Starlight

  ‘It’s only me, thought I’d just look in see if you wanted anything. My, you do look cosy,’ said Gladys, joyfully marching forward.

  ‘It was sweet of you, thank you. Yes, I’m very cosy. My husband’ll be here presently.’

  ‘She dropped off?’ Gladys looked with frankest curiosity at the girl sleeping beside the fire. ‘Skinny, isn’t she? Come from far?’

  ‘Germany. She’s been in one of those camps.’

  Gladys’s eyes grew wide in eager horror.

  ‘What, one of them awful places! How in the wide world did she ever get out?’

  ‘No – no, of course not. There aren’t places like that any more – at least …’ she paused, and when she spoke again, it was to draw the words out doubtfully, while her lowered eyes were fixed on the smoke of her cigarette, ‘not … so that people can be kept there … they’re … empty. At least, you couldn’t see …’ She broke off. ‘No, she was in a camp for refugees. She wandered round with her grandad and grandmother; begging, I suppose, really, until they got to this camp. In West Germany.’

  ‘Well I never,’ said Gladys, wonder and pity, as well as curiosity, on her face. ‘What’s her real name, then?’

  ‘Oh … it’s Erika, all right – I don’t know her other name – Mr Pearson knows. Mr Pearson managed it all. He had a friend and he knew someone … you know how it is.’ Mrs Pearson laughed, like a mischievous girl.

  ‘He got her away, anyhow, thanks to Mr Pearson’s friend, and here she is. Her mum and dad were killed. They had a farm, but the Russians burnt it.’

  ‘There’s beasts for you,’ said Gladys, but automatically; the story was too enthralling to invite a pause.

  ‘Mr Pearson’s friend’s got the address where her grandparents are, and he’ll write to them and tell them how she’s getting on, and I’ll bring her up. It’ll be an interest for me.’ She lit another cigarette. ‘Her light’s very faint, but it’s blue.’

  ‘What light?’ Gladys demanded blankly.

  ‘The light round her head, dear, her aura. We all have one. Yours is blue, too,’ she added casually.

  Gladys made a rudimentary movement of neck-twisting and eye-rolling as if trying to see above her head.

  ‘Go on,’ she remarked at last, doubtfully, looking sideways at her landlady. The room seemed less cosy suddenly.

  ‘Oh you can’t see it. You can never see your own. But it’s there, and blue’s the best colour to have.’ Mrs Pearson smiled at her, and Gladys, after some hesitation, smiled back.

  ‘Then I’m all right, aren’t I?’

  ‘Yes, dear. You’re all right.’

  Mental, Gladys was thinking. Well I never. But doesn’t seem likely to get violent. They say they’re often all right except for the one idea. Seems kind enough, though. Oh well, might be worse. But the room still did not feel quite so cosy.

  Their voices, though quiet, had aroused Erika.

  Her sleep had always been in places where the walls were thin and a ceaseless, restless murmur of sound vibrated, and her body kept an awareness of hunger even in a slumber as light and thin as itself. She sat up slowly. As she did so, the sound of a key in the front door, followed by its closing, sounded through the quiet of the house. Mrs Pearson, listening, smiled.

  ‘There’s my husband,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll be off,’ and Gladys started for the door, ‘only looked in, sure you’re all right, well, you’ll have company now, ta-ta for the present.’

  Nice company, she thought, hurrying down the stairs, and shrinking almost into the wall to avoid the dark figure (how dark he was, clothes and all, made you feel downright queer) coming up them; nice company, a rackman and a German what’s been a beggar. Annie won’t half be thrilled.

  ‘Good-evening,’ said Thomas Pearson.

  ‘Oh – oh. Good-evening. Cold. Cold, isn’t it. I was just …’

  He went on without answering, and Gladys was left reflecting upon his tone. Sarcastic, she decided. Like his sauce.

  Erika had two thoughts, as she stood by the fire (some dim instinct having impelled her to get up) and saw him come in. Were they going to eat? Would he hit her?

  When he had held his wife in his arms for a while, moving his lips to and fro over her cheeks and brow in gentle caresses, he let her decline on to the pillows and, half lying beside her, stared across the room at Erika.

