The Watch Tower (15 page)

‘Clare!’ Laura’s voice was a furtive half-whisper.

‘What?’ She unlocked the door.

‘I told Felix you had your cases packed. He was very upset. Very upset. You see. You’re too quick to jump to conclusions. He said those nasty things because I didn’t explain properly when I said you’d have to change jobs. He didn’t realise the doctor ordered you to. He thought you just decided to yourself, to get away from us, and naturally he was very hurt.’

‘Was he?’

They exchanged amazed looks.

‘
Yes
.
He thinks the world of you.’

Clare smiled. Laura always did that. She had no artistic sense. If no one checked her, she exaggerated till her most credulous listener was obliged to grin.

‘I think you should go in to him.’ Laura widened her eyes as advisers do, and knotted her green silk scarf.

‘Oh. Not tonight.’ What gifts they had, these two, to make it seem, when it suited them, that only she could create discord or harmony. She was used and, in theory (if she had been someone else, for instance), she resented it.

‘I think it would be the fair thing to do, after all this.’

Clare looked at her hard. If Laura wanted or needed or asked as much as this, why not? She had nothing else to do. No one else required her. And she felt nothing whatever.

‘Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay.’ She almost ran to the other room. ‘Anything.’

‘Well now, well now,’ Felix said, pulling a jolly face like a butcher at a trade picnic. Clare was manoeuvred into a low chair. Felix rose and put his hand on her head, holding her head there below him, powerful, chuckling.

‘What’s it all about, eh? What’s it all about?’ His rough smiling voice had a note that was sadistic and
obscene. He was pretending to comfort her! Pretending in a sentimental, sadistic, drunken way to console and forgive her!

That she permitted this, that she permitted his hand on her head, caused her to suffer greatly. Laura came in and the two continued to regard Clare with such false smiles of reprobation that she could not look at them. In their separation from what
was
they were infinitely alien. Clare felt a paralysing sense of sin, but smilingly conspired.

‘Well, there’s two thousand in cash,’ Felix said to Gilbert Blaine, nodding at the stacks of folded notes on his desk. He dug into the pockets of his khaki shorts and crossed his feet, drawing close to himself and smiling at the younger man, pompous and wistful. ‘Two thousand smackers!’ he repeated, suddenly depressed.

Gil Blaine studied the money as if Felix were a sculptor of genius and this his controversial masterpiece. His expression both reassured and hurt Felix, but he tried to cope with his mixed feelings by watching Gil, who was good to look at. He had youth, beautiful teeth, frank brown eyes, the face of a male mannequin.

From the divan his wife, Julie, a glamorous, bored-looking girl with upswept black hair, watched the two men and the money. With a minute movement of one foot in an elegant white shoe, she slid the canvas overnight bag towards her husband. He picked it up
abstractedly and began to pack the money, flipping through each roll.

‘You won’t be sorry, Felix. In the long run it’s going to look like
your
lucky break.’

Willing though he was to be comforted, Felix gave a painful smile at this, and his attention jumped again and again from Gilbert’s soothing patter to his busy hands.

‘I hope you’re right, young fella. You’d better be, or I’ll end up in Queer street.’

‘I noticed a new Jag in your garage.’ Julie Blaine drew her cheeks in and opened her eyes like the beauties in cigarette advertisements.

Felix’s look was as cold and surprising to her as a slap in the face with a wet fish. He turned slowly back to the young man and Gilbert hurried to say, ‘We’ll get the beer-garden working in a month, Felix. The finance is all fixed up. We only needed this bit of ready cash to tide us over.’

‘I hope so. I hope so.’ He was a little sententious, but who had more right to be? ‘All safely packed, eh?’

‘Yep!’ Gilbert let his charming teeth be seen. ‘Only the receipt now to keep it all above board. Have you got a duty stamp on you?’ He felt in his pockets. ‘Blast! I meant to make sure—’

‘Receipts!’ Felix threw his arms about casually. ‘Red tape! We’re not a government department! Next time’s soon enough.’

Young Blaine eyed him with deference and compunction, making Felix give a broad, indulgent smile.

‘No, look,’ Blaine protested after a moment, ‘that’s not good enough. I’ll make out an interim thing—except that we still can’t get round the duty stamp!’

