We All Fall Down

by Rosemary Friedman

  Outside, her machine humming as she twirled candy-floss for two small boys who watched open-mouthed, Vanessa smiled. She was hardly able to believe that it was her father. Her father who, in town, came home irritable and tired from the office with hardly a word for anybody. Who was immersed either in his newspaper or in the papers he kept in a large box-file and which seemed to give him an enormous amount of worry. With his City suit he seemed to have shed whatever it was that in London kept his brow permanently creased, his mouth firm and straight, his eyes tired. Had anyone told her, six months ago, that he was capable of rolling up his sleeves, of calling an old lady ‘dear’, of slicing ham, she would only have laughed. She had always thought of him as buttoned permanently into a dark suit, or on Sundays fawn with a Prince of Wales check, and set irrevocably into his rut of City and armchair, card games and cruises in which there seemed very little joy. With each birthday, on which she and Victor spent hours trying to think of something original and usually ended up with socks and ties which he invariably exchanged, he had seemed to grow a little greyer, a little more as she remembered her grandfather had looked. It had not seemed possible that he could bare his forearms, test the temperature of toffee, supervise the making of tea. In the months they had been at Whitecliffs, his face, which ever since she could remember had been pale, had become not tanned but glowing with the look of skin that was alive, the lines that seemed always to have been between his eyebrows were less obvious, and his eyes, at home always slightly blurred with weariness, were clear as stones.

  This morning there had been a letter from Cliff. ‘Van, darling, you don’t write very much. I am sweating blood over this Anatomy but every time I close my eyes and try to commit something about the flexor retinaculum or the internal iliac lymph glands to memory I can only think of you. Why did you go away, and when will you be coming back?’… She hadn’t wanted to go away. Hadn’t believed that without Cliff… She handed the two fluffy, cotton-wool sticks of candy-floss to the children, and took the warm shilling they gave her. Turning off the machine that stopped with a slow whine, she looked up behind her towards Howard. He was in profile, serving his customers with ice-cream. Solid, such beautiful hands, beautifully kept. How could he not know? She felt as if her thoughts must be electric. He did not turn round. This afternoon they were going to Walmer Castle. Only a few more hours. Suddenly he turned towards her and trapped the naked look of adoration in her eyes before she had a chance to hide it. He looked uncomprehending, then surprised. He served his customer then looked again towards Vanessa. She had her machine whirring again and her back was towards him.

  In the kitchen, Basil, stirring the toffee, said to Honey: “It’s the oddest feeling. A very miserable sort of emptiness. Yet with it there’s a kind of peace. It’s like playing truant from school; one feels almost too guilty to enjoy one’s freedom. I can hardly believe that I’ve cut the chain between me and that wretched typewriter. Stay near me, Honey.” He watched the line of her throat as she stuck sticks into the apples she removed one by one from the case.

  “I know how it feels,” she said. “Each night, as it gets dark and I’m free to watch the evening through the window, I begin to miss the lights and the music and the make-up and the fights in the dressing-room, and the gossip…”

  “What did you gossip about?”

  “Sex.” Honey thought for a moment. “I can’t remember anything else.”

  “It must be quite a sight in the dressing-room,” Basil said, “all you girls running around in your birthday suits.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Honey said. “We put something on as soon as we come off stage.”

  “I suppose half the audience queues up for you at the stage door.”

  “There’s no stage door. We have to come out through the bar. And they don’t queue up. They usually send round notes. It’s surprising,” she said, “the amount of men who imagine that just because you take your clothes off on the stage you are no better than if you walked the streets.”

  Basil looked up from his toffee.

  “I mean we’re only working-girls no different from short-hand-typists or anything…” Basil took the apple she held out to him and kissed her nose.

  “You really are rather sweet. Do you get diamonds and furs sent to the dressing-room?”

  “Chocolates and sherry,” Honey said.

  “What do you do with them?”

  “Keep them.” Honey looked surprised. “We do quite well at this place. I once got a pair of diamanté earrings. Of course, occasionally you meet somebody really nice who’s been to see the show, like Mr Dexter, for instance…”

  “Mr Dexter’s seen you dancing around in your…?”

  “Of course,” Honey said. “He said he enjoyed it.”

  “I’ll bet he did. Would you believe it?”

  “Of course, I like men you can talk to,” Honey said, “somebody interesting, like you. And there was an archey…archy…oh you know, somebody who digs up old stones and things, once; he was awfully sweet, and then a doctor who cut up dead people all day and…”

  “Let me keep my illusions, darling,” Basil said. “I seem to have nothing else left at the moment.”

  “Has Elisabeth answered your letter?”

  “She hasn’t answered any of my letters.”

  “Perhaps you should stop writing. Perhaps she’ll get worried about you.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “That’s what a woman would do. We’re funny like that.”

  Basil shrugged. “I could try it. This toffee’s hardening. Can you hand me the others quickly, Honey-child, or I’ll never get them all coated.”

