The Sleeping Beauty (16 page)

‘Well, I don’t know how you manage it,’ Len said, but not in a congratulatory voice. ‘You’ve only had the same as me.’

‘Then we must come to the conclusion that I get drunk quicker.’

‘No cause to get shirty.’

‘I am shirtanly not certy.’

‘I feel fit as a flea myself.’

‘Then you can deal with my mother when we get home.’

‘Of course, old boy, make it all right for you.’

‘She has never seen me sewn-up before.’

‘She won’t know, I promise you.’

‘Got to
get
home first,’ Laurence said gloomily. ‘Better make a move then,’ Len said and, to Laurence’s indignation, put an arm along his shoulders and steered him out of the pub.

Vinny was just leaving Isabella’s when they arrived; but one look at Laurence made him step back into the hall.

‘Have you had a nice stroll?’ Isabella asked them.

‘Never enjoyed myself so much,’ Len said. ‘Nasty shower about nine, so we stepped in for a glass of beer. Very quaint little pub. Once used by smugglers, so the Landlord was saying. I always like anything with a bit of history about it.’

‘Come and have a whisky,’ Isabella gaily said.

Vinny thought both she and Evalie were overexcited; their first drink had gone to their heads. He stood slightly in front of Laurence while Len talked. Laurence bowed and swayed, trying to keep his back against the wall and then, whitening, began to make for the staircase as if treading air. Vinny followed him.

‘Whatever is wrong?’ Isabella asked.

‘Poor old Laurie doesn’t feel too great,’ Len said, and he fended her off, into the parlour, where Evalie was sitting, straining her ears.

‘In what way?’ said Isabella.

‘He wasn’t too good on the journey here. We got a lift part of the way in a lorry, and what with the jolting and the fumes …’

‘Laurie not too good?’ Evalie enquired.

‘I thought he looked pale at luncheon,’ Isabella said. ‘What is the Army food like really? He always says “not bad”, but I have doubts.’

‘We don’t get caviare above every other day.’

‘And you have to work so hard, though I am not quite sure what
at
. Does
your
mother worry?’

‘All mothers worry,’ Len said with a fond smile at her.

‘Perhaps he needs a tonic. But I am sure you think I am fussing. You mustn’t tell him. Won’t you have a drink, Len? Do help yourself.’

‘I wouldn’t mind a small whisky.’

‘Do! It’s all on the tray.’

‘What about you?’ He looked from her to Evalie, his hand on the decanter.

‘I can’t see why not,’ they agreed.

‘Thank you, Len,’ Evalie said, taking hers, and looking up at him.

‘Well, I certainly am enjoying myself,’ he said, and drank. ‘Sorry about poor old Laurie, though,’ he added with a pious expression. ‘I’ll go up and see how he is.’

‘I should leave him,’ Vinny said coming into the room. ‘He’s gone to bed.’

‘Oh, but I must take him up some hot milk,’ Isabella said.

‘He doesn’t want to be bothered. I asked him.’

‘I wonder what is wrong?’ Isabella said.

‘Lot of gastric ’flu about,’ Vinny said.

‘He may have eaten something,’ Len suggested.

‘Thank you for your help, Vinny. Have a drink.’

‘No. I must go.’

Isabella saw him out and then went up to Laurence’s room.

‘He’s pretty well had it, hasn’t he?’ Evalie asked Len.

‘I’m afraid so. He doesn’t want his mother to know.’

‘I can’t see how she can’t. You reek of alcohol. Do you go on like this at Aldershot?’

‘We couldn’t, on our pay.’

‘He’s fast asleep already,’ Isabella told them. ‘He must have been completely exhausted, poor boy. No wonder he’s been so cross all day.’

‘He’ll be better in the morning,’ Evalie said without conviction.

‘He’s been over-working, I can tell. I don’t honestly agree with all this drilling and marching … even guardsmen faint sometimes … and Laurence simply hasn’t the physique. You’re different, Len, I can tell. Much sturdier.’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

Evalie thought: ‘He looks like a purring cat with cream all over its whiskers.’

Rose, when she saw Emily glance at the clock, was sure that her sister meant to go out again that evening. They were in the kitchen, shelling the peas for the next day and, as soon as they were done, Rose gave a great tired sigh and began to get out the pastry-board.

‘Oh, surely you aren’t going to begin cooking at this time of night,’ Emily protested.

