The Walking Stick

  He said: ‘Don’t think about slipping, see. Just try to stand up and hold on to me.’

  He got on the left side of me so that my weak leg was in the middle of us and pushed off with his left leg. My good leg at once wanted to shoot from under me. I put the bad one down and somehow we glissaded into the side and all but fell.

  I swore deeply in my heart but said nothing. After all it was no good being angry again with him – only with myself for being such an unutterable fool.

  So we tried again and again nearly fell. ‘Good,’ he said – the idiot – ‘another try; we damn near made it that time.’

  At the seventh attempt I said breathlessly: ‘Let me go – it’s no good! For Heaven’s sake, let me go, Leigh! You go on your own.’

  ‘Another one – just for luck. Just once. I thought we were getting it. Nobody’s looking.’

  I bit my lip and we started again. This time we began to go. His strong sturdy body was like a rock against mine. We began to go round the ring. We almost made a complete circle, before somebody sweeping across made him swerve and we had to fetch up hurriedly at the side.

  ‘You see!’ he said laughing. ‘You really did it! If that nit hadn’t got in our way we’d have gone on for ever!’

  Breath back and begin again. And this time it really did work. Round twice, shakily but no fall. My left leg had just enough power to push at the ice and he showed me how to turn it to gain a grip. This I could do not from the calf and ankle where it should have been, but by turning the thigh.

  Hot all over; hands in his clammy with sweat. But his triumph was so real that he might have been celebrating some feat he’d pulled off himself; I found myself laughing with him. We sat and rested and then tried again. Again no mishap. We went round six times before giving up and taking coffee and sandwiches in the cafeteria.

  ‘There,’ he said, ‘you see! It’s quite possible. And next time it’ll be easier still.’

  ‘There’ll never be a next time!’ I said, knowing that there would and that he knew that there would.

  He held my hand, fingering it as if he would feel each individual bone. ‘There’s other things yet, in time. Swimming – that ought to be easy; golf – I’ve never played golf, we might start it together; dancing . . .’

  ‘I can swim.’

  ‘But do you?’

  ‘In the physiotherapy baths.’

  ‘That’s no good. South of France is the place. We could go on a trip . . .’

  I didn’t try any more to discourage him. I knew it was no good. Anyway just then I didn’t feel in a discouraging mood. Tomorrow both legs would be stiff, but I was feeling as ridiculously pleased as he looked. And so well, so very, very well. I felt like someone who has been out riding on a cold, wintry morning. Tired but relaxed, skin tingling, appetite keen, lungs full of air, and alive, alive, alive.

  He looked at me and smiled his all-embracing, rather contorted, rather beautiful smile.

  ‘You’ve had enough for one night, Deborah. I’ll take you home.’

  Friday at Whittington’s. A day like any other day. Cataloguing completed until some new stuff came in on Monday, I was doing a few letters in reply to inquiries. Letters were always coming in: ‘Dear Sirs, I have for long had on my mantelpiece two beautiful vases of what I believe is called Cloisonné ware . . .’

  Upstairs Smith-Williams was conducting a sale of English water-colours and early drawings. Only small sales were held on a Friday, such as would be completed by noon. A furniture van was outside our back door in Bruton Lane unloading some furniture which had been sent down from Scotland.

  A telephone rang in the office of Peter Greeley, the head of the firm. It was from Switzerland, from a hospital in Geneva to say that John Hallows had met with a car accident ten miles outside the city and was in hospital with concussion.

  Greeley called Maurice Mills into his office, together with three other directors who were in the building, for consultation, because Hallows was expected back on the 14:30 plane with the Vosper tiara he had been sent to collect. One of the emigrant English, Viscount Vosper had tax-dodged himself abroad ten years ago, but had been living beyond himself and had decided to realize on the diamond tiara which had belonged to his mother and which was valued at £40,000. John Hallows presumably now had this with him, but it had been a member of the hospital staff who had telephoned, and Greeley had not liked to make public the sort of cargo that John Hallows was carrying. After a few minutes it was decided to ring up Viscount Vosper to see what he could do on the spot, but before Peter Greeley could put through the call, another ring came through from Geneva, and it was John Hallows himself to say that his injuries were slight but that the accident had been a put-up job and that he and the chauffeur had been set on by three masked men and the tiara was gone.

