We All Fall Down

by Rosemary Friedman

  For the first time in eighteen years Vera said into the darkness:

  “I’m sorry, Arthur. It was unfair of me.”

  Arthur was so surprised he said nothing; just lay there looking at the scrap of moonlight that crept round the side of the curtain. He wondered what had come over Vera.

  “Perhaps we should have talked to them more about… about…well, you know,” Vera said.

  “Prehaps someone should have talked to us more.”

  Vera stared into the darkness, her cheeks burning.

  There was a slight noise in the room.

  “Are you crying?” Arthur said.

  “A little.”

  “What about?”

  “Us, Victor.”

  “You can’t put back the clock.”

  “I suppose you can’t,” Vera said, and wished suddenly that there wasn’t such an unbridgeable gap between the two single beds.

  Now, listening to Arthur rambling on like an excited schoolboy about the cottage she knew he would not have very long to enjoy, Vera yearned with a longing she did not know she was capable of for every one of the lost years which had taken them step by step farther apart. If, at home, Arthur was taciturn it was she who made him so; if he never discussed his business affairs with her it was because years ago she had made it clear that she was uninterested; if they avoided physical contact it was because that was the way she wanted it. She realised that she now had everything she wanted, but with the prospect of losing Arthur it had all turned sour.

  “I suppose you’ll enjoy yourself furnishing it,” Arthur said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Furnishing. The cottage. Curtains and carpets and things.”

  Vera stared at him. She hadn’t thought of that. Previously nothing would have delighted her more than to tour the shops to furnish a brand-new little seaside house. Now she didn’t know if she could do it. She had to do it; cloud grey for the walls, pink for the chairs, yes, and a cottagey print for the bedroom…knowing all the time that it would be for nothing, she wouldn’t keep it, of course, after… It was going to be awfully difficult. She had an idea.

  “Why couldn’t we keep this flat on?”

  “It’s not really homey. Besides, I want a garden and there’s the grapevine.”

  The grapevine.

  “Of course I don’t suppose we should come every weekend. Not in the winter, at any rate. There’s wistaria by the front door. Tiny of course as yet. The frame’s there for it to climb up though.”

  Wistaria.

  “You see, if we hadn’t come to Whitecliffs I would never have thought of this cottage idea. One must make decisions. You see, good comes out of everything.”

  Good comes out of everything. Vera looked at him. Why has it got to be just when he is so happy, she thought. Why haven’t I bothered to see that he was happy before? I never knew he could be like this. I never thought about it.

  “I can hardly wait until next summer when we’re settled in.”

  Vera looked away so that he would not see the tears in her eyes.

  “You do like the cottage, don’t you, Vera?”

  The doorbell rang. Relieved, Vera stood up. “I’ll see who’s at the door.”

  On the landing stood Honey. She was wearing a navy blue linen suit and had a white coat over her shoulders. She was carrying her make-up case. “Can I see Mr Dexter?” She followed Vera into the sitting-room.

  “I’m sorry to walk out on you, Mr Dexter,” Honey said, “but I have to leave.”

  “What is it, Honey?” Arthur said.

  Honey’s eyes were sparkling. “Well, I met this man,” she said. “He owns a big hotel not far from here and he’s something to do with the BBC. He’s going to give me a spot in his show. Singing. His name’s Terence. Are you awfully cross?”

  “Not a bit,” Arthur said. “We’re packing up soon anyway. We shall miss you.”

  “You’re sweet,” Honey said. “You really are.” She crossed the room and bending, kissed Arthur on the top of his head. “Isn’t he a poppet, Mrs Dexter?”

  “Yes,” Vera said, and Arthur looked at her.

  When Honey had gone they went together over to the window which looked onto the front of the block.

  Downstairs was a red sports car in which was a good-looking, grey-haired man wearing a signet ring, and Honey’s luggage. He reached across to open the door for Honey, and started the engine. Arthur and Vera watched until they had disappeared in a welter of exhaust along the sea-front.

