A Weekend with Claude

by Beryl Bainbridge

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  A Weekend with Claude

  Beryl Bainbridge

  For my editor, Anna Haycraft

  1

  Two people had come to buy a desk.

  Claude had told them the date (it wasn’t very old), stated the price (no, he couldn’t go below that figure) and agreed with them (yes, it was a lovely desk). Then he walked away down the barn towards the open doors. There were two kinds of customers: the dealers who came to bargain and weren’t open to influence anyway, and the home lovers, mad for possession, who needed little encouragement.

  He stood looking out at his dying garden, at the stalks of his roses and the ragged trees that had almost lost their leaves, at the few last clumps of marigolds in tubs by the wall.

  He had bought the house and barn for his wife, Sarah, and their four children six years before. The children had put their toys in the rooms and their bicycles in the yard, Claude had acquired a dog and a cat, and in the end people came not so much to buy his antiques as to see his family and to envy him. Next door to the house was a pub and he made a great show of playing darts and buying people drinks. They all stood round him in a circle laughing at his jokes. Behind the laughter they were afraid of him, as well as envious.

  On the other side of the house was the girls’ boarding school where Lily, his friend, had gone as a child, long before he had met her. He had bought the house and moved in before he realised that she had gone to school there. Sometimes at night he would lie awake and think how strange it was that Lily had walked in crocodile in the Elizabethan gardens beyond his barn. When Sarah had left him he had telephoned Lily every night and sometimes two or three times during the day just to talk to someone, just so as not to be so alone in the house with the rooms strewn with toys and the cradle empty in the bedroom. He wanted Lily to come and visit him, but she lived up north and she had her own problems; all she could do was hold the telephone two hundred miles away and listen to him talking. She kept telling him that it would be all right, that in time it would stop hurting, that from somewhere someone was coming to him, just like one of those songs she was always humming, ‘Some Day my Prince will Come’, though God knows it was Lily who needed to believe that, not he. He kept telling her that it wasn’t love he wanted – not that ever again – but amnesia. Then Julia had come and tidied away the toys and put the cradle in the loft, hidden his cigarettes and nursed him back to health. Without Julia there would be no house, no barn and no business.

  Claude looked across the stone courtyard to the open door of the house and saw Julia pass quickly in red slippers, going into the kitchen to prepare lunch. Against the wall, pressed close to the dried stem of the wistaria, was his youngest son’s pram. It was a big pram, an expensive pram, with the edge of a white pillow showing at the hood. He remembered that his other sons had slept out their milky days in a second-hand pram bought for seven-and-six in Camden Town. A thrifty woman, Sarah, in many ways. Bending her golden head, heavy under its weight of hair, she had laid their children one by one in the cheap carriage on the soiled pillow and gone, melon-hipped and honey-mouthed, away from him into their house. Always away from him.

  Behind, in the barn, the woman was whispering, and Claude heard the man say, ‘Yes, but it’s just what we visualised’, and he moved his head, because he didn’t care at that moment to know what it was other people visualised. He slid his hand into the opening of his check shirt and caressed his breast, massaging the skin for comfort and from habit. He didn’t turn round or withdraw his hand when the man said, just behind him, ‘My wife and I have decided to take the desk.’

  The wife was opening drawers and rummaging inside them. Her fingers searched in the narrow darkness and found something. ‘Oh look!’ she cried, feeling the evidence first and then seeing it. ‘A photograph and a letter.’ She held them up in her greedy fingers and waved them about in the air.

  ‘Ah,’ said Claude, ‘yes, I’m afraid I put them there and forgot, only a few weeks ago.’ He moved regretfully towards her. Her scarlet mouth was open in disappointment, her face misted with powder. ‘So sorry, my dear,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing more historical than a letter written to me by a friend. It’s not much of a find. If you’ll look at the date you’ll see it was written in 1960. You know, in all my years in the antique business I’ve yet to come across anything of real significance.’

