Riley, page 15
‘Well, I couldn’t stand that. I really couldn’t stand that.’
‘Oh, poor fellow. Poor fellow.’ She was now laughing at him.
‘Don’t laugh about this, Louise. I can’t tell you how I’m feeling. And another thing: she isn’t the first pregnant woman I’ve seen. I have sisters, you know, and although I wasn’t there when they were born I saw my mother just before the ambulance came. She was in a bit of a state, but nothing like Nyrene has been.’
‘How d’you know? Apparently your sisters were all born in hospital, and so you can’t know exactly what state your mother was in then. She might even have had a Caesarean or forceps…Oh my goodness!’ She pushed him into a seat now, saying, ‘Oh, I am sorry. I am sorry, Riley. Look! Sit quiet; I’ll get you something.’
More than ever she was realising what had prompted them not to tell Nyrene he was back, and also to dissuade him from visiting her, their excuse being that in her advanced condition she did not welcome any visitors. And he had given them no indication that he was going to visit her today.
Within minutes she came back holding a wine glass and said to him, ‘Drink that. Go on, drink it up.’
He gulped at the brandy, then drained his glass; and after a moment, his head drooping, he said, ‘Good God! I was for passing out.’
‘Well, you wouldn’t have been the first, nor the last.’
As she finished speaking the door was thrust open and the doctor stood there, saying, ‘I’ll have to be gone for an hour or so, but I’ll be back. In any case, she’s got a good way to go yet.’
Louise walked towards him now, saying, ‘She should’ve gone to hospital, shouldn’t she?’
‘Yes, of course, she should’ve gone to hospital! But like most women she thinks she knows best.’
They were walking into the hall now when she said, ‘But is there really any danger, Doctor, it being so premature?’
There was a long pause before the answer came, and Riley heard it, for the doctor was now on his feet moving towards the door. ‘All I can say to you, Mrs Beardsley, is, premature my foot!’ Then he was gone, and the door banged behind him before Louise turned and saw Riley standing at the kitchen door. ‘What did he mean, “premature my foot”?’ Riley said.
She blinked, wetted her lips, then said, ‘I don’t know. And I want a cup of tea for her,’ and she pushed past him to go into the kitchen, leaving him standing and looking towards the stairs.
Premature my foot.
At a quarter past twelve he was standing on the landing with Fred when he heard the first cry of the child. They looked towards the bedroom door behind which varying sounds could be heard. Fred was smiling when he turned to Riley, but Riley wasn’t smiling, and there was no way in which he could describe his feelings at this moment; they were such a mixture. He only knew that he was relieved she had got rid of…it, and would now be herself again. So he imagined.
‘I wonder what it is.’
He glanced towards Fred, saying, ‘What?’
‘I said, I wonder what it is; she’s got the nursery’—he nodded towards the far door—‘ready for either blue or pink.’
With the sound of Mrs Atkins’s high laugh the bedroom door opened and out she came holding something in her arms and looking towards him and saying, ‘Oh well, here it is! Did you ever see the like of it? Look at the size of him!’ And she suddenly pulled the blanket from the child, and they both looked down onto the firm compact body of a baby boy.
‘And look at his hair! We’ll have to send for the barber tomorrow. Did you ever see the like! By! He’s a lovely bundle.’ She switched the blanket this way and that and the baby was covered up. Then she was looking at Riley, saying, ‘Like to hold him? You’re likely used to holding bairns, having all those sisters below you.’
He didn’t remember holding his arms out, he was sure he hadn’t, but he had to put them out to stop the child from falling; and there he was looking down into a round, crinkled face.
‘Well, don’t stand there gaping at him, bring him along. He’s got to have a bath; then he’ll be ready for a feed if I know anything.’
In the nursery, after handing the child back to Mrs Atkins his arms felt very odd, tired as if he’d been carrying something heavy. Yet it hadn’t been an unpleasant feeling.
