Lewis Percy (13 page)

‘But that means you’ll be staying longer than three hours,’ said Lewis.

‘The longer I’m out of that place the better,’ was the heartfelt reply.

‘Well, old chap, what do you say?’ said Lewis, squatting down to meet Barry Joliffe’s gaze. The child looked so sad that he could not bear to deny him a kitchen in which to eat his lunch and a garden to play in. He rather liked the idea of having a child in the house. And the little boy’s bleak expression moved him, as did the thought of his being shut up in one room over the tobacconist’s all day. ‘Would you like to come here, Barry?’ The boy removed from his mouth the corner of a toy truck he had been sucking and nodded.

‘Splendid,’ said Lewis. ‘Well, I’ll see you on Monday, Mrs Joliffe.’ He handed her the spare key and they parted on good terms. She was not quite what he had envisaged, Lewis reflected. Not quite the spotless cheerful independent paragon on whom he had set his sights. He supposed that the services of such superior women were hotly contested,
and the advantage of Mrs Joliffe was that she lived only five minutes away. And in any case, having made the initial effort he rapidly lost interest in the whole affair.

Mrs Joliffe turned out to be competent if unenterprising at preserving Lewis’s household from further decay. But the novelty of finding a note on the kitchen table stating ‘Fish pie in oven’ was so overwhelming that Lewis was inclined to overlook Barry’s toys left on the window sill. As the days passed, and as food was always left for him, he closed his mind to the fact that Mrs Joliffe and Barry occupied his house for most of the day. Now that he had surrendered his thesis Lewis found he had little to do and tended to come home earlier. On one occasion he saw Barry’s face staring at him impassively from the window; on another he found Barry sitting in the middle of the drawing-room floor with his favourite toy, an egg cup containing a marble. Once, coming home later than usual, he found the house empty but inadvertently trod on the marble, stumbled across the room, and bumped his head on the mantelpiece. None of this bothered him greatly, although he took to buying small educational items such as picture and drawing books, which he left modestly on the kitchen table. He returned to find them stacked on the window sill, with the truck and other paraphernalia. He told himself that he liked this evidence of occupation. It was when he returned one evening to find the bathroom full of steam that a doubt crossed his mind. But ‘Lamb chop under grill’ enabled him to silence whatever qualms he was beginning to feel, and he decided to ignore the whole business until such time as he might have the energy to think about it.

There was no doubt that she was a vigorous cleaner, although she did not seem to be very clean herself. Surprisingly, she appeared to like the work, and applied herself spasmodically to what she was doing, although as far as he could see there was absolutely no method in it. Days of energy would be followed by intervals of torpor, when she apparently limited herself to the washing-up. But it
was good to see the polish restored to Grace Percy’s fine round Victorian table, and her silver tea service gleaming once more. This emboldened him to invite Pen over one Saturday. They would have tea, he said, and go to a film.

‘I like this house, Lewis,’ said Pen, pulling a dark green handkerchief from his sleeve and honking into it. ‘A good size, marvellous stuff in it. All late Victorian; such a relief after this modern rubbish. Terrific crewel work on those footstools. But look here, there’s a scratch on this table. Do you see? That’s very bad news. What have you been putting on it?’

‘Barry must have been playing with his truck,’ said Lewis glumly. He hated to see his mother’s belongings so treated. He had never accepted the fact that they now belonged to him, and the thought made him sad. But the idea of coming home to an empty house after so blessed an interval dismayed him even further. Pen, however, was a householder who took a pride in his job.

‘And there is his truck,’ he said. ‘And his ball. And his stuffed – what is it? Dog? Are you sure you couldn’t get somebody better, Lewis? A regular house-keeper, for instance? This house is too good to be left to mercenaries.’

‘I suppose it is a good house,’ said Lewis. ‘It belonged to my grandfather. He was a dairyman in Fulham. He bought this place when it was new. Everything here belonged to him originally. Then my grandmother lived here and eventually my father. My mother took to it and refused to change a thing. I like it here. But then I’ve always lived here.’ Stealing quietly into his mind came the image of his mother, head on one side, with her book, by the fire. But he was not yet able to bear such images, and, starting up, poured Pen more tea.

