In ‘Le Casse-Croûte’ they tried to behave as though nothing had happened to spoil their idyll. They all worked hard at their own and each other’s jobs in an attempt to fill the gap left by Victor. Everything was the same in actuality: in essence it was not. Arthur came in after he had been to the hospital, but there was no, “Good morning, everyone, come along there, let’s get cracking, watch your ices, Howard…”
He stood gloomily in the back kitchen and drank a cup of tea. He didn’t check the stock or watch the sales, and when a customer came back complaining that the sails had come off her small boy’s windmill, he didn’t give her her money back. They served teas, coffees, ices, fancy-goods, everything as usual, but there was none of the customary banter, summery words, flying back and forth across the café, neither did they chat much with the customers. They kept to themselves in a tight, restrictive knot, thinking their own thoughts and unbending only to serve the boats or the candy-floss or the bottles of coca-cola. It was Honey who kept them all going. After her quiet words with Basil in the morning she was gayer than ever. She danced into the kitchen with the empties, chaffed Howard unmercifully for his solemnity, and made them all laugh despite themselves with the bold eyes she made deliberately at all the handsome men who were in the queue. When Elisabeth arrived at four o’clock Honey was leaning across the counter, from the customers’ side, and asking Doctor Gurney in dramatic tones if he knew of a cure for a broken heart, as one of the men whom she had just ogled in her best manner had turned away and looked quite cross. After that she put a cha-cha-cha on the record-player and refilled the racks with cakes, in time to the music. From the corner of her eye she watched Elisabeth watching Basil, and Basil watching Elisabeth. When she was tired she went into the back kitchen and made herself some tea. Arthur was sitting with his jacket off, and his head in his hands.
“How is Victor?”
“They can’t do anything about his eye,” Arthur said, “and they’ve left him a nice legacy in the way of scars. Don’t say it might have been worse. I know. It doesn’t help much.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Honey said. “I was going to ask how many sugars you want in your tea.”
“Two.”
“If something like that happened to me,” Honey said, “I’d be finished. My face is my fortune. My face and my… Well, what I mean is, Victor has brains and education and background and money…”
“I know you’re right. You’re all right. A few superficial cuts, the loss of an eye… God, I could murder them for what they’ve done to my son.”
“An eye for an eye,” Honey said.
Howard was at the sink getting fresh water for his ice-cream scoops. “Actually it doesn’t mean that,” he said. “It refers merely to monetary compensation for an injury done; that there should be a limit to damages paid. Of course, it’s a popular misconception but the Old Testament states quite clearly…”
“Much obliged, Your Worship,” Honey said, bobbing a curtsy, and even Arthur had to smile.
They locked up early. Basil walked along the promenade with Elisabeth. The sun was sitting low in the sky in a nest of pink clouds. In another half-hour the tide would be at its highest. On the small strip of beach that remained a few holiday-makers, reluctant to go home, huddled against the wall watching the sea inch up towards them. The serious swimmers were enjoying a bathe in which they did not have to wade half a mile before the water reached their waists, the children, sun-filled and happy, enjoyed their last paddle, their mothers relaxed, content that they had no supper to cook, that their fish and chips would be waiting, ready laid on a white tablecloth, with a bottle of tomato ketchup and worcester sauce to each table; their fathers, handkerchiefs knotted too late over sunburned foreheads, sat and thought or did not think. The cleaner picked up the floating papers on the promenade, leisurely emptied the bins. Elisabeth and Basil, walking along, dodged the black rubber balls on the ends of lengths of elastic of the remaining Jokari players, the chalked-out squares of the hopscotches, the women wringing out the bathing suits until the water trickled in a dark stream over the white stone and down on to the sand. They skirted children sitting in the middle of the promenade, struggling unself-consciously to fit sandals on to damp, sandy feet; they dodged round families who walked in long lines, heavily laden with bags, trailing children, homewards. They were scampered into by dogs, used as foils for children playing hide and seek, stared at for Elisabeth’s good looks by the men, for her clothes by the women. They did not speak. They passed the last hut, where a man locked the door and put the key into his shorts pocket, and the point where there were no more litter bins, only a long, bare, empty stretch of stone against which the sea already slapped because it was the arm which cradled the bay, and beneath the grey water stretching out to sea they could see, just darkly visible, the black mass of the rocks. To their right a few gulls swooped plaintively over the water, to their left the chalk cliffs crumbled.
Elisabeth said: “I want you to know, Basil, now that I’ve seen Honey it’s all right.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean I can understand how you felt; and Honey being there. She’s so gay, I pretended for a moment, looking at her, I was you. I would have done the same.”
“Not you, Elisabeth.”
“Basil, I want to say something. You’re always kind of putting me on a pedestal, accentuating, as it were, our differences. You make yourself earthy, me remote; me rich, you poor; me virtuous, you not. It’s a thing you’ve got. You act as though I think I’m too good for you.”
