The Centre of the Green (16 page)

The backs of Charles’ legs began to ache; he had been on his feet for much of the day. He sat down for a while on a bench, and considered what to do next. Perhaps if he were not to think about what to do, if instead he were to find an interest outside himself in the people who walked past, or the dogs, or the pigeons, or the colours of the sky—but he could not pretend to an interest he did not feel; it was easier to kill time after all, and go to the movies. He began to walk back again towards Notting Hill Gate, since, although he took no pleasure in walking, a bus would get him there too early. A flurry of rain,
driven by the wind, came down the path to meet him. He turned up the collar of his raincoat, and a tune began to form in his mind, and repeat itself over and over.
Gloomy Sunday!
he had heard that the B.B.C. had banned it because too many people had committed suicide while listening to it.

He was early for the cinema, and had to queue until the doors opened. He noticed the girl he had seen at lunch ahead of him; they exchanged that tiny facial twitch with which strangers recognize each other. When eventually the people in the queue were allowed inside the cinema, Charles saw the girl again. She gave him half a smile, and made half a gesture of invitation, so Charles took the seat next to her.

“Hullo,” he said.

“I saw you at dinner.”

“Yes. I saw you.”

“So I thought we might as well sit together.”

“Good idea.”

“I mean, there’s no sense in going to the pictures by yourself, if you can go with someone else, is there?”

“No.”

Charles said, “Do you come here often?”

“Sometimes. When there’s not much else to do.”

“So do I.”

They sat in silence for a while. The girl had taken off her raincoat, and folded it across her lap. She did not look at Charles, but stared in front of her. Since the
programme
was not due to start for some minutes, music from gramophone records was relayed to the audience through an amplifier. The girl tapped one foot in time to the beat.

She said, “Did you come last week?”

“Yes, I did.”

“I thought it was quite good really.”

“Yes. I didn’t care for the second feature though.”

“No, it wasn’t very good, was it?”

“I don’t know why they show them.”

“Oh, I like a long programme.”

Takes up more time, you mean
, Charles thought. I suppose I like a long programme too.

The lights faded. The programme began. Time passed.
I suppose
, Charles thought …
I suppose
…. He glanced sideways at the girl as she stared ahead, watching the film. Although she was not pretty, neither was she plain. She was not an uneducated floozy, nor an intelligent feminist being sensible about sex, but a nice C-class girl who had left a nice C-class home to live on her own in London. She had behaved, not brazenly, but like a shy person, determined to overcome her shyness. What did she expect of him? What—the two might be different—did he want to do? Picking people up in cinemas was Julian’s game, not his; he didn’t want to be involved, yet he lacked the defences of the habitual philanderer. He had accepted her invitation to sit next to her, but after all, this sort of thing was known to be casual; it was not an involvement. Like the movies, it passed the time.

Her hand lay on the arm of the seat, and he put his hand on top, and gently squeezed her fingers. They sat, holding hands for a while, and then he put one arm around her shoulders, and she rested her head against him. Other couples in front, he could see, were doing much the same thing. He moved his hand downwards to touch her breast, but, although she did nothing to stop him, he could feel her shoulders and neck go rigid, so he drew back his hand.

When the film was over, and they stood together awkwardly in the street outside the cinema, Charles said, “Let’s go and have a drink somewhere, shall we?”

“Well….”

“Or coffee if you’d rather.”

“I would rather have coffee really. If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind at all. Where would you like to go?”

“Anywhere you like.”

Charles said carefully, “Why don’t we go back to my place then, and have it there?”

“I don’t mind.”

As they walked down the hill, the girl said, “I expect you think I’m a bit silly really, not wanting to go for a drink. It’s not that I’m against drinking or anything. I mean, I used to—like having a gin and lime if I was out with a boy, and that kind of thing. It was the woman underneath where I live put me off.”

“Underneath?”

“In the basement.”

“Oh. She’s temperance?”

“No. But she was always drunk, you see, and it quite put me off drinking.”

“I suppose it would.”

“It was her husband dying that started it. That was before I moved in. I’ve only been at the place where I live for a year, you see. I used to live at home before that. This woman—she was the caretaker of our place, you see, she and her husband. Everyone says she used to be such a clean woman—too clean really. She’d go off at him if he forgot to take his shoes off when he came into the house, and you could smell the furniture polish the moment you opened the door. But by the time I came, he was dead and she’d begun to drink. It was some sort of bronchial thing; he was older than her. She wasn’t really very old at all; more at what they call the difficult age. It was wine she drank.”