They stood watching Mrs Atkins sponging the child, and when she said, ‘Well, instead of you two standing gaping there, the doctor and the nurse will want some kind of refreshment, and I don’t think it’ll be just coffee or tea because they’re both worn out. She had us all worn out, herself into the bargain. I think she’ll sleep for twenty-four hours.’
When Fred moved towards the door he looked back to where Riley was still standing near the high table; then he shook his head. During the past weeks he had become tired of putting two and two together, and then discarding the answer. A while ago he’d had a few words with Louise, and she had repeated the doctor’s statement, ‘premature my foot!’
‘Well, it all adds up now,’ Fred said, and she had answered, ‘Yes, I’m afraid so. But what’s going to be the outcome? And where does Charles come in?’
‘And there was a Charles, wasn’t there?’
‘Oh yes, yes, no doubt about it, I spoke to him, I’ve already told you, and he sounded a very nice fellow.’
‘And he died.
‘Oh yes, he died.’
‘I give up.’
Riley did not see Nyrene until the next day when she was sitting up in bed with the child by her side, and the first impression he had of her was that she looked radiant. He had never seen her look so happy; and she greeted him as she hadn’t done for a long time.
‘Hello, Riley!’ she said. ‘Well, it’s all over bar the shouting, and we’ve had plenty of that. He’s got lungs on him like a coal hawker. Isn’t he lovely?’ She pulled the clothes back from the baby; then picking him up, she said, ‘Hold him.’
The last thing he wanted to do was to hold the child again, for he still hadn’t been able to analyse his feelings he’d had the first occasion. He was thinking it was partly resentment against her, because she was no longer alone and in need of him, or of anyone else apparently. All he wanted to do now was to take her hand, touch her face and tell her that she looked beautiful.
Nyrene lay back on her pillows and looked at the tall young fellow, holding the child, and when she said softly, ‘You must be his godfather, Riley,’ he almost answered her flippantly, I’m not supposed to be old enough to be a father never mind a godfather, but then, he supposed, godfathers came at all ages.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Wonderful.’
‘You look it too.’
Her reply, which was actually a question, had no coyness in it: ‘You think so?’ she asked simply.
‘Oh yes. Yes, taken years off you.’ He was smiling at her now. ‘At least nine months.’
Her expression changed, as did her voice as she said, ‘It was early, premature, almost five weeks or more.’
Five weeks or more. He was shutting down on a question in his mind, a ridiculous, stupid question, one that came to him whenever he experienced that particular dream; maybe not so often now, but nevertheless still there.
Riley was still holding the baby, and when he made a whingeing sound he moved his arms up and down, as he had seen his father do with one or other of his sisters; then he handed him back to her, and she was placing him by her side when he said, ‘It’s a pity his father’ll never see him.’
She turned her unsmiling face quickly towards him as she said, ‘Yes, it is, a great pity; but there, these things happen, and I have him.’ She turned her head away again and, looking down at the child, her fingers moved through the tuft of hair.
Presently she said, ‘You go for your audition next week then?’
‘Yes, but as I’ll likely be one of a hundred and one the result will be, “We’ll ring you. Don’t ring us.”’
‘But from what you said I thought that it was almost sure.’
He smiled at her now as he said, ‘Well, you above all people should know what in the theatre “almost sure” means: nothing is sure until you’ve signed on the dotted line—not even then. But we’ll see. It doesn’t matter, anyway, if I’m not there; I’ll be on the road again. That’s still open.’
‘You sound as if you’re in two minds about the whole thing.’
‘I am. I am. Yet if I gave it up what else is there for me? I’ve got to eat. More’s the pity.’
‘What else could you do? What else are you fit for now?’
He looked at her. She was Miss Mason again, as when she wasn’t in a good mood, and he answered, with equal stiffness, saying, ‘Well, I could do like many another does, become a waiter, get on the buses, go on the dole, probably go in for adult education. Oh there’s lots of openings.’
‘Oh, Riley!’ She was still Miss Mason. ‘I could slap you when you talk like that. You’re made for the stage, and you know it, and that’ll be your life, so get it into that stubborn head of yours and don’t let me down. I spent more than two years on you altogether, drumming that into you.’