  The woman stood there, holding the letter and the snapshot out of his reach, not wanting to give them up. Claude would have liked to snatch the letter from her, to flick her meanly across the bridge of her tilted nose – there where the powder grains lay like pollen on her skin. They stared at each other.

  ‘We really should be going,’ said the husband.

  The woman’s arm came down at last. She pouted.

  ‘Come across to the house and have some coffee,’ said Claude, folding the letter and putting it and the photograph in his pocket. Without waiting for a reply, he led the way out of the barn and across the yard, his hand pinned like a brooch to his heart.

  Julia had been peeling potatoes and preparing the child’s nappies for washing. Because of the thoroughness with which she did everything, most ordinary household tasks took her far longer than was necessary. The nappies had been soaking all night and were now half-washed, before being boiled and washed yet again. They lay modestly in a blue polythene bucket by the sink and emitted no smell at all.

  ‘Coffee,’ said Claude, not unkindly, though he knew this would delay Julia even further and would make her irritable later in the day. ‘You are naughty, Claude,’ she would scold. ‘I’ve so much to do and you know how I hate getting behind my schedule.’

  ‘What a charming kitchen,’ said the woman. She peered with exaggerated interest at two china heads, two rustic sweethearts, cheek to apple cheek, attached to the whitewashed wall. ‘Oh how sweet! Aren’t they sweet?’ As she looked she kicked the polythene bucket, and a small slap of cold water spilled on to her foot. ‘Goodness,’ she cried and stood there while Claude knelt at her feet and patted her shoe with a dishcloth.

  Kneeling as he was, Claude felt the photograph in his pocket stiff against his skin, and beneath his skin his heart beating – beating rather rapidly with the effort of stooping.

  It didn’t seem so long ago since he had been young, or younger, since he had been two stones lighter, since his wife had left. She had walked so deliberately out of the door, without even a coat; and he had followed her down the street to the bridge and then stopped and watched her walk away from him over the river, her hands by her sides. She had moved out of his life without looking back, without bothering to wave. He had been so ill for a year after her departure over the bridge, out of his reach, that he hadn’t been aware of his gradual accumulation of flesh; it had been a surprise for him to find himself at last so large and bulky. Julia thought it was the drink. Probably it was, but privately he believed it was the body’s way of protecting itself against being beautiful ever again. There was a time, after all, to cease being beautiful and a time to cease being young, and for him it had been when his wife left him. If he had been less weak he might have been able to keep the children which, like her coat, she had forgotten to take with her, but he had gone into hospital and finally she had fetched them.

  Julia began to boil water for the coffee. ‘Only Nescaff, I’m afraid,’ she said and paused, watching Claude as if half expecting him to say it wouldn’t do. But he was busy opening a box which stood on the kitchen table, packed full of china he had collected earlier that morning.

  The man who had bought the desk was left standing in
the doorway. He had the feeling that if he spoke he wouldn’t get a reply, but he couldn’t keep silent. ‘Anything very interesting, old man?’ he said, and added quickly, to fill the void in which Claude went on unwrapping plates: ‘Shall I make out a cheque for the desk now, Mr Perkins?’

  Claude had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. His arms were square and hairless, elbow-deep in newspapers. ‘Yes, if you like.’ At the corner of his mouth he had sucked in a tendril of beard.

  There was no room to write on the table, and the only other surface, the draining board, was wet with soapy water. The man was forced to hold his cheque book high against the wall. He found his eyes level with the two china heads, with the two rosy mouths. As he half-turned to look at his wife, his hand slipped and the book fell to the floor beside the polythene bucket. The half-completed signature blurred. ‘Damn,’ he said, bending to retrieve the book and flapping it about in the air.

  ‘It’s quite all right,’ said Claude. ‘Don’t bother to write another.’

  He didn’t look up, and the cheque with its tear-stained signature lay on the table among the newspapers.

  Outside in the yard the baby woke and began to make small sounds of distress.

  ‘Claude darling, do get him,’ said Julia.

  ‘Look at these,’ he said. ‘Aren’t they nice?’ He held up one of the plates for Julia’s inspection.

