The Game (27 page)

‘I haven’t, of course, read your books,’ said Simon’s neutral voice, with a finality that suggested somehow that he never would. With these small hardnesses he had held her once. When he said nothing else, she told him ‘The reason I didn’t offer to take you home is that my flat is full of dependants so you can’t hear yourself talk.’

‘How much family have you?’

‘A husband and a daughter. She’s fifteen. And a lot of people brought in off the streets. I married a sort of saint.’

‘Like your father.’

‘A bit like. Not altogether.’

The memory of Simon’s wistful affection for her father brought back other memories. To suppress these she began to give him an account of the Bakers’ misdeeds, deliberately laying herself out to entertain. Simon laughed once or twice and crossed and uncrossed his legs.

They got out of the taxi on the Embankment. Simon, paying the driver, dropped a handful of half-crowns and florins which rang on the pavement and glittered in the gutter. They both bent down and their heads knocked lightly together; she put out a hand and steadied herself against his shoulder. This contact affected her; she was aware of the bulk of Simon’s body under the raincoat and was momentarily silly with a need to touch him. She wanted to slide both hands inside the coat and put her arms round him. They stood up, having retrieved the coins, and began to walk along the Embankment. Simon’s walk was no more co-ordinated than it had been; he swayed like a poplar tree and occasionally twisted his legs almost round each other. They walked separate, fairly distant from each other, but collided frequently owing to Simon’s Coleridgean motion. Every time they collided Julia suppressed a cry of anguish.

In this way they came to the
Discovery.
Simon leaned over the wall and stared at the ship. Julia stood beside him and watched an end of rope trail in the water and a red light, slung from the vessel, glitter on a floating patch of oil. She did not know what Simon was thinking.

‘What are you thinking, Simon?’

‘I was thinking that it’s strange how people find things comic that aren’t, not really.’

‘You mean the Bakers —’

‘I wasn’t thinking of them. I was thinking of your friend.’

‘Ivan?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did he think was comic, Simon?’

‘The piranhas.’

‘Piranhas?’

‘Fish. Flesh-eating fish.’ He held up his hands, cupped round the imaginary shape of one. ‘So big.’

Julia shuddered. ‘It’s the sort of thing he would find funny.’ Simon said nothing.

‘I’ve read about how they can strip a man to a bare skeleton in ten minutes. Or did I get that from your talks?’

‘I’ve seen that.’ He looked at her, and away, quickly.

‘Simon!’

‘He found that funny.’

‘Well, you know, it’s the sort of gruesome thing he’d feel obliged to feel was funny. I mean, because it’s so awful and
typical.
I really knew a chap once who had an uncle who was eaten by cannibals. A vegetarian uncle. It got to be a family joke.’

‘I see.’

There was a long silence.

‘I’m so glad to see you, Si. You can’t know. You know, I’ve never got out of the habit of saving up things to tell you – all sorts of little things. I really do feel that relationships develop even if one can’t do anything about them, just with the passage of time. But that’s quite likely an illusion. I thought if I ever did see you you might be a complete stranger. But you aren’t.’

‘It’s been a long time,’ said Simon, in a muffled voice.

‘Did you ever think of me, Si? Since you left? Ever?’

He hesitated. ‘Oh, yes. Often.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t know many people to think about. I think I was told you were married. I thought I might write and wish you well.’

‘You never did.’

‘No.’

Julia touched his arm, briefly. ‘I wish you had. Would it seem silly to ask – after all these years – meeting like strangers – why you – why you just suddenly went off?’

She tried to catch his eye in the dark and could see only the rough cheek surface and its craters. ‘Or have you forgotten?’

‘No, no, I haven’t forgotten. I – nothing seemed to be getting
anywhere, I suppose. It just wasn’t getting anywhere. I thought you knew that.’

This could not be described as a satisfactory answer.

‘But I loved you, it was a terrible shock.’

‘I thought it was the other way round,’ he said, shifting slightly. ‘Anyway, I’m sorry.’

‘Oh, no —’

There was another silence.

‘I’m glad you’re happy, Julia. I thought you ought to have been. You had such a capacity for living – for attacking life. You are happy, aren’t you?’ He asked this with a kind of eagerness.