He felt his jaw stiffening and he wanted to reply in her tone: Yes, you drummed it into me, but as a cover-up for your miniatures. But she was still ill, and there was the child, and anyway, he could never have said that to her. So what he did say was, ‘What are you going to call him?’
‘Charles.’
‘Why Charles?’
‘Because it was his father’s name, Charles Geoffrey Kingston.’
They were looking at each other in silence when the door opened and Mrs Atkins said, ‘You’ve got visitors, Miss Mason, all the way from Scotland: Mr and Mrs Wakefield, and Mr Beardsley is with them.’
‘O…oh no! No!’
‘What is it?’ He was bending over her. Her face had gone pale and she was nipping on her bottom lip, and when he said, ‘The Wakefields? Mrs Wakefield is your cousin, isn’t she?’ she nodded, saying, ‘Yes, yes, she’s my cousin. Yes.’
‘And you don’t want to see her?’
‘Oh yes, of course I do, but…oh but, do something for me, Riley, will you?’
‘Anything. Anything, my dear.’ His voice was soft.
‘Go downstairs, and take Fred home straight away. But before you go, send them up. Do that, will you, take him with you straight away?’
‘Of course. Of course.’ He was puzzled, and he showed it by shaking his head; but he repeated, ‘Yes. Yes, I’ll do that. I’ll see you in the morning then?’
‘Yes, Riley. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
In the sitting room he said to the elderly couple, ‘Good evening. I’m Peter Riley.’
‘Oh, how d’you do?’ The man was nodding at him. ‘We’ve heard a lot about you, Mr Riley.’
Before more could be said, Riley looked at Fred, saying, ‘Could I have a word with you?’ Then he asked Louise: ‘Would you please see Nyrene’s friends upstairs?’ and to them he said, ‘She’s waiting for you anxiously.’
‘Well, what word do you want with me?’
‘Nothing really. The only thing I can say to you is, she obviously wants both of us out of the way for some reason or other, so she asked me to go home with you now.’
‘Haven’t you any idea?’
‘No, I haven’t, but I’m puzzled.’
‘Well, where ignorance is bliss it’s a folly to be wise, and we’ll leave it there, Mr Riley, for the moment. And without being pushed I’m going home, and I suppose you must come with me.’
‘I have no other choice, have I?’
‘Oh yes, you have, mister. You have a number: our being sent home is a poor substitute.’
‘Oh, don’t get on the Mr Beardsley tack, please, Fred. I’m all worked up inside. Why the hell I should be, I don’t know.’
At this Fred laughed, put his arm around Riley’s shoulder and led him to the door.
Ten
Riley had just returned from London and the audition and, because of the result, he knew exactly what he was going to do once he reached the Beardsleys’ house, where for some days, the atmosphere had been strained, and strained was putting it mildly. Even Fred hadn’t been able to maintain his forced jollity.
Then there was Nyrene. Her happiness with the child seemed to be overshadowed by…was it anxiety? Well, it was worry of some kind.
Before he had left for London, two days before, she had said to him, ‘Oh, I do hope you get it. And if you’re offered it, let nothing stop you from accepting it, even if they want you to go to Brazil or Hong Kong,’ and to that he had replied, ‘As far away as possible, you mean?’
And her answer had come softly, saying, ‘Oh, Riley, don’t twist things.’
Well, his mind was made up; he knew what he was going to do.
He entered the house by the kitchen door and the greeting Mrs Roberts gave him was genuine: ‘Nice to see you’re back, Mr Riley. What was London like?’
‘Bedlam. A thousand times worse than Newcastle.’
‘Oh well, that’s saying something. You’re just in time for a cup of tea; Mr Beardsley’s just got in.’
As he left the kitchen and entered the hall he saw Louise coming down the stairs, and she exclaimed, ‘Oh! You got back then?’ Then at the foot of the stairs she called out, ‘Fred! Our lodger has returned.’