‘It has to be done.’

‘You always make the pastry in the morning.’

‘I shall have more than enough to do tomorrow.’

‘But why more than usual?’

‘You seem to forget we have extra people here.’

‘Only one.’

Rose measured the flour.

‘I can do it in the morning,’ Emily offered.

There is no impatience like the impatience of desire thwarted. To be out of Vinny’s arms one moment more was so intolerable that she felt like a spoilt child, ready to stamp her foot. It was difficult to hide her disappointment at the delay even this argument had caused; and she did not hide it. Rose, looking so disdainfully into the mixing-bowl as she poured in water, became a ridiculous and hated person. She would have liked to do her some physical violence, push her roughly, shake the look of suffering from her face; as often, when they were children, she had been driven to snatching things from her or pulling her plaits. Then Rose had run in and told tales. Now that there was no one for her to tell, Emily could imagine the lingering air of injury, the muted offendedness she would carry about for days.

Rose, knowing her sister’s hands were clasped tight with exasperation, would not look in her direction. She knew herself the misery of such over-riding passion, though in herself it had sprung always from hatred and not love, from disgust and never from desire, and she dealt it out as a punishment, knowing its discomfort and shame.

The pastry had gone too far now to be left till morning, and Emily, in a voice she had not used since girlhood, could only grumble. ‘You were always a martyr.’

‘To have to work so late and then to be abused as well …’ Rose began; but, fearing that Emily would use a quarrel as an excuse for walking out of the room, she caught her breath. It was caught on a sob, and she leant heavily against the table, and then put her floury hands to her eyes.

Emily, on the wing almost, about to defy, was trapped.

‘I cannot go on,’ Rose cried.

Again, Emily was tempted to shake her, knowing that Vinny must be waiting already and only Rose was in her way.

‘Are you tired?’ she asked coldly. ‘I told you not to begin all this work.’

‘You don’t understand. It is useless to explain. You know nothing about running the house.’

‘Because you will never let me help.’

‘I don’t want your help. I haven’t ever wanted it and I am not asking for it now. But I have to plan my work ahead, and you won’t understand. I have to get
forward
, or when I wake tomorrow I cannot face the day.’

Her driven look, her desperate voice, began to alarm her sister. The streaks of flour on her face were so un-Roselike.

‘You are over-tired,’ she suggested.

‘It is this terrible pain.’

‘Are you ill, then?’

‘I feel as if my inside were being dragged from me,’ Rose said, so graphically that she indeed began to feel this. As, when her husband was alive, it seemed that her body would not let her tell a lie and immediately caught up with whatever she described.

‘Then you must go to bed.’

‘How can I go to bed?’

‘I can finish all this.’

‘I know your pastry,’ Rose said, and sank down into a chair and began to cry.

‘He was always delicate,’ Isabella said to Len, speaking of Laurence. ‘When he was a baby, his digestion was such a trouble. Diarrhoea, and so on.’

Len nodded. He was tired himself now and wanted to go to bed.

‘I thought we should never rear him. I know my mother-inlaw openly said so. I would creep into the nursery at night and wonder if he could ever live till morning. He had a sort of mauve look.’

‘Horrible!’ said Len.

‘Does he seem to stand up to Army life?’

‘He mucks in like the rest.’

‘Well, of course; but does he seem to you to get especially fatigued?’

‘I daresay he gets a bit browned-off. I know I do.’

‘There was that terrible experience he had when my husband … I expect he told you.’

‘Yes,’ Len said quickly. He looked away while she was searching for her handkerchief.

‘His matron,’ Isabella struggled to resume, ‘at Prep-school used to say to me: “That boy is living on his nerves. He wants taking out of himself more.” But we never seemed to manage it. We could never hit on anything that interested him. Were you strong as a child, Len? I imagine you were.’

‘I was all right once I’d had out my adenoids.’

‘Were you? Yes, they said that would make all the difference to Laurence, but we didn’t notice any change. He’s still a mouth-breather I’m afraid.’

‘Poor sod!’ Len thought. ‘I expect his ears burn as well.’

‘Only children are always a problem. I should have liked a large family, but I could not – for internal reasons.’

‘Quite.’

‘Laurie tells me you are engaged to be married.’

‘That’s right.’

‘It’s very young to be making up your mind, you know.’

