by Henry Green
The man behind the desk introduced himself. Pye did not catch the name, only that it was a doctor. This physician began by thanking him for his trouble and then said they wanted his help. Pye reminded himself, ‘Anything bar money,’ he repeated behind clenched teeth. Aloud he said ‘Yessir.’
‘In all sicknesses of this kind,’ the physician remarked, soft yet firm, ‘when we deal with illnesses of the mind, or not even illnesses, breaks, such as the weather we have today, look how different it is from what we endured yesterday, and what will be our lot tomorrow.’ ‘It won’t last, sir,’ Pye put in, intelligent. ‘Exactly,’ the doctor went on, ‘precisely as in high summer we can have quick storms, then fine weather again, so with the human being we get the sudden storm out of a blue sky.’ ‘And women especially,’ said Pye. ‘Men and women,’ the physician corrected, picking up a long ivory paper knife, carved at one end like the figure head beneath a bowsprit.
‘What we have to do is to dispel it, to prevent the storm from persisting. If we can,’ he went on, and stopped.
If they can’t, Pye remarked to himself, surely they won’t expect me to pay towards keeping her on. But he said nothing.
There was a long pause. In the end Pye cleared his throat. He said ‘Yessir.’
‘Mr Pye,’ the man at the desk began again, and he might have been telling about a scientific game of draughts, ‘your sister’s had a relapse. I’m sorry to say she’s not so well.’ More expensive treatment, the sub officer thought at once. ‘Now why, that’s what we’ve got to consider,’ Pye heard as, in self defence, he let his eyes wander out to the cream yellow sunlight on the ungrowing, still winter grass. ‘Why,’ the voice came at him again, ‘Why? There must be a reason. That is where we want your help.’
‘Me,’ Pye said, turning back to him.
‘Yes, you, Mr Pye, you see we have no one else.’
‘Me? In what manner, sir?’
‘Very simply, by telling us about your sister.’
‘Me tell about her? I’m sure I don’t know. We don’t discuss matters much in our family, we never did.’
‘I fancy we’re rather at cross purposes, Mr Pye. What I’m getting at is this, I want you to let me have your time so that I can get some inkling as to why she is like this. You see, just now, we can’t ask her.’
‘Now I understand,’ Pye said slowly, with dread. ‘But I don’t know that I’ll be able to assist. It was like this. Somehow or other, we can’t tell, this kid hitches ’imself on in the department store, just how ’e done it we’ll never get at, and that was the start.’
‘Oh no, Mr Pye, that was not the beginning. What I want you to do is to take me right back, back to when you were both children.’
‘Can I see her, sir?’
‘No, I’m afraid that is quite out of the question.’
There was another pause. Then Pye said:
‘I thought if I could ’ave a chat with her, settle ’er mind, then between the two of us we could get at what you was desirous of knowing.’
‘No, Mr Pye, you can’t. It is impossible just now. Now, let’s see if we can help each other over this. I had a sister. I was brought up with her in the country.’ Waited on hand and foot, Pye thought, now that he could concentrate on the story this man had begun to tell. ‘It was near Godalming, I don’t know if you are familiar with the country round there.’ Pye said ‘No sir,’ readily. The doctor got up. He began pacing the turkey carpet behind his desk. He went on:
‘There was a heavy fall of snow in the winter of nineteen eight, though I don’t suppose you will remember that, I should say it was before your time, and one afternoon my mother let us take one of those large japanned black tray things there used to be, with a key design in gold round the edge, off to a hill at the back of our garden, for tobogganing. It was most imprudent as it turned out. For my sister had an accident, she crashed into a tree and broke her leg. Now my mother, my sainted mother, had one unreasoning prejudice which seemed stronger than herself, she was one of those who call themselves Christian Scientists. I’m confident that we, as children, could never have been in more loving hands. But, despite the pain her daughter was in, my mother would insist that a qualified doctor should not be called. For ten days Mary must have been in agony, without even a proper splint to support the fracture. Then at last my father prevailed. Well, that is why I chose this profession, why, to this day, my sister stutters which, in turn, is, to a great degree, the reason that she never married. Why did you join the Fire Brigade?’