  “Farmyard morals!” Vera said.

  Arthur looked at her and the look said: Victor.

  “Oh, God,” Vera said, “I shall have to remember.”

  “I don’t suppose,” Arthur said, “that they’ll be able to do such a good job on him that we shall ever be able to forget.”

  Twenty-six

  In the bar of the ‘Landscape’ Louise waited for Harry. She sat at a little table from where she could watch the door. With her left hand she clasped the small glass in which was a gin and orange she had barely touched, and with her right she patted the hair at frequent intervals which felt so light, so odd upon her head. She had enjoyed her morning at the hairdresser’s. Watching the manageress like a hawk she had told her where it should be long, where short, where thinned, where tapered. Louise knew more about hair than did this woman who called herself a hairdresser, and with whom the local inhabitants were apparently well satisfied; she ignored the sighs and glares with which her instructions were obeyed. When it had been cut she suffered in silence while the sloppy Pat shampooed her hair looking anywhere but at what she was doing, chiefly at her own face in the mirror, while the water dripped down Louise’s neck or into her eyes. After applying the brightening rinse Louise had asked for, she brought her, sopping, up from the basin and, not bothering to put a dry towel round her neck, shambled off to call the manageress again. They had no rollers with which to set her hair; had never heard of them. Louise painstakingly showed them how to make rolls of cotton-wool round which the strands of hair could be wound. She practically set it herself, and when they went away to find a hairnet for her she heard them muttering about her outside. She didn’t care. There were two heats on the dryer – unbearably hot or icy cold. Louise read a magazine two years old – Winter Sports edition – and suffered. When she was pronounced dry by Pat who came in chewing the remainder of her ‘elevenses’, she said she would comb it out herself. The result was pleasing. She paid the bill, gave tips to compensate for the trouble she had caused, and went home.

  Her mother said: “Louise, what have you done? Your hair was the best thing about you.”

  “Thank you, Mother,” Louise said, and went into the bedroom. Her mother hobbled in after her and watched her as she sat before the mirror.

  “You’re not eighteen, you know.”

  “Forty-three next birthday.”

  “Why have you gone all kittenish?”

  “A change. I was fed up with that bun.”

  “You’ve had it long enough. Don’t know what you wanted to mess about with it for. Tinted it, too, haven’t you?”

  “A rinse.”

  “Waste of money. Who’ll notice? It’s not as if you were young enough to…”

  Louise got up and walked past her mother into the kitchen to see to the lunch. Her mother was wrong. Quite wrong. She would have quite a shock if she knew she was young enough to… Harry obviously thought she was anyway. The day didn’t go quickly enough.

  When it was seven o’clock she put on the blue dress she knew suited her, and ranged all the make-up she possessed on the top of the dressing-table. When she had finished she knew she had done a good and expert job. With the material at her disposal she knew it was not possible to do better. With her pots, her bottles, her pencils, her brushes and her newly cut hair she had created an illusion of beauty. She knew it was unimportant, but she had been in the world of beauty for long enough to know that it helped. By the scared look on her mother’s face she could te
ll she had succeeded.

  “You’ve met someone, Louise! A man’s been paying attention to you. You wouldn’t get yourself up like that just for the cinema.”

  Louise said: “Don’t be ridiculous, Mother,” and waited until Miss Price came to sit with her mother before she left.

  In the ‘Landscape’, the eyes of the men dispelled any doubts she had left. She had been accustomed to them sliding over her unremarkable appearance as though she were one of themselves. Tonight they had registered ‘woman’, and lingered if only for a moment.

