The HOPEFUL TRAVELLER Read online

  ‘What about that coffee, Cath?’

  She thought of suggesting that they should warm up soup, but she could not bring herself to do that even for a starving refugee.

  The coffee was ersatz and unsweetened because Cath had mislaid her saccharine tablets, but it was hot and Kerren and Jan drank it gratefully.

  ‘What do you do?’ Kerren asked him, encouraged by their shared pleasure. ‘I mean, what work?’

  ‘I am in a department store. I sell stationery. This is temporary, you understand?’

  They understood that he, too, was waiting for the right job.

  ‘In Jugoslavia, I should have studied law and become a judge. My father was a judge.’ Automatically he took a letter from his breast pocket, in much the same way as he might have produced a passport. ‘I am known to your great legal advocate. Sir Patrick Hastings. I have here a letter from him.’ He held it in front of them so that they could read the signature and then returned it to his pocket.

  Cath looked rather straight-faced and Kerren guessed that she did not believe that he was known to Sir Patrick; this kind of contact was taken for granted in the circle in which Cath’s parents moved, only outsiders made a fuss about it.

  ‘You are married?’ Jan was looking at Kerren’s hand cradling the cup for warmth. It was the first sign of interest he had shown in either of the girls.

  ‘Kerren is a widow,’ Cath said quickly, as though Kerren could not be expected to explain this for herself. ‘Her husband was a Fleet Air Arm pilot and he was killed in a crash.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Jan shrugged Peter’s death away. ‘This happened. There are many widows.’

  Kerren felt that between them they had made her appear self- pitying. Never slow to defend herself, she retorted:

  ‘There are many refugees, too.’

  This sharp rejoinder had the effect of jerking Jan out of his bad mood. ‘And they are very dull fellows, too, yes?’ He smiled and suddenly he was anything but a dull fellow. His good mood lasted for the rest of the evening. He laughed, displaying flashing white and gold teeth, and he clowned, making mock of himself with unexpectedly sharp self-knowledge. All this was for Kerren’s benefit. For some reason, Cath had displeased him and he punished her by ignoring her. She took her punishment as abjectly as if he had beaten her; her face became heavy, the eyelids drooped, the mouth took on a bruised, swollen appearance. Beneath the tight black dress her ample breast laboured like a galleon swept by a heavy gale. Uneasy at the prospect of causing trouble between them, Kerren announced that she must take her leave. Jan promptly insisted that he, too, must go. Cath stared at him, a dumb animal hurt beyond understanding. In the doorway, she entreated, ‘Stay . . . stay . . .’ Her hand caressed his sleeve and he jerked his arm away. ‘Darling, what is it? Tell me what I’ve done, please, my sweet. . .’ Kerren, forgotten, backed away and ran down the steps.

  Jan caught her up in the street and fell into step beside her.

  ‘You are friends long?’ His voice expressed surprise.

  ‘Very long,’ Kerren answered shortly.

  ‘You are not the same. This is clear to me.’ He sounded as though he was trying to tell her something about himself – that he was a man of taste, perhaps.

  ‘Cath is a very nice person,’ Kerren said angrily.

  He looked down at her, his eyebrows raised, uncertain whether she could really be so innocent. People were their actions in his view: it was a hard case to answer. For a time they walked in silence. The pavements were dusted with frost and their footsteps rang iron hard in the deserted streets. From the main road came the occasional flash of electricity from the trolley buses. Kerren remembered going back to the cabin on nights like this; it had seemed the ultimate in desolation, but at least there had been others to share the discomfort.

  ‘Do you live near here?’ she asked Jan.

  ‘I live in Bayswater.’

  ‘Then this is the wrong direction for you.’

  ‘I come with you,’ he replied. Did he, too, think that discomfort was better shared?

  They turned into the dingy street where Kerren had a basement room. She pointed down to it.

  ‘I’m a troglodyte.’

  He said vaguely, ‘Very nice.’

