Vacant Possession (19 page)

“Thanks very much,” Miss Anaemia said. She scrubbed away her tears with the back of her hand and picked a slice or two out of the wrappings. “Cheers,” she said. Her emotions were short-lived; it was just as well, of course. It didn’t do to get excited about the future, or too attached to any project; you never knew when some change in the benefit rules would turn your life upside down. It was companionable, here at Napier Street, but they were talking about chopping rent allowances and making young people move on. In the world outside people called her Anne-Marie, and asked her to account for yourself; have you seen a psychiatrist? they said. If she left here she’d have to go home to Burton-on-Trent and live with her mum and dad, who never spoke to each other, and who made it clear that she was a big disappointment, and asked why she hadn’t gone to work for Marks & Spencer. They only take quite wholesome people; Mum and Dad didn’t seem to realise that.

On the night of old Mrs. Sidney’s discharge, Poor Mrs. Wilmot gave in her notice. She would be sadly missed, the nurses told her, by staff and patients alike. A willing, stooped, humble body, with her heart in the right place; the cleaners were being privatised, and they would not look upon her like again.

She went down Eugene Terrace, to Crisp’s house. He and Sholto were eating sausage rolls together. “If you want a revenge for Effie,” she said, “you can get on with it now.”

Crisp said the hospital had killed Effie, that she’d got pneumonia and they’d let her die; seeing that she was old, and mad, and not worth the antibiotics. In fact she had been far gone when the ambulance brought her in, frozen and raving. But they had to amuse themselves. Crisp was trying to get into trouble by hanging around with juveniles. As for Sholto, he said he was sick to death of the soup at the night shelter. They were both scheming to be sent back to Fulmers Moor. It didn’t matter to her, because her scheme was one she had to carry out alone; she didn’t need their help, or anybody’s.

Mother had not materialised; but often, as she polished the scratched dining table at Buckingham Avenue, Muriel thought she felt her hanging in the air. She wanted her and didn’t want her, that was the trouble. She couldn’t explain that to Crisp and Sholto. She said goodbye to them and went downstairs. It was ten o’clock when she got out into the street, and the Mukerjees were closing up the shop. A plump Asian gentleman was drawing away from the kerb in his big car. He drove slowly behind Lizzie Blank as she minced along to the corner. He put down his electric window, leaned out, and made her an offer. She stopped dead, staring at him. As if he had not made his meaning clear, he held up a fat paper packet and jingled it. “Ten pounds in five pees, all yours,” he told her. He smiled encouragingly, showing a gold tooth. They were heading for the wasteland; there were no street lights now. Just his white cuffs gleamed in the darkness, and his gold ring and his gold tooth. “Name your price,” he told her. Her heart began to thud. She felt a desperate strangling rage rise up inside her. When the box breaks, the baby will fall, out comes Little Muriel, teeth bones and all. She raised her fists at the man in the car, and a great hoarse bellow rose out of her chest and echoed back down the dark caverns of the Punjab. Sweat starting out on his face, the man put his foot on the accelerator and roared away into the night.

When the ambulance drew up outside Florence’s house, all the family except Alistair were waiting in the front garden. Colin’s face was drawn with apprehension, but his wife and sister looked like women who knew exactly what to expect. The two little girls, who had been briefed about their grandmother’s misapprehensions, were giggling and practising their curtseys; Claire had insisted on wearing her Brownie uniform. Suzanne lurked in the shadow of the porch, with a blanket round her shoulders. As the winter came on she looked more and more demoralised and disreputable. There were whole days when she didn’t speak a word to anybody, and didn’t set foot outside the house.

The back doors of the ambulance opened, and the ambulance men lifted Mrs. Sidney and her wheelchair and set them carefully on the ground. One of them waved in the direction of the family. They swivelled the chair in the road, edged it onto the pavement, and pushed it to the front gate. Mrs. Sidney was swaddled in a gay scarlet blanket: only the top of her head showed. “Here we go,” the attendants cried, running her up the path. “She can walk, you know, but she says it’s not etiquette. Are we glad to see you lot! Took one old lass home last week, the whole family had done a moonlight. Like the
Mary Celeste
. Took the police a week to find them. Said they’d gone up to Aberdeen looking for work on the North Sea oil.”

