England's Lane (22 page)

“Well … why don't you …? I mean … look, Jane—I know all this is none of my business. I am terribly aware of that. Even my being here. I feel so … Look, you just say the word, and I'll be gone. All right? But you see Jane, I'm, well—intrigued, if I'm being honest. Really I am. Intrigued. I mean—why don't you tell Stan that you eat all this chocolate? That it's all you ever want to eat. Then he could bring it to you. Then you wouldn't have to … and why do you let him believe that you don't eat anything at all? And why won't you talk to him? You're talking to me. Aren't you? So why won't you ever talk to Stan? He's very worried, you know. Concerned about you.”

“Yes. You have said. And I do believe he is. Sometimes, in turn, I feel quite sorry for him. Other times not. And now, Mrs. Stammer—if you will forgive me. I yet have today's entry in my journal to complete. An entry in which, rather I think to the surprise of both of us, you are now destined to feature. And then I must snaffle a good deal more chocolate and repair to my room in advance of Stan's, my husband's return. Did you care for my room, by the way? A trifle drab for your tastes, I imagine. Fruit & Nut. I suddenly do have a fancy for … I think this evening, you know, it's rather looking as if it might well be Fruit & Nut. Will you leave me?”

“Yes, of course. Of course, Jane. But—will you let me come again? May I? Visit you again? Talk a bit more …?”

The light in her eyes is really quite impaling.

“I do not know, Mrs. Stammer. I am undecided.”

“Well—please do tell me. Somehow. Get word to me. I'm in the book, if ever you want to … Whenever you make up your mind. I really would like to. And Jane—won't you please call me Milly …?”

The sourest smile now comes to her lips.

“No, Mrs. Stammer. I rather think I shan't.”

And later, when eventually I could bring myself to reflect upon this day which yet was set to develop into something so very much worse—oh yes, really quite utterly intolerable—I do see that here was the moment I should immediately have left. For had I not just been the butt of a gratuitous insult, a haughty dismissal? Who then other than I would still have lingered? In apparently her customarily forthright and even willfully rather cruel sort of a manner, Jane had indicated so very plainly the point of termination—yet I was dissatisfied: here was no sort of an ending at all, no, not to me. So what did I do …? I said something. Something. Nothing of consequence—pure and utter waffle I imagine it must have been: I might even have once again offered to make her some tea. Which, yes, even to me seems beyond credibility, but there—that is what I did. And then she said this:

“Zoo, isn't it …?”

“I'm sorry, Jane …?”

“Where they have gone.”

“Oh yes. I see. Yes. Zoo, that's it. I'm sure they'll all be having the most wonderful time.”

“No doubt. But of course they won't take him, you know.”

The whole of this afternoon … it is beginning now to affect me quite badly. The dimness in the room. The twin assaults of challenge and directness from this very strange woman that yet are leading me further into all sorts of bewilderment. I feel to be the victim of erosion. And her gaze—still it is so quite frighteningly intense.

“Take him, Jane? Who? Who won't? Take who …?”

“Anthony. My son. Oh and by the way—was not the very first thing you were intending to report to Stan, my husband, when he comes to quiz you over my general demeanor, the fact that during
the entire course of our stilted and rather singular conversation, not once had I so much as mentioned him? Anthony? My son?”

I might have stuttered out something. More likely I just continued to stare at her.

“All I mean to say, Mrs. Stammer, is that they are extremely particular. The zoological authorities. I am not altogether sure that a human being is quite within their remit, but should they feel the urgent need of a young example, then I hardly think that it is to Anthony, my son, that they will turn. He is marred, you see. Defective. They know nothing of my firstborn, Frederick, perfectly obviously. For he is dead, do you see? Though Anthony, my current son … no no. Never would they accept him, even as a gift—for never could they care, could they, for anything so very apparently detestable as a cripple.”