‘Don’t let the house go under,’ said Pen. ‘Get someone else. Or better still, get married. Why don’t you do that? Lots of people do. Not me, of course, but you could. And then there’d be no argument.’

‘I’m afraid Mrs Joliffe might want to stay on,’ said Lewis.

‘A woman can deal with that sort of thing better than a man. Can’t you get a woman to live with you? It’s done all the time, I understand. After all, we’re living in the 1960s. And frankly, you need a bit of looking after. That jacket, Lewis … You’d better let me take you to my tailor. You’re not strapped for cash, I hope?’

‘Oh, I’ve got plenty of money,’ said Lewis.

He did not resent Pen’s advice, but once he was left alone again, with the prospect of Sunday to get through (the Tate again, he supposed), his thoughts turned with some reluctance to Tissy Harper. He had behaved very badly, he reflected uncomfortably, in not going back to see her again, as he had promised, at the Public Library. To tell the truth, he had felt a certain distaste for all those women’s novels with which he had comforted himself, and was at present immersed in
The Eustace Diamonds
. But that was not the point. What was needed was not an excuse but a reason. He had had no reason to seek out Tissy Harper again because he had managed to bury the part of him that ached to be consoled, sought out, preferred, in the more masculine excitement of finishing his work. And because he had become aware of the discrepancy between his work, so exalted in tone, and that awful red room, between the part of him that consorted with words and the inarticulate communication that passed wordlessly between Tissy and her mother, and that fearful doctor. He knew that he was destined to seek his home in language. But he also knew in his heart that he could not remain forever without a companion. Some restlessness in him – and maybe it was this feeling that he mistook for loneliness – informed him that the day would come when he would renounce everything and begin in earnest his real life, his true life, the life that at present somehow escaped him. He smiled as the thought came into his head. People did not seek their fortune any more, or at least not outside the covers of a book. And yet he thought that in time he might do so, although he knew that the hour was not yet come. Not yet, he thought; not yet. For to take that step he must be on his
own, unencumbered. And that was what he could not quite bear to contemplate. First he must be understood, accepted. Later he might seek his freedom.

Until that day came he could not live in an empty house. As if he had opened the doors of his mind to the idea of a woman, and of Tissy’s large sad eyes, his desire woke him in the night. He was so startled by this, after a long period of quiescence, and so impressed by the programming of his body, that he determined to go back to her, the following week, if necessary. If only she weren’t such a girl, he thought despairingly. If only he could get rid of her mother. And yet the thought of her in his house did not sit oddly with him. He liked her quietness, her delicacy. She was undiscovered; he liked that too. With her he need not be afraid. He smiled sadly to himself in the dark, for he knew the step was as good as taken.

Most men married because it was convenient, because the time was ripe. So he reasoned with himself, still aware of an old, old longing to be comforted. Passionate love affairs were not compatible with marriage. Marriage was a reasonable partnership, one that enabled a man to get on with his work. Still he felt sad, and his sadness extended to Tissy, who must be wondering about his defection and who did not yet know of his decision. Suddenly, after so long, so shameful a delay, he could not bear for her to have been hurt. His face burned in the darkness as he thought of her drooping head, her great eyes. She was blameless in all this! The life she lived was terrible, not to be endured! And he had been cruel to her, following her so clumsily, and then ignoring her for weeks. If anyone ever needed him it was Tissy, who would in return be faithful unto death. Who knew what she was thinking, what she had felt in the weeks when he had drifted away from her? Would she even speak to him again? His throat ached as he thought of her, and he took this for a form of love. It was the best he could do. Poor little girl, he thought.

