Bilgewater (21 page)

“All right then,” she said. “Just as you like. You've a nasty streak in you Tom Terrapin. So had your Gran. And your Ma—not to mention your Pa if there ever was one. I don't know why I stop on.”

“Neither do I,” he yelled out back. “You can go to hell.”

“Go to hell yourself.”

Her footsteps, very slow and creaky and her wheezing breath grew fainter down the turret staircase. In time, a long way off a door slammed.

“I must go now,” I said. I swung myself out of bed and felt around for my shoes, got my arm back into the dress. Terrapin found the light string and pulled it and we looked at each other. I began to shiver. He stood by the bed with his hair all in tufts and his eyes bright. His shoes and socks seemed to have disappeared. Quite a lot of his clothes seemed to have disappeared. His feet looked very endearing. Never in my life had I so loved anyone. “I'm going now,” I said.

He said, “Bilge—stay. She's gone. She'll not come up again. She won't even see me in the morning. We scarcely meet. She's hardly ever been up here in her life. It was just terrible luck.”

I'd got my shoes on and picked up the coat and swathed myself in it. “Please,” I said, “could you take me back? It wasn't just bad luck.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. I just have to go.”

“So you didn't mean it?”

“I did. I love you.”

“Then stay.”

“Oh Terrapin, take me back.”

“To lovely Daddy Green and Prissy Paula?”

It was then easy. “No,” I said quite steadily, “I can't do that. I'm afraid you'll have to get me back to Jack Rose.”

“Bilge!”

“I'm afraid so,” I said going to the table and putting on my glasses.

“Bilge. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I said that. I like your father and Paula. I owe them a hell of a lot. Look, luvvy—stay with me.”

“And what are the Roses going to say when I'm not there in the morning?”

“What were they going to say anyway? You weren't thinking of that when you came running to me an hour ago.”

“I didn't know you were here. It was Mrs. Deering. I had no idea you lived here—I told you. It was coincidence.”

“Bilge do you honestly expect me to believe that?”

“It's true.”

“Fate leading you to my door?”

“If you like.”

“And Fate in the person of Mrs. Deering rescuing your virginity—Mrs. Deering messenger of the gods? Mrs. Hermes. Mrs. Eumenides.”

“Shut up.”

“You're a coward.”

“I'm not. I'm telling the truth. Anyway it's as possible as a father who dresses up in ballet clothes and thinks he's the reincarnation of Punch and Judy.”

He said, “We'll go.”

His face had gone still. He pulled on his clothes and the coat from the back of the door, wound his House scarf round and round his neck. I pushed my stockings down the front of the dress, fastened up my shoes and buttoned up the sable coat. He opened the door and without even putting out the fire or the light or making the slightest effort to be quiet went clattering ahead of me down the stone stairs. I hovered a minute—switched off the fire, looked all round the room once and saw for the first time clearly what I had seemed to see from the corner of my eye and rejected, soon after I had arrived—Terrapin's latest puppet. It was not yet finished but already very dreadful and good. It was different from the rest—gross, balloon-like and rubbery with a greedy, ugly, impertinent head; a head so confident and powerful that it held more horrors than anything more ordinarily nasty—any devil or goblin—and it was of course Mrs. Deering.

She had been hanging there unfinished in the dark all the time we had been together in bed. Overhead the rest of Terrapin's company swung and whispered in the air the open door was letting in from outside. I shut it quickly and went down towards the sound of Terrapin wheeling out his motor-bike. All the way back through the miserable dark I heard the sound of the puppets laughing and murmuring quietly together.

I
n the morning I woke up to hear Uncle Edmund Hastings-Benson's loud, kind voice in the Roses' hall and I jumped out of bed and saw his massive pre-first-war Rolls Royce standing in their drive. It was still almost dark, but in December it is still dark up to about 9:30 o'clock and this in fact was the time.

I couldn't believe it, I had lain down on the soft cream bed the night before to await the dawn with open eyes. I had lain down in the black dress, vaguely regretting a toothbrush but otherwise in such a curious void and weariness that I would have been hard put to it to utter one word if that had been necessary.

