The Game (20 page)

She thought about her conversation with the priest, and about his letter to Cassandra. Cassandra had, had she ‘only a very tenuous connection with reality’? Well, what sort of
‘glorious’ reality did she inhabit? She remembered the copy of
Nature World
, and the photograph by which she had been, herself, not unpleasantly stirred, and thought she knew something. Oh, Cassandra.

I don’t, she thought, use my imagination enough, and she uses hers too much. Like Wordsworth and Coleridge, one trying to ‘give the charm of novelty to things of every day’, whilst the other – Julia’s memory struggled with a disquisition on the topic she had heard from Cassandra years ago – the other likes ‘persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic’. How did it go on? Something about transferring human interest from our ‘inward nature’ and ‘a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment …’ – ah, yes – ‘that constitutes poetic faith’. We are both too extreme. It’s true what they say about me, I remain on a level of complaining about facts.

There’s a theme for a novel, there, she thought: a novel about the dangers of imbalance between imagination and reality. ‘A very tenuous connection …’ I could do it, I think; it would mean coming to grips with the Game. It would be a way of coming to grips with what’s frightened me, with what I could, but don’t, understand. It would be a real novel, with a real idea behind it, not a complaint. It would be a way of coming to grips with Cassandra, but also of detaching us. It would be a way of seeing her as a separate individual. Knowledge, after all, was love. A lighting up of the other.

She remembered Storrin’s voice. ‘You will have plenty of material for an authentic book about academic life.’ It couldn’t be done of course. Cassandra would see it only as an attack. With all the dignity and imagination she was undoubtedly paranoiac. It would be interesting to explore that, in the novel, too. It was a pity it couldn’t be done. Julia, who had been prepared to flinch from the memory of certain parts of her weekend, sat up suddenly and began deliberately to remember everything, relating one episode to another, one incident symbolically to the next. They were all lit and glittering
parts of a pattern; one took possession and in the same movement detached oneself. Even the humiliations were precious. Such moments of imaginative vision were rare and valuable – knowledge, any knowledge at all, was beautiful, every accident of surface or emotion related, with no effort on her part beyond the simple will to see.

It would be a good novel, because it would not be about herself. It was a pity it couldn’t be done.

Julia smiled.

W
HEN
Julia came into the hall of the flat, the telephone was ringing. She had heard it all the way up the stairs. She put down her suitcase and lifted the receiver. The voice began at once.

‘Mr Eskelund. Mr Eskelund.’ It was a shrill voice, on the edge of tears.

‘This is Mrs Eskelund,’ said Julia. She added ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Well, is he there, then? Can you get him for me? Can you look, please, I’ve got to speak to him.’

‘I’ll look,’ said Julia. ‘I’ve just got in. I think he must be out.’

This was not answered. Julia rested the receiver on the shelf, and went into the flat. She could feel that no one was there. In the living-room was a pile of four large sacks, roped round with twine, and a baby’s bath. In the bedroom the bed had not been made. Deborah’s room had a notice fixed to the door with drawing-pins. ‘Keep Out. At Work. This Means You’. Julia knocked and went in. She ruffled through a pile of papers on Deborah’s desk, and turned over a Letts’ Desk Diary; flicking the pages, she saw they were filled with close tiny writing. She stopped to read the first entry. ‘I have decided to keep a diary to make myself think out what I really feel: I am not going to bother to record events for their own sake, daily happenings that are just as well forgotten. If I did that this diary might be interesting in 50 years, details for historians and novelists. As it is it will certainly appear banal in the extreme. But
I am doing it for myself.
Myself, now, and since I shan’t re-read it I shan’t bother if it’s embarrassing.’

Good stuff, Julia thought, and remembered the telephone.

‘Are you there? He doesn’t seem to be here.’

‘Where is he then? Can you get hold of him?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve just got in.’

‘I need to speak to him. When will he come home?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Soon or late?’

‘I —’

‘It’s
very
urgent.’

‘Can I take a message?’

‘No, no. I’ll just ring later, that’s best.’

‘Or can I do anything to help?’

‘I’ll just ring later, thank you.’

‘I’ll tell him you called.’

‘No, don’t do that, I’ll ring later, that’s best.’

‘Can’t you —’ Julia began, but the caller had rung off. Julia, slightly unnerved, went back into the living-room and surveyed the alien sacks. The baby’s bath was well worn, the plastic scratched and scored, the whole slightly grey. She kicked the sacks gently with one pointed foot. They yielded: cloth, of some kind.

