The Backward Shadow (19 page)

The whole business seemed to be over remarkably quickly; if Dottie hadn't explained that this particular ‘set' was accustomed to driving all over the countryside to attend any function from a house-party to an auction, I would have been amazed that so many sophisticates had found it worthwhile to come so far for so short a time. Abruptly the cohesion
of the clot of colour crowded between the tressels broke up; groups drifted to the door, calling goodbyes; Dottie signalled to me to attend her and I stood at her side smiling and jabbering adieus while the white-jacketed caterers helped the women on with their furs. I now noticed that many of them carried our Dottie-designed carrier-bags, a vivid creation in purple, green and blue with the name of the shop—‘Us and Them'—emblazoned on it. I thought these people must have been buying things, but Dottie later explained it was bad form to take money at openings; she had merely given away a pile of these distinctive bags, each containing a tiny polished straw doll, as a publicity gimmick. She had, however, unobtrusively accepted several very lucrative orders, and all in all was in such a state of elation when the last of the guests had roared away down the high street that we had to forcibly seat her and make her calm down for fear she would twirl herself into a state of collapse, like a victim of the Willies.

We had to assure her repeatedly that it had been a wonderful success, that the chronic vacuity in the eyes of the rich and influential guests had cleared, at least momentarily, releasing gleams of wonder and dawning aesthetic delight at the taste and craft on display, that ‘Us and Them' could scarcely have been better or more truly launched. I was really quite tight by this time and so was she, and soon she was laughing hysterically at my rather overdone sallies of praise, and then gradually the laughter changed and she began to cry.

I thought Henry might have been a bit impatient with this, but half Henry's charm was his unpredictability. He came straight off the table where he was sitting and went over to her, lifting her quite gently and saying, ‘That's enough, now. It's been a busy day. Time to be getting home.' He led her quietly out of the shop, leaving me to turn out the lights and lock up; I lingered a bit to tidy up, and after a few minutes Henry returned alone and threw me Dottie's keys. ‘I'm taking her home in my car,' he said. ‘Could you bring hers?' I said of course, and just as he was going out he paused in the doorway and said indistinctly, without looking at me, ‘And if you can
manage not to hurry …'

‘Henry …'

‘What?'

There was a pause while I tried to think how one says things like that when one is not sure of one's ground or even of one's hearer, and then mumbled gauchely, ‘I could sleep at your place tonight, if you liked.'

He hesitated a moment, and then said in a rough, angry voice—but not as if he were angry with me—‘No. No, don't.' His manner softened apologetically. ‘I want a chat with her, that's all.' Then he went off again; I saw him walking quickly past the bow-window with his funny, short-man's step, a slight spring in the toe as if trying to make himself feel taller. His face was hard and the whole set of his body looked rigid, as if he was holding himself in.

I made my superficial tidying-up into something a bit more elaborate, until everything was ready to open the doors properly the following Monday. The caterers, albeit the best in the West End, had left quite a mess, so it all took time, but I wasn't sure at the end if it'd taken long enough, so as it was still only 9 o'clock I wandered into the only local cinema, of which the box-office had already closed, and watched the last three-quarters of quite a good film for nothing. The champagne had made me light-headed enough to be able to push my unhappy thoughts of Toby right to the back of my mind and sink without trace into the pure escapism of that movie—an hour and a half of total relaxation which couldn't have been equalled (judging by the past two wretched nights I'd passed) even in sleep.

I emerged at a little before 11, feeling almost happy. I walked slowly back to where Dottie had left the car, passing the post office and next to it the darkened bow-window of our shop. I stopped a moment to look up at the façade with its freshly-painted name, in bold clear purple letters outlined in gold. The frontage itself had all been stripped to the wood and varnished. A street-lamp showed me the display on the rostrum inside the window—Dottie had cunningly used a plain white packing-case
with its lining of natural straw, on its side, with goods spilling out of it in well-organised confusion like a practical man's cornucopia. Hanging on a plain board at the back were a craftsman's tools, not new ones, but old and well-used. Swatches and hanks of unbleached wool, straw, bamboo, raffia and cane hung from the ceiling. On a succession of small shelves on one side wall were objects like paint-pots, brushes, a few unbaked crocks, even a small blow-lamp, and finally a glass-blower's pipe, for although there was no hand-blown glass in the shop Dottie had not given up hope of getting some and had put the pipe there for luck. In the window was a hand-written sign.

