Down in the City (13 page)

She dried her hair again, vigorously, with a fresh towel, and then combed it, determinedly avoiding her eyes in the mirror. I'm glad my hair curls naturally, she thought. It's a relief to be able to wash it on a day like this. With a firm hand she applied lipstick to her pale mouth.

I don't know why I went, she thought, as she lay back on the long chair on the balcony. I've never thought about children. It was simply that I thought it might help Stan. I don't know how or why.

She turned her head from side to side and closed her eyes. Stan's not the kind of man who wants his own house in the suburbs, and children at school, and responsibilities. I don't either. I like flat life. I want things to go on exactly as they are.

Esther had no picture of a different, ideal life, hanging like a full moon over the hill of the future to tantalise and weaken her. No hope for a new year made the present drab and tasteless to her. This day she flourished, breathed, felt the heat, and waited for Stan. And with him, she lived.

Time before him was vague and dim. If David mentioned people she had met in the past, she tried to remember them, conciliating him. A string of talking puppets, hollow, identical, assembled for her, and one of them was herself. There was nothing she wished to remember. It was better left grey and blurred.

She thought if she could feel in Stan the counterpart of her own content with the present, she would be entirely happy and free from strain. What could he need or want? He was not ambitious—except for money. But was that true? She wondered. That she was, herself, a fulfilled ambition to Stan, worn by him as another man might wear a knighthood, she did not understand. But it seemed evident to her that, generally speaking, he was not. They never discussed the future or made plans. There seemed no necessity. It was obvious that children would not have fitted into their life. Why had she thought it a good idea?

So there are to be no children. All right. But why keep saying it? she asked with a kind of bitter irritation. I understood the first time. I'm never to have Stan's child.

‘Hi, darling!' Stan leaned over her. ‘Were you asleep? Don't blame you.' He flopped heavily into a chair, threw his hat off and wiped his face with a handkerchief. ‘I've been out at that confounded factory all day with Ron. It was cruel. It was like an oven.'

‘How is everything going?'

‘Oh fine, fine. We'll soon have them on the market.'

‘What are they working on now?'

He grinned. ‘You don't really want to know that, honey. If I told you, you still wouldn't know. All you have to do is take the pretty things they let me buy for you. Now!' He took off his coat and tie and stood up to haul his shirt over his head. ‘I'm off to have a shower.' He collected his clothes under one arm and started to go. ‘Oh, by the way,' he said casually, ‘talking of pretty things, I've got something in here you might like.'

Esther went in, her hands loosely clasped in front of her.

‘What is it?'

‘On the table.'

One transparent cellophane box held a spray of gardenias, and a small white leather case, satin-lined, displayed when opened a magnificent pair of diamond pendant earrings.

At last she said, ‘They're beautiful, Stan!'

He frowned at the earrings disdainfully. ‘Think so?' Then he grinned. ‘Not bad, are they? Why shouldn't you have them, pet? We're doing well.' They held each other.

Later that night, when they sat at a small table at Zito's nightclub, his eyes turned again and again to the shimmering stones that swung against Esther's neck whenever she moved her head. Stan leaned back so that he could see her from a distance. He looped one arm over the top of his chair. He explored his teeth ruminatively with his tongue. What could he compare her to, he wondered critically. Irrelevantly, it struck him as a pity that she preferred champagne to whisky. He felt better than this on whisky. Still—he went back to his original problem—what could he compare her to? Nothing, he decided, swinging round to the table with a thump; she was on her own. Just on her own.

He glanced coldly at the women sitting nearest him. One, whose skin was the colour of cinnamon, whose dress was gold, was caught at the crisis of a long and trying joke. She shook her yellow head and laughed with relief, longer than was necessary.

Mouth like a shark, Stan condemned her disgustedly.

He looked next at a young girl whose red-gold hair gleamed in the artificial light. The colour appalled him; her animation and her youth made him turn away.

