It’s almost a shame to leave England, I always think, when the weather’s like this. So green in the long warm days –’
‘Miss Fanshawe, why are you pretending nothing has happened?’
‘Happened? My dear, what has happened?’
Carruthers laughed again, and looked through the window at cows resting in the shade of an oak tree. He said, still watching the cows, craning his neck to keep them in view:
‘Your mind is thinking about what has happened and all the time you’re attempting to make ridiculous conversation about the long warm days. Your heart is beating fast, Miss Fanshawe; your hands are trembling. There are two little dabs of red high up on your cheeks, just beneath your spectacles. There’s a pink flush all over your neck. If you were alone, Miss Fanshawe, you’d be crying your heart out.’
Miss Fanshawe, who was thirty-eight, fair-haired and untouched by beauty, said that she hadn’t the foggiest idea what Carruthers was talking about. He shook his head, implying that she lied. He said:
‘Why are we being served by a man whom neither of us likes when we should be served by someone else? Just look at those weeping willows, you say.’
‘Don’t be silly, Carruthers.’
‘What has become, Miss Fanshawe, of the other waiter?’
‘Now please don’t start any nonsense. I’m tired and –’
‘It was he who gave me a taste for pale ale, d’you remember that? In your company, Miss Fanshawe, on this train. It was he who told us that Beaune travels best. Have a cig, Miss Fanshawe?’
‘No, and I wish you wouldn’t either.’
‘Actually Mrs Carruthers allows me the odd smoke these days. Ever since my thirteenth birthday, May the 26th. How can she stop me, she says, when day and night she’s at it like a factory chimney herself?’
‘Your birthday’s May the 26th? I never knew. Mine’s two days later.’ She spoke hastily, and with an eagerness that was as false as the vague expression her face had borne a moment ago.
‘Gemini, Miss Fanshawe.’
‘Yes: Gemini. Queen Victoria –’
‘The sign of passion. Here comes the interloper.’
The waiter placed sherry before Miss Fanshawe and beer in front of Carruthers. He murmured deferentially, inclining his head.
‘We’ve just been saying,’ Carruthers remarked, ‘that you’re a new one on this line.’
‘Newish, sir. A month – no, tell a lie, three weeks yesterday.’
‘We knew your predecessor.’
‘Oh yes, sir.?’
‘He used to say this line was as dead as a doornail. Actually, he enjoyed not having anything to do. Remember, Miss Fanshawe?’
Miss Fanshawe shook her head. She sipped her sherry, hoping the waiter would have the sense to go away. Carruthers said:
‘In all the time Miss Fanshawe and I have been travelling together there ha
sn’t been a solitary soul besides ourselves in this dining-car.’
The waiter said it hardly surprised him. You didn’t get many, he agreed, and added, smoothing the tablecloth, that it would just be a minute before the soup was ready.
‘Your predecessor,’ Carruthers said, ‘was a most extraordinary man.’
‘Oh yes, sir?’
‘He had the gift of tongues. He was covered in freckles.’
‘I see, sir.’
‘Miss Fanshawe here had a passion for him.’
The waiter laughed. He lingered for a moment and then, since Carruthers was silent, went away.
‘Now look here, Carruthers,’ Miss Fanshawe began.
‘Don’t you think Mrs Carruthers is the most vulgar woman you’ve ever met?’
‘I wasn’t thinking of your mother. I will not have you talk like this to the waiter. Please now.’
‘She wears a scent called “In Love”, by Norman Hartnell. A woman of fifty, as thin as fuse wire. My God!’
‘Your mother –’
‘My mother doesn’t concern you – oh, I agree. Still you don’t want to deliver me to the female smelling of drink and tobacco smoke. I always brush my teeth in the lavatory, you know. For your sake, Miss Fanshawe.’
‘Please don’t engage the waiter in conversation. And please don’t tell lies about the waiter who was here before. It’s ridiculous the way you go on –’
‘You’re tired, Miss Fanshawe.’
‘I’m always tired at the end of term.’
‘That waiter used to say –’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, stop about that waiter!’
‘I’m sorry.’ He seemed to mean it, but she knew he didn’t. And even when he spoke again, when his voice was softer, she knew that he was still pretending. ‘What shall we talk about?’ he asked, and with a weary cheerfulness she reminded him that she’d wondered what he was going to do in the holidays. He didn’t reply. His head was bent. She knew that he was smiling.
‘I’ll walk beside her,’ he said. ‘In Rimini and Venice. In Zürich maybe. By Lake Lugano. Or the Black Sea. New faces will greet her in an American Bar in Copenhagen. Or near the Spanish Steps – in Babbington’s English Tea-Rooms. Or in Bandol or Cassis, the Ritz, the Hotel Excelsior in old Madrid. What shall we talk about, Miss Fanshawe?’
‘You could tell me more. Last year in Greece –’
‘I remember once we talked about guinea-pigs. I told you how I killed a guinea-pig that Mrs Carruthers gave me. Another time we talked about Rider Minor. D’you remember that?’
‘Yes, but let’s not –’
‘McGullam was unpleasant to Rider Minor in the changing-room. McGullam and Travers went after Rider Minor with a little piece of wood.’
‘You told me, Carruthers.’
He laughed.
‘When I first arrived at Ashleigh Court the only person who spoke to me was Rider Minor. And of course the Sergeant-Major. The Sergeant-Major told me never to take to cigs. He described the lungs of a friend of his.’
‘He was quite right.’
‘Yes, he was. Cigs can give you a nasty disease.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t smoke.’
‘I like your hat.’
‘Soup, madam,’ the waiter murmured. ‘Sir.’
‘Don’t you like Miss Fanshawe’s hat?’ Carruthers smiled, pointing at Miss Fanshawe, and when the waiter said that the hat was very nice Carruthers asked him his name.
