South of the Lights Read online

  ‘Vegetables coming on all right, are they?’

  ‘Lovely, just as ever.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘You keeping all right? And the wife?’

  ‘Very nicely, thanks.’ Henry put a hand on the curly top of the iron gate. Mackay backed away a pace, fear of entry by his friend clear on his face.

  ‘Ah, Evans, you were just passing by, then?’

  ‘Just passing. I’ll be on my way. Though I was wondering . . .’ The sky seemed darker, the wind pecked about his trousers. But it was Mackay who noticed the rain first. Alert of hearing, he heard a drop fall behind him.

  ‘There, I knew we’d have another shower.’

  ‘We could do with a drop. Do you ever sell your stuff, Mackay? Privately, I mean.’

  ‘Take a load to the market couple of times a week.’

  ‘Privately, though? Cauliflowers in particular, I mean. I was referring to cauliflowers in particular.’

  ‘Cauliflowers in particular?’ Mackay scratched the back of his neck. Rain was splattering down on the cement quite fast by now. ‘Can’t say I’ve ever really thought about it.’

  Henry removed his hand from the gate. The gesture caused Mackay some relief: he folded his arms to think, unaware of the increasing damp of his shirt. Henry was grateful for Mackay’s apparent oblivion to so heavy a shower. If he hurried away now there would be no chance to settle the matter.

  ‘It’s like this, Mackay.’ He heard a note of confidence in his own voice. ‘Some time soon, in the near future, like, there might be an emergency situation. Not to trouble you with details, I might find myself in a position when I should like to drive here, no notice, and buy a couple of cauliflowers off of you. How would that strike you?’

  Mackay shrugged.

  ‘Easy. Why not? You’ll always find me out the back.’

  ‘But prize cauliflowers, Mackay. I’d want a couple of the prize jobs. You know, make a person sit up when they saw them.’

  Sudden comprehension swarmed over Mackay’s wet face. He narrowed his eyes, making rain fall faster down his cheeks. He licked some of it away with his tongue.

  ‘Would I be right in thinking you’d want them for someone in hospital?’

  Henry paused only an instant.

  ‘That sort of thing. For someone in hospital, in a manner of speaking, yes.’

  ‘I took tons of green stuff up to my mother when she was dying in the Royal, you know. She said take away your blooming gladioli, Jack, she said: you can keep your blooming flowers. What I want is nice spring greens.’

  ‘That’s why I want the cauliflowers.’

  ‘I never took her caulis, come to think of it.’

  Henry felt the rain pouring down his neck.

  ‘Would that be all right, then, Mackay – Jack? If I just came sudden like and got a couple of cauliflowers?’

  ‘Dare say. Though I couldn’t promise you the real prize stuff, could I? The second best would have to do you. Don’t suppose many people could tell it was second best. Lovely heads.’

  ‘Wonderful, how many prizes you get, you know, Jack.’ His mission happily accomplished, Henry felt it easy to be complimentary. Mackay shrugged again.

  ‘Got a few in my time.’

  ‘Well, I’d best be getting back. The rain. You’ll be expecting me when you see me, then?’

  Mackay nodded.

  ‘Mind, you’ll have to twist their arms up at the hospital kitchens,’ he said. ‘They’re devils about cooking brought-in greens.’

  Henry turned his face into the slant of the shower, head held high. The rain soaked his feet and splashed his trousers, but he had no care. If the sparkling hedges had been covered in diamonds he could not have felt more excitement: never had he imagined his little transaction could have been so easy. He felt a warmth of gratitude to Mackay and all such uncurious men in the world, men with an instinct for making things easy. Now all he had to do was wait. Soon, the time would come. There he’d be, the two heads of cauliflowers in his hands, their pale crumbly flowers bursting from their leaves, huge, huge. The Leopard would be amazed.

  The Leopard. His dear Leopard. There were tears among the rain in his eyes.

