Listening in the Dusk (10 page)

When Alice found the note from her estranged husband propped against her Jane Austens, her first reaction was one of
amazement
. Not so much at the fact that Rodney had taken the trouble to track her down — though this was indeed surprising — but at the wholly unexpected feelings that the sight of his handwriting aroused in her. Not grief; not hope of reconciliation; but simple, uncomplicated relief that the note was merely from him, and not from one of her prospective pupils cancelling the lessons.

Did she already care more about her new life than about the old? And if so, was this an indication that …?

And then she read the letter, and at once the more-to-be expected feelings took over, and she found herself trembling, mostly with anger.

It was the word “we” that got through to her; the reiteration of those cruel little mini-syllables, “we” and “us” with which a new partnership can so effortlessly (and often unconsciously?)
torture
the discarded member of the old:

What lies! How could Ivy possibly be wanting to make sure that the discarded wife was “all right”? Surely Ivy’s cup of joy would only be completely full if she could learn that her rival was
not
all right at all? That she had taken to drink … had let herself go … was shuffling around in slippers all day, hair all over the place, egg-stains down the front of her dressing-gown? Isn’t this the secret dream of almost any woman in Ivy’s triumphant but still slightly precarious position? The letter went on:

Yes, Ivy
would
like that, very possibly. To glide across a restaurant on Rodney’s arm, while Alice walked a pace or two behind, the guest, the third party; to discuss with Rodney how to seat the three of them, playing hostess to Alice’s gooseberry … Well, of course she’d like it. She’d be disappointed — genuinely disappointed — if it didn’t happen.

As it bloody wouldn’t.

Refolding the note, Alice noticed a PS scribbled on the back:

So
that
had been Hetty’s strange man. And now Alice’s emotions made another U-turn, and she was flooded with protective tenderness towards her errant husband. “Not too bad … A bit yellow perhaps … A bit on the small side.” How dared she describe him thus! Rodney wasn’t tall, certainly; not quite as tall as Ivy, actually (as Alice had noticed quite early on); but this was only because Ivy was so large, as well as so ungainly. And as to
yellow
— what a way to describe Rodney’s healthily sallow complexion! Anger boiled in her; and then she remembered that tomorrow she was due to go to the Bensons for her first coaching session with Cyril, and that she ought to be making some sort of preparation for it. But what sort? Not for the first time, she thought longingly of her well-stocked shelves of classics at “home”, including several elementary textbooks for beginners. To go back there and help herself was of course out of the question. She would have to ring on her own front-door bell, be ushered into her own house as a visitor, and have Rodney cordially giving her permission (as he certainly would) to help herself to her own property. And Ivy would be there too, of course, backing him up, and falling over her lumpy self to show what a tolerant, what a magnanimous Other Woman she was.

“Take anything you want,” she would say sweetly, making generous gestures with her plump wrists towards the books that weren’t hers and of which she couldn’t even read the titles.

No. She would manage somehow.

And actually it wasn’t too difficult. Once ensconced with Cyril in the lofty and elegant drawing-room, and once Mrs Benson had stopped teetering in and out, ostensibly to make sure that Alice had everything she needed, but in fact consumed by a shadowy and unfocused anxiety at the idea of her son being exposed to something beyond
his mother’s ken — once this was over, and teacher and pupil were on their own, it soon became clear that Cyril had every intention of directing operations himself. He had come equipped with the books he wanted to study, a Lexicon, a Goodwin’s
Greek
Grammar,
and Book I of Herodotus’
Histories.

“I hope you don’t mind starting with chapter 109,” he
apologised
. “But you see I’m specially interested in Cyrus, and how he founded the Persian Empire. Absolutely single-handed, just by being brave enough, because to start with he didn’t know he was a King’s son at all, he just felt like one. Anyway, I’ve got to where Cyrus as a baby was to be put out to die on a hillside. Do you mind if we go on from there?”

