A Weekend with Claude

by Beryl Bainbridge

  ‘Oh darling, darling,’ I cried, because there was no sign of Edward, and Claude had talked about a worse agony to come, but she certainly didn’t look agonised – in fact rather peaceful and rosy in that striped nightgown. You can never be sure though, for the lighting is so poor and my eyes are so weak, and she might have been upset. She told me that she just felt like a cigarette and wasn’t tired and that he, Edward, was asleep. They just don’t seem to need sleep. Not tired after a whole day of talking and travelling and drinking! And the emotional energy she must have expended during the last hour or so. I simply haven’t had enough of that sort of experience to know where their energy comes from. Lily says it’s because she re-charges herself through her emotional life. I just don’t know. Every day I undergo a thousand emotional scenes and yet I never cease to have a feeling of weariness and inertia. Norman and she used to argue about it for hours until my head throbbed. She said it was the way in which energy was directed that determined whether one was refreshed or not. She said that energy was nothing but the instinctual power of sex, which could be sublimated into other useful activities like bathing a baby or painting a picture, but that sooner or later the sublimations would gradually lead to a mood of tiredness. Norman said it was all rubbish, that it was a question of the food we eat, the amount of protein in the diet. I do feel Norman could be right, though I despise him so, and he certainly has never bothered to sublimate himself, not for one day. Lily never used to express herself so clinically until that American came along with his terrible theories. I always knew I was an hysteric, that I had an unstable temperament, thank God, of which I was quite aware before she got hold of all those books on neuroses, but she did tell me that the word hysteria came from the Greek for uterus. It’s all so fantastic, so unbelievable, so unpoetic. That little star that shone through the broken pane of glass in that rotting house was unbelievable too, but so pure, so grandly scientific and cosmic, but all this other business is so bound up with bowels and tumours and unpleasant things – and I ought to know, because when I had my operation they removed almost everything, including my hysteria too most likely. It did use to be different. There was another mode of living, of courtship; even if I myself have never experienced it, it does exist. People had houses and gave dances and hung little lanterns in trees, and fragrance billowed outwards when the waltzing began. Lily could never compete in such circumstances. She admits the possibility of a relationship with a man would cause her acute embarrassment if she couldn’t interpret it physically. She never walks anywhere. Apart from going up and down the escalators in Lewis’s she never takes any exercise. To be fair, there was a time when she and Norman, after midnight, would run twice round the Cathedral, but that was nothing but eccentricity.

  Ah, the walking I did. My feet were so tantalisingly small, my hair so satisfactorily thick, a great bunch of it hanging down my back. Walking along the promenade, a group of us chattering away, and always such heroic sunsets, and later, a single star coming out and the wind beginning to blow more strongly as I craned my head backwards and stared upwards out of weak eyes. Then suddenly, like a firework display, the whole sky would be encrusted with planets and globes and stars, and the moon, perfectly round, would rise above the black, oily river. I won’t say it was all beautiful. Some of my so-called friends were dreadful fools. Their banality robbed my heart of heights of happiness. There were times when I felt oppressed by a sense of omission, a feeling that I was utterly alone, that the words I mouthed continually were words behind glass and nobody could grasp their meaning – at least not the fools I knew. They made me feel weary all right. Some time I must ask somebody who knows about these things. I never fail to be surprised when I read that great people, great artists, feel exactly as I do. But nobody I actually meet or attempt to communicate with ever feels a damn thing. Perhaps Lily does a little, when she’s in a serious frame of mind – between men. While I was curious last night as to why she wasn’t safely tucked up with Edward, I was really more anxious about her and Claude being together. All those deplorable things I had told him. And he really did seem a shade aloof with her. Oh, he smiled and gave her a cigarette and some more to drink, but he went over at once to talk to Norman and left her sitting alone in the armchair. Julia came out of the bedroom, though I can’t remember her going in, and I tried to talk to her. I held her hand for a moment, and it was dry and burning. I said how much Lily admired Claude (I was lying) and how they understood one another so well.

