Undue Influence (15 page)

I knew that the sick and the disabled exert a tyranny, that they nourish a grievance against the healthy and impervious, much as ill-favoured women resent the young and unmarked, thinking themselves justified in issuing verdicts of disapproval, yet at the same time unhappily aware of their own marginality. In an odd and reluctant sense I knew all this, was able to deplore my father’s character and appearance without any thought for the unhappiness he caused, and, I think, intended to cause. I saw him as a prime example of the inequity of nature, or of God, but I also saw him as a mistake. My sympathies were with my mother, hers, I think, with me. Yet we both
felt shame at what we perceived as the enormity of our reactions. Martin’s reflections—urbane, wistful—taught me that he too felt this shame.

Naturally I said none of this. My part was to be careful and neutral, and above all appreciative, respectful, as he deployed his golden legend. I was there to help him to rearrange his story, to expunge the ugly memories, to cancel the inconvenient feelings. I knew about the retreat into fantasy, although for me fantasy is generally an advance, albeit an unreliable one. I was quite willing to play my part, for the moment. What slightly irked me was his continued lack of curiosity. I began to see that Cynthia, who had so sumptuously demonstrated her indifference to Wiggy and to myself, had passed on this virus to her husband, whose closed and secret nature would already have prepared the ground. Indeed when we were not talking about Cynthia there was very little to talk about. Cynthia was what we had in common, though I intended to change that. I excused his behaviour as the awkward stance one has in the world when one is totally constrained at home. I could have reacted differendy. I could have distracted him with stories of St John Collier and the circumstances which accounted for my presence in the shop, but I was unwilling to do this. It would have seemed to me dereliction of a moral duty to deliver St John, who now appeared to me in a relatively noble light, into Martin Gibson’s worried self-absorption. Martin, I could see, was now in the business of editing, much as I had been, but what he was producing was a version of the truth. St John Collier, vulnerable in his simplicity, had seen the truth for what it was, on that ultimate page, but had not thought to rearrange it. I was aware that he was the superior character, but I was not conducting a heavenly assize. St John Collier was without ambiguity, and it was ambiguity that excited me.

‘Will you stay in the flat?’ I asked him.

‘The flat?’ He looked at me blankly. ‘Oh, yes, I’ll have to stay. All Cynthia’s things are there. Her beautiful things.’

I have a slight prejudice against beautiful things. ‘You ought to get rid of her clothes, at least. Get someone to help you. The Salvation Army. Oxfam. They usually send someone round.’

‘Sue might help. She’s been awfully good, you know. She rings up sometimes to see if I’m all right. She’s working at the Middlesex now. Quite near.’

‘There you are then.’ That at least was taken care of.

St John’s reflections might do rather well, I was thinking. These slim aspirational tracts seemed to sell in millions. I had taken to glancing through Muriel’s copy of the
Bookseller
, and was developing a new hard-headed attitude to my calling.

‘And you’re eating?’ I inquired.

‘Oh, yes, I’m doing all that.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘Who do you think did the cooking?’ His face relapsed into mournfulness. ‘Not that I have any appetite. I mustn’t take up any more of your time, Claire. I may call you Claire?’ He seemed unaware that he had been doing so all along. ‘If I talk too much it’s because you’re such a good listener.’

‘Talk as much as you like,’ I said. ‘Look in again. The morning’s the best time. The afternoons can get quite busy.’

‘Yes, I mustn’t keep you. You’ve been a great help, both to Cynthia and myself. Yes, I’ll look in again, if you’re sure you don’t mind.’

‘Of course I don’t mind.’

‘I’ll say goodbye, then.’

‘Goodbye, Martin.’

Muriel reappeared one afternoon towards the end of the same week.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘Hester’s watching the tennis. I feel better about leaving her now. Only for an hour, of course. How are you getting on?’

I vacated her desk and prepared to retreat to the basement, though there was nothing for me to do down there.

‘No, no, Claire. I shan’t stop. I came to say that there’s no need for you to sacrifice your evenings any more. We can manage quite well. I’ve been to Marks and Spencer. I shall take Hester with me tomorrow. She’ll be very amused.’ She looked round casually, carefully. ‘Fortunately she’s left-handed,’ she said. ‘So you can go straight home now.’

‘If you’re sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

I accepted this, although my evenings would now be unoccupied. I also accepted the fact that the Colliers were closing ranks once again.

‘Will you want a holiday?’ she asked. This inquiry was the purpose of her visit.

‘No, no,’ I said. ‘I shan’t want a holiday’

This was true. I had had enough of my solitary endeavours. I wanted something different now. I wanted someone to invest in me, to express curiosity, to ask me questions. I saw my summer as an affair of waiting for someone to do this. I thought of ‘someone’ with deliberate vagueness; at the same time I knew his face. I would ask him to dinner, I thought. I was no cook, but I could manage something. I was impatient for Muriel to leave, so that I could ruminate at my leisure. ‘Give my love to Hester,’ I said.

She rearranged a few books on one of the tables. She was homesick for the days when no domestic duties claimed her, when she could think of herself, with every justification, as a professional woman. She must have adopted this stance once
earlier hopes had been relinquished. It would have been in order for a spinster, who knew she would remain a spinster, to present this dignified face to the world, to join the ranks of the virtuous pioneers, flying the flag for the liberated woman. They were brave in those days, braver than we are now. Now everything is a short-term contract. Muriel would have known that she had taken on a job for life.

After she had left, with expressions of thanks for my various contributions to her peace of mind, I was seized with a desire to be out in the street. The rainy weather had cleared, as it so often did in the evening, and the sun shone once more. I was in no hurry to get home. I thought of calling in on Wiggy but decided against it. For the moment I wanted no conversation other than that earlier one. This continued to occupy my mind, so much so that by the time I went to bed I felt as if it were still taking place, progressing indeed, beyond what had already been said.