“You’re the only one I love, Elisabeth.”
“I know you love me. But there’s always this feeling. I don’t know whether it’s because of my home or because of father’s title or what it is, but somewhere, deep down, you resent me.”
“You are your father’s daughter.”
“I am what I am,” said Elisabeth. “We’ve never discussed this before, and I’ve never really been able to put it into words. But while we’ve been apart I’ve been thinking. We’re pulling against each other all the time, and I think that’s what’s been stopping you from working, too. Until you can accept me as I am, just a woman, your wife, part of you, I don’t believe we shall get anywhere.”
“How do you suggest I do that?”
“Try to love me, Basil, without any reservations.”
“I wasn’t aware there were any. If you’d seen me down here, missing you every moment of the day, you wouldn’t think so either.”
“I can’t put it any better than that, Basil. I have this feeling that all the time there’s this thing between us. When you’re working you are frustrated by the feeling that you are working to keep this Elisabeth who is richer than you; when we’re out you introduce me defiantly to your friends as though you were saying this is my wife, Elisabeth; you cannot talk to her for she is not like us; when we make love I have the feeling that you handle me carefully, like old china.” Elisabeth stopped walking and turned to face Basil. Against the chalky white of the cliff her hair was fiery.
“I don’t want to be treated like old china,” she said. “Can’t you understand, Basil, I want to be dominated by you, possessed? We’re all cave-women at heart. I don’t want you to look at me as though any moment I might fly away or melt or disappear on my broomstick. I want to be real for you as you are real for me. Do you know how you’re looking at me now?”
Basil shook his head.
“As though you can’t believe your luck.”
“But I can’t, Elisabeth. You’re so beautiful.”
“You do me an injustice. Honey is beautiful. I am a woman; a woman who loves you, Basil. A woman who is going to bear your child. I am neither my father’s daughter nor the unattainable customer in your bookshop. I am your wife. Only your wife.” She walked along again and Basil followed her. “It’s peaceful down here,” Elisabeth said. “I envy you your weeks. In town it’s been hot and dirty and noisy, but with the sterile, far-away feel that London has in August.
You forget, amidst the dust and the traffic, that not so very many miles away the air is clean and the sea has sun sprinkled on it and is infinite, and that you can take time off to air your soul. It’s very gentle here.”
“About our baby. What shall we call him?”
“Who said it would be a ‘him’? You’re the author, invent something.”
“There are several names already invented. Why don’t we stick to those? Perhaps it will be a girl, beautiful like her mother.”
“There you go again. Can’t you think of anything, anything at all you like in me, you’d like perpetuated in our daughter? My hair will be grey before she’s grown up, and my skin not the same despite what the labels on the night-creams say; what will you love in me then, Basil? You must find something for both our sakes.”
“You will always be… Elisabeth.”
“If I was sure of that…”
“You can be sure. How can I prove it?”
“When you tell me, I shall know.”
They walked up the steep path that wound up in a gap in the cliff, and Elisabeth sat on the rough wood bench halfway to rest.
“I keep forgetting about this baby because it doesn’t show,” Basil said. “I’m not looking after you properly.”
“I’m perfectly all right. You don’t have to coddle me. The doctor says I’m a big, strong girl and should have a big, strong baby.”
Back in the flat, Elisabeth put on her apron.
“I got some trout this morning,” she said. “The fish is wonderful down here. I thought I’d like to do it as you like it with some of those tiny mushrooms, and you could pop out for a bottle of wine, cheap wine, but you must have wine with trout…what are you staring at?”
Basil was leaning against the window in the tiny kitchen with his arms folded and his jaw stuck forward.
“Basil, what is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Then what are you looking at?”
“I’m looking at you.”
“But why like that?”
Basil unfolded his arms. “If you really want to know come into the bedroom and find out.” He went out of the kitchen and she heard him cross the hall and go into the bedroom.
Elisabeth hesitated for a moment. Then she took off her apron, switched off the gas under the saucepan she had put on for the trout, and followed him.
Twenty-two
“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” Elisabeth said anxiously.
“Absolutely, darling. Are you sure you will? I mean all that standing around.”
“I’m looking forward to it. It looked fun yesterday. Can I get you anything before I go?”
Basil, in bed, closed his eyes. “No, I shall just sleep.”
“Good. I’ll be back at lunchtime. I hope you’ll feel better, darling.”
“Don’t worry, sweet.”
Elisabeth, in a loose, oatmeal linen dress, looked round the bedroom in the manner of one who was about to leave but was reluctant to do so. She could find nothing to detain her. The curtains were half closed to keep the light from Basil’s eyes, her own bed was made, Basil’s tidy. There was water for him to drink, the newspaper to read, aspirins and cigarettes by the bed. She had swept the carpet, and dusted.
