Monday Lunch in Fairyland and Other Stories Read online

  Loaf spent more time than he used to in the hills. There, he was alone with his picture of Gracie lying back in the barn, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. She’d done something to him that night, Gracie had: just to think of her he trembled.

  He trembled and bashed at the bushes with his stick. Restless, up in the hills, he’d bash till the butterflies flew out, pretty butterflies not half as pretty as Gracie, Gracie who’d done something to him that night damn her lovely mouth and breasts and eyes. Restless, bashing butterflies, he knew he’d not resist her when she returned. Mother and Pa’d do their nuts, send him away, next time. Still, he knew what he had to do. Restless, bashing butterflies . . . He’d wait.

  Consequences

  Professor Gerald Bravington met Leonora Thorne on the 8.15 from Pewsey to Paddington. He noted with pleasure that by some chance, for a Tuesday, the train was not crowded. The professor chose the compartment she alone occupied. He sat by the window, opposite her, back to the engine: his favourite seat, when he could get it. He observed that Miss Thorne, as he later discovered was her name, wore a red coat and was filling in the Times crossword with considerable speed.

  It was a fine morning, but condensation on the window obscured the view. The professor wiped his hand across it, making a wide ribbon through which he peered at the familiar landscape. After a while Miss Thorne, who had been clicking her pencil against her teeth, said:

  ‘ “Our sincerest something with some pain is fraught”. Do you know what?’

  The professor drew his eyes from the fields to her face. She had good teeth, white and even.

  ‘Laughter,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you. That’s it. I can never do the quotes.’

  ‘They’re all I can ever manage,’ the professor answered, who was not a crossword puzzle man.

  There were papers in his case that he should attend to: he had planned to read once more through his notes on Carlyle, in the hopes that he would not have to refer to them on the platform.

  ‘If it wasn’t so heavy I’d bring the Oxford Book of Quotations with me,’ said Miss Thorne. ‘If it wasn’t for the quotes I’d get it done most days by Hungerford. My father, before he retired, always managed to do it between Newbury and Reading.’

  She folded the paper and put it on the seat beside her. Her eyes were restless, grey. They turned down at the corners, matching the slant of her mouth. The professor put a hand on his briefcase, making to open it.

  ‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere recently?’ she asked, frowning. ‘On television or something?’

  ‘Could have done,’ said the professor. ‘I show my face from time to time.’ He disliked being recognised, and thought attempts at conversation too bold, so early in the morning. Women’s Liberation had killed the art of the subtle approach.

  ‘Thought so. Do you live down here?’

  The professor considered not answering her question. It was no business of hers where he lived, and probably of no interest. Yes, he did live down here, in a seedy rented cottage on the banks of the Kennet and Avon canal. Damp all year round: no heating, unreliable light. Three thousand books and a broken sofa. A willow warbler outside the kitchen window, milk in bottles left to clot, used tea bags cluttering up the sink. It had all got on top of him, somehow, since Mrs Jenkins had given up her weekly bicycle ride across the fields to help him out. Yes, he lived there, if you could call it living: reading, writing, eating out of tins, swallowing pills to induce a few hours of fretful sleep.

  ‘I do,’ he said eventually, eyes back out of the window. He heard her cross her legs, the rasp of her tights.

  ‘Sorry to have interrupted your concentration, but I knew you’d know your Shelley.’

  Was that sarcasm in her voice? Or merely the impatience of a woman used to men reacting to her swiftly? In any case, her guess might easily have been wrong. She was taking a silly line.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I’m little acquainted with Shelley, as a matter of fact. Not very fond of him. I learnt The Skylark, at school. It was drummed into us along with Ode to the West Wind.’

