The Listeners (12 page)

‘Look, it’s not what
I
want — it’s what you think you ought to do. You’re sixteen. I don’t have to tell you to breathe.’ Why did they irk each other so, they who had always been allies against the tough sufficiency of Laura, the catastrophes of Alice?

When Jeff had trotted upstairs in the grubby yellow sandals he wore over thick sweat socks, Paul turned with a laugh and spread hands to the housemaster’s wife, sorting socks in a laundry basket. ‘You wouldn’t think we loved each other.’

‘I think he’s very fine,’ she said. ‘He thinks a whole lot of you, you know. He talks a lot about you, what you write to him, what you and he did last summer.’

‘Does he?’ Paul eagerly believed it.

When he had got Jeff in the car, he said, ‘What’s the matter with your eyes?’ The housemaster’s wife might have thought it odd that he did not know.

‘Nothing.’ Jeff grinned and took off the round wire spectacles and held them in front of his father’s eyes to show they were plain glass. ‘Do you want me to — sorry.’ He started to put the glasses back on, looked at his father, and folded them and put them in his pocket.

‘God, it’s good to get away from here.’ He leaned back and sighed as they drove under the archway.

‘Things are all right though, aren’t they?’ Jeff did not write letters, though he occasionally telephoned, reversing the charges.

‘Oh yes. Great. Mark’s pretty good, if you care about that.’

‘Friends?’

‘Some. They’re all right.’

‘What about games? Any football this year?’

‘Oh come on, Dad,’ Jeff said irritably. ‘I’ve been here long enough to know how to get out of
that.
’

Crossing the front of the school buildings to go out of the other gate towards the hotel, Paul allowed himself a little treat of nostalgia for the round pancake of lawn, the coloured glass crests in the library windows, the broad oak where his poetry class had sprawled, sucking grass, in the first shimmer of June.

Facile. It was possible to be nostalgic about anything past, even a prison camp, since it represented a part of your own precious life. When he and Alice left Singleton Court, as they would have to eventually, or die, no doubt he would occasionally think fondly of the artificial fire, the bathroom view of other people’s bathroom window-sills across the yard.

Out of the headmaster’s house came the familiar cinnamon tweeds, the patch of freckled skull like a tonsure, the pigeon-toed lope. As always, the little start of recognition, of surprise that he had the nerve to come, before the sincere grin and the double handshake. ‘My dear Paul!’ He had both arms in through the window of the car. ‘The nicest surprise. Have you got a moment? Sheila would love to see you.’

‘The hell she would,’ Jeff said when they had driven on. ‘It must be hell for you coming back here — I mean, it must be hell.’

‘It’s the only way I can see you till next year when you can get weekends. I’m sorry,’ Paul said, as they got to the road, ‘I should have asked you if there was anyone you wanted to bring to lunch.’

‘No thanks.’

Jeff was fairly uncommunicative at lunch. He drank beer, and Paul kept some sort of conversation going, but his questions about Jeff’s news brought only monosyllables, and his news of himself was clearly of little interest. Some parents and boys from the school came into the hotel restaurant, and Jeff put the spectacles on
again. He was rather waxy and pale, the pinkish scars of the impetigo still staining the skin of his mouth and chin.

‘Sick of school?’ Paul asked casually, getting out his wallet to pay the lunch bill, higher on term-time Saturdays since there was nowhere else to go.

‘No — why?’ Jeff looked up through the fake lenses.

‘Oh, I don’t know. I wondered if you ever regretted your decision. At the time you had to make it, you were under a pretty bad strain. We all were.’

‘I told you then,’ Jeff looked at the middle of his father, not at his face. ‘I wasn’t going to let my mother spoil my life.’

There was nothing to do after lunch except sit in the cinema and watch a second-rate film. Paul dozed and Jeff fidgeted and muttered and groaned as the film got worse. But when Paul woke, looked at his watch and saw that he must go, Jeff was quite sullen, although he had been throwing himself about in his seat and complaining: ‘I can’t stand much more of this.’

Paul did not get to the hospital until after six, but he went up to the ward anyway, hoping that he might find a nurse he knew.

The ward was closed for the Saturday night concert. From the corridor, Paul could hear some basic guitar chords and pleasant young Anglo-Saxon voices singing that ‘De Lawd He know ‘bout all de hungry chillun.’