As they brought the wheelchair to a halt, Mrs. Sidney’s skeletal hand emerged from her wrappings. She pulled the blanket aside from her face and peered out. “Where’s your father?” she enquired of Colin in her rasping voice. Colin looked at Sylvia for aid.

“Tell her,” Sylvia said. “Tell her he’s dead. Don’t pander to her.”

Colin cleared his throat. “He’s passed on, Mother. Don’t you remember? It was, oh, ten or eleven years back.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mrs. Sidney said. “I expect he’s off shooting at Sandringham. Who is that woman in a certain condition, standing in the porch?”

“Well, can we give you a hand?” the ambulance men enquired. “Where do you want her? Upstairs, downstairs, in my lady’s chamber?” Suzanne stood back to let them pass. They winked at her on the way out. “Give us a call if you start up sudden, love. Twenty-four-hour service, that’s us, no job too large or small.”

“What nice men,” Claire said. “I wonder if they’d like a boiled egg?”

“All yours!” they cried, as they sped off down the path.

Mr. Ryan—Jim—was a spare eager man in his early thirties. He had a sandy moustache and brown dog-like eyes.

“Sit down, Mr. Sidney,” he said. He paused, unhopefully. “I don’t suppose it’s about the account, is it?”

Colin pulled a chair up to the desk. “My wife thought that perhaps we ought to talk, but I don’t know…perhaps somewhere else would have been preferable?”

“It hardly matters,” Ryan said. “As long as you keep your voice down.”

“I haven’t come to make a scene.”

“No…well, that’s all right then.” Mr. Ryan shrunk a little in his swivel chair. His eyes wandered over Colin and away to the framed print of a fishing village which hung on the far wall. The quay seemed strangely deserted; little boats bobbed on blue-black waves. “Only it wouldn’t help if I lost my job.”

“Is that likely?”

“She’s a customer.”

“Of course.”

“And we have our professional ethics.”

“Like doctors and dentists? I didn’t know that. I mean, if a woman comes in to open a deposit account, you don’t ask her to take her clothes off, do you? Not in the normal case; though I can see there are exceptions.”

“You’d be surprised what happens, Mr. Sidney.” Mr. Ryan’s dark eyes flickered; he picked up a paper clip from his tray and began to unbend it. “You really see life from behind this desk. When the customers get divorced, they come into your office and fight.”

“I had no idea.”

“Oh yes. They get very personal.” He met Colin’s eye briefly. “That’s not what I came into banking for, I don’t enjoy it at all. They come in to divide their account, and then next thing you know, they’re arguing about fellatio and who’s going to have the hamster.”

Colin took out a packet of cigarettes. “Smoke?”

Ryan shook his head gloomily, as if at this moment any silly habit would have been a relief. “It’s no joke,” he said. “I don’t like it. It upsets me.”

“You don’t like emotions.” Colin lit his cigarette. “Leave it to the women, eh?”

“Why not?” said Ryan, sneering a little. “They have the expertise, don’t they, or so they say? They keep shifting the ground, you can’t keep up. To them, big rows are like, what do you call it, fashion accessories—they have a new set every season.”

“Have you got an ashtray?” Colin said. I won’t be drawn, he thought, I’ll keep my cool. He looked up. “I can’t help observing, Mr. Ryan, that you are a man of what…thirty-three, thirty-four?”

“Whereas Suzanne is eighteen. You think I took advantage of her.”

“I haven’t heard that expression in years,” Colin said. “But still, in this case…I can’t imagine where you met.”

“We met at the university,” Ryan said. “We have these annual promotions, you know, you must have seen the adverts. We call it our Someday Package. Someday You’ll Make a Million, that’s the slogan. The people who dream up these things are living in the past. They still think there are jobs for graduates.”

“Yes?”

“And there was your daughter, coming in for her free plastic clipboard with the logo, and her free packet of felt-tipped pens. Myself, I thought the felt-tips were a mistake, a bit juvenile, but your daughter said, on the contrary, you know, she being a student of geography, they’d be useful to her—and that’s how we got into conversation.”

“And then?”

Ryan ran a hand through his hair. “Then I asked her to meet me for a drink…you know how it goes. You know the rest. It’s not interesting, is it?”

“Well, only in one respect.”

“And what’s that?”

“I hoped you could enlighten me as to why you let her get pregnant!”

“I didn’t ‘let her.’ What do you mean? You’d think—I know she’s only eighteen, you’ve pointed that out, but you’d think she’d have the sense to swallow a pill.”

