“For school,” Colin said promptly. Sweat started out again on the back of his neck. “We have to carry it. For emergencies.”
“What emergencies? I thought you got ambulances for emergencies.”
“Are you looking for a phonebox?”
“Here, stop here, I think that’s one. It’s not got a light. Here, pull up.”
“At least we know where we are now.”
Colin grabbed the directory and hurled himself back into his seat, peering at the listings by the dim light of the interior bulb. The door was half-open and rain splattered in. Sylvia shivered.
“Here’s Frank. Give me that Iop.”
He dialled the number and was relieved to hear the ringing tone. It rang and rang. When he was on the point of giving up, the receiver was lifted and an unfamiliar voice answered. He heard it calling out for Frank.
“Here, Frank, here’s some extraordinary chap called Sidney who’s got lost.”
Frank came to the phone. “Hello? Colin?”
Colin expected him to sound irritable, but he was quite jovial, perhaps alarmingly so. Must be a good party, Colin thought, good conversation, lots to drink. His spirits briefly rallied. The directions fixed in his mind, he jumped back into the car.
“Right, got it this time. Be there in under five minutes.”
“I’m cold, Colin. Freezing.”
“Cheer up. En avant.”
“Is that a foreign expression?”
“Yes. Course it is.”
“I hope you won’t be using foreign expressions tonight, making a fool of yourself. And remember, about the drinking.”
Colin struggled for words for a moment, and found none. He slammed on the brakes and brought the car to rest outside Frank’s house. Some long-sealed capsule of rage seemed to explode inside his skull, so that the rest of the night passed for him in a sort of haze, odd incidents and scraps of conversation rising jaggedly above the tide of his wrath; so that the next day, when he was forced to think it all over, he could not pin any sequence to events, or say if they were real at all.
It was nine-thirty. Frank answered the door. He looked vacant, rather slack-jawed.
“Hello,” Sylvia said. Frank took her hand and kissed it. Startled, she pulled it away and rubbed it on her coat sleeve, then took off her coat and handed it to Frank as if he were a cloakroom attendant. Looking him over, she saw that he was wearing white shoes. She raised her eyebrows meaningfully.
Frank had a large Victorian house, a bit dilapidated but gracious in its proportions; he had a few good pictures, and quantities of junkshop and repro furniture intermingled with a few antiques. He leaned to the idea that books furnish a room, and frequented jumble sales in search of leather bindings; he was not as interested in the contents of his finds as he knew he ought to be. The overall effect was harmonious, a little dusty, genteel. He had bought the house before prices shot up, with his savings and a small legacy, and financed his risk by letting off bedrooms to students from the Teacher Training College. Colin imagined they paid a high price in humiliation, for Frank loved to patronise the young. I must take a good look around, he thought, I’m supposed to have been here quite often.
Frank did not seem to know what to do with Sylvia’s coat. “This way,” he said.
They followed him into a large, high-ceilinged room, where the other guests sat with drinks in their hands. In a tiny pause in the conversation, heads turned; turned back, and the talk resumed, a touch rumbustious, grating, over-loud; collars loosened and faces glowing. They’re in full swing, Colin thought, we really are terribly late. Perhaps it would have been better to cut our losses and not come at all. He began to stammer out fresh apologies, but Frank brushed them aside.
“This is my colleague, Colin Sidney,” Frank said to the room at large. “This is his charming wife, Sylvia, whom we all immediately notice is expecting another little Sidney, and this is Sylvia’s wet coat.”
“Why does he want us to call him Sidney?” one of the guests said. “Why can’t he use his real name?”
“Don’t be facetious, Edmund,” Frank said. “Have you seen my drawing-room since it’s been redecorated, Colin?”
“Oh well, we’ll call him what he wants,” the other man grumbled. “But either we should all go under our real names, or we should all have pseudonyms.”
“What?” Colin stared at him for a moment, and returned his attention to Frank’s question. “Of course I have, of course I’ve seen it,” he said heartily.
