The Long Prospect (29 page)

Arm in arm they faced the two girls and laughed affectionately. Mr Watts said, twinkling, ‘Someone'll have to look after your grandmother when you're gone, won't they, Emily? Do you think I'd do? Would you put in a good word for me, huh?'

Patty and Emily giggled with muffled hysteria and dared not look at each other. They tried to get themselves out of the room, but Lilian stopped them, saying almost experimentally, ‘Why don't you sing a little song for Mr Watts before you go?'

This gave the girls reason to laugh again, and drained off the dangerous surplus of mirth.

Dotty came to say goodbye, and then no umbrellas could be found so they had to run bareheaded through the downpour, through the lurid stormy night and pungent rainy smells to the garage.

There was a moment of elated pattings of coats and hair, a sensation of sparkling eyes and glowing cheeks, of having successfully brought off something potentially dangerous. After that, they deflated, saw the table, the bicycles; smelled, instead of earth and damp wool and hair, petrol.

In semi-darkness Mr Watts struggled round the side of the car with the suitcase, scraping it against the wall, and catching part of himself or his clothing on a handle. There was a noise of the boot being opened.

Bored to be still for even so short a time, Lilian thrust herself decisively forward to squeeze into the car.

‘If we wait,' she said to Patty, who followed her, ‘we'll only get wet again outside.'

They snaked through the few inches that were all the doors would open, and settled back on the leather seats.

According to custom, Emily stayed to switch off the light when the car had gone. But there was scarcely time for her to look, and none for her to frame a message: going, her wrists ached, her teeth ached, and when her fingers clicked off the switch she sent an apologetic glance into the darkness before she was swept away.

Tonight the future was close, about to be invaded. Things were always happening lately and there never was, would never be, time enough to sit and think about what it was that was so worrying. She seemed perpetually to be looking over her shoulder without time to find the words she ought to leave behind.

At the Horizon Hotel, close to the railway station, opposite a blackness that was the ocean, they had dinner in the grill-room. And while Mr Watts and Lilian sat at a corner table against the wall, Emily and Patty sat on stools arranged round a counter. They stared at the murals—reproductions of aboriginal drawings of hunters, animals, and boomerangs—and carried on a stilted conversation in high false accents, enjoying themselves, exaltedly conscious of their conspicuous position, and the imperative, adult reason for their presence here. But after a few minutes they fell silent, for apart from the fact that neither had much idea of what actually was said when sophisticated women ate out at a grill-room, there was so much that was distracting—the vast stretches of cutlery, the mysterious but delicious food, the waiters, the little hats of feathers and veiling...

Behind, from Lilian and Mr Watts, came low, rhythmical laughter which made Patty turn on Emily a sidelong glance of slightly malicious curiosity, but she, enduring a mouthful of something unrecognizable to her palate, batted her eyelids at Patty, and absorbed her look, remaining ignorant of its cause.

In a state of semi-coma they waited for lemon meringue pie and ice-cream. During this period, familiarity with their surroundings having brought about at least an assumption of disenchantment, they remembered that they were best friends, parting, and gazed inarticulately at each other.

It was too late now to say anything positive about their friendship, and before it had always been too early. A premature reference would have been in excruciating taste: any was now impossible.

On the station platform it was very cold. They stood around waiting for the train to come in. Constantly assaulted by the wild shrieks and blasts of shunting engines, eyes tormented by flying grit, they stood, four in a row, collars up round their ears, blankly and rather bitterly watching the other passengers and porters.

In single file they trooped through the crowd to buy magazines, chocolates, and nuts—large quantities of each, for Lilian, unused to travelling, looked on it as an endurance test—something against which enough precautions could not be taken. It was only after she had stared all round to catch the general opinion that she was dissuaded from plying Emily with cheese sandwiches and date rolls.

‘It's not that long. She's had dinner.'

But feeling that she had been restrained from a gesture of affection and kindliness, Lilian closed her mouth tightly and for a few minutes looked at no one.

