The Walking Stick

  I couldn’t face them for a bit. I couldn’t go back and go on with my dinner. So I went into the bathroom and sat on the pink-towelling-covered lavatory seat and said, stop, stop, stop. It’s not important; it’ll all be the same in a hundred years, in five years, in one year. I shall look back and think, what a fool I was to get upset about such a trivial thing and such a trivial man.

  So presently I stopped and blew my nose about a dozen times and took a few deep breaths and tried to put it all away from me. Proportion, that’s the most important word in life. If you can see things in proportion half your troubles are not troubles at all.

  The ‘spare’ bedroom in the flat in Ennismore Gardens was so tiny as only just to admit a single bed and a cupboard which did for a wardrobe. At night the walls were so close that I had to fight the old battles with claustrophobia. So when Virginia left, I moved in with Sarah.

  I told Sarah that Leigh had become too persistent and I wanted to choke him off, so she must help. Sarah said: ‘Anything you say, duckie.’

  I saw nothing at all of him that week.

  On the Monday John Hallows had to go back to Geneva, and Maurice Mills left with him, so I was in charge of the department. This meant my working late both on the Monday and on the Tuesday. By Tuesday evening I didn’t feel much like queuing for a bus and then walking, so I took a cab back to Ennismore Gardens.

  It was a light, warm and dusty evening, when there didn’t seem much sap left in anything and the leaves of the trees made thin scratching noises in the breeze. The declining sun was flooding the eastern side of the square. Two dogs dodged aimlessly among the rows of parked cars, playing hide and seek with each other.

  As I got to the door and put in my key I heard Leigh’s step behind me.

  He said: ‘I thought you must come in sooner or later.’

  I stood there, feeling the ridges on the cane of my stick. ‘Have you been waiting? Sorry.’

  ‘Sarah went out half an hour ago. Can I come in?’

  ‘I’m tired. I’d rather be alone.’

  Reflection of the sun in his eyes as he looked up at me.

  ‘What’s wrong, Deborah? Why’ve you thrown me over?’

  ‘I don’t think there was all that much between us, was there?’

  ‘I reckon so!’

  ‘Well, perhaps we can talk about it some time.’ I moved to turn the key.

  ‘No!’ He put his arm across the door. ‘I must know. It’s only fair to tell me what’s wrong, to say something, to explain.’

  I stood there feeling pretty sick.

  ‘Let me alone.’

  ‘No. Come out to supper with me.’

  ‘Just give it up, Leigh.’

  ‘No.’

  I leaned against the side of the door farthest from him. ‘Go back to your wife.’

  He stared at me and took a breath. ‘So that’s it.’

  ‘Not altogether.’

  ‘So that’s it! My God, I might have guessed it was that.’

  ‘Not quite in the way you probably think I mean it.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘As if that mattered. It’s true, I suppose?’

  ‘Oh, it’s true. But I haven’t so much as seen her for over a year.’

  ‘Isn’t it time you did?’

  ‘No. It’s washed up. Done with.’

  I said exhaustedly: ‘Leigh. In a minute I’m going in – and if you don’t let me I shall call a taxi and drive to Hampstead. But before I go I want – want to make it clear about this – about us.’ I swallowed and tried to get my thoughts in line. ‘I – I don’t know what the rules are of this game. Perhaps there aren’t any. That would be nothing new. But I have to have some rules to go by – it so happens – rightly or wrongly I can’t do without them – and if they aren’t there I slide gracefully out. That’s what I’m trying to do now if you’d only let me!’

  ‘But surely—’

  ‘Wait. If I could finish, and then . . . Leigh, if I fell in love with somebody – if I did – and he was a married man, it would matter, but it wouldn’t matter all that much. There’s divorce – or in certain circumstances no divorce – whatever the situation was, it couldn’t be the deciding thing. One could only judge – could only go on how it looked. But . . . but if I fell in love with a married man and he didn’t tell me he was married, that would be the deciding thing because that would mean he was cheating from the first step. If – if there’s anything in life at all, one of the fundamentals, surely, is that you don’t cheat people you care about. Or, if you do cheat them, then you can’t care about them in the way I mean.’

