A Temporary Life, page 22
We reach the stop. A queue has formed.
‘What’ll you do with the fruit?’ I ask.
‘I’ve no idea.’ She wipes her eyes.
‘I’ll take it with me, if you like,’ I say.
‘You can have it all for me.’
She plunges her hand inside the bag.
She lifts out the envelopes, the box of chocolates. She takes out the fruit.
By the time she’s finished my arms are full.
When the bus pulls up she climbs aboard; a hand is raised; the bus moves off.
As I turn up the street I see Hendricks walking towards me with a canvas cricket bag. He’s dressed in plimsolls with short white ankle socks, a raincoat thrown over his shorts and the white, scimitar-crested sweater. He sees me himself a moment later and glances back, hastily, the way he’s come.
He’s already moving off by the time I catch him up.
‘Just the man I want,’ I tell him.
‘I say, I heard you’d been in hospital,’ he says. ‘I called at your flat, you know, last week. That man on the ground-floor with the red moustache said he thought he’d seen you taken off.’
I hold out the fruit. ‘I was just wanting a bag,’ I tell him, ‘to hold all this.’
‘I’m just on my way to give him a game, as a matter of fact. Did you know he was the Surrey Hardcourt Champion in 1946? Or was it seven?’
‘I’d deem it a very great favour if you could relieve me of it all,’ I say.
He opens the bag.
‘Did you have your hand X-rayed?’ he says.
‘And chest.’
‘Was anything damaged?’
‘A couple of ribs. I’ve broken two fingers, it seems, as well.’
‘Wilcox, you know, made me write a report. The bulb in the light, apparently, had been taken out. And this last week, while you’ve been away, someone’s lifted one of these stuffed birds from the natural history shelf. There’s only that otter and that squirrel left. You should have seen Wilcox. Went quiet as death.’
He gazes at his bag, now stocked with fruit.
‘Is your wife improved at all?’ he says.
I shake my head.
‘Wilcox was telling the Major you mightn’t be coming back.’
‘When?’
‘It was something he mentioned, I believe, this morning.’
‘I wrote him a note.’
‘Perhaps Wilcox never got it.’
‘Perhaps he’s fired me, after all,’ I say.
‘He went to see Newman the other day.’
‘I hope,’ I tell him, ‘you win the match.’
I watch him walk off.
When he’s got some distance away he suddenly turns.
‘What shall I do with the fruit?’ he says.
‘Anything you like,’ I say.
‘I’ll eat it,’ he says, ‘if that’s all right.’
‘That’s quite all right by me,’ I add.
He nods his head.
Weighted down by the bag, he sets off down the street.
Lightened, I set off, more slowly, in the direction of the college.
‘Just look at this, man,’ Kendal says.
He’s standing in the door of Wilcox’s office: beside him are two of the cleaners, leaning on their mops.
On the desk itself stands one of the bottles which usually occupies one of the shelves on the office wall.
‘Guess what’s in it?’
The cleaners, grimacing, shake their heads.
‘They’ve just knocked one of them down,’ he says.
A bucket of steaming water stands by a pile of broken glass in the middle of the floor.
‘Acid?’
‘Urine.’
‘Dirty bugger,’ the cleaners say.
I step inside.
‘Every one of them,’ he says. ‘You can have a look.’
He runs his hand along the wall.
‘We knocked one of them down,’ the cleaners say. ‘All these years we’ve been mopping up.’
One of them stoops down; she collects the glass, sweeping it up beneath her mop.
With their bucket and the debris they go out to the hall; their voices, complaining, drone on a moment later from the corridor beyond.
‘I heard them in the door when I was working in my room. When I came in here they were taking all the stoppers out. They’re acid bottles from the etching room. Would you believe it? What a terrible pong.’
Kendal, entranced, has rubbed his hands.
Rebecca has appeared on the stairs outside.
A moment later she comes over to the door.
Unaware of Kendal, she steps inside the room.
Kendal, standing by the door, looks up.
