Four Bare Legs In a Bed

by Helen Simpson

  ‘Not bad,’ she thought. She had been cast down by the bleached faces and thin thatches all around.

  He had spotted her too; they were deep in conversation by the time the ship juddered out of the harbour.

  ‘So,’ said Leif Erik. ‘I am an electrical engineer from Oslo. And you?’

  ‘I am in Public Relations,’ said Sally proudly. ‘I’ve got to report back about holidays on these ships.’

  ‘And how old are you?’ he asked, offering her a cigarette.

  ‘Twenty-two,’ she said. ‘No thanks, I don’t.’

  ‘Ah. I am twenty-seven.’

  ‘Everybody else seems to be at least ninety.’

  ‘Yes,’ sneered Leif Erik, ‘they are all old krauts, you know. They would be better dead.’

  Shocked, Sally stepped back, wondering if he were mad.

  ‘Ah, so you are ignorant,’ he said. ‘They have come back to see old haunts. Ask your father about it when you go home.’

  ‘Don’t be so rude,’ she snapped. ‘You mean the War.’

  He gave a mirthless smirk and a half-bow of sarcastic congratulation.

  ‘You shouldn’t harp on about something that was over before you were born,’ she said.

  He looked around him with such venom that she felt positively placid by comparison. This was refreshing since she was used to Peter treating her like a time bomb.

  That evening, Leif Erik sat beside her in the dining room talking at such speed and random that she barely noticed the boiled fish she was swallowing. Lapps have over two hundred different words to describe snow, he said, then elaborated on the temperament of the polar bear which had killed his uncle. The sea was less rough during very cold winters, whereas mild weather built up pressure and caused terrible tempests.

  ‘Let’s hope it’s really cold then,’ she said.

  ‘Once I was seasick to the point of green for nineteen hours on a fishing trip for halibut,’ he continued. ‘It taught me a lot about myself.’ He put down his knife and fork. ‘You have been lucky to taste this typical Norwegian meal. It is molje, which is cod with female eggs and also, in the little jug, a sauce of fish livers with cod semen.’

  On the next day it was very cold indeed. The ship trawled in a few fishermen-passengers at Bodø, Svolvaer and Stokmarknes. Hail flew in showers.

  ‘You say your girlfriend never minds when you have a fling with someone else,’ said Sally meditatively.

  ‘No. Why should she? And I feel the same to her; good luck, we say to each other. It is a necessary arrangement. Both of us travel.’

  ‘I’d scratch Peter’s eyes out,’ said Sally.

  ‘But why? Don’t you like him? You want him to be happy?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Sally, baffled. ‘I suppose so.’

  Leif Erik lit another cigarette and drew on it hungrily, as though the tobacco were nourishing him. I bet Peter wouldn’t think twice if he got the chance, thought Sally nastily; I bet he wouldn’t wrestle with his conscience. Perhaps if I gave myself something to feel guilty about, she thought, perhaps then I’d be nicer to him.

  That evening the ship stopped for an hour at Tromsø. Leif Erik and Sally bounded down the gangplank like tigers. The air was savage with frost. They walked fast until they came to a jagged tent-shaped building crenellated along its spine with snow.

  ‘This is the famous Ice Sea Cathedral,’ said Leif Erik. To Sally it looked anything but ecclesiastical; in fact, it made her think rather of the Hall of the Mountain King and of how her father had made Peer Gynt blast out in times of crisis. She looked sideways at Leif Erik. His face was half-hidden by the hood, but she caught a gelid glitter from his eyes. He stopped to light a cigarette, shielding his face from the wind as though wounded, then turned to her.

  ‘I think it will be tonight,’ he said.

  ‘What will?’ she said, eyes narrowing.

  He tied her scarf more closely round her neck. His fingers were as cold as death.

  ‘The Aurora Borealis,’ he said. ‘You know, the Northern Lights.’

  Back on board, they stood watching the sky in silence. The other passengers had all gone to bed. Sally felt her face, and it was like frozen glass.

  ‘It’s very dark,’ she said. ‘I thought you had the midnight sun.’

  ‘Only in summer,’ he replied. ‘Now let us wait quietly.’

