Twenty-One Stories

  The driver again became aware of somebody shouting. It came from the wooden erection which was the nearest thing to a house in that desolation of broken brick. The driver climbed the smashed wall and unlocked the door. Mr Thomas came out of the loo. He was wearing a grey blanket to which flakes of pastry adhered. He gave a sobbing cry. ‘My house,’ he said. ‘Where’s my house?’

  ‘Search me,’ the driver said. His eye lit on the remains of a bath and what had once been a dresser and he began to laugh. There wasn’t anything left anywhere.

  ‘How dare you laugh,’ Mr Thomas said. ‘It was my house. My house.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the driver said, making heroic efforts, but when he remembered the sudden check of his lorry, the crash of bricks falling, he became convulsed again. One moment the house had stood there with such dignity between the bomb-sites like a man in a top hat, and then, bang, crash, there wasn’t anything left – not anything. He said, ‘I’m sorry. I can’t help it, Mr Thomas. There’s nothing personal, but you got to admit it’s funny.’

  1954

  SPECIAL DUTIES

  WILLIAM FERRARO of Ferraro & Smith, lived in a great house in Montagu Square. One wing was occupied by his wife who believed herself to be an invalid and obeyed strictly the dictate that one should live every day as if it were one’s last. For this reason her wing for the last ten years had invariably housed some Jesuit or Dominican priest with a taste for good wine and whisky and an emergency bell in his bedroom. Mr Ferraro looked after his salvation in more independent fashion. He retained the firm grasp on practical affairs that had enabled his grandfather, who had been a fellow exile with Mazzini, to found the great business of Ferraro & Smith in a foreign land. God has made man in his image, and it was not unreasonable for Mr Ferraro to return the compliment and to regard God as the director of some supreme business which yet depended for certain of its operations on Ferraro & Smith. The strength of a chain is in its weakest link, and Mr Ferraro did not forget his responsibility.

  Before leaving for his office at 9.30 Mr Ferraro as a matter of courtesy would telephone to his wife in the other wing. ‘Father Dewes speaking,’ a voice would say.

  ‘How is my wife?’

  ‘She passed a good night.’

  The conversation seldom varied. There had been a time when Father Dewes’ predecessor made an attempt to bring Mr and Mrs Ferraro into a closer relationship, but he had desisted when he realized how hopeless his aim was, and how on the few occasions when Mr Ferraro dined with them in the other wing an inferior claret was served at table and no whisky was drunk before dinner.

  Mr Ferraro, having telephoned from his bedroom where he took his breakfast, would walk, rather as God walked in the Garden, through his library lined with the correct classics and his drawing-room, on the walls of which hung one of the most expensive art collections in private hands. Where one man would treasure a single Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Mr Ferraro bought wholesale – he had six Renoirs, four Degas, five Cézannes. He never tired of their presence, they represented a substantial saving in death-duties.

  On this particular Monday morning it was also May the first. The sense of spring had come punctually to London and the sparrows were noisy in the dust. Mr Ferraro too was punctual, but unlike the seasons he was as reliable as Greenwich time. With his confidential secretary – a man called Hopkinson – he went through the schedule for the day. It was not very onerous, for Mr Ferraro had the rare quality of being able to delegate responsibility. He did this the more readily because he was accustomed to make unexpected checks, and woe betide the employee who failed him. Even his doctor had to submit to a sudden counter-check from a rival consultant. ‘I think,’ he said to Hopkinson, ‘this afternoon I will drop in to Christie’s and see how Maverick is getting on.’ (Maverick was employed as his agent in the purchase of pictures.) What better could be done on a fine May afternoon than check on Maverick? He added, ‘Send in Miss Saunders,’ and drew forward a personal file which even Hopkinson was not allowed to handle.

  Miss Saunders moused in. She gave the impression of moving close to the ground. She was about thirty years old with indeterminate hair and eyes of a startling clear blue which gave her otherwise anonymous face a resemblance to a holy statue. She was described in the firm’s books as ‘assistant confidential secretary’ and her duties were ‘special’ ones. Even her qualifications were special: she had been head girl at the Convent of Saint Latitudinaria, Woking, where she had won in three successive years the special prize for piety – a little triptych of Our Lady with a background of blue silk, bound in Florentine leather and supplied by Burns Oates & Washbourne. She also had a long record of unpaid service as a Child of Mary.

