The HOPEFUL TRAVELLER Page 6

  Food had become a problem. Robin’s stay had had a disastrous effect on Kerren’s meagre resources; not only had they spent a lot of money over the week-end, but while Robin was ill Kerren had had to buy countless small things for her. Robin had not paid for these items. It was not her fault, she had had a lot on her mind and would unquestioningly have paid Kerren twice the amount due had she been asked for it. But Kerren could not ask for money. She was tempted once again to draw some of the money she had in the bank, but she resisted the temptation. To add to her misfortunes, she developed a streaming cold which nothing would staunch. She refused to stay away from work because the room was gradually infecting her spirit. Her cold was communicated to the rest of the library staff and she was not popular. Cudd muffled his face with a handkerchief at her approach. Miss Nimmo advised her to stay in bed over the week-end and offered to minister to her. The thought of Miss Nimmo in the room was inconceivable and Kerren assured her that she had friends who would be there. The only person who had come to the room was Ian and he had not noticed anything amiss: other people’s conditions did not register except in so far as they affected him. She noticed that he avoided her while her cold was bad.

  The hostility of the weather and the misery of her condition made her acutely depressed. Little things became hard to bear. There was the cat that came in at night and relieved itself outside her door. She could never get rid of the smell. Then there was the bathroom. She shared this with the other tenants and it usually took her at least a quarter of an hour to get rid of the scurf marks before she could take a bath herself. The linoleum was dirty and cracked; she always took a spare towel to stand on and then sent it to the laundry. As her supply of towels was limited, this meant that she could only have a bath once a week. It was difficult to get her washing done. She had left it on the rack over the bath until one of her vests disappeared; now she draped it over the chair in her room, but in the bitter, damp air it would not dry.

  One week-end when she felt particularly desperate about her surroundings she went in search of other lodgings, but the rents quoted were quite beyond her means. The rent for one room in the attic of a house in Earls Court was three pounds which represented more than her salary for the week. She tried to put money aside by cutting out lunch except for an apple.

  That night there was a fight in the street. The disturbance seemed to centre round a lock-up garage with a flat above it. Kerren could hear screaming, it was difficult to tell whether it was a man or a woman. The noise went on interminably, sometimes the voices receded and then they would start again, a drunken murmur building up to a continuous bray of cursing and shouting. In the morning she went to the police station.

  ‘I should have thought you could have heard it sitting in here,’ she told the desk sergeant.

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘When we do pull them in we never get any truth out of any of them. You can’t make a charge stick.’

  ‘What about disturbing the peace?’

  ‘In that neighbourhood!’

  But at eleven o’clock the following night two policemen appeared at the end of the road and walked slowly along the pavement, making a lingering survey of each house and showing particular interest in the lock-up garage. After that things were quiet for a while. In spite of this, Kerren found herself lying awake, waiting for the next outburst of violence as people had once waited on still nights for the bombers to come.

  ‘You should do something constructive about it,’ Cath advised. ‘These people need help.’

  ‘They need voluntary workers like a lion needs a Christian!’

  Cath brushed this aside. She was gradually becoming obsessed with the need to do good. The incident in the park had made her realize how aimless her life was becoming. Now she was helping the vicar of a local church to run a youth club. She was poor company when she was doing good, she had to keep laying her good deeds at your feet like a dog demanding an encouraging pat. Kerren hoped that she would soon find another man, preferably not the vicar.

  After a week the police tired of their vigil and the fighting started again. Kerren spent a sleepless night and in the morning she could not concentrate on her work. In the afternoon, however, things took a turn for the better. The librarian gave her a ticket for a performance of Gotterdammerung. He had to attend an emergency meeting of the library committee and none of the other members of the staff had the stamina for Wagner. ‘It’s very long,’ they warned her. ‘Six hours at least.’ Six hours in the massive security of Covent Garden was a gift from Heaven. She wondered whether she could contrive to remain there all night.

  She ate a Bath bun in the train. Her stomach rumbled a lot lately and this would be embarrassing in the theatre. The train stopped and started and she dug her nails into the palms of her hands to stop herself crying out with rage. She had been assured that if she were late she would not be admitted until the first interval. The lights were dimming when she entered the amphitheatre; men and women groped on the floor for folded coats and handbags and muttered under their breath about people who come in at the last minute. She realized that she had no programme but did not dare to go back for one. The Bath bun had been a mistake, it was lying like lead on her chest.

  Gradually before her eyes green mists curled and vague shapes came and went. She watched, soothed and fascinated; it was as though her nightmare was being acted out on the stage. And something else was happening, too; she felt the music throbbing through her veins, touching deep subconscious chords. The light grew stronger, revealing a fantastic landscape slumbering behind a gauze shield; the gauze began to dissolve like a protective skin being peeled off a world of concentrated passion. From then on she was lost and yet in some ways more disturbingly alive than ever before.

