Girl with a Monkey (13 page)

Elsie laughed most immoderately at this and when the first side of the record finished got up and went into the bathroom.

The lavatory flushed with a roar that caused her the usual embarrassment, so she stayed longer than necessary, soaping and rinsing her hands at the porcelain basin, watching the light catching on the steel fittings,
the grimy bubbles honeycombing the plug-hole and then running free, the clean water rising in a swelling tide to subside with frightening and Rabelaisian sounds. In the silence as she dried her hands, she could hear the other two still discussing Joe and Joe's wife, venom mingling with protest, carping chasing bitter truth. ”. . . After she turned thirty her hips spread like wildfire . . . she's not Labour. You're confusing her politics with her condition . . . consolations with the young L.A.C.s.”

She looked at her watch again and saw it was twenty minutes to eight. A quick anxiety that contracted her stomach ran through her and she hurried back to the sitting-room. It was as if she had absorbed all the fear of which she was capable, fear that after all she might not get away, that she would be doomed to another evening in what to her was already a dead town.

“It's getting late. You don't think Joe will forget?”

“His single virtue. To remember any extramarital date. So don't panic. It's only five minutes by car the way he drives. But collect your coat and books and be ready to move the moment he comes.”

They wrapped a silence about them as the clock hands moved forward to a quarter to eight, moving with them a panic that rose in Elsie like a tide, so that she became conscious of the pounding of her heart, the artery in her neck almost choking her with its emphasis. Over the stillness of the room the ticking of the clock became a drumming magnified by the
listeners to a regular thunder through which the grinding of car brakes and footsteps bounding up the steps came with startling clarity.

There he was,
bonhomie
oozing from every pore, moustache thinly clipped and would-be devil-may-care, the small eyes roving restlessly. It was as if he galvanized the room, though there was no one there who really liked him, two of them despising and one using him. The women sprang to their feet and the man, spreading his charm like Gentleman's Relish, checked his watch, pinched Moira furtively, squeezed Laura's thigh in passing and hurried them out to the big red sports car. Moira became part of the veranda's shifting shadow as she waved to the three of them.

It was just seven forty-seven.

Never had Elsie driven so fast through town. She had been across it many times on Mrs Buttling's bicycle, savouring at night the glimpses of sea-grass furniture and dinner tables through the open front doors and uncurtained windows, the family settings staged under hard electric light, jealous of their safely housed intimacies, of the figures curved towards one another in conversation. The unknown cup-raising hand or the animation of grouped stranger-faces teased her imagination.

But now the houses of Melton Hill blurred past in the darkness, the front squares of garden became a long park of dusty lawn and shrub, and when the car
swung over the last rise and round into the main street, the sudden brightness of coloured seeds of neon dazzled her eyes, so that toothpaste advertisement melted into mattress and tea signs without perceptible change, the red into the yellow into the green, flicker, flicker; the evening theatre crowds still queueing up and the cafes half empty, palms polished to steel under the electric light, and the sudden stoppings and startings at pedestrian crossings, with the crowds leisurely as always. Oh, hurry, hurry! It was ten minutes to eight.

She had the rear door half open even before the car pulled up practically at the feet of the truculent young man, and there was Jon on the kerb obviously puzzled by her lateness and searching the crowds with anxious eyes. Their faces composed themselves quickly into patterns of pleasure as their gaze met and, to her surprise, Elsie found herself even at this juncture guided by convention into introduction and banalities. Mercifully the moment was brief and in her last-minute confusion she was hardly aware of thanking Laura or Joe.

“Don't forget to drop a line, Elsie, and let me know how things go. Will you be all right now?”

“Yes, oh yes. Yes, thank you.”

“Yes, drop a line, any time,” echoed Joe.

They stood there splendidly tall, both of them, and handsome under the dim station lights. As she went through the gates they waved once.

She never saw either of them again.

Jon took her arm and pressed it closely to his side.

