The Listeners (41 page)

There it was. Pus, pool, gnome. Billie trudged up the path and turned the handle of the musical bell genteelly, though she felt more like pounding on the door.

Phil opened it. Naked to the waist, he looked somehow more obscene than if he had his trousers off.

’Is Morna there?’ Billie could see her sitting in the room beyond. Morna looked at her, but said nothing, just stared with those round eyes that did not blink.

‘I want to talk to Morna.’

‘Well, she don’t want to talk to you.’

‘Tell her to come out here.’

‘Oh piss off. She’s with me now.’ Phil began to close the door.

‘Don’t you know what she is?’ Billie shouted. ‘Don’t you know what she bloody is?’

‘Oh shut up, you old butch,’ he said and slammed the door in Billie’s face.

It was Victoria’s night at the Samaritans. When Billie got home at last, somehow, some time of the night, she pushed her pudgy fingers wearily into the holes of the telephone dial – 333-4000.

‘Samaritans – can I help you?’

‘Where’s Victoria?’

Hospital of Saint Olaf and Saint Jude. Well, if Victoria had really gone and got herself mugged, there was nothing like doing it somewhere where the nuns could take care of you.

‘Billie? Oh, I’m glad to hear your voice.’

‘I wanted to talk to you last night.’

‘What’s up?’ Victoria’s voice was strange. ‘You sound rather low, me old Bill.’

‘I am low.’

‘So am I. Come and see me, and we’ll mourn together.’

‘At the hospital? No thanks.’

‘Oh come on. This one is nice. It’s small and old and no one is in a hurry.’

‘I hate all hospitals.’

But that afternoon after work, she put on her cracked leather coat over her green overall and trekked over to Saint Olaf’s and Saint Jude’s, a convent hospital that had been expanded during the war, with long Army huts running out behind the original white building where the nuns had been for years.

In the hall, the sickly drugging smell was there, in spite of all the flowers and floor wax. If her need for Victoria were not so great, Billie would have turned and walked out.

‘Twenty-nine? I’ll take you there.’ The nun moved without feet, her young shining face narrowed by stiff white blinkers.

In a tiny room, there was a woman in bed, with long reddish hair plaited over her shoulders and the whole of one side of her face swollen black and blue, the eye almost closed.

‘Victoria?’ Billie did not know what she had expected to see.

‘Hullo, Billie.’ She could only smile and speak with one side of her mouth. She looked as if she were in pain.

‘My God –
Victoria.
’ Billie stood by the door, too stupidly shaken to come into the room. Victoria put out a hand and patted the chair by the bed, and Billie came in, feeling huge in the little room.

Victoria said, ‘Oh, I’m
so
glad you came. They won’t let me up, and I can’t read, and I’m getting lonely and depressed.’

Of course. Of course. Billie sat in the chair, hot in her coat, because she would not let Victoria see her in the stupid green overall with C. Cripps woven on the top pocket, and it all became clear. It was not her need of Victoria that had tugged her unwillingly across the river and through the worst parts of Flagg’s Hill to the hospital. Victoria needed her.

Victoria could not talk much, so Billie did most of it for both of them. She chattered on about the cafeteria and Mr Fettiche’s niece, who he had put over everybody at the cash register, and about a Norwegian film that was either not as dirty as they claimed, or so filthy that Billie had not understood what they were up to.

She did not say anything about Morna and Phil, and by the time the young nun brought a tray of tea for both of them, she knew she was not going to.

‘Oh Billie,’ Victoria said. ‘I do like you. Why didn’t we meet before?’

‘The unseen voice,’ Billie said. ‘Mysterious, tantalizing. No man knew her face.’

Victoria clicked her fingers. ‘
Far Caravans?
Yes, I remember. Stewart Granger.’

Billie shook her head smugly. ‘No dear.
They Walk By Night.
I like you too, Victoria.’

There had been times, when she was lonely, or bored, or sick of the newspaper or of being single among married friends, when Victoria had almost thought she had better marry Robbie. This was not one of the times. He sat in her room looking a little petulant. He thought this whole happening was very unnecessary of her. Other people did good works without being so obsessed and childish. Other Samaritans stayed by the telephone. Victoria had to get involved in the stupidest possible way.

