Essential Stories (19 page)

“And what about the Sunday papers, the man from the News ?” she said. “You open your big mouth too soon.”

“Christ!” said Mr. Fulmino. It was the sound of a man who has gone to the floor.

I will come to that matter of the papers later on. It is not very important.

When we went to bed that night we must all have known in our different ways that we had been disturbed in a very long dream. We had been living on inner visions for years. It was an effect of the long war. England had been a prison. Even the sky was closed and, like convicts, we had been driven to dwelling on fancies in our dreary minds. In the cinema the camera sucks some person forward into an enormous close-up and holds a face there yards wide, filling the whole screen, all holes and pores, like some sucking octopus that might eat up an audience many rows at a time. I don’t say these pictures aren’t beautiful sometimes, but afterwards I get the horrors. Hilda had been a close-up like this for us when she was lost and far away. For myself, I could hardly remember Hilda. She was a collection of fragments of my childhood and I suppose I had expected a girl to return.

My father and mother looked down on the Drapers and the John-sons. Hincham Street was “dirty” and my mother once whispered that Mr. Johnson had worked “on the line,” as if that were a smell. I remember the old man’s huge crinkled white beard when I was a child. It was horribly soft and like pubic hair. So I had always thought of Hilda as a railway girl, in and out of tunnels, signal boxes and main line stations, and when my older brother was “chasing” her as they said, I admired him. I listened to the quarrels that went on in our family—how she had gone to the convent school and the nuns had complained about her; and was it she or some other girl who went for car rides with a married man who waited round the corner of Hincham Street for her? The sinister phrase “The nuns have been to see her mother” stuck in my memory. It astonished me to see Hilda alive, calm, fat and walking after that, as composed as a railway engine. When I grew up and Mr. Fulmino came to the library, I was drawn into his search because she brought back those days with my brother, those clouts on the head from some friend of his, saying, “Buzz off. Little pigs have big ears,” when my brother and he were whispering about her.

To Mrs. Fulmino, a woman whose feelings were in her rolling arms, flying out from one extreme to another as she talked, as if she were doing exercises, Hilda appeared in her wedding clothes and all the sexuality of an open flower, standing beside her young Indian husband who was about to become a doctor. There was trouble about the wedding, for Mr. Singh spoke a glittering and palatial English—the beautiful English a snake might speak, it seemed to the family—that made a few pock marks on his face somehow more noticeable. Old Mrs. Draper alone, against all evidence—Mr. Singh had had a red racing car—stuck to it that he was “a common lascar off a ship.” Mrs. Fulmino had been terrified of Mr. Singh—she often conveyed—and had “refused to be in a room alone with him.” Or “How can she let him touch her?” she would murmur, thinking about that, above all. Then whatever vision was in her mind would jump forward to Hilda, captured, raped, tortured, murdered in front of her eyes. Mrs. Fulmino’s mind was voluptuous. When I first went to Mr. Fulmino’s house and met Iris and we talked about Hilda, Mrs. Fulmino once or twice left the room and he lowered his voice. “The wife’s upset,” he said. “She’s easily upset.”

We had not all been under a spell. Not young Jack Draper nor his wife, for example. Jack Draper had fought in the war and where we thought of the war as something done to us and our side, Jack thought of it as something done to everybody. I remember what he said to his wife before the Fulminos and I said “Good night” to them on the Saturday Hilda came home.

“It’s a shame,” said Jack, “she couldn’t bring the Nip with her.”

“He was killed,” said his wife.

“That’s what I mean,” said Jack. “It’s a bleeding shame she couldn’t.”

We walked on and then young Mrs. Draper said, in her flat, northern laconic voice:

“Well, Jack, for all the to-do, you might just as well have gone to your fishing.”

For Jack had made a sacrifice in coming to welcome Hilda. He went fishing up the Thames on Saturdays. The war for him was something that spoiled fishing. In the Normandy landing he had thought mostly of that. He dreamed of the time when his two boys would be old enough to fish. It was what he had had children for.

“There’s always Sunday,” said his wife, tempting him. Jack nodded. She knew he would not fall. He was the youngest of old Mrs. Draper’s family, the baby, as they said. He never missed old Mrs. Draper’s Sundays.

It was a good thing he did not, a good thing for all of us that we didn’t miss, for we would have missed Hilda’s second announcement.

