She shook her head. I looked past it at the river but examined instead an instant picture of Chandler’s Close. Sergeant Babbacombe’s cottage faced Captain Wilmot’s across the entry—two cottages a distinct degree superior to the rest. Beyond them, the cottages got progressively smaller, meaner, dirtier and more decayed down to the ruined mill. Children tumbled and fought in the muddy road. The boys wore the uniform of a Poor Boy; father’s trousers cut down, his cast-off shirt protruding from the seat. Mostly they had bare feet. I realized suddenly that it was what the papers called a slum. If Sergeant Babbacombe hadn’t got a piano, certainly none of the others would have one.
“What about Captain Wilmot? He—”
She shook her head again.
“He’s got a gramophone and a wireless. Used to ask me in when I was a kid, to listen.”
“That was kind.”
“Glass of lemonade and a bun. All classical music. And he’s got a typewriter.”
We were silent for a while.
“So I don’t keep up my singing,” said Evie at last. “And what with learning to type—”
I understood. I nodded solemnly. It was a shame.
“You weren’t playing today, Olly, were you?”
I laughed and held up my bruised finger. She took it to examine the tip with her own white fingers; and the performance repeated itself as if we were something reproduced from a die or plate—the giggles and laughter, the change from pursued to pursuer, the lugging down into the darkness of the pier, the semisurrender face to face, denial, consent, denial, kiss and struggle, scent, three plums and a glimmering skin, vibration—
“Don’t you like me?”
“‘Course I do—no, Olly, you mustn’t—”
“Aw come on—”
“You mustn’t—it’s not nice!”
I knew and accepted that it wasn’t nice; knew too that as far as I was concerned, niceness wasn’t the point.
“Leave go, Olly—leave go!”
I was down the bank again. This time, one foot went in the river. I scrambled back up but Evie was staring into the sky.
“Listen!”
There was a faint droning among the stars. She skipped to the rise of the bridge and stood still. As if some exotic star had come adrift, a red light was moving under the shaft of the Great Wain.
“It’ll come right over head.”
“R.A.F.”
A green light appeared beside the red one.
“I wonder if it’s Bobby?”
“Him?”
Evie was still staring up, her mouth open, her head leaning further and further back. The plane became a dark shape between the lights.
“He said he’d fly here as soon as he could. Said he’d stunt over Stilbourne. Said if he could find a place to land he’d take me up—”
“I bet!”
“Oh look! It’s going to—No, it’s not.”
She turned on her heel as the plane passed us, and lowered her head gradually, until the shadow had sunk behind the trees of the wood.
“They wouldn’t let him yet. He’s only been there a week or so.”
She stamped her foot.
“Boys are lucky!”
“I shall learn to fly when I go to Oxford—probably. I’d thought of it.”
She turned back to me quickly.
“Oh I should like to fly more than anything! And I should like to dance—and sing, of course—and travel—I should like to do everything!”
I grinned at the idea of Evie doing everything; then stopped grinning as I remembered the trousers, and the one thing I wanted her to do—or let me do.
“Let’s get back down.”
Evie shook her head.
“I’m going home.”
She began again the sliding walk, back towards the arc of street lights. I followed, cursing the R.A.F. to myself, and its latest recruit in particular. As we passed each light in turn, I felt the spheres of influence thickening round me and slowed. Evie slowed too.
“Well—so long, Evie. Until tomorrow.”
Evie went on with a glint of smile over her shoulder. Looking back, she lifted her left hand by her shoulder and wiggled the fingers at me. With great care I examined the poster of Douglas Fairbanks that stood outside the cinema. When she had disappeared into the Square, I went home too, keeping to the other side of the Town Hall and not leaving its shadow until I was sure the Square was safe.
My mother was darning a pair of my pants when I got in. She flashed her spectacles at me as I sat down, then bent her greying head to the work again.
“I see young Bobby’s back.”
“Bobby Ewan?”
“Weekend.”
“Good God—He didn’t fly down, did he?”
