Listening in the Dusk

by Celia Fremlin

  And Alice promised. Well, it seemed easy, as promises go.

  It must have been nearly an hour later — well after eleven o’clock — when the phone sounded up and down the echoing stairs and landings, and this time Alice over-rode the usual custom and went racing down the three flights to the ground floor, fearful lest Mary should get there first. This time, she knew what she was going to say to this tiresome and nerve-racking intruder. This time, she was going to ask the questions. Would you kindly tell me who is speaking, please? Do you realise what the time is? Will you explain why you are continuing to harass us when you have already been clearly told that we have no one of that name here?

  She had embarked on more than one of these pre-rehearsed put-downs before she realised that the male voice she had at first not recognised was in fact Rodney’s; so startled had he been by the freezing reception of his call that his usually precise and confident voice had collapsed into bewilderment and hesitancy.

  “For goodness sake … What on earth …?” he protested; and it was not until he reached the word “earth” that she gathered who it was that was speaking.

  “Oh … Oh, I’m sorry …!” she apologised, and could have kicked herself for putting him so effortlessly in the right before the argument, whatever it might be, had even begun. “I’m sorry,” she repeated lamely. “I thought you were someone else.”

  “The lucky fellow!” he commented drily; she seemed to be handing him on a plate all the best lines. “The lucky fellow, give him my best condolences, won’t you, if he ever speaks to you again! Now, listen: What I was going to say — and if you’re planning to bite my head off, at least wait until I’ve said it — is that I — we, that is — would be awfully pleased if you’d come round for a meal one evening? Long-time-no-see, and all that?”

  Why did he have to change it to “we”, spoiling everything? Why couldn’t he have left it “I would be awfully pleased”? What harm would it have done him?

  And anyway, what was it all in aid of? Long-time-no-see was in no way a sufficient explanation. No, it was something Ivy wanted? Or didn’t want? Let’s guess …

  “You want to talk about the house,” she hazarded. “You and Ivy are moving.”

  From his sharp intake of breath, she knew she had hit the bullseye.

  “How … How did you know?” he asked, baffled, as men so often are by a woman’s capacity to reach a correct conclusion without reference to the relevant data. “Who told you?”

  No one had; she’d guessed, but it would be more fun to let him — or, rather, to let Ivy — imagine that she, Alice, had access to some sort of information unknown to them. It would make Ivy feel nervous about all their mutual acquaintances, wondering which one it was. She would feel under scrutiny. Rodney wouldn’t, of course; he wasn’t a man to bother about being under scrutiny. Well, the Rodney she knew wasn’t. Had he changed?

  “And so you see,” Rodney went on, bypassing the mystery — and Alice could exactly picture the slight humping of his left shoulder with which he was accustomed to brush aside the incomprehensible — “You see, it’s your things, Alice. I know you said you didn’t want them, but the thing is, we don’t want them either … Ivy doesn’t. We’re trying to get sorted out for the move, and she doesn’t know what to do with them. She can’t exactly throw them away, you see, and so …”

  How do you exactly throw things away? Is it the opposite of throwing them away inexactly? Not aiming quite straight when you toss them towards the dustbin or the paper-salvage or whatever? For a moment, she indulged in a vision of Ivy doing just this, anxiously aiming object after object towards some receptacle, and failing miserably every time.

  “So we wondered — Ivy wondered — if you could come round and go through them a bit? Your papers, you know, and all those wads of typed stuff, and all those half-finished bits of knitting? We don’t mind storing some of it for you, if it could all be packed up somehow, but at the moment …”

  This was just the sort of opportunity she’d had in mind, only a few days back; but Rodney was still speaking:

  “And your books, Alice, surely you want your books?”

