Dark Places (26 page)

And now my damned wife was summoning me from her chair. ‘Oh Albion dearest, could you come here a moment?' She had already made her way across the creek to where Rundle had set up the all-too-folding chairs in what little shade there was, and sat with her swollen ankles and everlasting fan, with the crease between her eyebrows that I hated, and that whine in her voice that made me want to trumpet in her face like a rogue elephant.

‘If something could just be found to raise my feet a little, Albion, the grass is damp, you know, and my legs ache so.' Rundle and I scurried around, finding a hamper that was too high, and a box that was too hard, and finally a stool that was acceptable.

Lilian galloped over the tufts to us, and startled me by suddenly laughing a gusty laugh and pointing—‘Look, Father, that tree is just like a person, look, it has elbows and everything, look, it even has a...' But she stopped; she had spoken the truth, but the truth had swept her a little further than she dared to go. For the tree was indeed like a person: to be exact, it was like a fat female with her clothes off. There was dimpled pink flesh that was as plump and smooth as the inside of a thigh, with busy creasings and foldings around angles in the branches like elbows and knees. What had silenced Lilian was a dark puckered orifice in the trunk not far above Norah's head, the skin of the tree bunched around it like the neck of a bag, a thing humanoid to the point of obscenity.

My eyes returned from these puckers and plackets to my pasty-faced wife. ‘Look at the dimpled flesh, Norah,' I said, ‘on that tree,' and Norah looked, but blankly, seeing only leaves and branches, and wondering aloud about the possibility of bird-droppings.

We sat tilting on our chairs in the sandy soil, and waited like galahs for Rundle to
boil the billy.
I had suggested a good supply of vacuum-flasks, but of course
boiling the billy
was the high point of a picnic for Rundle. We had to go through the whole drama of gathering up the sticks, being scientific about laying it—
a fire needs oxygen
, Rundle reminded us as we sat in a row watching him balance one twig on top of another—then there was the puffing and blowing at the smoulder until it lit. Smoke swirled around our heads, Rundle wiped at his streaming eyes, the billy tilted and nearly put the whole thing out, but Rundle stood back as triumphantly as if he had just invented the wheel. I sat consumed with irritation like an itch: what was the point of all our heroic pioneers having been so uncomfortable, if not to spare us this sort of thing?

At last the great table was set up, only slightly lopsided, under the marquee, and Rundle came over. ‘Ready, Mr Singer?' he asked, positively purple with the responsibility of it all. What a freak of nature Rundle was, especially with the smudge of ash on his nose, and the Bowie-knife which had now swung around on his belt so that it dangled lewdly into his groin.
Look sharp
,
Rundle
, I wanted to say.
You are not doing anything for the dignity of Singer Enterprises
,
man!
but I replied calmly to set an example which I hoped he might follow, ‘Yes, Rundle, I am quite ready.'

The next bit was the only part of the Singer Christmas Picnic that I enjoyed: I knew I had the right kind of carrying voice for my task, and a grasp of the suave platitudes appropriate for the moment. How it warmed my heart to see their faces crease with laughter at my little jokes! I swelled with the knowledge that I was the ultimate head of the ultimate family. They were gathered around me, laughing obligingly at jokes which in cold blood even I would have admitted were not terribly funny. Everyone nodded, smiled and greeted with applause the various achievements of
Singer Enterprises
over the year: the introduction of the window envelope, the installation of the Pneumatic Cash Railway, and the marriage, finally, of Miss Freeman. I felt myself expand under the trees, matching them in sheer bulk and solidity: I had never felt more substantial, knowing that the boots of every man here, the corsets of every woman, the bread in every child's mouth, were all thanks to me.

After the proprietor's speech of welcome, the next thing was the parade, and this was the reason for the purple panic on the face of Rundle. I looked away discreetly as he hissed various last-minute instructions, and pushed and prodded at workers until they formed ragged lines. Then he waved his arm in a wild way at the band of St Brendan's (of which Rundle was apparently a pillar), and with a colossal fart from the tuba, the parade began. Rundle led the way, but was unable to resist anxious glances back over his shoulder, so that the
Singer Enterprises
banner he held—embroidered and gold-fringed by the ladies of Notepaper—dipped and twisted dangerously. Courtesy of Mr Singer, each female had been provided with a corsage (cheaper in bulk) so that every bosom crawled like a nest of spiders, and each man had a buttonhole, even though the weaselly fellow who did the privies did not in fact seem to own a buttonhole in which to poke his buttonhole, but had put it in a convenient rip in the front of his shirt.