  ‘Miss Saunders,’ Mr Ferraro said, ‘I find no account here of the indulgences to be gained in June.’

  ‘I have it here, sir. I was late home last night as the plenary indulgence at St Etheldreda’s entailed the Stations of the Cross.’

  She laid a typed list on Mr Ferraro’s desk: in the first column the date, in the second the church or place of pilgrimage where the indulgence was to be gained, and in the third column in red ink the number of days saved from the temporal punishments of Purgatory. Mr Ferraro read it carefully.

  ‘I get the impression, Miss Saunders,’ he said, ‘that you are spending too much time on the lower brackets. Sixty days here, fifty days there. Are you sure you are not wasting your time on these. One indulgence of 300 days will compensate for many such. I noticed just now that your estimate for May is lower than your April figures, and your estimate for June is nearly down to the March level. Five plenary indulgences and 1,565 days – a very good April work. I don’t want you to slacken off.’

  ‘April is a very good month for indulgences, sir. There is Easter. In May we can depend only on the fact that it is Our Lady’s month. June is not very fruitful, except at Corpus Christi. You will notice a little Polish church in Cambridgeshire . . .’

  ‘As long as you remember, Miss Saunders, that none of us is getting younger. I put a great deal of trust in you, Miss Saunders. If I were less occupied here, I could attend to some of these indulgences myself. You pay great attention, I hope, to the conditions.’

  ‘Of course I do, Mr Ferraro.’

  ‘You are always careful to be in a State of Grace?’

  Miss Saunders lowered her eyes. ‘That is not very difficult in my case, Mr Ferraro.’

  ‘What is your programme today?’

  ‘You have it there, Mr Ferraro.’

  ‘Of course. St Praxted’s. Canon Wood. That is rather a long way to go. You have to spend the whole afternoon on a mere sixty days’ indulgence?’

  ‘It was all I could find for today. Of course there are always the plenary indulgences at the Cathedral. But I know how you feel about not repeating during the same month.’

  ‘My only point of superstition,’ Mr Ferraro said. ‘It has no basis, of course, in the teaching of the Church.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like an occasional repetition for a member of your family, Mr Ferraro, your wife . . .?’

  ‘We are taught, Miss Saunders, to pay first attention to our own souls. My wife should be looking after her own indulgences – she has an excellent Jesuit adviser – I employ you to look after mine.’

  ‘You have no objection to Canon Wood?’

  ‘If it is really the best you can do. So long as it does not involve overtime.’

  ‘Oh no, Mr Ferraro. A decade of the Rosary, that’s all.’

  After an early lunch – a simple one in a City chop-house which concluded with some Stilton and a glass of excellent port – Mr Ferraro visited Christie’s. Maverick was satisfactorily on the spot and Mr Ferraro did not bother to wait for the Bonnard and the Monet which his agent had advised him to buy. The day remained warm and sunny, but there were confused sounds from the direction of Trafalgar Square which reminded Mr Ferraro that it was Labour Day. There was something inappropriate to the sun and the early flowers under the park trees in thes
e processions of men without ties carrying dreary banners covered with bad lettering. A desire came to Mr Ferraro to take a real holiday, and he nearly told his chauffeur to drive to Richmond Park. But he always preferred, if it were possible, to combine business with pleasure, and it occurred to him that if he drove out now to Canon Wood, Miss Saunders should be arriving about the same time, after her lunch interval, to start the afternoon’s work.

  Canon Wood was one of those new suburbs built around an old estate. The estate was a public park, the house, formerly famous as the home of a minor Minister who served under Lord North at the time of the American rebellion, was now a local museum, and a street had been built on the little windy hill-top once a hundred acre field: a Charrington coal agency, the window dressed with one large nugget in a metal basket, a Home & Colonial Stores, an Odeon cinema, a large Anglican church. Mr Ferraro told his driver to ask the way to the Roman Catholic church.

  ‘There isn’t one here,’ the policeman said.

  ‘St Praxted’s?’

  ‘There’s no such place,’ the policeman said.

