The Watch Tower (10 page)

Clare nodded two or three times. ‘Yes.’ She dried a handful of cutlery and sorted it out, clanking, into its
drawer.

‘For heaven’s sake, Clare, I thought you’d be bubbling over.’

Considering a pile of saucers judiciously Clare said, ‘No.’ To deny the day’s gaiety seemed churlish and unreasonable. They had laughed and talked incessantly, in loud voices, shouting each other down. A feeling of being somewhere precipitous had exercised apprehension and excitement. Yet the absence of a fatal accident had hardly been sufficient to set her heart alight with joy, nor had she any particular feeling that it should have been.

Even while Clare was contributing her fair quarter of smiles and exclamations, balancing a plate of ice- cream on her knees, flashing her long fingernails in animated talk, her self inside her lay injured and drained. This was unreal. This was artificial. ‘Go away, go away,’ her voice silently exhorted the three whose easy eyes and glances, easy satisfaction, easy amusement, divided her from them in some way more profound than that in which black skin is divided from white, sickness from health, age from youth. ‘Go away.’

They desired and expected nothing more of themselves, each other, the afternoon; they were not, with those eyes, aware of anything more to be desired or expected. Even Laura, with her husband, house, visitor and cakes, was well content.

Clare recalled Ruth wandering, inquisitive, about
her bedroom, pausing to admire the impersonal array of covers, brush, comb, Royal Doulton pin trays and small crystal vase that Laura and Felix had bought for the dressing-table. Ruth examined and saw every expensive artifact with an acuteness of interest that fascinated Clare. Clearly, Ruth would remember for months, years, perhaps for ever, the thin blue-grey china trays that she had turned about in her plump white hands. She found them worthy of coveting.

‘Ruth’s a very nice little girl,’ Laura said. ‘What did you expect to happen?’

‘Nothing.’ But of course something had. A small explosion had revealed to Clare that she was a person to whom one
thing
was much the same as another, interchangeable because unspeakably unimportant. Another explosion had revealed the alarming fact that this was the way her companions regarded
people
.
That her own singular expectations came from the springs of her being and might be the source of her life’s experience came to her intuition cloudily, chilly, like a portent.

‘Well then—’ Laura had finished wiping down the stainless steel sink, and now removed her rubber gloves and washed her hands and dried them. ‘You’re never satisfied, Clare!’

‘No, I’m not,’ she said viciously, clinging to her dissatisfaction as though it were her only virtue, the only spar of timber to clutch in a shipwrecked sea.

‘When I think of all those poor people in Europe and Asia—’ Laura’s voice was warm, her manner matronly. She gave her sister a severe look and went off to play dominoes with Felix. If people did not make the best of things and look on the bright side, it was frightening to think how discontented they might be. Here they were—lovely house, lovely autumn weather, a superlative view, cupboards and refrigerator stacked full of food, safe from bombs, cold and hunger, which was more than many, many poor people could say, so why Clare could not be content, why she had to be so—somehow, remorselessly expectant—

Laura opened the door and Peter Trotter asked, blank-faced, ‘Where’s the boss?’

‘Felix’s collecting the car from the garage, Peter. He won’t be long.’

He frowned at his watch. ‘I’ll give him five minutes.’

Without removing his hat, he lounged through the house to the office, bestowing condescending glances to right and left. Recently, by one means and another, he had become rather rich. It was irksome enough to have to address Felix, who was a man: Felix’s simple wife he ignored, grunting a refusal to her offer of tea or coffee.

‘I was doing some ironing in the kitchen,’ she confided next, hovering in the doorway.

Peter Trotter looked up at her stonily. ‘So what?’
Then pulling some papers from his pocket, he cracked his knuckles, found his Parker pen and hitched his chair closer to Felix’s desk.

In the adjoining kitchen, Laura started to thump perplexedly at her ironing. She could never, would never, believe that anyone deliberately intended to be unpleasant. This meant that much of her time, even while she bowed conscientiously over the factory’s accounts, was spent rationalising the apparently nasty behaviour of people who
could
smile, and had been known to, and who had formed ordinarily amiable words with their lips, and who therefore must be, really, nice and well-meaning like everyone else.

