The Watchers on the Shore (19 page)

Somehow I know by a curious instinct that she's not in the room
even before my eyes have begun to look for her, and as I'm leaning
there against the jamb watching Conroy chatting up the bird who's
just been in the kitchen and now
gazing
at him with a glassy look
that he might be taking for rapt attention but which looks to me
like she simply can't focus properly, she comes through the door
way on my left, from the hall.

She smiles. 'All right?'

Yeh. Lovely party.'

'Gosh, it's warm and smoky in here now.

'It'll get worse before it gets better.'

She laughs. 'So you keep saying.'

Can I get you something to drink?'

'Not just now, thanks. What's the time?'

'Four minutes to twelve.'

'Good lord, we're going to miss it.'

'What?'

'Letting in the New Year.'

She's up on her toes, scanning the room. 'Where the devil's
Paul gone?'

'Who?'

'Paul Merrick. He promised earlier ...'

'There's a bloke in the kitchen.'

She leans past me, one hand on my arm, the scent of her in my nostrils.

'Yes, that's him. He's dark enough, isn't he?'

'I should say so.'

'I'd better get him out.'

I go with her into the kitchen. She grabs Merrick by the arm.
' Paul.' He twists and grunts at her.' Come on, Paul, do your duty. Sheila will still be here when you get back.'

'Have you got a lump of coal?' I ask her.

'Not a bit. Should I have?'

'Well, strictly speaking. To do it right.'

'We'll have to manage without.'

'Well give him some bread.'

She opens a cupboard, takes out the remains of a loaf and pushes
it into Merrick's hands. We usher him out of the kitchen and into
the hall. He stands there, acting stupid.

What am I supposed to do - eat the bread?'

Donna opens the door.

'You just go out now and come back in when it's struck
twelve.'

'I haven't got a watch.'

'Listen for the church bells.'

'With that row going on?'

Donna throws up -her hands.

'Oh, my Gawd!'

'I'll go with him,' I say.

'Yes, go on, Vic, there's a love. Only make sure he comes in
first.'

'I'm dark, so it won't matter all that much.'

'No, but he said he'd do it and he will. God knows what kind of
luck he'll bring me, though.'

We nip out with about half a minute to spare and stand on the
landing outside the door, Merrick leaning on the rail with his black
shaggy head down and his eyes closed.

'I've been trying to make that Sheila for the last six months,' he announces suddenly without looking up.

'She looked cooperative enough to me,' I say.

'She's got a grasshopper mentality, though,' he says.' She'll be in a corner with somebody else when I get back. All my good work gone for nothing.'

'You'll manage,' I tell him. Then 'Listen!'

'What?'

'The church clock - striking midnight.'

'You have remarkable powers of hearing, my friend. All I can
hear is that bloody gramophone.'

Suddenly the gramophone cuts off in mid-record.

'They've turned it
off.' I look at my watch. 'Half a minute past.'

'Is it time for my entrance?'

'It is.'

He straightens up off the rail and starts for the door, checking
for a second to look back at me.

'What's the line again?'

'Happy New Year!'

'So it is.'

He throws the door open and charges in clutching the half-loaf.
' Happy New Year! Happy New
Year!'

I follow him in as the hubbub of greetings starts on all sides.
Merrick has hold of Donna, shouting something about kissing the
hostess. She lets him plant one on then wriggles free and pushes him off on to somebody else, turning to laugh at me.

'Thanks, Vic. Happy New Year.'

'A pleasure, love. Happy New Year.'

There must be something in my face because the expression in
her eyes changes as I put one arm out to bring her close. Then I have
her, both arms holding her, her mouth under mine; and through
my mind a chant is going. Not' Happy New Year' but' Oh Christ,
oh Christ, oh Christ.'

There's a little smile on her lips as soon as we break away, but it's accompanied by a faint flicker of puzzlement in her eyes. I cover as quick as I can, knowing that the moment's got to break and wanting me to do it rather than her. So I plant on a chaser, a quick light stab of my mouth at hers.

'Astonishing good luck, then.'

'All the best to you.'

Her expression is lost to me as she turns her head at somebody's
call. The moment's gone and I wonder if the complexities of it weren't just in my mind, and only there. When Conroy moves round my way I'm looking at her standing across the room with her back to me as she chats to a couple who seem to be getting
ready to go.

'How're you doing?'

'All right, Albert.'

'Not a bad party, is it? Is there any more booze?'

'Under the draining-board in the kitchen. Behind the waste-
bin.'

Crafty snake.'

