Colin reached for his glass, drained it. He put it back on the table, and quite suddenly, instantly, he was drunk. Around him the conversation resumed, louder, crueller; he heard it in snatches, above his own thoughts, clattering after logic like some unoiled and primitive engine.
A door was creaking. In time, in time, Evelyn’s figure appeared below her at the foot of the stairs, her hand fumbling for the lightswitch that still worked. She snapped it down, and as light burst over Muriel, a frenzy of pain burst out in her body, an unstemmable riot of pain, hers and hers alone.
Evelyn mounted the stairs. “Get up, get up,” she said. “Do as I tell you. You have to. I’m responsible. I’m in charge of you.”
So every day is Mother’s Day, Muriel thought. Her eyes half-closed, she regarded the old woman. Evelyn reached out and took Muriel under her armpits, trying to pull her to her feet. Muriel allowed herself to be lifted, her body hanging like a sack filled with bricks. Evelyn’s chest rose and fell audibly, with a creak that was very like that the furniture made, but which seemed strange from a human person. Her lips turned blue, her face grew pinched, flesh fell away from the bones. When Muriel was good and ready, she put her hands on Evelyn’s shoulders and heaved herself upright.
“It’ll get worse before it gets better,” Evelyn said. “I’m only telling you.”
For years she had been of the opinion that Muriel didn’t feel pain. She got bruised and bled, but she didn’t feel it like any
normal person. What was agony for some could be just a twinge for her. Tonight even her twinge must be regarded.
“I got this dress on the island of Kos,” Elvie was saying. “We went there on honeymoon. It was very cheap, this dress.” A sort of complacent savagery crept into her voice. “But I think it’s rather special. It’s my colour, scarlet. It was too long, you know, so I made them shorten it, there and then. That’s what I call service.” She looked around, ready for a challenge. “That’s what’s wrong with Britain today.”
“Ah,” Edmund said, “how does it feel, I wonder, to be twenty.”
“After we’d been to Kos,” the girl said, “we visited Malta. On both islands we saw all the historic sites.”
“I did the swim,” Frostick said, “the famous swim. As in history.”
“It’s got to be done in armour,” Frank said.
“Where would I get armour from?” Frostick demanded.
“Well, you say swim,” said Edmund, “you say armour, but I question whether it is possible to swim in armour.”
“Not what you would think of as armour,” Frank explained. “Not plate armour. A leather jerkin with things sewn on it. Chain links.”
“Oh, that,” Toye sneered.
“My friend fell in the canal wearing her suede coat,” Gail Colman said. “She sank like a stone.”
Colin pushed his chair back and stood up.
“You can’t go to the lavatory, because I’m going.” Elvie Frostick hoisted herself to her feet, looking belligerent. She thrust her chair away and swayed across the room, her face incandescent; it could be seen that she was in fact little more than a dwarf.
Colin edged himself around to Frank and bent over him, whispering.
“Do you think I could make a phone call?”
“Of course.” Frank gestured expansively. “You don’t have to ask permission, you know where it is.”
“I said I was going,” Elvie yelled back from the doorway. She clung to the door frame like a furious and compressed gorilla.
Colin slipped into the little room that Frank had indicated earlier. It was a junk room indeed, piled high with broken-sided old tea-chests and yellow newspapers. The phone with its stack of directories was on a rickety table in the far corner. Colin swore to himself as he picked his way over the rubbish. How bloody impractical and stupid, how exactly like O’Dwyer. All his respect evaporated, replaced by loathing and fear, as if he were compelled to walk a mountain road in the company of a lunatic. He nudged the directories aside to crouch over the telephone; no one must overhear. Under the topmost book was a copy of
Playboy
and a volume of
Reader’s Digest
. Colin stared at them. He did not know which he found the more shocking. After a moment he recovered himself, but as he began to dial Isabel’s number he was appalled to see that his fingers were trembling.
He tried to work out how many weeks it was since he had spoken to her. Suppose her father answered, and she refused to come to the phone? Or she answered herself, and put it down at the sound of his voice? His heart was thumping against his ribs. Is it so important, he asked himself, is it a matter of life and death? He didn’t know, his brain was befuddled, he couldn’t think straight. He must choose the words, the exact words that would tell her at once—
“Hello?”