  This news ran through the building like a short circuit, and only Smith-Williams, on his rostrum in his expensive charcoal grey suit, went on in ignorance. Peter Greeley decided to fly out with Maurice Mills to Switzerland at once, and they left to catch the 13.15 plane.

  All this meant extra work for me, and I didn’t get home until eight. We had been skating again on the Thursday, and it was tiring me even more than I’d expected. The following morning I slept on and was still in my bath when Leigh called at ten. Fortunately it was Erica’s morning on duty so they didn’t have to meet.

  On the way to his place I told him what had happened to John Hallows. He whistled.

  ‘Somebody’s been pretty sharp. Also somebody’s been pretty dim-wit.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well this man Hallows; you really sent him off to collect a valuable tiara like that without any guard at all?’

  ‘Often it’s the safest way. The less publicity the better.’

  ‘Yes, if someone isn’t in the know. But what about this Viscount fellow in Switzerland? How is anybody to know how many in his household knew about it? Your man ought to have had a guard.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Of course, it’ll be insured.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  When we got to his studio I found the chair and easel ready, and he fussed less than the first time. But the painting was covered until I was settled, and there was no chance of seeing it.

  ‘Has the photo come out?’ I asked innocently.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ not noticing any irony. ‘It’s just good enough to keep me on target when you’re not here. I’ve done quite a bit of the background since last week.’

  I sat for about twenty minutes in silence while he painted away. Then he said:

  ‘You know these characters who do these robberies – you can’t help but admire ’em.’

  ‘Admire them?’

  ‘Well, not exactly admire them, but . . . See I reckon, Deborah, that there’s two sorts of crimes, isn’t there? There’s the anti-human and the anti-property. I’ve no room at all for the first – the lout who clobbers an old woman and steals her bag; the man who shoots a bank messenger; the sneaking sex criminal who lurks in bushes to attack little girls. God, I’d belt ’em all!’ He dabbed at his palette. ‘But the type that only goes for property – and not personal property but company property, insured, gold in a vault, £5 notes belonging to a bank, that sort of caper – the man who pits his wits against the law, playing the game to the rules – no violence or the minimum – nothing that’ll harm people as people . . . You know, you can admire their cleverness, their guts, their nerve.’

  ‘I don’t suppose John Hallows will.’

  ‘I don’t reckon he will. All the same, I still think your firm ought to start using its loaf.’

  ‘There are still an awful lot of honest people in the world,’ I said. ‘Most business goes on in that belief – just as you live assuming that most people are sane. If you didn’t you could hardly live at all.’

  I watched his face as he worked. The concentrated H lines of a frown between his eyes, the thick short curly hair, never tidy but too often combed, the big mouth with
its thin sensitive lips parted. The poised right hand moved swiftly between palette and canvas. Was it creating an immortal work or an amateurish botch? From here I couldn’t tell. The concentration was the same, the muscular movements, the degree of mental and spiritual effort, the quality of canvas and paint. Who knew? Who was to decide?

  He said: ‘Tell me something. How do you think on morals, Deborah? How does your mind work? Not just sex morals but ethics generally.’ He called it ee-thics. ‘D’you reckon to still believe in all those old Commandments? Steal, adultery, murder, the lot.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I just wondered.’

  ‘I don’t know. Why?’

  ‘I just wondered.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Oh,’ he shrugged. ‘Maybe I’m poor enough to wish I’d the knack of making money in some big quick way. Too many Cheap Jacks, too many Smart Alecs, too many Smooth Operators are striking it rich these days for me to feel much of a twinge of conscience if I could come by money quick and easy . . . So it’s lucky the chance isn’t likely to arise.’