My heart, just then, it simply cracked. I do not remember the landing, my tumbled flight down the darkened staircase, the murk of the corridor—only that now they were behind me. I fumbled with the snib on the back-door lock and was ablaze in my craving for God's sweet air, and the kiss of sunlight. Outside in the yard, I simply stood there, trembling. I held out my arm, regarding it as a thing apart from me, as I witnessed its tremor. I was at that moment so terribly in need: and at once and of course my thoughts were of Jonathan. He could maybe just hold me, could he? My head against the warm and big deep throb of his heart, that would surely calm me. And so I skittered away down the alley, careless of who should see me, and prayed that the gate to his own yard had been left unlocked. Sometimes, he had told me, Sunday afternoon would find him in the office, attending to accounts. Maybe this was such a day …?

Yes … it did seem so: oh thank you, thank you, gracious Lord. For as I stood just alongside that mighty and purring refrigerator
he has there, I saw with relief through the tiny window of the office that one of his green-shaded lamps was lit, and so I rushed up to the door and would have hurled it wide …! But for the merest murmur within that stayed my hand. It was a voice. Quite low, the words indistinguishable. Though here was not Jonathan's voice. No no—it was the voice of another. A woman's voice. And then there was laughter, which Jonathan now was indulgently sharing. For one appalling instant, everything inside of me was knotted into ropes, rigid and twisted, my eyes as hard as glass. Then I fled.

By the time I reached home, I had made up my mind to be numb. There would later be time—yes, and rather too much of it—to steel myself against just the very first and horribly corrosive seepage of the full and coming anguish that would rush in a welter and cover me over. But for now, in deferral of all such subsequent agony, I shall attend to Paul, my Paul, who is excitedly calling to me. They are back, then. The outing is over. I cannot comprehend where the time has gone, and no less how I have spent it. He is beckoning me up the stairs and into his room—and the light of excitement in his dear little eyes maybe will serve to urge me to inject if only a shard of animation into the lifelessness of my own. The reason the sweet boy is taking me away from the living room very soon becomes quite brassily evident: Jim, of course—jigging to some or other jazz tune on the wireless, his jacket with its pulled-through and inverted sleeves cast upon the floor, his loosened tie beneath an ear, his slackened face as red as blood. He is brandishing the neck of a bottle of Bass, the foam now coursing across his whitened knuckles.

“Oh it was just wonderful, Auntie Milly—I do so wish you'd been there. As soon as you go in there's this enormous elephant and you can get rides on him but Uncle Jim said it was too expensive but it didn't matter because Anthony and Amanda and Susan and me—Susan is Amanda's friend, she's quite nice and not too girly
for a girl, not sort of girly like some girls are—and we ran off to see the lions who didn't roar or anything and they were just lying there because the man there said they'd only just been given their dinners and were having forty winks because it was Sunday afternoon but they probably do that every day, don't they Auntie Milly? And Amanda and Susan, they really didn't like the snakes but I did and Anthony did and I'd really like to have one, actually, a snake, one of the long black and green ones we saw, because you could keep it in a box under your bed and just feed it things and watch it when it goes all slithery around the floor. Amanda said she liked the giraffes the best but I told her you couldn't keep one of those in a box unless you had a really cracking great box, which she thought was funny and she was laughing. And then we went to the cafeteria and Mr. Miller, he bought us all milkshakes and mine was banana and so was Anthony's and Amanda and Susan, they had chocolate and strawberry, actually I think it was raspberry but it doesn't matter. And I said to the grown-ups we'd just seen the apes and Uncle Jim said we've just seen them too walking past the window but I don't think that's true, well it's obviously not true because they're all in cages so that was just Uncle Jim talking like he does. I really didn't want to come home but they were closing. I'd really like to go back—it's really great there. Maybe next time you could come instead of Uncle Jim. Do you think you could, Auntie Milly? And we got some toffees in the gift shop with a picture of the chimps' tea party on the box. Do you want to see it? Here—it's great, isn't it? I've eaten nearly all of the toffees, but I did dish them out to everybody. Some had nuts in which isn't quite so good. We didn't actually see the chimps in real life because I think they were all asleep. And we got a hot dog which I'd never had before. Do you know what they are, Auntie Milly? It's not a dog, or anything—it's a sort of orange sausage which tastes a bit funny actually but
the bread was nice with ketchup which you squirt in it. And an ice cream from a van like they've got on the Heath but it's not like Wall's Family Bricks or wafers or anything because it comes out of a tap all swirly and it's really really good and they put a Flake in it which are yummy. Mr. Miller said they must make a lot of profit, which I don't really know what it means. Would you like a toffee, Auntie Milly? I've just got three left. What did you do today? Did you have a nice time?”