  Victor, selling postcards and buckets and spades as fast as he could go, had little time to think about Petal. When he did he counted the hours until nightfall, and imagined how it would be when he called for her at her darts stand at Merrydown Park. They would walk, he thought, along the sea-front, leaving the crowds behind, until they came to ‘Le Casse-Croûte.’ He would have his arm round Petal and he would feel her warmth as they walked together in the darkness. He wondered whether there would be a moon. Perhaps there would, and it would shine through the windows of ‘Le Casse-Croûte’ as they danced cheek-to-cheek in the space before the counter where today people in bathing suits, pink from the sun, were lining up for tea and coffee, cakes and sandwiches, little imagining… And then when their dancing had grown slower, they would stop to kiss, and Petal’s lips would be soft and her hair pale in the wash of light and the piles of silent plates and saucers, ghostly, and then gently, very gently, he hoped he would not tremble and that she would not realise it was his first time…

  “I think you’ve given me the wrong change.” He looked down at the fat lady in the navy blue dress who held a pile of silver and copper in her pudgy hand for his inspection. “I had two cards and a fishin’ net and one of them rubber balls.” Victor, relinquishing Petal with a sigh, said, “I’m frightfully sorry,” and tried to add up.

  Louise, in a moment of respite between filling the large, steaming teapot from the hissing tap, pouring endless cups of good, strong tea, filling pots with one, two or three tea-bags, milking cups expertly, just so much, serving cups of coffee, fingered the knot of hair at the nape of her neck and wondered if she dared. Harry said it would make her look years younger. She had a nice face, he’d said, why did she spoil it with that dreadful, old-fashioned hair style? He had been even more surprised when she’d told him that her work, her proper work, had been in a hairdressing salon. She’d tried to explain that the fancy, fashionable styles, the urchin fringes, the casual curls, the bouffant, were for the customers; the women to whom the hairdresser, no matter where they were, was a necessary adjunct to living. The week was not complete, the party could not be attended, the dinner not eaten, without the washing, the conditioning, the setting in rollers and clips, the net, the cotton-wool for the ears, the drying, the combing out, the lacquer; not to mention the perming, the straightening, the blea
ching, the tinting, the rinsing, the oil treatments, the scalp treatments… All that was for women whose night was a theatre, a dinner, a party, not a bus home in the rush hour, a hastily prepared supper – a kipper perhaps or scrambled egg on toast – and an evening listening to the television and her mother grumbling. She took advantage of the facilities the salon offered its staff for free shampoos and sets. One of the girls, Miss Irene usually, did her hair for her, and years ago they had stopped asking her wouldn’t she like to wear it short for a change or brightened a little or the ends permed. Now they just washed it, dried it loose under the drier and left her to wind it into the knot with which she was so familiar. The only thing she did accept was her weekly manicure. She was proud of her hands, which were very much in evidence as she took money, gave change, entered appointments in the large book in front of her. It was on her hands that she lavished varnish, creams and lotions, her hair she had given up long ago. Her mother would have something to say, of course, but that didn’t worry her. What worried her was if she really wanted herself to experiment, if she dared. What worried her even more was her own willingness to do this for a man she had only just met, and so casually, a man who, she had to admit, but only in the deep recesses of her own heart, wasn’t really her type at all.

  That she had accepted his invitation at all was difficult to believe. Drinking in a seaside pavilion bar was hardly something to which she was accustomed, and if it wasn’t for her mother she would never have gone.

  On the day that she had taken the Gurney children to the concert party her feeling of contentment and good humour had persisted, in spite of her mother’s moaning that she had been left for the whole afternoon, until after their supper for which Louise, because of her good mood, had prepared a tasty dish consisting of fillets of sole, a fish which was plentiful and beautiful in Whitecliffs, and sauce in which were sweet, white grapes. With the cookery book in front of her, she had hummed the tunes which the band had played as she peeled the grapes, melted butter and carefully stirred her sauce. During the meal her mother had said nothing, only carefully scraped every bit of sauce from her fish to the side of her plate, and left her half-dozen grapes untouched. When she had put down her knife and fork Louise, still in her good humour and only half annoyed because she had expected nothing else, said: “I don’t know why I bother,” and gone into the kitchen, carrying the plates, to fetch the crème caramel she had made. When she came back her mother was sitting very still and upright, her hands clasped on her lap, her lips in a thin line. She should have recognised the signs. “I don’t know why you do, either,” her mother said.

  “Why I do what?” Louise put the dish down.

  “Bother. That’s what you said, wasn’t it? Can I help it if I’m an old woman and my legs aren’t very good?…”

  Louise was still cheerful. “Come on now, mother, don’t start. Eat your caramel and we’ll listen to Variety Playhouse, or I’ll take you for a little walk along the front while it’s still light, if you like.”

  But her mother was not to be diverted. “When I think,” she said, not even picking up her spoon, “of the years I spent looking after you, you never were an easy child, Louise, and then your father day and night in the sick-room, and when it comes to my turn for a little attention…”

  Louise had put down her spoon. “Just a minute, Mother,” she said, her mood having completely evaporated and been replaced by an unfamiliar, tight feeling which seemed to be constricting her chest. “You know quite well who it was that looked after father, day and night, and meals and beds and everything else…”

  “And why not? Your own father…”

  Because you were his wife and because of you I lost my only chance of happiness, Johnny. “No reason why not, but don’t pretend you did it all, Mother, because you didn’t; you didn’t.”