  But Miss Thorne’s head was bent over a book now. Huffy. She shrugged, but said no more. The professor had offended her, he supposed. In the old days, when he was more concerned about doing right by women, he was always offending them. He possessed no talents to charm them; that had always been his problem. He had felt uncommonly – quite disturbingly – inclined towards one or two of them in the past (the names Patricia and Teresa came briefly to mind), but the partial independence he had always insisted upon had not satisfied them. They required more than he had been prepared to give – his entire being, his every private reflection, a whole mass of promises concerning love and fidelity in the future. So far he had never felt all that was worth bargaining for, and so, some twenty years ago, the professor had abandoned the search for an ideal woman with whom to share his life. He decided that no such thing existed. Those who thought they had found perfection fooled themselves, as the years would show.

  Out of the running, the professor was a happier man. Disillusion no longer disturbed him. The occasional woman who attempted to glut her own loneliness, desirousness, whatever, upon him, he could treat with impressive indifference: Madam, he would say, don’t waste your time. I have no sympathy, no compassion. Go elsewhere. And at the ice in his voice they would give up, knowing he meant what he said. Now, the only women he depended upon were those he paid to ease the domestic side of his life. He missed Mrs Jenkins because without her the rubble of the cottage had become almost unbearable. When he could summon the energy he would have to try to lure some other woman from the village, by means of extravagant wages, to replace her. The professor sighed at the thought.

  The train pulled into Paddington. He saw that the uncovered ends of the platforms were wet, and wondered at what moment of the journey the skies had changed without his noticing. Foreboding gripped him. He hated London rain.

  ‘Taxi,’ he said out loud, standing up.

  ‘Taxi,’ said Miss Thorne. ‘I never take the tube, I’m afraid. I can’t bear it.’ She spoke vehemently, as if the tube was someone who had offended her in the past.

  They walked together up the platform, stood side by side in the queue. A silent wait for ten minutes. It was always like this on rainy days. For practical reasons the professor asked Miss Thorne where she was going: to share a cab would at least halve the wait for one of them. Ludgate Circus was her destination.

  ‘Well, how extraordinary,’ remarked the professor, ‘for I myself am bound for the City. Therefore it would seem sensible to share . . .’ Miss Thorne nodded without interest.

  In truth, the professor was going to Baker Street, the opposite direction. But there was plenty of time. If he had made his way directly to the lecture hall he would have had to spend a dull hour in the canteen. Half an hour in a traffic jam with this strange red lady seemed preferable. Nonetheless the professor felt himself blush at his own lie. A man much concerned with the truth, to hear himself lie with such easy spontaneity was disturbing. He turned away to concentrate hard on an advertisement for hair oil that blared across the murky walls of the station. Goethe was right: ‘Man thinks he directs his life, leads himself: but his innermost being is irresistibly drawn in the direction of his destiny.’ Destiny had decreed that he and Miss Thorne should share a taxi. Therefore the lie was forgivable – indeed, imperative.

  At last it was their turn. They sat side by side on the beige leather seat, encompassed in the stuffy air that smelt of old cigars. The professor’s briefcase lay between them. Miss Thorne’s gloved fingers played scales on her navy leather bag. She wore shoes of matching blue decorated with gold chains. Good ankles.

  ‘Wish I could remember where it was I saw you,’ she said, turning to look at him. ‘Some programme about education, could it have been?’ Her eyes held such enquiry that the professor felt afraid.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I’m asked from time to time for my opinion upon diverse subjects, and f
ind myself accepting with little relish.’ What he had meant to say was that he did a bit of television in order to pay the bills. But the red lady’s musky scent, which the professor had not noticed in the train, had stifled the cigar fumes and rampaged through his senses in a curious fashion. He noticed that the buildings of London, this morning, seemed to be made of coarse grain, shifting as if in a wind. Through the rain-pearled windows familiar streets were quite distorted so that it was difficult to be sure, on this well-known route, precisely where they were. And it was necessary to hear more of the lady’s voice.

  ‘You do have a funny pompous way of talking, if you don’t mind my saying so,’ she said. ‘Wonderfully old-fashioned.’ She smiled kindly. Extremely kindly, white teeth a-dance among scarlet lips.