‘So her dad said; but I don’t know. My brother had been engaged twice by the time he was
my
age.’

‘Twice?’

He blushed when she laughed.

‘But I’m different with this girl,’ he said simply. ‘I really love her, with all my heart and soul.’

‘How heavenly for you!’ Isabella said. Her warm voice masked the foolishness of her words.

‘I’d rather you didn’t repeat it to Laurie, though. I never told anyone before, not even her – my young lady. You don’t want them feeling too sure of you,’ he added, with a return to his usual swagger, ‘or they get above themselves. My way is to always have them guessing.’

‘Is
that
what men think?’ Isabella asked him with great interest; for she was always ready to learn. ‘I could not be more fascinated.’

Vinny left by an early train next day. As if there were not enough obstacles in his way, Rose had now thrown in a nervous collapse, convincing to all, endorsed by her doctor. Philly’s grazed leg had become septic. It was a good thing, after all, Emily said, that Rose had insisted on getting ‘forward’ with the work, for Rose was not merely in bed; but fretting in bed, with a great deal of bell-ringing, reminders, and advice.

‘I ran out to the steps last night,’ Emily apologised, when Vinny called in the morning, ‘but it was too late. The tide was right up, and you had gone.’

He sat down in the kitchen, watching her while she worked. He said: ‘I waited until I could scarcely get back over the rocks.’ He was cross at the memory of scrambling over the slippery ledges, once or twice having to put his hands down to steady himself; and a wave had washed right over his shoes. He had appeared ridiculous to himself, an elderly man behaving like a love-lorn youth.

‘I was sorry,’ Emily repeated. She would not explain how inadequate a word this was for her sense of dismay and
deprivation, seeing the water churning about the foot of the steps and knowing that he could not have waited.

‘You asked me not to come up to the garden,’ he said reproachfully.

‘It would have seemed strange, so late.’

‘To wait about in the dark anywhere at my age is strange. It is not at all seemly. You will have me clambering up balconies very soon, and that is not my way of doing things. I should like to have a proper courtship, and an announcement in
The Times
.’

‘
Why
do you want to marry me? Is it from pity? Rose says it is.’

‘I don’t know what is meant by such a word. Perhaps “pity” is one of those beautiful and debased words, like “charity”. Ruined by condescension. If there is condescension, onesidedness in it, I could not feel it for you. Yet if you are hurt, I should pity you, surely – as well as admiring your loveliness, which was the first thing I knew of you – when I watched you walking on the sands that evening, and the time when you ran into my arms in the dark.’

‘You could not know whom you took into your arms.’

‘Yes, I knew.’

‘I had given up love. I had gone into a nunnery.’

‘You had that hood over your head and those wide sleeves to your coat. Yes, a nun.’

‘But no nice thoughts, no good deeds or living for others.’

‘You did not live.’

‘This week I did something to try to please you. I went into the town one morning. I was just finding the courage to walk into the café and sit down at one of the tables among all those shopping women, when a man I used to know came out. I said “good-morning” to him and he looked quickly over his shoulder thinking I must mean someone behind him. Then he raised his hat and fled.’

‘Did you still go into the café?’

‘No.’

‘I wish you had.’

‘I felt that I was blushing; but I cannot blush. Did you know that?’

‘Your arms blush.’

She looked down at them with great interest, then said: ‘The moment in my life when I felt really destroyed was the moment when everyone thought I was well again. For the first time, the doctor allowed me to have a looking-glass. He handed it to me with such a pleased smile and stood back to watch. I can see him now, his hands clasped over his stomach, leaning back a little; confident, so triumphant – like … like one’s favourite uncle who has given one a present. I stared and stared, but no words came. I knew I was lost. Until then, however in pain, bandaged, in darkness, despairing, I had been myself. But in that looking-glass there was no vestige of me.’

‘The poor doctor!’ Vinny said, and turned quickly and looked out of the window.

‘Oh, I remembered in time – that I had been properly brought up and would not be ungracious about a gift. Before his smile could fade, I managed to say thank you. I went on staring at myself, saw the lips move,
my
lips; then tears rolled out of the eyes. When the Sister came in, I had dropped the mirror and was crying with rage and terror. I thought that I would never again have the courage to look at myself. “It’s the relief,” she told the doctor, and he went happy away.’