Far from minding, Alice was thankful to have so many decisions taken out of her hands, and the relevant books so efficiently supplied. At first, when he began translating, she wondered how far he was really following the text, and how far he simply knew the story already in detail; but a few searching questions about specific words soon elicited the fact that he was in the habit of making systematic lists of all the words he had needed to look up; and as to his proficiency in grammar, she had no sooner queried the tense of a certain irregular verb than he treated her to such an exhaustive lecture on the Ionic form of the optative as compared with the Attic, that she decided then and there to leave grammar alone in sheer self-defence. What on earth was she going to be able to teach him that he didn’t already know?

Plenty, as it turned out. As with any self-taught amateur, Cyril’s knowledge was patchy, startlingly extensive in some directions, and with incongruously elementary gaps in others. He was quick, though, attentive, and deeply interested. The session flew by, and
Alice was both surprised and disappointed when Mrs Benson came into the room to announce with an air of quite
disproportionate
relief (apparently at finding her son still alive) that the hour was up.

“Satisfactory?” she asked, with an air of unease; but when Alice began assuring her that the lesson had indeed been satisfactory, and that Cyril was proving a most apt pupil, Mrs Benson’s attention began almost at once to wander. Her eyes drifted round the room as if in search of something, and she interrupted Alice in mid-sentence:

“Cyril dear, have you seen Sophy’s new toy? You know, the toy tractor Daddy bought for her? She’s been looking for it everywhere. I thought I saw it in here this morning?”

“Yes, here it is,” Cyril reached down beside the sofa, and pulled out a sizeable toy tractor of a bright metallic grey with touches of green, and very shiny. “Here you are. You’d left it on the table, but it was a bit in the way, and so I …”

His mother’s face cleared. She looked really happy for the first time since Alice had made her acquaintance.

“You see?” she exclaimed, turning to Alice with an air of quiet triumph. “We don’t believe in sex-stereotyping when it comes to children’s toys. We give Sophy exactly the same kind of toys as we used to give to Cyril. We’re so very anxious not to brain-wash her into the traditional ‘feminine’ role, you see, as happens to so many little girls. She’s never had a doll in her whole life!” she added proudly. “And you can see the results already; she takes to the traditionally ‘masculine’ toys every bit as eagerly as any boy. She just loves this model tractor, it’s her very favourite toy. Isn’t it, darling?”

Here she turned to the sturdy little figure who was lurking behind her, peering warily and with provisional disapproval at Alice’s unfamiliar presence. “Here you are, Sophy darling, here’s your tractor, it was here all the time. Why don’t you wind it up and show Mrs Saunders how well it goes, even on the carpet? It has three speeds, you know,” she continued, turning to Alice again, “and a reversing lever, so she can —”

By this time Sophy had reached out eagerly for the proffered toy, and was clutching it to her breast.

“No,” she said firmly. “No, Tracty’s tired. He’s not to be wound up, not no more today, it’s his bedtime,” and wrapping the awkwardly-shaped vehicle in a loose woolly garment, and hugging it close to her, she marched out of the room, crooning gently: “Tracty go by-byes, then. Tracty be a good Tracty, come with Mummy and go by-byes …”

For a moment, Mrs Benson looked as if she was going to cry; then, with an effort, controlled herself.

“Oh, well. Anyway,” she said.

To which Alice could find nothing to add.

*

It was only after she had reached home, and was about to settle down to preparing tomorrow’s lesson with Mr Bates, that Alice discovered that her reading-glasses were missing. Hell! She must have left them at the Bensons’, departing as she had in a hurry, somewhat embarrassed by Mrs Benson’s discomfiture over the Tracty episode.

A phone call confirmed that the glasses had indeed been found, and Alice set off at once to recover them.

