The Listeners (26 page)

The sun was out. At the bus station, naming a town, the first that came into her head, she had wanted to tell every woman in the world, Get out, get out. You don’t
have to bother with it. When she climbed down at the noisy, crowded bus terminal, as strange as a foreign land, she had used almost the last of her money to ring the Police at home. She told them where the children were. ‘It’s not locked. Someone must take them away. I’m not coming back.’

‘Just a minute. Wait just a minute. Hold on...’ And be caught and dragged back? No thanks.

There was nothing to do and nothing to do it with. If she went for work or money, they’d get her. She walked about the town, two days, three days. A man gave her a meat pie at a stall somewhere. She grew as frozen as a walking corpse. The children wailed ceaselessly in her empty head.

In the market, where she picked among the cabbage leaves for something to see her through, an old man told her about the station, and she had dragged herself over the bridge. The oily black river looked soft and welcoming. Her mind climbed on to the railing and tumbled easily over. She had no strength to climb, barely to walk. In the station entrance, she staggered and was almost knocked down by a weaving line of boys. The end one caught her with his elbow and she spun round and clutched the wall.

‘What a piece of ‘uman wreckage,’ one of them said, and the others guffawed and pranced out singing.

In the middle of the night, people came, young ones, and a line of human wreckage straggled out of the shadows. They brought soup, bread which Agnes could not eat, but she swallowed the soup, without wondering about the hands that gave it.

‘Are you all right?’ A girl’s face like a white flower leaned to her between skeins of soft hair. ‘Do you need some help?’

Agnes shook her head. When she went back to the bench, she had cried for the first time.

She pushed herself up from the bench and began to walk. She would walk about until she dropped. Dented into the jelly of her brain with her mother’s finger, an old
image of hospital hands undressing her. She dragged herself across the empty station and pushed at the door of the Ladies’. They had forgotten to lock it. She leaned over the basin with her mouth under the single tap. The cold water splashed into her stomach and came right up again. She hung over the basin, her hair among the grimy hair combings, and wailed with her children.

She washed her face and stood vacantly, wringing her hands, since there was no towel. She would not look in the speckled mirror. On the wall next to it was a notice about a VD clinic, the usual ...
‘If you are desperate.
’ It wasn’t the VD. It wasn’t the usual ...
‘If you are at the end of your tether.

Under the entrance arch, she stood against the wall, trembling. A few people were about, walking briskly, not loitering. This town had as bad a name as any other. One of the bums who had slept in the station came out, shuffling and muttering, lips red and wet in a tangle of beard. No good trying him, but she stepped forward.

He groped a sixpence out of a pocket somewhere among his clothes and shuffled on faster when she tried to thank him.

‘Samaritans - can I help you?’ A man’s voice.

‘Yes ... yes, I need help. I can’t go on.’

‘Tell me?’

‘I can’t.’

‘You can tell me anything.’

It was years since anyone had spoken to her like that. She felt like a child. ‘Come and help me.’

‘I can’t leave here, I’m afraid, but we can talk for as long as you like.’

‘I want to see someone. I want someone to help me.’

‘Can you come up to us?’

‘Where is it?’

He told her, gave her a bus number.

‘I’ll have to walk.’

He told her the way. ‘Do you want to tell me your name? All right Agnes, we’ll watch for you.’

• • •

Sarah was to work two afternoons a week at the Samaritan Centre. Going to hang up her coat the first day, she found Meredith putting hers on.

‘Oh - did they take you?’ she was going to say, but it might sound rude. Meredith said it to her, and it did sound rude.

In the reception room, there was a young medical student called Andrew, friendly and casual, sporting a staple-shaped moustache, talking in jerks and hesitations, leaning on the lesser parts of speech.

‘Don’t be nervous.’ he told her, ‘
because,
it’s all quite -you know. Look, Sarah,
when
people come in, what you do - chat ‘em up a bit. See what they want. May only want to sell us paper clips, but don’t leave them, you know, standing.’

When the door opened and a woman looked in, waxen, drained, no stockings, her thick legs blue, Andrew broke off in mid-sentence and jumped up.

‘Hullo, come in. Here—’ He grabbed her arm and caught her as she staggered, and put her into a chair. ‘Poor dearie. It’s - oh yes, it’s Agnes, isn’t it? We’ve been expecting you.’

‘I couldn’t—’

‘Look, it’s all right. Sit for a minute. Then we’ll talk. Sarah will get you a cup of tea.’

