Authors: Elizabeth Jane Howard
Some of this blind vehemence overran him even after fifty years, and he bumped heavily into a stranger: they recoiled with dazed aggression and apology, and he was back in New York, shivering
from the jolt and needing coffee. He looked round him, having no idea how far he had walked, and made for the nearest drug store across the street. It was while he was waiting for the coffee to
cool that he saw a headline in the paper lying on the counter:
ATLANTIC STORM
:
TANKER COLLISION OFF CAPE COD
.
‘QUEEN
MARY’ DELAYED
.
The whole day changed: he had been certain of it and shivering in the heartless spring air of the street – the sunlight cold and dazzling – the angles of the shadows sharp and deep
and crazy and turned at their centre to cavernous draughts: he had felt heavy and cold and old; hemmed in by foregone conclusions, imprisoned by mechanical experience, actually ‘doing
time’ with this day: but now, sitting up by the soda fountain with bars of dusty sunlight round him, his hands warm round the coffee cup and the newspaper spread like a proclamation of chance
before him, these little currents of warmth and light and uncertainty brought him to life; the atoms of dust were distinct in the sun – each particle seeming to have a gentle mysterious
purpose – so that it was like looking at a magnified bloodstream. I am sitting on this stool, a small and ageing man, and at this moment anonymous to everybody but myself –
there’s balance for you – that’s the right way round for once. I have a power, a little beyond me, to design a certain kind of communication for people who have not got this
power. I can show them a certain sense of proportion – give them some balance – which is all that design is for – to put something in its right place in relation to whatever lies
on either side of it. Proportion is always beautiful: beauty is always significant; therefore design is always necessary, and I am one of the thousands of designers. He felt an impersonal joy about
all this, and looked again at the slow unearthly movement of the dust in the bar of sunlight. He was warm and smiling from the centre of his heart and he kept his head very still until the glow had
spread to it, as he had learned long ago not to fly to a piece of paper with the first little vestige of an idea, which merely blunts the memory and renders it indiscriminate. He remembered an
argument with Jimmy about this, because not immediately recording them meant that one forgot some of the ideas, and Jimmy had thought this lazy and wasteful. He couldn’t make Jimmy understand
that it wasn’t: that it was wasteful and lazy not to make one’s memory work for one; it had to select what was worth remembering and then wait for it – instead of premature
explosions on paper – like a bird breaking open an egg she has just laid.
He saw the boy who had served his coffee eyeing him with a kind of apathetic curiosity: nothing would surprise
him
, unfortunately. He asked for his check, what the time was, and what
street he was on, and the boy provided this dull information as though his customer was drunk.
As he walked back to his hotel he reflected that usually at this point of his walks – on his return – he was consciously bracing himself, storing up his private life to last for the
day when he did not expect to have any, and focusing his patience and attention: but that now patience did not seem to be called for, and his attention was not straining after any particular
direction but at ease, and therefore ready.
‘. . . and so,’ he finished, ‘I thought that as I had nothing worse to do, you and I would spend the day.’
She sneezed and continued to look at him expectantly.
‘Until the boat arrives at six o’clock. Or do you want a day off to yourself?’
She shook her head. They were breakfasting in his sitting room: she was eating waffles with maple syrup, and he was drinking coffee.
‘What would you like to do, Alberta?’
‘Tell me what there is.’
He told her all the things he could think of – the sightseeing – going to the top of the Empire State Building, or Radio City – the Frick Collection, the Bronx Zoo, Greenwich
Village, shopping – having a Chinese lunch, etc. etc. – and she listened with the impassive but acute attention of a child. When he had run out of what he could immediately think of
– and it was surprisingly little – she sneezed again, and he said severely: ‘But if you’re getting a cold we shan’t do any of it.’
‘I’m not, I’m not.’
‘Well, hay fever. You’re probably allergic to maple syrup.’
‘I’m not allergic to
anything
!’ she said and scraped her plate defiantly, but she had gone pink, and presently she added: ‘I’m sorry, but excitement makes me
sneeze. I’ve been sneezing ever since we got here, but naturally I have tried to be unobtrusive about it.’