“Did you see much of her, then?”

“Well, it’s all flats and flatlets where I live, and I’m on the ground floor, you see; so when she wanted anything,
she used to come up to me. She’d want me to get her things—you know, like bread. She was ever so thin and fallen-in looking. And dirty. I don’t think she ever had a bath or a wash or anything, from the day her husband died.”

“What did she do for money?”

“I don’t think she had much. She never paid me for most of the things I got her. She used to sell her furniture to buy wine. The place got into an awful state. Funny how the tenants never complained, but we felt sorry for her, you see. And she was never noisy. Being just above, I used to hear her crying at night sometimes, but there was never any singing or bad language or anything like that. In the end, it was the neighbours wrote to the firm that owned our place. They said the place was so dirty it was lowering the street.”

“So she was put out?”

“Yes. It was a Saturday. They had to burst open the door, because she couldn’t hear them knocking. She was lying in the front room on a sort of sofa with all the springs bursting out; it was the only furniture she had left. Then they took her away, and cleared the place up; there’s new caretakers in it now. I was sorry for her, I must say. She hadn’t done any harm; she was only lonely. But you can see why it’s put me off drinking.”

“Yes, I can.”

As they turned the corner into Charles’ street, they saw a policeman coming towards them. He drew closer. He was wearing a beard. “Oh look!” the girl said, “I’ve never seen a policeman like that before.”

Charles said, “Perhaps he’s in disguise.”

The girl laughed, and put her hand on Charles’ arm. “You are silly,” she said. “I ought to remember the things you say, and write them down.”

They had arrived. In the front room, Charles put on
the light, and drew the curtains. Then he put his arms around the girl, and kissed her. Again he felt a rigidity, a sort of deadness in her response, although she returned his kiss. Was it simply that she wasn’t very good at it? No there was something more, something like fear. He said, “I’ll put the coffee on,” and went into the kitchen.

“It is sad really,” she said, as they sat opposite one another in the armchairs by the fire, and drank the coffee.

“That woman downstairs?”

“Everything really. I mean, I often think you can’t win. Like my friend, taking three years to die of
Parkinson
’s disease. She’s got about a year left now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I expect you’ll think I’m morbid, going on like this. I’m not usually, but it was talking about that woman downstairs made me think of it. My friend’s got two little children, you see, and she doesn’t know what to do. You’ll say she shouldn’t have had them when her
husband
’s an epileptic, but I suppose you don’t think about that at the time. She always says she’s not afraid of dying, but what’s going to happen to them when she passes on?
He
can’t look after them.”

“Hasn’t she any one else?”

“Her mother’s sixty-three. Then there’s a married sister, but she’s afraid to take the kids because of epilepsy being hereditary. So my friend doesn’t know what to do, and time’s getting shorter. It’s really only prayer now that keeps her going.”

“Prayer. She believes in God, then?”

“Well, of course. Don’t you?”

“Not really.”

The girl said, “If Amy didn’t believe in Heaven, what would she have left? I mean, there has to be a future life, or it’s so unfair. Why should other people live happy,
and her suffer? There has to be compensation, you know; I mean, that stands to reason. After all, it’s not only Amy. Think of all the people that was hurt in the war. They can’t even go out for a walk in the street, because nobody can bear to look at them.”

“It does seem … hard.”

“What do
you
believe then?”

The feeling you had as you watched a child playing in the sunlight; pride in work well done—by yourself—by others—the pride of a father, whose child has brought a good report card home from school; the joy of physical action, all senses at a stretch; responsibility—the giving and getting of trust. It sounded so well. It should be true, but it was not true. Perhaps Charles had believed in all that once. Perhaps every human being had, as Aristotle thought, the possibility within him of being a good, an ideal human being, but too many things outside him could deny that possibility. It didn’t work for Amy, dying of Parkinson’s disease. It didn’t work for her children and her epileptic husband. It didn’t work for the drunken lady in the basement. It didn’t work for this girl. It didn’t work for him. It didn’t work, and yet there wasn’t anything else. So he only said, “Oh, I don’t know.”

“We are having a serious conversation, aren’t we?”

“Yes, we are. Too serious.”