‘Yes,’ said Julia. ‘On the whole, very happy.’ She didn’t know whether she was or not, but it was clear that Simon wanted her to be.

‘I thought so.’ He looked out at the water again, his lips moving.

‘Oh, I
am
glad to see you.’

He said, into the water. ‘You used always to be in two minds about seeing me. Always. You know you were.’

‘But not now. Now I’m just glad.’

‘Good.’ He was silent again.

Julia felt that something was being achieved; that at last she was talking, with a possibility of further talk, to the real man. In some very simple way she was no longer in two minds about seeing him; he was no longer, as she remembered he had been, faintly repulsive or faintly menacing. She was visited again by the desire to touch him, simply to touch; she looked at his dark face and hunched shoulders with love and the surface of her body prickled. This is one of the few times, she thought, when my thoughts, and my body, and all my attention, have been in the same place.

‘That comedian —’ said Simon.

‘Yes?’

‘He took hold of your dress. I didn’t like that.’

Julia did not know how to take this. It might well have been an expression of a kind of jealousy, but sounded much more
like one of Simon’s occasional blundering efforts at moral guidance. His expression was one of prudish distaste. She said, ‘It’s just his way.’

‘Probably.’

‘Shall we walk on a bit?’ said Julia, to distract him. He seemed to wake up. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I’ll take you home, now.’

D
URING
the next three days Julia thought of nothing but Simon. She went over their inconclusive conversation several times. She was obsessed by the memory of the moment when they had collided, and by the idea that she needed to touch him. She had never before wanted to touch him in this way without any accompanying reluctance: she put it to herself that to touch Simon would ‘make everything real’. She had two detailed and warmly erotic dreams about him – again, this had not happened before – and woke to a sense of loss. She felt that to meet him, to talk to him again, would be a completion of a part of her life and a beginning of a new part, a new revelation. She thought she had sensed this feeling in him, too. But he had hailed a taxi, brought her home, let her out on the doorstep, and, before she had turned round to ask for an address, to suggest a further meeting, had driven away.

Over the last months, after the death of her father, and particularly since the end of
A Sense of Glory
, she had felt that she had achieved a new sense of identity to act from. She had always been tempted to remain a child – well, she was ready now to grow up. Her teeth were cut, she was innocent and responsible. Touching Simon – from herself – was somehow to prove this.

After further thought she attributed her new sense of Simon’s possible private reality to the complete absence – during that meeting – of any sense that she was being watched by Cassandra. She had always felt that her actions were being ‘produced’ by Cassandra’s fear, Cassandra’s expectations, Cassandra’s idea of Simon. But this meeting had felt like her own. She was ready to have things of her own, now. Once the thought of Cassandra’s watching had occurred at all some of the sense of innocence slid away; but this, Julia told herself,
was because she did not see Simon and had nothing to bite on. She spent time imagining his hotel room, imagining unexpected meetings, adding explanatory sentences to the Embankment conversation. She avoided Ivan.

On the fourth day she woke to the sound of the telephone ringing. When it had rung for some time she struggled out of bed; Thor seemed to be nowhere, and the thing must be answered. When she arrived in the hall, Thor was already lifting the receiver.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘No, on the contrary, I do of course, very well.’ He listened. ‘I’m sure she would. Oh yes, certainly, by all means. And
I
look forward to meeting you. Yes, indeed.’ He rang off.

‘That was Simon Moffitt,’ he said. ‘He wonders if you would like to go to the zoo.’

‘To the zoo?’

‘He is coming round for you.’

‘I wanted to speak to him. Why didn’t you let me speak to him?’

‘He didn’t ask,’ said Thor. ‘He said he looked forward to meeting me.’

Julia looked, perturbed, at the telephone.

‘I should get dressed,’ said Thor, ‘if I were you.’

Simon was wearing a sportscoat which flapped widely and unfashionably from the waist, and a huge pair of
veldtschoen.
He was carrying his raincoat, a canvas holdall, a brief-case, an umbrella, and a long canvas bag, tied and labelled, that bulged from itself once or twice. He put this casually on a chair, against which he tried to stack the other things; whilst he did this, Thor came out of the living-room, the Bakers collected in the living-room, and Deborah came out of her bedroom in pyjamas, dressing-gown, and thin, bare feet.