She put some dishes into the oven and slammed the door. ‘Rose said last night: “I know your pastry,” and look at it, quite grey. So I am useless as well.’

‘Next week you will walk right into that café?’

‘Yes, I will,’ she said in a hurried voice.

‘Which day?’

‘Perhaps Wednesday?’

‘Wednesday. At eleven. It must be exactly at eleven, because in my mind I shall be going in with you.’

Those games, to outwit time and distance, all lovers play – the rose that the hand touched, the kisses on paper: so that the earth is spun about by invisible threads, a tangle of enchantment.

In the train, the enchantment flattened out, coming up against the dullness of Sunday evening. He shut his eyes and tried to compose the conversations that he might have with Rita when he arrived at Market Swanford – a less alert, defensive Rita than he had last encountered, when she had tartly disposed of any suggestion of her desertion – an idea he had begun to cherish – with letters to prove her point, she said. He wondered if she had been given some legal advice, so adroit she was, in phrases not her own. To have resorted to solicitors at such a stage disposed of his wan hopes of a dignified agreement. He saw that he could expect no reasonableness, mercy or generosity; that she was resolved to cling fast, in theory, to what she was happy never to have.

At Market Swanford, he walked from the station under scented lime-trees. Grit swirled on the pavements, and he felt tired and dirty. In the Square, a Salvation Army band was playing at the foot of the central statue. Youths leant against the blank shop-windows, watching the band and the girls strolling in twos, and the pigeons. Utterly enervated the place seemed, stupefied by the brassy hymn-tunes. Interiors of public-houses were dim and muted. Cool darkness was cast over the pavements from the wedged-open doors. Inside, shafts of light looked strangely bilious and out-of-place, striking across rows of beer-handles or bottles, or illuminating dust-motes down varnished walls and on linoleum. Voices inside were only murmurs at this stage, and the band, occasionally punctuated by the brief
clash of money being rung-up at a bar, dominated and depressed. Its sound, hardly attenuated, followed Vinny down the street, past the drab jewellers, the shop where Isabella’s picture on glass was still propped up against an old fender. The door at the side of the tailor’s was shut. When he rang the bell, the sound seemed to come from inside his own head, so tired was he, so much beyond – at his age – enduring the exhaustion and complication of his affairs.

‘We can afford to be undignified only when we are young’, he thought, waiting in the street, staring at his dusty shoes. ‘And love, alas, has so much indignity attached to it.’

The bell sounded far away from its source, winding up the stairs, along passages, carrying his urgency to her; but she did not come. He wondered – for it was the first time he had ever come to see her without a warning – if she were shut in there, hiding, whispering, with a lover. He yearned for this lover for her with all his heart, and stepped back on the pavement and looked up, as if he might see him peering down from between the flowered curtains. The windows were shut and blank. For a long time, he could not believe that she might be away from home, that he had made this impulsive but tedious journey for nothing. The streets had so filled him with ennui that he could not imagine them tempting anyone forth from indoors.

He rang again, but hardly waited. He walked dully away, and Emily was in another world from him at that moment.

‘I shall keep coming back,’ he thought. ‘Again and again. Ringing the bell until my train is due.’

A man went by carrying a trombone, and Vinny realised that the band had stopped playing. In the Square, they were packing up, dispersing, watched still by those youths who leant against the shop-windows and the iron grilles across doorways. Women, sitting at opened upstairs-windows, gazed
down hypnotically. ‘How can they be so bored, and live?’ Vinny wondered, feeling so permeated himself by the slackness of the atmosphere that he might just as well, he thought, expire along with his fading hopes. ‘Fading desire, too,’ he was forced to admit, sure that if he had Emily in his arms at that moment, he could feel nothing but dullness. Yawning, he caught a glimpse of himself in a big navy-blue shop-blind. His bowed shoulders looked thickened, bison-like. He was walking as if overburdened by the small case and the hat he carried. His grey hair was greasy and combed into furrows. Untidily, his jacket swung open, his tie flew out. To escape any other reflections of himself and the despondency of the streets, he turned into a pub. This was the cocktail-bar of the only big hotel. Rather appalling, he thought (for he inclined towards old-fashioned pubs with frosted, engraved glass and photographs on the walls of boxers, actresses, rosetted dray-horses), with raw-hide and chromium.

On one of the stools at the bar, Rita was sitting.

