The Listeners (42 page)

‘There’s blood on your coat.’ she said.

He looked down. He had not had time to change his working jacket and trousers. ‘Bloody sow broke a bottle of ketchup.’ In that last house at the end of the lane, not worth the bumpy trip for a packet of matches and two wholemeal. And then she had said, ‘You’d better clean that up, young man, before Ted cleans you.’

‘Come on down the boats, Fliss,’ he said urgently.

‘Not tonight.’ But she was smiling. ‘I’m too tired.’ But the yawn was artificial.

‘Tomorrow?’

‘If I don’t work late. I have more on my back now that I have everything to do for Mr Sissons. He won’t let anyone else near him, not even Mrs L. “I want Felicity,” he grumbles. “She’s the only one I can stand near me.”
He’s dreadfully particular, you see, on account of always having been looked after, on account of his money.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Tim stuck to that thought.

‘Do you know what he said to me the other day?’ Felicity went on as if he had not spoken. Perhaps he hadn’t? ‘He said, “If I can get out of this hell hole will you come and take care of me, oh felicitous one?” ‘

‘They wouldn’t let you.’

Tim sucked the last of his sticky drink up through the straw. His fair hair flopped in his eyes. He bubbled up air as she said, ‘I can do what I like now. No one can stop me.’

No one could stop her going out the next night, although she was not supposed to go out without permission. ‘If I don’t work late,’ she had said, finishing her artificial yawn with a smile.

Her light was on. The blind was up. Tim whistled and waited. He waited for a long time. Then he saw her come to the window. She did not lean out with her long plaits hanging down. She pulled down the blind, and he stood in the garden and watched her undress behind it, moving slowly back and forth behind the blind with nothing on at all.

Paul was back to see him in a week. They sat in the dining-room and looked at the fan of paper in the grate. Tim did not think he said very much. Sometimes there was no way of knowing whether he was speaking or thinking, because thoughts that were in his head could be heard out loud.

Paul began to ask him questions, as he used to do long ago when they first met and Tim had to be so careful. He was very careful now. When Paul asked after Felicity, he looked into the corners of the room before he said, ‘All right, I suppose.’ Paul knew how Felicity was. He saw her at the place where she worked.

‘Don’t you like her any more?’

When Paul looked at him like that with his kind and
serious eyes, Tim’s hands began to tremble. ‘I – I—’ He could not have spoken if he wanted to. His mouth was going like a baby. He got up and spun out of the room, stumbled up the stairs and on to his bed under the slanted ceiling.

Paul came and knocked at the door, but he had bolted it. That was the best thing about Diddlecot. No one locked you in. You could do it for yourself.

‘Could you come out of the room for a minute?’ Paul asked. ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘I’m busy with my patient.’ Felicity fiddled and fussed with the curled-up old lady, tucking in the sheet and untucking it, so Paul said curtly, ‘Come outside,’ and she left the bed and came quite meekly.

‘It’s about Tim.’ It was very hard to talk to this girl. She changed moods rapidly from belligerent to sly to malleable to pert, and swiftly back to belligerent if you said anything she could interpret as an affront.

‘Tim Shaw?’ she asked innocently, all eyes and ripe mouth.

‘I think he likes you very much. Don’t tease him. He’s a very sensitive boy, you know. He’s been through a rough time. You can help him so much by being his friend.’

‘What’s in it for you?’ The innocence was quickly gone, the eyes long and scheming, the mouth twenty years older, and shrewd.

‘I’m his friend too. I like him. I’m interested in what happens to him.’

‘Because you saved his life? He told me that. And he told me, “Sometimes I wish he hadn’t interfered.”’

‘He asked for help.’

‘He won’t next time,’ Felicity said, watching him.

‘There won’t be a next time.’

‘What’s the matter?’ Felicity leaned against the wall and rubbed the back of her head against the paint. ‘Afraid of losing a customer?’

‘You watch your step.’ Paul was infuriated with her. ‘Or you’re going to find yourself in a lot of trouble.’

For the next few weeks when he came to see Alice, Felicity kept out of his way. He sat in front of Alice and dried her slow tears, and wondered how long it would go on like this. In the end, if she was never going to come alive, would he stop visiting her?

If divorce was never possible and Barbara agreed that they should live together, perhaps abroad, how would he manage to live without the Samaritans?

