‘Well,’ Miss Spearman said peevishly, ‘what are they waiting for? Why don’t they hurry up with the All Clear?’
Teresa smiled and shrugged her shoulders. ‘They’ve gone,’ she thought, soothed. ‘Gone home to get their medals pinned on, gone home to get something to eat.’ She had got used to the cellar, she did not want to leave it now. Why leave this good, this perfectly safe, windowless cellar, so like that other long ago?
‘Nothing changes much,’ she thought, remembering the bellowed orders, contradicted the next minute – Left turn. No, right turn. No, as you were, silly ass – the obligatory grin, the idiotic jokes, repeated over and over again, which you had to laugh at, at first unwillingly, then so hysterically that your jaws ached, and the endless arguments as to whether the girls might carry knives slung to their waists or not. ‘Oh, the girls can’t have knives.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Well, because they aren’t officers. The girls are only common sailors.’ ‘Yes, but common sailors do have knives’, and Norman, the soft one, the one who liked girls, you suspected. ‘That’s the great thing about being a common sailor.’ At last it was decided that the leader of the girls could have a knife, the others could carry sticks. The worst part of this horrible game came when the frenzy was over and the damage done. Then the boys would cluster in a group, and one of them would be sure to say, ‘It was the girls’ fault. They started it; they egged us on. They were worse than we were.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘there you are. That’ll be all for this morning.’
Miss Spearman did not answer. She stared straight ahead, strained, listening.
‘The All Clear,’ Teresa said, speaking carefully. Now she could think again, she could tell herself, ‘Don’t shout. Pitch your voice right and she’ll hear.’
‘Ah!’ said Miss Spearman. ‘Not much of a raid.’ Her expression changed, became spiteful. ‘You are nervy, aren’t you? Look at your hand shaking.’
‘It’s so cold down here.’
‘Come along then. We’ll have something to warm us up.’
They went up the steep stone stairs, past the brass gong in the hall, the brass tray for visiting cards, the dim looking glass, malevolent with age, into the kitchen.
2
The kitchen was a large, comfortable room. The owner of the house had gone off when the raids started, to live at an hotel in the Lake District. (‘People said she oughtn’t to have done it – that it was a bad example. But when they get to that age what can you expect? “They can’t stand the racket these devils make when they’re her age,” I said.’) Miss Spearman, who looked like an ex-lady’s maid, or housekeeper, perhaps, or poor relation or half-acknowledged relation – there must be some half-acknowledged relations knocking around, even in this holy and blessed isle – was installed and let rooms to select lodgers.
She lit the fire, talking about air raids, land mines and slaughter.
‘Why, there wasn’t a pane of glass left in the square. Everything down, from St Agnes’s to the County Tea Shop. That was a night.’
She went into the scullery and came back with tea and bread-and-butter on a black lacquer tray.
‘I’ll have mine later; I like it strong. I must go and see if my blind old lady’s all right.’ She said the words ‘old lady’ in a patronizing, pitying and scornful tone. ‘And then perhaps Olly Pearce at Number Seven may have heard the news.’
There were two red plush armchairs near the fire, a patchwork rug, a calendar with a picture of cats, a round table with a wool mat in the middle, a large black cupboard and, on the walls, some old prints of soldiers in full dress – Ensign of His Majesty’s Dragoon Guards, Captain of the 78th Foot – fellows of those in Captain Roper’s bedroom upstairs, which Teresa always imagined looked down at him so approvingly as he slept. ‘Sleep on, chum,’ they said. ‘Snore well, mate.’
Captain Roper, her fellow lodger, was away on a course. And a very good thing too, for he had turned against her now, and she knew perfectly well why.
On the first night of her stay they had gone together to the nearest cinema. After dinner on the second night they had settled down by the fire – he in the big armchair, she in the smaller one, and he had produced a half bottle of whisky.
‘Have a spot?’
‘Battledress doesn’t do justice to a man’s figure,’ he said after the second whisky, and it probably didn’t to his. He had a small, handsome, cocky, ageless face and a cocky little moustache.