You will not get plastic objects from
Us
.

Try
Them
.

I personally did not care for this touch, but it was Henry's only personal contribution to the decor and Dottie had allowed it because, I suppose, she knew his history and understood as well as I did why it mattered to him, like a definition of his creed.

I arrived back at the cottage to find everything quiet and a dry note from Henry on the hall table:

‘Have driven Mrs. G. home' (Mrs. Griffiths had been baby-sitting for me, I'd forgotten about her) … ‘you needn't have stayed out so long. H.'

I went upstairs. Dottie was asleep, and so was David. I had never felt so wide awake in my life; sleep would be quite impossible. I made myself a cup of strong coffee, as if on purpose to banish sleep still more decisively. For a long time I sat in the kitchen, not reading or doing anything except sip my coffee and stare into space. My whole body seemed to be trembling with the need for some action, and suddenly I knew what it must be.

I went upstairs again, changed out of the glamour-rags Dottie had picked out for me into a skirt, sweater, warm tights and anorak. Then I went into the spare room and crouched by Dottie's bed.

I had to shake her shoulder to bring her even half way awake.

‘Dottie, listen. I'm going up to London. Can I leave David with you, just for tomorrow? I'll be back tomorrow evening.'

‘Isn't it the middle of the night?'

‘Yes, it's better. Less traffic. Anyway, I must.'

At the door her voice stopped me. ‘Jane—'

‘Yes?'

‘Take John's address.'

‘I won't have time—'

‘You might. Take it, it's on a piece of paper in my bag.' Irritated by the delay, I rummaged about till I found it, and stuck it into my pocket.

A LOT
of other motorists besides myself seemed to have imagined it was easier to drive at night, and it took me the best part of another hour and a bit to get to Hammersmith. I glanced at our house—that's to say, Father's—as I went past; it was dark. I hadn't seen him for months, though we dropped each other notes occasionally. I had a sudden feeling of panic about where I was going, and a craven desire to turn into our drive, get Father out of bed, sit and talk for an hour, and then go to sleep in the room where I spent my not-very-happy and yet now, somehow, strangely attractive, because safe, adolescence. However, the pull was not quite strong enough, and in any case, I thought: ‘It isn't far from Earl's Court—I can always come back—afterwards.'

I drove on.

The Earl's Court Road was quite alive; there were several coffee-bars still open, despite the cold weather. However, the subtle plimsol-line between respectable day-time occupancy of the area and the emergence of disreputable-looking night-denizens had been crossed, and the streets had a strongly sinister atmosphere in which even quite ordinary people took on a faintly lupous appearance and seemed suspect.

I drew up under a lamp-post, near the side-turning which would take me to Toby's street. Now I was so close, I was grimly unsurprised to find that my burning desire to confront him was wavering. What if Whistler were there …? It hardly bore thinking about. This was one occasion when I was quite determined to behave with dignity, and not have any loss of self-control with which to reproach myself later. But to ensure this, and also to gather my courage, I needed a minute to sort myself out. I looked at my watch. It was a quarter past one.

