Riley, page 2
‘No, Mr Beardsley, ’cos they haven’t got me fingerprints.’
‘Oh, my hands itch to reach out to your lugs, Riley. Every so often I have this awful itch in the palms: they’re crying out to make contact with your ears now. Anyway, as I said, we won’t be meeting again. At least make it your business that we don’t meet, eh?’
‘I’ll try, Mr Beardsley; and mind I’m not saying this off me own bat. What I’m gonna say me ma says I have to say, and that’s…ta. But as I see it I’m saying ta for havin’ me bloody ears boxed, havin’ me face pushed into the wet grass ’cos you think you see a foul, havin’ me stay behind and you sit lookin’ at me without uttering a word for almost half an hour, driving me up the wall; and lastly, for losing your toes in my backside so often. What’ve I got to say ta for? But anyway…well, she said I had to say ta.’
In the ensuing silence Miss Louise Barrington edged her face slowly round the curtain again and saw, to her amazement, the two figures shaking hands; and then the boy running from the teacher, jumping into the air and punching at it. She watched until he had disappeared through the iron gates before returning to her chair and sitting down.
Really! Really! He was the most strange man. So far there had been little contact between them except in the Head’s office, or at a parents’ meeting, at which times he became a different person, one whose actions and speech were those of a gentleman. It was as if he had come from some quality stock. However, this was not apparent when he was dealing with the pupils, for his bawling alone could frighten some of them. But what a strange conversation he’d had with that boy; at moments you could imagine him being as rough as the culprit.
Well, she would go round her laboratory and see that everything was in order before she left the building to the caretakers, and she could only hope that she didn’t return after the holidays and find half the place had been ransacked or the school burnt down, something that happened all the time.
After closing the window she took a light dustcoat from the back of the door before opening it, only to step into the arms of the man she had been musing about.
‘Oh. Oh, I was just about to knock on your door,’ he said.
‘You want something, Mr Beardsley?’
‘No, I just thought I would wish you a happy holiday.’
‘Oh, thank you.’ She smiled now as she added, ‘I’m glad you didn’t add “down south”.’
‘Oh, have you had a lot of that today?’
‘Quite a bit.’
‘The great divide still remains, unfortunately.’
They were walking down the corridor when she remarked, ‘Isn’t it pleasant…the quiet?’
‘You like that?’ He was glancing sideways at her.
‘Yes, don’t you?’
‘No: I’m afraid of this kind of quiet. In a school, I like the hullabaloo.’ She now caught his glance and from the look in his eye she was waiting for him to say, If quietness is what you were after you’re in the wrong job, but what he said was, ‘At the meeting the other night I was sitting behind you. You were talking to Florrie…Miss Quail, and you mentioned that you were interested in an amusing book about a man who rode on a bicycle out into the country every weekend to see, I suppose, his girlfriend, but you said you had forgotten the author’s name and couldn’t recall it. And Miss Quail, although she seems to have read everything from Horace to the Hotspur during her long active life, couldn’t put her finger on it either. Well, I thought then, it might be Cooper.’
‘Oh.’ She turned to him, her face bright. ‘Yes, that’s him. Yes, that’s him, and he wrote a sequel to it. I don’t actually remember what either of the novels was about, only that I was very amused by them at the time of reading. But it’s many years ago and age may have altered my taste.’
He nodded towards her as he said, ‘Oh, yes, your extreme age could have altered your taste all right.’
He was being gallant. This was the charming side she had earlier been warned about by Miss Elder and Miss Turner, who had seen them exchanging a few words about her syllabus. They had laughingly implied that he was immune to all female wiles, even admitting that they themselves had tried it on, but to no avail. She had never enquired into his past as it was of no interest to her, but she was given to understand that he had been married and then divorced, all within a short time.
‘Would you like to come and pick it up?’
‘What?’
‘I said would you like to come and pick the book up, it’s in my room?’
‘Oh. Oh yes, thank you.’
