To the Dark Tower (17 page)

As they turned up a slope where lovers sprawled in ungainly beatitudes ("Don’t stare, girls!") Barbara spoke for the first time:

"Shirley?"

"Yes."

"I’m sorry I was so horrid about your scrapbook. I was a pig to take it from your locker."

"That’s all right." She longed to be gracious, but could not find the requisite words. "I didn’t really mind."

"Shirley?" This was more tentative: the gold bracelet gleamed as she fiddled with it.

"Yes."

"Can we be friends now? I mean, real friends."

"Oh, yes. Oh, please."

Fingers pressed her arm through the dark-blue macintosh.

"It must be marvellous to have a man like that as your guardian."

"Well—he’s—he’s not exactly my guardian. Of course—well—it comes to that—"

"Like a father, really."

The words filled her with an extraordinary pleasure. "Yes," she said. "Yes. That’s it. Like a father." For no reason there was an ache in her throat, her eyes misted. But she was elated, she was content.

"Your father’s dead?"

"Yes."

"You don’t mind my asking? My father nearly died when he had his appendix out. It burst. But he got all right again. He’s in the Foreign Office... Did you love your father very much?"

Shirley nodded. "I can’t remember him very well. But he was awfully nice."

"Were you very young then?"

"Oh, yes. Only four." For the first time she was telling somebody. In a moment she would mention the photograph, and, Cousin Maurice, and the box of old clothes. "He was killed in the first week of the war."

Barbara’s head jerked suddenly towards her. "In the first week?"

"Yes. He just went away—and never came back."

The snare snapped shut. "But you said—that night—you said that he had saved the General’s life—that they were comrades—comrades, you said—oh, right through the war. You said they went to South America together—"

"I never said—"

"Oh yes you did! If you like we’ll ask Felicity—and Beatrice—"

"No, please don’t do that!"

"Then you
were
lying?"

"But you—you were asleep—"

"Of course I wasn’t asleep. I heard every word. So you thought you could take us all in, and—"

"No, honestly Barbara. What else
could
I do?"

"Have you ever met this creature—this General Weigh?"

"Well—"

"Have you ever met him? Answer me!"

"Well—no."

"I see."

She shook her wrist so that the bracelet jingled. She smiled.

The crocodile moved on, threading the fanatical lovers. Tears poured down Shirley’s cheeks, but she made no sound. This was the end, she decided. This was the end.

No one likes to be deceived. "The little bitch," said Felicity, as she pulled down from her cubicle wall a picture which she had torn out of the
Sketch
while waiting to have her teeth filled.

This was the opinion of all of them.

Mr. Ivor Novello in Tyrolean shorts was restored to locker-doors, albums, picture-frames. Shirley, after a few days of ‘baiting’ was sent to Coventry. At meals no one passed her anything.

The incident had its ironic sequel.

As they were filing out of a lecture on "Early English Brasses" Barbara beckoned her into a darkened music-room.

"But it’s time to go to bed," Shirley protested, fearing some unseen torture. "Matron will—"

"Matron won’t be round for another ten minutes. Don’t be frightened. I’m not going to hurt you."

"But, Barbara—"

"Oh, come on."

In the twilight, in a room which smelled of peppermints and eau-de-Cologne, Barbara faced her. She put out a hand: "I’ve made you so unhappy. I’m an awful beast. Oh, do forgive me, Shirley. Say you forgive me."

"But I—I—" It was impossible to say anything. When one most wanted words they eluded one.

"I betrayed you. I see that. Oh, I do see that." She put an arm round her. "I trapped you. It was horrible of me. But you see—you see..." She broke off. "Shirley, may I tell you a secret?"

"Oh, yes!"

"Promise not to tell anyone? Promise? It’s between you and me—no one else? Promise?"

"I promise."

"Cross-my-heart?"

"Cross-my-heart."

Barbara drew Shirley towards her so that her hair brushed the other’s wan cheek. "I’ve never told anyone here before. You’re the first person I’ve told. You see—there’s something queer about me." Her hand tightened on Shirley’s wrist; her voice thrilled.

"Queer?"

"Yes. It’s in the family, really. Mother—she was an actress, you know—a famous actress—before she married Father, that is. Well—I get it from her. She calls it her ‘temperament’. But it’s not really that."