‘For the pension.’
‘And your sister,’ the doctor said rather impatiently, Pye thought, with that tone of authority back in his voice, ‘She never married? How was that?’
‘I don’t know I’m sure, I couldn’t say.’
‘But there must have been boys round.’
Without any warning, and with a shock that took all his breath, Pye saw the dry wood shaving creep, bent in the moonlight, the back way to their cottage. He saw it again as though it was before his eyes, which he now tried to draw away from the doctor’s. He had never before thought of his sister’s creeping separate from his own with Mrs Lane’s little girl. In a surge of blood, it was made clear, false, that it might have been his own sister he was with that night. So it might have been her voice, thick with excitement and fright and disgust, that said ‘Will it hurt?’ So in the blind moonlight, eyes warped by his need, he must have forced his own sister.
How could he have been mistaken, how not recognise that neck of junket, dew cool then. What a judgment! And he could not call to mind how they had come on one another that night. It must have been stifling, and her skin clammy hot, sticky. Why had she not said, the unnatural bitch. But if he had not been so quick, could he not have told who she was? Of course he could. And he had always known, and never realised.
He searched back, frantic. His pairing with the other girl had started a year before he thought he first had her. He was shy. They were gradual. She had begun to be on the look out when he went down to fish of an evening. The path went round the back of the Lanes’, by that pear tree. Was that why, when in the end it occurred, she made out she was so surprised, his second time, her first with him, when he had thought it was her second occasion?
With a suffocation of loathing at himself, which quickly passed, he grew hot with the idea.
He remembered there had been nothing doing, his float had not moved, the river slipped by, the blazing day had begun to sink, flies and wasps, the manor clock chimed, the kind of swallows that live in holes along the river bank squeaked as they flew. He left his rod, came up out of the rushes to the grass. He ate his step of bread and jam. He had lain back, eyes shut and pink, shirt open, the breeze flapping, so you could hardly notice, all over his heat-wet body. And a smear of jam must have been across one corner of his mouth, for the first he knew was when she mouthed it off.
She had come up barefoot, shoes and stockings hung about her neck to stalk him, and there was dust, he could exactly see it now, over her scruffy, absolutely flat brown feet. As he sat up they almost trod him by that difference there is in a girl’s foot, which he had never before had occasion to feel. But what a difference again to Prudence’s enamelled toes, the silky white bitch. So that must have been the first time with him for old Lane’s daughter.
‘Well, Mr Pye?’
Brought back to himself, Pye decided he must box clever, else he might lose the old pension.
‘I’ll think it over, sir,’ he said. He got up, unsteady. He wondered if he should thank this man for reminding him about that late afternoon, the rotten-gutted bastard of a doctor. Or should he thank him for minding his sister? Then he thought no, sod it, they pay him well, trust him for that, the quack.
‘Yes, precisely,’ the doctor said. ‘And let me know so that we can fix an appointment. I don’t want to worry you but she is just at a stage when a clue will make all the difference.’ At which Pye recollected his sister. What with believing, then disbelieving, he c
ould not remember afterwards how he got out.
But she did not last in his mind, not then at any rate. For, in the bus back to the substation, and their driver must have been late because he drove them swooping round the streets always, or so it seemed, downhill, Pye began to observe a girl. She was fair, that was all he could see for some time, and her tweed shoulders above the back of the seat. But, as this double-decker swayed and banked, and she, the lily, let her lovely head and neck incline with it, he caught sight of one protuberant, half-transparent eye, sideways, blue, hedged with long lashes that might have been scythes to mow his upstanding corn. And a straight, grave nose, curved like a goose neck at the nostril. Elated at his release from the asylum, he asked himself what he would not give to have this puss mouth jam off his cheek by a river bank on such an evening as the weather today seemed to promise after the first long winter of war, and to see her quietness overflow into laughter, into the pleased shrieks of Mrs Lane’s little girl and, so much more to his taste, the protests later and ever fainter, oh the gorgeous, up now on her dignity, bit of fancy lump of grub.