  She could not stop shivering, even when he put his arm round her. They stared into the raven’s-wing blackness. As they watched, a star turned red, then another winked green. ‘It comes now,’ said Leif Erik, his eyes bird-bright, intent on the heavens.

  Streamers of phosphorescence blazed noiselessly, filling the sky. As they stood sighing, veils of chilly yellow fire flared and soared like curtains in the wind. Winking hard, painfully intense, the stars had assumed the froideur of corpse-candles. This went on for several minutes.

  ‘Ah,’ she breathed, ‘ah!’ and stared unblinking upwards.

  Now the eery flambeaux were dying, their long fires blanching, expiring at a funeral pace, until at last the moonless sky showed nothing but a celestial hoar frost. In a few moments even this had faded off into infinity, leaving unparalleled blackness.

  Their subsequent congress was somewhat dispiriting. As the gaunt face hung above hers, Sally’s mind filled like a sinking ship with images of lost safety, grounded pleasures and the failed warmth of belonging. She felt such a lust for dry land in the thick of it all that she was not surprised to taste bile in her mouth afterwards.

  Her hair smelled of cigarette smoke the next morning; she did not feel well. At some moment during the small hours, the ship had passed the Arctic Circle, and the sea was much rougher, flashing green and black with choppy jagged waves like broken glass. Over breakfast they made conversation with an effort. Sally was royally bored, pleased that he was leaving the ship that morning.

  ‘Oh go away, please go,’ she thought impatiently when he offered to bring her more coffee. At last he went, and she never saw him again.

  The snow-shrouded ship chugged on northwards, towards Russia. Occasionally an ashen sun injected lemon-tinged steam through the clouds, but most of the time sea and sky colluded in muffling all colour and sign of life. One passenger claimed he had seen a whale spouting; it was possible. That night Sally dreamed finny monsters loomed dull-eyed with teeth a-glitter beneath her, their bulk so enormous that she herself provided less than a mouthful of flesh and bones.

  By morning, the ship had started to keel and lurch with sickening deliberation. It creaked like a pair of new boots. Sally stayed in her bunk, clutching the sides as her feet rose higher than her head then dipped down again. She felt extremely ill and ineffably bored. They had reached the miserable Barents Sea, and Russia was only miles away. There was a gale blowing, and sea water slapped at the porthole. The stiff little curtains stood out at an angle of forty-five degrees and swung back again. The chair shot over from the porthole to the door. Oranges flew through the air. Throughout the ship could be heard the sound of vomiting and broken glass.

  The return journey was interminable. Old people dozed around her like wasted dinosaurs. Their talk was all of nausea; an elderly English-speaking couple at her table translated it for her at mealtimes. The woman described lying on her bunk during the storm, listening to her husband’s hairbrush sliding up and down the cabin’s linoleum floor. Sally attended with a dead face to the timeless bilingual squabbling.

  ‘For some reason my husband has put nails in the back of his hairbrush,’ shrugged the woman.

  ‘My dear, without those nails and also some glue, my hairbrush had fallen apart.’

  She marvelled at the impotent stasis into which Travel had cast her. The minutes crawled by and she could barely move for her great weight of tedious unease. She hauled herself out on deck to see if the ice of the storm could lift her from this stagnant trance. Coldness blirted over her in salt-crests but failed to invigorate. Instead, chill clamps gripped her pulse points so that it grew difficult to breath
e. She went down to her cabin and lay on her bunk. The cold had worked some sort of confirmation. She had never felt such indifference, and could no longer imagine the existence of love or disappointment or terror.

  This huge indifference meant that she barely registered the journey from Bergen to Heathrow, or even from Heathrow to the flat she shared with Peter. She sat and read his note, then made herself some tea. ‘Dear Sally,’ it read, ‘As you may have guessed I met Somebody Else a while back. When you got sent on that trip it seemed the right moment to make the break. Hope you are well. Lots of luck with the Career. All the best, Peter.’

  She noticed that she really could not care less. Idly intrigued, she summoned up her father’s shade: nothing. She considered how it was in the nature of things that the first day of the holidays always came, and the last, and how it would be just like that too with other men, and with death as well. Nothing was durable. So what, she shrugged.