“I didn’t think you had. I’ve moved the idiot box into the morning room, not that I ever watch the thing except for the odd documentary, and the telephone’s through there in the junk room. They couldn’t seem to understand that I wanted it through there.”
“Why not?” the grumbling man said. “Most telephone conversation is junk. The art of letter writing is dead.”
“Colin, have you met—I’m sure you must know Edmund Toye?”
“I’m afraid not. How do you do?”
“Now that is a question.” Edmund Toye was a yellow-faced man, with a goatee and a snide pseudo-aristocratic expression; not unlike Cardinal Richelieu in some respects, but very unlike him in others. “Now that is a piece of what you might call conversational junk. I mean, you say how am I, but if I were to tell you about my spondylitis, you would be very put out. My dear lady,” he said to Sylvia. “Enchanté.” Sylvia removed her hand hastily, fearing he might kiss it. “Now is that more meaningful, or not, Sidney? I wonder.”
“Edmund,” a woman said in a sweetly warning tone. She presented them in turn with her hand. “I am Charmian Toye.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Sylvia said.
“Now that is what I call an overstatement,” Toye said. “Or a piece of hypocrisy. At best, she might be indifferent, certainly she has no reason to be pleased, and in fact she is simply trying to impress us with her grasp of the social niceties.”
“Well, well,” Charmian said. “We may just get along stormingly together, and she may be awfully pleased in the end, so you see, Edmund, she is only anticipating. Anyway, it’s a perfectly innocuous statement. Or so I should have thought. It may pass without comment.”
“It may, but of course,” said Edmund, “it has not.”
Momentarily, Colin was alarmed. Who were these people with the odd names, and had they been drinking? Well, yes, obviously, but had they been drinking too much, or did they always talk like this? He was glad to see that one of his colleagues from school was present—Stewart Colman, who taught English—but although he was at least sanely named he was not a reassuring dinner companion. He seized Colin’s hand now and pumped it earnestly, wisely adding no spoken greeting. There was a peculiar glint in his eye, Colin thought. He was a wiry man with very black hair. During his last summer vacation he had grown a beard, which to his grief and astonishment had sprouted the vibrant shade of bitter thick-cut marmalade. Having braved ridicule on the first day of term, he would not court more by shaving it off. His wife, Gail, was a big-boned woman of thirty-five, contrastingly sober in hue, who followed him around like an apology.
“Well, you seem to be saving lots of time by recognising the Colmans,” Frank said. “Though I must say, Colin, you do appear a trifle distrait.”
“I’m just sorry we were so late. I can’t apologise enough.” He paused, wary in case this turn of phrase should excite Edmund Toye’s derision. “We must have held up dinner.”
“Oh, we hadn’t thought of dinner,” Frank said. “We’re doing some serious drinking. Let me provide for you. Whisky, I suppose, and for you, Sylvia? Gin all right? Gin’s all right for Sylvia. Anything in it, Sylvia? Splash of something? Orange? Good Lord, I didn’t think anyone over the age of sixteen drank gin and orange. Never mind, my dear, you shall have whatever you desire, I’m no snob.” Frank whirled about, Sylvia’s coat in his arm like a comatose dancing partner.
“Here is Brian Frostick, and this is Elvie, whom we immediately notice is Brian’s very newly marr
ied wife.”
Frostick was gaunt and pallid, and intimated that he was a solicitor; his wife Elvie, no more than twenty to his forty, was brown and short, with cropped hair and sturdy bare shoulders rising from the flounces of a vivid scarlet dress. Her handshake was bone-crunching.
“Well, why don’t you sit?” Frank demanded. “I’ll dispose of Sylvia’s outerwear and give you drinkies in a trice, when I think how to manage it.” He wandered from the room.
“Frank’s well away,” Frostick said. He sniggered.
“I say,” said Edmund Toye sharply, “don’t sit there.”
Sylvia stopped, her backside in mid-air, then reached behind her to retrieve a violin, which Frank had placed carelessly on a chair in an effort to raise the cultural tone. She held on to it, looking about her helplessly. Soon, Colin thought, she would become angry.
“Oh, do,” Toye said with a gesture. “By all means, if you feel moved. I dare say Frank can provide a selection of sheet music. You do play, I suppose?”