  His face was set in a sullen narrow frown, almost pouting. After a minute he took his arm from the door.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘it isn’t just quite so dead easy as all that. It isn’t step one, step two like some Goddamned ballet dance. Sometimes you’re so blind scared of scaring off the person you’re in love with – especially when she’s difficult and touchy and independent, and can’t bear to be pitied, and liable to fly off at the slightest thing and doesn’t care for you much at the start anyway – sometimes then you’re so blind frozen scared of frightening her off that you don’t dare tell her a single thing she won’t like or you may lose her in a flash – snap and she’s scarpered. Just that! Just that, Deborah.’

  As he was speaking we both saw Sarah coming round the square with Philip Bartholomew, and when he’d finished there were about a dozen seconds before they came up with us. Those seconds passed in silence.

  Then all was talk. They hadn’t yet had supper and it was waiting inside – cold meats and things – so we could go right up. Sarah obviously thought of inviting Leigh to join us, but she glanced doubtfully at me.

  ‘Then I’d best be pushing off,’ said Leigh. ‘Nice to have seen you, Philip. And you, Sarah. See you again sometime. Bye, Deborah.’

  And hunching his shoulders as if it were raining he turned and went off toward his little red car on the other side of the square.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Wimbledon and Henley came and went. It rained in Ascot week. My father and mother left on their separate holidays on the fourth Sunday after Trinity. London was full of foreign visitors. The season began to look tired and dusty. Whittington’s always closed for the month of August, except for a skeleton staff for receiving goods for future auctions – and auctions did not begin again until the middle of September.

  I was left in harmony and peace, just as before and just as I wanted to be again: a quiet ordered life; no firm hands touching and grasping my body in strange ways, no questing lips, no heavy-lidded, anxiously admiring eyes.

  Peace.

  Time on my hands.

  Sarah’s friendship with Philip Bartholomew grew. Since she was so tactful about Leigh, no questions for her; but it looked like the real thing. I came to like his seriousness: it wasn’t a dull moral attitude but seemed to spring from a fundamental belief in the value of human beings. Unusual these days. And it didn’t at all stop him from being lighthearted or jolly.

  Arabella’s affair with Bruce Spring was going through as many vicissitudes as a barometer in the monsoon season. It was fascinating to see. Maybe I’d have been better that way instead of sitting on my feelings like a repressed Victorian.

  One day in the showrooms of Whittington’s, a voice said: ‘Miss Dainton.’

  Jack Foil. The stout, elderly man whom I’d met with Leigh at that club in Wapping.

  ‘It is Miss Dainton, isn’t it? Do you work here, then?’

  We talked for a minute or two. Very friendly and polite. Behind their thick lenses, his eyes wobbled like lightly poached eggs. He was here, he said, looking at some Oriental rugs. He wanted two for his dining room. His wife had a fancy for them. And there was a Sung baluster vase catalogued that he was interested in professionally. Did I know where that was?

  Yes, I knew where it was, and led him to it, while he told me that his antique shop was in Brompton Road and invited me to call i
n any time I was passing. Was I interested in indoor plants? It was his hobby.

  We stood and looked at the baluster vase and he puffed out his thick lips and he asked me why it was so called, and I said its real name was Mei-ping, which referred to the shape of the mouth. But of course, I said, he must know all this, being a dealer.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘This isn’t really my line. Furniture and silver mostly. Is this genuine, this vase? I mean is it a genuine Sung?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No? Oh, I see the catalogue only claims . . . But how does one know?’

  ‘If you lift it up you’ll see something has been ground out of the base. It was a reign mark, probably. The reign in which it was really made. It wasn’t intended as a forgery, only as a copy.’

  ‘It’s really Chinese, then?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Probably Yung Cheng. And quite valuable.’

  ‘How clever you are. Have you worked here long?’

