Midsummer Night in the Workhouse

by Diana Athill

  Her outline suggested that she was the sort of girl who sat about in coffee bars, remote sometimes, or giggling with other girls delightfully absurd in their dress, their skins so smooth and their eyes so clear behind the masks worn at that time, made of black lines on eyelids and strange pale paint on mouths. To watch girls of this kind made Roger smile with pleasure, but he had never spoken to one. His own women, especially Nettie his wife and Heather who might become his wife, were people like himself because much beauty or silence or strangeness in a woman alarmed him. He had chosen confirmation rather than challenge. When Nettie looked pretty, which she sometimes did, it was at things he shared such as the prospect of a journey abroad or at a meeting with a writer she admired. Neither she nor Heather was a woman whose sex dressed her in mystery like some women to whom he had seen other men fall victim, or like the girls he enjoyed watching across the gulf of years and difference. His had been women he liked and who demanded no abdication from reason (or so he had thought until Nettie went so odd) – and now here was this different kind of girl aware of him in the empty row.

  Should he speak to her? He felt reluctant. It would mean coming out of his cave of shadow, girding himself about with personality and being again the man he always was: a well- read man of liberal opinions; a sensitive man who six months ago had parted from his wife with humility because she had stopped loving him and he could, after all, see why (also he had minded less than he had expected); a man living the life he had chosen among people who thought as he did, free to be discriminating in art, to like Negroes, to dislike capitalists, to understand criminals, to sympathise with sexual deviation and to feel constant guilt on his country’s behalf towards Cyprus, Israel, Egypt, India (in retrospect) and large parts of Africa; to feel even sharper guilt on the whole world’s behalf towards its suicidal image; a man with a mind too good to be fooled; and who, being humble and busy, could not think what he could do about what he saw. He had been to a lot of meetings in his time and had learnt, he felt, their inadequacy. He had never done a bolt (and never would) into Communism, the Catholic Church or a psychiatrist’s consulting room. The sort of man he had deliberately set out to be. And who was now sitting in this cinema at 4.15 on a working afternoon, having smiled at Herr Becker and enjoyed thinking beastly bloody kraut.

  To speak to anyone, then, would mean picking up a burden from which he needed to rest; would be tiring. But worse, he now realised, would be to leave the cinema alone. He could go back to the flat, surprising its weekday empti- ness, and at this prospect a skin peeled off part of his mind leaving it raw. He could walk about the streets until the pubs opened – like a madman? He could catch a train and join Heather at the cottage, but he had not enough money on him and anyway with her he would have to be, again, his customary self. Tea, he thought. It cannot be picking up to ask a girl to have tea with me, and she will be unknown, I can say I am someone else or perhaps – and here he felt hope stirring – perhaps I can tell her what has happened. And thinking this, Roger, who forgot that he himself did not know what had happened and who was further from feeling desire than he had ever been, had a vision of release, his body lying on a bed in a strange room, a girl getting dressed and going out, leaving him to sleep.

  He looked at the screen again, from which Fernandel was absent while a blonde with feathers on her negligée cajoled the fat husband. The girl stood up and began to edge away from him towards the aisle. No decision made, he found himself standing too, out in the aisle on his side and moving parallel with her towards the exit. They reached the door at the same moment and he held it for her, then followed her into the street and took his stand beside her at the nearby bus stop to which she went.

  It was easier than he had expected.

  You would think, he said, when no bus had come for several minutes, that there was a strike on.

  She turned her head, half-smiling, and he saw with excitement that her eyes were amazing, huge and silver-grey between the lines of black.

  It wasn’t a very good film was it? he went on.

  I don’t know really. I didn’t know it would be all in French.

  Her voice whined, the accent just off cockney. Disconcerted by this and by her words Roger saw that she was no more, probably, than eighteen. But he was ashamed of noticing the accent and the hope that she would look at him again made him persist, in spite of her youth.

  Don’t you find out about films before you go to them? he asked.

  Well sometimes, she said. Then, lifting her face and blink- ing: Don’t it seem funny, coming out of the pictures in broad daylight? It leaves you at a loose end, sort of, wondering what to do next.

