Chestnut Street (8 page)

“I don’t know anyone called Simon.” I pleaded that I wasn’t Simon’s bird—they must be thinking of someone else.

“Well, why were we drinking with you all night if you weren’t Simon’s bird?” they asked unanswerably and left me on the pavement with all this beer. There was a discotheque nearby, so there I went. The average age of everyone dancing in the strobe lighting was at least ten years younger than mine, and many of the dancers were fifteen years below me. But I’d paid to get in, so, clutching my beer, I stood by the wall. Sudden shouts of recognition and delight. The whole Fifth Form seemed to be there. No wonder they are too weak to retain any history, I thought gloomily. They were ecstatic to see me. Not in the least surprised.

“I brought you some beer,” I said helpfully.

Nothing could have been more acceptable. The prices at the disco were very steep; they had run out of drinking money. Their boyfriends were enchanted with me—what a schoolteacher, what a woman; they whistled appreciatively. None of them asked me to dance—you don’t dance with someone as old as me. Any thoughts of a hopeless, problem-filled relationship of the
Tea and Sympathy
kind vanished. I said I had to be moving on.

One of my friends had got into dire trouble by being approached by a conference businessman in a big hotel. Maybe that would be the best thing to try now, considering the lateness of the hour. There was no trouble getting into the hotel and no trouble meeting conference businessmen. The only trouble was that they were all whey-faced and lined and eating tranquilizers and talking about output and the product and the recession and looking at clipboards. It had been a bad day, and tomorrow was going to be a worse one. I asked one of them casually had he seen the play
Death of a Salesman
. He looked at me wildly.

“No,” he squeaked. “God, were we meant to have seen it?”

Then they all started going off to bed and making big scenes at the desk about being called at 6:30 a.m. and having breakfasts
with no cholesterol in them, and would their shoes definitely be cleaned, and had the hotel realized that if it forgot to call them, there would be a high-level investigation and heads would roll. There wasn’t a pleasure-loving out-of-towner in the bunch, so I thought I’d better go to the phone and try and raise some excitement that way. Anything to get their haunted, hunted faces and their ulcers out of my mind.

I rang Donal in case he might be having a party. He wasn’t. He was making the final and potentially successful advances to an air hostess; my phone call had ruined it, and she was getting her coat. It had given her those few seconds she needed to clear her head. He was less than delighted to hear from me.

I rang Judy, who sits up all night drinking black coffee and having intense conversations with hopeless cases, men she loves passionately. They drain her and she drains them so emotionally that there’s a kind of atmosphere of drama and stress hovering around the place like ectoplasm. She was deliriously happy that I had called; she had been hunting for me all night. She had this appalling situation. Sven was out in the kitchen trying to put his head into the oven; he’d been at this for hours. It was all too terrible. I remembered Sven, didn’t I? He had been living in the commune because his analyst had said he needed a lot of giving and taking, but really Sven had been doing all the giving and none of the taking. Judy wanted him to come and live with her. Sven said that he was a disappointment to everyone, to the analyst, to the commune, to Judy … he could see nothing but the gas oven, really … it was all so bleak, Judy said … so draining.

I pretended we had been cut off. I kept shouting, “Hallo, hallo!” and then hung up.

The taxi man told me on the way home to Chestnut Street that all women were scum. He had always half believed it deep down, but now he knew it. Scum. And his wife was the cream of the scum. She had been carrying on with a neighbor for months, apparently. He had only just discovered and faced her with it.
Tried to defend herself, she had. Scummy thing that she was. Said she had been lonely, what with his irregular hours. What would make a woman do a thing like that, lady, he asked me, hoping that I would set him straight.

“Scummishness,” I said. And we fell silent.

At home there was a letter from a friend whose husband had been behaving oddly. She thought he might be having an affair with someone at the office. He was beginning to look lined and whey-faced and was taking a lot of tranquilizers. I wrote her a quick postcard saying that it was all nonsense. He was only caught up in the rat race like all those businessmen I had seen that night; he couldn’t have time for another woman. And then I tore it up. Why was I always consoling my friends and none of them were consoling me?

I had a cup of some drink they say soothes away the cares of the day and gives you healing sleep. I hoped that it might also soothe away all the gin so uselessly downed during the evening, and prevent a hangover. It would be irony indeed to have to face a day of teaching with my head hammering and not a problem to show for it.

And then the phone rang. It was two o’clock; it had to be someone who was pregnant or who wasn’t, some voice complaining that yet another disastrous romance was fizzling out on her sofa or in her gas oven. Wearily I answered. It sounded like a very drunk man.

“Yes?” I said, resigning myself.

“I’m very drunk,” said the voice, a bit unnecessarily but with a need for definition of terms before we started. “I had to be drunk, otherwise I’d never have had the courage to ring you. I fancy you enormously, I think I love you, actually, I’m not sure about loving you, but I do know that I need you. I’ll have to meet you properly, I can’t bear all these hypocritical chats we have, talking about things that don’t matter like scholarships, and homework, and the need to study. I want to talk about you, yourself, and
me, and myself. I want to walk in the country with you. I want to have dinner with you in lovely places, and hold you and look after you.”

Well, that all sounded fairly genial of him, I said heartily, but on the other hand did I know him at all?

“No, of course you don’t. How could you know me when I have to talk about homework and scholarships with you and the goddamn need to study … and I don’t know you. When we have been able to get away from all those terrible buildings and corridors, and car parks and parent-teacher meetings, then I’ll know you and you’ll know me.”

It obviously had something to do with school. The mad thought that one of the pupils was a ventriloquist or some kind of male impersonator came to my mind.

