Perhaps, he conceded that he had fallen immediately in love with Meg and this had stirred the waters. He laughed out loud at his metaphor, in a mood to see his own faults while he was with these two. Very likely he needed a Meg, an indeterminacy, a treason to match or outpass his own.
‘My, you’ve been long enough,’ Carol said on their return.
‘We had to queue.’ Tricia.
‘I thought you’d eloped.’
There’d been a little patch of awkward silence, then, but they were soon at ease with Carol pouring and bullying Tricia about her appetite for biscuits. At twelve Fisher made his excuses, spoke his pleasure.
‘Shall we see you again?’ Carol asked outright. Her ring gave her this privilege.
‘Very likely. I’m here till Saturday.’
‘We’re usually round about this spot.’
He picked up the tray and teapot to return, arranging all neatly.
‘You look really domesticated,’ Carol said.
‘I do my best.’
‘Watch out at the Frankland,’ she warned. Tricia said nothing, looking away from him except at the last moment when she waved, mouth slightly, attractively open from white teeth. At the stall, when he returned the crockery, took his deposit, it was as if he was selling off some valuable part of his life.
At the boarding house, which stood deserted, he changed shoes, suit and tie. He examined the handsome, respectable figure in clerical grey, eased himself breathlessly down on to his bed to waste five minutes.
The plate glass doors of the Frankland Towers stood open to the foyer, which with long windows, cunning neon-tubes seemed hugely filled with cool sunshine and banks of flowers. The surface of the reception counter was thick glass, the chairs modern, gay-bright, the spiked palms small and flourishing. Footsteps made no sound; no music, and even voices muted themselves in the high expanse.
Vernon was already by the reception-desk, at ease with the busy blonde.
‘This way, this way,’ he said, voice little, but suitable. ‘I could guarantee you’d be on time. You’re the only young man I know who is. The Tudor bar for you, I think.’
‘Cymry am byth.’
‘Ah, ah, No, not really. My wife is already there. Ensconced, shall we say?’
They moved along corridors into a stone room of darker, warmer light, low roof with black beams, mullioned windows, by one of which Irene Vernon sat. She had dressed herself for the occasion, with a toque, whorling upwards, a matching beige coat, both regimental yet flowing, block-heeled shoes; she ought, Fisher thought, to carry a white parasol, or a sword-stick.
She smiled, motioned Fisher alongside, brusquely demanded dry sherry, gently inquired how he was.
‘Meg not here yet?’ His voice was hoarse.
‘She’s due at one.’ Irene made motions towards the clock, which indicated ten minutes’ wait.
‘Has she ever been on time?’ her face asked. ‘What’s yours, Edwin?’
‘Is she here, in Bealthorpe?’ Fisher asked.
‘That we don’t know.’ Vernon spoke back from the bar, where a man obsequiously, hands splayed, head forward, waited his order.
‘David phoned her last night. At home,’ Irene said, putting a gloved hand on Fisher’s arm.
‘She’ll drive over.’
‘I see.’
He thought of the phone in the hall, where she’d answer, by the Bellini madonna with its rubber-doll Christ across her knees. In the evening there’d be sufficient light for Meg’s face to be reflected in the picture-glass, and he could see her fingers disarranging curls as she spoke. She would also, he was certain, leave too little time for the journey, if he knew her. He was certain that he did. Shivering he looked about him.
They settled to their drinks, Vernon smiling, founder of the feast.
Fisher glanced round the other drinkers, who huddled over dark tables in conspiracy, never raising voices, bronzed as Indians.
‘Your health,’ Vernon proposed. They drank.
‘Keep you eye on the clock,’ Irene warned. ‘It won’t do to keep Meg hanging around.’
‘Don’t come between a man and his drink,’ her husband answered, patting her knee.
A young man in a tail-coat approached, arm full of menu-cards.
‘Are you ordering now, Mr Vernon?’ he inquired. Already his father-in-law had made his name known.
‘We’re waiting for a fourth, John.’ compliment returned, accepted. ‘Shouldn’t be too long.’
