Listening in the Dusk (13 page)

During her years of teaching Alice had, of course, found herself at times the recipient of confidences from one or another of her pupils, and intractable though the problems could sometimes seem, she had always prided herself on being able to find
something
helpful or encouraging to say: some suggestion for a possible course of action; an idea, perhaps, for breaking a vicious circle; some new angle from which to view an impasse; a touch of humour, even, to put the problem more in proportion.

But among all the troubles that had been laid before her, there had never been anything like this. Her repertoire of appropriate responses was silenced. To a trouble of these dimensions nothing you could possibly say would be adequate; and yet you must say
something.
And quickly. A pause for thought, a few moments silence, would come across as embarrassed revulsion, and could close up the floodgates of confidences for ever. It was four o’clock in the morning, the girl’s white exhausted face poised above her thin shoulders looked almost middle-aged under the harsh ceiling light. Maybe it would have been better, less depressing, to have created a softer illumination for their vigil by lighting the candles; the bright, waiting candles newly purchased for a festive occasion which now could never be. But how heartless this could have seemed!
Candles
! There was no way of getting it right; none at all.

How thin she looked, poor child, in this cruel light, bones sticking up everywhere! How come she hadn’t really noticed this before? And suddenly, without thinking about it at all, Alice found herself speaking, firmly and decisively.

“I’ve got some bacon,” she said, “downstairs in the fridge. I know it’s early, but let’s have some breakfast. With coffee. And toast.”

“But … But …” A suggestion from such an unexpected angle had obviously given Mary a jolt. “I don’t eat breakfast,” was all she could come up with.

“I know you don’t. And you don’t have lunch, either. Or any supper to speak of — Hetty’s been worrying about it for weeks. What are you trying to do? How is starving yourself going to help? Or
is
that what you’re trying to do? Literally to starve yourself? It won’t work, you know, it takes weeks and weeks to get anywhere remotely like dying, and even then —”

“I’m
not
trying to starve myself!” Mary protested. “I was just trying to get thin so that I wouldn’t be so recognisable — I used to be quite plump, you know, and it makes a lot of difference to your looks. That’s the important thing, Alice, that no one shall ever, ever recognise me, as long as I live. I’ve cut my hair, I’ve changed my name. I’ve come to live in this grotty place, I’ve got thin and hideous — what more
can
I do? What
can
I?”

Well, what could she? What
did
families do, in this sort of terrible situation? You didn’t hear much about it, really, in the news reports. About the wives and girlfriends, yes — but then that was different. These might indeed heroically insist on standing by the evil-doer through thick and thin; but all the time they had the option of not; of changing their minds, of ditching him, of shaking the past off completely, freeing themselves from it, and getting on with their lives; sooner or later becoming someone else’s wife or lover.

But you couldn’t opt for being someone else’s sister. This was a blood tie which nothing could sever, not as long as you lived. Was Mary’s solution perhaps the only possible one? To cut yourself off from everyone and everything you had ever known? To exile yourself into a world of lies, lie upon lie, a vast top-heavy structure of falsehood, for ever needing to be shored-up, for ever needing emergency repairs and alterations in panic response to this or that unforeseen occurrence in the outside world? Such tiny, everyday things would be able to set the whole contraption rocking; a chance encounter with a former acquaintance; a careless gap or inconsistency in the fictional life-story?

And yet, if this
wasn’t
the answer — then what was? What could one say? And who was Alice to say it? It was Mary, not
Alice, who was the expert in this grim speciality. How can one dare to give advice to someone enduring an ordeal which one has never faced, and never will have to face? Oh, there is always
something
you can say to people in appalling trouble: like, “Be thankful it’s not
both
legs,” or, “Lucky you’re not going to be deaf as well.” That sort of thing.

Alice drew deep breath.

“Come on,” she said. “Breakfast!” and reached out a hand to pull the girl to her feet.

