The Collected Stories Page 5

  ‘Elizabeth –’

  ‘You didn’t have cigarette burns all over your clothes. You didn’t smell of toothpaste when you should have smelt of drink. You stand there, pathetically, Sunday after Sunday, trying to keep a conversation going. D’you know what I feel?’

  ‘I love –’

  ‘I feel sorry for you.’

  He shook his head. There was no need to feel sorry for him, he said, remembering suddenly the elderly assistant in Frith’s Patisserie and remembering also, for some reason, the woman in Hyde Park who peculiarly had said that he wasn’t shaved. He looked down at his clothes and saw the burn marks she had mentioned. ‘We think it would be better’, said the voice of Sir Gerald Travers unexpectedly in his mind.

  ‘I’ll make some coffee,’ said Elizabeth.

  She left him. He had been cruel, and then Diana had been cruel, and now Elizabeth was cruel because it was her right and her instinct to be so. He recalled with vividness Diana’s face in those first moments on the train, her eyes looking at him, her voice. ‘You have lost all dignity,’ Elizabeth had whispered, in the darkness, at night. ‘I despise you for that.’ He tried to stand up but found the effort beyond him. He raised the green glass to his lips. His eyes closed and when he opened them again he thought for a drunken moment that he was back in the past, in the middle of his happy marriage. He wiped at his face with a handkerchief.

  He saw across the room the bottle of Gordon’s gin so nicely matching the green glasses, and the lime-juice, a lighter shade of green. He made the journey, his legs striking the arms of chairs. There wasn’t much gin in the bottle. He poured it all out; he added lime-juice, and drank it.

  In the hall he could hear voices, his children’s voices in the bathroom, Elizabeth and the man speaking quietly in the kitchen. ‘Poor wretch,’ Elizabeth was saying. He left the flat and descended to the ground floor.

  The rain was falling heavily. He walked through it, thinking that it was better to go, quietly and without fuss. It would all work out; he knew it; he felt it definitely in his bones. He’d arrive on Sunday, a month or so before their birthday, and something in Elizabeth’s face would tell him that the dark-haired man had gone for ever, as Diana had gone. By then he’d be established again, with better prospects than the red-faced Sir Gerald Travers had ever offered him. On their birthday they’d both apologize to one another, wiping the slate clean: they’d start again. As he crossed the Edgware Road to the public house in which he always spent an hour or so on Sunday nights, he heard his own voice murmuring that it was understandable that she should have taken it out on him, that she should have tried to hurt him by saying he’d gone to seed. Naturally, she’d say a thing like that; who could blame her after all she’d been through? At night in the flat in Barnes he watched television until the programmes closed down. He usually had a few drinks, and as often as not he dropped off to sleep with a cigarette between his fingers: that was how the burns occurred on his clothes.

  He nodded to himself as he entered the saloon bar, thinking he’d been wise not to mention any of that to Elizabeth. It would only have annoyed her, having to listen to a lot of stuff about late-night television and cigarettes. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, he thought, Thursday, Friday. On Saturday he’d buy the meringues and brandy-snaps, and then it would be Sunday. He’d make the sandwiches listening to The Archers, and at three o’clock he’d ring the bell of the flat. He smiled in the saloon bar, thinking of that, seeing in his mind the faces of his children and the beautiful face of their mother. He’d planted an idea in Elizabeth’s mind and even though she’d been a bit shirty she’d see when she thought about it that it was what she wanted, too.

  He went on drinking gin and lime-juice, quietly laughing over being so upset when the children had first mentioned the dark-haired man who took them on to his knee. Gin and lime-juice was a Gimlet, he told the barmaid. She smiled at him. He was celebrating, he said, a day that was to come. It was ridiculous, he told her, that a woman casually met on a train should have created havoc, that now, at the end of it all, he should week by week butter bread for Marmite and tomato sandwiches. ‘D’you understand me?’ he drunkenly asked the barmaid. ‘It’s too ridiculous to be true – that man will go because none of it makes sense the way it is.’ The barmaid smiled again and nodded. He bought her a glass of beer, which was something he did every Sunday night. He wept as he paid for it, and touched his cheeks with the tips of his fingers to wipe away the tears. Every Sunday he wept, at the end of the day, after he’d had his access. The barmaid raised her glass, as always she did. They drank to the day that was to come, when the error he had made would be wiped away, when the happy marriage could continue. ‘Ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Of course it is.’