He looked into the office. Good luck, Nurse Drage was in there, sneaking a cigarette. She was an intense, impulsive girl with her hair scraped back behind enormous ears and her stiff cap riding her forehead like an American sailor.

‘My God, you scared me.’ She jumped up, with her cigarette inside her hand, even more like a sailor.

‘Where’s Sister?’

‘At supper. I’m in charge here.’ She stuck out her apron front and put on Sister’s voice. ‘The ward is closed, my good man.’

‘I know I’m late, but I promised that boy — the one with the wrist — that I’d come back. Has he told you what his name is?’

‘I don’t think so. He’s been asleep since I’ve been on. Is he one of yours?’

Paul did not answer. Nurse Drage put out her cigarette, dropped the stub in her pocket, wiped the ashtray with a square of gauze dressing and put that in her pocket too. ‘Sister’s got another twenty minutes,’ she told him, and then as De Lawd ended to no clapping, she took a quick look down the corridor and said, ‘Quick — sneak in before they start again.’

The next song was beginning, but all the men and boys in the beds and chairs turned like a theatre audience to look at Paul coming in. He raised a hand in apology to the two serious boys and the singing girl with the sweet triangular face, and tiptoed round the side of the ward from bedrail to bedrail, as if the middle of the floor were a torrent.

The boy by the end wall had his eyes shut and was either asleep or pretending to be. He was very young, perhaps not yet out of his teens. His light hair, badly cut too long ago stuck up at odd angles on the pillow. His face was narrow, with a small delicate nose like a girl and fair flushed skin that could not need much shaving. The grazes on his mouth and cheek made him look victimized, the outflung arm a plea for mercy.

As Paul sat looking down at him, he opened his eyes, frowned, closed them again and then opened them and opened his mouth as if he might say something.

‘How are you?’ Paul asked, when he did not.

‘All right.’ The music was loud enough for them to talk without being heard by the chubby man, propped on a thick elbow to listen. ‘I didn’t think you were coming back.’

‘I’m sorry I was late. I had to go to Oxfordshire. My son’s at school there,’ Paul said, for something to say, not expecting the boy to care, but his eyes brightened and he asked, ‘How old’s he?’

‘Sixteen. Bit younger than you. Where did you go to school?’

‘Not much of a school. I didn’t mind it. Does your son?’

‘Not too much. The work’s all right, but he hates games and he seems to be a bit of a loner. He doesn’t go round with gangs of friends.’ Paul was feeling his way, trying to keep the boy’s interest.

The boy nodded. ‘What’s his name then?’

‘Jeff.’ Paul talked a bit more about his son and the school and the lunch and the film they had seen. People in trouble usually wanted you to listen and not talk about yourself, but this boy seemed to want it the other way round. He wanted more about Jeff, perhaps to keep from having to talk, perhaps because some drift of fantasy was making Paul a father?

At the end of the song, the boys and the girl waved and called out. ‘See you next week!’ and took their guitars and their healthy youth away. The girl kissed a very old man by the door, and he chuckled and made a grab at her thigh.

‘You off?’ the boy asked, as if Paul had only come for the concert.

‘I’ll have to go before Sister comes.’

‘Yes.’ He had lowered his voice when the music finished. Paul had to lean forward to hear his murmur. ‘She’s like when I was a boy.’ He smiled a little and shook his head as if it were a very distant memory.

‘Someone strict?’

‘Yup.’ No more.

Paul let that go, and asked casually. ‘What’s your name?’

‘I’ve not told them.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because of the police.’

‘It won’t make any difference. Anyway, I don’t think the police will bother you.’

‘What I — what I done ...’ His pale-lashed eyes flicked to his arm.

‘Was that why you went off and hid, after you rung us?’

‘I don’t know.’ He had to keep his arm still, but the rest of him moved restlessly on the bed. ‘I don’t remember. I don’t remember nothing about what happened. It’s all so confused all the time. I don’t know what to do...’ His voice went wandering away, and Paul said again, ‘What’s your name?’

‘Tim.’ His eyes came back to Paul as if in surprise that he did not know. ‘Tim Shaw. I live up Darley Road.’ He added without being asked, ‘Got a room there.’

‘A job?’

‘Oh yes, I’ve got a job but -1 don’t know if I’ll stay. It’s not much,’ he pursed his mouth in a businesslike way. ‘Not my kind of thing really.’