Riley said nothing, but forced himself to smile: the jollity was beginning again.
‘Hello, Riley! Well, you’ve got back then.’
Riley stared at this big outsize man and, reverting to a boyish voice, he said, ‘You know, Mr Beardsley, that’s the most silly thing that could be said to anybody…so you’ve got back then. Who do you think, Mr Beardsley, is standing in front of you?’
Fred’s hand came out none too gently and pushed him roughly forward, saying, ‘Smart alec! And you’re not yet too big, you know, to have my hand across your ear,’ to which, and in his natural voice, Riley answered, ‘And you’re not big enough, Mr Beardsley, to do it.’
They looked at each other, then laughed.
Rather anxiously, Louise put in quickly, ‘I’ll bring some tea in.’
Seated in their usual places, Fred looked at Riley and said quietly, ‘You’ve made up your mind about something, haven’t you?’
‘How did you guess? But you’re right: yes, I have.’
‘Well, it might surprise you, laddie, so have we. It’s been very testy for a while, hasn’t it?’
For the moment Riley was stumped with the plainness of this statement; then he said, ‘Oh, you’ve noticed then.’
‘We’ll keep facetiousness out of it for the next half-hour, Riley.’
There was something about the tone of his friend’s voice and the look on his face that caused Riley to withhold any comment he might have made; but as Louise entered the room with the tray he got up quickly and took it from her and placed it on the side table, and as she poured out the tea she chattered about the doings of Jason at nursery school that morning.
Fred put his cup and saucer none too gently down on a side table and, addressing Riley, said, ‘Well, come on, how did it go?’
‘I didn’t get it.’
The husband and wife exchanged a quick glance, and then Fred said, ‘Why? I thought it was to be handed to you on a plate.’
Riley gave a small laugh as he said, ‘You can never trust the waiters in this profession. Anyway, again I got down to the last three, and the best of us got it. He was older than either of us and he had a presence gained from quite a lot of experience, I should imagine. The other fellow was about my age, just on twenty.’
‘Well, you’re not just on twenty.’
‘I’m not all that far off; but what does that matter?’
‘Well, as I see it, it must have done in this case; likely they thought you were too young.’
‘They didn’t think I was too young. Apparently they knew nothing about me.’
‘What about the man, Mr…what was his name? Who told you to go up there?’
‘He was one of four and he was a voice in the wilderness. I knew this from the moment I got inside the theatre. He was going on my appearance in The Golden Mind, and that’s all he knew about me. It wasn’t enough against what the others had done, well, what the man who got it had accomplished. Anyway, I’ve made up my mind, I’m going to take the tour offer; I don’t like resting.’
Again Fred and Louise exchanged a glance, and when she nodded at her husband, he said, ‘Well, we’ve made up our minds too; at least you’ve made up our minds for us. We’ve got something to say to you, Riley, and it all depended upon the result of your London trip: if you had been given the part we would’ve let it go at that, because, once in London, that would’ve been a stepping stone to bigger things. We both felt this, and that being so we weren’t going to enlighten you with anything that might have impeded your career. And we were not the only ones who thought along these lines, oh no. I’m going to ask you a question.’
As he said this, Louise got to her feet, almost gabbling now, ‘I…I’ll get some more hot water.’
Fred looked at her for a moment and smiled, then said, ‘All right, dear. If you wish to save him embarrassment, then go and get some hot water.’
‘Oh, Fred!’
As she went quickly from the room Riley asked tersely, ‘What is this? From what embarrassment could you save me?’
‘I’m going to ask you a question. You remember in part the Christmas party and your farewell do last year?’
Riley made no answer, but he felt his whole body stiffening, and when Fred said, ‘You were tight, and she was tight. I know that much, so I’m going to put the rest to you plainly without any frills: did you sleep together?’
Riley’s body was stiff; he felt he was red from the roots of his hair to the soles of his feet. Fred had said they were both tight, then asked if they slept together. It sounded crude, even nasty.
‘I’m asking you a question and you’re bound to know: did you sleep with her?’