  With his coming, something of the East had come, perhaps brought by the unmistakable shape and colour of his eyes, perhaps suggested by his attitude as he reclined; the sultan, with his favourite wife, summing up a new slave with cruel and melancholy stare.

  ‘You’ll frighten her, Tom,’ Mrs Pearson said at last, putting a palm against his cheek and slightly pressing his head towards her, ‘don’t. She’s all right. I can hardly make out her light, but it’s there and it’s blue.’

  ‘I must tell her … You,’ pointing one finger, that stood out dark and unmoving in the pink light towards Erika, ‘do what Mrs Pearson says. If you don’t there’ll be trouble, bad trouble for you. I’ll kick you back to where you came from. You’ll starve. So remember.’ He spoke in a pidgin-German.

  After a moment, she nodded slowly.

  ‘Get out, now. Go to bed.’

  ‘Gute nacht, schatz. Schlafe gut,’ Mrs Pearson said. ‘Come here,’ she coaxed, ‘come and say good-night properly.’

  Erika slowly approached, head hanging, eyes fixed uneasily on her face; when she stood close to the bed Mrs Pearson stretched up her face and kissed her. Erika stared, with unchanging expression; she made no movement to return the kiss.

  ‘Get out,’ said Thomas Pearson suddenly, and she turned and went slowly towards the door.

  ‘Get yourself a bit of cake. In the kitchen,’ Mrs Pearson called. ‘Girls of her age can always manage a bit more.’ She turned to her husband as the door closed. ‘Growing,’ she explained.

  The kitchen in Rose Cottage, as Gladys had instantly decided, might have belonged to another house. The general pinkness and luxury stopped at its door; even the lighting was weak. Yet, while Erika slowly fumbled with the lid of an old cake tin that Peggy had crossly opened an hour or so ago, her eyes moved from one shabby object to another with a slightly livelier expression.

  This was a real room. She had been in places like this before; they were in houses. She believed that Mrs Pearson was lying on a bed in a shop window, such as she herself had stood outside, in the savage winter wind of some German town, looking at the splendour within and trying to catch its warmth. She liked this room best. The glory and comfort of the other had been too much: unreal; would, perhaps, be suddenly snatched away.

  Eating, she crept up to the room that Peggy had showed her; Peggy’s sharpness had not been noticed by someone to whom sharpness was the human being’s usual manner. This room was like a shop window in the daytime; colder, but with the same splendour; she had not of course realized that it was her own.

  She was standing there, slowly turning the pages of a magazine gorgeous with coloured advertisements of Western Germany’s prosperity, and photographs of eupeptic beauties in furs, when with noiseless step, Thomas Pearson came suddenly upon her.

  In silence, after snapping his fingers to attract her attention as if she were an animal, he knelt and demonstrated how to turn on and off the electric fire. ‘Understand?’ was the only word he threw at her.

  When she nodded slowly, he looked at her for a minute, with a black expression. Another living creature. So many of them, so many, and all there only to demand that he withdraw his attention from Nora. But Nora had called this one schatz; treasure. He went quickly away, in silence as he had come.

  Erika slowly lowered herself until she was crouching beside the warmth, and did not move, while heat gradually crept through the room and brought up burning patches on the unhealthy skin of her face.

  She glanced through the magazine for a while; then riffled the pages of an old volume, The Pink Fairy Book, lying on the table beside her bed.

/>   More coloured pictures; men in cloaks and crowns; zweigen, and girls with hair to their knees. Deep within Erika, memory began to stir in its sleep and its bruised lips smiled. Grössmutter …

  Her stomach was full, warmth had seeped through her unhealthy young flesh and rickety bones. Slowly, regally, fully awake now, Memory stalked out of its lair.

  But, once outside, it did not present before Erika pictures of dwarf and goose-girl dwelling in the murmuring pine forests of the Märchen her grandmother had told her in her babyhood. Being a German’s memory, it turned, instead, to the electric fire.

  How did it work? What had the man done to it?

  On and off, on and off, Erika made it go for twenty minutes, while she watched its alternately reddened and steely face. Then, at last, when she understood the mechanism, she undressed and got into bed.

