The Watch Tower (28 page)

‘What happens?’

‘What happens? Oh, there’s a first-class scene. Or he starts drinking again, if he isn’t drinking. Or he’ll even go to the trouble of getting involved in some new business, some extra, very worrying, slightly illegal, speculation. Nothing’s too much trouble if it will drive—hope, I suppose—out of someone’s head. The idea that life might be worth living. As if he was a deity set up to ensure that nothing and nobody should ever be appreciated.’

‘But what would Laura think of his actions? She would see through them.’

‘Yes. But she would be frantic with worry and fear. And then, she’s adept in self-deception. For years she has thought: he isn’t himself or he wouldn’t be like this. That people can be themselves (not psychologically disturbed) and dangerous, and wicked, is something she will never agree to realise.’

‘Can she respect him?’

‘She thinks he represents security. She thinks he might change and be kind to her. She pities him; that enslaves her.’

Leaning forward over his knees, Bernard clasped his head in his hands. ‘I wonder if—I wonder if—’

‘Don’t! Forget it! Laura’s always saying, “I wonder what’s at the back of his mind?” Which is just how he likes her to occupy herself. Well, I think it’s sad about
Felix: he’s a miserable man. But I think the back of his mind should be
forgotten
.
There’s only death at the back of his mind. He’s jealous of anything living. Death’s all he wants to spread. Now show me your letter.’

‘We’re just leaving for home. You’ve just caught us,’ Laura spoke into the telephone receiver to Clare and glanced at Felix waiting at the door. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing. In fact everything’s sensationally fine. We couldn’t wait to tell you. You can tell Felix. Bernard’s here just outside the booth. We went with Max—the solicitor, you know—to see the solicitors representing the building company Bernard’s father worked for. They’ve admitted liability. They’re going to settle out of court. They’ve agreed to pay Bernard’s mother a—quite a lot of money. The figure’s not settled yet but a scale was fixed. So this means—Well? Isn’t it a wonderful day?’

There was a slight pause. Laura said in a niggling tone, ‘It’s rather hard on the company. He only worked for them for three months.’

A variety of strong emotions opened Clare’s eyes and mouth and as suddenly closed them. ‘Oh, Laura,’ she said faintly, rejecting the twenty-four most natural responses that sprang to mind.

‘Well! From being a very unlucky boy, Bernard’s turned overnight into a very fortunate one, with a scholarship offered in the post this morning, and now
this.’ Laura’s tone was brittle and joyless. ‘Are you coming straight home?’

Felix said, ‘Where are they?’

‘Felix says where are you? He might be able to pick you up on the way through town if you like. It depends where you are.’

‘No, thank you, Laura. Thank Felix. We’re at the Quay. We’ll be home about the same time as you.’

‘Very well then. Goodbye. I’ll tell Felix.’

He closed the office door and sat down on the brown leather chair reserved for clients. He pulled at his nose thoughtfully, then extended his right arm behind him on the glass-topped desk. Laura stood four feet away by the telephone table, her eyes moving above the level of his head, her pigskin-gloved hands readjusting the silk scarf at the neck of her overcoat.

‘So all his troubles are over, are they? What do you know?’ He mused. ‘He’s done pretty well for a stranger in a strange land, young Bernard.’

Going home in the car Felix was very quiet and for almost the first time that Laura could remember passed no abusive remarks about pedestrians or other people’s driving. When they reached the house, Clare and Bernard, who had arrived first, flew out to meet them at the sound of slamming car doors.

‘Oh, there you are,’ Felix said abstractedly, not smiling, not appearing to notice that he had almost been knocked to the ground by the force of their excitement.

They were in the courtyard. Traces of a cold, crystal, piercing sunset were still visible in the west, but all of the vast remainder of the sky was totally dark.

‘Coming home in the car I was thinking,’ Felix turned to Laura, wiping Bernard and Clare out of existence. ‘I think I’ll get rid of the whole shebang. Sell the joint. It’s all very well for you at your age, but I’m getting on a bit. So I’m going to take things easy, even if it means cutting down on the rations.’

All the words in Laura’s head broke to pieces. She felt like someone suffering from delusions. She wanted to shake her head violently in the hope of shaking his words into some more expected pattern.

‘What will you do if you sell the factory?’ Clare managed to ask.

