Bilgewater Page 16

  “I’d have died,” I said. I couldn’t help it.

  “What?”

  “Well, weren’t you—you know—embarrassed?”

  “I was so proud of him,” said Terrapin, “I was so proud of him he might have been God.”

  “So what happened?” I said.

  “He died.”

  “But—”

  “Well he did. When I was ten. I hadn’t seen him for ages. He died at Blackpool of pneumonia. After going on the evening show as usual. We didn’t hear for ages.”

  “But what about your mother?”

  “Oh she’d died long before. She never lived with him. She was crazy. She’d got T.B., too—you used to die of it in those days. T.B. makes you very wild and very sexy and you go at things ten to the dozen—like Keats. She was a bit of a terror, my mother. They were in those days anyway—it was the fashion. She was the old-style romantic heroine, my mother. Rode to hounds.”

  “What?”

  “Went hunting. Foxes. On a horse.”

  “What—here?”

  “Round here. She lived here—in the Hall. Her family always had done since William the Conqueror. She was a crazy, inbred aristocrat with a curling lip. Two curling lips. She loathed my guts.”

  “But how on earth—? How in the world did she meet your father?”

  “How d’you think? On the sands. Galloping through the wavelets on her chesnut mare.”

  “I didn’t know there were any foxes on the sands.”

  He gave me a look. “She was not hunting at that moment. Not foxes. Just romance. She found it.”

  “Your father? At the pierrots?”

  “Right.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “You didn’t see my father. I’ve told you. He was the most marvellous-looking man on earth. I don’t suppose he was a drunk then, either.”

  “And they married? Just like that?”

  “Just like that. The nearest altar. It was an utter disaster.”

  I said, “Oh Terrapin, I’m so sorry.” I had got into bed with him by this time. I don’t know at which point of the story I had decided to, but there I was. He was still lying with his nose in the air like a knight on a slab but I got up close to him and put my face into his neck. I was very nice and warm now in the long black dress clothes. He felt—his neck and his hands which I’d got hold of—rather cold. After a while he shook my hands off his and scrabbled around and wrapped us both up in the red blanket and we lay there very still.

  He said, “No need to be sorry for me now that my grandmother’s dead.”

  “Was she awful, too?”

  “My father was not awful.”

  “I mean was she like your mother?”

  “No. She was all right. Just a misery. You couldn’t blame her. Her husband had been killed in the First War—he’d been a scholarly sort of gent and they hadn’t had much to say to each other. Then mother got T.B. and married the pierrot and all she’d got left was me.”

  “But didn’t she love you? Did you remind her of the pierrot or something?”

  “I don’t think so. I just wasn’t exactly attractive.”

  I remembered the gargoyle bellowing about Peeping Toms and the figure with the bulging eyes and croaking throat beside the swimming pool. “You may remember,” he said.

  I simply surged with love and said, “Oh Terrapin, oh Terrapin. I do so wish she could see you now.”

  “Now?” he said, “She wouldn’t have thought me very promising now. At the moment. In bed with a girl who’s wearing her sable coat.”

  “I’m not in bed with you,” I said putting my arms around his neck and feeling tremendously happy that I was. “I mean, not in that sort of way.”

  “My grandmother would not have distinguished.”

  “When did she die?”

  “Last year.”

  “It’s getting terribly hot,” I said, “in this fur coat.” We got the coat off somehow under the blanket and chucked it out on the floor. “Anyway, why should she have minded?” I said as we wrapped ourselves up again. “I’m not a pierrot.” I was quite enchanted with myself. I had always thought I had very strong views on sexual morality. I found I had nothing of the kind. Perhaps I should have been more carefully Prepared for Confirmation and not just relied on being father’s daughter. “I just love you,” I said.

  After a bit Terrapin said, “Bilge—you ought to watch out with me. I’m pretty unstable.”

  I said, “Shut up.”

  “Well, I’m telling you.”

  “I’m in love with you.”

  He said, “Look. You ought not to be wearing my grandmother’s dress.”

  “Why not?”

  “It gives me the creeps.”

  “It’s a lovely dress.”

  He said, “Take it off.”

  I found that I said no.

  “Take it off,” he said more urgently.

  There was a string hanging down over the bed for the light so that one could switch it off without getting out of bed and groping for the switch by the door. Terrapin who was not by this time lying like a knight on a slab any more—or not like any knight in any Church that I have ever seen—began to feel about in the air above us to get hold of the string to pull it. At the same moment I got into a panic and somehow or other I got my arm which was half-way out of the granny’s dress, free, and began to wave it about in the air, too, trying to catch his and stop him. “TERRAPIN,” I said, “Don’t.” I knew that the light must not go out.

  “You fool,” he said catching the string. The light went out. And at the same moment there was a tremendous knocking and thumping on the door of the tower.

  CHAPTER 21

  I’ve brought you a sandwich,” called the voice of Mrs. Deering through the door. “Put that light on again. You needn’t pretend you’re asleep. I saw it go out a second ago round the crack.”

  “Go to hell,” said Terrapin.

  “Nice way to talk. And me taking the trouble to come all the way up here with me heart.”