‘Forget it! Forget it! I can trust you.’ Felix shook Gilbert’s arm paternally, laughing. ‘What about a spot of lunch? How’d that be? Lobster mayonnaise. How about that?’

‘Ah—’ The Blaines darted a look at each other. ‘We couldn’t manage that today, I’m afraid, Felix. We’ve got some cocktail thing on at Julie’s mother’s place tonight and we’ll both be flat out one way and another—’ He smoothed the back of his head with his right hand and grasped the bag with his left.

‘Is that so?’ A joylessness much more positive than the mere absence of joy overflowed in Felix and went out from him like a minor death ray. ‘We’d better make it one day in town next week, then. It’d be easier to talk business alone, anyway.’

‘Yes, or—I tell you what: I’ll call at the factory one afternoon.’

Julie Blaine was opening the door of Felix’s office, walking out into the shady flower-decked hall.

‘Will you? Yes, that’s the shot!’ Felix stood still to adjust to this compromise which might turn out to be far far better than lunch today. He hurried after the young couple, then led the way through the garden,
grateful now for anything he might be thrown. Like a child, with a plea, a sad smile in his eyes, he looked at Gil Blaine and clapped him on the shoulder, laughing unhappily.

The car leapt away from his side. Disconsolate, he sauntered back down the steps and past all the green swaying garden, hands in pockets.

‘Isn’t he staying, Felix?’

‘I am not aware that he was invited.’ There was a lofty pause. ‘He had some stupid piece with him. I can’t conduct a business discussion like that. We’ll meet in private next week.’

‘I see.’

Usually on Saturday the house was cleaned from chimney to cellar while Felix retired to the garden or the office. Very early on Sundays Laura did the week’s washing and finished the house off in time to iron at night. This Saturday, for the first time since Ruth’s visit long ago, the routine had been altered to include a luncheon party—‘A luncheon party,’ Laura said, ‘for Felix’s friend Mr. Blaine.’

‘I see.’ Laura changed colour, and her soft pale face looked a little puffy. ‘Will you have your lunch now, then, Felix?’ Lobster mayonnaise.

‘I’ll have some bread and cheese later. I’ll let you know when I’m ready. I have letters to attend to. And by the way,’ he looked into her eyes, startling her, ‘there’s another overdraft now, so you’d better go a bit easy on the housekeeping.’

Laura breathed in through her nose, looking after him. Recently she had joined the sales staff, going about the city and suburbs on foot with a suitcase of samples. Selling was physically tiring and in other ways so against the grain of her nature that she shrank from waking to each day, but she
would
have Felix happy, his business a success.

‘I thought we were doing quite well.’

He halted, shoulders drooping, seeming persecuted to death by the sound of her faint voice. ‘It so happens,’ he enunciated, not turning, ‘that I have decided to go into partnership with Mr. Blaine. Today I gave him a certain sum for petty expenses. In order to raise sufficient capital I am negotiating with my bank. Are you satisfied?—Are you still curious?—Or am I permitted to get on with my work?’

Laura watched him go, half-suffocated by the press of anonymous emotions. She hated, hated (presumably), the people, things, that had done this to him, raised up his corrosive bitterness, antagonism of the bone. She used to try to rally him at first, refuting his grievances and coaxing him out of his tragic role. She persuaded Clare, who was better at it, to imitate some of his ludicrously gloomy poses to such effect that he had to roar with laughter to see himself so. He loved to be so concentrated on. Yet how quickly he wearied of being wooed from his blackness and gnashing of teeth! How almost resentful he appeared later at having been
seduced to laughter and sense! Like a fretful child he allowed himself to be distracted briefly, and crowed and accepted the spotlight with fractious high spirits, only to hold a grudge against the author of those good spirits ten minutes later.

Laura wandered into the dining-room set with real silver, soft-looking silver, for the luncheon party. The walls and ceiling reflected the harbour’s trembling surface. Today of all days, because Felix was so amiable before the Blaines came, she had plucked up the will to ask him for a new dress. She had dragged herself to the idea of this as easily as she might have urged herself to the rim of an active volcano: it was against nature.

But—it wasn’t even that the shabbiness of her few clothes made her vulnerable to the snubs of the expense-account tycoons she had to bargain with daily. It was, rather, that she had to make a gesture from herself to herself, do something to assuage, make amends to—

Really, she was foolish. He had told her ages ago, ‘Ask for anything you want.’

