The Walking Stick (3 page)

‘No.’

‘They’ve got long faces really. Modern faces. Yours isn’t. It’s oval – a good bet for old man Rossetti. It’s nineteenth century. Very out of date.’

‘Thank you.’

‘No. It’s got something. It’s sensitive, and
gentle
. Of course, I can see you aren’t a bit gentle really, but that’s not what I mean. You
look
romantic, even though underneath you may be—’

I didn’t learn then just what else Leigh Hartley thought I might be underneath, because Sarah came across and interrupted us, bringing with her a girl neither of us had yet met. I waited
until the conversation got going and then slid away into the kitchen and saw no more of him that night.

I work for Whittington’s, the auctioneers. This might seem a bit of a comedown in a professional family like ours, if it hadn’t been Whittington’s.

When I left school the one thing I was certain I wasn’t going into was medicine, so my mother sent me off to France where she had a married cousin. I stayed there, outside Avignon, and
read for university entrance but never got far as I’m not really the academic type. Being laid up so long has fostered the reading habit without giving it discipline, so that I can always
read and study and pick up quickly what I am interested in, but what I’m
not
interested in simply slides away and my memory of it is as blank as a cinematograph reel that hasn’t
been exposed to the light.

My half uncle is an archaeologist and writes popular books on Pompeii and Arles and Perpignan for the French public. I read these and they touched off a fuse, so that I went back to the
scholarly works from which he’d got most of his facts, and then I couldn’t read enough about it.

So later I had gone to Whittington’s. It was a time when employment by any of the big three was just becoming fashionable. Even Debs applied for jobs in Whittington’s or
Sotheby’s or Christie’s, and when I put my name down I was at the foot of a long list. But it wasn’t long before I got a second interview, and with it, at nineteen, a job as a
receptionist clerk. There were, you see, certain things in my favour. Already I knew quite a lot about early art. And Mr Hallows, who first engaged me, must have reasoned that it was unlikely I
should get married. In a world where woman-wastage must reach about 90 per cent, this virtue isn’t to be sneezed at.

So after two years I was put in the antiquities department, and then later transferred to the porcelain which was much larger and really covered most of the things I was interested in. A year
later I became a cataloguer, and now I was Mr Mills’s right hand and usually went with him if there was a china or porcelain collection to be itemized out of town. On smaller jobs I often
went alone.

Whittington’s is the smallest of the big three, but in some ways the most select. It is just the oldest, by a matter of five years, and its links with English aristocracy are secured by
long custom. All the same it was slower than the other two to discover that even tradition must give way to progress, and in the postwar period – when I was still a child at school – it
nearly ran on the rocks. Then a new generation of directors grew up and shook it out of its dying sleep and put it on its feet again.

He rang me on the following Wednesday about nine in the evening.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘you free this coming Sunday? I’m a member of the Seven Arts Club and we have a film show every Sunday evening. It’d be interesting this
week—’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m already booked up.’

‘Oh.’ He sounded really disappointed. ‘Pity.’

‘Yes. Thanks all the same.’

He sensed I was going to ring off and said quickly: ‘That’s a pity because it’s the Picasso film – it’s an old one, made ten years or more ago, but I’ve never
seen it. The old boy in action. People who’ve seen it rave about it.’

‘Oh . . . Yes, I have heard of it.’

‘Not that the Seven Arts Club is often much to write home about. I sometimes reckon it’s more an excuse to watch blue films than anything else. But every now and then they turn up
something real good.’

‘Like this.’

‘Yes, like this. We wouldn’t need to get there till nine. What hopes?’

‘No hopes . . . Sorry again. I must ring off now, as I left a kettle on.’

‘OK . . . Deborah?’

‘Yes?’

‘When is your next free Sunday?’

Damn the man. ‘Well . . . I’m not
absolutely
sure. Perhaps next month.’

‘As long as that? Anyway, I’ll ring again.’

‘Yes, all right. Goodbye.’

‘Bye.’

