31st Of February

by Julian Symons

  “What’s that?”

  “I say marriage is a terrible thing. Have you met my wife? She’s a terrible woman.” Anderson found nothing to say. “Sometimes I wonder why one does it all. Advertising, I mean. Working, working, working – abandoning an artistic career – and for what? To support a woman who just doesn’t care.” VV’s rich voice was low and emotional, as though he were about to cry. “I sometimes think you’ve got the best of it. A girl like Molly—”

  “Look here,” Anderson said, “I shouldn’t like you to think that was anything serious. It’s not.”

  This time VV was able to make the semicircular arc without obstruction. “I’m a man of the world, Andy. I understand these things. I don’t want to inquire into your private life. Probably none of our private lives will bear inspection.”

  “But—”

  “Though there are compensations. Did you know I had a stepdaughter? Her name’s Angela. She’s a nice girl. It’s her birthday today. Fourteen.”

  “Shan’t I be in the way?”

  “Oh, not at all,” VV said gloomily. “Quite the contrary. And we must have our talk, don’t forget that.” His voice was now almost threatening.

  VV lived in a large block of fiats. They went up three floors in a lift and down to the end of a corridor. As he turned the key in a highly varnished maplewood door VV gave a low-pitched whistle. There was a sound of running feet. The door opened and a large girl flung her arms round VV’s neck. “Daddy!” she cried. With a look almost of idiocy VV put his arms behind his back. “Daddy, what have you got? Oh, who’s this?” Anderson found himself shaking hands with the girl. She was large-boned, red-haired, slightly freckled, and attractive in a peasant-girl manner. She looked at least sixteen years old. “It’s my birthday,” she said. “Have you brought me a present?”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t,” Anderson said. “But many happy returns, all the same,”

  “Thank you. Oh, Daddy, what are you hiding?”

  With ghastly agility VV skipped behind Anderson, holding the brown paper parcel still concealed. Angela shrieked and pursued him. Using Anderson as a fixed central pole, they danced round the little hall, giving cries and shouts of pleasure. At last Angela caught her stepfather and they struggled together as she tried to get the parcel. “Catch,” VV said. The package came flying through the air to strike Anderson chest high. He hugged it in both arms as the door opened and a voice said: “What is this brawl?”

  Anderson remembered Mrs Vincent as large and bony. She now appeared smaller, but bonier, than he remembered. Her face was long and thin with a knifelike nose between high cheekbones from which the flesh fell away, Her breastless body was clothed in a long dark sack tied at the waist. Her hands, dropped at her sides, were long and colourless. She stood framed in a dark doorway, looking at her husband and daughter. “Victor,” she said, “don’t be disgusting.”

  VV removed his arm from Angela’s waist and took off his overcoat. My dear, I’m glad to see you up,” His tone was one that Anderson had never heard him use before, the gentle placatory tone that an actor uses to a stage invalid. “This is Mr Anderson from the office. Perhaps you will remember him.”

  “Go and wash your face and hands, Angela. You look grubby.” With awful gentility Mrs Vincent said to Anderson:

  “How do you do? We have met at the firm’s dances, have we not? But this is an unexpected pleasure.” Anderson tucked the parcel under one arm and took her limp hand.

  “VV was good enough to invite me at very short notice. I hope I haven’t put you out.”

  “Nothing puts me out,” Mrs Vincent said, not reassuringly. She was staring at the parcel under Anderson’s arm.

  VV made a gesture towards the parcel. “And what do you think? He’s brought a present for little Angela’s birthday.”

  “That was kind,” said Mrs Vincent. “And particularly clever, at such short notice. But unnecessary. What is the gift, may I ask?”

  “A pair of ice skates,” VV said hurriedly. Anderson patted the parcel and idiotically repeated the words. Angela ran out to the hall again and cried: “A pair of ice skates.”

  “Happy birthday,” Anderson said, and dumped the parcel in her arms. She looked at him uncertainly. Mrs Vincent’s thin voice said: “Thank Mr Anderson for his gift.”