‘I shouldn’t come in here,’ he says.
Rebecca, startled, has looked across.
‘I wondered if I could have a word with you,’ she says.
‘Just look at this, then,’ Kendal says. He indicates the bottles glinting on the wall.
‘Would you like to open a door?’ I say.
‘What door?’
‘The door to Wilcox’s lavatory,’ I say.
‘Have you something I could open it with?’
‘I’ll get you something,’ Kendal says.
‘Isn’t Mr Wilcox here?’ she says.
‘He’s out,’ Kendal says. ‘I won’t be a minute.’
He crosses the hall to the door of his room.
The two of us, for a moment, stand in silence.
‘I’m sorry about bursting in,’ she says.
‘Look before you leap,’ I tell her.
‘I should have known. Only I never thought.’
‘Will you tell your father?’
‘I shouldn’t think he needs to be told,’ she says.
‘Have you seen your mother yet?’ I say.
She shakes her head.
‘She’ll not be disturbed,’ she says. ‘It’s happened before. I just never thought of it. Not on this occasion, at least,’ she adds.
Kendal reappears in the hall outside.
‘I’ve a piece of wire. Some metal. A pair of pliers. Whatever you like.’ He holds them out.
‘I’ll try the wire,’ she says.
She goes over to the lock. She tries the door.
Kendal stoops beside her as she feels with the wire inside the lock.
A few moments later the door swings back.
I feel inside for a switch on the wall.
The light goes on.
There’s a hand-basin immediately opposite the door, a toilet, and a wooden cupboard.
The entire room, however, is packed to the ceiling with dismembered statues, with pieces of pottery, easels, stuffed animals, palettes; with lumps of coke and coal and clay; with picture frames and prints and magazines; with miscellaneous boxes, packages and chests. I recognize the Cupid, an Apollo Belvedere; a broken ’cello stands, its bodywork eroded, in the sink itself. There’s an atmosphere of dust and damp. On the lavatory seat stands a plaster cherub; on the floor beside it lie the dismembered limbs of an articulated wooden horse. A skeleton, a hook embedded in its skull, hangs from the topmost link of the lavatory chain.
‘My God,’ Kendal says. ‘The man’s gone mad.’
Rebecca gazes in, wide-eyed, from the open door.
‘But it must have taken years,’ she says.
‘Even longer, I imagine,’ Kendal says. ‘It’s a work of art.’ He rubs his hands. ‘He puts his refuse on the wall, where his culture belongs, and the relics he confines, don’t you see, to his bloody bog. Wilcox is an artist. A man of his times. He could exhibit this wherever he liked. A bloody genius.’
‘It looks more like kleptomania to me,’ I tell him.
‘To an outsider,’ he says, ‘I suppose it might.’
He steps inside. He examines the pieces.
‘I should leave it,’ I tell him. ‘The shock of it being discovered might prove too much.’
‘What about the bottles?’
‘I should leave them, too.’
We go outside.
‘Can you lock the door?’ I ask Rebecca.
‘I’ll have a try,’ she says. ‘It’s more difficult than opening.’
She feels inside the lock with the piece of wire.
‘I’m not sure what’s more amazing,’ Kendal says. ‘Wilcox, or the girl herself.’
The door itself has given a click.
‘I’ll see you home, if you like,’ I say.
She gives Kendal back his piece of wire.
‘I wouldn’t mind going for a drive,’ she says.
‘Will you tell Apollo and the Major?’ Kendal says.
‘I should keep it,’ I tell him, ‘between ourselves.’
‘Until the opportune moment.’ Kendal smiles.
He gives a wink.
‘It’s as safe as a dicky-bird with me,’ he says.
He goes to his room; he turns on his light. We go out to the hall and close the door.
The cleaners are in the rooms upstairs; there’s the rattle of buckets and the banging of mops.
‘There’s this party tonight.’
‘That’s why I came.’
‘To the college?’
‘I was hoping to find you.’
‘What time does it start?’
‘We’ve a couple of hours.’