It had been quite unnecessary. Through the night Terrapin's motor-bike had roared with the snowflakes spinning in its headlamps. Behind him I had sat with my arms round his waist, my cheek against his back, his woolly scarf-ends flapping across my snowy glasses. The parts of me that were covered by the sable coat were warm but my hands were so numb that I could hardly cling with them and my feet hanging down under the long dress seemed to have disappeared. We had got to Marston Bungalow in what seemed liked seconds and Tettapin had ignored red lamps, ropes, notices about heavy plants and rubble and bounded over the roundabout at huge speed. As the lights of Teesside faded away I began to recognise things—Eston lane-ends, the turning for Ironstoneside. He seemed to know exactly where to go.

I began to notice the beginnings of the prosperous terraces all now in darkness with the curtains pulled back for morning—last job of the middle-class day, all the television plugs pulled out.

I began to panic at the thought that we should soon be parting and my heart began to beat so loud that I felt sure he must be able to feel it through our coats. I held tight, and tighter still to him as we turned into the Roses' road—I suppose he must have been there before. Funny—I had thought they were enemies. How little I really knew about the Boys' Side. How little I knew about anyone or anything.

But this didn't bother me—not even the fact that Terrapin must have known all about the Rose ménage when I was boasting about being invited to a grand country-house weekend (Oh God! Oh God! And Terrapin at Marston Hall!) so much as what I was going to say to him when the bike stopped and I had to get off.

For I knew that I had said an unforgiveable thing. About his father. I knew what needed to be said. In a perfect and uncomplicated world where one can say anything without being sneered at or giving offence or being misunderstood I could have said what was right: “Oh Terrapin, I do understand about your father dancing by the sea. I can see how you would love him.”

Yet of course this could not possibly be said—or only by a lunatic or a child.

The bike slowed and stopped and Terrapin rested his foot on the ground and waited for me to get off. This was not easy. There was first the long dress and second the disappearance of my feet. In fact as I put my legs upon the pavement they tottered and swayed about and I had to clutch at the pillion and Terrapin's arm.

As soon as I was sranding more or less upright he gave an enormous revving to the engine, flung off my hand and paying no attention at all to whatever it was I did say in the end—“Oh Terrapin, I'm so terribly sorry,” or something—without a glance in my direction he was off in a flamboyant U turn in the road leaving me very much alone at the end of the gravel semi-cirde which was now coated with snow. When the sound of the bike had died away—it took a very long time—there was complete silence as if there was nobody left awake but me in the world.

The Roses' curtains however were not yet drawn back and the dreadful square light above the door was still on, so that I supposed there was a chance that the front door had not been locked yet. I crunched up the drive, swung the door open, remembering my furtive escape from the balcony earlier as the lunacy of the kindergarten, and marched into the hall. There was a light on in one of the consulting rooms—one of the Roses must be preparing for the labours of tomorrow—and, still taking no thought about being seen I went over to me Dentists' Benevolent table and wrote on the memo pad the following message:

 

Would you be so very kind as to telephone the

number below and ask Mr. Edmund

Hastings-Benson to come and get

me as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely,

Marigold D. Green.

(the member of the congregation

this
A.M.
)

 

I put the number and then added in very vigorous fashion and more careful writing than usual
OH PLEASE
. I folded the note and addressed it to the Vicar and walked out of the front door again and down the road to the church. There was a board in the sooty car-yard beside the west door and I managed to read the times of services. There was an early Communion on Mondays at 6:30
A.M.
, so I pushed the note under the church door rather than on to the notice board in the porch where he might miss it. Then I walked back, up the gravel again, and once more into the front hall. I was a bit put-out to see no light now in the consulting room and coughing and humming and curtain-drawing noises from the sitting-room. But still I made no great efforts at secrecy. I went sedately up the stairs and when I remembered that I had locked my bedroom door on the inside I simply flung open Grace's door alongside it. I marched through, not even looking to see if she were there or not, or alone, or awake. I stepped out through her french windows along the balcony and in through my own. I didn't shut her windows, either. I felt no concern that they might break, that she might catch pneumonia. I felt no interest or guilt at my nastiness or hostility. I lay down and listened to the heavy sound of the bolts being drawn across the frontdoor beneath me and when a second later the dental illumination outside my balcony went out prepared, as I say, to lie awake until the dawn.

