Long Summer Day (55 page)

With a tremendous effort Paul pulled himself together. His sense of humour was too far off to help but his sense of irony remained. He said, ‘I’m all right, officer. It hadn’t occurred to me to jump in!’ and then, ‘Did you … did you see which way the young lady went?’

‘Yes, I did,’ said the man, looking relieved, ‘she boarded a tram, heading for the tunnel! Bit of a tiff, sir?’ and he grinned and waited.

‘You could call it that,’ Paul said, ‘but she’s more accustomed to them than me it seems. She’s a suffragette—and my wife!’

The policeman looked surprised and them amused. ‘You don’t say, sir? Then do you mind my giving you a piece of advice? Don’t go after her, just take it out in beer. Then, when you’re braced up, take a dog-whip to her! If all you chaps did that we chaps would have a quieter time on the beat, sir!’ and as though feeling that he had shown too much levity he suddenly straightened his face, nodded and continued slowly on his walk towards the Boadicea statue.

The encounter had the effect of steadying Paul somewhat, so that, for the first time since he had seen Grace leave the prison he was able to make some shift at viewing the situation objectively, putting aside thoughts of pursuit, compromise or following her to the headquarters of the suffragists and perhaps dragging her home by the hair. Yet he did not abandon all thoughts of violence, for his mind conjured for a moment with male license of the past when, as the policeman had hinted, a husband in his situation could have legally thrashed his wife in public and been applauded by the magistrates for setting a good example. But as he considered this, the ultimate sacrifice of dignity, the sheer hopelessness of the situation overwhelmed him and again he almost succumbed to a physical nausea and thought he might do worse than follow the policeman’s advice as regards a drink, or several drinks. He crossed the road and passed under Charing Cross arches, turning in at the first public house in Villiers Street and ordering a double brandy. It was only after he had swallowed his second dram, and had nibbled at a beef sandwich, that the forces of resentment began to reassemble inside him, swelling until they embraced not only Grace and the suffragettes but all womenkind and yet, as he continued to drink, his thoughts began to sort themselves into a less extravagant pattern. He knew that his immediate need was for companionship and thought first of Celia, then of Uncle Franz across the river, and finally of Grenfell, over at the House, but after a moment’s thought he rejected all three. Celia would not be available, Zorndorff was too cynical and Grenfell might even sympathise with Grace, for he too was preoccupied with pamphlets, white papers and codifications compiled from the raw material of human emotions. ‘God help me, I have to talk to someone,’ he said aloud and a cheerful voice beside him said, ‘Well, I’ve bin hoping you would, dearie! You wanter buy me a stout?’

He did not recall ever having seen a more obvious harlot plying in public. She was a study in bright mauve, mauve summer dress, with old-fashioned leg-o’-mutton sleeves, mauve straw hat, open-work mauve mittens and it struck him at once that she was approximately Grace’s age, with Grace’s sturdy hips and shoulders and narrow waist. Her cheeks were heavily rouged and her lips gleamed with salve. She had on a pair of ear-rings made of some dull metal and a cheap coral necklace. Her hair, dark at the roots was dyed straw-blond and her eyebrows had been so mercilessly plucked that they had almost ceased to exist. He noticed all these things, misery sharpening his perceptions to an unusual degree and decided that her brittle smile was the saddest welcome he had ever been offered. He said, politely, ‘I’ll buy you a stout; you can have as much stout as you can drink.’

She laughed uncertainly, as though a little wary of him, but said, in her grating, Cockney voice, ‘Christ dearie, you wanner be careful wi’ your invitations!’ and to the impassive barman, ‘Fill ’er up, Fred!’ as she coiled herself on the high stool next to him, throwing one leg over the other and exposing a few inches of booted calf.

‘Whatever it is you don’ wanner do mor’n damp it down, dearie,’ she said, gaily. ‘Too much too quick an’ where are yer? Back where you was in no time at all with an ’angover as a bonus! You wanner take it nice an’ steady like me,’ and she downed half her stout in a gulp and he asked the barman for another brandy. As he raised it to his lips he saw that the girl was now looking at him closely and that her brittle smile was gone. She said, ‘Well, just that one if you’re really interested, dearie!’ and finishing her stout stood up and adjusted her hat in the gilded mirror. He followed her out into the sunshine, she slipped her arm through his and they went slowly up the hill towards Charing Cross Station. Seven brandies on an empty stomach left his mind free to conjure with irrelevancies, the warm colour of a pyramid of oranges on a coster’s barrow, the gap-toothed grin of the vendor, the words ‘Latest on the Far East War’ on a billboard beside a newsvendor. The girl said, ‘My place is behind the Turkish Baths. Lot o’ my gentlemen friends like to pop in after. Do you good it would, dearie, in your mood—quick game o’ Mums and Dads then sweat it aht an’ sleep it orf!’