  He had something there. She did want her books, even though she had, more or less, nowhere to keep them. In particular, she wanted the further volumes of Herodotus, so inflexible was Cyril’s determination to plough through the lot of them, it would be a shame to discourage him, especially in view of his remarkable ability and propensity for hard work. She would be wanting the plays, too, and a number of Latin texts, Caesar, Cicero, Virgil. For some more coaching was coming her way: two sixth-form girls from the local Comprehensive who wanted to take A-level Latin despite the current lack of a Latin teacher at the school; also an aspiring physics student who had decided (probably mistakenly, but who was she to argue?) that it would be easier to learn Greek and be done with it rather than learn by heart, separately, the ever-multiplying scientific terms of Greek derivation. On top of which, the prospect of some supply-teaching was on the cards; the spring term, the term of colds and flu epidemics was just starting, and so supply teachers of every kind were likely to be in great demand, especially in this area, where the full-time teachers were currently digging their toes in about filling-in for absent colleagues.

  So, “All right,” she said, cautiously. “When?” and after a brief bit of to-ing and fro-ing about dates, an evening was fixed on. Next Wednesday. For dinner, at seven o’clock.

  By now, Alice found herself quite looking forward to the occasion, because, really, it couldn’t go wrong. It was a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose situation. If the meal was nice, well, that would be nice in itself; but if it was awful, that would be nice too, as showing-up what a rotten cook Ivy was.

  If she was. Oh, well …

  It occurred to Alice that there were compensations in being the discarded wife: the onus of being perfect now falls on the Other Woman.

  Chapter 27

  She arrived on the doorstep of her old home at six minutes past seven — exactly right according to Alice’s grandmother, who had been an absolute mine of this sort of information. For a dinner invitation, the guest should arrive between four and seven minutes later than the appointed time; for afternoon tea, between five and twelve minutes; whereas for lunch you should be exactly on time, to the minute. Why this should be, Alice could not clearly remember. The late arrival for dinner was explicable in terms of allowing your hostess a little margin of time to be absolutely ready for you; but why was this not necessary at lunch-time, likewise? Her grandmother had explained it to her at the time, something to do with the servants, and the replacement of butler by parlour-maid for morning occasions … Well, something like that, but the inner logic of it had escaped Alice’s memory, presumably through long disuse, butlers and parlour-maids being thin on the ground these days.

  Still, her grandmother would have been proud of her tonight. During the longish pause between her ringing of the bell and the sound of scurrying footsteps (evidently, Ivy was a hostess who needed the full seven minutes), Alice had time to look at her watch and congratulate herself. At least she’d got the timing right, and with a complacent smile she waited for Ivy — for she was sure it was Ivy, scuttling nervously like an overweight rabbit down the stairs — to open the door.

  It was more of a shock than she’d expected, to be welcomed as a guest into her own home: to be shown where to hang her coat, on the very same pegs on which she had always hung it as far back as she could remember.

  The sitting-room was a shock, too, though in a different way. The big serviceable work-surfaces on which the books and papers of one or both of them had invariably been spread out throughout the best part of twenty years were gone. There was no longer any proper solid table at all, just flimsy little coffee-tables with splayed-out gilt legs, scattered here and there about the room, each with an ornament on it, or a photograph of some bulbous baby or grinning relative; something, anyway, to prevent it being any use for putting anything down on.

 
And somewhere to put things down was exactly what Ivy was urgently needing, at this very moment. Moving agitatedly back and forth from glasses to drinks cupboard, she had managed to assemble on a tray three large wine-glasses, three sherry glasses and a brand-new packet of peanuts needing to be gouged open by some sort of sharp implement not yet to hand. With one hand she clutched this tray against her person, while with the other she was trying to pluck from the drinks cupboard, like a bunch of oversized flowers, a bottle of gin, a sweet sherry, a dry sherry and an unopened bottle of white wine. Her glance darted hither and thither along the well-stocked shelves; she was desperate, Alice could see, to remember where the corkscrew was, and also to locate some kind of dish into which she could decant the peanuts, when and if she could succeed in wrenching them open.

  Her predicament was so familiar that Alice could have laughed out loud. Helpful though Rodney could often be with day-to-day household chores, whenever there were visitors he always behaved like this: disappearing without trace the moment the doorbell rang, and only reappearing when the difficult part was over, when the guests had been successfully divested of their coats; had been asked how they were, and been informed in tones of extravagant rapture of how wonderful it was to see them; had been seated in appropriate chairs, and supplied with appropriate drinks … Then, and only then, would Rodney re-emerge and take over his duties as eager and welcoming host.