‘You’ve succeeded,’ he said solemnly.
‘I expect to outgrow it, of course.’
‘Excitement, or sneezing?’
‘Sneezing first.’
‘Do you mean that you
want
to outgrow excitement?’
‘I – no, I don’t mean that. I mean that I’d like to be much
more
excited about fewer things. Perhaps even one thing in the end. May I say what I think about the
day now? I wish to change the subject.’
‘I think we should do what we have to do first, and then see what happens.’
‘Move the luggage to the apartment?’
‘Yes, and see if the woman did come and clean it, and everything is ready for Mrs Joyce. Perhaps she has had a horrid time in the ship if there was a storm.’
‘You are quite right. Let’s go.’
‘I’d better see if the letters have come.’ She went to the telephone, and looked at him questioningly. He nodded. She was wearing a sweater which he recognized as
Lillian’s – a very pale fawn which she had said didn’t suit her skin in winter. With it she wore a dark grey flannel skirt, very old, but well polished English brogues and the
stockings he had given her. He longed suddenly to take her out and buy her everything she could possibly want – then he remembered Lillian’s remark about Gloria Williams’
stockings – and a whole set of extremes reared protectively in his mind, hedging any past from this present – forcing all comparisons to such a background that they were barely
distinguishable.
She was asking for the bill to be sent up with the letters. Her high, clear little voice had a command about it which was, or seemed to be, unconscious, and therefore agreeable. She projects
herself, he thought, thinking of the exhausting hours he and Jimmy had spent trying to get various people to do this in a theatre. The letters arrived, and there were two from England for her. She
asked if she might open them, and watching her pleasure in the contents of the first one, he realized that he couldn’t remember when he had last had a letter which he was eager to open.
‘Are your family well?’ he asked when she had finished reading.
She nodded: she seemed so full of their news that he said: ‘I like hearing about your family – do tell me.’
‘Serena and Mary both have colds which they say they caught by accident, but Aunt Topsy doesn’t believe that illness is accidental, so they are in bad odour. Napoleon has had five
more children, but we were expecting her to: she is a cat; she was called Napoleon before we realized who she was. Mrs Facks says the world is coming to an end on November 11th and Papa does not
agree with her, but he says that the employment of reason would be cruel as she has so little security. Mrs Facks works for us – off and on – because she has so many children. They live
on chips and tomatoes, and Aunt Topsy says she keeps them under a paving stone – they are a very queer colour for people – but they are awfully strong really, because they’re
always having mumps and things and it doesn’t seem to impair their strength. Serena has decided to be a doctor for her career, which is much more suitable than her previous choice.’
‘What was that?’
‘An admiral,’ she replied briefly, and folded the letter.
‘What about your brothers?’
‘Humphrey is at school, and Clem is still down from Oxford, but staying with an extremely rich friend in Yorkshire which worries Papa, as he says it is healthy to have ideas above your
station, but useless to get ideas which aren’t your station at all, and he’s afraid Clem may with his friend.’
‘And how is your papa?’
‘Well. This is my aunt’s letter, he has simply put a postscript saying mind the traffic being different in America and his blessing. The other one is from my uncle, and I’m
going to save it up for a bit.’
‘Well, I – we – are going to save all mine,’ he said, and stuffed them into his pocket.
Outside, there was far more wind than there had been on his early walk: the sky was hurried by clouds — the streets glittered – and there had been a shower. When they had visited the
apartment earlier in the week they had discovered it all shrouded in darkness by curtains and blinds. It had been hot, as the heating was full on; it smelled of stale cigarettes, and when they had
turned on some of the lights they were presented with luxury smitten by contemporary squalor. Full ash trays, innumerable dirty glasses of every description, coffee cups, a great bowl of dead
dogwood, nuts all over the floor: in the bed rooms, unmade beds, tissue paper, crumpled Kleenex, and dirty cotton wool: the bathrooms were full of used bathtowels and razor blades, the tiles
smeared with toothpaste, and in one a stack of newspapers had been put in the bath on to which the shower – which could not be thoroughly turned off – had dripped. The kitchen was
spattered with dirty crockery, cartons of half-eaten food, and open tins whose oil or syrup seemed to have reached every available surface. Over everything there was dust, and above the dust a
layer of irresponsibility which was somehow disgusting. ‘Really, it’s as though they were rich monkeys,’ Alberta had said when they had surveyed it. ‘I mean not quite sure
what anything is for,’ she had added. They had seen die porter, who assured them that a woman came every day to clean up, and that all would certainly be well by the time they wanted the
apartment. Alberta was quite right: they ought to make sure of everything – see that the right beds were made up, and get coffee and flowers and things like that . . .
