The Penguin Book of the British Short Story Page 31

  In any case those other men, accustomed to the pulling of wires, were hardly worried by prospects of collusion. This now suited them. It made things easy. Fred was the man. They all agreed.

  ‘Well, Fred, shall I fix it?’ said Everett.

  Morley made one final hesitation, for form’s sake. He pursed his lips, ruminated, then suddenly sharply nodded. ‘All right then. I’ll do it.’

  ‘Good boy,’ rose ulcerous Evans. ‘Lead me to the blower. This needs fixing right now.’

  And so it was fixed.

  It was a different Fred Morley who sat downstairs the next morning in deference to the upstairs pandemonium. From bar to lounge to front door he walked – but this time with a glint in his eye, a chuckling of hands together, sometimes the tum-tumty-tum of a little song. She may touch her toes and waggle herself and knead herself like dough, he thought – ha, knead herself, who’ll she be needing next, eh? He blew a kiss upstairs to the invisibly exercising Great-Belt. Old Fred Morley and none other! Tum-ti-tumty-tum. And outside it was a beautiful morning, the sun shone. Old Fred Morley? Old me Aunt Fanny! Forty-eight if a day. Middle-age. And no spread.

  Nor was it quite the same upstairs that morning as the day before. Those girls had had their bikinis delivered: some were too big, some too small. Tall pale Sauerkraut became too huge a goddess in hers too big: Miss Amsterdam, her brown skin cooing against the new white slips ordained by the Council but also too small, went into a corner and attached with the vigour of a true Hollander various appealing frills of her own – and of course there was a row about that. And of course the girls had by now survived their first affability – they were getting each other’s measure. Some had seen others at something, others had heard some say this or that. Sides were taken, embattlements formed. But between squalls and bickering a sense of dignity prevailed. No one actually touched anyone else.

  Meanwhile out on the front, on the sea – all was plain sailing. It was lovely weather and the sea lay smoothly sparkling blue. White paint of pier and railing stood freshly deadly clean against all that blue and the colours of people, boats, cars, kites – and Fred Morley had an idea. He sent, by the new and overpaid and delighted maid, messages up to the ladies Rotterdam and Clermont-Ferrand. Would they do him the honour of a stroll and an apéritif before luncheon?

  All he thought was: ‘They’re nice girls. I’d like a stroll. I’ve better plans for the Danish lass, let her bide (and it’ll perhaps do her good).’

  Rotterdam and Clermont-Ferrand – the one butterflying her arms to raise further her already sturdy breasts, the other sitting in front of a mirror practising ‘facial yoga’ – that is making grotesque narcissist kisses at herself to exercise the mouth, then pecking her head forward twenty times a minute like a little hen on her bright young egg – read their messages with approval and half an hour later those two were one on each of Fred Morley’s arms strolling the Front. Morley in a faultlessly raffish suit of biscuit tussore, with a high stiff collar, a pin in his tie and a curl to his hat: Miss Rotterdam blonde in flowered silk that wisped round her so closely in the breeze that those following could see not only the lovely knobbles of her vertebrae but the knobbles of her suspender-belt too: Miss Clermont-Ferrand in high white shoes and a strange white belt almost taller than its breadth round her no-waist, black hair flowing, black silk buttocks a-swing, preposterously and magnificently French.

  Rotterdam in her friendly Dutch way, which concealed heaven knew what guile, had taken Morley’s arm to draw his attention to a group of young men playing cricket on the sands below. ‘You English,’ she had laughed, pressing her round lips back on to her teeth, making enormous dimples, and giving Morley’s arm a niecely squeeze. All of which Clermont-Ferrand immediately, and fiercely, noticed – so that not to be outdone she had taken the other arm, pulling Fred’s interest towards a sombre green-painted glass wind shelter: ‘Why do you have autobus shelters,’ she asked, in innocence of the normal weather prevailing on such a parade, ‘when you have no autobuses?’ And panted up a charming little laugh to him that also implied ‘Oh, you dear mad Englishman.’ But at the same time panted her mouth itself, open and eager, red-lipped and wetly pink inside, teeth laughing wide and tongue-tip pointing right out at him very close to his startled eyes.

