‘You make me furious!’ Janet had shouted, ‘Mother wouldn’t be such a sadist giving me a washing machine when I want a fur coat if George hadn’t been killed like that in the War. You always have moral problems, Alison. Other people just sin—or don’t sin. What’s the use of forcing all these kids into the Army when the scientists are inventing bombs powerful enough to blow up the whole country?’
Alison had gone into the room where the two babies were howling instead of sleeping, and tried to calm both them and herself. The floor was littered with soiled napkins and dirty garments, and she understood why her mother had decided on a washing machine. Janet was a hopeless manager. When Alison had asked her for a snack because she had missed her dinner with Rodney and had not stopped to get anything on her way, there had been nothing in the flat except some milk for the children and some unappetizing cold spaghetti. Janet had forgotten to buy bread—and there was no butter.
Alison had put the quietened babies one by one back in their cots, powdered her hot agitated face, and, picking up her coat, had been stumbling over her niece’s scattered bricks when Nigel had called after her, ‘If you see that young deserter give him my blessing! He’s given me an idea for a new song. Boy on the Run! Boy on the Run!’ and he was already picking out a tune and singing the words as Alison ran down the stairs.
She was hungry—terribly hungry. She entered the dim carefully-shaded place, wrinkling her nose distastefully at the thick warm smell. The lighting appeared to be confined to the frontage. Within, against trailing indoor plants, Mexican straw hats and skin water-containers, couples were sitting at low plastic tables. When her eyes became accustomed to the gloom, the reason for the lack of light was obvious. Not only legs and arms were entwined but bodies also, she saw resentfully, as she searched for a vacant table and found one in a corner.
She ordered some coffee and sandwiches and sat there eating them mechanically. What had Rodney said? That she did her welfare work from curiosity—not from love. Was he right? Did she try to find in the lives of others what she herself missed in her own? Life seemed suddenly utterly grey and pointless. It stretched ahead, pathless, monotonously blurred and cobwebby into a drab fungus void such as that in which her widowed mother lived.
What she and Rodney White had had together now seemed altogether arid. The slick cocktail bars, the restaurants where she listened to his near-the-bone jokes, the theatres with his pretence of weighty criticism, and the hour’s charade of love afterwards, stretched backwards over two grinning years for what they actually were—a pitiful façade, not only of love but of life. Nothing was felt, nothing cared about, nothing constructed. She clenched her hands in frustrating wretchedness. Was she what he had called her? Sterile, frigid and unresponsive? But she wasn’t, she wasn’t, she thought fiercely. She wanted love—a home, children, a home which meant something and in which something strong, warm and enduring would hold not only her but her children to it.
She had seen enough of broken homes, of unwanted children. How could Janet guess that when she was begging her sister to help her with an abortion, she herself lived in constant dread of having to face such an event herself? Janet thought of her as a rapidly ageing spinster—a virgin, as she had said contemptuously. And the strange thing was that in spite of the two years’ affair with Rodney she still felt virgin. She was suddenly violently resentful. . . . She wasn’t like Janet. Janet would suit Rodney. Janet wanted fun, admiration, excitement, the restless shifting life which her contemporaries lived in their bed-sitters or studios—and yet Janet had two children and was expecting a third.
She put down her empty coffee cup. It was made of plastic—synthetic, like the froth on the coffee, the washable table-top and the misleading romantic cosiness of such places. They hid emptiness, dreariness, just as make-up hid one’s true face. Her mother, lolling in bed or on a chaise-longue, eating chocolates secretly and reading dirty literature, embarrassing her companion, Miss Pearce, for her own amusement, suddenly appeared to her as pathetic instead of revolting. What did the chocolates and the smutty books hide? Had she, too, since her brother George’s death, found that emptiness which ended in utter desert?