Unconsciously she revenged herself when the train came in by relaying to the entire compartment, through the medium of her chosen confidante, a bathetic biography of her ‘only grandchild'. Not recognizing herself in the wistful—and, she privately thought, weak-minded—heroine Emily went red under the interest of the listeners: she and Patty rolled their eyes at each other and remained dumb. Mr Watts smoked in, and successfully blocked, the corridor.

Winding up her tale, Lilian threw a critical glance at the other occupants of the carriage, smiled and nodded to the middle-aged woman she had been addressing, and briskly kissed Emily. Tapping her on the knee, she bade her be good to her mother, and to write sometimes. Rising, she gathered Mr Watts and Patty and was gone.

It was too sudden. Emily craned out of the window but there was no sign of them—only porters and grown-up people pushing past, eyes fixed compulsively ahead. She sank back. Lilian had said goodbye; the others had had time only to work themselves up to a smile, a half-phrase, a lift of the hand.

She herself had been still taking in Lilian's injunctions, listening in a dazzled, perfunctory way, seeing the row of white faces opposite, thinking, even as she answered: don't think I'll ever forgive you.

But now it was noisy everywhere; the lights on the station began to go past the window. All at once she wanted not to leave Lilian, whom she at least knew, or Patty, or that empty room, or the river.

The station had gone, and all external light. The train rocked and rattled and, it was to be supposed, went forward through the blackness that enclosed it.

The top of the raw yellow stake, around which the unenergetic rose bush languidly grew, drove small indentations into the palm of Emily's hand, and gave off little bits of itself which were to come away on her skin when later she moved from the garden.

One arm lifted to the stake, the other bent across her waist, Emily balanced on the low stone retaining wall in front of the flats, in front of the long rose-garden.

Behind her, the building—a creamy cube of brick roofed with multi-coloured tiles—gleamed inoffensively in the late afternoon sunshine, its windows dazzled to black and gold. It wore the look of a building wherein food is being prepared, steam rising from saucepans.

Back to the road, separated from it by two older blocks of flats, it faced the west: it was the last building on the flank of a hill which, below the wall where Emily stood, was covered still by a rough tangle of bush—stunted gums, scrub, and blackberry bushes over which the strangling tide of convolvulus threw its blue and white flowers—for a distance of fifty yards or so.

With a shocking finality then the slope ended in a meeting with a bare flat plain of withered grass—a park, a playing-field on which nothing was played. To the right and straight ahead the park extended for some way, but to the left, just not level with the flats, a semi-circular wall held back the water of the harbour.

This then was the farthest reach of one finger of the Pacific, this bay, this so small as to be nameless bay.

The opposite land—unbuilt, hilly, wooded—curved low, dark-green, ideally rounded and gentle down to a rocky shore and the water. It was a bird sanctuary, Emily had been told, it might never change. It was certainly not
now
to be touched.

The knowledge that it was meant for birds, sacred to them, peopled the small headland hill, in Emily's mind, with bluebirds, wings, cries; with great colonies of birds, cool and busy under the trees' layered leaves.

Empty rowing-boats anchored in the shallow water of the bay had all begun to swing round with the gentle force of the rising water. And the sun shone on their white-painted, water-wet sides; on the occupied, incoming sea; on the tops of the trees; on the dull playing-field.

Soon it would be gone, soon it would be dark, but meantime the earth gave up earthy evening scents, dampness in spite of heat. Frail pink clouds feathered the translucent sky and Emily clutched at the stake and breathed the air, looked with unthinking eyes, was uplifted, transported, gave herself to the present beauty and the coming night. With cold smoothing hands the moment unfretted fear. She could have sung some wild wordless chant. In a trance she watched a bird soar homewards, disappear.

The climax past, the clouds paled and wisped, lay streaked and sheer across a deeper sky. Her eyes suddenly closed tight, hand pressing the stake, hand clutching her waist, Emily thought: oh surely, surely! Surely, surely, surely...

When Harry said that, Paula giggled and he, deprecating his wit, drew a pattern on the table-cloth with his fork and would not catch her eye.