They now studied the menu, talked about food, though Irene clearly was on edge.
‘It’s one o’clock, David. Go and see.’
‘I’ve spoken to Lilian there, and she’ll ring through if Meg arrives.’
‘And just at the moment she does, your Lilian’ll be out at the back.’
The phone shrilled. The barman answered sotto voce taking care not to intrude on his guests’ pleasure. The three waited, Fisher twirled his glass, stroking it with his thumb; they were not called over, and the instrument was replaced in its cradle.
‘Go in, David.’
‘You know what she’s like.’
‘Never mind. Go and look.’
Vernon mimed the unreasonableness of women, but obeyed. Fisher found himself watching Irene doodling with her little finger in the circle a glass had marked. She traced without pattern, from one side to the other, not crossing the line, holding her breath, four eyes on the bright-ringed hand. Fisher had finished his drink, had rearranged himself on his cushion five or six times, had hummed no tune to himself, had counted the escutcheons on the bar-canopy before Vernon returned.
‘No sign,’ he said.
‘It’s nearly ten past.’
‘I went outside and had a word with the commissionaire. Her car is white, isn’t it? A white mini? That’s what I said.’
Fisher offered them a further round, nervously. Vernon jumped.
‘No fear. You’re not coming here at my invitation to spend your money on us.’
He gathered the glasses, made for the bar.
‘Not for me, David,’ his wife called.
He seemed white now, drawn about the mouth, bonhomie wiped off. When he returned, he put the drinks on the table despondently, apologetically.
They sat in silence, Fisher, embarrassed by the discomfiture of his parents-in-law, stumbled through conversational openings in his head, but made none. The clock showed one eighteen; John appeared again but treated them only to a raising of brows, a nod of understanding; the phone lay idle.
Irene sucked the calligraphic little finger. Fisher tapped his foot to Mozart No. 40. Vernon licked handsome lips.
Now they were certain she would not come.
‘I’ll try again,’ Vernon said, leaping straight. He, a fastidious man, graceful, knocked his stool over behind him. He seemed almost relieved to pick it up; it gave him occupation.
‘Yes,’ Irene said, sucked breath in. She sagged under her fine feathers, as if the powder would drop from her face like scurf. Fisher himself, chafed, reached out, took her hand which he held awkwardly for a moment. Vernon noticed before he left, and approved with a military nod. ‘I don’t know what’s happened to her,’ she murmured, when her husband had quitted the room. ‘David was so sure she’d come.’
‘You didn’t think so, then?’
She started, as if affronted at his presumption.
‘I don’t think David understands.’
‘He’s had a lot of experience of this sort of thing in his office, hasn’t he?’
‘As a solicitor, explaining the law.’
She picked up her glass, still half full, and touched it with her lips, as at a last supper. Then she smiled, at him, shyly, like a child intervening among adults.
‘Explanations,’ she said, ‘aren’t much good to Margaret.’
‘She may have run out of petrol, or collected a puncture. She might have lost her way, even.’
‘She would be here on time if that’s what she wanted.’
The mother spoke hopelessly, in a monotone of appalling certainty that approached grief. She fixed her eyes, which watered, ahead, on hanging decorated shield. No more was said until the return of David. He shrugged, spread his hands.
‘No sign of her.’
‘You’d better ring her up, then.’
‘I’ve done so, my dear.’
His contempt sounded, or his anxiety.
‘We’ll go in,’ he said, miserably. ‘I’ve ordered the soup and hors d’oeuvres. I hope you don’t mind. Irene leaves that to me, usually.’
The meal was more cheerful than Fisher expected, as if all three were relieved by Meg’s non-appearance. She was mentioned; Mrs. Vernon grumbled though without malice; David started the meal with three or four anecdotes of the eccentric behaviour on the part of wives matrimonially aggrieved, but by the time the main course was served, he launched himself into descriptions of fellow-guests, and then, unusually for him, of the cars in the hotel’s parks. They moved back to the Tudor for brandy, and there Irene invited him to spend the afternoon in their company.