She steered him into a narrow alley between two vast, slabsided buildings, then through a door and up two flights of uncarpeted stairs. At the top of the first flight an obese, bald-headed man was deeply absorbed in a newspaper, flaunting a heavy-type headline, ‘Japs Rout Tsar’s Army at Mukden!’ and Paul thought, ‘Now there’s idiocy for you! What real interest could a bald-headed old whoremaster have in Mukden?’ but the man did not look up as the girl ushered him into a small, sunless room that seemed full of stale steam. The bed was unmade, the single wickerwork chair piled with litter and there was unwashed crockery on the bedside table. The impact of the unrelieved squalor sobered him within seconds but the girl seemed disinclined to waste time. She reached behind her, unhooked her dress and let it fall, lifting her feet from the folds and stooping swiftly to unlace her boots. He watched her stupidly as she kicked them off, then picked up her dress and tossed it over the back of the chair, before making a half-hearted attempt to straighten the sheets. She wore no petticoat, only a punishingly tight corset and a pair of white, beribboned drawers the legs of which fell short of the top of her black stockings. He saw now that he had been misled by her padded shoulders and that although she had broad, fleshy hips that strained at the grubby rim of the corset the upper part of her body was very slender and her shoulders narrow and stooping. She said briskly, as she slipped off her drawers, ‘Are you one o’ the altogether boys or will near-enough do?’

‘How long have you been on the streets?’ he asked suddenly, not because he was interested but because it was the first conversational gambit that occurred to him but she looked at him now with amused exasperation. ‘Oh, Gawd!’ she said, with mock despair, ‘you ain’t one o’ them nosey parkers, are you?’ and then, as though deciding for herself that he was not, she said, ‘Let’s say long enough to send you on yer way rejoicing, dearie! Well, is it the lot or not? Or would you like a cup o’ cawfee first to clear yer pore head? No extra; all on the ’ouse.’

‘No coffee but thank you, thank you very much,’ he said foolishly, and for some reason, this pleased her and she said, ‘I like you! You’re different! I dunno why, but you don’ go with the girls neither, do you, or not all that much! You c’n alwus tell, mos’ly be the way they stand gawping, like you! Either that or they’re in such a perishin’ hurry! Tell you what,’ she put a finger in her mouth so that suddenly she no longer looked like a tart but like a lewd parody of a little girl teasing an adult, ‘we’ll ’ave our cawfee after an’ jus’ for you we’ll ’ave the altogether, so as you c’n swank to yer pals after!’ She swung round, putting her back to him. ‘You’ll ’ave to un’ook me, tho’!’

He stared at her narrow back, noting the contrast between the slack hooks at the top of the corset and the terrible tautness of those sheathing her buttocks. The stench of stale steam filled his nostrils so that he found it difficult to breath and his head seemed hardly to belong to him at all, yet it continued to record details with the accuracy of man making an inventory. He noted that the closed window was half covered with peeling paper, that the paper had a fussy pattern and that the girl favoured mauve above every other colour, for even the ribbons on her discarded drawers matched her outdoor clothes. Then, as though these facts revealed to him the absurdity of his presence here, he said quickly, ‘I’m sorry, I’m going now! Here …!’ and fumbling in his pocket he found a sovereign, slammed it down on the bedside table and hurried from the room.

The girl was so astonished that he was half-way across the landing before she realised he had gone and then, darting as far as the threshold, she shouted, ‘Come on back, Soppy! I’m
clean
I tell yer, I’m
clean
!’
but he went blundering down the stairs two at a time, rushing past the old man down the second flight to the passageway.

The clean air of the streets seemed as heady as the rush of a gale over Coombe Bluff and he gulped at it as if it was liquid. He went up Northumberland Avenue and into the Square, hurrying through the slow-moving traffic, across to St. Martin-in-the-Fields, then up Charing Cross Road as far as Leicester Square, where at last he slackened speed, crossing under Shakespeare’s statue to a seat opposite the Empire. He sat down with a vast sense of relief, as though he had just escaped suffocation in a sulphurous tunnel.