In the drawing room my mother had just finished playing the piano. It was an ascetic, sterile room, with two small Hamadan rugs on the polished oak block floor. The charcoal leather settee was
without cushions. The Bluthner six-foot grand in black veneer had an Anglepoise lamp on it. That was all there was in the room except for three framed reproductions of paintings by abstract
artists, two small pieces of modern sculpture, and three chairs. Douglas, my father, always said that if one’s intellect was worthwhile, that furnished any room adequately. People cluttered
their rooms, he said, as they cluttered their minds. (Yet, of his three daughters, I collected porcelain and Sarah collected old silver. Arabella so far only collected young men.)

Erica wore an expensive but seventh-winter grey barathea suit. ‘Was it for you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not one of the girls? Because I wanted to ask Sarah—’

‘No, it was somebody I met at Sarah’s party.’

‘They were inviting you out?’

‘No. They wanted an address.’

Up in my bedroom I had a moment’s regret. The Picasso film was one I hadn’t seen, and God help me, it couldn’t have hurt to go out one night with a man. And I could surely
handle Leigh Hartley, in the very unlikely event of his needing to be handled. (A
few
men had been interested in me in my life, but very few. In most cases the sight of a withered leg put
them right off, and in others I think they felt I was delicate and they’d be taking advantage of an invalid.)

I stared at the slightly damaged Italian majolica dish I’d picked up in a shop in Brighton. A gorgeously rich ruby lustre and the central picture was of God turning Adam and Eve out of the
Garden of Eden; it had probably been painted by one of the Grues of Castelli. The plain answer to my question was that men really weren’t for me. Any more, perhaps, than they should have been
for Eve.

Leigh Hartley in his obtuseness clearly hadn’t come to appreciate all this, for he rang me the following Monday evening and told me that because of its great success the members had
managed to get the Picasso film for a further evening. Could I come next Sunday at nine?

I said: ‘You’ve seen it once. You don’t want to see it again,’ and then cursed gently under my breath while he reassured me he was going a second time in any case. When
you’ve not said no at the very beginning it’s harder halfway through. Of course I should have said: ‘For God’s sake go away and stop bothering me!’ But last
week’s thoughts were still in the back of my mind; and, after all, the poor fellow didn’t mean any harm. His rather humorous blunderings were better than the glassy-eyed self-adulation
so many young men have.

So I found myself weakly agreeing to meet him at the Hampstead tube at 8:30. He would have come to the house, but I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving under the speculative eyes of my
parents. I never really knew how they felt about this sort of thing.

This Sunday evening was the first Sunday in May, and when I got to the tube he was waiting standing beside a very small red sports car. I got across the road without him noticing, and came up
behind him. His face lit up when he saw me. He was younger than I remembered, probably
years
younger than I was; crikey, he must
still
find me attractive, I thought; odd, is he a
‘case?’ but generous and warm; give him his due; pity about his bad voice – just flat rather than accented, and thin in timbre; a sort of cockney voice without the accent; it
didn’t go with his physique, which was husky and strong. Artist barrow boy? And those clothes.

‘Can you fit in here? Let me take your stick. That bogey across the way has been looking pretty nasty, I reckon one shouldn’t park here. Mind your coat – this door has to be
slammed
. Good. Hold your breath and we’ll see if it starts.’

The show was in a little cinema in Wardour Street, and had just begun when we got there with a short film about sculpture in Japan. When it was done we ran straight into the Picasso. I’d
never studied painting as such; but inevitably as pictures and furniture were the two biggest sections of Whittington’s, one came to know a certain amount about them.

When the lights went up we had drinks at the bar there, but it was crowded and noisy. So he said, let’s go round the corner and have coffee in peace. This we did, and sat in a café
and talked in quite a friendly way for a while.

Then he said: ‘You didn’t want to come out with me tonight, did you?’

I picked at a flake of skin on the edge of my finger. ‘Not particularly.’

‘You reckon I’m a Smart Alec, who won’t take “not particularly” for an answer.’ He was smiling, but one really got the impression he cared what I said
next.

‘It isn’t
quite
that. Maybe I’m a bit abrupt – a bit rude. Or seem so. It isn’t that I intend to be.’

‘Good. I’m glad to know it.’

I said carefully: ‘Of course I enjoyed the film, and of course I wanted to see it. It was fun . . . I get a great deal of fun out of life, but it isn’t always quite the
same
fun. I mean the same as other people’s.’

