TWENTY

‘We could stay in town,’ Mrs Corrigan said. ‘I’ve looked at the designs in Maplethorpe’s window.’

‘You never mentioned it,’ Mr Corrigan said.

‘I’ve mentioned it now.’ Mrs Corrigan smiled.

‘Do you have a place in mind?’ Mr Corrigan asked.

‘The Buckingham,’ Mrs Corrigan said. ‘I’ve always liked it.’

‘You’re not thinking of our moving there?’ Mr Corrigan said.

‘Temporarily.’

Mrs Corrigan smiled again.

The light from the candles, which had been lit for the evening meal, was reflected in Mr Corrigan’s eyes: the colour in his cheeks had deepened.

‘It sounds as if it’s decided, Fay,’ he said.

In the kitchen a plate was dropped and sound of Mrs Meredith’s singing was interrupted.

‘There’s a green I’d like for the bedrooms.’

‘Upstairs as well?’ Mr Corrigan glanced at Bryan.

‘If we are to be at the Buckingham for several weeks, they might as well do the whole of it,’ Mrs Corrigan said.

‘Several weeks.’

‘That was Maplethorpe’s suggestion.’

‘I thought you only looked in the window,’ Mr Corrigan said.

‘There’s scarcely any point in my looking in the window if I don’t go in and get an estimate,’ Mrs Corrigan said. ‘You could go in tomorrow yourself and ask to see the colours.’

‘I shall.’

‘There’s a yellow that would go well in here and an ochre in the study.’

‘I see.’

‘With brown paintwork and a white relief.’

‘There’s little left for me to choose,’ Mr Corrigan observed.

‘These are only suggestions, Harold. They’re easily changed.’

‘We can’t afford it.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘I’d say so.’

‘There’s no point in sulking,’ Mrs Corrigan said. ‘The house needs doing. I’m sure you’ll agree.’

Mr Corrigan glanced at the unblemished paintwork, at the unblemished ceiling, at the unstained wallpaper: finally, he glanced at Bryan.

‘The sooner it’s done the better, Harold.’

‘I’ll look in tomorrow.’

‘I’ve rung the Buckingham and booked a suite.’

‘Already?’

‘The Wellington,’ Mrs Corrigan said. ‘It has a central view and is least affected by the traffic.’

Two weeks later they moved out of the house and into the Wellington Suite at the Buckingham Hotel. Bryan had a single room adjacent to the central sitting-room on the other side of which were the doors to the bathroom, to a dining-room, and to Mr and Mrs Corrigan’s bedrooms.

On his first day there, when he came home from school, he stood on a balcony outside the sitting-room window: odd figures passed below, Mr Waterhouse, Miss Lightowler, Mr Berresford; he called out to one or two pupils from the school, Parkinson included, but none of them heard him above the roar of the traffic.

A fire burned in the sitting-room grate and, shortly after his return, tea was served by a maid.

‘Isn’t it cosy?’ Mrs Corrigan said, as stimulated by the noise of the traffic as she was by the room itself – the flower-patterned chairs, the flower-patterned wallpaper, the flower-patterned draperies and carpets and curtains. ‘It’s like being at the seaside, or in a foreign city. We must travel, Bryan, when we get the time.’

Yet Mrs Corrigan was scarcely ever there; when he left in the mornings she was invariably in bed and, if not asleep, disinclined to greet him and, when he came home in the afternoons, she was invariably in the tea-rooms below where, in an alcove opening off the central lobby, she entertained her friends.

One afternoon he came home from school to find the check-suited figure of the butcher sitting by the fire. ‘There you are, Bryan,’ he said in a voice loud enough to be heard in the adjoining bedroom. A moment later Mrs Corrigan appeared, her make-up freshly done, and said, ‘There you are. You’ve just missed tea.’ A tray stood on a table by the window. ‘I have to go out. If you want tea, ring,’ indicating the telephone as she drew on a coat.

‘Are you coming back soon?’ he asked her.

‘I may be late,’ she said. ‘Mr Proctor dropped by. He can see me down.’ Not once did she look in his direction. ‘Don’t wait up,’ she added while outside, on the landing, Mr Proctor wheezed.

Without glancing back, she closed the door.

It was long after Mr Corrigan had gone to bed that he heard the closing of the outer door; by the time he’d got out of bed Mrs Corrigan had gone through to her bedroom and though he walked slowly up and down, creaking the floorboards, and switching on the light, she didn’t come out: only once, faintly, did he hear, as if yawning, or singing, the murmur of her voice.

‘How is that great oaf?’ Mr Corrigan asked the following morning.