  So Fred had them both hugged on his arms. He puffed his chest with a deep breath of the good clear sea-air of morning and felt, there in the sunlight with sea to the left and bright traffic to the right, with the Cliff Memorial Gardens pine-green ahead and the white pier-dome flashing all holiday joy, good to be alive.

  It was in such style that he was observed, a little further on, by those same local gentlemen who had first sent him the girls. These locals moved in a group: just then they had moved that group, bellies eased and jolly with good morning beer, from the brass-flashing doors of a near-by saloon to take a breather of sea-air before the next. But when they saw Fred they gaped, their spirits gravened and sank. For they were in that least enviable of situations – that of the practical joker who slips on his own banana-skin, that of him who is laughed at last. Yes, it had gone wrong all right. There was Fred sitting pretty, with two, with a blondie and a blackie, one of each kind, one to suit whatever his fancy was, turn and turn about – and they had put this in his way! They had actually been such damned idiots as to send him that choice handful he had there! Not thinking, not dreaming to keep the handful for themselves, and send it somewhere quiet round the corner where they might call later to pass the time of day … Oh well, they supposed it was the booze again, that’s what it was. Can’t have everything. But – that it should be Fred! Fred whom always secretly they had envied, Fred who’d had it on a platter all his life, bags of it, oodles of it there on his stage-doorstep whichever way he might turn … while they …

  Now to Fred passing with a beauty on each arm they raised their hats and gave grim fixed smiles, new white teeth and old yellow ones flashing in the sun: to which Fred Morley, deeply satisfied, bowed and passed on his triumphant way.

  Yet those gentlemen would not have been so discomforted had they seen him an hour hence. For matters did not continue so well. In the first place, those girls were young and active, they were out to enjoy themselves and not content at all simply to take the morning air. Also, as foreigners, they were inquisitive, they wanted to taste the oddities of this strange new country. So that soon Clermont-Ferrand had dragged them to a fish-and-chip booth that lay just below down some steps: and she walked now with newspaper in one hand and a chip in the other, fish-oil lustrous all over her lipstick and powdered chin. And Rotterdam had asked for a small propeller on a coloured stick, which she waved fluttering high, while firmly her other fist clasped a long thick truncheon of pink peppermint rock. They giggled bending, pointing, nudging, giving high shrieks of awe and shock at so many strange things to see. With rock and fish-and-chips they had settled their feminine differences, now they were all for fun. And having discovered the livelier scenes of stalls and crowds beneath the arches of the Parade they dragged Morley from sweet-shop to pin-table, from whelk to winkle stand, from jellied-eel to ice-cream barrow. They took him on the Dodgem cars and they had him photographed with them in sailor hats standing in front of a huge cardboard fishing-smack. (The photographer, giving his rump a resounding whack, had cried: ‘Another good smack gone to the bottom!’) Loudly as Morley protested, the louder they laughed and the further they dragged him. They thought these were no more than the coy protestations of an elderly man enjoying himself.

  Fred Morley had planned an apéritif on the terrace of the best hotel in the town, a terrace just overlooking the street and readily seen from there: he would have sat with his two beautiful guests and from that eminence with a drink in hand and a naughty glint in his eye enjoyed the envy of passers-by for the half-hour until luncheon. And then luncheon. Cold salmon, a bottle of the best, the white clean cloth, the silver and the laughter of these two pairs of lovely red lips. This had all gone wrong. Those girls had no tim
e for luncheon. He was tired, jolted, hungry, thirsty. And he did not wish to be seen even up on the Marine Parade itself with two such high-spirited girls – who now wore each a hat with a large motto printed on it. Yet of course, when they had had enough of the beach, up they had to go.

  And there, to cap everything, he saw approaching him Miss Great-Belt. Miss Great-Belt with her fine red hair and in an orange dress holding in one hand a towering stick of electric pink candy-floss, a wild mane of strident sugar which every so often she kissed with her bright carmine lips. In the other hand – and still she managed all this with no lessening of self-composure – she held the arm of a sleek young giant in a shirt of flowered American silk.

  He nearly hated her. And it was then, at a moment of shame and dislike, that she made towards him her first affable gesture. She waved her great pink floss-stick with the benign gesture of passing royalty – then gave him a huge, long, tranquil wink! And passed on.