"What is it then?"

"Shirley. You’re not frightened are you?"

Mutely she shook her head. Then she started as the school cat whisked past the window after a rabbit. Her heart began to pound.

"It’s a sort of—madness." Barbara went to the window, rested her elbows on the sill, and stared outwards into the gathering darkness. "No—not madness. That’s too strong a word. But something—something queer. It makes me do things which I don’t really want to do. I didn’t want to betray you, Shirley: honest, I didn’t. But then one of these fits came over me, and it—it happened... Oh, I felt so miserable about it afterwards. I cried all that night in bed."

"Did you? Did you really?" No one had cried because of her since the day when her mother had thrust her, head first, into the world. "Did you really cry?"

"Oh, yes, Shirley. I was so unhappy, you see. I’m very fond of you, really. I want to be your friend. You do see that, don’t you?"

"Yes."

Shirley stood by her at the open window. The wind blew strands of Barbara’s hair across her mouth. It was sweet and fragrant on the lips.

Barbara put an arm round her shoulder. "Say you understand," she whispered intensely. "Say you understand. Say you forgive me."

Someone, a school servant, was turning out lights in the corridors and the schoolroom; they could hear the clicks of the switches, the ring of her shoes on vacant concrete. A mournful sound. Then there was silence.

Huddled together, they both wept luxuriously for a full five minutes. Afterwards, they scurried up to bed, hand-in-hand, just evading Matron by a passage and two steps.

But the next day, strangely, Barbara said nothing to Shirley. The whole incident might never have occurred.

Soon after that first and only term she spent at boarding-school Cousin Maurice died.

He was to have come down for his customary week-end by his customary train. But the day wore on and the dinner Mother had cooked for him grew cold, and she, who was usually so indolent and placid, rang up the station and walked down to the end of the drive, and said repeatedly: "I can’t think what can have happened to him."

"Couldn’t you ring him up?" Shirley ventured at last.

"Ring him up? How can I? He closes the shop on Saturday afternoon."

"But couldn’t you ring him up at his home?"

Mother flushed. "No, I can’t do that," she snapped.

"Why not? Hasn’t he got a phone there?"

"Oh, do stop these absurd questions!" Mother shouted in exasperation. "You don’t understand. Do go away!"

"But
why
not?" Shirley reiterated as she scurried for the door.

She was to learn why, later.

Eventually, Mother did ring up Cousin Maurice at his home: and a wife, whom Shirley had never known to exist, told her that he was ill, dangerously ill.

Mother said: "Oh, I must see him! I must see him!" Tears ran down her cheeks. She went into the garden and cut all the roses, with a dry snip-snip of scissors. Then she wrapped them in tissue-paper and said to Shirley: "Do I look all right, dear? Do use your wits for once. Do I look all right?"

"You look lovely, Mummy."

"Good. I want to show that woman."

Her cheeks were still blotched with tears.

The next morning she returned, her eyes red with grief and sleeplessness. Shirley was eating breakfast. Removing the fur which Cousin Maurice himself had given to her, removing the cloche hat and the black net gloves, she sank into a chair.

"He’s dead," she said.

"Dead?" Shirley looked at her blankly. She felt an extraordinary elation, her head sang. "Dead?"

Then with a sudden choking groan, as though she were trying to retch, Mother collapsed across the table. "Dead, dead, dead!" she screamed, her rings knocking on the smooth mahogany. "He was dead before I got there. I never saw him alive." She writhed in the chair as though in physical anguish, her eyes poured, saliva ran from her open mouth.

She was thinking of the death’s head, strangely bald, shrunken and topped with white scars, that had lain propped in a darkened room. She had put her lips to his forehead, while his wife looked on, silent, tearless, in a stiff black dress, and the children whimpered next door.

But Shirley was thinking of Mother on a late summer evening in a silk wrap, massaging the lobes of her ears; and in her hand was a telegram; and Father was dead.

At the funeral Mother and Cousin Maurice’s wife, both in widow’s weeds, sat close together, their hands clasped. Mother was enormous, magnificent, her plump throat clasped in three folds by a triple necklace of pearls. But Cousin Maurice’s wife was thin, and sallow, and the only jewellery she wore was a worn circle of gold on her wedding finger.

Afterwards, they wept together; and Mother said: "We are friends now, aren’t we?"