  Angela opened the parcel. A card dropped out, which she glanced at hurriedly and put into her pocket. “They’re lovely,” she said. “Thank you awfully.”

  In words as clear as drops of water Mrs Vincent said:

  “A card too. How very thoughtful Mr Anderson is. What does it say?”

  “It just says happy birthday.”

  “I am sure it must say something more interesting than that. Give it to me, Angela.”

  “Would anybody mind,” Anderson said, “if I took off my overcoat?”

  “My dear boy.” VV rushed forward. There was a little flurry. Anderson was freed of his overcoat. He turned round to see that Angela had torn the card to shreds. She faced her mother defiantly and said: “You shan’t see what’s on it.” Mrs Vincent’s limp hand came up and struck the girl upon the cheek. To Anderson she said with perfect politeness:

  “You’ll excuse me, I am sure, Mr Anderson. I have a sick headache.” She was swallowed up in the darkness behind her.

  Angela stood facing her mother’s closed door, cried two words at the top of her voice, and ran into another room, holding the ice skates in her hand. The first word Angela cried was “You.” The second pulled Anderson’s mind away from his surroundings to the establishment in Melian Street. Would there be any place for such words in Miss Stepley’s aseptic sexual paradise? Probably not. Or perhaps they might be uttered only by special dispensation as erotic stimulants.

  VV sighed. “I expect you’d like a drink.” He led the way into a pleasant but untidy sitting room. “You see how it is. Of course, she’s not well. Any excitement upsets her and she has to go to bed. Nervous trouble – but I told you that, didn’t I? What can you do?” VV fiddled with the glasses. He was so unlike the benevolent dictator of the office that Anderson felt he was talking to a stranger.

  He said with a shade of understatement: “She doesn’t get on with Angela?”

  “That’s the trouble. The fact is that I love Angela like my own daughter. You’d think Mary would be pleased. But is she pleased? Instead she does everything she can to make life miserable for all of us. Do you know the cause of all this trouble just now? The theatre.”

  “The theatre?”

  “We were going to the theatre tonight for Angela’s birthday. But – Mary has a sick headache.” VV laughed without amusement, and yet with a faintly histrionic air. “I know what you’re going to say – why don’t we go without her? Impossible, my boy, impossible. She goes to our neighbours’ flats and becomes hysterical. She sleepwalks if she knows she’s alone. Once she fell out of a window. That was not here,” VV said in a regretful voice. “It was a first-floor window. Little damage was done. But she can’t be left alone.”

  “I don’t see where I come in.”

  “We’ve got to have our talk.” But VV said it with little energy or interest. “And the fact is, she’s been more than usually intolerable lately. I thought a visitor might – ease the strain. Perhaps I was wrong. Ah, here comes Angela. Now we can have – ah – have supper.”

  Supper had a certain surrealist quality. VV ate only lettuce, seedless raisins, grated carrot and nuts, but he was anxious for Anderson’s welfare. “Eat up,” he said. “Take plenty of everything.” Anderson found it difficult to follow this advice. The food had come from the delicatessen counter of a very high-class store, and it was all covered with jelly. Anderson ate gingerly of cold consume followed by prawns in aspic and by chicken in a huge square jelly casing. The jelly stuck like glue to his teeth; the Russian salad that accompanied the chicken, on the other hand, tasted like small cubes of ice. Angela told him that Mrs Vincent had put it into the cold storage department of the refrigerator by mis
take. The white wine afforded a contrast to the Russian salad, for it had inadvertently been placed by the electric fire, and was luke warm.

  “Mother ordered everything from the food department of Jockney and Hanson,” Angela said demurely. “Did you think she had done it all herself?” She had changed both her dress and her appearance. She was now wearing a green evening frock and had swept up her red hair to reveal neat ears remarkably like her father’s. Only, of course, Anderson reflected, he was not her father, but her stepfather. The effect of the new hair style was to make her look eighteen instead of sixteen.