A parade is a thing calculated to stir the blood: amass a crowd of people in ragged lines, get them behind some embroidered banners, make sure there are tubas on hand, and it would take the soul of a reptile not to be stirred. My daughter was no reptile: her feelings flowed so close to the surface they could be read on her very skin. She said—shouted, rather, for the tuba was assertive—‘Jolly good, Father, isn't it?' and watched with her hands clasped at bosom-height, over-acting her ecstasy, I thought, and drawing attention to her chest in an unfortunate way.

The workers marched and wheeled in a ragged sort of order before us, and when they had finished, we set up a patter of applause. Rundle bowed, wiping perspiration off his brow and actually laughing with relief, I cut a symbolic slice off a leg of ham, and the picnic was launched.

We ate our way through ham and mustard, and beetroot, and potato salad; the keg of beer was broached with much spurting foam, and Lilian went around with plates offering bits of the famous smoked salmon. I grew weary of standing on the bumpy ground with Rundle telling me how many pounds of mustard he had bought, how many hams, how cheap beetroot was when you bought it by the bushel; how could he think Mr Singer would be interested in the price of beetroot?

I murmured my marvelment, I hoped not so enthusiastically as to encourage him to go into how he had arrived at the precise number of potatoes, but he was not to be stopped. He told me how he had sat down, by way of a scientific experiment, with a plate of ham before him, to see how large a smear of mustard the average man needed for the average plate of ham. From this he had ascertained how many smears of this size were to be got out of a jar, and thereby—Rundle did not spare me any detail of his mathematics— by multiplying the number of smears by the number of employees, and dividing that figure by the number of jars—or was it dividing the smears by the employees, and multiplying by the jars?—thereby arriving at the number of jars of mustard the picnic would need.

Esprit de corps was the name of the game at the Singer Picnic: what the parade had started, the afternoon games were to continue. Rundle produced a number of chaff-bags, and a number of soupspoons and china eggs for the Ladies' Heats, and cricket paraphernalia for the men, and Miss Morgan of Fastenings was deputed to round up all the girls.

This was a delicate matter: when does a girl cease to be a girl? The matrons of
Singer Enterprises
were naturally not expected to hump themselves along in sacks or scurry with eggs, but it was thought appropriate that the young ones—the girls from the packing room, and the junior sales staff—would throw themselves into the spirit of the thing. The delicacy was in drawing the line, which is why Rundle handed over to Miss Morgan.

Miss Morgan herself, with her liver-spotted cheeks and her quivering dewlaps, was clearly not eligible, while little Miss Connie Entwhistle of Fastenings—her cheeks as pink as a man could wish, and I could personally vouch for the rest of her being equally pink— clearly was. But what about Miss Spragg, who in the soft light of Envelopes was a peachy enough proposition, but who in the crude daylight here could be seen to have a pucker between her eyebrows that was nearly a wrinkle, and pouches of flesh starting under her eyes? And what of Miss Parkinson? She had won the egg-and-spoon race last year—Miss Parkinson was built on the same lines as a wading-bird, and had more or less waded her way to victory on her long shanks—but this year there was a certain indefinable change in her. I happened to know—Mr Singer liked to keep track of his staff, and Rundle could be relied on to keep me informed—that a young postal employee was showing interest. Would Miss Parkinson be wounded not to be asked, and wish she could join the fun, and perhaps win again? After all, the egg-and-spoon race at the
Singer Enterprises
Christmas Picnic might well be the only thing Miss Parkinson would ever win. Or would she feel she was above such amusements now that she was spoken for? Would she be offended to be invited, as if the postal clerk and all he represented did not exist? Only Miss Morgan could have any hope of charting a course among all these delicacies.