‘Retire! Like all you blokes.’ A real throwing-down of the gauntlet. He swung round at her. ‘Do a bit of gardening. Take it easy. Got a bit of cement-work that needs attending to. And the soil needs building up. And I’ve got these weeds to get under control.’

Even yet his listeners could not believe their ears. They made feeble sounds of interest and assent. His expression was that of a man who had been hammering in colossal insults and threats, and had in some way justly triumphed.

‘So I have a lot to occupy me. All you people go ahead with your dinner. I’ll have mine later in my office.’ He turned to Bernard as he walked past him
into the house, ‘So it’s just as well you’re not counting on me for a job, isn’t it?’

Left outside in the darkness, Bernard, Clare and Laura surveyed each other.

Bernard felt his arms sailing out of their own accord to look for distracting things to do. He folded them. ‘I’m afraid he’s angry.’

‘Has this been hinted at before?’ Clare asked. ‘Selling the business?’

‘Never. No,’ Laura said.

‘Didn’t you—did you tell him about Bernard?’

‘Yes, of course. He was in the room when you rang.’

‘Oh.’

Laura said, ‘Well, it’s getting cold. Let’s go inside and get some dinner on.’

But Clare put a hand out to detain her and looked into her sister’s eyes with unnatural intentness. ‘But
you
’
re
pleased about Bernard’s news, aren’t you, Laura?’

‘Yes, yes. It’s wonderful, Bernard. Sad for your mother. But it’s only right that she should receive—’

Felix sold the factory just six days after his decision to do so. Because the business was superbly organised and profitable, and the terms invoked by Felix in his desire to be fair to unknown young men involved much paper but little cash and low interest, the first caller—seeing that his fleet had come in with his fortune—
fervently claimed it.

‘Well, no business to go to on Monday morning!’ Laura came out on to the balcony where Clare was leaning against the railing. ‘And Bernard going away soon. And you with no office. It’s hard to get used to all these changes.’

Clare nodded and looked at her sister thoughtfully. ‘What do you think you’ll do? You’re too young to retire from the world.’

‘I don’t know. I hope Felix doesn’t get too bored.’ In the dense sunlight, Laura shaded her eyes. She sighed and felt in her pocket for her cigarettes. ‘We’ll feel marooned in a way. When you’ve got a business there’s no time to make friends or have interests. For some reason.’

Down in the curve of the suburban bay lined with weedy parks named after councillors, red-brick apartment buildings, gracious and dilapidated private dwellings, a yacht strung with flags was being christened.

‘I wonder what you could do? Heavens, you’re not thirty-one yet.’ Clare glanced at the yacht. ‘Classes of some sort. Social work. You could take children from orphanages out in the car and give them picnics.’

‘Felix might like that. Playing Santa Claus,’ Laura conceded, ‘if I could persuade him to do it. Or you could. But—’

They exchanged a look that acknowledged the traps in this suggestion and automatically rejected it.

Laura went on, ‘Some social work could be depressing, though. I don’t know if it would be such a good idea. Besides, I’m tired of working.’

‘Anyway—And every kind of club is out.’

‘Drink. No. They’re impossible.’

A rusty oil-tanker made its way toward the Heads.

Laura said, ‘Really, it’s just as well to stay home. I’d just as soon. And so would he.’

Clare nodded again, then said, ‘It’s being launched.’ Indifferently enough the boat slid into the water. Among the small crowd assembled for the ceremony a band began to play
Auld Lang Syne
.

‘It isn’t only drink in clubs,’ Laura went on, and Clare knew what she meant: strangers, Felix taken in, taken down. ‘But with people—even if drink was no problem at all, even when he hasn’t touched any for months—it’s never worked out. I can get on with them, but he—We’re much better to keep to our own little routine. Heavens!’ Laura stood back from the rail and looked about at the blinding, myriad-faceted glitter of the water, at the tall towers of the city, at the world-famous bridge with its battalions of cars, buses and trains, at the great radiant exclamatory morning sky that started in eternity and came down to her very fingertips. ‘Heavens!’ she said again, exhibiting these
wonders and the awe-inspiring colours of the trembling garden. ‘We’re lucky. We’re really very lucky.’

‘Yes.’

Laura’s eyes faltered. She had thought the circumstances of her life as rigid as a steel foundry. Then suddenly everything shifted. Now an earthquake, a slow, prolonged and invisible earthquake was collapsing everything.

