A Place With Two Faces
Josephine Mann
© Josephine Mann 1971
Josephina Mann has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1971 by Hodder Paperbacks Ltd.
This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
1
London
2
Kilruthan
3
A Warning
4
The Walk On The Moor
5
Pisky-Led?
6
The Breakdown
7
The Poppet
8
The Flight In The Fog
9
An Ally
10
The Esbat
11
The Black Mass
12
Death To The Tourists
13
The Catharsis
14
The End
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1
London
I’ve got to get away, thought Jenny Maxwell, as she watched another seventy-three draw from the curb half empty. The shivering queue gazed up Oxford Street, their eyes searching for the long overdue eighty-eight. There was no sign of it and, hope temporarily abandoned, they shuffled a little and then resumed their patient wait, frozen into a numb submission.
He’s going to destroy me, thought Jenny. It’s going to destroy me. The pain had pursued her all day. She had typed Mr. Kearsley’s uninspired letters about lost consignments and damaged goods with only a tiny part of her consciousness, leaving the rest submerged, flooded and clouded with pain. It’s madness to go on like this, she thought, I must stop seeing him, change my job, break away.
A surge of anticipation ran through the wind-pierced queue. The long-sighted had observed another bus trundling toward them.
It’ll be another seventy-three, thought Jenny for whom physical discomfort had become an almost welcome counterirritant, distracting her momentarily from the anguish of her relationship with Colin Barton. She knew that she was a fool. That at the first stirrings of love she’d rushed forward, reckless with giving, only to learn – unbelievably – as the weeks passed that she had entangled herself emotionally with a man who was too self-absorbed to offer anything but sex. She had tried to thrust him out with Martin bearded and beaded, with Alan crazy on football. Her roommates had done their best offering advice and sympathy and their various panaceas. She had attended lectures with Pat, a health and beauty session with Jean. She had tried alcohol with Mandy and her rich boyfriend and what was reputed to be pot with an amorphous group of Martin’s acquaintance, but nothing had freed her from the pain of loving Colin. If it is love, she thought, squeezing aboard the crammed bus, for something so painful and pointless, so obviously futureless, seemed more like an infatuation.
She left the warmth and shelter of the bus reluctantly and hurried through the wind-stabbed streets. Fur-trimmed hood up, plum-colored coat clutched about her, eyes half shut against the blowing grit and dust. Tattered, muddied paper whirled and swooped, dustbin lids clattered maliciously as the wind snatched at them; she fumbled for her key.
The flat was a haven. From the voices in the kitchen she knew that the physios – she and Mandy always referred to them collectively – were home. There was a childhood smell of tea and buttered toast.
The living room was hideous. The knowledge of this struck her at every entry, familiarity had produced no kindly blurring. The landlord’s tomato-red fireside chairs and his fire engine-red-and-black patterned carpet looked like the cast-offs of rival hotel lounges, while the wall paper, off-white and liberally scattered with green and crimson leaves, added to the overpowering redness. Two posters, one Spanish, advertising a bullfight, the other of a long-forgotten pop singer, concealed some of the leaves but firmly affixed by a previous tenant, they had yellowed with age and their edges were tattered by halfhearted attempts at removal. Alan had given the pop singer a moustache and the bull a human victim.
Mandy had tried to imprint her personality on the room with a display of six fans pinned above the mantelpiece and Pat had hung her collection of bottles; they dangled emptily from the picture rail. Jean’s contribution was a large, framed photograph of her parents’ house and a vase of plastic daffodils – which Mandy hid in the kitchen when her friends came. Jenny, in the first thrill of owning a flat, had bought a print of 18th century London and a tall green jar in the Portobello Road, but she’d been unable to bear the way that the red glare of the living room diminished them and they now decorated the bedroom she shared with Mandy. She crossed the room to the telephone and looked furtively at the pad beside it. There was no message.
“Come and share our toast, it’s gorgeous,” called the physios in voices heavy with tact. Jenny was an emotional invalid, an object of pity with a right to sympathy.
“What sort of day did you have?” they asked.
“Dull, just letters. Pumps, water filters – no dramas,” Jenny answered through tea and toast.
“I was just telling Jean about my new cases…” Jean shifted restlessly as Jenny’s presence gave Pat the opportunity to start at the beginning again. “First of all there’s this femur and the extraordinary thing is that she comes from Chipping Norton where my aunt used to live. I’ve told you about her, haven’t I? Aunt Mary, who I used to stay with in the summer holidays, she was married to Uncle Paddy then and he spent all his time angling…”
Pat’s stories were always told with so much detail, with such elaborate parenthesis, that only the most attentive listener could hold the thread. He hadn’t telephoned, thought Jenny. But if he had what would be the use? Did she really want to see him, to sleep with him, to start the whole suffering cycle again? She’d made a mistake. She’d rushed into it, thinking naively that where one gave love it must by rights be returned. And now she wasn’t strong enough to extricate herself sensibly. She must get away.
