A Word Child (20 page)

‘What's his second wife like?' I said, to divert the conversation from this awful channel.

‘I don't know. Some sort of fashionable nonentity.'

‘Educated?'

‘I don't think so.'

‘Any children?'

‘No.'

I said, ‘Crystal is definitely going to marry Arthur, it's fixed. She has said yes. Arthur is glorified. Arthur in majesty.'

‘Oh no — ' Clifford threw down the spoon with a clatter.

‘Yes. I'm afraid so.'

‘You can't let her — oh no, no, no — I didn't take you seriously last time — you must stop it — '

‘What can I do? It may even be a good thing.'

Clifford took off his apron. ‘Come on.'

‘What? Where?'

‘We're going round straight away to see her.'

‘See Crystal? Certainly not!'

‘I want to see the girl who's going to be Mrs Arthur Fisch.'

‘No,' I said. ‘Sorry.
No
.'

‘We're going to see Crystal.'

‘No, we're not. Clifford, don't be an absolute devil. You know how Crystal feels about you. I expect she daren't even think about you now. How
could
you want to upset her just when she's made up her mind? God, don't you think I hate this too? But I want her to be settled and happy.'

‘And do you honestly think she will be if she marries that drip?'

‘Yes. Probably. Otherwise I wouldn't let her. Arthur isn't one of the wonders of nature, but he's a decent chap and he loves her.'

‘I'd like to stop it,' said Clifford.

‘You keep out of it. I mean that. Keep out. Keep away. If Crystal were to set eyes on you now — '

‘Why should little Arthur have a virgin? Why should he have that virgin?'

‘You are touchingly romantic about virginity.'

‘It still has a meaning. In this rotten greedy lolling dribbling world.'

‘You promise you won't go and see Crystal or write to her or anything?'

‘I never promise. How can I commit my future self?'

‘But you won't, will you? It isn't as if you had anything to offer her. All you can do there is destroy.'

‘Oh, all right,' said Clifford with a sudden change of mood from enthusiasm to apathy which was characteristic of him. ‘It's your affair anyway, I was just thinking about you and if you regard it as marvellous then that's that. She's your property until she becomes Arthur's. It's true that I have no constructive plan. Anyway I daresay it won't happen. Now, as dear Laura would say,
à table, à table.
'

We sat down. There was some sort of eggs messed around with vegetables. Then some sort of fish messed around with fruit.

‘How did Gunnar look?'

‘Old.'

‘We are all old, my darling,' said Clifford. His lips relaxed. He reached out his hand across the table and took hold of mine.

TUESDAY

I
T WAS Tuesday morning. I arrived very early and took the lift up and scuttled to my place in the window. It was still dark and Big Ben's face was round and bright as if the moon had come visiting amid the towers of Westminster. I cowered in my corner like a frightened animal. I would have liked to barricade myself in.

Tommy's Tuesday letter had arrived from King's Lynn. It was unusual in tone.

Darling, I have been saying marry me for so long you can probably not hear the words. I begin to feel, for many reasons, that I must now make them into a real question and receive a real answer. I cannot respect myself otherwise. I must settle the future one way or another. I know you have deep troubles and I know you need me. Everything is becoming urgent. Unless we seize each other we may be swept apart. Take my hand in the rain and the storm and hold onto it, oh my dear, and let me go with you into whatever is to come. I am close to you and there is real speech between us. Recognize this and the achievement of it and the salvation of it. I must see you soon, there is something we must talk about together. I cannot wait until Friday, there are reasons why.
Please let me see you on Wednesday.
I will telephone the office on Wednesday morning.

Your own faithful,

Thomas.

My first thought on reading this high-flown epistle was that Tommy must have discovered all about Gunnar and Anne, hence this desire to save me from the storm and so on. Yet how could she possibly have found out? I was developing persecution mania. Would I ever tell Tommy all about that business? No. That was another reason why I could never marry her.

I sat in my safe window and gazed out at the gradually lightening scene. It was another of those bitter yellow days. I wondered whether or not to put in my resignation at once. Last night I had been curiously compelled by Clifford's argument. Perhaps I ought to stick it out and as it were expose or exhibit myself to my enemy. It was an odd idea, but there was some logic to it. Perhaps I ought not to run away but to endure, and let the thing become, through the simple fact that we sometimes just saw each other and nodded (but would we?), that much more ordinary. Would this, not only for him but for me, somehow reduce the nightmare? I had reflected about this after, rather drunk, leaving Clifford's flat. This morning however the whole argument seemed just jesuitical, even frivolous. In any case, much deeper and more awful reasons why I should not leave my job were beginning to come into view.

