“Not what you would think of as armour,” Frank explained. “Not plate armour. A leather jerkin with things sewn on it. Chain links.”
“Oh, that,” Toye sneered.
“My friend fell in the canal wearing her suede coat,” Gail Colman said. “She sank like a stone.”
Colin pushed his chair back and stood up.
“You can’t go to the lavatory, because I’m going.” Elvie Frostick hoisted herself to her feet, looking belligerent. She thrust her chair away and swayed across the room, her face incandescent; it could be seen that she was in fact little more than a dwarf.
Colin edged himself around to Frank and bent over him, whispering.
“Do you think I could make a phone call?”
“Of course.” Frank gestured expansively. “You don’t have to ask permission, you know where it is.”
“I said I was going,” Elvie yelled back from the doorway. She clung to the door frame like a furious and compressed gorilla.
Colin slipped into the little room that Frank had indicated earlier. It was a junk room indeed, piled high with broken-sided old tea-chests and yellow newspapers. The phone with its stack of directories was on a rickety table in the far corner. Colin swore to himself as he picked his way over the rubbish. How bloody impractical and stupid, how exactly like O’Dwyer. All his respect evaporated, replaced by loathing and fear, as if he were compelled to walk a mountain road in the company of a lunatic. He nudged the directories aside to crouch over the telephone; no one must overhear. Under the topmost book was a copy of Playboy and a volume of Reader’s Digest. Colin stared at them. He did not know which he found the more shocking. After a moment he recovered himself, but as he began to dial Isabel’s number he was appalled to see that his fingers were trembling.
He tried to work out how many weeks it was since he had spoken to her. Suppose her father answered, and she refused to come to the phone? Or she answered herself, and put it down at the sound of his voice? His heart was thumping against his ribs. Is it so important, he asked himself, is it a matter of life and death? He didn’t know, his brain was befuddled, he couldn’t think straight. He must choose the words, the exact words that would tell her at once—
“Hello?”
“Isabel.”
“Colin? What is it?”
“Listen…”
“What do you want?”
“Something’s happened, ver—”
“Oh? Something’s happened, has it?” Her tone was full of impatience and mockery. “Has Sylvia miscarried? Is that it? So you think that now—well, you can’t. It’s not on, Colin. So if that’s it—go to hell.”
He gasped, and suddenly tears filled his eyes, pricking and demeaning. Where did she learn to talk to him like that? Why did she do it? Was it out of perplexity and confusion greater than his own, or out of some practised hardness inside her? He shuddered, taking a great breath.
“I know where your file is,” he said, as loudly and clearly as he dared.
“What?”
“Your file, your missing file.” As simply as he could, he told her what had happened.
“Wait,” she said, when he finished his account. “Colin, you’ve got me out of bed. I can’t think straight.”
“You’ll have to be quick. I’ll have to ring off in a minute.”
“But I went to the garage three times. They denied they’d ever seen it. Then they—but Colin, how could he write a novel? I don’t know what you mean.”
“He thinks it’s got the makings of a good story.”
“But it’s not a story, it’s just what people do. It’s just a record of what they do.”
“Grist to the mill, he says. Have you ever heard that stupid phrase? What is grist, anyway?”
“Colin, are you drunk?”
“No, not by a long chalk.”
“This isn’t some stupid joke, is it?”
“Of course it’s not a joke. It’s a dinner party. We’ve finished two courses and I’ve come to phone you. I’ve got to be quick.”
“Colin, there’s nothing I can do, is there? I mean, if I came and asked him for it…do you think—?”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea, because how would you have known, and that involves me—”
“Yes, I see, I do see that.”
“If Social Services asked him for it? If you told them?”
“Don’t be stupid, Colin, I’m trying to avoid them knowing, isn’t that the whole point? I don’t want this case discussed at Social Services. Can’t we persuade him?”
“I’ve told you, no.”
“This is awful, Colin, this confidential information lying about, it could cause the most awful blow-up.”
“I know that, I know, you don’t have to persuade me.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“Where it is? What do you mean?”
“In the house.”
“Well…yes. Roughly.”
“Then take it.”
“What?”
“Get it for me, Colin.”
“But Christ, how can I—”
“Do you see any other way?”
“No, but—”
“Phone me tomorrow.”
He heard a click. The line was dead. She didn’t even say thank you, he thought. And she hadn’t told him what the file looked like, or whose name was on it. Presumably he would know it when he saw it. Gently he replaced the receiver. Someone was calling him.
“Sidney! Sidney!” That was Frank. Now Frank thought it was a big joke to call him Sidney. “Sidney, come for your chocolate mousse.”
At least, Evelyn thought, the turn of events had not taken her by surprise. She had dreaded being roused from sleep, pulled up from her musty undersea dreams to find the girl and her half-born child scraping at the bedroom door. What if there were difficulties? Of course, it had to be considered, she had run over the question in her mind. If Muriel looked like dying, she would fetch the doctor. If it came to that…she could not stomach being haunted by that composite creature that would be Muriel and the half-emerged child; no, she could not stomach it. They would want a room to themselves, to hiss and cavort and bang on the walls; ah, the gay young dead. Soon she would be forced to live in the kitchen.
She left the lights burning all over the house. She hoped that it would not attract attention from the outside, but she had enough to do without being hampered by things following her down the hall. She made Muriel a cup of tea and let her have it lying on the bed. She was the soul of kindness. Then she took out the first-aid books and her reading glasses. She boiled the scissors for ten minutes. She did not think they would be much use, but you cannot get scissors sharpened nowadays. In her drawer in the kitchen cabinet she found some lengths of string, which would do for tying off the cord; they were rolled up with the remains of her paper bags, from her tenants’ tearing days. She could not see her pile of farthings, and spent a minute or two rooting around for them. She sighed. She would have to ask Muriel about it, when Muriel was more in command of herself. “I do like everything in its place,” she said to herself. She got ready a blanket for the baby, a bit worn and musty but the correct size; it must have been one of Muriel’s. She took up some aspirin and a glass of tonic wine; but when around midnight Muriel screamed out in pain, she lost her nerve and slapped her repeatedly until she lay quiet, with two tears rolling down her grey cheeks.
When Colin re-entered the dining-room, he saw at once that the situation had deteriorated. Several more bottles of wine had been opened, and Charmian had returned to gin; the bottle stood by her elbow. Charmian’s precise tones had become even sharper, as if her tongue were edged with glass. Sylvia looked up at him anxiously. He attempted a smile, a reassuring smile; his face felt stiff. Edmund Toye was explaining how after a hard week at the Teacher Training College he liked to support his local football team and stand on the terraces, wearing a cap and bellowing. He described it as a most valuable emotional release.