  Henry’s blood pumped fast with the joy of having achieved something that was linked with the woman who consumed his thoughts. The fact that she was unaware not only of his existence, but also of the surprise he was preparing for her, made no difference to his elation. He would feed off the pleasure for weeks, if necessary, trying to be patient, keeping a constant watch on the Star. He would be protected from the irritations of every-day life by his private anticipation. In such high spirits, even Rosie’s concern about his wet condition, her chivvying about with hot drinks and dry clothes, could not touch him. The success of his cauliflower plan had brought the Leopard wonderfully close. No one would guess, from looking at him, he was alone with her in his heart.

  It was still raining at nine that night when Evans drove along the same road towards Brenda’s flat. The room in Wroughton House had been ready for a week now. For some reason which he could not decipher, even to himself, he had preserved the news all this time. Tonight, irritated by his father’s sniffing by the fire, Evans had on impulse decided to get out of the house, and tell Brenda. It was not one of their regular nights. She would not be expecting him – she would be washing her hair, probably, having one of her gossipy evenings with Lark. Still, armed as he was with good news, Evans imagined he would be welcome.

  Lark answered the door. Surprise clouded her small face. Brenda was out, she said. Just gone down to the Air Base for a drink. Some party, she thought it was; why didn’t he come in and wait? Brenda was bound not to be late.

  Evans followed Lark into the sitting-room. The remains of a solitary supper lay on the table: half a piece of burnt toast, a jar of salmon fish paste, a bottle of tomato ketchup. Lark switched on the gas fire. The room was always dank.

  ‘So who’s she gone with?’ Evans managed to sit himself quite jovially in the chair by the fire.

  ‘That I don’t know exactly,’ said Lark, carefully. ‘Some bloke she met somewhere, I think. Quite harmless.’ She glanced at Evans’s face. ‘Like a gin?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’ve eaten, but I could get you something.’

  ‘No thanks, just a drink. She never mentioned this bloke to me.’

  ‘No, well, she probably didn’t think it important. Some men aren’t important, are they, after all? Not worth mentioning, really.’ Lark gave a small laugh, handed Evans a glass half full of neat gin.

  ‘You’ve given me a whopper, Lark.’

  ‘Go on. Drink it slowly.’

  Evans took a gulp of the drink.

  ‘We are engaged, you know,’ he said, ‘Brenda and me.’

  ‘Well, that’s very old news.’ Lark smiled kindly.

  ‘And would you consider, seeing as we’re engaged – would you consider, in the circumstances, it’s right that my fiancée should go gallivanting off to some party at the Air Base with another bloke, without so much as a word to me?’

  ‘Well,’ said Lark, ‘depends.’

  ‘Depends on what?’

  Lark searched her mind for a word Evans had recently used.

  ‘Circumstances,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, circumstances.’ The gas fire’s blue flames were rubbing heat into Evans’s shins. For a moment he experienced the dream-like feeling of running fast and yet not moving from the same spot: help from Lark seemed a long way off. ‘In which circumstances would all this be correct?’ he asked.

  ‘Well,’ said Lark, pouring herself a large measure of gin to give herself time, ‘I think if you’ve been engaged to someone for a long time, like you and Brenda, and you trust each other, like you two do – well, then, there’s no harm in it, is there? I mean going to a dance with someone else will only make her appreciate you much more. Don’t you think?’

  Evans looked at her. There was no doubt in her eyes.

  ‘I don�
�t know,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I’m being ungenerous.’

  ‘I think perhaps you are. A bit, anyway.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have minded if she had told me. I would have understood, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Oh, Evans, stop worrying. It’s nothing to worry about, honestly. She’ll explain all right. She’ll be back soon. You just wait here by the fire. But if you don’t mind –’ she went to the door ‘– I’ll get back to my room. I was just in the middle of doing my nails.’ She held up a hand. Three nails were scarlet, two were still unpainted.

  ‘Who are you tarting yourself up for, then?’ Lark liked to be teased.

  ‘Just keeping my hands nice. You never know what to expect round the next corner, do you?’

  ‘You’re a funny girl, Lark.’

  ‘You keep helping yourself to gin. It silvers the mind, you know.’ She shut the door behind her.

