The Old Jest (8 page)

‘Goodbye.'

‘Do you want to take your bananas with you?'

‘Shut up! You damn … damn …!'

She climbed up on to the railway line and walked down the line without looking back. Far out on the horizon a ship ploughed its way towards England. It looked like hard work, pushing its way through the grey rising sea. The sand rose in sheets and flew along the beach before the wind. The sleepers were slippery and the deep cracks in them were filled with water.

Aunt Mary was crossing the hall as Nancy came in through the door. In one hand she held a cup of tea and in the other a plate of thin fingers of hot buttered toast.

‘My dear child, you're soaking. Where have you been? Run up and change at once or you'll be all aches and pains tomorrow.'

‘Tea …' suggested Nancy.

‘Don't argue. If you're quick, the tea'll still be drinkable, it's only just made. Your grandfather's actually asked for toast. It's amazing. He's so much better today, the pet. Such a relief.'

‘I'll bring a cup up with me.'

‘You shouldn't dilly dally round when you're wet like that.'

Nancy went into the drawing room and poured herself a cup of tea. The pyramid of turf in the fireplace smouldered gently. She cut a piece of sponge cake and went back out into the hall. Aunt Mary was still there.

‘There was something …' she said vaguely. ‘Look at those drips on the floor, dear. Bridie will be most upset. Drip, drip.'

‘Something?'

‘Where is death's sting?' sang out the old man from his room across the hall.

‘Coming, pet. Toast. Now what was it?'

‘I hate that blooming old hymn.'

‘Where grave thy victory?'

‘Just this moment.' She moved towards the door. ‘Harry, ah yes. That's it.'

‘Harry?' Nancy's mouth was full of cake.

‘He telephoned. Luckily I wasn't in the garden … all that rain. I should have been, it's beginning to look like a jungle. I never hear the telephone when I'm in the garden … well, I do really, but Mrs Burke is so aggravating, she'll never ring more than twice and you rush, huffing and puffing to the dreadful machine and she'll say … I didn't think anyone was in, Miss Dwyer. She knows perfectly well there's always someone in. No patience. It's not even as if she were madly busy. I suppose she can't bear to tear herself away from all the fascinating calls she listens to.'

‘Harry …?'

She dropped a piece of cake on the carpet and stooped to pick it up.

‘I triumph still if Thou abide with me.'

‘Oh yes. He and Maeve are expecting you to dinner. Sevenish. Her parents are going up to town to some function or other and Maeve is entertaining Harry and you to dinner. Something like that.'

‘And you said yes … Honestly, Aunt Mary!'

‘I thought you'd want to go, dear.'

‘How exasperating! How … bloody!'

‘Swearing is very unbecoming in one so young.'

Nancy kicked angrily at the banisters. The tea slopped over the side of her cup into the saucer.

‘He sounded very pressing. Have a nice hot bath, dear, there's no point in laying yourself open to rheumatism.'

‘He just needs me there as … well as … sort of …'

‘Ballast. You'll take all the paint off if you go on doing that.'

‘There's hardly any paint left on anyway. It's all so beastly shabby.'

Aunt Mary sighed. She suddenly looked forlorn and very tired standing there with the toast cooling rapidly in one hand.

‘Isn't it your bridge afternoon anyway?'

‘I just thought I'd stay with him. I'd have done some gardening only … the rain … It wasn't really necessary to stay, but…' She looked up at the ceiling and surprisingly whistled a few tuneless notes. ‘Mrs Heslop was very put out. You know what she's like … but there you are.' She moved a couple of steps towards the door of the old man's room. ‘I think he's better, much, much better.' She pushed at the door with her empty hand. ‘Perhaps he'll outlive us all. Seven, Harry said. Do run along, dear, and get into that bath.'

She went into the room and closed the door behind her.

‘Oh well!' said Nancy to the empty hall.

The bathroom smelt of witch hazel and warm dry linen. Wisteria had crawled its way in through the small window. Nancy lay and stared at the twisted stems of the plant as they worried their way towards the ceiling. There couldn't be many people who had wisteria growing in their bathroom. That was always her routine thought as she lay down in the hot steaming water, and then she forgot about it.