He told her that he thought things were going to be very difficult after this war – worse than last, which was bad enough. In 1920 he had been in Mexico, but in 1921 he was back in London. On his uppers. ‘Pop went everything except my dress suit. In 1914 . . .’
‘But you must have been very young in 1914,’ Teresa said flatteringly.
Captain Roper blinked. ‘Well, as a matter of fact I was. However, I remember . . .’
Yes, pre-war 1914 must have been a golden time.
Teresa stopped listening. When she next heard what he was saying he was no longer in 1914; he was in 1924, giving lessons in Mah Jong to keep his body and soul together.
‘And some very interesting pupils I had too. I taught Mah Jong to the prettiest woman I’ve ever seen. Lovely young creature – dark, very vivacious. She got rather bored with it, of course. Scoring too complicated.’ His hard, shallow, sentimental eyes looked past her. Perhaps he saw a sunny street and trim steps up to a freshly painted door and flower boxes in the windows and the decorative, unattainable young creature in the room inside. ‘I can’t remember her name. A double-barrelled name. It’s on the tip of my tongue.’
Double-barrelled names raced through Teresa’s brain.
‘Ah, I’ve remembered it,’ Captain Roper said. ‘Barton-Lumley.’
‘Barton-Lumley?’
‘Yes, Mrs Barton-Lumley. She got bored,’ he muttered, and, after a pause, ‘She died.’
Then Teresa had laughed loudly. One of those terrible laughs which now shook her at the most unexpected moments. It came from the depths of her – a real devil of a laugh. Every time this happened she would think ‘Who’s that laughing?’
She smoothed her face and tried to turn it into a cough.
‘Oh, what a shame! Beautiful people oughtn’t to die; they ought to be guarded and protected and kept alive, whoever else dies. There are so few of them.’
But this was useless. He looked at her with distrust – and he had gone on looking at her with distrust.
‘No,’ she was thinking when Miss Spearman came back, ‘I’ll never know the rest of the story – what happened in 1925 or 1938, in 1927 or 1931 . . .’
‘Norton Street,’ Miss Spearman said, pouring out her tea, ‘and I hear they’ve got Bailey’s.’
‘Pretty close. That must have been that first bang.’
‘Yes. Olly says she’s heard that fifteen people were killed, but old Jimmy says thirty. If it’s Norton Street, we can go and have a look this afternoon. But it’s no use going now, do you think? Well, you seem better already,’ she went on. ‘You looked very bad in the cellar, I thought, as white as a – as white as a sheet. You mustn’t let your nerves get on top of you, you know. It doesn’t do. Think of something else. You want a bit of cheering up.’
She walked across the room and opened a cupboard, which was full of dresses, underclothes, sandals, brassieres, kimonos – ladies’ second-hand clothes, Miss Spearman’s sideline.
‘What about this? Three and sixpence.’
She held up a brown felt halo hat with a long veil attached to it.
‘Wouldn’t I look comic in that?’ Teresa said. ‘Well, I mean, a bit comic?’
‘Yes, perhaps it’s not quite your style,’ Miss Spearman agreed. She was now wearing her earphone and it seemed to be working perfectly. ‘Well, what about this costume? I only got it yesterday. Very smart woman she is – wears some lovely clothes. She wants two pounds for it. Just been cleaned. I’ll let you have it for thirty shillings.’
‘But I don’t li
ke that shade of green. I don’t like green at all. It’s not my lucky colour.’
‘What?’ Miss Spearman said. ‘I can’t hear you. Take it into your room and try it on. A pound to you – and that’s giving it away.’
‘All right,’ Teresa said feebly. She took the hideous thing and hung it at the back of her chair. She thought, ‘Yes, I’ll end by buying it, and I’ll end by walking about in it too, God help me.’
Then she recognized her own black dress in the cupboard. It was hanging next to a shapeless purple coat. A cast-off self, it stared back so forlornly, so threateningly that she turned her eyes away.
‘Have another cup,’ Miss Spearman said. ‘I see you’re looking at your old black. I hope to get it off this week. But you can’t expect much.’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘Black’s too depressing. Twelve and six I might get.’
‘Well, it cost me quite a lot, you know.’
