Complete Short Stories (VMC) (77 page)

He looked at Deirdre over the top of his spectacles and agreed. Part of Brenda’s unflagging interest in other people was to be constantly finding likenesses between them. She had at the very beginning – last Saturday – decided that Ralph Troughton was a younger, shorter General de Gaulle, and that his Peggy might have been an identical twin to their doctor’s wife back home.

That was how Mrs Crouch had introduced herself to them, sitting at the bar before dinner. ‘Oh, you must think me terribly rude,’ she said. ‘I just found myself staring at you. It quite took my breath away when you walked in. You’re so like our doctor’s wife back home – we live in Guildford – I thought for a moment …’

Mrs Troughton was easy, benign, friendly. She smiled. ‘Here we go,’ she thought. It will be like those Tillotsons in Majorca and the funny couple in Corfu. She was quite prepared to be genial for a fortnight. Her placid disposition was never disturbed by other people. At home, in London, she protected Ralph from such intrusions; on holiday it was unnecessary, he was not really there.

Mr Troughton now stirred himself, slapped a fly away from his ankle, got stiffly up and stretched. ‘Time for a drink,’ he said. ‘Last dip,’ he added. He had few words to spare.

He dived in expertly from the side of the pool, swam powerfully across it, and hauled himself out. The others, feeling rather dazed and enervated by the sun, began to collect their belongings.

After dinner, the Wallaces drank coffee in the hotel courtyard. Light fell from wrought-iron lanterns and printed scrolled shadows on the white walls around them, together with the shadows of giant leaves. A fountain dribbled water back into a pool. An orange dropped from a tree.

Next to them at dinner sat a young American and his Moroccan wife – perhaps on their honeymoon, it was thought. His wife dealt deftly with every situation, speaking in Arabic, French or Spanish. She was as curt with waiters as Deirdre had earlier watched her being with rug-sellers and
beggars who hung about the entrance to the hotel. Her shift was of a pale lime-green silk and clung to her, showing her beautiful, wide-apart breasts.

Now she and her husband were sitting across the courtyard, under a climbing-rose tree. She was feeding a thin grey cat with popcorn. Deirdre, who loved cats, had tried to make this one come to her, but it had edged away at her touch. The popcorn made it thirsty, and it kept pattering off to the fountain pool in the middle of the courtyard to have a drink. A boy had hosed the paving-stones. Although they had dried at once, there was still the delicious smell of wet stone.

Deirdre refilled Bunny’s coffee-cup and then sat back. He was glancing too often at the young Moroccan woman, almost staring at her at the moment, and to underline his inattention, Deirdre twisted her fingers in her lap and looked fixedly down at them. The message was received. With a little start of confusion, Bunny said, ‘I was just remembering when you had a dress that colour.’

‘What colour?’ asked Deirdre, glancing round the courtyard.

‘That yellowish green.’

‘When?’

‘Oh, I can’t remember. Probably years ago.’

‘Not that colour, I’m quite sure. It wouldn’t suit me in the least.’

‘Oh well …’ he said vaguely, taking up his coffee-cup, his eyes anywhere but on that lime-green dress under the roses.

‘But,’ she persisted, ‘what on earth was it like?’

He regretted mentioning it. He had made a mistake, and she was beginning to think it was some other woman’s dress he had remembered. It had been a difficult evening.

In the bar before dinner, she had looked huffily at the other visitors as if cross with them for being English; then had turned away to chat in French with the Arab barman. ‘Until we came here, we hadn’t seen a single English person since we left Ouezzane.’

When they reached home after their holidays, she liked to tell people that hardly a word of English had offended their ears from start to finish. Now she would not be able to – for she would not exaggerate, or tell a lie.

Bunny had smiled and said good-evening when Ralph Troughton had come into the bar, and Ralph had nodded back quite genially, settling himself on a high stool and helping himself to olives. It was soon plain, however, that Deirdre was annoying him, monopolising the attentions of the barman as she was, asking him what was the Arabic for peanuts, for cherries, for everything she could see around her.

‘Large Scotch,’ said Ralph Troughton, when he could get a word in.

Deirdre turned her eyes to him and then away.

