by A. L. Barker
“What are you playing at?”
She was playing as she had in the street, at being someone else, but this time he wouldn’t help her. “You’re a silly little bitch, you are.”
“I didn’t ask you to follow me.”
“Think I would have!”
The thought pricked. “You mean you didn’t know it was me?”
“That’s self-evident, I’d say.” He sat down on the steps and took one of Brind’s cigarettes from behind his ear. “How was I to know you’d got a coat that colour?”
“You mean you’d follow any girl?”
“What’s special about any of them?”
“It doesn’t matter what she is or where she’s been or how many times?” If she fooled so easily he wondered how he could have been scared of her. “I know some girls that go in under the bandstand in the Park. They have to pay rent for it or Charlie Wraxall and Billy Diprose won’t let the men go in.”
“Here!” he said, shocked, “you didn’t ought to know about that!”
“Do you follow one every night?”
“That’s none of your business.”
She came close so that the red coat touched his shoulder. “Were you disappointed when you saw it was me?”
It seemed to Joe that she had never looked him in the face before or he would have remembered it—those eyes drinking him up, round and eager as a dog’s, so that he felt all in a moment like a pod with the peas shucked out.
If he could have moved a finger he might have fobbed himself off with the words, but in the stillness the meaning sank in, he heard it shouting loud along with the private noise her clothes made, and from being empty he was suddenly full of Esther Munn.
“But you’d mind me knowing.” She smiled. “You could never be sure I wasn’t thinking about it, could you?”
Sometimes in the café he had started a feeling about Evie. He had nothing against her, it was her body and the way it flowed about inside her dress that made him uncomfortable, spiteful even. He wanted to be revenged and he thought if he could have taken it away from her for a while neither of them need be upset about anything he did.
Now he had started this feeling about Esther and there was no question of punishment, it was her stint small body that dominated his. He thought of it, bird-boned and puffy under the red coat, with a shudder of abject longing.
She sat on the step above him. “You needn’t worry,” she said softly. “I wouldn’t think much—not about you.”
Joe got to his feet. Sight of the street lamps strung out below made him dizzy.
“How old are you? Fourteen? A kid of fourteen talking a lot of gumbo you don’t understand.” His voice cracked with anger. “You ought to be playing with your dollies. What do you know about anything?”
“I’m fifteen, and what I know I taught myself.”
“A dismal lot that is!” She smiled, and his fury mounted. “Come on, let’s hear it, let’s hear about all the men who’ve had you!”
He winced as he said it and she looked up, puzzled. “I don’t see why you’re so angry. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Then why pretend you’re a tart? You know what a tart is—without jam in?”
“There’s no need to shout,” she said fastidiously. “Can I help it if you jump to conclusions?”
“Look, I’m telling you for your own good. You don’t want people to take you for a split—”
“What?”
“—unless you’ve got ambition that way.”
“If anyone should be calling anyone names it’s me should be calling you. I suppose there are names for men?”
“Aw,” he said, disgusted, “get back to your dollies.”
She put up her chin and rolled her head sleepily against the iron rails of the escape. “She didn’t hide anything—why should I?”
“She? Who are you talking about now?”
“Camilla. Her real name was Florence, Florrie, Flo—” she gibed softly—“Flo Keppel. I lived with her till I was fourteen.” She kept moving her head lazily to and fro, the collar of the red coat open and her bare neck sprouting out of it like a stalk. “Two hundred theatres she’d acted in, then she had to give up. She got the tick and she couldn’t keep her face still. Like this,” said Esther, who must have practised. One cheek cracked open, her lip snapped back over her teeth and for a second she grinned like a fox. “She used to pretend it was me doing it. ‘Stop pulling those faces, girl, you’re showing your canines.’” The dry laughter rustled in her throat. “You couldn’t believe anything she said, it was all according.”
“According what?”
“What she was acting. She did it all the time. If she wasn’t being Joan of Arc or Sadie Thompson or Stella Dallas she was being herself and he said no one ever wrote a part that bad.”