  She drank her cold tea, considering the voyage with fathomless incuriosity. Only the recollection of that Arctic elf light, weightless, soaring and flaring in the blackness, produced in her face a certain chilly correspondent glare.

  Below Rubies

  I LAY ON the bed looking over my shoulder through a tangle of hair, across my dipping breast down to thighs like swan’s wings. I felt electric and wanted him to look at me. But he slept within seconds.

  I saw myself in the mirror and felt none of the usual shame at my hugeness. I thought, yes, I must be nice for a man, I am big and soft and round with velvety skin. Lucky old Colin. I glowed back at my image, rosy like a goddess in a painting, quite cock-a-hoop.

  Why do I cry in the bath, then, when the enamel sides grip my hips and my whale bulk grins through the suds? Back in real life, which does not include such nights as I have just had, my own flesh makes me breathless with distaste. Well, I was born fat and I have stayed fat. And that is the last I shall think about it for now.

  I’m as happy as a sandboy under the weight of these blankets. It’s very early in the morning, maybe three or three-thirty, and I can’t even make out the shape of the wardrobe in the dark.

  I don’t know I’ll bother to go into work. Now that Colin’s back I’ll cook us both a big breakfast. Though I must return my lucky necklace first, of course, very early, before old Grouse gets in. He won’t notice a thing.

  Old Grouse won’t believe I’m ill, but he can lump it. If I can’t take the odd day off on what he pays me for working eight hours a day in that stuffy little shop of his, then it’s a poor lookout.

  I get off at Green Park, with the lions and the unicorns dancing over shop doorways. Being a good mimic, I slide into subdued respect without any trouble. My voice was never as Peckham as Melanie’s anyway. And if you twist one or two of the words you use most often, you reassure them even more; like saying ‘vey’ as in, ‘This is a vey fine emerald brooch, sir.’ But on the whole it’s best to stay quiet and keep your eyes down. Those old boys have no trouble in talking themselves into buying.

  Everything in the shop costs over £500. I never begin to want even the cheapest peridot bracelet, I think of all the jewels as if they were part of the display in a gallery. I admire them, yes, especially the diamond rooster pin with his crest of rubies. But I never think I could have them for myself. I look at them and like them, just as I go to the National Gallery sometimes in the lunch hour and stare at the big Venetian pictures; but I don’t feel any itch to own them.

  Working so near Trafalgar Square also means it’s only five minutes to the Coliseum and ten to Covent Garden. I like Verdi best: Violetta and Tosca and Mimi. It’s funny, going to the pictures does nothing for me. I’ve never enjoyed the theatre either, and all the plays now are about such depressing things too, like multiple sclerosis or analysing marriage.

  No, I prefer music and colour and being overwhelmed. Best of all are fairs. It makes sense that I met Colin at a fair.

  I’d gone along with Martin, the little window-cleaner and double-glazing salesman from next door. For some reason he was always pestering me to go out with him. Maybe I reminded him of his mother. Melanie tells me that I can’t afford to be a physical snob, the size I am; but I’d rather do without than go with little runts like Martin.

  I can’t remember why I let him tag along; but I gave him the slip after we went for a ride on the Mushroom and on the second time round he had to lean over the edge to be sick. I felt disgusted. He has no courage in him.

  Then I walked on my own in the blare, with the black sky whirling over Battersea Park, smacking my lips around a bush of candyfloss, nothing but sweet grit and air in the mouth.

  The roundabout flanks of the giant cat and ostrich and the horses with their blood-filled nostrils galloped like swimmers, and I strained to hear the organ tune of ‘Lily of Laguna’ above amplified Blondie and Madonna. I grew familiar with the faces that came round: the laughing mother with her roaring crimson-faced baby on the ostrich; the Rastafarian as still and beautiful as a centaur; the girl with green lipstick; and the sulky lout lounging the wrong way round on the gaudy rooster, showing off, arms folded behind his head, a leg either side of the golden pole, his feet crossed on the tail feathers, lazing with cocky ease along the back of the painted bird. I kept looking out for him.

  From the Wall of Death came screams which escalated and fainted as the machines revolved in the blackness. I started meandering across the grass towards it, and I was invisible and happy.

