The Tenement (9 page)

“Oh, that's all right. It'll be good for me.” He thought for some reason that she was a teacher of Foreign Languages. She had that cool competent look. And she wore those attachments on her glasses that the stair-woman had been talking about. They were blue to match her costume. Her hair which had once been black had streaks of grey in it.

“I hope you'll like the hotel,” she said. “It's quite old but it does a good dinner.” They eventually reached it. It was quiet and they sat together at a table, near the window.

“Melon for me, I think,” she said to the waitress.

“And the same for me,” said Trevor.

“It is so awful when someone dies. Perhaps you're right. Perhaps it's better for you to be taken out of yourself.” She ate her melon. “It's better than brooding, I think. I'm afraid I myself never married.” She didn't look deprived. She was clearly one of those self-sufficient people who can live on their own without difficulty.

“There will be a few people here tonight. Some of course of our group are on holiday. They are shy, so they might not ask many questions. Do you mind being asked questions?”

“Not at all,” said Trevor.

“Of course they don't have much knowledge of the higher reaches of literature,” said Miss Gillespie, disposing of the last of her melon. “They try, you know how it is.”

“Yes,” said Trevor, “of course.”

“I suppose you must do a lot of this?” said Miss Gillespie, choosing veal.

“I do,” said Trevor, choosing fish. His hand hovered over the cabbage.

“Do you like doing it?”

“Depends on the mood I'm in.”

She appeared satisfied with this. Trevor didn't want to talk too much. Sometimes he had to drag words out of the depths of his mind by conscious effort.

Miss Gillespie wiped her fingers on her red napkin. He wondered if she had ever read any of his poems.

“We had … and … here, last year,” mentioning a brace of well-known poets. “They were very good. … told me that he hated poetry readings. He said that he always tried to be funny. That, he told me, was the great danger.” Her earnest eyes interrogated Trevor. “Is that the case?”

“Yes,” said Trevor.

“One of them said, I can't remember which one, that he had once been asked to pay to get into one of his own poetry readings!”

“That can happen,” said Trevor.

“Imagine that!” The ways of artists were strange, romantic, exotic.

“Is there, I mean, is there much money in it? Can one live on what one makes from poetry readings?”

“I couldn't live on poetry alone,” said Trevor. “But I have my pension. I taught for forty years.”

Miss Gillespie was content. She had found someone who could fill a space in her programme, and Trevor didn't appear to be particularly nervous, not like the last speaker but one. Trevor liked her, she was quite like Julia, competent, but cooler, not the sort of person who would make heroic gestures or be assailed by sudden surges of compassion.

They had trifle.

“Wine?”

“No,” said Trevor. She appeared to be relieved.

The poetry reading went off well. The audience consisted of 21 people who hadn't heard of him, he knew that. He stood up, after laying his crushed hat on the table and read quietly. He made some statements about literature in general. At one point he quoted Valéry. “The first line of a poem comes from God: the rest you have to work for.” He told a story about a poet who wanted to write a poem about flying and had learnt to pilot a one-seated plane. He told of an artist who wanted to paint the French coast and had talked at great length to the fishermen first. There were two people taking notes. One was a schoolgirl in green uniform, the other was a woman with white hair.

When the readings were over they asked him a few questions.

He felt happy, satiated. For a moment he was the centre of attention, the expert. Their questions confirmed that they had never read any of his poems. One man in glasses asked him what he thought of the sonnet. Trevor said it was no longer very fashionable.

“Why is modern poetry so unintelligible,” he was asked.

He went on about this for a long time. When it was all over he was driven to the station by Miss Gillespie. “One of our most successful evenings,” she said judicially.

Of course it had been successful. When was anything ever unsuccessful?

“I think they learned a great deal.” She shook hands with him firmly, like a man. After he had left her he found himself at a kiosk in the station. He was phoning his own house to tell Julia that he was on his way home when he remembered that she was dead. He turned away and sat for an hour in the waiting room before the train arrived.