‘Yes, I know it’s well cut, but it’s a depressing dress all the same. Would you take ten bob?’
Her face looked very sharp and eager, her brown eyes glittered. You wouldn’t have thought she was talking about shillings at all.
‘If that’s all I can get . . .’
Miss Spearman relaxed.
‘Funny how tired these air raids make you, isn’t it?’ she said, sighing. ‘It’s afterwards you feel it, I always think. Yes, it’s afterwards you feel it.’
‘Sit still. I’ll wash the cups up,’ Teresa said.
But the scullery was like the cellar – dim and dark, with only one small window high up to light the sink, the rusty gas-stove, the stupid moon-faced plates in the rack, the cheerful cups, the gloomy saucepans on hooks. So she was glad to come back into the kitchen, where Miss Spearman was talking to herself about the charwoman.
‘I’m sure Nelly won’t turn up. I’m sure she’ll make this raid an excuse. She always does. Most annoying. And they never go anywhere near the part she lives in.
‘I don’t know what the working class is coming to. Haven’t you noticed it?’ she said. ‘And this house is too much for me without any help, officers or no officers.
‘And,’ she continued, ‘I do it for love, as you might say. How will they manage when people like me are dead and gone? They’ll soon find out what it’s like.’ Something in her mournful and complaining voice made you see all the houses growing dustier, dingier, more silent. ‘What’s to happen if everything’s left to go to rack and ruin?’ she lamented. ‘Where do they expect people to live? In underground caves, or in concrete barracks, or what?’
‘Some will,’ said Teresa, ‘and some, as they say, will not.’
Don’t worry, everything will survive somewhere – the polished floors, the bowls of roses, the scented hair, the painted nails. Some will sink, but others will swim. Trust Bibi . . .
She put her hand over her eyes, which felt sore, and listening to the noisy clock, thought about that other clock ticking so slowly, the watch on the table ticking so fast. But the same seconds, or they said the same seconds. Not that she believed a word they said.
‘I know she isn’t coming. An hour and a half late now. The whole trouble is that they promise things that they don’t mean to. It’s very un-English, very. And she was going to cut the cards for me today, too. She’s wonderful at that, I will say.’
She clasped and unclasped her hands in her lap. They were very red and raw, the joints swollen – the only ungraceful things about her.
‘Miss Spearman, I admire you so much.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes, and I envy you.’
‘Envy me?’ Miss Spearman said happily. She looked into the little glass over the mantelpiece. ‘I never touch my hair or my face with anything but rain water. From that cask outside. Soft water – that’s the secret.’
Teresa said, ‘Yes – your appearance, of course. But what I meant was that I admire you because you’re always so calm, so sure of yourself, and because . . .’
It was a glittering, glaring day outside, the sky blown blue. A heartless, early spring day – acid, like an unripe gooseberry. There was a cold yellow light on the paved garden and the tidy, empty flower beds and on the high wall, where a ginger cat sat staring at birds. You could see his neat paw-marks in the damp mould.
‘I feel so well,’ Teresa said, ‘though a bit sleepy. That shows I’m getting better – feeling well so early in the morning before the break of day. Almost.’
‘Have you been ill?’ Miss Spearman asked inquisitively. ‘A lot of people are feeling it now, a lot of people. Of course, not these young, heartless people.’
Teresa said, ‘Do you think young people are heartless? Aren’t old people heartless? And people who are getting old – aren’t they heartless too?’
‘I can see you’ve been ill. I can see it in your eyes.’
‘Oh, nothing much,’ said Teresa.
But instead of turning her head away she looked straight at Miss Spearman – straight into a hard bright glitter, hard and bright as the day outside. But behind the glitter there was surely something nebulous, dreamy, soft? Usually the sweetness and softness, if any, was displayed for all to see; but, hidden away, what continents of distrust, what icy seas of silence. Voyage to the Arctic regions . . .
She thought, ‘Shall I tell her about it on this fresh new morning?’