Even Felix who, since he had married her, must care for her, was off-hand and not altogether faultless in this direction. When Peter or any perfectly strange man called on business he was apt to ignore her, never to call her by name, hardly to acknowledge her as his! He knew it, too, she could tell, from the little smirk he gave when they were alone again.

Stretching another white shirt on the ironing-board, Laura continued: but he didn’t realise how his attitude influenced the attitudes of other people towards her. But then again, how could she take it personally? Neither Felix nor Peter had a high opinion of women as a sex. Felix on occasion had even seemed to taunt her with being female. Being so much younger was a disadvantage, probably, if she hoped for respect
and inclusion in discussions. Only to be allowed to listen! But she did throw all her energy into Shaw’s Chocolates and was dedicated in her desire for the company’s success, even though she could not believe in it exactly as Felix did.
He
felt the eyes of the world were on Shaw’s Chocolates. He would not have been unduly surprised to find Shaw’s Chocolates headline news in the
Herald
any morning.

‘That’s how businessmen have to be,’ she explained to Clare so that she herself might begin to understand this monomaniacal approach to life.

Still, even Felix had broken down once and admitted that no one could work harder than she did, and if he would only not treat her like a spy from whom state secrets had to be guarded, she might be even more helpful.

Oh, she remembered she was a woman! Not a member of the human race to Felix and Peter Trotter. Except, she recalled, turning the shirt on the board, that they all had a radically different way of treating the diamond-studded ones who frequented Peter’s shop.
Rich
women they respected. Or their money. Peter liked flashy-looking women, too. Felix never noticed women in that way.

She folded the shirt. If she allowed it to be, this reflection about money could be galling.
She
owned a few washed-out and repaired pieces of clothing. Now that Felix was keeping her (and Clare) she naturally
received no wage. This was quite right, and all right, as long as her worth as a person was not equated, even by her husband, with her bank account.

In the office, Peter Trotter cracked his knuckles again.

Peter now owned four shops and took the factory’s whole output. He also rented but had no obvious use for the office Felix had vacated.

‘If he wants to waste good money—’ Felix grinned, thinking himself a devil, rubbing his hands together.

‘He can afford to—the profit he makes,’ Laura said. Felix had set his own profit quite peculiarly low, and expected miracles of household management from her.

‘It would not occur to you to consider his rents, wages and overheads, I suppose?’ Felix was too pleasant.

‘It just doesn’t seem fair. We work so hard, and yet—’

‘And yet? And yet?’ he prompted her, smiling with what looked like intense pleasure into her eyes. As suddenly his face changed and appeared to register intense hatred. ‘What do you know about work, anyway?’ His hand tapped rapidly at his chest. ‘When I was your age, I didn’t live in a house like this. Don’t think it!
I
didn’t have it handed to me like you two. Mr. Trotter and I know what a day’s work is, so kindly don’t poke your nose in where it doesn’t concern you. If I want a friend of mine to get on, he will. I’ll see to
it. So shut your face!’

‘Felix. Oh!’ She rushed away, stricken.

Later she worked it out that he had been joking, though very roughly. Her inability to comprehend Felix with any certainty often fatigued Laura. But he did need her; he was her task. She supposed he must be an enormously subtle and complex man: he was not, obviously, what he sometimes seemed—His look had actually said:
you
’
re jealous of Peter
.

‘Hi, boy!’ Peter looked up from the divan where he had retired to study a racing-guide. ‘What say we clinch it?’

‘Oh!’ Felix laughed falsely. ‘You’re on to that again, are you?’ He sat at his desk and swung the chair round on its revolving base to face the divan. ‘I’ve just been up collecting the car.’

‘You know what I’ve offered. It’s the best you’ll get. Better close that door.’ Peter paused. He watched Felix sit down again. ‘Because if I withdraw my orders you’ve got no goodwill to sell anyone else. You’ve had it.’

‘Ah!’ Still smiling, Felix leaned back to drag his tobacco pouch from his trouser-pocket. His hands trembled as he began to roll himself a cigarette. ‘But where would you be without Shaw’s Chocolates?’

‘With my shops, and my reputation, and the publicity I’ve bought, and the clientele I’ve built up, I could sell dog biscuits and make a packet. Don’t think
I
count on you.’