‘Well, look who’s here!’ she called. Her two companions glanced with interest at Vinny. ‘Hello, stranger! What brings you here?’

Vinny thought that she must be drunk and wondered why she spoke with an American accent.

‘What are you doing around here?’ she rattled on. ‘Oh, pardon! Mr and Mrs Wilcox, Mr Tumulty. What are we all having?’

‘No, please!’ Mr Wilcox leant authoritatively over the bar, trying to engage the attention of the barmaid. ‘What’s yours, old man?’ he asked Vinny.

Mrs Wilcox handed round a large gold case of cigarettes. The case was so slim that the cigarettes were squashed. They were scented from her handbag and after the first draw Vinny held it down at his side. Mrs Wilcox had purple-auburn hair and a
black suit covered with dandruff. She examined her fingernails a great deal, cleaning one with the tip of another, pushing back her cuticles and staring crossly at the chipped varnish. As she moved her hands, all the seals on her bracelet slid heavily together. Rita, still chattering brightly, stirred the ice and fruit in her drink with a sprig of borage.

‘Were you passing through?’ she asked. ‘Why ever didn’t you phone up?’

‘I … came to see you.’

‘Well, why ever not let me know? How did you know where to find me?’

Vinny thought: ‘She asks two questions at a time, hoping to get only half the answers.’

‘It was rather urgent. I wanted a chat with you.’

‘It’s lucky you found me then. Oh, Davey darling, don’t line up another one for me. You know my head. I’ve got all this already. Oh, you
are
! You simply
are
the end.’

She finished one drink and then began to eat all the fruit from it. The American accent kept changing into nasal Mayfair. ‘I’m so hungry!’ she wailed, spearing a cherry.

Mrs Wilcox drank calmly, professionally, as if disposing, without fuss, of some contemptible chore. When she had tired of fidgeting with her hands, she began to pat her hair, and more dandruff fell.

‘Good luck!’ Vinny said before he drank.

‘All the best,’ said Mr Wilcox.

‘Cheers!’ Mrs Wilcox murmured offhandedly, in a warding-off way as if throwing spilt salt over her shoulder.

‘Well, here I am,’ Rita said. ‘All ears.’ She looked engagingly at Vinny, her head on one side. ‘What have you got to tell me, pray?’

‘Perhaps later you could spare me a moment.’

‘Later?’

‘I don’t want to interrupt you now.’ He glanced uncertainly at her friends and then down at the floor in time to see her foot pressing against Mrs Wilcox’s.

‘But later we’re going out, you see. We can’t not, because we’ve promised.’

She put her arm through Mrs Wilcox’s, as if she were afraid that Vinny would drag her away.

‘Don’t mind us,’ Mrs Wilcox said, and she opened her handbag and stared into it, leaving them in private, she implied.

‘May I get you a drink?’ Vinny asked her. ‘What would you like?’

‘La même chose, thanks.’

‘I can’t think why ever you didn’t phone,’ Rita said again.

‘Yes, I should have done.’

‘What train are you catching?’

‘There is one in ten minutes. No point in staying longer.’

‘No. What a pity. Not another drink for me! No, you shouldn’t.’

‘All the best,’ Mr Wilcox said.

‘Cheers,’ said his wife.

‘Such a shame we are going out. Next time you come, remember and phone, won’t you?’

‘Shall I come next Sunday?’

‘Really weekends are a bit tricky. I usually go out. Much better ring up.’

‘Goodbye, then.’

Mr and Mrs Wilcox smiled bright, relieved smiles.

‘So don’t forget,’ Rita said. ‘Then we can have our chat.’

He imagined, as he crossed to the door, their silence eloquent with grimaces, the two women rigid with smothered laughter.

‘Thank you, darlings,’ Rita said, when he had gone.

‘What did he want to talk about?’ Mrs Wilcox asked.

‘Without unduly flattering myself I think I might say that he didn’t want to talk at all.’

‘How long have you known him?’

‘For years and years.’

‘The rejected suitor,’ Mr Wilcox said.

‘My husband used to say he’d take a horse-whip to him if he didn’t leave me alone.’

A look of bereavement then saddened her face. Her mouth tightened. A splendid little creature, Mr Wilcox thought. So sunny always, though inconsolable. He patted her shoulder encouragingly. Mrs Wilcox drained her glass. No one ever knew what she was thinking.