He thought of himself as Robinson Crusoe. He had left the ship and was sometimes returning to it to retrieve mirrors, jewellery. The birds mocked him from the trees. He had ideas like, What will happen if I go blind? He considered language. The floor was like sand, brittle, numerous. There was a big Bible which his father had once used, and on which were written the names of the members of the family. Once in a dream he danced through a wood. Julia was there, Maid Marian, she was dancing towards him. They met in sunlight.

“I killed you,” he told her.

“No, no, you didn't. Of course you didn't. I loved you. You were my child.”

“You loved me more than Robin?” he asked her. But she didn't answer. They walked together, hand in hand, towards a rock which was lopsided in the water. There was a big mirror in which he saw faces, wrinkled and old.

He pointed downwards.

“Whose are these?” he asked.

“The footprints?” she said.

Footprints in the sand.

He knew he had some way to go yet. The Camerons nagged at the back of his mind. M
R
C
OOPER WAS
a retired milkman. He often stood at the door of the close, talking to people, for he was an inveterate gossip who liked company. Opposite him on the same landing were the Masons who had shifted from the flat above after the matron died. When his wife was alive Mr Cooper had a black and white television set. Now he had a coloured one which he could control by a gadget which could change channels from a distance.

Mr Cooper worked in a toilet during the summer. He had plenty of customers to talk to there: and he kept the toilet very clean. Sometimes he told his customers that he had been head of a dairy and had passed examinations. Actually, he had left school at fifteen, had served in the army during the war: he and his wife had no children. He couldn't make head or tail of Trevor Porter whom he thought slightly nuts. Mrs Floss amused him. The Camerons he didn't like. “If I was younger,” he would often say, “I would beat him up. No one should ever hit a woman.”

Actually the Masons didn't like him much. He was always talking to Mrs Mason, who was expecting a baby, and she told her husband that there was something odd about him. Whenever she came out of the flat to collect the coal he would say, “I'll take that in for you. You shouldn't be carrying heavy things.” She was sure that he was always watching her legs when she bent down for the coal. His face was red with high blood pressure, and the sun. He often made comical remarks, but nevertheless she didn't like him. Neither did John. Many of his stories were dirty, sexual. John called him an old pervert.

“Don't make trouble,” she told him. “After all, he's lost his wife.”

“That's why. Because he was an old pervert. She couldn't stand it.”

John worked in the freezer shop. He was always looking for a job that would bring in better money. His mother came to visit them and so did his father. Once John had thrown his father out because he was an alcoholic and insulting to his wife. “You old bugger, clear out of here or I'll floor you. Don't you realize Linda is pregnant?” But his father insisted on coming back and he did floor him. He had a taxi called and dumped him like a sack of potatoes outside his house, in the moonlight. “You should leave him,” he told his mother.

“If I see Cooper sniffing around here any more, I'll clock him too,” he told Linda.

“He doesn't mean any harm,” said Linda.

“I'll tell you: he was always talking and joking to you when his wife was lying there ill. It wasn't right. No wonder she died. He broke her heart.”

“You're exaggerating,” said Linda.

“I'm not exaggerating and you know it. I can't stand people like that.”

Mrs Cooper had died of heart trouble. She had been taken latterly to the hospital and had died there very quickly. A policewoman had come and told Cooper. It was eleven o'clock on a winter's night, cold and frosty.

“I couldn't believe it,” he had said more than once. “I think these surgeons are no good; criminals. There was nothing wrong with her when I left her. She was talking to me quite happily when I said cheerio to her at eight o'clock.” He had been really shaken by his wife's death, but he had coped better than Trevor. Perhaps his imagination was less fertile, perhaps he had a stronger sense of his own identity. He much preferred Mrs Porter: at least she would talk to you.

