The Collected Short Fiction Part 47

When his mother brought him his cup of tea, he looked at her with sad eyes, then quickly turned away, lest she notice.

However, for the first time in Laming's life, something extraordinary happened, something that a third party might have marveled at for months and drawn new hope from.

Only two days later a crisis had arisen in the office: one of the partners required a parcel to be delivered at an address "down Fulham way," as the partner put it; and Laming had been the first to volunteer for the job-or perhaps, as he subsequently reflected, the junior who could best be spared.

"You can take a No. 14 most of the distance," the partner had said. "If you get stuck, ask someone. But do take care, old chap. That thing's fragile." Whereupon he had guffawed and returned to his den.

Laming had clambered off the bus at more or less the spot the partner had indicated and had looked around for someone to guide him further. At such times, so few people look as if they could possibly know; so few are people one could care or dare to address at all. In the end, and without having to put down the heavy parcel, Laming had obtained directions from a middle-aged district nurse, though she had proved considerably less informed than Laming had taken for granted. In no time at all, Laming had been virtually lost, and the parcel twice or thrice its former weight.

And now he had come to a small park or munic.i.p.al garden, with mongrels running about the kids in one corner, breaking things up. He was very nearly in tears. At the outset, it had seemed likely that offering to perform a small service would stand well for him in his career, but that notion had gone into reverse and j.a.ped at him within five minutes of his starting to wait for the bus. He could hardly carry the parcel much farther. Ought he to spend money of his own on a taxi? If one were to appear?

And then he saw Ellen. The road was on his left, the dark-green park railings were on his right, and there were very few people on the pavement. Ellen was walking toward him. He nearly fainted, but responsibility for the parcel somehow saved him.

"Hullo, Laming!"

It was as if they were the most tender and long-standing of friends, for whom all formality was quite unnecessary.

"Hullo, Ellen!"

He too spoke very low, though really they were almost alone in the world.

"Come and sit down."

He followed her along the length of railing and through the gate. In a sense, it was quite a distance, but she said nothing more. He had heard that, in circ.u.mstances such as these, burdens became instantly and enduringly lighter, but he was not finding that with the parcel.

She was wearing a sweater divided into diamonds of different colors, but with nothing garish about it; and the same fawn skirt.

Once or twice she looked back with an encouraging smile. Laming almost melted away, but again the parcel helped to stabilize him.

He had naturally supposed that they would sit on a seat There were many seats, made years ago of wooden beams set in green cast iron frames, some almost perpendicular, some sloping lasciviously backward. Many had been smashed up by children, and none at that moment seemed in any way occupied.

But Ellen sat down at the foot of a low gra.s.sy bank, even though there was an empty seat standing almost intact at the top of the rise. Laming, after a moment for surprise and hesitation, quite naturally sat down beside her. It was early May and the gra.s.s seemed dry enough, though the sky was overcast and depressing. He deposited the parcel as carefully as he could. It was a duty to keep close to it.

"I want you," said Ellen. "Please take me." She lifted his left hand and laid it on her right thigh, but under her skirt. He felt her rayon panties. It was the most wonderful moment in his life.

He knew perfectly well also that with the right person such things as this normally do not happen, but only infrequently with the wrong person.

He twisted around and, inserting his right hand under her jumper until it reached up to her sweetly silken breast, kissed her with pa.s.sion. He had never kissed anyone with pa.s.sion before.

"Please take me," said Ellen again.

One trouble was of course that he never had, and scarcely knew how. Chaff from the chaps really tells one very little. Another trouble was "lack of privacy," as he had heard it termed. He doubted very much whether most people-even most men-started in such an environment, whatever they might do later.

He glanced around as best he could. It was true that the park, quite small though it was, now seemed also quite empty. The children must be wrecking pastures new. And the visibility was low and typical.

"Not the light for cricket," said Laming. As a matter of fact, there were whitish things at the other end, which he took to be sight screens.

"Please," said Ellen, in her low, urgent voice. Her entire conversational method showed how futile most words really are. She began to range around him with her hand.

"But what about-?"

"It's all right. Please."

Still, it really was the sticking point, the pons asinorum, the gilt off the gingerbread, as everyone knew.

"Please," said Ellen.

She kicked off her shoes, partly gray, partly black; and he began to drag down her panties. The panties were in the most beautiful, dark-rose color: her secret, hidden from the world.

It was all over much more quickly than anyone would have supposed. But it was wrong that it should have been so. He knew that. If it were ever to become a regular thing for him, he must learn to think much more of others, much less of himself. He knew that perfectly well.

Fortunately the heavy parcel seemed still to be where he had placed it. The gra.s.s had, however, proved to be damp after all.