  ‘Yes, they are nice.’ Head down, her spectacles misty from the steam of the coffee now in the cups, Julia put the sugar bowl on the table amid the papers, and a tin of biscuits.

  ‘Do sit down,’ said Claude to the woman. He gathered up quantities of newspaper and dropped them on the kitchen floor. The cheque went too. The man saw it float under the table and come to rest against the leg of a chair.

  ‘I bought these plates from a woman in the next village,’ said Claude. ‘I constantly buy for money objects that people no longer value. When I was younger I could hardly bear to part with anything I bought. Now I’m not so foolish.’

  ‘I suppose you’ve hung on to a few things,’ the man said, thrusting his fist into the pocket of his trousers. It was a damn fine desk and a damn fine house, but he didn’t know how to take this fellow. He couldn’t explain it, but the blighter seemed aggressive. And yet it had been he who had suggested they stay for coffee.

  ‘No,’ said Claude. ‘I haven’t. When my wife left me, she didn’t even take a toothbrush. But later, when I was ill, she sent a van and cleared me out, lock, stock and barrel.’

  The woman sat quite still on her stool at the table.

  Julia went out of the kitchen into the yard in her red slippers. The baby’s crying suddenly stopped.

  Presently she came back into the passage, and they heard her talking to the baby. ‘My little lamb, my little honey love, Mummy’s little honey cake,’ she crooned. She climbed the stairs, and a door closed and clipped short the sweet words.

  ‘Have you ever thought, man,’ said Claude, though he was looking at the woman, ‘how eatable are the words of endearment, how full of sugar? There’s a good reason for it, of course.’

  ‘Oh, what’s that?’ In spite of himself, the man put the question. He sat down at the table opposite his wife and stirred his coffee.

  ‘Simple,’ said Claude. ‘The body needs sugar – it’s the energy source. At birth a child undergoes six hours of hunger – sometimes more, but six hours is the maximum before the body experiences actual starvation.’

  ‘Really,’ said the woman. She had never had children. She had tried, but had failed.

  ‘It’s a fact,’ said Claude. ‘Then the child starts crying – crying because it’s starving – and the mother takes over, either with the breast or a bottle.’

  The man felt uneasy at the use of the word ‘breast’. He had a terrifying image of himself laid against his mother’s huge purple nipple. Saliva gathered in his mouth. He glanced at the tailored front of his wife’s costume and was aware of Claude saying:

  ‘A child that’s denied food when it cries is also denied love, I reckon. The withholding of food by the mother object is a withholding of love. And it doesn’t just stop there. Most mentally disturbed adults crave sugar – you know, sweets and sugary drinks, all the fattening things.’ He crumpled a piece of newspaper between his fingers and rolled it into a ball. ‘They’ve done some interesting experiments in America. They put three mental patients into a room with two doctors, who gave them the usual shock treatment to the mid-brain. Then they put all sorts of candies and sweets in front of the poor devils and watched them eat. Suddenly they removed all the food and the first patient screamed “For God’s sake, give us more love”, and the second said to the doctor “Please, Mother” and held out his hands.’ Claude opened his own hands in illustration, and the ball of newspaper dropped to the floor.

  ‘But what about the third man,’ asked the woman. ‘The third patient? What did he say?’

  ‘I really don’t remember, my dear.’

  ‘Do you really believe in all this neurotic nonsense?’ The man shook his head, as if to clear away doubts. He was surprised at the irritation in his own voice. There was something about this fellow Perkins that made you feel he was being personally vindictive. And he’d damn well let his own child cry long enough out there in the garden – if it was his child.

  ‘Certainly I do,’ said Claude. ‘There’s a great deal in it. Otherwise, why should you feel such resentment? We all suffer from the same sense of loss.’

  The man couldn’t think of a suitable reply. Sweat accumulated under the armpits of his newly laundered striped shirt.

  ‘That’s why you girls like having your breasts sucked,’ said Claude. ‘You know instinctively you’re giving the man both food and love.’ He leaned forward and put his arm round the woman’s shoulders and shook her. ‘It’s true, isn’t it, girl? It’s the truth, isn’t it?’