Traffic flowed round the Square and people passed to and fro in front of him but he seemed to have lost the knack of recording inconsequential detail and the only thing that impinged upon him, apart from relief, was a hoarding, advertising ‘Pearsons’s Preserved Peas’ fronting a building in the process of demolition. It struck him as being a very eye-catching advertisement, calculated to inspire almost anyone to have the utmost confidence in Pearson’s Preserved Peas. It was a great splash of colour, a compound of greens, yellows and blues, depicting a sea and country landscape not altogether unlike that of the Vale south of the final bend in the Sorrel. He thought, ‘By God, I believe it
is
the Valley!’ and then he realised that no corn was ever as golden as that and no sea as blue, not even on a windless day in high summer. The illusion braced him and in a persistent way worked upon his fuddled brain, so that presently, when he had recovered his breath, his head began to clear and he was able to review the events of the day, from the moment he had issued from Celia’s and hired the four-wheeler to his irrational flight from the sordid little room behind the Turkish Baths. He thought. ‘It can’t all be due to too much brandy on an empty stomach. I must have had a kind of brainstorm!’ and he wondered idly where Grace had gone after boarding the tram and then, by degrees, what he should do about her or himself, now, or later, or at any time in the future. He thought of hailing a cab and calling on Uncle Franz, or walking down to Westminster and sending in his card to Grenfell but a growing self-disgust prompted him to put both courses aside. What could either of them do beyond tendering advice? And what use was advice against an obstinacy like hers? Then he looked up at the hoarding again and this time it seemed to have a message for him, reminding him not solely of home but of all the people of the Valley, women and children whom, he supposed, had come to rely upon him to some extent. He thought, ‘As long as I’m here I can’t even think! I can always think down there so why don’t I just go home, out of all this fume and clatter, to people I need, even if hardly one among them really needs me?’ Then, as he stood up, he thought of Ikey Palfrey, now launched upon his first full day at school and buttressed by his bogus kinship with Squire of Shallowford, a boy with a manufactured background and a superimposed accent but with the courage of a hunted fox. The inevitable comparison between himself and Ikey made him shudder, so that self-pity ebbed from him. ‘Craddock,’ he said to himself, ‘that boy would make a baker’s dozen of you at this moment! For God’s sake pull yourself together and get out of here!’ and he got up and began to walk swiftly down the hill towards the Strand, remembering that there was a train from Waterloo at midday and if he could get a cab at Charing Cross and promise the cabby double fare he might conceivably catch it.

V

I
t did not take Ikey long to realise that he was an exceptionally privileged new boy at High Wood for whereas all the other first-termers possessed but one background he had three. He had arrived at the school adequately supplied with academic qualifications, for the crammer had brought him up to prep school level with little trouble to either of them. High Wood, however, was not an establishment that set great store upon common factors, French verbs, and Latin declensions. It was a comparatively new foundation and was thus hard at work fashioning an image of itself calculated to persuade middle-class parents that they were getting Harrow and Winchester polish at half the cost and yet it was by no means a sham institution. The headmaster was a northerner and a realist who naturally made the most of the fact that his predecessor, High Wood’s first headmaster, had actually sat at the feet of the great Arnold of Rugby. Outwardly the school had a good start over most of the smaller public schools that had sprung up all over the country in the last half-century with the object of catering for sons of a newly-prosperous industrial class, together with those of private gentlemen with limited means. It was a vast, isolated group of buildings on the edge of the Exmoor plateau, six miles from the nearest market town and endowed with more playing fields than its two hundred and fifty boys could use. A youngish staff was qualified to equip these boys with what was advertised as ‘a comprehensive modern education’ and encouraged pupils to set their sights about half-way between city counting houses and the outposts of the Empire, boys, in short, whose fathers were prone to quote Kipling without taking him too seriously. Unwittingly, in his original conversation with the crammer as to where Ikey would be most likely to succeed, Paul had made an ideal choice. Had he aimed any higher even Ikey’s wits might have been severely taxed to maintain the charade but here, among prosperous farmers’ sons, and the sons of merchants, doctors, dentists and clergymen who had married a little money, he was given time to adjust himself. He was to take unique advantage of the opportunity.