  This, Alice calculated, he would be doing in about five minutes’ time; meanwhile, she took pity on the flustered Ivy, cleared one of the tottery little tables so that she could at least put something down, and offered to go and find the corkscrew.

  “It’ll be in the knife drawer, right at the back,” she predicted confidently, and set off for the kitchen, wondering as she did so, whether it was quite her place to be knowing more about where things were kept than Ivy did.

  Rodney, as expected, had found himself something urgent to do to fill in the time until the guest could be assumed to be settled; with a felt pen, he was blacking-in the pattern on the label round the coffee-jar. He jumped guiltily when Alice came into the kitchen, though not, in her opinion, guiltily enough in the circumstances.

  “Corkscrew,” she said, falling effortlessly into the old shorthand which had once existed between them, and proceeded to scrabble in the knife drawer, pushing her hand back and back among all the old familiar prongs and edges and spare bits of the mincing machine.

  “That drawer could do with a good clear out, you know, Allie,” he was beginning, in tones of mild reproach, and then suddenly, like a man woken from sleep, he recalled who she was, or rather, who she wasn’t.

  Her fingers encountered the corkscrew, and she pulled it out triumphantly. “Here!” she exclaimed, thrusting it into his hand. “Come on, we mustn’t leave …” and now it was she who had to recollect who she was, and who she wasn’t.

  The situation was impossible. Their eyes met in a kind of visual shrug; each gave a little laugh and hurried to take refuge in the sitting-room, where the resumption of dinner-party formalities would help to prevent old and familiar habits from raising their unruly heads.

  The meal was a disappointment. That is to say, it was neither good enough to be a gastronomic treat, nor bad enough to show up Ivy as a rotten housekeeper. Ivy’s legs were a disappointment, too. As she stumped in and out of the room carrying dishes, Alice couldn’t help noticing that they weren’t, after all, as thick as tree-trunks, as she had been picturing them all this time. They were just rather fat, that’s all, nothing spectacular. The rest had been just wishful thinking.

  After dinner, and after coffee, quite good, though served in horrid little vulgar mugs with slogans on them — “ME First!” “Oops — Sorry!” and “Come Again!” — that sort of thing; after this, the real business of the evening had to be broached. In a little procession headed by Ivy, they made their way upstairs into the spare bedroom where all Alice’s belongings — or alleged belongings, much of it she intended to disown on sight — had been piled, higgledy-piggledy, to await … Well whatever was going to happen to them in the end.

  “You see,” Ivy was pointing out as politely as she could — because who wants to reveal herself as a fishwife in front of a newly-captured partner? — “I don’t like having to rush you like this, but we do have to get this room clear, ready for the decorators. Before we can put the house on the market the whole place has to be decorated from top to bottom, the men are starting on Monday, and so you see —”

  “Yes, that’s right, no rush at all,” put in Rodney warmly, just as if by saying the exact opposite he was backing his wife up; this, too, was an annoying way of his that Alice remembered well. “All we really want you to do tonight, Alice, is to pick out the things you actually want, here and now, and I’ll give you a lift back with them.”

  “Just books it’ll be,” Alice was beginning firmly to stipulate, when Rodney interrupted, his voice sharp with dismay:

  “The cuckoo-clock!” he exclaimed, rummaging behind piles of old journals and pulling it into view. “Surely you want the cuckoo-clock, Allie? Don’t you remember? I brought it back from the Black Forest after that convention, and you were so pleased? You must want it!”

  His dismay seemed quite out of proportion. After all, if he valued the clock all that much, how had it ever got shoved away out of sight like this?

  “Of course I remember,” she said. “But it’s yours really, Rodney, you bought it. Why don’t you still have it in the bedroom, where it always was?”

  She had said the wrong thing. Had she meant to? Had some devil inside her been prompting every word? After a moment, Rodney answered in a tight voice: “We can’t have it there any more. It keeps Ivy awake.”