  15

  On Christmas Eve, Peggy was in the drawing-room, tying to the Christmas tree, whose branches almost touched the ceiling, the balls of coloured plastic which have replaced the fairy-like spun glass of other days. She had laid out cigarettes, and seen that the forced pink and white hyacinths whose scent filled the room were well displayed.

  The old woman who acted as parlourmaid had tottered in, followed by the older houseman with a tray of canapés, for whose safety Peggy could not refrain from apprehensive glances; these had been returned with spiteful ones by man and maid. They were very jealous of her.

  ‘These won’t work,’ she observed, indicating the coloured bulbs that were to light the tree. ‘Can you do anything, Hobbs?’

  Her voice sounded young and harsh across the softly-coloured old room. Hobbs, thinking with secret satisfaction of his spasmodic, but often convenient, deafness, made no sign that he had heard, and old Doris darted at Peggy a look of mournful dislike. They continued to fiddle about in silence.

  Peggy indulged in a shrug, and at that moment Mrs Corbett, accompanied by the prancing and excited dogs, came in.

  ‘These won’t work,’ Peggy said, demonstrating again, ‘I think the battery must have run out.’

  ‘Oh what a nuisance: it was all right this morning. Hobbs,’ turning to the old man, who had just reappeared with a second tray, ‘have we another battery?’

  ‘I always keep one, madam. It’s replaced every year, a few days before the tree is dressed,’ said Hobbs, managing to sound insulted.

  ‘Get it, will you, please – or perhaps Doris could?’

  The matter lapsed. Hobbs, pursuing the private pattern of his life, went out to the hall and hovered cleverly, doing nothing at all, while Peggy and Mrs Corbett discussed final details.

  ‘What about the dogs, Mrs Corbett? Will they be coming?’

  ‘Oh they’re coming. It’s my turn this year. The girls and I take it in turn to bring our doggies. I wish they could all come, bless them, but that naughty Roddy will fight with my boys, he upsets everyone, doesn’t he, A.? Isn’t Roddy your worse enemy, Cee? (Look at his ears, Peggy – he knows the name, don’t you? No, Roddy isn’t coming, you needn’t make that noise.) Aren’t you slim, Peggy! That black makes you look even slimmer … oh dear, to think I was once as slim as you … oh there you are, Arnold, where have you been? Peggy’s had such a fight with the lights.’

  ‘Party at the club. Bit of a lush-up for Christmas Eve. I expect the battery’s gone.’

  Bringing the smell of an expensive after-shave lotion, he came up to the tinkling, glittering tree and solemnly inspected it. Peggy stood in silence, struggling with such a feeling of boredom and despair as seldom assailed even her. She could walk out of here to-morrow morning; nothing need stop her.

  What was she doing in this hot room, with these fools, living their half-life?

  Oh it was something to do – it passed the time – it made a break. The language of boredom and despair.

  ‘I agree with you, it’s a dog’s life.’

  The mutter came from the corner of Arnold Corbett’s mouth, while his sad eyes turned to glance at her; his hands were busy with some wires in the tree. She was surprised into speech.

  ‘I didn’t say so, Mr Corbett.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake make it Arnold, it is Christmas Eve. I know you didn’t say anything, but you looked it … What’s the matter? Boy-friend trouble?’

  ‘No – just the feeling there’s another year nearly gone,’ she answered, paling.

  ‘Here, here – you save that up for New Year’s Eve – that’s the time that really gets into its stride … no, seriously, Peggy –’

  They were alone in the room; the four dogs dozing beside the fire. Mrs Corbett had gone off in pursuit of Hobbs, who had hovered himself out of sight.

  ‘I’ve been wondering about you – attractive girl like you – not engaged or anything – you don’t wear a ring – or do you?’ He caught clumsily at her hand and held it.

  She had made no attempt to withdraw it; only steadily increased the pressure of her own on the moist, hot one that clasped it, smiling into his face.

  ‘Here, Peggy – that hurts …’

  She suddenly relaxed the pressure, and he snatched his hand away, staring.

  ‘I’ve never felt a girl’s hand so strong – your muscles are like steel – where did you get muscles like that, in God’s name?’

  ‘Riding,’ said Peggy; the word would come out, it came out quietly, to match her smile, but it was fatal; it carried for her an enormous load of pain and lost ecstasy, and tears rushed up into her throat. She turned away.

