‘Everybody else there stands it. Why shouldn’t I?’
‘You really don’t mind it?’
Duncan thought it over. ‘I don’t like the smells much,’ he said at last. ‘They seep into your clothes. And sometimes you get a headache, from all the noise; or your eyes go funny, because of the belt.’
Fraser frowned. ‘That wasn’t what I meant, exactly,’ he said.
Duncan knew that it wasn’t what he’d meant. But he lifted a shoulder, and went on in the same light tone, ‘It’s easy work. It’s not so different from sewing canvas, actually. And it lets you think of other things. I like that.’
Fraser still looked baffled. ‘You wouldn’t rather do something a little more—well—a little more inspiring?’
That made Duncan snort. ‘It doesn’t matter what I’d rather. Can’t you just imagine the look on the face of the DPA man, if I’d said I’d rather this or I’d rather that? I’m lucky to have any job at all; even a pretend one. It was different for you. If you were like me—if you had my sort of past, I mean—’ He couldn’t be bothered. He began to pick at the surface of the beach: at the stones and bits of broken china, the oyster shells and bones. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he said, when he saw Fraser still waiting. ‘It’s boring. Tell me, instead, what you’ve been doing.’
‘I want to know about you, first.’
‘There’s nothing to know. You know it all, already!’ He smiled. ‘I mean it. Tell me where you’ve been. You wrote me a letter, once, from a train.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes. Just after you’d got out. Don’t you remember? Of course, they wouldn’t let me keep it; I read it, though, about fifty times. Your handwriting was all over the place, and the paper had a mark on it—you said it was onion-juice.’
‘Onion-juice!’ said Fraser thoughtfully. ‘Yes, now I remember. A woman on the train had an onion, and it was the first any of us had seen in about three years. Someone got out a knife and we cut it up and ate it raw. It was glorious!’ He laughed, and drank more of his beer, his Adam’s apple leaping like a fish in his throat.
The train, he said, must have been the one he’d taken to Scotland; he’d been at a sort of logging-camp up there, with other COs, right until the end of the war. ‘I came down to London after that,’ he said, ‘and got some work with a refugee charity—sorting out people who’d just got over here, finding them houses, getting their children into schools.’ He shook his head, thinking about it. ‘The things I heard would make your hair curl, Pearce. Stories of people who’d lost everything. Russians, Poles, Jews; stories of the camps—I couldn’t believe it. What you’ve read in the papers is nothing, nothing at all…I did it for a year. That was as long as I could stand it. Any more of it, and I think I would have finished up wanting to blow my own brains out!’
He smiled—then realised what he’d said, caught Duncan’s eye, and blushed; and at once started talking again, to cover the blunder up…He’d been at the charity, he said, until the previous autumn; then he’d started to try his hand at journalism, with a view to writing for political magazines. A friend of his had got him the ‘hack job’ he was doing now; he was sticking with it in the hope that something more serious would come along. He’d been involved with a girl, for a month or two, but it hadn’t worked out—he coloured again as he told Duncan that. She’d been one of the other people, he said, at the charity for refugees.
He spoke seriously, fluently, like a commentator on the radio. His well-bred accent was very marked, and once or twice Duncan found himself almost wincing, knowing that the accent must be carrying across the beach, reaching the ears of other drinkers. He began to look at Fraser and, as he had before, to see him as a stranger. He couldn’t imagine the life that Fraser had had, in the logging-camp in Scotland and then in London, with a girl; he could only really picture him, still, as he’d used to see him every day, in the small chill cell at Wormwood Scrubs, with the coarse prison blanket over his shoulders, mopping up his cocoa with his breakfast bread, or standing at the window, his lean white face lit up by moonlight or by coloured flares in the sky.
He gazed down into his glass, then became aware that Fraser had fallen silent and was watching him.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Fraser said, when he looked up. He’d lowered his voice, and seemed self-conscious. ‘You’re wondering how it was for me, working with those refugees, listening to the stories I had to hear—knowing other men had fought while I’d done nothing.’ He threw a stone, so that it bounced across the beach. ‘It made me sick, if you want to know. Sick with myself—not because I’d objected; but because objection hadn’t been enough. Sick because I hadn’t tried harder, hadn’t tried to find other ways—and hadn’t made other people try to find them with me—earlier in the war. Sick, for being healthy. Sick, simply, for being alive.’ He blushed again, and looked away. He said, more quietly than ever, ‘I thought of you, as it happens.’