He could hardly restrain a cry. Ellen was streaked and spattered with muddy moisture, her fawn skirt, one would say, almost ruined; and he realized that he was spattered also. It would be impossible for him to return to the office that day. He would have to explain some fiction on the telephone, and then again to his mother, who, however, he knew, could be depended upon with the cleaners-if, this time, cleaning could do any good. He and Ellen must have drawn the moisture from the ground with the heat of their bodies.

Ellen seemed calm enough, nonetheless, though she was not precisely smiling. For a moment, Laming regretted that she spoke so little. He would have liked to know what she was thinking. Then he realized that it would be useless anyway. Men never know what girls are thinking, and least of all at moments such as this. Well, obviously.

He smiled at her uneasily.

The two of them were staring across what might later in the year become the pitch. At present, the gray-greenness of everything was oddly meaningless. In mercy, there was still almost no one within the park railings; that is, no one visible, for it was inconceivable that in so publicly available a place, only a few miles from Oxford Circus and Cambridge Circus, there should at so waking an hour be no one absolutely. Without s.h.i.+fting himself from where he was seated, Laming began to glance around more systematically. Already he was frightened, but then he was almost always more frightened than not. In the end, he looked over his shoulder.

He froze.

On the seat almost behind them, the cast-iron and wood seat that Ellen had silently disdained, Helen was now seated. She wore the neat and simple black dress she had worn in the first place. Her expression was as expressionless as ever.

Possibly Laming even cried out.

He turned back and sank his head between his knees.

Ellen put her soft hand on his forearm. "Don't worry, Laming," she said.

She drew him back against her bosom. It seemed to him best not to struggle. There must be an answer of some kind, conceivably, even, one that was not wholly bad.

"Please don't worry, Laming," said Ellen cooingly.

And when the time came for them to rise up finally, the seat was empty. Truly, it was by then more overcast than ever: Stygian might be the very word.

"Don't forget your parcel," said Ellen, not merely conventionally but with genuine solicitude.

She linked her arm affectionately through his and uttered no further word as they drew away.

He was quite surprised that the gate was still open.

"Where shall we meet next?" asked Ellen.

"I have my job," said Laming, torn about.

"Where is it?"

"We usually call it Bloomsbury."

She looked at him. Her eyes were wise and perhaps mocking.

"Where do you live?"

"Near Finsbury Park."

"I'll be there on Sat.u.r.day. In the park. Three o'clock in the American Garden."

She reached up and kissed him most tenderly with her kissing lips. She was, of course, far, far shorter than Helen.

"What about Helen?" he asked.

"You're going to the Apollo with Helen on Wednesday," she replied unanswerably.

And, curiously enough, he had then found the address for the parcel almost immediately. He had just drifted on in a thoroughly confused state of mind, and there the house obviously was, though the maid looked very sniffy indeed about the state of his suit in the light from the hall, not to speak of his countenance and hands; and from below a dog had growled deeply as he slouched down the steps.

Soon, the long-threatened rain began.

Of course, had he been a free agent, Laming was so frightened that he would not have seen Ellen again. But he was far from a free agent. If he had refused, Ellen might have caused trouble with Helen, whom he had to meet on Wednesday: women were far, far closer to other women in such matters, than men were to men. Alternatively, he could never just leave Ellen standing about indefinitely in the American Garden; he was simply not made that way; and if he were to attempt a deferment with her, all her sweetness would turn to gall. There was very little scope for a deferment, in any case: the telephone was not at all a suitable instrument, in the exact circ.u.mstances, and with his nervous temperament. And there was something else, of course: Laming now had a girl, and such an easygoing one, so cozy, so gorgeous in every way; and he knew that he would be certain to suffer within himself later if he did not do what he could to hold on to her-at least to the extent of walking up to the American Garden and giving it one more try. Helen or no Helen. It is always dangerous to put anything second to the need we all feel for love.

It was colder that day, and she was wearing a little coat. It was in simple midbrown and had square b.u.t.tons, somewhere between bone and pearl in appearance. She was dodging about among the shrubs, perhaps in order to keep warm. Laming had wondered about that on the way up.

"Hullo, stranger!"

"Hullo, Ellen!"

She kissed her inimitable kiss, disregarding the retired rail-waymen sitting about in greatcoats and m.u.f.flers, waiting for the park cafe to open.

"We're going somewhere," said Ellen.

"Just as well," said Laming, with a s.h.i.+ver, partly nerves, partly s.e.x, partly cool, damp treacherous weather. But of course he had struck entirely the wrong and unromantic note. "Where are we going?" he asked.