“
Oh
…!” Mary pulled away, but seemed bewildered rather than antagonistic. “I can’t, you know, Alice, I really can’t. It’s not that I’m still trying to get any thinner, it’s that I
can’t
eat now. I really can’t. My stomach’s shrunk up, or something. Like, yesterday Hetty was trying to get me to eat one of her rock-cakes, and I did try, just to please her. I’d had nothing all day, and they’re not bad, you know, those cakes of hers. But I couldn’t get it down, honestly, Alice, I just couldn’t. My throat just wouldn’t swallow it …”

“Bacon’s different,” declared Alice authoritatively. “Come on. When you smell it, sizzling away, in the pan, and fried bread too, done in really hot fat so that it’s all crisp and
golden
…”

It worked — at least to the extent that Mary consumed not just one rasher, but two, as well as a square of fried bread and a finger of toast. She even managed a watery smile when Hengist marched in, quite noisily as he sometimes did when he knew it wasn’t a proper mealtime, and staked out his claim to some sort of share of whatever was going at this unaccustomed hour. No, not just
rinds,
for heaven’s sake, a bit of proper bacon if you don’t mind, and not all fat, either …

And then milk, of course. He established himself alongside his usual saucer, front paws neatly together, and stared at them, without blinking.

“Do tell me, Mary,” Alice said, going to the fridge. “You’ve been here longer than I have, which of these milks is it all right to give to Hengist? There’s so many of them, some with labels and some not, whose
are
they all? This one called ‘Yesterday Only’, for instance … Who on earth?”

“Oh, that’s Hetty,” Mary explained. She laughed a little, and Alice secretly rejoiced that her ploy of raising a trivial domestic problem was turning out more than half-way successful; it was the first time ever that she had heard Mary laugh. There was colour in her cheeks; she was looking, for a moment, like any other twenty-year-old. “It’s history really,” she was explaining. “Once upon a time a note was left out for the milkman saying ‘Yesterday only two pints were delivered, please leave extra today’ — something like that. Most of the message got rained away, but Hetty kept what was left because she’d had such a lot of trouble threading the rubber band through it to attach it to the bottle, it seemed a shame to waste it, so she kept it for hers. It had to be hers, she said, because anyone else would make a fuss, having a label like that.”

“Oh.” Alice continued her researches. “And so what’s this ‘HH’ one? I’ve been taking for granted it must be Hetty. ‘Hetty Harman’, you know —”

“Oh no,” said Mary. “That’s Hengist’s. You see, there used to be Horsa, too, until he disappeared, and Hetty’s keeping it like this just in case he comes back.” She laughed again. “Do you remember the rhyme, Alice — did they have it when you were at school?

I forget how it goes on, something about ‘And Horsa ate peas with a knife!’ I remember Julian saying …”

And suddenly, without warning, she was in floods of tears. Rushing out of the room and up the stairs. Before Alice had thought what to do, the distant door had slammed.

To interfere? Or to leave the girl to the solitude she seemed so urgently to be seeking? By the time she had decided on interfering, several minutes had passed. Pushing open Mary’s door — for once it was not barricaded — she saw, to her relief, that the girl was already asleep. Sound asleep, dead asleep, her face rosy and untroubled in deep unconsciousness, like a tired child.

And no wonder, after the stress, and the misery, and the all-night
vigil. Alice felt quite envious, she wished that she, too, might settle down to a day’s sleeping, but this could not be. The day that was to dawn in a couple of hours’ time was Saturday, the day when both her pupils were due to come for their respective lessons, and there was quite a lot of preparation that she must do.

On top of which, she was going to have to explain to Brian that the party must be cancelled, at least for the time being. The explanation was going to be difficult, because Mary had sworn her to secrecy, adding, in addition:

“
Whatever
happens, Alice, don’t let Brian find out! Don’t let him suspect anything!
Promise
me, Alice, that you won’t let him suspect a thing!”

