9

‘Pardon me, sir,’ cried the woman, jostling Mr Jaraby at the counter in Woolworth’s. ‘Have I damaged you? I was rudely pushed.’

‘No damage done. There is a rough crowd here on Saturdays.’ He proceeded on his way, but the woman pursued him, brushing his jacket and holding on to his arm. ‘One longs for more elegant times,’ she cried, smiling at him, not anxious to let him go. ‘Do you live in these parts?’

Mr Jaraby, startled by the woman’s directness, replied that he did. She fell into step with him. ‘It is a pleasant neighbourhood, though not at all what it used to be. You have seen changes? Have you lived here always?’

‘Well, yes, I have –’

‘How nice to get to know a neighbourhood so well! How nice to feel a native!’

When Mr Jaraby entered the greengrocer’s he found the woman still at his side. He spoke to her of the vegetables and made recommendations, assuming she was there to buy. But when his order was completed, when the assistant turned to her, she said: ‘No, no. I am with this gentleman.’

‘I have forgotten your name. Forgive me. Have we met before?’

‘We met just now in Woolworth’s. Shall we meet again?’

Mr Jaraby, finding the woman a nuisance, raised his hat and crossed the street, leaving her safely trapped by traffic on the other pavement. But when he sat down for a cup of tea in the Cadena she was there again, begging permission to share his table. ‘Meringues!’ the woman cried. ‘Shall we gorge ourselves on meringues today?’

‘I have already ordered a bun. But by all means take meringues yourself.’

‘I must watch my figure, but having met you I shall go on the spree with meringues. You are not overweight. Well-built but without surplus.’

Mr Jaraby did not speak. The woman continued:

‘I have trouble with liver. It leads to plumpness. I have injections for it.’

Mr Jaraby did not reply. He felt embarrassed, sitting in a café with a stranger who spoke about her liver. The waitress brought his tea and he lengthened the process of pouring it and buttering his bun. He had no newspaper to read. He tried to look over the woman’s shoulder.

‘Meringues,’ she said to the waitress. ‘I am having a fling! The heat,’ she continued across the table – ‘isn’t it terrible? It is no weather for a plump girl, I can tell you. I sleep quite naked, with only a sheet these nights and the window thrown up.’

‘It is oppressive, certainly.’

‘I can see you are a gentleman. Do you mind my saying it? I love a gentleman. My secret is I fancy men who are no longer young. Wise with years, but young in their ways. I think I see you are young in your ways.’

‘I am seventy-two. My age shows and often I feel it. My wife is a year older and quite out of control.’

‘Ah, I do not care for wives! I am naughty about that. Tell me now, is your wife as plump as I am?’

‘Well, no. My wife is like a skeleton. A bag of bones.’

‘Perhaps you prefer the skinnier woman, eh? Am I not your sort? I can make arrangements –’

‘Excuse me, please. I would prefer not to talk like this.’

‘You are shy, dear man! Come on now, if you would like me to make arrangements –’

‘Arrangements? Arrangements? Madam, you have the advantage of me. I am at a loss –’

‘I have friends who are attractively thin. No tummy at all. Upright like sticks, no –’

‘Are you confusing me with someone else? I cannot continue this conversation.’

‘Or younger ones. Thin or fat. One of them trained for the trapeze. Another a mass of muscle, she used to be a gym teacher. Bus conductresses in uniform. Canadians and Chinese. Girls in kilts or macintosh coats. Lady disciplinarians. Girls come back from the Israeli Army. Blacks and old grannies. Ex-nuns. Judo girls. Greeks.’

She was as crazy as his wife. The world was full of wretched women. Did his wife, he wondered, behave like this, talking madly to strangers when his back was turned?

‘Shall we meet again?’ the woman cried, but he was moving fast to the pay-desk. She shrugged her shoulders and pulled a face at Swingler, who was sitting a table or two away.