It was always the same, Bunny thought wistfully, and without bitterness. She drove people from him, shooed them off, as if he were private ground. Sometimes he longed to have a conversation with someone else, another man – this one drinking whisky, for instance.

At dinner, they had found themselves sitting next to the Crouches. The Troughtons, earlier established in the hotel, had a table by the veranda overlooking the swimming-pool and beyond that the dark seashore.

Deirdre recognised Mrs Crouch as the one who had stared so much at them that afternoon, had been talking about them, had murmured to her companions, Deirdre thought, when poor Bunny had done his belly-flop. To punish her, when she was overheard remarking to her husband how strange it seemed that the scarecrows in the fields should be dressed as Arabs, Deirdre put her tongue in her cheek and smiled, giving a glance under her lids at Bunny.

The food was extremely boring, but Mrs Crouch was either hungry or easily pleased. That her chop should be tender was enough for her, and several times she told her husband how tender it was.

‘Do you remember the
tajine de poulet aux amandes
in Fes?’ Deirdre asked Bunny, leaving most of her own chop, putting her knife and fork together. He could see that she had taken a great dislike to Mrs Crouch.

Now, sitting in the courtyard, listening to nightingales, looking through leaves at the stars – for safety – they both felt tired; tired by one another. Deirdre was exhausted by trying to interest him and keep him happy, trying, in fact, to make up for all the rest of the world; to be a world in herself.

‘Shall we hire a
calèche
and drive round for a bit?’ Bunny suggested. The Crouches and Troughtons had come out into the courtyard and were settling down at a nearby table. He had written them off. They were not for him.

‘Oh, I should love to,’ said Deirdre. She seemed in ecstasies at the idea and hurried upstairs to select one of her many stoles.

The air was beautifully soft and smelt of orange blossom, as they drove in the
calèche
down the
boulevard
, across the
rond-point
and into the old part of the town. Under the walls, by one of the gates into the medina, a circle of men were sitting on the ground, wrapped round in their
djellabahs
, listening to an old man who was reading to them from a large book. Light from a paraffin flare waved over the pages, over their intent faces. They were absorbed, like children, and did not lift their eyes to Deirdre and Bunny jolting by in their
calèche
.

‘It is so beautiful,’ whispered Deirdre, taking Bunny’s hand.

They drove round the walls, and when they came back past the gateway, the circle of Arabs had broken up; the men were dispersing in silence,
going their own ways thoughtfully, through the quiet streets, still under the spell of what they had heard.

‘It is what we came to see,’ Deirdre said, with a sweep of her hand at the white walls, beyond them the tower of a mosque topped with a stork’s nest. ‘Not that boring new hotel, not all those tiresome English people. We can have plenty of them at home.’

Yet don’t, thought Bunny sadly …

It was becoming colder and the fronds of the trees in the palmeraie clashed softly together. Moonlight was enough to read by. It blanched Deirdre’s face as she lifted it to look at the stars, it glinted on some metal threads woven into her stole.

The streets were quiet. The only sound was of the horse’s hoofs on the road, the creaking of the
calèche
, and then, as they drew near, dance music coming from the hotel.

The Troughtons and the Crouches were just setting out for a stroll before bed. They felt drowsy from the day’s sun and non-exertion.

As they went down the steps of the hotel, they saw Bunny helping Deirdre from the
calèche
… her radiant smile as she took his hand.

‘
Of course
they aren’t married,’ Mrs Crouch murmured as she and Mrs Troughton fell into step together.

‘I’d like to go in one of those, Ralph,’ Mrs Troughton said, over her shoulder. But she didn’t suppose they’d ever bother …

Peggy Troughton sat up in bed and drank her coffee; croissant crumbs scattered on her sunburned chest.

‘And his name is Bunny. Isn’t that wonderful?’ she asked her husband, who was pottering about, getting into his swimming-trunks and sandals, ready for the day’s lying-out in the sun. He was rather irritable in the mornings when he was on holiday, having slept most of the day and, so, badly at night.

‘What do you think he does?’ Peggy Troughton went on.

‘Does? What do you mean
does
?’

‘I think he travels in lingerie. Or he might own a launderette. It’s obvious that
she
has the money, don’t you think?’

‘What money?’

‘Well, for this sort of holiday, for instance, and all those moonstones and seed pearls and garnets that she wears in the evening.’

