The Watch Tower (17 page)

Clare
listened to Oriel. She listened with a singular absorption, sifting her statements this way and that through all the meshes of her intuition. Methodically, like a jeweller whose passion was rubies, she laid out on black velvet with theoretical appreciation and yet with dissatisfaction the semi-precious stones and even the diamonds given off by Oriel Carter-Wright: wit, intelligence, vitality, education, experience of a severe and testing nature—of war and death, opinions based on fact, a developed political sense. These and other fabulous possessions Clare admired and laid aside while she continued to wait, weigh and sift.

At this moment she and Oriel stopped with their cups of morning tea at Janet Adams’ desk. At thirty-seven, Janet was the oldest inhabitant of this all-female section of the Department, and carroty, freckled, irascible, unendingly berating the operations of Head Office.

‘You’d never get this sort of inefficiency outside!’ she exclaimed, flapping a handful of pink and yellow memoranda at her smiling friends. ‘What are you grinning at?’

‘You make it sound as if we were in gaol. Your innocent view of commerce,’ Clare said, over her cup.

‘You should have stayed in it when you had the chance,’ Janet said darkly. ‘These morons!’

‘She’s right, you don’t belong here,’ Oriel said, low-voiced to Clare, when Janet turned to answer her raucous telephone. ‘Why don’t you go? I don’t mean into the brave world of commerce.’

Forbearing to ask what Oriel did mean, Clare went off to answer her own telephone.

Out in the corridor at the trolley, Oriel poured herself another cup of liver-coloured tea before returning to her post beside Janet. One of the junior girls punctiliously held the door open for Oriel to pass before her. Her ways were so courteous and thoughtful, her thanks for small services so warmly-phrased and unfailingly delivered at the right time, that everyone else felt hoydenish and uncultivated but, too, strangely expanded, for Oriel’s straight look saw all the inherent graces each knew herself to possess. Oh, it was not surprising that the total of her differences rendered Oriel almost alluring. Even Janet Adams, who was harsh as a nutmeg grater, was softened by Oriel’s flattering presence.

Putting down the receiver now, Janet brought out a long beige garment she was knitting, to boast a little, ironically, because she was an unhandy person and knew it. Clare returned to finish her tea.

‘I’ve been admiring your freckles.’ Oriel smiled down into Janet’s eyes. ‘They’re amazing! I don’t know
how you do it. I’ve often thought how much I’d like some.’ She said, ‘I know. Who could produce a freckle in London? Alas, you’re quite right. I’m full of envy.’

Left-over smiles stuck to Janet’s face and Clare’s, then as the words translated themselves and were understood, Janet turned a dreadful dusky red beneath freckles that were not cute at all, which had martyred her, caused her sharper suffering for decades of her life than many a lingering fatal-sounding disease would have done.

‘Are you?’ Janet’s voice was dead and rasping. She bent low over her desk.

Even her hands had blushed, Clare saw, as she stood stupidly still, looking down at Janet’s rather scraggy gingery head, the back of her dusky red neck, and her shapeless beige jersey dress.

Grasping a memorandum fiercely, even Janet’s hands were red. And freckled. Clare knew what they had meant to her, had always known, had not had to use a geiger counter, or to be in her company for ten years to know.

For a split second, recovering from a painful body blow, Clare stood vague and muffled, yet at the same time with light, crystal light, pealing in all round her. From Janet’s clenched hands she looked over to Oriel, who was turning away with one of her graceful movements. She gave Clare a bold, bored, defiant, whimsical look and walked away.

Back at her own desk, Clare started to draw squares, circles and other geometric shapes at a furious rate on a scribbler.

That look of Oriel’s! My true colours! So what? it had clearly said. She bores me. I’m bored. What’s Janet Adams? it said.

All the facts Oriel had at her command, her rich life and intelligence proved nothing whatever. Nothing at all. Her views had been so civilised, perceptive, fine-grained. In theory, her attitude to life and people was a model of rectitude and loving-kindness. It had seemed unreasonable in Clare, even to herself, that Oriel’s fluent, witty and informed conversation should have had as draining an effect as any sample of Mrs. Robertson’s famous social life. Oriel had described the world where everything that mattered happened, was actor and eyewitness, and yet, listening, Clare had often had to assume a vitality, engagement and interest far greater than she felt. She had been alarmed to have to admit to herself that even now, when subject and speaker should have enthralled, she was in reality still waiting at the forgotten bus stop, urgently, in a high wind, with a talkative stranger.

