by A. L. Barker
Suddenly they were there, they came out of the café, Evie with her rare swimming walk, Brind angling behind her. They got into Brind’s car—Rumbold had the slam of the door as evidence for his eyes. A moment, and with a jet and a snarl from the exhaust they were gone.
It shocked him, for all his being ahead of the event. He sat bunched and violent like a piece of paper that has been suddenly crushed into a ball.
Joe came shambling across the yard. He had an inner tube round his neck. He opened the office door and let in a gust that smelt of the fag end of winter.
“I can’t find the leak, I’ve put in a new valve and it’s soft in five minutes.”
Rumbold said, “Did you see?”
Joe held the tube to his lips. “See what?”
“She did me the honour of lying, but she couldn’t be bothered making it stick.” He sounded as if someone had both thumbs on his throat. “I don’t care what she does or who she does it with. Who throws the dice, that’s important, but I wouldn’t bother to wait to see who throws her.” He held up his fist, gripped and trembling. “If she wants Brind she can take him, he’ll do her plenty of dirt. All I ask is she should have the manners not to rub my nose in it.”
“She only got in his car.”
“That’s why they keep the spoon on a string—so you can have a stir and throw it back.” He was shaking with nausea. “I’d be a fool to care.”
Joe unscrewed the valve of the inner tube and let the air hiss into his collar. “Evie’s not so bad.”
“Who said she was bad? She sells to the highest bidder, that’s not bad, that’s business.” Rumbold’s paddy had reached its climax and begun to fall back. He was afloat already in the aftermath. “I used to think you could get something for nothing—love, I called it.”
Joe went to the back of the workshop and spat on the rust.
Rumbold was gathering himself to go to the Airlie when Brind returned. It didn’t make sense, his coming back so soon, and Rumbold, who had at least been able to tie two and two together said the first thing that came into his head.
“Where’s Evie?”
“With her sister.”
“You took her?”
“She was in a hurry.” Brind took off his glasses and dropped a silk handkerchief over them as if he were going to conjure.
“Why didn’t she ask me to take her?”
“Because I offered.”
Rumbold watched him cleaning his glasses, breathing on them, rubbing and polishing until the light sparked off the lenses. Not for the first time he wondered if Brind wore them for seeing or for being seen.
“What lies did you tell her about me?”
Without the pince-nez Blind’s face looked horsey, almost kind. “What makes you think lies would be more damaging than the truth?”
*
They were both searching, the child trudging everywhere on his knees, lifting lids—even the lid of the ashcan—pushing his hand into shoes, under the tongues, down into the toes. The cat kept near, chest to the ground and thin elbows hoisted, or running without hope to his hand, crying a high crackling cry.
“Perhaps Ma took it with her,” said Joe, “to drop in the canal.”
Christy’s hands came crabwise to his knees and rested while he considered. That was something he could always do, he could work out whether to be scared or not.
“They pedal in the water—like rats,” said Joe. “She’d have to find a brick first.”
If he thought there was cause, he’d be frightened. Joe had seen him wrapped in his fear, strung up like a cocoon. Very early on the same thing had taught Joe that he was on his own and that everyone else was together. “She wouldn’t be bothered looking for a brick.”
Christy moved aside a broom and the cat ran crooning into the empty corner.
“Where’s Esther? She might know.”
The child got up from his knees, one at a time in an oldish way. He stood frowning, with Joe’s gesture of rubbing his hands over his thighs.
“Go on, go up and ask her.”
He went, creaking slow in his hard boots. At the door he waited, courteously held it ajar and the cat ran to join him, tail up over her pale decent button. They were a joke, those two—like Mrs Martineau—of a private kind. Shared, the joke died because other people didn’t laugh right.
Esther would be sitting in her room with her hands in her lap and her feet hooked as if she’d never come out of the box and Joe didn’t care if he saw it or not. He went because Christy and the cat went.
Joe had never seen inside Esther’s room. It was pegged under the slates like his own, with a small window beetling over the same view of river and derricks and power-house chimney. Afterwards he decided it must be the same view, but at the time he didn’t notice because Esther was there on the bed.
He hadn’t been expecting that and he got quite a shock. That mimm neatness of hers was gone, she was sprawled like a rag doll, half rubbed out under the tousled bedclothes. If she was surprised she didn’t show it. Her eyes went round Christy to Joe; she sat up and the quilt fell off her bare shoulders.
Joe felt the curdling in his stomach, he needed to run to the back of the workshop and spit.
“The kid’s lost his kitten.” If he could have stopped looking at her, stopped seeing her all broken down into something soft and dirty and knowing—that was the worst of it, the knowing—she and the raddled bed and the smelling room, they knew.
“What kitten?”
This was what they were at the park railings, what they all were underneath, seventy-five per cent. this, like a humpback was seventy-five per cent. hump. You didn’t have to be sorry for them, that’s what they wanted—a way to catch hold.
“I don’t like cats,” said Esther.
“Are you sick?”
“No.”
“Then why are you in bed?”