His pride and satisfaction fell to pieces. All young things reminded him of age. He should have stayed at the top of the tree forever. It wasn't in the bargain, he hadn't understood, that he would get old, that he would ever be more than twenty-five or so. The lost years, the best years, were behind him now, untouchable, used up, the damage done. And here he was, doing all right, but still not what he should have been, and not going to have another chance—ever. Just getting older and older while crowds of redheaded girls…

‘I want to get out of here. Let's go home,' he said to Esther. ‘It's nearly half-past one.'

In the car she said, ‘I like champagne.' She began to hum one of the tunes they had danced to. ‘I like dancing with you, Stan. You're so…' And then she remembered that there was something she had to guard against, keep out of her mind, and she wondered what it was. She sat motionless, staring with unfocused eyes at the road ahead.

‘Yeah, it was great,' Stan declared with an effort. ‘Great.' He repeated the last word as he often did to show that he was a man of strong opinions.

‘This was a kind of going-away party, tonight,' he said suddenly, the words and the idea coming together. ‘Have to leave you next week, pet. Gotta go to Melbourne to see about some business. I'd take you along,' he said, punching the car horn viciously with the side of his clenched fist, ‘only I'll be on the move all the time. It'd be no fun by yourself in a hotel room. You're better at home.' He caught at her hand and squeezed it for a moment.

‘Don't leave me,' she said in a low voice.

‘I told you why,' he said patiently. ‘You'll be fine. It'll only be for a week.'

And whether it was because Esther had sounded heartsick at the news, or because he had proved to himself that he had some control over his life, Stan felt the warmth of rising confidence.

Holding her mouth carefully open, Vi swept the small brush, heavy with red polish, along her nail and then popped it neatly back into the bottle. She removed a thin line of polish from the tip of her nail with an orangestick and relaxed.

‘Thank God!' Stan said irritably. ‘I hate the smell of that stuff.'

They sat in Vi's bedroom, a sunny pale-blue room with flower prints on the walls and a pink rug on the floor. A hot breeze billowed the gauzy curtains out over Stan's head; peevishly he grabbed at them and pushed them back.

Seeing his mood, Vi glanced thoughtfully at her sticky nails, and blew a token breath to dry them. Her lips still pursed, she turned again to regard Stan, who, elbows on knees, eyes on carpet, was smoking a cigarette with ferocious attention.

‘I forgot to tell you Eck was asking for you last night,' she began mildly, but seeing the blank hostility in his eyes as he raised his head, she said abruptly, ‘Listen, Stan. If you've changed that master mind of yours about this trip you'd better say so. Don't think I've taken a week off to go to Melbourne so that you can have me for an audience for one of your famous moods, pal, because you're wrong!'

She stared at him indignantly, her small hands still raised, fingers outspread to protect her nails. It was like a childish gesture of protest.

The hardness left Stan's eyes. ‘Cute lid you've got,' he said, waving at her hat.

Vi's stiff black lashes rose as she rolled her eyes up in an effort to see it. ‘What's wrong with it? It was damn dear.'

They grinned at each other. Stan stood up and stretched his arms. ‘Time that taxi was here.'

‘I'll just make sure all the windows are closed.'

He watched Vi as she went through to the other room with short quick steps. Screwing his face up, he massaged his neck for a moment and wished that he was twenty. He sighed, remembering the good feeling of being young and being with men. He remembered the days spent swopping yarns and studying form, hanging round the courses, waiting for the piece of luck that would make their fortunes. Females came and went in those days: a man had the sense not to get involved. Well, you couldn't say Vi came and went—but she was different. She was a real good-looker and she'd had a head full of sense even then: she could sum up a horse or a drink or a deal. Still, women were all alike. They always meant trouble, he reflected morosely. No peace, no good times. Aw hell, he could do with a real binge. It'd cheer a fellow up.

‘What are you mumbling about?' Vi looked into the room and he stared at her foolishly. ‘Back in a jiff.' She was off again without waiting for an answer.