  “I thought you said it was a sandwich. Don’t move,” he said into my ear in the dark, “Don’t breathe.”

  “Is it locked?” I whispered.

  “No.”

  “You know what I mean. You know me heart. I’m puffed to death. ’Ere. Let me come in for a sit down. It’s stairs does it the doctor says. I feel it on the stairs.”

  Terrapin called, “It’s all right Mrs. Deering. I’m not hungry. I’m going to sleep. I’ve been working.”

  “Working, Working. Always working—Half Term holidays an’ all. Unnatural sort of life. In my day young folks enjoyed theirselves. You ought to be out finding a nice girl.”

  “Just leave it, Mrs. Deering.”

  “Eh?”

  “The sandwich. Just leave it by the door.”

  “Ont’ doorstep? The rats’d get it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I’ll eat it meself. I like a sandwich.”

  “o.k. That’s fine. I got some soup.”

  “I saw you ’ad. And left t’pan. I saw it when I got in from me Club.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Come on now Tom, let us in. Let’s have a natter. I been to me daughter’s. Dint you ’ear t’car? I thought you’d a bin down when you eared t’car.

  He said nothing. We were lying side by side now and a good bit apart. The paper people rustled in the dark above our heads.

  “All right then,” she said. “Just as you like. You’ve a nasty streak in you Tom Terrapin. So had your Gran. And your Ma—not to mention your Pa if there ever was one. I don’t know why I stop on.”

  “Neither do I,” he yelled out back. “You can go to hell.”

  “Go to hell yourself.”

  Her footsteps, very slow
and creaky and her wheezing breath grew fainter down the turret staircase. In time, a long way off a door slammed.

  “I must go now,” I said. I swung myself out of bed and felt around for my shoes, got my arm back into the dress. Terrapin found the light string and pulled it and we looked at each other. I began to shiver. He stood by the bed with his hair all in tufts and his eyes bright. His shoes and socks seemed to have disappeared. Quite a lot of his clothes seemed to have disappeared. His feet looked very endearing. Never in my life had I so loved anyone. “I’m going now,” I said.

  He said, “Bilge—stay. She’s gone. She’ll not come up again. She won’t even see me in the morning. We scarcely meet. She’s hardly ever been up here in her life. It was just terrible luck.”

  I’d got my shoes on and picked up the coat and swathed myself in it. “Please,” I said, “could you take me back? It wasn’t just bad luck.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just have to go.”

  “So you didn’t mean it?”

  “I did. I love you.”

  “Then stay.”

  “Oh Terrapin, take me back.”

  “To lovely Daddy Green and Prissy Paula?”

  It was then easy. “No,” I said quite steadily, “I can’t do that. I’m afraid you’ll have to get me back to Jack Rose.”

  “Bilge!”

  “I’m afraid so,” I said going to the table and putting on my glasses.

  “Bilge. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said that. I like your father and Paula. I owe them a hell of a lot. Look, luvvy—stay with me.”

  “And what are the Roses going to say when I’m not there in the morning?”

  “What were they going to say anyway? You weren’t thinking of that when you came running to me an hour ago.”

  “I didn’t know you were here. It was Mrs. Deering. I had no idea you lived here—I told you. It was coincidence.”

  “Bilge do you honestly expect me to believe that?”

  “It’s true.”

  “Fate leading you to my door?”

  “If you like.”

  “And Fate in the person of Mrs. Deering rescuing your virginity—Mrs. Deering messenger of the gods? Mrs. Hermes. Mrs. Eumenides.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You’re a coward.”

  “I’m not. I’m telling the truth. Anyway it’s as possible as a father who dresses up in ballet clothes and thinks he’s the reincarnation of Punch and Judy.”

  He said, “We’ll go.”

  His face had gone still. He pulled on his clothes and the coat from the back of the door, wound his House scarf round and round his neck. I pushed my stockings down the front of the dress, fastened up my shoes and buttoned up the sable coat. He opened the door and without even putting out the fire or the light or making the slightest effort to be quiet went clattering ahead of me down the stone stairs. I hovered a minute—switched off the fire, looked all round the room once and saw for the first time clearly what I had seemed to see from the corner of my eye and rejected, soon after I had arrived—Terrapin’s latest puppet. It was not yet finished but already very dreadful and good. It was different from the rest—gross, balloon-like and rubbery with a greedy, ugly, impertinent head; a head so confident and powerful that it held more horrors than anything more ordinarily nasty—any devil or goblin—and it was of course Mrs. Deering.

  She had been hanging there unfinished in the dark all the time we had been together in bed. Overhead the rest of Terrapin’s company swung and whispered in the air the open door was letting in from outside. I shut it quickly and went down towards the sound of Terrapin wheeling out his motor-bike. All the way back through the miserable dark I heard the sound of the puppets laughing and murmuring quietly together.

  CHAPTER 22

  In the morning I woke up to hear Uncle Edmund Hastings-Benson’s loud, kind voice in the Roses’ hall and I jumped out of bed and saw his massive pre-first-war Rolls Royce standing in their drive. It was still almost dark, but in December it is still dark up to about 9:30 o’clock and this in fact was the time.