  The General’s Day

  General Suffolk pulled on two grey knitted socks and stood upright. Humming a marching air, he walked to the bathroom, intent upon his morning shave. The grey socks were his only apparel and he noticed as he passed the mirror of his wardrobe the white spare body of an elderly man reflected without flattery. He voiced no comment nor did he ponder, even in passing, upon this pictured nakedness. He was used to the sight; and had, over the years, accepted the changes as they came. Still humming, he half filled the wash-basin with water. It felt keenly warm on his fingers, a circumstance he inwardly congratulated himself on.

  With deft strokes the General cleared his face of lather and whisker, savouring the crisp rasp of razor upon flesh. He used a cut-throat article and when shorn to his satisfaction wiped it on a small absorbent pad, one of a series he had collected from the bedrooms of foreign hotels. He washed, dressed, set his moustache as he liked to sport it, and descended to his kitchen.

  The General’s breakfast was simple: an egg poached lightly, two slices of toast and a pot of tea. It took him ten minutes to prepare and ten to consume. As he finished he heard the footsteps of the woman who daily came to work for him. They were slow, dragging footsteps implying the bulk they gracelessly shifted. The latch of the door rose and fell and Mrs Hinch, string bags and hairnet, cigarette cocked from the corner of her mouth, stood grinning before him. ‘Hullo,’ this woman said, adding as she often did, ‘my dear.’

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Hinch.’

  Mrs Hinch stripped herself of bags, coat and cigarette with a single complicated gesture. She grinned again at the General, replaced her cigarette and set to clearing the table.

  ‘I shall walk to the village this morning,’ General Suffolk informed her. ‘It seems a pleasant morning to dawdle through. I shall take coffee at the brown café and try my luck at picking up some suitable matron.’

  Mrs Hinch was accustomed to her employer’s turn of speech. She laughed shrilly at this sally, pleased that the man would be away for the morning. ‘Ah, General, you’ll be the death of us,’ she cried; and planned for his absence a number of trunk calls on his telephone, a leisurely bath and the imbibing of as much South African sherry as she considered discreet.

  ‘It is Saturday if I am not mistaken,’ the General went on. ‘A good morning for my plans. Is it not a fact that there are stout matrons in and out of the brown café by the score on a Saturday morning?’

  ‘Why, sure, General,’ said Mrs Hinch, anxious to place no barrier in his way. ‘Why, half the county goes to the brown café of a Saturday morning. You are certain to be successful this time.’

  ‘Cheering words, Mrs Hinch, cheering words. It is one thing to walk through the campion-clad lanes on a June morning, but quite another to do so with an objective one is sanguine of achieving.’

  ‘This is your day, General. I feel it in my bones. I said it to Hobson as I left. “This is a day for the General,” I said. “The General will do well today,” I said.’

  ‘And Hobson, Mrs Hinch? Hobson replied?’

  Again Mrs Hinch, like a child’s toy designed for the purpose, shrilled her merriment.

  ‘General, General, Hobson’s my little bird.’

  The General, rising from the table,
frowned. ‘Do you imagine I am unaware of that? Since for six years you have daily informed me of the fact. And why, pray, since the bird is a parrot, should the powers of speech be beyond it? It is not so with other parrots.’

  ‘Hobson’s silent, General. You know Hobson’s silent.’

  ‘Due to your lethargy, Mrs Hinch. No bird of his nature need be silent: God does not intend it. He has taken some pains to equip the parrot with the instruments of speech. It is up to you to pursue the matter in a practical way by training the animal. A child, Mrs Hinch, does not remain ignorant of self-expression. Nor of the ability to feed and clean itself. The mother teaches, Mrs Hinch. It is part of nature. So with your parrot.’