  It wasn’t Rodney’s words so much as Ivy’s face that revealed to Alice a hitherto unsuspected truth: the truth that, if she really wanted him, she could have Rodney back. If she really set herself to do so, giving time and trouble to it, using all her intelligence, pulling out all the stops …

  For the bond was still there. Neither of them could have failed to be aware of it during those moments in the kitchen. A bond tough as old boots, resistant alike to both neglect and rough-handling, sending out shoots, like bindweed, in every direction, coiling around everything, popping up everywhere, out of control, ineradicable.

  Or almost. Of course, it could be eradicated, just as bindweed can. It would die in the end, it was bound to, if it got no nourishment at all of any kind. It was in Alice’s power to nourish it, to feed it with new life, starting this very evening. Or not to. She looked at Ivy’s round, unhappy face, with a smudge of dust across the cheek, and she knew that Ivy knew. And then she looked at Rodney, his bent head turned away from her as he fiddled with the cuckoo-clock. Setting it, for goodness sake! Setting it to the right time, seven hours out of phase as it was.

  “Cuckoo … Cuckoo …” the soft musical notes floated lightly in the still air up in this little room; and then, almost immediately, “Cuckoo …” a single note as he took the hand past the half hour. “Cuckoo … Cuckoo … Cuckoo …” three o’clock, half past, four o’clock … The sweet notes were like an accompaniment to Alice’s unfinished thoughts … to Ivy’s … to Rodney’s … and at last it reached its conclusion; caught up with real time, with now-time; the nine sweet cuckoos marked the end of something.

  “Time for the News,” exclaimed Rodney, setting down the clock as the ninth cuckoo died away; and then, turning to Alice: “We have the telly in the bedroom now, Alice; so come on.”

  The danger was over; they were safe. For the time being, anyway. The sense of relief in the three of them was almost palpable. They were like three climbers, roped together, who had just achieved a miraculous escape from some fearful hazard of the mountains. Here they were, safe and sound, back on solid earth again, warm and comfortable in front of a TV set, two in chairs and one on the bed.

  All the same, Alice found it hard to concentrate on the news; she’d heard it earlier, anyway, before she’d
started out, and there wasn’t much change. An insurrection somewhere; a twenty-four hour strike of civil servants in some department or other; a widow of eighty-nine who had hit an intruder over the head with the family Bible and sent him flying. “The Lord helps those who help themselves!” she’d declared, cackling with triumph in front of the cameras, her face rosy and wrinkled like an old apple, and her top teeth slipping.

  And then — just after what should have been the final item — a late report:

  “The news has just reached us that mass-murderer Julian Gray escaped this afternoon from Brimthorpe top-security jail. Police have set a cordon round the area, and there is hope that the man may shortly be recaptured. He is five-foot eleven in height, light brown hair, and as far as is known will be wearing the prison clothes. Meantime, the public is warned that if they see a man answering to this description, they should on no account approach him … Highly dangerous criminal … It is believed that he may be carrying a gun … The Governor of Brimthorpe Jail has told reporters …”

  Ivy leaned forward and turned the knob. “It’s nearly twenty past,” she pointed out, “I want to watch that ballet thing.” And at once the room was filled with orchestral music. But Alice, already on her feet, did not hear a single note of it.

  Chapter 28

  Cyril yawned, and pushed his Goodwin’s Greek Grammar to one side of Alice’s makeshift table. It had been a rotten day, one way and another. First, the Bike Run had ended in disappointment. Instead of beating his own record by at least a step or two, as he’d confidently expected after all that practice, he had done worse then he’d done for weeks; falling off almost at once three times in succession, while they all laughed, and called him Cissie. Not unkindly, exactly, it was only a joke; but all the same, they did call him Cissie. Then, afterwards, coming here for his Greek lesson, what should he find but that Alice was in a hurry because of some rotten dinner-party she had to go out to, and so could only give him his exact hour, with no time for interesting conversation either before or after. Normally, they had all sorts of discussion triggered off by something in Herodotus; whether Cyrus, stirring up disaffection, was really just like Mr Scargill, only lucky? Did the Oracles actually influence events, as well as predicting them, rather like the Opinion Polls? Could there really have been giant ants in the Arabian desert that could run as fast as camels? That sort of thing.