The Watch Tower (8 page)

‘The men of this tribe,’ the anthropologist had written in that book of Clare’s that she had skimmed one night, ‘the men of this tribe regard the act of sex as the ultimate insult to be inflicted on a woman. Having degraded their wives by using them thus, they hold them thereafter in the greatest contempt.’

Goodness knew what brought that to her mind!

If Felix teased her a little strangely, almost unkindly, it meant nothing in particular. Against the teasing and the employer’s look and tone, she had to weigh the lovely house, the garden and water-views, and the
fact that she and Clare were to be taken care of. Yes, against all her silly invisible fancies, she had to set the very real white house. After all, he had bestowed its care on her.

‘Oh, it’s heavenly!’ Clare said effusively, pressed again and again for appreciation. ‘There’s a lot of space,’ she added more sincerely. ‘I like the grass and trees.’

‘Space!’ Laura’s hand caressed the blue curtain. Almost, she revered the house. Almost, she loved and feared it with a heavy doting love.

‘Yes,’ Clare said. There was more space, but no more company. It was extremely nice to look at, she could see, and there were very many new and pretty objects in it, which she had lifted, looked at and replaced. Of course, it wasn’t
her
house, which could have accounted for her ability not to be overcome by its value and its lacy charm. (But of course it wasn’t Laura’s, either.)

‘Picked this up for you the other day.’ Peter Trotter thrust a parcel into Felix’s hands as he was leaving the shop. ‘Present. Reminded me of you.’ Felix’s expression was both touched and suspicious. ‘Wait till you get home,’ Peter said, when he started to open it. ‘Read the label.’

Striding into the house half an hour later, he called, ‘Hey there! Where is everyone? Come and see what Peter gave me!’

Laura sped from the kitchen, but Felix looked
about, dissatisfied. ‘Where’s Clare?’

‘Cla-are! Cla-are! Come here a minute!’

She came running from the garden, and raised her fair brows and grinned with open optimistic eyes at Felix, who had so recently provided car rides, meals in restaurants, plays, picnics, events. ‘What’s happening?’

Felix drew the present from its brown-paper wrappings with a magician’s hey presto! flourish, and held it up like an auctioneer.

‘Oh!’ Laura was prepared to be delighted, but looked at Felix for an explanation.

‘An ornament?’ Clare hazarded.

‘Who do you think it is?’ Felix was wearing his slyest smile.

‘A sultan? A sheikh?’

The china figure, fifteen inches high, represented a swarthy turbaned man wearing rich robes of red and blue, in the act of drawing a long assassin’s knife from the low-slung girdle at his waist.

‘Bluebeard!’ Felix cried. ‘Me! Peter said it reminded him of me.’ He held the small dark china face close to his own and assumed a terrible leer.

Laura gave an indignant laugh. ‘What a nasty thing to say!’

‘
He
knew how to treat his women! He knew the stuff to give ’em! Is he like me? Huh?’ He grimaced more horribly than ever into Clare’s face, popping his
eyes at her, and she backed away, giggling kindly. She did not really think him funny at all, but she was very obliged that he tried to be.

‘What?’ The source of Laura’s indignation changed. ‘He was the one who had rooms full of murdered wives!’

Felix gave a dreadful roar and rolled his eyes wildly. ‘Aha! You want to watch out!’ He laughed into the smiling, wary faces with glee. Then with the drawing in of a deep breath, he fell to admiring his own china image. ‘Nice bit of work. Must have set him back a bit. Where’ll we put it, now?’

All three considering together, it was finally decided to put the villain on the shelf above the fireplace in the sitting-room. The dark brilliant eyes looked out from under the curving satanic brows, the malicious smile never tired.

As she left the room, Felix pulled the ribbons from the end of Clare’s plaits, and she exclaimed, pretending to be angry. He laughed, his eyes unreadable. He watched her go. If he had had twelve dependants roaming the garden, answering, ‘Yes, Felix!’ instantly, when he called, ‘Ho, there!’ he would have found it even more satisfactory—leaving aside the financial aspect, since the whole idea was hypothetical.

‘Yes, Felix! Yes, Felix!’ It was pleasing to hear his name uttered on demand by these light, girlish voices, to have people dashing in out of the sun with expect
ant faces.

But, emphatically, he did not want children. It would not have mattered anyway, but neither did Laura.