‘You need a keeper.’ He leaned forward and took her hand in his gentle friendly hand. ‘You can’t go blundering about on your own. You need to get married, Victoria. You could still have a baby. I’ll find another flat, a house if you like, we’ll go anywhere you want.’

‘But Uncle Willie—’

‘You can give up your job. Give up this slumming thing. Give up the Samaritans, I wish you would. You’ve done your bit.’

‘I’ve hardly even begun.’

‘My God, Victoria!’ Robbie was quite angry. He got up and paced what little floor there was to pace. ‘Stop trying to save the world. Try saving yourself.’

Not that way. She shook her aching head. Her face was very sore. Her blurred eye felt as if it would never see properly again.

‘It’s Sam – is it?’ He stood with his back to the window so that she could not see the detail of his familiar, brotherly face. ‘You still love him. Is that it?’

Oh – love. What was that kind of hopeless fantasy love? Jealousy? Regret? Humiliation? You could think
yourself into or out of it. But she said, ‘Yes, I think so.’ to avoid telling Robbie that she did not love him.

She had never seen Peter except at the old rectory. She had not expected that he would come to the hospital. Except for Sarah, who had worked for him, he did not see any of the Samaritans outside the Centre.

Victoria had been dozing when he wandered in, as he had in the dream when she thought he had said, ‘I am the angel of God...’, and stood with his hands in his trouser pockets, holding them up because they were baggy and old.

He told her that he had seen Michael. ‘They’ve got him down at the Chater Home. He seems all right. Whether he fell or was knocked down, he was too drunk to get hurt. When I told him you saved his life, he said, “Victoria – who’s she?” ‘

Smiling was still painful. Laughing was impossible. ‘I always have to tell him.’

‘And I came to tell you that at last night’s meeting, the Companions decided to ask you to join them.’

‘
Me?
Because of Mike? But that was nothing. I stumbled into it. I wasn’t brave or anything. All I did was get knocked out.’

Peter said, ‘Not because of what you did. Companions aren’t chosen that way. It’s because of what you
are.’

‘Oh no, not me. Why me?’

‘Yes.’ He nodded his tawny rough head from which the barber thinned ‘enough to stuff a sofa’ without any appreciable difference. ‘You.’

‘... and so I rang Dr Strong and told him. “Mrs Potter is extremely ill,” I told him. “I believe it’s a heart attack.” ‘

Paul had come to see Alice, but Mrs Laidlaw, grinning behind her desk, had snared him on the way in.

‘ “How old is she?” he asks. I tell him, “Ninety.” “Then she’ll probably die anyway,” says this good Doctor Strong of whom they think so highly. Two hours later, I ring him back and tell him, “Mrs Potter has expired,” and he
says, “I told you so.”’ Paul could not detect whether she thought this was funny or not.

He went to the room where Alice sat with a piece of blue ribbon tied round her hair, which seemed to get whiter each time they washed it. On the way, he passed Tim’s girl Felicity, arm in arm with a rather sprightly old man on a cane.

She stopped and said, ‘Hullo, Mr H.’ in her vaguely insulting way, jaw tipped, as if inviting you to sock it. ‘Meet Mr Sissons.’ The old gentleman was wearing a fairly decent light-grey suit with a flower in his buttonhole and a shine on his shoes. A soft grey hat was arranged over the wens and brown patches of his head at a carefully rakish angle. They were going for a walk.

‘Mr Sissons is my very special patient,’ Felicity said, giving his arm a little squeeze.

‘And she’s my special girlfriend,’ the old gentleman said, a white moustache covering his upper lip, the lower one impotently lascivious. ‘You know this felicitous young lady?’

‘Oh yes, she takes care of my wife.’

‘I take care of everybody, don’t I?’ Felicity led Mr Sissons away, cackling and besotted.

Alice had not changed in the weeks she had been here, but when Felicity came into the room after the walk, she began the finger clicking and the winking. She told Alice something that the old gentleman had said, and she told her a story about another patient who had fallen out of bed. Alice stared, her sad face unmoved.

‘You see?’ Felicity said. ‘She knows. She understands everything I say.’

What if she could? What if Alice was still Alice behind that dribbling mask, suffering without succour the torment of hearing without being able to speak, of not even being able to tell them that she heard?

If that could possibly be so, then Paul’s ‘I don’t think so’ would be another nail driven.

