Vital Signs Page 9

  Jeanne came in carrying a cup of coffee. She was wearing a pink, quilted housecoat and was barefoot. As she sat down on the end of the bed, she said, “I’ll make you some proper breakfast when you get up.” Sipping the coffee, Peter watched her over Anna’s head. Without make-up and in the morning light, her face was pale and gaunt.

  “David and me go swimming now, eh Mummy?”

  “David and I.”

  “David and I,” said Anna.

  “You certainly do,” said Jeanne.

  The lines seemed deeper drawn than he’d remembered, her eyes more shadowed. As she drew on her cigarette, her cheeks hollowed. He watched the jet of smoke falter, drift, wreathe up the path of sunlight.

  “You’re not paying attention,” said Anna. “I said which way do they go?”

  “Queen on her own colour.”

  She was sitting between Jeanne’s feet. The toes were long and bony, knobbly with corns and calloused skin. He touched his fingers to his lips and lightly pressed her foot. She grinned at him.

  “It’s your turn, Peter,” said Anna.

  He advanced a pawn and said, “Does Jim know I’m here?”

  “Yes. I told him before he left for work.”

  “And?”

  “He urged me to collect rent in advance if you were staying for a week and otherwise to work out a per diem arrangement.”

  “Per diem, eh?”

  “He’s an educated man,” said Jeanne.

  “Per ardua ad astra,” said Peter.

  “Do you want that move again?” said Anna.

  Peter studied the board and said, “Why? What’s wrong with it?”

  “Oh, there’s nothing wrong with it,” said Anna. “You’re sure you don’t want it back?”

  “Go on! Make your move.”

  “Got it!” shouted Anna, as she took his queen.

  “Oh, that was stupid of me!” said Peter.

  “I gave you a chance,” crowed Anna.

  “Oh, it’s hopeless,” said Peter.

  “Give in?”

  “Well, I’ll have to, won’t I?”

  “I’ve won, I’ve won,” she chanted as she knocked over all the men and started to scoop them into the box.

  “Listen, poppet,” said Jeanne. “You can go and play with Marion for a while if you like. But you have to come home at twelve o’clock. All right?”

  “Okay,” said Anna.

  “Don’t say ‘okay,’” said Jeanne. “Speak properly.”

  Anna scrambled off the bed and started for the door.

  “Come back and take the chess game downstairs. Put it in the cupboard. And what are you going to ask Mrs. Williams?”

  “When it’s twelve o’clock.”

  They listened to the rattles and thuds as she ran and jumped her way down the three flights of stairs. There was a silence and then the massive slam of the front door. They heard the wire basket underneath the letterbox fall off and skitter across the tiles in the hall. Jeanne stood up and watched her from the window as she pushed open the Williams’ front gate and climbed the steps to the front door.

  As she turned away, Jeanne unbuttoned the pink housecoat. Under it she was wearing a black nightdress. Peter moved over to the far side of the bed and pulled back the blankets. He felt her length slide down beside him.

  “Your feet are cold,” he said.

  “Give me some pillow,” she said.

  He worked his arm under her shoulder.

  “God! You stink,” she said.

  “Take this thing off.”

  “You don’t want to look at me,” said Jeanne.

  “Yes. Yes, of course I do.”

  * * *

  jeanne’s voice shouting something. Peter opened the bedroom door.

  “What?”

  “Hurry up! Your breakfast’s nearly ready!”

  “Coming!” he called.

  He put on his last clean shirt and started downstairs past the silent rooms. On the second floor a bedroom door was standing open and he stopped on the threshold looking in. Two iron bedsteads, one covered by a blue mattress. A black-painted chest of drawers. Under the window stood an old leather-topped table and a rush-bottom chair. The gas fire had gleaming new white mantles. On the bare white walls were tabs of yellowed Scotch tape.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and stared towards the window. Only a few weeks ago the walls had been covered with photographs and drawings of badgers. The tabletop had been littered with glazed pillboxes full of badger dung, glass-topped boxes of tiny bones, mounting pins, probes, scalpels, teeth, magnifying glasses, a badger skull, withered plants, and dried bluebell bulbs. And John Neil sitting oblivious of noise or intrusions, one hand playing in his beard, the other listing food types in an exercise book.

  “Peter! Do I have to beg you!”

  The sunshine through the dusty window was warm on his bare feet. He worked his toes into the green carpet and then got up and stood looking out. Most of the house across the road was hidden behind the leaves and branches of a sweet chestnut tree. He followed the slant of the purple slates up to the high point of the roof which was crowned by a golden weathervane. He remembered that afternoon of another summer when Jeanne had suddenly come into their room with an enamel bowl of ice and four bottles of Chablis and, as the wine went down, they had dragged his bed in front of the window and the three of them had fired at the weathervane all afternoon with Nick’s air-rifle until the ice melted and the wine was gone and they had fallen asleep.

  But he had enjoyed the winters more, lying on his bed for hours and days, reading, the counterpane grey with cigarette ash, feeding shillings into the meter for the gas fire, reading and reading until his head felt light and he resented the footsteps on the stairs, Nick and the rush of colder air as the door opened, and the sudden descent into the cluttered reality of the room.

