Stories (33 page)

“She’s afraid of staying here with me,” said Jimmie with bitter triumph.

“Quite right. I know you.” She mimicked his voice: “Don’t go back on me, Rose, don’t you trust me?”

Rose winced and muttered: “Don’t do that.”

“Oh, I know him, I know him. And you’d have to put chains on him and drag him to the registry. It’s not that he doesn’t want to marry you. I expect he does, when all’s said. But it just kills him to make up his mind.”

“Staying with me, Rosie?” asked Jimmie, suddenly—the gambler playing his last card. He watched her bright eyes, waiting, almost sure of his power to make her stay.

Rose looked unhappily from him to Mrs. Pearson.

Mrs. Pearson watched her with a half-smile; that smile seemed to say: I’m not implicated, settle it for yourself, it makes no difference to me. But aloud she said: “You’re a fool if you stay, Rosie.”

“Let her decide,” said Jimmie, quietly. He was thinking: If she cares anything she’ll stay with me, she’ll stand by me. Rose gazed pitifully at him and wavered. It flashed across her mind: He’s just trying to prove something to his wife, he doesn’t really want me at all. But she could not take her eyes away. There he sat, upright but easy, his hair ruffled lightly on his forehead, his handsome grey eyes watching her. She thought, wildly: Why does he just sit there waiting? If he loved me he’d come across and put his arms around me and ask nicely to stay with him, and I would—if he’d only do that….

But he remained quiet, challenging her to move; and slowly the tension shifted and Rose drooped away from him with a sigh. She turned to Mrs. Pearson. He couldn’t really love her or he wouldn’t have just sat there—that’s what she felt.

“I’ll come with you,” she said, heavily.

“That’s a sensible girl, Rose.”

Rose followed the older woman with dragging feet.

“You won’t regret it,” said Mrs. Pearson. “Men—they’re more trouble than they’re worth, when all is said. Women have to look after themselves these days, because if they don’t, no one will.”

“I suppose so,” said Rose, reluctantly. She stood hesitating at the door, looking hopefully at Jimmie. Even now—she thought—even now, if he said one word she’d run back to him and stay with him.

But he remained motionless, with that bitter little smile about his mouth.

“Come on, Rose,” said Mrs. Pearson. “Come, if you’re coming. We’ll miss the underground.”

And Rose followed her. She was thinking, dully: I’ll have Jill, that’s something. And by the time she grows up perhaps there won’t be wars and bombs and things, and people won’t act silly any more.

W
hen he had first seen Barbara Coles, some years before, he only noticed her because someone said: “That’s Johnson’s new girl.” He certainly had not used of her the private erotic formula: Yes, that one. He even wondered what Johnson saw in her. She won’t last long, he remembered thinking as he watched Johnson, a handsome man, but rather flushed with drink, flirting with some unknown girl while Barbara stood by a wall looking on. He thought she had a sullen expression.

She was a pale girl, not slim, for her frame was generous, but her figure could pass as good. Her straight yellow hair was parted on one side in a way that struck him as gauche. He did not notice what she wore. But her eyes were all right, he remembered: large, and solidly green, square-looking because of some trick of the flesh at their corners. Emeraldlike eyes in the face of a schoolgirl, or young schoolmistress who was watching her lover flirt and would later sulk about it.

Her name sometimes cropped up in the papers. She was a stage decorator, a designer, something on those lines.

Then a Sunday newspaper had a competition for stage design and she won it. Barbara Coles was one of the “names” in the theatre, and her photograph was seen about. It was always serious. He remembered having thought her sullen.

One night he saw her across the room at a party. She was talking with a well-known actor. Her yellow hair was still done on one side, but now it looked sophisticated. She wore an emerald ring on her right hand that seemed deliberately to invite
comparison with her eyes. He walked over and said: “We have met before, Graham Spence.” He noted, with discomfort, that he sounded abrupt. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember, but how do you do?” she said, smiling. And continued her conversation.

He hung around a bit, but soon she went off with a group of people she was inviting to her home for a drink. She did not invite Graham. There was about her an assurance, a carelessness, that he recognised as the signature of success. It was then, watching her laugh as she went off with her friends, that he used the formula: Yes, that one. And he went home to his wife with enjoyable expectation, as if his date with Barbara Coles were already arranged.

His marriage was twenty years old. At first it had been stormy, painful, tragic—full of partings, betrayals and sweet reconciliations. It had taken him at least a decade to realise that there was nothing remarkable about this marriage that he had lived through with such surprise of the mind and the senses. On the contrary, the marriages of most of the people he knew, whether they were first, second or third attempts, were just the same. His had run true to form even to the serious love affair with the young girl for whose sake he had almost divorced his wife—yet at the last moment had changed his mind, letting the girl down so that he must have her for always (not unpleasurably) on his conscience. It was with humiliation that he had understood that this drama was not at all the unique thing he had imagined. It was nothing more than the experience of everyone in his circle. And presumably in everybody else’s circle too?

Anyway, round about the tenth year of his marriage he had seen a good many things clearly, a certain kind of emotional adventure went from his life, and the marriage itself changed.

His wife had married a poor youth with a great future as a writer. Sacrifices had been made, chiefly by her, for that future. He was neither unaware of them, nor ungrateful; in fact he felt permanently guilty about it. He at last published a decently successful book, then a second, which now, thank God, no one remembered. He had drifted into radio, television, book reviewing.

