Coral Glynn (3 page)

“I am cleverer than you. I have a plan: I will come to see you, and I will trip over the hearth rug and twist my ankle or something like that, and we will have to call for her to come and attend to it, as the only medical professional available.”

“That plan is absurd. She will look at your ankle and see at once that you are faking. And I’m not sure I want her looking at your ankles in any case.”

“Do you think I have unusually attractive ankles? Are you worried that she will take one look at my comely ankle and fall in love with me? You rather enjoyed my feet, if I remember correctly.”

“Shut up,” said Clement.

“It shall be my appendix, then. Something she can’t look directly at. Or I shall feel dizzy. I will come over sick in some way that cannot be proved false or be found titillating. This is how I shall meet your Coral Glynn and decide if you are to marry her. What is she like? Describe her to me.”

“She is rather pretty, I think, in a plain way.”

“Well, anyone can be pretty in a pretty way. Is she dark or fair?”

“She is dark, at least her hair and eyes. And rather tall, and slender. She is very quiet and has a lovely smile.”

“And what about her figure?”

“I told you—she is slender.”

“Has she bosoms?”

“I was under the impression that all women had a bosom.”

“Yes, but they vary in size. What size are her bosoms?”

“What an extraordinary question. Why ever would you enquire about such a thing?”

“Because, as I have previously stated, we are two men talking in a pub. We must make an effort to follow protocol.”

“Then the best I can tell you is that her bosom—I do not like the word—is perfectly proportionate.”

“What word do you like?”

“I do not like any word. I do not like the subject.”

“Most men do. The marrying kind, at any rate. You shall have to make an effort.”

“I think she likes me,” said Clement. “I mean in her shy, quiet way. Not in any obvious way. But when we are together, I sense…”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps I only imagine it. There’s something, though—something strange. I mean unusual. A feeling, which I think is shared.”

“And what is that feeling?”

“I would not call it a happiness. A relief, perhaps. A feeling of something alive between us. A connection, I suppose.”

“Love, perhaps,” said Robin.

“I would not go that far,” said Clement.

“Yes, I know,” said Robin. “You have never gone that far.”

*   *   *

Saturday afternoons Coral had free. The first two weeks she stayed at the house, feeling it was too soon to take leave of it, even if it was her right. The third week she did not feel well: she was exhausted, for Mrs Hart had not been sleeping and kept crying out fearfully in the night, “More! More!” wanting the morphine, the sudden gorgeous prick of it in her worn flesh, so she spent the afternoon in bed. The fourth week she knew that a precedent must be set: she must leave the house, or she would be trapped. So she did the only thing she could think of to do, which was to go to the cinema in Harrington.

Hart House was situated as far from the bus line as it could possibly be, a mile down a road of its own. Mrs Prence claimed not to know the schedule of the bus, for she thought the town was beneath her, and avoided it.

It was a chilly day—it was always a chilly day; it was hard to believe other days would come—and damp, but the sun was shining and there was a hesitation to the chill, a feeling that if the sun just tried a little harder it might, just possibly, amount to something. She was wearing a scarf about her head, a gay silk scarf splashed with giant pink peonies, which had been a Christmas gift from the mother of the children she had cared for before coming to Hart House, three children with scarlet fever, and even though the scarf had been wrapped in lilac-coloured tissue paper, she was almost certain that it had not been purchased for her—that it had been pulled from the tangle of scarves she had seen in the woman’s dresser drawer, but because the woman had been kind and the children were sweet and the house had been well heated, she had not thought the gift of the second-hand scarf mean. It was its fragrance that gave it away; it still smelt faintly of the woman’s perfume, and the odour reminded Coral of that woman, that warm house in Guildford, those children, the Christmas tree they decorated in the nursery, the cat who unexpectedly released a litter of eight kittens. Of course, there was more to it than that, but there is no point in remembering misery.