  And then dinner in the warm basement kitchen, often followed, when Jim was away, by wild darts tournaments which Jeanne organized to see who would do the washing-up, games which always seemed to swell and grow until they turned into events. The huge kitchen would become crowded with friends and acquaintances who brought beer and pork pies and chips and at ten thirty, when the pubs closed, the doorbell would ring to reveal old Fred Johnson from the Three Feathers with his entire darts team crowding up the front steps behind him, bottles clinking in the dark.

  He stopped in the hall, the brown tiles cold on his bare feet, and fixed the wire basket under the letterbox again. He went down the stairs into the basement. As he walked into the kitchen, Jeanne was throwing darts into a new board. She was dressed now, wearing jeans, suede boots, and a sweater.

  “Bloody rude,” she said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “In the pan, there.”

  “When did you get the new board?”

  “I got the new board two weeks ago in exchange for five hundred Red Dragon coupons.”

  Peter looked at her for a moment and then said, “You’re still smoking those bloody things, are you?”

  She shrugged and kept throwing for the double seven. Peter poured coffee from the pot on the stove and lit the gas under the frying pan to reheat the eggs and bacon. He slid onto the bench behind the long table.

  The wall facing him was bright orange. The others were daubed with designs, foot and handprints, graffiti. They were the result of one of Jeanne’s parties. Jim had complained at first but as the rawness of the colour had faded into the plaster nothing more had been said.

  Jeanne’s face was set, her lips a straight line. The darts thudded into the board. Peter watched her as he drank the coffee. He remembered the loud click of the key in her bedroom door; the white anger of her face the next morning as she ripped off the crumpled sheets.

  There had been a barrel of beer in the sitting room on the ground
floor and everyone brought draught port in milk bottles from the Excise Man. There had been dancing. Nick had been red-eyed and belligerent and had called a medical student a trainee plumber. The medical student had kept on saying he wasn’t a plumber because he had to take an Oath. A very important Oath. Jeanne had ordered an art-school student thrown out for vomiting in a wardrobe. Then they’d thrown the medical student out for refusing to stop saying that he’d got to take an Oath. Jim beamed on everyone and reminisced about Biggin Hill and The Few and then cried and refused to go to bed until he’d made everyone promise to give their all if the call came.

  The sitting room had emptied by about three thirty. A boy from the art school was asleep on the floor with a cushion from an armchair under his head. The ashtrays were heaped and spilling over. The air was frowsty. Bottles, glasses, and froth-ringed beer mugs stood on the sideboard, carpet, table, bureau, and mantelpiece. Drop after drop of beer from the leaking spigot plipped into an enamel bowl set underneath.

  Jeanne and he had strolled through silent streets to Uplands Park. They had walked beyond the range of the glistening street lamps out onto the dark expanse of grass. Jeanne had picked an armful of lilac branches. As they were bending to catch the slight fragrance of the flowers, they had suddenly stopped, staring at the paleness of each other’s face in the night.

  She had given him the flowers to carry and he remembered the coldness of the drops of dew on his face and shirt. Then, holding hands, they had paddled in the icy grass until, holding onto his shoulder and hopping about on one leg, she’d said, “Hey, my feet have gone all white and crinkly.”

  When they returned, the house was dark and silent. He remembered they had giggled and said “Shsssh!” to each other as they had crossed the dark hall and tiptoed down into the kitchen.

  He had been talking about Spain. She had made bacon sandwiches and coffee laced with brandy. He remembered pouring HP Sauce onto his sandwich; the gleam of the brown sauce as it curled out of the bottle.

  He performed a dazzling faena of rhythmic naturels, veronicas, and audacious mariposas, using a tablecoth for a cape, until he tripped on it and hurt his leg on the ironing board.

  He remembered her hands under his arms helping him up and the loud click of the key in her bedroom door.

  When he awoke, she wasn’t there. The curtains were drawn over the small window and the room was gloomy. He raised himself on his elbows and the blankets slid off onto the floor. As he bent out of the bed to pull them back, pain slopped through his head. He lay back and moved his head carefully on the pillow trying to find a cool place. He heard sounds from the kitchen; the clash of crockery, the kettle banging down on the stove. She had come in with two mugs of coffee.

  “Why don’t you make the bed properly?” he had said.

  She had stood staring at him.

  “All the blankets keep falling off.”

  “A gentleman’s first words are usually, ‘Thank you,’ or at least, ‘Good morning.’”

  “Umm?”

  “You arrogant, bad-mannered little snot! The bed isn’t made because I happen to like it that way. And it happens to be my bed. And because you happen to be in it doesn’t give you any rights over it. Or over me.”

  She banged the mugs down on the dressing table so hard that coffee slopped over the sides.

  “Is that clear?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t. . . .”

  She grabbed at the blankets and jerked them onto the floor.

  “Get up!”

  She yanked off the crumpled sheets.

  He’d stood naked and watched her as she made the bed. It seemed to take her only seconds. “Is this the sort of thing you mean?” she said as her hands twitched at the sheets, drawing them taut, binding them with hospital corners. “I did this every day,” she said, banging and shaking the pillows until they lay plump and creaseless. “Every day for twelve months.” She worked round the mattress, binding in the blankets. “And on every single one of those days I didn’t get my breakfast until the nice lady had inspected my handiwork.”