  Mr Ferraro, like a Biblical character, felt a loosening of the bowels.

  ‘St Praxted’s, Canon Wood.’

  ‘Doesn’t exist, sir,’ the policeman said. Mr Ferraro drove slowly back towards the City. This was the first time he had checked on Miss Saunders – three prizes for piety had won his trust. Now on his homeward way he remembered that Hitler had been educated by the Jesuits, and yet hopelessly he hoped.

  In his office he unlocked the drawer and took out the special file. Could he have mistaken Canonbury for Canon Wood? But he had not been mistaken, and suddenly a terrible doubt came to him how often in the last three years Miss Saunders had betrayed her trust. (It was after a severe attack of pneumonia three years ago that he had engaged her – the idea had come to him during the long insomnias of convalescence.) Was it possible that not one of these indulgences had been gained? He couldn’t believe that. Surely a few of that vast total of 36,892 days must still be valid. But only Miss Saunders could tell him how many. And what had she been doing with her office time – those long hours of pilgrimage? She had once taken a whole week-end at Walsingham.

  He rang for Mr Hopkinson, who could not help remarking on the whiteness of his employer’s face. ‘Are you feeling quite well, Mr Ferraro?’

  ‘I have had a severe shock. Can you tell me where Miss Saunders lives?’

  ‘She lives with an invalid mother near Westbourne Grove.’

  ‘The exact address, please.’

  Mr Ferraro drove into the dreary wastes of Bayswater: great family houses had been converted into private hotels or fortunately bombed into car parks. In the terraces behind dubious girls leant against the railings, and a street band blew harshly round a corner. Mr Ferraro found the house, but he could not bring himself to ring the bell. He sat crouched in his Daimler waiting for something to happen. Was it the intensity of his gaze that brought Miss Saunders to an upper window, a coincidence, or retribution? Mr Ferraro thought at first that it was the warmth of the day that had caused her to be so inefficiently clothed, as she slid the window a little wider open. But then an arm circled her waist, a young man’s face looked down into the street, a hand pulled a curtain across with the familiarity of habit. It became obvious to Mr Ferraro that not even the conditions for an indulgence had been properly fulfilled.

  If a friend could have seen Mr Ferraro that evening mounting the steps of Montagu Square, he would have been surprised at the way he had aged. It was almost as though he had assumed during the long afternoon those 36,892 days he had thought to have saved during the last three years from Purgatory. The curtains were drawn, the lights were on, and no doubt Father Dewes was pouring out the first of his evening whiskies in the other wing. Mr Ferraro did not ring the bell, but let himself quietly in. The thick carpet swallowed his footsteps like quicksand. He switched on no lights: only a red-shaded lamp in each room had been lit ready for his use and now guided his steps. The pictures in the drawing-room reminded him of death-duties: a great Degas bottom like an atomic explosion mushroomed above a bath: Mr Ferraro passed on into the library: the leather-bound classics reminded him of dead authors. He sat down in a chair and a slight pain in his chest reminded him of his double pneumonia. He was three years nearer death than when Miss Saunders was appointed first. After a long while Mr Ferraro knotted his fingers together in the shape some people use for prayer. With Mr Ferraro it was an indication of decision. The worst was over: time lengthened again ahead of him. He thought: ‘Tomorrow I will set about getting a really reliable secretary.’

  1954

  THE BLUE FILM

  ‘OTHER people enjoy themselves,’ Mrs Carter said.

  ‘Well,’ her husband replied, ‘we’ve seen . . .’

  ‘The reclining Buddha, the emerald Buddha, the floating markets,’ Mrs Carter said. ‘We have dinner and then go home to bed.’

  ‘Last night we went to Chez Eve . . .’

  ‘If you weren’t with me,’ Mrs Carter said, ‘you’d find . . . you know what I mean, Spots.’

  It was true, Carter thought, eyeing his wife over the coffee-cups: her slave bangles chinked in time with her coffee-spoon: she had reached an age when the satisfied woman is at her most beautiful, but the lines of discontent had formed. When he looked at her neck he was reminded of how difficult it was to unstring a turkey. Is it my fault, he wondered, or hers – or was it the fault of her birth, some glandular deficiency, some inherited characteristic? It was sad how when one was young, one so often mistook the signs of frigidity for a kind of distinction.