Young Mrs. Draper provoked it. These Sunday visits to Hincham Street were a ritual in the family. It was a duty to old Mrs. Draper. We went there for our tea. She provided, though Constance prepared for it as if we were a school, for she kept house there. We recognised our obligation by paying sixpence into the green pot on the chiffonier when we left. The custom had started in the bad times when money was short; but now the money was regarded as capital and Jack Draper used to joke and say, “Who are you going to leave the green pot to, Mum?” Some of Hilda’s luggage had been moved by the afternoon into her mother’s little room at the back and how those two could sleep in a bed so small was a question raised by Mrs. Fulmino whose night with Mr. Fulmino required room for struggle, as I know, for this colonising man often dropped hints about how she swung her legs over in the night.

“Have you unpacked yet, Hilda?” Mrs. Fulmino was asking.

“Unpacked!” said Constance. “Where would she put all that?”

“I’ve been lazy,” said Hilda. “I’ve just hung up a few things because of the creases.”

“Things do crease,” said Mrs. Fulmino.

“Bill Williams said he would drop in later,” said Constance.

“That man suffered,” said Mrs. Fulmino, with meaning.

“He heard you were back,” said Constance.

Hilda had told us about Shinji. Jack Draper listened with wonder. Shinji had been in the jute business and when the war came he was called up to the army. He was in “Stores.” Jack scratched with delight when he heard this. “Same as I tried to work it,” Jack said. Shinji had been killed in an air raid. Jack’s wife said, to change the subject, she liked that idea, the idea, of Jack “working” anything, he always let everyone climb up on his shoulders. “First man to get wounded. I knew he would be,” she said. “He never looks where he’s going.”

“Is that the Bill Williams who worked for Ryan, the builder?” said Hilda.

“He lives in the Culverwell Road,” young Mrs. Draper said.

Old Mrs. Draper, speaking from the bowels of history, said:

“He got that Sellers girl into trouble.”

“Yes,” exclaimed Hilda, “I remember.”

“It was proved in court that he didn’t,” said Constance briskly to Hilda. “You weren’t here.”

We were all silent. One could hear only the sounds of our cups on the saucers and Mrs. Fulmino’s murmur, “More bread and butter?” Constance’s face had its neat, pink, enamelled smile and one saw the truthful blue of her small eyes become purer in colour. Iris was next to me and she said afterwards something I hadn’t noticed, that Constance hated Hilda. It is one of the difficulties I have in writing, that, all along, I was slow to see what was really happening, not having a woman’s eye or ear. And being young. Old Mrs. Draper spoke again, her mind moving from the past to the present with that suddenness old people have.

“If Bill Williams is coming, he knows the way,” she said.

Hilda understood that remark for she smiled and Constance flushed. (Of course, I see it now: two women in a house! Constance had ruled old Mrs. Draper and Mrs. Johnson for years and her money had made a big difference.) They knew that one could, as the saying is, “trust Gran to put her oar in.”

Again young Mrs. Draper changed the subject. She was a nimble, tarry-haired woman, impatient of fancies, excitements and disasters. She liked things flat and factual. While the family gaped at Hilda’s clothes and luggage, young Mrs. Draper had reckoned up the cost of them. She was not avaricious or mean, but she knew that money is money. You know that if you have done without. So she went straight into the important question being (as she would say), not like people in the South, double-faced Wesleyans, but honest, plain and straight out with it, what are they ashamed of? Jack, her husband, was frightened by her bluntness, and had the nervous habit of folding his arms across his chest and scratching fast under his armpits when his wife spoke out about money; some view of the river, with his bait and line and the evening flies, came into his panicking mind. Mr. Fulmino once said that Jack scratched because the happiest moments of his life, the moments of escape, had been passed in clouds of gnats.

“I suppose, Hilda, you’ll be thinking of what you’re going to do?” young Mrs. Draper said. “Did they give you a pension?”

I was stroking Iris’s knee but she stopped me, alerted like the rest of them. The word “pension” is a very powerful word. In this neighbourhood one could divide the world into those who had pensions and those who hadn’t. The phrase “the old pensioner” was one of envy, abuse and admiration. My father, for example, spoke contemptuously of pensioners. Old Mrs. Draper’s husband had had a pension, but my father would never have one. As a librarian (Mr. Fulmino pointed out), I would have a pension and thereby I had overcome the first obstacle in being allowed to go out with his daughter.

“No,” said Hilda. “Nothing.”