She was ushered into a space not much larger than a cupboard, with books tumbling from the shelves, others heaped on the floor in the corner. She was gazing around her in amazement when he said, ‘Oh, I can see you’ve never been in here before; this is my cubbyhole…sanctum sanctorum. It was the storeroom, and I confiscated it some years ago. Sit down for a minute.’ He pulled a chair away from a small battered-looking school desk and slowly she sat down, only needing to turn her head slightly to be on a level with a row of books, all dealing with mathematics.
She turned to him and said, ‘Why so many maths books?’
‘Oh, I read mathematical physics for finals. It was a toss-up which way I went.’
Then he surprised her by asking, ‘How old are you? Thirty-seven, is it?’
She took in a short breath before replying, ‘Thirty-five.’
‘Thirty-five. That makes the division between us greater still, I’m forty-eight. By the way, I hate drinking alone. I have a number of unleashed vices, I know, but this one I’ve kept at bay: I don’t drink unless I’m in company, otherwise I’d be an alcoholic by now.’
He had been sitting on the top of small library steps. He now stepped down and lifting the lid of the little desk, he took out a bottle, glass, and a cup and saucer, and arrayed them along the flat top of the desk. Then dropping down the lid, he held the bottle towards her as he said, ‘Illegal, and not allowed on the premises. But I break the law twice a year: at summer holiday time and at Christmas. Do you like port?’ Then without waiting for her answer, he poured out a glassful and handed it to her.
She hesitated for a moment before accepting it. She could hear her mother’s voice like the twanging of a thin violin string as she warned, ‘When you go into company, Louise, never never choose port; it’s the common woman’s drink, port. It’s as much as I can bear to hear Mrs Saunders talking about her previous night’s doings and always bringing in her port and lemon. Never ask for port. Anyway, it isn’t a lady’s drink at all, it’s what gentlemen have after dinner.’ Well, her mother should have known what gentlemen had after dinner if anybody should, because in order to keep up with his wife her dear papa had played the gentleman so much that he was bankrupt before she herself was ten years old.
‘You know the best pick-me-up for the dumps, the blues, or when you go looking for a bridge high enough to jump off?’
‘No.’
‘Brandy and port mixed. Yes, brandy and port mixed. Of course, only in moderate quantities, and generally to be taken last thing at night. For medicinal purposes, you know.’
And she smiled as she agreed, ‘Oh yes, for medicinal purposes.’
He had a deep thundery-sounding laugh; and now he was holding his cup out towards her, and as she touched it with her glass he said, ‘To a most refreshing holiday.’
She did not offer any reply, only inclined her head and sipped at the port. It had a pleasant taste, almost like a liqueur. Fancy! She was thirty-five and had never before tasted port.
‘Where are you going? Home?’ he asked.
‘Not exactly. I no longer have a home as such. My parents are dead and I’ve only one sister. I make my home with her and her husband and three children when I need to, and more often than not we spend our holidays together, but we haven’t decided yet where we are going this year.’ She took another sip from the port, then asked, ‘Do you go home?’
‘No, there’s no central point left. But where does your sister live?’
‘In Rye.’
‘Oh, Rye. I know that well. Years ago I had two or three holidays there boating from the harbour. Nice little town, Rye, very interesting. Then there’s Winchelsea and Hastings. I don’t see why you would want to go further for a holiday.’
‘Nor do I at times, but they want a change and the children do too.’
Here he was, bending over her with a bottle in his hand now. ‘Let me put a drop more in that glass.’
She pulled the glass towards her saying, ‘Oh no. Oh no.’
‘Come on, come on. Look, if you can’t stand I’ll help you out of the car and leave you on the doorstep of your flat.’
‘Oh really! But…but I’m not used to drinking port.’ She did not add, or any other form of alcohol.
‘What are you used to?’ He was now topping up his cup; then he sat down on the steps again, repeating, ‘I said what are you used to?’