Mr Cooper had lived in his flat for years. He could tell the other tenants about those who had inhabited the building in the past. “Where you are,” he told Linda, “there was once a boy and his mother. He wasn't quite right in the head. I suppose he must be thirty now. No, I'm a liar, he must be older than that, perhaps thirty-six. I don't know what he is doing now. At one time he used to work on the bookstall, but he wouldn't speak to anyone. So he left there. The two of them left the town. I don't know where they are now. There was also a shoemaker here, a fat fellow called Robertson. He used to make shoes. This house goes back to 1896, did you know that? It was one of the best buildings in the town at one time. But now everybody neglects it. No one paints the door for instance. That door should be painted. And the sheds at the back are a disgrace.”

He liked his job in the toilet. “Bums of all shapes and sizes come in there,” he said, “and I mean bums. Some of them wash their hands afterwards, some don't. I asked the Council for a radio and they gave me one. Nothing like dance music when you're doing your business. They can even listen to the news. That would give anyone diarrhoea. I sit there and read the
Record
most of the time. There was one day when a woman came in by mistake. Hey, I said, what are you doing here? You never saw anyone so embarrassed.” And he laughed his high giggling laugh. “It was like the time I was paid for the milk by this woman who had forgotten to put her teeth in. By golly, she hated herself, she did. And of course some of them who use the toilet don't have much change. I have to find change for them. One of them even offered me a five pound note. He thought I wouldn't charge him, but I did. I found the change. You can't keep up toilets without paying for them. Another day a fellow objected to the soap. Your soap's scented he said. What do you think I am, a poof? Of course it's scented, I said, that's good soap. And, another thing, he said, why don't you have towels, that hot air doesn't dry your hands properly. An old man told me, I get hell from my old woman. I pee on my trousers. There's no force in my pee any more. You really see the world in lavatories.”

“That old pervert,” said John, “I'll knock his face in.”

“He's quite comic,” said Linda. “Quieten down. What happened about that electrical job?”

“Nothing. It's been filled. There were a hundred and twelve people for it. Imagine that.”

“I can believe it. Do you really hate the freezer place?”

“Yes. We never seem to have enough money, do we? I can't even go for a drink with the boys.”

“Never mind, your luck will change,” said Linda. She was so happy at the prospect of having a baby that her face glowed. That was what she wanted from life, nothing more, a family of children. It was her manifest destiny. She even fantasized about the baby's hair and temper already.

“I hope it won't be like me,” said John. “I had a hell of a temper when I was young.”

“You still have,” said Linda fondly.

“I never slept when I was a baby,” said John. “My mother told me that. I was like King Kong.”

“Rubbish,” said Linda affectionately. “You're a good provider.”

“I'll kick his bum in if I see him around you again,” said John, whose moustache seemed to vibrate when he was angry. “I will, too.”

Cooper would often hoot with laughter. “There was this fellow,” he said, “and his pee was deep yellow. He was worried about it too. I had some whisky last night, he said. Do you think it's my liver? Not at all, I said, your liver and your kidneys are two different things. But he was shaking. What whisky was it, I asked him. Black Prince, he said. Oh, that's okay, I told him, that's not so powerful that it will make your pee yellow. That's a nice moderate whisky. Try Tartan next time. The laughs you get! But you get some yobs too. Disgusting. Really filthy. But I won't put up with any of their nonsense. Still you've got to watch. One of them took out a knife one night. I thought I was a goner, but I talked him out of using it. He was blind drunk: maybe he was on drugs.”

“He's probably writing all the stuff himself,” said John to Linda. “They say that when he was a milkman he had a terrible reputation.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know what they say about milkmen. He was giving them more than pints. These sex-starved women. Imagine it. Old Cooper.”

And he and Linda laughed. They were young, they were happy, they hadn't been long married. The world was ahead of them. When they woke up in the morning they were excited, anticipatory, confident.

“You should have seen Mrs Floss in her bikini,” said John. “She was like a whale. And her skin's dead white.”

“Maybe she thinks the back green is the deck of a ship.”