‘God, I've worked this week to get away,' he said aloud, as if she were there. He had a vision of himself at the wheel of the car, racing from the factory to the houses of his salesmen and agents, from the docks to the factory, and from there, the tedious trail around the suburbs to the homes of the women who assembled his novelty lines. A fellow must be off his rocker, he grumbled. But in truth, he was soothed by the memory of business. Unconsciously he wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand to hide the smile that had appeared there.

The help he had received from Jim and Toddy after they went over to the States was incalculable, but he could be independent of them now if he chose; he had found his own contacts. But he'd stick to them, of course; Stan Peterson would never let his old pals down. It hadn't all been easy sailing: he'd run risks, but that was in the game, a bit of danger was fun to anyone worth his salt. And a few notes to the right man at the right time kept everything sweet. The work and the worry and the final reward—he enjoyed every move.

‘Take your filthy shoes off my bed!'

He stood up and laughed in his humourless way while Vi inspected the filmy blue covers which had been ordered especially to match the curtains. ‘Just as well,' she said. ‘Don't do that again.'

She looked at him provocatively, standing with her weight on one leg, the other thrust forward, one hand on her hip. It was a pose she liked, but she dropped it a moment later to say, ‘All I want to know is—do you want me to come with you or not?'

‘Strike a bloody light! What do you want me to do? Go down on my ruddy knees? Haven't I said so?'

‘Yes, but you meant it then.' She looked at him, half angry, half doubtful.

‘Well, for crying out loud, what's the matter with you? Of course, I meant it,' he said, exasperated.

‘Okay, honey,' she smiled. ‘Keep calm. Oh! There's the door! The taxi! Where's my bag? Where's my gloves? Answer the door, will you, love? Yours'll be along in a minute, won't he? All this business—going in two taxis. No one'd see us if we went together. I could sit on the floor. So long. See you at the airport. And Stan!' she called as she banged the door. ‘Don't forget to close that window. There's going to be a storm.'

‘Women!' he exclaimed. But by the time he ran downstairs to catch his taxi he was whistling.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

How did it start? How did it ever start, and why? Esther answered her question with another. Because Stan wanted to quarrel was the only answer, and she knew it.

Four times in the three weeks that had passed since his return from Melbourne he had come home at night flushed with whisky, wearing an attitude of such truculence that it seemed to precede him into the flat. In sullen brooding silence he ate his dinner, half turned from the table, sprawled in his chair, cramming food into his mouth and pulling exaggerated faces of distaste as he chewed, looking every moment as though he might spit it out, or be sick.

Settling back in an armchair with another drink, he unrolled a newspaper, or took some sheets of paper and covered them with pencilled hieroglyphics referring to the factory output. Supposedly occupied, he covertly watched Esther as she cleared the table and washed the dishes in the kitchen with nervous haste. She knew he watched her and he knew she knew. His lips curled with malicious satisfaction that he succeeded in stripping her of her repose. He felt his power swell within him, and he loved it as a pregnant woman loves her unborn child.

Each night, as tonight, Esther returned to the room with a piece of sewing, or a magazine, or letters that she should write, to keep the appearance of normality in her small routine; at the same time she held herself ready to do whatever might pacify him, to check a movement or word that seemed to displease. But she underrated him in thinking that her actions only were on trial, while her existence, and her family's, and the joint and separate pasts of each of them were undeniable facts.

The way she looks at me! he thought, as he stared glassy-eyed at the paper. She appeared to his drunken mind as something loathsome beyond description, something to be tormented and squashed.

His voice came at her suddenly and she went rigid at the hate in it. Coherent thought failed in the wake of such venom, leaving her stranded in total darkness, like someone in a house where lightning has cut the current. Instinct alone, called up by alarm, caused her hand to rise and fall over her sewing and kept her eyes on the shining needle. It mercifully dulled her hearing and slowed her breathing, so that for long stretches of time, while the voice sneered and cross-examined, she was barely half alive.

The paper had fallen from his hand, and he lay back in his chair, hands in pockets, talking, talking. ‘God!' he interrupted himself to exclaim every now and then. Looking at Esther in a long cold silence, ‘Jesus!' he said.