"I haven't said a word."
"It's all so safe and civilised and cosy," she went on, half dreamily. "All these men, so well mannered and mild and agreeable - but what's behind it all? Violence and death. They've seen things which you think would drive anyone mad. And yet there's no trace. There's blood on everyone's hands, that's what it amounts to ... everything so damned insecure - " I felt her shiver.
"Don't think about it, love," I said. "The world's full of violence. But it always has been. There's probably someone being killed not ten miles away from here at this very moment - "
"Don't remind me," she said.
"It's different in wartime, too. You didn't have time to be sickened. There was too much to do. Anyway, you can't help anyone by being sensitive."
"I know, I know," she said impatiently. "Oh God, everything's going so fast. There's no way to stop the merry-go-round. You never feel safe. When I was young I used to feel safe. Even if Father and Mother quarreled, they were kind to me. The house was solid too. That bloody concrete barracks I live in now - it's so clean and streamlined that I wouldn't be at all surprised if it took to flight."
"You talk too much," I said, and drew her upon my knees. "Quiet now, not another word." I stroked the smooth skin of her forearm; she closed her eyes and went limp in my arms.
"You can do that all night," she said. "I won't stop you."She sighed. "You make a lovely seat. I could purr like a cat."
The smoothness of her arm, the warm weight of her upon my lap; I too could have done it all night. And I could have taken her again; but the act of love was becoming not distasteful, not unnecessary, but only one of a series of pleasures; of pleasures which were solely dependent upon her.
The doorbell rang; three shorts, one long, three shorts. "Elspeth," I said. I was going to rise, but Alice pulled me back.
"Don't be so bourgeois," she said. I put my arms more tightly round her.
Elspeth's head came round the door with a roguish smile on it which would have suited her better in the days when she was touring in A Little Bit of Fluff . She danced rather than walked into the room, her skirt flaring up round her. A heavy smell of Phul-Nana came in with her. "Hello, dears," she said in her husky fruity voice. "Do hope I haven't disturbed you. I try to be discreet, but I had to come in. It's cold outside."
"I'll make you some tea," Alice said, and went into the kitchen.
Elspeth threw herself down into an armchair. "Me oh my, what an evening I've had. You not only produce, you teach 'em how to act. Honestly, ducks, they can't understand the simplest thing. I don't know why I went in for the stage, I don't really." She pirouetted to the piano and started to sing "Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Worthington," her husky voice still clear and full.
She whirled the piano stool round when she'd finished and sat facing me, her hands held outward. "Not that it's anything else but cabaret stuff," she said. "No body in It somehow ..."
"If you're not going to give us a concert, you'd better have some food," Alice said from the kitchen.
"Lovely, dear," Elspeth said. She lowered her voice. "You're a very lucky young man, Joe. Alice is an angel, a real angel. A heart of gold." Her black button eyes were looking at me intently. In the old painted face they were shockingly youthful. She was sitting with her legs slightly apart and her skirt had ridden up above her knee; I turned my eyes away, feeling a little disgusted. Her legs too were the legs of a much younger woman: cut off from the waist, sheer pornography. However full her skirt, Elspeth always gave the impression that it was inadequate.
She pulled it down over her knees. "I always forget," she said. She smiled at me, her head a little on one side. "If you'd seen that much of me once, you wouldn't have stayed in that chair for very long."
"I'm sure I wouldn't."
She blew me a kiss. "Ah, I don't blame Alice. You're the sort of man I like, big and beefy. There's too many pansies about these days. I knew a lot of big men once; they're all dead now and a little skinny thing like me lives on ..." Her picture-postcard face with the dyed red bubble-curls and the Lillle Langtry nose and chin was sad as a sick monkey's. "It's as if the bigger and stronger they are, the more the illnesses have to feed upon. I remember the night Laird died. I can't breathe, he said, and he started tearing at his collar. Then he just fell, straight forward. My God, the dressing room shook. We picked him up and he was dead. Thirty-five, with his whole life before him. It makes you wonder, don't it?" She lit one of her Turkish cigarettes; the sweet, pungently archaic odour - The Bing Boys and Romano's and Drury Lane - filled the room like incense. "He was mad for me to go away with him," she said. "Sometimes I wish I had. My husband wasn't much good even then. I was too independent and he wanted to own me. He was a devil when he was drunk. A big strong man too - I never could resist big strong men ... Do you love Alice?"
"Yes," I said without thinking; the question was so abruptly put that it caught me off balance.
"I thought you did," she said calmly. "I saw the way she was sitting with you. She doesn't know it yet - " she put her hand on mine - "Don't hurt her. Don't hurt her."
I had a sensation of black water closing over my head; the room seemed airless, too heavily scented, somehow decadent; the raddled, intent face before me was an old witch's, I'd suddenly awaken and find myself turned into an old man and see her laughing at me, a girl again, rosy and plump with my stolen youth.
She started talking about the old days at Daly's Theatre; I hardly listened because suddenly I wanted to be out of the room, to walk over the moors, to have the wind and the rain in my face.
When Alice came in with the supper tray, I saw her for a moment as the same kind of person as Elspeth, an inhabitant of a shut-in musty world, tatty as running greasepaint, and the tenderness I had felt evaporated; it seemed impossible that I'd embraced her naked body, that the whole evening hadn't been a rehearsal for some naughty bedroom farce, a bored routine the colour of a provincial theatre's faded gilt and plush.
12
The Bar Parlour of the Western Hotel, just opposite the Town Hall, is a remarkable one in its way. It's the best furnished in the place, with cushioned benches and thick grey carpet and glass-topped tables and basket chairs and photos of local cricket and football teams and wallpaper in a soft, subdued orange and grey which is, if you care for that sort of thing, a pleasure to look at. It's for men only; the other rooms, even the Lounge, are rather scruffy, with iron-legged tables and hard benches and Windsor chairs. Consequently the pub is much used by solid businessmen and Town Hall officials, who like to drink without women but who have no taste for the sawdust and spittoons of the taproom. The Western has always been the venue for the Warley NALGO Men's Evening, the Town Hall's annual stag party. The routine is to meet in the Bar Parlour for a couple of pints, have dinner upstairs and a couple more pints, then return to the Bar Parlour for some serious drinking. One unwritten rule of the Men's Evening is to mix with other departments; that evening, I remember, I talked mostly with Reggie from the Library.
I'd taken Charles's advice and hadn't tried to see Susan since Christmas. I hadn't much hope of his plan working; in fact, I'd almost decided to write her off. But that evening - probably as a result of the four pints inside me and the odd feelings I'd had about Alice in Elspeth's flat the day before - I started to daydream. I did the job thoroughly too. There was a letter from Susan inviting me to a party and asking plaintively if she'd done anything to offend me. Or, better still, the doorbell would ring one wild wet evening and she'd be standing there, her face rosy with the wind; perhaps she'd come ostensibly to see the Thompsons on Thespians business or perhaps she might simply say "I had to come, Joe. You'll think I'm shameless but - " And I'd kiss her and there'd be no need to speak; we'd stand there listening to the rain walling us up into happiness together and then we'd go out to Sparrow Hill - "I love walking in the rain with you," she'd say - and we'd walk on and on, the good clean air fresh in our lungs, walking on forever, the fairy story come true ...