  ‘I’m sorry, Peggy,’ he said, following, ‘here – don’t – I’m sorry. Fact is, I’m a bit high …’

  ‘I – don’t like being touched. That’s all,’ she muttered, turning round.

  ‘All right. I said I’m sorry and I said I’m a bit high. It is Christmas Eve. And I’d appreciate it if you don’t go running to my mother. She wouldn’t approve.’

  ‘I shan’t run to anyone. But just remember; I don’t like being touched.’

  ‘All right, Peggy. I – really am sorry. Get awfully lonely sometimes … silly, isn’t it?’

  ‘Too bad,’ she said, turning away.

  ‘I wish you’d be a bit nice to me – oh all right. As you were. How about a drink on it? Oh blast,’ as the bell of the front door sounded melodiously. ‘Press on regardless.’ He turned, straightening himself, to face the arrivals.

  In a moment the first guests were in the room, ushered warmly by Mrs Corbett; a stout old woman tightly packaged in turquoise lamé, and her stout old husband.

  Peggy was known to all the elderly pairs who followed; she had passed sandwiches to the wives at bridge parties and listened to desultory chat from the heavy old husbands. This evening everyone was slightly livelier than usual, because of married children and grandchildren flying in on their way to holidays abroad, visiting the old people for a few hours; letters were arriving from all over the world, sending love and photographs and news, even if the senders could not be there in person.

  It was a sober, noticeably respectable group, offering little chance of adventure or change; the men were heads of companies, directors of wealthy firms or financiers who had retired from active speculation; and their wives were satisfied with lives padded at every angle by expensive comforts.

  Peggy stopped for a minute’s chat with Gwen Palmer (usually referred to by Mrs Corbett as ‘poor Gwen Palmer’), who ‘must have been’ driving her little car round the broad shady local roads for some fifteen years, now, and with whom Peggy associated the idea that she would not mind marrying Arnold.

  She had not heard anyone say so, and nothing in Miss Palmer’s manner contributed to the theory, it was merely in the air, like a scent, and clung to everyone who entered its orbit; it was part of the general boredom, to Peggy.

  Self-possessed and graceful, her dark eyes and their stars looking out between the short curtains of her black hair, she moved between these elderly people, seldom adding the low note of her voice to the babble.

  Taking a drink for herse
lf – Peggy was fond of drink – she stood in a corner, close to the window through which, in spite of heavy curtains, a whisper of cold air was blowing.

  Her pleasures were not those of most girls.

  Her long walks in the loneliest places that could be reached and returned from in one day, her solitary visits to films about war or exploration or savages; her occasional descents upon the Zoo, where she would stand, looking, before the cage of some wolf or puma that had paused in its terrible pacing to stare, unseeingly, out across the passive, affectionate crowd; her swift homeward walks across crammed and desperate London – these were her own. She had lied about them to Mrs Corbett, until she found that her employer did not find such recreations eccentric, merely dismissing her as ‘a funny girl’.

  ‘But I would never go to the Zoo,’ Mrs Corbett would add. ‘I could never bear it. Those poor creatures. How they must miss their freedom.’

  Peggy was still too young to know that the true tragedy was their no longer missing their freedom.

  Some weeks before Christmas, she had gone to the Royal Smithfield Show: making her solitary way along with crowds of red-faced, solid men and their wives; crowds that she had hoped to avoid by paying the pound entrance fee of the first day’s showing.

  She had come to look at the Highland cattle.

  The hall was so enormous, and the crowds so dense, the cacophony of voices and the brilliant lights were so complicated and overwhelming, in effect, that she climbed to the gallery which runs around the main hall, hoping to see from above the stalls where the cattle were kept, and then make her way there.

  She leant on the rail and looked out over the scene, much as the puma or ceaselessly pacing wolf would look out across the heads of a crowd.

  It was spread below; vast; extraordinary; frightening; a colossal pattern of the angular bright shapes of agricultural machinery, painted red or blue or yellow, and lifted slightly into the air, quivering with light and noise, on stand after stand. Peggy looked down at it inimically. What had this to do with cows wandering homeward through dewy fields?