A Word Child

  The day was bleak, with a damp cold which nuzzled its way into one’s clothing, up one’s sleeves, down one’s neck. The warmth of the office, as I came in through the doors, was welcome. No power cuts today, thank heaven, the strike appeared to be over. However the lift was out of order, not an unusual state of affairs. I began to mount the staircase. I had already decided that the best way to alleviate the teasing anxiety which I now felt was to spend the morning drafting the permitted letter to Lady Kitty. There was so much, at our extraordinary meeting beside the sinister boy, that had been assumed, hinted at, left unsaid. Had she really understood me? Until I had explained myself to her, exposed myself utterly to her, I was incapable of further action. And what a comfort there was in this. Beyond, there was nothing but fear and hazard.

  As I reached the top of the first flight of stairs I nearly collided with Gunnar who was about to come down. I apprehended in a moment how he shied from me as he recognized me, how he shrank from me, went round me. Our eyes met with a sudden wildness. It was like a violent clash of arms. He went on down the stairs.

  The idea of ‘the interval’ was annihilated. I stood in shock, in perfect indecision. Then came a rush of power too harsh to be called hope and yet not uncoloured by it, more like a sort of frightful urgent terror. I gripped the bannister, turned myself round and said, ‘Gunnar.’

  I said it not loudly, softly yet clearly, like someone calling to a ghost or speaking idly and yet eloquently to the dead.

  We were alone on the stairs, I at the top, he more than halfway down. The momentum of his ‘shy’ from me had quickened his pace and I expected him in a moment to be gone. But he hesitated, stopped and slowly turned. We looked at each other.

  Gunnar was frowning in a manner which might only have been expressive of irritation. Then he began to come back slowly up the stairs. I waited tensely as he approached me. I flattened myself against the wall. He passed me by without a glance and went back along the corridor towards his room. I felt a second of anguish until I realized quite clearly that he intended me to follow him.

  He went into his room leaving the door open. Very soft-footed, as if trailing an animal, I moved after him down the corridor and slipped into the room closing the door behind me.

  The rooms at this level had double-glazed windows and the traffic of Whitehall was muted into a hum scarcely more audible than silence itself. A little rain tapping on the glass with a faint insistence was louder, closer. The big square handsome room was dark except for a green-shaded lamp upon the desk, throwing a very white light upon some papers. Gunnar sat down and waited. His waiting was as perceptible to me as the tapping rain, the immense desk, his own form hunched in the chair. And it was frightful. I came towards the desk and stood before him. I wanted him to see my face clearly but the only way to achieve this would have been either to sit or to kneel, or else to move the lamp. I said again, ‘Gunnar.’

  The name was different this time, uttered no longer idly into emptiness, but with an urgency of present need and also with a sort of amazement, as if one were to meet a friend unexpectedly in a far-off place. Uttered still as a call which did not dare to be a summons.

  Gunnar made a very slight movement which I interpreted as an order to sit down. I pulled a chair close to the other side of the desk and sat. I did now actually move the lamp so that it gave more light to both our faces. I caught a sudden glimpse of Gunnar, his face half illuminated, frowning, glaring.

  At that moment someone knocked on the door and almost at once entered the room. Turning my dazzled eyes out of the lamplight I recognized, by his general outline in the half dark, the form of Clifford Larr.

  I got up. Clifford was standing frozen, his hand still on the door handle. Gunnar had not moved. Inside a split second I reflected. Then I did what seemed the only possible thing. I made for the door, passing Clifford, who stepped aside, and went out again into the corridor closing the door behind me.

  The lofty brightly lit corridor was empty. It seemed like a long hall seen in a dream and I a tiny menaced figure moving. I reached the stairs, hesitated, then began slowly to go down, holding hard to the bannister, my feet slowly taking the treads. I reached the hall, crossed it and went out through the doors into the street.

  A light fine rain was now falling, the rain which had been tap-tapping discreetly upon Gunnar’s window through those immensely long seconds during which I had been in his room and something had happened. What exactly had happened I was still unsure, but as I walked along I was already beginning to read it off the world, to see it, in the guise of passing cars and buses. I crossed through the Horse Guards and began to walk over the wide empty rain-pattered parade ground to the park. I reached the war memorial. Mons. Retreat from Mons. Landrecies. Marne 1914. Aisne 1914. Ypres 1914. Langemarck 1914. Givenchy 1914. I went on into St James’s Park and along the right-hand side of the lake as far as the bridge. I walked onto the bridge and paused in its centre. The farther towers of Whitehall were invisible in the murky rain, but beyond the iron-grey expanse of pitted water I could see the Foreign Office with its line of lights. I took off my cap and let the rain gently hit my face, tap my brow and eyelids. I looked down onto the nearer surface of the lake, which brightened near to the bridge into a metallic green, and saw there black and white tufted ducks, bobbing bright-eyed upon the choppy wavelets, diving suddenly and popping up again, sleekly beautiful, perfect, new-minted by ingenious nature, enjoying the rain, enjoying their being. I watched the ducks, seeing them with a clarity which seemed like a new mode of vision, as if a cataract had been peeled off my eyes. I breathed slowly and deeply and looked at the ducks.

