Sadler's Birthday (23 page)

‘You see, you'd never have dreamt it, would you? What a boring life the old buffer has, you said to yourself, didn't you? No excitement, eh? Well, it was only once, mind, the year before you came, the year before the War began. And what a lady! Never knew the slightest thing about her, except that she was fond of gymnastics. Picked her up in Kensington Gardens, but nobody could infer from that that she wasn't a lady. Years younger than me, of course. Years and years, and what a goer! She never stopped, Sadler, and I just used to lie there and marvel at her, marvel at meself too, never knew I had it in me. And of course it made me so bloody happy, I couldn't leave her, Sadler. I couldn't let go. Always had been able to let go before, when I was young, abroad you know and all that, but this time I couldn't. Don't know what it was about that girl. Do you know she could turn a cartwheel on the window sill? Bloody marvellous, eh? Cartwheel on the window sill. I used to make her do it over and over again until she was dizzy.'

Sadler laughed.

‘Funny, eh? Yes, I suppose it is really. I was funny to her, I expect. Probably said, silly old buffer, probably had dozens of young chaps queueing up. But she'd never take money. Never took sixpence from me, not that type at all. A present now and then, of course, some little thing I'd bring her, but never money. Angela, her name was. I used to call her my angel.'

‘Do you still see her, Sir?'

‘Me? No. She got tired of me. Much too old for her. Not surprising. Much too old. Can't think why I'm telling you this, Sadler. Probably because it was so important to me. I was in love, Sadler, hook, line and sinker. I used to say to myself, I'm in love with an angel. Damn silly, really. Thing was, I couldn't let her go. I couldn't say to meself, Geoffrey Bassett, you are never going to see your angel again. I just couldn't do it. And that's the rule I broke, Sadler. Never pester, never put yourself where you're not wanted any more. But that's exactly what I did; I pestered and pestered her because I said to myself, it's the last time, I'm much too old for it to happen again, much too old for love and all that business, to do it properly. But I could with her, you see. She
made
me do it. I'd only got to see her. I'd only got to say: “Angel, what about a cartwheel . . .?”'

‘She got married, did she?'

‘What? Oh yes. So she said. Going to marry an American, so she said. Nice young American, good at baseball. Good for you, Angel, I said, but she knew I didn't mean it, knew I'd go on pestering her till she threw me out one day. Suppose it was all she could do. I was such a damn nuisance.'

Sadler nodded. Sipping port like that, he and the Colonel might have been old friends.

‘Never wanted to get married, Sadler?'

‘Me, Sir?'

‘Yes. Never thought of trying it?'

‘No. I'm really very content, Sir, stuck in my ways, too.'

‘Lots of tomfoolery talked about marriage.'

‘Yes.'

‘Damn right. A lot of tomfoolery. Mine's been happy, mind, even though I muffed it where it mattered. I muffed it – not Margaret's fault. She knew what it was all about, said she'd imagined it thousands of times, her “wedding night”. Thousands of times, eh? Women are bloody marvellous sometimes, aren't they? Full of romantic dreaming. Funny thing is, nothing seems to disillusion them. But I muffed it all right. Drank too much. Too bloody nervous; Margaret Kenyon, I thought. Margaret Kenyon – my wife! But I never imagined we'd have to go our own ways like we did. I wanted her all right because she was a marvel, Sadler. I could find a picture of her that's better than Garbo! Bloody marvellous looker, my Madge was. Kept sheltered, of course. Neurotic mother, father in a looney bin – or should have been. Never forget going and asking the old man if I could marry Margaret. He was walking in the orchard, in a tailcoat and no shoes. Barmy! And d'you know what he said to me? “I know what you've come for,” he said, “you've come to confess, haven't you? How was it, then? Was it satisfactory? Did you take her from behind when she wasn't expecting it? She's a smart one, my Margaret, don't try and tell me you caught her unawares!” Mad as a hatter, Sadler, impossible to communicate with. So I thought, fine, old chap, I'll play your game, if that's they way you want it. So I told him I very much enjoyed going to bed with his daughter. “I enjoyed it very much,” I said, “so did Margaret. Now we're going to get married.” But that narked him, you see. “Taking her away, are you?” he said. “Can't do that, young man. No one takes my daughter away from me!”

