The Likes of Us (40 page)

Ruth hesitated. It seemed silly here in this room. But she asked just the same.

‘You don't think it might be a bit too much in parts?'

‘What? How d'you mean?'

‘A bit outspoken.'

‘Too graphic, d'you mean? Goodness me, no. Nobody here has suggested anything of the kind.' He smiled. ‘Do you still live with your family?' Ruth nodded. ‘I sometimes think,' he said ‘that the only tenable situation for a writer would be an omniscient anonymity, knowing everything but not taking any part in it.'

‘You mean something like a Catholic priest?'

He gave a guffaw. ‘Yes, something like that.'

‘Except that readers seem inclined to see it the other way round,' Ruth said. ‘That it's the writer who's making the confession.'

‘Yes...' His attention had wandered. He moved papers on his desk as though looking for something, then glanced at his watch. ‘We ought to be going to lunch.'

He asked if she wanted to freshen up and, calling in the girl who had brought her upstairs, had Ruth shown to a small lavatory on the next landing. Then, a few minutes later, she and Waterford were walking across the square, he swinging a tightly rolled umbrella with which he pointed the way at each intersection. In the restaurant, a low-ceilinged room with oak-panelled walls, red velvet upholstery and quiet, attentive waiters who addressed Waterford by name, Ruth, her tongue loosened by a mixture of excitement and wine, became talkative, telling Waterford at his prompting, about her family, her career at college, her work now, and which writers she admired. At one point she recognised the face of an actor whom she'd seen in films at a nearby table and Waterford amused her by recounting a slightly scandalous anecdote about the man. Then Ruth switched to questioning him. When was her book likely to be published? How long before she would see the proofs...?

‘You haven't got an agent, have you?' Waterford asked.

‘No. Should I have?'

‘Yes. You won't be able to handle the subsidiary rights yourself. A paperback sale is our province, but then there are all the other pickings: foreign rights, both in the United States and on the Continent; possible serialisation before publication; film rights, and so on.'

‘Can you recommend anybody?'

‘I should think so. It's a question of who'll be best for you. How long are you going to be in town?'

‘Till tomorrow. I'm staying with a friend tonight.'

‘In any case, he'd want to read the book before deciding whether or not to take you on. Have you got a spare typescript?'

‘Just one carbon.'

‘If you could send that on to me as soon as you get back. You won't need it, will you?'

‘I don't suppose so.'

‘No. You forget this one now and get on with the next. In any case, if I have it you've a perfect excuse for preventing people from reading it before the proofs are ready.' He smiled.

‘All right.'

‘I fancy it's something that writers have to get used to,' he said, returning to the subject they'd begun to discuss in his office. ‘I mean the question of saying in print what you possibly wouldn't discuss in so-called polite society. It's not easy to be honest. So far as I can gather the solution is to find an environment in which you can feel free and at ease, yet not cut off altogether from the sources of your inspiration – if we may use such a word. Your material, if you like. That's why so many young writers come to London after their first success. And why too many of them find that in doing so they've lost their basic nourishment. The other side of the coin is the danger in becoming too big a fish in too small a pond.'

‘The pond may be small,' Ruth said. ‘But I think it's very deep.'

‘Well, then. We shall have to wait and see what you haul out of it with your next book. In the meantime, you won't really mind becoming quite well known and having your picture in the papers, will you?'

‘No,' Ruth admitted. ‘No, I don't suppose I shall.'

‘No,' Waterford said, ‘you'd be quite a rare human being if you did.'

In the middle of the afternoon, slightly muzzy headed from the lunchtime wine, Ruth made her way by Underground to the flat of her friend, in Baron's Court. Monica Darrell had been in Ruth's year at college, but soon after qualifying she had given up teaching to go on the stage. After a year with a provincial repertory company she had landed a regular role in a television serial and now she was combining this with a part in a long-running West End play, which had been recast for the second time.

‘I wish you'd write something decent for me,' Monica said. ‘This play I'm in is a terribly creaky old thing; but the public love it and it looks as though it'll run forever. Why don't you write a super television play and tell them you simply must have me for the lead?'