“Who said?”
“She didn’t like it because he held my neck.” Esther closed her eyes, smiling. “I didn’t like it either, his hands smelled.”
“Who was he?” Joe’s own hands itched to take her by the throat.
“She called them all ‘Peter’—she liked to think there’d only been the one—but I found out who he was and where he lived.” She touched the red coat with affection. “That’s how I bought this.”
“He gave you money? What for?” Joe was unprepared for the sudden plunge of fear. “What did he pay you for?”
“To keep quiet, of course. There was a lot I could have said.”
“Hush money!” Joe laughed. “How much?”
“Not much. It was worth more for what they did.”
Why should it matter what any of them did—her least of all? Whatever she was, better or worse, why should he want her different?
“Only a fool would be scared of what a kid said. No one would have believed you.”
“People would have liked to hear it, anyway.”
“You’re a greenow. That sort of thing’s not new, it happens all the time.”
“What sort of thing?”
He said savagely, “Didn’t you never go under the bandstand?”
She opened her eyes and again it was as if she hadn’t looked him in the face before. “That wasn’t what they did.”
“All right then, what else?”
She looked, saying nothing. He tried to keep his depth. “Come on, you can rinse your mouth out afterwards. Are you scared you’ll make me blush?”
“I don’t mind telling. They didn’t do anything I’d want to.” She stretched, sighed with comfort and lay back against the wall. “Aren’t you going to sit down?”
“Why should I?”
“Then I won’t have to shout.”
No, she didn’t mind telling. She was going to enjoy it, she was going to tell him things he might have thought of or not even dreamed about, and he was no prude, he wanted to hear them. But not from her, not the way she’d tell them, sitting dreamy and decent and fly all the time.
“Sit down—” She put out her tongue and touched the corners of her lips—“and I’ll tell you.”
“No!”
“Why not?”
He started away down the steps. “You were paid to keep quiet.”
*
No one tried to hide anything from Rumbold, he wasn’t that important. He had to watch it grow, open-handed, innocent almost, as if out of two people’s need of each other. He knew Brind’s needs and could guess at Evie’s: none of them were so much more reputable than his own.
Seeing them meet was painful, but not so painful as knowing that he wasn’t worth a wink in the dark. Surely he had some rights after all he and Evie had been to each other. All? Their times together were so few he could count them on one hand. The comfort was his: he had taken, but Evie hadn’t been involved enough to give.
He told himself there were other women, the world was full of them waiting to be picked up, expecting to be put down. He told himself they were all Evies, all the same, only better—softer, kinder, more passionate—and none of them knew Brind.<
br />
But they were all over the place, hiding their lights under bushels, they had to be looked for. The nearest for his purpose might be in Bethnal Green or Battersea Park. Evie was here, every day she was in the café across the road, for the price of a cup of tea she was here in the flesh, he could see, smell and taste it all over again.
He often did. It was some sort of relief to put the screws on himself. Besides, he was on the watch for something short of a miracle. It was bound to happen. Brind had catholic tastes, no one as wholesome as Evie could suit them for long. Evie was going to be glad of Rumbold, glad to let him take, even glad to give.
At eleven o’clock in the morning he could believe it. By afternoon he was griped with jealousy. He was a sick man and the rest of the world was healthy. His private pity began by coddling and ended by tearing him. Whatever he did, he got this inimical bird’s eye view of himself, cocked back over his own history, back to the times when Evie was more his than any other man’s. It showed him the special shabbiness he brought to every moment. The remembered pleasures—could he be sure she had shared any of them? What could he give that wasn’t second, third, or underhand? A girl like Evie didn’t know what she was looking for but she knew better than to look for it in a man like Rumbold, whereas Brind could make all the motions, he’d been making them to women since his time began.
Rumbold watched the café all day, even when he was working he stayed where he could see it. There was always Joe to save him from talking to himself.