  Anderson sloshed some warm wine about in his mouth. It removed pieces of jelly from his teeth and unfroze some small cubes of Russian salad. “Are you really only fourteen today, Angela? You look much older.”

  “Do I?” She glowed. “You hear that, Victor?” VV nodded gloomily. She turned again to Anderson. “You didn’t buy me the ice skates, did you? The card said: ‘For Angela, with love.’ You wouldn’t have said that, would you?”

  “I might have said it,” Anderson replied gallantly, “but I didn’t buy the ice skates.”

  “But still it was sweet of you to try to get us out of trouble.”

  She looked archly at VV, who was scooping the last mouthful of carrots and raisins from his plate. “We’re always in trouble with Mummy, Victor and I. Do you like ice skating?”

  “I’ve never tried.”

  “It’s so graceful – you just fly along. Victor sometimes comes with me, don’t you? I say, this wine is nice, isn’t it?”

  “Delicious.”

  “Mummy doesn’t let me drink wine. Isn’t it lucky she’s ill?” She gazed from one to the other of them.

  Anderson coughed. “Perhaps she would like a little – a little consommé.”

  “Oh no, Mummy enjoys being ill, I say, shall we have some more wine? I know where there’s another bottle.”

  VV said weakly: “You’ve had enough to drink.”

  “It’s my birthday,” she pouted. She was certainly remarkably pretty. “And I want it. I’m going to get it.” She jumped up and ran out into the kitchen. While she was out of the room VV rolled his brown eyes ceilingward in mock appeal. Angela came back with another bottle. VV pushed away his plate with an air of hunger. “I think I might have a little sweet. What is it?”

  “Fruit and ice cream.” Anderson brightened, but the fruit arrived embedded in jelly. His spoon slid off the stiff surface of the ice cream. He thrust furiously at the jelly and succeeded in extracting small, tasteless pieces of cherry, pear and banana. VV pushed his sweet aside and sat picking his teeth with a silver toothpick. Angela ate the whole of her sweet with much apparent enjoyment. Anderson tried a mouthful of wine and found that the second bottle was, if anything, warmer than the first.

  “It’s good wine, isn’t it?” Angela said. “I mean, I don’t know anything about wine, but I like this, don’t you? Oh, but I asked you that before. You are a couple of deaf mutes, you two, aren’t you? I mean to say, can’t we do something? Oh well, if you’re not going to talk, I shall go out and make coffee.” She disappeared again.

  Conspiratorially, VV leaned over the table. “I suppose you wouldn’t like to take Angela to the Palladium? I’ve still got the tickets, you know, and—”

  “I’m afraid not,” Anderson said firmly. “I mean, I should like to, but I have to go along to a party.”

  “You could take her with you.”

  “And what about our talk?”

  “Oh that – that can wait. Will you take her to the party?”

  “Well really, I’m afraid—”

  “No? No, I suppose not. You don’t mind my asking, do you?”

  Angela came in a little unsteadily with coffee and biscuits on a tray “I say, let’s dance. You do dance, don’t you?” Anderson admitted that he did. “And so does Victor, only he never will. But tonight you must because it’s my birthday.” She darted over to VV, took his hands and pulled him from the chair.

  “But what about the noise? Your mother—”

  Oh, she won’t hear it if we have it low. After all, it’s my birthday. Next to ice skating, I love dancing more than anything in the world. Don’t you, Mr Anderson? I say, what’s your Christian name?”

  “That’s something I never reveal.”

  “Then I shall call you Andy. I’ll turn on the radio. Oh, but I suppose you want some coffee.” Anderson half expected the coffee to be warm jelly and was pleased to discover that it was quite drinkable. Encouraged, he bit into a biscuit, but his teeth refused to close on it. The biscuit bounded from his mouth on to the table. Angela was convulsed with laughter, as she explained that these rubber bouncing biscuits were kept specially for guests. Even VV came out of his abstraction to venture a sad smile. Anderson did not find himself much amused. The incident made him aware that he was painfully hungry.