  She was unaware of anything around her except for one small incident which brought her briefly back to the other side of the gauze veil. A woman in front rattled a cough lozenge paper and a man near by snarled at her to be quiet. The woman froze. Every now and again she made little strangled noises like an agonized puppy. When the lights went up for the interval Kerren got up to stretch her stiff limbs; as she moved towards the exit she could hear the woman whooping painfully.

  She felt elated and recklessly determined to add to the sensual pleasure of the evening by buying a cup of coffee. The bar was very crowded and there was a solid flank of men in front of her. She tried to edge between them but they closed their ranks against the weaker sex. She was just wondering what tactics to adopt when there was one of those lulls in the general hubbub which occur inexplicably from time to time so that the odd comment will ring out clear for all to hear. What Kerren heard was a man saying in an exasperated, rasping voice:

  ‘Rustled a sweet paper in the middle of Brunnehilde’s aria. Bloody barbarian!’

  People moved on either side like the Red Sea dividing. She could see him quite clearly, standing near one of the alcoves; he had already managed to get a drink. She said, ‘Adam!’ She did not say it loudly but he must have heard, or sensed it, because he looked round as though someone had tapped him on the shoulder. There was no one there. Then he looked towards the bar and saw her. He was surprised, there was no doubt about that; even in the moment before people surged round her again and they were cut off from each other, she registered the fact that his reaction was not entirely one of pleasure. She was not sure how she felt herself, she had only come in for coffee. He covered up his discomfiture quickly and shouldered his way towards her displaying more determination than the manoeuvre really demanded.

  ‘I’d no idea you were in London,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve been here two months.’

  ‘And you didn’t get in touch with me?’

  ‘I’ve been meaning to.’ She did not say that she had rung once and put the receiver down when he answered the telephone.

  There was a slight pause while people heaved around them, then Adam said, ‘We can’t talk here. Let’s go and eat.’

  ‘Now?’

 
; ‘Why not? We don’t meet every day.’

  He was sacrificing Gotterdammerung to make up for his initial lack of warmth.

  ‘I want to see the end,’ she said.

  ‘It will be too late to eat then.’

  ‘All right.’ She was hungry, but it wasn’t this that decided her. She was not going to take in much of the opera from now on. No doubt Adam felt the same. She said:

  ‘Won’t your friends wonder where you are?’

  ‘I’m not sitting with them. I got a ticket at the last minute.’

  He assumed that she was on her own, so she said:

  ‘My six friends will miss me.’

  He laughed, perhaps recognizing an echo of the old Kerren.

  As they walked down Flower Street, she said:

  ‘I’m not dressed for a meal.’

  ‘Are you not?’ He did not sound interested and she realized that he would never bother about this kind of thing. It gave her something of the sense of security she had once felt in his company. But it was dark in the street and hurrying along the road it did not matter much if they talked or not. In the restaurant it would be different. She felt reluctant at the thought of the encounter ahead; like a runner suddenly confronted with a fence in the middle of a flat race. She had been digging a little groove for herself over the past few months and she did not particularly want to be jolted out of it.

  They went to The Nag’s Head. As she studied the menu she thought that it would be her luck to meet someone who would give her a good meal at a time when she felt she could not eat. When she looked up she realized that Adam had been watching her. For a moment she caught a flicker of something in his eyes before he controlled himself. Adam was always well-controlled. When he had ordered, his first question was:

  ‘What have you been doing to yourself? You look like Deirdre of the Sorrows.’

  ‘I am.’ She tried to make a joke of it. ‘I should never have left that dear land across the Irish Sea.’

  The waiter came with the wine list. She knew nothing about wine, but she was glad that Adam had the good manners to make a show of consulting her. She looked at him while he went through the ritual so dear to men. He had changed in some ways. In the navy his grey hair had been clipped short giving his head a hard, crisp look. Now it was longer, dry and more unruly. It made him look much more casual than she had imagined him, and his clothes though good looked old and crumpled. He had eased back into civilian life. But there were things which had not changed. His speech was as direct and shrewd as ever; words meant something to him, they were a weapon or a tool as the occasion demanded. He used them with force and precision, scything through the easy generalities and evasions which were common currency of everyday communication. One had to think when one was talking to Adam. The eyes were tired, but even so they saw too much too clearly. He was a shock’ to her. She realized that she could not play a part with Adam; all her failures and inadequacies would be revealed as though scurvy had broken out all over her face. He put the wine list down and turned to her. Attack is the best form of defence; she said quickly:

  ‘Was it you that shushed that poor woman? Do you realize she was nearly choking?’

  He was taken aback, unable to remember the incident. It was exhilarating to find that she could be too quick for him.

  ‘She rustled a piece of paper,’ he recalled.

  ‘But she had a cough. What was she supposed to do?’

  ‘Die.’