  ‘You promised we’d smoke opium,’ Mrs Carter said.

  ‘Not here, darling. In Saigon. Here it’s “not done” to smoke.’

  ‘How conventional you are.’

  ‘There’d be only the dirtiest of coolie places. You’d be conspicuous. They’d stare at you.’ He played his winning card. ‘There’d be cockroaches.’

  ‘I should be taken to plenty of Spots if I wasn’t with a husband.’

  He tried hopefully, ‘The Japanese strip-teasers . . .’ but she had heard all about them. ‘Ugly women in bras,’ she said. His irritation rose. He thought of the money he had spent to take his wife with him and to ease his conscience – he had been away too often without her, but there is no company more cheerless than that of a woman who is not desired. He tried to drink his coffee calmly: he wanted to bite the edge of the cup.

  ‘You’ve spilt your coffee,’ Mrs Carter said.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He got up abruptly and said, ‘All right. I’ll fix something. Stay here.’ He leant across the table. ‘You’d better not be shocked,’ he said. ‘You’ve asked for it.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m usually the one who is shocked,’ Mrs Carter said with a thin smile.

  Carter left the hotel and walked up towards the New Road. A boy hung at his side and said, ‘Young girl?’

  ‘I’ve got a woman of my own,’ Carter said gloomily.

  ‘Boy?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘French films?’

  Carter paused. ‘How much?’

  They stood and haggled a while at the corner of the drab street. What with the taxi, the guide, the films, it was going to cost the best part of eight pounds, but it was worth it, Carter thought, if it closed her mouth for ever from demanding ‘Spots’. He went back to fetch Mrs Carter.

  They drove a long way and came to a halt by a bridge over a canal, a dingy lane overcast with indeterminate smells. The guide said, ‘Follow me.’

  Mrs Carter put a hand on Carter’s arm. ‘Is it safe?’ she asked.

  ‘How would I know?’ he replied, stiffening under her hand.

  They walked about fifty unlighted yards and halted by a bamboo fence. The guide knocked several times. When they were admitted it was to a tiny earth-floored yard and a wooden hut. Something – presumably human – was humped in the dark under a mosquito-net. The owner showed them into a tiny stuffy r
oom with two chairs and a portrait of the King. The screen was about the size of a folio volume.

  The first film was peculiarly unattractive and showed the rejuvenation of an elderly man at the hands of two blonde masseuses. From the style of the women’s hairdressing the film must have been made in the late twenties. Carter and his wife sat in mutual embarrassment as the film whirled and clicked to a stop.

  ‘Not a very good one,’ Carter said, as though he were a connoisseur.

  ‘So that’s what they call a blue film,’ Mrs Carter said. ‘Ugly and not exciting.’

  A second film started.

  There was very little story in this. A young man – one couldn’t see his face because of the period soft hat – picked up a girl in the street (her cloche hat extinguished her like a meat-cover) and accompanied her to her room. The actors were young: there was some charm and excitement in the picture. Carter thought, when the girl took off her hat, I know that face, and a memory which had been buried for more than a quarter of a century moved. A doll over a telephone, a pin-up girl of the period over the double bed. The girl undressed, folding her clothes very neatly: she leant over to adjust the bed, exposing herself to the camera’s eye and to the young man: he kept his head turned from the camera. Afterwards, she helped him in turn to take off his clothes. It was only then he remembered – that particular playfulness confirmed by the birthmark on the man’s shoulder.

  Mrs Carter shifted on her chair. ‘I wonder how they find the actors,’ she said hoarsely.

  ‘A prostitute,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit raw, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you like to leave?’ he urged her, waiting for the man to turn his head. The girl knelt on the bed and held the youth around the waist – she couldn’t have been more than twenty. No, he made a calculation, twenty-one.

  ‘We’ll stay,’ Mrs Carter said, ‘we’ve paid.’ She laid a dry hot hand on his knee.

  ‘I’m sure we could find a better place than this.’

  ‘No.’

  The young man lay on his back and the girl for a moment left him. Briefly, as though by accident, he looked at the camera. Mrs Carter’s hand shook on his knee. ‘Good God,’ she said, ‘it’s you.’