And Cousin Maurice’s wife blew her nose, nodding.

He had his successors: and as Shirley was then growing up, while Mother herself was growing old, a certain jealousy was felt for the daughter. Not that these middle-aged shopkeepers and travellers were ever interested in the child. They always preferred Mother, who dyed her hair red, and wore rubber corsets, and joked coarsely and raucously. But Mother never ceased to humiliate Shirley. "My dear child," she would say in front of one of her friends’, "you’re as flat as a rolling-board. But don’t stoop so. It doesn’t help." It was always assumed that Shirley was to be an old maid: "My poor girlie! I doubt if we shall ever marry her, with a figure like that. What do you think, Paul? Perhaps we can find some gentleman whose tastes are not quite—orthodox. Really, she might be a boy." And she screamed shrilly in laughter, while Shirley got up and left the room.

Worst of all, Shirley was treated as Mother’
femme de chambre
. Mother had a certain sense of propriety which made it impossible for one of the servants to bring up her breakfast when she was ‘entertaining’. So this task devolved on Shirley. She grew used to knocking on the door, not once but repeatedly, so that she might be heard above the spurts of laughter and the raised voices.

"Come in!" yelled Mother. And then: "Ah! It’s my little Shirley. My innocent little Shirley. The child knows nothing, you know. Put the tray down here, dear... No—not on Uncle Henri’s knees! Whatever next!"

In nausea she would leave them as soon as possible, bearing with her an image of some tousled ‘gentleman’, the hair thick on his chest where his pyjama jacket divided, and Mother smoking a cigarette as often as not between stained fingers, her face creased, and greased with Crême Pomeroy, and surrounded by a wig-like mat of red hair.

The nicest of them was Théo, who had a short fringe, and was plump, and spoke in an oddly soprano voice. His pleasures so often coincided with Shirley’s: he liked to go to the shooting gallery up the road, and helped her with the house she was building out of bamboos, and bought ice-creams for her and himself. Once he took her to the cinema in Fontainebleau and wept throughout.

Afterwards, they walked back through the Forest, and he climbed a tree, and waved his arms, and began to sing, "
Auprès de ma blonde
". Then he climbed down, rather sheepishly, and said: "We’d better hurry. Your mother will wonder what has happened to us."

They walked on, in silence, until suddenly he turned to her: "Your nose shines dreadfully, you know."

"Does it?"

"Why don’t you powder it?" he suggested kindly.

"Mother won’t let me use make-up—yet."

"But that’s not make-up. Why, even I use powder—after a shave."

"Do you? ... Do you think it would make me look better?"

"Of course it would. You take no trouble with yourself. You don’t care how you look." As though to modify the harshness of these criticisms he slipped his arm through hers: "One simply must take trouble, you know. Appearances do count. Look at this waistcoat of mine—double-breasted—latest style. It’s damnably uncomfortable, one can hardly breathe. But it gives a man an air. People stare at him. You take my advice. Just think a little more about how you
look
."

"Yes, I will, Théo. If you really think it will make any difference."

"I’m certain it will."

He began to whistle, pleased with himself, full of self-importance, while his dainty letter feet moved forwards under white spats.

That evening, after dinner, Shirley crept up to Mother’s room. She had seldom been in there when it was empty. She fumbled for the light on the dressing-table and clicked it on. Smells, unnoticed before, now filled her nostrils—stale perfume, perspiration from the soiled jacket and trousers over the chair, smells of the medicine Mother took and the marigolds, drooping in a vase, and Théo’s hair-oil. On the bed was a koala bear with a zip-fastener down its back: it had been stuffed with Mother’s nightdress and Théo’s pyjamas. Their slippers lay side by side. On the bedside table was a glass for Théo’s teeth, and a Bible which he sometimes read.

Shirley looked at herself in the mirror, turning her face this way and then that. She moved the light, she pulled her hair up on to her head. But whatever she did she looked drab, dull, untidy. About her lay bottles with great globular stoppers, curling-tongs, bits of newspaper which had been scorched where the tongs had been tried on them, some false hair. She took this last, fixed it as a fringe on her forehead, and then began to giggle. But a moment later she was crying. Why did she always look so ridiculous. Why did the false hair make Mother seem so chic while she looked absurd in it?