‘Well, am I going back to school? What’s going to happen?’ Clare was at the kitchen table scraping the big yellow mixing bowl with a teaspoon. Laura had been baking gem scones.

‘Yes, of course you are. You have to. You’re under leaving age.’ Felix was outside digging round the roses at the front of the house, a hundred yards away or more or less, behind walls, round corners, nevertheless Laura’s voice was low to furtive. ‘I know the holidays are nearly over. I’ll talk to Felix tonight.’ Glancing at Clare, she wiped the table with a sponge, and something about her sister’s full grey eyes and lids drugged Laura’s disquiet. For a moment she noticed the girl. ‘Do you want to get your plaits cut before you go back?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, now!’ After dinner, manipulating the clever point of his tongue round his teeth in search of remnants of steak, and dexterously sucking air through likely crevices, Felix slid down in his chair and stretched his legs rigidly in front of him, crossing his ankles. He thrust his hands deep into his trouser-pockets, poking and sucking, somehow philosophically. ‘I don’t know. I think she better just go to that place you went to.’

Having eaten, they had checked the factory’s books meticulously for two hours in Felix’s small office at the
back of the house. Now he was teaching Laura a game of dominoes.

‘The business college?’ Laura’s eyes flinched away from his calm smiling dark ones. He had said—She had thought—Painfully, she stared at the black dominoes, the green baize—

‘Sure. If she does a bit of shorthand and typing she’ll be right.’ He appeared to think. ‘I tell you what. If
you
can’t pay the fees and your mother didn’t leave anything—’ he gave his down-turned smile and made a roguish play for Laura’s eyes. ‘
I
’
ll
fix it. Add it to the housekeeping. How’s that?’

She was like a novice tackling a master of jujitsu. Her head swam. All at once she was clinging frantically to what she had regarded as no sort of solution. ‘Oh!—Good.’

‘Only good, is it?’

‘No. It’s more than good. It’s very kind of you. If you feel—if you’re sure—she can’t go on to finish high school.’

Easing himself further down, so that he was resting only shoulders, neck and head on the back of the chair, and supporting his spine in the seat, Felix reminded her gently, ‘It’s two more years, you know. Don’t forget that. At least two years—’ He pondered over his decision, and Laura waited, silence pressing in on her.

‘No one kept
me
there the extra time, and I don’t think I’ve done too badly.’ Felix opened his eyes at her,
ruefully, whimsically. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. What do you think? He looked at her suddenly again, with exaggerated alertness, as if her opinion might even yet change the direction of his life.

Laura jumped. ‘No, no! You’re not wrong. Of course you’ve done—wonderfully.’

‘Do you think so?’ he asked keenly, looking at her as if her answer to this, too, interested him tremendously.

‘Of course!’ Laura was vehement and whole-hearted in his praise. ‘It was only an idea. Lots of nice young girls go to business college.’

Felix smiled modestly at his crossed feet. ‘I don’t mind seeing that she gets there. Later on, if she comes up to scratch, we might find something for her at the factory. Who knows?’

Laura’s left hand tentatively buttoned and unbuttoned and buttoned the button at the neck of her yellow cardigan.

‘Where is she, anyway?’ Felix affected to glance over his shoulder as if he might perhaps have overlooked the girl’s presence.

‘Reading. In her room.’

‘Oh? What’s wrong with our company?’

Laura looked at him, not quite comprehending. ‘Nothing,’ she assured him suddenly. She continued to look at him till, as suddenly, she said, ‘I’ll go and call—’

Felix rubbed his nose, appearing inattentive, only saying to his fingernails, ‘I don’t know if you’ve ever
had to pay an electricity bill in this district, but—ah—’ He raised his eyes very quickly and laughed.

‘I’m getting her.’

‘When you come back I’ll beat you at dominoes for the fifth time running. I hope you know that. I hope you know what a fourth-rate brain you’ve got. Do you?’

The telephone rang in the office and Laura padded rapidly to answer it, and half-ran coming back. ‘It’s for you, Felix.’

‘You’re puffing like an old crone,’ he said with distaste. ‘At your age.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Clearing his throat portentously, he rose and, head down, abstracted as a bishop on Easter Day, he moved out of the room like a procession while Laura stood aside. Then she went to recruit Clare, drawing nourishment through her eyes and fingers on the way. Home.