  She snatched her purse from the dressing table and took out a half-crown.

  “Look, Jeanne. . . .”

  “Don’t speak to me,” she said. “I don’t want a conversation with you.”

  Facing him across the bed, she silently held the coin up to his eye level and then dropped it. It fell onto the centre of the bed. The blankets quivered.

  “She always used to drop her whistle.”

  She glared at him, her housecoat hanging open.

  “So now, my charming young friend, I have it the way I want it.”

  “Jeanne. . . .”

  “I am now going to have my breakfast.”

  “Really, Jeanne. . . .”

  “And another thing. I spent my days working in the laundry, so you needn’t think you’re going to get clean shirts out of this!”

  The door had slammed and then bounced open again.

  The monotonous thud of the darts in the board irritated him. There were muddy patches on the orange wall near the ceiling. The original paint seemed to be bleeding through. Possibly it was just dampness. He tried to remember what colour the wall had been before; whatever it had been, it was better than orange.

  “Jeanne?” he said.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry I was a long time.”

  “It’s your breakfast, not mine.”

  “Well, I’m sorry if I was rude. I was in John’s old room.”

  She planked a last dart into the board and then scooped out the eggs and bacon onto a plate. She put it in front of him and sat down.

  “Have you heard from Nick yet?” she said.

  “No, not yet.”

  “The rotten sod. Remember he said he’d write to tell us when he’d been in his first drugstore?”

  “Jeanne?”

  “Umm?”

  “I was thinking.”

  “What?”

  “I could tell Jim that he could give me a room to myself for the same price as a double one because I’m not a student now and so I’d be here—paying rent—while the others were on vacation.”

  “Don’t make me laugh!” she said.

  “Well, it’s worth trying.”

  “It isn’t. You ought to know him better by now—the nauseating little prick!”

  “What’s he done now?”

  “Were you still here when he beat David for wetting the bed?”

  “Yes, that was just before I left.”

  “It’s a good job the poor kid’s away from him for the rest of the summer. And, by the way, I learned that James has got his name down for some ghastly public school. But do you know what he said to me? ‘It isn’t manly for a boy of nine to wet his bed.’”

  “Well, what’s that got to do with asking about the room?”

  “No. I was going to tell you about what happened last week. I was in bed reading—it was about eleven thirty—and there was a knock at the door.

  Who is it?

  It is I—Jim.”

  “He didn’t really say that?”

  “Don’t interrupt. So I went to the door and there he was in his pyjamas—all buttons done up. Hair neatly brushed. Bulgy eyes.”

  She did her Jim-face.

  “Did he have an RAF badge on his pyjamas?”

  “I think David’s unwell he says and I wondered if I could prevail upon you to cast a motherly eye. . . ? So we went upstairs to David’s room. You know, there were little wisps of pubicy hair sticking out of the collar of his pyjamas—he must have hair all over his back. Isn’t that disgusting! Anyway, David was fine. Just a bit restless so I gave him an aspirin and puffed the pillows up. And while I was bending over the bed, he was bending over me. You’ll be all right, old chap. Right as rain. Just snuggle down and let Jeanne tuck y
ou in. And he was pressing himself against me so that I could feel his thing. Well, we went out on the landing and he said It’s extremely decent of you to be so kind with the little chap, Jeanne. Needs a woman’s touch. Don’t know how we’d get along without you. Then his eyes started going bulgy again. It’s a lonely task for a widower he says. Lonely. Very lonely. So I gabbled something about all of us being lonely at times and whipped off downstairs and locked the door.”

  “Poor old Jim,” said Peter. “You know he’s always fancied you. I don’t know what you’re going on about.”

  “Oh, that doesn’t bother me,” said Jeanne. “No. It’s not that. It’s what he says the next day—the snivelling little crapper. Oh, Jeanne. I’ve been forced to give some consideration to the economics of the house and I’m going to find it necessary to make an adjustment to your allowance. Pay, he means, of course. Your duties are far less onerous while the students are on the long vac and I really think it not unreasonable. Etcetera. Etcetera. What do you think of that?”

  “Did he pay you less?”

  “Don’t be soft,” she said. “But the nastiness of it, eh? Can’t get his end away so he turns spiteful.”

  She stopped suddenly and pointed at the small window above the sink which was level with the grass of the front lawn. She mouthed something at him. She drew off one boot and suddenly hurled it through the open window.

  “Tomcat,” she said. “Always comes and pisses on the windowsill and taints the butter. No. It’s the attitude, the spirit of the man that gets up my nose. And that’s the man who’s going to let you have a room cheap. Especially you.”

  The front door slammed and they heard Anna clattering down the basement stairs.

  “Fancy being hairy all over!” said Jeanne. “He must look like King Kong when he’s naked.”

  “King Kong! King Kong!” shouted Anna.

  “You bad girl!” cried Jeanne. “You’ve been changing clothes with Marion again. You just go straight back and get your own dress and shoes.”