A Word Child (8 page)

‘Aaargh.'

‘Yes, you do. I understand you better than you imagine. I can read you like a book. You lead a selfish shut-in life. You're afraid of anything new. You ought to try and do things for others now and then instead of just expecting people to look after you.'

‘You'll always look after me though, won't you? Take me out of myself. Just grab and pull.'

I was sitting on the bed. Laura, dressed in a high-necked white blouse and the ankle-length brown skirt (she was too plump for this gear) was sitting in an upright chair, her tweedy knees about nine inches from my knees. Her face was rather indistinct in the murky gauzy light, but I could see her brown eyes glowing, even moist perhaps, with fearful sympathy. Why did I automatically, by stupid flippant badinage, evoke these feelings in Laura? I did it every time. That fearful sympathy, that frightful energy. Yet I felt at home with her, that was the trouble. She calmed me.

‘I wish you'd really tell me about yourself sometime, Hilary.' Laura often expressed this wish.

‘I thought you could read me like a book.'

‘I can't see your past. How did you get that scar on your chin, for instance? I feel sure there's something which it would do you good to tell me.'

‘My past is boring. No sins or crimes. Only the selfishness upon which you kindly animadverted.'

‘And I'd like to talk to you about Tommy. Oh if I could only get you
talking
!'

‘I chatter artlessly in your presence.'

‘You do nothing artlessly. You use words as a hiding place. You're always
hiding.
But what from? Anyway I didn't really come to see you at all. I came about the panto. I want to talk to Christopher. I wonder if we could persuade him to write us a song? And Freddie thought he might invent a sort of happening for the finale.'

‘Like setting fire to the theatre. Excellent.'

(Example of one of Christopher's happenings designed for a garden party. Each guest was enclosed in a huge brown paper bag and told to stay quiet until a trumpet blew and then tear his way out. The point was that there was no trumpet and after a long and agonizing silence the guests began to react in a variety of ways. There was a lot of embarrassment and annoyance and impromptu play-acting. The event ended in a most appropriate manner when the paper bags blew away across the main road and stopped the traffic and the police arrived.)

‘I want to talk to the boys anyway about the drug scene. I'm writing another article. I feel like a probation officer to these kids.'

The front door bell rang. Closing Laura in, I went to the door. I wondered if it was the Indian girl. It was Tommy.

Tommy in a red mackintosh and matching hat, her dark ringlets unravelled into rats' tails by the wind, opened her little mouth in a beseeching prayerful O. ‘Hilary, I know I'm not supposed to — '

There was an absolute rule about no visits at the flat. And Tommy would arrive when Laura was in my bedroom. I felt blind exasperated head-mislaying rage. I pulled her inside and we both stumbled over the trailing telephone wires. I pushed her in through the door of the sitting-room and squeezed in after her and closed the door. There was just space enough for us to stand hemmed in by the furniture. My shoulder grazed a table which was standing on another table and there was a small crash. I pinned Tommy against the door, gripping her by both arms and pressing her violently back, squeezing the flesh as hard as I could and I
whispered,
‘I told you — never to come — never to come like this — I told you — '

Tommy's small mouth remained open and her long innocent grey eyes filled instantly with tears. Her hat was tilted awry by the pressure of her head against the door. I thrust her back, pressing upon her arms, as if I wanted to drive her body back through the wood or flatten her like an insect. She uttered a little whining gasp of pain. I went on whispering, ‘I told you never to come here, I told you — '

The front door bell rang. I released Tommy and sidled out of the room and closed her in. I went to the front door. I wondered if it was the Indian girl. It was the Indian girl.

I did not hesitate for a second. One hand reached for my overcoat, the other drew the front door to behind me. I did not even look at my visitor, nor did I wait for the lift. I passed her, crossing the landing to the stairs, and as I did so I plucked peremptorily at the sleeve of her blue jacket. I began to run down the stairs, hearing the light patter of her feet running behind me. In less than a minute after the sound of the front door bell we were outside in the street, where by some miracle a great bright blue rainy light was shining.

We were walking along the northern walk of Kensington Gardens in the direction of the Serpentine. I wondered briefly how long the two women, like the people in Christopher's paper bags, would stay quietly in their rooms, unaware of each other's presence. I had still not looked at my mysterious pursuer. Crossing the main road I had held her sleeve, not her arm. Not a word had been said, we walked onward in silence.

