The Listeners (22 page)

‘Was there a name in the wallet?’

‘A driving licence, yes. I didn’t look at it. I didn’t want to know. I burned it. I burned the whole wallet. I—’ She gave a short laugh. ‘Funny, I feel better now I’ve told someone, even though. I suppose you’ll have to tell the police.’

‘If you really thought that, you wouldn’t have told me, would you? Look, Jenny, could you come in and see us? I think we ought to talk it over, don’t you, and decide what’s best to be done. Don’t worry, my dear. Everything is going to be all right. We’ll help you.’

‘You won’t tell my husband?’

‘Perhaps we can help you to tell him. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ A whisper. ‘He really isn’t as bad as I’ve made out. He’s very kind really, that’s why I—’

‘Don’t cry, Jenny. Lots of women get themselves into this kind of fix.’

‘Do they really?’

‘Of course. Thanks to those unscrupulous doorstep artists. It can be worked out. Do you think you could come in tomorrow?’

‘Will you be there?’

‘There are plenty of people who would help you, but if you want to see me to save going through the story again, I’ll be here after two.’

‘I’ll come at two.’

‘Good, Jenny. Ask for me. Paul. I’ll watch for you.’

‘God bless you.’

When he first started to work as a Samaritan, Paul tried to take home to Alice something of the distress and sorrow and anxiety that he found. Drinking and quarrelsome, he would not have attempted to tell her anything, but even during dry and amiable phases, she would hear nothing of it. She was jealous of this second life where somehow he was able to be nicer, wiser, more patient. Once in the days when he still joined battle with her, after a bitter fight in which they had said unbearable things to each other, she had said, ‘If I rang 333-4000 and told you about us, you’d be very nice to me.’

He would have liked to spend the afternoon at the Centre, but since it was the holidays, there were extra students about, and when Ralph came back to 4000, a new young Samaritan, Ronnie, came to sit with him to listen and learn.

Paul went away. The sun was out and up. There would be an afternoon glitter on the sea that aped its summer look. He should take Alice somewhere, drive miles along the coast, have dinner, ration her drinks, stay at a hotel, make love. Instead, he turned the car left and
headed towards Royal Bridge, negotiating the hopeless traffic of this cumbersome town that had so planlessly multiplied. In the old factory district under the hill, there were still tramlines in some streets, appearing and disappearing like messages from the past as the old square paving stones went under to the macadam, came lumpily up again, to be smothered once more by the black surface, already sundering into potholes.

The dirty district, where the impenetrable windows of wholesale houses still dustily proclaimed beltings and feltings and spring grives, ran itself under the railway and emerged to better things. A Blitz-like demolition awaited the builder, children footballing in the mud, bulldozers stranded below ground level in the puddles of excavation. Mesh fences guarded a dorp of pre-fabs, and then the road straightened its shoulders and headed wide and white for the Butterfields Industrial Estate, flags flying, even the smoke cleansed and hygienic.

Paul walked from the car park across the tailored winter grass and went briskly in past the doorman at the main entrance, as if he had business with Unitech Electronics. ‘Look in again any time.’ Upjohn had said. Well, he was looking in.

Mr Upjohn’s secretary, as cold and blank as her telephone manner, with a bright jungle talisman dangling invitingly between her sharp uninviting breasts, said, ‘I’m sorry, he’s out to lunch.’ She looked at her watch to show it was an odd time for Paul to expect to find him.

‘Give him my regards. Tell him I was passing. I hope we can have that game of golf soon. Paul Hammond.’

‘I’ll tell him.’ She did not write it down.

Like a burglar, like Jenny at the knitwear sale, Paul went round the back of the lift and walked up the stairs on his toes. Mrs Frost was at the stove in the little shining galley, scrambling eggs. When he greeted her, she turned with a smile and put her hand up to her hair, although it was not untidy.

‘I came to see Mr Upjohn, but he wasn’t here. So I thought I’d just—’

‘How nice of you. Wait a minute while I finish these.’

He waited while she spooned the creamy egg on to rounds of toast in a silver dish, and neatly crisscrossed them with strips of anchovy. Paul’s mouth was full of juices for the fluffy yellow egg. He had not wanted breakfast after Jeff pounded off with the turned-over tops of his boots flapping. As she took the pan to the sink, Paul almost asked, ‘Can I scrape it out?’

Good thing he had not. The steward came through the swing door, raised a pair of black matador’s eyebrows at Paul, picked up the dish of savouries and went back to the dining-room.