‘No, thank you,’ he said.
‘Are you doing something?’
‘Not really.’ He tried to show his concern. ‘You’ve had enough of me for one day.’
The Vernons apologised, but he, sipping brandy, was anaesthetised against discomfort. He thought back to the beach, to the Lancashire girls in their innocent bikinis and knew he could not return to them his breath reeking of alcohol. They were symbols, he recognised, delightful pictures like these heraldic shields, ersatz comfort, with no connection with life. This saddened him; the whole world he saw in a dazed disproportion. He and those girls could make a go of it, he decided through the brandy-fumes, but while he drank, he could not approach them. The wry fantasy disappeared.
‘I hope nothing’s happened,’ Irene said.
‘She’s decided not to come.’ Vernon. ‘Taken fright. Nothing we can do about it.’
When they had left the bar, Irene ordered him to ring Meg again at her home. While he complied, the other two waited in the high light, amongst the sheets of bright glass, toeing the carpet.
‘Nothing doing,’ David said, in the end.
‘Perhaps she set off.’ Fisher tried, but the others did not respond. He shook hands, thanked his hosts fulsomely, made unsteadily for the door. Outside, it struck hot, the air rubbed his skin like sandpaper, after the silver moderation of the Frankland. At a bookstore, he bought a paperback complete with literary man’s introduction and a publisher’s note on the trial.
He removed jacket, tie and shoes, lay flat on his bed, read meaningful sentences sensibly, until he did not understand them, and dozed.
The curtains by the window hung frozen by the heat.
8
Fisher fell deeply asleep, as though exhausted.
This surprised him, because he would claim to have left the Frankland almost unmoved, untouched by events. He was sorry for Irene, wished he could make it up to her while he admired Vernon’s masking of his anger. David hated to be crossed, and if Meg could not be punished, then the nearest would stop the kick. Fisher wanted to be out of the way.
Washing, scrubbing the morning’s business off his hands, he wondered suspiciously if Vernon weren’t up to monkey tricks, but could not see how this was possible. Irene had been genuinely, if genteelly, distressed; not that damage done there would hamper Vernon.
What troubled Fisher most was the feeling of having missed Meg; he wished to see her. This, a week ago, would have been impossible, but now, without pretensions to reconciliation, he wanted to meet, look at, touch hands with, her. Perhaps, then, this indicated they could make a go of it, with care; more likely, he needed a woman, and his wife was supremely attractive to him. He tried to concentrate his attention, but could not. He lacked criteria, even the will to make decisions, and thus allowed his mind to rattle on its unending tumble of reflection, imaginative sillinesses pacing clumps of word-play.
He dressed carefully for dinner, spoke cordially to his fellow-guests, as if he owed the world something or feared retribution when he did not step vigilantly. Yet he felt genuinely pleased, a man who had done well, unlikely as that seemed. The Smiths invited him down to the pub, made a party up with the middle-aged couple; Sandra walked behind with him in a street that was still pleasantly warm.
Fisher ordered the first round while Sandra reserved him a place next to her.
They talked of children for a time, and education, showing Fisher deference, before they discussed violence. As they tilted glasses, they claimed they did not know what the world was coming to. The middle-aged man’s wife sat like a mouse, not daring to touch her lager, with a little sweet smile thinning her lips from minute to minute. She took no part in the conversation, even when her husband broached marriage.
Terry Smith said he could not understand some people. His wife looked away.
‘It’s all a matter of give-and-take,’ the middle-aged man, Mr Hollies, claimed. ‘Once you’ve grasped that, half the problem’s over and done with.’
Fisher found himself nodding, in the manner of pub-audiences when some wiseacre holds forth.
‘Now,’ said Hollies, ‘I work at a printer’s. We do fine work. It’s a skilled trade.’ Here followed technical details to which they listened avidly, it appeared. ‘Now you couldn’t choose of a steadier craft. And yet when I think of the way the younger fellows, all men who’ve served their time, treat their wives, I’m not surprised at the divorce rate. They’ll meet for a drink or two, not a lot, these aren’t wild by any means, sometimes after we’ve done, and it means, I tell myself, that there are dinners drying up in stoves and young women worrying. Needlessly.’