The porter was a different one: he produced a key, put them into the lift with their luggage, and vanished. Alberta opened the door: it was dark; it was hot; it smelled the same. In silence,
they switched on the lights: the dogwood was a little deader, and the odour of its decay was the only addition to a scene otherwise unchanged. He felt suddenly, furiously angry. But for the merest
chance, he might have brought Lillian back – to this. He walked to the main window in the living room – he was so angry that his feet hurt on the ground – jerked up the blind, and
wrenched open a window. That was not enough: he seized the dogwood and flung it out of the window, and turned round for the bowl which had contained it, but it had fallen to the ground and a sticky
green stream oozed from it. That was the last straw. He picked up the bowl, and hurled it into the fireplace where it broke with a cheap dry crash. Alberta said: ‘I know exactly how you feel,
but this is all my fault, so please don’t break any more.’
‘That bloody woman – that damn porter – what do you mean,
your
fault?’
‘I should have seen whether she came before today. It may not be the woman’s fault: she may be ill, and the porter has changed. Anyway, I’m your secretary, it’s my
responsibility and I’m very sorry. Now we’d better clear it up.’
‘I won’t have you clearing up this disgusting shambles. I’ll call the porter. He can damn well get someone to do it.’
‘All right.’
‘Well – what are you doing then?’ He stared at her aggressively, while he jogged the telephone.
‘Opening a few windows: I don’t know how else to stop central heating.’
There was no reply from the porter and he went down in search of him. The situation was not Alberta’s fault: it was he who had been so confident and airy about the arrangements. His temper
cooled in the lift, and by the time he had found the porter, and had a long and dispiriting talk with him, it had frozen to despair. The porter was new – the other man had gone sick –
nothing was known of the daily woman, not even her address: in the two days that he’d been on the job five tenants had asked the porter if he knew of a daily woman; he hadn’t known one
and he didn’t know one now. It was not his responsibility to see to the inside of apartments – he had enough to do as it was. Someone had just thrown a bunch of dead flowers out of a
window – they had fallen on to a very, very sensitive dog who had bitten a truck driver who had been delivering a monkey at the service door. He was sore because he’d been bitten on the
sidewalk and his union only insured him in the truck, and the owner of the dog said it was in the middle of analysis and being provoked to aggression just when it was beginning to understand its
social responsibilities was very, very bad for it, as if
he
– the porter – was supposed to be responsible for anything tenants threw out of windows: the last block he’d
worked in the windows didn’t open and things were more civilized. For all he cared the tenants could throw themselves out – then at least the cops could take care of them and he
wouldn’t have to sort things out. Meanwhile here was the monkey in a basket cage marked: ‘I eat four bananas a day please do not give me more out of mistaken kindness’ and no
address. Had he, by any chance, ordered a monkey? Well, that left him with a cool seventy-four apartments to call up. Emmanuel looked at the monkey, who, grasping the bars of its cage with tiny
grape-coloured hands and glaring hungrily at them was clearly longing for some mistaken kindness. It did not seem as though anyone was going to help anybody. He gave the porter a cigarette, and the
porter said he guessed they both better sort out their own problems.
He decided to organize a laundry and a cleaner and book an hotel for a couple of nights until everything was sorted out, but he had reckoned without Alberta. He found her methodically at work.
The ash trays, glasses, and cups had disappeared from the living room. The flat was light, imbued with fresh air, and she was on the floor sorting and folding dirty linen and making a list of
it.