I made believe to myself that I was tough and sane and on the whole recovered. But I really knew, and knew now with an awful penetration of it into the heart, into the guts, how frail the achievement was. I did not anticipate breakdown or madness. But if I were to leave Whitehall and wander round looking for work and failing to get it, with my money rapidly running out, what condition would I soon find myself in? I remembered, and it felt hideously close, that awful year in the north, the ‘chocolate year', when I lay on a camp bed in Crystal's room and pretended to be recovering from physical injuries when really I was battling with my mind. Suppose I were to give up my job and then become, even temporarily, incapable of earning my own living? Suppose I were to fall back into that black terrible slough? The deeper levels of the mind know not of time. It was all still
there.
It would have needed God to remove it. Even Crystal could not do it. Suppose I could not earn money? Suppose I had to be supported by Crystal?
Suppose I had to be supported by Arthur?
If I stayed where I was, even if I were to become for a while almost unable to work, I could at least manage, I could get away with it, no one would notice me and I would be safe.

Reggie came in whistling, eating peppermint. ‘Hello, Hil. You skedaddled pretty early yesterday, didn't you? Thought we wouldn't notice you'd slunk off! Go to a flick?'

Edith arrived.

‘I was just telling Hilary we saw him skrimshanking yesterday.'

‘I say, have you heard? Mrs Frederickson has had triplets!'

‘No!'

‘She took that ghastly fertility drug.'

I settled back, pretending to work. I pretended all morning.

I decided to go early to lunch and take a long lunch hour, in spite of the witticisms which this would provoke in the Room. Walking was therapeutic. I thought I might walk as far as north Soho and have a sandwich in one of the Charlotte Street pubs, where I used to get drunk when I was younger.

I slipped out and donned overcoat and cap and made for the stairs. I hesitated. Was the lift safer? But suppose I were to be caught in the lift with Gunnar? Was he in the office today? I decided to brave the stairs. I went on down. I had almost reached the ground floor when a woman who had just entered from the street crossed the hall quickly and began to hurry up the stairs. She was not an office person, not anyone I knew. She was smartly dressed. That degree of smartness in the office was unusual. She was dark, wearing a fur hat and an expensive-looking fur coat, caught in to a slim waist with a metal belt, and a bright silky scarf. I took all this in. She passed me with a whiff of perfume and disappeared onto the landing.

I stopped. I turned. I felt an immediate certainty but had to test it. I padded back up the stairs. Templar-Spence's room, and so presumably Gunnar's, was on the first floor, the
piano nobile,
a little way from the stairhead. I reached the top of the flight and came out onto the wide carpeted landing. The woman in the fur coat was standing at the door of Gunnar's room with her hand upon the handle, and looking back. I stood there for a second and she looked straight at me. She not only knew that I had turned and followed her.
She knew who I was.

I receded quickly. I almost ran from the building. I told myself again and again that I must be mistaken. I
must
be mistaken. That look had, in the second it had lasted, seemed a look of recognition. And yet it was absolutely impossible that she should know who I was. This was persecution mania, the old sickness that I feared so. I walked and walked. I found myself at the foot of the Post Office tower. I drank whisky in several bars. I could not eat anything. I considered not returning to the office. I came back about three. I had to hold onto order and routine. I must stay at my desk. I must try to do my work. I must not start wandering round London all day.

‘I say, Hilo, three hours for lunch isn't bad!'

‘Hilary looks as if he's had one or two.'

‘Hilary, Hilar
ee
— '

I settled down again to pretending to work. I even read a new case through twice, without understanding anything. One of the Registry girls, Jenny Searle, brought the tea in, as Skinker had the 'flu. She asked me if I was feeling all right. Arthur brought in a pile of stuff. He too looked at me anxiously. He did not dare to touch me, but he put his hand down on top of the papers in a gesture which by some mystery of human sign language conveyed sympathy.

I could still smell Lady Kitty's perfume, as if some of it must have got onto my clothes as she passed me. I tried to picture her face but could only vaguely conjure up dark hair, dark eyes. Dark blue eyes? Dark brown eyes? I had by now firmly decided that what I had believed must be false. She could not possibly have known who I was. She perhaps sensed that someone had come back up the stairs after her, some curious impertinent clerk. She may not even have noticed me coming down.
She
had nothing to do with the matter. Though it now occurred to me that I had never reflected about how Gunnar must have told his second wife how his first wife died. In fact I could not bear to imagine Gunnar talking, Gunnar thinking, Gunnar
conscious,
and I tried to cloud the whole subject over in my mind.

It was already dark. My head was aching from the whisky. I was drawing intersecting circles on my blotting pad and listening idly to the interminable chatter of Reggie and Mrs Witcher. How long would it be before the whole office knew of what I had done? Would it get around in the end? There is such a terrible difference between a secret disgrace and a public one.

I heard Gunnar's name and started to listen more carefully. Now Mrs Witcher was talking about Lady Kitty. ‘She's the daughter of some sort of little Irish lord.'