The rain had stopped, but the air was still heavy with damp, and the pavements glistened wetly under the occasional
streetlights
, few and far between in this rather down-at-heel
neighbourhood
. She walked briskly, pulling her coat collar up over her ears against the encroaching chill: which was perhaps why she did not at first hear the footsteps following steadily at a short distance behind her. Didn’t notice them, anyway — well, why should she, it was a public highway — until, reaching the bus-stop in the High Road, and pausing to see if a bus were just coming (if so, it would be worth jumping on it to save herself the last half-mile or so), it came to her that the footsteps behind her had also stopped. Turning quickly, with a twinge of uneasiness, she looked back along the way she had come; but no one seemed to be watching her, or furtively lurking. Indeed, few people were in sight at all: a busy shopping-centre by day, the High Road was almost empty at this hour of the evening: empty of pedestrians, that is: as always, there were plenty of cars passing.

For a few moments, she lingered at the stop, peering into the moving maze of headlights, hoping to discern among them the
looming, lit-up oblong of an approaching bus. But no: and so, shrugging even deeper into her coat, she continued on her way.

No more footsteps. Or maybe it was the noise of the passing traffic that had drowned them? — because less than a minute after she had turned into the broad, leafy avenue where the Bensons lived, she became aware of them again — the same steady, purposeful pad-pad that she had heard before. Whoever it was must be wearing trainers or something of the sort, the
characteristic
footwear, according to Miss Dorinda, of the muggers, rapists and murderers who infested the London streets when darkness fell.

It was the thought of Miss Dorinda that prevented Alice looking behind her now. I’m
not
going to be like her, she thought: letting herself be turned into a bag of nerves by all the hyped-up horrors she watches on TV each night, imagining them to be
commonplace
when in fact they are once-in-a-lifetime rarities. After all, if they were common, they would no longer be news, would they? Alice remembered carefully making this point to Miss Dorinda one evening recently, but totally without success. Now she made this same point to herself, even more carefully, and strode forward boldly, albeit slightly increasing her pace. Only a hundred yards or so now, and she would be safe inside the Bensons’ front garden. She chided herself for using the word “safe” even in her own mind, for wasn’t she safe anyway? Statistics were massively on her side — a woman living in London is likely to be raped or mugged once every five hundred years, she had read somewhere.

This broad, prosperous suburban road, flanked by the shrubs and ornamental trees of the well-screened front gardens, was silent, and absolutely deserted. No cars, even, were passing. Big well-curtained windows, set well back beyond lawns and flower beds, showed an occasional crack of light, but the houses here were too well-built, too painstakingly double-glazed, for any sound of life to emerge into the outside world. All was quiet except for the pad-pad-pad behind her, and also the sound, suddenly preternaturally loud, of Alice’s own boots as she hurried towards safety.

Yes, safety. She was no longer bothering to vet her own inner vocabulary.

Number eleven … Number thirteen. Number twenty-one could only be a few gates away. Yes, here she was, and as she paused, fiddling with the icy latch of the ornamental iron-work gate, she was aware of a sudden rush of sound from behind, and the man was upon her, grabbing her arm and holding it in a relentless grip. Sheer panic, strangely mingled with a detached and cool determination not to admit any of this to Miss Dorinda, blurred her reactions for a moment, and she stood limply in the man’s grasp.

“Good evening,” he said; and only now did she take in that her assailant was not the unkempt teenager of the stereotype, but a man approaching middle-age, heavily built, and with a lined, pallid face under the harsh streetlighting.

“Good evening,” he repeated. “I’m sorry if I’ve alarmed you, Mrs Harman, but I wanted our interview to take place well away from seventeen Beckford Road. I’ve been watching for you to come out on your own, and this seemed a good chance …”

Mrs Harman? Mrs Harman? Oh, he means Hetty, of course. Hetty Harman.

“I’m sorry,” she said stiffly, “I’m afraid you’re making a mistake. I’m not Mrs Harman, she’s the landlady. I’m just one of the tenants, I —”

“Oh, but that’s all right, that’s fine! It wasn’t Mrs Harman herself that I wanted to see: the person I am trying to contact is a young lady residing at that address; I’m sure you’ll be able to help me. A blonde young lady; you know her, I take it? I wonder if you could be very kind, and tell me what her name is? The name she is using?”