“Well, you say history, but I wonder what you think history is. Probably a question we would need considerable time to go into. ‘It is a sign of the gods’ especial detestation of a man, when they drive him to the profession of schoolmaster.’ Now which of the ancient writers, I wonder, said that?” Toye did not wait for a reply, but pressed on keenly, thrusting a forkful of salad into his mouth. “Tell me now, what is your preferred form of creativity? Frank of course has written some delightful poetry. As an actor he is extremely skilful. His painting I feel is artificial. Intellectualised.” A stray thought claimed Colin’s wandering attention and involuntarily he raised his eyes to the deep blue ceiling above the Regency Stripe. Didn’t he remember Frank complaining about the cost of undercoat? No, Toye didn’t mean that, evidently he didn’t mean that.
“Frank,” he was saying, “have you told Colin about your novel?”
“My novel,” Frank said, beaming. “You want to hear about my novel, Colin?”
“That would be very nice,” Colin said. “I had no idea.”
“Well it’s just a germ as yet, you understand.” Frank took off his glasses and polished them vigorously. “It’s all rather circumstantial…as a matter of fact, I had a stroke of luck. Do you remember that bad fog we had, when my car got a bump, and was in the garage?” Frank paused, took a sip of wine, then a gulp. “Robust,” he said. “Here, Colin, let me top you up.” Colin pushed his glass towards Frank. Out of the corner of his eye he checked on Sylvia. She didn’t seem to be making too much of a fool of herself. There was an untouched glass of white wine by her plate, and he knew she had only had two gins.
“Well, the odd thing was,” Frank began.
“Perhaps for brevity I should take the story up,” Toye cut in. “When he got his car back, it came complete with the most extraordinary document. Obviously belonged to somebody else with a car in for repairs, and the garage men had taken it out and then put it back in the wrong car. At least, that’s the explanation we came up with.”
Colin felt uneasy. “What exactly was it?”
“Oh, a most extraordinary thing,” Toye said. “A kind of case file which a set of wretched social workers had been keeping over the years. Really, you cannot imagine the low level of literacy among those people.”
“The entries,” Charmian Toye said slowly, “have given us much innocent pleasure.”
“But look,” Colin’s heart was hammering in his throat. “Look, Frank, you must give it back at once. It’s the property of the Social Services Department.”
“Oh, knickers to that,” Frank said. His grin was distinctly lopsided, and his eyes behind his spectacles seemed to slip out of focus. “Finders keepers. It’s all about two dotty women. It’s a gift. Grist to the mill. I’m going to turn it into a novel.”
“Frank could never,” Toye said, “have invented such grotesquerie by himself.”
“For goodness’ sake,” Colin said. He was aware that his voice was very loud, and that the Frosticks, man and wife, had turned to stare at him. “Frank, think now, this is confidential information you’re talking about.”
“Then someone should have taken better care of it. Here, Frostick, open another three bottles, will you, I’m talking. You can’t imagine the lives some people lead. I might turn it into a sort of allegory, you see, about the state of our society.”
“But regardless of how it came to be lost…some poor social worker…the consequences could be very serious.”
“Poor social worker be damned,” Frostick said. “I’m not sure that they’re not the villains of the piece. Interfering do-gooders. Caring Society. Huh.” Frostick showed yellow teeth in contempt, and took to grappling with the corkscrew.
“Come on now, Frank, you’ve got to give these papers back.” Colin’s tone was pleading.
“Not a chance. I’ve already written Chapter One. Stranger than fiction. It’s inspired me.” He waved an arm. “It’s all through there, in the study, waiting for me to get back to it tomorrow morning.”
“Really, Frank,” Colin said, “you can’t do this. You’ve lost touch with reality.”
“He has if he thinks he’ll do anything tomorrow morning,” Elvie said. “Except vomit.”
“But these are real people. You can’t make their lives public property.” He turned around on Toye. “You’ve no right to abet him in this. You know it’s wrong, probably illegal.” Toye stroked his beard, and regarded him sardonically.