 

I don't really know whether I heard Uncle HB's voice or saw his car first because there I was standing at the window looking at it and hearing the voice below at exactly the same time. I must have been still asleep as I jumped out of bed, my eyes still not properly open as I peered out. But there was a feeling of relief and joy in me that seemed to have been there for quite a time—and the oddest feeling, too, that all things today would be well.

I put on my shoes and went and hung over the banisters.

He was talking to Mrs. Rose who was in her white overall and giving him the confident straight look of a professional about to do fearful but necessary things. “What a silly mistake,” Pen was saying smiling at her as if she was the prettiest and most enchanting thing he had seen for years.

“Oh not at all,” she was answering brightly. “We're all a bit scatty about Jack's arrangements. He brings home so many friends.”

“Of coune I imagined Bill Green would have said something—long-standing outing—rather vague chap—ha ha ha.”

They both laughed indulgently at the thought of father forgetting to tell them that I was leaving them on the Monday
A.M.
and not in the evening, Uncle Pen knowing perfectly well that father had probably forgotten whether I was coming back at all and would have taken some time to notice had I not.

“I do hope you don't mind—now that we are here?”

“Not at all. Not at all. Jack has Grace Gathering here to keep him happy.” (Pen gripped the end of the hamster.)

“Um yes.”

“Actually we haven't seen much of little Bilgie. She went off to bed early last night. Locked her door. I believe she went to church. There was a little note—I expect she's about now—” She looked vaguely in the direction of the stairs from behind her dentist's mask. She had some sort of sharp thing in her hand again and from behind her in the surgery that dreadful gurgling noise of the pink water could be heard. I saw darling Uncle HB's knuckles whiten on the rail.

“It's all right,” I called. “Just coming.”

“Oh, there you are.”

“I'm nearly ready.”

“Oh. Super. Sorry not to have seen you, Marigold. See you again. Welcome anytime if you don't mind us being so quiet.”

“Thankyouverymuchforhavingme.”

“I must get back to my patient.”

“I've had a lovely time.”

“Good show. 'Bye now.” She vanished into her surgery and shut the door and I said, “Oh—” I had wanted to tell her about the amber beads and that she could have them and where they were. I remembered the trace of softness and niceness in her yesterday when she mentioned my ma, and her saying in a way I hadn't thought her capable of, “No—
not
luck.” I remembered that I had spent the hostess's present money on the bus fare. But a great whistling came out of the opposite door across the hall which meant that Mr. Rose was at the drill again fixing the infected flaps and I saw poor Uncle Pen now rigid with distaste and sweating. “Come on, Marigold.”

“Just coming.”

“Get moving.”

“All right I won't be long.”

I dashed for the bathroom and took off the black dress and washed with other people's soap and flannels and towels. In a wall cupboard I found somebody's comb. I drew the line at any of the row of toothbrushes though they were in excellent condition and included a range of electrical ones, too. I put the dress back on and went back to my room for the fur coat and put on my tights which had been stuffed down my front all night and were now dry.

“Come
on
,” called Uncle Pen.

I looked at the room and decided against making the bed whatever Paula would have said. (“Take off the blankets, sheets, pillowslips, fold them rectangular. It's manners in guests.”) On the landing I paused a second outside Grace's door. I had a great longing suddenly to go and say goodbye. I remembered the way she'd got me to bed after all that gin. The trip to Marks and Spencers. Perhaps she hadn't known I was invited this weekend after all. And what if she had been rolling about the kitchen on Sunday morning with Jack? Maybe she liked him. It was difficult to know anything about Grace. Jack clearly wasn't good enough for her but maybe she really did like him. I should have liked to talk to her, and a very slow, sad, miserable feeling welled up in me as I stood there, almost as if I was never going to see Grace or Jack or anybody again.