‘Well, maybe a glass of sherry now and again.’
‘Just now and again?’
‘Yes,’ she emphasised, ‘just now and again, Mr Beardsley.’
‘OK, Miss Barrington.’ He had assumed her tone; then he laughed and went on, ‘You know, I often wonder why I’m not a secret drinker because my father was, and many other things as well; High Church man, too.’
‘Really?’ She was smiling at his frankness. She felt relaxed, rather warm inside. Of course it was a warm day.
‘Do you mean you’re surprised at him being a High Church man and a potential alcoholic?’
This was the sort of argumentative question adopted by some people to get you going and at the moment she didn’t feel up to answering him one way or the other, and so she said simply, ‘I wasn’t differentiating.’
‘Oh.’ He was laughing again, and at her; and he now took almost a gulp from the cup and wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead before he said, ‘My father, you know, was a man who always said there should be moderation in all things. Now, when people emphasise a statement like that, bet your life that nine times out of ten it’s a cover-up, and it was in his case. Huh, moderation! There had been fourteen of us: three were born dead, four died before they were twenty. That left seven: my three older brothers, two older sisters, me and then’—he gave a little toss to his head now as he said—‘Gwendoline. Moderation in all things. If he had had his way there would have been twenty, but Mother potched him by dying. Oh, he gave her a great send-off and he himself gave the oration from the pulpit.’
‘You didn’t like your father?’
‘No, I didn’t like my father, Miss Barrington, and I make no bones about it. Yet’—he turned his head to the side and looked up at the racks of unevenly stacked books—‘it’s only at times when I unbury him, and it isn’t when I’ve imbibed my refresher’—he held the cup up towards her—‘no, it’s generally following some event, and a while ago I had a last exchange with my arch-enemy Riley. Oh, you’ll know about Riley, everybody does. I suppose it revealed more clearly to me life’s incongruities. There’s Riley, he’s a bully of sorts and he’s from a poor family. His father is incapacitated with a bad back, although his wife doesn’t believe him; she says he’s work-shy. There’s another three besides him, all girls. Yet, as a boy I would have swapped places with him any day, work-shy dad an’ all, because in our rambling domain up in the hills, under my father, we, in comparison, led a hell of a life. So much so that I wasn’t the only one among us who thought those who had died young were the lucky ones, because we all knew about his secret tippling; and also that he followed, to the letter, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the human race and subdue it, which he did by subduing my mother into a pregnancy each year. And subduing is the word…Oh, don’t look like that, my dear. I’m terribly sorry, I’m boring you to death.’
‘Oh no. No, please no, you’re not boring me to death. It’s very odd, it’s very odd.’ She now looked down into her almost empty glass and her voice was just a mutter as she said, ‘As you feel about your father I…I do about my mother.’
‘No! Really?’
‘Yes, yes really. My sister and I were stifled by middle-class snobbery. But…but go on. Please, Mr Beardsley; go on.’ Her head was bobbing now towards him and she was smiling. ‘Tell me more about your family.’
‘Oh, there’s not much more to tell, except that we all got out as quickly as possible after Mother died. One brother went to Hong Kong. He’s done pretty well for himself. Two in Australia have done even better. They have a ranch out there, breaking in horses. As for the girls…oh, you could say one married well and one didn’t. One married into the upper class; the other married a man who wore a belt around his trousers.’
As he laughed she thought, There he goes again; but she didn’t mind. No, she didn’t mind in the least. She had never seen him in this light. He was different.
‘But I’d like to bet Lucy is happier than May,’ he was saying. ‘He is a very good chap, is Robbie.’ He pursed his lips before continuing, ‘You know, you’re having a very strange effect on me, Miss Barrington, because I can take four drinks and never feel warm. Now here I am talking to you about my family. Now that is strange, because I never talk about it except to a member of it. And I was on the point of telling you about Gwendoline. Now, that is a strange story.’
‘Why? What is the matter with her? Is she ill in some way?’
