The Game (21 page)

‘Well, what’s the next move?’

Thor looked up at her and wrinkled his face – surprised, displeased? – and kept silence. Lorna Terry said warmly:

‘How much space have you got? This is
very
kind of you, Mrs Eskelund.
Really
generous …’

‘Very kind, I’m sure,’ said the colourless voice of Edna Baker behind her. Fred Baker, who had not sat down, coughed.

Thor, not looking at Julia, said, ‘I thought Mr and Mrs Baker could have the spare room. With the baby. And we can clear out my study for Trevor and Rosie. We can share the living-room and kitchen.’

Julia winced momentarily, then gathered herself.

‘Excellent,’ she said. ‘We’ll start on the study.’ Mrs Baker said, defensively, ‘It’s only until Fred’s got a job and we’ve got a place.’

Julia spun round. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Of course. Now,
please
think yourselves welcome. We’ll have everything fixed in a jiffy. And I’ll show you the kitchen. And the children can have a bath …’

Thor looked at her, and smiled briefly. The telephone rang again and he went out into the hall. Julia motioned to Lorna Terry to take the other end of the cot, and they began to carry it through into the study. Thor came back again, pale, and strained-looking.

‘I find I have to go out,’ he said.

Julia looked at him through the gathering and smiled, warmly, generously.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll manage. I’ll arrange everything, by the time you get back everything’ll be quite tidy.’

Thor looked at her heavily. Julia thought: he would find it easier if I’d been furious. Or hysterical. And then; well, I won’t be. She went on smiling. Thor put on his coat.

Next week, Julia had supper with Ivan in his flat. They sat, youthfully cross-legged, one on each side of the hearth, eating avocado pears with teaspoons. Between them was a large bowl of savoury rice on an electric hot-plate. Ivan’s flat was black and white leather, tiling, stainless steel, purple glass lights. His wife, Merle, who was an actress, was working. Ivan himself was a small, round, dimpled man, with a wispy skullcap of rather Chinese black hair, and slightly sloping eyes. He had a surprisingly deep voice.

‘So what happened then, my angel?’

‘So then I took charge, in a rather awful way, and we put up beds – the boy, Trevor, had the spare bed, and they had the mattress, and —’

‘Spare me the domestic catalogue. I see it exercised your mind.’

‘So then I
bathed
the children, darling, one of them peed in the bath. Then we all had supper – I cooked it – and then the older Terrys started giving clothes to the Bakers, and that Douglas and I did the washing-up, and he told me all. I liked Douglas,’ said Julia, reflectively, meaning that Douglas had liked her. Ivan’s soft lashes flickered and he grinned.

‘What was
all
?’

‘Well, they’re London’s homeless poor, and he’s been in prison three times – once for breaking and entering, twice for malicious wounding, and the kids are bed-wetters and they don’t want the family split. I don’t know where Thor got them from – he’s got on the committees of more and more of these Samaritan agencies – but anyway he apparently brought them to Meeting, and then stood up and talked for forty-five minutes about how we avoided the sufferings of others and
paid out our cash so as not to have our lives invaded and how everyone had been romantically stirred by the Hungarian Revolution and had housed refugees, but no one thought to house those in need now, and that we had a duty to involve our lives in others’ sufferings and most Friends, he guessed, had no moral right to the amount of space they occupied. If he’d been anyone else, he’d have been eldered after fifteen minutes. As it was, I guess from what I got out of Douglas by encouraging him with bits of jokes and things, that he thoroughly annoyed all the worthy Friends and hurt the Bakers’ pride by talking about the bed-wetting, etcetera, in
front
of them.’ She paused, reflectively. ‘You know, the thing about Christ and St Francis and all those – even St Paul, whom I
hate
, Ivan, for his censoriousness – the thing was, they stirred people up, they appealed to their imaginations, they involved people in things. I know Thor; I’ve heard him speak. He thinks he can overcome people with flat facts and moral imperatives. He mumbles, too, and looks embarrassed. So that they feel a bit guilty, and a bit repelled by him, but not co-operative. So the upshot was, nobody offered, so Thor said he’d house them. But Friends feel guilty enough to be bombarding us with all their unwanted clothes, and blankets, and saucepans, and home-baked cakes and useful pieces of chintz. And we have to bundle it all up and take it round to Oxfam in vans, except what Mrs Baker thinks she might like for when they
do
get a place of their own. So I said, do make yourselves at home, and they have, for which I suppose I ought to be grateful. Only the bloody telephone never stops ringing now – I think it’s not only
one
woman, it’s about four, and so – so –
determined.
I think Thor’s decided he’s got to
live
his charity. And he’s bad at it, and it involves us all.’