‘You’re not lunching?’ Mrs Frost was wearing a white woollen dress, its front covered by the long red apron. Her legs were straight, rather undeveloped, but good. Feet small. Back of neck clean under short petals of hair.

‘I don’t always. This is a business lunch.’

‘Is Upjohn in there?’ What if he came out napkin in hand to say, ‘Where’s the mustard?’ or ‘The lunch was splendid’? ‘Are you allowed followers?’

‘No.’ She grinned.

‘I’ll help wash up.’

‘No.’ She sat him down with a cup of coffee. The matador came in and out a few times, bringing out plates and glasses, taking away the coffee tray.

‘That’s it then,’ he said. ‘That’s their lot. All on diets, the half of them. You’re wasting your talents here.’

‘If you’re in a hurry to go,’ she said, ‘I’ll finish clearing. Walter’s wife is ill,’ she told Paul.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s all right. Thanks, Barbara.’ He hung his white coat on a hook in the steel cupboard, put on the jacket of his dark suit and left, taking a pocketful of cigars.

Paul sat on the stainless steel stool which was cold to be on for more than a few minutes. As Barbara Frost ran hot water into the sink, he said, ‘Tell me about your husband.’

‘He’s dead.’ Paul let out his breath on a sigh. ‘He’s
been dead for almost fifteen years. My children were quite small.’

‘Why didn’t you marry again?’ It was easy to ask direct questions. She did not look at him, and her back did not stiffen.

‘No time, I suppose. The boys. And I was working.’

‘Have you had lunch?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Would you like to come and have something to eat when you’ve finished? It’s a lovely day. We could drive along the coast a bit, if you’ve got time.’

Jackie’s mother did not really believe in Christmas, although there was no doubt it was very good for business. It might be an old wives’ tale to suppose that Jesus was born on December 25th, but as the date grew near, the sale of slippers and handbags was marvellous to see. Shoe dyes moved well too, as the ladies got last summer’s whites coloured up to match their party dresses.

Jackie was not allowed to make sales, but as he came through into the front shop with heels for waiting customers, he watched the people turning the revolving stand of slippers, puddling the green Duralon carpet with their umbrellas, and listened to his mother’s selling voice.

‘That’s a.top-quality bag. You’ve only to look at the lining. That’s where you can always tell, the workmanship inside. You see the label? That’s a Dorolee bag.’

‘Oh yes?’ said the customer, as if she had ever heard of Dorolee.

When the sale was made: ‘Thank you, madam. You’ve made a good choice. If your daughter doesn’t appreciate it, you send her right back to me and I will show her the difference between quality merchandise and your run-of-the-mill goods.’

Miriam, who came every day to help as Christmas approached, had a different style.

‘That?’ she would exclaim in her half scream. ‘Who are
you buying it for, your sister or your grandmother?’ She dangled the big pouchy bag by the handle, making a face as if it had forgotten itself. ‘Let’s face it, these went out with Queen Victoria.’

When Muh and Miriam were together at the cash register at the end of the counter, Muh muttered, ‘Please don’t denigrate the stock.’

‘Ha!’ Miriam flung back her abundant head. ‘It does that for itself.’

Muh was a bit dubious about taking the morning off to go to the Play School Christmas party. ‘She’s getting very slapdash, that Miriam,’ she told Dad the night before, accusingly, as if it were his cousin, not hers. ‘I doubt she’s good for trade.’

‘Nonsense, Ena, everyone loves Miriam.’

‘I luh Mim.’

‘Not with your mouth full, Jack,’ his mother said, and his father said, ‘Of course you do. So do I. She’s very good to all of us.’

‘Hmmm . . . yes . . .’ Muh drummed her pebble-hard fingertips on the table and looked at Dad, as Malcom said afterwards, as if she thought he had Miriam laid out on the cutting bench with her skirt up as soon as her back was turned.

‘Oh, ho, ho,’ Jackie chuckled to that.

‘Want to see something, old Jack?’

‘Yeh, yeh.’ He nodded his head so violently that his eyes rattled.

‘What’ll you give us then?’

‘A fag?’

‘Two.’ Malcom clicked his fingers, and after Jackie pulled out the cigarettes Miriam had stuffed into his pocket and fiddled two out of the crumpled packet, Malcom showed him the picture he had hidden in chapter six of his chemistry book.

‘Whee-ew.’ Jackie’s whistle was full of breath and spittle.

Later that night, he crept downstairs to dial the Samaritans and tell Helen that he was going to a party.