‘Me!’
‘I remembered—well, things you’d said.’
Duncan gazed down into his glass again. ‘I thought you’d forgotten all about me.’
Fraser moved forward. ‘Don’t be an ass! My time’s been taken up, that’s all. Hasn’t yours been?’
Duncan didn’t answer. Fraser waited, then turned away as if irritated. He drank more of his beer, then went back to fiddling with his pipe, sucking at the stem, making his cheeks like wineskins again.
He’s wishing he’d never asked me here, thought Duncan, prising at a stone. He’s wondering why he did. He’s working out how soon he can get rid of me. He thought again of Mr Mundy, waiting at home, with the tea ready; looking at the clock; perhaps opening the front door to gaze anxiously down the street…
He became aware, once again, that Fraser was watching him. He looked round, and their gazes met. Fraser smiled and said, ‘I’d forgotten how inscrutable you can be, Pearce. I’m used to fellows, I suppose, who do nothing but talk.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Duncan. ‘We can go, if you like.’
‘For God’s sake, I didn’t mean that! I just—Well, won’t you tell me anything about yourself? I’ve been going on like a lunatic, while you’ve hardly said a word. Don’t you—Don’t you trust me?’
‘Trust you!’ said Duncan. ‘It isn’t that. It’s nothing like that. There’s nothing to tell, that’s all.’
‘You’ve tried that once. It won’t wash, Pearce! Come on.’
‘There’s nothing to say!’
‘There must be something. I don’t even know where you live! Where do you live? Up near that factory of yours?’
Duncan moved uncomfortably. ‘Yes.’
‘In a house? In rooms?’
‘Well,’ said Duncan. He moved again; but could see no way out of it…‘In a house,’ he admitted, after a moment, ‘up in White City.’
Fraser stared, just as Duncan had known he would. ‘White City? You’re joking! So close to the Scrubs? I wonder you can stand it! Fulham was near enough for me, I don’t mind telling you. White City…’ He shook his head, unable to believe it. ‘But, why there? Your family—’ He was thinking back. ‘They used to live in—where was it? Streatham?’
‘Oh,’ said Duncan automatically, ‘I don’t live with them.’
‘You don’t? Why not? They’ve looked after you all right, haven’t they? You’ve sisters, haven’t you? One in particular—What was her name? Valerie? Viv!’ He pulled at his hair. ‘God, it’s all coming back. She used to visit. She was good to you. She was better to you than my bloody sister was to me, anyway! Isn’t she good to you, still?’
‘It isn’t her,’ said Duncan. ‘It’s the others. We never got on, even before—Well, you know. When I got out it was worse than ever. My oldest sister’s husband hates my guts. I heard him talking about me once, to one of his friends. He called me—He called me Little Lord Fauntleroy. He calls me Mary Pickford, too.—Don’t laugh!’ But he began to laugh, himself.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Fras
er, still smiling. ‘He sounds like a regular charmer.’
‘He’s the sort of person, that’s all, who can’t bear it when people are different to him. They’re all like that. But Viv isn’t. She understands—well, that things aren’t perfect. That people aren’t perfect. She—’ He hesitated.
‘She what?’ asked Fraser.
They were recapturing some of their old closeness. Duncan lowered his voice. ‘Well, she’s seeing some man.’ He glanced around. ‘A married man. It’s been going on for ages. I never knew, when I was inside.’
Fraser looked thoughtful. ‘I see.’
‘Don’t look like that! She isn’t a—Well, she isn’t a tart, or whatever you’re thinking.’
‘I’m sure she isn’t. Still, I’m sorry to hear it, somehow. I remember her; I remember liking the look of her. And these things, you know, hardly ever turn out well, especially for the woman.’
