Strange Stories Page 10

  A man in a dinner jacket had come onto the front of the stage and was reading from a piece of paper, having first assumed a pair of spectacles, while they watched it. It appeared that one of the company had a sudden attack of gastric flu; time had passed while his understudy had been sought for on the telephone; and it had now been decided that someone else's understudy should come on in the proper costume and read the part from the script.

  "I thought that understudies were always waiting about in the wings," said Laming.

  "I expect there isn't much money with this production," said Helen. "It's a shame about the poor fellow being ill, isn't it?"

  "I've never heard of him."

  "It might have been his big chance," said Helen, "and now it's gone, because the play might be off before he's better."

  "We mustn't think about that," said Laming, following her earlier and more sanguine cue.

  How on earth was he to entertain her at the end? After that party? What exactly would she expect? The problem had been worrying him all day. He had become involved with two girls when he could not afford even one, never had been able to and probably never would.

  Descending the many steps to ground level, Helen summed up excellently: the rest of the cast had naturally been affected by the zombie in their midst, and it would be unfair to judge the play, as a play, by this single overcast representation. "I adore blank verse, anyway," Helen concluded.

  Laming hadn't even realized.

  "Especially this new kind," said Helen. "It can be terribly exciting, don't you think?"

  Of course she gave no sign of being excited in the least, because she never did.

  "Would you like a Welsh rarebit tonight, Helen? By way of a little change?"

  "Oh, no, I can't eat things like cheese. Our usual cup of coffee is absolutely all I need. Besides, it makes a kind of tradition for us, don't you think?"

  At the end, she suggested that next time they go to Reunion in Vienna, with the Lunts.

  He really could not suggest that there might be difficulty in finding a free evening, and he doubted whether she could suggest it either, even in quite other circumstances.

  "The Lunts are very popular," he pointed out. "We might not get. in."

  "Let's try. If we fail, we can always go to something else. We shall be in the middle of Theaterland. What about a week from today?"

  "Could we make it Thursday?"

  They agreed to meet in the queue that time.

  They still shook hands each time they parted, though, by now, only in a token way. Advance in intimacy was marked by her omission to remove her glove for such a trifling, though symbolic, contact.

  "You tie me up nicely and then you can do what you like with me. Afterwards, I'll tie you up and do things with you." Tot Ellen it was a quite long speech, the longest, he thought, he had ever heard her make. They had already been in the flatlet a good couple of hours.

  It had become much warmer, as befitted the later part of May, and she had been wearing a short-sleeved blouse, instead of a sweater; a beach skirt instead of the fawn one. The blouse was in narrow honey and petunia stripes, with a still narrower white stripe at intervals. Ellen had left most of the buttons unfastened. The retired railwaymen, some without their jackets, had just stared and then began talking with self-conscious absorption, to their fellow workers, willing her to go, to be burnt up, while they diverted attention. Ellen was also wearing little-girl knee socks. Laming was desiring her far past the point of embarrassment all the way to the flatlet.

  He could not even touch her, let alone take her half-bare arm.

  But when, at that later point, he acted upon her suggestion, he had to admit to himself that he lost initiative: he did not really know what he could do, what would be far enough out of the ordinary to please her. And when he appealed to her for suggestions, she began to display that all too familiar female amalgam of mockery and fury.

  It was when he struck out at her with the first thing that came to hand that he saw Helen standing in the window with her back to the room. She too wore a lighter dress, one that Laming had not seen before; cornflower-colored. Previously, he had himself had the window behind him, or at his feet, but of course she could not have been there or she would have cast a shadow, and right across Ellen's body. Or was that true of whatever was in the room with him and Ellen?

  The figure in the window was all too manifestly sunk in trouble and despair. One could almost hear the sobs and see the bitter tears falling on the new dress. Even the hair was obviously disordered across the face.

  Laming threw away the object he had snatched up, totally unromatic and unsuitable in any case.

  "What's the matter now?" inquired Ellen.

  "Look!" This time Laming actually pointed a shaking finger. "Look!" he cried again.

  "What at?"

  On the previous occasions he was unsure whether or not Ellen had seen what he saw. He also realized quite well, then and now, that it would probably remain uncertain, no matter what she said or did.

  "Look at me instead," said Ellen quietly. "Do something nice to me, Laming!"

  He looked back at the window, but of course the two of them were once more along, or seemingly so.

  "Oh, my God," cried Laming.

  "Do something nice to me, Laming," said Ellen again. "Please, Laming."

  She was becoming ever more talkative, it would seem; and he had realized that there were things one could do, which involved talk, very much so. The popular antithesis between talk and action is frequently false, but in no case more so than after meeting a girl in the American Garden.

  Laming liked Reunion in Vienna better than any other play he could remember. He could identify almost completely with the archduke in white tunic and scarlet trousers, for whom Haydn's stirring anthem was played whenever he appeared, and for whom ladies wore lovely evening dresses almost all the time. There was sadness in it too, though; if there was no hope at all of ever living like that (because nowadays no one did), what point was there to living at all? Laming was so carried away by the finale to Act One that he momentarily forgot all about Helen, and when the intermission came, he could think of nothing to say to her. She might perhaps like the play, at least up to a point; but it could not conceivably mean as much to her as it meant to him.