She saw clearly now that both she and Rodney had tired of the dreary intrigue because of its sheer destructiveness. Both had entered it without love, expecting in its place escape, pleasure and excitement. She, at any rate, had experienced none of these things. She had been held back from pleasure not only out of fear of conception but also by some clinging relic of religious teaching at school. Chastity, purity, abstinence. These had been taught continuously as those qualities to be admired, aimed at and achieved. She was resentful that they should cling so obstinately to her, while Janet had shed them so lightly. Rodney had never once suggested marriage, and her face burned now as she thought of what she had said to him this evening and of his retort. She remembered his first approach to the sex question and her reluctance to comply. He had called her a prude, old-fashioned, had told her that she would wither quickly without some sex-life.
She thought of him now as she had so often seen him, complacent, stretched out on her satin-hung bed, smoking, after discussing her faults as a lover, her lack of enthusiasm, her failure to excite him, her many shortcomings. And she had suffered under his withering scorn, his biting remarks, had felt inferior and lacking in some essential feminine quality.
‘After all, it’s what we’re made for . . . you can’t get away from that . . .’ he would grumble. ‘Try some drink . . . perhaps that’ll warm you up a little. . . . Have a cocktail, a good strong one. . . .’ And so on. She could hear his hard matter-of-fact voice ‘selling’ her the idea much as she imagined he sold a new advertisement scheme. The picture was humiliating and that last vision of him as he strode out of her flat was even more so. She shivered suddenly as the slim pony-tailed girl at the nearest table put up her mouth to the dark-browed skinny boy with her and they kissed across the table—each with their coffee cup still in their hand. They seemed to mock her . . . she hated them, even as she envied them, because the girl’s eyes were like stars and the boy had a wondering, newly-awakened look, which was infinitely moving in these tired pseudo-exotic surroundings.
She got up abruptly, paid her bill, and left. Outside in the night it was warm and a little wind stirred the dirt in the gutters and the cardboard boxes and package wrappings piled on the dustbins outside the shops. Cats prowled and one cried loud and challengingly in the quietness. She could hear the clack of her small pointed heels on the pavement and it alarmed her suddenly that she was alone in the street now.
She began to hurry back towards the world which she knew. She had taken a wrong turning in her blind flight from her sister’s and this environment was alien to her. Crossing first one main thoroughfare and then another in the direction of the river, she found herself suddenly by a high railed-in piece of ground with trees and strange white shapes. Then she came to higher iron gates showing a long ghostly walk under heavy cypresses, dark and menacing, and she saw from the board on the gates that it was a cemetery. Memories of school again and the German lesson—a story they had had to translate—what was it? About a cemetery and a good knight who was so brave and pure that when escaping from his enemies he had gone bravely through the graveyard and all the skeletons had risen to form a barrier between him and his pursuers. She shook herself angrily at these foolish childish memories. She knew where she was now . . . if she went straight on and then turned left she would soon reach the river and the block of flats where she lived. But she did not like walking by the cemetery. It depressed her. Against her more matter-of-fact sensible judgment she decided to cross and walk on the opposite side of the road. It was just as she was leaving the pavement that she heard a child cry out.
She turned back sharply. She could see nothing. It must have been a cat. But just as she was again starting to cross the road the cry came again and this time there was no doubt. It was the wail of a frightened child.
‘Where are yo
u? What’s the matter?’ she called. She peered distastefully into the cemetery and it seemed to her that something moved against a white tombstone. ‘Where are you? Come out. I’m here by the railings,’ she called again. There was silence and then very slowly the form of a child appeared crouching down behind a grave. ‘Come out,’ repeated Alison irritably. ‘If you aren’t quick I shall go away.’
A child in a pale frock stood up and came cautiously to the railings. She was crying, and her voice was frightened. ‘I’m locked in. I can’t get out.’
Come here and let me look at you,’ Alison coaxed, gently.
The child, a girl with long legs and a mass of curly hair came and pressed herself against the railings. Alison took a small cold hand through the iron bars. ‘How on earth did you get here?’
‘I lost something. I lost my key,’ said the child, ‘and I came to look for it. And I looked and looked, and when I gave up looking for it the gates were shut and I couldn’t get out.’ She began to wail again, but softly now.