‘Once their wives become used to the idea . . .’ Fisher argued.
Hollies wagged a finger.
‘They do not get used to it. Looking after children is an exacting occupation.’ The words were a small, artistic triumph, delivered with panache. ‘And they count the minutes to the time that back door’s opened.’
‘I long for Terry to come home, sometimes,’ Sandra said, in simplicity.
‘You’ve never told me that, before.’
Her scorn, his confusion were mildly noticeable.
‘I like my pint,’ Hollies continued. ‘I don’t deny it. But I am home every night exactly on time. If I wasn’t, there’d be good reason. That’s so, isn’t it, Lena?’
His wife smiled, tinily, narrowing her eyes so that she sat like an old Chinese. She said nothing.
‘That was our agreement. I clocked in to the minute. My dinner was ready for serving. It has always been so.’
‘You know where you are,’ Terry said.
‘Exactly. You know where you are. And that makes the marriage.’
Further drinks were ordered, for there was hurry this evening when the landlady had agreed to keep an eye on the Smith children. Terry mouthed clichés, spoke loud agreement with every statement; his wife rubbed her leg surreptitiously against Fisher’s under the table. Mrs Hollies sipped herself into inscrutable jade, while her husband spun a long-winded tale about a couple who’d made an agreement that each could live his, her, own life. Fisher, muddled, divined sense in this. The point was that such a pact, though mutally agreed, was incompatible with harmony. The young man took his old flames out drinking, but beat his wife when he found her in bed with the lodger.
Fisher did not see this classical situation of the smoking-room joke as at all comcial.
‘Do you know what happened?’ Hollies seemed to deliver entirely to Sandra, as he leaned across the table, hand fanning oblique face. ‘She threatened to leave him, packed her trunks, the lot. And then he gave the lodger a good hiding, and that seemed to settle it.’
‘That showed her,’ Terry said.
‘What if the lodger had been a better fighter?’ Fisher asked, bemused now.
‘He wasn’t.’
That stopped contention. Hollies sat back with the stiff pride of
a man trying not to be sick.
‘I take it you’re not married, sir?’ he said to Fisher.
At the question, there was a renewal of interest, a shuffling round of chairs, a straightening of mental furniture. Sandra’s perfume became newly potent.
‘I am,’ he replied. ‘But I am living temporarily apart from my wife.’
They murmured sympathy; Sandra’s fingers momentarily fluttered on Fisher’s.
‘Until’ Fisher continued, ‘we know where we are.’
‘That’s sensible,’ Hollies claimed. ‘If other people had the wit to do that, there’d be less trouble all round.’ He sank half a pint.
‘Sandra threatened to leave me once,’ Terry said. ‘We had a row about money. She said she’d run home.’
This he delivered without affection, with no mention of forgiveness, but as an interesting fact of life dredged from the bottom of his tankard. Sandra blushed, and her common-place features hardened round indrawn lips so that her neat jumper and slacks seemed too well-laundered to match the coarsened face.
‘It cleared itself up?’ Hollies.
‘In time.’ Terry sounded reserved, now.
‘Give and take. Give and take.’
Fisher provided further drinks so that Hollies spoke louder, his wife smiled more foxily and Terry Smith staggered to the lavatory. Sandra, lips parted, had recovered her poise. Now the conversation became a duet between Hollies and Terry on the subject of football, the vandalism of fans, the temperaments or skills of players. They blamed managers, financial temptation, the press, ignorant children; as far as Fisher could make out neither attended matches, merely followed games on television Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. Both were bold with their sentences of condemnation, fervent in support of the other, often contradicting what had been said minutes before. A man from the next table joined in, as did the potman wiping tops and clearing empties. In the middle of this noisy enjoyment, Mrs Hollies said, out of character, squeaking,
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