  Harry had said eight o’clock. It was half-past. She would give him until nine. An hour was long enough to wait for any man, even if they were as few and far between as they were in Louise’s life. One could only stoop so low…and she was stooping low, she knew, with Harry. She didn’t care. She knew there must be something else, but life as it was with nothing but work and life with mother and few friends and the cinema on Fridays…was that him?… No. She had butterflies in her stomach for a moment. She repeated to herself what her mother had told her. She was not eighteen. What a silly way to behave! It was jolly in the bar; seaside and holiday conversation on all sides; sounds bred of Manchester and Liverpool as well as local accents. The men wore open-necked shirts as they held their pints; the girls were bare-legged, sun-tanned, laughing. She wondered whether he was perhaps angry with her for going to his digs, and wouldn’t come at all.

  When he did come in she didn’t see him until he was standing by the table.

  “Hallo, Louise.” He looked nervous and kept glancing over his shoulder.

  “Hallo, Harry.”

  She waited for him to comment on her changed appearance. He got himself a drink and sat down next to her. He appeared not to have noticed and she felt a small pall of disappointment.

  “I’m sorry about Thursday,” Louise said, “barging in on you like that. I wouldn’t have dreamed of it only everyone was so worried about Victor and I wanted to help.”

  “That’s all right,” Harry said vaguely, as though he didn’t know what she meant. Then, as though he had suddenly remembered something, he looked straight at Louise, gave her the full benefit of his false-toothed smile and took her hand.

  She had to admit to herself it was not unpleasant, and did not take it away.

  “Louise?”

  “Yes?” Louise held her breath.

  Harry hesitated. “What have you been doing with yourself since Thursday?”

  “Nothing much. Busy at the café.” She told him how Victor was progressing, about Basil’s wife coming back to him, about some amusing things that had happened at ‘Le Casse-Croûte’, about an argument she had had with her mother. Harry listened, nodding from time to time, then he got up to get them each another drink. The bar was getting crowded. Harry was tall, she could see his head above all the other men round the bar. He sat down again with the drinks.

  “Louise?” He took a handkerchief from his breast-pocket and patted his forehead. It was getting warm in the bar.

  “Yes?” She wished he would say it and get it over. He was making her nervous. When Johnny had proposed (was it really so many years ago?) there had been no hesitation, none at all. They had been in the officers’ mess when the order had come over the loud-speakers to ‘Scramble’ and that had meant Germany and the night sky for Johnny, and it had taken him a second to say, “Marry me, Lulu,” and even less for her to say, “Yes, Johnny,” as their eyes met, and then his lips had touched hers so quickly she might have dreamt it, and he had said: “Until I get back, my love,” and made for the door to which the other boys were running, and she had said: “Come back safely, my darling!” but he had already gone.

  “I hope you won’t mind my asking you this,” Harry said.

  Louise shook her head and waited.

  “You see, we haven’t known each other very long, but I feel that I’ve known you longer, that we understand one another, Louise…”

  Listening, she knew that it sounded like a bit from a second feature film. She sighed and remembered she was forty-three and couldn’t afford to be so choosy.

  “…I wouldn’t ask you, Louise, if it wasn’t desperate, a matter almost, you might say, of life and death, only…”

  What was he talking about? His face was quite flushed and the perspiration gathering again on his forehead.

  Louise sat back and held tightly to her glass with both hands.

  “Harry,” she said, “What is it you want to ask me?”

  He dabbed at his forehead. “Well, it’s like this, Louise…”

  “Wouldn’t it be better if you came straight to the point?”

  He tipped his glass to his lips. It was empty but the action appeared to give him courage.

  “Can you lend me five hundred pounds, Louise?”

  Louise sat back in her chair. As well as her feeling of shame and disappointment she felt a kind of relief. There was something she had to know.

  “What makes you think I have five hundred pounds, Harry?”

  “Well, I know those sea-front flats aren’t cheap, and you told me you had a good job and you must’ve been puttin’ a bit by each week and you aren’t as young as you were, so I reckoned by now…”

  “I’m sorry,” Louise said.

  “Wait till I tell you how it is.”

  “I don’t want to know. You’ve made a mistake. I couldn’t lend you sixpence.”

  “I thought you liked me, Louise,” he said reproachfully, his smile forcing itself back over his teeth.

