We All Fall Down

by Rosemary Friedman

  “My dear fellow,” he said, “my client couldn’t manage it. We’re dining at Claridge’s instead.”

  Louise Crosland made her decision quite quickly, but said nothing about it until Friday.

  It was to Louise, the receptionist at the hairdressers, that Vera Dexter had emptied her heart whilst waiting for her appointment, and to Louise, on the spur of the moment, more to teach Arthur a lesson than anything else, that she had offered the sixth flat in the little block at Whitecliffs. To Louise the shattering invitation was opportunity knocking, the tide taken at the flood, and everything else rolled up together. The decision was easy. There was only one obstacle to overcome, and she decided to leave that until Friday.

  On Friday night, Louise, tall, smart, the wrong side of forty and just a little hefty, buttoned her black coat over her thirty-eight inch bosom as she came out of the cinema. She stood for a moment on the broad steps, bathed in a glow of pink neon light, until her eyes behind the glasses with the red fly-away frames became accustomed to the darkness of the street. When she had smoothed on her kid gloves and adjusted her handbag and her umbrella firmly over her arm she stepped, in her medium heeled courts, out into the crowd which swarmed to form a patient, lengthy queue at the bus-stop. She did not mind the wait and was oblivious of the keen wind cutting along the street. She stood with head erect on swan-like neck, feet in third position, elbowless arms curved gently over stomach, waiting for the curtain to rise. Tonight she was Giselle; just as, in the film of the Russian Ballet she had just seen, Ulanova had been Giselle. She was fluid, boneless, purged, graceful, ethereal, beautiful. The orchestra was playing the overture and she was about to meet her lover.

  Friday, spring, autumn, winter and summer, was cinema night. Week after week, Friday night would find her, gloves in pocket, handkerchief ready in her hand, sitting expectantly in her seat in the centre stalls. By the time the programme — the entire programme, travelogue, cartoon, adverts, news, second feature, first feature — was finished, Louise Crosland had disappeared. Buttoning her black, face-cloth coat, or in winter, huddling into the bulky beaver-lamb she had been careful not to sit on, she was a provocative, pocket-sized gangster’s moll, a firm-chinned resistance heroine who had suffered all and still not told, a Poor Little Rich Girl seeking someone who loved her for herself, a Dying Swan.

  Tonight she was Giselle, and the long wait in the queue, the bus journey to the request stop at Cedars Avenue, the hike to the top of the lamp-lit road where the semi-detacheds grew smaller, passed in a crescendo of soul-stirring music to which she pirouetted, arabesqued and leaped to lie limply airborne in the strong arms of her prince.

  Airily, on the blocked toes of her pink satin shoes she glided, running steps infinitesimally tiny, up the garden path. Her key came effortlessly to hand and the front door swung easily, grandly open.

  “That you, Louise?” Her mother’s voice was croaky, querulous. “I’ve been waiting for my Ovaltine.”

  As the front door clicked shut behind her, Louise sank slowly from her toes. The satin shoes, the undulating dress, the stage-white, the garland in her hair melted whisperingly away. A glance in the oval, oak-framed mirror confirmed the suspicion that her eyes were no longer heavily shadowed into alluring butterflies, her lashes inch-long and black, and that her nose was red and needed powder. Her court shoes trod reluctantly along the threadbare line of the passage. In the front room her mother, lilac woolen shawl over her black dress, sat disconsolately before the television screen whose picture was practically obliterated by a sea of undulating light.

  “It’s had those wavy lines all evening,” she complained. “It went funny halfway through Eamonn Andrews and I’ve missed TV Tune Time and Amateur Boxing. I do wish you wouldn’t stay away the whole evening when I’ve not a soul to do anything for me. I’ve been gasping for my drink, the electricity makes my throat dry, and I thought I heard someone out at the back. It’s no joke when you get old and nobody cares and there’s nobody to do anything, and I felt that pain right across my back again and I’ve no more of those white tablets…”

  Louise adjusted the contrast switch on the back of the television set until the picture became clear. In the kitchen she put a saucepan of milk on the gas for the Ovaltine, opened the back door to make sure there were no intruders lurking about, and went upstairs to hang up her coat and put on her slippers.

