let him down, he said, thieving and lying like a common criminal. “I’m chalking you up as a failure for Ashleigh,” he said. “I never had much faith in you, Carruthers.” ’
‘He’s a most revolting man.’ She said it without meaning to, and yet the words came easily from her. She said it because it didn’t matter any more, because he wasn’t going to return to Ashleigh Court to repeat her words.
‘You were kind to me that first day,’ Carruthers said. ‘I liked that holy picture in your room. You told me to look at it, I remember. Your white overall made a noise when you walked.’
She wanted to say that once she had told lies too, that at St Monica’s School for Girls she’d said the King, the late George VI, had spoken to her when she stood in the crowd. She wanted to say that she’d stolen two rubbers from Elsie Grantham and poured ink all over the face of a clock, and had never been found out.
She closed her eyes, longing to speak, longing above all things in the world to fill the compartment with the words that had begun, since he’d told her, to pound in her brain. All he’d ever done on the train was to speak a kind of truth about his mother and the school, to speak in their no man’s land, as now and then he’d called it. Tormenting her was incidental; she knew it was. Tormenting her was just by chance, a thing that happened.
His face was like a flint. No love had ever smoothed his face, and while she looked at it she felt, unbearably now, the urge to speak as he had spoken, so many times. He smiled at her. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The Reverend’s a most revolting man.’
‘I’m thirty-eight,’ she said and saw him nod as though, precisely, he’d guessed her age a long time ago. ‘Tonight we’ll sit together in the bungalow by the sea where my parents live and they’ll ask me about the term at Ashleigh. “Begin at the beginning, Dora,” my mother’ll say and my father’ll set his deaf-aid. “The first day? What happened the first day, Dora?” And I shall tell them. “Speak up,” they’ll say, and in a louder voice I’ll tell them about the new boys, and the new members of staff. Tomorrow night I’ll tell some more, and on and on until the holidays and the term are over. “Wherever are you going?” my mother’ll say when I want to go out for a walk. “Funny time,” she’ll say, “to go for a walk.” No matter what time it is.’
He turned his head away, gazing through the window as earlier she had gazed through the window of the dining-car, in awkwardness.
‘I didn’t fall in love with a freckled waiter,’ he heard her say, ‘but God knows the freckled waiter would have done.’
He looked at her again. ‘I didn’t mean, Miss Fanshawe –’
‘If he had suddenly murmured while offering me the vegetables I’d have closed my eyes with joy. To be desired, to be desired in any way at all…’
‘Miss Fanshawe –’
‘Born beneath Gemini, the sign of passion, you said. Yet who wants to know about passion in the heart of an ugly undermatron? Different for your mother, Carruthers: your mother might weep and tear away her hair, and others would weep in pity because of all her beauty. D’you see, Carruthers? D’you understand me?’
‘No, Miss Fanshawe. No, I don’t think I do. I’m not as –’
‘There was a time one Christmas, after a party in the staff-room, when a man who taught algebra took me up to a loft, the place where the Wolf Cubs meet. We lay down on an old tent, and then suddenly this man was sick. That was in 1954. I didn’t tell them that in the bungalow: I’ve never told them the truth. I’ll not say tonight, eating cooked ham and salad, that the boy I travelled with created a scene in the dining-car, or that I was obliged to pay for damage to a waiter’s clothes.’
‘Shall we read now, Miss Fanshawe?’
‘How can we read, for God’s sake, when we have other things to say? What was it like, d’you think, on all the journeys to see you so unhappy? Yes, you’ll probably go to the bad. He’s right: you have the look of a boy who’ll end like that. The unhappy often do.’
‘Unhappy, Miss Fanshawe? Do I seem unhappy?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, tell the truth! The truth’s been there between us on all our journeys. We’ve looked at one another and seen it, over and over again.’
‘Miss Fanshawe, I don’t understand you. I promise you, I don’t understand –’
‘How could I ever say in that bungalow that the algebra teacher laid me down on a tent and then was sick? Yet I can say it now to you, a thing I’ve never told another soul.’
The door slid open and a woman wearing a blue hat, a smiling, red-faced woman, asked if the vacant seats were taken. In a voice that amazed Carruthers further Miss Fanshawe told her to go away.
‘Well, really!’ said the woman.
‘Leave us in peace, for God’s sake!’ shrieked Miss Fanshawe, and the woman, her smile all gone, backed into the corridor. Miss Fanshawe rose and shut the door again.
‘It’s different in that bungalow by the sea,’ she then quite quietly remarked, as though no red-faced woman had backed away astonished. ‘Not like an American Bar in Copenhagen or the Hotel Excelsior in Madrid. Along the walls the coloured geese stretch out their necks, the brass is polished and in its place. Inch by inch oppression fills the air. On the chintz covers in the sitting-room there’s a pattern of small wild roses, the stair-carpet’s full of fading lupins.
He began to speak, only to speak her name, for there was nothing else he could think of to say. He changed his mind and said nothing at all.
‘Who would take me from it now? Who, Carruthers? What freckled waiter or teacher of algebra? What assistant in a shop, what bank-clerk, postman, salesman of cosmetics? They see a figure walking in the wind, discs of thick glass on her eyes, breasts as flat as paper. Her movement’s awkward, they say, and when she’s close enough they raise their hats and turn away: they mean no harm.’
‘I see,’ he said.