  Evans drank the first glass slowly. It was not a taste he liked, but it did indeed silver the mind. He listened happily enough to the small wheeze of the gas fire, and let his eyes curl about the twisted flames. He thought of silver birches, for some reason, their leaves up-brushed by the wind. He thought of his collection of sixpences: as a child, he had dropped them in the snow. They had made small glinting holes, like the beginnings of a thaw. Picking them up, the cold had bitten into his fingers, making them clumsy as he tried to stuff them back into the jar. Perhaps Lark was right, he thought, and there was no need to worry. In all this time Brenda had not betrayed him. Why should she now? Probably, as Lark said, she was just enjoying the dancing. There’d be nothing funny, no funny business. Brenda would never allow that, would she? But then why had she said nothing? Why hadn’t she said there’s this bloke, Evans, who wants to take me dancing?

  He finished the last of his drink. No one ever wanted just to take a girl dancing these days, did they? Especially a girl like Brenda.

  The realisation broke savagely within Evans. He stood, poured more gin from the bottle on the table, conscious that his head, chest and shoulders were all hurting, a physical pain. Away from the fire, the heat of his legs began to fade: a chill, as if he’d been caught in a sudden wind, lashed over his body. The small, ordinary things in the room, the plain furniture and thin curtains, trembled as if they too were affected by the wind. Evans picked up the piece of burnt toast, ate it. It was bitter on his tongue, but food would steady him, he thought. He would ask Lark if he could help himself to a piece of bread and butter.

  Carrying his drink he left the room, hesitated on the dark landing, then knocked at her door. She called to him to come in. He opened the door, quickly shut it behind him lest the stuffy warmth, which flowed up to him like the corner of a summer afternoon, should escape.

  ‘All this gin,’ he said, ‘could you let me have some bread and butter, Lark?’

  Lark was lying back on her bed in her dressing-gown. Barefoot, her scarlet toe nails plucked at the candlewick bedspread, making it writhe between them. She held her hands above her head, the nails flashing at Evans like a procession of ladybirds.

  ‘Oh, dear, of course,’ she said. ‘Give us a minute and I’ll get it for you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Lark smiled at him.

  ‘I can see you’re not a gin drinker,’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I like it. It makes me feel happy.’ She sat up, swinging her legs on to the wool rug beside the bed. There was a long silence between them. Then Evans said:

  ‘One thing I’ve always meant to ask you, Lark: I’ve never understood about your name. I suppose your Mum said to you one day, when you were a kid, “you sing like a lark”. And it stuck.’

  Lark laughed.

  ‘Yes, she did, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Funny how names stick.’

  ‘Funny, yes.’ She put her hands to her waist to tighten the cord of her dressing-gown.

  An absurd pleasure at having made Lark laugh, at having guessed correctly the reason for her name, caused Evans to sway a little on his feet. Then the vision of Brenda, obliterated briefly by the gin, came back to him. She was dancing close to some man. Close to him and wanting him.

  ‘Take that thing off,’ Evans said. He was surprised, considering the fuzzy condition of his head, at the harshness of his own voice. With an economic gesture that conveyed a life of response to duty, Lark undid the dressing-gown. She threw it to the bottom of her bed. Then she lay back, eyes wide but showing no surprise.

  Evans looked at her. The small fierce light that hung from the ceiling glared on to the flat white surfaces of her body, reminding him of snow. Her nipples were black chips, hard as charcoal: her limbs, scattered in awkward shapes, thin as winter branches. From her breastbone to her naval ran a jagged scar, its ruckled join a shining silver membrane. Each side of the scar, pink dots dimpled the flat white skin. Evans licked at the corners of his mouth, tasting the gin.

  ‘You know what I’m going to do to you?’ he said.

  Lark lowered her eyes to look at him. She put one hand on the scar, feeling down its ridge with a scarlet fingernail.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What do you think about that?’

  ‘Oh, get on with it, Evans.’ Her voice was weary, impatient, without care.

  Evans struggled to undo his belt, his trousers, his shirt. His hands were clumsy. Lark’s eyes, very bleak, remained upon him. In his impatience, he shuffled himself awkwardly to the bed, trousers round his ankles. He crashed down upon her, felt her small bones writhe beneath him, the helpless flutter of a dying bird. He smelt nail polish – her fingers were clattering about his ears – and the sickly smell of hairspray as his nose dug about the brittle, frosty mesh of her hair. He felt himself to be lying on cold flat earth, enraged by the lack of undulations beneath him, but too desirous of release to get up.