  ‘Yes, they do, Shebah,’ – such a polite little voice, though it’s only the way Julia shapes her vowels so beautifully – and I began to fear lest I was doing more damage. She is his mistress, and the relationship between Claude and Lily is rather strange, and maybe Julia is distrustful anyway. So I just gabbled on, audacious as ever, allowing my voice to become a little more contralto, thinking what the hell did it matter anyway, as in a very few hours I would be banished from this silver and china room and forgotten in my own hovel. Lily sat quite still with her eyes closed and a glass in her hand and a meaningless little smile curving her mouth. God knows what she was smiling at. Yet I did have a vague sorrowful emotion in my heart. If I have a heart. Other people of my age (no, I can’t bear it) have hearts that split and wheeze and thunder, necessitating long weeks in bed and an enormous amount of attention. Tender mauve grapes arrive hourly and are placed in colourful heaps on the bedside table. Bunches of daffodils, invalid yellow, are stuck in vases on the window ledges. I can’t stand the anguish of being without an ailing heart. That that too should be denied me! One day without preliminaries the beating will just stop, the blood stop flowing. No one will guess, let alone enquire. I shall lie frozen for ten days without a heartbeat in an empty house. The forlornness of it!

  I half expected Edward to run in and pick up Lily without a word and carry her away, and I told Julia as much, but she said she thought he was probably fast asleep, as if she knew out of her own experience that this would be the case. Such a nice girl and very well mannered. We talked about the theatre and about her job before she met Claude, and about Claude’s improved health – mental, that is – though as far as I can see he’s still raving, and about the dogs and the names of all the animals’ relations and how when they are in pup you leave them quite alone (I’d leave them alone at all times) and about Lily. Not very much about Lily – only she did let slip that Billie had actually come here one Sunday when Lily was staying for a couple of days. It was only a matter of weeks ago, and Lily and he had gone into another room to discuss things.

  ‘What things, darling?’ I said.