‘They took him away, poor old boy. Quite right, of course, dreadful liability. But then again, he was quite lucid some of the time, knew just what was going on and said he didn't like the idea of being locked up. I felt sorry for him. Madge used to be very distressed. But going to see him wasn't any good. We tried, of course. Several times. He'd talk to me all right, very friendly even, but he wouldn't say a word to Madge, never would say a single word to her. Some incident on a train, or something. Never did find out. But he never talked to her after that – tried to pretend she wasn't there. How's your glass?'

‘I'm doing fine, Sir, thank you.'

‘Being boring, am I? Expect I am. Never could tell a story like Jarman could. He had a knack. Old Jarman even made you laugh when he couldn't remember the ending. Well, so you like a good port, do you, Sadler? Does your heart good – in moderation. Everything in moderation, another cardinal rule. Drank too much when I was young, of course. Champagne was the thing, not so expensive as it is now. I taught Margaret to like champagne, always thought it might help us in bed. Couldn't have been more wrong. Terrible business. The saddest thing of my life. Just couldn't make it, Sadler, not with my wife. All right with anyone else, but not with the woman I loved. Ghastly business. But she never mocked me. Never once in her dear sweet life did she say an unkind thing. She's loved me all that time, Sadler. She's been my life's companion, all these years, and I never once satisfied her. Sometimes I ask meself, how can you hold up your head and look at her? How can you bear it?'

Sadler granted the Colonel the silence for which, the following day, the old man would undoubtedly be grateful. It was getting dark in the room and both of them were thankful in a way for the dark. A minute or two passed and then the Colonel suddenly said, ‘Better go and take me trousers off. Bloody wet meself.'

VIII

Sadler dozed again. When he woke the room was full of orange light. Sunset. For a moment he couldn't remember if it was summer or winter, if the sun going down meant night or only mid-afternoon. He lay still and stared at the windows. The sky was marvellous, a real charcoal fire of a sky. ‘Last!' he said to the sunset, ‘go on, last!' Less than half-an-hour, though, and it was gone and the room quite dark.

His body in the saturated bed felt cold and weak, and there was cold sweat on his lip. He wanted to call someone. A face, arriving at his bedside, a hand to hold his that felt so limp and useless – if only he could have called out for that. Mrs Moore would have done. Anyone would have done. And a cup of tea. He would have asked for a cup of tea and sat in the armchair drinking it, while the sheets on his bed were changed.

There was a bell dangling above his bed. Downstairs, outside the kitchen, a red disc marked
Bed. 2
inside a glass case was set jiggering when you pressed it, so that the servants would know which room to run to. Sadler reached up and pressed the bell and he heard the dog begin to bark.

Vera was all right, he thought, in a hospital. In hospital, there was always someone to answer when you rang a bell. Vera's own special nurse had wide, freckled arms, and when Vera wanted to shit, those arms would lift her as easily as they might have lifted a child and hold her firmly as she sat on the pan.

‘You know, Mr Sadler,' Vera had said once when he visited her, ‘I'd always 'ave said it'd be 'umiliating, all that carry on, but they sense it, you see, nurses sense how you're feeling.'

‘She seems nice, that nurse, Vera.'

‘Oh she's lovely, i'nt she? I don't know what I'd do without kindness, Mr Sadler. You were always kind to me, and now 'ere . . .'

She cried so easily. She cried every time he went to see her. He'd sit in the chair and Vera would lie there crying, not even bothering to wipe away the tears.

‘Come on, Vera dear. You're taken care of. And what about that tingling you had in your leg the other day? That was a good sign, wasn't it?'

‘Didn't feel it no more. Think I imagined it.'

‘You don't imagine things like that.'

‘Well I do.'

But she had been cared for. That ward of hers had been a bit crowded and it was so hard to sleep, she complained, in that line of wheezing, snoring old ladies, that they had to give her sleeping pills, and that depressed her. The recipe for a good night's sleep, she'd always said, was to get up early, and so no wonder, because now she never got up at all.

