The Tenement (4 page)

In the summer, too, the scholars seemed happy and fresh and radiant. It was as if they were full of hope, their whole lives ahead of them. They were absorbed in each other though this didn't mean that they didn't quarrel at times. She could tell when they had quarrelled. The boy would come in earlier than usual and he would wait, glancing at his watch and fidgeting and sometimes whistling, and pretending that he was not waiting for the girl at all. Once he had left before she arrived.

But their quarrels were only occasional. Usually they held a continuous conversation. She could hear snatches of what they were talking about, for instance a remark about Old Spotty, who, she assumed, must be a teacher. Then they would discuss their examinations. The girl, she gathered, wasn't good at maths and might not be able to go to the same university as the boy who, she thought, was cleverer. They discussed their maths teacher a lot. He was violent, bad-tempered, and oppressive, and frightened his pupils so much that they couldn't concentrate on their work. The school was their whole world. Once the maths teacher had thrown a Bible at someone, for she gathered that he taught Religious Education to his register class. He had wakened out of a sleep and thrown his Bible at a girl who was sitting at the back of the class dreaming. The Bible had shot past her head and rebounded from the wall.

The girl was tall and had corn-coloured hair. The boy was dark-haired, handsome and, she thought, athletic. The girl wore a ring on her finger. It might not be an official engagement ring but would serve as one. Sometimes if she was in a bad mood she would turn the ring over and over. On such days the ring seemed to inflame her finger and this told her, according to herself, something about the boy's faithfulness or lack of it. “Rubbish,” the boy would say, “all that is psychological.”

“No, it's not,” the girl would say. She always took an
Express
in with her and they compared horoscopes. She could tell that the girl believed in them but that the boy didn't. The girl was a Pisces and the boy an Aquarius.

She had heard the boy say once, “How can everybody born under Pisces have the same fortune for a particular day? And then if you buy a
Mirror
or a
Sun
it will give you a different horoscope.” The girl then became technical saying that she might not be wholly a Pisces or he wholly an Aquarius. It depended on the exact hour at which you were born. She herself had been born at two in the morning: the boy didn't know the exact hour of his birth.

The old woman sipped her coffee. Sometimes scum formed on it. She would look out at the street and say to herself, “Imagine any woman wearing a hat like that! And really, that boy who has just passed with green hair!” They would do anything to draw attention to themselves. Some of them looked like Red Indians and some had no hair at all. She had once made a mistake with that Catholic girl, telling her that there was a spot of dirt on her brow. In actual fact the spot was associated with a particular Catholic date, Ash Wednesday. The girl hadn't been offended at all.

She felt awfully sweaty and now and again scratched herself. She often had bad constipation and her eyesight was not as good as it had been. But she wore her fur coat all the time, she even slept in it. She often felt like an animal in a pelt.

One day the boy and the girl had an awful row. It was to do with a girl called Joan. This Joan, as far as she could make out, had joined the magazine committee on which the boy was editor. Joan had been trying to make up to him and had gone round the school with him putting up posters to advertise the magazine.

“You were with her. You were seen,” the girl hissed.

“Who saw me?”

“Sheila for one. She told me.”

“Sheila's a cross-eyed bitch.”

“She's not cross-eyed even though she wears glasses.”

“What can I do? I have to go around the school putting up advertisements: otherwise no one would buy the magazine. It was Scruffy who told me to do it. I couldn't turn round and say to her, ‘You can't come'. Anyway she can write quite well.”

“Quite well? Who told you that?”

“I know it. I've seen some of her stuff. That's why she's on the committee.”

“It's not. It's because Scruffy likes her. Anyway there were others you could have gone around with.”

“It was Scruffy who sent us. I just told you.”

“That's what you say. You were talking to her all the time, laughing and joking.”

“What am I supposed to do? Not speak to her? Be reasonable. She's on the same committee.”

“It's you who's not being reasonable. It doesn't have to be a girl you go round with: does it?”

“She's pretty competent actually. I'm not saying that because I'm in love with her or anything. But she is. And she does work, more than most of them. Some of the people on the committee just treat it as a skive.”

“We know why she works for you. The other girls don't like her. She's a clype.”

And so on and so on. The quarrel went for ages. Periodically through the summer it flared up and died down again like an inflammation on a finger. Sometimes the girl would be deliberately late. Sometimes the boy would sit silently glaring at her with compressed lips. Sometimes the girl would refuse to take her coffee or the boy would.

Then a wholly different quarrel started. This one had to do with a play which the girl was taking part in, and of which the boy disapproved. It was clear that the only reason that the girl had joined the drama group was to get her own back on the boy.

“You don't have to get a lift home with him,” the boy would say, and the girl would answer, “What else can I do?”

“You needn't have been in the play at all.”

“
You
needn't have been on the magazine committee.”

“That's different.”

“How is it different?”

“It is. It's pretty obvious to anyone why it's different.”

“What do you mean to anyone! Are you implying that I'm stupid or something?”

“You know perfectly well I've been editing the magazine for two years. You've never acted in a play before. You've never shown any interest.”

“Well, I've to start sometime.”

It seemed that another boy called Slim who apparently was a brilliant actor ran her home in his father's car after the rehearsals. Slim was the son of a local doctor, played rugby, had a lot of pocket money, sometimes drank, was also a prefect. It was obvious that he was a formidable rival.

At times as she watched the two of them the old lady would see herself bending down to take an order from a customer. She too had blonde hair though she wasn't as tall as the girl. It was as if that picture were superimposed on the one she saw in front of her. Or it might be that she saw Jim coming in the door after his work and they would talk animatedly and she would bring him a cup of tea which he didn't have to pay for.

Now, however, when she saw him there was a scar from the lightning snaking across his brow.