  She was about to dismiss him, gently but firmly, when he bowed and bade her goodnight: it seemed that he had seen her home as a matter of courtesy. She felt a little ashamed as she watched him retracing his steps; the very straightness of his back was in an odd way pathetic, as though he knew that he would always have to make a gesture of his intractable independence.

  As she undressed in her damp, cold room, Kerren decided that the evening had been a miserable failure. Her vitality was always at a low ebb at night. Now little gusts of panic seized her and, as usual at such times, she thought of Peter.

  Chapter Two

  In the services time had had a different value to time as it was understood in Civvy Street. Kerren, still under the influence of the service world, felt that she was well-established at the library after the first week.

  The library was housed in an old mansion which stood in a small park off Holland Park Avenue. There had not been much time over the last few years for park upkeep, so there was just the expanse of grass, a few trees and a small, weedy pond. Kerren did not have to get to work until ten o’clock on Mondays because she worked late that evening. The rush-hour was over when she set out in the morning and there were few people about. She had plenty of time so she walked round the park before going into the library.

  The water in the pond was metallic, shot with dashes of light where ducks disturbed the surface. Silver stratus was spread very thinly over the sky and through this the sun shone weakly, giving no colour. It was intensely cold. An elderly woman in a fuzzy knitted hat, tweed coat and black stockings was playing with a ragged dog with rolling eyes and yellow teeth clamped over a stick. The woman kept saying, ‘I’ll have it, then!’ in a growling voice and the dog growled back as she lunged at his stick, they both pretended to be very ferocious. In spite of the energy displayed by the dog and the woman, the overall impression was one of icy stillness. The grass was damp and the damp crept up Kerren’s ankles and legs; the frost caught in her throat. Most of the people she encountered were elderly: the elderly are much hardier than the young.

  In spite of their shrivelled faces and watery eyes, Kerren did not find the old people depressing. It was the young bustling housewives who depressed her. The war was over and they were busy taking up the threads of family life again; there were two such women at the library, incessantly exchanging plans for the future. Kerren could not bear to hear their eager talk. When she came out of the W.R.N.S. life in Belfast had seemed intolerably dull, the people provincial and self-satisfied, unaware that there was a wider world beyond the shores of the Emerald Isle. She had escaped to London. But the new-found freedom was not quite as she had imagined it. There was no sense of stepping out into a new dawn of life; instead, life seemed to have lost interest in her, it had tossed her down in this vast, uncaring city and forgotten about her. She realized, with terrifying clarity, that she had lost her stake in the future when Peter died. She had been well on her way to recovery when she left the W.R.N.S.; but now, confronted by the purposeful happiness of those who had been reunited, she suffered a bad relapse. Without realizing what she was doing she began to turn away from the main stream of life. It was the eccentric, the misfits with whom she could feel safe at this time.

  The library had its share of such people. As Kerren went into the building, she could see through the glass-panelled door that Cudd was at his usual position in the reference library. There was a big desk at the far end of the room and Cudd crouched at that with a high pile of books at his left elbow; during the day the pile would gradually transfer from one side of the desk to the other, but whether or not this was a significant transaction no one knew but Cudd. Kerren walked across to the desk and picked up the topmost book. Cudd looked up and tittered. He did this becau
se it had become generally accepted in the library that Kerren was an amusing character and, although Cudd could not understand this, it seemed advisable to conform: Cudd conformed in small ways because he had discovered that this simplified life.

  ‘And what would you be doing with this?’ Kerren read aloud, ‘ “The Mahogany Tree: its botanical characters, qualities and uses, with practical suggestions for selecting and cutting it”.’

  Cudd gave an anxious snigger and said, ‘You put that back on the desk.’

  ‘But what are you doing with it?’ Kerren insisted.

  It seemed to her that everyone had taken Cudd for granted for so long that they forgot to ask him questions, she felt that perhaps he suffered from never having to explain himself. She looked at the face staring up at her, greenish-white as though it was never exposed to daylight. Cudd must be in his fifties, yet there was something macabrely youthful about him, as though he had been unnaturally preserved. It was impossible to imagine that the expression in Cudd’s eyes had changed much since the first day that he came to the library. Certainly, as far as Cudd was concerned, the world had not changed; but then he had not ventured far into it, probably his biggest excursion into adult life had been his move from school to library.

