Five

Norman picked up Kitty’s postcard from where it lay on the mat. Unbelievable blue fishes, flat – like the plaice on the bone his mother used to grill for him – swam to and fro, their backs striped with broad black bands, through the lucid waters of the Gulf of Eilat. He had missed his aunt. Not only for the dinners which twice a week she enjoyed preparing for him – having no one else to cook for – but for the wise and sympathetic ear of his surrogate mother, not yet having come to terms with the death of his own.

It was five months to the day – he marked them off on his calendar – since he had as usual taken Dolly her cup of tea, and she had not answered his habitual morning enquiry as to how she had slept, what sort of a night she had had. He had not thought it strange. Had put the teacup on the bedside table, opened the curtains to let the daylight fall on the thin carpet. Dolly’s sleeping pills – which sometimes she took late – had, he imagined, not worn off. He shook her arm. Since her stroke she had aged. Her skin was slack like an old woman’s. Not that she was young. Norman himself was forty-two and his mother had been getting on for thirty when he was born. She had shrunk. He had watched the gradual process, his heart bleeding, daily. She had never been a big woman but as he helped her down the stairs, into her chair, into her bed at night, he had felt the bones through the flesh, the increasing lightness of her frame. He shook her again. There was no response. She usually woke with a grumble, about her heartburn (for which she blamed Norman who had brought her night-time biscuits), her aching back, her lack of sleep.

“Drink your tea before it gets cold!”

Often she sent him down to make another cup.

A tiny dart of fear, the first, entered Norman’s mind. He looked at the sleeping pills. Perhaps she had taken too many. Her hand was on the coverlet. He took it, the knuckles thickened with rheumatism. It was cold.

“Mother!”

He had dreaded this day.

“Mother!”

There had been no warning. Nothing unusual. Death had come in the night and taken her. Away from Norman. He stood stupidly in the sun looking at the old woman whom, since the death of his father, he had cared for at the expense of his own life.

The family had taken over, Beatty, Freda, his Uncle Juda. Norman had done what he was told. Had played his part in the funeral – unable to accept that it was his mother in the simple elm box – the prayers, the tying up of loose ends with the solicitors. When it was over he had paced the rooms of the terraced house where – six foot tall and heavily built – he had always seemed too large, hoping to catch a glimpse of Dolly. He saw her often. In the kitchen before her illness, cooking his favourite food; in the sitting-room where she knitted his pullovers which were never quite right at the hem; in the garden, putting bread out for the birds. When he put the kettle on it echoed with her voice – as did the narrow bathroom where she did his washing. ‘Where are you going, Norman?’ and ‘What time will you be home?’ He missed the security of it, the structure which it had given to his life.

It was inevitable that he thought of Della, the fiancée he had surrendered in consideration of his mother. He had chosen Dolly who had no one else. For weeks now he had mustered his courage, rehearsed the lines he had composed, in the car on the way to work, before the mirror as he shaved. ‘My mother died…is dead…no longer with us…passed away. I’m free. I love you. Have always loved you. Will you marry me?’ From the mirror Della’s voice mocked him for deserting her in favour of his mother; her laugh scorned his proposal. The plan, which he found himself unable to put into operation, occupied his waking moments and bedevilled his sleep. At Bluestone and Blatt, the Estate Agent’s where he worked, they put Norman’s agitation, his abstraction, down to his mother’s death. The turmoil in his head and in his heart presaged, he thought, his own. Unable to tolerate his self destruction he took his courage in his ungainly hands. Fortified by the large whisky, which since his mother had died had become an evening ritual, enabling him to confront it alone, he drove to Kingsbury.

Della’s father opened the door.

“Norman!”

The flat had not changed. Della’s mother, still dressmaking, took the pins from her mouth to greet him. They had read of his bereavement and commiserated. Norman’s eyes circumvented the neat sitting-room looking for Della. For a sign.