Outside, Mr Jaraby noticed a young constable on the beat and considered for a moment reporting the matter to him. He decided against it, for it would take so long to explain; the policeman would be stupid; he would be asked to go to the police station; he would be asked if he wished to bring charges. Mr Jaraby knew this, because often before he had made complaints to the police, though never a complaint as bizarre as this one. He found the police obstructive and politely impertinent. He had once had cause to take part in a long correspondence with a Chief Constable concerning the impudence of a desk-sergeant. He did not wish to go through all that again. Yet he was conscious of a mounting anger against the woman. That broad, hideous face, coloured like a parrot, ill-fitting teeth dangling in its mouth, the whiff of perspiration, the awful, endless chatter of nonsense. Dowse had given him, man to man, the address of a safe house which boasted an exclusively public school clientele. Dowse had told him about disease, about young men fresh at the University getting themselves into a mess. He had quoted histories, spoken of the terror in a young man’s mind that led so often to total decadence or suicide. Dowse it was who had given him, though on another occasion, the address of a good tailor and had recommended a barber’s shop in Jermyn Street. Dowse would have made a man of Basil, no doubt of it. It was odd how these things were: how influenced and – yes, the word was right – how inspired one might be at a certain age. The formative years. Dowse stood no nonsense. Fight fairly, squarely, have nothing to hide, indulge in no shame: the words might aptly have been inscribed on his gravestone. And with the thought of his gravestone he remembered the roar of the hymn in Chapel that had marked his passing, and the silence that followed it. With Dowse as his master, Basil today would not be training a circus of birds in a hovel of a house somewhere. There would not be this estrangement in the family, with Basil a bone of contention between man and wife. Well, estrangement there was and so it should remain. Polite Sunday teas were one thing; Basil beneath his feet all day, birds fluttering through the house – that was another matter, and one which he did not intend to tolerate. How dare she think along such lines! What was there to be gained, from anyone’s point of view, by a son returning at this late stage to live like a child with his parents? Did she wish to wash his hair and bathe him, to buy him Meccano sets, to send him spruced and combed to Christmas parties?

How few people there were in the world, Mr Jaraby reflected, who were equipped to weather it and remain intact and sane. What pricks in the flesh one endured: one’s wife, one’s son, a crumpled cripple like Nox, this woman who leeched on to him. Dowse had said Nox was a trouble-maker. ‘He plays no games, Jaraby. He shows no enthusiasm. The strictest surveillance for that boy, Jaraby. The task may not be to your liking, but we are all together in the House, we have a duty one to another.’ He had failed with Nox; he had tried and he had failed. Nox today was scarcely a creature to be proud of. Could one say without flinching that one had been an influence in his formative years? Yet his instruction from Dowse had been that he should be. ‘These are important years, Jaraby. The man is made, his standards are set. See that you leave your mark on Nox, as you leave it on others. I know you well, Jaraby. I trust that mark.’ Mr Jaraby laughed. One could certainly not be proud of the absurd Nox.

His steps had led him away from the shops and the crowds into a leafy suburban road not unlike his own. He entered a house that was marked with a brass plate, consulting his watch to check his punctuality.

Dr Wiley, who was elderly too, was dressed in an old-fashioned manner. The knot of his tie was noticeably large and had not been pulled into the familiar position on the collar. It left a gap of an inch or so, in which a brass stud featured prominently. In combination with his wing collar and the cut of his waistcoat the stud contrived to suggest a tail-coat, although in fact Dr Wiley was not wearing one. Mr Jaraby came straight to the point.

‘She is far from herself, Doctor. She rambles in her speech and makes no sense.’

Dr Wiley played with a magnifying glass on his desk, holding it over random sections of print. He liked to have something in his hands when he was giving a consultation. He came straight to the point too.

‘Is she fit physically?’

‘It appears so. She seems strong as a horse. She can lift things and do a day’s work.’

‘Ah. She must not lift things too much. Nor do too strenuous a day’s work. She is no longer young. We forget how taxed the body becomes simply by living a long time. See that she does not overwork. Get her to put her feet up.’

