Daniel Martin (32 page)

She moved in the next day, at my invitation. I already knew she was going to be very simple to live with; and in that sense I used her, I wouldn’t let her interfere with my work, I suppose I rather treated her as a pet animal someone I was prepared to feed and dress and make love to, and teach a little, but not someone I could ever give my heart to. She was one of those girls who are both shrewd and ignorant over many things, and with the usual defence mechanism: suspicious of all superior knowledge. Reading was beyond her, though she tried intermittently. But I soon discovered she had a mind of her own over other things: clothes, food, the films we saw, the odd exhibition. Some of the knowledge flowed my way, especially over the films. One of the supreme idiocies of commercial filmmakers is their ignorance of how the mind of the ordinary audience works. All the sneak previews and reaction analysis reports in the world are not worth half an hour with the real thing; and still today, if I think I am going over audience heads, I sometimes try to see as Miriam saw. She was a sucker for sentiment and spectacle. But I introduced her to some classics and what serious contemporary cinema was around. After a first sniff and reluctance, she fell agreeably fast for quality, and I think not just to please me. I jump ahead a little: ‘she’ should really be ‘they’. Miriam did some elementary shopping and housework, but there were still long hours to fill while I worked; she very soon took to going out on her own during the day. To see her parents, her sister, or so she said; sometimes she just went to ‘the flicks’. She failed only once to return. But she rang, she was with ‘me mum’, the old man was being a pig, he was pissed, she wanted to stay the night. She came back late the next day.

I was glad to see her; the gabble, her ghastly evening retold.

A few days later, she did return to the flat when expected, but not alone. This time her sister was with her. She had, I suspect under strong pressure from Miriam, walked out on the idea of sleeping her way to stardom. The girl did look unhappy and vaguely shocked, and rather touchingly aware that I was not running a home for waifs and strays. It would only be for that night, she just couldn’t face all the argy-bargy at home. There were two spare rooms, I couldn’t very well refuse; and even if Miriam was content with her submissive role, I felt some other return besides my leisure hours and the odd handout ‘for pocket-money’ was called for. We stayed in, they cooked, with more enjoyment than skill, a meal. I heard their low voices in the kitchen, and it was somehow rather pleasing, their ordinariness and sisterliness; a certain shyness between them during the meal, a tendency to giggle, as during our first lunch together; and then alone with Miriam in bed later, I had all her worry I should feel I was being taken advantage of, ‘lumbered’ with her problems. She told me more about their home, their parents.

It was mainly about her father—he was one of those ugly variants of the sad clown, all jollity and bonhomie on the boards or in a pub, but a moody, flash-fisted tyrant in his own home; even worse, there had been ‘things’ when she and Marjory were younger ‘Honest, Dan, I couldn’t tell you… course, ‘e was always ‘alf pissed.’ Then she said shyly, ‘I don’ mean whatchermercallit. You know. Jus’… you know.’

‘But all that’s over now?’

‘Sure. Only when we was little. Just you don’t never forget.’

She paused, then went whispering on in the darkness. ‘What’s so terrible, ‘slike it was the only way ‘e knew ‘ow to be our proper dad. Ever since, ‘e don’t want to know us. Like it’s all me mum’s fault we even exist. ‘E’s such a mean old bastard, you can’t imagine. You want me to shut up?’

‘No. Tell me.’

‘Frinstance, month ago I was down ‘ome and I went to fetch ‘im outa the boozer for his Sunday dinner. You know ‘e was all over me, drinks all round, showin’ me off like I was every dad’s dream. Then we got outside an’… oh Christ you know. No bloody warning, ‘e starts callin’ me ‘n Marjory every fucking name under the bleedin’ sun. I could kill ‘im sometimes. Honest. And the way he treats me mum. You just can’t imagine.’