‘What? Are you moving again?’ Peter Trotter climbed into the car with the disengaged air of one who knows he is granting a favour accepting a favour: his own car was being greased, Felix was dropping him off in North Sydney. He turned his long pale face towards Felix and jerked his head at the roof-high collection of ledgers, cash books, stationery, in and out trays, adding machines and books he could not identify, in the back of the car.

‘Yeah, I’m thinking of running the office from the house. I’ve been carting this stuff home a bit at a time.’

Felix drove with the steering-wheel pressed to his chest, his strong arms hooped round it, hanging on for dear life as though it were the neck of a mad bull.

‘This is the last shipment.’ He laughed consciously.

Trotter barely opened his trap of a mouth. ‘What’s it in aid of?’

‘Saves a heap of rent, you know. Might as well kill two birds with one stone. She’s got to look after the house and it saves time if she does the typing and phoning at home. Then I’ve got everything handy to work on the books at night.’

Trotter flicked a platinum lighter and applied its flame to a cigarette. He stared, bored, through the windscreen, felt the back of his patent head. Felix drove in nervous, angry spurts as some feeling of his one-time partner’s elevation in the world and his own opinion dawned on him. Old Pete had taken steps up out of his range. Look at his suit!

Felix continued laboriously, ‘A man’s got everything he wants at home: plenty of space, view—No sense paying rent for an office. I’ll still be pushing this thing round most of the time.’ He continued doggedly in this fashion, his voice cracking occasionally so that he could stop to clear it. ‘What do you say?’

Expressionless, Peter Trotter gave him a shilling to pay the bridge toll. ‘I say it’s a lousy idea. You save a
few quid subletting the office at the factory (incidentally, I’ll be your tenant) and drop a packet.’

‘How do you make that out? Drop a packet!’

‘If you can’t see it—In your shoes, I’d be branching out, not closing down.’

‘Oh, would you? Who’s closing down?’

Peter Trotter shrugged. His indifference was bottomless. Pennies and dimes. Pennies and dimes. Why was he persecuted by the natterings of small-time no-hopers like Felix Shaw with his paltry manoeuvres, when he had real plans cooking?

Tiredly, he made Felix a further donation of his opinions. ‘That’s how it gets round. “Shaw’s doing the paperwork at home. Can’t afford a two-by-four office.” I’m not saying it’s a fact. Only how it looks to the trade.’

Thickly, defiant, Felix said, ‘So what? Who cares what the trade thinks? Mr. Shaw’s not too worried about them.’

‘Yeah. Well. This is where I get off. See you.’

***

‘Would you like to ask Peter and his girlfriend—I think he’s got a girlfriend, don’t you?—ask them for dinner some night?’ Laura looked up brightly from her plate. She had begun to think that Felix was as friendless as she and Clare. Till now she had assumed that everyone else in the world had families and hosts of loved ones,
but this was evidently not so. Of course, Felix had known a lot of people in his day and, strangely, when she asked of twenty different people, ‘What happened to him?’ Felix would answer, ‘He’s still kicking about. Caught sight of him the other day, as a matter of fact.’

Why were his friends all so irretrievably in the past?

Laura passed on to the next question. Why not start entertaining in this house made for happy gatherings? She could not doubt that Felix wanted that: his purchases of silver, china, glasses, decanters and liquor made it obvious enough. He had insisted on these luxuries at the expense of many a homely article for the kitchen. The only small difficulty was—who in the world could they invite?

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Felix said indifferently and, at the same time, critically, looking up from his rockmelon. ‘No, I don’t think we’ll bother with Mr. Trotter.’

He
had
asked Peter to dinner some time ago. Peter had intimated that he was permanently tied up. Felix had kept this from Laura. He was rather miserly about any new facts he happened to acquire. He hoarded them in secret as though they were personal wealth, only popping one out occasionally to give Laura a feeling that this poor sample was the very least of all he hid.

Felix spooned up cold, mouth-watering curves of melon. God knew he’d had dealings with thousands of fellows in the course of his several business careers. (Who
could he ask to dinner?) He had had Chinese dinners in Dixon Street with four other coves twice a week when one big sale was pending. Other times he’d eaten and drunk in cramped Kings Cross flats while documents were signed and books taken over. (Still, who could he ask to dinner?) In pubs all over the city he’d had sessions with a vast variety of boys from one trade and another. Friends? He’d had them by the gross.