My mother laughed and adjusted her spectacles with a glittering thimble.
“Of course not. Mrs. Ewan took the car into Barchester and met his train.”
My father knocked out his pipe in the grate.
“He’ll have travelled First Class. Have to. Officers do.”
“He’s not an officer yet, Father! A sort of cadet.”
“Oh. Well. I don’t know.”
I got up, seeing my mother glance at me then away again. I went straight off to the bathroom and examined my mouth, but there was no lipstick on it. I stood before the mirror, confirmed in my previous estimate of my face. It was not only unfragile. It was melancholy and bad-tempered. I wondered what a naked girl looked like exactly—what Evie looked like. I had no precise idea but thought it would look pretty good. I found myself wondering the same about Imogen Grantley; and caught myself up, appalled at having even inadvertently equated the two of them. I knew I had no business thinking these thoughts or wanting these things. I was only eighteen; cricket, football, music, walking, chemistry, were what I was for. Imogen would win the subtle, indescribable competition. I leant my forehead against the little mirror, shut my eyes and stayed like that for a long, long time. Not thinking. Feeling.
With the morning however, I plotted fiercely. I played with extravagant bravura, determining that somehow I would get Evie to a place where I might wreak my wicked will. I understood it to be wicked. Well, I was wicked. I swore a great oath of implacability and felt better. After tea I walked up to the woods and searched the nearer fringes for a place of dalliance and concealment. There were enough of them; and each raised my temperature a little higher until I was sweating and panting. I went back towards the road, to go down the hill and wait for her on the bridge; and heard a rocket coming up from it. The Duke of Wellington’s profile flashed by me. I had a glimpse of Evie sitting astride behind him, white embroidery shivering in the wind, eyeflash and the open mouth of delight. Then they were gone and the woods settled behind them.
After a while I walked down the hill, over the Old Bridge and up the High Street. I went indoors. My mother looked up from darning my father’s combinations.
“Back early then, Oliver?”
I nodded and sat down to the piano. After a while my mother went out very quietly, shutting the door behind her. I played to the empty room, the empty reception room, the empty Square and town. I bruised my finger again.
*
The next morning when I went into the bathroom I peered round the edge of the window to see Robert, for I intended to cut him as pointedly as I could if he should notice me; but he wasn’t there. The punchball was motionless as ever between its upper and lower attachment and the motor bike was on its stand in the corner. It was chalky all over, and even at that distance I could see the deep gouges in the metal. One of the handlebars was bent right back. I was excited immediately; and a little worried too—not for Robert but for myself. I did not like my pleasure in the sight of the wrecked bike. I even spoke aloud to force myself into the correct human position.
“Poor old Robert! I hope he’s not hurt—”
Then I remembered the fluttering white embroidery, the naked knee, and my thoughts and feelings became too confused for understanding. I shaved as quickly as I co
uld, and hurried downstairs. Breakfast was waiting for me, though my father had already gone through into the dispensary. When she heard me, my mother came in to give me my breakfast.
“Seen Robert’s bike?”
My mother put down the hot plate and wiped her hands on a tea towel.
“Heard about it. I knew that would happen sooner or later. Young men—motor bikes ought to be banned from the road.”
“Is he hurt?”
“Of course he’s hurt! What d’you think?”
“Badly?”
“They don’t know yet. Took him to the hospital.”
I helped myself to HP sauce.
“Anybody else hurt?”
My mother was silent for a while. Her silences always made me uneasy. She could see through a brick wall, could my mother. Uneasily I remembered how dark it had been under the bridge—reassured myself. There was no reason why I should not have met Evie accidentally on top of it, and stopped to chat. After all, she worked practically in the same house.
“Anybody else hurt, Mother?”
“Motor bikes aren’t the only thing I’d ban!”
She gathered together the débris of my father’s breakfast.
“Nobody else was hurt—more’s the pity!”