‘Poor sod, whatever he does,’ Ralph said. He found Deirdre’s airs and graces intolerable. Her pale-blue eyes, baby hair, and crushed scarves irritated him. Not that she ever talked to him, but she talked
at
him.

‘Very henpecked,’ Peggy agreed. ‘His accent isn’t quite right. A bit too much of a good thing.’

She put her breakfast-tray aside and got heavily out of bed. When she had pulled off her nightgown she stood in front of the long mirror, turned round slowly, trying to look over her fat shoulders at her sunburned back. Between the top of her thighs and the lower part of her breasts her flesh was as white as lard.

‘Ralph, I’m not peeling, am I? Don’t tell me I’m peeling. I am itching all down my spine.’

He came across the room and peered at her, as if he were making up his mind about a joint of meat, not looking at a woman, his wife. The red skin across her shoulders was puckered and creased from the crushed-up nightgown.

‘Looks a bit angry,’ he said. ‘I should give your back a rest today.’

But she could not bear to waste a whole day – and what else was there to do?

Going into the bathroom, she said, ‘And the way she drags him off to those mosques. And all that shopping, and going into those smelly
souks
.’

It was another world that these Europeans briefly made – nothing to do with the country they were in, and little to do with the one from which they had come. Everything was centred on the sun cult and its rituals – the oiling, the turning, the rules for exposure and non-exposure, the setbacks – particularly blisters – the whole absorbing process.

They were mostly middle-aged married people who lolled about the swimming-pool all day. The young French girls – the bikini brigade, as Leslie Crouch called them – went to the shore and lay on the sands where a group of straw umbrellas was planted above tide level.

Deirdre was rather relieved when Bunny decided to swim in the sea for a change. There he would have to wade out and she would be spared the anxiety of the dive in.

She went with him, taking her book. She would not bathe herself. The last time she had put on a swimsuit, she had felt absurd, too thin – not the kind of thinness of the young bikini girls, but a wide flatness which looked ridiculous or pathetic; her skin, which never tanned, looked almost mauve. She suffered, deprived of her floating stoles, her floppy hats.

On their way, they passed Mr and Mrs Troughton. She was oiling his back, finishing with an affectionate little pat. Then, sternly turbaned and wearing her sunglasses, she opened a book and began to read to him. She had pulled down the straps of her sunsuit and all that showed of her large bosom was reddish brown. The morning air smelt heavily of sun-tan oil.

‘A very large lobster,’ Deirdre whispered to Bunny when they had passed by. ‘She only needs a dollop of mayonnaise.’

They made their way through some dusty oleanders, across the shore
road and on to the beach. When they had taken off their sandals, their feet sank deeply into the sharp, hot sand. They plodded slowly through it down towards the water’s edge.

Bunny’s forehead was peeling, so he wore a little white jockey cap with a long peak. As he strutted, very upright, arms swinging, on the hard ribbed sand they had come to, he resembled some kind of bird. Deirdre thought Mrs Troughton had looked amused as they passed by, but it was difficult to be sure. Sunglasses take so much expression from the face.

‘People come out here,’ said Deirdre, glaring at the bodies about her, ‘and bake themselves all day, only glad if they can go back home the colour that they punish other people for being.’

‘So true,’ said Bunny.

Without discussing where they should sit, they moved apart from the others and spread towels out on the sand. Bunny removed his hat and shirt, and went trotting down to the sea, his crooked arms jerking back and forth like a long-distance runner’s.

Languid, shallow waves came in, gathering little crests of foam, spilling over and fanning out on the sands. After quite a long time, Deirdre could still see Bunny wading out, not even knee-deep in the water.

Quite close to where Deirdre sat guarding his towel and shirt, two young girls came and flopped down on the sand. They were smoothly brown, slim-waisted. One had a pale appendectomy scar showing above the little triangle of bikini. She rolled her almost bare, oiled body over to switch on her transistor-set and a French song blared out.

Not entirely because of this, Deirdre gathered up her things and moved away into the shade beneath an umbrella. She sat there primly, reading; sometimes glancing at the sea, her shiny, white legs tucked under her flowered skirt. When she saw Bunny coming out of the water, she stood up and waved to him. He altered his course and came towards the umbrella.