  When at last he was safely home, and when thus in comfort and at ease his temper had subsided – he still remembered that wink, reviewed it in a more benevolent light, and began to build up implications for it. Hope flowered. Wish welcomed fulfilment. It was plain her mood had turned, she had completed her feminine duties – the period of cat-and-mouse play laid down in the rules – and now she was blossomed and waiting. It only remained for him to pluck her.

  So that an hour later, when he met her in the hall, he mentioned that he had a box at the Hippodrome that night. And she charmingly agreed to be his guest. At the theatre? At seven-thirty? Most kind. And supper afterwards. Delightful.

  But at seven-thirty she was not at the theatre, nor at eight-thirty. He telephoned home. No, she was not in. She had gone out – to what? What? To a dance?

  He slammed down the receiver and left, furious.

  When she came in that night he was waiting for her. She came in early – for the next day was the day of the Contest, and she had to enjoy a long night’s sleep – she came in a little breathless, her lovely red hair ablaze in the light, now with no pink candyfloss but in an evening dress the colour of the night sky. For a second when she saw him she hesitated: but instantly then gathered herself and came flouncing, almost on those tall legs bouncing, along the hall, unperturbed as usual, a glint of disdain in her navy eyes, but her lips pouted to smile. And as she came up to him she did smile.

  ‘Good evening.’

  Now it was he who played with composure.

  ‘Good evening,’ he said coldly. ‘I missed you at the theatre.’

  ‘The theatre? Of course – I’m so sorry. But you know – I really felt I could not come. To sit about all evening in a stuffy box! I needed exercise, you know. The great day tomorrow!’

  ‘Indeed? And it was nothing that I waited a full hour for you?’

  ‘I’ve said I am sorry.’

  ‘And that is all?’

  She said nothing. But looked at him curiously.

  Then she asked: ‘You really expected me?’

  He looked surprised. ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Well really. You spend the morning with not one but two of these … these women upstairs. And then you expect to spend the evening with me? What do you think I am? What next? Shall I tell you what you are – you’re an old satyr, that is what. A wolf! With pointed ears! With hoofs!’

  She had raised her voice – he was so surprised he put up a hand to feel his ears – and then, having reached her climax with the word ‘hoofs’, which she blew at him with a mouth shaped for whoofing whole houses down, she was gone.

  He stood there a moment amazed. Then his lips snapped shut. ‘The Great Day tomorrow?’ he said to himself. ‘So be it.’

  The Great Day dawned differently to those preceding. In the early hours, as from nowhere, big clouds blacker than the night had loomed up, flashed into fire, burst into water. Straight down, as if some celestial bucket had slopped over, the rains had fallen. Summer hails had swept the front. The temperature had fallen a swift ten degrees: then more. A wind had sprung up, gathering into a light steady gale. Until when dawn finally broke the Marine Parade lay drenched and grey, chilled and windy and drizzled, deserted and to remain so throughout a long wet cold day.

  Morley had awoken in the night to hear the hailstones drumming and booming on the glass verandah roof below his window: and when at nine o’clock he went downstairs not at all well-slept, the house was grey and dead, no shafts of summer light livened the rooms, the blue lupins sat dusty like drab flowers in the corner of a dull boarding-house. Which this is, he savagely thought.

  Yet it was hardly dull – for throughout the morning the sounds upstairs rose to a climax. Most of the girls were now not speaking to each other. But those who did yelled at the tops of their voices. Their frenzy in these last hours of preparation rose to new and furious levels. By twelve o’clock Morley could bear it no longer, he took his mackintosh off the peg and went out.

  The air on the Parade was pleasanter than he had supposed. Forlorn, perhaps, the look of things – but there was a stimulating clarity abroad, a briskness of new air blown in from the sea. He looked across at the scudding waves, took deep breaths, and in between puddles stepped out briskly. Rain-soaked boats lay about the deserted beach like wrecks, a solitary figure in a mackintosh came swept by the wind down one street and disappeared up another.