‘I will go to the police,' she said to her sponge. It made no comment.

‘I am glad after all that he isn't, can't be, my father. Can't be. Deliriously glad. He could be. What am I talking about?'

Her pale untouched body glimmered in the green light.

‘Oh sponge, what would you do?'

A drip from the cold tap landed on her big toe. She moved her leg sideways and ripples distorted the shape of her legs.

‘Why can't I think straight? Why?' In a moment of rage she threw the sponge across the room. It hit the wall by the basin and fell wetly on to the floor.

‘It's all I ask, to be able to come to tidy conclusions. Well, almost all. I am biologically, psychologically, physiologically a mess. Blooming mess.'

She glared across the room at the blameless sponge and then felt better. Aunt Mary's knuckles banged on the door.

‘Nancy, pet, not too long lolling in the boiling water. So bad for the skin. It will all dry up. Pits and wrinkles.'

So, Nancy scowled, you bully me into the bath, now you bully me out. That's life.

‘Anyway time is running on. I'd like to come in. I have to wash my teeth.'

Aunt Mary had impulses to wash her teeth at all sorts of odd hours of the night and day. She had little gold fillings in the back of her mouth that you could see when she laughed; perhaps it was important to keep such valuable assets up to the mark.

‘Well, come on in. I've nothing to hide.'

‘Tut!'

Nancy heard the landing floor creak as she moved away.

‘Aunt Mary.'

‘Out child, out. You're not even washing. I can hear the silence of total inaction. Out.'

With a sigh Nancy stood up and reached for her towel.

‘Are all informers rats?'

The creaking started again, as Aunt Mary came back towards the door.

‘I didn't quite hear what you said.'

‘Informers? Are they?'

‘What a curious question?'

‘Have you an answer?'

Silence.

Nancy wriggled the plug out with her big toe. Water rattled down the pipe.

‘Well … I've often wondered about Judas, you know. I find it hard to accept that for all these centuries he's been regarded as the most despicable man in the world.' There was more silence through the door as Aunt Mary thought about Judas. ‘You see … maybe he was a hero. I mean, maybe even the greater hero of the two. Terribly strong, far-sighted, the true ally. I only say maybe.'

‘I'm sure that's blasphemy or something.'

No thunderbolt. Just the creaking of old dry boards.

‘Get a move on, dear child. My teeth are aching to be washed.'

‘You haven't answered my question.'

‘It's an impossible question to answer. Circumstances are never the same. Sometimes it would be terribly silly not to inform, if that's the word you want to use, other times one wouldn't do it for love nor money. In this country the word informer has rather nasty connotations. Why do you ask such a question anyway?'

‘I was just wondering about this and that.'

‘Well wonder about them somewhere else.'

Nancy rubbed herself fiercely with the towel and watched with interest the tiny white flakes of skin that she scoured off her body.

‘I wouldn't do it,' she said.

‘What's that?' shouted Aunt Mary through the door.

‘Nothing.'

As a gesture to the formality of the occasion, she decided to approach the Caseys' house by the wrought iron gate, the swept path, the front door. She walked sedately down the avenue and along the road, wearing her best shoes and stockings and her black crepe dress that Aunt Mary hadn't wanted her to buy because she said it was too old for her. She felt old as she walked … well, older anyway. She stretched her neck, swan-like, as they had been implored to do at dancing class. ‘Heads in the clouds girls, up, up, up. Grow.' She grew as she walked. She must be six feet tall. She gazed disdainfully at the dusty road, at the silver buckles on her best shoes. The rain clouds had blown away and the sky was a luminous greeny-blue. Even from Nancy's great height you couldn't see the sea, but you could always smell the sharp breath of salt in the air; sometimes if you were feeling undignified and put your tongue out, you could even imagine you could taste it.