Paul did not ask what it was, nor whether he should get in touch with the employer, because the boy seemed to have made it up. The door crashed open wide as if an army were coming through, and the birdlike Sister marched into the ward, buttoning her cuffs and looking round for trouble.

‘I’ve got to go.’ Paul got up quickly. ‘Goodbye for now, Tim.’

The boy neither answered nor seemed to notice. He had withdrawn from behind his face. Paul put back the chair and was starting off with a conciliatory smile for the advancing Sister, when there was a nudging tug, like a child, at the edge of his jacket.

‘Will I see you again?’ the boy asked anxiously.

‘Of course.’ Paul steamed out of the ward in a glow of elation that frizzled Sister’s outrage and caused Nurse Drage to grumble, ‘There’s
some
people have to work on a Saturday evening

Alice was not in the flat. That was not unusual, at drinking time. Not that she favoured any one particular drinking time over another, but the evening was when she wandered off to her favourite pubs and bars, or the Capstan Club down by the harbour.

Tonight they were supposed to be dining out, but once gone, Alice was not likely to remember. Paul went on his own, and his friends accepted the excuse of Alice’s flu as if they had not heard it before, and not as if they were quite relieved. They were, because they had invited a strange couple, and with Alice, you never knew.

You never knew when she would come home either. Paul got back to the flat at midnight, and paced about undressing and muttering to himself, ‘If I had a pound for every night I’ve had to worry about her ... If I had five quid for every time I’ve been fool enough to call the police and ask about accidents...’

His pacing eventually led him into bed. He turned on the lamp to read, and saw, stuck into a book he had finished and would not have been reading, a note from his wife.

She had gone to stay with Hazel Rencher, a stoical friend from days long past who had always been ‘good’ to her. Hazel thought that Paul was a bad influence on Alice, and traced her drinking directly to him.

On Sunday, before he went to the Samaritan Centre, he rang Hazel’s number in a town farther along the coast, which Alice disliked even more than this one.

‘How’s Alice?’

‘She’s all right.’ Implying, why wouldn’t she be, since she is with me? ‘She expected you to ring up last night.’

‘I went out to dinner. She was supposed to go too.’

‘She was lonely with you off all day. She got on a bus and came here. She didn’t want to be alone.’

‘She could have gone with me.’

‘To
Burlington?’

‘To see her son.’ The conversation was getting too righteous on both sides. ‘Let me talk to her.’

‘She’s asleep,’ said Hazel triumphantly and rang off.

’Vicky. How nice of you to come.’

‘It was nice of you to ask me.’

‘I expect you’d like a drink.’

‘Thank you very much, I—

‘You and Robbie are rather late. I expect you’d like to go up and dress first.’

‘Thank you very much.’

The weekend with Robbie’s parents near Maidenhead had been no more stimulating than usual, though not completely a weekend since Victoria came back on Saturday evening.

Robbie’s parents were afflicted with an anachronistic title, which was one of the reasons why she could not marry him. There were others — he was shorter than she was, she needed a couple of drinks before she could enjoy his hand on her, at the Bank he wore a braided Edwardian waistcoat and half glasses and was irascible with the melancholy trainee girls — but it was enough to tell him, ‘I couldn’t possibly ever be called Lady Roundswell.’

‘I don’t see why not.’

‘I’d have to pay for everything in cash because I wouldn’t be able to say my name in shops.’

‘Would you marry me if I gave up the title?’

‘That would kill your father.’

‘If I was Lord Roundswell, he’d be dead anyway.’

The white house was beautiful, the garden falling in terraces to the river. If she married Robbie, this would eventually be theirs. What would they do with his mother? She was not the kind you put in a flat over the stables. Not likeable, she made it difficult to dislike her by giving you no cause. She was passive, placid, dull as bottled water, demanding so little of life and of herself that she did not appear to notice what was lacking. She was a stiff awkward shape, in dressmaker, not couturier expensive clothes, with a mass of grey hair piled haphazardly above a face blessed with a wild-rose skin from not drinking or smoking. She called Victoria Vicky although she had been asked not to, and thought she was not quite top drawer and had knocked about too long without a husband, but might do for poor ridiculous Robbie who had made such a fiasco of his first disastrous marriage. She did not remember that she had originally
favoured it; only that he had muffed it.