Coral knew that wearing the scarf out on this day, with the chill damp breeze flattening it against her head, would hasten the evanescence of the scent—that by the time she returned to the house the scarf would smell of the bus and the cinema and cigarettes and of herself. This made her feel a little sad, but like many sadnesses she knew were inevitable, she tried to hasten its occurrence, for it was unbearable for her to experience a pleasure she knew was fleeting.

As she neared the main road she saw the bus approach, and she ran and called out, but it took no notice of her and passed swiftly by. She had to wait thirty minutes for the next bus and came late into the cinema. Slowly her eyes adjusted; she could see the rapt luminous faces offered up to the glowing movie screen, and she found a seat next to a man who put his hand on her knee as soon as she sat down, as if he had been expecting her. He kept his eyes focused on the screen, as if the parts of his body were separate, his hand a small country at the outskirts of a large empire that enjoys, simply because of its distance from the capital, the sort of autonomy that is merely a result of negligence. There was something almost tender in his gesture, as if she were his wife returning from the ladies’, and in the disorienting darkness Coral was for a moment confused, and thought perhaps she was his wife and the mistake was hers, but she knew by the way his hand trembled that it was perverse, so she got up and moved further along that row and sat beside a woman who had a small wheezing dog in a carpet bag on her lap.

The film,
An Odd Marriage
, was about two twin sisters who were evidently married, unwittingly, to the same man, although how this had happened Coral could not tell. One of the sisters lived in the country and the other lived in the city and the man cleverly moved back and forth between them. The country wife was domestic and rosy-cheeked and the city wife was jaded and soigné; the same actress played both sisters. When the city wife was dying in childbirth and needed a blood transfusion that only her long-lost twin sister could provide, the husband was forced to make a decision: either reveal his duplicity or allow his city wife to die. A weakling with a thin moustache and beautiful suits, he chose the latter, and brought his infant motherless daughter down to the country wife, claiming she was an orphan of the war, and the country wife raised the baby as if she were her own, but of course the husband couldn’t bear the sight of the child, reminder as she was of his loathsomeness, and so he pulled her out of bed one night and tried to throw her over the cliff into the spumy crashing surf below, but the mother, waking in the night and sensing something amiss, came running out at the last moment, and struggled to wrench the child away from the father, who cruelly revealed the true identity of the little girl before plummeting (accidentally and thrillingly) onto the jagged rocks below.

The movie upset Coral, even though there was a final scene in which the country wife was seen happily marrying the handsome widowed gentleman from a neighbouring farm who had always been so kind to both her and her daughter, while waves relentlessly crashed upon the decomposing body of the evil husband, and predatory seagulls hovered above. It was not clear why the body of the loathsome husband had been left to rot rather than given a proper Christian burial.

*   *   *

It was dark and raining when Coral left the cinema, and there was something further upsetting about the change in weather and light, for she did not like it when night came in this unobserved way, without transition. She walked up the High Street of the town towards where the bus had left her. Despite the rain, the street was full of people hurrying about, in that happy way people do on a Saturday evening when they think there is only pleasure ahead of them. She did not have an umbrella and the rain coursed off the fabric domes of the passing umbrellas and soaked her, and she felt outcast, defeated, so when she passed a florist’s shop that was still open and brightly lit, she opened the door and stepped inside.

There was an odour of moisture in the shop, but it was different from the cold bland wetness of the street: inside the air was softer, warmer, and perfumed with the scent of the flowers that hung their necks over the rims of the tubs all around the floor. She stood inside the door, which had steamed over, as had the windows, and although she could still hear the rain and noise of the street outside, it felt far away, as if a gap had opened between her and it.

There appeared to be no one in the shop, but from somewhere in the back came the sound of a radio playing, and she stood for a moment, listening. It was an old song her brother had played often on the piano. She could picture him sitting at the piano in the parlour, his face bright in the lamplight, his fingers fiddling the keys. He had been melancholy, one of those people who always seems to be disappointed by the world, but when he played the piano something—a tight mask he always wore; a wince almost—fell away and she had liked to see his face slacken that way.