‘As usual,’ Mrs Corrigan said. ‘He was only here for three or four minutes. By coincidence, at tea-time. If Bryan hadn’t have arrived he’d have insisted on staying longer. The two of us soon got rid of him.’

‘How did the meeting go last night?’ Mr Corrigan asked. ‘Anything of interest?’

‘The usual,’ Mrs Corrigan replied.

‘Anyone I know?’

‘One or two. I doubt if I’ll go again,’ she added.

‘How did Proctor know we were staying here?’ Mr Corrigan asked.

‘He frequents the bar and saw you passing through.’ Shadows darkened the skin beneath each eye: her cheeks were sallow, the corners of her mouth turned down.

‘I thought you’d been drinking when you came in.’ Mr Corrigan, who was standing at the window, glanced down at the street.

‘These meetings wouldn’t be complete without refreshment,’ Mrs Corrigan said.

‘Much?’ Mr Corrigan said. ‘Or little?’

‘We called at the Settle.’

‘The Settle?’ Mr Corrigan raised his head from his inspection of the street below.

‘A club that one of the members belongs to.’

‘I see.’

‘Nothing the least improper.’

‘I’m sure it isn’t,’ Mr Corrigan said.

‘I did feel tired, as a matter of fact.’ She glanced at Bryan. ‘It was nearly midnight by the time I got in.’

‘Aren’t you enjoying staying here, Fay?’ Mr Corrigan asked.

‘I am enjoying it.’ Mrs Corrigan flushed.

‘We’re not obliged to stay,’ Mr Corrigan said. ‘The decorators could work around us.’

‘I’d prefer to stay, Harold,’ Mrs Corrigan said, and added, ‘I thought I might go out this evening.’

‘Where?’

‘To a friend’s. It was just a suggestion.’

‘Will you be late?’

‘I might.’

The panes in the window rattled; a coal fell in the fire.

‘It makes very dull company in the evening, Fay,’ Mr Corrigan said.

‘I thought it would be a change to have dinner by yourselves.’ She indicated Bryan.

‘I thought you were feeling tired,’ Mr Corrigan said.

‘I’ll brighten up when I get some fresh air.’ Mrs Corrigan flushed more deeply.

‘And dull company, too, for Bryan,’ Mr Corrigan continued.

‘I’m sure one evening, or even two, won’t upset Bryan unduly,’ Mrs Corrigan said. ‘Why not go down to the bar? There’s bound to be someone you know.’

‘No, thank you,’ Mr Corrigan said.

‘With living so far out at Chevet you’ve forgotten what sociability can do,’ Mrs Corrigan said. ‘You’d be surprised whom you’d meet, if you went this evening.’

‘Stan Proctor.’

She crossed to the bedroom.

‘There’s bound to be someone you know. The Buckingham is a place where everyone meets.’

‘Will you be there?’ Mr Corrigan asked.

The bedroom door was closed.

‘Perhaps you’d like to go out, too?’ Mr Corrigan asked Bryan that evening. ‘I could give you the money for the pictures.’

‘No, thanks,’ he said.

‘Are you going to bed?’ Mr Corrigan asked.

‘I thought I’d go for a walk,’ Bryan said, having opened his door and taken his coat.

‘Like me to come with you?’ Mr Corrigan asked.

‘I don’t mind,’ he said.

‘I don’t fancy this hotel,’ Mr Corrigan said as they went down in the lift. ‘Let’s try my club.’

They walked through the darkened streets together.

‘It’s called the Liberal,’ Mr Corrigan added, ‘though there aren’t many Liberals left. Only one or two like me.’

Stone steps led up to a stone-flagged hall; wood-panelled doors opened off on either side. ‘At one time a businessman in this town could spend half his working day in here. On that side a restaurant, on the other a library. Offices now,’ he added.

They ascended a flight of stairs; a room opened out beyond a pair of double doors: chairs, the majority upholstered, were arranged along its length. At the far end, surmounted by a mirror, stood a stone-flanked fireplace. There was a smell of damp, of cigarette smoke, and a faint aroma of coffee.

A man in a white jacket and black trousers moved amongst the chairs: in one a man was sleeping, in another a figure looked up as Bryan entered; a man was playing cards on a folded table.

Mr Corrigan ordered a drink; a glass of lemonade was brought for Bryan.

‘It used to be the legal district.’ Mr Corrigan waved his arm to the tall, framed windows. ‘Dentists came in next. Even a barber. After that,’ he waved his arm again, ‘it went to pieces.’

He turned in his chair, finished his drink, and ordered another.