‘I thought she was Jewish, sort of banker's family?'

‘That's the mother's side, she's half Jewish.'

‘Lots of lolly there I imagine.'

‘Oh yes, and lots of style. You know, she's got a lady's maid, and not just a lady's maid, but a
black
lady's maid!'

‘A negress with a turban? What fun.'

‘No, Indian, I think, but something blackish. Of course she and Jopling have been all round the world. What, Hilary, off again? It's like living with a jack-in-the-box.'

I got out of the door and eventually out of the building. I turned up my coat collar against the damp cutting wind and began to walk randomly along Whitehall. A black lady's maid.
Biscuit.

I was with Arthur as usual, since it was Tuesday. We had eaten cold tongue and instant potato and peas and cheese and biscuits and bananas. At least Arthur had and I had feigned to.

I had had a lot of thoughts since leaving the office. One was that I must do everything in order as I had always done. I must go regularly to work. I must keep to my ‘days'. I must not become a madman walking about London and living on the tube. I had also given some rather cloudy and desperate consideration to the question of Biscuit. Was it conceivable that Biscuit was Lady Kitty's maid and that she had been sent to report on me? I decided to decide that it was impossible; I had enough troubles without envisaging anything as weird and nightmarish as that: so I terminated these reflections by an act of will. Another more immediate thing was that I must get through the evening with Arthur in as dignified and rational a way as possible, preserving what was left of my authority and status. My relations with Arthur must not break down into overt hostility or emotional chaos.

‘What do you think of the wine, Arthur?'

‘What?'

‘What do you think of the wine?'

‘Oh, fine, yes, fine.'

‘It's just cheap stuff, of course, but these little blended French wines are quite good if you let them breathe a little.'

‘It's — yes — it's not the stuff we drink at Crystal's, is it?'

‘No, that's Spanish.'

‘Hilary, would you mind if we fixed the day?'

‘What day?'

‘The day for Crystal and me — to get married.'

I looked at the firescreen representing the Empire State Building and at all the dust which had somehow managed to adhere to the vertical surface. ‘When — ?'

‘I've been to the registrar and — I hope you don't mind — it could be soonish — I mean in a — week or so — '

‘In a week or so?'

I heard Clifford Larr's voice saying ‘It won't happen'. Would Clifford keep his half promise not to interfere?

‘Yes — I'd rather it was soon, if you don't mind — '

‘Do you see much of Crystal now?' I said.

‘No, no, I just go the usual times.'

Poor children. This was because of me. They were afraid to shift anything, to alter anything, without my permission. Yet after that final visit to the registry office ‘in a week or so' the world would be utterly different. As Clifford had said, Crystal was my property, until she became Arthur's. Ought I not to set them free, to tell Arthur now that he should see Crystal more, that Crystal needed protection? What was Crystal doing now, while I was carousing with Arthur? Sitting at home alone. What indeed did Crystal do most of the time when I was busy with other matters? I did not think about that. Was I not even now hoping that Clifford would somehow make it impossible for her to marry Arthur? He could probably do so. He could probably do it by a single visit. So let Crystal be alone, let her wait. Oh how could Arthur torment me with this frightful decision when there were so many other things making ordinary life impossible!

‘You don't want to get married in a church?'

‘It takes longer and — '

‘You are both in a fearful hurry.'

‘No. I mean — '

‘Don't fix anything yet,' I said. ‘I'll talk to Crystal.'

For a second Arthur's face looked disappointed, vexed, almost sulky. ‘All right.'

There was a silence, Arthur picking moodily at his moustache, then cleaning his glasses carefully upon the tablecloth, I crumbling up pieces of cheese and strewing them about.

He said, ‘Do you mind if I talk about that other business?'

‘What other business?'

‘Jopling.'

‘Oh that. If you want to. I rather thought we'd finished it.'

‘What are you going to do?'

‘Nothing.'

‘What
did
you do then — I mean after you came out of hospital — did you write to him or anything?'

‘No.'

‘You did nothing at all to — ?'

‘Of course not. When you've done something like that there's nothing more to be said.'

‘I don't think I agree,' said Arthur. Perhaps the sulkiness was making him uppish. ‘I think you could have written to him. I would have done.'

‘My dear Gunnar, I really must apologize — '

‘Just in order to continue the connection, to make some sorting out or reconciling or something — possible.'

‘Use your imagination, for Christ's sake! “Continuing the connection” was just what was absolutely out of the question! One must have some decency and sense.'

‘And now, I think you should go to him — '

‘Go to him?'

‘And say — here I am, after all these years, and I'd like you to know how sorry I am — or something like that — '

‘“Here I am after all these years” — he'd be pleased, wouldn't he!'

‘Well, he might be,' said Arthur. ‘After all you aren't the only person who exists. He's been thinking about it too for twenty years. He might be glad to let you know — that he forgave you — '