  “Don’t think your father wasn’t aware, Louise, that when you nursed him it was grudgingly, your mind all the time on that Air Force fellow…”

  Louise stood up. “I loved my father,” she said distinctly, “he was the sweetest, kindest…how can you say a thing like that…when Father’s not here to defend me? When you know it isn’t true?”

  Her mother, now she had succeeded in riling Louise and had the upper hand, began calmly to eat her crème caramel. “Well, you did want to go off with that fellow, didn’t you?” She made her voice sound reasonable as she slung her darts with sure aim.

  “I did, yes, and you made sure that I threw away my chance. My only chance, as it happened.”

  Her mother looked up. It was not like Louise to answer back.

  “That’s just what I said. You bore a grudge and your father sensed it…”

  Louise said, “Whose name was it he called into the night, every night? And when he was dying, and he must have known it because you were careful that he should, whose name did he call?”

  Her mother opened her mouth to answer but before she had a chance Louise said: “You’re a wicked, wicked old woman, and if I said I don’t know why I bother, I meant what I said; I meant it because it’s never occurred to you that I, too, might have feelings, need someone to care…”

  “Louise, where are you going?” The voice followed her into the bedroom where she had run before she said too much of what was in her heart.

  She hadn’t been going anywhere except to dam the stream she had been bottling up over the years and which threatened to overflow.

  “I’m going out,” she said.

  “I’ll be alone again… You said we were going for a walk…” the voice, unsure, was whining again.

  Louise had her coat on. She was pale when she came into the lounge which was also their dining-room. “I have to get out for a bit. It’s your own fault, Mother. I shan’t be long.”

  Outside she had run, a middle-aged woman, tears streaming down her face, towards the bus which would take her to the pavilion.

  Only when she pushed open the door of the bar, and the smell of the drinks and the smoke had hit her in the face, had she wanted to turn and go back, but he had already seen her. She accepted the chair at the small, glass-topped table, and the cigarette and the gin he put before her. Only when he said: “I’m ever so glad you came,” did she really look at him. He had changed from the red jacket uniform of the concert party, and now wore a pale grey suit on which the chalk stripes were at least an inch and a half apart, and the shoulders well padded. His shoes were brown and white. After her third gin she stopped noticing that his teeth clicked when he talked, and when he covered her hand with his she did not protest. It was warm and friendly in the bar, and it was not until she had told him practically all there was to know about herself that she thought suddenly, I don’t know what has come over me sitting here in a bar drinking with some frightful man – and she knew he was frightful – and telling him my life story like some eighteen-year-old. Looking again at his face, which was not unkind, only a little sad from too many dreary digs and third-class shows in fourth-class seaside towns, and too much knocking around for too long, she thought he will probably take out his wallet soon and be surprised to find it empty, and say, “I’m most terribly sorry, I thought…” and she would pay for the three gins she had had and for his whiskies… Suddenly she knew she didn’t care. Whatever his motives, and she had seen too many films, read too many books from the library to believe them anything but suspicious, he had made her feel, for an hour at least, that she was a woman, still not too old for beauty, not too staid for fun. She had left him to walk back alone along the sea-front, having declined his offer of company which he did not press too hard, but had agreed to meet him again in the pavilion bar. When he said, “Good night, Louise, try to make it Wednesday,” and clasped her hand in both of his she’d said, “Good night, Harry,” and hadn’t cared that she was making a fool of herself, and knew that she could come again because she had enjoyed the evening and she felt relaxed, wanted, if only by Harry who she knew was probably up to no good, for herself.

  Now in the caf�
�, at her place behind the urn, Louise, too, had something to think of besides whether she had done the right thing for herself and her mother in coming to Whitecliffs, and as she poured teas and filled pots she decided yes, she would have her hair cut and perhaps try to take a little weight off, she was, after all, not much over forty but until now she hadn’t cared…

  “You’re all half asleep this morning,” Arthur said, coming through to the café from the stock room. “Come along Victor, Louise, Basil, we’ll have them all going over to the Corporation if we don’t pull our socks up. Let’s get this queue cleared quickly if we can; we’ll have the trippers down at any minute on a lovely day like this.”

  And indeed, pouring out from the little station and flowing down in a colourful stream towards the beach, for which they had risen at six and packed sandwiches and filled thermos, was a steady line of Mums in floral dresses and Dads with scrawny Adam’s apples in open-necked art silk shirts in blue or green, carrying floppy bags, and Grandads with caps, and Nannas with varicose veins, and children of all ages with black plimsolls and tired London faces but smiling with anticipation. And as they neared the front and ‘Le Casse-Croûte’ they decided that having been up so long they could do with a cup of tea and an ice for the kiddies, and they were served by Vanessa who thought of Howard, and Louise who thought of Harry, and Victor who was waiting for the night.