  In the sitting room the radio was playing dance music very softly. Only one light was switched on faintly illuminating walls and chairs and bookcases. “Come on,” Angela said. “Let’s dance.” She seized her stepfather by the waist and they began to shuffle over the carpet together. Anderson dropped into an armchair and twiddled with the half-full wineglass which he still held in his hand. Like somnambulists the two figures swayed in their erotic clinch as the radio played:

  It was all over my jealousy;

  My crime was my blind jealousy…

  The Radio Times was by his chair. Anderson picked it up and saw that the programme was “Hit Tunes of 1942.” Nineteen forty-two, he thought, nineteen forty-two. What did the date mean? That was the year when he was thirty-two years old. That was the year when he married Val. That was the year when he might have been called up – when, in fact, he would have been called up, but for Reverton. In that year Vincent Advertising had been told that they must cut down their staff. They cut, and cut again; and at last there came a day when either Anderson or a man named Goble had to be relinquished. Goble was a studio artist who made layouts for the Ministry of Knowledge and Communications schemes, on which Anderson was then writing the copy: he was thirty-five, two years older than Anderson; he had two children. Anderson would have had to go, there was no doubt about it, but for good old Rev. Good old Rev had been a tower of strength; good old Rev had not much liked Goble, who was inclined to be independent and sometimes came in late and had a habit of taking things to VV direct, over Rev’s head; good old Rev saw a chance of placing Anderson permanently in his debt. All this had been understood when good old Rev said: “It’s a toss-up, I don’t mind telling you that, Andy, but I’m going into that Board Meeting to fight like hell to have you retained. We’ve always got on together, haven’t we? But it’s not a question of that; it’s just a matter of which man is the most valuable to the organization.” And then good old Rev had paused, had taken the pipe out of his mouth shrewdly and then had looked shrewdly at Anderson. “Unless, of course, you feel that you must go, Andy.” That was the decisive question, the decisive answer, that put you in Rev’s power. For after you had equivocated, after you had said that if you had to go you’d do your bit as well as the next man, that if you really thought you’d be more useful in the army than here doing essential propaganda work you’d go like a shot, but it was obvious that you weren’t… After you’d said all that you’d delivered yourself over to good shrewd old Rev, and you could never really argue with him on even terms again. And that was all recognized when good old Rev put his pipe back again and said: “I want you to know, Andy, that I’m going to do my damnedest to swing it for you.” And good old Rev had swung it (or perhaps there had been no question of swinging it, perhaps that was just Rev’s fun, perhaps the votes of all the directors had gone to him without question), and Goble had been released from deferment and conscripted, and had died on the Normandy beaches, earning himself a posthumous MC. And the curious thing, Anderson thought as he sipped his lukewarm wine, is that I shouldn’t have minded the army at all, that I shouldn’t have minded dying, that I shoul
d have been very capable of the act of enforced heroism, the action to which there existed no alternative. And why did I accept good old Rev’s offer? Because it was the smart thing to do, because it was always foolish to stick out one’s neck. There, but for the grace of good old Rev…

  “Andy, Andy,” Angela was calling him. “Come on, Andy. I’ve kept this dance for you on my card.”

  VV’s face was very red. He dropped into a chair which was completely in shadow.

  “VV,” Anderson said, “will you tell me something. Do you remember Goble?”

  “Poor old Goble.” VV nodded.

  Good old Rev and poor old Goble. “You remember we had to release him. Either he or I had to go; that’s right, isn’t it?” VV coughed. Anderson waved his hand impatiently. “I know that’s how it was. What I wanted to ask was this. How did the discussion go at the Board Meeting?”

  “It’s a long time ago, Andy.”

  “Don’t tell me you can’t remember,” Anderson said rudely. With a trace of his vanished Olympian office manner VV said: “I was going to say it’s a long time ago, and I don’t see it can do any harm to tell you. There wasn’t any discussion. We knew you were the man we had to keep.” He sighed. “And so poor old Goble went.”

  “Oh, come on,” Angela said. “Don’t start jabbering.” She pushed herself into Anderson’s arms and he smelled her hair.