Sarah jumped up as if she had been asked to go to the top of St Saviour’s tower and pull someone in off the ledge. When she came back, the woman thanked her weakly. She looked as if she had been walking all night, all day and all night. Andrew sat beside her, not looking at her, not not looking at her, just being with her while she drank the hot tea and sighed.

‘There’s some bread
and
– something or other in the kitchen,’ Andrew told Sarah. ‘Could you make, like - you know, a sandwich?’

14.10 Max Legge, a father looking for his missing daughter Jane, came in to ask if we knew anything. Nothing in files. (Sarah, 589.)

‘Aren’t you going to the office, Max?’

‘I can’t. Phil and Olive will have to manage.’

‘Don’t worry so. Why do you worry like this all the time? It doesn’t do any good.’

‘My daughter’s been gone four months. Your daughter. Don’t you worry?’

‘Not any more.
I hate her now.
’

‘Margaret - don’t!’

‘Why not? After all we’ve done for her...’ The old tune.

‘Did we do it to get gratitude?’

‘I don’t know. All right, yes. What’s wrong with parents wanting that from their children?’

‘If there were something I could do...’ His old tune.

‘You’ve tried everything. Police. Hospitals. Church Army - you must have rung every agency there is. Janie is probably hundreds of miles away.’

‘I think she is in terrible trouble. That’s why she won’t come home, or write to us. I’m so afraid, Margaret.’

She looked at him, her face drawn down.

‘I keep thinking she might be dead.’

When Sarah was in the hall, a tall woman with a head of swathed sandy red hair cupped in the turned-up collar of her coat came in at the front door and stood looking at her.

Don’t leave them, you know, standing. Sarah went to her, smiling shakily. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Oh thanks.’ The long mouth curved into a friendly smile. ‘Are you new? I’m Victoria,
4.22.
Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Everyone does it till they get to know people. My first day, the Director came wandering in looking exhausted in a jacket I wouldn’t give to the Salvation Army, and I rushed up and almost killed him with sympathy.’

As they went to the back of the house, the unlatched front door was pushed open and a middle-aged man with an astrakhan hat came in. He looked at the notice which told him to go to the reception room, then looked uncertainly
down the hall at Victoria and Sarah.

‘Try again.’ Victoria murmured. ‘That’s a genuine one.’

‘No, you.’

‘I’ve got to take off my coat.’

‘Can I help you?’

The man was tall and stiff. His overcoat was a black tube, too long. He took off his hat and looked down at Sarah as if it was not what he had expected to see. ‘I doubt it,’ he said wearily, ‘but I thought I’d better try everything.’

‘Would you like to come in and sit down?’ Sarah asked, like a polite child at a grown-up party.

‘I only want an answer, yes or no.’

His daughter had been missing for four months. Had she been here for help? He believed she was in some trouble.

‘How dreadful for you.’ Sarah stared up at him, transfixed by what she now saw was sorrow and pain in the lines of his grey face.

‘What shall I do?’ She went to ask Andrew.

He told her to look in the files for the girl’s name. ‘But if she
has
been to us, we’d have to get in touch with her before we could tell him anything.’

‘But her father?’

‘Anyone. You never tell.’

There was nothing. Two or three cards in the file identified as ‘Jane’, but too long ago.

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s not your fault.’ The father put on his astrakhan hat dead centre over his sad face and went away.

Later, when Sarah had dealt breathlessly with the office telephone, ‘You talk too fast,’ Andrew told her. ‘
And
too much. Got to learn you know, to shut up in this place.’

‘At least she’s articulate,’ Victoria said. ‘She doesn’t call everyone Whatsaname or Thing.’

‘Doesn’t talk like a secretary either.’

‘Do I still?’

‘Once in a while. A bit too official.’

‘Oh God, that’s my office training.
“Courier,
good
morning. Mr Fisher is in conference. Can I take a message?” Thanks for reminding me, Andrew.’

They criticized without rancour or affront. ‘People don’t do that anywhere else.’ Sarah said.

‘They would if they were all after the same thing. It’s like - well, there is this Unanism thing. A sort of non-religion. The most significant human relationship is when people do something in the same way and for the same what’s-it. Kon-tiki. Doctors and nurses in an operating theatre. Even a football team. Unanism. It’s why grownups go on playing schoolboy games.’

‘Or become Samaritans,’ Victoria said.