  Louise stood up. “You were wrong about that, too. You must excuse me.”

  In the ‘Ladies’ she shut her eyes and leaned against the wash-basin.

  “Feelin’ queer, love?”

  A brassy blonde breathed smoke and port into her face.

  “I’m all right.” She washed her hands although they did not need washing. The towel was grubby and someone had left lipstick on it. When she got back to the bar Harry had gone. She ordered a double whisky and sat down again. Something inside her whispered a warning about mixing drinks. She didn’t care. That was that, she thought; absolutely and positively that. She watched a girl with short hair and beautiful legs make bedroom eyes at the good-looking man she was with. Their gazes did not falter. I’ve seen too many films, Louise thought, and not looked long enough, not frankly enough, in the mirror. How stupid of me to have my hair cut! The scissors can do nothing to the years. She looked away from the girl she had been watching and down into her drink. In the amber of the whisky she saw a black dress and a lilac shawl. Wearing them was an old lady sitting before a fire. She could not see the old lady’s face, but she knew it was her own. She drank the whisky to destroy the image.

  “Louise!” a man’s voice said beside her. “It is Louise, isn’t it? I hardly recognised you.”

  “Hallo, Howard,” Louise said.

  “May I join you or were you…?”

  “No. You can sit down if you like.”

  Howard put down his glass on the little table and sat down opposite Louise.

  “You look extremely nice. You’ve done something to your hair. I had to look twice.”

  Louise was on the last sip of her whisky. She said nothing.

  “It suits you. It makes you look a great deal younger.”

  “I’m forty-three.” Louise emphasised the words.

  “The same age as I.”

  “It’s different for you, you’re a man.” Howard looked up at the bitterness in her voice.

  Louise said: “Bachelor! What a gay, romantic sound – a whirl of gaiety and girl friends. Now think of the word they use for me.”

  Howard was silent.

  “Spinster!” Louise said. “Dead wood. Pitiable. Laughable.”

  “Louise,” Howard said, and his voice was gentle. “What’s the matter?”

  “I suppose I’m a little drunk,” Louise said, “and saying what’s on my mind for a change. I’ll be sorry tomorrow.”

  “Shall I get you another?” Ho
ward said.

  “You’re not shocked?”

  “It looks as if we both need it tonight.”

  “You, too?”

  “Me, too,” Howard said. He took out his pipe and bit on it as he did in moments of agitation. Earlier in the day he had watched Cliff, a young god, call at the café for Vanessa. He had concentrated on his ice-creams, trying not to watch. He had looked up as they strode down to the beach, young limb by young limb, Vanessa’s sweet face serious. Later still, from the back kitchen where he had been fetching fresh supplies of ice-cream, he had watched them linger by the motor-bike, had seen them drive noisily off, noticed Vanessa’s head go down against Cliff’s back and wondered whether he hadn’t been unwise. He hadn’t realised that Vanessa had hit him so hard. There were many things he wished. He wished he were twenty years younger; he wished he were beginning again at the start of his dream; he wished he could, with a good conscience, have opened his arms to Vanessa who was the sweetest, freshest, most desirable thing he had ever had offered to him. Above all he wished to eradicate the image of her which formed itself every time he shut his eyes. For this reason, as well as one which had been at the back of his mind for a long time, he had come to the ‘Landscape’.

  Howard fetched two double whiskies from the bar and set them down on the table. They drank in silence for a while, listening and not listening to the hum and sudden throb of noise around them. When Howard looked across at Louise he was surprised to see tears rolling down her face and into her glass.

  “Louise, what is it?”

  “I’m sorry. The drink most probably. I can’t remember when I last shed tears. When one is the head of the family one can’t afford to. I thought for one moment tonight…but I was wrong. I suppose it was the disappointment. I’m sorry if I’m embarrassing you although with the gin and whisky I can’t say I really care. I don’t care about anything at the moment. I’m just having a good wallow.”