Ivan began to laugh.

‘No, don’t laugh. It’s not funny. It’s such a little flat, that’s why I liked it.
They
think it’s little, too, they keep telling me.

The bathroom’s full of drying-out sheets and nappies. Thor says I ought not to have scrubbed the children’s heads, it takes away their dignity.’

Ivan laughed again. He laughed with his mouth closed, and twirled one foot, gracefully, in a black suède shoe and a purple sock.

‘It’s a judgement, Ju. He wants to drive you out. He wants to leave no room for you.’

‘No, it’s not that. I’ve thought of that. I’d know if it was that, I’m not
that
imperceptive. No, he really
is
involved in doing good. He’s right in a way. If you start from first principles there
is
a sense in which we’ve no right to a flat, when people are being segregated into single-sex dormitories.’

‘A rather remote, obscure sense, love, when you think of the complexity of modern justice.’

‘He says justice should be simpler. I admire him.’

‘And they? These people?’

‘Well – he runs them. He says they
must
get a job. He’s always on about their dignity and self-respect. And they take that, but not the way he means it. They treat him as a master. They lie to him. About – oh – minor things, breakages, telephone calls. He knows they do, he doesn’t exactly mind. He’s a bit clumsy – he respects them at the wrong times and then tightens up when he ought to be a bit blind.’

‘Which
you
don’t?’

‘Oh, they love me. They don’t like him, but they love me. Mrs Baker follows me from room to room like a large floppy dog peering through all her hair and telling me her life. I know a lot about her life. She’s had two dead children and Mr Baker beats her. She used to work in a hotel stripping beds – you wouldn’t
believe
what she saw. He was on the lift, a bit, and got sacked and took her with him. Everything she’s done, she apologizes to me for. In a defiant sort of way.
Everything.
“I’m sorry to say —” she begins each sentence, and “if you don’t mind” she ends it. And she has to
talk.
If I sit down to write she appears with some question about how to work the automatic potato peeler – she’s broken that – and how to hang lace curtains the Terrys brought to stop the neighbours looking in at the bedroom. I
abominate
lace curtains. And – and she regularly uses my loofah and leaves black hairs
twisted in it and god knows what else of my things when they’re all in the bathroom.’

‘Eat your rice, Ju, it’ll go cold.’

‘She makes things nice for me with little plastic mats —’

‘
Darling.’

‘Oh, I listen, I listen, I’m not made that I can say go away. I say “it must have been dreadful”. She hates everyone so for what she thinks they’ve “done” to her. And she expects nothing different, ever.’

‘Well, you can write a domestic novel to end all domestic novels, amongst the suds and nappies.’

‘That’s what Debbie said. Debbie’s furious. She locks herself in her room and won’t come out except for meals unless he’s in. She said to me’ – Julia laughed nervously, because this had hurt – ‘she said, “Well at least you’ve got some real difficulties to write a real book about, for a change.” ’

‘Acute child. I don’t like your daughter.’ Julia, who was accustomed so to present Deborah that no one could like her was perversely hurt. And Ivan had not contradicted the judgement on the novels.

‘She’s just an awkward age. I wish she’d got a boy-friend.’

‘Wouldn’t let
you
have knowledge of it if she had, my beautiful.’ Ivan showed all his small teeth in a white grin and began to scoop rice into his mouth with chopsticks. ‘So all you can do is take voluminous notes on the tribulations of Mrs Baker.’

‘
No
,’ Julia wailed. ‘I can’t do it. Because her life was
really
awful, and I’d make her into a kind of wistful-comic charlady. Thor’d be furious with me and he’d be quite right.’

‘Never mind. It can’t last. Something ghastly’s bound to happen, and then, my sweet, it will all be over.’

Julia persisted. ‘I just can’t settle to any work, I feel all uprooted, everything I do seems meaningless. I can’t even – talk to Thor in bed – or anywhere – because They are always drifting by and I remember Mrs B Seeing Everything, in her hotel.

‘And I meant to try and write a
real
book – a complicated
book – not about myself – and I haven’t got time or space to concentrate.’