  When she came back into the front room with the Ovaltine her mother said: “You may as well switch it off, it’s finished. Not that I’ve seen much this evening.”

  Louise switched off the set and settled her mother with her other glasses and her drink.

  “Did you put sugar in?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “It doesn’t taste like it. You let the milk boil. I can always taste when the milk’s boiled.”

  Louise knew better than to argue. She sat in the small, moquette-covered armchair opposite her mother.

  “Mother, I’ve some news.”

  The old lady examined the biscuit she was eating. “Is this a Marie biscuit?”

  “Yes, Mother. Did you hear what I said?”

  “I may be getting on a bit, but I’m not hard of hearing, Louise. What news? Not that it’ll be anything that’ll do me any good. If this is a Marie biscuit I’d be most surprised.”

  Louise said: “Mother, we’re going to live at the seaside.”

  “The crumbs are irritating my throat and you never get crumbs with Marie biscuits. You’d better take them back in the morning.”

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Yes. Ridiculous!”

  “A client of ours has bought a block of flats by the sea; a little place called Whitecliffs. She’s offered us a flat, rent-free. It’s a sort of experiment to see if we like it. We wouldn’t sell up here or anything.”

  “Have you been to the cinema, Louise?”

  “You know perfectly well I have, Mother.”

  “You’re always a bit odd when you come back from the cinema. You’ll have forgotten all about it by tomorrow.”

  “I’ve made up my mind.”

  “What about me?” There was a whine in her mother’s voice. “I am an old lady not a piece of furniture. You can’t move me about from pillar to post.”

  “The sea air will do you good.”

  “And what about my friends and Mrs Cole and the television?”

  “You’d make friends there, and I’d find someone to come in during the day and look after you, and they have television at Whitecliffs just the same.”

  The old lady tried a new tack. “What about your job?” she said. “You’ve been there ever since the war. How long is it?”

  Louise thought of the seemingly endless time that she had sat behind the desk of the hairdressing salon. “Shampoo? Set? Perm? Bleach? Trim? Facial? Mr Alphonse, your client. Take madame through, Miss Joan. A taxi, madame? Certainly. You wish to pay by cheque? But of course, madame. Manicure? Eyebrow shaping? Re-styling and a bottle of our exclusive hair conditioner? Your change, madame. A brush for your suit, madame. What a charming poodle, madame, and hasn’t he been exceptionally good? With Mr Maurice, madame? Today, madame? We’ll try to fit you in. Your gloves, madame. You’re forgetting your gloves; Miss Irene, madame’s gloves. Your fur, madame; yes it is for the time of the year. The Bahamas? Naturally, madame. One wouldn’t dream of a winter in this climate. Monte Carlo? But of course. Here, we have no summer to speak of at all. To Rome? To Kitzbuhel? To Paris? New York? Do have a lovely, lovely time, madame. We look forward to seeing you in a month, in two months, in a year. Your daughter? How charming. For her coming-out dance? How delightful. To Switzerland? How necessary. Where else could one be finished?”

  “It must be nearly thirteen years, isn’t it?” the old lady said.

  “Whatever it is,” Louise said, seeing herself as the years rolled inevitably on growing nearer the lilac shawl over the shapeless black dress, the gnarled hands and the two pairs of glasses for distance and near, “it’s
time we had a change!”

  The young man in the green jersey jumped at it.

  “But don’t you see?” Basil said excitedly, “it’s exactly what I’ve always wanted.”

  “It sounds incredible,” Fiona said, wiping the top of the coffee bar and rearranging the tray of Danish pastries. “I wish someone would ask me. How did it happen?”

  Basil put his lips to the froth on top of the coffee. “I hardly know myself. I was sitting in a pub in Fleet Street the night after Elisabeth walked out, and this bloke was sitting at the same table. I was feeling frightfully down and pretty drunk and was saying some absolutely inane things.”

  “What about?” Fiona said.