He stood up, took her hands in his, and pulled her to her feet. “Come over here,” he said, and led her gently to the bed. Then he sat down, pulling her down with him. She was like a doll, allowing him to arrange her in any position he chose, but doing nothing for herself. “Put your feet up. Be comfortable,” he said. Obediently she began to swing her legs up on to the coverlet; then she stopped, looked at him half in shyness and half in guilt, and kicked off her shoes before completing the
movement
. He leaned back and over her so that she could rest
against his right arm, while, with his left hand, he began to unfasten the buttons of her jacket. She lay quite still as he placed his hand over one breast, squeezing it gently and caressing the nipple. He found that he was shivering slightly in anticipation. He kissed her. “Would you like to stay the night?” he said carefully. She gazed up through him, beyond him, up to the ceiling. “After all,” she said in a little voice, “it’s only like friendship really, isn’t it?”

Desire died in him. He took his hand from her breast, and began very slowly to fasten the buttons of her jacket again. He found that his throat and mouth were dry, and his voice cracked when he spoke. “No. It isn’t,” he said. “It isn’t at all.” The girl made no reply.

He could not explain.
It’s only friendship
—those words! and an abyss of loneliness had opened before him. He was frightened. “How can you
be
so lonely?” he wanted to say, but all he did say was, “I’m sorry. I’m really very sorry.” He searched for words to help him out. “My mistake, “he said. “I mean … I shouldn’t——” “Don’t you want to?” the girl said, and he replied, “No. No, I don’t.”

She sat up on the bed again. She seemed composed, but it was the composure of extreme tension. Charles watched her; he was incapable of saying or doing
anything
to help. Her lips were held firm, and her gaze was steady, but a tear formed in each eye, grew to ripeness, and fell slowly. “I’d better be going now,” she said. “Thank you for the coffee. It was ever so nice.” Charles opened the door for her, and followed her up the
basement
steps into the street. “Good-bye,” she said. “It has been nice, talking and all.” Then she walked away up the street, turned the corner into Holland Park Avenue, and was gone.

Charles wanted to run after her, but he did not. He
wanted to run away, but he did not. He held on to the basement railings, feeling weak and empty. He told
himself
that it was foolish to be so shocked over so small an episode, but he knew that it was not foolish, and that he was shocked.
What will become of her?
he thought,
meaning
, “What will become of me?” And when, much later on that night, he fell asleep at last, his sleep was broken by a dream, in which the drunken lady from downstairs scraped at caked dishes in cold water with the stump of a mop, saying over and over again, “I used to be such a clean woman,” while the tears ran freely down her cheeks.

So much for Sunday.

*

So much for Sunday. Penny Baker, who was spending the Bank Holiday week-end with friends in Sussex, went to bed in a room with bamboo wallpaper. Wearing pyjamas from Harvey Nichols, she sat before the
dressing
-table, and took off her make-up with cold cream and cotton-wool. She patted astringent lotion carefully into her skin, taking plenty of time on this routine occupation, since there was nobody to be irritated by her slowness in coming to bed. A lumpish country moth flew through the open window, bumping and butting its head against the parchment globe from Heal’s which hung from the centre of the ceiling. Penny began to brush her hair.

Penny was not lonely; she did not believe in that. The empty flat in Putney did not oppress her. “My dear, I’m never in it,” she would say. She did not lack company. When one works in Public Relations, one knows—one has to know—so many people. There were so many parties for the Press, so many acquaintances to drink with in the evenings, so many influential people whom she could help to entertain. The Soho pubs, the
expense-account
restaurants—how pleasant to take them up
again, and find them still the same! how foolish of her to have left so much of this part of her job to others during her days as a wife, a tied woman. Now it was gin and tonic again, and pink gin, gin and Dubonnet, Bloody Mary, Scotch on the rocks. Now it was, “The Scampi Provençale are very good here”. “I
think
I’ll have a steak.” “No potatoes, thanks. Just a green salad.” All the old bits of conversation came out, and could be used again. That wonderful man who slimmed you by
metabolism
—“And then, you see, when you’re down to your basic weight, you start putting things back in the diet again until you see what causes the trouble. Of course, I started with alcohol. I must say it was a relief to find it wasn’t that.” You could talk about him, or about the latest American musical, or you could gossip endlessly about the shifting politics of the Public Relations world, in which it is rare to hold one job for more than eighteen months. And if you ran out of talk about that, there was always the wider political scene—” I mean, I’m not political, Penny. You know that. But the way everything keeps going
up
all the time. I mean, they can’t keep asking for more money. They’re bleeding the country white.”