  I stopped at the coconut shy. There he was again, the one who had been riding the rooster. I watched him roll his sleeves up to the elbow. He had a bad-tempered face with the sort of black-fringed eyes which they say have been put in with a sooty finger. Beside him was a small pyramid of the wooden balls, which he heaved with startling violence, one by one at a steady pace, with such precision that a little crowd grew round the stall. He was aiming at one coconut only, and hitting it every time, very hard. It did not budge. The crowd murmured. He threw the last ball with such a vicious twist that it split into several parts when it reached its target. The coconut, however, remained steady as a rock. People began to shout, ‘Cheat!’ and ‘It’s nailed down!’ The owner of the coconut shy looked every bit as dark and bad-tempered as my man, but not by any means as heavily built. He gave a cross grin and said, ‘Here y’are, mate, better luck next time,’ pitching over a coconut from a secret store behind the canvas flap.

  My man tossed it aside, then hopped lazily across the rope, past the stall’s owner, and lobbed the rest of the coconuts to the laughing crowd. I fielded one neatly, and he winked at me with his sooty eye. The stallholder looked like thunder but didn’t dare touch him.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’ he asked. I swelled with pride. He latched on. He hardly said anything after that. I was as pleased as Punch.

  It was late by now and the stalls were starting to close down. There was that lovely cheap smell of danger. We mounted the Waltzer, the two of us bunched into a snub-nosed cart, and an iron bar fastened us down. Because it was late, I suppose, and because of bye-laws insisting on the right to sleep of Battersea residents, there was none of the usual amplified racket, and they turned the lights off too. It got up speed and we whipped around at a neck-cracking pace. I lost my nerve, my skirt blew up, I couldn’t stop laughing, and round we went, the whole machine creaking like a ship in a storm; and the screams of those around us on this circular hurtle swelled and faded, swelled and faded. In front of my eyes blinked trees, a helter skelter, the paybooth, his face, in regular crazy succession, and from my mouth belted uncontrollable laughter I could not recognise as my own. Then the unmasked creaking and screams started to sound terrifying; but almost as quickly we were turfed out of the little carts, and I was staggering against him down on the bruised grass again.

  I didn’t know who he was or where he came from, I didn’t even know his name. I’m usually a good deal more cautious than that. I read the papers just like anyone else, I know what can happen. But that last ride had taken away m
y common sense. I was chuckling at his arm round me, we were giving each other pinches and punches all the way back to my flat, and by the time we came to it, it was as mad as the Waltzer.

  When I saw his bristly face on the pillow next morning, I was shocked. He looked like a cartoon villain, with that blue chin and one of those dotted line tattoos round his neck labelled CUT HERE. I hadn’t noticed that the night before. I turned back the sheet to look at it, the large root resting on his belly.

  He growled and woke up.

  ‘No harm in looking,’ I said.

  And we were off again.

  That was the best of it, if I’m honest, of course. I know what Melanie thinks, and she’s right, he does sponge off me as much as he can. But I don’t care. I love it.

  That was only a month ago. He’s been staying here on and off. I don’t think he has anywhere else just now. I still don’t know what he does for a living when he’s in work, but, as Melanie said, it’s hardly likely to be legal, honest, decent or truthful.

  I know it’s not too clever to get involved with a waster like this. I know it hasn’t been so good lately, either. Take that evil row at the weekend, for example. But my way of coping with life has always been, Ignore It and Keep Hoping. I go from day to day, and I do as little as possible, unlike Melanie. My sister slaved away at school, and was the only girl they ever produced who went on to college. Now she is a trainee solicitor and lives with another trainee solicitor out in Hainault, which was as far away as she could get from Peckham. I went to dinner there a couple of months ago. Everything smelt of air freshener. They talked about grouting for two whole courses, then during pudding about how twenty-seven and three-quarters was the right age to start a family. All the time there was the whine of next door’s Black-and-Decker, because Do-It-Yourself is what they do on Saturday nights out in Hainault. Well, I know what I’d rather be doing.

  I believe in shutting my eyes and waiting for the bad things to go away. It works, too! Yesterday everything looked as bad as it could be, and now we’re together again.