Paula giggled again, a curious little neighing sound, now frequently to be heard from her, and still throwing over her shoulder at him that awed, so flattering look, turned to the oven.

Then he gave a dry chuckle and cocked an eye up at her, but she was busy. A trifle let-down, his mouth fell into a sour curve—but for an instant only. He saw the electric mixing-machine, white and shining silver. He looked at the modern unit where Paula was working, at the green plants on the small waist-high wall that divided the room.

‘Paula! I've been figuring out—' He waited till she came over to him. ‘I've been figuring out how much I've saved by getting this stuff wholesale.'

Her expression—intended to convey extreme interest—was apprehensive, and Harry did not find apprehension over money matters amiss.

‘Three hundred,' he said quietly, raising his brows, looking down at the cutlery.

‘No!'

‘That's right!' He bowed his head, then glanced up at her as if to say, ‘Make what you like of it.'

‘Oh, Harry, that's wonderful!' She laughed and thrashed the air with a spoon. ‘And you just say it like that. “Three hundred.”' She came round the side of the wall to admire him at closer quarters. She had about her a high excessive air of adulation. Again, it did not seem to Harry overdone.

He said kindly, ‘It was old Watkins who got it for me. He knows all these jokers in the furniture trade.'

‘Still...!'

‘Old Watkins, he'd do anything for me.'

But Paula's big grey eyes assured him that she really would not allow him to give the credit to old Watkins.

In silence, rubbing soft fingers over the golden hairs on his arms, he watched her. Suddenly he said, ‘Where's er...Where is she?'

‘Emily? In the garden, I think.'

‘She ought to be up here helping you.'

‘I don't need her. She really doesn't know how to do anything, anyway.'

‘It's time she did.'

Paula suppressed a sigh and, her preparations finished, rinsed her hands under the tap. She was supported through this moment of less than contentment by the most stable of her joys—the flat, its gleaming furnishings, its waxy cleanness. Vague peaceful sensations of satisfaction came like small waves to wash away the marks left on the sand.

For both she and Harry there had been greater gain in their reunion than either had thought possible. Above all, there was the prestige of respectability. They were married, together, with one child and a nice home—in a similar condition, that is, to most people of any consequence. Physically they were satisfied. And from day to day Harry rejoiced in a resident audience, and applause. For Paula, he was her master, her unruly child. He was the magician who had saved to produce the flat and all its beautiful contents.

Yes, she liked her new rôle. She liked the costumes and the scenery. Ruthlessly she sacrificed all that was left of herself to the part. She was submissive, eager, impressed. She teased and glorified. She was alert. Harry was a man and no one knew his faults better than she. Her care was necessary to keep the balance. He was vain, touchy, selfish. Sometimes already she had despised him, yet she was able to think of herself as happy.

If there was a flaw—and there was—it was their daughter. For one thing—admittedly not her fault—she was older than they would have chosen her to be. A sprite of four or five with curly hair and nice little ways was Paula's wistful ideal, and Harry's, apart from the fact that he wanted a son, was much the same. And then the incident that had precipitated their coming together had not been an auspicious beginning to a new life. They felt they could not really trust her after that.

‘Always mooning round the garden,' her father complained, ‘but ask her to
do
anything...'

‘She does what you tell her. That digging was quite hard work, though,' Paula excused her. ‘She's only young.'

‘You
did it,' he pointed out, ‘and she's bigger than you.'

‘Oh, well, she's only young.'

Harry shifted his elbows on the table and glared at her aggressively. ‘Paula, do you know what
I
was doing when I was her age?
I
was—'

‘Oh! Everything's ready, Harry. I'll just call Em and then we'll start.' Smiling placatingly, she went to the door.

Moodily Harry watched her. His marvellous, his glorious announcement had been forgotten. Just like that. Three hundred. She said, ‘Imagine that! How clever!' and that was that. What was the saving of three hundred compared with calling her daughter in for dinner? A man was just a machine to make money.