  It was over in a moment. Evans cried out, Lark remained silent. She pushed at his shoulders, eager for him to be gone. He sat up, swung his legs on to the floor, pulled his trousers up over his knees.

  ‘Do you often do that?’ he asked.

  ‘Time to time. Not here. I wouldn’t like men in my room, except you.’

  ‘Brenda and me have often wondered if you had a boyfriend. Where do you do it, then?’

  Lark, eyes shut, shrugged her bony shoulders.

  ‘There are people at the office. Randy men. Lunchtime. Here, give me that.’ Evans threw the dressing-gown over her. ‘There’s a room where they keep the files. Airless in summer, freezing cold in winter.’

  Evans stood up, pulling his clothes together. Lark was a childlike mound on the bed. Impossible to imagine her, grey jersey and skirt pulled up, giving pleasure to some randy clerk who had backed her up against the files.

  ‘Can’t be much fun, like that,’ he said.

  ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘Well, it can be good.’

  ‘Brenda says it’s good with you.’

  ‘Did you think so?’

  Lark opened her eyes, cast upon him her usual consideration.

  ‘Well, you didn’t try with me, did you? I could hardly expect that, these conditions. Still, it was better with you than with the others. Don’t worry though – I won’t remember it.’ She sat up, patting at her dead hair which, in the skirmish, had lost its temporary boost and had fallen back into its old partings. ‘Now I’d like you to go, please, Evans. You can go back to the other room, help yourself to bread and butter, sit by the fire. You can wait there. Brenda shouldn’t be long. I want to go to sleep.’

  Evans took the remains of his drink from amongst the cacti on the bedside table. He felt in need of more alcohol. Deflated. His body still ached with an unfamiliar pain.

  ‘You might tell me now, then, who she’s with.’

  ‘I won’t, and I can’t. I don’t know his name and if I did I wouldn’t tell you because she’s my friend, Brenda.’

  Evans laughed.

  ‘Your friend? And you’ve just –’

  ‘Go on, Evans, get out
.’

  ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t tell her, for all she’s your friend!’

  ‘I wouldn’t say too much about it either, if I were you.’

  ‘You can trust me. But if she buggers off, some other bloke, I’ve every right to –’

  ‘Go on, Evans. Please. I’m tired.’ Lark stood up. In the moment before she succeeded in securing her dressing-gown Evans caught sight of red marks on her flat breasts, the beginnings of a bruise beneath a sharp hip bone. Perhaps he had hurt her. He could not remember how it had been. But her eyes were limp, in deep shadow despite the blaze of the overhead light. She seemed to be exhausted, very old.

  ‘I’m going,’ he said. ‘You all right?’ Lark nodded. ‘I didn’t intend, you know . . .’

  ‘No need to explain.’

  ‘Night, then, Lark.’

  Back in the sitting-room he closed the door and sat at the table. It was two-thirty by the clock on the fireplace. The bottle of gin was empty. The gas fire hissed and spluttered: there was a faint smell of gas. Evans felt both sick and hungry. He opened the jar of fish paste, scraped inside it with a knife. It had a sour, smooth taste, nothing to do with salmon, difficult to swallow. He heard Lark open her window and switch off her light. In a few moments, he hoped, poor battered scrap of a thing, she would be asleep. Perhaps by morning she would not remember much of tonight. Perhaps she would be able to cocoon herself back into the small scarlet world of her room unharmed, unresentful. She was a good friend, Lark. He would not want to hurt her.

  Evans lay his head on his folded arms. He had no wish to think about it any more. He slept.

  Two hours later he was woken by Brenda opening the door. In the stone-coloured dawn, increasing in the window, he saw that she wore a shawl over her shoulders – a shawl he had not seen before. Her hair was glossy as usual, but then it was the kind of hair that never tousled, no matter how energetic had been their love-making. Her face? How was her face? Through his aching eyes Evans found it hard to tell. Soft, somehow. The lines of defence, so familiar to him in daylight, evaporated. Sulky.