Then Sandra had said those words, and her eyes had stung with tears.
All things being normal, she might even have experienced a feeling of relief, of inexplicable pride, watching his lumbering frame returning across the High Street, still breathing, still living, the fool, like some winner at the finishing line. But all that had changed. She clung to the counter, to its worn wooden surface. How well she knew, after sixteen years, every lump, crack and ridge on that counter.
Sandra sat erectly on her stool. The dress lay, almost torn in two, in the crumpled bag at her feet. But it was worth it. What did it matter, a new dress, a bit of flimsy colour? It was worth it to be able to say at last: ‘You’ll never have him.’
He walked in at the door. It seemed for a moment that he might have blundered mistakenly into some shop that was no longer his own — or that he might see, behind the counter, some grotesque replica of himself confronting him. He had to concentrate, not only to recover his breath, but to overcome the sense of strangeness. Then he saw that something had happened. They were standing looking at him with the distinct stillness of people after there has been action.
‘Mr Chapman — you look dreadful.’
Mrs Cooper spoke. Expected words. But she uttered them in a peculiar way, with neither anxiety nor reproof, as if she were merely mouthing a part.
‘I’ll be all right in a minute —’ he wheezed. ‘Must admit — overdone it a bit.’
He lurched towards the counter. The little still tableau seemed suddenly to start into life again, as if by clockwork. Sandra, who was by the flap, lifted it for him but said nothing. He noticed that she wasn’t wearing a bra.
‘Be with you in a moment — just get my breath back.’
He put a hand out to part the veil of plastic strips.
Mrs Cooper, like some attentive valet, followed him mechanically into the stock room. He stood for a moment by the cardboard boxes, clutching the briefcase.
‘Here, let me. You sit down,’ Mrs Cooper said. The same old predictable phrases, but they no longer had that wheedling, abrasive tone. They were spoken almost with meekness.
She took the briefcase and put it in its regular place, on top of the safe. Then she hung his jacket on the wooden hanger on the peg by the sink. She filled a glass of water from the tap. She seemed to be going through these simple motions in order to hide something.
‘Pill?’
‘Breast pocket,’ he said, not thinking — and then remembered, and looked on aghast. Standing by the sink, Mrs Cooper reached inside the pocket and pulled out, with the little phial of pills, the folded piece of light-blue notepaper. At any other time obsequiousness would not have prevented her, even in his presence, from opening it and quickly scanning the contents. But now she simply glanced at it incuriously without unfolding it and put it back where it had come from.
She undid the bottle and tipped out a pill onto her left palm.
‘There.’
She held out the glass in her right hand and the pill in her left, as if offering food to some unfriendly animal.
‘Thanks.’
‘What a thing to do,’ she said as he took the pill. ‘What did you do that for?’ — but still in that subdued, unscolding tone. And she added softly, before turning and walking back into the shop:
‘You know, she won’t come back.’
He sat for several minutes in the stock room, digesting Mrs Cooper’s words. They were the first words of hers in sixteen years that had actually penetrated him, pierced him with a sense that she was tuned to his secretest thoughts. But what struck him most was the manner in which they were said — as if their force applied to her; as if she herself were deserted, abandoned, and no longer pretended.
He swallowed the pill. You were supposed to melt them in the mouth, not swallow them, but it didn’t matter.
What had happened in his absence? He looked through the plastic strips to where Mrs Cooper and Sandra were dealing with a flurry of customers. They looked unnaturally busy, ignoring each other’s presence, like people who know they have done wrong.
He drained his glass of water and, after rinsing his face and arms at the sink, shuffled, still breathless, back into the shop.
‘Everything — er — all right?’ he asked, standing by the plastic strips.
‘Yes — yes,’ Mrs Cooper replied.
Sandra said nothing and scarcely turned. Why had she taken off her bra? It made her look vulnerable rather than provocative. There was a bag by her feet, a chocolate and pink carrier bag torn at the handle. As his eyes moved to it Mrs Cooper looked up helplessly. Then he understood. The whole history of the afternoon became clear to him: Sandra had bought the dress. It was in the carrier bag. Mrs Cooper had discovered, misinterpreted. There had been a fight.
Suddenly he wanted to laugh. Did Mrs Cooper see — looking at him imploringly, as if he were about to punish her — that he really wanted to laugh?
‘Mrs Cooper, Sandra,’ he announced. ‘I’m going to shut the shop.’
They looked up, lips parted.
‘I’m going to shut the shop at half-past five. You can leave early.’
And not come back, thought Sandra.
He no longer wants us, thought Mrs Cooper.
The clock over the door stood at ten-past five.
‘I’m none too well, you can see that — I’m closing early.’
They didn’t protest.
‘Sandra, before you go, would you mind doing the awning?’
He took up his position at the counter. The evening rush had begun, and he started to flick the evening papers off the pile, fold them and hold them out, his hand cupped for the coins.
‘Much obliged. Thanking you.’
You had to perform to the last. Even with a pain like an iron bolt in your chest.
He watched Sandra outside on the pavement, struggling with the High Street awning. Her body was unavoidably on show as she reached with the pole, but — unlike Phil, displaying his strength in the morning — she seemed suddenly unnerved by the fact. When two youths, passing by, feinted a grab at her, she rounded on them almost menacingly.
She re-entered the shop, slid the pole into its resting place and then stood, rubbing her palms on her skirt.
‘Is it all right then — if I go?’
The clock showed only twenty-past — but it made no difference.
‘Yes, of course.’
No snapped interjection came from Mrs Cooper.
Sandra lifted the flap in the counter and passed into the stock room. She returned with her shoulder bag and then, hesitating momentarily and lowering her eyes, stooped to pick up the tattered carrier bag. She lifted it, crumpling the paper tight and held it protectively over her bra-less breasts.
Mrs Cooper’s hands scurried extra quickly over the piles of papers.
‘Right then —’
‘Okay Sandra. Have a good weekend.’
‘Oh — yeh.’ And she turned to the door.
After she’d left, he couldn’t resist asking Mrs Cooper, ‘What was in that bag?’ And Mrs Cooper said, without meeting his eyes, ‘Oh, nothing important, I shouldn’t think.’
They worked on in silence at the counter. He waited for her to say, true to form: ‘If you want to go home, Mr Chapman, it’s all right, I don’t mind, I’ll stay and close up.’ But she didn’t. When half-past came he said, ‘Off you go then,’ and she took off her shop coat and gathered her things without a murmur.
‘Tomorrow then, Mr Chapman.’
‘Yes. Tomorrow.’
Somehow it seemed they both knew they were pretending.
She walked briskly to the door and only then did she pause.
‘Goodbye then.’
‘Goodbye Janet.’
He had called her Janet.
38