“I’ll change their names,” Frank said sulkily. “I wish I’d never told you, Colin. You’re spoiling it.”
“Yes, and I’m right to spoil it. This could have serious consequences, and not just for you. Some client—these clients—may be suffering because the file’s missing. And someone’s job may well be in jeopardy, if things go wrong. Even losing the file is bad enough, but it was obviously pure accident—and some poor young woman—or man,” he added hastily, “won’t be able to do their job properly without it.” He leaned forward, his face reddening. “Give it back, Frank, hand it in, for God’s sake.”
Frank sprawled back in his chair. “Client,” he murmured. “He knows all the jargon.”
Frostick leaned over Colin and refilled his glass. “Calm down,” he said.
“Yes, calm down, Sidney,” said Toye. “You’re spoiling the party.”
“I don’t give a damn about the party.” Colin crashed his fist down on the table. “Give that file to me.”
There was a silence. From the other end of the table Sylvia implored him. “Please, Colin, what does it matter to you?”
“It does matter, because—I happen to know—Oh, Christ.”
“Know what?” Elvie said.
“Frank’s heart’s set on it,” Charmian added sentimentally.
“Never mind,” Colin growled. He dabbed his mouth with his napkin, as if there were blood on his lip. He would, indeed, have liked to lean over the table and punch Frank as hard as he could manage. Frank was what he had always suspected. He was a blind, antisocial egotist, and not fit to have charge of the young. He should have known it was useless to appeal to any residue of morality left in Frank. And no other kind of appeal was open to him, without giving himself away. Was there any possibility that he was mistaken? No, not a chance. That was Isabel’s file, and Isabel’s error that Frank was hoping to blazon to the world. And of course, Frank would succeed in his project. Frank and the Frosticks and Edmund and Charmian between them could write any number of books. He glared at Elvie Frostick, now glowing like a bulb above her lampshade of a dress. Elvie probably took shorthand.
Colin reached for his glass, drained it. He put it back on the table, and quite suddenly, instantly, he was drunk. Around him the conversation resumed, louder, crueller; he heard it in snatches, above his own thoughts, clattering after logic like some unoiled and primitive engine.
A door was creaking. In time, in time, Evelyn’s figure appeared below her at the foot of the stairs, her hand fumbling for the lightswitch that still worked. She snapped it down, and as light burst over Muriel, a frenzy of pain burst out in her body, an unstemmable riot of pain, hers and hers alone.
Evelyn mounted the stairs. “Get up, get up,” she said. “Do as I tell you. You have to. I’m responsible. I’m in charge of you.”
So every day is Mother’s Day, Muriel thought. Her eyes half-closed, she regarded the old woman. Evelyn reached out and took Muriel under her armpits, trying to pull her to her feet. Muriel allowed herself to be lifted, her body hanging like a sack filled with bricks. Evelyn’s chest rose and fell audibly, with a creak that was very like that the furniture made, but which seemed strange from a human person. Her lips turned blue, her face grew pinched, flesh fell away from the bones. When Muriel was good and ready, she put her hands on Evelyn’s shoulders and heaved herself upright.
“It’ll get worse before it gets better,” Evelyn said. “I’m only telling you.”
For years she had been of the opinion that Muriel didn’t feel pain. She got bruised and bled, bu
t she didn’t feel it like any normal person. What was agony for some could be just a twinge for her. Tonight even her twinge must be regarded.
“I got this dress on the island of Kos,” Elvie was saying. “We went there on honeymoon. It was very cheap, this dress.” A sort of complacent savagery crept into her voice. “But I think it’s rather special. It’s my colour, scarlet. It was too long, you know, so I made them shorten it, there and then. That’s what I call service.” She looked around, ready for a challenge. “That’s what’s wrong with Britain today.”
“Ah,” Edmund said, “how does it feel, I wonder, to be twenty.”
“After we’d been to Kos,” the girl said, “we visited Malta. On both islands we saw all the historic sites.”