‘I'll have to think about that,' Ruth said.

‘It's all a living, though. And God knows I shouldn't grumble when there are any number like me out of work. Anyway, it's lovely to see you, Ruth, and absolutely marvellous news about the novel. You are a sly boots, though, not saying anything about it before.'

Ruth gave the excuse she'd given everyone else. Not that she minded one bit Monica's reading the book. She was the kind of intelligent equal for whom she'd written it, and whom she expected to be her most perceptive audience.

‘When is it coming out, then?'

‘They're going to try to get it into the autumn list. That means before Christmas at the latest.'

‘And do they seem pleased with it?'

‘Yes, they were very flattering.'

‘Let's hope you have a big success with it, get lovely notices and make pots of money.'

Ruth turned from the window. They were high up under the roof of the house. ‘That field's a bit of luck, isn't it?' she said. ‘So totally unexpected when you're in the street.'

‘It's the grounds of a church,' Monica told her. ‘You can't see the building itself for those trees, but if you look past that wall you can just make out the tops of some gravestones.'

Ruth sat down on the bed-settee. ‘You know,' she said. ‘I've got the funniest feeling about the book. I think it's going to do very well indeed.' She was silent for a moment, then she laughed, breaking the intent seriousness of her features. ‘Probably no more than wishful thinking.'

‘Sillier things have happened, as my Aunt Amelia used to say. You just keep your fingers crossed, lovey, and hope for the best.'

Monica brewed a pot of tea and made some toast.

‘Lucky I'm written out of the series for a couple of weeks,' she said, ‘or I should hardly have had a chance to talk to you. When I'm rehearsing that and doing the play as well it's all go, go, go from nine-thirty in the morning till ten-thirty at night. I usually wait and eat properly after the show. Then if I'm lucky there's someone to pay for my supper too.'

‘Is there anybody special?'

‘No, not just now. And that reminds me.' Monica arrested the motion of the teacup towards her mouth. ‘I saw Maurice Waring the other week.'

‘Oh? Where?'

‘In the Salisbury. I nipped in for a drink with a friend after the show and there he was.'

‘Did you speak to him?'

‘For a minute. He seemed quite pleased to see me. Glamour of the stage, and all that. I suppose he'll be mad keen to read your book when he hears about it. Very fond of the off-beat success things, is our Maurice.'

‘Did he say what he was doing now?'

‘Teaching at a grammar school somewhere in the Home Counties. I forget just where he said. Ruth, he's not queer at all, is he?'

‘Whatever makes you ask that?'

‘Oh, I don't know exactly. Something about the way he was standing there eyeing people when we went in. Maybe my imagination. He was probably just looking out for celebrities.'

‘Anyway,' Ruth said, ‘I don't know that he is. Or I should say was.'

‘You should know, I suppose,' Monica's gaze lingered on her for a second. Ruth felt it rather than saw, because stupidly she couldn't bring herself at this moment to look back at Monica. She had nothing to hide. Except, that was, the way her heart had lurched at the mention of his name, and the trembling hollowness just under her ribs now, which it seemed to her must show in an unsteady control of her voice.

‘Is he married, or anything?'

‘How can he be if I got the impression he might be queer? But then, I don't know. I didn't ask him and he didn't say.'

‘Did he... did he ask about me?' She was impatient with herself for putting the question. She had thought herself in command of her emotions on the subject; that the long labour of the novel had purged her of bitterness, bringing her to the realisation that to keep her wounds open was to destroy the beauty of what she had felt at the time. She had come to terms with it, so she'd thought. But now she was undone again, jealous of Monica who had spoken to him, stood near him, only a few weeks ago, when she herself had not seen him for more than two years.

‘He asked about the old gang in general, then mentioned you. Did I ever see you. So I told him we wrote to each other, and what you were doing.'

‘And that was that?'

‘Yes. What else did you expect?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Ruth...' Monica said in a moment, gently chiding.