He tried philosophy. “A woman’s got no mind of her own, no way of knowing if a man’s poison until she eats him.” More often his feeling spilled over, everything was sticky with hate, longing and germs of hope. “I’ve told her about Brind, I’m the only one that can, and by God I’ve a right to.”
“Told her what?”
“I’ve wasted enough breath.” Rumbold’s jaw darkened. “It was convenient to forget everything, to make out she never knew me except from the sixpenny side of the tea-urn. If it’s none of my business what she does with herself—” he kicked the oil rack sideways—“neither is this place.”
Joe said, “Brind’s taken them both over.”
“Brind!” Rumbold spat the name across the pump bay. “That weasel! Why didn’t they crucify him? Why didn’t they peg him out in the jungle? Why didn’t they finish him in Burma?” The door slammed across at the café and three men in painters’ overalls came out. “One day she’ll be glad if her bread’s buttered without wanting to lick the jam spoon.”
Pyefield had come through the store shed behind them. He carried a roll of chicken mesh under one arm.
“What do you want?”
“Joy in the morning: what you might call a sign to the ungodly. If it had four legs I’d back it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if it’s my business—”
“You’re unduly sensitive. In Joe now, it wouldn’t be out of keeping. First love is a painful thing. In a man of your age it’s morbid, it’s unmanly. I’d go further, I’d say it’s dangerous.”
“Go further still and go to hell.”
“The lady in question has the reputation of being a generous giver. That cuts both ways. What’s any man’s property is no man’s prize.” Pyefield showed his brown teeth like a villainous old horse.
Rumbold’s hand went out as if to grab him by the slack of his coat, but his fist hit the roll of netting and sent it flying. “Keep your dirty thoughts to yourself or I’ll knock them down your neck!”
Pyefield’s eyes twinkled. “My, Barty, you’ve a temper—hopping mad like a little bird.” He took the netting which Joe had retrieved for him, stood it end up and leaned on it. “You should watch your blood, it looks none too pure, colouring up like soused cabbage—”
“Shall I show you the colour of yours?”
Pyefield sighed. “I’m an old man, it would make a yard of pump water look rosy.”
Feeling the weight of the claw hammer in his hand, Rumbold threw it down, irritably, like a man who has picked up the wrong tool.
“The truck broke down, I had to ditch it at Muswell Hill and come on by bus. Still, it’s an ill wind,” said Pyefield cheerfully, “or I shouldn’t have seen this netting tuppence a foot cheaper in Seven Sisters Road.”
“Muswell Hill? That’s off your map.”
“I’m a rolling stone. There’s nothing much wrong with the truck, sounds like transmission. If I’d been near a street-lamp I could have fixed it myself.”
“I’ll fetch it tomorrow if I can spare the time.”
If he could spare the time away from that view, always the same view of the door covered with cigarette advertisements and the yellow light blistering the steam.
“Tomorrow’s not soon enough. I can’t leave it unattended all night, not with the load it’s got.”
“Half a yard of sharp sand?”
“Forty feet of guttering, two cisterns and three lavatory pans.”
“Who’s going to covet those?”
“I wouldn’t wish to put any man’s soul in jeopardy,” said Pyefield, folding his thumbs on the roll of netting as if it were a pulpit.
Rumbold turned his back on the café. He picked an empty bottle out of the oil rack and looked at it with hatred. “I can’t go tonight, there are only the two of us here.”
“What about that partner of yours? Now there’s a gentleman won’t give you the smell of an oily rag.” Pyefield winked at Joe. “You two are pretty free with that.”
“We’re not in the same class,” said Rumbold. “When me and Joe do dirty work we get dirty.”
Pyefield ducked his thumb at the café. “Is he in his office across the street?”
“He’s in Manchester,” said Rumbold sourly. “Be back tomorrow.”
“Well, I wasn’t banking on him to fix my truck. Come on, Barty, it’s time you shut down anyway and I can’t leave that stuff in the street all night.”