  “Well, that’s the whole point. You see this bloke’s best friend had just dropped down dead outside his office, and I was saying how ghastly it is that we have to keep on and on and on…”

  “You must excuse me a moment,” Fiona said. “Somebody wants a capuccino.”

  When she came back to face him from behind the counter at which he sat on a high, red stool, Basil said: “Anyway I had completely forgotten about all that, and wouldn’t have recognised this chap if I’d met him in the street. But he remembered me all right, and he sent this girl to look out for me and asked me to call and see him. He’d been thinking, you see, about what I’d apparently been shooting my mouth off about, life being a treadmill and all that crap, and he’d taken it to heart and decided to do something about it. Anyway he not only bought this block of flats at the seaside and decided to live there himself, but he wants me to come, too, because it was all my idea in the first place, and a whole lot of other people. It’s a sort of experiment, you see.”

  “What about Elisabeth?”

  “That’s the only snag. I’ve told her, you see, but she won’t come back. She says it doesn’t make any difference where we live, things will be just the same again. But for me it’s marvellous. I forgot to tell you we’ll all be living rent free, so there won’t be a thing to worry about. It’s what I’ve always wanted and never had. The peace and the time to get cracking on something good. I feel that at Whitecliffs I shall write something really worth while. I don’t think Elisabeth thinks I’m capable of it, but I know I am. I know it. Perhaps if I have something to show her, something to make her believe in me, she’d… Oh, what the hell!”

  “I must say you led her a song and dance,” Fiona said.

  “I’m an author!” Basil said. “And we’re artists. Sensitive artists. There must be allowances. We can’t be treated the same as other people.”

  “But you expect to eat like other people, and your wife has to run the home on something.”

  “You have no soul,” Basil said. “You’re just as bad as Elisabeth.” He got down from the stool. “Will you chalk it up?”

  Fiona sighed and nodded.

  “And if Elisabeth should drop in, tell her…tell her… Oh hell, don’t tell her anything at all.”

  Fiona watched him, tousled hair, corduroy trousers and thick, beige jumper, go out into the Hampstead Street. She reached for her handbag and taking ninepence from it put it in the till.

  Five

  Doctor Gurney alone refused the offer at first. It was only at the last moment that he agreed to come at all.

  Arthur, excited still by his new interest in people rather than in matters of business, called, by appointment, at Doctor Gurney’s house. Informed, at some length by Vera, about the mess and the muddle she had found on her single visit to the Gurneys, Arthur was surprised, when he arrived, to see the front step gleaming redly. He was shown into a large, tidy, book-lined sitting-room by Mrs Gurney, an attractive, too thin redhead, smartly dressed in black. There was a coal fire burning softly in the grate. With his back to it Arthur thought that Vera, upset as she had been at the time, must have been imagining things.

  “I’m so sorry everything was so chaotic the day your wife came round,” Mrs Gurney said, pouring him a glass of sherry as they waited for her husband. “It was just one of those days. We were having this room painted, a patient of Francis’ did it, and it took six endless weeks, evenings and weekends only, and the au pair had just gone back to Switzerland because her father was ill, or so she said, and Jonathan had whooping cough and screamed every time I went out of the room.”

  “Please don’t worry,” Arthur said. Then lied: “I’m sure that Vera didn’t even notice. You must have a very busy household.”

  “It is, of course,” Mrs Gurney said, “but the funny thing is that when everything, absolutely everything, goes wrong, when we are having one of our really slummy days, somebody’s sure to call and needs to wait somewhere when there isn’t anywhere at all. But when we’re all properly organised, the children fit, help, and Francis not too busy so that I’ve time to keep things as they should be, nobody comes at all!”

  Arthur smiled at her youth. She did not look as though she had had four children.

  When Doctor Gurney came, apologising for his lateness, and his wife left them alone together, Arthur outlined his scheme.

  Doctor Gurney said nothing for a while, looking into the fire, then he said:

  “Do you know when my children last had a summer holiday?”

  Arthur shook his head. He had presumed that, like most other children he knew, they went to the seaside for a month every August.