I watched her under my eyebrows as she went back to the kitchen. Clearly my mother was having one of her moods. She did not have them often, but when she did, I found it necessary to stand from under. I should not get more accurate news from her today, no matter how diplomatically I probed for it. I could not question my father either; or rather, though I could question him, he would have forgotten the details already. That left Evie herself. So after breakfast I strolled through to the dispensary, where my father was working silently as usual. I heard the laborious clatter of a typewriter from the reception room. It was true then. She was all right. Not hurt enough to stay away—well enough to get there on time, too. All at once I was swept up on a wave of joy. What my swung fist had failed to do to Robert, he had done for himself, without any help from me.
“Can I give you a hand with anything, Father?”
My father swung his heavy head round. There was surprise behind his pebble glasses. He tugged his grey moustache once, shook his head briefly, then swung it back again. I had some kind of intuition that my mother’s mood had started very early. I went to our piano and tried to strike a mean between finger-soreness, irritating my mother, and reminding Evie that I was there. I wandered into the town; saw Mrs. Babbacombe pecking at Sergeant Babbacombe by the Town Hall, so loitered, until she had gone on. When I passed him in my turn, he looked from the mat he was brushing and nodded to me. There was no doubt about it. He had never done it before, but now he nodded to me. I gave a jerk of my head which might be taken either as recognition, or avoidance of a fly and walked on. I was so surprised that I stood for a long time before the window of the Antique Shoppe, examining the contents. I did not know what to think. I read such titles as were still legible among the tattered books, picked one out and examined it. I did not see it. I saw instead Sergeant Babbacombe’s extraordinary nod—as if I were a soldier too, or drinking companion. I put the book back in the tray, went past the Jolly Tea Rooms where six college wives were eating buns, drinking coffee and clacking, past Douglas Fairbanks outside what had been the Corn Exchange and stood, looking down the rest of the High Street at the Old Bridge. There was nothing to worry about. From the High Street, anyone—any pair—against the further pier would be completely hidden. I was safe.
Mrs. Babbacombe came up the other side of the High Street, carrying a string bag full of packets and paper bags. She was wearing her usual grey suit, usual grey cloche. An enormous artificial pearl hung on her left ear. She came up wizened and smiling, with an unacknowledged greeting to this person and that. Then she saw me. She did not alter her brisk walk; but her head sank sideways, inclined, her false teeth dazzled. She held that bow, that smile, for a good five yards, till a man by a lamp post hid her.
Knowledge poured into me. Awe-stricken, I realized exactly how perilous my lust was. I knew something else, too. Neither Sergeant Babbacombe nor his wife could have my mother’s flashes of diabolical perception. This was Evie’s doing. She had used me as a lightning conductor. More accurately and unconsciously than I ever played any scale, I raced over in my mind the realities of people. Evie could never have Robert for keeps. She could not even catch him. If she tried, she would come up against a cliff of adamant. But since she liked his motor bike and had paid for her rides—yes, paid for them!—she needed excuses for lateness, for staying out, for—My cliff was as adamant as the Ewans’s; but not as high. No, not nearly as high. It was not as high, for example, as the cliff that separated Evie herself, from the louts who hung round the Town Hall, out of work. For Evie, I was a lightning conductor. To her parents I was a possible suitor. Bellicose Sergeant Babbacombe must have been twisted by those white fingers, persuaded by that tinkling voice that we were courting. I put my hair up out of my eyes and took a deep breath. Apart from my terror at her parents’ assumptions, I was lost in conjectures as to how Evie had used me. Was it I, for example, who had kept her out after twelve—I who had pinched Bounce’s car, even? And what else? What other strings did Evie have to her trim little bow? I assumed without thinking, that she would lie when necessary, as I lied myself when necessary. In that case, driven by necessity, she might say anything. I saw as in a nightmare, Sergeant Babbacombe turn up on our door step, twisting his three-cornered hat in his hands, and demand of my father to know what my intentions were. I knew what my intentions were, and so did Evie; but they were too neatly describable for family life. I went home, round the other side of the Town Hall, and played the piano very softly.