I paused. He said: ‘Well, go on.’

‘There’s not much more to say, is there?’

‘D’you mean because you’re lame?’

It was the second time he’d mentioned it, and emotionally I still resented this.

‘As you say. But I’m quite happy, I assure you. Really
perfectly
happy, thanks.’

He thrust out his bottom lip and sucked at his coffee. ‘OK, OK. You’re happy. That’s fine. Couldn’t be more pleased. But I’m trying to separate this up, see. I am
trying to sort it out. If you wanted to see the film, why did you “not particularly” want to come out and see it with me? Have I got smallpox?’

I stared past him at a dark young man in the corner who was eyeing me.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Leigh said. ‘I mean, why are you lame?’

‘It’s a fine evening, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, I get the danger signals. So tell me just one thing. Why does it make you different from other people? I know, maybe you’re not good at ballet or skiing. So are seven million
other girls not good. In what other way has your fun got to differ? Eh? I’m interested, Deborah. I want to know.’

I lifted my coffee cup. There was a thin circle of brown in the saucer. Someone had just put sixpence in the juke box, and it was thumping out one of last year’s pop songs.

‘If you’re white,’ I said, ‘why want to be brown; if you’re brown why want to be white? If you’ve straight hair, why pine for curly? If—’

‘That doesn’t answer a damned thing. You’re only evading the issue.’

‘All right, I’m evading the issue!’

We were silent for a while. Then he said:

‘What’s your work? Some sort of secretary?’

I told him.

‘Hm. Interesting. I thought perhaps you were shy, but you must have to deal with people all day long.’

‘Oh, yes, but that’s in the course of business.’

‘Well, how about treating me as if I was in the course of business?’

I laughed. ‘What have you got to sell?’

‘Myself.’

We looked at each other. ‘
Make no mistake
,’ said the disc, ‘
you gotta be certain in love. No mistake, no mistake, no mista-a-ake
.’

I said: ‘Phew, it’s nearly eleven-thirty. I think I must go.’

‘Come round to my place for a drink.’

‘Not now, thanks.’

‘You’ll come out again?’

‘Find me another Picasso and I will.’

‘Next week it’s some nudist film from Sweden. But I’ll shop around. We’ll find something.’

The dark young man in the corner was just leaving. I was glad he’d be gone before I had to get up.

Leigh said: ‘D’you have a lot of friends?’

‘Oh, yes, a lot.’

‘How about including me in?’

‘But of course.’

He blew out a breath. ‘OK. Let’s go.’

‘Why d’you sigh?’

‘Because you said “But of course” in a Goddamn party voice that meant nothing at all. I reckon I ought to know when I’m beat.’

Something moved me to say, ‘Sorry.’

‘No, no, if that’s the way you feel, that’s the way you feel. It’s a free world. Look, you wait at the door and I’ll get the car.’

He got the car, and we drove back to Hampstead in a sort of cold-war silence.

‘Don’t bother to drive up,’ I said. ‘It’s a nasty hill and One Way.’

‘No. Party manners’ll triumph even over the brush-off.’

We roared noisily up Holly Hill. ‘Which way now?’

‘Fork right. That’s it. And it’s the third house on the right.’

We stopped just short of it. I said: ‘Thank you. It’s been very nice.’

‘But you don’t want to come out with me again?’

‘Well, it’s just a question of looking the facts of life in the face.’

‘Such as?’

‘You’ve already spelled them out. Good night.’ I began to get out of the car.

Another car came up behind and turned to go into our garage, which I hadn’t noticed was open. The headlights lit up Leigh’s tiny sports car. ‘Hold it,’ he said,
‘I’ll just draw ahead to let this character get in. One of your household?’

He drove on a few yards, and I knew by the rapid expert swing of the other car into the garage that it was my mother driving.

‘I’ll go now,’ I said. ‘Thank you very much. Good night.’

Of course he had to get out and help me out, though Heaven knows I’ve learned to be quick enough at that; but my stick had got lost somewhere behind the seats, and by the time he’d
found it Erica was on us and I had to introduce him. We talked for three or four minutes and then he drove off and we went in.