A young man emerged from the back room. For a fleeting moment she thought it was her brother, and then remembered he was dead. The young man greeted her and walked past her to the door, which he locked. And then he flipped the sign from
OPEN
to
CLOSED.
He turned back to her. “I forgot to close up,” he said.

He had an odd brown shock of hair and a narrow face. He wore a pink shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a Fair Isle vest, and brown corduroy pants with very wide legs. He had a sort of kerchief tied about his neck. Despite this odd costume she still associated him, somehow, with her brother.

“Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry—I thought—”

“It’s all right,” he said. “What would you like?”

She had meant only to step inside out of the rain, not to buy flowers—they were a luxury she could not afford—but she felt obliged now, and then she thought of her cold little attic room in the house, of how a jug of flowers on the dresser would make it almost nice, and so she said, “Some flowers. Something small.” She could not say “cheap.”

“Is there an occasion?”

“Oh,” she said, “no—just a little bouquet—of anything, really, I can’t afford much.” She had never bought a bouquet of flowers and had no idea what they cost.

“Well, come back here,” he said. “I’ve got some nice lilies I could give you cheap.”

She followed him into the back room, which was brightly lit, two large tub sinks and a long worktable covered in flowers, and another table with rows of glass vases in which identical bouquets were being assembled. It was bright and cheerful and there was a heady scent of elsewhere in the air.

“Oh, it’s lovely,” she said. Coral had never seen so many flowers. It seemed impossible to her, this many of a thing so beautiful. She felt in some way that all the life and warmth of the cold, drab town, of her life, had collected in this room—that she was in the hot golden centre of the world.

And then she thought how soon all the flowers would be wilted, dead, all this beauty rotting on sodden trash heaps in the back alleys.

“I’m doing the flowers for the Page wedding tomorrow,” the man said. “Are you going to the wedding?”

“No,” she said. “I’m just in town for the day. I don’t know anyone here.”

“Well, Page is the mayor and his fat cow of a daughter Marjorie is being married tomorrow and half the town is invited and they want flowers on every table. I’ll likely be up all night.”

She didn’t know what to say. There were some flowers on the floor, yellow flowers, lilies, she supposed, and she bent down and picked them up and put them on the table.

“Those are no good,” he said. “They’re tired.”

“They look fine,” she said.

“Well, they won’t do for Marjorie Page,” he said. “You’re welcome to them if you want.”

“They’re beautiful,” she said, but then she noticed there was a thin edge of brown on some of the petals. But they were beautiful. She held them up to her face and smelt them. It was a sweet, unlikely scent.

“Well, take them,” he said. “But they won’t last long.”

She picked a few more of the discarded stalks off the floor and attempted to arrange them.

“Here,” he said. “Give them to me.”

She handed them to him and he went to the sink and cut the long stems with a penknife, wrapped wet newspaper around the amputated stalks, and then tied them together with a lilac ribbon he unfurled from a huge roll. “Here,” he said, and handed them back to her.

“Thank you,” she said. “They’re beautiful.”

“Just don’t look too close,” he said, and laughed.

“No,” she said, “they’re beautiful. Thank you.”

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“I’m nursing the old woman out at Hart House,” she said. “And I’d better go. I don’t want to miss the bus.”

“It runs late on Saturdays.”

“Yes, but I’ve got to get back,” she said. “Thank you for the flowers.”

“Oh, you’re welcome,” he said. “They’ll rot by morning.”

“Well, I shall enjoy them tonight,” she said. She walked back through the front room to the door and tried to open it, but it was locked. He came up behind her, touched her back, and then reached past her, turned the lock, and pushed the door open. It was still raining. “Good night,” he said.

She said good night and passed through the door, which closed quickly behind her. She heard the bolt fasten and turned round to see him walking towards the back room of the shop. The lights in the front went out. She stood for a moment in the sheltered doorway, watching him in the lighted back room, moving back and forth between the two tables, carefully filling the vases with flowers.