Look at Me (21 page)

Heels drumming, and eyes staring steadily ahead, I walked towards him. I could smell the whisky and hear him mumbling and groaning. Out of the corner of my eye I could see him bending over, as if to vomit, and then righting himself; then I could see him spread-eagled against the wall, one hand, with thick black nails, splayed on the tiles behind him. As I came level with him, the other hand reached out and made as if to grab my sleeve, but his aim was too unsteady and he missed it. This angered him, and his voice came to me, a
threatening animal sound. I stamped on, electric with terror, assuming an expression of worldly indifference, as if I had not noticed anything amiss. Only when I had reached the other end of the tunnel and was about to turn towards the steps did I dare to look back. I saw him, propped against the wall, his hand still stretched out, feeling for me. His face was a darkish purple.

By now I was shaken, and I felt my confidence or my madness or whatever it was leave me. I felt the blood drain from my face and the heat from my body; I felt my shoulders contract, and my hands start to tremble. I would have run the rest of the way if I had had the energy, but this seemed to have deserted me. Oxford Street looked like a dull chasm, with ghostly Christmas trees in shop windows illuminated only by those terrible acid overhead lights. I looked at my watch; it was half-past twelve. For some reason the thought of taking a cab never crossed my mind; in any event, nothing passed me. I felt as if I had to accomplish this ritual on foot, and that only if I did so could I face the haven of warmth and muffled air that awaited me. Only in this way could I exhaust myself sufficiently to put thought to sleep, and if I did not so exhaust myself I would feel that I was entering a tomb, rather than a perfectly ordinary bed. As I turned up the Edgware Road, the home stretch, I even thought with longing of the hot drink that Nancy would have left for me, and of the safety of her presence, her protection.

I was not very fast now, and my feet stumbled from time to time. I went past the sex shop, and the television rental company, past the ethnic hairdresser, whose fluorescent tube in the window blinked weakly, lessening my feeling of total desertion. I greeted the wax nurse in her spectral uniform like an old friend. I passed the banks and the supermarkets and mysterious shops which seemed to have an air of dereliction about them
and whose normal purposes I could now no longer remember. The rain had stopped but my coat was damp and it impeded me. I felt intimations of nightmare; I seemed to be making no headway. It was as if I were trying to wade through some viscous substance wearing an old-fashioned diving suit. There was no one in sight. There was no sound, apart from a distant rumble, which I could not identify. I was breathing harshly now and I could feel a pain in my chest; my hair stuck to my damp face in wisps, and I was very thirsty. The dull rumble came nearer, and I was aware of a dark shape looming in front of me, high above. Then I realised that this was the flyover, and that I should have to negotiate another underpass in order to get to the other side, and home.

For some time I could not do it. I clung to the railings and waited to feel better, and still did nothing. I think I even decided that I might stay there until someone came along and then I might summon up the courage to follow them down those steps. I was prepared to wait until the morning, but I was so tired, and it was so dark, that this immediately became unimaginable. Several times I started down the steps, only to retreat to the surface, my mouth dry. I could not go down there. I knew that people sometimes slept rough in subways, that they were the favourite haunt of drunks and derelicts. I thought of the man at Marble Arch and I smelt the smell again. I think at one point that I must have sat down on the steps and buried my face in my hands. I had never had to do this before, on my own. James, who knew I was frightened, had always put his arm round me, and that way it was even enjoyable. And thus I felt his loss again, and the loss of all protection, and I tried to summon the compensating anger. But at some point on that homeward journey, even the anger had retreated from my grasp.

And then, after about half an hour, I managed to go
down the steps. But I was shaking so much that I had to cling to the railing, feeling for every step with my foot, and then, when I had reached the tunnel, keeping close to the wall, the dirty tiles, ready at the slightest sound to retreat, or, when I had passed the halfway mark, to fling myself forward. It took a long time, that I know; I also know that when I reached the steps at the other end I could hardly lift my feet to climb them. At one point I was overcome with a sort of vertigo and had to stand still until I found the will to go on. I emerged upwards into the blackest night I had ever seen.