“You suppose wrong,” Sylvia said. Her voice was flat. “I just want to know what to do with it.”
“My dear lady,” Toye said. Colin took the violin from Sylvia and edged up a very tarnished silver candelabra to place it on a sidetable. Mrs. Toye was patting the chaise-lounge beside her. She was a tiny woman, buttoned-up and rather cross, with a small pointed face and an air of extreme self-possession.
“What a pity, Sylvia,” Frostick said. “What a pity, I really thought you would give us a recital. What a merry little Zingara you looked, in your festive red and green.”
“What’s a Zingara?” Elvie asked.
“A type of gypsy, I believe,” Edmund Toye said. “Speaking of the Romany people, does anyone, I wonder, read George Borrow nowadays?”
At that moment Frank arrived with the drinks. Gail Colman leaned forward and asked Sylvia pleasantly, “When are you due?”
“July.”
“Oh, the ladies are going to talk about their confinements.” Frank seemed delighted. He pressed a glass into Sylvia’s hand. “Do harrow us, freeze our blood.”
“Well, I know nothing about it,” Elvie said, in the manner of one delivering a crushing snub. “I only left school last year.”
“Thanks,” Sylvia said. “Cheers, everybody.” She sipped her gin. “Oh, it’s very strong,” she said. “Do you have children, Mrs. Toye?”
“I have six.”
Colin turned and regarded the neat little woman with open astonishment.
“My goodness,” Sylvia said. “I expect they keep you busy.”
“They don’t keep me busy,” Mrs. Toye said, a shade reproachfully, “they keep me occupied.”
Sylvia was silent for a moment; all were silent. “Well, Charmaine,” she said at last, “I’m not going to cut any figure beside you. This is my fourth I’m expecting, and I’m quite sure it’ll be my last.”
“Oh, not Charmaine.” Mrs. Toye closed her eyes. “Not as in the popular song.” She sang softly, “‘I wonder why you keep me waiting, Charmaine, my Charmaine.’” Her eyes snapped open again. “Charmian, as in Iras and, A and C. ‘Give me my robe put on my crown I have immortal longings in me.’ If you find it easier, do call me Mrs. Toye.”
“‘Withered is the garland of the war, the soldier’s pole is fallen,’” Toye remarked. “That of course is a more than faintly ludicrous line. Really, I sometimes wonder if Shakespeare had any sense of the sexually ridiculous.”
Toye had by now taken up his stance before the fireplace, and was toasting his meagre buttocks before the electric logs. “Do go on with what you were saying,” he ordered Frostick. “About the so fascinating Road Traffic Acts.”
Stewart Colman leaned forward confidentially. “Between you and me,” he told Colin in a hoarse whisper, “these dinners are a bit pretentious. Frank’s a bit pretentious. I don’t know what they’re talking about half the time. Truth be known, I don’t think they know themselves. Intellectually speaking, it’s a case of fur coat and no knickers.”
Unexpectedly moved by this image, Colin looked at Colman gratefully. He wondered when dinner would appear; he was feeling very hungry. Sylvia edged towards the end of the chaise-longue, away from Charmian, and touched his hand.
“Colin, are they all mad,” she muttered, “or have they had too much to drink? That woman singing…”
“I don’t know. Keep your voice down. Try to take no notice.”
“Can’t we go?”
“Not till after dinner. Have a drink of your gin, and then you’ll feel more into things.”
“Can we go right after the meal?”
“Yes, I don’t think they’ll miss us.”
A gust of Elvie’s piercing chatter blew across them.
“I don’t think they’d miss us if we went now,” Sylvia said.
Frank was moving amongst them, circling the room with a bottle of Gordon’s in one hand and a bottle of Johnnie Walker in the other. He poured a liberal measure of the gin into Charmian Toye’s glass, a quintuple by Colin’s estimate. Colin could not help but total it up and add in the cost of the whisky Frank slopped into his own glass. Ashamed of himself, he looked at his watch, as a diversion. It was ten-thirty.