Cyril arrived at Alice’s for his Greek lesson slightly late and in a state of extraordinary euphoria. Funny, that, because he hadn’t actually succeeded in the descent from step eleven, which was where he was at now. In fact, he had failed quite dramatically — his elbow was still hurting fairly badly from this failure. The feeling of triumph wasn’t to do with success, then it must be to do with having had a go; and as he and Alice began to work their way through Cyrus’ various tribulations and set-backs on his way towards supreme power, it occurred to Cyril that he and the Great King were linked by something more than the common derivation of their names. Ascending the throne of the mighty Persian Empire to the cheers of your victorious army … Ascending to step eleven behind the garages of Park Rise Estate to the cheers (whispered) of your special gang — it was the same thing really. People didn’t understand this sort of thing
nowadays,
because “glory” had become a bad word, worse than “fuck”; but Cyrus would have understood. As a child, he’d gloried in excelling at boys’ games — they’d recently been reading a splendid chapter about this. He’d have taken part in the Bike Run like a shot, Cyrus would, if he’d happened to have been born nowadays instead of two and a half thousand years ago. And would have won it hands down, too, he’d have been at step eighteen already, beating even Winston. But of course, none of this, nowadays, would lead to becoming a Great King. In order to attain power nowadays, he’d have to start by getting into local politics and being for or against things like Housing Subsidies …

“So why is the verb in the infinitive?” Alice was asking; and Cyril quickly turned his mind back to the text in front of him. In a way, he liked her being pernickety like this, even though it
slowed things down rather irritatingly and interrupted the progress of the story. All the same, he did want to understand the twists and turns of this fascinating language, and this was the only way. He listened carefully to her explanation of the whole passage being in indirect speech because of Herodotus having been told the story by some chap, starting pages and pages back so that you’d almost forgotten, but the infinitive made it clear that it was still indirect speech, and therefore the chap must be still talking. What an ingenious system! You couldn’t do that in English. Greek was a wonderful language.

“When we’ve finished Herodotus,” he said, “I’d like to go on to Homer. He uses the Ionic forms too, doesn’t he? Can we do that?”

Alice was slightly taken aback.
Finish
Herodotus?

“You know, Cyril, there are
nine
books of the
Histories
,”
she pointed out, “and we’re not a quarter through this one yet. I don’t see how there will be time.”

“Why, aren’t you going to go on teaching me?” demanded Cyril, suddenly shocked. “Have you got another job, or something?”

“No … Oh no …” Alice laughed uneasily. “Not so far, and even if I had I’m sure I could still fit you in all right. But you know, Cyril, I don’t think your parents are going to want you to study Greek for ever. You’ve got all your school subjects, remember; and in a year or two you’re going to have to start thinking about exams. What you’re going to take for O-level. That sort of thing. I know your parents are expecting you to do Maths and Science —”

“Of course I’m going to do Maths and Science. They more or less make you, if you’re at all bright. And I
am
bright, so there isn’t much option, is there? I just wish people wouldn’t go on about it, that’s all. I don’t want to have to think about it. It’s depressing.”

“Well …” Alice hesitated. It seemed a glum sort of way for a promising boy to be embarking on his special subjects; but on the other hand, a lifetime of teaching had ingrained in her the necessity for displaying a degree of solidarity with parents and their wishes. “Yes, well,” she temporised, “they’re anxious for
your future, naturally they are, and they want you to have an education which will lead to a really good job. As you say, you are bright …”

Cyril did not dispute this; he had already admitted it, and certainly did not suffer from false modesty. But why was being bright made to seem so much like being crippled? Far from increasing your range of options, it drastically reduced them. The cleverer you were, the more narrowly specialised would be your job, and the more certain to be indoors, sitting down, for forty or fifty years. Not very different from being confined to a wheelchair, when you thought about it.

“Well, we’ll see,” said Alice, meaninglessly, as befitted the intractability of the problem. “Anyway, we’ll keep on like this for the time being. So long as your parents are happy about it. By the way, will they want you to go on coming here after the holidays are over? Or will I be coming to your house again?”

“Oh,
here
!”
said Cyril emphatically. “Ma hasn’t said, but I’m sure that’s what she’d rather. She doesn’t really like Greek going on in the drawing-room, where people might come in and out, you know, and might think it’s funny. Besides, I’d rather come here, much rather. It’s more fun. And I
love
this room …” He leaned back in his chair and glanced round appreciatively. “All these funny things you’ve got … Would you like a dried octopus? I could bring you one if you liked, and you could hang it up somewhere.”