‘Ring me up next week and tell me all about it,’ she said. ‘OK, love? Happy Christmas!’

‘Ha-ie Iss-uss!’ He went upstairs on hands and knees like a silent night cat.

But next day when Miriam arrived and Jackie went to get his coat and his bag of gifts, his mother said, ‘Where are you going, young man?’

‘Going a party.’

‘I told you, Jack.’ She tried to steer him back into the workshop, but he stood firm. ‘I don’t believe we should go, with all there is to do here. Work-a first, then play. You know the golden rule.’

‘You told him he should go to the party!’ Miriam plunged into the scene before she had even taken off the fur hood which made her look like a wolf, all nose and teeth.

‘Don’t interfere.’

‘Sometimes ‘I wonder who’s bonkers in this family.’ Ignoring two women who came suspiciously into the shop with faces prepared to say, ‘That’s too dear’ at the first price-ticket, Miriam began to button Jackie’s coat. As fast as she buttoned it, his mother undid the buttons and there they were, the three of them, swaying back and forth against swing doors between the workshop and the front shop, so that Dad got up from the stitching machine with a cordovan brogue on one hand to say, ‘Here, here, what’s up?’

‘You may well ask.’ Willpower vanquished brute strength, and Muh had Jackie through the door and into the workshop, his coat half done up in the wrong button holes, his carrier bag of presents for the children bumping round his ankles.

‘What’s the matter, son?’ his father asked, for Jackie’s face was working, the tongue wandering about with a life of its own, making spit.

‘You heard me say last night we shouldn’t go.’ It was only with Dad that she relaxed into shrillness like any other woman, and did not bother how she formed her words.

‘Ah - let him have a bit of fun.’

‘You spoil him rotten.’

‘How can they have the party without
you
?’ Sometimes Dad was keener than you’d expect. He sat down again at the stitcher, a relic of the days in Camden Town, a little old treadle machine so low that he sat on a child’s iron chair bolted to the floor. With a sweep of his hand, he turned the wheel towards him and began to treadle away for dear life, his head glistening, a goblin running up toys for Santa Claus.

‘All things to all men . . .’Muh said. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to see where one’s duty lies.’

‘You’re a good woman, Ena.’

‘Thank you.’

As she took Jackie out through the side door and past the window, pretending not to see Miriam pointing at the cash register which had rung up an £11 sale, he realized that she had meant to go all along. Her bag and gloves were under her coat on the hall table. She had her rainboots on. How could he and Miriam and Dad not have noticed?

Jackie had bought a Christmas present for Sarah. He had toy whistles and trumpets for all the children (’My stars, what a shindy!’ Harriet seized a tootler and joined in) and a harmonica for Sarah, as if he did not class her with the grown-ups.

Sarah had brought a toy for each child and a cigarette lighter for Jackie, with his intials on it. She knew that he smoked, since they had had a serious conversation with their heads in the refrigerator, getting out the milk, about various brands of cigarettes. She did not know that he was not supposed to smoke. When he began to unwrap the present, his jaw fell, his eyes slid quickly to his mother and he dropped the lighter into his jacket and clamped his hand over the pocket.

Sarah caught his eye and they winked. What became of a boy like that? What would happen when his mother grew old and died and he himself carried his child’s brain
about in a middle-aged skull? What happened about sex? Sarah was still at the age when she visualized herself going to bed with every man she saw, postmen and waiters and concert pianists. She imagined it without much variety, an endless procession of heavy bodies thumping down between her legs.

The presents were distributed from under a Christmas tree in the middle of the room, made of aluminium strips and hung with coloured glass, glittering and fantastic. The children could not keep away. Hands reached out. The glass bubbles broke. You did not scold after something had happened. You watched and tried to prevent it happening.

‘No, no, Mara. It’s to look at. Pretty. See? Pretty Christmas tree.’

Mara shot out her arm like a dictator and crushed a golden ball carefully in her fat fist. She opened her hand and watched the eggshell pieces sprinkle to the floor.

By the time Jackie’s mother gave out the presents, there was as much glass as wrapping paper on the floor round the tree. She called out names and some of the children came forward. Most of them had to be propelled by Harriet or Sarah or a rosy young medical student called Bill. Mrs Manson, the mother of the mongoloid boy was not here today, and Bill spent his morning with Charlie, working his arms, talking to him, picking him up and swinging him, winding musical boxes and waggling puppets in front of his face. When he paused, Charlie went to his chair and sat with his arm on the back of it and his head on his arm until Bill came and swept him up again.