  ‘About seven years. But porcelain and antique pottery are my subjects. I don’t know much about rugs, I’m afraid.’

  He took out a heavy cream silk handkerchief and wiped the outside corners of his eyes with it. It smelled of carnation.

  He said: ‘To be frank, Miss Dainton, I don’t think I should have been so sure of recognizing you this morning if I hadn’t been looking at your portrait the other day. I haven’t a good memory for faces in the ordinary way.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, colour coming somewhere. ‘You mean Leigh Hartley’s painting.’

  ‘Yes, it’s splendid, isn’t it?’

  ‘I haven’t actually seen it.’

  ‘You haven’t . . .’ He put the handkerchief away, and his signet rings flashed in the light. ‘Oh, hasn’t he let you see it yet? Well at your next sitting, maybe.’

  I folded my notebook over. ‘I think I must be getting on. I was looking—’

  ‘Of course. Don’t let me detain you, Miss Dainton. Working hours, etc. But I must tell you, I’m very struck with that portrait. It’s much the best thing Leigh has ever done. If you don’t want it yourself when it’s finished, I’ve offered him a hundred guineas for it. Not to resell, but for myself.’

  ‘For that?’ I half-laughed in surprise and embarrassment. ‘Really. He’ll be pleased, I expect.’

  ‘Yes, he is. He’s still groping his way in art, you know. It’s hard for a young man who’s not an absolute genius to develop a distinct and personal style. Young artists often spend years doing what other people have done better before. This, this portrait he’s done of you, is the first sign I’ve seen in him of an important development.’

  It was one of those times in life when because everything moves as usual, nothing seems to move at all.

  On 21 July, which was a Friday, I felt I just couldn’t go back to the flat and spend the whole weekend there, so I went on my own to the Academy Cinema to see a reissue of the Bergman film Wild Strawberries. I got a seat at the side away from everyone else and watched the remaining few minutes of the secondary film. As the big Fin showed up larger and larger through the last sunset someone walked along the row and sat next to me.

  The lights came up slowly. People stirred and yawned and looked about. A girl came up the aisle selling icecreams and soft drinks, and a little cluster formed around her. The dull discomfort in the middle of my body, which had been with me so long, turned and twisted into life.

  He said: ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes. Honest I couldn’t.’

  I moved my stick to the other side of the seat, out of his way. I was wearing my old office dress, the grey linen one with the wide green belt.

  ‘Have you seen the main film?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor have I. Mind if I stay here?’

  ‘As you please.’

  ‘I’ve only been here about ten minutes. How long’ve you been here?’

  ‘About the same.’

  ‘As soon as my eyes got used to the dark I looked around and there you were!’

  It didn’t seem likely. Probably he’d followed me from the office. I stared at the advertisements trying to empty mind of thought and heart of feeling. Blood and nerves obey. Be cold, detached, secure, an iron tower in a wind, not a frail surface-rooted tree.

  Brown suede boots crossed themselves beside me. Dark brown small check trousers, a cinnamon shirt with white collar and a green knitted tie. No jacket. Probably he was frowning at me; if I looked up he’d be staring at me with those contorted lines over nose and brow.

  ‘It’s been hell not seeing you,’ he said.

  More people coming in now for the beginning of the big film. Two sat down behind us, began to rustle chocolate paper. Hell? But why? There are other women. Dozens and dozens all able-bodied, glad of a strong vigorous young man. Then what? He wants me. That’s it. And no one else’ll do. For some reason. And I?

  He said: ‘Been to the ice rink since?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I went a couple of times, hoping you might be tempted or perhaps go with someone else.’

  The advertisements were over. Music played. More people, filing in, settling.

  ‘You living with your sister all the time now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t your father and mother mind?’

  ‘They’re both away.’

  ‘When do you have your holidays?’

  ‘Week after next.’

  The lights began to go down.

  He leaned over. ‘Look, Deborah, you think I did you dirt not telling you about Lorne. I did. But it was for fear of losing you. I told you that, tried to explain. Didn’t I explain that to you? Every time it came up and I was going to say something, I just looked at you and thought, if I tell her she’ll walk out.’