“Is Della here?” He thought he would choke.

Her parents exchanged glances.

“Didn’t you know?”

Died. Dead. Della. He was being strangled. Thought he must fall.

“Are you all right Norman?”

“Open the window, Mother, it’s very hot in here.”

“Della’s not here,” her father said.

“I thought you knew,” her mother said, pulling the net curtain aside to let in the breeze.

“She got married.”

“Lives in New Zealand.”

“We had a letter…”

“Ever so happy…”

“We’re going in the winter…”

“To visit…”

“They’ve invited us…”

“Geoff, his name is…”

“She’s expecting a baby…”

“New Zealand?” Norman said.

“Ever such a nice boy.”

He didn’t remember getting home. He had no recollection of finishing the whisky. In the morning he found the bottle on top of the television set. Empty. Nothing inside. There was nothing inside Norman as he went to work, came home, went to bed, went to work again, came home, went to bed…until Sandra came into his life; from South Africa. And Aunt Kitty. He told Aunt Kitty about Sandra. To verify it. He did not believe it himself.

She had been a voice on the phone like many others, looking for a flat on Hampstead Heath. From the selection he had sent her she had chosen one to view and Norman had taken the keys to let her in.

The appointment had been for eleven-thirty. At noon Norman, wandering moodily through the empty rooms, staring from the windows at the green expanse below which did not move him, decided to give her another five minutes. The estate agent’s life was beset by time-wasters, plagued by clients who failed to show. It was the distasteful thought of going back to the office that had made him wait for her so long. He found everything distasteful. Pleasure in nothing. Since his mother’s death. Measured out his life in a succession of uninviting days.

He had left the front door open and did not hear her come in.

“Am I late?” Her accent was South African. He recognised it. He looked at his watch.

“You wouldn’t have believed the traffic!”

She was small and slim with tanned limbs, dressed in a tan suit. Her handbag and her shoes, which had very high heels, were made of some sort of skin. She jangled as she walked towards him, the gold chains round her neck knocking one against the other.

“Sandra Caplan.” She held out her hand. “You’ll be from the agent’s.”

Her perfume had preceded her. Norman breathed it in.

“This sounds just what I’m looking for. I have to be near the city – the boys go to school – but I like to smell the air.”

Her hair was spun gold. Norman wanted to touch it. The desire shocked him. He put his hands behind his back.

“Where would you like to begin, Mrs Caplan?”

She was looking out of the window he had opened. Through her eyes he saw the delicate tracery of the trees, the undulations of the Heath.

She turned to look at him and her face was laughing. It was a long time since Norman had laughed.

“Just anywhere.”

From her expression he guessed that the flat was sold. He could always tell. She had fallen in love with it and he with her. It was that simple.

He showed her the three bedrooms, admitting the inadequate size of two of them – which she said would be all right for her boys – the out-of-date work-tops in the kitchen which Norman bemoaned as if he personally were responsible for their design. He agreed that the situation of the dining-room was ridiculous and apologised, looking at her band-box appearance, for the runnel of rust on the bath which had not, he confessed with embarrassment, been used for some time.

Back in the hallway she made him an offer for the flat and Norman explained that the owner was abroad and would not be back for a few days.

“Meanwhile, perhaps your husband…” He wanted to see her again. “If you would like to make another appointment.”

With half-closed eyes she was looking down the corridor. “I’d like to bring my decorator. The place needs gutting.”

Norman suggested a time the following day.

“Great.” She turned her face to him. “Fortunately I can see the potential. You couldn’t sell an igloo to an Eskimo!”

Norman knew it was true. It had been true before his mother’s death. Now it was more so.

“You need to adopt a more positive approach. Be more assertive. I’ll bring you a book.” She held out her hand.

“See you tomorrow.” Had she not moved away he would not have been able to let it go.

“And just for the record,” she turned at the door. “There is no Mr Caplan.”