“Who is that?” I said crisply.

“Oh, that voice, I love it, I love it, so cool, so unflappable, so unlike any other female voice in the world,” he said happily. “I’m Susie’s father, of course, and I’ve been in love with you forever. I’m Simon Scott who loves you, that’s who I am.”

Mr. Scott, Susie’s father? An insignificant sort of man, but then, weren’t they all? Tall, sort of middle-aged, middle-size, always talking about scholarships and homework and the need to study. Oh, God, this was something else. But suddenly it came to me in a flash that
he
could be my problem, I could become all emotional and upset over him, and confide to people how terrible the situation was, and why hadn’t I met him earlier, and why couldn’t he leave his wife for me. And the coincidence about his name being Simon—that was staggering. That was the fictitious man that those drunks in the bar had said I belonged to. Perhaps it was the same Simon.

“Do you have a lot of drunken friends who are trying to remember the words of ‘The Listeners,’ Mr. Scott?” I asked.

“My darling, my darling, you are psychic—of course I do. They all came around to my house and they’re in the other room
still trying to remember them. We are made for each other, my love. How else would you know what I am thinking and I am thinking what you are thinking …” His voice trailed away, the effort of trying to make a long sentence was very hard.

Very well, Simon would be my problem. Donal and Judy, and Miss O’Brien and Lisa, all of them would have to talk me out of him, make me see sense. I must make sure first that he was a proper problem.

“What about Susie’s mother?” I asked. There was no problem about getting involved with a man who was free. I couldn’t recall Mrs. Scott from parent-teacher meetings, but then tonight I could hardly recall anyone.

“She never understood me, not from the start; she has no soul. She’s away now, coming back tomorrow. She went to see her cousin—that’s the limit of her imagination, going to see a cousin. I don’t hate her, I’ll always be good to her, but you … I must have you … I need you.”

It sounded very promising indeed.

“Would you have to meet secretly?” I asked. “Would you just be able to snatch minutes to come and see me? Would we have to pretend in front of other people that we hardly knew each other? Would it be full of confusion and recriminations, and a misunderstanding twice a week?”

He sounded startled by these questions. Not at all what he had expected, but what he
did
expect was of course impossible to imagine.

“Yes, a bit at the beginning,” he said nervously. “But love will find a way. We’ll be able to steal precious time together, and we can share real thoughts, not talk about going to see cousins, and not a word about scholarships and the need to study.… It will be magical,” he finished off a bit unconvincingly.

“Right,” I said. “You’re on. What will I do now—will I take a taxi to your place immediately so that we can get the value out of it while she is away, or would you prefer to come here? Then
tomorrow we could snatch a few precious moments in a pub at lunchtime, and you could pretend to come in to the school to talk about Susie and you and I could pretend to be having a discussion in one of the classrooms and we could steal a few magical embraces there?” I was getting quite pleased by the thought of it all now, and quite looking forward to the adventure.

Mr. Scott said, “… er, well.”

“Oh, come
on
, Mr. Scott,” I said encouragingly. “You’ve been in love with me forever, you said, you think we’re made for each other, I think it’s a
great
idea. If we want to share real thoughts, and you want to hold me and look after me, then we shouldn’t waste any time getting started. I’m delighted you phoned me and I think it will all work out splendidly. You just give me your address, I’ll come along straightaway, and I’ll give your drunken friends a poetry book with the words of ‘The Listeners’ in it, and they’ll go home happily, and we’ll tidy ourselves away before Susie comes back from the disco. And we’ll have a great affair.”

A change had come over Mr. Scott. He seemed less drunk. He also seemed less ardent. The walks in the country and the dinners in lovely places seemed to have receded.

“Well,” he said. “What I was doing really was telephoning to tell you
one
aspect of my feelings for you. Just one. Of course there are many others, like great respect and admiration. My wife, you … er … remember my wife … she’s not here just now, she’s visiting her cousin, but she’ll be back tomorrow early, or even very possibly tonight. Yes, quite possibly tonight.… Well, my wife and I have often said that we think Susie is very lucky to have such a level-headed teacher as you, not a person who does reckless things, not a person who acts hastily. We need you, yes, need you for Susie’s education and her scholarships and … er … everything.”

“Oh, very well, Mr. Scott,” I said in irritation. “Very well, we won’t have an affair then, if that’s what you’re getting at. I don’t mind. I can have an affair later on in the term, or perhaps around
Christmas—that’s a good time for a bit of drama and tragedy.… No, stop apologizing—it’s perfectly all right. Just get rid of those drunks before Susie comes home, and tell Susie that she shouldn’t be out so late anyway—she has all those exams to think of. She should keep her dancing for the weekends when she doesn’t have school the next day. And in my view you should tidy up all those beer cans. When Mrs. Scott comes back from her cousin’s she won’t want the place looking like the back room of a pub.… Not at all—you’re perfectly welcome, Mr. Scott.… No, you didn’t disturb me at all—I wasn’t in bed. I’ve just come in, actually. I was wandering around the town trying to start an affair with somebody highly unsuitable, but it didn’t seem to work. But I can always try again tomorrow, if I don’t have too many marking exercises, or if I’m not holding some tragedy queen’s hand.”

His voice was inarticulate with relief. I could barely hear what he said, but I decided to agree with him.

“Yes, of course I was having my little joke, Mr. Scott—naturally I was. I’ve got an extraordinarily well-developed sense of humor, and I’m known as a rock of good sense and fund of good advice. Those are the exact phrases, I think.… Ask anyone.”