  I couldn’t believe it, I had lain down on the soft cream bed the night before to await the dawn with open eyes. I had lain down in the black dress, vaguely regretting a toothbrush but otherwise in such a curious void and weariness that I would have been hard put to it to utter one word if that had been necessary.

  It had been quite unnecessary. Through the night Terrapin’s motor-bike had roared with the snowflakes spinning in its headlamps. Behind him I had sat with my arms round his waist, my cheek against his back, his woolly scarf-ends flapping across my snowy glasses. The parts of me that were covered by the sable coat were warm but my hands were so numb that I could hardly cling with them and my feet hanging down under the long dress seemed to have disappeared. We had got to Marston Bungalow in what seemed liked seconds and Tettapin had ignored red lamps, ropes, notices about heavy plants and rubble and bounded over the roundabout at huge speed. As the lights of Teesside faded away I began to recognise things—Eston lane-ends, the turning for Ironstoneside. He seemed to know exactly where to go.

  I began to notice the beginnings of the prosperous terraces all now in darkness with the curtains pulled back for morning—last job of the middle-class day, all the television plugs pulled out.

  I began to panic at the thought that we should soon be parting and my heart began to beat so loud that I felt sure he must be able to feel it through our coats. I held tight, and tighter still to him as we turned into the Roses’ road—I suppose he must have been there before. Funny—I had thought they were enemies. How little I really knew about the Boys’ Side. How little I knew about anyone or anything.

  But this didn’t bother me—not even the fact that Terrapin must have known all about the Rose ménage when I was boasting about being invited to a grand country-house weekend (Oh God! Oh God! And Terrapin at Marston Hall!) so much as what I was going to say to him when the bike stopped and I had to get off.

  For I knew that I had said an unforgiveable thing. About his father. I knew what needed to be said. In a perfect and uncomplicated world where one can say anything without being sneered at or giving offence or being misunderstood I could have said what was right: “Oh Terrapin, I do understand about your father dancing by the sea. I can see how you would love him.”

  Yet of course this could not possibly be said—or only by a lunatic or a child.

  The bike slowed and stopped and Terrapin rested his foot on the ground and waited for me to get off. This was not easy. There was first the long dress and second the disappearance of my feet. In fact as I put my legs upon the pavement they tottered and swayed about and I had to clutch at the pillion and Terrapin’s arm.

  As soon as I was sranding more or less upright he gave an enormous revving to the engine, flung off my hand and paying no attention at all to whatever it was I did say in the end—“Oh Terrapin, I’m so terribly sorry,” or something—without a glance in my direction he was off in a flamboyant U turn in the road leaving me very much alone at the end of the gravel semi-cirde which was now coated with snow. When the sound of the bike had died away—it took a very long time—there was complete silence as if there was nobody left awake but me in the world.

  The Roses’ curtains however were not yet drawn back and the dreadful square light above the door was still on, so that I supposed there was a chance that the front door had not been locked yet. I crunched up the drive, swung the door open, remembering my furtive escape from the balcony earlier as the lunacy of the kindergarten, and marched into the hall. There was a light on in one of the consulting rooms—one of the Roses must be preparing for the labours of tomorrow—and, still taking no thought about being seen I went over to me Dentists’ Benevolent table and wrote on the memo pad the following message:

  Would you be so very kind as to telephone the

  num
ber below and ask Mr. Edmund

  Hastings-Benson to come and get

  me as soon as possible.

  Yours sincerely,

  Marigold D. Green.

  (the member of the congregation

  this A.M.)

  I put the number and then added in very vigorous fashion and more careful writing than usual OH PLEASE. I folded the note and addressed it to the Vicar and walked out of the front door again and down the road to the church. There was a board in the sooty car-yard beside the west door and I managed to read the times of services. There was an early Communion on Mondays at 6:30 A.M., so I pushed the note under the church door rather than on to the notice board in the porch where he might miss it. Then I walked back, up the gravel again, and once more into the front hall. I was a bit put-out to see no light now in the consulting room and coughing and humming and curtain-drawing noises from the sitting-room. But still I made no great efforts at secrecy. I went sedately up the stairs and when I remembered that I had locked my bedroom door on the inside I simply flung open Grace’s door alongside it. I marched through, not even looking to see if she were there or not, or alone, or awake. I stepped out through her french windows along the balcony and in through my own. I didn’t shut her windows, either. I felt no concern that they might break, that she might catch pneumonia. I felt no interest or guilt at my nastiness or hostility. I lay down and listened to the heavy sound of the bolts being drawn across the frontdoor beneath me and when a second later the dental illumination outside my balcony went out prepared, as I say, to lie awake until the dawn.

  I don’t really know whether I heard Uncle HB’s voice or saw his car first because there I was standing at the window looking at it and hearing the voice below at exactly the same time. I must have been still asleep as I jumped out of bed, my eyes still not properly open as I peered out. But there was a feeling of relief and joy in me that seemed to have been there for quite a time—and the oddest feeling, too, that all things today would be well.

  I put on my shoes and went and hung over the banisters.