Later he found out that she was divorced. It was like a dream. The boys were called Hilton and Milton aged eight and six. One played the cello, one the violin. They came to see the empty flat, hurtling up and down the corridors, their feet echoing on the bare boards. Their mother – she did not look old enough – dressed next time in a yellow dress with a pleated skirt, bringing the summer into the empty flat – brought Norman a paperback as she had promised. It would teach him how to be more confident in his job, in his life. He was too old a dog, he told her, to learn new tricks. She berated him for his self-defeating attitude. He took the book home and read it at night in bed. In every page he recognised himself; in his relationship with his late mother, letting her trample on him; his subservience at work, where he had never progressed to the partnership he had envisaged; his castigation of himself for every defect of each property he showed; his habit of agreeing with his clients when they were patently wrong. It was as if a door had opened, a mirror held up to the middle-aged Norman he had never before confronted. Tentatively, he tried, on Mr Monty, what he had learned at night beneath the covers. It was his dinner night with Aunt Kitty. She was making the stuffed cabbage leaves which she knew he liked. A client, leaving next day for Bahrain, had wanted urgently to view a house. In the office the typewriters were covered. They were packing up, going home.

“Give it to Norman,” Mr Stewart said automatically, looking at the gold watch beneath his white cuff. He had tickets for the theatre.

“Norman will do it,” Mr Bluestone said to Mr Pearl.

Mr Monty put the details of the house on Norman’s desk. As usual he was in a hurry to see his girl friend before he went home to his wife in Potters Bar.

It was six-thirty. Norman, his viscera dissolving, looked pointedly at his watch, which was neither gold like Mr Stewart’s, nor digital like Mr Pearl’s. They took advantage of him. Of that there was no doubt. He had been only vaguely aware of it before he’d read the book which Sandra had given him. He closed his eyes and visualised the chapter: ‘Working Late’. When he opened them Mr Monty was waiting.

“I can’t manage it,” Norman said in a voice which seemed not to belong to him.

Mr Monty stared. Mr Bluestone and Mr Pearl turned round in their chairs. It was as if a strange presence had entered the office.

Norman swallowed. “I have a dinner engagement…” He hoped they would think it was a smart restaurant, a beautiful girl, and avoided the mention of his Aunt Kitty. “…I’m awfully sorry.” He stood up as resolutely as he was able on his rubber legs. “But I really have to go.”

He wasn’t sure how he had managed to get to the door, out of it, along the street. He stopped in front of a shop, looked unseeingly at the underwear in the window. He had to reassure himself that he was more than forty years old. When he had recovered he could not hear his feet on the pavement. With every step his silent voice said: ‘I did it. I did it.’ He could not wait to tell Sandra.

When he entered the office the next morning he held his head high. He had ironed the shirt which had dripped dry all night over the bath. Mrs Treadwell the receptionist looked at him. The word had clearly got round. He detected a change of attitude when she handed him the typed details of a new property. A strange and exciting world was opening up like a flower before him.

Because of Sandra.

She had bought the flat and taken him under her wing. He could not for the life of him understand why. She involved him in every aspect of its transformation, asking for his approval of every knob and knocker, his opinion on shades of broadloom and snippets of silk. They walked on the Heath with Milton and Hilton where Norman was surprised that Sandra didn’t stumble in her high heels. Sometimes she drove him in her smart coupé on which he thought he would drown in her proximity, her perfume, the sound of her voice. Her movements, delicate but strong, had entered his being and threatened to shatter his rib cage. It was as if he had had no life before. His mother, Della, faded into the unremembered background. He was like a man possessed, a wild thing. At work he had become a giant, a force to be reckoned with. He no longer bothered to care, to cringe, to bow beneath the menial tasks with which they overwhelmed him, for fear they would replace him with a brighter, younger man. His commissions, week by week, increased, keeping pace with his new-found confidence. It was self perpetuating. Accompanied by Sandra, Norman had bought new suits, new shirts, new ties. She took him to shops he had not dared to enter, to have his hair cut at a salon whose name was a household word. His improved appearance – Sandra declared him handsome – had given Norman a new pride, a self esteem, which he had lacked but never felt the need of. Impressing himself he impressed his clients. They treated him with respect instead of as the ‘boy’ from the office. At Bluestone and Blatt they watched the metamorphosis with caution. He did not think it coincidental that they took on a school leaver for the chores, began to address him with deference.