“There wasn’t anywhere else to go.” She pulled up the quilt trying to make out she had a lot to hide—
The cat, which had been treading a circle, suddenly leapt. Esther screamed and beat at the bed. The cat thrust its blunt nose into the folds of the quilt. Esther kept screaming and beating and the cat kept hunting and then Esther snatched something from the bedclothes and the cat gave a long fierce cry and Esther hit it. Next moment Christy was on the bed hitting Esther.
No one who knew Christy tried to control his rages. The only way was not to start them. Once he was sparked off he was in the raw, he was the destructive element, blind, deaf and hell-bent. He used his body to bite, punch, kick and scratch, indifferent to his own flesh and blood in his frenzy to harm someone else’s. Let be, he was capable of marking for life. He was very strong for his age, out of temper he was stronger. He had to be fought off and Joe could see that Esther wasn’t equal to it. For one thing, she’d been taken by surprise; for another, she was a coward.
She didn’t try to defend herself, she folded up like a paper bag in a hailstorm. It reminded Joe of old Mrs Stogumber and he had to laugh.
The cat jumped off the bed carrying its kitten. Christy was kneeling on Esther, using his body like a bellows to knock the breath out of her. She screamed and every scream was cut short so that it wasn’t more than a squawk. Her face was plum colour and all she did was cover it with her chicken elbows.
It was funny, but Joe had stopped laughing. He wanted to watch. She was old enough to deal with a kid of five, why should he interfere? She was making him sick, squirming and screeching as if she was being murdered, his skin crept at the way she kept rolling her eyes back on the boiled whites.
This was something he had to see—every mark of every blow. He had nothing against her personally, it was that watery flesh his own palms itched to punish, to mash and sink into the bedclothes. He was close, so close that when the sheets were dragged aside in the struggle he saw that her puffy little breasts had brown middles the colour of tea.
His stomach seemed to pitch. It was nothing new; he scared easily, but this time he was
sick cold and furious. He felt as if he had been insulted with the truth.
He snatched Christy off the bed, held him in mid-air before he half threw, half dropped him outside on the landing. Then he stood with his back in the open door, not looking at Esther. She was crying and choking and making out to be at her last gasp.
“You’ll know now not to touch his things.”
She was drowning there in the bed—what if Christy had really hurt her? “Why didn’t you give it back?”
He knew why. Because she couldn’t let anything happen, she always had to work it up into something else.
“I only took it for company.”
“For what?”
She was whining into her pillow. “I was lonely—”
It didn’t mean anything—even if it did, he wouldn’t have believed it of her.
“Stop grizzling and get dressed.”
“There’s nothing to get dressed for.”
“You can come out if you like.”
“Out where?”
“Just out!” He went battering down the stairs, sorry he had said it. The idea had been to find out if she was hurt. He kicked at the wall and a trickle of plaster ran over his boot. As if it mattered. And if it had, for half a minute, that was only while he was learning. He knew now that she wouldn’t be hurt, she wasn’t the kind. He knew about her and it didn’t seem odd that he should have picked it up so quickly, nor possible that there could be anything more than met the eye, apart from her own little fakes.
He felt a mild triumph because there had been a bit of a struggle—between himself—and he had settled it. He was never going to be scared again of what Esther Munn or any other woman could be. They couldn’t be anything for him.
He sat on the bottom stair and waited without rancour. He even yawned, which was right for the occasion.
She came with her face still blotchy from fistmarks or tears. “Where are we going?”
“To the doctor’s.”
She drew back as if he had reached out for her. “I don’t want to!”
“I thought you were hurt bad.”
She put her hands over her face and turned it to the wall.
“It’s to get medicine for her,” he said, jerking his thumb at the basement stairs. “The doctor’s a bucko.”
“A what?”
“A nigger.”
She shuddered. “I don’t want to come.”
“Suit yourself.”
But when he got as far as the porch she called out that she’d changed her mind.
*
There was one old man sitting in the boarded off part where people waited. After they had been there a few minutes he went in to the doctor. This place was so small that if there were more than six patients they had to stand outside under the shopblinds.
Esther said, “I suppose he’s cheap.”
“Why should he be?”
“Of course some people might like it—some women.” She looked dreamily at her hands. “I shall laugh, I know I shall.”
“What at?”
Smilingly she laced her fingers. “I’ve got a sense of humour.”
Over at the garage the pumps were unlit, the office looked empty like a bowl without a goldfish. “There’s where I work.”
“Oh, where?”
She had to get on a chair to see over the painted half of the window.
“Weekdays we have a flicker sign that says, ‘Garage—Petrol, Repairs, Maintenance’. You can see it as far as Moult Street.”
“What do you do?”
“Greasing, punctures, fuelling. I’m on the pumps, mostly.”
She wet her finger and drew it over the windowpane. “You’re strong, aren’t you?”
“The pumps aren’t worked by hand, if that’s what you think.”
She didn’t think, she let her mind trickle like water in a gutter.
“I’m sorry about this afternoon.”
“Sorry? What for?”
She laid her head on her shoulder. “You know.” He was ashamed for her and his cheeks burned. Then she suddenly primmed up. “It was an exhibition, I didn’t know your brother was such an ill-disciplined child.”