‘I know.' Ruth poured herself another cup of tea. ‘He'll get a shock if he does read the novel.'

‘Oh? It's all in there, is it?'

‘Well, I used it rather than recorded it. I mean, that's what a writer does. But it's close enough for him to recognise it. The girl in the book has an abortion.'

‘Wow! You don't mean...? You couldn't have...'

‘Not without you and perhaps some of the others knowing, no. But he'd gone away by that time. No, I just extended it all a bit, pushed it to a further extreme. I did think for a time that I was pregnant, you see.'

‘And you never said a word!'

‘No, I kept it to myself. Terrified out of my wits for nearly three weeks.'

‘I don't think I was ever absolutely certain that you and he...'

‘Had been sleeping together? Weren't you? It was bloody marvellous, Monica. The most stupendous uplifting experience of my life. Until it turned sour, of course.'

‘I was never quite sure before how badly he'd behaved... So when he reads the novel he's going to wonder if you…'

‘I expect he will.'

‘Serve the swine right. If he's got enough conscience for it. Of course, I've got to be honest and tell you that I never really did care for him myself…'

 

In the early evening they set out for the theatre. While Monica was getting ready for the performance, Ruth wandered along Shaftesbury Avenue, looking into the shop windows. The play was, as Monica had said, a rather creaky, contrived piece and not the kind of thing she would have gone to on her own initiative. But Ruth had never seen her friend working on the stage before and was glad of the chance. Afterwards, she met Monica at the stage door.

‘Is there anywhere special you'd like to go?'

‘I don't think I've ever been to that pub you mentioned. The Salisbury, was it?'

‘Oh, it's just a place in St Martin's Lane where you can sometimes find a few actors after the show.' Monica paused.

‘It's not his local, you know, Ruth.'

‘No,' Ruth said. She felt foolish, found out in something unworthy of her. ‘Let's go and eat, shall we?'

 

While still in London she could to some extent keep her main concerns at bay; but once on the train, with the thread which connected her to the familiar and the past drawing tighter over every mile, she gave herself to a brooding examination of her state of mind.

The conviction which had come to her yesterday, that the novel would be a success, was as strong as ever; and on its foundation she allowed herself to build the notion of a new life. She saw opening out before her prospects of which she would hitherto hardly have dreamed; saw them with a prophetic clarity, but soberly now, without elation. For she knew that whatever small measures of fame and fortune came to her with this book would have to be justified by the long and continuous labour of the future; saw also that the task before her would provide no magic shield against the disappointments and deprivations of her life; rather would it, in its conscientious execution, expose her to a raw-nerved apprehension of reality such as she had never known before.

And, oh, that all this should have come to her so soon, while the joy was still fresh in her!

If she were not, therefore, to lose everything there was above all else the grave necessity of making something of
herself
: of learning somehow to hang on until she found, if not happiness, a strength of mind to endure whatever in its probing, analysis and self-questioning this new life could challenge her with, so that through it all she would in her basic purpose keep firm and true both to her talent and the memory of that exultant womanhood she had known when Maurice loved her.

Had she been a praying girl she would have prayed. As it was, she closed her eyes and addressed herself with stern resolve.

A little while later a white-jacketed steward slid open the door of the compartment and announced the first sitting for lunch. Ruth had not thought herself hungry but now she got up and made her way towards the dining-car, swaying from side to side as she balanced herself against the motion of the train.

THE GLAD EYE

 

For C.M.B.

 

Work in Progress

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Otterburn had come to live in this cathedral city when he left his wife. He rented a room and kitchen, with a shared bath and lavatory on the next landing. He had never lived alone in his life before and from his window he could look down three floors at the river flowing between its stone banks and think that at least he hadn't far to go if he decided to do away with himself.

The river ran through the city under four bridges. Upstream was the bishop's palace, which Otterburn had not yet seen. The city was a great tourist attraction and at every season of the year, though more plentiful in summer, damp crocodiles of children and groups of visitors speaking many different languages could be found in the narrow streets and around the cathedral, whose walls of carved stone were just now free of masons' scaffolding for the first time in years. It sometimes seemed to Otterburn that every corner one turned gave fresh evidence of the city's beauty. He soon found also, as others who had come to live here before him had discovered, that the damp air gave him recurring trouble with his sinuses.