Miss Fanshawe dipped a spoon into her soup. The waiter offered her a roll. His name, he said, was Atkins.
‘Are you wondering about us, Mr Atkins?’
‘Sir?’
‘Everyone has a natural curiosity, you know.’
‘I see a lot of people in my work, sir.’
‘Miss Fanshawe’s an undermatron at Ashleigh Court Preparatory School for Boys. They use her disgracefully at the end of term – patching up clothes so that the mothers won’t complain, packing trunks, sorting out laundry. From dawn till midnight Miss Fanshawe’s on the trot. That’s why she’s tired.’
Miss Fanshawe laughed. ‘Take no notice of him,’ she said. She broke her roll and buttered a piece of it. She pointed at wheat ripening in a field. The harvest would be good this year, she said.
‘At the end of each term,’ Carruthers went on, ‘she has to sit with me on this train because we travel in the same direction. I’m out of her authority really, since the term is over. Still, she has to keep an eye.’
The waiter, busy with the wine, said he understood. He raised his eyebrows at Miss Fanshawe and winked, but she did not encourage this, pretending not to notice it.
‘Imagine, Mr Atkins,’ Carruthers said, ‘a country house in the mock Tudor style, with bits built on to it: a rackety old gymn and an art-room, and changing-rooms that smell of perspiration. There are a hundred and three boys at Ashleigh Court, in narrow iron beds with blue rugs on them, which Miss Fanshawe has to see are all kept tidy. She does other things as well: she wears a white overall and gives out medicines. She pours out cocoa in the dining-hall and at eleven o’clock every morning she hands each boy four petit beurre biscuits. She isn’t allowed to say Grace. It has to be a master who says Grace: “For what we’re about to receive…” Or the Reverend T. L. Edwards, who owns and runs the place, T.L.E., known to generations as a pervert. He pays boys, actually.’
The waiter, having meticulously removed a covering of red foil from the top of the wine bottle, wiped the cork with a napkin before attempting to draw it. He glanced quickly at Miss Fanshawe to see if he could catch her eye in order to put her at her ease with an understanding gesture, but she appeared to be wholly engaged with her soup.
‘The Reverend Edwards is a law unto himself,’ Carruthers said. ‘Your predecessor was intrigued by him.’
‘Please take no notice of him.’ She tried to sound bracing, looking up suddenly and smiling at the waiter.
‘The headmaster accompanied you on the train, did he, sir?’
‘No, no, no, no. The Reverend Edwards was never on this train in his life. No, it was simply that your predecessor was interested in life at Ashleigh Court. He would stand there happily listening while we told him the details: you could say he was fascinated.’
At this Miss Fanshawe made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a denial.
‘You could pour the Beaune now, Mr Atkins,’ Carruthers suggested.
The waiter did so, pausing for a moment, in doubt as to which of the two he should offer a little of the wine to taste. Carruthers nodded to him, indicating that it should be he. The waiter complied and when Carruthers had given his approval he filled both their glasses and lifted from before them their empty soup-plates.
‘I’ve asked you not to behave like that,’ she said when the waiter had gone.
‘Like what, Miss Fanshawe?’
‘You know, Carruthers.’
‘The waiter and I were having a general conversation. As before, Miss Fanshawe, with the other waiter. Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember my telling him how I took forty of Hornsby’s football cards? And drank the Communion wine in the Reverend’s cupboard?’
‘I don’t believe –’
‘And I’ll tell you another thing. I excused myself into Rider Minor’s gum-boots.’
‘Please leave the waiter alone. Please let’s have no scenes this time, Carruthers.’
‘There weren’t scenes with the other waiter. He enjoyed everything we said to him. You could see him quite clearly trying to visualize Ashleigh Court, and Mrs Carruthers in her awful clothes.’
‘He visualized nothing of the sort. You gave him drink that I had to pay for. He was obliged to listen to your fantasies.’
‘He enjoyed our conversation, Miss Fanshawe. Why is it that people like you and I are so unpopular?’
She didn’t answer, but sighed instead. He would go on and on, she knew; and there was nothing she could do. She always meant not to protest, but when it came to the point she
found it hard to sit silent, mile after mile.
‘You know what I mean, Miss Fanshawe? At Ashleigh Court they say you have an awkward way of walking. And I’ve got no charm: I think that’s why they don’t much like me. But how for God’s sake could any child of Mrs Carruthers have charm?’
‘Please don’t speak of your mother like that –’
‘And yet men fancy her. Awful men arrive at weekends, as keen for sex as the Reverend Edwards is. “Your mother’s a most elegant woman,” a hard-eyed lecher remarked to me last summer, in the Palm Court of a Greek hotel.’
‘Don’t drink too much of that wine. The last time –’
‘ “You’re staggering,” she said the last time. I told her I had flu. She’s beautiful, I dare say, in her thin way. D’you think she’s beautiful?’
‘Yes, she is.’
‘She has men all over the place. Love flows like honey while you make do with waiters on a train.’
‘Oh, don’t be so silly, Carruthers.’
‘She snaps her fingers and people come to comfort her with lust. A woman like that’s never alone. While you –’
‘Will you please stop talking about me!’
‘You have a heart in your breast like anyone else, Miss Fanshawe.’
The waiter, arriving again, coughed. He leaned across the table and placed a warmed plate in front of Miss Fanshawe and a similar one in front of Carruthers. There was a silence while he offered Miss Fanshawe a silver-plated platter with slices of roast beef on it and square pieces of Yorkshire pudding. In the silence she selected what she wanted, a small portion, for her appetite on journeys with Carruthers was never great. Carruthers took the rest. The waiter offered vegetables.
The Collected Stories Page 39