‘Remember those mornings, doin' Madam's tray?'

‘Never forget them, Vera, the care you took.'

‘Little sprigs of parsley on 'er butter.'

‘Clean tray cloth every day.'

‘She knew I took trouble.'

‘Of course she did.'

‘Poor old thing.'

Then the tears again. Nodding there on her pillow, her eyes brimming over. Sometimes her freckled nurse would pass and see her crying and come and puff up her pillows and try to think of a joke to crack. Sometimes Vera clung to her arm.

Yes, they'd cared for her, as far as they could. They hoped she'd die, because they knew she'd have to lie there till she did.

No, thought Sadler, whatever was I saying – Vera was all right? She wasn't all right. She'd lain there for nearly two years, staring out at the long ward. She'd seen people die in beds that were occupied by other people the next day, seen them die and so on and on, until she was the only one left of the original company. Then she died in the night, in her sleep, drugged no doubt, and unaware. Sadler had gone to visit her the following day and found someone else in her bed. She'd been replaced.

No one to replace me, thank God, he thought. He'd seen to that. Left the old neglected house to the state, left it all to the Government, because at least they'd think of something sensible to do with it. They'd see it was filled with pregnant women, or geriatrics, and it would flower, its windows would shine with usefulness, and the infants born there or the old people dying there would, for a day or two, fill their lungs with the air of paradise – for wasn't it paradise that the place had once been called? And that view from his room, that sky of a moment ago, that was as good a first or last glimpse of God's heaven as you were likely to get. You couldn't grumble, if, through eyes half open or eyes almost closed you saw that.

Dreadful, though, to start counting sunsets. A hundred more? Ten more? Only one more? Or couldn't you be certain even of one? At his age and with this coldness and this feeling of not wanting to move . . .

Get up. That was it. Get down to the warm kitchen, have a word with the dog, make tea. You'll feel better if you just get up and dress and get into the warm. You could listen to the wireless and in no time you'll have forgotten Vera and all this maudlin nonsense about sunsets. And then after tea, you could look for that key again and spend the evening rummaging about upstairs in the room, seeing what's there, getting absorbed, forgetting to notice time, go to bed late in that narrow bed, sleep through Sunday, sleep without dreaming till it's Monday again and Mrs Moore comes . . .

Sadler was going through all this in his mind, but he hadn't moved. Moving seemed so difficult, his body so sluggish. Downstairs the dog was whining. Tired of the hot kitchen, probably, dying to get out and sniff the dark.

‘Coming!' Sadler shouted. But still he didn't move. I could, he thought, if I just had someone to hold on to, to get me started. If I just had Mrs Moore's skinny arm, or Vera's nurse's big freckled one. If someone could just help me to sit up, I'd be all right. I could get my legs going then, swing them out even. Because it wasn't as if he didn't have a reason for getting up. Thousands of times, he must have got out of bed to stare at a blank day, days and days empty of purpose and meaning. But today, he'd had this brain-wave about visiting his old room, and he wanted to go up there, he was looking forward to it. He kept imagining how he'd feel as he walked in. He
knew
it would make him feel better. So why, when for once he had something to do, couldn't he move?

He put his arms behind his head, raising it up, so that he could watch the gathering darkness more easily. And he thought about lying just like that in a little flat bottomed boat on a hot afternoon, watching the mayfly hatching off the water, lying absolutely still, trapped by the heat, lulled by the sound of the water licking the boat, letting his eyes move now and then, but nothing else, only his eyes moving lazily from the shining water to gaze up at Tom's face that was pink from the effort of rowing and that now and then smiled at him. That was a stillness he hadn't wanted to break. It was so perfect a stillness that he hadn't even dared to move a muscle. Thirty years ago now. Thirty years since he'd loved.

He heard an owl hoot and it made him smile. Because for a long time he'd pretended to be frightened of owls, told Annie that their hooting scared him, so that she'd come closer to him. They hadn't really frightened him at all, or if they had, he'd soon forgotten it. Owls were just an excuse to make Annie stroke his hair, to drift softly to sleep held in her arm. It was beyond imagining now, that kind of peace.