‘He won’t be long for this world, will you, Arthur?’
‘Don’t let’s seem to hurry him away,’ Billing said, on the older brother’s behalf. Wasn’t Arthur allowed to make his own decision regarding mortification? Typical English, he thought. What’s wrong with the country?
‘Your mother liked Arthur,’ said the horn-rimmed man pointedly, as if pronouncing a curse. ‘Flo liked you, didn’t she, Arthur?’
Arthur smiled, sighed, and returned to his cheek.
The funeral service, too, had been a disaster. The preacher had been late and either coldly inebriated or just over the safety limit of a nervous breakdown. Clasping the prayer book upside down, he had muttered furtively over grave and coffin, casting his words to the disinterested wind.
Straining his ears, Billing caught the words ‘… whom God hath joined … cast asunder.’ The wedding service having been intoned, the mourners made their way back to Gladys Lee’s place, to seek in her sherry a refuge from mortality.
‘You weren’t at the service?’ Billing now enquired of Arthur, not long for this world.
The bald man looked up and smiled in the general direction of Billing. He raised a glass of Harvey’s Bristol Cream and, drinking, spilled some of the liquid down his chin. His furry white tongue failed to reach the elusive drops where they clung to the wrinkles of his face.
‘I’m excused funerals,’ he said. ‘Being blind, I don’t see the point any more.’
Could he actually be making a joke? Billing was uncertain. He had lost his ear for English irony.
‘You’ve got your sense of humour still. That’s the main thing.’ He recalled that one spoke in such a way at family funerals.
Arthur nodded thoughtfully and fumbled with his chin as if it were newly discovered territory. ‘I don’t get as much fun out of visual gags as I used to,’ he said with regret.
Seeking relief, Billing looked about for a gleam of happiness, for the sight of a pretty woman. But pretty women had been debarred from this shabby-genteel part of London. There was only old Gladys Lee in her pearls, fragile but grand, playing queen in her generally unvisited rooms.
They’re so isolated, these people, Billing told himself. As I was. The Americans are much more ingenious at coping with their loneliness. Patriotism is another form of psychotherapy over there. He thought of the mountains of Utah, where he had once skied. Those wild mountains, the way American skiers dressed in bright garments to flash down their slopes like Martians, the sudden fogs which embraced the Snowcat. Loneliness there had been grand opera, solitude a momentary thing with commercial value.
It was not only the English people. Gladys Lee’s room and everything in it were old. No disgrace in that, or commercial value either. It was just that he had become used to new things: not so much in New York, which was to him curiously ancient, filled with old Jewish and African habits, but the great stretches of Middle America, blue-grass country, where all the furniture in all the houses had been manufactured only the year previously from extruded creamy plastic.
He excused himself from the company of the blind man and his brother and went in search of a lavatory. The toilet still had an overhead cistern and a chain with a china handle that said Pull. Back in time, he said to himself, as the water gurgled and frothed; I’ve travelled back in time. The 1973 calendar showed a picture of an old horse and cart.
Lights were on in Gladys Lee’s kitchen, which was next to the john. A sturdy woman of middle age dressed in something that might have been a caftan was bustling about among piles of china.
‘Were you after the coffee, dear?’ she called, as Billing’s head appeared round the door. ‘Won’t be long. You can lend a hand if you like. I can’t find where she’s put the bloody tray. There must be one somewhere.’
He wandered into the kitchen and, in studying the arrangements, took a look at his companion. She was amply designed; brightly painted, florally scented, with a florid way of smoking, as if believing the sleeves of her dress needed to be shaken every time she removed her cigarette from her mouth. Her short hair curled into horns which lay against either cheek. Billing was pleased to see her smoke. All the career women he knew in the States did so.
‘I’m Hugh Billing,’ he said.
‘Oh, so you’re Hugh Billing.’ She came forward loiteringly, having another puff and a shake. Her eyes were a dark blue and surrounded by freckles which made her, in Billing’s eyes, appear intelligent. ‘I’m Alice. I was looking after your mother, this last year or two. Now I’m helping Gladys out, just for today. It seems to be my role in life, so help me.’
They shook hands. As he exchanged a few words with her, Billing listened to her North Country accent, remembering it as if rediscovering a forgotten countryside. Complete with old horses and carts.
‘Your mother thought the world of you,’ said Alice, without a hint of reproof. ‘Have you written any more of them songs of yours lately?’
‘Not lately, no.’
‘I liked that “Side Show”. I’ve got a record of it at home, you know. You’re younger than I thought you were, just judging by your mother’s photos.’
A familiar sensation overcame Billing; like cramp, it made its presence known only when it had set in. She liked him. Fancied him. She wanted a little part of him. Even as he responded by making himself agreeable, he said to himself, ‘This is not for me and I am not interested. From now onwards, I want my life free of involvement.’
Hugh Billing roused the next morning to feel Alice’s heavy body against his. He lay there with his eyes shut, smelling her floral perfume. Wallflower, possibly. It was a movement of hers which had wakened him.
Evidently aware that he was awake, Alice turned and