One day, coming into the house, he found an envelope addressed to him on the mat behind the door. It surprised him, for no one knew he was here. Yet this was an envelope with his name written on it in someone's hand. He took it upstairs and opened it in his room. There was a single sheet of rather good dove-grey writing-paper, folded once. On it, written in the same hand, was the message: ‘I shall be in the Ferryboat at seven tonight'. Nothing more. No signature. No date. Otterburn could not decide whether it was a woman's handwriting or a man's. He looked at the envelope again. There was no stamp or postmark. It had presumably been delivered by its sender. And seven tonight meant just that.

The Ferryboat was a riverside pub a couple of minutes' walk away, a smart place with a colourful inn sign and well-kept white paint on the outside. Its rooms were small but cosy and always spotlessly clean. Its brass and mirrors gleamed. On cooler days wood fires burned in the grates. Small dishes of olives and tiny silver onions and potato crisps stood on the bar counter in the lounge. At one end of the counter at lunchtime joints of cold ham and roast beef rested on a white cloth and cuts of these were offered with jacket potatoes and a green salad or as the filling between slices of crusty bread. On warm days then, and sometimes on balmy evenings, the clientele would spill out onto the embankment, to drink at tables on the cobbles and watch perhaps a skiff with a lone rower speed upstream or a white pleasure boat glide by.

The Ferryboat was Otterburn's local but he had been in only a couple of times. Its food was expensive and its drinks always a few pence dearer than in the other pubs nearby, and Otterburn was being careful with his money. Otterburn's wife would not want, because her father had money. It was only when he had won a prize in a premium-bond draw that Otterburn had finally decided to break away from his wife. His windfall had been twenty thousand pounds. His idea was to live on it until he sorted himself out; but inflation would cut into its value, and with over three million unemployed the prospects of finding another job were not good. Not that Otterburn relished the thought of working for someone else again, but he would have to earn a living in some way when the money ran out. Unless he did do away with himself. There had been times when that had seemed the only way of freeing himself from Hazel. He had thought also of leaving her, but until his good fortune he had had no money.

Otterburn also had a daughter, but as she was a pupil at a boarding school he saw her only during the holidays. The combined influence of Otterburn's wife and the school had given the girl a distant manner and sometimes she would treat Otterburn as though she was not quite sure who he was and wondered why he should be there every time she came home. She had certainly always been made aware that it was her grandfather's money that, directly or indirectly, kept everything going. When Otterburn had finally fallen to wondering why Hazel had married him in the first place, he reached the reluctant conclusion that it satisfied something in her nature to be able to choose a potential failure, confirm him in that role and dominate him because of it. ‘Thee stick by thi family an' thi job, Malcolm lad,' Otterburn's father-in-law had said to him early on, ‘an' tha'll never want for owt. Is'll see to that.' That the rich little business in importing and exporting specialised foodstuffs that Hazel's father had created and built up could carry one passenger was the interpretation Otterburn came to put on the situation. ‘Sufferance,' he had finally said to himself. ‘That's what I'm living on. Sufferance.'

Otterburn looked again at the note. He thought on reflection that the writing was more probably a woman's than a man's. Then again, it had almost a childish look. If that were so, he told himself, it was not because it belonged to a young person but because its backward slope was a disguise.

He heated chicken soup for his lunch, the remains of the can he had opened yesterday. Otterburn had not been able to cook when he came to the house, beyond boil and fry eggs and grill bacon. Now he could scramble eggs and soon he would master the making of omelettes. He was determined, with the help of a basic cookbook, to learn how to feed himself on a simple but balanced diet. At present he fell back more often than he liked on expensive frozen foods, but he intended before long to be knowledgeable in buying the ingredients for casseroles and stews, the buying and preparation of his own fish and in making pancakes and vegetarian dishes which would cut his intake of meat. In the meantime he heated the soup and cut bread and thought about what he might have for his evening meal which would fit in with his visit to the Ferryboat at seven.

