Stanley and the Women (18 page)

For all
I knew, this part and that part had been different then, built at different
times with different ideas, anyhow not interchangeable. That was no longer so,
if it ever had been, unless perhaps you happened to have an eye for churches.
Not that I cared, of course — I had left South London for good as soon as I had
the chance. And yet in a sense what I saw from the Apfelsine was the same as
ever, was cramped, thrown up on the cheap and never finished off, needing a
lick of paint, half empty and everywhere soiled, in fact very like my old part
as noticed when travelling to and from an uncle’s funeral a few weeks back.
Half the parts south of the river were never proper places at all, just
collections of assorted buildings filling up gaps and named after railway
stations and bus garages. Most people I knew seemed to come from a place —
Cliff Wainwright and I got out of an area. This might have spared us various
problems.

On
Shooters Hill I picked up a sign for St Kevin’s and was directed across some
strikingly unrepulsive parkland through a couple of open gates in a low
red-brick wall surmounted by railings. Following further signs I found myself
winding through what added up to another park, though this one was in full fig
with lawns, flowerbeds, shaped hedges and ordered groups of shrubs, all looking
cheerful enough even if fairly well saturated just now. But most of the view
consisted of houses, again in red brick, probably of the Thirties, and enough
in size and number to shelter a great many people, in fact a small New Town of
loonies and their attendants. That sounded like the sort of novel by a dead
foreigner that got reviewed in the
Sunday Chronicle,
not with Susan
doing the review, of course.

The car
park was right at the end, at the back of a one-storey building with a
husky-looking creeper trained along it. Having duly parked I walked round to
its front, not hurrying because I was early and the rain had stopped for the
moment. I turned the corner to find that an ambulance had drawn up outside the
entrance and the two crewmen were helping down an old fellow who was going on
like a madman in a Bela Lugosi movie. Shock-headed, wild-eyed, wrapped in a
grey blanket, he was spreading his hands jerkily about in front of him as he
shuffled forward, not actually screaming but crying out in a high wordless
voice. The men told him he was fine and doing great. I was trying to look like
a piece of the wall and had no idea how he saw me, but he did, and swung and
swayed round.

‘Hoo-oo!’
he howled, pointing a shaky finger. ‘Urhh!’

The man
quickly soothed him and the younger one steered him through the glass door. The
older one came over to me. He had a very long neck and small ears and was
blinking and frowning.

‘Nothing
for it, just got to stare, have we?’ he said hoarsely. ‘Reflex action, is it?
See a nut and goggle like a kid?’ He gazed past me and let his lower jaw hang
to help to show me what he meant.

‘I’m
sorry, I wasn’t thinking, I was waiting to go in here myself.’

‘I mean
he’s not a bloody freak, you know. He’s a poor old man who’s a little bit
confused and a little bit frightened, and he don’t need very ignorant people
gawping at him, right?’

‘Yeah,’
I said. ‘My son’s in here somewhere.’

‘Oh,
well I expect you’ll learn then, won’t you?’ He looked me up and down once or
twice before letting me off whatever he still had up his sleeve for me, and
hurried off into the building, stopping abruptly on the way to light a
cigarette.

Something
prevented me from following him for the moment. I stood muttering excuses and
looking vaguely about, soon catching sight of someone in a white coat who
peered out of the entrance of the house opposite, probably a woman, but the
white brimmed hat like a cricket-hat made it hard to be sure. Two pairs of eyes
met for I suppose two seconds, then the figure threw up both hands and waved
them and started towards me, crossing the threshold on widely separated legs.
That sent me indoors all right. There was a desk and a girl there, and the
ceiling struck me as unusually low.

‘I’m
looking for Rorschach House,’ I said.

She
scratched her neck and said without looking up, ‘This is it.’

‘No
really?’ I had been fully expecting to be sent on a hike back to the front
gate.

‘It’s
over the door,’ she said, sighing. ‘Was there somebody you wanted to see?’

We went
into that and I started walking down a narrow, dimly lit corridor with doors
along the sides made from extremely cheap wood and the floor loosely spread
with white cotton lengths like the ones decorators put down. I saw nobody and
heard no sound before I knocked on a door of similar quality at the end of a
section of passage. Like the others it had a number on it but no name.

On
request I went inside, and nearly went straight out again on failing to
recognize the female sitting behind the metal table with her back to the
window. Then I saw that the dark-rimmed tinted glasses, swept-back hairdo and
old-style office get-up belonged to Trish Collings — so too with a vengeance
did the thin funny-shaped mouth, where I should have looked first. She held out
her hand, which I shook, and asked me to sit down, which I did, on one of the
kinds of chair you never see in a private house.

There
was not much in the room, and nothing personal or unnecessary, no photographs,
newspapers, flowers, books except what looked like textbooks and reference
works, none of the usual desk-clutter. Except of course there was no desk
either, just the bare table with a couple of files, a couple of wire trays, a
couple of loose papers, a telephone, a canteen saucer for an ashtray and a
white plastic institutional wastepaper-basket. Not so much as a typewriter —
but a small voice-recorder on a shelf. Strip-lighting gave an effect much more
like daylight than any electric light ever did, and at the same time not like
daylight at all.

Collings
allowed me plenty of time to take this in by finishing, or so far just going on
with, the letter or note she had been writing when I came in, my second
reminder of the world of the cinema since parking the car. When the wall-clock,
one of the sharp sort with no face or hands, just figures, showed 09 11 she
looked up at and said, ‘Mrs Hutchinson is late.’

‘I
know, it’s incredible,’ I said incredulously, ‘I can’t think what can have
happened to her.’

‘Usually
on time, is she? I suppose with her —’

‘No, I’m
sorry, no, she isn’t usually on time. She’s always late, you see. It’s because
she’s a … Er, I don’t think we’d better wait for her. Tell me, how’s Steve?’