  “Eight years ago,” Doctor Gurney said, “when we just had Simon and Amanda. This summer Simon’s going to camp with his Scout troop. The two little ones have never seen the sea at all.”

  Arthur said nothing.

  “I’ve a fair-sized practice,” Doctor Gurney said, “but it’s a single-handed one, and there’s plenty of competition round here. Simon is away at school, and you know what fees are these days, and then there’s the mortgage on this house and food and clothes for all of us, and if we do go away we have to pay a locum a very large sum to look after the practice. Not only that, but the house has to be kept open for the locum, and that means a housekeeper, so you see…”

  “I thought there were rota systems and things,” Arthur said.

  “Yes, for the odd days. But not for summer holidays. One has to have someone on the premises in a single-handed practice.”

  “Well, what about coming to Whitecliffs? There’d be no rent to pay and there is one reasonably large flat. You’d still get paid by the Health Service, wouldn’t you?”

  “I would. If I provided a competent locum who wouldn’t lose all my patients for me. But I’ve just told you. I can’t even afford one for the holidays.”

  “I’ll pay for a locum,” Arthur said, “for three months.”

  Doctor Gurney refilled Arthur’s glass with sherry.

  “Tell me, Mr Dexter, why are you doing all this? I can understand you going to Whitecliffs yourself. I think it’s a very sensible decision. But why take the responsibility for all these other people you’ve been telling me about? Why offer to pay a locum for me? Why spend all this money on people you hardly know?”

  “It’s the treadmill,” Arthur said. “I not only want to get off myself. I want to help you all get off. It’s something that since Willie’s death I want passionately to do. It’ll cost me very little really, you know I’m not a poor man, but I must know, if we had the choice, if we’d still go on and on and on till we dropped.”

  “I can’t see where the choice comes in,” Doctor Gurney said, “in my case, at any rate. Suppose I agreed to your suggestion, which of course I never would, but just suppose that I did, for argument’s sake. Well, after the two months or the three months for which you paid my locum, I would have no choice but to get back on my own particular treadmill. I would have had an extremely nice rest and holiday, as would Mary and the children, but after that it would be back to work, if there was to be any bread and butter.”

  “Ah! That’s just the point,” Arthur said. “You see at Whitecliffs you might discover that you would be far happier and able to earn a living doing something else. You might find you were more tem
peramentally suited to being a house-painter or a farmer or an insurance broker.”

  “It would still be a treadmill, though. Whatever it was, you would have to keep on and on doing it. Unless you wanted to starve.”

  “Perhaps,” Arthur said. “But you must get off for a while and look at yourself. You must take time to consider whether you want to continue to do what you are doing, for the rest of your life. I want to make that possible not only for myself but you. It’s not charity, or philanthropy or anything else. It’s just that I don’t want to die, or you, or any of these other people who are coming with us, before we’ve had a chance to slow down, to discover what it is that makes us turn and turn, step after step after step.”

  “LSD mainly,” Doctor Gurney said.

  “No. You’re wrong! Willie had all the money he could use.”

  “Greed, avarice?”

  “Willie was a simple man.”

  “Then I don’t know. Probably sheer laziness. When you’ve taken one step the easiest thing in the world is to put your foot on the next as it comes round.”

  “Exactly,” Arthur said. “Once you’re on you stay on. But I am going to get off, much, I must say, to the disgust of my family who are afraid, not for their bread and butter, but for their cake, and I want to make it possible for you and the others to do the same. Call it an experiment if you like. It may very well be that none of us would be happy without those steps coming round and round monotonously to be trodden on. But I must find out before I end up like Willie. I must.”

  “It’s a very generous offer,” Doctor Gurney said, “and I’d very much like to accept it. You must see, though, that I can’t. I can’t let somebody pay for my locum while I sit on the beach. Not to mention the rent of the flat.”

  “I suppose,” Arthur said, “that in a way, work is different for doctors. I mean it’s a vocation, isn’t it? Something you feel in your blood you have to do?”

  Doctor Gurney looked at him, and appeared to be weighing up whether or not he should say what he was about to.