The station was crowded with travellers and their relatives, whipped into artificial gaiety by the moment, saying things and making promises that in their saner moments they would never have dreamt of uttering. Porters shoved their hand trolleys between the mums and the dads, the drowsy children, the visiting football team on its home trip. By the bookstall the men thumbed through the cheap pornography and the women the bran-and-mash weeklies that doled out the philosophy of their sex. And all along the line of carriages stood people gulping railway tea and sandwiches.

All this light, dust and noise Elsie received in one hasty impression, for her whole being was occupied by one thing. With the certainty one is aware that suns will set or rise, so she was aware that somewhere among these scores of people Harry would be searching for her. Her glance shivered to right and left, her feet hesitated, and Jon, sensing her fear, held her arm all the closer.

“Do you think—?”

He did not finish his question. The girl, anticipating it, squeezed his arm in return and said, “Yes. I'm sure.”

She could hardly relax sufficiently to look at him, her busy eyes resting temporarily everywhere but on his own. In the shallow little valley that was her
soul lay the conventional dread of a scene in a public place, though for years she had made a point of subscribing to the unconventional. Now her beliefs, her protestations were in jeopardy, she felt as foolish as the next person.

“I'll pick up your bags for you. Quickly, give me your luggage check.”

“Thank you, Jon. Thank God you're here to help. I've only five minutes at the outside.”

Jon's simple brain became a commanding general's. He had always believed that it was much better to be a male, and these little situations calling for support strengthened his conviction. He was sure he loved her.

“Go straight to your sleeper, chick. Do you think you can find it?”

“I'll be all right.”

Her eyes were busy casting into the crowd again. He turned and strode off, quickly, self-consciously doing a good turn for the girl who had treated him so rottenly. She wasn't anybody's meat! He liked being pushed round really. That fell into the category of “rights”. A man should do the chasing, a woman should be hard to get. It was almost as if he read the women's weekly papers himself.

A Maltese family with six dark-eyed children strung out in a line of human beads to a second-class compartment where the sleepers were arranged in tiers of three. The youngest dropped the orange it was mumbling
right at Elsie's feet, but she stepped across it without even noticing and, clinging as if for succour to her rain-cape and little pile of books, too tired to see that the titles were turning their erudition outwards, she elbowed her way through the loud, falsely cheery groups.

Her berth was number three in car two, but she was not sure just where that car would be. The crowd had pushed in closer to the train now for the more intimate stages of good-byes, the uninterested kisses on the cheek, the pressure of hands, the exchange of fruit and chocolates. Somewhere down the far end of the platform a man with a mouth-organ played “Sentimental Journey” to a drunken and happy group of young men. And suddenly the crowd parted like a sea.

Along this avenue she saw Harry reeling beside the train fifty feet away and peering into one compartment after another.

Now at this climax of the day there was no time for real fear. Acting quite instinctively, and not looking again in his direction lest he might sense her glance and glimpse her, she sprang up the steps of the first car within reach, intending to work her way down the corridor until she came to her own. As yet he had not seen her. Within the sooty passageway confidence returned and, armed with this feeling of security, she noted the number of the second-class carriage she was in and began edging swiftly towards the southern end
of the train, past the men's and women's lavatories, the couples kissing near the water coolers, the men resting buttock against wall, arm on doorway. She passed into the next car, slamming the door behind her. Her mind roamed wildly.

Behind, eight months of a year taken, no magic part remained, no mystery, but as before the long mangrove fingers would move just as quietly among the fish now she was gone. Tirade and pasquinade and passover were all words that passed momentarily through her mind; and the train moved sullenly and stopped as heavily and she hurried forward dream-walking. Should the platform crowds gulp me, she thought, how happily so; yet I must move quickly down the long corridor where the couples gaze back at the watchers outside pressed under in the fug twilight of the tropical station.

The catch on her compartment door slipped back and the narrow space received her like a lover too late from the lover who stood drunken at the lintel.