We go down the corridor; I hold the door.
‘Wasn’t it strange? Finding all that stuff.’
She steps down to the car. She opens the door.
‘Can you control it?’ she says. ‘A thing like that.’
‘You can control almost anything,’ I say.
‘You sound like Daddy.’
‘I’m beginning to feel like him,’ I say.
‘But you’re not like him at all.’ She laughs.
She starts the engine. We move out from the yard.
‘I hope it’s not going to be too bad a night for you,’ she adds.
It’s dark. Immediately above us looms the low stone wall separating the overgrown garden of the ruined house from the heath itself: the battlemented roof with its balustrade shows up against the moonlit sky beyond.
‘They’re sort of demons, I suppose,’ she says. ‘Daddy has his girls. Mummy has her men. Most of them,’ she adds, ‘like you.’
She climbs the wall.
We move between the overgrown mounds towards the house.
‘Wherever we go it gets like this. At first, you see, I was away at school. But recently, coming back, I’ve seen it all.’
We step into the drive. The jagged outline of the roof and the tall, rectangular blacknesses of the house’s mullioned windows loom about our heads.
‘Do you think it’s spooky?’
She takes my arm.
The heath, below us, is full of shadows.
‘With you it’s different, I suppose,’ she says.
‘Why’s that?’
She shakes her head.
Two figures, silhouetted, have stepped out from the trees.
Silently, they pass down the garden, the way we’ve come.
‘It’s a kind of circus. Leyland. Fraser. Groves. They hang around. They all have parts, you see, as well.’
The gate, surmounted by the stork, appears ahead.
‘I’m not sure what you hope to gain from it,’ she says. ‘From getting involved, I mean, with me. And them.’
She gestures round.
A bird flies off from the shadows of the gate; on one of the posts is the lower half of the metal stork; the silhouette of the other stands out against a luminous bank of moonlit cloud.
‘Do you hate all this?’
She indicates the village; perhaps she’s been mistaken about the time of the party: the road across the green is lined with cars. More cars are parked in the driveway of the house and around the gates. Others, as we come out from the overgrown driveway, are being parked in rows along the verges of the green itself.
‘It’s just an excuse.’
‘For what?’
‘For junketing, I suppose,’ she says. ‘Do you want to come in? I’ll slip in the back. I have to change.’
She lets go my hand. We start across the green.
‘I’ll leave the car where it is,’ she says. ‘Afterwards, if you like, I’ll take you home.’
Other figures are moving across the green; there are shouts and cries from the garden of the house.
‘I suppose it’s mischievous, in the circumstances, inviting you,’ she says.
‘I’d have preferred to have come in any way,’ I tell her.
‘No wonder that Mathews approves of you,’ she says.
She begins to laugh.
‘His father’s a bus-driver, you see. He feels you haven’t sold out.’
‘To what?’
‘To people like me, I suppose. Like Mummy and Daddy.’
Groups of figures are drifting up the drive; all the lower windows of the house are now alight; there’s the sound of music coming from the open doors. There’s a burst of laughter: a window in one of the upper rooms has opened: a voice calls down to the drive below.
‘You remember Eddie? The one with the factory.’ She shakes her head. ‘He’s the only decent one there is,’ she says.
Pettrie is standing in the porch.
He comes down the steps as he sees her in the drive, folding back his hair. He’s wearing a suede jacket, with a thin, string tie.
‘Your mother’s been going frantic,’ he says.
He leans down to Rebecca, kisses her cheek, then gives her a small parcel he’s holding in his hand.
‘Honestly,’ she says. ‘I’ve just been rounding up my guests. You remember Colin.’
Pettrie puts out his hand.
There’s a cry from the porch; other figures emerge from the lighted door.
Rebecca disappears; I see her being greeted inside the hall: figures intervene. A couple dance slowly to and fro in the shadow of the porch.
‘Let me get you a drink, then,’ Pettrie says. ‘It’s a case of grabbing what you can. I’ve tried a couple of times,’ he adds, ‘already.’