And as he continued to babble on delightedly, Milly beamed as hard as she could, and continually stroked his hair. His pleasure was tugging her only gently, while normally it would long ago have overwhelmed her, and she would be hugging him tightly. Now, though, she could for not an instant longer barricade her mind from the invasion of the women: she had today been slapped so viciously until she was stunned by these two women, neither of whom even was known to her. But it was not the apparent derangement of Jane that most now disturbed her, profoundly shocking though it was. No—because of course it was the voice, the voice and the laughter, which soon then was chiming with his own. That of my man, as I have come to think of him: my man, yes. For the voice, it had been that of Fiona. Fiona, yes. His wife. With whom he gets along, oh … very well indeed then, it would surely appear. I am not sure I have before ever properly thought about this. Of Fiona. His wife. Her existence, of course—of that I am forever aware. That is a constant, a simple truth to be borne. Though I feel that it is not somehow … right, that they both should be so apparently friendly. That it is not altogether … decent. And then there was that other noise that had reached my ears before I could act upon the spur and rush away swiftly, my head bowed down like a villain, my insides so madly alive, just boiling in the turmoil. For there had been a chink. A chink of little crystal glasses. And I think that they were drinking Benedictine.

I've got a little bit of a head, to be honest. Not used to it, you see. But after just those few little nips of Haig I had off Jim in the cafeteria, I sort of got a taste for it. Which surprised me I can tell you, because in the normal sort of run of things, well—barely touch it at all, really: can't even remember the last time I was in a public house. Don't at all care for them. The smell and the men. But after we got back home, Anthony and me, all I was remembering was that I was fairly sure there could be a bottle of something or other at the back of the sideboard, just on the shelf over where we keep the photo albums—bottle of something left over from Christmas time. Buy it every year, I'll never know why: bottle of Scotch, one of gin, tawny port, another of Bristol Cream. Nobody drinks it. Never have anyone round, or anything. Well of course I don't. So come Easter, I give it away to be raffled, most times. Tombola, sort of style. Good causes. Red Cross. Lifeboats. And those blind dogs you see about the place with some poor old sod there tapping away with his stick. Not the Polio people though, some reason; they wanted me to have one of those little plaster model boys in his calipers outside the shop, with a slot in his head for coins: soon sent them packing. Anyway … when I got back from the Zoo … oh,
I was in all sorts of a state, I can tell you. All over the place, I was. In my mind, I mean: I wasn't like Jim, reeling about like an idiot. He had nearly the whole of the bottle.

I was very careful when Anthony and me got back to the shop. Jim, he'd already tottered off to his ironmonger's—talking to his budgie Cyril, if you can believe it, and him still three doors away—and there was Paul, head down, walking slowly, and on the opposite pavement. Amanda had already gone home with that other one—what was she called again? Dear oh dear: my mind—I'm telling you. Gets worse and worse. And she's a good girl, that Amanda—ever so grateful for all the tuck I'd treated them to: thought I'd never hear the end of it. The price of those toffees and that ice cream, though—how they've got the nerve. But you've got to, haven't you really? Kids out on a treat—got to make it as nice as you can for them. Yes well—didn't see Jim dipping into his pocket, though. Apart from a cup of tea and his whisky, it was all down to me. Christ Alive—it's not as if I can afford it, or anything. Susan—yes of course: that's the name of the other one: nice girl too, nice and polite. Not from the Lane I don't think, though: else I would've seen her about. Anyway … when we came in, Anthony and me, I said to him—here, Anthony: have a nice day out, did you? There's a good lad. Well you go off up to your room now, eh? I'll call you down when your tea's on the table—but after that hot dog, was it, and ice cream and I don't know what else, I expect you're fit to bursting, aren't you? But I just want a little word with your mother, see? All right? Let her know we're all back safe and sound. Maybe bring her up a cup of tea.