‘Yeh. Boy from London came in here the other day, on the - you know - on the run. Wild with me, though I spent all morning trying to find him a room. What was I doing here, why wasn’t I up there chucking bricks through the windows of the American Embassy?’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘Too busy. Nothing I can do about Viet Nam. Something here I
can
do. What got you in here, Victoria?’

‘Unoriginal reason. Someone I knew killed himself. Someone I thought I loved.’

‘With me—’ the reception room was empty now. Andrew was lounging on a sofa in his jeans and torn sweaters; Victoria was writing a report about her talk with Agnes - ‘with me, it was someone I detested. My first year at University. I shared a room with him, till I could find some kind
of
- you know - to move out. The world’s bore. He still came to my room all the time, talk, talk, all his problems, I stopped listening. One day, he hanged himself. Sorry? Yes, I was,
but
- you know? - for myself. Cheated. He cheated me of the chance to do something for him. Not that I ever did, but he was sort of - filed away. I might. Now I couldn’t. Make you sick? It did me. I came up here and learned how to listen.’

And Sarah too, as the weeks went by, Sarah learned to listen. For some of the people to whom she listened, nothing could be resolved; it was part of an endless quest for what they could not find in themselves. Listen, Sarah,
listen, you have nothing to give but your ears. She did not think she was much use.

One evening, leaving late, she met David, 520, getting out of his shuddery car.

‘Hullo?’ He peered through his thick smeared glasses. ‘Oh,
hullo.
Are you one of us now?’

‘Yes, I am. Sarah, 589.’

Sarah King. Warm. Alertly young. Eager. She will make a better Samaritan than me, Victoria thought. I’d like to meet her husband, and know the rest of what she is.

Sarah had looked at Victoria’s left hand, then curiously up at her face, seeing - what? Would she evaluate me differently if I were married to Robbie? The Hon. Mrs Robert Fielding. Lady Roundswell. Who would even
speak
to me?

‘If I were married to a Lord,’ she asked Peter, rummaging through the boxes in his office to find shoes for Michael, ‘could I still be a Samaritan?’

‘You could still be Victoria, 422,’ he said. ‘Why are you so neurotic?’

‘I’d be an anachronism.’

‘We’ve all been anachronisms since we were born, to the babies that come tumbling after.’ He was reading her report. ‘Did Agnes ask you to find out where her children were?’

‘Oh yes. I talked to the Children’s Officer. She wanted me to do that before she would tell me anything.’

With an old Army overcoat and a pair of shoes and thick socks to stuff them with, Victoria went down to Marsh Lane that evening. Michael was not on his beat. The Brethren of the Judgement was open for business, however, and she went in.

In the small room behind the black glass window, there was a counter, shelves of books and leaflets, and a few chairs and low tables, like a carrot-juice cocktailbar.

‘Have you come to read?’ The woman behind the counter wore a tam o’shanter and a black overall pinned
tightly across the chest as if Marsh Lane were full of rapists.

‘It was about the old man with the boards—’

‘You are interested in the Brethren? You’re early for the meeting. Are you going to wait?’

‘It’s really old Michael I want to see. He’s a friend of mine.’

‘I see,’ said the woman, not seeing anything. ‘Well, it’s nothing to do with me. It’s Mr Naylor who pays the old gentleman, for not very much, if they want my opinion, but Mr Naylor is like that. Man or beast, he’ll not see anybody go in need.’

‘Is he here?’

‘On a Thursday? No, my dear. He’s in the field.’

‘Where is that?’

‘Wherever he sets down his stand and banner. Street corners, car parks, the zoo. He spoke on the pier one Whitsun. It was quite nice.’ Her eyes glazed over.

‘You haven’t seen Michael?’ Victoria tried to bring her back. ‘I’ve got some shoes and a coat for him. It’s cold.’

‘Don’t look at me.’ The glazing slid back like shutters. ‘If he chooses to traipse up and down in the gutter, it’s no affair of mine.’

Victoria went on up Marsh Lane, which became increasingly shabbier and more downhearted, until it died among a huddle of condemned houses and abandoned workshops near the coalyards. Under the railway, the arches dripped and stank. On one side of the street that ran along these sluggish reaches of the river, warehouses and garages and blocks of prosaic flats had been raised out of bomb ruins after the war. On the other, many of the old factories still tottered on the river bank, window-less shells, chimneys standing alone, blackened timbers fallen across burned-out floors.