I thought: If I go to Toby's now, it will be patently obvious that I've come to check up on him because of Dottie's report; perhaps he'll even think I've come to catch him out with the
girl, and if he's not sleeping with her he'll have every right to be very angry. After all, it could have been just a casual supper together. On the other hand, if she
is
there, it'll be (my mind went blank at this point. Sober, I couldn't really visualise a scene with Toby in bed with Whistler as its focal point). Better to go by day, when I can easily explain my visit as a simple dropping-in and bring up the subject of Whistler in some more or less natural way. I reviewed my behaviour towards Toby the last time I'd seen him, and remembering clearly only one thing—the look I had thrown at him when he had tried to sit down with a newspaper—I shrivelled in my skin. If he were to plead that look alone as a reason for turning his back on me, I would be totally at a loss for a defence. In any case, what use was it to defend myself? Love lost by one moment's explicit unfairness can't be won back by trying to justify it. My only real hope was that I was wrong; that it was only my guilty conscience telling me that that look had been such a fundamental thing. It deserved to be; but one doesn't always get one's deserts. On the other hand—there was his silence. Two months of it … but I hadn't written either … perhaps he was waiting for a sign from me … perhaps he would be overjoyed to be confronted by me on his doorstep at one in the morning, we would hold each other, talk for a bit, everything would be explained, and then, as naturally as water sinking into thirsty earth, we would go to bed. Once, he had drawn back from making love to me because he was afraid it would bind us together again, give us renewed responsibility for each other. The next time, we had slept together, actually slept in each other's arms, but without making love, due to the comic and annoying physical accident about which I'd told Dottie. But the mere fact of being so close to him must have reminded him, as it did me, that our love was a permanency, only waiting for him to grow and develop enough to take hold of it and accept it fully.
I
was ready—God knows, I'd been ready all the time. I was readier this moment than ever before, and surer; but perhaps that was only because I had had such a fright and really had to face
the fact that I might have lost him altogether. All self-doubts are apt to fly before such an eventuality.

The torment of not knowing almost drove me to change my mind again and go bursting in on Toby that night. I went as far as the house where his studio-flat was. Never having been there, I couldn't be sure which window his was, but as the whole house was in darkness it made little difference. I sat in the car for ten minutes, debating with myself. Several very dubious-looking characters drifted by, every one of them pausing to peer in through the windows, I suppose in the hope of surprising some couple in a pornographic position on the back seat. When they saw it was a lone woman, just sitting there in the dark, several of the men knocked hopefully on the windscreen. I hated this so much that eventually I blew a terrific blast on my horn, which made the latest applicant for my services jump and run.

Eventually a policeman came strolling along, and this, oddly enough, alarmed me more than the lubricious strollers and made up my mind for me. I moved off. Driving away from Earl's Court with a feeling of the deepest misery—Toby so near me, yet unreachable, unmerited, perhaps no longer loving me—I drove aimlessly through the streets for a long time, too wretched even to wonder what to do and where to go. I supposed dimly that I would wind up at Father's, but as it grew later and later I became more disinclined to arrive there and have to wake him up and explain. I thought of going to a hotel, but dismissed the idea—I loathe hotels, especially cheap ones in the middle of the night, not that I've ever had any experience of them, but London altogether at that hour is so sleazy and frightening that I wanted more than anything just to find somebody I knew—somebody kind and undemanding and not too curious—yet who could one disturb at this hour who would not be curious?

Hot on the heels of this question came the answer.

I pulled up once again. I was at Little Venice, and the water of the canal glinted golden from the street lamps; the leaves of the old trees fringing the banks moved with a soft sound
which I could just hear between the intermittent roars of passing cars. It was as nearly peaceful there as one could hope for, and certainly not at all sinister, perhaps because there were no people. I took the bit of paper out of my pocket and opened it in the light from the dashboard. It gave an address in Paddington. I got out my A-to-Z and looked it up. It wasn't more than a few minutes' drive from where I was.

I started the engine up again, rather reluctant to break the relative quiet, but it didn't break it for long because it died almost as soon as I'd choked it into life. I glanced at the petrol gauge, which was silly of me, since it had been pointing to zero ever since I'd inherited the car from Addy. I tried the starter a couple of times without result. Then I pulled my anorak hood over my head and, thanking God there was no rain, abandoned the car and started walking, carrying nothing but my A-to-Z and the bit of paper. I'd even forgotten to bring my wallet.