“But he was your husband, you said,” said Constance.

“He was in the army, you say,” said young Mrs. Draper.

“Inflation,” said Mr. Fulmino grandly. “The financial situation.”

He was stopped.

“Then,” said young Mrs. Draper, “you’ll have to go to work.”

“My girl won’t want for money,” said old Mrs. Johnson, sitting beside her daughter as she had done the day before.

“No,” said young Mrs. Draper. “That she won’t while you’re alive, Mrs. Johnson. We all know that, and the way you slaved for her. But Hilda wants to look after you, I’m sure.”

It was, of course, the question in everyone’s mind. Did all those clothes and cases mean money or was it all show? That is what we all wanted to know. We would not have raised it at that time and in that way. It wasn’t our way—we would have drifted into finding out— Hilda was scarcely home. But young Mrs. Draper had been brought up hard, as she said, twelve mouths to feed.

“
I’m
looking after
you,
Mum,” said Hilda, smiling at her mother.

Mrs. Johnson was like a wizened little girl gazing up at a taller sister.

“I’ll take you to Monte Carlo, Mum,” Hilda said.

The old lady tittered. We all laughed loudly. Hilda laughed with us.

“That gambling place!” the old lady giggled.

“That’s it,” laughed Hilda. “Break the bank.”

“Is it across water?” said the old lady, playing up. “I couldn’t go on a boat. I was so sick at Southend when I was a girl.”

“Then we’ll fly.”

“Oh!” the old lady cried. “Don’t, Hil—I’ll have a fit.”

“ ‘The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo,’ ” Mr. Fulmino sang. “You might find a boy friend, Mrs. Johnson.”

Young Mrs. Draper did not laugh at this game; she still wanted to know; but she did smile. She was worried by laughter. Constance did not laugh but she showed her pretty white teeth.

“Oh, she’s got one for me,” said Mrs. Johnson. “So she says.”

“Of course I have. Haven’t I, Harry?” said Hilda, talking across the table to me.

“Me? What?” I said completely startled.

“You can’t take Harry,” said Iris, half frightened.

“Did you post the letter?” said Hilda to me.

“What letter?” said Iris to me. “Did she give you a letter?”

Now there is a thing I ought to have mentioned! I had forgotten all about the letter. When we were leaving the evening before, Hilda had called me quietly to the door and said:

“Please post this for me. Tonight.”

“Hilda gave me a letter to post,” I said.

“You did post it?” Hilda said.

“Yes,” I said.

She looked contentedly round at everyone.

“I wrote to Mr. Gloster, the gentleman I told you about, on the boat. He’s in Paris. He’s coming over at the end of the week to get a car. He’s taking Mother and me to France. Mr. Gloster, Mum, I told you. No, not Mr. Faulkner. That was the other boat. He was in San Francisco.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Johnson, a very long “oh,” and wriggling like a child listening to a story. She was beginning to look pale, as she had the evening before when she had the turn.

“France!” said Constance in a peremptory voice.

“Who is Mr. Gloster—you never said anything,” said Mrs. Fulmino.

“What about the currency regulations?” said Mr. Fulmino.

Young Mrs. Draper said, “France! He must have money.”

“Dollars,” said Hilda to Mr. Fulmino.

Dollars! There was a word!

“The almighty dollar,” said Constance, in the cleansed and uncorrupted voice of one who has mentioned one of the commandments. Constance had principles; we had the confusion of our passions.

And from sixteen years or more back in time or perhaps it was from some point in history hundreds of years back and forgotten, old Mrs. Draper said: “And is this Indian married?”

Hilda—to whom no events, I believe, had ever happened—replied: “Mr. Gloster’s an American, Gran.”

“He wants to marry her,” said old Mrs. Johnson proudly.

“If I’ll have him!” said Hilda.

“Well, he can’t if you won’t have him, can he, Hilda?” said Mrs. Fulmino.

“Gloster. G-L-O-S-T-E-R?” asked Mr. Fulmino.

“Is he in a good job?” asked young Mrs. Draper.

Hilda pointed to a brooch on her blouse.

“He gave me this,” she said.

She spoke in her harsh voice and with a movement of her face that in anyone else one would have called excited, but in her it had a disturbing lack of meaning. It was as if Hilda had been hooked into the air by invisible wires and was then swept out into the air and back to Japan, thousands of miles away again, and while she was on her way, she turned and knocked us flat with the next item.