Mandy came in chattering with equal enthusiasm for a new sort of chocolate biscuit, a “dreamy” man she’d seen on the train and Jamie who’d telephoned her at work and was taking her to Brighton on Saturday. She drowned Pat’s story, scattered clothes and paper bags on every chair, kicked off her boots and demanded tea. The physios sighed and assumed the tight-lipped brightness with which they dealt with difficult patients.
“All right, Mandy dear, you shall have your cuppa,” said Jean adding hot water to the teapot, “but just remember that we all have to live in that living room: you’re not the only pebble…”
“Yes, and there is the small matter of your breakfast things…” began Pat. Jenny, recognizing the first stage of an all too familiar argument, fled to the bathroom. She shut the lid of the toilet and sat on it; she had to think. The bathroom was tiny and damp tights dangled around her like jungle creepers; drying bra’s, struggling to maintain their shapes, were spread on every available flat surface; a thin, snowlike film of talcum powder covered the floor. Then the door was rattled and an anguished cry from Mandy asked, “Are you going to be long Jenny? I’m going out with Christopher and I’ve simply got to wash my hair.”
Jenny retreated to the bedroom. It too had a sleazy look. Drearily, she wondered if it was her’s or Mandy’s turn to clean it; she felt sure that it was Mandy’s week for the bathroom. The physios had arranged elaborate lists and pinned them u
p in the kitchen, but Mandy had whipped them down and used their backs for shopping lists before losing them in a supermarket. The physios’ bedroom was spotless with the ordered emptiness of the school dormitory or hospital ward, but here the usual cache of dirty coffee cups lingered under Mandy’s bed together with a selection of banana skins variously withered. A purple-painted screen between the beds was hung with Mandy’s entire wardrobe. Jenny lay on her bed and Colin tall, thin, elegantly dressed, cheerful and debonair filled her mind’s eye. How could anyone who’d looked so eager and loving have felt nothing at all? It was just bed he had wanted. No relationship, no companionship, no affection; just to come and go. Just a port of call among a dozen other ports of call. And she loved him! She got up quickly as more intimate visions flooded in. She must go away. Mandy had a friend who was looking for somewhere to live; her boss Mr. Kearsley would be mildly inconvenienced, but there were plenty of temps to be had. She could go home, but that would seem like failure and demand explanations. Anyway it wasn’t far enough, she would be tempted to telephone. She must be out of reach, out of touch. She must make it impossible for herself, in weak moments, to re-expose herself to his arrogance. “Well, I am going down to Shepherd’s Bush to pick up a spare part for the car,” he’d said, “so I’ll look in on the way back if you like.” He didn’t love her, he didn’t even need her. She went into the living room, loathing its redness.’
“Has anyone a paper?” she asked.
She bought The Times for three days. Almost all the jobs were London based, only companions for active elderly ladies and assistant matrons for prep schools were wanted out of town and she felt that in her present desolation she was incapable of dealing with people. She saw herself slapping the little boys, crowning the elderly lady. Then she saw it – in the personal column – a secretarial job. She answered the moment Mr. Kearsley went to lunch. She posted it. Her spirits rose…
“You’re crazy,” said Mandy. “You’re out of your mind. Bodmin Moor! That’ll finish you off. Why don’t you look for something in Oxford? There are quantities of males there and all this culture you and the physios seem to need.”
“I don’t want males,” said Jenny sadly.
“But working for a writer,” said Pat doubtfully. “It may be all right, but I’d have thought a hospital or a school would have been better. Livelier, more going on, to take you out of yourself.”
“‘Margaret Shaw,’ a female writer at that,” groaned Mandy as she read the advertisement.
“And a moor in winter,” observed Jean. “I’m afraid it’ll be very bleak.”
“But March is spring,” objected Jenny. “There’ll be primroses, bluebells.”
“March winds, howling gales, a freezing house. But perhaps she’ll have a dozen dotty applicants and not fancy you,” comforted Mandy.
“I see she’s a historical novelist, that might make it more interesting,” said Jean judicially. “You’ll have to look things up in libraries, I expect, help her with research; at least that’ll get you out of the house.”
“But male librarians are all such weeds,” wailed Mandy.
“Oh do keep off men for a minute,” snapped Pat, “we’re trying to discuss this seriously.”
“If I get the job I shall spend my savings on a car,” said Jenny. “A small, secondhand car.” They all thought that Colin would have been just the person to find one for her and a heavy silence fell.
“Can I borrow someone’s hot rollers?” asked Mandy. “I’m going out with Mark and look at my hair. Please, Jenny. I swear I won’t forget and leave them on this time.”
Margaret Shaw replied asking for personal details, a photograph and references. “Do try and tell me what you’re really like,” she wrote, “as then I’ll know whether you would fit in and be happy here.” Jenny spent a whole evening gnawing a ball point pen and trying to describe herself. She could describe other people; Mandy for instance: long, black, dead straight hair cut with bangs. An Indian-rubber sort of face, vivacious, with a huge mouth which expresses her moods much more than her dark blue eyes. Awful legs, but she forgets them except when depressed. Loves parties, hates routine.