As she pushed open the Casey's gate, her disdain and her height dwindled a little. Perhaps Aunt Mary had been right about the dress after all. Maybe she just looked silly in it. She walked slowly up the path towards the hall door. Harry's motor was parked outside the garage. Maybe he would drive her home in it after dinner and she could just sit there silently beside him and not say anything idiotic or immature. Glass panels on each side of the door glowed with light. She put her finger on the bell. She thought of the man who wasn't Robert and wondered if he were all right. Had he decided to go? She took her finger off the bell. A figure moved in the hall. She turned and ran down the path, scattering gravel on to the neat edges as she ran.

‘Nancy …' Harry's voice called her name.

She ran out of the gate on to the road.

‘Nancy …'

Once she had safely turned the corner on to the main road that led to the railway arch, she stopped running and walked on as sedately as she could manage. Every pulse in her body seemed to be bumping at a different rate. The shoes and stockings and the black crepe dress now were irrelevant. They would murder her, she thought, but that would be tomorrow. Now, it was important to stop him leaving. If he went, she knew he would never come back, disappear totally as he must have done so many times in his life before. Gun or no gun, she didn't want that. By the railway bridge she climbed over the fence at the bottom of the embankment. The grass in the field was long and wet around her ankles. She pulled off her shoes and stockings and left them by the fence. She clambered up on to the line and began to walk towards the point. The slipping sun was gold and its long rays coloured the unfolding waves.

Up on the hill she could see the light shining from the dining-room window. Aunt Mary and the old man would be sitting there in silence, worn-out thoughts humming gently in their heads. The tapping of their knives and forks on their plates would be the only sound in the room. The sleepers were wet under her feet. It was strange, she thought, that silence, which was, after all, merely an emptiness in the air, could have such a powerful effect. Presumably the old man led some strange comforting life inside himself that no one could touch, evading even Aunt Mary's gentle watchfulness. You sometimes got tiny splinters of wood in your bare feet, the devil to get out, and if you allowed them to work their way into your bloodstream, they whirled round inside you and eventually pierced your heart. And that was that. A boy and a girl walked on the beach below her. More silence. Their hands were knotted together, their faces looked exhausted by their emotions. Loving was such a problem.

You couldn't make a rhythm as you walked along the tracks, as the sleepers were not a proper stride apart and you had to keep shortening yours to avoid stepping on the sharp little stones between the wood. Sometimes in the summer you could see dolphins, way out near the horizon, their bodies arching and shining as they played. Sssssh! The sea broke the silence and begged for more in one long breath.

When she got to the point, she climbed down from the line and walked along the sand. Here the only marks were the criss-cross patterns made by the birds along the edge of the sea.

He was sitting with his back to the hut, reading. He looked up from the book as she approached, then he got to his feet and stood there looking at her, the book held loosely in his right hand.

‘I didn't expect you back quite so soon. I was going to leave in the morning.'

She shook her head.

‘I thought maybe … perhaps …'

‘First thing. In the morning.'

‘I'm sorry. That's what I came to say. Please don't go.'

He stared at her in silence for a long time. She felt her face getting red.

‘I haven't done anything awful.'

‘Sssssh!' said the sea.

‘I was afraid you might have gone. I hurried …'

The thousand-year-old seagull flew in from the sea and settled on the roof.

‘Please don't go.'

‘Do you understand what that means?'

‘I will try.'

He nodded.

‘I think we might have a drink. I take it you're not too young to have a drink?'

‘I'd love a drink.'

‘I only have whisky.'

‘Whisky sounds lovely.' What would Aunt Mary say?

‘In or out?'

‘Out. Always out, unless it's raining.'

‘I'll get a rug.'

‘Don't bother. I'm all right.'

‘I'll get a rug.'

He went into the hut.

Just like Aunt Mary, fuss, fuss about piles and draughts and rheumatism. All grown-ups were blooming well the same in the end. She did a little whirl around and her black dress flew out like a bird's wings. Nice. She whirled again. He came out of the hut with a bottle and two cups and the rug draped round his shoulders.

‘What a pretty dress!' he said.

She blushed.

‘Oh … do you really like it?'

‘I do. It makes you look like a young witch. I don't mean the hook-nosed variety who fly around on broomsticks. Perhaps I should say sorceress.'