“I did the swim,” Frostick said, “the famous swim. As in history.”
“It’s got to be done in armour,” Frank said.
“Where would I get armour from?” Frostick demanded.
“Well, you say swim,” said Edmund, “you say armour, but I question whether it is possible to swim in armour.”
“Not what you would think of as armour,” Frank explained. “Not plate armour. A leather jerkin with things sewn on it. Chain links.”
“Oh, that,” Toye sneered.
“My friend fell in the canal wearing her suede coat,” Gail Colman said. “She sank like a stone.”
Colin pushed his chair back and stood up.
“You can’t go to the lavatory, because I’m going.” Elvie Frostick hoisted herself to her feet, looking belligerent. She thrust her chair away and swayed across the room, her face incandescent; it could be seen that she was in fact little more than a dwarf.
Colin edged himself around to Frank and bent over him, whispering.
“Do you think I could make a phone call?”
“Of course.” Frank gestured expansively. “You don’t have to ask permission, you know where it is.”
“I said I was going,” Elvie yelled back from the doorway. She clung to the door frame like a furious and compressed gorilla.
Colin slipped into the little room that Frank had indicated earlier. It was a junk room indeed, piled high with broken-sided old tea-chests and yellow newspapers. The phone with its stack of directories was on a rickety table in the far corner. Colin swore to himself as he picked his way over the rubbish. How bloody impractical and stupid, how exactly like O’Dwyer. All his respect evaporated, replaced by loathing and fear, as if he were compelled to walk a mountain road in the company of a lunatic. He nudged the directories aside to crouch over the telephone; no one must overhear. Under the topmost book was a copy of Playboy and a volume of Reader’s Digest. Colin stared at them. He did not know which he found the more shocking. After a moment he recovered himself, but as he began to dial Isabel’s number he was appalled to see that his fingers were trembling.
He tried to work out how many weeks it was since he had spoken to her. Suppose her father answered, and she refused to come to the phone? Or she answered herself, and put it down at the sound of his voice? His heart was thumping against his ribs. Is it so important, he asked himself, is it a matter of life and death? He didn’t know, his brain was befuddled, he couldn’t think straight. He must choose the words, the exact words that would tell her at once—
“Hello?”
“Isabel.”
“Colin? What is it?”
“Listen…”
“What do you want?”
“Something’s happened, ver—”
“Oh? Something’s happened, has it?” Her tone was full of impatience and mockery. “Has Sylvia miscarried? Is that it? So you think that now—well, you can’t. It’s not on, Colin. So if that’s it—go to hell.”
He gasped, and suddenly tears filled his eyes, pricking and demeaning. Where did she learn to talk to him like that? Why did she do it? Was it out of perplexity and confusion greater than his own, or out of some practised hardness inside her? He shuddered, taking a great breath.
“I know where your file is,” he said, as loudly and clearly as he dared.
“What?”
“Your file, your missing file.” As simply as he could, he told her what had happened.
“Wait,” she said, when he finished his account. “Colin, you’ve got me out of bed. I can’t think straight.”
“You’ll have to be quick. I’ll have to ring off in a minute.”
“But I went to the garage three times. They denied they’d ever seen it. Then they—but Colin, how could he write a novel? I don’t know what you mean.”
“He thinks it’s got the makings of a good story.”
“But it’s not a story, it’s just what people do. It’s just a record of what they do.”
“Grist to the mill, he says. Have you ever heard that stupid phrase? What is grist, anyway?”
“Colin, are you drunk?”
“No, not by a long chalk.”
“This isn’t some stupid joke, is it?”
“Of course it’s not a joke. It’s a dinner party. We’ve finished two courses and I’ve come to phone you. I’ve got to be quick.”
“Colin, there’s nothing I can do, is there? I mean, if I came and asked him for it…do you think—?”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea, because how would you have known, and that involves me—”
“Yes, I see, I do see that.”
“If Social Services asked him for it? If you told them?”