And the physios? Well, their descriptions would be full of “clean, tidy, reliable.” Virtuous, conventional and hardworking, they wished to please not their contemporaries as was Mandy’s aim, but their peers. Older people, authoritarian people, God and the police. They thought themselves very mature, but Jenny doubted this. In some ways, they were middle-aged, but underneath there was this fondness for communal living, dormitory bedrooms, stout leather sandals, Pat’s toy panda, rules and lists, girlish giggling over doctors.
But what was she like? Compared with Mandy and the physios, she seemed to lack character; her personality was pale. She fitted in, adapted to them all, acted as a buffer state in the flat. She looked in the mirror. She had dark hair, naturally wavy, cut to the bottoms of her ears, which when in a good mood fell in easy waves around her small face, giving her a waif-ish, vulnerable look that Mandy swore was definitely sexy. Her skin was pale, her eyes large and brown with, nowadays, an anxious look. They stared out of her face and her nose, which was neat, and her mouth, which was well-shaped, faded into insignificance. She was five feet four and slim, her legs were better than Mandy’s, her hands not so nice. But what was she like? She enjoyed people more than places or games or things. And after people places and after places things. She didn’t believe in the infallibility of her contemporaries, her peers, God or the police… Thinking with envy of the long lists of commendable hobbies that the physios could give, she wrote “I like seeing new places, reading (that was tactful), the cinema, country walks and I can drive a car.”
A few evenings later, Margaret Shaw telephoned to say that Jenny had the job. Her voice was rich and fruity, her vocabulary unusual, but she was friendly and full of excitement and enthusiasm over her new secretary. The physios rushed to the library in search of her books.
The car was a thirdhand Mini, scarlet. Jenny decided that she liked red for cars. Hers had a valiant intrepid look and seemed a suitable companion for a new and adventurous life.
She drove to Bexley to tell her parents. Her mother was delighted. “Country air is just what you need,” she said, “you’ve been looking a bit off color since Christmas. Country air and Cornish cream.” And behind the conventional reaction, Jenny sensed a relief that she would be out of London, away from the world of promiscuity, drug addiction, sex shops, nameless and unimaginable sin. “Perhaps you’ll marry a nice farmer and settle down there,” said her mother. “I always wanted to marry a farmer when I was young. It was being an evacuee in the war that gave me the idea, I suppose; I really took to the country.”
Her father inspected the Mini and took it for a trial run.
“Not a bad little car at all,” he pronounced. “Much better than spending all your money on wigs and false eyelashes. You’ll be able to get about a bit, see the country. That means more in the long run.”
She liked them better now that she’d been away from them. She could look at them as people in their own right, they had receded, grown smaller, the relationship no longer created feelings of claustrophobia. For one sudden weak moment, she felt tempted to stay. She could easily get a job near, in Lewisham or somewhere, and live here with comfort and affection. She would forget Colin without the gigantic effort of going to Cornwall, of tackling a new job, an unpredictable employer, a strange world. But the car offered incontestable evidence of a decision already taken and presently the mood passed.
She drove to see her elder sister but the visit wasn’t really a success. Married, expecting her first baby, Cathy had become unfamiliar. Grotesque in shape, she had no interest in anything but the immediate future; a world of preparation, of knitting and buntings and prenatal clinics. Instructed by her mother, Jenny had brought a present of a carriage blanket but even that was a disaster; it was the third in Cathy’s collection.
Back in London, the physios and Mandy had
accepted her departure and prospective girl sharers fussed in and out only to be turned down by the physios on moral or material grounds or rejected by Mandy as totally incompatable room fellows.
When the physios produced an entirely acceptable candidate, a physiotherapist from another hospital, Mandy decided to move out.
“I’m off,” she told Jenny. “They can find a fourth to make up the herd or gaggle or rut of physios and then run their own boarding school. My bet is that they’ll move all the beds into their room and have a real dorm, then they can use ours for handicrafts or table tennis.”
Jenny felt guilty, but Mandy assured her that she felt like a change of scene and a boyfriend thought he knew of a room going in Islington.
“It’s you I’m worried about,” she went on. “You’ve made such a great drama over Colin. I know he’s dreamy to look at, but that’s about it. He’s hell to talk to – on and on about those draggy cars. And he’s stingy. I don’t just mean about taking you out, he’s stingy over love, sex, everything. Of course you’ve got to get off the hook – I’d have chucked him out months ago – but Cornwall! I don’t know what goes on in the country nowadays. There used to be cows and birds and things, but since factory farming and silent spring… Still, I suppose you can move on. Anyway, keep in touch.”
2
Kilruthan
Jenny felt a distinct pang as she drove away from the flat. Mandy and the physios and even the red living room had become part of life, part of her; to be viewed with affection and not to be discarded without a wrench.
She’d helped Mandy move out the night before and the physios had gone to work, so it was a wordless farewell and a quick one, no nostalgic lingerings in the street for the day was cold and bone-dampening, with gusts of rain on a blustering wind.
A Place With Two Faces Page 1