Basil, in his blue pyjamas, lay quite still. Elisabeth walked quietly out of the room and shut the door softly. He heard her let herself out of the flat. He waited until he was sure she was well on her way to ‘Le Casse-Croûte’ and would not be coming back for anything, before he opened his eyes. He got out of bed to open the curtains and in the full impact of the morning sun which was bright, but not yet hot, he realised that he was trembling with excitement. He showered, dressed, put on his shoes and shaved his face as carefully as if he were going to a party. When he was ready he went into the little hall, guiltily almost, on tiptoe, and opened the cupboard. The typewriter was where he had left it next to the electricity meter. He lifted it out and took it into the bedroom. Five minutes later he was sitting in front of the clean white paper he had wound into the roller, and was tipping backwards slightly in his chair. This was the moment he hated most of all. He had fiddled with the carbon, making sure it was right side up, set the margin and the indentation to his satisfaction, made sure his notebook and his pen were by his side. He lit a cigarette, burning the match longer than was necessary, then got up to find an ashtray. When he sat down again he pressed the shift lock and printed ‘Chapter One’. He underlined it in red. Tipping his chair back again, he thought perhaps he ought to have one quick glance at the newspaper to put him in the mood. He got up to get it. The headlines were uninteresting; August headlines. Nothing exciting was happening on the Stock Exchange. He read a letter headed ‘Why learn dead languages?’ and another about the damage by seals to fishing. The women’s page was all about how to make tapestry tea-cosies, and on the back page nobody he knew had given birth, married or died. He read an appeal for toys for deaf children, how to get a better mortgage, and that a leading Couturier was holding a sale of models. Short of starting on the crossword there was nothing else to detain him. He threw the newspaper on the floor and lit another cigarette from the first which he had not yet finished. The feeling that he would not this morning, not ever, be able to get started, was familiar. Today though he was not worried. Today was different. Today he was not the same Basil as he had been. He was a man complete, and because of Elisabeth. He smiled when he thought of last night, a little wistfully, for he had wasted so very many years in clinging to something he only half had, something he was not at all sure of. Last night, yesterday evening rather, he had made love to Elisabeth, for the first time since they had been married, with his mind entirely on Elisabeth and uninhibited by the fact that tomorrow he would not be able to write; without, in the back of his mind, pity for Elisabeth who was married to a failure, and pity for himself. He had made love to her for no other reason than that he loved her; he was relaxed, unaware of time and place, conscious only of his wife. For a whole night, loving and sleeping, chatting softly and idly in the dark, he had forgotten himself. He smiled when he remembered that at nine o’clock last night, lying close together in the same small bed, Elisabeth had said: “Basil, aren’t you hungry? We’ve had no dinner. What about the trout?” And he had looked into her eyes, which were deep grey in the almost-dark, and said gently: “What about the trout?” and it had still been there, waiting patiently in the fridge at breakfast time. It must have been midnight before they got to sleep. At six, with the light already bright, he woke, conscious for the first time in years of having dreamed about nothing at all, worried about nothing at all, feared nothing at all. There was one moment, while he lay looking at the pattern made by the light through the curtains, of utter peace, then, completely unbidden, the crystals of knowledge, of work, of half-ideas, he had worried over and collected over the past years, came rushing into his mind, and for the space of one lucid moment had formed a clear, precise and recognisable picture. There seemed no doubt that he could do now, today, what he had struggled unsuccessfully for so many years to do. Looking at Elisabeth’s red hair on the pillow, her breathing quiet, shadows beneath her eyes, he knew that it was something too delicate, too fragile to share, even with his wife. It was a revelation whose first and freshest telling could be only to his typewriter. He had lain there calmly, powerfully in the knowledge he possessed, and wondered how he could wangle a morning, a few hours even, on his own. He had despised himself rather for the story of the migraine and the suggestion that Elisabeth should take his place at ‘Le Casse-Croûte’, especially when she had overflowed with sympathy, darling Elisabeth, but there had been nothing else he could do.
Staring at the paper, blank except for ‘Chapter One’, he had one moment of doubt; one fleeting moment when he wondered whether this might not be exactly as any other morning of the past few years, whether he might not sit there all morning and at the end of it have nothing at all to show, or at best a few pages of typescript which he would ultimately tear up. Th
e moment did not last. He straightened his chair until all four legs were firmly on the ground, typed one line, hesitantly, slowly, like one scarcely able to control his hands, then lost himself in words; words which flowed so fast from the pages already written on his mind that his fingers were hardly able to keep pace with his thoughts.
He was surprised when he looked up, distracted by a noise, to find Elisabeth standing by his side.
He blinked. “Did you forget something?”
“No. Why should I have?”
“You came back.”
“I came back to give you some lunch. I expected to find you in bed.”
“What’s the time?”
“After one.”
We All Fall Down Page 21