  After that it was easy to suggest a cup of tea in the place across the street, to which she came willingly saying that she supposed she should be getting home really but a cup of tea would be nice, she was parched. Her name, she told him, was Anne.

  The hair pulled back from her face was reddish, her chin receded, but the eyes dominated her face and her skin was a child’s. Round her neck she wore a velvet ribbon from which hung a cross with green glass at the centre, and her fingernails were dirty.

  Why did you go to the cinema this afternoon? he asked.

  Oh well, I just went in, she said. I don’t start in my new place till Monday, see. Mother said to help her with washing the paint but I’ve been messing about the house all week, I got fed up. My friend’s at work so I couldn’t meet her till after, so I just thought why not go up to the West End for a change? Why did you, anyway?

  I happened to have a free afternoon. Where do you work?

  The BBC, said Roger (because it was nearby).

  Are you in the television?

  No – no, in sound radio.

  I like the telly sometimes but I’m not mad about it like my friend. We used to go ice-skating every week, Wednesdays, but now it’s all I can do to get her out.

  Is skating what you like to do best? he asked, thinking yes, that would suit those eyes.

  Well I do sometimes but I wouldn’t say best. I like dancing too, and I like reading, I’m funny like that.

  Good, said Roger hopefully, preparing to understand the charm, for her, of books he would probably despise. I read a lot too, he said.

  I think it’s ever so nice. I take three books every week, True Story, Mademoiselle and She.

  Oh, said Roger.

  They sipped tea in silence for a moment, until Anne said that the tea was ever so hot and Roger answered yes.

  Then, making an effort, remembering unread columns in many newspapers picturing lives unlike his own: Do you like jazz? he said.

  That old stuff! My boyfriend’s mad about it, he is really. All those old records, they all sound the same to me.

  But you ought to like jazz, said Roger feeling trapped. I thought you all did.

  All who?

  You gay young things, he said, and knew how old she saw him and how dull; knew too, with a mixture of dis- appointment and relief, that he could tell her nothing.

  After that he found it hard to think of things to say but Anne did not seem to mind. She turned her great eyes on the other people in the tea shop, commenting sometimes on their appearance, and when Roger muttered about an appointment she said thank you for the tea and ran across the road to the bus stop without looking back, while Roger turned down a side street and hurried away, where to?

  Depression went with him now. Why had he not tele- phoned the office and spared himself conjecture as to what they must be supposing, and why was this all he could find to do? Where had it gone, whatever had been prompting him to withdraw into his skin and by so doing to shrug off Roger Paul? Stillness and silence were to get him into some- thing or out of something, the bright clear solid objects about him were to tell him something – and here he was, elation ebbing and conscience beginning to bump at his heels. Those cranes, he thought, I’ve
been wanting to look at them, I’ll walk past them now.

  The cranes, rearing into the sky from perches at rooftop level, were working with the hesitant precision of craftsmen on a tricky job. They swung great girders from one height to another, tons of metal looking up there like matchsticks – but now to the indifferent film and the girl was added a pneumatic drill working on a nearer part of the site, sawing at Roger’s brain so that he squinted and began to feel sick. Naomi loves panics, he thought, she will probably call the police, and anyway what shall I tell them when they ask where I have been? This must be why people become alcoholics or turn up in Glasgow not knowing who they are, and all I have done is go to the cinema. Perhaps, he thought, if I move nearer the drill, into the thickest of the clangour, I shall find a still centre as the man who works it must or he would go mad. But the nearer he moved the more it battered and vibrated and screamed into his skull. He tightened his muscles, bending slightly forward as though against lashing rain. I can’t even have a proper nervous breakdown, he thought. I must get out of this, Christ I must get out of it, and he turned and almost ran down the street, frightened and angry. I’m not on strike, he thought, I’m on the run.

  The street ended at a corner of Regent’s Park, which when he reached it was almost empty. Only a few people were walking dogs across the generous country-seeming spaces in the fading light. Roger sat down on a bench to light a cigar- ette, then leant forward, elbows on knees, and stared at the toffee papers and husks of monkey nuts on the path between his feet. Tired, he felt, and thirsty in spite of the tea, and he could no longer prevent himself visualising details of the consternation his absence must be causing. Stevenson, the translator – oh Lord, he remembered, the wretched man was coming all the way up from Bognor for the appointment.

