The Breaking Point (32 page)

‘Not our dollars,’ said Alf. ‘G.E. paid for this outing.’

They drove Barry back home, got him changed and into evening clothes, and took him along to the Silver Slipper to dine. Alf had arranged for the three loveliest girls on tap to G.E. to come and join them at the table. Bim had a grand time, and so did Pat, and Ken and Bob made good weather with the little Japanese beauty who had only arrived in Hollywood that morning, but it was no go. Barry kept complaining that they did not give him porridge to eat, and he was going to call up May and see if she could fix something.

‘OK. Go ahead and call her up,’ said Alf.

He was fed up to the teeth. It was nearly midnight. The girls had done no good. The Jamaican wrestlers had done no good. The acrobats from Korea who had raised a sparkle in the dim, dead eyes of poor old wasted Harry Fitch, after he had tried every mortal thing under the sun and had dragged round the world for years, had done no good. It was zero hour. The boys had reached their limit.

‘Tomorrow,’ said Alf, when Barry had gone to call up May, ‘all of us sitting round this table are going to be out of a job.’

Meanwhile Barry had got one of the waiters to show him a call-box and lend him a dollar, and he waited in the box for the call to come through. The call-box was just opposite the ladies’ powder room, and the attendant was standing in the doorway knitting. The clients were all in the restaurant and it was not her busy time. She gave a sort of half-smile when she saw Barry, and went on with her knitting. She was plump and middle-aged, and her hair was grey in the old-fashioned manner except for a purple streak down the middle. Barry did not notice her. His call came through and he spoke to May.

‘That you, dear?’ he said. ‘I can’t hear you very well.’

‘I’ve got my chin strapped,’ she said. ‘I’m having treatment. How are you, honey?’

‘I’m great,’ he said, ‘just great.’

‘Where are you speaking from? Are the boys with you?’ she asked.

‘We’re in some night-club,’ he told her. ‘We’re quite a crowd.’

‘How do you mean, quite a crowd? Who’s there?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know their names, dear,’ he said. ‘There’s a Japanese girl just off the plane, and an acrobat and his sister, and two darkies from Jamaica . . .’ and then the line went funny and he could not make himself heard, though he could hear May’s voice clearly enough. She kept saying, ‘What are you all doing?’ in a strange, agitated sort of way. He reckoned it must be the strap under her chin that prevented her from speaking properly. Then the line cleared.

‘We’re doing fine,’ he said. ‘There’s just one thing wrong.They will keep feeding me steaks, and I want porridge.’

Silence from May. Perhaps she was thinking out some way to help.

‘Do you go to work tomorrow?’ she said at last.

‘I think so, dear. I don’t know.’

‘What did you do all day?’

‘We spent all day on Poncho beach.’

‘On Poncho beach . . . ?’ May’s voice sounded as if someone was trying to strangle her.

‘Take that strap off your chin, dear,’ he told her. ‘I can’t hear a damn thing.’

He must have irritated May in some way, because it sounded as if she was telling him to go back and eat his bloody steak, which was rather unkind of her. And she was saying something also about the best years of her life, and how much she loved him, and did the whole thing have to smash because of his career, and what happened on Poncho beach?

‘Don’t fuss, dear,’ he said. ‘I didn’t go out of my depth. The boys got stomach trouble, but I was fine. Just fine.’

Then the line went completely dead, and the operator told him the other party had hung up. It was too bad. The treatment at the Club could not be suiting May. Barry came out of the call-box.

He saw the attendant in front of the powder room smiling at him and her lips open as if to speak. He felt in his top pocket for his pen. The boys made him keep a pen handy for autographs. When anyone smiled at him it always meant they wanted his autograph. He slipped the cap off the pen and waited. But the woman did not produce a book or the back of a menu-card. Barry waited.

‘Where do you want me to write it?’ he said at last.

‘Write what?’ asked the woman.

‘My autograph,’ said Barry.

‘I haven’t asked you for your autograph,’ replied the woman.

‘Oh,’ said Barry, ‘I beg your pardon.’

He put the cap back on the pen and replaced it in his pocket.

‘You haven’t changed much,’ said the woman.

