The Watchers on the Shore (3 page)

'Thank you, James. That will be all.'

'Will it?'I plant a kiss on the damp curve of her neck and shoulder.

'Yes, it will,'she says; 'On your way, lover-boy. I want to get dry.'

'I'll dry you.'

'I can manage, thanks, I don't want covering with bruises.'

'Would you rather have kisses?'

'I'd rather you went away and let me get dry.'

'I can take a hint.'

I leave her and go into the bedroom. I open a new book but I've hardly got into my stride with it when I hear Ingrid coming out of the bathroom, so I put the book away, switch off the bedside light and lie in the dark. She comes into bed and lies quietly beside me
for a while. Then she says:

'Do you wish Bobby was ours?'

'What? No. Why should I?'

'You seem to make such a fuss of him.'

'I think he's a grand little lad; but there's a difference between playing with a kid for half an hour and having to cope with him all day and every day.'

'You would like to have children, wouldn't you?'

"Course I would. But there's no hurry yet.'

This isn't a new conversation with us. Every now and again
Ingrid's got to be reassured that I do want kids and at the same time
that I'm not over-worried that in her case it's going to be a bit
trickier than normal to produce them. But when I say there's no
hurry it's not the real reason I give her. The real reason is that a
baby would put another chain round us, tie us a bit more firmly, and try as I might I can't help resisting this. There's a part of me under the daily routine, the settled surface of our marriage, that never accepts, that's always holding out against a final surrender
to the facts.

And it's a bit later, when we've made love, that the feeling hits me strongest; and I lie in the dark with nothing now between me
and the thought that comes to me time and time again; the question
that's always hanging round waiting for an answer I can't give: Is this all?

2

'What I want to know,'Henry Thomas says,'is where's the catch.'

'You would, Henry,'I tell him. 'Everybody else is taking their first easy breath for a week and you're nattering about catches.'

'Oh, I'm relieved,'Henry says, taking a dog-end from behind his ear and lighting up. 'But perhaps I'm a bit more far-sighted than some people. I don't take things on face value as easy as most.'

It's Monday morning, first thing, a grey October morning out
in the streets, and we're in the shop together. I'm looking through
the post and Henry's leaning on the other side of the counter,
having a chat like he often does before organizing his day's work.

'You see,'Henry says, pulling his great thinker's face, 'I can't understand why the Russians should build missile bases in Cuba without trying to camouflage them, and then agree to dismantle them when the Americans cut up rough.'

'Perhaps they didn't expect the Yanks to get as tough as all that.'

'Aye, and perhaps they did expect just that. I don't know. It's a
mystery.'

'It is to me an'all. But I'm not trying to analyse it; I'm just bloody glad it's all over ... Here, listen to this: "Dear Sir, That television I bought from your shop two months ago is very good
on the BBC but there is too much advertisements on the other side which keeps breaking into the programmes and spoiling them. Would you please send your assistant to adjust and oblige yours faithfully..."'

'Do you fancy a bit of adjusting and obliging mine faithfully?'

Henry takes it very calmly. 'Who is it?'

'A woman in Greenford.'I pass him the letter.

'This one's worse than that woman who wanted to swap her
seventeen-inch for a twenty-one because she thought she wasn't getting all the picture. You'd better drop her a line. I've too much
on to mess about with her.'

'You could always send Walt,'I say with a grin.

'Walt!'Henry's eyebrows go up in disgust.'You can't send him for a box of screws. D'you know he brought six sets in last week that could have been seen to on the spot? And why? Because he couldn't do 'em himself. He's supposed to be a skilled man but I'm doing his work for him. All he's good for is fetching and carrying. Summat'll have to be done about him, that's all. I can't go on like this for ever.'

'It beats me how he got set on in the first place.'

'Because I didn't interview him, that's how. I'd have seen
through him in two minutes, but he told the Old Man a tale and he
swallowed it, hook, line and sinker.'

'Where's Walt now?'

'Out with the van, picking some more stuff up for me to repair.'

Olive comes through the door from the, washroom at the far
end of the shop. Another of Mr Van Huyten's appointments,
she's a thin, mousy girl, quiet and a bit vague, but not bad at her
work as long as you keep telling her what to do. She hovers about
at the end of the counter till I call out to her:

'Will you have a bit of a dust round, Olive love, if you've nothing else to do.'

She takes a yellow duster from under the counter and wanders
off among the TV sets and radiograms.

'I wonder if Mr Van Huyten's coming in today,'Henry says. 'I really ought to have a word with him about Walt.'

'I want to see him as well,'I say, 'Though as far as coming in's concerned I wish he'd keep clear altogether, because he's sure to
poke his finger into something whenever you see him. The trouble is, we run the place but he won't stop interfering and let go. All we need him for is to sign the cheques ... Here's a perfect example.'

I nourish a letter I've just opened at Henry.