‘That is not the trouble. She talks of having our son to live with us; she has had him to tea.’

‘An extra person in the house certainly means extra work. Does she have help?’

‘A woman comes. It is wild, irresponsible talk that worries me more.’

‘Can you be specific? What kind of things –’

‘My dear man, I’m telling you. Our son, she says, is to come to live in Crimea Road. In his old room which she has prepared. He will bring his birds.’

‘Now, Mr Jaraby, that does not sound wild. Your wife feels she would like to see more of her son. It is natural for loneliness to creep in at this age. Be a companion to her more, if you can. Do you ever go together to the cinema?’

‘Go to –? Heavens above, what good would going to a cinema do? You cannot cure madness in a cinema.’

‘But is there madness to cure? You have given me no evidence of it.’

‘We had cut our son off. We had not seen him, nor cared to see him for fifteen years. Well, I think she occasionally called on him – but at least he never came to the house. He was not welcome, he was not invited.’

‘And Mrs Jaraby thinks of a reconciliation. That is very natural. It is quite normal and in order –’

‘My son, Dr Wiley, is a near-criminal. He has been in trouble. We do not discuss it. Basil is a great disappointment to us.’

‘To you. Maybe not to your wife.’

‘Oh, rubbish. You know nothing of it. You are speaking outside your province.’

‘I am attempting to help you. You came for advice.’

‘That is not true. I came for pills or tablets to calm my wife. You are deliberately obtuse.’

‘Come, come, Mr Jaraby, let us keep our tempers.’

‘Let us keep to our proper places and not overstep the line. I repeat, Dr Wiley, Basil is a near-criminal.’

‘Be that as it may, I cannot prescribe for your wife –’

‘Oh my God! Great God in heaven, why cannot this said case –’

‘If you shout, Mr Jaraby, I shall ask you to leave.’

‘I am not shouting. You are not listening to me. Are you refusing to treat my wife?’

‘Certainly not. Mrs Jaraby is my patient. I will call and talk to her, examine her if necessary.’

‘What good will that do? This is really too much. I have had a trying day. My wife goes on. People annoy me on the street. Yesterday there was the strain of Basil in the house again. I make a simple request; a good doctor would instantly accede to it. It is useless to talk to her. She will consent to nothing.’

‘If you consider that I am a bad doctor you are at liberty to have another. I remain your wife’s, though. Is it your wish that I visit her?’

‘No, it is certainly not my wish. I never suggested it. When did I ask you to visit her? What are you talking about?’

‘Then that is the end of the matter. Unless you can persuade her to come to me.’

‘Is that likely? Give me pills or tablets that I may put in her food.’

‘My dear Mr Jaraby, I cannot do that.’ The Doctor laughed to ease the atmosphere. ‘I would be struck off the register.’

‘You will see this woman suffer? You will see me suffer? She would take no pills herself. The mad think the world is mad. You should know that. After this I cannot believe you are a fully qualified doctor.’

‘I must ask you to go.’

‘I am going. I shall seek medical aid elsewhere. You are a callous man, far beyond the work you try to do. My fingers itch to write the facts to the Medical Council.’

‘I can give you the address.’

‘You are cheap and insolent, incompetent and doddering. Your brass plate shall be in a dustbin before the month is out.’

With his stick he struck the brass plate fiercely as he passed it, scarring his knuckles and noticing briefly in its gleam his blood-red, maddened face.

If I will it well enough it shall come to pass, she thought. He shall come with his birds in cages and release them through the house at the times he wishes. They shall chirrup and chatter and I shall watch him teaching them to say a few words. The past shall stay where it is, forgotten and never again raked over. He shall eat good meals, stews and tinned fruit, biscuits with his coffee. I shall wake in the mornings and hear the sound of the birds, and take an interest in them and go with him to shows. People shall come to the house to see them and buy them, not people who are old and lonely and of uncertain temper, but men who talk enthusiastically of their interest, who can tell the quality of a bird and can talk about it, so that one may learn in time to tell it too, and exchange a point of view.