  ‘Really? I wasn’t aware . . .’

  ‘I shall look out for you,’ she said, ‘on television.’

  As far as the professor could tell, they were passing the Savoy. It was then he asked her name, and was told Leonora Thorne.

  ‘Beautiful name, Leonora,’ he said, wondering if that, too, sounded pompous.

  ‘Probably helped me more than anything to become an executive secretary,’ she said.

  ‘Is that what you are?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Very impressive.’

  ‘Quite dull. But well paid. In a year’s time I shall stop commuting and stay at home.’

  ‘What will you do at home?’

  ‘Help my father with his orchards. We sell apples and plums.’

  ‘Ah.’ The professor could not imagine her, red-coated, up a tree, basket over her arm. ‘Crossword in the lunch hour, then?’

  ‘I suppose so, or I’ll become a complete cabbage, won’t I?’

  A cabbage among the apples. The professor smiled as the taxi pulled up at the door of a stern building. Miss Thorne opened her bag, fumbled for her purse. The professor touched her gloved hand: he would not hear of it, he said. It was on his way. Miss Thorne looked at him in belief. She got out of the taxi, tossed her hair in the rain. The professor leant out, shook her hand. She thanked him. He said perhaps they would run into each other again one day on the train. Perhaps, she said, and ran to the door. Rain splashed her shining blue shoes. Her red back disappeared quickly, impervious. As the taxi moved away the professor noticed the name on a small brass plate: Benson & Benson Ltd., Engineers. To whom in Benson & Benson was it the happy destiny to have acquired Miss Leonora Thorne, dreaming of her orchards, as executive secretary? Silly thought: but the professor would have given much to swap places with that person this morning.

  As the taxi made its slow way towards Baker Street Professor Bravington found himself thinking about the exceptional white - ness of her teeth. Over a cup of tea in the canteen, guest of several students, he found the chains of her shoes glinting in his mind. On the platform itself he managed to banish Leonora while he concentrated upon Carlyle, and was rewarded by keen applause. But on the train returning to Pewsey – empty compartment very bare without her – she returned to him: the lilt of her voice, the funny way she boasted about her ability to do the crossword. The professor, repeating his earlier gesture, wiped a clear space in the steamed-up window, and watched the rain slant across fleeting trees. He thought about her father’s orchards: apples and plums, she had said.

  Professor Bravington was set upon a course from which he knew there could be no diversions. Exactly when the climax of that course would come he did not know, or care to know. It was a subject on which he would not question himself. He was content merely to let himself drift from day to day, without anticipation, until the right moment became recognisable.

  When he arrived back that raining day from London, a feeling of unusual melancholy hung over him. His bicycle dripped in the station car park, its seat quite sodden. The rain battered into his eyes as he rode, and walking across the field to his cottage the mud seeped into his shoes. He was used to such things. They did not bother him. His mind was normally on bookish matters, too involved to be disturbed by the heaviest rain. But today, detachment from physical discomfort was suddenly not possible. There was no ignoring the wet, the chill, the bleakness of the evening ahead.

  And the cottage itself, he noticed, was particularly desolate. The thatch was black with water. A thick curtain of raindrops fell from the eaves. Inside, the sickly smell of damp. Water dripped from a yellow patch in the kitchen ceiling and overflowed from a saucer the professor had laid on the floor in the morning. The sink was full of dirty plates, gaudy smears of dried egg yolk and baked beans – horrible colours in the gloom. The professor, still in his gloves, lit the kettle. Its instant hissing made a companionable noise, but the tin of tea bags was empty. With some distaste he plucked a damp tea bag from the pile under the plates in the sink, and put it in a mug. Through the window he could see that the solitary white duck, which of late had frequented this stretch of the canal, was huddled in the reeds on the bank. Head under its wing, it lay quite motionless.