But who said he was going to the Ferryboat? Why in heaven should he take the slightest notice of a message from someone who couldn't sign his or her name?

Because it showed that someone was interested in him.

After he'd eaten, and drunk two cups of tea, Otterburn lay down on his bed which, with a woven cover over it, doubled as a divan. He had not done anything physically strenuous but he felt tired. He felt tired rather a lot lately. With no routine to shape and control his day, indolence took over. He should, he thought, make some kind of plan for occupying his time. Perhaps he might study in depth the history of the city, embarking on a programme of reading with the aid of the public library. With nothing to distract him, he could become an expert. From the trunk of the subject he could explore the many branches, political and economic, religious and secular. Perhaps he could eventually write some articles himself and publish them under a pseudonym. Or even a book.

Mildly excited by the prospect, Otterburn dozed off.

He woke to find himself wondering what he should wear this evening. He'd been accustomed to sports jackets and jumpers and slacks, and off-the-peg business suits of unmemorable cut and cloth. His shirts were in plain white or pastel shades, or with faint stripes on a white ground. He almost always wore a tie, feeling undressed without one unless he had on a sweater whose neck came up about his throat. He had no style. A lot of men who frequented the Ferryboat had style, even if it was only in the careless way they wore a t-shirt with patched and faded jeans. Otterburn did not want to go to that extreme. It only worked if you felt not the slightest trace of self-consciousness. But there was room for some improvement.

He looked at his watch. It was only the middle of the afternoon. There was still time for him to catch the bank open. Otterburn had stopped using his credit card for fear that when he informed the company of his change of address his wife would trace him. His prize from the premium bond he had kept secret from her. Somehow he had realised immediately the opportunity it gave him, so he had said nothing and deposited the money in an account at a new bank, transferring it yet again when he moved to this city.

Leaving the house, Otterburn walked briskly along the quay and up a sloping alley to emerge into the street. There were several men's outfitters of quality, some specialising in shirts and knitwear, some in suits of clothes, others in shoes, and a couple of department stores who could equip one from head to foot and from the skin out. He stopped as he passed the windows of one such and thought that he could go in and pay by cheque when he knew what his outlay was. But then, he might this evening find himself called upon to stand drinks, or even a meal, and it would be as well to have spare cash in his pocket. So he walked to the bank, made a withdrawal with three minutes to spare, then retraced his steps.

In the store he selected a two-piece casual suit in blue denim and took it into a cubicle. One thing, he thought as he appraised himself in the glass, was that though he was no longer a lad he still had a lean body that didn't need forcing into slim-hipped trousers. The cubicle mirrors gave him views of his profile and the back of his head. His first thought was that he needed a haircut, his second that he didn't. His hair at this stage in its growth waved quite becomingly in the nape of his neck. If left for another couple of weeks it would be long enough for a restyling by a barber who knew more than the short-back-and-sides Otterburn had always favoured, simply from long habit. Perhaps he could brush it forward instead of back and dispense with that neat parting he had fought so long to establish when a boy. From this, Otterburn went on to the question of his spectacles. He didn't think he needed to indulge in the vanity of contact lenses: the appearance of many men was enhanced by their glasses. What he should try was a more modern type of frame, with larger lenses. But these were longer-term considerations. For the present he felt and looked well in the denim suit. The effect would be complemented when he added a new shirt. He chose one of wide navy-blue and narrow pale-pink stripes, with a scarlet thread running through the pink, then paid for his purchases with cash. The suit he thought quite cheap, though the shirt cost more than he was used to paying. He left with the goods in a large carrier bag with the name of the store printed on it and walked back to his room through the warm and slightly hazy air of the afternoon.