  ‘Are you reading this book?’ Kerren asked.

  ‘Reading it?’ It was obvious that Cudd did not think that Kerren could really imagine that anyone connected with a reference library wasted their time reading. He said snappishly, ‘Put it down and go away. You’re not supposed to talk in here.’

  He took the book in both hands. His fingernails were dirty and when he moved he exuded a faint smell of stale bread and cabbages. His clothes were greasy and so was the lank black hair that formed a harsh frame to his thin face. At the moment he looked malevolent and very unwholesome. There was no one else in the room and Kerren was still three minutes early for work. She went across to the long window and looked out at the park which seemed small and sad seen from this angle. She wondered what it was like at night. It was rumoured that Cudd sometimes spent the night in the reference library.

  ‘They’ve been looking for you.’ Cudd was sufficiently incensed by her interference to lie.

  She was glad to accept the lie. No doubt in time she would find the secret of communication with Cudd, but for the present he was best left alone. Miss Nimmo was a different matter altogether. Kerren looked forward to seeing her as she ran up the stairs to the store, a vast room where books were packed and unpacked, repaired or discarded. In a corner by the window there was a desk where Miss Nimmo worked, when there was typing to be done, or, during her long periods of enforced idleness, sat silently occupied with her own thoughts. Miss Nimmo’s thoughts, unlike Cudd’s, were undoubtedly beautiful. She was a soft, brown mouse of a woman, small-boned, with tiny hands and noiseless, quick-moving feet. She had a patient face and bright, nervous eyes. Kerren thought that she was probably a minor saint. She had looked after elderly invalid parents throughout the formative and more hopeful years of life; but she did not seem to regret having watched the world go by from behind a sick room window. She had a sensitive imagination and had created a quite adequate world of her own. She spent much of her spare time writing, and had allowed Kerren to read one of her essays. It was an account of a short visit to Iona in which something of the unreality of the Hebrides came across – though, of course, to Miss Nimmo Iona had been more real than the mainland. She was quite accomplished and had had articles published in The Lady and The Queen. Kerren admired her because she managed to keep her world of illusion intact and earn a modest living at the same time.

  When Kerren came into the room. Miss Nimmo looked up and smiled.

  ‘Mr. Allen left some books on the work table for you to repair.’ And then, after a little talk about the weather, she felt that sufficient time had elapsed to permit her to enquire, ‘Did you have a nice evening with your friend?’

  Kerren said briefly, ‘Yes, thank you.’ She wished that she had not mentioned that she was seeing Jan. They had met once or twice since their encounter at Cath’s and he had become rather amorous. They had spent last evening arguing as to whether or not she should sleep with him; she had not done so, but she had had a bad night imagining what it would have been like had she succumbed.

  ‘I’m afraid it didn’t work out,’ she said to Miss Nimmo.

  Miss Nimmo said, ‘I’m sorry,’ and Kerren could tell that she did not want to hear any more. Kerren picked up the bottle of glue and determined not to think about Jan any more.

  ‘It’s so cold out,’ she said. ‘The ducks on the pond were the only creatures that looked as though they were enjoying life today.’

  Miss Nimmo said, ‘I think I should like to have been a water creature.’ She laid carbon paper between two white sheets and then with tender care inserted the sheets in the typewriter. Kerren could imagine her bright little face peering through reeds on a clear winter day. They talked about water creatures while Kerren stuck pages in books: Miss Nimmo was good at slightly fantastic conversations, provided the fantasy did not become too Gothic.

  At eleven o’clock, Kerren and Miss Nimmo made coffee and were joined by those of the staff who were not on counter duty. Kerren watched Cudd surreptitiously take a biscuit from his trouser pocket and dust off pieces of fluff with every appearance of fastidiousness. He did this every morning as though performing a rite which he had cleverly managed to conceal from his companions: Kerren sometimes felt that Cudd could strip naked and convince himself that no one had noticed.