It might have been the same day, but just before black-out, that Ilse lay naked on her bed. Declining light, in which there was no sun, made her body squalid. She lay dim, like a worm with a thin skeleton, back from a window, pallid, rasher thin, her breasts, as she lay on her back, pointing different ways. She had been complaining. The war with Finland. The invasion of Norway. Poor Sweden. Poor England. It was this last that irritated Prudence, as she sat on a cushion before the hoarse gas fire.
For Prudence much resented Shiner Wright, with whom Ilse had coldly begun to go to bed, almost publicly, almost as though, to clear the skin, she was going through a course of colonic irrigation. So sweet, lovely she thought Ilse was, so cold of course. After all, it was too continental with this Auxiliary. It put one off Bert Pye even. She wondered if her John would be flying this night. It was real bombs now. Not leaflets. She said, to change the conversation:
‘Darling, you’ve started painting your toes.’
Ilse said something really quite coarse and unlike her true self about the Wright creature, who sat in the best chair and stamped cigarettes out on the carpet. She, who had seriously left her toenails natural, now said she had changed because he liked it. She did not even pretend she felt anything except the one thing.
‘Look,’ Prudence said, ‘it must be black-out.’ She judged this by the sudden unreal depth of blue outside. ‘I’ll draw the curtains.’ She got up.
‘Ach you are so English, darling. No, I will lie in the night light.’
‘You can’t. You know the fire shews outside.’ Prudence drew the curtains, shut the room up. It glowed with the gas fire. Then she walked across and switched on lamps. At these, in their logic, Ilse’s body jumped out where it lay, fattened and stared. With her yellow hair in short curls, her washed, washed skin, fluted ribs, a stomach caved like sand, with long-fingered arms drifted to her whole violin-cut length, long fragile legs polished and fine, with painted toenails that had the look of objects thrown up on a beach, her mouth also and with the shut, lashed eyes which might have been the marks a tide that has ebbed can leave on sand, Prudence caught her breath, it was so strong, so falsely Wright’s, what was thus coldly, virginally outspread.
Taking up the eiderdown from where it had been kicked, with disgust she covered, and left, and muted, this now victorious paper white violin.
So it came about that Prudence went off Pye. She would still go out but she would not bring him back after. Pye thought it must be to do with his sister, that she must have heard. She might even have met the doctor. That man would never hesitate, he thought, to discuss a case for which the asylum had not been paid.
And Pye of course was no longer sure that he had forced his sister that night long ago. He told himself it had been so bright out he must have known who he was with. But in an attempt to make certain he began experiments. Once he went up to Shiner when this man was on guard, peered right in his eyes. And there were moments, always at night, that Pye could not get away from it that it might have been.
About this time Dy brought Christopher up to London for a week at the flat. On Richard’s leave day they all went to the Zoo for tea.
That night, their son safely tucked up and pleased at the idea of sleeping alone, when it was their hour to turn in she took off all her clothes, coming naked into bed with Richard. This was unusual. As a rule he had to beg before she would take off her nightdress. To do as much, he made motions to get out of his pyjamas. She stopped him. Lying half over his left side, her face to the pillow between his ear and shoulder, she murmured to stay as he was. She had been on edge all day. Though he knew it was absurd he wondered anxiously if she could smell Hilly on his skin. Then he reasoned that Dy could be upset only because she had brought Christopher up. She had become so afraid of raids.
‘D’you think it’s all right,’ she said in a faint voice, without explaining.
‘About bringing the old boy up? Why of course. But if he invades Holland or Belgium you’ll have to take him back at once.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Quite certain.’
‘It’s so dreadful being down in the country, away from you.’
‘Darling,’ he said. He kissed her ear. Where a lobe had been pierced for earrings the hole was slightly dirty as though the flesh had been metal-stained. She put her left arm up over his chest round his neck. A sob shook her like a hiccup.
‘Darling,’ he said again, holding close.
‘You don’t know,’ she whispered, ‘Oh you don’t know.’ She sniffed. ‘It’s coming back makes it harder. The darling flat and you.’
‘It’s everything to have you both once more,’ he said, and meant it.