‘The first time my father brought me here I wasn’t much older than you. A Minister had come up from London to explain the extension of the franchise. All I remember is a crowd of men who seemed at the time on the verge of a riot.’ He raised his glass. ‘It was the centre of enlightenment in those days. All it is now is an evening’s retreat for,’ he counted up the figures, ‘six men and a boy who have no home to go to.’

He consumed his second drink and ordered a third. He asked for another. A man called out across the room; Mr Corrigan laughed. After the fourth drink Bryan decided he had never seen Mr Corrigan look so happy.

‘Have you ever had the feeling you’d like to run away?’

‘Where to?’ Bryan asked.

‘Anywhere.’

Bryan shook his head.

‘I often felt the temptation when I was young. I got up one morning, bought a ticket for the first train that turned up at the station, and set off for a place I’d never heard of. A seaside town.’ He raised his glass, finished it, and gave indications to the white-coated figure across the room that he’d like another. ‘One place is very much like the next. You take your problems with you and, in the vacuum of an unknown place, they only multiply and become more insoluble than they were before.’

The empty glass was taken away and replaced a moment later; a figure stirred across the room. In the darkened panes Bryan could see his own reflection.

‘For you,’ Mr Corrigan said, ‘the future is an open book, with the pages, as yet, unwritten on. For me, at your age, I knew what I would have to do, whether I cared for it or not.’ He finished his drink. ‘My father’s son. Whereas for you,’ he concluded, ‘everything is different.’

The door opened; a figure came inside: dressed in an overcoat, a hat in its hand, it glanced round, noted the several faces, glanced at Mr Corrigan and then at Bryan, then at Bryan again, and went back out.

Mr Corrigan smiled; having drained his glass he didn’t ask for it to be replenished: he examined his shoes, one foot raised above the other.

The leather shone, the laces neatly fastened.

In the window Bryan examined their two faces and, for the first time, realized that, superficially, he might easily have been mistaken for Mr Corrigan’s son: the same gauntness, the same dark eyes, the same sallowness in the evening light.

‘I wondered whether, in the past,’ Mr Corrigan said, ‘you were ever aware of the amount of tolerance you have to show when dealing with other people.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Mrs Corrigan isn’t always aware of what she is doing, which comes as a shock, even to someone who has known her as long as I have.’

‘Mr Proctor told me how they went to gymkhanas together,’ Bryan said, anxious to introduce the name of the man with whom, at the moment, he was vengefully preoccupied, and to learn, also, what it was in Mrs Corrigan that Mr Corrigan had been attracted to, if not inspired by, in the past.

‘I suppose my experience of Mrs Corrigan is not all that different from Mr Proctor’s,’ Mr Corrigan said, glancing about the room. ‘She was eccentric, even in those days, though most people gave her the benefit of the doubt.’ He paused. ‘She was very high-spirited. I could never keep up. Nor could Mr Proctor. Though I shouldn’t doubt it didn’t stop him trying.’

He fingered his glass; his gaze, too, had caught the reflection of their two faces in the darkened window: he glanced across and laughed.

‘It needs a lot of understanding. She’s something of a child.’ He paused again. ‘If you have to show discretion from time to time you’ll have to realize that, in the end, it’s to your benefit as well as hers. If you feel you’d like to help her,’ he gazed at a point above Bryan’s head, ‘I’d be very grateful. There’s a great deal to be said for her.’ He pressed his fingers together, the knuckles interlocked, and pushed them for a while beneath his chin. ‘She was a revelation when she was young. I’d never seen anyone like her. My father took to her straight away. He thought he could tame her before he died. He never succeeded.’ He tapped his chin again.

They walked back through the darkened streets together; Mr Corrigan walked slowly: he called, ‘Good night,’ to a figure in the doorway of the club as they came out, but in such a spontaneous manner that the man, who had been about to enter, had not replied; and at the entrance to the hotel he called out again in a similar manner to the uniformed doorman who, showing something of the same reaction, saluted Mr Corrigan’s swaying figure and gazed across the foyer as they approached the lift to signal to the receptionist behind her counter.

‘She has a sense of style,’ Mr Corrigan said as they ascended to the first floor above. ‘A vision. Which is very rare in a place like this.’ He paused at the door of the suite to insert his key but, after several attempts to do so, allowed Bryan to do it for him. ‘Like your gift. Unusual. And expressed, in her case, amongst other things, by her choice of clothes.’

He gazed into the lighted sitting-room at a figure who, wearing a dressing-gown, had just emerged from the bedroom.