I follow him, looking round for my glass as he roots about under
the sink and comes up with an unopened pint bottle. There are a
few used tumblers about but I can't remember which is mine so I
take one and rinse it out under the hot-tap and Albert fills my
glass and his. I light a fag and we lean against the sink, quiet for a
moment, listening to the sounds of chat and laughter, and the
record-player that somebody's turned on again now, in the next
room.

'I was a bit short the other day,' Conroy says all at once.

'Eh?'

'Ratty
...
in the office.'

'Oh, that
...
I'd forgotten.'

'It's always a mistake, mixing business with pleasure.'

'I don't get you.'

'Cynthia.'

'Oh . ..'

'I used to take her out a bit at one time.'

'I see. Didn't it work out, then?'

'She's the biggest tease I've ever come across. A professional
virgin. Works you up then won't let you get there without raping
her.'

'Perhaps that's the way she likes it, as if it's rape.'

'They're no good to anybody, birds like that. They want your
cods as souvenirs.'

'I thought you said she was sweet on Franklyn.'

'She is. Just what it amounts to, I don't know. I think he's too canny to let her get her hooks into him.'

'Perhaps he's got too much to lose.'

'Everybody's got too much to lose. There's always a time to
retreat in good order.'

'I dunno .. . I...'

'What?'

'Well, it just seems a bit cold-blooded, Albert.'

'You've got me wrong, Vic
...
I was married for a while, as you
know ...'

He turns round and tops his glass up while I keep dead quiet, interested in what he's saying and wanting to let him talk if the
mood's on him.

'She took a fancy to somebody else . .. She couldn't help that. These things happen. But she had to go away with him. Couldn't live without him. I was the big magnanimous gent. I let her go. Twelve months later she wanted to come back.'

'She made a mistake.'

'Aye, but the trouble was, I didn't want her any more. I wasn't
being vindictive about it. I just wasn't interested.' He looks at me. 'The trick is to see the mistake before the damage is done. Before
it's too late. You've got to use this...' He taps his temple with his
finger.

From the way he's standing there looking at me I get the impression that he's doing more than talk for his own sake; that he's trying to tell me something, that he might even have started the conversation off with this in mind. I want to take him up on it while the moment's ripe but I'm stopped by Fleur, who appears in the doorway, somewhat stoned, very flirtatious, and a living hymn to what in effect I've been saying I don't approve of- casual sex.

She pouts at Albert. 'I thought you were getting me a drink.'

'So I was, my sweet. What do you want?'

'A gin and tonic.'

'You'll be lucky!' He pokes about among the bottles on the side of the sink. 'A drop of Spanish sauterne ... no, that's empty. South African sherry. So's that.' He turns to her.' You'll have to be satisfied with a sip of mine.'

She comes up close to him, pressing her breasts against his chest
and gazing up into his eyes as he tilts the glass to her lips. He speaks
to me without taking his eyes off her.

Isn't she just a living doll?' To her he says,' What can I tell my mother about you?'

She carries on looking at him, dozy-like, without saying anything.

'I want to kiss you all over and then eat you up,' Albert says.

I reckon it's time I left them to it so I go to the doorway, then
turn and call to him. 'Albert.' He looks at me and I put my finger
to my temple and grin at him. As I go out he's matching his words
by cramming the fingers of one of her hands into his mouth and then, a second later, covering her neck and one half-exposed shoulder with kisses while she squirms in his arms in a way that could be either protest or enjoyment.

I squeeze my way round the edge of the room and get a seat on one end of the sofa, a loose-covered piece of furniture which seems to be passing into a comfortable old age with only the odd occasional grumbling twang from the springs. I wonder if Donna carts her own furniture around from place to place or if she chooses furnished flats. One of the few personal things I can see is a painting over the fireplace, an abstract effort: a great ball of orange like the yolk of a fried egg on a pea-green plate seen after a heavy night on the booze. I think of Donna moving about as the jobs come, and all the people here, a lot of them younger than me, who came from somewhere and might end up somewhere else, but now to me don't really exist as people because there's no frame round them. And this is like admitting that I can't see myself without my own frame; that the thing they rely on, that hard core of personality that makes a man what he is wherever he is, is something that in my case doesn't exist outside its context. Context... familiar places - a quick easy answer that covers the recognition of a lot of people and the love of a few ... Lonely people turning to God, the great portable con
text... Lonely man sitting on the end of a sofa at the fag-end of a party with people who all know one another but who he doesn't know, thinking dreary depressing thoughts in the early hours of an unspoiled year.