  ‘You’ve money enough to go on with?’

  ‘Oh, scraping along . . . Maybe it’s the best bet. Honest Jim in his garret. Of course if I could make money out of painting that would be different. Then I’d feel I was really on the way.’

  I tried to stretch without moving. My limbs felt tired and stiff.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘your background’s so different from mine. You’ve never wanted for anything since the day you were born. Delicately nurtured they call it. Money can’t ever have the same importance—’

  ‘It can have plenty!’

  ‘Yes, but look at my old man on the railways. He’s got a safe job, I’ll grant you, but one of the worst paid. A declining industry: nobody cares a damn for railways any more; and no hope himself of getting any higher; his union fights a battle and he gets an extra 12/6 a week, and tax at once takes off 4/-. Just standing still, with the rise in the cost of living, just standing still costs him more than 8/6 a week more, but unless he goes out cleaning cars of an evening he hasn’t a hope in hell of laying his hands on another penny piece. Could you blame him if he cooked some figures to wangle a few quid out of the post office.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Did he? Not likely! It would be against the principles of a lifetime! But you see what I mean. Living with someone like that makes you think. I’m not sure his son might not be tempted if the chance came his way . . . Ah, you’ve moved!’

  ‘I must have been shrinking away from you in horror.’

  ‘That’s it. Well, it’s time for the coffee break anyway. I’ll help you down.’

  Instead of helping me he lifted me, and then lowered me gently, but kept his arms round me. I smiled. But he wasn’t smiling.

  ‘Deborah Doolittle.’

  ‘Leigh Do-Nothing.’

  ‘I got a much tougher job than old Higgins or whatever his name was. I have to breathe on you and rub you gently like a – a sort of angel with frostbite. It’s a thawing process, see, and a waiting process. Real good for me.’

  ‘For you?’

  ‘Yes, for me. I got no patience in the ordinary way – can’t wait – must grab at life. But this – this being with you – it teaches me patience – Chinese patience nearly. Chinese torture sometimes.’

  ‘As bad as that?’

  ‘As bad as that and as good as that. Only one thing could do it, you know. Only one thing could ever make me so patient.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Don’t you know? You shouldn’t even have to guess.’

  He put his mouth against my cheek and kissed and sniffed. It was as if he was suddenly tired and wanted rest. I put my hand up and smoothed his hair.

  There was a couch that a step or two back took us towards and he bent and swept newspapers and other litter flying. I lay on it and he knelt beside it, stroking my face and then my breasts and legs. He began to kiss me on the mouth, neck and arms, then unbuttoning the front of my frock, pulled shoulder straps down and put his lips about the top of my body. A wave of sudden sexual emotion sluiced over me and I’d no more control of thought or direction than a branch caught up on the crest. His mouth came up to mine and his hands were like warm snakes making magic life and a fiery compulsion that had no end but acceptance. Sanity was falling out of the skies and darkness shone through the sunlight, and I was sitting up and he had moved back to squat on his haunches, drawing deep breaths and his grey eyes pale as paint.

  A tug hooted in the river. I dragged together the neck of my dress.

  ‘Patience,’ he whispered, and swallowed, not sure of me. ‘Christ!’

  The tug was bringing up a vessel of some size which looked to have a Norwegian name on its bows. They would have to open the bridge. All my life I had never seen them open Tower Bridge.

  He said: ‘I’ll get the coffee.’

  When he was gone I tried to stand up, but even my good leg was groggy. I flopped back on the couch and began to pick up the newspapers and fold them and stack them beside me. Just for something ordinary to do. Just to keep in touch with ordinary life. My mouth was as unstable as a drug addict’s. As he returned I managed to get up and peer out of the window at the cargo boat so that he couldn’t see my face. If he had come back for me to take me then I’d have gone like a straw.