This must be the most terrible hour, the hour when people die in hospitals. No sound, no light, the vital forces ebbing away, even the memory indistinct. I had no reliable information on where I had passed the earlier part of that evening, nor could I really understand what had happened, or how I came to be here. I only knew, as I passed dreamlike along the endless empty street, that I must get home; I even put my hand in my bag to get my key, and I held it before me like a talisman as, light-headed, and vague in my movements, I reached the corner where the Westminster Bank stood foursquare, as it always had done, and when I lifted my eyes I could see a very dim glow behind the curtains of the drawing room, as if a lamp had been left on for me.

It took me a long time to climb the red-carpeted stairs. I felt like a pilgrim who at last reaches the place of his pilgrimage, after days and nights of search and exhaustion. I noticed, as if it were some item of sacred furniture, the gleaming brass of the stair-rods; my hand crept out and touched the wooden banisters. Slowly I looked around me. I had reached the end of my journey. I raised my hand and with it the key.

The door was locked. Nancy had locked the door.

After a time, or rather a complete absence of time, I rang the bell. Then I rang it again, aware that I was
doing something so untoward that it had never happened in this house before. This place of regularity, and sound, if valetudinarian, habits, this serious place, always so quiet and so measured, was now violated, at two in the morning, by the harsh sound of a peremptory bell. I imagined people stirring with alarm, with outrage, as their night was shattered. I expected to see the ranks of the elderly, in substantial dressing gowns, in solid slippers, massing at their front doors, ready with admonishment, shaking their heads. I awaited complaints. I stared around me, as if on trial. Then, after a long silence, I heard the soft shuffle of Nancy’s steps, and the chain sliding, and the latch going up, and at last the door was opened and I was staring down into Nancy’s severe and trusting blue eyes.

I must have looked very odd for she said nothing, merely put out her hand and laid it on my sleeve. As I went forward, but so slowly now, she took my arm in both her hands, and then I felt her arm around me, and, quite wordlessly, we walked along the passage. She guided me into the kitchen, and put on the light, and as I sank down into her own padded basket chair, she shuffled over to the cooker and got busy with the kettle. I was still wearing my wet coat and my feet were swollen; my eyes seemed to me to be shuttered by my drooping lids, although Nancy tells me that they were wide and staring. As she made the tea, my ears adjusted to this new form of silence: I heard a singing in the pipes, the occasional jerk of the hands of the kitchen clock, the bubbling of the boiling water poured into the teapot. Then I felt the cup guided towards my mouth and I drank steadily as Nancy held the cup to my mouth, lowering it when she thought I ought to take a breath, as she had when I was a child. Without asking me, she poured some more, and this time she let me drink it myself. Then she took out the old square biscuit tin, and
put it in front of me. After a moment my hand stole out and took a biscuit, ‘That’s my girlie,’ she said.

She asked me no questions. She simply sat down, with her hands folded, and waited. It was peaceful in the kitchen, and safe, and I had no desire to move. I looked at the pale yellow walls, and the dresser with the cups hanging from hooks, and the piles of the
Cork Examiner
, and her knitting bag on the back of the chair. I looked at the television, which my mother had bought her one Christmas, and the old-fashioned wireless, which she refused to replace. The scullery, which contained all the machinery of our lives, the agencies by which we were fed and kept clean, was a place I hardly ever visited, although I sometimes sat with Nancy in her kitchen. On those occasions, as now, we rarely spoke, but I think she liked to have me there.

I had not been there for a long time. Tentatively, I reached out and felt the soft clean surface of her deal table. In the centre stood a blue china fruit bowl, and among the apples and the tangerines there was a packet of the harsh mints that she loved so well. There was always a faint smell of peppermint surrounding her. Then I noticed an enormous and elaborate box of chocolates, and I smiled involuntarily. ‘Sydney?’ I asked. She nodded. ‘Came the minute you left,’ she said. ‘He was so sorry to miss you. Always comes at Christmas, Mr Goldsmith. I made him a nice little tea, although he didn’t want to eat it. Said he was going out to dinner. But I know him. He was going back on the train, back to an empty house, I expect. I gave him a nice boiled egg, and some toast, and some of my fruit cake, and I made him a few sandwiches to take back with him. He sent you his love, Miss Fan. He was sorry to miss you.’