  But she was evasive, perhaps she really didn’t know, and then she made the observation that Billie appeared to be charming but evidently wasn’t. I didn’t tell her what I thought of Billie, the rotten swine, talking to me as if I was nobody, always glad to see the back of me, when I had more right, more need to be there, than he had. Grudging me a couple of hours in a damp eroded kitchen. I hadn’t a large flat to return to, or two devoted parents, or friends and relations sending parcels once a month regularly as clockwork, with home-made plum cake and tins of tobacco, a new pair of socks – just as if he hadn’t a large enough salary to buy his own. Why is it that those in receipt of more than their fair share of the vanities of life can’t bear the very poor even a tiny allotment of comfort? When he went away and I used to stay sometimes at Lily’s overnight, in that vast sinful brass bed, with all those poor stuffed animals staring with pebble eyes from each corner of the room, and Victorian Norman banging up and down stairs all night, I used to get such pleasure from thrusting my fist backwards through the head bars of the bed and knocking the photograph of Billie from its nail on the wall. Lily would mutter from the sofa under the mound of duffel coats and curtains that served her as bedding, ‘What’s up, Shebah?’ and I would reply, ‘Oh God, I don’t know, the whole place is like Grand Central Station,’ and think of Billie face downwards with his well-shaped nose full of dust, under the bed on which so many nights he mu
st have lain supreme. I didn’t really want to stay overnight at Lily’s. There were so many things I ought to have done, my bit offish to be placed in salted water, my body to attend to, my eye drops, but it was all too much to cope with, and it was always so cold, or snowing or blowing a gale, and Lily would say so enticingly, with such warmth, ‘No, Shebah, dear Shebah, do stay. You can’t go back there.’ And of course latterly it was just impossible to return there, even to think about it. The house was empty, and Eichmann Hanna had been removed by the authorities and everything was falling apart and the gas was cut off and the electricity cut off, and the dust and the dirt blew heedlessly up and down the stairs. There was water pouring through the roof and snow beginning to pile up in the hall. I ask you, what human being could live like that – persecuted by day and by night by all the alarms of a battlefield? They just wouldn’t believe me when I told them what it was like. And then one night Norman walked me home and I couldn’t open the door, and finally when we did enter and Norman shone his torch, there was sheet ice from vestibule to roof, a stairway of glass, and icicles hanging in petrified ribbons from the rotting banisters. Norman made a little noise, an intake of air, almost a sound of admiration. He stood playing his torch on the whole glacial scene. ‘The mind boggles,’ he said at last, and took me back to Lily. After that they were kind to me and I did stay for a longish time, but gradually there was a new dimension – or rather an old familiar dimension – of impatience, and then sly hints, and then they began to talk about Rooms to Let in front of me, so that I went out one morning and knocked at the first door that took my demented fancy and rented a room for the following Monday. I did think that their humanity would have made them pause and see how impossible it was for me to go on alone, but then Lily was leaving and Norman was going to take over the ground floor, and no one mentioned the idea of me living in Norman’s old room, and how could I ask them? How could I, choking as I was? So I just moved into another little hovel and left all my books and my records and my bits and pieces to rot in that refrigerator along the road. Of course it did thaw out eventually, but I hadn’t the heart to go back and see all my belongings stained and obliterated and his inscriptions in my books washed out by nature’s superhuman tears. Once I had gone from Lily’s, removed so to speak from the necessity of having my suffering smelling to heaven right under their noses, they were good to me again. My appointments continued as before, and since Lily was recovering from the traumatic experience of Billie’s return and sudden departure, we weren’t disturbed. There was a difference of course. She seemed very withdrawn and would tell me nothing, absolutely nothing, about why she’d been ill and what had occurred. I had thought she was staying with her mother, and then one night I called round to ask Norman if there was any news and there was Lily passing down the hall, all skin and bone and eyes glittering and a mouth closed in a tight line as if she never intended to speak again. I was so taken aback I said, ‘Oh darling, I had no idea, just pretend I’m not here,’ and she walked on down the hall and shut the door behind her. I found myself hovering like a moth in the dim hall, not knowing what to do. Norman was no help, he was going out somewhere or other and no, he couldn’t talk and no, I shouldn’t stay, and yes, Lily was best left alone, till he almost forced me out of the house into the street and walked off whistling towards the bus stop. A few days later she did send me a little note asking me to call, and though she wasn’t her old self (like now) she was grateful for my company. Of course I was hurt she wouldn’t, couldn’t, take me into her confidence. It had something to do with sweets, though whether she was alluding to the Sweetness of Life or merely to Quality Street, I’ve never fathomed. I did so want to understand what had happened to her. Now I realise it was just like everything else – no reason, no depth, meaningless. All that she would say to me were some lines from Dover Beach (inaccurate, I’m sure):

  Ah love, let us be true to one another,

  For the world that seems to loll before us

  Like a land of dreams hath neither hope,

  Nor peace, nor certitude, but yelps of pain …

  repeating the lines over and over like an evocation for help – though how a schoolmaster could understand Lily and her emotional difficulties, I fail to see. Sometimes a spasm of pain would seize her face, already beginning not to show the bones so prominently, and then she would stew up more tea and busy herself doing something practical. She did seem to be off men for the time being, but then she was packing up, and every time I came to see her there were fresh clues to her impending departure. Pictures would be gone from the room, a perfect square of dust outlining their old place on the wall. A stuffed animal sat on a chair in the hall and books in bundles began to climb up the stairs. In the bathroom, furniture appeared, freshly painted and covered over with newspaper. The moose which had pointed its antlers above the brass bed lay in the bath, the black tip of its snout resting pensively on the chipped enamel. The Christmas ball that had hung round its neck for years lay in splinters upon the torn lino. It was like visiting a graveyard; the whole house began to assume an air of memory and dedication to the past. Norman walked in and out silently. Flowers died in vases, the vases were removed and packed away and the flowers stayed propped up against the wall, cinnamon-brown with decay. It was a relief when it ended, when she left on the train for her worse agony to come, as Claude would have it. It was a relief to think that finally my peace, my certitude, my Friday night had seeped away like water down a drain, leaving only debris behind. But then, after all, I found she hadn’t abandoned me. Victorian Norman has taken up, like a ritual handed down by his fathers, the ceremony of my Friday night. It’s kind or it’s cruel. I can’t decide.