It was all as—it was all but tinkling bells and cymbals—Or sounding brass—Or whatever it was.

And now she knew why.

‘Laura? I forgot to tell you this morning, I’m going to
a play at the Independent tonight with Mike Rankin. I won’t be home for dinner.’ (It was mean, but it did avoid a long, long, mangled discussion, not to have said so this morning.)

‘Oh? Very well.’

Clare waited at her end of the line, then said, ‘You sound puffed. Have you just got home? Is Felix with you?’

‘No. He’s been at the hotel with Gil Blaine all day. He dropped me off at the factory this morning and went straight out there, so—’

‘So,’ she had no need to say, ‘I’ll just have to wait and see.’

Almost every night since Felix had bought an interest in Gilbert Blaine’s hotel, she and Clare had done exactly that. And the sound of footsteps which was the end of waiting was the climax of the day: most often they were heard slowly lurching and stumbling down the steps and down the path, and the women prepared to wait it out as people wait out an air-raid, suspended, with existence itself a matter of either/or. When the footsteps were quick and heavy, however, there was a rapid unscrewing of nerves, a lighting of lights and playing of music, so that when Felix entered it was to find a peaceful and relaxed scene in which his wishes were all in all to everyone—all three.

‘I hope it’s—everything’s fine tonight,’ Clare said with a pang of guilt, wretchedly conscious that she was
failing in her duty, and that her absence could increase the night’s unpleasantness for Laura if the wind was blowing north, south, east or west.

‘Have a good time,’ Laura said bleakly, deliberately not asking, ‘Who’s Mike Rankin? What play are you seeing?’ just as she would never ask in the morning, ‘Was the play good? Did you enjoy yourself?’

‘Yes. Okay,’ Clare said with equal bleakness and resentment, feeling as if her lungs had been sucked empty of breath. She was aware of Laura’s regret at not being able to refer her evening’s outing with Mike to Felix, that Felix would no longer be able, anyway, with inimitable friendliness, like a smiling tiger, to refuse permission. By some blessed miracle, imperceptibly, she had become too old.

There had been a time, even after it became impossible to blackmail her into rejecting all invitations, when Laura and Felix invariably happened to be out in the car posting letters or getting a breath of air when the theatres emptied. ‘You two young people’ were kindly given a lift home, Clare’s escort discarded, and Clare herself, in the back seat of the car, was enjoined to admire the view as they approached the white citadel once again. There were guns held to her head. ‘Look at that moon over the water! It’s pure gold tonight.’

Now
she went out from time to time with Les from the office, or Keith, whom she had met on the ferry, or Mike, whose sister worked in the office and who had been
introduced by Diane on Balmoral Beach one Sunday.

If she had taken to prostitution her family could hardly have given off more silent unhappiness. When it was convenient to him, Felix relied on her company. If he was busy, she took herself obligingly to her room, but when he had a rare idle hour and was sober, he did expect her to exert herself a little to divert him.

If she remained in town with another girl, the slight was not so hurtful. It was always aggravating to see someone treat the house like a hotel, and to feel that Laura’s excellent and important dinners could be forgone, but it was chiefly the thought that Clare sometimes chose to spend her time with some unknown male, in preference to spending it with Felix (who was a man, too! ) that made him smile sarcastically at her with dark, demanding offended eyes. Laura could understand this perfectly.

‘Why you would want to go out with a man if you didn’t have to—’ she said to Clare.

‘Oh, Laura. Give me strength! You are married to one.’

‘That’s different. You know what I mean. You don’t want to marry any of
them
,
do you?’