‘Don’t tell her I told you,’ he concluded, blinking his eyes.

‘Don’t tell Bryan what?’ Mrs Corrigan said.

‘I thought you were out,’ Mr Corrigan said.

‘I was.’

‘We went to the club.’

‘What club?’

‘The Liberal.’

‘You haven’t been there for years.’

‘I used to go each weekend.’

‘And now you’re taking Bryan.’

Mrs Corrigan had been crying.

‘Is there anything wrong with my taking Bryan?’ Mr Corrigan said. ‘We are left so often on our own that it’s surprising we aren’t there every night.’

Having entered the room, stepping around Mrs Corrigan, he collapsed in a chair, his legs splayed out.

‘You’re drunk.’

‘Not much.’ Mr Corrigan glanced at Bryan.

‘Has he walked through the streets like that?’ Mrs Corrigan asked.

‘I haven’t flown through them,’ Mr Corrigan said.

Mrs Corrigan sat down.

‘Is anything the matter?’ Mr Corrigan frowned.

‘I thought you might have been here,’ Mrs Corrigan said.

‘We were.’

‘You weren’t when I got back.’

‘We were before.’

‘How was I to know where Bryan was?’

‘You appeared indifferent until now,’ Mr Corrigan said. ‘Out each evening. A new gown every night. Afternoons in the tea-room. Evenings in the cocktail lounge. Mornings in the coffee lounge. Nights,’ he extended his hand, ‘I know not where.’

‘Is anything the matter?’ Bryan asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘You’ve come back early,’ Mr Corrigan said.

‘I came back when I wanted.’

Mr Corrigan spread out his hands. ‘As for me, one evening off in twenty.’

‘I don’t feel well.’

Mrs Corrigan bowed her head.

‘Proctor not arrive?’ Mr Corrigan asked.

‘It’s got nothing to do with Stan,’ she said.

‘Hasn’t it?’

Mrs Corrigan had removed her make-up: her skin was greased, her cheeks puffy, her eyes red. Her feet, beneath the hem of her dressing-gown, were bare.

‘It’s something you’ve eaten.’ Mr Corrigan drew back his head, his chin thrust down against his collar.

‘You don’t understand,’ Mrs Corrigan said. ‘I don’t suppose you ever will. Not ever.’

‘I’ve given you Bryan,’ Mr Corrigan said.

Mrs Corrigan flushed.

‘Even though you’ve had him with you, it hasn’t stopped you,’ he paused, ‘with other men.’

‘What other men?’

‘Do I have to itemize each one?’

‘It’s all been innocent,’ Mrs Corrigan said. ‘It’s innocent now. No one means anything to me as much as you.’

Mr Corrigan glanced down at his jacket.

‘I’m more aware than anyone else of what I’ve done,’ Mrs Corrigan added.

‘You draw attention to it,’ Mr Corrigan said, ‘as if you wanted everyone to see it.’

‘I show restraint. I’ve always shown restraint. Don’t you think I’m not aware of what people think?’

‘Didn’t Proctor turn up tonight?’ Mr Corrigan said. ‘Is that why you’re unhappy?’

‘He means nothing to me,’ Mrs Corrigan said. ‘He meant nothing to me in the past. He means nothing to me now.’

‘If you can’t discuss it honestly then there’s no hope for any of us, Fay,’ Mr Corrigan said. ‘Bryan should have been enough if you’d only controlled your appetite for creating a sensation with other men.’

‘How can Bryan satisfy everything, Harold?’

‘He satisfies enough.’

Mr Corrigan counted the buttons on his jacket, confirmed that each one was there, then said, ‘You can send him back.’

‘Where?’

‘To Stainforth.’

‘I can’t send him back. He can’t go back,’ Mrs Corrigan added.

‘I’ve done all I can, in that case,’ Mr Corrigan said. He got up from his chair. ‘Are you going to bed?’ he added.

‘I shall be,’ Mrs Corrigan said.

‘Good night, Bryan,’ Mr Corrigan said. ‘I’m sorry tonight has ended so badly,’ and adding, ‘If there’s anything else I can do, no doubt you’ll let me know,’ he closed his bedroom door.

Later, Bryan heard them quarrelling from Mr Corrigan’s bedroom, but the following day Mr Corrigan himself came into his room, standing in the door, reassuring Bryan by his manner that everything was exactly as it was before, and announcing, ‘I enjoyed last night at the Liberal.’

‘So did I.’

‘Perhaps we’ll go again.’

‘I’d like to.’

And with the same inclination of his hand with which he had come into the room, he smiled at Bryan and left.