Curiously, every remark the man made amused
Felix. Nothing could have offended him. He had an extraordinary air of indulgence. He seemed almost charmed, as if a baby had hit his face with a baby hand.

‘What if I don’t want to sell?’ Felix parried, his arm wavering as he lifted it from his knees, drew on his shaggy cigarette and replaced it.

‘Look, boy, I can give you ten more seconds. I’m late as it is. What’s in it for you? Stuck at home. The thing runs itself.’ He jerked his head at the closed kitchen door behind which the wireless was playing and the iron thumping. ‘
She
could run it. I’ve got the shops, the personnel, the clientele. If I can’t get your place, I’ll get a better one. So it’s the end of the line.’

Felix laughed heartily, his short square brown face, on which the skin drooped in loose folds wrinkling all over. ‘You’ve got it worked out, all right! Well, I don’t know, young fella—I wasn’t thinking of getting rid of it just yet, but—’ he caught Peter’s eye ‘if that’s how you feel, it’s a deal.’

He stubbed out his mangled cigarette, dashing at flying sparks and shreds of tobacco with his left hand. Peter Trotter almost smiled. He pulled from his pocket a contract which would be, he said, ‘legal enough’ till they saw their solicitors.

‘What was the joke?’ Laura asked, looking up from the ironing-board, smiling tentatively, when they appeared. She had been so glad to hear them laughing together; Felix needed men’s company and
light-heartedness.

‘Were we telling jokes?’ Felix drawled. ‘I thought we were talking business.’

Trotter met Felix’s eyes, looked at his watch.

‘In good time you’ll be told all you need to know,’ Felix said to Laura, and in his expression there was an element at once sexual and sadistic. Clapping her on the back with a firm hand, he chuckled dryly, secretly, across the room, into his friend’s flickering, evasive eyes. ‘How about a cup of something, eh?’

‘Not for me, boy. I’m off. See you. Ring me.’ With a brief salute, he was across the hall and gone.

Laura woke to a cheerful bull-frog version of
Happy Birthday
.
It was only Felix, up and dressed, come to serenade her, holding parcels wrapped in pink paper: a silver tray, teapot, coffee pot, sugar basin and milk jug, pewter mugs and theatre tickets.

He had roused the unconscious Clare at six and now she stood singing a duet with him and breaking into giggles as he strained after subterranean notes and jumped about the room with bearish playfulness. Laura uttered little squeals of delight.

Clare now handed over her packages: a pair of pretty red sandals, a cotton skirt, a leather handbag.

‘Oh, it’s too much. Both of you. Everything so smart and well chosen! You both always give me beautiful presents.’

Considering her income, Clare certainly gave lavishly, saving for months. But nothing was too much for Laura, nothing could be enough. You had to make it up to her, somehow. Had to try to. She said, ‘I’m going to make breakfast. I’ll call you.’

Sitting in bed with the morning sun shining over her shoulder, Laura was visualising herself in this situation in order to feel a proper reaction to it. Shortly, it became evident that she was in a luxurious setting, surrounded by a small but loving family, and enviable. If she had known years ago that all this was before her, how gladly (she thought) she would have waited!

Rather more girlishly than she had acted and spoken when she was younger, certainly in more youthful a manner than Clare’s, she kissed Felix and thanked him and drew the very last dregs of gratitude from herself to please him. After all, she owed him
something
,
and at times it pleased him to have her childish and excessive. When you thought of it, he was a stranger, under no obligation to provide for or feel anything towards her! Of his free will he had chosen her. The fact held her. Her mind’s core stood in meek and helpless subjection before the idea of herself as someone singled out. This was a safe and inviolable fact, not to be bent or broken by any amount of thought. Therefore no return that was in her power to give could be too great. It stood to reason. Alas, though! Poor Felix valued beautiful presents, too, like the ones he gave. And she had
only herself, and out of herself she had somehow to manufacture repayments he would find acceptable.

‘Come in. He’s gone to bed.’

Clare hesitated.

‘The rain’s blowing in, Clare. Come in and close the door.’

With a jerk, Clare obeyed her sister and walked past her into the small sunroom while Laura shut out the noisy night. Then they both stood.