  ‘Perhaps I would have.’

  ‘Well, then.’

  The curtains were sliding back as the taped music died and was superseded by the soundtrack of the film.

  He sensed he had a good arguing point. ‘What should I have done? Tell me. How could I have done it?’

  I sighed: ‘I don’t know. It’s difficult to answer when you—’

  ‘There you are, you see. Look, Deborah, when this is over—’

  ‘Ssh. Ssh!’ said someone behind us.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he whispered, making a move.

  ‘No. I want to see the film.’

  ‘I’ll talk all through it.’

  ‘Don’t you dare.’

  He subsided, but I didn’t know if he’d stay quiet for long. He put his hand on my arm. Though I made no response, I didn’t take it away.

  So we sat through that strange sombre classic. At first I couldn’t follow it for thinking of the choice I’d to make when it was over; but when I did follow it it seemed as if it was my own life. Infinite pathos of lost youth, joys of childhood fading into the past, sound of dead voices, echo of laughter; these seemed to fill and flood my memory. The tension of my half-broken love affair heightened every light and shadow so that I was caught up in it and became a part of the tale. I felt the loss of an emotionally rich life that hadn’t ever really been mine. In the end I shed no tears, but there were tears in my heart.

  When it was over we moved together slowly towards the exit, going with the crowd. I didn’t know what effect if any the film had had on him. Fragments of the conversation of others drifted around.

  Outside he said: ‘Coffee?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Drive you home?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Ennismore Gardens?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Little red car. Same smell of petrol and leather and paint. Same rattles. The wind blew back on to my hair. London was warm and traffic fairly light. We could have raced down Park Lane, but he kept to a moderate speed.

  Seeing a film like that gives a new look to your own life. When you’ve been concentrating on the eternal verities, temporary misunderstandings look pretty trivial. It seemed to me just then that childhood, maturity, marriage, old age and death were e
ach no more than the turning of a page; and soon it’s all gone, and nothing’s left but the sad wind sighing in an empty garden. Just how big did my own doubts loom in this context? They made no louder sound than a pin drop in a great hall.

  After the car stopped we sat in silence for a while.

  I would have loved to talk to him about the film, to tell him what I felt, to say that tragedy of this quality had a liberating effect on tired and twisted emotions. One wanted to proclaim that there was some justification to life, that there was some purpose to it more dedicated than the blind reactions of an amoeba, that all one could do was reject and throw out the trivial, the petty, the cheap, the vulgar, the shoddy, the sham. And say, I am a human being, and as such am greater than the sum of my parts. I live. I breathe. I am. Let the pages be turned . . .

  But he didn’t speak and I didn’t speak, because I was afraid he wouldn’t understand.

  The sky had a whiteness that comes only from the moon; it encroached even on the cinnamon glow of London.

  ‘Do me a favour, Deborah?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘However you feel about me, give me a chance to finish the painting. You don’t need to get any more fenced in. But I’m stuck, and it’s hell to be stuck. One more sitting might do. Two at the most.’

  ‘All right.’

  He took a breath. ‘Thanks.’

  I opened the door, anxious to be gone now.

  ‘When? Can I come for you tomorrow morning?’

  ‘If you want.’

  ‘I want.’

  I opened the door, got my stick and went in. After shutting the front door behind me I stood back to it for a minute or two, waiting for his engine to restart. I couldn’t forget the strange dream in the film of the coffin and the dreamer seeing his own face as a dead man.

  At last I went into the living room. Sarah called from the kitchen.

  ‘Good film?’

  ‘Great, thanks.’

  ‘Coffee? I’m just making some.’

  ‘Lovely.’

  After a minute or two more I went to the mirror and pushed my hair back more or less in place. I ought to wash it tonight. Sarah was still in the kitchen. I went to the window and parted the curtain an inch. He was still sitting there in his car smoking a cigarette.