Only it was not quite what he wanted, that was the
trouble. He had wanted to find his everything, his right true end. To have his house filled with a peaceable presence, and to feel a rightness, a oneness, a glow of good conduct. Never again to have to seek what he could not find at home, or to spend his leisure hours wondering how best they might be filled. This house, with its large windows and its bosomy furniture, was made for domesticity. It had a settled rather than a nuptial appeal: it would take his wife to its Victorian heart. There would be a minimum of adjustment. It was just that he had desired more, a coming to life … Not merely the declining sun, seen through the house’s wide windows, but the blaze of noon, incandescence. No doubt such things were not easy to come by, he told himself; they probably only happened in books. Ah, but that was what he wanted to be, he thought: a character in a book. And when he had formulated this thought (and been very glad that he had not confided it to anyone else) he measured both his disappointment and its unwisdom. He was not to have a legendary life, he told himself. He was Lewis Percy, and he would probably take that job in the college library. The time had come for the shedding of illusions and the making of sensible decisions. He could no longer fill his house with the company of the Joliffes. He could not let them have the run of the place until they took root there and regarded it as their home. He had no family; that was what had to be taken into account. Therefore he must found a family of his own. He liked children and identified with them. Even Barry’s unresponsive little face seemed to mirror something in his own. He would have children, many children. Maternity would free Tissy from her bonds. Together they would have some kind of real life, even if it were not the one he had always wanted.

The next morning he bathed, shaved, and dressed carefully. Pen was right; he was getting shabby. All that must now change. Out in the street he was aware that autumn, his favourite season, was well advanced, and he determined not to let another year pass without some semblance of normality in his own affairs. He felt a sense of acute displacement, and
yet his steps seemed to be taking him in the direction of the Public Library. He was the first one there, and he was glad there was no one to witness the scene in which he had to take part.

It was all easy, easier than he had imagined. Tissy came over to him, gliding in that way of hers that he remembered. He heard himself apologizing for his long absence, heard her polite acceptance of his excuses, heard her say, ‘I knew you’d come.’ What she was thinking he could not begin to guess. She had, he thought, something of her mother’s disconcerting lack of curiosity; he might never know what she was thinking. But she heard him out, and the reserve in her manner made him more and more determined to overcome it. He issued his invitation to tea for the following Saturday, and she promised to convey it to her mother. ‘The only thing is,’ she said, ‘the doctor usually looks in on a Saturday.’ ‘Well, he can come and pick you up,’ said Lewis firmly, for he did not see why he should have to entertain the doctor as well. It was arranged, with dreamlike ease, that Tissy and her mother should walk themselves down to his house at four o’clock, on the following Saturday, and that Dr Jago should collect them at half-past five. The thing was taking on the aspect of a military exercise, but then he supposed that was how it had to be done. The thought did not please him, but he managed to suppress it.

It was Mrs Harper who took care of the proceedings. Lewis found her neither more nor less intimidating than she had appeared at their first meeting. She was just as elaborately accoutred, and just as indifferent. In her company Tissy became a shadow of her always shadowy self, although he was pleased to see that her appetite was unimpaired. Mrs Harper, once provided with an ashtray, let her gaze roam round the room quite peaceably, possibly took an inventory, but evinced no opinions. She managed to call him ‘Lewis’, which was a good sign. He knew, however, that she would always make him uneasy, and he wondered at her peculiar power. When the bell rang he was quite surprised, for he
did not see how so much time had passed when so little had happened. He counted the afternoon a disappointment, and got up to let in the doctor with a feeling of failure.

The doctor sank into a chair, still wearing his ill-judged hat and coat. As before, crumbs descended from his plate onto his burgeoning stomach. But the doctor made up in amiability what Mrs Harper lacked, and soon Lewis found himself discussing his future, or as much of it as he thought might interest him.

‘And what about a job, Lewis?’ asked the doctor, still amiably. Lewis registered the fact that he had become ‘Lewis’ to the doctor as well.

‘I’ve been offered a job in the college library,’ he said, with a slight sinking of the heart. (But that was to be expected, he told himself.)

‘Quite a coincidence,’ mused the doctor. ‘You and Tissy both being in the same line of work.’ After that there was a short silence, until Mrs Harper expressed a desire to see the rest of the house.

When he saw them out he felt a curious relief. Their presence, he reflected, was onerous, yet it left him with a desire for Tissy’s unsponsored company. If that could be arranged – and he had mentioned a play, a film, not knowing what she would like – he foresaw no great difficulty in finding out more about her. She was limpid, he thought. And the very enigma of her deeper feelings was beginning to obsess him. She had shown no very great excitement, keeping her beautiful eyes modestly lowered, but there was colour in her cheeks. ‘I like to look at pictures,’ she had said.