She did not. She was so much too old, so in excess of what they imagined her to be, that she went merely because it was a matter of survival to her not to react like a weathervane to every variation of pressure her family chose to impose on her. The independent action
available was often not very preferable to what she abandoned at home and, in a sense, she knew it did not matter greatly what she did. Nevertheless, as some sort of principle, almost for Laura’s sake and Felix’s, she would not even appear submissive. So she went out now and then with these boys. They spoke to her because she was, in effect, the pair of ears, the mouth, the body that happened to be standing next to them at the bus stop. Anyone about her age and size would have done as well. Nothing about her entered into it. They were content to be with a young female who had straps to be pulled at, ears into which they could try to poke their tongues. They were children on a picnic. They kissed her as if she was something good to eat, and she did not object. But they made her lonely.

Not like any girl of the right age, shape and so on, after all, but like a woman leaden with experience, she turned away. Between two lies which were, on the one hand, going out with the boys and, on the other, seeming to submit to
their
combined wills in not doing so, she began to choose the latter. If she had cared, it could have rankled that they should think her docile and obedient in not deserting them and her square room, but at least alone pretence was unnecessary.

But see tonight how essential to patrol the boundaries and make use of the rights of the free!

Felix strode into the hotel and felt at once the heightening of power that a king might experience returning to
his country from foreign parts. He was in the home of alcohol. The air was heavy with it. There came from all about the echoing hollow sounds of hotel life. Under his feet in the cellars there was alcohol enough to keep a Roman fountain tumbling for days. Through the swing doors to his right there were rows of superlative whiskies with renowned labels, each one of which he cherished. There were classic, and dimpled and square bottles. Advocaat, cherry brandy, crème de menthe, cointreau, all the liqueurs, spirits, sparkling and still wines with their beautiful inviolate corks and wires and tin-foil wrappings. There was no need to fear, in this harem of delights, that a scarifying thirst might descend and remain ungratified. Nothing could happen to him here. Safety was within arm’s reach. Eloquence, great gestures, physical strength, magic, hypnotic powers, were in every thrice-blessed bottle. The contents of any one of them would let him out of his cage. He, Felix, Mr. Felix Shaw, was returned to himself and the world by these perfumed liquids. He could jump. He could growl. He could open his eyes wide and frighten everyone. He could impress them all, at any time he chose. He could emerge in his real majesty and glory—

Striding along the stony ringing corridors, on his way to do a job of stock-taking with Gilbert Blaine, he felt an almost religious satisfaction.

‘Is Mr. Blaine anywhere about?’

The hotel ‘useful’, Nobby Clark, came down the
passage with the addled fish eyes of one who has not been completely sober for years. He stopped when Felix addressed him for the second time.

‘Is Mr. Blaine about?’

‘Gil? ’aven’t seen ’im.’ Sluggishly indifferent to peremptory voices and efforts, however unconscious, to put him down, Nobby went his way to the bar.

‘Ah.’ Felix rattled the change in his pockets abstractedly, and stood alone in the corridor, ostentatiously thinking. As if to demonstrate that there is indeed a little justice left in the world, he was actually seen there.

‘Hullo, Mr. Shaw! You look deep in thought!’

Felix gave a colossal start, quite frightening his discoverer, and then began to laugh. ‘Oh! Oh! Yes. Hullo there, Josie. Where’s Mr. Blaine?’

‘He sent a message a while ago. He can’t come in today. He said for you to go ahead and he’ll talk to you later.’ Josie was a tall bony woman with black hair rolled back from her forehead. She gestured with a large tin tea pot. ‘He said you better start in there.’

Felix was like a fire abruptly deluged with water, snow, rocks and dirt. ‘He did, eh?’

Young Gil was more often missing than not when you wanted him, but at least his absence proved his confidence in Felix. Felix supposed. When he did turn up he would quite likely say, ‘Don’t tell me you’ve finished already? They said it took three coves to do
that last year, and then they buggered it up.’

To date, Felix had drawn no money from the hotel, though he had spent more time working here than at the factory, which did continue to provide him with an income. But one day this place would be a gold mine. Gradually he would extract more money from the factory and increase his holding here. He would double the refrigeration capacity. He would carry the biggest stock of liquor on the North Shore. He and young Gil might set themselves up as joint resident managers.
She
could keep the other place running.

Solitary, in a sealed-off section of the Bottle Department, Felix began a preliminary stock-taking. Tomorrow night, when the last customer was chucked out, the real job would begin. Meantime, he would demolish so much tonight that young Gil would be staggered by his ability to get things done.