The lesson had stretched well beyond the allotted hour, as it nearly always did. Quite often, it ended with an invitation to Cyril to stay to supper. On this occasion, though, they had to keep an eye on the time as Cyril was expected home to babysit for his small sister while his parents played Bridge next door.

“No, I don’t mind,” he said, in answer to Alice’s sympathetic query. “I expect I’ll let her stay up and play for a bit. She’s trying to teach Tracty the Greek alphabet, you know, and Ma worries about it, even though she mostly gets it wrong. The only letters she really knows are gamma and delta, and so now she wants to call our new hamster Gammerdelta, that’s what’s worrying my mother at the moment. She’s afraid that Sophy’s catching the Greek bug from me, though I wouldn’t think myself that calling a
hamster Gammerdelta showed a tremendous leaning towards the Classics, would you? It’s partly because of Sophy being a girl, my mother wants to bring her up in a very Women’s Lib sort of way to be interested in technology and things. That’s why they give her tractors and things to play with instead of dolls, just to prove that girls are exactly the same as boys.

“Mind you, they’re a bit illogical, it seems to me, because they never forced
me
to play with dolls, which I would have thought would have proved the point just as effectively … Hey, look, I’ve got to go. I’m going to be late …!”

The whole house shook to Cyril’s departure, as he sprang from landing to half-landing almost in single bounds; and Alice waited on tenterhooks for Miss Dorinda to launch herself into the hallway trembling with not unjustified protestations. One of these days that boy will have the ceiling down, she would point out, and it could well be true. Most of the ceilings had cracks spidering across them already — ever since the Blitz, according to Hetty. The bomb damage people had gone off and kept saying they were coming back, but they never did. In a manner of speaking she, Hetty, was waiting for them still. No good crying over spilt milk, though, and it seemed to Hetty that the Blitz (here the metaphor began to get a little bit out of hand) was just about as spilt as anything can get, after all this time, didn’t Alice agree?

Alice did; but all the same, she must have a word with Cyril before next time. Even if none of the ceilings
did
fall down, Miss Dorinda’s would assuredly threaten they would do so, and would rival the erratic geyser as a topic of conversation for weeks to come.

The slamming of the front door ended the suspense. All was quiet. Evidently Miss Dorinda wasn’t back from her salon yet, and Alice relaxed. No one else would complain. Hetty wouldn’t because she always liked the sound, however
ear-splitting
, of a bit of life around the house. Brian wouldn’t, because no pianist ever ventures to complain of any sort of noise, ever, for fear of bringing on his own head an avalanche of tit-for-tat grievances about his practising. And Mary wouldn’t complain because, well, she just wouldn’t. She had
too much to brood over for the house falling about her ears to make much impact on her.

How
was
Mary? Hadn’t she been asleep for rather a long time now, even allowing for the sleepless night which had gone before? That is, if she
was
still asleep? Or was she just sitting in her room, moping, as had been her custom for so long? Was she, then, slipping back into her old habits just as if nothing had happened? Had the long night of talk and confidences made no difference for her at all?

Alice felt a little hurt, but also relieved. She had been wondering, on and off during the day, what she would do when Mary reappeared, perhaps desperate for further tête-à-têtes, and she, Alice, too busy to attend to her, maybe with one of the pupils just about to arrive. It would look heartless to give them priority over Mary’s desperate need — and yet you couldn’t cancel everything on account of someone else’s tragedy. Life must go on, as the cliché has it. Though Mary herself seemed to have taken the opposite view — that life
mustn’t
go on. It must come to a dead stop.

Well, as it happened, the conflict hadn’t arisen. Alice had neither had to cancel any lessons, nor feel guilty about not having done so, for Mary hadn’t appeared at all. The party she
had
cancelled though, much to Brian’s puzzlement and displeasure; for of course she had been debarred from giving him the real reason, and her invented excuses sounded feeble in the extreme, as well as too many of them. Two excuses are always less convincing than one, but it is difficult to remember this while in the throes of white-lying.

And on top of all this, Christmas was almost upon them. You can cancel a party, though maybe with some difficulty; but nobody can cancel Christmas.