The thin-faced chauffeur is standing in the hall; he’s examining invitation cards from the people flooding through the porch. Beside him is the close-cropped, grey-haired secretary; she smokes a cigarette, scrutinizing each face as it comes in through the door, looking up in dismay as she recognizes mine.
‘Mr Freestone hasn’t got a card, Bennings,’ Pettrie says. ‘Rebecca rounded him up herself.’ He takes my arm.
We move off towards the lounge; there’s a small orchestra playing in one corner of the room; several couples are dancing; other groups stand against the walls: most of the furniture in the room has gone. Over the fire-place, however, still hangs the ‘View of Delft’.
‘I shan’t be a second,’ Pettrie says. He disappears amongst the crowd.
A waiter passes carrying an empty tray.
I go back across the hall. The secretary herself has gone: I nod at Bennings. In a room beyond the hall a bar has been set out; a frieze of glittering bottles and half-filled glasses lines the edge of a narrow table above which hangs Elizabeth’s triangulated abstract picture. Immediately beneath it, by the bar itself, stands Wilcox, a glass of fruit-juice in his hand.
He looks over quickly, blinks, then looks again; he regards me, as I cross the bar, with widening eyes. He’s dressed in a dinner-jacket, with a black bow-tie.
‘Freestone.’
‘Been here long?’
‘I’ve just been having a word with Mr Newman.’ He holds up the glass, perhaps as an indication of his pacific intentions. ‘I thought you were in hospital, then.’ He looks at my face, glances at my bandaged hand, then looks over at the barman as I call for a drink.
‘I’ll be back at college next week,’ I tell him.
‘That’s something,’ he says, ‘I meant to talk to you about.’
I take the drink as the barman passes it across; I take another from a tray of drinks already on the counter. I swallow them down. I take a third.
I say, ‘Have you done any dancing yet?’
‘My wife couldn’t come this evening, I’m afraid.’ He makes some attempt to move away. I take his arm. Figures press in on either side.
We move over to the door. Immediately ahead of us Pettrie reappears.
‘You’ve got a drink. Good show.’ He taps my back, moves past, his figure swallowed up amongst the groups behind.
‘You’ve been here before, then?’ Wilcox says.
‘Several times.’
‘I had an invitation from Newman,’ he says, ‘the other day. I went out to see this new place he has.’
‘A bit of a mess.’
‘It’ll mean big changes in the town he says.’
He looks towards the stairs; Elizabeth has appeared; she wears a red gown: her hair’s piled up above her head. Her neck and arms are bare. She moves off, without seeing Wilcox or myself, towards the lounge: there’s a cry from inside followed, a moment later, by a roll of drums. An announcement’s made; people stand on tiptoe, gazing in.
‘The party-girl’s been found, then,’ someone says.
‘Apparently Rebecca wasn’t here when the party began.’ Wilcox gestures towards the door itself. ‘I saw her at the college, earlier today. She’s taken up, you know, with that trouble-maker Mathews. I’ve been half in a mind, in the past, to pitch him out. He’s started one of these student action groups. Actually came up, you know, with a signed petition: said he wanted to participate in the planning of next year’s curriculum. Plus, I might tell you, representation on the Board of Governors.’
Leyland’s red head appears, stooping at the door of the library at the rear of the hall; he’s seen me already for he calls into the room behind then comes forward, forcing his way between the crowd.
His pale blue eyes have lighted. He puts out his hand, sees the bandage, and begins to laugh. ‘Not run into a wall, then, have you?’
‘Just about,’ I tell him.
He laughs again.
‘Left hand as well?’
I hold it out.
‘Terrible eye.’
‘Fell down a flight of steps. Damn lucky he wasn’t more seriously injured,’ Wilcox says.
‘Always say: “look where you’re walking nowadays”,’ Leyland says.
‘A damn good motto, if you want my opinion,’ Wilcox says.
‘Enjoy yourself, then,’ Leyland says. He slaps my back. ‘We’ve got the steps out here well lit.’