There were other things. Sandra took him to the theatre to see plays for which he would not have dreamed of booking, asking for his opinion, which previously he would have been too self-effacing to give; to see paintings in galleries he’d not considered for the Normans of the world; to concerts where monumental music elicited unexpected responses in his soul. It was as if Norman had died and a new Norman risen from the ashes. There seemed no end to the transfiguration Sandra had brought about. She told him she had done nothing. Merely released his true self. He did not believe it. Was a slave at her feet. Once in a restaurant he had been served with steak which had bled beneath his knife, although he had asked for it well cooked. Sandra had told him to send it back. “It doesn’t matter,” Norman said. Looking into the laughing eyes, now soberly appraising him, Norman knew that it did. His heart in his boots, he called the waiter who saw only a customer within his rights. Norman explained gently but firmly, as he had learned, that what he had been given was not what had been ordered. Apologising, the waiter took his plate away. Norman was sweating. He found his reward in Sandra’s eyes. Gradually it became easy. He expressed his anger when it was appropriate, declared his interest, stood up firmly for his rights. He was like a coil with the spring released, the possibilities were infinite. He was astonished how good it felt to have others respond to him attentively, day to day encounters he had not dreamed possible, to find situations, from which at one time he would have shrunk, actually going his way.

For all this he had to thank Sandra and paradoxically his relationship with her was the only factor in his new life which he did not find satisfactory.

She was friendly enough. That was the trouble. He wanted more than friendship. Wearing his new, cashmere sports jacket, he watched her at the top of a ladder as she arabesqued to measure windows, or busy with swatches of material on the floor, and thought that he had never seen anything in his life more beautiful than the graceful sight of her and mastered an urge to grasp the silken ankle, to run his hand up Sandra’s shapely leg, to take her in his arms and make wild passionate love to her. He waited for a sign. That she cared for him. That he meant more to her than a pupil she had trained to assert himself, to realise his potential. What was the use of his changed behaviour, his new-found attitudes, if they could not bring him the object of his sleeping and waking desire. Once Sandra’s foot had found a pot-hole on the Heath. Norman had put out an arm to steady her and thought that there must be a burn where her skin had touched his. She had thanked him, laughing, and run ahead after Hilton and Milton, leaving him unable to move, as if his entire body would be consumed.

They met only at the new flat which was rapidly nearing completion. Because of Milton and Hilton, he guessed, Sandra never asked him to her rented house. Bit by bit, Norman had pieced together the marriage to Arnold Caplan. He could not understand how any man, when he had this treasure of a wife, this honey-coloured rose, could lust after other women, needing to possess them all. The infidelities had been numberless – his secretaries, casual encounters on planes and trains, a succession of mistresses – the divorce uncontested. He had been generous with Sandra whose parents were dead and who had money of her own. She had come to England, where she had friends, to start a new life. Norman was puzzled. She seemed to like him, wanting to occupy more and more of his time, but only her perfume, with which he was familiar and which permeated his dreams, embraced him. He guessed that she looked on him as a brother, a new toy. He saw her as a gift-horse sprung from some South African heaven and – terrified less it bolted – he was careful not to look it too closely in the mouth.

When he’d picked up Aunt Kitty’s postcard from the mat, he had hoped it was from Sandra, who had taken the boys to Capetown to see their father.

He stared, disappointed, at the pouting blue fishes, the other-world creatures, that swam in the Gulf of Eilat.