And Miss Morgan rose to the occasion, as always: Miss Morgan would have made a fine diplomat. I saw that Miss Parkinson, her long cheeks flushed with excitement, had been entrusted with the starting-pistol, and Miss Spragg was fussing around the finish line with a notepad, a pen and a stopwatch—clever Miss Morgan!

Miss Entwhistle, Miss Baxter, Miss Flaherty, all known to me from the stockroom, one or two others with whom I was not yet familiar, and Miss Singer, were definitely on the humping-and-scurrying side of the invisible line that divided the female species. The young ladies from the shop stood holding their eggs gingerly, their cheeks flushed with having everyone looking at them. One of them dropped her egg before the starting gun went off, and giggled as if it were the funniest thing in the world, picking it up with a dainty little bob, and Miss Flaherty showed all her fine little teeth, laughing along with her, and they both tucked the hair behind their ears with a graceful gesture.

By contrast, Lilian was all frown, concentrating. She had gathered her skirt up in one hand so that she could run efficiently, as if she did not know that a young lady does not expose her meaty calves to the gaze of the world, and that efficiency is not the point in a ladies' egg-and-spoon race. Did Norah teach the girl nothing? We all watched, and Miss Parkinson waited with the gun in her hand, as Lilian experimented with the best technique, whether it was better to hold the egg out at the end of your arm, or clutch it up against your chest. Finally she was ready, and waited for the starting gun crouched like a jockey, with her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth as if it all mattered. ‘Lilian must think she is in the Empire Games,' I remarked to Norah, but to my surprise Norah came back at me rather tartly, ‘She wants to win, Albion, and why should she not?'

A good crowd was gathered to watch; on rugs on the lumpy ground all the shop-ladies were gathered. Some reclined, others sat bolt upright, depending on the ferocity of their underpinnings. Behind them, caps on the backs of their heads, legs a-straddle, arms akimbo, stood all my awkward lads, in their greasy cloth caps, and their pants too short in the legs.

The day had grown hot, and the cask of beer had grown empty, and under these influences the young men from Despatch had taken the liberty of removing their jackets. They were all well-built. I employed them scientifically, on the basis of their chest measurements; there were employers who believed in the fallacy of wiry strength, it was often debated at the Club, but personally I believed in muscle you could measure. Their bodies were their glories, but above their necks there was not much worth looking at. Their features were jammed together in the centre of their faces like an after-thought, and they all stared out woodenly at the world, as if it cost money to have an expression on your face.

One young chap, a gingery fellow with a neck like an ox, the pearl-white skin of his shoulders almost luminous, was particularly conspicuous, having stripped down to his undershirt so that his particularly fine pectorals could be clearly seen. When he passed close to us I caught the sharp animal tang of his fresh sweat, and saw Norah pick it up too, and follow him with her eyes as he joined the other young men. I caught Rundle's bloodshot eye, and by a meaningful jerk of the head and lift of the eyebrow, instructed him to get the young man's shirt back on: it might be a picnic, but it was not a free-for-all!

Miss Parkinson took up a threatening stance with the pistol, and Lilian watched every move, positively scowling with concentration, so that Miss Parkinson's finger had barely squeezed the trigger before Lilian shot off, egg a-tremble. When the shot was fired, Miss Entwhistle gave a jump, squealed, and dropped her egg again; Miss Baxter began to waver forward in a sort of zig-zag, as if chasing her egg rather than propelling it, and laughing away fit to burst: they were in a state of quite delightful flush and titter.

Lilian had never looked less delightful. Her large pink tongue was now protruding so far from her mouth that she could have caught flies with it, and her thick red cheeks shook at each step she took. While all the others tripped along calmly and daintily, their skirts flouncing nicely around their ankles, Lilian was galumphing along like a rhinoceros, her flesh shaking around her at each step and her chest bobbling along under its muslin.

I became aware that I was not the only male watching her overeager efforts with her egg. The gingery lad had put his shirt back on, but was now standing taking up a lot of space on the grass, his eyes devouring the breasts of my daughter. This thick-necked ginger lout had the face of a cockroach. There was something greedy in the way he stared, and when he muttered something out of the side of his mouth to the youth next to him, I knew precisely what sort of thing he was saying.