Ivan laughed. ‘You all come to that. It’s a mistake. You’re a perfectly normal, fairly simple-minded, not unduly intelligent woman, and you write clever, circumscribed, pin-pricking little books, and you have this itch to be a prophetess, or a great sufferer. I’ve been wanting to say for a long time – come off it, Julia.’

‘I’m sorry you see it that way.’

‘You’re silly. You’re perfectly nice as you are.’ Ivan rolled boyishly over on the hearth-rug and gripped her ankle, grinding the bones. Julia allowed this. Ivan caressed her leg for a few moments in silence. Julia sat, her legs together, straight out in front of her. Ivan ran his hand up her leg, under her skirt, and caressed her thigh. Julia said, not commenting on his activities, ‘I don’t suppose old Baker will ever get a job. Thor drives him off looking for them, in vans. But there’s so much he won’t do because of this dignity Thor’s so keen on.…’

‘Shut up,’ said Ivan. He sat up abruptly and pushed Julia over on to her back, where she lay, staring rather pathetically at him.

‘And don’t look at me has it come to this, because this is where it’s always been coming and you know it. You are the most provocative woman I’ve ever met. At a second meeting you offer no less than everything. And I want you horribly. So be honest, my love, enjoy yourself.’

‘Don’t mock,’ said Julia. Her mind was tick-tacking over various uncomfortable calculations. She drew her legs fractionally closer together.

‘I’m not mocking. I’m perfectly serious. I’m even laying myself open to appearing as the selfish lover in one of your books. Love could go no further. Julia,’ he said, shifting closer and peering down at her with jetty eyes, ‘I can’t find any other way to speak to you. Don’t be put off.’ He put out his finger, with a real or assumed timidity, and drew it across her lips. Julia was touched by this; she was always ready to be touched.

‘Anyway, where’s Merle? This sort of thing is so
messy
, Ivan. It spoils things.’

‘You’ve no guts.’

‘Yes I have. But I
am
a sort of prude. I like friendship, not passion. Now, my sister has a positively Byronic hunger for passion and doesn’t get much chance to practise. But it’s not my line.’

‘And for that momentary malice you deserve no quarter. Defend yourself, my darling.’

Julia was no good at self-defence when it came to a direct attack, and opened her legs pliably enough when they were pushed. She was not easy to stir, and had been, ever since Simon’s first attempt to kiss her, neurotically afraid of being watched; she was unable, although she knew it to be impolite, to resist twisting her head from side to side to see whether the room had suddenly become inhabited. Afterwards, she felt hot and sticky, and, as Ivan handed back to her those of her clothes he had removed, a sense of temporary respite. It meant, at least, that she was able to lean peaceably against Ivan’s small male warmth on the sofa, since she didn’t need to fear provoking someone who had already been provoked.

‘You’re not really cross?’ he said.

‘Oh, no. No.’

There was a silence.

‘Did you know that your friend Simon Moffitt was in difficulties? Lost his cameraman to a crocodile, or something. They’ve got a stock of films but then that’s going to be the end of them for the time being, apparently.’

Julia thought of Simon, and the strained delicacy of his love-making and felt wistful. She should have been more abandoned. She thought of his knobby face, and his nervousness, and his meddling.

‘Poor Si.’

‘What was he like?’

‘I hardly remember. I don’t know if I ever knew. I loved him.’

‘Good for him,’ said Ivan. Merle came in, bundled in a white raincoat, smiling.

‘You two look comfortable,’ she said.

‘I’ll make us all some coffee,’ said Ivan, kissing Julia and standing up. He said to his wife, ‘We were talking about Simon Moffitt. Julia’s got this
thing
about Moffitt. A real girlhood passion. One can just see
why
, can’t one?’

‘Not very salubrious,’ said Merle. ‘I mean, the sort of thing he does, the sort of place he does it in. It gives me the creeps, honestly, darling.’

Next day Julia left the flat early in the morning, carrying a brief-case and several note-books. She walked several times round Russell Square, past the gaudy tea-kiosk, past the fountains, granite griddle-cakes with single tubes of water suspended thinly above them. In the night she had slid one hand over Thor’s huge rib-cage in tentative invitation; he had not responded. Outside, a child was coughing and she could hear Mrs Baker padding across the carpet. With her privacy she was losing her sense of identity. Thor excluded her and Ivan’s grab, neatly defining her as a sexual object, diminished and humiliated her. He had said she was provocative; so she was, she needed to prove she was there to be seen; but the proof always, contradictorily, drove her to further uncertain agony of guilt and self-distaste.