‘He’s
all right, he’s quiet, no cause for alarm.’

‘Can I
see him?’

She
hesitated. ‘Later. For now you might answer a few basic questions.’

The
basic questions started with one about the date of my birth, but its precise
hour was not required, which ruled out the casting of my horoscope. They went
on with ones about things like whether I had had a serious illness, all from
what looked like some sort of form. Necessary for her theory? Possibly. Or then
again she could have been softening me up for a sudden really rotten one
slipped in after one about my grandparents. If so she had still not got to it
when at 09 22 there was a knock at the door and Nowell came in.

She was
smiling with demure triumph at having made it on time — well, 22 minutes late
was on time unless you were going to start being foul to her. At 10 22 she
would have gone on in just the same way, plus being ready, if anyone started
being foul to her, to state wonderingly that she was sorry but she had been
asked for 10 00. She had on a very upstanding kind of suit in some khaki
material, and with her short hair reminded me of the ATS girls I had seen
during the war. Collings got up and Nowell went across and I could have sworn
they were going to kiss, but without going that far they made it clear enough
that they got on famously together. Then they both turned and looked at me. I
knew that look, I would have known it even if I had never seen it before — it
was the look of two women getting together to sort a man out. And on the way
here I had said to myself well anyway, it would be fun to see those two wills battling
against each other. My trouble was that I kept mixing women up with men.

Nowell
came conscientiously over and kissed me on the cheek. Then she went and sat
down on a chair just like mine but ended up rather nearer Collings than me,
underlining the two-to-one effect. Intentionally? Not a useful word when
talking about Nowell.

‘Well,’
said Collings in chairpersonal style, ‘let’s get on, shall we? What I’m trying
to do is put together an informal biography-in-depth of Steve so far. I’ve
managed to get quite a lot from him — oh yes, it’s not that difficult if you
know what to look for — but I’ve hardly started on you and Stanley, Nowell. Let’s
go right back to the time he was born.’

She
could have meant me but she really meant Steve. The first twenty minutes or so
went suspiciously well — at least no physical blows were exchanged. Collings
took quite a few notes, which reminded me that I had not seen her take any on
the Monday. Nowell went on being conscientious, but in a different style. From
the events of Steve’s life up to puberty, such as they were, the talk shifted
to parental relations. In general, had he got on reasonably well with his
mother? On the whole yes, Nowell thought. Did I have any comment on that? No,
that seemed fair enough to me. What about how he and I had got on?

‘There
again,’ I said, all systems on full alert by now, ‘I think reasonably well.’

‘You
confirm that, Nowell, do you?’

‘I… think …’ said Nowell, dripping with objectivity, ‘
I
think …
that that’s putting it … rather too low. Stanley and Steve seemed to
me
to
get on … considerably better than the average father and young son. In fact
I’d go further than that. In
my
view the two of you had a … quite
remarkably close relationship. Considering how little you saw of each other.’

I
stared at her with a sort of grin. ‘What? We saw a hell of a lot each other.
Don’t you remember how every evening I —’

‘It’s
perfectly understandable, darling,’ she said, and gave Collings an I-told-you-so
smile. ‘Nobody’s blaming you. As I say, it was a great success —you got on
marvellously well whenever you did actually set eyes on each other. I often
remarked on it at the time.’

‘This
is ridiculous. It wasn’t like that at all. For instance, what about those
weekends when I —’

‘We
have here the standard behaviour-pattern in the situation.’ Leaning over her
work-table and blinking her eyes pretty fiercely, Collings marked the important
words by tapping on it with the butt of her black ballpoint. ‘Again, it’s the
norm for young primogenitors with strong external drives, not necessarily
producing negative effects.’

Something
that might have been the strip-lighting was making a high-pitched humming
noise. There was no view through the window, just a flat brownish surface which
filled the space and was probably the outside of more of the building, and
nothing on the walls, not even a calendar, not even a list or a timetable. All
this and the grey paint on those walls made the room seem a long way from
anywhere much, like a satellite tracking station in the Mojave Desert, say. I
looked over at the two females and saw that, quite naturally really, they were
looking at me, Nowell with a hesitant smile and her own, wider-eyed style of
blinking, Collings with her usual mish-mash of expressions and what might not
have been expressions at all. Much sooner than I had expected, the three of us
had reached the point I had foreseen ever since this meeting was proposed,
foreseen it intermittently and vaguely and yet with certainty.

Starting
with the set of my shoulders, I did my best to look and sound like the very
picture of meekness, goodwill, sincerity, tolerance, respect and disposition to
admit mistakes, and lumbered off on what had to be done.

‘Now I
take it the reason we’re all here is that we want to do the best we possibly
can for Steve.’

‘Of
course we do, darling,’ said Nowell reassuringly, showing that she really was
on her best behaviour, because I instantly saw that opening had been far from brilliant
after all — I might easily have been getting ready to tick her off for being
there for some other motive.

‘For
the moment I’m afraid I frankly don’t understand just where our, er, inquiries
are leading, but maybe I will later, and anyway I’m sure there’s a reason and a
purpose to them.’ In the meantime I was pushing my hands down between my thighs
and crossing both sets of fingers.

‘You
bet there is,’ said Collings with a couple of peals of laughter.

I
struggled on, addressing myself to her because I had to. ‘Obviously, if — er,
for the best results we’ve got to get as near the facts of what happened as
possible, it’s some years ago now and people forget things, of course they do.
But, for Steve’s benefit, that’s all, Nowell is mistaken when she says I saw
rather little of him during his childhood. I could give you the names of
friends who would describe to you the situation as it was in fact. Neighbours,
parents of school friends. Why, before he could walk I—’