Taking advantage of the quietness of the house, Otterburn went down and ran a hot bath. He lay in it for some time, watching, his thoughts in the same suspended state, his pubic hair and his limp penis floating under the surface of the water. Otterburn rarely indulged in sexual reverie. Though his intimate life with Hazel had consisted of an efficient but matter-of-fact once-a-week Saturday-night coupling, a routine relief usually initiated by her and never referred to out of the bed, it had been enough to keep him from fancying women on the street and from longing for some more intense liaison. He supposed he was undersexed. He thought, on the occasions when it crossed his mind, that he was lucky. It had seemed enough for Hazel and its absence had not preoccupied him since he had left her. Now he wondered if the letter were not drawing him to the beginning of a sexual adventure. The letter... He could still hardly believe it was real and he had opened it and read it again before coming down for his bath. The distant nudging of common sense told him he was being foolish in taking so much trouble to prepare for an assignation made in such a mysterious fashion. But is, it was distant. His mind was as languorous as his body, drifting, floating, waiting for whatever might happen.

Someone was interested in him...

The skin of his fingertips was wrinkled. He had not known that since he had played in his bath as a child. He pulled the plug and stood up, putting a quick steadying hand to the wall as a faint giddiness made his head spin. He had stayed in too long. He took his sponge and squeezed water from the cold tap over himself.

Back in his room, he pulled on pyjama trousers under his dressing-gown and tucked a scarf round his neck. The squeaking groan of an unoiled pulley drew him to the window. Some men were unloading bales into a warehouse from a barge across the river. Otterburn dragged a chair over and sat down to watch.

 

On his way to the Ferryboat, Otterburn strolled up the alley to the street and bought an evening paper. It would give him a prop with which to occupy his eyes and hands, should he have to wait. How would the approach be made? Would someone simply walk up to him, smile and say, ‘Did you get my letter?' It was at this point that he wondered if he were about to be faced with some wrongdoing from his past. We could all, he told himself, feel the occasional touch of a nameless anxiety: that was a part of the human condition. Yet, as he cast his mind back over the dull march of his years, he could find no specific act of his that merited guilt. He had lived a blameless life. His trouble was that he could not imagine anyone being interested in him for his own sake.

He had decided that it would be better if he were a few minutes early; he could watch then who came into the pub, and it would save him from feeling that he himself was being observed as he entered. The pub was at the ebb of its evening trade. The after-office drinkers were already gone or about to leave. There were some tourists, who would not linger. The late evening customers had not yet appeared. Otterburn chose the lounge. He bought half a pint of bitter, and as two businessmen left a corner table he went over to it and sat down with his back to the wall. From here he could see the door at the far end of the room as well as that at this end of the bar, through which he had entered. Yes, he must be first, for by no stretch of the imagination could he picture any of those present as the author of the note. That group in anoraks were visitors, come to look at the sights. They in their turn, as they suddenly all laughed, were being given a quick once-over by the landlord who, in check Viyella shirt and yellow tie, his glasses hanging from a cord round his neck, had just come in to join the girl behind the bar. That elderly gent sitting alone, neat grey hair, well-cut navy-blue blazer, reading the
Financial Times
and drinking from a half-pint pewter tankard, lived in that big bay-windowed house farther along the embankment. And that middle-aged man and the much younger woman were too absorbed in each other even to have noticed him except as someone they needn't fear. An office romance, if he'd ever seen one. Soon they would go their separate ways, he to make his excuses at home, she to fill in her time somehow till the next snatched hour. The only remote possibility was the thin woman of indeterminate age, in tweeds, sitting at the bar, lighting a fresh cigarette within seconds of stubbing out the last, and ordering another gin and tonic, lemon but no ice. But Otterburn had seen her before too, and if she had wanted to know him she would have hailed him and drawn him into her company with the unself-conscious ease with which she chatted to the barmaid and the landlord and whoever of the regulars stayed long enough at the bar. You could find her counterpart, Otterburn reflected, in pubs and hotel bars all over the country: the woman who gave the impression of having seen it all, who had settled for a secure but boring marriage to a dull but tolerant husband, to whom she would return each mid-evening, ever so slightly tipsy, after a couple of hours steady drinking.