“Isabel.”
“Colin? What is it?”
“Listen…”
“What do you want?”
“Something’s happened, ver—”
“Oh? Something’s happened, has it?” Her tone was full of impatience and mockery. “Has Sylvia miscarried? Is that it? So you think that now—well, you can’t. It’s not on, Colin. So if that’s it—go to hell.”
He gasped, and suddenly tears filled his eyes, pricking and demeaning. Where did she learn to talk to him like that? Why did she do it? Was it out of perplexity and confusion greater than his own, or out of some practised hardness inside her? He shuddered, taking a great breath.
“I know where your file is,” he said, as loudly and clearly as he dared.
“What?”
“Your file, your missing file.” As simply as he could, he told her what had happened.
“Wait,” she said, when he finished his account. “Colin, you’ve got me out of bed. I can’t think straight.”
“You’ll have to be quick. I’ll have to ring off in a minute.”
“But I went to the garage three times. They denied they’d ever seen it. Then they—but Colin, how could he write a novel? I don’t know what you mean.”
“He thinks it’s got the makings of a good story.”
“But it’s not a story, it’s just what people do. It’s just a record of what they do.”
“Grist to the mill, he says. Have you ever heard that stupid phrase? What is grist, anyway?”
“Colin, are you drunk?”
“No, not by a long chalk.”
“This isn’t some stupid joke, is it?”
“Of course it’s not a joke. It’s a dinner party. We’ve finished two courses and I’ve come to phone you. I’ve got to be quick.”
“Colin, there’s nothing I can do, is there? I mean, if I came and asked him for it…do you think—?”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea, because how would you have known, and that involves me—”
“Yes, I see, I do see that.”
“If Social Services asked him for it? If you told them?”
“Don’t be stupid, Colin, I’m trying to avoid them knowing, isn’t that the whole point? I don’t want this case discussed at Social Services. Can’t we persuade him?”
“I’ve told you, no.”
“This is awful, Colin, this confidential information lying about, it could cause the most awful blow-up.”
“I know that, I know, you don’t have to persuade me.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“Where it is? What do you mean?”
“In the house.”
“Well…yes. Roughly.”
“Then take it.”
“What?”
“Get it for me, Colin.”
“But Christ, how can I—”
“Do you see any other way?”
“No, but—”
“Phone me tomorrow.”
He heard a click. The line was dead. She didn’t even say thank you, he thought. And she hadn’t told him what the file looked like, or whose name was on it. Presumably he would know it when he saw it. Gently he replaced the receiver. Someone was calling him.
“Sidney! Sidney!” That was Frank. Now Frank thought it was a big joke to call him Sidney. “Sidney, come for your chocolate mousse.”
At least, Evelyn thought, the turn of events had not taken her by surprise. She had dreaded being roused from sleep, pulled up from her musty undersea dreams to find the girl and her half-born child scraping at the bedroom door. What if there were difficulties? Of course, it had to be considered, she had run over the question in her mind. If Muriel looked like dying, she
would fetch the doctor. If it came to that…she could not stomach being haunted by that composite creature that would be Muriel and the half-emerged child; no, she could not stomach it. They would want a room to themselves, to hiss and cavort and bang on the walls; ah, the gay young dead. Soon she would be forced to live in the kitchen.
She left the lights burning all over the house. She hoped that it would not attract attention from the outside, but she had enough to do without being hampered by things following her down the hall. She made Muriel a cup of tea and let her have it lying on the bed. She was the soul of kindness. Then she took out the first-aid books and her reading glasses. She boiled the scissors for ten minutes. She did not think they would be much use, but you cannot get scissors sharpened nowadays. In her drawer in the kitchen cabinet she found some lengths of string, which would do for tying off the cord; they were rolled up with the remains of her paper bags, from her tenants’ tearing days. She could not see her pile of farthings, and spent a minute or two rooting around for them. She sighed. She would have to ask Muriel about it, when Muriel was more in command of herself. “I do like everything in its place,” she said to herself. She got ready a blanket for the baby, a bit worn and musty but the correct size; it must have been one of Muriel’s. She took up some aspirin and a glass of tonic wine; but when around midnight Muriel screamed out in pain, she lost her nerve and slapped her repeatedly until she lay quiet, with two tears rolling down her grey cheeks.