But I could, only too well, behind her few remaining reticences; and began to realize the strange, almost noble, sense of working-class responsibility that kept the two girls at least morally at their mother’s side. They showed me a snapshot of her one day, a woman in her early forties, her hair done tightly back, a faintly gipsy face, but worn, resigned before its time, though she was smiling. They’d begged her to walk out, but they were up against another kind of martyrdom there. There was the act; the fear of what the ‘old bugger’ would do if he was abandoned. I read an East End Mycenae, the workings of inexorable fate; very trite, perhaps, but very real. As I lay that evening listening to Miriam as she rambled on, I knew I had done something more than pick up a charming mongrel; but landed myself with someone I must not hurt. The next morning I said Marjory could stay until she could face all that: the venom of Laius.

Her shyness turned out to be rather illusory, or more a matter of previous insecurity than anything very innate. Miriam tended to boss her about and they developed a dry little slanging relationship or must always have had it, and now hid it no longer. Some sort of equivalent of my attitude to Miriam began to be passed on: judgments or information I had given to the elder sister were now sometimes a good deal more bullyingly and peremptorily visited on the younger. Playing umpire was not difficult. Their spats amused me, and were never serious. Once or twice they joined to argue against me. More and more I was treated as a kind of oracle Cum-encyclopedia-cum-butt: why didn’t I believe in God or an afterlife, why did I vote Labour, what was expressionism about, why did I despise fish-and-chips… and then one day they found to their amazement that I’d never been to the dogs literally, not metaphorically. So I was dragged out to Harringay, and lost some money or they lost it for me and felt uncomfortably like an off-duty pence; but enjoyed it. Their shrieks and moans when their sure-fire winners once again failed to make it, and their chatter all the way home; and Miriam’s clinging young body, when we went to bed.

I remember that night in particular. Her sister had been with us for five or six days by then and it was clear to me that she wasn’t going to leave unless she was told. Miriam kept telling me she was like her old self again; it was rather as if I had performed some miracle cure. They were also both broke. They weren’t grasping, never asked for money; and never refused it. I apparently had plenty, they were simply grateful, but not conscience-stricken about what was spent on them or I gave to Miriam. But this night, it must have been bothering her secretly, she was lying in silence; then she kissed the side of my neck and whispered.

‘D’you fancy my sister?’

I thought back then to a tiny incident at the greyhound stadium earlier that evening. One of the dogs, the one Marjory had put her money on, stumbled as it came out of the trap and picked up hopelessly late to stand a chance. She had turned her face against my shoulder in despair and disgust. I’d laughed, and put my arm round her for a moment. Miriam had seen that.

‘Don’t be silly. I like you much better.’

‘Why’s it silly?’

‘Being jealous.’

‘You’re not saying my question.’

I kissed the top of her head. ‘I like you both. But only you in bed.’ There was a mulling silence. ‘You don’t understand, Dan. I wouldn’t mind if you did.’

I patted her bottom. ‘Come on. That’s dirty talk.’

Another beat. ‘She fancies you.’

‘How do you know?’

“Cos we talked about it.’

‘Then you shouldn’t have.’

‘It’s only ‘cos we like you. ‘Cos we’re grateful.’ She said, ‘if you’d like it too.’

I should have said firmly then that I didn’t; but such darkness, closeness is very different from daylight. Part of me did not dislike the idea. But I think above all I was curious.

I said, ‘if you really liked me, it would have to make you feel jealous.’

‘Honest. I wouldn’t mind.’ She kissed my neck again. ‘If I knew you… you know.’ Then she said, ‘I don’t mean anythink nasty. Like ol Doodah. Us both together. Nuffin like that.’

I was tempted to joke her out of it, to pretend that I was disappointed it could not be ‘both together’. But I knew she was trying, in her tongue-tied way, to say something generous and however implausible, obscene, what you will, her proposition might sound. She was saying that she knew she and I had no future, the distances were too great; that she and her sister were glad to have landed up with me; that…

‘Does she feel in the way?’

I felt her nod. ‘Yeah, a bit.’

‘I won’t push her out, Miriam. If that’s it.’

‘Just thought I’d mention it.’

‘You’re sweet. And extraordinary.’ I lifted her head and kissed her mouth; then turned us on our sides, her back to me, and held her. I thought the matter was closed, we would settle to sleep. But after a few moments she whispered again.