‘Ah, Mr Moffitt, I presume.’ Julia could not tell whether this was an accidental locution or a deliberate joke. Simon straightened himself, and put out a hand.

‘Julia and I are old friends.’

‘I know. I know.’

‘I’ve got to go to the zoo, so I …’ He stopped, and looked at Deborah.

‘My daughter, Deborah,’ said Julia.

Simon considered her. ‘She looks like Cassandra. But suppose everyone tells you that.’

‘Even Aunt Cassandra admits it.’

‘I suppose you’re too old to be taken to the zoo.’ Deborah smiled.

‘Would you like to come to the zoo?’

‘Oh, no, I don’t think so. Not today, thank you. I don’t often go.’

‘A pity,’ said Simon. ‘Some other time.’

‘Oh, yes, some other time, I’d love to.’

Simon wrung his hands, and then, without warning, knelt to retie a shoelace.

‘Get your coat, Julia,’ said Thor. He said to Simon, ‘Maybe you could come back this evening to eat with us? I am anxious to know about conditions in South America at first hand. We have been in correspondence with the health education institutes there. I have a lot of questions for you, if you’ve not had enough questions.’

‘I’d love to come,’ said Simon, his face hidden. ‘This is very kind. I shall certainly come.’

The bag on the chair changed position slightly. Thor gathered up Simon’s effects and handed them to him, one by one. The brief-case he gave to Julia.

‘Have a good day,’ he said. ‘Deborah and I will see about supper, don’t bother.’

Simon took a taxi to Regent’s Park; then he walked Julia across to the zoo buildings. Julia was carrying, now, both brief-case and umbrella; in this way she felt she had a hold on him. He offered no explanation for the invitation, nor for his three-day silence; once or twice he stopped and looked at her, with an expression predominantly anxious, but when he did speak, it was from a distance, as though to
a business associate, or maybe a niece whom he was obliged to entertain.

‘I’ve got – I’ve got – a certain amount of – of business. I do hope you don’t mind a certain amount of – hanging around. Of hanging around.’

‘Of course not.’

‘Oh, good. I thought, then we could – eat something. Or something.’

‘I didn’t know if you
really
meant the zoo,’ said Julia, at random. It had seemed so much like a rendezvous from a
Woman’s Own
love story.

‘Don’t you like the zoo?’

‘Oh course I do – but —’

‘I – I have to be here quite a lot. I don’t like it much. But it seemed a good place – a good place to meet. In the circumstances.’

They went in. Julia took Simon’s raincoat and restored his brief-case. She discovered rapidly that there was, indeed, a certain amount of hanging around involved; she followed Simon from office to office, watching him hand over type-written sheets and little phials and boxes which he produced from the holdall, examine photographs and reports, and last, in the Reptile House, hand over the canvas bag. She sat in corridors or stood in doorways; no one paid her any attention, except that in one office she was given a cup of long-brewed tea and a chocolate jammy bun wrapped in silver paper. Simon himself hardly looked at her. She began to feel very female, an attendant servant-cum-girl-friend, his woman. This pleased her, finally, rather than insulting her. It disposed of the hysterical apprehension she had been feeling over being faced with his physical presence and finding it unreal, like a too long anticipated childhood treat. Simon, to the people in these offices, was real enough – solid, necessary, to be negotiated with. She was real to them in terms of him and it had always been so much the other way about. He kept signing things, and he, too, drank tea and ate a jammy bun.

Finally they were alone in the Reptile House. He looked down at her.

‘Well, that’s that, for today. A quick look round?’

‘If you want.’ He knew, and must be choosing to ignore, her dislike of reptiles.

The place had an unearthly glow, and was hot, damp, concrete and dark. Inside their little glass boxes of brilliance the snakes lay, heaped haphazardly together, almost all motionless. One narrow, stone-coloured, dark-eyed creature looped itself round the plastic foliage provided for it, and flickered its nervous tongue at the glass walls. It seemed aimless, poured along the leaves, leaned out and froze into a brittle twig; it gave no sign of further movement. Simon walked past it, heavily in his
veldtschoen
; Julia tapped two steps behind him. Around them, children squalled.