As a matter of fact, she hated the boy and the girl. She hated them not simply because they were young, not even because they quarrelled. At least a quarrel was a sign of life. It was better to quarrel than to be silent, fuming and fretting. She considered them, however, silly. Imagine having quarrels about such silly things. In fact she found it hard to explain to herself what her feelings about them were. Certainly there was envy and dislike, but there was something deeper than that. It was as if she saw in them her indifferent negligent children. But more than anything she hated them because they had a life ahead of them, a future ahead, and their days were populated with characters.

Of course after their quarrels they would make up and gaze into each other's eyes again. The boy would hold the girl's hand in his and stroke it gently. His soul was in his eyes. It was evident that this was the girl he loved, would always love, and that life would be good to them. The old woman wished that she could stare into the future and watch what happened. Did they in fact marry? Did they go to the same university? Did they have children? Were they safe from the crooked lightning?

And then one day they had the most tremendous quarrel and the girl threw the ring on the floor and stalked out. The boy ran after her without thinking about the ring. It rolled under the old lady's table and rested beside her shoe. She felt it almost burn her foot, sting it. She placed her shoe over it. Then making sure that no one saw her, she bent down and slipped it into her handbag, dropping a spoon on the floor first. She sat there staring out at the sea as if she had done something dramatic, novel, startling. Her heart was beating very fast.

And then the girl came in in a great hurry. She began immediately to search for the ring on the floor, but couldn't find it. She hesitated and finally came over to the old lady.

“Excuse me,” she said, “did you see a ring on the floor?”

“No,” said the old lady adamantly.

“Are you sure? I mean … It's just …” And she blushed. “It fell off my finger. You see it's very loose. Are you sure you haven't seen it?”

Suddenly the old lady said, “Are you accusing me of stealing it or what? I f…ing didn't see it.”

The girl blushed and moved away.

However, the manager heard her swearing and came to inquire what had happened, standing there like Peacock in
Are you being served?
.

“She's f…ing accusing me of stealing her ring. I don't know about her ring.” The old lady was furious.

“Keep your voice down,” said the manager, glancing around him at the other customers in the restaurant. “I won't keep my f…ing voice down,” said the old lady. She was angry with the girl and also with the manager. She had never been a thief in her life. All the years of being allowed to drink coffee in the restaurant wounded her.

“I won't keep my f…ing voice down,” she shouted. “In that case you had better leave,” said the manager. She was so angry that she didn't care about the future. The girl was shifting from foot to foot not knowing what was happening and wanting to leave. Well, she could face reality for once, the upper class bitch, thought the old woman.

She ran out of the restaurant clutching her worn handbag, and shouting at the manager. She crossed the street and stood staring into the water, simmering. She didn't care what would happen to her now that she had got that off her chest. All her life she had been bowing and scraping to people, taking their orders, and she was fed up to the teeth. It was high time that she told the manager what she thought of him.

And that girl, tall and invulnerable in her uniform. She looked across at the restaurant from the other side of the street. It said,
RONAL MORE, B KER ND C NFECTI NER
. The manager and the girl were bending down looking for the ring but they couldn't find it. Now they were talking to some of the other customers. The girl clearly couldn't understand why the ring wasn't on the floor. It was a magical disappearance. Perhaps she feared that love would disappear as inexplicably as the ring had done. But let her learn. Let her learn that disaster could strike out of the blue. Let her learn that the stars couldn't protect her. In fact the day her husband had been killed her own horoscope had said, “Good day for all practical purposes though it can be a dull one if you are bent on pleasure. So be more enterprising in seeking entertainment.”

She walked away from the restaurant in the direction of the railway station. Some of her friends would be there drinking. It was as if she had severed connection with her usual world. Now she would not be able to go back to the restaurant. She knew what the manager was like, mean-minded, formal. She had seen many like him in the past. He had the same kind of walk as pompous Captain Peacock.

She thought at first of throwing the ring into the sea, imagining it dropping into the water, circling, spinning and falling, till it reached the bottom. Spinning in blue. The water near the shore was clear, transparent, and had a greenish tinge. She looked at the seagulls squabbling in a circle. Once she had seen a crab, another time an eel, white and upright in the water like a ghost. The fishing boats were anchored chastely, each showing the reflection of its name in the sea—
Sea Wanderer, Tern
, and so on.

On second thoughts she wouldn't throw the ring into the water at all. That would be a waste. The best thing would be to take it into a jeweller and sell it. In fact that's what she would do. After she had sold it she would buy a bottle of wine and drink herself stupid. She felt free as if she had emerged from a long servitude, as if she had broken though a necessary horizon.

She and the others would have a singsong in the station. And they would watch the trains leaving. In fact it looked as if in future she would have to take her coffee in the station buffet, though she didn't much like it. Too many tramps came into it. And there was a juke box which she didn't like.

She walked into the jeweller's having first taken the ring from her handbag. She had already forgotten about the girl and the boy. For the moment she had even forgotten about Jim. His hands were not held out to her. Horoscopes were a lot off…ing rubbish, that was for sure. And as for that manager, he could stuff himself.

A
FTER HIS WIFE
died, Trevor Porter felt desolated. Whenever he picked up a handkerchief of hers he would weep like a child. Her presence seemed to be everywhere in the house even though her physical body no longer was. She had left everything tidy for him, the brooms and buckets in one cupboard, the food tins arranged and tabulated in another, and as far as that went he knew exactly where he was. But it was the explosion of herself from ordinary objects that bothered him most of all.

All his life he had been a teacher, sometimes in England, sometimes in Scotland. He hadn't been a good teacher. He had started just before the war, and during the war itself had served in the Navy mostly on convoys with icy decks heading for Russia with supplies. Even now he had nightmares about these times. He woke snorting from black seas that rolled over his head. Waiting under the water were enemies to trap him.