Being a Samaritan was his hold on hope, his clutch of treasure. The Samaritans was an obsession, a disease for which there was no cure.

‘Why does my wife weep so much?’ he asked Mrs Laidlaw.

‘I told you, it’s because there is no control of the emotional mechanisms,’ she said. ‘Of course, we can’t know whether Mrs Hammond is suffering or not, since she cannot tell us.’

Paul was distressed enough by this pleasant shaft to ask Felicity, when she came nonchalantly into the room with sheets, ‘Do you think it means anything when she cries?’

‘Poor Alice.’ Clutching the sheets, Felicity came and stood thoughtfully in front of the chair with her head on one side and her flat stomach thrust forward. ‘It’s hard for her, of course, but it’s better she knows the truth. I think she’s sort of glad for you, in a way.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘Well, I asked her if she wanted to know something and she winked once. That means Yes.’

‘She can’t wink.’

‘She can for me. So I told her not to worry about you. Because you were very well taken care of. “Do you mind that, Alice?” I asked, and she winked twice, didn’t you dear? That’s a clever girl.’

Paul went quickly out of the room, to keep his hands off her throat. He did not go to Mrs Laidlaw. He went to Highfield, since the girl was still under their supervision.

‘
If the sick woman can speak, and be proved to understand
what is being said to her, then it could be possible for divorce proceedings to be instigated.’

If Felicity was right about Alice, then he and Barbara...

If Felicity was right about Alice, the cruelty was already unbearable.

When Paul left the solicitor’s office, he went up to the rectory on Church Avenue to find Peter.

‘What am I going to do? For God’s sake tell me what to do!’

Felicity had left the nursing home.

‘Got fed up,’ she told Tim on the telephone. ‘Got browned off cleaning up all those shitty old women.’

‘Where are you?’ She would not say. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘Oh – I don’t know. Might get married one of these days.’

‘Fliss!’ They had talked about marriage sometimes. It had been their secret dream when they were at Highfield, clinging together in the broom cupboard, planning what they would have to eat and what colour the curtains would be. ‘I’m getting a raise next—’ he began, and her laughter cackled through the wire like static.

‘Be able to give me a nice wedding present then, won’t you? Not that I’d want you to spend your money if I’m going to be so well fixed.’

‘What are – what—’

‘He’s asked me before, as I told you.’ Her voice was airy and ladylike, teasing him, as so often before, to make him say, ‘Come off it’ and grab her where it mattered. ‘He shouldn’t be in that place, and he won’t be much longer, because I’m going to take him out of there, poor old gentleman, and live with him for the rest of his life, if it doesn’t kill him sooner.’

‘Fliss, you—’ He could think of only one thing. ‘You mean you’d
do it
with him?’

‘Well ...’ Her laugh was a silver bell. ‘I’ll be his wife, won’tl?’

‘I want to speak to Paul. 401, Paul. Is he there?’

‘He was here earlier. I think he’s gone. Wait a minute, and I’ll see.’

Tim leaned against the glass of the telephone box. He felt sick and faint. He could hardly stand. Sagging, he waited for the strength of Paul’s voice to shore him up.

‘I’m sorry he’s gone. Shall I try and get hold of him and ask him to ring you?’

‘Yes.’ Tim hardly knew whether he was speaking or not. ‘Tell him—’

‘What? Sorry, I can’t hear you.’

‘Tim.’

‘Does he know the number?’

‘Yes. No. I’m not at home. Here’s the number. I’ll wait here.’

‘I’ll miss you, my Sarah.’

‘I’ll miss you too.’

‘You won’t. You love that place so much, you’ve got to be there all night now, as well as half the day.’

‘It’s my first night duty. I can’t help being excited. Do you think that’s childish?’

‘It’s a funny thing.’ Brian held her off and looked at her, making a face as if she were revolting. ‘I think you’re growing up.’

‘I think perhaps we both might be?’

‘That’s a pity.’ Brian’s beautiful face became grave, as if he were going to say something serious. ‘I’d much rather stay childish and spoiled.’

When Andrew handed over the 4000 telephone to Sarah, he said, ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of Paul. Keep trying him and ask him to call Tim Shaw. Here’s the number.’