‘No. Oh no; far from it.’
She was waiting for him to go on, but when he remained silent, she asked softly, ‘Is she married?’
‘Married? Oh no…well now, I say no, in the official sense Gwendoline isn’t married, but in another sense Gwendoline has been married many, many, many times. You look puzzled. Oh well, you would be; and you would like to ask what she does for a living, wouldn’t you?’
‘Huh!’ she said; then in a laughing voice, ‘Yes, please.’
And then he answered her, saying, ‘Well, putting it plainly, she is on the streets.’
The silly smile left her face and her body stiffened slightly: he was saying that his sister was a prostitute, saying it openly like that.
‘Now you’re shocked.’
‘Oh no; no I’m not shocked. Surprised, yes, but not shocked, no.’
‘I’m glad. I’m glad that…’ His voice had a sober sound now and his face had a sober look and, turning slightly on the top of the stool, pushing aside some books he leant his elbow on the shelf and rested his head against his hand then, as if to himself, said, ‘Oh yes, she was a lovely girl was Gwendoline. Beautiful, beautiful inside and out, and she had an abundance of charm, her main desire in life being to give although not to just one…well, one man, no. She must have known from the beginning that it would be fatal to get married and that she didn’t need to shop around…oh no; they came after her like bees to the hive. And, of course, that didn’t please dear Papa. She was his last child and he wanted to possess her; and she knew this, so, what did she do? As soon as she left school she left home. She had it all arranged and, being Gwendoline, she didn’t leave alone; and when he heard with whom she had gone off and he threatened to ruin the man, what did she do? She came back home; and there we were, the four of us and old Eliza—she had been with the family from a girl—and there stood Gwendoline in the dining-room doorway. Eliza had just served dinner, and we just gaped. The lads were about to jump up when my father cried at them “Stay!” and for a moment we stayed and stared at the beautifully dressed creature as she said to us, “Hello there, troop!” Then turning to her father, she added, “If you dare to lift one finger against John or his business I will expose you from the pulpit of the church, that very pulpit from which you spout so much pomposity. And what’ll I tell them when I stand up there? I’ll tell them that I’ve gone on the streets or I shall be shortly, because I’ll not be long with John. John isn’t the first, by any means, Papa,” she said. “Oh no; I’ve done it under your nose, because I’m made that way: I want to give, not get and grab and fill with fear, and live a false life, like you have. And I’ll ask the congregation what they think their deacon got up to on his visits to York? It certainly wasn’t to attend a quarterly solicitors’ meeting. I’ll ask them where the money came from to help Mary Addison’s family to go to live in London. Well…well, who knows? She may have taken up my profession or I’ve taken up hers, one or the other. Only you could tell, dear Papa.”
‘When he sprang to the fireplace and grabbed up the poker we were on him, the two lads and I, and Eliza had to get Gwendoline out. We often talk about that day, she and I.’ He was nodding towards her, but she remained silent. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, and that it was Mr Beardsley who was telling it. It was as if he was dragging up some dark secret from the depths of him.
‘Say something.’
‘I…I don’t know what to say.’
‘Well, ask me why I’m spilling the beans at this time, because I’m not tight; it takes more than two large ports to push me over the border. I’m asking you because if I asked myself, “Why the devil am I talking to her like this?” I’d have to search for the answer bit by bit. I might tell myself, “Perhaps it’s because she’s a reticent person, and, as I am myself at the moment, rather lonely.” Gwendoline would have made it clear in two shakes of a lamb’s tail and in a few words. She wouldn’t beat around the bush as I’m doing. She would be able to tell me the real reason I am opening up an old sore.’
She found herself draining her glass, and when she leant forward and placed it on the desk, he said, ‘I’m not going to offer you any more. Two’s enough for a starter on port, oh yes.’
She didn’t come back at him and say, I wouldn’t have accepted another. But what she did say was, ‘Is your sister…I mean…is she still alive?’