She had flung her belongings on the lower bunk not yet made up for the night and had crossed to the window to lower the blinds. Even as she fumbled with the catch, his voice sounded thickly from the doorway behind her.

“It's no good, Elsie.”

Her thoughts coloured and exploded like fireworks and her heart, frightened, seemed to pause to sum up
the situation. She spun round and there he stood, bending slightly forward, face distorted by drink and hurt.

He was still wearing the crumpled check shirt he had been wearing that afternoon and the pale-green trousers she had always disliked. Under electric light the sweat on his face glowed grimily and trickled down the two heavy furrows that ran from his nose to the corners of his mouth. She wondered how she had time to notice these things, and he for his part was puzzling, too, why he troubled with this silly bitch who had been using him so transparently for weeks, throwing his faults into relief by her snooty accent and her talk about books and music. Yet he could not stop himself. He wanted her desperately, not only through pride but through the very difference of her personality. She had no common denominator with the tarts he had taken casually in Ipswich Gardens or the maids in hotels for overnight stops, except her sex, and her sex seemed to be the least important thing about her.

“It's no good,” he repeated, and moved towards her. In a single movement she had thrust herself at the door and pushed it against him; uselessly, for with one strong twist he kicked it back viciously and moved in upon her. Terrified, she retreated till her back was pressed hard against the window.

“Get out!” she whispered. “Get out!”

But he did not even hear her. Almost, his eyes
did not see though they were fixed unwaveringly upon her. “Why?” he asked. “Why did you do it?”

She groped for her words.

“We have nothing in common. It would have been a failure.”

She trembled and put one hand up to ward him off as he took her by the shoulders.

“Nothing!” he cried. “Don't the days we got on so good count?”

He shook her, almost laughing as she closed her eyes in fright. Then he released her so suddenly that she fell sharply back and he shouted, “It's twenty quid! Twenty quid in the river.”

She was astonished to find herself thinking at a time like that. “Twenty? Only twenty. Surely he could have spent more on a ring.”

Any moment Jon would arrive with her luggage and the fear would end. As if summoned by the wish he appeared in the doorway, palely excited as he sized up the situation. There could be no debate now as to which man would be the victor. Jon with his superior height and near-complete sobriety was on top for once, and roughly he grabbed the other man from behind before he had a chance to turn round. They struggled silently and desperately in the confined space, then, pushing and shoving past the astonished travellers in
the corridor, Harry was half thrown off the train. Jon returned, confident, chivalrous.

“The animal! The damned animal. Are you hurt?”

She shook her head dumbly and, turning from him, caught sight of the other on the platform, leaning against the window of her compartment, head buried on his arms. He was sobbing, shockingly as it always will be when men cry, and over and over again he kept saying, “I love you, Elsie, I love you.”

No compunction filled her heart, only a great embarrassment. God! Will he never go away? Jon and she stepped into the corridor.

“Will you write, chick?”

“Of course.” Use any offer, seize on any chance, never let an opportunity slip. It was the watchword of her sex. She suffered his kisses, her mind detached, already winging south on the journey, and its opportunities. When she took her face from his, she managed to glance round his arm at the window. Harry had gone.

The bell rang noisily and finally on the platform and relatives hurled last frantic good-byes, jumping down off the steps. The green air quivered and slid as the train broke through its thin veils. A final pressure of her to him, a hurried last kiss and he was gone, as the train lurched, stopped, lurched and gathered speed.

She sat by the window, not daring to look out at the crowds streaming past. There was no one she
knew in sight, not even the loyal Jon. Then, suddenly, there was commotion in the groups following the train, the people parted to let a running figure through, and the next minute Harry, panting as if at the end of a long race, drew level with her compartment and almost superhumanly kept pace with it for a few seconds. He was thrusting a brown paper bag at her, and she, looking neither to right nor left, heard only his last words as the packet fell through the window onto the seat.