  As he sat staring, there came the scuff of feet on the path. He looked up and saw an old woman approaching, on her head a wide-brimmed straw hat trimmed with roses once pink, the man’s overcoat which flapped round her feet secured over her stomach with two safety-pins. She paused, started to go on, then turned as though deciding to claim her rights after all and lowered herself painfully to sit at the far end of the bench. Turning her back on Roger and inching a little towards him, she drew from under the coat an untidy parcel wrapped in newspaper. This she began slowly to unpack on the end of the bench sheltered from Roger’s sight. He leant forward to see what was coming out: an empty sardine tin, two crushed fronds of ostrich feather, the heel of a loaf, a broken photograph frame, a cutlet bone, a set of false teeth, a wrinkled apple with one bite browning in its side and a roll of fresh green ribbon.

  The old woman flattened the paper carefully and arranged her hoard upon it, changing the position of the objects sometimes as though there were a correct order which she knew but had temporarily forgotten. Then, the ribbon in her hand, she hesitated, cocked her head as though listening and suddenly swung round to stare straight into Roger’s face. Hers he had not seen till then, shaded as it was by the brim of her hat and the locks of cinder-coloured hair hanging forward over her cheeks. Looking at him, she pushed the hair back at one side and he now met an eye of extraordinary innocence, almost completely round, pale blue and like a baby’s in its accepting, unwatchful gaze. Her skin was either brown or filthy, her small toothless mouth an upturned crescent, a permanent smile sunk between nose and chin. Her innocent, smiling interrogation was endless and he felt that he must speak.

  That, he said softly, is a pretty piece of ribbon.

  For a moment she did not answer. Then, turning back to her belongings she said in a clear, prim old lady’s voice: Mind your own fucking business you bleeding papist bastard.

  I’m sorry, muttered Roger, the blood rushing to his fore- head, and as he got up he kept his eyes lowered, seeing only her foot sticking out from under the coat: the torn black canvas shoe and the purple knob of her ankle, the skin criss- crossed with dry white cracks.

  The light was going. Soon the park would be shut. In a scared effort at common sense he decided that he had time to walk once round the park putting his thoughts in order and then would go home. But when he reached the more open, wilder part with the zoo to the north and water lying misty on his left, it was already nearly dark and he could hear the park-keepers’ whistles in the distance and their calls of All out. He stood among trees. A keeper came riding a bicycle along a path near him, blowing his whistle as he pedalled, and Roger without intent drew back against the trunk of an elm tree and was not seen. The keeper vanished in the dusk, one last dog-owner hurried in his wake and in a few minutes the minatory whistles ceased, somewhere out of sight gates were chained, men lit cigarettes and went off duty. Roger, frozen against his tree, felt the ache in the palms of his hands which he recognised from night patrols during the war. It was hard to believe that if he were now caught nothing very terrible would happen.

  He noticed for the first time that a wind had risen on this warm evening and that a moon was already in the sky. The silence was vast, contained within the encircling city’s hum but not diminished by it, and when he began to walk again the swish of his feet in the grass sounded loud. The wind ran overhead and he was alone.

  It was not elation coming back to him, though he felt again the tautness he had experienced early in the afternoon, and that a purpose was within his reach. To be here in the night park where no one ever came – or so he supposed, ignorant of those who clamber over fences with girls or for darker purposes – to be in the centre of it all but alone: perhaps he had come without alcohol or forgetting what he had been seeking, had shed enough of his surface to uncover the cause of his flight. He was unwilling to turn his atten- tion upon himself (no, it was not elation, it was fear), but light had gone, sound had gone, people had gone: there was nothing else to claim it. I am alone here, he thought, nothing else is here but what cannot change, and I have got to look at it.