'The electricity bill. He wouldn't let me see to it. No, leave it with
him, he said. Now it isn't paid and they're threatening to cut the
supply off.'

'He knows he's past it physically but he won't admit he's losing his grip mentally as well. Ah, well, I suppose it comes to all of us if we live long enough.'He stirs himself. 'I suppose I'd better get some work done.'

'Here you are, Henry; take these.'I hand him four letters asking for service. 'A bit of rescue work for you to do.'

Henry ambles away down the shop to the workroom and I carry on with the post. It's mostly bills, invoices and circulars, apart from the customers' letters, but one envelope is addressed to me personally. When I open it I'm surprised to see that it's from Albert Conroy, a bloke I haven't seen in years, who was making plans to emigrate the last I heard of him.

'Dear Vic, I hope this reaches you care of the shop as I don't know your home address. How are married life and the pop-record fans treating you? Any family yet?

'The reason I'm writing is because I was wondering if you'd ever given any thought to the possibility of coming back into engineering. I moved down here eighteen months ago to a job with a small structural firm called Joyce and Walstock and now I'm the chief draughtsman (no less!), first of all boss of myself and now in charge of two more draughtsmen, one of them Jimmy Slade, your
old pal from Whittaker's, who I persuaded to come down twelve months ago.

'As I say, this is a smallish firm yet, but it changed hands just
before I joined it and the new management is set on building the
business up. We shall be needing some more men and there's a nice
little opening for a bright lad like yourself, if you fancy it. Money, conditions and prospects are all good and there's room for a bloke
to use his initiative.

'For all I know you're happy doing what you're doing but I
thought I'd write on the off-chance you fancied a change. If it
sounds interesting to you, let me know and I'll send you more
details or, better still, I can fix up an expenses-paid trip so that you
can come down and look the job over for yourself.

'Jimmy sends his regards. He suggested writing to you at the
shop. He seems to have settled down here nicely and he's fratern
izing with the natives to the extent of doing a bit of courting in the
town.'

There's a p.s.: 'It's good ale,'that makes me smile.

The address on the letter is 33 Tavistock Road, Longford,
Essex. The grin stays on my face because I'm flattered that Conroy's written to me like this. Most of the time we worked
together in the drawing office at Whittaker's we didn't get on all that well; and it was only just before Conroy left that I found out
there was more to him than a big mouth and a cocky sense of his
own importance that put everybody's back up at times. Now I see
that I must have made a bigger impression on him than I ever
guessed.

I let my mind run on for a minute, wondering what it would be
like to go down south and work with Conroy and Jimmy again,
then I fold the letter and put it away, thinking I'll reply when I've
ten minutes to spare. I know now what the answer will have to be,
but it still makes me feel good to have been asked.

The day goes by without anything unusual happening. Walt
drifts in and out, saying nothing much to anybody, the usual blank
look on his long face, a half-smoked fag drooping at the corner of
his mouth as always. You never see Walt light a cigarette or put
one out, but he always has one, partly burned away, stuck in his
face. Olive dreams her way through to six o'clock. Henry grumbles
a bit more. Mr Van Huyten doesn't show up, nor does he get in
touch. So I decide I'll have to go up and see him after I've closed
the shop.

I ring Chris first and ask her to tell Ingrid I'll be late, then when
I've locked up I hop on a bus which goes up the hill past the end of
Mr Van Huyten's street. I have heard him talk at times, but not
lately, about buying a bungalow, which would be cosier for him on
his own; but he's never made the move and he's still in the biggish gloomy stone-built place I've always known him to live in; though
now he seems to have retreated into just a couple of rooms on the
ground floor and dragged most of his possessions in after him in the
most fantastic overcrowded hotch-potch of furniture, junk and
knick-knacks I've ever seen. I don't think there's anything in the
place I'd give him more than ten bob for, though I don't know about these things and it could be there's something an antique
dealer might rub his hands over.

He's a long time in answering the door. With his heavy curtains
drawn it's hard to tell whether he's in or out. I ring the bell a few
times before I hear the shuffle of his feet in the hall and his voice
on the other side of the door.

'Who is it?'

'It's me: Victor.'

Then he lets me in.

It's really a terrible change the last three years have brought in
Mr Van Huyten. He's been old and frail for as long as I remember
him, but now he's all of a sudden a lot older, a lot frailer, and
eccentric into the bargain. And it's the last bit he doesn't seem to
see himself.

I go for him over the electricity bill as soon as we're sitting in the
big wing-chairs by his great dark marble fireplace.

He says dear me, tut, tut, tut, he's quite sure he paid it. But he can't ignore the .notice I've brought with me and he gets up and
pokes about in the pigeon-holes of his roll-top desk, which look
from where I'm sitting like a model of untidiness and inefficiency,
and in a minute he finds the bill and looks at it in surprise.