“Nobody’s going to get a drink at this rate. I thought you knew where Frank’s was.”
“If I knew, we’d be there, wouldn’t we? Do you think I’m doing this for pleasure?”
“There’s no need to get sarcastic. At least three times in the past two months you’ve been over to Frank’s.”
Fear shot through him, joining the anger churning his intestines. “Not from this direction. I know it from our house but not from this direction. All these streets look the same. And in the dark, too.”
They drove around for another ten minutes, and then Colin stopped the car at a phonebox. Inhaling the smell of stale urine, he leafed through the directory, a draught from a broken pane blowing piercingly down the back of his neck. The “O” section had been torn out jaggedly, cutting him off at O’Connor. He dashed back to the car.
“You’re getting soaked,” Sylvia said reproachfully. She was scrabbling through her handbag looking for change. “Haven’t you got Frank’s number in your wallet?”
“I’ll find another box.” Colin drove on. “Here, I might have, take it out and have a look through.”
They had by now reached the main road and Sylvia searched through his wallet under the generous light, unimpeded by trees. “Well, I can’t see Frank’s number. I don’t think you’ve got it. Here, what’s this? Social Services. What do you want the number of the Social Services for?”
“For school,” Colin said promptly. Sweat started out again on the back of his neck. “We have to carry it. For emergencies.”
“What emergencies? I thought you got ambulances for emergencies.”
“Are you looking for a phonebox?”
“Here, stop here, I think that’s one. It’s not got a light. Here, pull up.”
“At least we know where we are now.”
Colin grabbed the directory and hurled himself back into his seat, peering at the listings by the dim light of the interior bulb. The door was half-open and rain splattered in. Sylvia shivered.
“Here’s Frank. Give me that Iop.”
He dialled the number and was relieved to hear the ringing tone. It rang and rang. When he was on the point of giving up, the receiver was lifted and an unfamiliar voice answered. He heard it calling out for Frank.
“Here, Frank, here’s some extraordinary chap called Sidney who’s got lost.”
Frank came to the phone. “Hello? Colin?”
Colin expected him to sound irritable, but he was quite jovial, perhaps alarmingly so. Must be a good party, Colin thought, good conversation, lots to drink. His spirits briefly rallied. The directions fixed in his mind, he jumped back into the car.
“Right, got it this time. Be there in under five minutes.”
“I’m cold, Colin. Freezing.”
“Cheer up.
“Is that a foreign expression?”
“Yes. Course it is.”
“I hope you won’t be using foreign expressions tonight, making a fool of yourself. And remember, about the drinking.”
Colin struggled for words for a moment, and found none. He slammed on the brakes and brought the car to rest outside Frank’s house. Some long-sealed capsule of rage seemed to explode inside his skull, so that the rest of the night passed for him in a sort of haze, odd incidents and scraps of conversation rising jaggedly above the tide of his wrath; so that the next day, when he was forced to think it all over, he could not pin any sequence to events, or say if they were real at all.
It was nine-thirty. Frank answered the door. He looked vacant, rather slack-jawed.
“Hello,” Sylvia said. Frank took her hand and kissed it. Startled, she pulled it away and rubbed it on her coat sleeve, then took off her coat and handed it to Frank as if he were a cloakroom attendant. Looking him over, she saw that he was wearing white shoes. She raised her eyebrows meaningfully.
Frank had a large Victorian house, a bit dilapidated but gracious in its proportions; he had a few good pictures, and quantities of junkshop and repro furniture intermingled with a few antiques. He leaned to the idea that books furnish a room, and frequented jumble sales in search of leather bindings; he was not as interested in the contents of his finds as he knew he ought to be. The overall effect was harmonious, a little dusty, genteel. He had bought the house before prices shot up, with his savings and a small legacy, and financed his risk by letting off bedrooms to students from the Teacher Training College. Colin imagined they paid a high price in humiliation, for Frank loved to patronise the young. I must take a good look around, he thought, I’m supposed to have been here quite often.
Frank did not seem to know what to do with Sylvia’s coat. “This way,” he said.
They followed him into a large, high-ceilinged room, where the other guests sat with drinks in their hands. In a tiny pause in the conversation, heads turned; turned back, and the talk resumed, a touch rumbustious, grating, over-loud; collars loosened and faces glowing. They’re in full swing, Colin thought, we really are terribly late. Perhaps it would have been better to cut our losses and not come at all. He began to stammer out fresh apologies, but Frank brushed them aside.
“This is my colleague, Colin Sidney,” Frank said to the room at large. “This is his charming wife, Sylvia, whom we all immediately notice is expecting another little Sidney, and this is Sylvia’s wet coat.”
“Why does he want us to call him Sidney?” one of the guests said. “Why can’t he use his real name?”
“Don’t be facetious, Edmund,” Frank said. “Have you seen my drawing-room since it’s been redecorated, Colin?”