There was a small lodge by the gates. The child saw Alison look in its direction. ‘It’s no good, the keeper’s not there, he’s gone home and only comes back when it opens in the morning.’
‘I’ll have to get the police to come and get you out,’ said Alison briskly. ‘It won’t take me a minute to find a policeman.’
But the child cried out in terror, ‘No. No. Please. Please. Not the police. Please not them, miss.’
It was after ten o’clock, and few people were in the street. A bus came lumbering down and sped by with its flashing red bulk and then came a man on a bicycle. He looked curiously at Alison by the railings and then at the child behind them. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, dismounting and wheeling his bicycle on to the pavement. ‘Shut in, is she? Well, here’s a nice kettle of fish.’
‘I want to get the police but she gets alarmed at the mere mention of them,’ said Alison.
‘’Course she does. Don’t want the perlice nosing round you, do ye, luv? Pretty high, isn’t it?’ He stood scratching his head and eyeing the railings. ‘Tell yer wot! I could shin up them gates and get over and lift her over to you, if you could climb up on my bike to reach her. Could you try that, miss?’
Alison assented resentfully. She felt that there was no end to the things she was drawn into this evening and that one more would make no difference.
‘We’ll wait till there’s nothing coming by,’ said the man. ‘After all, it’s breaking-in so to speak.’
‘Much better let me get the police,’ said Alison, sharply. ‘If they come along we’ll get into trouble for not calling them.’
‘Can’t leave her there while we hunt for a bleeding copper,’ said the man tersely. ‘Now then, miss, just hold the bike while I hop over.’
Reluctantly, Alison held the bicycle. Her whole training in welfare had embodied in her a respect for the aid of the law. She did not see it as this man did. To him a frightened child was locked in a rapidly-darkening cemetery. He was all for the obvious way of getting her out. He shared the child’s aversion to the police.
‘Hold it steady now while I climb on the saddle,’ he ordered.
‘How are you going to climb up with her on the other side without the bicycle to help you?’ Alison said, destructively. ‘You’ll never do it.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong, Miss Know-all,’ he retorted. ‘There’s the shelf made by that great lock. I can stand on it and hand her over to you.’
It seemed to Alison that this man was very much at home with climbing difficult obstacles. She watched him go up the gate with the ease of a trained burglar and over the top, balancing on the great lock as he had said he would, and vaulting lightly to the ground, where he coaxed and petted the child into getting on to his back. ‘Put your arms round my neck and hold tight, luv,’ she heard him say, and then he was coming up again easily in spite of his burden.
‘Reach up and take her. . . .’
But Alison, balancing on the saddle of the bicycle, lacked the nerve to complete the operation as he had planned it. ‘I can’t!’ she said urgently. ‘As soon as I move the bicycle slips—we’ll both fall with the double weight.’
‘I’ll have to drop you, luv,’ said the man resignedly. ‘The lady can’t make it. Think you can drop on your feet safely?’
‘Yes,’ whispered the child. ‘Let me go, mister.’
She landed with knees bent and arms out in the way recommended to athletes after a jump, then stumbled on to her knees on the pavement. The man stood upright on the gate, outlined against the dark cypresses for a moment.
‘Quick! mister, there’s a lot of people coming,’ cried the child, urgently.
‘Can you step on to the bicycle if I hold it?’ asked Alison.
‘No. I’ll jump like the kiddy did. Look out!’
He was down almost as lightly as the child and without falling as she had, and before Alison could do so, he had picked her up and was examining her dirty knees.
‘Aren’t you going to say thank you?’ asked Alison. ‘It’s not everybody who would do all that for a little girl who had no right to be in the cemetery at all. What were you doing there so late at night?’
‘It wasn’t late when I come,’ retorted the child, sullenly. ‘I told you I stayed long looking for the latch-key I lost.’
‘And did you find it?’ asked the man, curiously.