Sydney Goldsmith, in his gangster’s overcoat. His unfailing, his discreet fidelity. I had almost forgotten him, yet now I saw him clearly, head cocked, soft brown
hat in one hand. I saw him lean over to kiss my mother’s forehead, and I heard him say, ‘Any time, Beatrice. Call on me any time. My time is yours.’ How long ago it seemed that I had stood with Nancy at the door to wave him goodbye. And I never got in touch with him, although he would have been glad of it. He was always fond of me.

Nancy got up and left the room, and after a time I heard bath water running. My coat had steamed and then turned stiff in its creases, and I shrugged out of it. My shoes were muddy and so were my legs; my grey dress, which I should never wear again, seemed to hang on my insignificant body. So great was my fatigue that if I had a conscious wish, it was to remain where I was. I felt old, unwieldy. Slowly, and with great care, I sat up and leaned forward. I doubted whether I was up to the exertion of taking a bath. In the heat which now enveloped me, I could smell the scent which I had put on earlier that evening. It was only my desire to remove it that made me get up and follow Nancy into the bathroom.

She had put out a clean towel for me and a clean nightgown. She had unwrapped a new cake of green soap and put the bathmat on the floor. She waited while I took off my discredited and dirty clothes, and then went away with them. What she did with them I do not know. I never saw them again after that night.

I lay in the water, the kindest of all the elements, the one that welcomes and soothes and cradles you and from which it is difficult to break free. I floated, without thought or memory, only aware that something had happened. That was what my mind kept saying: something has happened. The details escaped me, although I knew that they were all stored somewhere, and could, at some future date, be retrieved, intact. It would be my wearisome task to retrieve them with gusto, to make my
readers smile wryly at the accuracy of my detail. No mercy given, none received. And the purpose of it all distinctly questionable. Perhaps to lighten the burden of things left unsaid. For those who put pen to paper do so because they rarely trust their own voices, and, indeed, in society, have very little to say. They are, as I now knew, the least entertaining of guests.

I looked at myself in the long glass, wiping the steam away with the corner of the towel. I saw a slight and almost childish person, with fixed and fearful eyes. Briefly, I even smiled. I congratulated myself on never looking like this when anyone was near; normally, I know, I look rather disdainful. When I was younger, my Aunt Julia had once taken me on one side and told me that I would make myself unpopular unless I took that expression off my face. I had done so then, but lately, very lately, I had found it useful again.

I put on the nightgown, a white nightgown with long sleeves that I did not immediately recognize. This puzzled me, for I am rather particular about my clothes. This, as far as I could judge, had never been worn, for it had long vertical creases in it and smelt of new cotton. It was a pretty garment, with a round neck, and fullness falling from a yoke. I looked rather well in it. But its strangeness puzzled me, and I found myself standing in the middle of the bathroom, wondering where Nancy had found it. Then it came to me. It was one of the nightgowns I had bought for my mother. She had said, ‘Far too pretty for me, my darling. You wear it.’ And she had smiled, and folded it up again. But I was rather hurt, although I had not shown it, and I had taken it into her room and put it into the drawer of the dressing table with the glass top and all the photographs stuck underneath it. Nancy, of course, had kept it, as she had kept everything else.

Suddenly I wanted to sleep, and I stumbled to the
door and out into the passage. Nancy emerged from the kitchen, and said, ‘No dressing gown, Miss Fan? What can you be thinking of?’ But I must have looked exhausted, for she took my arm again and guided me. When we reached my door, I made as if to kiss her goodnight, but she said, ‘No, dear, no’, and went on walking, urging me forward with her. I said, ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ She went ahead of me, her step more purposeful now. ‘Nancy,’ I called after her, ‘what is it?’ Then she turned, her expression guileless. ‘You said you wanted a change,’ she said, ‘so I’ve put you in Madam’s room. Such a nice room. I’ve made up the bed.’

So I got into that bed, which seemed very strange after my own. And I looked at the ivory satin curtains, and the white rug in front of the pale tiled fireplace, all rather faded now, but made of such superior materials that they would last for ever. And the idiosyncratic centre light, of wrought iron, sprouting many tiny satin shades, that I begged my mother to allow me to change, but she never would. She always wanted everything to stay the same. And although I had not been in this room for a long time, I had no doubt that her clothes were still hanging in the wardrobe, and her narrow shoes marshalled in their usual impeccable rows.