  This was exactly what Morley needed. He needed a change, he needed a breath of air. He was no longer angry with that Miss Great-Belt – he had lived too long to stay too deeply perturbed by such events – but only irritated: and that irritation included Miss Rotterdam and Miss Clermont-Ferrand as well, in fact the whole lot of them. He wanted his peace back. And now as he stepped out against the rain he reflected with pleasure that in a few hours it would in fact be all over. The Contest would be done and won. Not won by Miss Great-Belt, though – and a sense of justice rather than rancour filled him as he made this reservation. Yet after the Contest would they really leave? Probably – they were mostly subsidized. And certainly – if the weather held. ‘Blow, blow, thou winter wind—’ he hummed more cheerfully to himself as he paced along.

  He went to the Club and refreshed himself. Everett Evans wished him a gloomy ‘best of luck’ for the afternoon – but left before the eating. Morley then had a good luncheon in the company of his fellows.

  The Contest had been scheduled to take place in the open-air salt-water pool – the Pier Aquadrome, a place of civic pride. Now it had to be removed inside, into the Aquadrome’s Winter Garden. This was a large white concrete modern building set like a plate-glassy liner, all decks and terraces, astern the paddle-boat old Pier.

  By half-past two, in spite of the weather, quite a queue had assembled. Most of those that formed it, men and women alike, wore pixie-hoods. Tall-pointed heads leaned this way and that, chattering like a troop of fairies drenched with harebell dew – the women like wet narcissus petals in their grey-white plastics, the men in duffle-hoods like hairy great gnomes. All these were admitted slowly into a bare concrete hall brilliantly shadowed by mauve strip-lighting.

  This ominous form of illumination has been called ‘daylight’ lighting. Yes – but it is the light of the worst day of the worst month of the year, the lilac light of a raw February afternoon. Faces everywhere lost their colour, lips turned purple-black and skins took on the pallor of long illness. Nevertheless, though soaked and drained of colour, the audience managed a certain cheerfulness: it was the cheerfulness particular to a wet seaside afternoon, when spirits soaked by the rain dribbling down windows of boarding-houses and hotels eventually make a burst for freedom – to batter along against rain and sea-wind, and thence to commingle at some echoing hall of entertainment with a cluttering of umbrellas, a thumping of boots, a wet rubber smell, a draughty gusto of raised voices.

  So that now, sodden but heady with relief to be taken out of themselves on this stolen day of their holiday, the pixie audience gradually massed into seats set in amphitheatrical style round a semi-cir
cular raised platform. On this the Beauties were to parade. And on its straight side there were ranged the judges’ chairs, and their long table draped with Union Jacks.

  A roar of laughter went up as Fred Morley and his four fellow-adjudicators entered. They were a great joke. Five portly gentlemen, wrested from their everyday dignities and their all-embracing wives, put to the task of examining pretty girls with hardly anything on! … Watch that professional eye glaze over. Watch blood pressures rise and pulses quicken! Five fat ruddy genial lambs up there on their altar … it was slaughter, it was murder, it was killing! ‘Hooooo,’ roared the crowd.

  Dressed in their best suits, the judges simpered and blushed, dug each other in their ribs and whispered wicked chuckles in each other’s ears as they settled down. One made an over-courtly gesture ushering his neighbour to his chair; another made for a brief two steps the motion so beloved of hefty hearties in their cups, he put one hand on a hip and lumbered along mincing like what he thought was a lady. Only old Fred, who was accustomed to an audience, retained his composure. He contented himself with a short, but most telling, twirl of his silken moustache-end.

  Then the uniformed Silver Band at the other end of the hall struck up – what but A Pretty Girl is like a Melody? – and a door opened at one side and up a long inclined gang-plank came the girls.

  They came first jostling, then as they reached the raised parade spaced themselves out – a plump, slender, tall, short, round forty of them. In slow measure, with short proud steps, pausing almost at each step, hesitating just as heel touched passing heel, like primping prancing two-legged ponies they passed round the ring.

  All wore the same small costume. That had been one of the rules. It had been adopted because it was time the proposer had one of his ideas accepted, so that he might remain quiet in other matters. The Contest Organization bore the cost, which in terms of the area of material needed had been slight. White rayon had been chosen – a remnant from Everett Evans’s Drapery Store. Now each girl wore at her loins a close-fitting triangle, and at her breasts two discreetly billowing moons. No more. And, for sure, no less.