Barry scratched the back of his head. It was a reflex gesture taught him by the boys long ago as the stock answer to a fan’s compliment. The compliment never required an answer.

‘Remember Windy Gap?’ pursued the woman.

Barry stared. Windy Gap . . . Funny thing, he had thought about Windy Gap only that afternoon. It was when he was coming in from his second swim, and was splashing in the shallows and trod on a small shell, and the feeling of the shell under his foot took him back to the beach at Herne Bay and the spot near the breakwater where he used to dump his clothes. There was a hole in the breakwater where the wind from the east caught him undressing, and he used to hurry on with his bathing-drawers so as not to catch a chill.There could not be anyone in the world who remembered the name Windy Gap except himself . . . and . . . Barry stared a little harder at the woman, and then everything seemed to fall away and he was seventeen again, and thin and long, shivering in a pair of navy blue bathing-shorts, and Pinkie Brown was giggling beside him in a cotton frock and jabbing at his bare toes with a shrimping-net.

‘Go on,’ said Pinkie, ‘go on, dive.’

‘I don’t like getting my head under water,’ said Barry.

Then she pushed him over the breakwater, and he had never forgotten the awful feeling of the swirling water, and the singing in his ears, and the choking, spluttering gasp for breath. He had thrashed out wildly with both arms and struggled ashore, and there was Pinkie running up the breakwater to get out of his way. He started in pursuit, and tripped and fell, knocking his forehead on an old stump full of barnacles, and his forehead began to bleed. He shouted,‘Pinkie . . . Hi, Pinkie, come back!’

She looked over her shoulder and saw him standing there, shivering, trying to staunch the blood with his clumsy fingers, and she came running back, pulling her own handkerchief out of her knickers.

‘Here, take this,’ she said scornfully, and then, because it would not stop bleeding, bound the handkerchief round his head and stood there holding it. When it was safe to take the handkerchief away they climbed down to the beach and sat on Barry’s clothes by Windy Gap, and Barry put his vest over his shoulders to keep out the draught, and then he kissed Pinkie until she got fed up and pushed him away, after which they both sat eating Herne Bay rock. Even now he could feel the crunch of it.

The powder-room attendant was smiling at him, and for the first time in over thirty years Barry Jeans was aware of a tremor in his cheek, some sort of slackening of the muscle-line of his jaw.

‘Yes,’ said the woman, ‘it’s Pinkie Brown all right.’

If the press had been around at that moment they would have seen an expression on the Menace’s face that none of the fans had ever seen. It might be called emotion. Or, in modern speech, a double-take.

‘Gosh!’ said Barry. ‘Gosh! I’m glad to see you, Pinkie.’

He put out his hand, and the woman tucked her knitting under her arm and shook it.

‘I’m glad to see you too, Barry,’ she said.

He looked about him, trying to take it all in, and then he said to her, ‘You must come and join us. We have a table here.’

The woman shook her head.

‘I can’t do that,’ she answered. ‘I can’t leave here until closing-time. That won’t be until about three a.m.’

Barry stared at the notice above the door - Powder Room - and saw the dressing-tables inside the room and the long mirrors.

‘You work here, Pinkie?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘I’ve had this job ever since it opened. It suits me a treat. Now my kids are grown-up and married it gets dull at home.’

She had started knitting again. Something white and loose. He put out his hand and touched it.

‘You did a scarf for me once,’ he said, ‘that time I got the flu. It was white too, and had little dancing dogs in crimson in the front.’

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘What a memory you’ve got. This is going to be a shawl for my next grandchild. I’ve got two already.’

Barry thought a moment, then looked at his watch.

‘I wish you didn’t have to work,’ he said. ‘I wish we could just sit and talk.’

The powder-room attendant looked doubtful.

‘Haven’t you a party on in there?’ she asked, nodding her head towards the restaurant.

‘Yes,’ said Barry,‘but nothing important. Just the boys and some of their friends. We don’t have to worry about them.’

The woman gave a quick look up and down. Then she beckoned Barry inside the powder room.

‘There’s a little place in here behind the cloaks,’ she said, and drew him swiftly into a recess that led from the hanging-space where the women left their wraps while they were in the restaurant. ‘It’s only a cubby-hole,’ she went on, ‘but there’s a stool to sit on and no one can see you. Look . . .’ and she drew a curtain so that it hid the recess. It was a bit stuffy with the curtain drawn, but Barry did not mind that, and he saw she had an electric kettle fixed to a point in the wall. There was a cup and saucer there.