  What Helen proved really to like was Lynne Fontanne. "I should adore to look as elegant as that," she said.

  "You often do," responded Laming, though it cost him an effort, and she actually took his hand for a moment as they sat there.

  How strange life is! Laming reflected. If he had somehow been richer, he could obviously have been a Lothario. As things were, Helen's hand frightened him. Also she was wearing the cornflower dress he had first seen the previous Saturday in the flatlet.

  "I love coming here with you," she said later, when they were in the cafe. "It's an adventure for me." If only she could have looked more adventurous! Laming supposed it was that which was wrong.

  Moreover, the three girls who served in the place, all obtrusively married, had long ago come to recognize Helen and Laming when they entered and to take them more and more for granted. Helen quite probably liked that, but Laming did not. Also they solicited with increasing cheekiness for more substantial orders than single cups of coffee. Laming was perfectly well aware that the three girls were laughing at him every minute he was in the place and probably for much of the rest of their time together too.

  "What about Careless Rapture next week?"

  "We shall never get in to that."

  "The gallery's enormous."

  He had not known, because he had never entered the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

  Again they agreed to meet in the queue. That evening, Helen had continued to insist upon paying for herself, most honorably.

  "I adore Ivor Novello's way of speaking," said Helen. "It gives me the shivers."

  "Isn't he-?"

  "What does that matter, Laming? We must be open-minded, though of course I
wouldn't actually marry Ivor."

  Laming could think of no rejoinder.

  In any case he needed no reminding that he was a man marked down.

  And to think that he had started all this himself, taken the initiative quite voluntarily! At least, he supposed he had. In what unpredictable ways just about everything worked out! Most things, in fact, went into full reverse, just as was always happening at school! If you want peace, prepare for war, as the classics and history master had admonished them.

  "I can't wait till next time," said Helen unexpectedly, as they parted. Not that even then her eyes lighted up, or anything like that. Laming realized that work, with poultry statistics in the civil service was hardly calculated to put a light in anyone's eyes. He quite appreciated the need to be fair. It was simply so difficult to act upon it..

  Laming thought of Ellen's eyes.

  But apparently the immediate trouble was to be that Helen's inability to wait until next time had to be taken literally. Laming began to see her all over the place.

  The first occasion was the very next morning, Thursday. He had been sent out by the office manager to buy sponge cakes to go with everyone's midmorning coffee, and he had glimpsed her back view on the other side of the street, still in that same dress, purchased or brought out for the summer that was now upon them all.

  He was very upset.

  Nonetheless, the second occasion proved to be that same afternoon. Laming had been dispatched by the partner who was in charge of buying to an address in E. 1., almost Whitechapel, Laming thought; and, in that unlikely region, he saw Helen in her dress climbing aboard a No. 25 bus, not ten yards in front of him. She was having difficulty with what appeared to be a heavy black bundle. Indeed, on account of it, she might well have spotted Laming, and perhaps had. Of course it would have been unreasonable to suppose that in the course of a single day she would have had time or reason to change her dress. Still, Laming was now not merely ordinarily frightened, but for the time almost deprived of thought, so that he could not for the life of him recall what he had been told to seek in E.1. The buying partner spoke very sharply to him when he crept into the office empty-handed (he had managed to lose even his library book) and ashen.

  And after Laming had been totally unable to explain himself to his mother, and had then passed one of his utterly sleepless nights, came, on Friday morning, the third occasion; and, this third time, he walked straight into Helen, head-on. Things had begun to move faster.

  He had left the office quite voluntarily, saying that he needed to be in the fresh air for a few minutes, and had walked into Helen within a bare two hundred yards from the outer door, where Tod sat, the one-eyed custodian. It was before Laming had even reached the appliance place on the corner, about which everyone joked.

  What was more, he could have sworn that not for a second had he seen her coming, even though there were very few people on the pavement, far, far fewer, he would have said, than usual at that hour. If he had detected her, if there had been even the slightest tremor of warning, he would have shown the swiftest possible pair of heels the street had ever seen, convention or no convention, bad leg or no bad leg; and if he had been run over in the process, would it have mattered very much?

  Helen was wearing another neat summer dress (after all, a whole sleepless night had passed), this one white creeping foliage on a brick wall background, as Laming could see quite well; and she was again carrying something weighty, this time slung over her left shoulder, which gave her an utterly absurd resemblance to the cod-carrying fisherman in the Scott's Emulsion advertisement. There was no advertisement that Laming knew better than that one; standing, as it did, for mens Sana in corpore sano.

  "Hullo," said Laming, in a very low, very shivery voice, audible to no one but her.

  She simply trudged past him in her white court shoes, very simple in design. She showed no sign of even seeing him, let alone of hearing his greeting. Under other circumstances, it might have been difficult to decide whether she looked alive or dead. Her burden duly took the shape of a long, gray anonymous object. It seemed to be heavier than ever, as Helen was staggering a little, deviating from a perfectly straight course.