"You'll see," said Ellen, and took his arm in her affectionate way, entirely real.

The railwaymen glowered mptionlessly, awaiting strong tea, awaiting death, seeing death before them, not interfering.

Ellen and Laming tramped silently off, weaving around bushes, circ.u.mventing crowded baby carriages.

Orsino, Endymion, Adonis: the very roads were named after lovers. Laming had never noticed that before. He had always approached the park from the south, and usually with his mother, who did not walk fast and often gasped painfully. Once in the park she had downed a whole bottle of Tizer. How they had all laughed about that, forever and a day!

Around this turn and that, in the queer streets north of the park, Ellen and Laming stole, tightly locked together; until, within the shake of a lamb's tail as it seemed, they were ascending a narrow flight of steep black stairs. Ellen had unlocked the front door, as if to the manner born, and of course she was going up first. She unlocked another door and they were home and dry. - "Did it work out all right about your clothes? The mud, I mean?"

She merely smiled at him.

"Who lives here?"

"My sister."

"Not Helen!"

Of course not Helen. What a silly thing to say! How stupidly impulsive! Ellen said nothing.

There were little drawings on the walls by imitators of Peter Scott and Mabel Lucie Attwell, but all much faded by years of summer sun while the tenant was out at work.

Or tenants. Most of the floor s.p.a.ce was occupied by an extremely double divan, even a triple divan, Laming idiotically speculated, squarer than square. It hardly left room for the little round white table, with pansies and mignonette round the edge. All seemed clean, trim, self-respecting. The frail white chairs for dinner parties were neatly tucked in.

"Is your sister married?"

Ellen continued silent. She stood in front of him, smiling, abiding.

He took off her coat and placed it on the hanger on the door. There was a housecoat hanging there already, sprayed. with faded yellow Chinamen and faded blue paG.o.das and faded pink dragons with one dot in each eye.

"She won't barge in on us suddenly?"

Ellen threw back her head. Her neck was beautifully shaped, her skin so radiant, that it seemed all wrong to touch it. She was wearing a little mauve dress, fastening up the back, and with a pleated skirt.

Laming put his hands gently on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, but she did not raise her head.

When he lifted it for her, it fell forward on her front, in renewed token of uninterest in sociable conventionalities, in the accepted tensions.

Laming unfastened her dress and drew it over her head. Unskillfully though he had done it, her hair looked almost the same, and, in what slight disorder had arisen, even more alluring.

She was wearing nothing but a plum-colored garter belt and lovely, lovely stockings.

Laming wished there was somewhere where he himself could undress alone. There were various doors. The kitchenette. The bath and toilet. A cupboard or two for rainwear and evening dresses and ironing boards. It would look silly to open so many doors, one after the other. Laming drew the curtain across the window, as if that made any difference. In any case, and owing to mechanical difficulties, he had drawn it only half across the window.

He undressed with his back to her, as if that made any difference either.

She would be naked by now, and half laughing at him, half fractious, because he had never before knowingly seen a naked adult woman.

When, lumpishly, he turned to her, she had removed her garter belt, but still wore her stockings, now secured by garters. She had brought them out from somewhere. They were bunched up in pink, violet, and black lace. She was no longer smiling. She looked as serious and ethereal as an angel on a card.

"What about-?" There was that, and everyone knew it.

"Come in," said Ellen, climbing in herself.

The immense divan was as the sea. Clinging together, he and she were drowning in it, down, drown, down, drown. As they dropped, all the way, she showed him small, wonderful things, which tied him in fetters, clogged him with weights.

Hours later, as it seemed, it was over; and until who could tell when? It had continued for so long that he was afraid to look at his watch. Post coitum omne animal triste est, as the boozy cla.s.sics and history master had pointed out to the middle fifth, Laming's highest form in the school.

However, it was still daylight. Could it be the next day, Sunday? Had his mother been left alone in the house all night? Of course not, but the real trouble was the utter and total irreconcilability between this life, real life perhaps, and daily life. Laming apprehended this with a lurch like a broken leg or arm: a fracture that could never mend.

Ellen was pottering about, doing things to herself, making tea.

It occurred to Laming that exactly at the point where this life, real life, and daily life were at right angles, stood Helen, or, rather, sat on a park bench. Laming, naked in some almost unknown person's bed, actually found himself looking around the room for her, and with small starts of terror, as when jabbed by a schoolfriend's penknife.

Ellen emerged from the kitchenette with two cups of tea on a small tray. It had been a gift offer and was covered with eider ducks, the name of the firm scrupulously omitted. Ellen had straightened both her stockings and her tight, frilly garters. Laming could still feel the latter tickling his thighs when it had all begun.