The Watchers on the Shore (34 page)

'You believe a lot in marriage, don't you, Vic?'

'I suppose I do;'

'Well, so do I. Enough to want it just once and for good.'

'But not with me?'

'Oh, Vic, you're not free and you can't act as though you are.
There's somebody else involved.'

'I'm talking about getting free.'

There's a long silence. The car presses on through the dark, but not too fast because the roads are winding and the surface isn't to
be trusted. Once, coming out of a bend, the back wheels slip on a patch of ice but Donna corrects the slide with a quick twist of the
wheel.

I wish you hadn't brought this up,' she says at last.' It's not the right time.'

'Time is something we just haven't got. That's the point.'

'The fullness of time.'

'What?'

'Nothing. It's a lovely phrase, though, isn't it?'

I grunt and she drops her left hand, finding and squeezing mine.

'I'd marry you tomorrow if I could,' I tell her. 'That's my
position in a nutshell.'

'Darling...' She turns her head and looks at me for a moment. 'Life and feelings ... they're so complicated,.. Promise me you won't go off the deep end and do anything rash.'

And what, I ask you, can you say to that?

I miss her like hell the next two weeks. I can't stop thinking about
her. She's not out of my mind for two consecutive minutes. Even
when I'm talking to people she's hovering there waiting to take over
the moment I've no need to make any response.

Franklyn calls me in one day and I try to concentrate on what
he's saying, which will be more than the friendly chat he starts the conversation with. He asks me how I'm settling down with the job
and when I say okay he says he's glad, because he's happy with the
way I'm shaping and he hopes I'll stay with them.

'Have you done anything about bringing your wife down?'

'No. Her mother's just had a serious operation and Ingrid
doesn't want to leave her yet. She's a widow, you see.'

'Ah. Well, it's not the best weather for house-hunting. You'll
perhaps be as well leaving it for a couple of months.. .Anyway...' He gets his fags out and we light up before he pulls a rolled print
towards him and opens it out on his desk, weighting the corners
with ash-trays and books. 'I've got a job here that I think will
interest you. It's a bit tricky, so you'll have to keep your eyes open,
but I think you'll cope with it all right.'

It's a design for a new-type seaside chalet-cum-bungalow
based on a metal structure. The structure is what we're interested
in and what Franklyn wants to quote for. The quotation, he tells
me, has to be done in three ways, in quantities up to a thousand off.
So it's worth having, and if it caught on it could be a nice steady line for years to come, with the jigs and templates paid for in the
first order. The costing department will get the price out but before
they can do that I shall have to sort out the structure from the rest
of the assembly; and that's where the tricky bit comes in because
it's all contained in one general assembly drawing with figures all over the place and the print we've got is a very bad one with some
of the dimensions so near to unreadable that they'll have to be
guessed at.

'We want eyesight money for this one,' I say, and Franklyn
laughs.

'Yes, you'd think they could at least send us a decent print. I can
write and ask them for another one, but there's a deadline on the job and I'd like you to push on as best you can in the meantime.'

'I think we can manage.'

I'm sure you can. Have a word with Albert if there are any real snags. I'd have given it to him but he's got enough on his plate at the moment. And anyway, it's time you had something interesting to do.'

He flashes me a quick on-off smile and I leave him, taking the print with me.

I've got it spread out on my board when Jimmy passes by.

'You've got a right 'UN there.'

'It's a beauty, isn't it?'

'You want a magnifying glass.'

I say aye, and laugh, thinking he's kidding, but he goes away to
his own place and comes back in a minute.

'Here you are, then.'

He reckons to pore over the print with the glass, making little clucks and grunts in his throat.

Yes, yes, Watson. It's quite obvious that this print was made by a left-handed Chinaman with dandruff who lives in Wapping.'

'But that's astonishing, Holmes. How do you know?'

'Elementary, my dear Watson. He's my brother-in-law.'

I'd forgotten that Jimmy was always fond of gadgets, like patent pencil-sharpeners, three-colour ballpens and circular slide rules.

'I can have your fingerprint outfit and false moustache if I need
'em, eh?'

'Any time.' He holds up the glass. 'With this in your hand a
fascinating new world of flaws and imperfections is yours. Nothing
is as it seems. Look at that line of typing on that material schedule.
It looks perfect to you but I'll bet it isn't.'

He looks at it through the glass.

No. The letter "s" throws a little to the right and above the line. Happens every time. Which shows that it was typed by a squint-eyed Portuguese from Hitchin, using the toes of his left foot.'

'Aye, I know,' I say, taking the glass from him and looking myself. 'He's your mother's cousin ... You're right, though, it is out of line.'

'The magic glass reveals all.'

'Aye, well piss off then and I'll get it to reveal some of the dimensions on this print.'

'There's politeness,' he says, going away. 'Just return the glass
when you've finished with it. No need to grovel in gratitude.'