She took off her coat and hat, feeling let down by her family’s absence, and was heading for Deborah’s room again when the front door bell rang. At the same time the telephone pealed again. Julia opened the door, beckoned vaguely to the man on the doorstep to come in and ran to the telephone.

‘Hullo, Julia Eskelund speaking.’

‘Is Mr Eskelund there?’

Julia could not tell whether this was the same voice.

‘No. I don’t know where he is.’

‘Oh, God,’ wildly. And then, more belligerently ‘I can’t understand it.’

‘Can I take a message?’ Julia said, but the connection was broken.

Behind her a man in a duffel coat was carrying a pile of blankets across the hall, and a woman in tartan stockings and a young man with sparse curls and a dandruff-spattered olive-green sweater were carrying a cot, a potty, and part of a high chair into her living-room. She followed them nervously.

‘Hullo,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’m Julia Eskelund.’

‘Bill Terry,’ said the man. He had a double chin and was moist with effort. He breathed heavily and volunteered no more. Julia turned to the others.

‘Lorna Terry. And Douglas,’ the woman said, brushing her hands together. ‘Where do you want the cots, Mrs Eskelund?’

‘I don’t know.… My husband.… I don’t know where my husband is.…’

She could not bring herself to ask their business; they were sufficiently clearly something to do with Thor.

‘I’ll just get the mattresses,’ said Bill. Julia began to push pieces of her own furniture ineffectively against the wall, to make room for what might still come. The thought crossed her mind that the flat had simply become a collecting depot for Oxfam. She did not, somehow, want to test this hypothesis by asking.

‘Can I make you some coffee?’ she said to Lorna Terry, who was screwing two sides of a cot together, just inside the kitchen door. The telephone rang.

‘There’s a woman keeps ringing up and frightening me,’ she said to Lorna, confidingly. Lorna smiled briefly through the bars of the cot. The boy, Douglas, was for some reason undoing one of the sacking bales. This made her apprehensive. She went out to answer the telephone.

‘Please,’ she said, ‘please, will you …’

‘Ah, Ju. Ivan here.’

‘
Darling
,’ said Julia. ‘Darling, I’m in such chaos.’

‘As always, my beautiful. What is it this time?’ Julia lowered her voice and cupped her hand over the phone. ‘I don’t exactly know.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Oh, forget it, I’ll tell you later.’

‘You do sound distraught. How did your exorcism go?’

‘It wasn’t an exorcism. It was a visit.’

‘I adore you. You don’t sound as though it’s done you much good. Shall I come round?’

‘Not at the moment. There’s such chaos.’

‘Can’t I come and help?’

‘Well, not exactly,’ said Julia. ‘Though of course I’d love you to help me with anything
at all
, darling, but this isn’t exactly your cup of tea. It’s something I expect I’ll understand in a minute or two. It’s a – a sort of
invasion.’

Bill Terry humped a double mattress round the front door, rested it against the hall chest, and went in search of his wife, breathing even more heavily.

‘I don’t understand my life any more,’ Julia said. ‘It doesn’t make sense. I need help. I do rely on you to sort me out, darling.’

During this speech, Thor came in through the front door and went across the hall.

‘Well, can I come round and protect you?’

‘No – love – no, not just now.’

‘You do sound flapped.’

‘I am, I am. I’ve got to see you.’

‘And there was I thinking you’d come back a new woman. Come and have some supper and tell all.’

‘I’d love to.’

‘I’ll ring you. Hey, Ju —’

‘Yes?’

‘Keep sane. Go and write it all down.’

Julia rang off. She followed her husband into the room; he was kneeling on the other side of Lorna Terry’s cot, helping to screw it together. Douglas’s sack was undone, and he was spreading clothing, all sexes and sizes, across the carpet in a bewildered but purposeful way.

‘Well, I’m back,’ said Julia.

‘So I see.’ He stood up, and came to embrace her.

‘I’ve got a lot to tell you. I’ve done an age of thinking …’

‘I shall be glad to hear it,’ he said, courteously.

The telephone rang again.

‘Where’s Debbie?’ said Julia, and then, ‘Thor, there’s a fearful woman …’

‘Excuse me, the telephone,’ he said, and went out, closing the door behind him.

Julia thought she should help Douglas.