3
But then it was afternoon – a hot afternoon. You know, there does come an afternoon when you think ‘I want a rest; I want a good long sleep.’ So I took two tablets, and then another two. Then I drank some whisky and it seemed quite clear. Now, my lass, now Hope, the vulture, will have to go and feed on somebody else. I thought, ‘I must wear my pretty dress for this.’ So I went upstairs and put on my blue dress and powdered my face. I didn’t hurry, but when I came down again the hands of the clock hadn’t moved at all. Which shows that it’s true, what they say: ‘Time is made for slaves.’ Then I knew I must do it and so I swallowed all the tablets in the bottle with the whisky. Seven grains each they were – strong. And I saw some spilt on the floor. ‘I must take these too,’ I thought. But before I could take them I don’t remember anything more.
When I woke up the first thing I saw was the blue dress on the chair. And the doctor was there. ‘What are you doing here?’ I said, and he answered, ‘It’s the afternoon I always come to see you.’ So I knew it was Tuesday. A whole night and a day gone, and I shall never know what happened. And afterwards too I don’t remember. I had dreams, of course. But were they dreams? . . .
She said, ‘I liked this house as soon as I saw it. And you seemed exactly right when you opened the door. Not the sort of person who goes all of a doodah, like me.’
‘It’s a lovely old house,’ Miss Spearman said. ‘Solid.’
‘Yes, lovely and solid,’ Teresa said.
But how can you tell? The other one was solid, too. As you approached it the river, which had been narrow, broadened out, like an avenue, straight, with willows on each bank. The water was covered with dead leaves. The paddle did not make any sound, the dead leaves slowed the punt down. Round a corner was the house – turrets and gables and balconies and green shutters all mixed up. It looked empty and dilapidated. The boards of the landing-stage were broken and rotten. Two statues faced one another – the gentleman wore a cocked hat, knee-breeches and tail-coat, but the lady showed a large breast. She held up her draperies with one hand, the other was raised as if she were listening. The lawn was dark green and smooth and in the middle was a cedar tree. The rocking-horse under it was painted white with red spots. There wasn’t a sound. And I knew that if I could pass the statues and touch the tree and walk into the house, I should be well again. But they wouldn’t let me do that, the simple thing that always makes you well.
How much shall I tell her? Shall I tell her that in spite of everything they did I died then? Shall I tell her what it feels like to be dead? It’s not being sad, it’s quite different. It’s being nothing, feeling
nothing. You don’t feel insults, you wouldn’t feel caresses if there was anyone to caress you. It’s like this – it’s like walking along a road in a fog, knowing that you have left everything behind you. But you don’t want to go back; you’ve got to go on. There are moments when you know where you are going, but then you forget and you walk on, torturing yourself, trying to remember, for it’s very important. When you start, you often look back to catch them laughing or making faces in the bright lights away from the fog. Later on you don’t do that; you don’t care any longer. If they were to laugh until their mouths met at the back and the tops of their heads fell off like some loathsome over-ripe fruit – as they doubtless will one day – you wouldn’t turn your head to see the horrible but comic sight . . .
‘Yes, I’ve been ill,’ she said. ‘I’ve been having a holiday. I was staying not so far from here and I saw your advertisement in the local paper.’
Miss Spearman said, ‘I usually let my rooms to officers. But this happened to be a slack time.’
Teresa smiled. ‘Lucky for me.’
How much have I told her? What have I said . . .
Not too much, for Miss Spearman did not seem to be at all surprised.
‘Calm?’ she said. ‘Of course, it’s better to be calm. I don’t believe in hysteria. Not for women, anyhow. Sometimes a man can get away with hysteria, but not a woman. And then of course don’t be too much alone. People don’t like it. The things they say if you’re alone! You had to have a good deal of money to get away with that. And keep up with your friends. Write letters. And a good laugh always helps, of course.’
‘Which helps most – with or at?’
‘I don’t quite follow you,’ Miss Spearman said. ‘And then a little bit of gossip.’
. . . See people. Write letters. Join the noble and gallant army of witch-hunters – both sexes, all ages eligible – so eagerly tracking down some poor devil, snouts to the ground. Watch the witch-hunting, witch-pricking ancestor peeping out of those close-set Nordic baby-blues.