“Don’t be stupid, Colin, I’m trying to avoid them knowing, isn’t that the whole point? I don’t want this case discussed at Social Services. Can’t we persuade him?”
“I’ve told you, no.”
“This is awful, Colin, this confidential information lying about, it could cause the most awful blow-up.”
“I know that, I know, you don’t have to persuade me.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“Where it is? What do you mean?”
“In the house.”
“Well…yes. Roughly.”
“Then take it.”
“What?”
“Get it for me, Colin.”
“But Christ, how can I—”
“Do you see any other way?”
“No, but—”
“Phone me tomorrow.”
He heard a click. The line was dead. She didn’t even say thank you, he thought. And she hadn’t told him what the file looked like, or whose name was on it. Presumably he would know it when he saw it. Gently he replaced the receiver. Someone was calling him.
“Sidney! Sidney!” That was Frank. Now Frank thought it was a big joke to call him Sidney. “Sidney, come for your chocolate mousse.”
At least, Evelyn thought, the turn of events had not taken her by surprise. She had dreaded being roused from sleep, pulled up from her musty undersea dreams to find the girl and her half-born child scraping at the bedroom door. What if there were difficulties? Of course, it had to be considered, she had run over the question in her mind. If Muriel looked like dying, she would fetch the doctor. If it came to that…she could not stomach being haunted by that composite creature that would be Muriel and the half-emerged child; no, she could not stomach it. They would want a room to themselves, to hiss and cavort and bang on the walls; ah, the gay young dead. Soon she would be forced to live in the kitchen.
She left the lights burning all over the house. She hoped that it would not attract attention from the outside, but she had enough to do without being hampered by things following her down the hall. She made Muriel a cup of tea and let her have it lying on the bed. She was the soul of kindness. Then she took out the first-aid books and her reading glasses. She boiled the scissors for ten minutes. She did not think they would be much use, but you cannot get scissors sharpened nowadays. In her drawer in the kitchen cabinet she found some lengths of string, which would do for tying off the cord; they were rolled up with the remains of her paper bags, from her tenants’ tearing days. She could not see her pile of farthings, and sp
ent a minute or two rooting around for them. She sighed. She would have to ask Muriel about it, when Muriel was more in command of herself. “I do like everything in its place,” she said to herself. She got ready a blanket for the baby, a bit worn and musty but the correct size; it must have been one of Muriel’s. She took up some aspirin and a glass of tonic wine; but when around midnight Muriel screamed out in pain, she lost her nerve and slapped her repeatedly until she lay quiet, with two tears rolling down her grey cheeks.
When Colin re-entered the dining-room, he saw at once that the situation had deteriorated. Several more bottles of wine had been opened, and Charmian had returned to gin; the bottle stood by her elbow. Charmian’s precise tones had become even sharper, as if her tongue were edged with glass. Sylvia looked up at him anxiously. He attempted a smile, a reassuring smile; his face felt stiff. Edmund Toye was explaining how after a hard week at the Teacher Training College he liked to support his local football team and stand on the terraces, wearing a cap and bellowing. He described it as a most valuable emotional release.
“A. J. Ayer does it,” he said. “Logical Positivism.”
“Go on,” Frostick said.
“He’s Arsenal.”
Colin took his seat. He pushed his plate away. He certainly wasn’t going to eat chocolate mousse. He picked up his brimming glass and took a gulp of dessert wine. He did not notice the taste; it could have been water, or vodka. His throat was dry. Stewart Colman pushed the bottle down to him.
“Refill, Colin. Might as well. When in Rome et cetera.”
Colin noticed that Colman seemed relatively sober still. And Sylvia too; she sat with an expression both hunted and mutinous, which she had assumed as soon as she saw Frank’s white shoes and which the meal and the drinks had done nothing to alter. But then, he thought, for what I have to do next it would be as well if they were all drunk. He shifted his attention from his glass to find Charmian’s eyes fixed upon him. He lifted his head.
“Do you know,” she said distinctly, “he hasn’t got spondylitis?”
“I suspected as much,” Colin said.