She said, somehow narrowly, ‘And Bernard deserting you after all you’ve done for him. Leaving yourself with not even a job to go to.’

‘What?’ Clare turned from the view to look at Laura’s face. ‘I’m glad he’s going.’

When Bernard had prepared to leave and declared his plans, Laura had pleaded with him to stay for a few more days. Felix, she said, was coming round, accepting all these changes, but it would hurt him if Bernard rushed away and he felt afterwards that they had parted bad friends. When Bernard consulted Clare, she agreed that it would be considerate and politic if he could delay—no more than a week—till the change could come about without disturbing Felix’s balance. ‘Only for Laura’s sake,’ she added. ‘She has to live with the repercussions.’

Now, the facts of Bernard’s scholarship and the compensation due to his mother could be openly mentioned in front of Felix. And he smiled. And he took a sort of interest. His eyes had not recovered from
looking offended and giving significant looks, but he was, Laura assured Bernard, coming round.

‘I didn’t think you’d be
glad
,’
she persisted now, feigning absorption in the shipping on the harbour, and smoking with concentration. ‘I got the impression that you had a great crush on him.’ It sickened her to say this, as if her bare hand had been forced to touch something abominable. Emotion nauseated her.

‘What?’ Clare said again, but faintly this time. She told herself that she was not surprised that Laura had misinterpreted her actions. It was never surprising to be misinterpreted and, indeed, it had been obvious from the beginning that Laura and Felix both assumed that only a juvenile passion could account for her concern.

‘No,’ she said now. ‘No, not really, Laura.’ In love with Bernard? She felt as if heavy irons had been cast about her. ‘Break it down,’ she protested feebly, thinking hard. They both—she and Bernard—had so much to do! Everything was waiting. Everything. Something in her wilted in surprise and despair at the thought that they were in any way tied to each other. Not free?

Slowly, drawing her reflections slowly after her, she began to extricate herself from the hypothetical straitjacket Laura had imposed on her. ‘No, it isn’t like that, Laura. I only—’ She only loved him, only knew him well. ‘He’s young. He just needed a little—kindness. And I—don’t know very much.’

Suspecting mockery, Laura looked at her coldly, impatiently. She could not follow the workings of Clare’s mind: Clare was pretentious. Laura warned her, ‘I hear Bernard coming now.’

Inside the house, slouching back to his room from the prolonged contemplation of his face in the bathroom mirror, Felix heard laughter outside on the verandah and scowled. He stood by the bed cleaning his nails with a little steel file, idle, with nothing to do. The sharp little file scraped under each nail again. Felix breathed. Outside they all laughed. Felix gave his surroundings—the brocade of bedcover and curtains, the flawless wood of the furniture—a ravenous look. There was her diamond ring on the cut-glass tray. Diamonds—Felix was caught, stood, half-smiled, moved his head infinitesimally to be struck by shafts of topaz light, of scarlet light, of raging greens, sapphires. He looked, and was impressed. Then he was displeased. He put the ring into his pocket.

He had another idea. Out in the office there were letters written this morning waiting to be posted. Exchanging an intense private look with himself in the long mirror, he took his new suede jacket from the wardrobe, slid his arms into it and sauntered out.

Laura had begun to hang washing on the line at the side of the house. ‘It’s a glorious morning, Felix. I thought—on Monday—I know you don’t like the
traffic at weekends—but on Monday, how would it be if we all went off to the mountains for the day? We’d see all the spring blossom. It’s Bernard’s last week with us. And we’ve got no old factory waiting.’

Felix rubbed his chin, lids downcast. ‘Oh, I don’t know. We’re pretty comfortable here. We don’t have to drive a hundred miles for a view. And besides, it all costs money. Don’t forget we haven’t got any cheques coming in now.’

‘Oh—He and Clare might have a day out, then.’

‘Mmm?’ Felix gave her a deaf look.

She tried again. ‘Felix, what do you think might be wrong with this little pine tree? See—it’s going brown at the edges.’

But Felix was like a doctor visiting a
malade imaginaire
,
his own mind on some thrilling assignation just five minutes away. ‘Yeah—’ He crumbled the dead brown foliage between his fingers. ‘Well, I’m off.’

They stared at each other, he smirking a little and full of mischief, Laura frowning appeals and smiling doubts, trying to decode his eyes’ garbled messages.