“She told you she was on the pill?”

Mr. Ryan stared at him, mute; then each capillary flushed and blossomed, turning him pink from his hairline to the white collar of his striped shirt.

“It’s a fad,” Colin said calmly. “They don’t like the pill. I thought you’d come to an agreement about it. Natural methods.”

“What?” Ryan said. “What are you talking about?”

“Sorry. I’d have broken it more gently…not that it matters now. Academic interest, as people say.”

“It’s of more than academic interest to me! What was I supposed to do?”

“Withdraw, I think. It’s natural population control. Peasants do it. In Italy. There’s a book about it.”

“Well, I must have missed that.” He was scarlet now with shock and indignation. “I’ll have to join the Book of the Month Club, won’t I, before I pick a girl up again, I’ll have to go by W. H. Smith and check out what bloody insanities she might have in store for me. Is that right?”

“Or go for a woman of thirty,” Colin said. “They’d be on the pill, wouldn’t mind poisoning themselves for a fine upstanding man like you. Oh, really, Ryan, get hold of yourself, calm down, if you’ve any brain there won’t be a next time. Does your wife know?”

“Does she know? Your daughter told her on the phone. When I got home she was waiting. I knew right away there was something up. She said, ‘I’ve had a most disturbing phone call from a girl called Suzanne.’ That was it. I had to tell her everything.”

Plod on, Colin thought; the old pedestrian tone.

“I think Suzanne expects you to leave your wife and set up with her.”

“Leave my wife?”

“I’m afraid she took your relationship too seriously.”

Ryan covered his face with his hands. “I’ve been conned all along then, haven’t I?” he said wearily. “This wasn’t my understanding of it. Not my understanding at all. It was just…a fling. One of those things that you do.”

“A fling?” Colin said. “Come on, mate. This is 1984. Victorian Values.”

“Nothing Victorian about the way your daughter ran after me—”

“No, but there is this about it,” Colin said patiently, “that you pay for what you do. It isn’t the scot-free seventies, you can’t expect to go littering the countryside with your by-blows and expect the state to pick up the tab. You’ve got to feel the guilt, Mr. Ryan, you’ve got to put your hand in your pocket. You’d really better think of limiting your activities. Or you might get one of these special diseases.”

There was a short silence. Ryan slumped in his chair. “I offered to pay for the abortion.”

“She doesn’t want one. Anyway, it’s too late for that.”

“Girls today…I can’t take it in.” With his fingertips Ryan worked the skin above his eyebrows. “She must understand…you must make her understand…I can’t leave my wife. It’s simply not one of the options. Isabel’s not well.”

“Not well?” Colin said sharply. Ryan sat up, at his tone.

“Her nerves. At least I think it’s her nerves. There’s something amiss. To be honest—may I be honest with you?”

“Feel free.”

“I suppose I thought, with Suzanne, that she would take my mind off things. I’m a very troubled man, Mr. Sidney. So would you be, if you had Isabel to deal with.”

“Would I?”

“You see, Isabel was twenty-six when I met her, and unmarried. No one had taken her on. I thought I was her first lover, though later I learned different. She was wary of me, very wary, do you know what I mean? She put men off, men in general. It took me months to get anywhere near her. The day we were married I don’t think I knew her at all.”

Ryan picked up a sheet of paper from his desk and began to fold and pleat it between his fingers. “And do you know her now?” Colin asked.

“Oh, now…She drinks. Gin mostly. Or whisky. Quite a lot. She has rages, the most horrible emotional storms. If you knew her you’d understand why I looked elsewhere, but at the same time, as a practical matter, if I left her what would she do? I can’t just dump her, can I? She can’t take care of herself.”

“Look,” Colin said desperately. “You don’t have to tell me any of this.”

“Oh, but it’s a relief, get it off my chest. Her father died just recently in hospital, and that’s made things worse, because they were always at outs, you know, and she’s got some idea that she wished him dead. It seems that before he died he told her he’d got…well, I don’t know, some sort of responsibility, an illegitimate child I think, some woman he met in a park. Now she goes on and on about it. She talks about her life, the life she’s had.”

“We all have a life.”

“But you have to put the past behind you, don’t you?”

“If it will let you.”

“That’s what she says. She says time’s circular, she can feel it snapping at her ankles.”