“By the way,” Frank said, giving himself a final dash of Scotch, “I’ve invited Yarker to join us for dessert. I didn’t think we wanted Yarker for the whole evening, and yet I did think that at some point Yarker would be necessary.”
“Does he know when to come?” Elvie asked.
“Yarker always knows the moment,” Frank said. “You should know that, Elvie.”
“Christ, yes,” Frostick said, with a smile that showed his gums.
“Do you remember when he put Charmian’s knickers on his head and pelted everybody with sardines? Yarker’s good value.”
Colin’s heart was sinking fast. The present company he could possibly cope with, but this threat of physical extravagances seemed unbearable. Would it be worse in anticipation, or worse in reality? People said that things were never as good as you hoped or as bad as you feared, but then, he thought with a pang, there had been Isabel, and on the other hand there had been the time he had his wisdom tooth out.
“By the way,” Frostick said, “when’s the food, Frank?”
“Oh, stop fussing. Where’s your glass?”
It was another three-quarters of an hour before they were seated at Frank’s elaborately laid table. Sylvia and Colin were at opposite ends, but Elvie and her husband had been seated together, because, Mrs. Toye advised mysteriously, “it was not yet a year.” By now it had become clear to Colin that the Toyes and the Frosticks were at home in the house, because the men had become ruder to Frank, and had started to help themselves to drinks. It seemed also that the two couples knew each other well, even intimately. Colin felt a sense of sinister exclusion. He had hoped to be seated with Gail Colman, but he had Charmian instead. He thought that with this seating plan the evening had reached its nadir, but he did not know then what would occur over the saltimbocca.
Muriel had decided to go to bed. When she was halfway upstairs, a sharp pain brought her to a dead stop, as if someone had slammed a door in her face. She put a hand to her back and stood where she was, her large feet wedged a little sideways and her hand slapped down on the banister rail, flatly where it had fallen. After a time, when the pain ebbed, she turned gingerly and sat down on the step. She waited, not aware of what she was waiting for, not trying to think about it. Lately the affairs of her body had taken a turn for the worse; here was a turn for the worser. Evelyn had just gone on being the same, except snide and looking sideways and jeering about her misfortunes, and doing a performance she called worrying about the future.
When the pain came back, Muriel leaned forward and dug her fingers into her thighs. The vast bulk before her seemed to pulsate dully, throbbing and jumping like a machine. There was no guarantee that she would not always have to stay like this, her head down, a dry grunt coming from her throat. But after a mi
nute or two the spasm slackened and released her. She took a deep breath, ran her hands along her legs, and stroked her knees. This was a change in her state. This was a process, she thought. There would be something at the end of it.
It was so long since Colin had eaten that he felt slightly nauseated. Frank was an accomplished cook, and he had taken a great deal of trouble. It was obvious that the meal had not been waiting. Did that mean, Colin asked himself, that his lateness had made no difference at all? If he had sat there with the rest of them, consuming Frank’s generous drinks since eight o’clock, he would have been in no state to drive home; and they had hardly started on the wine that was to accompany their meal. He looked apprehensively around the ring of faces. They looked little different from when he first came in, but different they must be, edging by degrees towards inebriation; he hoped there would be no scenes.
“Insalata di funghi e frutta di mare,” Frank announced. He tripped slightly, bearing the plates in, but retrieved himself. His glasses were completely steamed up from the heat in the kitchen. But he did not seem to notice. “No squid, of course,” he said gloomily.
“Ah well, Frank,” Mrs. Toye said. “Squid is next to impossible, especially those tender little sea creatures which the Italians, so poetically I always feel, call sea-strawberries.” Mrs. Toye now sat back with a languid air, as if, because of the absence of squid, she could expect to find no further pleasure in the evening.
Colin looked down at his plate, and down the table at Sylvia. She wouldn’t eat raw mushrooms, that was for sure. Oh well, she could blame her pregnancy for anything she couldn’t manage.
“Sidney. I’m speaking to you,” Edmund Toye said. “I say, I understand you are also a schoolmaster.”
“Yes, that’s right. I teach history.”