“It’s my husband, Mrs Poulter. I should like to ring for the doctor. If you will allow me. Though we must realize nothing can be done.”
Her pure, inherited voice erected a barrier not only between herself and Mrs Poulter, but those she had conceived in an adulterated tradition. Though Waldo could imitate voices, even adapt himself to situations, if they didn’t threaten to extinguish his individuality.
So he said now: “Wait, Mother. Let me see to it.”
It appeared to convince, because she stopped where she was with Mrs Poulter. Nobody but Waldo, and he only in passing, was surprised at his sung command, his Rigoletto-tenor tones. After briefly rehearsing the part, he was running springily in, ignoring Bill Poulter in his own house.
“George Brown, Terminus Road.” He was telling the receiver of a man who had died.
The carefully phrased words forced his lips into a smile. He was seducing himself, not the telephone. Just as Dulcie, for a moment in the beginning, in the living room at “Mount Pleasant”, had been seduced by the same silky tenor voice.
When he turned he was not surprised to find Bill Poulter looking frightened. While Waldo himself was loving his own moustache with the tip of his tongue.
He went outside, if not muscular, slim and supple, to where his mother was waiting with that woman. Mother and son crossed the road naturally enough, though in silence, because words were unnecessary, and without his touching her, because they seemed years ago to have come to an agreement not to touch.
He could hear her slippers in the dust, her old blue woollen dressing-gown dragging through the damp grass on the verge of the road.
Arthur’s blurry face, which strangers often found disturbing, was waiting for them on the veranda where they had left him, his skin still smeared, though drying. And Mother went up the steps to Arthur, suddenly quicker than Waldo could account for. In the present unsettling circumstances of course she would feel she must comfort somebody afflicted like Arthur, who in many ways had remained her little boy. But Arthur, he saw, was holding their mother. She was not so much looking at him, as to him, into his blurry face, which perhaps was less confused than it should have been.
Waldo was trembling for unsuspected possibilities. Standing above him his brother appeared huge.
If only he could have focussed on Arthur’s face to see what Mother was looking for. Because whatever it was she might find would soon be buried in words. The little boy on the step below stood craning up, wriggling his nervous, white worm of a neck, to see. But could not. The sun was shining on his glasses.
“We’ll have to have our breakfast, anyway. Won’t we?” Arthur was gobbling.
“Yes, darling,” Mother agreed.
Waldo had never heard her sound so natural.
“You shall get it for me.” She sighed. “Wouldn’t you like that?”
Because in a crisis, Waldo admitted, Arthur had to be humoured.
“Shall we have milk for a change? Warm milk?” Arthur suggested. “That would be good and soothing, wouldn’t it?”
It was quite an idea.
Soon they were holding in their hands, the chipped, while still elegant, porcelain bowls with the pattern of little camomile sprigs, which they had brought out with them from Home.
“When the doctor gets here I’d better be making tracks,” Arthur mentioned anxiously, looking at his watch, at Mother. “Allwrights’ll be wondering what’s come over me.”
“I’d hoped you would stay with us,” Mother said, “today.” She added quickly, without looking round: “I’m sure Waldo would appreciate it.”
As though her little boy Waldo would take for granted anything she might arrange for him with his big brother. Naturally Waldo was grateful. Somebody would ring the Library.
So he continued watching Mother as she smoothed back Arthur’s moist hair, looking into Arthur’s face, into the avenue she hoped to open up. Finally Waldo saw them only indistinctly, because he had deliberately taken his glasses off.
Their father, then, was dead. Encouraged by his death, Waldo was often tempted to re-enter his own boyhood. He was only beginning to learn about it, and even where there were flaws in the past, they fascinated, like splinters in the flesh.
There was no reason why visitors should have guessed at the flaws in Waldo Brown. His confidence appeared firm without being aggressive. His hair was so candid. He would take water to it, and brush it carefully down; it was only later on that he felt the need for brilliantine. During his boyhood strangers were moved by the streaks of water in his innocently plastered, boy’s hair.
He was growing up taller and straighter than had been expected. His long, bony, usually ink-stained wrist was exposed by the retreating sleeve. Because he was growing too fast. His shirt-cuffs would not button, and frayed at the edges. Naturally they couldn’t afford to buy him so many clothes so often.
He developed into a Promising Lad. Although weak in mathematics his gift for composition persisted as vocabulary increased to decorate it. There was some mystery of literary ambitions, which his parents scarcely mentioned, through shame or fear, or simply because they didn’t believe. (Waldo began to suspect parents remain unconscious of a talent in their child unless you rub their noses in it.)
They were proud of him, though, especially when he jumped up, in his just buttonable knickerbockers, to offer a plate of scones without being prodded. Strangers compared him with potty Arthur, who would have scoffed the lot. Big lump of a thing sitting on a creaking stool, knees under his chin, crumbs tumbling down his chin onto his knees. Munching. Beside the promising Waldo, Arthur tended to fade out. Began to work for Allwright, both behind the counter, and in the sulky delivering the orders after Allwright taught him to drive. Arthur was good with animals; it was perhaps natural for them to accept someone who was only half a human being. It was sad for Browns, not to say a real handicap to a fine boy like Waldo, who, they said, was the twin of the other, you wouldn’t believe it. You’d see them sometimes walking down the road together of an evening, Waldo in the Barranugli High hat-band, carrying his school case, Arthur shambling in the old pair of pants and shirt he wore to work at the store, because you couldn’t expect the parents to spend good money on an outfit just for that. Anyway, there they were. Two twins. You wondered what they talked about.
Waldo knew it all by heart from listening — even when he couldn’t hear.
So they moved through the landscape of boyhood, two figures seen at a distance, or too close up, so close you could look into the pores of their skin, you could see the blackheads and the pimples. Waldo hated that. He hated his interminable pimply face. He preferred to listen to the voices of strangers murmuring what they had decided were the truths. How they would have jumped if they had seen him pop a pimple at the face of the glass. People did not go for pus. So he learned to give them what they wanted. Occasionally, in passing, after returning the scones to the table, he would very carefully brush the crumbs which had fallen on Arthur’s knees, with a candid though unostentatious charity which moved the observer — as well as the performer. Quite genuinely, once he had performed the act. Funny old Arthur was no more funny than your own flesh suffering an unjust and unnecessary torment.
Because Arthur was part of his own parcel of flesh it was easy with Arthur. Less so with Dad. With Dad it was downright difficult, not to say painful at times, particularly during those years when Waldo was going in to the High. There was no escaping his father. They travelled together in the train, one way at least.
Seeing them off in the early light that first morning, Mother said: “You will have each other for company.”