I run the glass over the most blurred of the figures on the drawing and see that I can make them out now without much trouble. Then I sit back and light a fag, thinking of the best way of setting about the job. I pull the material schedule over. There'll be one of these to do when I've got all the bits and pieces sorted out. Then the costing boys will work out a price based on the amount of steel needed and the labour and jigs involved in cutting, drilling, welding, etc. Jimmy's aroused my curiosity about the typing and, knowing what way my mind's moving, I wonder, no more than casually, if all typewriters write with similar faults. There's a memo on my place, typed on Cynthia's machine, and I take that and examine it through the magnifying glass. No. There might be characteristics an expert could see, but nothing I can spot. I glance round to see that everybody's working then take out one of the anonymous letters - the first one, as it happens - and apply the glass. The shock I get then makes my heart give a little lurch. The letter 's' is slightly out of alignment to the right and above the line.

I let the first shock fade and then, finding I can't sit still, let alone
concentrate on the job I ought to be doing, I go out and down the
corridor to the bog, taking the magnifying glass with me. There,
locked in a cubicle, I examine all three letters. I flush the lavatory as a cover, let myself out, and walk back, glancing into the general office as I pass. A little doll called Wendy Bamforth with hair like
pink candy floss is sitting at the typewriter with the long carriage
that's used for material schedules and anything else that's too wide for the other machines. I wonder who's been in there when nobody
else was about and used it for typing anonymous notes.

It's lovely for examining young women's nipples in naughty books,' Jimmy leers across at me as I go back into the office.

'What a filthy-minded beast you are, Slade,' I say.

19

There's no Donna at the end of the fortnight, when she should be
back. The expected phone call on the Monday doesn't come through and late in the evening I go to the Mitre in the faint hope that she'll
be there and then round to her flat where I get no reply to my
ringing. I think of asking Conroy for Fleur's phone number and
ringing up to find out what's happened, but decide that this might bring Fleur in on the act and the fewer people who know about me
and Donna the better.

It's nearly the end of the week when I get a letter to tell me she's
down with the 'flu: 'I did the final recording with a raging tempera
ture then flopped straight into bed where I've been ever since until today when I've got up for just a little while. I'm glad I managed to
finish the job, though. It was a very exciting part to do and my
agent has rung since to say that everyone seems terribly thrilled
with it and it looks like bringing me some more work.'

She can't say when she'll be back in circulation again but she
hopes to see me soon. I send her a
note in reply, telling her to take
good care of herself and not to go out in the cold until she feels
properly fit. Then I compose myself to wait for her in patience.

Another week passes by before I get the second letter, which
tells me she's not coming back at all.

'My agent has got two more parts for me now, another one
pending and next week I'm to read for a new BBC series. He says the management at the Palace are being very cooperative in
releasing me from my contract, which has a little while left to run.
Fleur's got this flat, which is ruinously expensive for one person,
and wants me to share, so all in all it's best for me to stay in town
now.

'Those are the professional and economic considerations. The other thing is us. Is it more immoral to have an affair with a man without trying to take him from his wife? Knowing something of the way your mind works I can imagine you probably arriving at this conclusion and becoming indignant at the way I've trifled with your affections. Dear Vic.. .Things are never as easy and clean cut as that. If I say that I don't want you to leave your wife for me you'll think that I never have had any real feeling for you, which isn't true. It would never work for us. Mistakes are terrible when you make them for yourself; they're doubly so when other people are involved.

I'm writing this instead of seeing you and telling you because I don't want to argue with you and I don't want to quarrel, which we've been near to doing a couple of times. I want you to have time to work it out for yourself. If you decide you'd like to come and see me here I'll be glad. If you don't I'll miss you terribly, but understand.'

Miss you terribly... understand... real affection...' Words. Words, words, words. And all I know is feelings: how much I want her. I feel as though my fingertips have brushed eternal joy and it's been snatched away from me. Of course I know there's no such thing. You just make the best possible bid for it, and this was mine. Perhaps the only chance I'll ever get.

I don't reply, thinking I'll at least see her when she moves her gear from the flat. But when four or five days go by without sight or sound of her I walk round there one night and let myself in with the key she lent me and I never gave her back. Most of the furniture is still there but Donna has gone. No record-player, records or books, an empty wall over the fireplace where the fried-egg picture hung, nothing in the kitchen cupboards and a collection of empty bottles under the sink, including half a dozen pint light ales.

It's the sight of these that really sets the melancholy flowing. The times here and at the Mitre seem like legendary days of happi
ness, never properly appreciated while they were here, and gone
now for ever. The sadness is mixed with some anger and bitterness
at the knowledge that she could come and go without telling me or
wanting to see me. It hurts, and I'm standing there feeling very
sorry for myself when I hear a noise behind me and look round to
see a middle-aged man in a grey smock in the doorway.