Tim waited for a long time in the telephone box. Twice someone came to make a call, and when they saw that he was not using the telephone, they tapped on the glass with a coin, and he waited outside until they had finished.

He waited for hours. A church clock kept striking, the quarter, the half, three quarters, nine, ten, eleven.

Some of them were still up at Diddlecot. He could hear the set going in the front room, and the clink of teaspoons. They did not care whether he was in or out. They didn’t care. Paul didn’t care. He was in league with Felicity, the two of them, meeting at the nursing home and laughing about Tim, he knew that now.

Well, he would show them. He had known for days how he would show them, ever since he found Vernon’s sleeping pills in the bathroom cabinet, mad thing to do, leave them there where anyone could get them.

‘Anyone seen my capsules?’

‘I’ll help you look.’ Tim had helped Vernon to look everywhere but in his own pocket where he had the little bottle hid.

‘One tablet at night, as necessary.’ Standing under the light in the middle of his room, Tim read the label. He opened a bottle of Coca-Cola and took five of the pills. They went down tasteless, like jelly. It would be Vernon who found him, coming up to tell him he would be late for work.

Tim – oh Timmy! How would they find his mother? She would have to be told. They would all have to be told, gathering in this room, a weeping crowd of them, like doves.

Tim began to feel dizzy. He blinked away tears and sat on the bed to sample his dizziness, watching the floor tip and the door handle swell and recede, swell and recede. It was like the time when he was drunk, in the pub with Frank that time when the sailor had bought their drinks, and the table-top came up and smacked Tim on the nose.

He pushed himself off the bed and walked to the door, swaying from foot to foot, feeling the air with his hands. Giant steps would carry him down the stairs, floating along the road until he came to her lighted window. Crash! A stone as big as a football. She would poke out her head through the jagged glass and the blood would
run all down the bricks where the tight braids of her hair hung down.

In the mirror on the back of the door, he saw his white face, aghast. He put his fingers on his wrist and felt the blood throbbing under the little ridge of scar. Under the stairs when the glass went in, the blood had welled quickly without pain and Paul had come and put his hands on him and shouted, ‘Here he is!’

‘No one can tell you what to do,’ Peter had said. ‘Don’t ask for answers. The only answer to your life is you.’

‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘Wait. Be yourself. Don’t listen to anyone else. Listen to yourself.’

He got into his car and drove away from the town. He stopped by a telephone to tell Barbara to come with him, but when he heard the beeps, he hung up without putting in the money. He drove far out along the top of the hills where the trees were stunted flat on top and blown away from the sea. After a long time, he followed a narrow white road down into a cleft of the cliffs and when it became sand, he got out and slept on the dry turf.

He woke stiff and heavy. The day at school hung before him like a sullen threat. Tim had once said, in depression, ‘You can’t stand to look at how long the day is, but you have to keep looking.’

Sighing, looking at the day, Paul drove more slowly back. Before the town, he turned off the road and went round by the village where Tim lived. The cottage and the lane before it were in commotion. Tim had taken some Seconal and then slashed his wrist and bled to death when the drug blacked him out.

Helen’s employer had been kicked by a Shetland pony that ran through her first-aid tent at a horse show, so Victoria was taking Helen’s Thursday night duty.

She still looked rather battered. One side of her face was grazed and discoloured, and she wote dark glasses
because of her eye. She and Sarah switched the telephone through to the bunk room quite early, and turned on a small lamp, so that Victoria could lie down and take off the glasses.

‘Samaritans – can I help you?’

‘Helen? Oh – Sair!’ Jackie chuckled. ‘I come your hou make pots?’

‘I’d love it.’

‘Next week? Munnay?’

‘Will she let you?’

‘I don’t care.’

Sarah began to rehearse fighting words. Somehow, in spite of the trauma of Wool worth’s, it was going to be easier to talk to Jackie’s mother.

Quite late, they heard a key in the front door and Peter called to them from the hall. ‘Not burglars. I’ve come to try and find some slippers and stuff for that drug man. We’re going to the clinic and his feet are all swollen.’ He came up to the doorway of the bunk room. Sarah got up. ‘First night duty? How nice you look in jeans. No hips.’

He went down to his office at the back of the house. The telephone on the shelf between the bunks rang. Sarah looked across at Victoria. She shut her eyes and said, ‘You.’