Duncan shrugged. ‘It’s their business, isn’t it? What does “turning out well” mean? Do you mean, being married? If they were married they’d probably hate each other.’
‘Perhaps. But, what’s the man like? What kind of bloke is he? Have you met him?’
Duncan had forgotten this way Fraser had, of catching hold of a subject and niggling away at it, just for the pleasure of thinking it through. He said, more reluctantly, ‘He’s some sort of salesman, that’s all I know. He gets her tins of meat. He gets her loads, all the time. She can’t take them home, my dad would wonder. She gives them to me and Uncle Horace—’
He stopped, in confusion and embarrassment at what he’d just said. Fraser didn’t notice; he latched on to Duncan’s words instead.
‘Your uncle,’ he said. ‘That’s right, Mrs Alexander mentioned him, at the factory. She said what a wonderful nephew you are, or something like that.’ He smiled. ‘So your family isn’t quite so bad as you paint it, after all…Well, I’d like to meet your uncle, Pearce. I’d like to meet Viv, too. I’d certainly like to see where you live. Will you let me come and visit you, some other time? For we—Well, there’s nothing to stop us from being friends again, is there? Now that we’ve hooked up together like this?’
Duncan nodded; but didn’t trust himself to speak. He finished the beer that was in his glass, then turned his head, imagining the look that he knew would appear on Fraser’s face, if he was ever to go home with Duncan and see Mr Mundy there.
He went back to picking at the litter of things on the beach. Soon his eye was drawn by something in particular, and he levered it up. It turned out, as he’d thought, to be the stem and part of the bowl of an old clay pipe. He showed it to Fraser, then started picking the mud from it with a piece of wire. Partly to change the subject he said, as he did it, ‘There might have been a man here, three hundred years ago, smoking tobacco just like you. Isn’t that a funny thought?’
Fraser smiled. ‘Isn’t it?’
Duncan held the pipe up and studied it. ‘I wonder what that man’s name was. Doesn’t it torment you, that we’ll never know? I wonder where he lived and what he was like. He didn’t know, did he, that his pipe would be found by people like us, in 1947?’
‘Perhaps he was lucky not to be able to imagine 1947.’
‘Maybe someone will find your pipe, three hundred years from now.’
‘Not a chance of it!’ said Fraser. ‘I’d lay a thousand pounds to a penny that my little pipe, and everything else, will be burnt to cinders by then.’ He finished his beer, and got to his feet.
‘Where are you going?’ Duncan asked him.
‘To get more beer.’
‘It’s my turn.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I drank most of this jug. I need the lavatory, too.’
‘Shall I come with you?’
‘To the lavatory?’
‘To the bar!’
Fraser laughed. ‘No, stay here. Someone will take our place. I won’t be long.’
He’d started to move off across the beach as he was speaking, beating idly with the empty jug against his thigh. Duncan watched him climb the water-stairs and disappear over the top.
The pub, it was true, was more crowded than before. People had brought their drinks out, as Fraser and Duncan had, to the street and the beach; a few men and women were sitting or perching on the wall above Duncan’s head. He hadn’t realised, before, that they were there. He didn’t like to think that they were looking down at him, or might have been listening to the things he had been saying.
He put the piece of clay pipe in his pocket, then gazed out at the river. The tide was turning, and the surface of the water seemed to tussle with itself, like snakes. The boys who’d been splashing about in the mud had all sat down at the edge of the shore; now they rose and came back up the beach, driven in by the tide. They looked younger than ever. They were grinning, but also shivering, like dogs. They walked more wincingly, too: Duncan imagined the soles of their feet having softened in the water, getting cut by stones and shells. He tried to stop himself looking at them as they climbed the water-stairs; he had a sudden horror of seeing a boy’s white foot with blood on it.
He lowered his head, and started picking at the beach again. He found a comb with broken teeth. He prised up a shard of china from a cup, its dainty handle still attached.