  Laming clung sickly to the railings until a middle-aged woman with hair made metallic by curlers came halfway up the area steps and asked if he was all right.

  "Quite all right," replied Laming, a little petulantly.

  The woman washed her hands of him on her flowered apron.

  But then a police constable materialized.

  "Had a little too much?"

  Laming thought it best to nod.

  "Work near here?"

  Laming nodded again.

  It was fortunate that all the partners had left together for luncheon before Laming was brought back to the office by an arm of the law.

  The next day, Saturday, Laming's leg was suddenly much worse. Indeed, it hurt so much that he could hardly walk the short distance to the park, and the American Garden was, of course, on the far side. His mother looked extremely anxious as she stood on the porch, kissing him good-bye again and again. It was quite terribly hot.

  Still, much was at stake, and Laming was determined to meet Ellen, even if he did himself a permanent injury. He would be most unlikely ever again to find anyone like Ellen in his entire life, so that, if he lost her, a permanent injury might hardly matter. Confused thinking, but, as with so much thinking of that kind, conclusive.

  When he arrived, he found that the railwaymen were actually lying on their backs upon the grass. They were in their braces, with their eyes shut, their mouths sagging. It was like the end of a military engagement, the reckoning.

  And, this time, there was no sign at all of Ellen, who had previously been there first. Laming looked in vain behind all the shrub arrangements and then lowered himself onto one of the seats which the railwaymen normally occupied. He extended his bad leg, then lifted it horizontally onto the seat.

  A fireman in uniform sauntered past, looking for dropped matches, for tiny plumes of smoke. There was a sound of children screeching at one another, but that was over the brow of the hill. Laming would have taken off his jacket if he had not been meeting a lady.

  "Hullo, Laming."

  It was Helen's voice. She had crept up behind his head in complete silence.

  "Ellen asked me to say that she can't come today. She's so sorry. There's a difficulty in the shop. We're both a bit early, aren't we?"

  Laming pushed and pulled his bad leg off the seat, and she sat beside him.

  She was in the brick-wall dress with the mesh of white foliage: She looked cool and dry as ever. How could Laming be there early? He must have made too much allowance for infirmity.

  "Say something!" said Helen.

  What could anyone say? Laming felt as if he had suffered a blow on the very center of the brain from a lead ingot. His leg had begun to burn in a new way.

  "I'm sorry if I frightened you," said Helen.

  Laming managed to smile a little. He still knew that if he said anything at all, it would be something foolish, ludicrously inappropriate.

  "Please take me to Kelly's flat." It seemed to be a matter of course.

  "Kelly?" Even that had been copycatted without volition.

  "Where you usually go. Come on, Laming. It'll be fun. We might have tea there."

  "I can only walk slowly. Trouble again with my leg."

  "Ellen says it's just around the corner. We can buy some cakes on the way."

  They set forth, a painful journey, where Laming was concerned. They circumvented the inert railwaymen. In one or two cases, Helen stepped over them, but that was more than Laming cared to risk.

  Helen spoke. "Won't you take my hand, as it's Saturday?"

  "I'd like to, but I think I'd better concentrate."

  "Take my arm, if you prefer."

  Orsino, Endymion, Adonis: how differently one feels about these heroes when one re-encounters them amid such pain, such heat!

 
Nor did they buy any cakes; there was no shop, and Laming did not feel like going in search, even though he realized it might be wise to do so.

  "I forgot," exclaimed Laming, as they turned the last and most crucial corner. "I haven't got any keys. I think we need two at least."

  "Ellen lent me hers," said Helen. She had been carrying them, not in her handbag, but all the time in her hand. They were on a little ring, with a bauble added. Helen's gloves were white for the hot weather, in lacelike net.

  Helen and Laming were inside the flatlet. Helen sat on the huge divan, not pulling down her dress, as she usually did. Laming sat on one of the little white chairs, at once bedroom chairs and informal dinner-table chairs.

  "What do you and Ellen usually do first?" asked Helen. She spoke as if she had kindly volunteered to help with the accounts.

  "We talk for a bit," said Laming, unconvincing though that was when everyone knew that Ellen seldom spoke at all.

  "Well, let's do that," said Helen. "Surely it can do no harm if I take off my dress? I don't want to crumple it. You'd better take some things off too, in all this heat."

  And, indeed, perspiration was streaming down Laming's face and body, like runnels trickling over a wasteland.

  Helen had taken off her white shoes too.

  "Do you like my petticoat?" she inquired casually. "It came from Peter Jones in Sloane Square. I don't think I've ever been in North London before."

  "I like it very much," said Laming.

  "It's serviceable, anyway. You could hardly tear it if you tried. Have you lived in North London all your life?"

  "First in Hornsey Rise and then, after my father died, in Drayton Park."

  "I adored my father, though he was very strict with me."

  "So your father's dead too?"

  "He allowed me no license at all. Will you be like that with your daughter, Laming, when the time comes?"

  "I don't expect I'll ever have a daughter, Helen." Because of his leg, he would have liked a softer, lower chair and, for that matter, a more stoutly constructed one. But the springy, jumpy divan would not be the answer either, unless he were completely to recline on it, which would be injudicious.