‘You promise.’
‘Cross my heart,’ he murmured. This was one of the phrases they shared. She stopped crying. She lifted her so loved, beautiful heavy head and softly kissed his mouth. She rubbed her cheek against his a little, then lay back. ‘My own,’ she said.
‘What are you going to do tomorrow?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. I ought to go shopping.’
‘Yes,’ he said, and let love and comfort rock his mind.
‘What about me bringing the old boy to see your fire engines. He kept on about it in the train coming up, he’s absolutely set on seeing them.’
‘Why not? Pye will be on leave tomorrow.’
‘Pye?’ she asked, going stiff in his arms. ‘Is that horrible man still there, you never told me.’
‘Well, it wasn’t his fault about Christopher.’
‘But he might frighten the old boy.’
‘He won’t. Sub Officer Pye is on leave tomorrow.’
‘Are you sure, d’you promise?’
‘I promise,’ he said.
‘I might ring the psychologist up to ask him if he thinks it a good thing.’
‘Pye won’t be there, remember.’
‘Yes, darling, but supposing he was.’
‘Silly,’ he said. He kissed her hard.
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘you don’t know how lovely you are. Kiss my neck.’
She delighted in having her neck kissed. As he leaned across to do this she lay back, slack.
The next day, Sunday, Dy changed her mind twice, but in the end she brought Christopher along in the morning. They gravely shook hands with Richard. While he shewed her what they had by way of equipment, Christopher drifted off to the back.
Dy, in her dislike of anything to do with the Service, was extremely reserved.
‘What’s that?’ she asked coldly.
He noticed she was dressed in her smartest. She looked lovely. ‘Oh that?’ he said, ‘why that’s what we use for lifting static water,’ and went on to describe the suctions at some length. She thought this was rather like before you were married, when you went to see a young man or other, and he shewed you round.
Meantime Christopher had wandered behind a corner of sand
bags. He stood at the entrance to the recreation room. Shiner was lying on his shoulders, feet in the air, exercising leg muscles bicycling above his head. As soon as he saw Christopher he said good morning.
‘I’m quite well thank you,’ Christopher replied.
‘Then everything in the garden’s conga,’ Shiner said. Christopher watched. Not a word more passed until Shiner completed his exercises. Then he began, ‘ ’ow did you come to blow in, mate?’
He got no reply. He lay, immensely broad and long, staring at Christopher who stared back.
‘You wouldn’t be lookin’ for much by any chance? Or anyone?’
Christopher did not say a word.
‘Then wee wee off,’ Shiner said.
On Sundays the men were now allowed to use their beds. Christopher turned to another voice under electric light which said, ‘You wouldn’t be Roe’s kid by any chance, would yer?’ He saw Piper, old and unshaven, laid out with bare feet sticking from his trousers. He stared fascinated at the twisted broken toes, armed with nails like doll’s trowels. He did not realise that the smell came from those stained feet. He turned. He went off, looking over his shoulder. With a vast shout, Shiner called, ‘Guard.’
Richard heard Shiner, saw Christopher come away.
‘It’s all right, cock,’ he cried, ‘it’s only my nipper.’ Dy thought, what horrible expressions he does use nowadays.
Piper murmured to his toes, ‘The minute I seen ’im I known, the minute I seen.’ He was overjoyed at having, as he thought, guessed it. To have even more, he quickly put on his socks, then his boots.
Shiner also got up. He was upset that he had not welcomed someone’s son. ‘Hi, Dick there,’ he shouted to Richard, ‘I’ll be with yer, ’ang on there.’
Another voice said from between blankets, ‘Why can’t you bastards make less din.’
At this moment Hilly came into the appliance room by a side entrance and saw Dy not more than ten feet away. She had so often imagined what she would do when in the end, as was inevitable, she came face to face with his wife. Contrary to all her plans she went straight up. She said, ‘Why, hullo.’ Then, because she remembered they had not been introduced, she added, ‘I knew you at once from your photograph.’ This last remark embarrassed her. She blushed. ‘And is this Christopher?’ she asked, flooded with blush, to Richard’s fury.