And then—he didn’t know why; it might have been that someone spoke his name, and the words reached his ears through some freak lull in the sounds of voices, laughter, water—he turned his head towards the pier again, and his gaze met that of a bald-headed man who was sitting with a woman at one of its tables. Duncan knew the man at once. He came from Streatham; he lived in a street close to the one in which Duncan had grown up. But now, instead of nodding to Duncan, instead of smiling or lifting his hand, the bald-headed man said something to the woman he was with, something like, ‘Yes, that’s him all right’; and the two of them stared at Duncan, with an extraordinary mixture of malevolence, avidity, and blankness.
Duncan quickly looked away. When he glanced back, and found the man and woman still watching, he changed his pose—turned his head, moved his legs, shifted his weight to his other shoulder. He was still horribly aware of being observed, being discussed, sized up, disliked. Look at him, he imagined the man and woman saying. He thinks he’s all right, he does. He thinks he’s just like you and me. For he tried to picture himself as he must appear to them; and he saw himself, without Fraser beside him, as a kind of oddity or fraud. He turned his head again, more slyly—and yes, there they were, still watching him: they were lifting drinks and cigarettes, looking at him now with the empty yet bullying expressions of people who have settled down for a night at the cinema…He closed his eyes. Someone above him gave a raucous laugh. It seemed to him that the laughter could only be directed at him—that, one by one, the drinkers outside the pub were nudging their neighbours, nodding and smiling, spreading the story that Pearce was here—Duncan Pearce was here, drinking beer on the beach, just as if he had as perfect a right to do it as anybody else!
If only Fraser would come! How long had it been, since he’d gone off with the jug? Duncan wasn’t sure. It seemed like ages. He’d probably got talking to someone, some ordinary man. He was probably flirting with the barmaid. And suppose, for some reason, he never came back? How would Duncan get home? He wasn’t sure he could remember the way. His mind was getting blank or dark—he tried to concentrate, and it was just as though he was blindfolded and putting out his foot, and could feel soft ground, crumbling away…Now he began really to panic. He opened his eyes and looked down at his hands, for he’d once heard a doctor say that looking at your own hands, when you were frightened, could make you feel calmer. But he’d grown too conscious of himself: his hands seemed odd to him, like a stranger’s. His whole body felt queer and wrong: he was aware all at once of his heart, his lungs; it began to seem to him that if he were to draw his attention away from those organs for a single instant, they’d fail. He sat on the beach with his eyes shut tight, sweating and almost panting under the f
rightful burden of having to breathe, press blood through his veins, keep the muscles in his arms and legs from flying into a spasm.
In what might have been five minutes more—or what might easily have been ten or even twenty—Fraser came back. Duncan heard the sound of the full jug being set down on the stones, then felt the touch of Fraser’s thigh against his own as Fraser sat.
‘It’s crazy in there,’ he was saying. ‘It’s like a scrum. I—What’s the matter?’
Duncan couldn’t answer. He opened his eyes and tried to smile. But even the muscles of his face were against him: he felt his mouth twist, and must have looked ghastly. Fraser said again, more urgently, ‘What is it, Pearce?’
‘It’s nothing,’ said Duncan at last.
‘Nothing? You look like absolute hell. Here.’ He passed Duncan his handkerchief. ‘Wipe your face, you’re sweating. Is that better?’
‘Yes, a bit.’
‘You’re trembling like a leaf! What’s it all about?’
Duncan shook his head. He said unsteadily, ‘It’ll sound stupid.’ His tongue was sticking to his mouth.
‘I don’t care about that.’
‘It’s just, there’s a man over there—’
Fraser turned to look. ‘What man? Where?’
‘Don’t let him see you! He’s over there, on the pier. A man from Streatham. A bald-headed man. He’s been looking at me, him and his girl. He—he knows all about me.’
‘What do you mean? That you’ve—been inside?’
Duncan shook his head again. ‘Not just that. About why I was in there. About me and—and Alec—’
He couldn’t go on. Fraser watched him a little longer, then turned and gazed again at the figures on the pier. Duncan wondered what the man would do when he saw Fraser looking. He imagined him making some awful gesture—or simply nodding at Fraser and smiling.
But after a moment, Fraser turned back. He said gently, ‘There’s no one looking, Pearce.’
‘There must be,’ said Duncan. ‘Are you sure?’