‘What principle do you sort by?’ she asked.

‘Men’s here, women’s there, anything suitable for the babies in this corner, things you can’t mend in that chair. Do you think you could put fly-buttons on this suit? It’s a funny colour, but it’s in good repair, apart from fly-buttons.’

‘I’ll see what I’ve got,’ said Julia, associating herself firmly with the enterprise, whatever it was. Douglas smiled at her gratefully, and she felt better – accepted, occupied. Thor came back. He said, ‘Will you have tea, Bill, Lorna?’

‘I’ll make tea,’ Julia cried.

‘That would be kind,’ he said, gravely. Julia hung the suit, a grass-green and yellow tweed mixture, over a chair, and eased herself round the cot into the kitchen. Thor began to construct a second cot. He was humming to himself. He looked mild; Julia wondered why he had not told her what was happening.

As she laid out cups and saucers Julia studied the visitors with a quickened interest. Bill had rounded soft fingers; and words could be found for the ballooning smoothness of his intermediate chin; the skin had a kind of gloss and yet was not shiny; it was just taut enough to have a bloom, but not as the word bloom was normally understood. He was in need of buttons himself and had trails of thread caught unnoticed on the texture of his jacket and flannels. Julia put him down as a soft man; kind, a slow thinker. Lorna had false teeth, clearly; they had a glistening plastic completeness, no green, yellow, brown or chipped edges. This, Julia decided, was what gave her her air of artificiality – combined with the curls and red lipstick. Her clothes were all right, but typed her: grey pleated skirt, cable-stitch sweater, brogue shoes. Doubtless she wore, outdoors, a woollen cap with a tassel. Douglas had clammy hands and wrinkled socks. Julia decided that he either played a wind instrument in an amateur orchestra, or wrote bad poetry. It was in his face that he was a permanently hopeless intellectual. His curls at his temples were greasy. Julia decided that he had probably been imprisoned for his principles, and then that he might just have joined the ambulance unit. She
poured out boiling water cheerfully and called to Thor, ‘Darling, where’s Debbie?’

‘I don’t know.’

Julia lifted the tea-tray and began to edge back round the cot. The door bell rang, very long, and Julia’s tray tipped so that tea spouted out and swirled amongst the saucers.

‘That will be the Bakers,’ said Bill.

‘I’ll go,’ said Douglas.

‘No,’ said Thor. ‘I will.’

‘Who …?’ said Julia. ‘Milk, sugar?’ she said to Lorna who did not answer.

Thor came back. He was followed by a tall man in a soft, grey woolly pork-pie hat and donkey jacket, a woman in a long blue felt coat with torn buttonholes, and two small children. Julia remembered nothing about children, but both of these were still at the short fat age and one had trailing scallops of wet nappy below her skirt. The woman carried a baby. The man was clearly largely Negro, with a kind of drained, dark yellow face; his wife was white, and the children had dark curls, large brown eyes, and, under dirt and stickiness, skins of a delicate gold like easter eggs boiled with onion skin. They stared flatly at Julia, who stared back. The smaller child put its thumb in its mouth and rubbed its nose reflectively with a forefinger.

‘Sit down,’ said Thor. ‘There is tea, for all.’

‘May I take your coats?’ said Julia. Thor looked up at her with a sharp curiosity. What
does
he expect of me, Julia asked herself. The Bakers, in the doorway shifted from uneasy foot to uneasy foot.

‘This is Fred Baker,’ said Thor. ‘And Edna. And here are Trevor and Rose, and the baby is Dawn.’ He’s learned them efficiently, Julia thought, who knew her husband to be bad at names. Thor said to Mrs Baker, ‘We aren’t so far ahead as we’d hoped, but I think you’ll find we have everything we need. We’ve got bedding – and a few clothes.’

‘We brought our own things,’ said Mrs Baker, flatly. ‘Out in the hall, they are.’ She looked at Douglas’s work. ‘We’ve
got clothes,’ she said. She sat down on the edge of a chair and motioned to the children to stand nearer. Mr Baker took off his hat and held it submissively in front of him. His eyes were yellowed and bloodshot. It seemed to Julia now, likely that Thor meant to house these people; she wondered how long. They had had African and Indian students on the living-room couch for the week, or the night, and two pale Hungarian youths immediately after the Revolution, hungry crosses between gangsters and students of the kind England seemed not to produce. She looked again at her husband, and then asked brightly of the room at large,