  They laughed and the way his lips curled when he laughed reminded her that she had heard her first dirty jokes from Adam; it had been a tactful initiation, he had always been reasonably careful in front of the Wrens. The waiter came with soup. It was the most beautiful soup she had ever tasted and she remembered it, as she remembered that evening, for many long years. Over the soup they exchanged news. Adam accepted without surprise that Kerren was working in a library; he had not apparently expected that she would immediately land some quite outstanding job. She was the one to be surprised. He had left Reuters; he told her about this briefly and she could tell from the set of his mouth that he had no intention of giving his reasons. He had gone into publishing with a friend.

  ‘Is there room for new publishing companies?’ she enquired.

  ‘I’ll tell you in five years’ time.’ There was an edge of irritation in his voice which made her realize that in this instance she was the one who had been too shrewd. He went on, ‘It’s not exactly new. It was owned by a cousin of my partner. Things were bad during the war and he hadn’t the energy to build the firm up again.’

  ‘What do you publish?’ she asked.

  ‘Books.’

  ‘Just any old books or ones that matter?’

  ‘Ones that sell, please God.’

  She was disappointed. She was always probing, trying to find out about people’s standards, their values, trying to make them reveal some hidden truth by which they lived. When they did make this kind of statement, as in the case of Cath, it always sounded moralistic and rather small and she wished she had not persisted. But she went on trying just the same, convinced that one day someone would say something that would light the way for her.

  Adam led the subject back to her experiences in London. She told him about the plays she had seen and the galleries she had visited; she congratulated herself on making it sound as though she had had a scintillating time in London. Over coffee she said, ‘This is a nice place. I must come here again.’ To which he replied drily, ‘Aren’t there any places to eat in Holland Park?’

  ‘Why yes . . .’ She faltered, meeting his eyes and went on quickly, ‘But you know how it is, shows and art galleries . . . it all takes up time.’

  He did not comment. She recalled that Adam’s silences had always been telling.

  When they got outside, he looked round for a taxi but she said quickly, ‘Oh, don’t bother, please! A walk will do me good.’ She had already decided to spend the night in Victoria station. ‘I’ll go by tube,’ she said to Adam. ‘I’m terribly near Holland Park station.’

  They walked to Tottenham Court Road tube station where Adam bought two tickets to Holland Park.

  ‘Why two?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m terribly near Holland Park station,’ he mimicked. When they got out at Holland Park, she said desperately, ‘You can’t see me home.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘But it’s late,’ she protested as he steered her across the main road.

  ‘It’s half past ten,’ he retorted. ‘It must be the earliest you’ve been home since you started leading this gay London life.’

  Quite suddenly she began to cry; she had no warning, the tears gushed out as though somewhere inside her a main had burst. Adam was taken aback, but he put his arm around her shoulders consolingly. They passed one or two people who, as he said, looked at him as though he had committed rape. He did not ask for explanations, possibly feeling that things were bad enough as they were. He insisted, however, on coming into the room and she had no strength to argue by this time.

  ‘Have your people seen this?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not a child any longer,’ she wailed, and proceeded to behave like one. Before she could control herself she had told him about the fights in the street.

  ‘You can’t stay here in this state,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I can, I can . . .’

  She had reached the stage where she no longer cared what happened provided she could be alone with her wretchedness. But Adam must have been very decisive because almost without her realizing how it had happened she found herself walking down the street with him, clutching a hold-all containing nightdress and sponge bag. It was difficult to get a room at this time of night and her tear-blotched face did not help matters. ‘I’ve no doubt that by now the police have my description in several different languages,’ Adam said resignedly when they had been turned away from a dingy boarding house by an indignant Italian woman in a stained floral dressing gown. Eventually a room was found in a
n expensive Bayswater hotel which had ceased to ask questions with the advent of the first G.I. Adam paid and Kerren experienced all the humiliation of the kept woman without any of the pleasure. He took her telephone number at the library before he left her and said, ‘I’ll get in touch with you.’ She did not believe him.

  She lay on the bed without undressing. The evening had been a catastrophe. No man could tolerate a woman who let him down in public like that; it might have been amusing in the services, but it was not something a man liked in his personal life. Not that it mattered, of course; she had no place in Adam’s personal life, nor he in hers. Nevertheless, she was sorry that their last encounter should have been so dreary.

  Chapter Seven

  Miss Nimmo placed the telephone receiver carefully on the table. ‘There’s a call for you. He says he’s the Marquis de Sade.’ She was not amused.

  When Kerren picked up the receiver Adam asked, ‘Are you still crying?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Good. I’ve found another room for you. Can you inspect it in the lunch hour?’

  ‘Where is it? And how much is the rent? I can’t . . .’

  ‘It’s in Abercrombie Terrace, number six. The owner is a friend of mine, Marjorie Neilson. I don’t think you need to worry about the rent; she’s not concerned with making money. She parted from her husband a year or so ago and the house is too big for her. She wants an unobtrusive creature to take the attic off her hands – a little shadow that will flit in and out without her noticing.’