He understood he was not going to make it; that he had become—not a hack, no one could call him that—but a member of that army of people who live by their wits on the fringes of
the arts. The moment of realisation was when he was in a pub one lunchtime near the B.B.C. where he often dropped in to meet others like himself: he understood that was why he went there—they were like him. Just as that melodramatic marriage had turned out to be like everyone else’s—except that it had been shared with one woman instead of with two or three—so it had turned out that his unique talent, his struggles as a writer had led him here, to this pub and the half-dozen pubs like it, where all the men in sight had the same history. They all had their novel, their play, their book of poems, a moment of fame, to their credit. Yet here they were, running television programmes about which they were cynical (to each other or to their wives) or writing reviews about other people’s books. Yes, that’s what he had become, an impresario of other people’s talent. These two moments of clarity, about his marriage and about his talent, had roughly coincided; and (perhaps not by chance) had coincided with his wife’s decision to leave him for a man younger than himself who had a future, she said, as a playwright. Well, he had talked her out of it. For her part, she had to understand he was not going to be the T. S. Eliot or Graham Greene of our time—but after all, how many were? She must finally understand this, for he could no longer bear her awful bitterness. For his part, he must stop coming home drunk at five in the morning, and starting a new romantic affair every six months which he took so seriously that he made her miserable because of her implied deficiencies. In short he was to be a good husband. (He had always been a dutiful father.) And she a good wife. And so it was: the marriage became stable, as they say.

The formula: Yes, that one no longer implied a necessarily sexual relationship. In its more mature form, it was far from being something he was ashamed of. On the contrary, it expressed a humorous respect for what he was, for his real talents and flair, which had turned out to be not artistic after all, but to do with emotional life, hard-earned experience. It expressed an ironical dignity, a proving to himself not only: I can be honest about myself, but also: I have earned the best in that field whenever I want it.

He watched the field for the women who were well known in the arts, or in politics; looked out for photographs, listened for bits of gossip. He made a point of going to see them act, or dance,
or orate. He built up a not unshrewd picture of them. He would either quietly pull strings to meet a woman or—more often, for there was a gambler’s pleasure in waiting—bide his time until he met her in the natural course of events, which was bound to happen sooner or later. He would be seen out with her a few times in public, which was in order, since his work meant he had to entertain well-known people, male and female. His wife always knew, he told her. He might have a brief affair with this woman, but more often than not it was the appearance of an affair. Not that he didn’t get pleasure from other people envying him—he would make a point, for instance, of taking this woman into the pubs where his male colleagues went. It was that his real pleasure came when he saw her surprise at how well she was understood by him. He enjoyed the atmosphere he was able to set up between an intelligent woman and himself: a humorous complicity which had in it much that was unspoken, and which almost made sex irrelevant.

Onto the list of women with whom he planned to have this relationship went Barbara Coles. There was no hurry. Next week, next month, next year, they would meet at a party. The world of well-known people in London is a small one. Big and little fishes, they drift around, nose each other, flirt their fins, wriggle off again. When he bumped into Barbara Coles, it would be time to decide whether or not to sleep with her.

Meanwhile he listened. But he didn’t discover much. She had a husband and children, but the husband seemed to be in the background. The children were charming and well brought up, like everyone else’s children. She had affairs, they said; but while several men he met sounded familiar with her, it was hard to determine whether they had slept with her, because none directly boasted of her. She was spoken of in terms of her friends, her work, her house, a party she had given, a job she had found someone. She was liked, she was respected, and Graham Spence’s self-esteem was flattered because he had chosen her. He looked forward to saying in just the same tone: “Barbara Coles asked me what I thought about the set and I told her quite frankly…”

Then by chance he met a young man who did boast about Barbara Coles; he claimed to have had the great love affair with her, and recently at that; and he spoke of it as something generally known. Graham realised how much he had already
become involved with her in his imagination because of how perturbed he was now, on account of the character of this youth, Jack Kennaway. He had recently become successful as a magazine editor—one of those young men who, not as rare as one might suppose in the big cities, are successful from sheer impertinence, effrontery. Without much talent or taste, yet he had the charm of his effrontery. “Yes, I’m going to succeed, because I’ve decided to; yes, I may be stupid, but not so stupid that I don’t know my deficiencies. Yes, I’m going to be successful because you people with integrity, et cetera, et cetera, simply don’t believe in the possibility of people like me. You are too cowardly to stop me. Yes, I’ve taken your measure and I’m going to succeed because I’ve got the courage not only to be unscrupulous but to be quite frank about it. And besides, you admire me; you must, or otherwise you’d stop me….” Well, that was young Jack Kennaway, and he shocked Graham. He was a tall, languishing young man, handsome in a dark melting way, and, it was quite clear, he was either asexual or homosexual. And this youth boasted of the favours of Barbara Coles; boasted, indeed, of her love. Either she was a raving neurotic with a taste for neurotics; or Jack Kennaway was a most accomplished liar; or she slept with anyone. Graham was intrigued. He took Jack Kennaway out to dinner in order to hear him talk about Barbara Coles. There was no doubt the two were pretty close—all those dinners, theatres, weekends in the country—Graham Spence felt he had put his finger on the secret pulse of Barbara Coles; and it was intolerable that he must wait to meet her; he decided to arrange it.

It became unnecessary. She was in the news again, with a run of luck. She had done a successful historical play, and immediately afterwards a modern play, and then a hit musical. In all three, the sets were remarked on. Graham saw some interviews in newspapers and on television. These all centred around the theme of her being able to deal easily with so many different styles of theatre; but the real point was, of course, that she was a woman, which naturally added piquancy to the thing. And now Graham Spence was asked to do a half-hour radio interview with her. He planned the questions he would ask her with care, drawing on what people had said of her, but above all on his instinct and experience with women. The interview was to be at nine-thirty at night; he was to pick her up at six from the
theatre where she was currently at work, so that there would be time, as the letter from the B.B.C. had put it, “for you and Miss Coles to get to know each other.”