‘Then—could I have some pocket-money every week? Not a lot. Only to save up with.’

‘What? Isn’t that like a woman? You go and spoil it straight away. What do you want
money
for?
I
know what to do with money. I said when you want some
thing
.
Aren’t you fed and driven about in a new car? The only thing women can do with money is spend it or put it in a savings bank. No. Come to me and say,
“Felix, I want a—whatever it is—please.” And if sales are looking up, we’ll see what we can do.’

‘It’s me,’ she said to Clare. ‘I can’t do it. I don’t know why.’

And now the factory, that they had thought, breathed, spoken, eaten and slept since Felix bought it in its death-throes, was to be drained to pay off the overdraft supporting Gilbert Blaine’s business. Whatever it was.

Head drooping, she stood at the side of the table.

She had sought out new materials for flowers, and searched a thousand fashion magazines and garden catalogues and gardens for the golden idea that would free Felix from his weird bondage to misery. If she could help to make him more than prosperous, so that he need never think of money, cash books, ledgers, overdrafts and mortgages at all, and never with fear, then—

At this point her thoughts always dispersed and darted off like a cloud of finches. But what she knew was: life could begin then.

Boxes, chocolates and artificial flowers were, really, nothing to her. Yet for years her life had been devoted to their production and sale as selflessly as it might have been devoted to music, or the care of the sick. Their names—box, chocolate and flower—were the words she had said and heard most often in these years. On the words with which they were coupled depended her peace of mind, almost, her safety.

She had concentrated on each one in turn with a fierce and dedicated will, since to go through the fire of dull box, chocolate and unreal flower was the only way out for Felix to the ‘then’ when life could begin.

Quite what it might be like then, she could scarcely imagine, but she visualised a Felix visited with ease, the wires that tormented and ham-strung him cut. That dense threatening blackness in him that rose for no reason, which was almost visible, making him seem physically bulkier, all shoulders, arms and head, would go. The towering gloom without object, seeking revenge for no particular hurt—all these would go. The Felix who must belittle her in front of strangers would alter, too. He would be—not some impossible paragon, only like anyone else, and only occasionally short-tempered and cruel. As it was, it was the sensation of deep malice, of bottomless glee, behind the derogatory remark that was so debilitating to her spirit.

But
then
with the factory working so well that they need not sit over its accounts nightly as though it were a feverish child, Felix would be light-hearted and gay. From Friday night to Monday morning they would never mention it! Felix would take back old Mr. Gilroy, the gardener. (The garden was not only large, but working in it as a pleasure had been ruled out for ever by the peculiarly punitive pressure under which they were made to labour there. It might have been fun, it might have been rewarding, except for
the fact that it was not meant to be. Felix’s all-tooobvious intention was not to create a beautiful place but to create another situation in which he could test his power. And in addition, Felix slogged beside his work-force, the pace-maker, the deeply-wronged foreman, no sound, only grunted instructions from time to time, and the harsher the weather the better.)

But
then—
at night and at weekends they would be free even to make friends. Why should they not? If it was not exactly obvious what Felix would do with a friend, it was only because neither he nor she had had much practice with them.

They would all sit in the garden, actually admiring it for a change, and having afternoon tea; or they would sit out on the terrace and watch the yachts racing.

Then, while Felix knew facts about the foreign countries he had visited, and could solve anagrams, and add brilliantly, and distinguish Scotch from local whisky, and might—if he chose—win fame as a genius on quiz sessions,
she
knew nothing about anything. What time had there been since the day of her father’s death to acquire any knowledge that was not utilitarian? There was never time even to read a paper. Occasionally she borrowed one of Clare’s books, but she was usually so tired that her eyes slid over two pages and she was asleep. When had she had half an hour to sit and listen to music? Felix was always active, and you could hardly loll about while he was working! It was years since she had even seen a piano, much
less touched one. And singing—Once upon a time she had loved to sing, she had loved to practise dance steps alone on the slippery kitchen floor. At school she liked French so much the girls accused her of speaking English with a foreign accent! And as a very young child she had picked out melodies on the piano by pure instinct! Her eyes grew round with the wonder of all she was telling herself. Then she sighed.