‘Like some tea?’ she asked.

‘I’d rather have hot milk,’ said Barry.

‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’ve got some milk in the cupboard. I’ll heat it for you in the kettle.’

She peeped out of the recess to see if the coast was still clear. ‘They won’t be in yet,’ she said. ‘It’s generally around one when they begin to come along. I’ll have to pop in and out then, but we can talk in between-times. Sit down and make yourself at home.’

Barry sat down on the stool and leant his head against the wall. His long legs were rather cramped, but he could not stretch them out because they would reach under the curtain, and then the girls would see them when they came into the powder room.

‘You been out here long, Pinkie?’ he asked.

‘Twenty years,’ she said. ‘I won a beauty prize home at Herne Bay, and the prize was a film-test in Hollywood. I had the test but it wasn’t any good, so I got married instead, and I’ve been out here ever since. My poor husband died of ulcers two years ago, but I’ve three lovely daughters, and a boy in Canada.’

‘You’re lucky, Pinkie,’ said Barry. ‘May and I have no family.’

‘No, I’m sorry about that,’ she said. ‘I always think having a family keeps you young.’

She had heated the milk by now and was pouring it into the cup.

‘Remember the prawns at Herne Bay, Pinkie?’ he said.

‘I should think I do,’ she said, ‘and the way they wriggled in the net. I was better at catching them than you were.You wouldn’t go in the deeper pools because of the crabs.’

‘I got caught by a crab once,’ he said.‘The horrid brute tweaked my toe. Got any sugar, Pinkie? I like my milk sweet.’

‘Here you are,’ she said, and she dropped in three lumps.

‘I’ll say one thing for this country,’ she went on. ‘You can eat well. But the cost of living is awful high.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s the taxes. The taxes kill me. Do you have to pay a lot in tax too?’

‘Not too bad,’ she said. ‘I seem to get by. I have quite a nice apartment. Everything labour-saving.’

‘Our house is labour-saving too,’ he told her, ‘and the view’s good from the terrace. That was a nice place you had at Herne Bay, Pinkie. Leonard Terrace, wasn’t it, the last house?’

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Poor old Dad, he’s been gone a long time. He didn’t half tell you off that time you came to supper and spilt the soup. “Don’t parson’s sons learn manners?” he said. He was surprised when you did well. But I don’t think he ever saw one of your pictures. Pity, really.’

‘Do you see my pictures?’ he asked.

‘I used to,’ she said. ‘Not lately, though. They seem to have gone off. The last one was such a silly story. But the girl was good.’

She poked her head through the curtains and motioned him to silence.

‘Someone coming,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to go through. Finish up your milk. It hasn’t turned, has it? There’s no ice-box here.’

‘No, it’s great,’ he said, ‘just great.’

She went into the powder room, and the girl who came in asked for safety-pins to fix her slip. Barry hoped the girl would not stay long. He wanted to go on talking to Pinkie. He remembered the time they had gone walking along the cliff and it had come on to thunder, and they had had an argument as to whether to shelter under a bush or run for it. He had warned Pinkie it was dangerous to go near trees in a thunderstorm because of the likelihood of being struck by lightning. She said that if they did not shelter he must give her his coat to put over her head.

‘But I’m only wearing an aertex shirt,’ he pointed out. ‘I’ll get soaked to the skin.’

Finally they had compromised and shared the coat, and Pinkie kept telling him as they stumbled along the cliff that he was pulling it all his side.

Barry peeped through a slit in the curtain to see if the girl had left the powder room, but she had been joined by another, who was making up in front of the mirror. She had spilt her compact in the wash-basin, and Pinkie was wiping the basin with a cloth. Presently the girls went off, leaving twenty-five cents in the tray on the dressing-table.

Pinkie left it lying there, and Barry wondered why she did not put it for safety in her bag. She said it looked better that way. It showed clients they were meant to tip. If the tray was empty nobody bothered to put anything in.

‘How much do you pick up of an evening, Pinkie?’ he asked.