No sun was shining but there was a great diffused brightness over the park. The asphalt paths, wet from earlier rain, shone with a blue glow, full of shadowy reflections. The damp light bestowed a faintly lurid clarity. To our right the russet vistas disclosed Watts's Bronze Horseman, Speke's obelisk. A chill wind moved the brown leaves in steady droves, then plastered them flat upon the asphalt. Most of the trees were bare now, only a few oaks retained their withered foliage. Looking like huge vines, the plane trees held up their bobbled fruit against the radiant clouded sky. Excited by the damp electrical atmosphere, distant dogs ecstatically raced.

I felt detached, extraordinary, as if a calm doom had come. I now looked at the Indian girl and she looked at me and smiled. Today she was wearing a black mackintosh and black trousers. A sodden blue scarf (she must have been walking in the rain) which had covered her head, had been pushed back onto her shoulders. Her long plait was inside her mac. Her face and hair were damp. Her features, though more irregular, less spiritual, than they had seemed in my first vision, had the bony refinement of her race. Her eyes were very dark and luminous and expressed some emotion. (Surely not pity? Simply a desire to please?) Her mouth, rather thin, rather long, was almost abstract in its delicacy, and hardly more highly pigmented than its surroundings. The whole face was pale, pale, the palest creamy brown, with that uniform pallor which far outpales the banal pink and white of coarser races.

As we neared the Serpentine I said, ‘Well?'

She simply smiled again.

I said, ‘Look here, you started this. Hadn't you better explain yourself, Miss Mukerji, or whatever your name is? You came to me, not I to you. You were looking for me, weren't you? Hilary Burde is my name.'

‘Oh yes — I know.' Her voice was something of a surprise. I had expected the chi-chi accent, so unmistakable, so indelible, so charming. But this was an English voice, even, as I later discovered, with traces of London vowels.

‘Well, what do you want?'

She smiled, flashing excellent teeth, and made a sort of helpless gesture, raising her eyebrows, as if my question were unexpected, complex, difficult.

‘I mean,' I said, ‘I don't want to be tiresome, but if, out of all the men in London, you sought for me there must have been some reason, maybe something which I can do for you. But if you won't tell me what it is I can do I can't do it, can I ?' I wondered if she was a little deranged, a mad girl. The speculation was uncanny.

‘I just wanted to know you.'

‘But why? Why me? How did you even know my name?'

‘I knew it. I wanted to see you. To talk to you. That's all.'

I said, ‘Are you a tart?' This was a little abrupt, but her vague smiling replies were unnerving me.

She seemed upset at this suggestion. ‘No, of course not.'

‘Well I can't make you out. Do you want money?'

‘No, no.'

‘What
do
you want then?'

‘To know you,' she said again.

We had now passed the little fountain of two bears embracing (which Crystal so much liked when I brought her there once) and reached the mysterious stone garden at the end of the lake which always seemed to me to be part of some other city (Leningrad?) or else a camouflaged entrance to some strange region (Acheron?). Urns enclose five octagonal pools and a little stone pavilion faces between more distant nymphs the tree-fringed curve of the lake. In summer fountains play. In winter the place is pleasantly derelict. We crossed the slippery pavement and sat down on a rather damp seat. Some pigeons and sparrows approached with desultory hope.

‘What's your name, Miss Mukerji?' I did not expect her to tell me.

She replied at once, ‘Alexandra Bissett.'

‘Alexandra Bissett? No, no, there are limits, you can't look like that and be called Alexandra Bissett!'

‘My father was an English officer. My mother was a Brahmin.'

‘I see. That makes you some sort of princess, I think. Where were you born?'

‘In Benares.'

‘Well, Miss Bissett — '

‘Please call me — '

‘Alexandra?'

‘No, no one calls me that. They call me Biscuit.'

‘Biscuit?'

‘Yes. I was called Bissett. Then Chocolate Biscuit. Then just Biscuit.'

‘Who are “they”?'

‘Who they?'

‘You say they call you Biscuit. Who are they?'