  I was just about to tell Julia last night about a play I had been in, when she said she ought to put the kettle on, though that was a lie because I never saw a bloody cup of tea till this morning. When I turned to look at Lily there was only Victorian Norman sitting in an armchair, legs crossed. No sign of Lily, no sign of Claude. Gone like the dear dead days beyond recall. There was no use asking Norman for an explanation, so we just looked across the carpet at each other, him in his armchair and me on the sofa, heads sunk on our respective breasts, eyeing each other if not with affection, at any rate with understanding. ‘Ho, ho, my love,’ he said insanely, wobbling his foot in its splendour of shiny leather. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a reply. He laughed and closed his eyes and leaned his head back. Not an unpleasant face really, taking it all in all: perhaps a slight reflection of everyday life, of present-day life. I could just see him pleading for an embrace, mouth gently pursed. Not from me, naturally, but from some cool, efficient girl like Julia. Where have the men gone, I wonder? The splendid army captains in their peaked caps with their reckless ways? Norman might have been the hero in some pre-war musical, with his foppish hair and his brows arching up like two wings and his well-kept hands folded delicately on his lap. Not that he’s good-looking by any means. Pathetic, rather. Hardly more than a child.

  Norman began to snore. With each reverberation his upper lip trembled. A fly landed on his forehead and he woke and sat up and asked me, ‘Where’s Julia, Shebah?’

  ‘She’s putting the kettle on, darling,’ I answered, noting the little dab of spittle at the corner of his mouth. My eyes seemed to be seeing far more clearly than usual. The leg of the piano, the one nearest to me, was shaped like the calf of a ballet dancer. Footless, it pirouetted and bulged with muscle.

  ‘What’s up, old girl?’ Norman said.

  Inconceivable he should be talking to me. Old girl of mine, he might have sung, old pal of mine, I’m weary and lonely, it’s true. Before I could reply he stood and stretched himself and went downstairs. Like a stage direction for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Edward entered the room in pyjamas, the hem of his dressing-gown dragging across the carpet. Where do they get all this clothing from, I wonder? He looked out of the window and then went into the bathroom. I heard water gurgling into the basin. When he came out he
was smoking a cigarette. He flicked a little mound of ash tidily into the hearth and went to stand at the window. He cleared his throat.

  ‘Do you know where Lily is?’ he asked.

  ‘God knows,’ I cried. ‘Leaping from bed to bed, no doubt.’ I hadn’t really expected to say that – the words just shot out.

  ‘A lovely night,’ he said, after a moment. He had his back to me.

  ‘Yes, dear, a lovely night for some,’ I said.

  Such children in their observations, their ability to be articulate about the obvious. I felt overdressed not being in night attire. The door downstairs opened. The alarm bell shattered the room. With a faint hum of irritation the fly rose in the air and spun under the ceiling. With a sense of purpose, God bless him, Edward went to the head of the stairs and stood with folded arms. A sob, or perhaps a laugh, from half-way down, and then Lily with chilled shoulders and remote face appeared like an apparition. Edward went into the guest-room and Lily followed. Pretend I’m not here, I might have said. There was no need, she wasn’t aware of me. The most disheartening thing about all this coming and going and change your partners and weekends in the country, is that there’s no one, no one at all, to whom I can unfold this tale in all its magnitude. I simply wouldn’t be believed. Or comprehended. It would be casting pearls before swine. I suppose I might drop to my friend, Mrs Malvolio, that I spent the weekend in an antique shop – the marvels hanging on the walls, the dear blue china plates rolling round the shelves. The praying angel would be appreciated. But can I possibly repeat that most of the guests spent half the night wandering about in night attire, that the host let fall two oval tears upon his checked shirt? Not to mention that before the night ended a hundred pounds of damage had been done, and that at dawn a bullet, whining like a bee, sped to my palpitating flesh.

  No sooner had Lily and Edward removed themselves than Claude arrived half-way up the stairs, unclothed it seemed. The bare breasts came into view, nipples like raisins embedded in the white flesh.