  Enthusiastic in her own defence, Mrs Hinch said: ‘I have brought up seven children. Four girls and three boys.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe. I am in no position to question this. But indubitably with your parrot you are flying in the face of nature.’

  ‘Oh, General, never. Hobson’s silent and that’s that.’

  The General regarded his adversary closely. ‘You miss my point,’ he said drily; and repeating the remark twice he left the room.

  In his time General Suffolk had been a man of more than ordinary importance. As a leader and a strategist in two great wars he had risen rapidly to the heights implied by the title he bore. He had held in his hands the lives of many thousands of men; his decisions had more than once set the boundaries of nations. Steely intelligence and physical prowess had led him, in their different ways, to glories that few experience at Roeux; and at Monchy-le-Preux he had come close to death. Besides all that, there was about the General a quality that is rare in the ultimate leaders of his army: he was to the last a rake, and for this humanity a popular figure. He had cared for women, for money, for alcohol of every sort; but in the end he had found himself with none of these commodities. In his modest cottage he was an elderly man with a violent past; with neither wife nor riches nor cellar to help him on his way.

  Mrs Hinch had said he would thrive today. That the day should be agreeable was all he asked. He did not seek merriness or reality or some moment of truth. He had lived for long enough to forgo excitement; he had had his share; he wished only that the day, and his life in it, should go the way he wished.

  In the kitchen Mrs Hinch scoured the dishes briskly. She was not one to do things by halves; hot water and detergent in generous quantities was her way.

  ‘Careful with the cup handles,’ the General admonished her. ‘Adhesive for the repair of such a fracture has apparently not yet been perfected. And the cups themselves are valuable.’

  ‘Oh they’re flimsy, General. So flimsy you can’t watch them. Declare to God, I shall be glad to see the last of them!’

  ‘But not I, Mrs Hinch. I like those cups. Tea tastes better from fine china. I would take it kindly if you washed and dried with care.’

  ‘Hoity-toity, General! Your beauties are safe with me. I treat them as babies.’

  ‘Babies? Hardly a happy analogy, Mrs Hinch – since five of the set are lost for ever.’

  ‘Six,’ said Mrs Hinch, snapping beneath the water the handle from the cup. ‘You are better without the bother of them. I shall bring you a coronation mug.’

  ‘You fat old bitch,’ shouted the General. ‘Six makes the set. It was my last remaining link with the gracious life.’

  Mrs Hinch, understanding and wishing to spite the General further, laughed. ‘Cheery-bye, General,’ she called as she heard him rattling among his walking sticks. He banged the front door and stepped out into the heat of the day. Mrs Hinch turned on the wireless.

  ‘I walked entranced,’ intoned the General, ‘through a land of morn. The sun in wondrous excess of light…’ He was seventy-eight: his memory faltered over the quotation. His stick, weapon of his irritation, thrashed through the campions, covering the road with broken blooms. Grasshoppers clicked; bees darted, paused, humming in flight, silent in labour. The road was brown with dust, dry and hot in the sunlight. It was a day, thought the General, to be successfully in love; and he mourned that the ecstasy of love on a hot summer’s day was so far behind him. Not that he had gone without it; which gave him his yardstick and saddened him the more.

  Early in his retirement General Suffolk had tried his hand in many directions. He had been, to start with, the secretary of a golf club; though in a matter of months his temper relieved him of the task. He was given to disagreement and did not bandy words. He strode away from the golf club, red in the face, the air behind him stinging with insults. He lent his talents to the business world and to a military academy: both were dull and in both he failed. He bought his cottage, agreeing with himself that retirement was retirement and meant what it suggested. Only once since moving to the country had he involved himself with salaried work: as a tennis coach in a girls’ school. Despite his age he was active still on his legs and managed well enough. Too well, his grim and beady-eyed headmistress avowed, objecting to his method of instructing her virgins in the various stances by which they might achieve success with the serve. The General paused only to level at the headmistress a battery of expressions well known to him but new to her. He went on his way, his cheque in his wallet, his pockets bulging with small articles from her study. The girls he had taught pursued him, pressing upon him packets of cheap cigarettes, sweets and flowers.