  She was consumed with embarrassment and excitement. It was as if he had shown her a pack of obscene photographs. His head was so close to hers that the curling strands of his beard touched her cheek. Her husband’s face appeared blurred in the little room, and his mouth was open. On his hand he wore a ring his father had given him, a gold ring with a dull green stone. She kept her eyes focused on it, because she felt that if she looked away the link between them would be broken and she would make some wanton remark to this bearded man with his arm so protectively about her shoulders.

  ‘It’s been most interesting,’ said her husband, frowning. ‘But it’s time we were moving. It certainly is time.’ He stood up and shook himself more securely into the jacket of his grey suit and heard the loose change jingle in his pocket. He was at once wholly himself and solid again. The man was probably round the bend, he thought. Clearly he had an obsession with women’s chests.

  Julia came back, bringing with her a smell of talcum powder. She was no longer pale or downcast; her lips and cheeks seemed to have filled out and gathered colour from the child.

  ‘I’m sorry to have been so long,’ she said, though she knew that her absence had probably been scarcely noticed. She made an affected gesture with her long fingers. ‘The baby, you know.’

  ‘They’ve bought the desk, the one I picked up in Leeds,’ said Claude, rising from the table. He lifted the pile of newly acquired plates and carried them to the sink.

  ‘Oh, how nice.’ Julia bent and began collecting newspapers from the floor.

  ‘My wife had a bit of a disappointment, though,’ said the man, watching his cheque being swept up with the rest of the debris. ‘She found a letter and a photograph in the desk, but they belonged to Mr Perkins.’

  ‘I did think it was at least an old will or a treasure map,’ complained the woman.

  Claude was putting detergent into the bowl in the sink and running hot water. ‘Instead of which,’ he said through the steam, ‘it was merely an old letter of Lily’s and a photograph I took in the garden that weekend in the summer.’

  ‘Oh, that one,’ said Julia. ‘
Where is it?’

  ‘In my top pocket.’

  Julia drew out the photograph and looked at it. ‘It seems such a long time ago,’ she said. ‘Poor dear Shebah.’ She laid it down on the table.

  The man stared at the photograph, at the two figures seated on the ground, a man and a girl. Behind them on a bench was an old woman with a bandage round her leg, and a man one seat away. It wasn’t a very good photograph, but he pointed at the face of the girl and said, ‘Who’s that?’, half-thinking it might be the missing wife gone with all the furniture – and small blame to her, by the sound of it.

  ‘It’s a friend of Claude’s, someone very dear to him,’ Julia said. ‘He’s known her for years, haven’t you, Claude?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘For years.’

  Which was the truth. For years and years he had known Lily. He and Sarah had had two rooms and three children when he had first met her. She had lived up at the Heath end of Parliament Hill and they had lived at the bottom. Sometimes she had baby-sat for them, once she had cut Sarah’s hair. She had told him about the student she was in love with, back home in Liverpool, who wasn’t in love with her. In the secure position of one who already knew the pain of unrequited love, he had advised her to forget him. ‘But I can’t,’ she told him. ‘It hurts.’ Her next sweetheart, an hotel waiter, had proved no more adequate at loving her in the way she desired, and she had felt hurt again. She leapt from one piece of suffering to another. She insisted that Claude meet all her lovers, because he might be able to persuade them to love her properly. ‘You,’ she had said, ‘are my best friend. You’ll know how to put my case.’ He hadn’t cared for the student, or for the waiter, or for the half-dozen suitors who followed after. He had cared for Billie least of all. Edward, the much-needed Edward, she had brought to him four summers ago, along with her comrade Victorian Norman and her friend Shebah.

  He looked down at the plates in the sink and lapped water over the painted flowers. Behind him the man picked up the photograph, scrutinising again the blurred features of the girl. It was as if he held the camera, as if he were about to click the shutter out there in that time past. The lens of his eye blinked and recorded her image, her dark mouth, her white cheeks, her slightly smiling eyes looking straight into his …