  ‘Straight out of Dickens.’ Ian Bligh, the children’s librarian, had followed her gaze.

  ‘Why don’t you put him in one of your books?’ she asked him.

  He was a children’s writer; she could not get over the fact that she knew a writer, even an unsuccessful one.

  ‘He would be wasted,’ he answered her question. ‘One has to edit for children, and the best of Cudd would have to go.’

  How odd that Cudd, who had never matured, should be suited only to adult literature. She said this and they laughed about it; something sparked between them, not for the first time. Kerren looked at her watch.

  ‘I’m on the counter now.’

  He took her cup from her and strolled away to talk to the others. The next day as he passed the counter he said casually, ‘We’ll have lunch, shall we?’ He did not wait for a reply. When she came into the hall he was reading the notice board. ‘Think of all you could learn if you had a mind to.’ He pointed to the list of library lectures and went on reading it as though there was something irresistibly comic about it. He had a tip-tilted nose and a thin mouth that smiled readily. Kerren knew that the eyes were green, but whether they were smiling she could not tell because he had not yet turned to look at her. She said rather edgily:

  ‘Are we having lunch?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ He turned reluctantly from the board.

  ‘There’s no “suppose” about it. Here and now, I make you free to lunch alone.’

  He tucked his arm in hers; the green eyes were definitely smiling now. ‘How defensive the child is!’

  Conversation with Ian Bligh always had an oblique quality. He reacted to feelings rather than to words. This did not mean, Kerren soon discovered, that he was invariably kind and sympathetic; he might be singularly acute at guessing what one wanted, but he often took a perverse pleasure in refusing to respond. On that first day, however, they seemed to be remarkably in accord. Kerren found that she could talk to him about anything. He had a way of divesting any topic of its immediacy by relating it to something else, even Cudd became someone out of Dickens. He had, as far as she could judge, a good brain and he saw things clearly, but usually in the abstract. This might have annoyed her at one time, but at present she was in favour of people who stood at one remove from life. She began to cultivate Ian. It was nice to have a man, they were as necessary as a shilling for the meter to a girl living alone.

  ‘Have you ever written a novel?’ s
he asked him when they were lunching together again at the near-by British Restaurant.

  ‘One or two.’

  ‘Didn’t they sell?’

  ‘They weren’t published.’ He did not seem to mind talking about it; if the rejection of his work had ever caused him any agony of spirit, he had recovered by now.

  ‘Did they tell you what was wrong?’

  ‘The people didn’t come to life.’

  Kerren toyed with a piece of fried cod, trying to think of something to say; she could never bother with novels if the people were not real to her. After a moment, she suggested:

  ‘Perhaps you hadn’t realized them fully in your own mind.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ he agreed indifferently. ‘But what about Conrad? Are his people always fully realized? Some of them seem to me to be pretty shadowy, but I enjoy them for that – one can add to them oneself.’

  She hoped that he would tell her about his novels, but he went on to talk about The Heart of Darkness, where the theme was surely more important than the people. Kerren responded with talk of Tolstoy and he shuddered, ‘I haven’t the stamina. The books are too heavy to hold.’

  Kerren introduced him to Cath, but it wasn’t a great success. Cath thought that he was weird, possibly homosexual, a subject on which Cath’s ideas were rigidly conventional.

  ‘I don’t think he is homosexual,’ Kerren said. ‘Women interest him and he can be provocative.’

  ‘Then he’s probably a pervert.’

  Cath was very bitter about men at the moment because her affair with Jan was coming to an end.

  Kerren took Ian to her flat and told herself that it was very refreshing to be able to sit and talk together without having to bother about the physical side of things. She saw him off at night and looked up at the moon, hanging like a great cheese tossed above the trees, and she was grateful to him because he brought his own kind of insubstantial romance to the city and gave her something to dream about.