‘My — friends — '

The voice, the manner, eluded classification. She did not seem quite like an educated person, there was a certain awkward simplicity. Yet she had a confident dignified directness which was itself a sign of culture, and there was none of the giggling forwardness of an amateur whore. She smiled, obviously amused at my puzzlement.

‘But Biscuit,' I said. ‘Why me?
Why me?
'

‘I saw you on the tube train. Perhaps.'

‘Yes, perhaps. And perhaps I was wearing a placard round my neck with my name on it. And perhaps you decided at once that I was the most attractive man in London. I know I'm a big handsome chap — well big anyway. But no, that won't do. Try again.'

‘I saw you in the bar at Sloane Square.'

‘Maybe you did. But why did you follow me home and how did you know my name? Biscuit — look — may I hold your hand?' I took a cautious firm hold of her long delicate hand, so frail that it felt as if it might break in my grasp. And as I took her hand I felt a stirring of the old crude male desire which had been present before but diffused in wonderment.

She laughed awkwardly. If I had still thought her a designing tart that laugh alone would have proved me wrong. She turned her head away, pressed my hand back with surprisingly strong fingers, and then withdrew her hand, moving a little away from me and standing up. ‘I must go now.'

‘Biscuit! You can't go! You haven't even called me Hilary!'

‘Should I?'

‘Yes, of course. If I call you Biscuit you must call me Hilary. That's a rule.'

‘Hilary — '

‘Good. And now you're going to come along with me and have a drink and then some lunch and tell me what this mystery is all about.'

‘No, I must go. I have to be back.'

‘Back where? Why? Have you got to go to
them
?'

‘I don't understand. I must go. Forgive me. Oh, yes, forgive me.' She sounded a little foreign at last.

‘I won't forgive you if you just go away. Where do you live? Where can I find you? When shall I sec you again? I
will
see you again, won't I? Biscuit, please — '

‘Yes. Again. Yes.'

‘Promise me. Swear to me. Swear by — by Big Ben.'

She laughed. ‘I swear by Big Ben that I will see you again.'

‘Give me your address.'

‘No.'

‘Let me give you something. Something to prove later that it wasn't all a dream. Oh God — what — ' Standing now, I leaned down and picked a stone off the wet pavement. It was a blackish smooth elliptical stone. I gave it to her.

She displayed more emotion than at any previous moment. ‘Oh thank you, thank you, so much — '

‘Actually I need the proof, not you. Let me see you to where you're going.'

‘No. You must stay here. I shall go away.'

‘But how shall I ever find you? Will you come to me again, will you come to my flat?'

‘Yes, I will come.'

‘Because of Big Ben.'

‘Yes, yes.'

‘When?'

‘I must go. You stay here.' She began to walk away from me, backwards at first, then looking back over her shoulder, as if riveting me to the spot with her glance. She walked away, holding the stone in her hand, holding it clear of the swinging skirt of her black mackintosh. She disappeared from view at last behind the stone pavilion at the head of the courtyard, vanishing in the direction of the Bayswater Road. As soon as she was gone I began to run. I darted round the corner, to the park gate. She must have started to run at the same moment. There was no sign of her among the people moving in both directions along the wet crowded pavements. I hurried up and down and searched and looked for some minutes, but there was no sign of her. She was gone.

Saturday was my day for Crystal. I usually went there fairly early, about six-thirty. Once a month, Tommy, arriving separately (she was not allowed to arrive with me) came in for a brief drink, disappearing at my nod about ten past seven. So as not to miss any minutes of my valuable presence she invariably arrived first. She and Crystal were not designed by nature to understand or like each other, but they were good girls and they loved me so they had to get on. They were both possessive about me of course, but with deep tact they had sorted out their spheres of influence so that there was almost no conflict. The tact was mostly on Tommy's part in fact. She occupied the junior position and she had the intelligence to appreciate the absolute nature of my relation to Crystal. Tommy knew that a foot wrong in that respect and she would be finished. She never put a foot wrong. I should say that I had told Tommy a little about my childhood but only in vague general terms and, so far as it was possible, without emotional colour. Of course Crystal and Tommy never had confidential chats. They would both have been far too frightened to do so. But as I say, they were good girls and they were kind to each other.