  The General walked on, his thoughts rambling. He thought of the past; of specific days, of moments of shame or pride in his life. The past was his hunting ground; from it came his pleasure and a good deal of everything else. Yet he was not proof against the moment he lived in. The present could snarl at him; could drown his memories so completely that when they surfaced again they were like the burnt tips of matches floating on a puddle, finished and done with. He walked through the summery day, puzzled that all this should be so.

  The brown café, called ‘The Cuppa’, was, as General Suffolk and Mrs Hinch had anticipated, bustling with mid-morning traffic. Old men and their wives sat listening to the talk about them, exchanging by the way a hard comment on their fellows. Middle-aged women, outsize in linen dresses, were huddled three or four to a table, their great legs battling for room in inadequate space, their feet hot and unhappy in unwise shoes. Mothers passed unsuitable edibles towards the searching mouths of their young. Men with girls sipped at the pale creamy coffee, thinking only of the girls. Crumbs were everywhere; and the babel buzzed like a clockwork wind.

  The General entered, surveyed the scene with distaste, and sat at a table already occupied by a youth engrossed in a weekly magazine. The youth, a fat bespotted lad, looked up and immediately grinned. General Suffolk replied in kind, stretching the flesh of his face to display his teeth in a smile designed to promote goodwill between them, for the pair were old friends.

  ‘Good morning, Basil. And how is youth and vigour today?’

  ‘Oh well, not so bad, General. My mum’s in the family way again.’

  ‘A cause for joy,’ murmured General Suffolk, ordering coffee with Devonshire cream and the fruit pie he favoured. ‘Your mother is a great one for babies, is she not?’

  ‘My dad says the same. He don’t understand it neither. Worried, is Dad. Anyone can see that.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Well, it is a bit fishy, General. Dad’s not the man to be careless. It’s just about as fishy as hell.’

  ‘Basil, your mother needs all the support she can get at a time like this. Talk about fishiness is scarcely going to help her in her ordeal.’

  ‘Mum’s had five. Drops ’em like hot bricks so she says. Thing is, if this one’s fishy what about the others?’

  The General placed a portion of pie in his mouth. Crumbs of pastry and other matter lingered on his moustache. ‘You are thinking of yourself, Basil.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you? I mean to say.’

  ‘I would attach no importance to such a doubt, I do assure you. Basil, what do you say we spend this afternoon at some local fête? It is just an afternoo
n for a fête. I will stand you lunch.’

  The plumpness of Basil’s face sharpened into suspicion. He moved his large hams uneasily on his chair and avoided his companion’s gaze. ‘It’s Mum really, General. I’ve got to tend her a bit, like you say it’s a hard time for her. And with Dad so snappish and the kids all over the place I don’t think she’d take it kindly if I was to go going off to fêtes and that. Not at a time like this like.’

  ‘Ah, filial duty. I trust your mother appreciates your sacrifices.’

  But Basil, not anxious to prolong the conversation in this direction, was on his feet, his right hand hovering for the General’s grasp. And then, the handshake completed, he moved himself clumsily between the tables and passed through the open doorway.

  General Suffolk stirred sugar into his coffee and looked about him. A lanky schoolmistress from the school he had taught tennis at sat alone at a corner table. She was a woman of forty or so, the General imagined; and he recalled having seen her by chance once, through an open window, in her underclothes. Since then he had often considered her in terms of sex, though now, when he might have explored the possibility, he found himself unable to remember her name. He watched her, trying to catch her glance, but either she did not recognize him or did not wish to associate with so reprobate a character. He dismissed her mentally and surveyed the room again. There was no one with whom he could fall into casual conversation, except perhaps a certain Mrs Consitine, known in her youth as Jumbo Consitine because of her size, and whose freakish appearance repelled him always to the point of physical sickness. He dodged the lady’s predatory stare and left the café.

  It was a quarter to twelve. If the General walked through the village he would be just in time for a morning drink with Frobisher. Frobisher always drank – sometimes considerably – before lunch. On a day like this a drink was emphatically in order.