*
That evening the news of Robert was mixed. The only thing that was certain was that he would be in hospital a long time. I went out early to the bridge, thinking to myself that if I were seen sitting there often enough, no one would notice or at any rate, comment, on my meetings with Evie. It was twilight again before she appeared, pacing down the street. She came up to me with no more than a ghost of her smile.
“Weren’t you hurt at all?”
Her smile became brighter, and a bit arch.
“What d’you mean Olly? What you talking about?”
“Last night.”
“I wasn’t—”
“I saw you, Evie. On the bike.”
She shuddered suddenly, drawing up her shoulders.
“What’s the matter?”
“Goose walked over my grave I ’xpect. Olly—”
“Well?”
She glanced sideways at the street.
“You won’t tell, will you?”
“Why should I?”
She smiled at me nicely and let out a long breath.
“Thanks.”
I laughed with fierce sarcasm.
“Oh yes! You were here with me on the bridge, weren’t you? We talked about music, didn’t we? We went down there by the water, fishing for tiddlers. Didn’t you show your mother a jam jar full of them?”
“I just said—”
“You said I took you over to Bumstead. You said I pinched Bounce’s car! I know you!” I glared down at her, trying hard to hurt. That, at least, was possible. “I wonder what else you’ve said. How many lies you’ve told. Getting me out of bed in the middle of the night—such a nice boy, Oliver, even if he hasn’t got a motor bike!”
“It isn’t like that, Olly—I had to! You just don’t understand—”
“I understand well enough. You’re like—” I stared round at the road, the river, the looming darkness of the woods at the top of the hill. I snatched a phrase out of the air without knowing why. I roared it. “You’re like—the Savoy Orpheans!”
Evie burst into giggles that confounded me and shut me up.
“You’re such a funny boy, Olly!”
Her giggles went on and got mixed up with laughter and choking. She leaned forward from the coping
of the bridge, held me with both hands, her head bowed between them. I could feel how she was shaking.
“So funny! So funny!”
“Shut up, Evie! Good God! Will you shut up?”
At last she was silent. She pulled herself up and sat upright on the coping. She shook her head so that her bob flopped and flew aromatically. She took a scrap of white stuff from under the imitation amber bangle on her left wrist, touched her face here and there, then put the scrap back again. Despite myself, I was touched. I disguised this slight decline in manliness by being as gruff as I could.
“You were dam’ lucky. Why weren’t you hurt?”
“Doesn’t matter. Oh all right—I wasn’t on the bike.”
“How the—”
“I egged him on. I dared him. He said ‘This little machine would climb a tree with me at the controls.’ So I dared him. I wanted to try with him. There was this chalk pit—”
“Where was it?”
“I wanted to try too, honest I did. ‘Not with you on the back, young Babbacombe,’ he said. ‘Hop off.’ The bike fell right on ’im.”
There was a droning under the Great Wain. I looked up and saw the red light moving towards us. It was some regular flight, then, some exercise or other. Evie did not look up with me. She was looking at her feet. When she spoke it was in a strangely hoarse voice, and one from far down in Chandler’s Close.
“E may be a cripple.”
The plane droned away, sinking slowly out of sight behind the trees at the top of the hill. Evie cleared her throat.
“For life.”
Then we were silent, Evie looking down at the road between my feet, I digesting this news according to my nature. I felt properly shocked of course; on the other hand I felt a little of Stilbourne’s excitement and appetite at the news of someone else’s misfortune.
She drew herself up on the coping, and smiled at me.
“You didn’t play today, Olly.”
“Yes I did. Softly.”
I held up my forefinger, in explanation and invitation. But Evie glanced at it then away. In some extraordinary way she had inhibited her exhalation. It was like one of those scraps of film run backward; flames, seen to draw themselves in, reconstitute the paper they had burned, then vanish, leaving nothing but ordinariness. Even the sodium light in her right eye was a duller and perhaps steadier gleam. This inhibition affected me too; but optimistically enough I discounted it.
The Pyramid Page 5