  ‘Coffee in a minute . . . Deborah.’ Instead his voice was supplicatory.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You got to admit until now I’ve been patient. This was – a sudden crack, see. I’m still ready to go at your rate, if you know what I mean. From now on.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He went across and dragged forward a chair. ‘God, my hand’s like I’ve been shell-shocked. Doubt if I shall be able to paint.’

  The tug was belching black smoke. Any moment now the bridge would begin to open. The central platforms would lift and separate, opening like two giant hands raised in praise and prayer. Traffic was stopped. The Norwegian vessel was drifting slightly with the tide. A barge altered course to move past it.

  I hadn’t done up the top button of my dress.

  I turned and limped blindly towards the kitchen.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To make the coffee.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was heavy and still that night when he drove me home, but glimmerings of late daylight latticed the clouds over Harrow. In the open car whiffs of lilac and wallflower surfaced through the tyre-tarmac-petrol smells. Houses glimmered like lighted barges, Euclidean problems jostling against each other full of unsolved areas and unmeasured angles.

  After another hour in the studio while he had tried to continue the portrait, we had gone out to lunch at the Spanish Galleon, and then had gone aboard the Cutty Sark, whose magisterial masts dominated Greenwich. Afterward we had walked beside the river and sat for a time in the temporary sun on the soft sand where there was the notice which said Dangerous for Bathing. We had had dinner in Erith and had taken a roundabout way home.

  No more said about that five minutes in the studio but it lay in the back of our minds. It couldn’t be ignored. It didn’t have to be.

  Because I wasn’t in the least unhappy that it had occurred. And that made it perfectly clear that, unless I took some pretty drastic decision here and now, it would happen again even more unmanageably in the near future.

  Not a problem then? Arabella wouldn’t think so. I still did.

  Who to ask? Advice from Sarah? She was the sanest, most down-to-earth of my family. But what use advice? One would ignore it. Help, then? What sort of help?

  At the door of our house he kissed me just once. Affectionate, without obvious passion. Being patient, no doubt, as promised. Or had something this morning not been quite to his liking? Perhaps he’d come to the conclusion that I was delicate, too delicate for all that sort of thing.

  ‘Monday?’

  I had the grace to say: ‘Not Monday.’

  ‘Tuesda
y, as usual, then?’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘Skating?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Mustn’t overdo it. It was a long session on Thursday. See how you feel.’

  Invalid. ‘All right.’

  ‘Night, love.’

  ‘Good night, Leigh.’

  I stood and watched him drive away. His car had a curious exhaust note, like a very cross fly caught on a very big window-pane. I took a deep breath. I was happy. Life was good enough, big enough, and I was strong enough. That was what mattered.

  All weekend – two days – to think, to decide, to remember, to weigh up, to reason it out. To remember. Two days. Didn’t need even to begin to think until tomorrow.

  Tired, pleasantly tired, and sleepy. I looked forward to pulling the cool sheets up and lying with my eyes just clear, not to read but just to look at my treasures – and think. To remember. To think.

  It being Saturday, Arabella was home; the strains of her record player coming from the drawing room. In our family even Arabella preferred classical music, but the fact that she was playing a Beethoven trio told me that my father was out. Douglas couldn’t bear Beethoven’s music. ‘All triviality of theme and ponderous Germanic decoration,’ he called it.

  I found her stretched on the one uncomfortable settee but draped over it in such a way, blonde hair voluptuously falling, that she contrived to make even our stark room exciting. She was reading the Kama Sutra, but she dropped it when I came in. Erica had gone to bed with a headache, she said, but had taken a pile of BMJs with her for light reading. I remembered Arabella as a thin straggly little girl inclined to malicious teasing of her lame elder sister, and this had gone on until she was sixteen. Then, almost overnight, her sallow, spotty skin changed, her hips and calves and breasts developed fashionably gentle curves, her eyes grew bigger – her hair more glossy, and every second man eyed her with interest and appreciation. At roughly the same time her nature had seemed to alter, had become less aggressive, less prickly, and we had scarcely exchanged a hard word since.