When Colin re-entered the dining-room, he saw at once that the situation had deteriorated. Several more bottles of wine had been opened, and Charmian had returned to gin; the bottle stood by her elbow. Charmian’s precise tones had become even sharper, as if her tongue were edged with glass. Sylvia looked up at him anxiously. He attempted a smile, a reassuring smile;
his face felt stiff. Edmund Toye was explaining how after a hard week at the Teacher Training College he liked to support his local football team and stand on the terraces, wearing a cap and bellowing. He described it as a most valuable emotional release.
“A. J. Ayer does it,” he said. “Logical Positivism.”
“Go on,” Frostick said.
“He’s Arsenal.”
Colin took his seat. He pushed his plate away. He certainly wasn’t going to eat chocolate mousse. He picked up his brimming glass and took a gulp of dessert wine. He did not notice the taste; it could have been water, or vodka. His throat was dry. Stewart Colman pushed the bottle down to him.
“Refill, Colin. Might as well. When in Rome et cetera.”
Colin noticed that Colman seemed relatively sober still. And Sylvia too; she sat with an expression both hunted and mutinous, which she had assumed as soon as she saw Frank’s white shoes and which the meal and the drinks had done nothing to alter. But then, he thought, for what I have to do next it would be as well if they were all drunk. He shifted his attention from his glass to find Charmian’s eyes fixed upon him. He lifted his head.
“Do you know,” she said distinctly, “he hasn’t
got
spondylitis?”
“I suspected as much,” Colin said.
“He said it because he thought it sounded clever. In fact it’s not an intellectual’s disease at all. I should think you might get it from carrying heavy weights.”
“I should think you might,” Colin said.
“In that case it surprises me that half the population of Africa hasn’t got it, from carrying things on their heads. It may be that they have. We do not comprehend,” she said, shaking her head, “we seldom take the time to try to comprehend, the sufferings of the Third World.”
At that moment there was a loud clatter just outside the room, and Elvie stood in the doorway holding by the hand a
bald sandy-coloured man of about sixty, with moles and bristles on his shining scalp. He wore sagging twill trousers and a leather-patched jacket. The man’s mouth hung open, but it was difficult to tell whether he was inebriated, or meant to utter a greeting, given time. It was possible that this was the only member of the party for which the excuse could be made that, when sober, he appeared drunk. Locked together, he and Elvie staggered across the room towards the table.
Now Charmian displayed the first real sign of animation since her discomfiture over the squid. She sat bolt upright, her hands clasped.
“I say, Yarker. How clever of you, Yarker, to know that we wouldn’t get to pudding till midnight.”
“Pudding?” said Yarker. “No pudding, whisky for me.”
“Oh, you are tiresome, Yarker, we’ve finished all the whisky.”
“Eh?” said Yarker.
“S’right,” Frank said. “Colman here’s been mixing cocktails.”
“You say cocktails,” Toye put in, “but does anyone, I wonder, really know the derivation of the term, ‘cocktail’?”
His glass halfway to his lips, Colin glared at Colman. If Colman had been sampling his own product, his last hope of sane assistance had gone. Elvie had now resumed her seat, and as if in early confirmation of his fears, Colman rose from the table, lurched across to her, and pressed his mouth into her stout shoulder. Brian Frostick watched from under lowered eyelids. Gail Colman stared at her husband’s strange parti-coloured beard moving across the girl’s flesh like some small browsing animal; she pursed her mouth, and sat isolated in a moody silence, looking as if she were accustomed to this and had been waiting for it all evening. When Colman raised his head, a large half-moon of teethmarks could be seen above Elvie’s meaty left breast. Perhaps anaesthetised by alcohol, she had not made a sound. As Colman straightened up, Gail’s
fingers crept across the table towards Colin’s untouched mousse; she stood up, drew back her arm, and with an Amazonian heave of her bosom lobbed the heavy glass dish at his head. It struck him a glancing blow, and a gelatinous mess slid down his shirt front. He swayed slightly, then stretched his arms wide and thrust his head forward, as if he were in the pillory. “More, more,” Edmund Toye cried. Her eyes narrowed, Gail Colman reached for the pepper-mill. Sylvia shot out of her chair in alarm.