‘No.’
‘How did you lose it here?’ asked Alison.
‘I lost it this afternoon. Someone frightened me and I forgot it,’ she said, beginning to cry.
‘Where d’you live?’ asked the man. ‘It’s late for little girls to be out.’
‘How late?’
‘After ten,’ said Alison looking at her watch.
A look of fear crossed the small face.
‘You’ll cop it,’ said the man wheeling his bicycle into the road. ‘And so’ll I if I don’t get on. . . . Don’t go getting shut in there again. I may not be coming along next time. And you cut along home double-quick now!’
‘Where do you live?’ asked Alison again. The child named a road well known to her from her round of visits.
‘Come along then, I’ll take you there.’
‘You won’t say where I was, will you?’ asked the child anxiously, hanging back. ‘I’ve been in trouble already over going in the cemetery, but I had to look for the key.’
‘What key?’ queried Alison, puzzled.
‘The door key. I couldn’t get in without it. I couldn’t find it here, so I was going to Gran’s till Mother got home.’
‘You have a grandmother?’
‘No,’ said the child regretfully, ‘not a proper one—I’ve only got Mum. But Mrs. Collins—she’s just like my real grandmother and I call her Gran.’
Collins . . . Collins. . . . Was she never to get away from this family? The boy had made trouble enough already; now this child who had caused her all this delay in getting home was talking of the old woman. The old woman lay in that bed like an old spider watching the world as if from a web.
‘Come along,’ she said, shortly. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Linda.’
‘Well, Linda, I don’t know what your mother will have to say to you, but she must be anxious so we’d better hurry. I’m going your way and I’ll see you safely back.’
As they were passing the piece of waste ground Linda clung tightly to Alison’s hand. ‘I wonder if he’s still there,’ she said fearfully, looking across at the dark murky shadows of the ruins. ‘I daren’t go and look for the key there; I was too scared. I’m sure it’s there.’
‘Who?’ Alison was scarcely listening. She was tugging the child along quickly and purposefully. ‘Scared of whom?’
‘The soldier. The one as frightened me. He was watching Mrs. Collins’ house. I saw him—so did Cissie. Never took his eyes off it.’
‘What soldier? Who are you talking about?’
‘The one there all afternoon. Lying in the
grass in the ruins he was. Frightened me and Cissie and when we looked at him he told me to beat it and to forget I’d seen him or he’d hurt me.’
‘What was he like?’ asked Alison, sharply.
‘Very dark—I didn’t like his eyes.’
‘And he was a soldier?’
‘Yes. National Serviceman like Mrs. Collins’ grandson and Cissie’s big brother.’
Alison’s eyes went instinctively to the deep shadowed place Linda pointed out as having been the soldier’s hiding-place.
‘Come on quickly. Let’s run!’ urged the child pulling now at Alison. ‘I don’t want him to see me again.’
‘We’re nearly there,’ said Alison. ‘One more turning and we’re there. I expect your mother will be worried. You’re not usually out as late as this, are you?’
‘No.’
They had reached the drab, neglected-looking building where Linda lived with her mother.
‘Up the stairs, three flights,’ said Linda.
Alison toiled up dirtier and narrower stairs than her sister’s until they reached the top landing and the child ran to a door and cried, ‘Mum! Mum!’
The woman who opened the door caught her swiftly in her arms. ‘Thank goodness you’re back! Where have you been you naughty girl?’ And her pent-up fear found release in action and Linda got a stinging blow across the buttocks. The child gave vent to her own feelings in a loud wail of anguish. Her mother then noticed Alison and said apologetically, ‘Excuse me, miss. But she gave me such a fright. All this story Cissie’s been telling us of a soldier frightening them on the waste ground this afternoon. You never know with all these toughs around. Why, Linda, the Collins’ Charlie is out looking for you. I must run round and tell them you’re back.’
‘No. No, don’t go now. I’m hungry and cold!’ wailed Linda.
The Fledgeling Page 18