  ‘Hello, I thought I’d find you here.’

  Clifford Larr was beside me. I felt intense annoyance at his arrival.

  ‘The porter said you had left the office in a sort of trance.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘I must confess I’m consumed by curiosity. Gome on now, come out of your trance. Explain to me the meaning of that perfectly fascinating scene which I interrupted just now.’

  ‘Did — Gunnar — say anything to you?’

  ‘Of course not. He started talking shop at once as cool as you please. I should like to have felt his pulse though. Let me feel yours.’

  I shook Clifford’s hand off my arm and began to walk back off the bridge. He walked beside me, laughing his nervous irritating laugh.

  ‘Was that the reconciliation scene?’ Clifford was smiling, but he had come out without his umbrella and evidently regretted this and objected to his fine trilby hat getting wet. He took the hat off, gave it for a moment all his attention, ceased smiling, shook it, settled it back on his head and smiled again. I was bareheaded, my cap in my hand, my hair plastered damply to my face and neck.

  ‘No.’ It had not been the reconciliation scene. It had been mysterious, ambiguous, for hope or fear I knew not what. But it had been somehow a tremendous communication, a moment when lightning had split rocks, earthquakes had riven cliffs, mountains had been cleft in two. None of this could I explain to Clifford. I made a gesture implying that he should leave me alone, and sat down on a sopping wet seat near the edge of the water. The rain-washed park seemed empty except for our two figures. Some glittering mallards approached and regarded us with their jewel eyes.

  Clifford mopped the seat a little with his handkerchief, then sat down beside me. ‘What was it then? You must tell me. Something’s happened, it must have happened. I shall die of curiosity.’

  ‘Between Gunnar and me,’ I said. ‘Nothing has happened. I am just doing what she told me to do.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘Lady Kitty.’

  ‘Good — God — ’ Clifford, staring at me, emitted several little whistles. ‘So you talk to her?’

  ‘I saw her once,’ I said, ‘at her request. She asked me to see Gunnar, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s all! Why? To — well, to calm the nerves of all concerned I suppose. But will it, can it? Why, anything might happ
en. What boldness, hers I mean. What, when you come to think of it, bloody cheek!’

  ‘I wanted to see him anyway,’ I said, ‘only I wouldn’t have dared to do so without her. He doesn’t know she’s asked me.’ I detested Clifford’s tone and his language. I wished he would go away and leave me alone with my great thoughts. I also uncomfortably knew that I ought not to have mentioned Lady Kitty. Only I wanted to break his mockery, to meet his persiflage with a blank truthful simplicity.

  ‘What a trickster!’

  ‘Have you met her?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Clifford, ‘I have met her twice, at cocktail parties.’

  ‘What did you think of her?’

  ‘I thought she was a saucy minx. I don’t mean anything to do with impropriety. I’m sure she is a perfect picture of propriety in the strict sense. After all, she would have the wit to play safe. But she is one of those numerous women who can’t stop flickering their eyelashes at anything in trousers, a compulsive flirt. She flirted with the prime minister. I suppose she flirted with you.’

  ‘No.’ How could I convey the sober serious merciful sweetness of her demeanour to me? I had no intention of trying.

  ‘Well, I see she has purchased your loyalty at any rate. So, obedient to her commands, you went to see our friend Gunnar. And what happened?’

  ‘Nothing. I had just come in. You arrived too soon.’

  ‘Dear me, I’m so sorry — Did I wreck the touching scene? What did he say?’

  ‘I’ve told you, nothing.’

  ‘You will be reconciled,’ said Clifford. ‘I can see it all. It will be very affecting and very edifying. He will forgive you. You will weep on each other’s shoulders and become loving friends forever after. You will dine at Cheyne Walk every Wednesday and have lunch with Gunnar at his club every Friday. They will exhibit you to their friends as the penitent monster — because the whole story will have got around by then of course — Lady Kitty will see to that.’

  ‘Go away, please,’ I said.

  ‘You will have a wonderful friendship with Gunnar, he will glow with magnanimity and you will have your little pleasure of being forgiven and you will smile the smile of abasement and you will both enjoy yourselves like mad. What a bond and what a bondage! He will buy you, in fact Lady Kitty has already bought you for him. She was probably surprised to find how cheap you were. Well, are you furious with me?’

  ‘Clifford, do go, there’s a good chap. And for Christ’s sake don’t repeat what I’ve said to you to anyone.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to be around much longer.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I shall be dead.’

  ‘Oh that. Well, fuck off and take those sleeping pills if you want to. Just leave me alone, will you?’

  Clifford rose and shadowily departed. I forgot him. The tufted ducks had come back. They looked more marvellous than ever.