  The professor put logs on to the ash in the grate and lit a fire. The small flames had no power to slay the feeling of damp – they barely warmed his feet. He kept his coat on and lay back in the broken armchair, mug of revoltingly weak tea to warm his hands. Later, he ate some dry cream crackers and drank several glasses of whisky.

  He watched himself steering his way down the narrow course he had set, eyes strictly ahead, not glancing in any direction for indications of help. There is no likelihood of rescue if signs of desiring rescue are not given, and the professor was not one for troubling others with his trivial depressions. The apparent futility of his life, he believed, was something that concerned him alone. He had always believed in the protection of one’s friends from oneself. And besides, these days, due to his own apathy, his friends were scarce. They saw him from time to time on television and wrote letters of congratulation on his dazzling articulation and good sense. ‘Saw you in excellent form as ever,’ one of them had written only last week, ‘country life must suit you.’ The professor was grateful, but only required that these few remaining friends should keep their distance. He never invited them to the cottage, and refused invitations so constantly to their London dinner parties that they had long ago given up asking him.

  Professor Bravington played with a small pile of biscuit crumbs on his thigh, dividing and sub-dividing them into patterns. It seemed to him that what had happened today had caused the faintest – indeed an almost imperceptible – hesitation in his journey. Leonora Thorne, her wonderful conventionality shining brightly in train and taxi, had stood like a stranger on the bank and waved a wave of recognition. The gesture was a a little unnerving. The professor desired no recognition on his solitary way. And yet . . . the smugness of her tailored coat, her dreary bag, her matching shoes – they symbolised a gentle pleasure he had ceased to imagine many years ago would exist for him. Perhaps to pause with her for a while, a mild autumn picking fruit in her father’s orchards, would cause no harm. Not an affair, of course. At the thought of the absurd process of shedding clothes only to cling to another body in the dear privacy of his single bed, the professor blew all the crumbs from his thigh on to the floor. Not an affair in that sense: just a rewarding union of minds. (Maybe she would be interested in Carlyle). The temporary cheer of companionship – a drink in the pub, scrambled eggs in here by the fire. (He could clean the place up, somehow). Walks down the towpath. She might like the smell of wild chives in spring, if their association lasted that long.

  The professor would not let her come too close, of course. All she would see of him would be the public man, the humorous intellectual who smiled on television. He would not warn her of his destiny: that would be unfair. All he would ask was her response: smiles and laughter for a while, before he pursued his way.

  For a drunken fantasy, as the professor realised the whole thing was as he stumbled to bed much later that night, the idea had taken a curious hold. It had not faded next morning, as soberly he regarded more rain. An
d a week later it was still vivid, providing him with a new energy. He preoccupied himself with trying to clean the place, though was soon diverted from this hopeless task by renewing acquaintance with old books. Each day he walked far along the towpath, watching swallows swoop to dip their breasts in their own shadows on the water’s surface. He would walk until he was cold and wet and tired, and then have a lukewarm bath in his damp and peeling bathroom, which scarcely warmed him but afforded an illogical pleasure.

  One afternoon, some three weeks after he had met Leonora Thorne, the professor, inspired by a silvery rainless day, decided to be practical. He would buy provisions at the post office, then make his way to the call box.

  For once, he enjoyed the shopping: bought the entire stock of Ambrosia creamed rice, four dozen boxes of matches, hrelighters, tinned pilchards, raspberry jam, sliced bread, sausages, margarine, Pears soap, and a packet of toffee, which he liked to suck on his walks along the towpath. He felt there were other things he should have remembered, but for the time being they escaped his memory. He tied the box of provisions on to the rack behind his bicycle seat, and pushed the heavy machine the few yards to the call box.

  Inside, he gasped for air: vile smells of wet cement floor and stale cigarette smoke. He leant against one glass-paned wall, heart beating jumpily like it used to in the early days of appearances on television. Directory Enquiries gave him the number of Benson & Benson. He made a small pile of ten pence pieces, in case the call should be a long one.

  ‘Benson & Benson, good afternoon.’