  The wind was rushing faster between the still moon and the still grass which was too short to sway with it. It poured through the darkness, pressing Roger’s clothes against his body, but he did not feel cold, only empty. He sat down on the grass, his knees up, his arms resting across his knees and his forehead on his arms, while between the moon and the earth the wind came flooding over him. I have failed in love, he thought, and I have failed in action. Understanding, honesty, guilt: they are only sops I have thrown to the monster as I backed into my hole, they are not enough and never can be. And whatever I uncover I shall not change because in all this space and darkness here I am, so inadequate yet as solid as a pebble. This, he thought with interest rather than horror, would be the time to die. There would be nothing to it, it would only be one short step further, and he saw clearly the litter left by a dead animal: a skeleton collapsed and tangled in grass. Then for a little while he saw nothing and felt nothing. He was asleep, almost, having come unexpectedly but without surprise to the end of where he could go.

  Perhaps fifteen minutes later he lifted his head. So that’s that, he said aloud, rising stiffly from the unaccustomed position. So long as one knows. . . . And it had, indeed, brought him to a strange flat calm, as though from here he need not worry.

  It was not difficult to get out of the park. His legs were long and he came by chance to a place where the hedge, with its core of wire netting, was low. His hands, he noticed in the bus, were scratched but only slightly. The telephone was ringing as he came up the stairs to the door of his flat, and although it stopped as he put his key in the lock it began again ten minutes later while he was pouring his second drink. Naomi’s agitation was so great that at first she was incoherent. Is it him? Is it Roger? he heard Felton ask behind her, and he said quietly: Yes it’s me, I’m here and I’m all right. Then as she began again, quack quack quack: For Christ’s sake leave me alone, he shouted, and crashed the receiver down. His voice was so wild that when next morning he arrived punctually at the office they looked away from his face and neither of them, then or ever, a
sked him what had happened on that Thursday afternoon.

  AN UNAVOIDABLE DELAY

  It was on a railway train and in one compartment were five people. One a Rumanian dozing against the window, three Americans, father, mother and daughter with so much matching and expensive luggage that it filled both the racks and the remaining corner seat, and one a small English- woman with smooth dark hair called Rose, very careful not to look like an Englishwoman abroad, her dress neither of flowered cotton nor full in the skirt and her shoes elegant with quite high heels. The Englishwoman was sad, not only because a holiday was ending. In her bag were three letters from her husband which she had found waiting for her at Ljubljana, one of four pages, one of seven pages and one of twelve pages. She had skimmed the short one, looked at the beginnings and ends of the others and said to herself: There will be plenty of time to read them on the train. She had not done so yet. She knew what was in them.

  To talk would prevent her thinking, but the Rumanian was languageless among them and the Americans, who had square right-thinking faces, were reserved because it is so hard to tell with foreigners. The mother and daughter wore little suits as though for drinking coffee with friends in the morning and pretty uncreased blouses of white lawn, almost a miracle after travelling a fortnight in Yugoslavia. The father was a doctor concerned with health in industry, returning from an international conference to which, with his family, he had been invited. In other compartments were other doctors, English, French and Scandinavian, all contented after such a good conference though some still with indigestion.

  What was in the letters, Rose knew, was that if she left Neville he would throw up his job, start drinking again and (in the twelve-page letter, probably) put his head in the gas oven. Going away by herself had not worked, it seemed, although it had been wonderful. Halfway through the second week, in Dubrovnik, she had begun to flirt with a handsome Yugoslav architect and this she had especially enjoyed. She had stopped only when the architect, growing confident, had made that remark about Englishwomen not being cold really, not with the right men, but what a misfortune for them to be married to English husbands. Rose always hoped that foreigners would not make this remark but they usually did, particularly when on a beach or in the evening she wore her hair loose and not coiled high at the back of her head. The architect looked particularly fatuous when he made it, Rose grew quite angry; after all, she thought, thousands no millions of English husbands were perfectly splendid and just because she happened . . . anyway she saw then that to go on with this architect would be worse than full skirts, flowered cotton and flat sandals, it would be too banal, not to be thought of. After that she stayed near the other friends she had made, married couples or women, whose delicate assumption that she was a little prudish in an attractive English way was fortifying. Warm-hearted, they judged her, but chaste. And so she was, after all, as people go.