‘Listen, Alice.’ He bent to look full into her faded,
meaningless eyes. ‘If you can understand, forgive me for not understanding. How can I know? I want to help you. Don’t be afraid.’

The girl Felicity was standing just behind him. He felt aware that she was laughing at him, but when he turned, her face was only bored.

His car was parked in the side street at the back of the building. Barbara had got out and was walking with the leggy puppy, trying to teach him not to drag on the leash. He was pulling ahead of her, legs spread and striving, choking himself. Paul picked him up. ‘Don’t torture him. He’ll come to it.’

‘He’s got to learn if he’s going with me to London.’

‘He’s not. Don’t start that, darling. You’re not going away. You can’t go away. Stay with me. It will be all right. Everything will come out all right.’

She shook her head. She was a lovely and gentle and patient woman, but the events of her life had not taught her optimism.

‘Don’t be sad.’ Paul put down the dog and kissed her as he pushed her gently towards the car. He went round to the other side and opened the door. Before he got in, he looked up for some reason. Felicity was at the window of Alice’s room, watching him.

He had not seen Tim for quite a long time, so on his way back to town, Paul stopped at the village where the boy lived in one of a group of white cottages built for High-field patients who could take care of themselves.

Tim was in the garden at the back, ‘hoeing his salads’, the old lady who opened the door told Paul, but he found Tim sitting on the ground, with his back supported in an upturned wheelbarrow. He did not get up. Paul sat on the ground beside him, and they smoked without saying much. Tim had not seemed particularly pleased to see Paul, but did not want him to leave.

‘It’s getting cold,’ Paul said. ‘If you’re not going to work out here any more, let’s go inside.’

‘Nah.’ The wheelbarrow was like a turtle’s shell. Tim
sat inside it and plucked bits of grass and chewed them dry.

After a while, Paul went into the cottage and talked to old Mrs Tolliver, who was sensible enough in a slapdash way.

‘Is Tim all right? He looks a bit—’

‘He’s off his food. Don’t look at me. They all complain about the meals, I don’t pay no attention.’

She and two other men and a tiny pinched woman like a fieldmouse were in the front room watching television and sucking peppermints.

‘He don’t like the telly.’ From a rocking chair, Mrs Tolliver looked up at Paul, her slippered feet taking a flight off the floor as she tipped back. ‘That’s why he likes to be outside. Someone was reading the News, and old Timmy starts fancying they’re saying something about him. Daft, innit? He’s no trouble.’ The commercials came on with a blaring shout and she lowered the slippers on to the floor and gave the set her whole attention.

All of a sudden, Felicity wanted to go out with Tim again. When he got back from the garage late one evening after a gruelling day of extra deliveries before the bank holiday weekend, she had written him a letter. It was in the middle of the dining-room table, propped against the old man’s white cat. It had been opened and licked shut again.

‘Meet me Friday night,’ it said, so since this was Friday, Tim went out again without supper and trudged the mile and a half to whistle under Felicity’s window.

The room was dark. The light did not go on. The blind did not go up. He waited almost half an hour, and was turning to go when a wild beast leaped on him from out of the syringa bushes and bore him to the ground.

They rolled over and over and she moaned and whimpered and said, ‘Yes-yes,’ but he had only got his hand inside her blouse when she pushed him away and jumped up, brushing down her skirt in a very prissy way, and tuttutting at him.

‘Men are all the same.’ she said. ‘Disgusting.’

Tim raised his eyebrows, waiting for her to make sense.

She said that she was hungry, so they walked down the hill and went into the narrow café like a railway carriage, where the bacon had bits of string in it and the iron feet of the tables were crusted thick with dirt, like castors.

‘I saw your friend yesterday,’ Felicity said.

‘Who?’

‘Paul.’

‘I seen him too. He come to the house.’

‘He came to see his wife. I suppose as he was out this way, he thought he might as well drop in and see if you were still alive.’

‘He likes me,’ Tim said. ‘He comes to see me. He helped get me put on the mobile.’

‘Some treat,’ Felicity said;

‘It’s all right.’

‘For those that know no better. There’s people out at Rowton works making twenty pounds a week.’

Tim stared. What would you do with such money? Tonight he had all he wanted. A home, food, clothes, Felicity. He fidgeted on the bench. In a bit, he was going to say, ‘Come on down the boats then?’