Rumbold looked at his watch, shrugged and threw the empty oil-bottle to the back of the workshop. “Get the break out, Joe. I’ll lock up.”
“You won’t want the breakdown van—I’ll pay your bus fare,” said Pyefield generously. “It’s only a tiddly little adjustment.”
“About as tiddly as last time when it was a cracked axle.”
Joe brought the breakdown van round into the pump bay. Pyefield was following Rumbold as he locked up. “All you’ll need is a torch and a pair of pliers—”
“We’ll do it my way or you’ll sit guard on those lavatory pans all night.” Rumbold climbed into the van. “Turn off the flicker and lock the shop, Joe.” He let in the clutch while Pyefield was reluctantly hauling himself in. The old man was rocked backwards Into his seat as the van skinned round the pumps into the road.
Joe watched it scud away down Shop Street. Rain had just finished, there was a jetty shine on the pavements and a fin of black water turning in the gutters. People began to slow down, straighten up and shake themselves. A girl took off her head-scarf and tipped her long hair loose over her shoulders. The buses crackled by with scarlet rain still splintering down their sides.
Joe did not move. His stillness, his two feet on the ground and his shoulder on the doorway were a kind of violence. He felt restless, wanting—nothing particular or localised, just a need. But it was desperate, he was ready cocked like a gun with nothing to aim at.
The light was on in the black doctor’s surgery. A woman carried in a baby, its thin animal wail stung him to fury. Suddenly he hated everything, wanted to tear down the old same street, the shoved-up buildings and the hoardings swollen with rain. They affected him the way a piece of gum, chewed tasteless, suddenly brought the bile into his throat.
Over at the café Evie herself came to the door and looked across at the garage. Seeing Joe, she waved, belatedly. He knew what she was hoping for, she had never come like that to get a glimpse of Rumbold. He turned away. In the workshop was something that was not Shop Street—just looking at it helped
.
Brind’s car had been in for repair—a puncture which Joe had seen to and a new fan belt which Rumbold had fitted. It was not tempered by its surroundings and Joe would never be without a leap of the heart when he looked at it.
He kicked the tyre gently to check that it was holding. The car tempted him as much as ever, sight of it channelled that stray need of his into a longing to handle it. What he could not handle was the notion that the car had a nature, that there was more than horse-power under the bonnet.
He slid into the driving seat. The wheel felt dainty and fit to snap when he ran his thumbs round it. He tried the pedals—they were too long for his reach—and switched on the radio. A man was singing ‘Jealousy’. Joe thought of Evie coming to look for Brind, she was so strong on him she couldn’t wait, and of Rumbold watching Evie, watching Brind. That was something to sing about. He switched off the radio.
He might know only the half, but it was enough to teach him never to get pieheaded about a woman. He wasn’t likely to, he felt the reverse about Esther Munn. In fact he could have been a bit more charitable, could have let up now and then and given her credit for being only as bad as she looked. He wasn’t used to thinking badly of people and he was surprised at the opinion he had of her. The trouble was, he was always having it, he didn’t know if she was under his skin or he was under hers.
Rain was starting cautiously again on the tin roof. There was nothing to do and usually it was enough. But now that he couldn’t do it in private he kept coming to a full stop. Time not only stood still, it hung round his neck.
Of course it was mad to think that Esther knew what he was doing and saw him this minute as if she had X-ray eyes. Like Friday the thirteenth which everyone knew was mad, yet still they believed in it.
Something moved, a shadow curling and clinging in the doorway. He couldn’t see any face, the flicker light was bouncing outside on the wet pavement and inside was darkness except for one small bulb under the rafters. He wound down the car window and called, “Who’s that?”
If there was any answer it was drowned by the roar of a passing motor-bike. He shouted, “I know you!” and switched on the headlamps. She stood wide-eyed in the glare. He said, disgusted, “You’ve got that red coat on.”