Eleven

When Wiggy called to say that Eileen Bateman had died I confess that my first thought was, Oh, no, not another death, but Wiggy was upset so I put down the receiver and went round there.

Eileen Bateman was a fairly mysterious woman who occupied the top floor of Wiggy’s building. When the café was closed they were the only two people in the house, a fact which bothered neither of them. Naturally they had got to know each other during the time that they had lived in such close proximity, but Eileen Bateman seemed entirely self-sufficient and had proved herself to be an excellent neighbour, if excellence is demonstrated by an ability to give no trouble, make no noise, receive no visitors, and be absent for most of the day.

We knew that she was retired, and that she had been a buyer for women’s fashions in a department store. She was unmarried and always had been. Wiggy got to know her better when Eileen Bateman, in the throes of flu, had telephoned and asked apologetically if Wiggy had any aspirin. She added, hoarsely, that she had no belief in patent medicines, but she thought that aspirin might ease her headache. On her recovery she had visited Wiggy, and, with profuse thanks, had presented a bunch
of flowers. They had got to know each other better, and Miss Bateman, or Eileen as she became, was, I suspect, the recipient of Wiggy’s confidences with regard to her boyfriend, as I was not. I did not mind this, as I knew that Wiggy liked to maintain a certain tacit pride in the face of my scepticism, but when she mentioned that Eileen had read the tea leaves and promised her a late marriage I drew the line. Wiggy knew my views on this matter and henceforth remained prudent, but I rather thought that several of these sessions took place and that if I was spared the details it was because Wiggy herself was fairly ashamed of them. Thus, by mutual consent, the matter was not discussed.

Nevertheless Eileen Bateman was a feature of the landscape and a subject of discussion between Wiggy and myself. She impressed us as a woman who knew how to live alone. When she retired from the department store she had reinvented herself by buying a bicycle and continually planning excursions: Shakespeare country, the Gower Peninsula, the Somerset coast. Every summer, after extensive research, she put her bike on the ferry and went to France. Wiggy had in her kitchen a plate inscribed
Souvenir de Quimper
which Eileen had brought her after a tour of Brittany. Her bicycle was the subject of some altercation since it had to be kept in the passage. The café owners objected to this although they had their own entrance; against their fairly vociferous opposition Eileen won the day. I have noticed that single women sometimes possess these capabilities.

She was small, grey-haired, unimpressive but disarming, owing to her permanent expression of good will. I could not imagine how she spent her days, but Wiggy said she had once seen her cycling down Southampton Row, so I imagined her in perpetual motion from one place to another. She urged
Wiggy to buy a bicycle herself and to emulate her own solitary movements: with singular tact she did not suggest that they team up. She was mindful of the difference in their ages, but evidently thought Wiggy less adventurous than she was herself. This may have been a source of some pride to her. Wiggy was used to brochures being thrust through her letterbox, which she then put into a drawer, not quite willing to throw them away for fear of hurting Eileen’s feelings. And Eileen’s feelings never seemed to be hurt. That was the nice thing about her.

She remained mysterious in that she made no reference to a family apart from the one she had known at work. Thus she appeared to have no antecedents, and we occasionally wondered what we should do if she were in any trouble; our own resources seemed to us too meagre to be deployed in this matter, and the people downstairs in the café would be no help since they had been the losers in the matter of the bicycle. I got to know her quite well: she was sometimes to be seen in Wiggy’s kitchen, sitting at the table with a cup of tea. If I had not been there I am quite sure that she would have produced a pack of cards and told our fortunes, but even she had some misgivings about the propriety of doing this, although she maintained that she was protected by the hand of fate. This did seem to be the case; in any event she remained undiscouraged by the uncertainty of the time in front of her, and was not subject to changes of mood. As far as we knew she was always the same, out in all weathers, off to the public library or to some street market to buy her vegetables—naturally she was a vegetarian—or knocking a little bashfully on Wiggy’s door to offer her a guide to the Lake District. She had if anything become bolder of late; she was thinking of tackling Holland and Belgium. We suspected that she collected all this literature in
order to plan journeys she would never make; on the other hand there was the
Souvenir de Quimper
to show that she did travel quite far afield. She seemed indefatigable. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks pink. Her short rough grey hair, the only pointer to her age, which must have been about sixty-five, was offset by the odd stylishness of her habitual uniform of blue jeans and pullover. It was a comfort to Wiggy to know she was there, above her head, listening to
The Archers
. She was someone on whom one could rely.

But evidently she was not, for Wiggy, infinitely distressed, told me that she had been found dead in bed one morning by the woman who cleaned the common parts of the building and who had keys to both their flats. It was the usual story: this woman, who was vigilant, had noticed a strange smell, had gone in, had discovered Eileen, had looked for a note or an empty pill bottle, had found neither, but had called the police anyway. Wiggy, returning from buying her newspapers, had had the horrifying experience of encountering the ambulance men with the body on the stairs. She became quite efficient after the initial shock; she too looked for a note or a pill bottle but also found nothing. It was then that the somehow incredible fact that Eileen had died of natural causes struck her, and this was corroborated by the inquest. Eileen had simply gone to bed one night and died, as obediently as she had lived. The police found that she had a sister in Cambridge. This sister now arrived to claim Eileen’s possessions. She offered Wiggy Eileen’s bicycle, but Wiggy declined. Nobody else could be found to take it, and it remained in the passage. Although this was something of a nuisance Wiggy could not bring herself to dispose of it. The pedals tended to snag our tights; we got used to this. Not doing anything about it seemed to be the only tribute we could pay.