“He’s all right if you don’t block him.”
“So’s a mad dog.”
“You bought it and you’re sorry. All right! If you’ve got any sense you’ll leave it there or he’ll think there’s something he didn’t finish.”
“You don’t think I’m going begging his pardon, do you?”
“Whose then?”
Her throat flickered with laughter. But for the glimmer on her face she might have been crying. He didn’t like the way she laughed or cried, breathy and quiet, and at him.
The doctor put his head round the door and stopped her. She went big-eyed and pink as a shrimp.
“Next?” said the doctor, leaving the door ajar.
Joe said, “You wait here,” but she couldn’t, her face had sharpened up as if she were on to something and she followed him in.
The surgery was painted green like a railway waiting-room. The lino was dark brown and there was the usual desk and couch and bookcase, looking second-hand, but not from the same hand. Beyond where the counter used to be was a door leading into the shop parlour, only now it was a dispensary. The shop door, that had opened on to the street, was sealed up with battens and the glass painted dark green. But no one had taken away the bell, it still hung up under the ceiling.
The doctor was standing with his back to them. His long arms hung down almost to his knees. He wore a white coat and there was something violent about the solid blackness of his head. But when he turned, his face had the slack lines of a patient man. He looked at them both, his brown slightly bulbous eyes rested longest on Esther.
“Which one is sick?”
“Neither,” said Joe. “We’ve come about someone else.”
The doctor slid himself down at his desk. Esther sat on the chair beside it and Joe stood. He could see her hooking her feet and lacing her fingers. The doctor waited, ready when they should be ready, his big spread lips unsmiling.
“She’s got a cough,” said Joe. “Sometimes she can’t get any breath and she chokes, and sometimes she gets too much and she blows like a horse.”
“She?”
“Mrs Martineau.”
“If I could know how old,” said the doctor. “And who this lady is in relation to you.”
“No relation. She’s our back basement. I don’t know how old—too old, anyway.”
“Why does she send you?”
“She sends me for everything. She never goes out.”
The doctor looked at Esther and she was looking brittle as if she were made of something pure and hard to get. “This is your sister?”
“No!” Joe said harshly, “Look, will you give me something for the old lady, to put her right?”
“You think I could do that?”
“You’re a doctor, aren’t you?”
He smiled, not the big melon grin of the negro, but private and unhappy, no more than a stretching of the lips. “I ought to see her.”
“She wouldn’t let you.” Joe could see he didn’t believe that. He thought she was like everyone else.
“How long has she been ill?”
“A week.”
Neither of them noticed the woman. She must have come through the dispensary and now she stood propping herself on the half-opened door. But the doctor knew she was there. He spoke to her, looking away into the farthest corner of the room. “I shan’t be long, Lise.”
“You know it’s time—”
“Another half an hour.”
“You always say that. When it’s too late you say there’s plenty of time. That’s for my benefit.”
“For your benefit there’s all the time in the world.” He asked Joe, “Is she in pain when she coughs?”
Joe shrugged. “She never says.”
“What does she eat?”
“She don’t.”
�
�Feverish?”
“I don’t know what you call it, one minute she sweats, the next she’s shrammed. She hauls herself around—”
“She’s not in bed?”
“No.”
The doctor picked up his pencil. “Tell me the address.”
“It wouldn’t do no good. She wouldn’t see you.” He waited, and Joe was stung by his patience. “You’d be wasting your time, she wouldn’t open the door.”
“Why not?” The woman came into the room, she seemed to explode among them. Rumbold had pointed her out, Rumbold knew the kind of woman who married a black man and what she’d marry him for. “Why not? Why wouldn’t she open the door?”
“Lise—”
“Oh, you needn’t worry. I’m interested, that’s all.” She was panting a little and smiling, and it made her look like a dog, a thin, foxy-faced dog. “It’s psychological, I suppose—what they call a neurosis? She can’t open the door, can she, not to anyone?”
“She could,” said Joe, “but she don’t—except to me.”
“Or is it,” said the doctor’s wife, “because he’s a black man?” She leaned towards Joe and Esther, laughing, as if they were children and she was sharing a joke with them.
“Lise,” said the doctor, and he was smiling too, and so was Esther, they were all smiling.
“You see,” said the doctor’s wife, “we’ve had some experience. They come here when they can’t pay for their medicine, because he’s kind and gives it them for nothing. My husband’s very kind.”
“I can pay all right,” said Joe. “I’ve got the money.”
“Tramps and street women,” said the doctor’s wife. “And you don’t ever forget that smell.” She was laughing again, fixedly, at Esther. “But they wipe themselves where he’s touched them, they wipe their dirt clean.”
The doctor got up with a slow, almost a lazy movement and went round the desk. He put his hand between her shoulder blades and the shudders of laughter died away all over her body.
Esther said, “I’m sure it’s nothing like that. Why, she doesn’t even know—” She paused, smiling with delicacy.
“If she doesn’t know she ought to be told. She ought to be warned.” The doctor’s wife broke away from his hand. “She might prefer to die—”