‘Any day now I’m not goin’ to be no good.’

‘We’re due for a rest.’

That baffled her a moment. But she nodded again, and then there was silence.

I had no idea, the next day, whether she had passed on to Marjory the result of that whispered conversation; I could see no evidence of it. I could also not help seeing the offered substitute in a new light, or at least a franker one. Having had them side by side now for several days, I had begun to sort out their particular charms. The younger had the less independent mind, but also a greater consciousness of men; another blend, this time of impudence and slyness, also a sort of greenness, an underlying innocence, perhaps because of that year less. She was less inhibited, yet a shade more school-girlish.

Two nights later, I had gone to bed and was reading. The girls were in the kitchen, they made themselves cocoa every night. I heard their voices, then they went into Caro’s old bedroom, where Marjory slept. I few minutes later, someone stood in the doorway of my room. It was Marjory. She was in a short nightdress. It was the first time I had seen her in anything but daytime clothes.

‘She wants to sleep on ‘er own tonight.’

I was embarrassed enough to pretend that I thought she was just a messenger.

‘Oh. Okay.’

She did not move.

‘She said I was to come. And go away, if you said.’

‘Then she’s disobeying orders.’

She said nothing, looked at the ground, then up at me again; she had a nice mouth, and it had a an oddly trepid glum smile, which hung suspended in the air, Cheshire-catlike, while she waited. Now I looked down, at my book, and kept my eyes on it.

‘I think you’d better go away.’

‘Don’t you like me?’

‘Of course I like you.’

‘What then?’

‘I don’t want to take advantage of you. Or Miriam.’

She let a moment pass. The nightdress was very short; puffed sleeves that didn’t suit her or any woman, in my experience. The legs proved she needed something slimmer and simpler.

‘What you readin’?’

I had to smile at that, it was so obvious; and she promptly looked hurt.

‘I only asked.’

‘I told her quite distinctly that I didn’t want this to happen.’

‘She said you was jus’ bein’ decent.’

‘One has to try to be that sometimes.’

She tossed her hair. She was leaning against the side of the door, her hands behind her back.

‘You do ‘ave to try then?’

‘Don’t be cheeky.’ She looked down. ‘I’m happy the way it is.’

‘I’m not. And me feet are bloody freezin’.

I weakened.

‘Go and fetch the cigarettes.’

‘Then can I stay?’

‘Just to talk. For one cigarette.’

She disappeared, then returned and stood at the end of the bed, lighting two cigarettes. The nightdress was not opaque. She came round on the unoccupied side of the bed and passed me mine.

‘Can I sit by you, Dan? Me feet reelly are cold.’

I drew a breath. ‘Until I say out. Then out.’

She climbed demurely in on the far side of the bed. There was a great waft of perfume. She slid a glance at the book I was reading.

‘Is that po’try?’ She craned to look closer. ‘I wish you’d read me a bit. Like you do Miriam.’

I realized my bedroom had fewer secrets than I had supposed. It was Bullen’s anthology of seventeenth-century love verse, Speculum Amanti; and I had one recent night read some to Miriam.

‘I can’t. It might give you ideas.’

She had her sister’s sniff. ‘Bet it’s not as filthy as that old jumper.’ I had forsaken pyjamas with Miriam; and had pulled on an old sweater by way of a bed-jacket. My elbow was nudged. ‘Be a sport. Just one little bit.’

‘I thought we were going to have a serious talk.’

‘In a mm.’

I began reading. By the end of the first stanza she was nestling closer. She wanted to read the print. Then she was reaching across me for the ashtray, and ended closer still; a few lines later my right arm was lifted and placed round her shoulders, and a bare leg touched the length of mine beneath the blankets. She did stay good and little-girlish till the end of that short poem and through most of the longer one that followed; but then, having put out her cigarette, her body turned and a leg came up and across. By the third poem a hand had crept beneath the bedclothes, and the nightdress ridden so high that the continued wearing of it became absurd. I closed the book. Her face was turned against my shoulder, her eyes closed.