  It was Wednesday evening. I had spent longer than usual at the Liverpool Street bar and was feeling rather drunk. I came up in the lift with Mr Pellow who told me a long story about how he had got another teaching job but had not said anything about being suspended from the previous one and how this had all come out and what the Head had said and what the history master had said and how upset the boys were when he had to go though he had only been there three days. This tale took some time and I went into his flat to hear it out and drank his whisky and sympathized, and thought about Gunnar and wondered what I ought or ought not to do next. Fearful agonizing anxiety had returned. When I let myself into my own flat I realized at once that there was a woman there. There were noises in Christopher’s room, the unmistakable sound of a woman coughing. I wondered for a moment with a sickening spasm if it could be Lady Kitty. Impossible. Biscuit? More likely to be Tommy. I was gliding back out through the door when Laura Impiatt erupted into the hall and seized my arm.

  ‘No, you don’t! You coward! No wonder you’ve got a bad conscience! I’ve been waiting for you for ages. Christopher has been so kind. He has been singing to me.’

  ‘Let him sing on,’ I said. I went on into the kitchen, shedding my wet overcoat as I went. Laura, clucking, picked it up from the floor and hung it on a peg and followed me. Christopher, in a long Indian robe and wooden beads and a far-away smile, his long fair hair carefully combed, began to do a sort of slow tap dance in the hall, stretching out his arms and humming.

  In the kitchen, watched by Laura, I turned on the stove, took a tin of baked beans and a tin of tomatoes out of the cupboard, opened the tins and poured their contents into a saucepan, put the saucepan on the heat, winkled a piece of sliced bread out of its package, put it under the grill, took the butter out of the refrigerator and began to lay the table for one.

  ‘I won’t offer you any beans, Laura, I know you despise them.’

  ‘Hilary, you fascinate me!’

  ‘Oh good.’ I stirred the beans, I turned the toast.

  Outside Christopher was singing or rather droning in the slipshod semi-audible sub-American manner of the modern pop singer. ‘Be my bird, waterbird, true true true.’

  This was one of Laura’s young bright days. Her glowing eyes were misty and elated, her lips moist for some fray, as if she were about to bound onto a platform and advocate something. She was wearing a well-cut black velvet dress and had her hair tied by a black velvet ribbon at the nape of the neck and pony-tailing down her back. She closed the kitchen door and sat down.

  ‘I’m dining at home and this is far too early anyway. Only proles and Hilaries dine at this hour.’

  ‘Hilary is a prole, thank God. Who’s coming to dinner?’

  ‘The Templar-Spences and one of Freddie’s tycoons.’

  ‘How can we part, dear, how can yer go away, I search my heart, dear, for somethin ter say ter make yer stay, and so I pray, waterbird …’

  I buttered the toast and poured the bean and tomato mess over it. I hated eating my own food with a witness, but I was very hungry, having been too agitated to eat at lunch-time. I ladled on mustard, buttered another piece of bread and sat down to wolf the stuff. Laura watched in silence until I had finished. It took about a minute.

  ‘What’s for din-dins at your place?’

  ‘Smoked salmon. Stifados. Lime soufflé.’

  ‘Why aren’t you there cooking it?’

  ‘It’s cooked, except for the soufflé, and I do that at the last moment. I’ve been at a cocktail party. The Joplings were there.’

  ‘They seem to spend all their time at cocktail parties.’

  ‘They are special people, oh special, I love them both.’

  ‘How nice.’

  ‘When my dear waterbird flew flew flew, left me without a bird, blue blue blue.’

  ‘Have you met her yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She’s marvellous. But listen, Hilary, I’ve come here from Tommy.’

  ‘From Tommy?’

  Little bird, waterbird, you, you, you.’

  ‘Yes, I rang her and she cried and cried and told me everything and I said I’d come and see you.’

  ‘How kind.’

  ‘Hilary, I do think you should think again.’

  ‘Like the waterbird.’

  ‘She may not be a dream woman but she loves you to much and it would do you so much good to get married.’

  ‘Sez you.’

  ‘If you’re not careful you’ll get old and cold the way single men do.’

  ‘I’m already old and cold. Laura, just let me run my life, will you, dear? I’m quite a mature adult, you know.’

  ‘This is playing merry hell with the panto, by the way.’

  ‘Fuck the panto.’

  ‘Actually, I never really saw you married to Tommy.’

  ‘You’re a fine ambassador.’

  ‘It’s not so easy, dear, ter find a true lover, yer may search everywhere and not find another.’

  ‘Perhaps you really are one of nature’s bachelors.’

  ‘Isn’t it time y
ou went home and put out the fish knives?’

  ‘They’re out. Hilary — you know there are moments when suddenly, with someone you’ve known a long time, you have a breakthrough and come much closer.’

  ‘Laura, you’re drunk.’

  ‘Our love was demented, our love was a feud, are yer contented ter call it a mood, jus’ an interlude?’